Abandoned Anchorage Church Update

Has it really been almost two years since we examined this abandoned church in Anchorage? It's abandoned no more; as promised by a commenter on that post, it's being totally renovated and it's looking great now.

Graves Vandalized in Millwood

Some sick individuals are stealing people's gravestones in the Vol Layman Cemetery in Millwood. From the Grayson County News-Gazette:

Vandals that desecrated the graves of three World War II Veterans and a Korean War Veteran in Grayson County have stolen the special grave markers provided by the Veterans Administration.

Aileen Stewart, widow to one of the WWII Veterans whose grave marker was stolen, came to the cemetery with her son Carl Stewart JR. and viewed the damage first hand.

Her husband had fought in the war and she told stories of the time he spent defending his country.

“He fought for the freedom that these people are enjoying today and look what they have done," said Stewart. "Once he spent three months in a fox-hole and when he was finally able to take off his boots his skin peeled off with the boot."

A fourth vandalized grave has been discovered at the nearby Frank-Embry cemetery, same M.O. as the others: a military plaque removed from its concrete base.

Anyone with leads or tips on these crimes is encouraged to contact the Grayson County Sheriff's Office at 270-259-3024.

Kroger's Aerial Advertising

I'm a big fan of aerial advertising, in which a message banner is dragged behind a low-flying plane over a high-population area. I see it all the time in Florida, but it's something not usually done in Kentucky except during major events like Thunder Over Louisville.


So I was a bit surprised to see this plane circling over St.Matthews yesterday with a banner bearing the Kroger logo. It was way too high up in the sky to be clearly seen by anyone - there aren't even many pedestrians in St.Matthews at that time of day, and the vast majority of people in cars would never have noticed it. Hope Kroger didn't spend much cash on this.

The Curse of Constantine Rafinesque

It's an unfortunate fact that if you excel in too many fields at the same time, the net effect is that people's minds will shut down trying to take it all in. There have been many modern-day renaissance men in the last 100 years, whose genius overlaps into many different subjects, from botany to electronics to philosophy to religion, and they rarely get their deserved due from the public, who tend to prefer that you pick one realm of research and stick to that.

(It can be even more of an annoyance for someone such as myself, who frankly excels at no one particular practice, but nevertheless enjoys dabbling in painting, writing, science, theatre, astronomy, computers, music, photography, gardening, microbiology, and the culinary arts. It's hard to tell someone that you do all these things without sounding like the world's biggest B.S.-er and/or someone with delusions of grandeur. Hey, I never said I was good at any of these things - I just don't let that stop me from doing them!)

Take Constantine Rafinesque for example. He was a self-educated polymath and a polyglot who made great breakthroughs in the fields of zoology, meteorology, geology, anthropology, linguistics, and more - but was officially honored by academia for none of his accomplishments during his lifetime.

In 1819 Rafinesque became professor of botany at Transylvania University in Lexington, and also tutored in French and Italian. His erratic personality and ahead-of-his-time views, however, kept him in constant trouble with the University and with his peers in the scientific community. In 1826 he and Transy parted ways after a heated argument with its president, Horace Holly. Some versions of the story say he was fired, others say he walked out. Either way, Rafinesque announced he had placed a curse on Transylvania University and Mr. Holly, a threat which no doubt elicited little more than droll chuckles around the faculty lounge.

But then Holly himself was ousted from power by his own board, and soon thereafter died of Yellow Fever. And two years later, the Transy administration building was destroyed in a fire. Some may have, at that point, asked themselves if there wasn't something to the mad professor's curse.

Perhaps in a move to pacify Rafinesque posthumously, it was arranged after his death to bring his remains back to Transy to be interred in a crypt room inside Old Morrison Hall. For many years having his remains here was a point of pride for the school. But then, even in death, Rafinesque messed with them once more: it was recently discovered that they got the wrong body. A campus secret society known as "The Hemlock Society" had been charged with the task and mistakenly exhumed the corpse of a woman named Mary Ann Passamore from a pauper's graveyard in Philadelphia instead of Rafinesque's.

Oops.

Lakeland Asylum Markers

The bronze commemorative marker on the grounds of the now-demolished Central State Asylum at Lakeland (Anchorage) vanished awhile back, and no one seems to know what became of it.

Recently, while taking my early-morning coffee-walk constitutional in the E.P. Sawyer Park (which now occupies the haunted former asylum property), I discovered that not one but two new markers have appeared. One's your basic state historical marker, pretty vague and dry and not terribly informational in its capsule description. The other is a surprisingly elaborate presentation that speaks of the asylum's horrors with a little more candor, but still doesn't even begin to touch upon the full nauseating extent of the atrocities said to have occurred here in the name of psychiatry.


The photos were taken with a flash since it was 5:30am and pitch black dark out (I couldn't even read these plaques until I got home and looked at my own photos.) Don't mention the "orbs" in the photo unless you want to be thoroughly ridiculed.

Skinmobile

Spotted this truck in Butchertown. I wonder if the "skin" tag (heh) was placed there deliberately by its owner, or if some vandal (excuse me, I mean "urban meme artist") just tagged it randomly.

Hopefully it's the former, in the tradition of graffiti vehicles like "Gold Teef", "GNAR", and "I Love Earth".

Inflatable Pumpkin

Caufield's Novelty Shop in Louisville has always been good for eye-catching gimmicks, such as their hearse and their giant bat. Now they've put a giant inflatable jack-o-lantern on their roof, joining UnK's hallowed ranks of blow-up goodies such as the Inflatable Cone and the Inflatable Ape.

1877 E. Howard Tower Clock

One from my blog Revelation Awaits an Appointed Time:


Last week I spotted this clockwork wonder in the lobby of the Henry County courthouse in Kentucky. It was the original courthouse tower clock, which had been abandoned when it ceased to work many years ago, but then some enterprising soul rescued it from whatever guano-encrusted shed in which it had been stored, and coaxed it like Frankenstein's Monster back into renewed life.



The clock was manufactured in 1877 by a Boston, Massachusetts company specifically for the Henry County courthouse's original incarnation. I was thrilled to discover such a Steampunky find out in the glory lands of rural Kentucky, but the locals seem jaded about it, and found it a source of considerable mirth that I was taking pictures of it like a foreign tourist.

More Weird Mailboxes

So I haven't noticed any interesting mailboxes in quite a while, and suddenly yesterday I spot three of them, all on the same stretch of highway 157 between Newcastle and Sulphur.


We have a bull, a hot rod, and one festooned with horseshoes (unfortunately turned the wrong way for the traditional luck superstition).

W.H. Averitt

A grave that gives a little detail about how someone died always catches my eye, and this one that says "Murdered in Stanton" certainly did. In Bedford Cemetery (Trimble County), you'll find the grave of W.H. Averitt, who had been the Fayette County Attorney at the time of his murder in 1893.

For the Love of Beer Cheese

One from my writing blog:

Brillat-Savarin once wrote, "A dinner which ends without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye." And that's doubly so when it comes to my favorite Kentucky delicacy, Beer Cheese. My regular readers already know what lengths of fanaticism my love for Beer Cheese can reach, and now I'm droppin' that knowledge for the Kentucky Monthly crowd in this month's installment of Commonwealth Curiosities! Scope out the October issue at your favorite bookstore or newsstand.

Wrought-Iron Gravestone

An unusual grave marker, looking rather like a wrought-iron gate, in Trimble County's Bedford Cemetery.