The Tornado hit Dawson Springs on Friday evening December 10, 2021. It was most likely one of a number of tornados that emerged along a 200+ mile line ranging from Northeast Arkansas through central Kentucky.

I have always liked Russellville. It’s in Logan County. The northern section of the county is hilly, bordering, Muhlenberg County. As you go south, the land gets more level, becoming rich farmland. Russellville seemed genteel. The people were (and still are) gracious. The historic architecture is good and of interest. It was always a comfortable […]

Leaving Paradise I meandered. I went to the Rochester Dam that John Prine sang about. Rochester is a small town with maybe one store a bank and a post office. I saw a dot on my Delorme Map identifying the town of Gus. My older son’s name is Gus, so I had to go there. […]

Lamont Collins, founder of Roots 101 African American Museum, t is holding a slave collar, one of the most horrific devices I’ve ever seen. Slave collars were locked around enslaved peoples necks to keep them from escaping. The weight of the collar and the protrusions, in this case spikes, impeded any sort of movement. Lamont founded Roots 101 to tell “the other half of the story,” the African American experience that has been forgotten or ignored.

At 351 feet, it towers over the Todd County landscape, the fifth tallest monument in the United States. Driving west on US 68 from Elkton, it immediately comes into view: the Jefferson Davis Monument, sited in the small town of Fairview, Davis’s birthplace.

I’d just spent a wonderful weekend with Pine Mountain Collective, and informal group of artists convened by the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust (KNLT). The KNLT has the vision of purchasing all of the available lands on Pine Mountain and putting them in nature preserves. Pine Mountain is Kentucky’s only true ridge mountain, running 113 miles plus from Tennessee to West Virginia. It’s a unique biosphere with a number of endangered species unique to Pine Mountain.