"Blessed are the Dead"

The epitaph on this grave in Georgetown Cemetery may seem a bit macabre (well hey, what do you expect from a rock that's sitting on top of a dead person in a box underneath the soil?) but it's actually from Revelations 14-13:

"And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."

Then again, the Bible also says "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth".

Then again again, Stiv Bators said "Meek inherits Earth six feet deep".

Q.E.D.

Hyenas in Kentucky

Researcher Bart Nunnelly has reported of a couple of cases of hyenas in Kentucky. One was near Uniontown, and the other was spotted (no pun intended) near Lexington in 2004:

"About 10 feet in front of the car, on the grassy area next to the expressway, we saw a strange 'creature'. It looked like a hyena, bluish-gray fur with blackish spots or splotches. It was crouched down as if going to pounce. As our car passed it looked over at us. It's face had a snout and long teeth. It bared its teeth at us and we were so shocked we just drove on. I can't imagine what it was. It was about 3 feet tall at the shoulder with a sloping back and narrower haunches. Its head was big and it had a fur 'fringe' along its back."

I'm not sure why they say "I can't imagine what it was" if they just got through saying it looked like a hyena, but okay. And that's a lot of detail given from someone who saw it from a moving car.

We do know there are coyotes in Kentucky, and that sounds more believable than a hyena. Seen from a distance in a moving car, a dirty or splotchy-looking coyote could fit the description and be mistaken for a hyena, I suppose. See coyote photo below:


Two 2009 posts to Jeff and Claudia's blog speculate on wolf sightings. Wolves are increasingly common again in Kentucky, and have even been deliberately reintroduced in some areas. These, too, could easily be responsible for alleged hyena sightings. See Red Wolf and Gray Wolf photo below:



On the other hand, it's still not impossible that hyenas could have somehow entered Kentucky's environment, as escapees from zoos or private breeders. Stranger things have happened, after all, like the spate of kangaroo sightings in Kentucky in the 1970s.

Kentucky State Fossil

Kentucky State Bird? Cardinal, of course.

Kentucky State Song? "My Old Kentucky Home" by Stephen Foster, naturally. And the Kentucky State Tree is the Tulip Poplar.

But did you know that Kentucky also has a state silverware pattern? It's apparently called "Old Kentucky Blue Grass: The Georgetown Pattern". And the state beverage is milk. Milk. Not bourbon. Milk. Who dreams this stuff up??

Kentucky even has a state fossil - the Brachiopod. Wikipedia says "they are sessile, two-valved, marine animals with an external morphology superficially resembling bivalves to which they are not closely related. Approximately 99 percent of all brachiopod species are documented solely from the fossil record".

The Labrot Family Plot

I only took photographs of these graves in Frankfort Cemetery because I thought their names were interesting, as well as their connection to Ardeche, France.


When I got home and Googled him, I realized Leopold Labrot was the Labrot in Labrot & Graham, the historic whiskey distillery whose name still appears on one of my favorite bourbons in the whole universe - Woodford Reserve. The distillery itself has been in operation since it was the Pepper Distillery in 1812. It was purchased by French wine merchant Leopold Labrot and Kentucky banker James Graham in 1878, who operated it until 1941. Brown-Forman purchased the distillery and then sold it in 1971, only to re-buy it years later.

View from Richmond Courthouse

Another high view (well, sort of): a photo taken from the top floor of the Richmond Courthouse in Madison County. I believe I took this around 2003.

Cathedral of the Assumption

I was up on the 6th floor of the Republic Building in downtown Louisville the other day, and took a few shots of the adjacent Cathedral of the Assumption from a hallway window.



