Murray Reads Maya

This is an interesting concept: in preparation for Maya Angelou's upcoming appearance at Murray State University in August, Western Kentucky residents are being encouraged, en masse, to study up on her oeuvre before she gets here.

The "Murray Reads Maya" program is being engineered by the good folks at murrayreads.org. Says their site: "The Murray Reads program is designed to bring in the entire community of Murray together through books. There will be different authors throughout the year that will be highlighted, so everyone in the program will read something by the same author."

And the West Kentucky Star says: "Groups such as book clubs, cooking clubs, women’s clubs, children’s story times, elementary, middle school and high school classes, churches, and others are encouraged to use the website to be a part of the program and record which Angelou book they read."

I like this. I like it a lot. I'd love, in fact, to see something like this instituted statewide from a central hub. Like, on a given month, say, Menifee County could be reading Langston Hughes, Boyd County could be reading Thomas DeQuincey, Wolfe County could be reading William Faulkner, Letcher County could be reading Robert Anton Wilson, Jackson County could be reading Hunter S. Thompson, Livingston County could be reading Oliver Onions, and so on, and so forth. (Maybe some county could even be assigned to read me.)

Murray State's Shoe Tree

There's a very strange tradition that pops up in several places around the world, seemingly independently of each other, and that's the quaint surrealist custom known as the "Shoe Tree". According to Wikipedia, "There are currently at least seventy-six such shoe trees in the United States, and an undetermined number elsewhere."

Kentucky has one such tree, and it's located on the grounds of Murray State University in Calloway County. The Murray State Shoe Tree is in front of the Pogue Library, and has been a local curiosity for many, many years. There's not a lot left of the tree - in fact, it's really reduced to a tall stump these days - apparently because all the nails driven into the tree to attach the shoes over the years have literally turned it into a lightning rod and it keeps getting zapped during thunderstorms.

The tradition, as the story is told, is that if a couple who met at Murray State end up getting hitched, they return to their alma mater and nail their shoes to the Shoe Tree. Why? No one seems to know.

If said couple has a baby, the baby's shoes are then nailed to the tree as well. Why? No one seems to know.

Don't ask, just accept it.

Bowman Cemetery

This is a very neglected cemetery, with many of its gravestones displaced or grown over. Several stones are leaning against this tree, and its unclear where they're really supposed to have been situated. Many other stones are seemingly lost.

That's a shame, because Bowman Cemetery in Calloway County is the final resting place of the great Nathan Stubblefield, the Kentucky farmer who invented radio years before Tesla, and years before Marconi stole Tesla's ideas.

See more about Nathan on page 100 of Weird Kentucky.