Mark White

Attention all of you social media know-it-alls that are constantly complaining about state government. The same goes for the Grumpy Gus’s, who are griping all of the time about the this and thats, which Frankfort does. Guess what? We have an election next week to decide who the next governor, secretary of state, attorney general, state auditor, state treasurer and state agriculture commissioner are going to be. I think I can speak for many people when I say that if you don’t go vote in this year’s November General Election, then I don’t want to hear all of your griping and complaining and crying about how bad government is or what...

When you envision the landscape of downtown Williamsburg, chances are that the marquee of the old Lane Theater will be among the first images that come to mind. Although it has largely sat empty for decades, the Lane Theater is one of the predominant structures on Williamsburg’s Main Street, and has been since it was first built in 1948. The Williamsburg Action Team, which purchased the building about 20 years ago, largely deserves the credit for saving this iconic structure, which closed in the 1980s. At some point after its closure, the City of Williamsburg obtained the building, but didn’t do much with it besides putting a new roof on the structure...

For about 10 minutes last Wednesday afternoon, I got really excited. My wonderful wife, Cecelia, and I were having lunch when she noticed on Facebook that a $1 million winning Mega Millions ticket had been sold at the Circle K on Gordon Hill. Since this is where I almost always buy my lottery tickets, I started getting really excited. I figured that my chances of winning $1 million had just dropped down from one out of a billion to one out of a few thousands. When she went to the restroom, I got my wallet out, which is admittedly a mess, and started looking through my old lottery tickets. I usually only...

You would be hard pressed to find anyone, whose hasn’t known someone that died by suicide. A few years back, I had gone over to the courthouse to speak with an official and bumped into an old friend, who was there to see the same official. We sat around for probably 30 minutes waiting for the official to get done with something so we could speak with him. We talked about life and my friend talked a lot about his wife and child quite a bit. He seemed perfectly fine. Finally, the official that we were waiting to speak with had gotten done. What I needed was only going to take about...

Last week’s 40th Annual Old Fashioned Trading Days festival proved to be a hit as always. Although I wasn’t down at the festival Friday and Saturday, I spent most of the day and part of the early evening in downtown Williamsburg Thursday enjoying the festival and getting other work done. While the crowd wasn’t as big as I have seen it in the past, it has been a long time since the festival had that many vendors, especially food vendors selling all kinds of good eats. I especially enjoyed Low Down South Thursday evening. This group has a nice classic rock kind of vibe. Some of the gospel artists that I heard...

When I first started covering Old Fashioned Trading Days in Williamsburg nearly 30 years ago, I learned one thing pretty quickly. If you referred to it simply as “Trading Days” then Old Fashioned Trading Days founder and coordinator Teresa Estes was NOT going to be happy about it and would definitely let you know that she wasn’t happy about it…LOL. When Teresa helped start the festival all those years ago, part of how it got its name was that several merchants would dress up in old tymed clothing. I have to say that made the festival fairly unique in the early days and gave it an identity. This year we mark a...

Over the years I have written about a great many crimes. Some are for really stupid things, such as indecent exposure. As my buddy and former co-worker, Dean Manning, used to point out, there is almost always a funny story that goes along with somebody being arrested for indecent exposure. He’s right about that one, such as a person, who decided to skinny dip in the swimming pool of someone that they didn’t even know, or the woman, who took her clothes off and ran around a school track. (In case anyone is wondering, Dean wrote about both of those by the way…LOL.) There was another stupid criminal that I wrote about, who...

When it comes to the economy, tourism generates some big bucks in Kentucky and locally, but I daresay that most people don’t realize just how big that the economic impact is. Some recent numbers might surprise you. In 2022, Kentucky tourism generated $12.9 billion in total economic impact and generated 91,668 jobs statewide, according to recent report for the Kentucky Department of Tourism, which was conducted by Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics Company. There was $8.9 billion in direct visitor spending, which resulted in $937 million in state and local taxes that were generated, according to the report. With tourism draws like Cumberland Falls State Resort Park, The Corbin Arena and the Kentucky...

So which of these amounts would you think is correct for a 30-day supply of a routine medication that has been around for at least 45 years? Is it $16.90, $118, $240, or all of the above? If you guessed all of the above, then you would be correct for a medication that a family member of mine got filled recently. One is the amount it would cost filling it by mail order. Another is the amount it would cost paying with the insurance at a local pharmacy. The third amount is what it would cost if you were simply paying cash for the medication at the same local pharmacy. Logic would seem...

Goodbye and good luck to two friends of mine, who have recently retired from working in emergency services. I’ve known Danny Moses pretty much as long as I have been at the News Journal, which is close to 30 years. I first got to know Danny when he was a member of the Whitley County Board of Education, and then got to know him better when he served as an auxiliary sheriff’s deputy for several years and worked as a volunteer firefighter. At the time, Danny’s day job was being assistant manager at IGA in Williamsburg. If I needed to get hold of Danny back in those days, I would usually just...