Skip to the 12:43 mark to watch the legendary Bill Bryant interview The RP and KY Agriculture Commissioner James Comer about their bi-partisan trip to Washington, DC, to lobby capital lawmakers about industrial hemp legalization:
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From Tom Eblen of the Lexington Herald-Leader:
Click here to read the full piece.  Click here to BUY MY BOOK! A shameless and unconventional promo of my eBook. Look…my eBook is ranked, ahem, 391,200 on Amazon.com. Is that bad? It is only if you focus on the link underneath it offering to take you to the top 100 ranked books on Amazon.com. In other words, there are 391,101 that separate me from being in that group. To some people who read a lot of books, that may not sound like a lot. But to me, well, even though I read a good deal….391,101 books …..is a lot. Quite a bit. A whole lot, in fact! So I’m pitching this eBook one last time. And if I don’t break into the top, say, 281,200 on Amazaon.com, guess what? I’ll write another book! That’s right. If enough people don’t buy this one because they don’t want it…. there will be a sequel! Mark my word. That’s right. Next time I’ll try hawking two books in a Facebook post that other people don’t want to read, not just one! Game on!! I’m serious. I’ll write it. I will. I’ll write a second eBook. I already have a title for it. Title: “More….a lot more….Musings from the Middle: The sequel. II. And these aren’t very good at all –and seem to just go on forever. Just awful.” Do you really want me to go there? Do you really want me to hawk a second and much worse eBook in a Facebook post? I don’t want to…and you don’t want me to either…but I just may. You’ve been warned. Muahahaha!! My “Unfilled” Bucket List of things to do before turning 50 (in 3 weeks) 1) See the Grand Canyon 2) Be an author (I kind of did that but with an eBook, which is only partial credit) 3) See some other national historic site in the West but can’t recall which one.
4) Get down to “HSW +15” (high school weight plus 15 lbs). 5) Learn to paint 6) Learn to dance 7) Learn to play an instrument 8) Become a millionaire (or at least stop asking my mom for loans)
9) Make a second contribution to IRA. (After I start one and contribute once.) 10) Run the mile in under 4 minutes. (Oops! I meant, run for 4 minutes nonstop) 11) Watch the entire Godfather trilogy in sequence 12) Clean out my closet 13) Change the light bulb in the basement storage closet 14) Read a Gentleman’s Guide to Etiquette to my son. (Or have my daughter read it to me. This was an either/or bucket list item) 15) Fix something in the house without using duct tape or super glue
17) Take a foreign language (Ok. This was on and I took it off and then put back on and took off again for good.) 18) Don’t qualify for any new 12 step programs 19) Don’t shrink in height because you are close to not being able to round up to 5 ‘9 as it is. 20) Turn 49 ( I did that! Yay me!!) I still have 17 to go after dropping foreign language and only partial credit for eBook and stopping asking my mother for loans. It’s going to be a very busy next 3 weeks trying to complete my “Bucket List before 50” right? Nah! My new Bucket List for the second half of life is going to include not having a Bucket List and just live each day relatively well and not worry about stuff I won’t get to do before I die. I’ve done a few. Like turning 49. And it was overrated anyway. I like vegetarians, they taste good. Nowhere else is this better understood than in South America, where meat isn’t just part of a meal…it’s the meal. Balanced diet? That’s when your plate has an equal amount of meat on all sides, right? Vegetables? We feed those to the animals, so it’s pretty much in the meat, right? Seemingly ridiculous to say at home, a proper South American parrilla (or asado) ignores the Surgeon General’s warnings about eating healthy for meat, meat, and more meat. .
Where’s the beef? Such a question doesn’t even make sense to South Americans who love their beef with sides of chicken, sausage, fish and anything else that once moved under it’s own volition. Read the rest of… I’ve lived a blessed life, and my 11 years in public office in Kentucky were pretty extraordinary. There was one thing, however, I was never able to add to my bucket list — a positive editorial from any Kentucky newspaper. Not that I received a lot of negative editorials; I was just mostly ignored. So I’d be lying to say that I wasn’t grateful for the following editorial that appeared over the weekend in Danville’s Advocate-Messenger. I didn’t embark on the hemp legalization initiative to get a bunch of atta-boys, but it is always a great feeling when your hard work is recognized:
Click here to read the full editorial. Have you ever heard someone say they want to be a polymath? Have you ever heard anyone ask, how do I become a polymath? I haven’t. The word comes from the Greek polymathes or having learned much. A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. When we think of polymaths we tend to think of dead scientists from another era like Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci. Rarely do we apply the moniker in modern times. We need more polymaths. We need a generation of youth who want to be polymaths when they grow up. It’s easy to wrap our minds around the idea of a polymath in the context of ancient eras long gone. The entire body of knowledge on earth was accessible to an elite few. Those with an exceptional mind, privileged access, and the freedom to focus on interdisciplinary study, could become polymaths. In 384 – 322 BC Aristotle studied under Plato in ancient Greece. His writings spanned many subjects including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theatre, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology. In the late 15th and early 16th century Leonardo da Vinci was a prototype of the universal genius or Renaissance man. He was a painter, sculptor, engineer, astronomer, anatomist, biologist, geologist, physicist, architect, philosopher and humanist. Where have all the polymaths gone?
