Please sign the petition below to remove the statue of Jefferson Davis currently in Kentucky’s Capitol Rotunda, and replace it with a tribute to Muhammad Ali, “the Louisville Lip” and “the Greatest of All Time.”
I just heard from the Ali family: It is the Champ’s belief that Islam prohibits three-dimensional representations of living Muslims. Accordingly, I have adjusted the petition to call for a two-dimensional representation of Ali (a portrait, picture or mural) in lieu of a statue.
UPDATE (Tuesday, December 2, 2014)
In this interview with WHAS-TV’s Joe Arnold, Governor Steve Beshear endorses the idea of honoring Muhammad Ali in the State Capitol (although he disagrees with removing Davis). Arnold explores the idea further on his weekly show, “The Powers that Be.”
Click here to check out WDRB-TV’s Lawrence Smith’s coverage of the story.
And here’s my op-ed in Ali’s hometown paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal.
UPDATE (Saturday, June 4, 2016)
In the wake of the 2015 Charlestown tragedy, in which a Confederate flag-waving murderer united the nation against racism, all of the most powerful Kentucky policymakers — U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, Governor Matt Bevin, Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker Greg Stumbo — called for the removal of the Davis statue from the Rotunda. Today, as we commemorate last night’s passing of Muhammad Ali, there is no better moment to replace the symbol of Kentucky’s worst era with a tribute to The Greatest of All Time.
UPDATE (Wednesday, June 8, 2016):
Great piece by Lawrence Smith of WDRB-TV in Louisville on the petition drive to replace Jefferson Davis’ statue in the Capitol Rotunda with a tribute to Muhammad Ali.
UPDATE (Thursday, June 9, 2016):
Excellent piece on the petition drive by Jack Brammer that was featured on the front page of the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Highlight of the article:
Miller said he has received a few “angry comments” on his call to honor Ali.
“One of them encouraged me to kill myself,” he said. “You can quote me that I have decided not to take their advice.”
UPDATE (Friday, June 10, 2016)
The petition drives continues to show the Big Mo(hammed): check out these stories from WKYU-FM public radio in Bowling Green and WKYT-TV, Channel 27 in Lexington:
UPDATE (Saturday, June 11, 2016):
Still not convinced? Check out this excerpt from today’s New York Times:
My last column claimed that balance is possible in the face of chaos. I promised that we are all capable of maintaining inner peace no matter the environmental stressors—that work, play, challenge and rest are healthy integrative aspects of our lives. About the complaint of not feeling vacation-peace and bliss at home, I suggested that intention is everything.
Wehhhhhhhhl, I wrote that column from the window seat of my charming straw-roof cabana in the Yukatan Peninsula just steps from the ocean as a warm breeze kissed my hair. A little voice in my consciousness said, “Writing about stress management from an emotional and geographic location that represent the opposite of stress might not be believable.” Yes, mi pequeno internal voice doesn’t use commas, but it is very wise. And it is true that faith is much easier to write about when times are good.
So today I revisit my claim from the living center of chaos. I have been home for exactly 10 days, and I have weathered exactly 6 mini crisis since my return. 6! This might be a record.
How am I managing, solving, dealing, integrating, going with the flowing now, you ask?
I am leaning on ALL of my rebalancing support strategies. It’s a lot like the saying, “Don’t wait for the fire before buying the hose.” Turns out my impressive hose collection really is useful. And because of it, I think I’m managing with more grace than I used to—it’s clear I’m not going it alone.
One significant resource I relied on this week was prayer. I sat down in a beautiful location near my house where I could feel the vibrancy of nature all around me, and I asked God for help, a lot of it. I remember specifically not knowing what the help would look like for this and that issue, and especially for my daughter Abby, struggling with a problem so deeply that she’d lost her appetite for days, but I asked for the ability to recognize the help when it showed up.
Two days later when she finally felt hungry, Abby had me google the new Dominos in our Andover neighborhood. I dialed and we huddled together over the speaker-phone conveying our dreams of extra toppings. But when it came time for the phone number, pizza boy could not make sense of my cell number. Again and again we repeated it as he typed away on his Dominos Pizza computer, but politely he kept apologizing that there were too many digits.
