New Shoes in the Rain

My home city of Lexington, Kentucky has always struggled with finding an identity for its downtown area.  When I was a kid I remember the phrase "urban renewal" being thrown about pretty regularly, and gradually a few new office buildings, a couple of hotels and Rupp Arena, home of the Kentucky Wildcats basketball team, all were built.  A few other developments have taken place in the the thirty years since all of that development, but not all that much.  But things appear to be moving along now. The catalyst?  An upcoming event called the World Equestrian Games. Now, to be fair, I'm not a devotee of equestrian sports.   My understanding is that this series of events involves a great deal of training and dedication, and I do not wish to demean anyone who participates in this sport.  But the Lexington area is making significant investments in infrastructure in order to accommodate the large numbers of visitors (competitors and spectators, one would ass...

As I write this post, I'm sitting in a bakery in Montgomery, Alabama, in a behind-numbing chair that apparently has seen its better days.  I've just about concluded a three day road trip for my company and my fourth travel day of this week.  This trip involved sales calls and representing the organization in a charity golf event outside of the city here.  With all of that in mind, I have some open questions I'd like to pose to no one in particular.... Isn't it nice to hear everyone (or nearly everyone, anyway) speak with a lilting Southern drawl? This part of the country has endured some pretty serious rain over the past several weeks.  With that being the case, how can a golf course have such rock-hard ground all over it?  About the only thing that was soft were the greens.  Everything else was hard-pan with very short and spotty grass. Why do certain parts of the country NOT restrict smoking in certain places, like restaurants?  The information...

Just saw this news item reprinted from the Des Moines (IA) Register and paraphrased here: Iowa's world-famous “Field of Dreams” is for sale.  The field featured in the 1989 move is part of a 193-acre tract that the Lansing family have had in their family for more than 100 years.They're asking $5.4 million for the field and surrounding farmland plus the house used in the movie. The sale will be conduced without stipulations, meaning the new owner could potentially plow under the field, just as the fictitious Ray Kinsella was urged to do by his bankers in the movie. Now, if you're not a baseball fan, or a movie buff, or a Kevin Costner fan, perhaps you've not seen this gem from 21 years ago.  But if you are any of those things, then you know that this is almost sacred ground.  Because I've actually been there! One of those odd convergences of circumstances wherein our daughter was moving to Denver for a residency in her field, and so my one and only condition ...

Lots of fodder in the recent sports headlines to chew on.... First and perhaps most disappointing if true:  there are reports from anonymous sources (is there another kind in a situation like this?) on the Seattle Mariners that Hall-of-Famer-as-soon-as-he-retires Ken Griffey, Jr. was not inserted as a pinch-hitter in a recent game, ostensibly because he was ASLEEP in the clubhouse!  Frankly, Griffey always seemed to have enough respect for the game that I find this hard to believe, but you just never know.  And the players were supposedly younger players who like and respect Griff, so, again, it's hard to tell what's what.  Very telling, though, that both Griffey and the team's manager were very quick to refute the report.  What IS true and not in dispute is that Griffey's offensive production is so poor that he doesn't even serve as the designated hitter in every game.  He's batting around .200 (that's not very good, for any non-baseball fans reading thi...

This entry isn't about any one subject.... First, I find it repugnant that BP is acting as though it's not REALLY their responsibility to clean up the massive and ever-growing oil slick that threatens to contaminate the Gulf of Mexico's coastal areas for the next several years.  Simply put, you break it, you bought it, in my opinion, so in that context it IS BP's responsibility.  But this doesn't really strengthen anyone's argument that "drill, baby, drill" is going to be the answer to our domestic energy needs, at least not without destroying the environment in any part of the country where drilling will take place.   This, of course, does not in any way contemplate what happens to those who work the ocean for their livelihood, namely the commercial fishing and shrimping boats.  And I agree with those who wrote that they don't understand why this event has caused gasoline prices to spike 10 cents a gallon. Glad to get that off my chest. Sa...