Columns

Make plans now to visit the Corbin Center, located below the Arena, between Nov. 18 to Dec. 30 to view the Smithsonian Museum’s traveling exhibit, “Hometown Teams.” I first heard about this event a few months ago from Gary West, our friend, author, and columnist for this newspaper. With a gleam in his eye he said,”The exhibit is going to be good.” No doubt, it will be good. Some of the exhibits will feature items supplied by local people. Yearbooks, sweaters, letterman jackets, photos and a football from Corbin High School’s 1927 team will be among the memorabilia. Perhaps you have a treasure or two that you could provide to the display....

Misconceptions can be a difficult thing to overcome. Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles recently addressed the topic while speaking at the Whitley County Cooperative Extension Office. “A few months ago, the Washington Post’s front page story revealed the results of a national survey that showed 16 million Americans legitimately think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, and white milk comes from white cows. These are grown adults,” Quarles told the audience that was made up largely of local farmers. Quarles is right that misconceptions can be a hard thing to overcome. I found it interesting that he then perpetuated another misconception later in his address. “Millennials, those born between 1980 and the 1990s,...

Retired Whitley Circuit Judge Jerry Winchester was an old-fashioned country lawyer and judge, who knew that sometimes the best tools for addressing a situation were with humor and common sense. Back when circuit court was still in the old courthouse, there was a homicide trial many moons ago that had gone into its second day on a Wednesday. The News Journal had a newspaper rack in the lobby of the courthouse with a story about the trial on the front page that morning. Of course, some defense lawyers were objecting to jurors seeing the headline of the paper as they left and entered the courthouse. After reading the headline aloud in the...

A few interesting tidbits. • You might remember a story we had about Daniel Johnson, a Corbin man who walked from Canada to Mexico on the Pacific Crest Trail. I interviewed him when he was just over 400 miles into the 2,695-mile hike. He finished recently. Took 92 days. If you are interested in sort of a pictorial travelogue of his adventure, look him up on Facebook and send him a friend request. Scroll through his timeline and you will see a pretty impressive recap of his journey. Congratulations Daniel! That was quite a feat. • If you are looking for something to do, I suggest “Sound the Trumpets,” a show sponsored by...

Don’t score Houston, don’t score! That is what I was saying to myself at1:30 in the morning during the 5th game of the World Series. I wanted this game, which I had been watching for over five hours, to continue. It was baseball at its best. Like Gary West in his column below, I grew up loving the Brooklyn Dodgers. I started being a fan at a very young age, when Louisville’s Pee Wee Reese played for the Dodgers. Reese played from 1940 to 1958. He was a 10-time all-star and is in the Hall of Fame. From my Little League playing days through high school I was a huge fan...

There are three sporting events that attract non-traditional sports fans annually. Without question the Super Bowl ranks number one, the NCAA basketball tournament probably number two, and the World Series next. In the beginning of what is now a sports-crazy society, however, the World Series was king. The Super Bowl and NCAAs are a creation of television. As a 12-year-old sixth grader at Morningside Elementary in Elizabethtown, I had cleverly hidden my little turquoise transistor radio out of my teacher Miss Mason’s sight. Hearing constant static, I could barely make it out that my favorite team, the Brooklyn Dodgers had just scored the go-ahead run in the seventh and deciding game against...

When opportunity knocks, we should open the door. Over the years, Kentucky has made great progress in becoming a better place for business. So, when Churchill Downs and Keeneland announced they are joining forces to further invest in our state, the Kentucky Chamber was thrilled to hear the news. Churchill Downs and Keeneland’s multimillion dollar proposal to develop two new racing facilities in Corbin and Oak Grove will create hundreds of new jobs, bolster one of the Commonwealth’s signature industries and open the door for additional economic development. The companies anticipate the creation of 375 construction jobs and 175 permanent, full-time jobs between the two facilities in Oak Grove and Corbin. And...

Jake Mountjoy was an absolute hoot. Over the years I have gone to many Williamsburg Kiwanis Club meetings, and I always tried to sit at the same table as Jake when he was there for one simple reason. You never knew what the heck Jake was going to say next, but it was a pretty good bet that it was going to be funny. I used to joke that I longed to get to Jake’s age where you could say virtually anything you liked and be able to get away with it like he did. Oh the stories he told. There were the WWII stories of serving in the United States Navy on board...

Too much bad news lately. I simply can’t allow my mind to marinate for too long. So, let’s talk about some good things. • This week is the beginning of our third annual Secret Phrase Game contest, but there’s a twist this time around. Very quickly, the rules. Basically, there will be a word hidden somewhere in the News Journal each week for the next 12 weeks. Get all the words, assemble them in the right order, and be the first one to call us on the last day of the contest with the right phrase and you win $500! The word will be written in a distinctive font, so you should know it...

Last week in this column I touched on the National Quartet Convention in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. This week I will share my experience of attending it. The convention was very good, good and not so good. The very good came with the afternoon session we attended which was a Gaither sing-along. It has gotta be good when Bill Gaither leads thousands singing familiar hymns. I also rate as very good the hymn singing in a morning session and some of my favorite groups. Topping the list are the Hoppers. Kim Hopper was voted by Singing News fans as their favorite soprano and Connie Hopper was voted as the favorite alto. The quartets...