Jonah, Jonah, Jonah -- you spread untruths! Well, we do have bats, but we also have Louisville Bats, the Triple-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. Okay, it's the minors, but I get just as much fun out of a game there as anywhere. My Indianapolis brother tries to catch a game in Cincinnati a couple of times a year, but he says he sits so high up that he could see it better at home. I don't know about you, but the atmosphere is as important to me as the game. You can have drunks sitting behind you, sloshing beer all over you whether it's the majors or the minors.
They have a jewel of a ballpark near the river, visible from the Kennedy (I-65) bridge. Attendance is great. They have lots of fun special events, and if you are inclined to take in Thunder Over Louisville, you can buy a ticket, leave the ballpark whenever you want to stroll around Waterfront Park, then have a great seat for the evening fireworks.
Way back in the 90s and 90s our minor league team played at the stadium in the Fairgrounds and was affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals. I enjoyed many a game there, too, watching the sunset, feeling the cooling breeze, and having beer sloshed on me.
Meh, Kentucky saying they have baseball because of the Louisville Bats is like me saying Mercer County has baseball because the neighbors play catch in their backyard.
Sounds right, Mommio. I've been to exactly one live baseball game. Both teams combined for three hits. (Had no concept of no-hitters at that point, so did not know enough to find that even mildly interesting or suspenseful). From where I was sitting I could tell you nothing about what exactly was happening with the pitching. The visiting team won 1-0. Some people dressed as large sausages ran a foot race. But I did have some pleasant conversations.
It's not a baseball thing - cricket's the same way for me. More of an ice hockey person - scoring chances both ends within seconds. But I will say that few things more than baseball give me that feeling of 'if only I had grown up here, maybe I would get this more and be more at home in this'. I do get the sense that for a lot of people an awful lot of baseball is about memories, atmospheres, stories, growing up etc. at least as much as about any present action. And if you missed the growing-up-with bit it's hard to catch up.
I almost got killed playing cricket as a teenager. Literally.
I am a true baseball fanatic. Nothing better than watching a game regardless of level.
Me, too. I haven't much use for sports built around battlefield paradigms. Thankfully, our AAA team, the Durham Bulls, are pretty good. the single-A Mudcats should be good, but their talent is raided too quickly.
Now GP, I can tell you have been out of the UK for a few years! The cricket version to watch is Twenty Twenty (US born people leave conversation now...) Each side has 20 overs and the highest score wins. It is played at a fast pace, often under lights in the evening - we now have permanent floodlights at the County Ground in Northampton. Each team plays in different colour clothing, with names like Northampton Steelbacks.The game is normally over in under three hours including break at change of innings. People actually pay to watch it, far more than normal cricket. It has become THE game in India, with big money (football size) being paid for star players from around the world for the two month season. And England are the current world champions. It is spreading into Europe - Denmark and Holland have teams too
Ice Hockey reminds me of the time when I used to go to see the Peterbrough Pirates regularly for a few years in the early 1980s. It certainly was exciting, but it never had the attraction for me that soccer has. It was more to do with a then girlfriend, I admit.
Been meaning to update this for awhile. Lots of new and exciting stuff happening in my new hometown of Frankfort, KY. But that will all have to wait.
We live a block from the Capitol Building (Frankfort is Kentucky's capitol). Slaves to Stereotype, the klan is holding a demonstration. I can hear them from down the block. I went over to investigate. Riot police are out making sure things stay peaceful.
It's a pretty large crowd there. It's the punk rock kids. The punk rock kids are out in force protesting the klan. They have signs promoting love, but they also don't forget to flip those fucking klan knuckleheads off from time to time.
A couple of inches of snow this morning in Western NY! On April 23!
sometimes I'm tempted to think that smalltown upstate NY is not all that different from smalltown South, and in a lot of ways it probably isn't; BUT: no klan here. I mean there's still a lot of racist assholes, but the idea of a klan rally here is just inconceivable. So I'll stick with the north thank you. I'll take a late April snow over a klan rally anyday.