After several minutes of this, puzzled and losing patience, we told him we’d call back. Was this some sort of joke? As I clicked “end” on my I-phone, the phone number I had dialed popped up on my screen before shutting off: +44 1264 363333.
Yes, it was a very good joke! I had accidentally tried to order a pizza from Dominos in Andover, in the United Kingdom!
We looked at each other and then at the phone, and then at each other. The swirling confusion around us dissolved into laughter, “Haahaah, the most expensive pizza on the planet, haha haha haha!”
Laughing harder, “After this phone call, we can’t afford pizza, hah hah hah hah hah!”
Stomach hurting and tears streaming, “I hope we’re still hungry next week when it gets here! Hahahahahahaha haahaahaa haaahaaahaahahahahahahahahaha!
We laughed at ourselves for about 10 minutes and then for 20 more as we called our family members to share what we had stupidly, hilariously tried to do.
Finally, with ribs and face hurting we slowed down, exhausted. Abby looked at me calmly and with a new light in her eyes, she said, “I feel so much better.”
Miraculously, what changed for my girl most in those minutes was her own sense of perspective. While the details of her week of struggle remained, suddenly her world felt much bigger than the confine of her problem—what better way to have the point illustrated than to order a pizza from overseas?
But what’s more, when 16 year-old Abby saw that her problem wasn’t her entire life, just merely a part of it, I knew that my prayer had been answered. God comes through every time, and has a most excellent sense of humor, because we want to laugh.
Read the rest of… Lisa Miller: God & Pizza are the Best Medicine
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Apr 16, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
Parents of teenagers are used to over-reactions – if someone doesn’t laugh at their Facebook post, they’re despondent, or a bad hair day leads to “I’m too hideous to go to school today,” or my personal favorite, teens who stare at a completely full refrigerator and moan, “There’s nothing to eat!” This could be a valuable skill in politics – in fact, I used to hypothesize that moms of toddlers could solve even the toughest diplomatic crises (“Israel and Palestinian settlers, if you can’t agree on how to play nicely with the occupied territories, I’ll put you both in time out!”) But these days, I think the additional skills gained by dealing with teenagers could help even more.
Because our political system has become so virulently partisan, even the slightest policy proposal creates shock and horror – both sides are guilty of over-reaction on occasion, but lately the most flagrant example is this week’s Senate vote on background checks for guns. From the way the NRA and many politicians are reacting, you’d think Senators Manchin & Toomey had proposed banning assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, and any ammunition and were considering banning bows & arrows and fishing poles. Strengthening existing background checks and closing a couple of loopholes is a really mild step, and from all the times Wayne LaPierre has ranted about ‘bad guys with guns,’ it’s hard to understand why he is so opposed to making it slightly harder for a bad guy to get a gun. The whole thing smacks of teenage over-reaction – “Today, background checks, tomorrow, they’ll have to pry my gun out of my cold dead body” is logically identical to “if Jason asks Kendra to prom instead of me, I’ll never have a social life and I’ll die alone.”
We already regulate weapons – no one is screaming about the slippery slope caused by the fact that you can’t own a nuclear missile just in case the coyotes out back get feisty. And we already regulate a TON of products and services that haven’t sent us on a never-ending decline into fascism – so far the government isn’t coming after our cars just because they’re registered, and while food vendors do need licenses and health inspections, it hasn’t led to goose-stepping officers shutting down little Susie’s lemonade stand. So get a grip, gun lobby – and to help you stop acting like hysterical teen girls who couldn’t get Justin Bieber tickets, here’s a musical reminder of all the things that have survived being regulated . . .
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 16, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Mr. Manners (My first advice column).
I think we need a Mr. Manners.
Miss Manners, in my opinion, talks too much and interrupts people in her mind before they can interject something. She doesn’t actually interrupt them, of course. But you can tell she wants to.
Which to me is disrespectful. Especially when you are already being lectured by someone about manners.
