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Today's Opinions

  • Bloom like an amaryllis

    My wife, Lori, and I are not good with houseplants. When she brings home a new plant, I shake my head, knowing the plant's likely demise. I want to pull it aside and whisper, "I'm so sorry she bought you. I promise I'll pray for you."

    If plants could muster a police force, they would charge Lori and me with negligent homicide.

    So last year, when some well-meaning friends gave us an amaryllis for Christmas, I thanked them kindly.

    And as soon as they left, I knelt by their gift and offered last rites for it.

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  • Memorial Day a time to remember and appreciate freedoms we have been given

    One of our greatest presidents and Kentucky native, Abraham Lincoln, once said of our country, "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." That quote comes to mind as we gather in the coming days to honor those who have fought and died in wars foreign and domestic to continue to guarantee the freedom that makes us the envy of other nations and their people around the world.

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  • Reflecting on Memorial Day

    Memorial Day is a significant holiday in the state of Kentucky in a variety of ways. Broadly, it is the unofficial kickoff to summer with the school year winding down, vacationers descending in droves to our lakes and rivers, and warm weather and sunshine becoming the norm. While many use this holiday as a time to travel back to their hometowns for reunions and family cookouts, others use it as a time to pay respect to their lost loved ones by taking flowers to their gravesites. 

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  • Former CKNJ news editor honored

    Steve Lowery, former news editor at the Central Kentucky News-Journal, was a visionary. He could see the potential even before most of us could even fathom what could lie ahead. Even though we lost Lowery too early in life, at the age of 54, his contributions across the state, newspaper industry and the communities where he worked are still being felt and recognized.

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  • A gardner's dilema: Should I stay or should I go?

    A friend and gardening mentor told me when I first ventured into this labor of love called gardening that this hobby should be relaxing. "If it's stressful," he told me, "you're taking it too seriously."

    His words echo in my ears as I stare at the freshly plowed ground, that chore the courtesy of a friend kind enough to break up the soil for me.

    It happens every year: "Can I do this? Do I really want to start with the planting, the cultivating, the weeding?"

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  • Racism a problem, no matter your race

    In journalism, if you need a source for a story, you talk to someone who has a point of view to share for your story. You do that regardless of the person's background, and particularly regardless of their race.

    Usually, I find myself on the side of the news story where I'm the one asking the questions. Rarely have I been the one interviewed. But Monday morning, I received a telephone call that placed me as a source for a story to be aired on television.

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  • Somebody's prayin'

    "Preacher," a church member said to me one Sunday, "I was driving in front of the church this morning, and I saw you standing by yourself up there at the top of the front steps. I knew what you were doing; I knew you were praying. And I just want you to know it made me feel better."

    It somehow makes us feel better knowing somebody's praying, though I can't explain exactly why.

    I've never been much of a country music fan, but I can listen to Ricky Skaggs sing,

     

    Somebody's Prayin,' over and over.

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  • Time to roll back the death tax

    Those who pay an abundance of taxes while they are alive shouldn't have their estates be required to pay a large amount of taxes to the government after they pass away.

    It's simply not fair and causes an undue burden on a family grieving over the loss of a loved one.

    We are of course referring to the estate tax, or, as many people refer to it - the death tax.

    The federal tax is levied on multi-million-dollar estates after a person in that tax bracket dies.

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