That is late amclark! We've had hail, thunder, rain and totally blue skies, all in the last 24 hours, but fortunately not 2 inches of snow. Inevitably there are racists round here too, but at least not the klan. The British Nationalist Party are bad enough, but at least they don't go round in white hoods
Just found out my five year old's pre-school got cancelled too; a snowcat [I meant snowday, thank you autocorrect.] in April! Granted it's due to power outage not roads, but still.
There are parts of the South that are more tolerant than others. The "Triangle" here in NC is rather diverse, and it benefits from having an affluent African-American community and a large population of people from New York, New Jersey and the New England states (hence Cary is called the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees). Being the capital county also helps.
However, I also think that the legacy of racism and prejudice is different in North Carolina than in other Southern States. Slavery was less prevalent. Participation in the Civil War was less tied to maintaining institutional racism. Following the war, African-Americans were better able to carve out financial institutions for their own purposes. And in general, I think that there was less hostility to the Civil Rights Movement. The Greensboro sit-ins and the Joan Little trials were events that, IMO, could only have happened in NC.
Now, before I white wash too much, I should admit this is the home of Jesse Helms. There is still a history of racially charged incidents. And there are still a few Confederate flags around.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the klan demonstrates in most states in the U.S. While there is something deliciously stereotypical about it happening in the south, I do recall similar rallies in both Chicago (Skokie) and Denver and South Carolina. I'm pretty sure those ugly braindead fuckers have (dis)graced the state capitol grounds of every state in the U.S. with their presence.
On better news, we drove into Lexington for a wedding Saturday. It was nice having a shorter commute to Lexington (as it is Louisville), and even better and more important, the drive was much prettier. The old drive from Harrodsburg was either ugly or dull, and the pretty parts got tiresome quickly. Now, we're really in the pretty part of horse country... with less farmland around.
After a fun Saturday night at a beautiful wedding, on our way out of town, we stopped in this neat little neighborhood of Lexington (already forgot what it was called, but it's in the North side, just before the border and the New Circle Road entrance before leaving Lexington proper). There were these old fashioned strip malls. I know strip malls invoke bad thoughts, which they should, but these were like just old stores set off the road. And they were very cool. There was several antique stores, a Goodwill, a old school diner, a chinese food joint that included veggie/tofu dishes on the menu, two TWO old-school barbershops, a neat liquor store, and a real bookstore.
We bought a bunch of books at the bookstore. It was so nice just experiencing a real bookstore again. No matter how many chairs and fake fireplaces they stick in a Borders/B&N, they can never recreate the awesome experience of browsing a real book store. We got some good stuff there, ate at the Chinese food joint, shopped the antique stores, just walked up and down the block of stores.
Inside the Chinese Food place (I think it was called Yummy Yummy Palace)... it was cool inside and the wall was made of windows and we were the only ones in there so it was completely quiet. Outside, it was sunny but some dark clouds. The street was quaint, not a lot of traffic. Long swaths of closely cropped lawn, full trees, birds, quaint buildings low to the ground so the sky was wide open... there is something so grounding about being inside a quiet place, separated by windows from outside & nature, and just observing the sun washing over lush green grass, trees swaying in a gentle breeze, leaves sparkling in sunlight, cars silent as they occasionally flit by, dark clouds playing with shadows... and silence from both sides of the glass windows. Even with that sensory separation (other than sight, obviously), I can still feel the sunlight warm my skin and the breeze go through my hair and hear the whoosh of cars and the chatter of squirrels and birds and hear the leaves rattle in the breeze... because it's so organic to all of us, that even when separated from nature, we are still a part of it. We can still feel it as long as there's some sort of connection (in this case, sight).
In a way, it's very comforting, and a reminder that we need not fear death, that we truly do become a part of that nature scenery again, and if it can reach out to me and induce visceral sensations like that though separated by glass, then surely after I die, there's a place in all of that for me too, and am I really dead if I can affect other people the same way as I was that day?
It had been awhile since I last felt that connection through separation. I was telling Katie that I think the last time was on our honeymoon, at our luxury suite in the mountains atop a hill. The living room had cathedral ceilings and the windows went from floor to ceiling, and staring through them at the mountain range and the clouds and they birds circling in the distance, and the forest treelines ribboning the cliffsides... the same thing, and in spades.