In fact, I think lecturing people about manners is rude. But that’s a different subject altogether.
Which leads to today’s question.
“Is it possible to be too polite sometimes?”
Yes! It is. A good example of this is Jimi Hendrix and the song “Purple Haze.” Jimi, of course, was a very well-behaved young man who liked to play the guitar and even wrote some songs. In one song, Purple Haze, he opts for the more informal “Excuse me, while I kiss the sky” over the more formal “Pardon me, while I kiss the sky.”
Had Jimi gone with the latter approach (which was preferred at the time in Great Britain), it would have been a musical disaster.
So never use more formal etiquette when it would cause a musical disaster.
Jimi Hendrix was respectful without seeming disingenuously polite –and was still musically appropriate.
I think that’s the key.
That’s the end of today’s Mr. Manner’s column. Which may not make much sense but compared to Miss Manners, rocks.
And “rocks” is preferable to the more for formal “is preferable.”
By Artur Davis, on Tue Apr 16, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Rand Paul’s speech at Howard University yielded about what would have been expected. The media focused on the crowd’s tepid reactions. Various liberal pundits dwelled on Paul’s awkward moments: the senator unwisely choosing a “did you know” riff that assumed his audience’s ignorance about certain historical points of reference, while he blanked on the name of Edward Brooke, a Republican who happened to be the only black man in the 20th Century who won a Senate election; and Paul’s tortured effort to contextualize his criticism of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
If Paul was simply showing up as a token of “courage”, the kind of symbolism consultants push on candidates, he deserved the dismissive results he received. After all, at the root of such a strategy is not really bravery, but a cold willingness to use the kids who attended as props whose indifference lets him demonstrate resilience.
Assuming that Paul had a nobler goal, that of actually winning converts among Republicans’ single hardest to crack demographic, African Americans under 29, I would still call it a missed chance, from his perspective as well as theirs, and a reminder of why the gap between blacks and the political right is such a chasm.
First, there was Paul’s fixation on historical alignments that predate his audience’s grandparents. The men and women who heard Paul could have used a primer not on 19th century history or even pre-Voting Rights Act Dixiecrats, but on the GOP’s contemporary pattern of electing blacks, Latinos, and East Asian Indians to governorships or Senate seats. It would have been worthwhile to tell the many southern born black kids at Howard that it is Republicans who put a black man in Strom Thurmond’s old seat.
Paul devoted a lot of time to the dirty hands another generation of Democrats brought to the debate over race. But it would have been much more relevant for Paul to push his audience on why poverty and inadequately funded black school districts stayed so persistent during the decades of Democratic legislative rule in the South, a run that in the states many of Howard’s students return home to every summer, just ended in the last six years.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Rand Paul’s Wasted Day at Howard
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Apr 15, 2013 at 6:58 PM ET
A good guide from The Huffington Post:
HOW YOU CAN HELP: This story is developing. Please check back for updates on how to help.
The Red Cross says the best way to help right now is to get in touch with loved ones through its Safe And Well Listings. The Red Cross is not asking for blood donations at this time.
The Salvation Army is offering food, beverages and crisis counseling to survivors and first responders. Find out how you can get involved here.
Some marathon runners are stranded in Boston in need places to stay. Find out how you can offer housing here.
Anyone with info about the incident can call 1-800-494-TIPS.
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Apr 15, 2013 at 4:25 PM ET
From Jack Brammer of the Lexington Herald-Leader:
FRANKFORT — Actress Ashley Judd has bought a house once owned by her father in Ashland, the northeastern Kentucky city where she spent part of her childhood.
Judd paid $120,000 on March 21 for a house on Morningside Drive in the city’s Beverly Hills subdivision, according to Jay Woods, chief deputy in the Boyd County Property Valuation Administrator’s office.
The purchase occurred six days before Judd, a Tennessee resident, ended speculation that she would run for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky against Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell.
Boyd County PVA Chuck Adkins said the house once belonged to Judd’s father, Michael Charles Ciminella, a marketing analyst for the horse racing industry.
The house, built in 1944, has 1,405 square feet with three bedrooms and one bathroom, according to Homes.com.