Three important inflection points have emerged calling to question an over reliance on specialization. Read the rest of…
Without moms, there wouldn’t be the other 364 days a year. And that’s just for starters. We would have a lot of bad habits that would hold us back in life and probably eventually lead to homelessness. And we’d have bad table manners and not bathe as frequently as we do. And we’d never gotten beyond 3rd grade in school. And with the foolish things we would try to do in the back yard playing as kids, we’d surely have put out one or both of our eyes. And refrigerators would stay open longer and waste energy. And we would have been cold more often because we forgot to wear warm enough clothes and shoes. And wet more often, too. Umbrellas may never have been invented if not for moms. Or chicken soup. Or coupons. Or the voice inside our head that says to us, “What would your mother say?” that keeps us from acting on ideas we have that are viewed negatively by society—except in Quintin Tarrentino films. But even Quintin Tarrentino is better off for having had a good mother. He would have merely been a spastic truant had he not had a good mom instead of one of the greatest film makers of our generation. So Quintin Tarrentino should be especially grateful for his mom. And we wouldn’t know how to say things like, “Happy Mother’s Day” and mean it. Or “I love you” and mean that. So, for all those reasons and many more, Happy Mother’s Day!
26 years ago this week, Rebecca Jackson (now Rebecca J. Brown) showed up to work at a Derby party my father and step-mother put on. It was a combination Derby and political event. My father was running for governor (term limits at the time prevented him from seeking a second term in 1983 so he had to wait until 1987). He was ahead in the polls but there was this fella named Wallace Wilkinson who was getting attention for proposing a lottery and he had a new hotshot campaign manager named James Carville, who had just come off his first major campaign victory and was looking to make a name for himself. But 26 years ago yesterday isn’t about politics. But rather romance. I had invited a friend of mine to join me, Andy Blieden. Andy and I had been friends since high school and he was determined to fix me up on a date. The week before we had met for dinner and Andy asked when I had last been out on a date. I answered somewhat jokingly, “Let’s see, this is Thur. So….Wed, Tues, Mon…Um…About 8 ½ months since my last date, give or take a week.” That did it for Andy. At the party, the outgoing and slightly intoxicated Andy, struck up a conversation with one of the Southern Belle’s greeting guests. He asked her what her name was. “Rebecca Jackson,” she said. “Are you dating anyone?” Andy asked point blank. “No, not right now.” Rebecca responded. “Would you like to date someone?” Andy humorously and pointedly asked. And then brought me over and introduced me. But before introducing us, Andy pointed out Rebecca to me and said, “You have to meet this girl. She’s beautiful and not dating anyone now.” I said OK and then scoped her out from a distance. She had long blonde hair and seemed sweet and shy. I liked that. So Andy brought me to her and said, “Rebecca, meet John the third. John, meet Rebecca.” I said, “Hi. How are you?” “Fine. How are you?” Rebecca responded. “Are you in a sorority?” I asked. “Yes. Are you in a fraternity?” Rebecca asked. “No.” I said. After a pause, I said, “Well, nice to meet you.” It was an inauspicious start but later in the day I struck up a much more meaningful conversation with Rebecca about such intimate topics as what she was majoring in and even disclosed my major, too. It was a start. As the party was winding down I noticed that the group of Southern Belles were leaving the party. I went down and said goodbye and thanked them. And looked longingly at Rebecca because I wanted to ask her out on a date but she was surrounded by sorority sisters and it was too embarrassing for me to pull her aside. She seemed to look longingly back at me, but I couldn’t be sure. So I waved goodbye and as I walked away I was angry at myself for not having the courage to just ask this young lady out. I let her get away. I missed my chance. She was gone. Or so I thought. A few minutes later while I was talking to a photographer working the party, I looked up and saw Rebecca walking toward the house. She had made up a story to her sorority sisters that she needed to go back inside the house to retrieve an umbrella she left behind. She never had an umbrella but wanted to give me another chance without all the other young ladies around to come up with the gumption to ask her out. I saw her and without thinking went with my gut, “Rebecca. Hey there. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
I had her number but she didn’t have her umbrella. But achieved her goal of giving a shy guy a little extra time to do what she knew he wanted –and needed–to do. And I’m awfully grateful for that. And will always have a soft spot in my heart for umbrellas, real and imaginary. Because that one umbrella changed my life forever—and without it I would have missed marrying my soul mate. Three weeks later, my father lost the Democratic primary for governor to Wallace Wilkinson—but there was a silver lining. I came out a big winner and won the heart of a loving lady now named Rebecca J. Brown. And she won my heart. By a landslide. I’m not sure what I’m whispering into Rebecca’s ear in the picture above on the afternoon or our wedding day 4 years later…..but it could have been something reaffirming my profound gratitude for sliver linings—- and imaginary umbrellas.
As always, The RP’s KY Political Brief, written and prepared by our wunderkind Managing Editor, Bradford Queen, has aggregated all of the latest news and opinion on Governor Steve Beshear’s decision to sign an Executive Order expanding Kentucky’s Medicaid program to 380,000 more uninsured Kentuckians. Here’s an excerpt:
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