Anyways, it was a nice weekend.
There's gonna be a jazz show in Lexington on May 18th(?). Might be kind of avant-garde, but I'm familiar with both artists and am thrilled to go see it. I'm also going into Louisville Derby weekend. I'll be attending a meeting of the Louisville jazz society, and I just found out that the next night our friend Johanna (long long long time friend of my in-laws and who graciously bordered me and my peeps during wedding week) has a friend/jazz musician from Boston (don't know who), but he's visiting and doing a house show that night.
My jazz world is starting to open up.
Speaking of which, I'm about to start a sister site to Bird is the Worm, one which will cover local jazz, both the artists and the venues, and maybe other music/art related stuff in Kentucky. Not gonna say what the site is called until the name is officially registered, but I'll announce it this week.
Man, there's so much more to talk about. I can't get behind like this.
I shouldn't have been so mindlessly critical of the south, I'll admit it. When it's almost May and you're scraping snow off your car, you have to try to find some damn excuse for living where that can happen.
This ephemera c. 1927 from the Women of the Ku Klux Klan was found in Coxsackie, New York, and was part of a museum accession that also included Klan robes and hoods. These artifacts are representative of widespread KKK activity in New York State in the 1920s. An estimated 80,000 New Yorkers belonged to the Klan. In fact, New York had the seventh highest membership in the nation. The Albany-Schenectady-Troy area had an estimated 11,000 members, but Klan rallies, parades, and burning crosses were reported statewide, from the state headquarters in Binghamton to Long Island, from Buffalo to the Catskills. As opposed to the anti-black animus in the South, the primary targets of the Klan in New York were Roman Catholics, Jews, immigrants generally, and "Bolsheviks" (the common 1920s name for communists).
Nationwide, as many as half a million women were members of Women of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). The Tri-K for Girls was the female youth group. It may seem surprising that women were involved in the Klan, but many elements of the Klan's platform were intended to appeal to women. Although Klanswomen did not enjoy equality with Klansmen, Klan rhetoric glorified the purity of womanhood and the sanctity of the home. Enforcing Prohibition was a cornerstone of the KKK's "reform" agenda. In this the Klan shared a position held by many progressive reformers, including many suffragists and feminists, who condemned the use of alcohol as detrimental to society. (For a similar view, see the Women's Christian Temperance Union quilt also on this web site.) The Klan opposed "vice" in all forms, including prostitution and gambling. The Klan in the 1920s was active in electoral politics to achieve some of its objectives, and therefore it supported women's right to vote--that is, it supported Klan women voting for Klan-endorsed candidates. Klanswomen also participated in boycotts of businesses owned by Jews and others who were not considered "100% American" (anyone not native-born, white, and Protestant).
I really do regret not keeping up with this thread more.
I keep forgetting that the Applebee's in my new hometown is what inspired this thread's title. I guess it still hasn't sunk in that we live in Frankfort now. If you don't feel like reading a long post, the summary is: I love this town, would be happy living here the rest of my life.
Since I last wrote, we've been through a summer and autumn here. We weren't around here much for the summer. My brother-in-law (my wife's brother) got married in Louisville, and we were there practically every weekend leading up to it (or somewhere else for a wedding event). There was a stretch where we were out of town seven of eight weekends. So, yeah, didn't spend much time here.
Autumn was beautiful. We're in an elevated valley, surrounded by hills. The colors changed everywhere, and everywhere I looked, I felt like I was in some vacation town and I had to be concerned about getting packed to go home. I always knew I'd end up in a beautiful town like this, but that doesn't mean the reality of it is gonna sink in any easier.
One of my favorite things to do over the summer was walk (sometimes a short drive) through my neighborhood toward downtown. Quaint wide tree-lined streets with old homes, then cross the old bridge over the river, stop by the library to drop off old books, pick up new. Then walk through another historical neighborhood before hitting the park where the farmer's market was held several days a week. Picking out fruits for juicing, vegetable for dinner, and then going back home and getting some writing done.