The Cathedral was nearly destroyed during the Bloody Monday Riots of 1855. George D. Prentice, the openly racist and bigoted editor of the Louisville Journal (which later merged with the Louisville Morning Courier to form the Courier-Journal of today) used his paper to foment inflammatory anti-Catholic, anti-Irish and anti-German sentiments, and accused these groups of fixing elections. According to Wikipedia:

The rioters, led by Know-Nothing political figures who bolstered their ranks with paid thugs brought to Louisville for the express purpose of causing trouble, targeted Irish Catholics and Germans (primarily Catholics but Protestants and even German Jews were also caught up in the melee — the key being that they were German). By the time it was over, more than one-hundred businesses, private homes and tenements had been vandalized, looted and/or burned, including a block long row of houses known as Quinn's Row. Conservative estimates place the death toll at 22, while more realistic estimates, including those of Bishop Martin Spalding of Louisville, placed the death toll at well over 100 with entire families consumed in the fires. Citizens were dragged from their homes, attacked on the streets and in their place of work. Weapons, arms and later bodies of the dead, were stored in Louisville Metro Hall (the old Jefferson County Courthouse, now the Mayor’s Office), a Know-Nothing stronghold at the time. Sporadic violence and attacks had occurred in the year and months leading up to August 6 and continued for some time afterward...

Only by Louisville Mayor John Barbee's intervention — himself a Know-Nothing — was the bloodshed and property destruction brought to an end, including his personal intervention that saved two Catholic churches, the new German parish of St. Martin of Tours and the Cathedral of the Assumption from destruction by the mob. No one was ever prosecuted in connection with the riots. The legitimately elected Mayor of Louisville, James S. Speed, had been ousted in June by a court order. Speed, who upon his marriage, had converted to Catholicism, would leave Louisville for Chicago never to return.

The riots had a profound impact on immigration to Louisville, causing literally more than ten thousand citizens to pack and leave for good, most to St. Louis, Chicago and Milwaukee, and a large group who left in 1856 for Prairie City, Kansas).

Since 1988, the Cathedral has been undergoing extensive renovation, not only restoring it to its antebellum glory, but making it even more majestic than ever. The grand re-opening of the Cathedral of the Assumption was celebrated in 1994, with a completely renovated Cathedral space, and further improvements are still ongoing. You can check out an interesting audio tour of the building on their website.

They also operate the School of Spiritual Growth, which periodically deliver lectures on various topics of interest to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. This very evening, in fact, they're holding one entitled "What Are We Learning About God From Our Universe?" at 7pm in the Cathedral Undercroft for a $5 fee.


I'm increasingly interested in taking pictures from windows and rooftops of tall buildings and structures, getting seldom-seen views - especially using the zoom lens to catch high-up architectural details that are virtually invisible from the street. I'll use the high views tag to mark these in the future. Below's another shot from the same Republic Building window, but pointed down at 5th street.

Giant Razor Blade

This enormous sculptural rendition of a razor blade can be seen outside of Blades Salon and Spa on Chenoweth Lane in Louisville.

Author Walks from Kentucky to Oprah's Chicago Office

From NBC:

Like millions of other people today, Sam Neace will walk through the Chicago Loop.

But chances are that Neace is the only person who walked 500 miles to get here.

Today marks the end of Neace’s journey from Hazard, Kentucky to Chicago, Illinois to raise money for Relay for Life, a cancer charity affiliated with the American Cancer Society.

The survivor would like to hand deliver his published book of short stories, Neace's Pieces, and the manuscript to his novel, Bad Boy to Oprah Winfrey at Harpo Studios.

If he timed it right with his 25 mile per day pace, he’ll show at Harpo studios between 4pm-5pm on Tuesday, October 13th.

Neace talked to NBCChicago on a cell phone about two hours from his terminus, "somewhere on route 41." He’s not sure if Oprah will be there to greet him.

“Whether or not Oprah knows, I have no idea,” Neace said. The fine folks at Harpo studios said they hadn't heard about his walk and that they're not in the habit of meeting viewers who aren't on the official agenda.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. The important part is all the money Neace has been able to raise for Relay for life, which he estimates in the thousands.

“The walk was rough,” Neace said. “I walked through rain storms and over mountains and whatever you can imagine. It’s been in some ways the most inspirational experience of my life. But also my most challenging.”

Hillcrest Halloween II

More images of the power and the glory of the yard decor on Hillcrest Avenue, Louisville. These people have got it going on. I dare YOU to outdo them - get thee to a Garden Ridge or something.

Hillcrest Halloween

Hillcrest Avenue in Louisville is (in)famous for its wonderfully over-the-top Halloween decorations. This year promises to be the best ever, from what I saw today. Many families were in their yards putting their displays together as I strolled around snapping photos, so there's clearly much more to come between now and October 31.