Mark White

Wow! Organizers couldn’t have asked for much better day than they had Saturday for the Third Annual Colonel Fest celebration on Main Street in downtown Corbin. I was downtown from about an hour prior to the festival’s start Saturday morning  until it ended about 6 p.m. Saturday evening and downtown was packed with people pretty much the whole time. Numerous vendors turned out selling various crafts, clothing items, leather goods and so forth. There was tons of free stuff for children to do, including games, inflatables, face painting and so forth. Several children turned out for the egg toss and ice cream eating contest among other events. Perhaps the only disappointment that there...

If you are looking for something a little bit outside of the usual to do this weekend, let me recommend the Rotary International Dinner that will be taking place Saturday at the Laurel-London Optimist Club in London starting at 7 p.m. The annual dinner is a joint event hosted by the London Rotary Club and the Corbin Rotary Club, and it alternates each year between London and Corbin. My wife, Cecelia, and I attended this event last year when it was held at The Corbin Arena and had a really good time. There was food from more than 20 different countries cooked for local guests. I’m what you might call a picky...

Why are some things news one day but maybe not another day? Why do some stories make the front page one week, but not another week? All of these are pretty good questions and ones that we get questions about and sometimes complaints about, periodically, including a couple inquires recently. While the answers to specific questions may vary depending a number of factors,  let me offer a general analogy that I think explains this pretty well. News and the temperature have at least one thing in common, which is both of them can be a relative thing. Think about it. Pretty much no matter where you are, a 100 degree day is going to...

Kudos to 82nd Rep. Nick Wilson, who recently got his first bill passed through the Kentucky General Assembly and it was a significant one. House Bill 249, also known as Kimber’s Law, passed the House by a vote of 85-6 and the Senate by a vote of 32-4. Governor Beshear signed it into law last Friday. HB 249 will amend state law to include the intentional killing of a child under 12 years old as an aggravating circumstance for which the death penalty may be authorized by a prosecutor. The bill stemmed from a case Wilson worked on in McCreary County as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney. That case involved the murder of...

Perhaps winter is finally over and spring is in the air, or at least I’m pretty sure that is what a lot of us here in Kentucky are hoping. With spring comes a variety local events that area residents might want to check out ranging from community yard sales to spring clean-ups and a free Easter Egg hunt. Here are just a few of those, which have been brought to my attention. • Corbin’s first Depot Street Market of the season will take place on Saturday, April 1, along Depot Street between Fourth Street and Gordon Hill from 8 a.m. – 2 p.m. There will be yard sale items, antiques, flowers, vegetables,...

Bullying. I think that we can all agree it’s a bad thing. Statistics show that one in five high school students reported being bullied on school property last year. Reports of bullying are highest for middle schools (28 percent) and followed by high schools (16 percent). Reports of cyberbullying are highest for middle schools (33 percent), followed by high schools (30 percent), combined schools (20 percent), and primary schools (5 percent), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the wake of suicides by two Whitley County Middle School students in recent months, bullying is a topic on the minds of lots of people as it should be. I don’t...

You can sometimes get some interesting reactions when you are taking pictures of people who are accused of crimes. “What did you do, kill somebody?” one perplexed prisoner asked the other prisoner he was handcuffed to about 20 years ago as the press was snapping pictures of them being walked from the jail over to the courthouse about a block and a half away. After a long, pregnant pause and a deafening silence as nobody answered the question, the perplexed prisoner then said, “Ohhh!” as he realized the man he was handcuffed too was in fact charged with murder. Nowadays, if you are looking at a crime story in the newspaper or...

What the world needs is more petty partisan bickering between Republicans and Democrats! Pretty much no one in their right mind would utter these words except for maybe some politicians. Last week the Williamsburg City Council approved a resolution opposing both House Bill 50 and Senate Bill 50, which are both pending in the Kentucky General Assembly. These bills would require the offices of mayor, city council and soil conservation commissioner to be partisan offices rather than non-partisan. For anyone that doesn’t know, partisan means that candidates would run as a Republican or a Democrat or independent or some other political party. Non-partisan means that the offices have no party affiliations. Currently,...

Suicide. It’s a tough topic to think about, talk about and write about. Several years ago, I bumped into an old friend that I had gotten to know through work. We hadn’t seen each other in a while. We were both waiting to talk to the same person, and sat there and chatted for probably 20 – 30 minutes. He mainly talked about his wife and his teenage daughter, whom he adored. There was no indication that anything was wrong with my friend. He seemed perfectly normal. Finally, the person we were both waiting to talk to became available. Since what I needed to talk to them about wasn’t going to take long,...

Imagine for a moment putting a bunch of teenagers in charge of guarding keys to liquor cabinets. Chances are one of three things is going to happen. You’re going to have several good ones, who are going to do what they are supposed to do and everything will be fine. There are going to be a few, who will genuinely misplace the key to the liquor cabinet. This will cause big searches and lots of drama trying to find keys that shouldn’t have been lost. Sometimes things will turn out alright despite the misplaced keys. Other times, those misplaced keys are going to end up with some bad results. Then you have the...