-
1 month ago | 
kentuckyliving.com | Byron Crawford |Wade Harris
MORE THAN A CENTURY after his passing, prints of Frankfort artist Paul Sawyier’s splendid water colors, primarily of central Kentucky landscapes, remain popular statewide and beyond. An original Sawyier oil sold in recent years for $100,000, and an original water color brought $45,000 at auction in November.
-
2 months ago | 
kentuckyliving.com | Byron Crawford |Wade Harris
THE OLD BUCKET OF ROCKS resting in a dark corner of the garage has been part of my life since I was a kid. You might say it was handed down from my dad, who was neither a paleontologist nor mineralogist, but a Kentucky farmer who liked rocks. Our farm wasn’t covered with rocks—just enough to make it interesting. Dad taught me early how to skip rocks across the wide, shallow creek that bordered the back of our place, and he often picked up unusual rocks and fossils in its riffles while fishing.
-
Jan 9, 2025 | 
kentuckyliving.com | Byron Crawford |Wade Harris
LAST SUMMER, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources officially changed the name of its law enforcement officers from conservation officer back to the original title, game warden, which dates to 1912. The name change comes at a perfect time for retired game warden Jeff Finn of Logan County, a consumer-member of Pennyrile Electric, who has authored three books of “game warden” stories from actual cases across Kentucky.
-
Dec 10, 2024 | 
kentuckyliving.com | Byron Crawford |Wade Harris
A FEW DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS IN 2021, John Beldon came down with COVID-19 and was eventually placed on a ventilator for 13 days in a Bowling Green hospital. Doctors twice told his family that he might not live more than a few hours. Miraculously, on the 14th day, he opened his eyes and was able to breathe on his own, but unable to speak, and too weak to even hold a pencil. He has lingering health issues from the virus.
-
Nov 19, 2024 | 
kentuckyliving.com | Byron Crawford |Wade Harris
THIS STORY MAKES ME REGRET not having a better gift of expression, and more space, for the telling. At its heart is pediatric nurse practitioner Judy Harrison, 78, who, in addition to raising two sons of her own, has adopted seven medically fragile children and fostered more than 100 youngsters, most with special needs, from across Kentucky. “It was a job that I knew, without a doubt, God had put me here to do,” says Harrison, now a nurse with Easter Seals of the Bluegrass adult day help.
-
Oct 9, 2024 | 
kentuckyliving.com | Byron Crawford |Wade Harris
LEGENDS OF THE UNEXPLAINED have, for decades, haunted several buildings on the campus of Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. Tamela Williams Smith, a retired staff member and former staff regent at Western, first heard accounts of paranormal happenings as a freshman at WKU in the mid-1980s, but later experienced her own close encounter. On her way to earning a doctorate in education, she served for a time with the campus police on the midnight shift.
-
Sep 10, 2024 | 
kentuckyliving.com | Byron Crawford |Wade Harris
A VINTAGE PHOTO on social media of Robert Pershing Wadlow, the tallest man in medical history, brought to mind a long-ago conversation with 82-year-old Waide Hughes of Somerset. At the time, Mr. Hughes was showing me one of Wadlow’s size 37AA shoes that Wadlow had given him in 1937. “Have you ever seen a man 9 feet tall?” he asked, unlacing the story of his friendship with Wadlow. “He was so tall and such a sensation, sir, that nobody could help but stand and look at him in awe.
-
Aug 14, 2024 | 
kentuckyliving.com | Byron Crawford |Wade Harris
August 14, 2024 3 min read Lifestyle SOMETIMES WHEN I am on hold, listening to a continuous loop of jazz or samba melodies, I lapse into wondering just how much of my life has been spent “on hold,” waiting for someone—anyone—to answer. Fifteen minutes here, 18 minutes there, and pretty soon you’ve invested too much time to call it quits. Usually a polite, digital voice interrupts the wait with a reminder that my call is important to them, but that representatives are busy at the moment, and...
-
Jul 2, 2024 | 
kentuckyliving.com | Byron Crawford |Wade Harris
RARELY A JULY FOURTH PASSES that I don’t recall an unplanned fireworks show that occurred—most appropriately—in the town of Liberty in Casey County on an Independence Day evening during the mid-1980s. No, I wasn’t there to witness the event, but was given a firsthand account 20 years later when I tracked down the central figure involved, Gary Burke Jr., who remembered it all too vividly.
-
Jun 9, 2024 | 
kentuckyliving.com | Byron Crawford |Wade Harris
MENTION THE NAME LEONARD FITCH to most any longtime resident of the Jessamine County community of Wilmore and you’re likely to evoke a tender smile and memories of some of the soft-spoken 83-year old storekeeper’s lifelong acts of kindness. “He is the most loved man and revered man in this town,” says Wilmore Mayor Harold Rainwater. “He’s a special, godly man.