Adkins said Judd’s father had sold the house to a next-door neighbor, Beth O. Kee, and she sold it to Judd last month through the law firm of Edwards & Klein. A spokesman with the law firm declined to comment.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Actress Ashley Judd had purchased a house in the northeastern Kentucky city of Ashland when she was considering running for U.S. Senate.
Boyd County Property Valuation Administrator Chuck Adkins said Monday that Judd paid $120,000 for the house that once belonged to her father, Michael Charles Ciminella. The deal was finalized in March, about a week before Judd announced her decision not to run against U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell.
“It was kind of her old home place,” Adkins said of the modest home on Morningside Drive. “I think it was for sentimental reasons.”
…
Judd supporter Jonathan Miller, a former two-term state treasurer, said he sees the home purchase as an indication the actress wants to be involved in Kentucky politics.
Miller didn’t discredit speculation that Judd could be looking ahead to 2016 when Kentucky’s other Senate seat, held by Republican Rand Paul, is up for election.
“That could be an open seat, if Rand runs for president,” Miller said. “And those open Senate seats come along very seldom.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Apr 15, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
This is the story of KFC. Or at least a chapter in that story. Not the first chapter. But possibly the most exciting. Certainly one of the most pivotal chapters.
Told first hand from a gentleman I’m proud to call my father. And who at age 79 still hasn’t lost his ability to hold a crowd’s attention. Most especially when he recounts the fascinating tale of when preparation, opportunity, luck and timing all seemed to converge, somewhat fatefully and always fretfully, on a restless young lawyer from KY as he met a gifted and persnickety restauranteur named Colonel Harlan Sanders who was supposed to be a new legal client but something bigger seemed to be at play. That moment that passes quickly if not acted upon. An opportunity at a leap of faith that promises only to be a life changing event, good or bad, but nothing more specific than that.
He took it and found himself at the helm of an historic moment in the fast food industry and not knowing what he
was really to do day to day–and hoping and working diligently and creatively as he improvised what he imagined needed to be done so that one day, when he stepped down and enough time had passed, people might look back and say “That guy seemed to have done a lot of things right at a critical time even though there wasn’t a playbook or owner’s manual around to guide anyone through this transformational moment in the food industry.”
The story is a triumph of courage over fear; creativity over predictability; and mostly instinct over expertise.
And the lessons one draws are mostly personal and range from from the “So that’s how it’s done! I could have never done that!” to “So, that’s how it’s done? My goodness, I can do it if that guy did!” Here’s to the latter response. Which was my father’s back in the early 1960s when his “moment’ presented itself and was wearing a goatee and a white suit and black string tie.
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Apr 15, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Part 2 of 4: FINDING A HOME. When we left home we left with the hope that we’d find the city for us. We’d walk the streets and feel comfortable. We’d savor the foods and feel fine if we got fat there. We’d see the homes and picture ourselves there. It would feel like home. After visiting more than 200 cities, where have we decided to settle? Follow us on the second Wednesday of each month to discover what traveling the world taught us about where we want to call home.
Having decided last month that the developed world is where we want to live, which country? Do we want to live surrounded with the history of Europe? Do we want to enjoy the culinary delights of Hong Kong and Singapore? Do we want to live in the Land Down Under?
HE SAID…
I have always seen myself as someone who would live abroad. I’ve dreamt of returning home for my 30th high school reunion to elicit envy for my globetrotting lifestyle. I’d call places like Monaco, Chamonix and Singapore home, maybe all at once. Most of all, I’d be able to say I went somewhere in life, somewhere exotic compared to Middle America.
Beyond the allure of living abroad I see some quantifiable benefits. I’d be freer to start new businesses with national healthcare instead of employer-based care. I’d be more easily able to quickly visit interesting places based in Europe or Asia. I’d be able to take public transportation instead of sitting in traffic. These lifestyle benefits can’t be discounted.
It’s easy to picture myself living in a modern metropolis like Busan.
Read the rest of… Matt & Erica Chua: Living Abroad vs. the USA
Blog this!