Because of money, we don't eat out much, but when we do, there are plenty of nice choices here. Granted, not like Chicago (obviously), but there's enough here that we don't feel like we're missing out on everything. Plus, we go into Louisville a lot, just whenever we feel like it. It's a 45 minute drive, so driving in after work, coming back the same evening is no problem at all. It really does feel like we're just in a Louisville suburb (as far as distance goes). Harrodsburg, we couldn't have done that while living there. Big diff between 1.5 and 3.0 hours round trip, yeah?
Our house (I believe it's called a Craftsman Style home) has a gas fireplace in the living room, which we've been taking advantage of. We got our first Christmas tree for the new Frankfort home. It was fun, though we weren't able to get it from the place we wanted to. There was this little nursery lot off the road, and every time we would drive to Frankfort just to get the hell away from Harrodsburg for the day, we'd see the nursery and say, if we ever lived in Frankfort, that's where we'd get our christmas tree from. Well, they were sold out by the time we got there. It didn't ruin the fun. We swung by the Kroger where they had some tree dangling out front on cords and no water to keep them fresh. It was kind of sad, and we were happy to liberate one of those trees and take it home. I chopped a bunch of grooves in its stump to help give it more avenues for soaking in water, which it did like mad the first two days... now it's sort've leveling off. That poor thirsty tree.
We adopted out our one remaining foster cat (Bea) to a nice home, of a new friend of ours. Apparently he's spoiling the hell out of Bea (who is a cat who always wanted some dude to spoil her), and she's getting nice and fat. She was one of the first cats I ever rescued from the animal shelter in Harrodsburg, and it's been a long journey through several foster homes and the humane society office before we were able to find a permanent spot, and we were both thrilled to place her somewhere where we wouldn't have to worry at night if she was okay and wonder if we'd made the right choice. She's doing great.
This neighborhood continues to show how friendly it is. We keep meeting people from around, just via walking. People walk around here (or walk their dogs or jog, etc). So different from where we were before, where nobody walked unless it was to get to and from their car.
I'm still interested in throwing some jazz shows here, and beginning to devise a plan. I got to see a bunch of shows in Lexington throughout the year. The same guy has been bringing avant-garde free improv shows in for the last decade. This past year, I've been able to see Jeb Bishop, Tim Daisy, Brotzmann, Jason Adaisiewicz, Tres Hongos, and more.
We've had five minutes of snow so far this winter. Literally, five minutes. The temp dropped like mad one afternoon recently, which made the condensation turn into lightly falling snow briefly before the temp went right back up and end the snowfall. I think air pressure and temps have some wildly varying swings because of the "bowl" that we live in (not quite a valley... it really looks like we're in a bowl).
I think that's it. Getting ready to spend time with the family for the holidays.
I've been to Frankfort! We were visiting family in Cincinatti, and all spent a couple nights in Louisville to go see Bourbon distilleries, and Buffalo Trace, my absolute favorite, is there in Frankfort. Very nice area.
Sounds idyllic, Jonah. We're moving in three or four weeks time, from a small village into a nearby town, Wellingborough. As we approach retirement, we are getting fed up getting into a car everytime we want to buy a newspaper or a bottle of milk or anything else for that matter. We'll have two lots of shops each less than ten minutes walk away, church will be even closer along with sports centre, doctors and pharmacist. Buses run by regualrly less than five minutes walk away, so in a week or so we start packing the boxes!
Good luck with the move, Greg. Those are always fun.
I'm probably selling Frankfort a bit hard. I've been in prettier towns, and I'm sure there's people out there that would scoff at me even referring to Frankfort as beautiful. But it is a very pretty town, and something about it just says "arrival point" to me, like after years of struggling, this is a great place to finally take a deep breath and let my guard down and plant some roots. Our neighborhood (South Frankfort, right by the Capitol Building) is super pretty. Quaint and all. The old homes, wide streets old trees, the curvature of the river, the old bridge, and the hills and slope of the land. And it's adjacent to a very quaint downtown and the official historical neighborhood (y'know you're in an old town with history when a historical neighborhood has to be considered even more "historical" than adjacent neighborhoods with tons of history).
Comments
Cricket
so they're the same sport.
They have a jewel of a ballpark near the river, visible from the Kennedy (I-65) bridge. Attendance is great. They have lots of fun special events, and if you are inclined to take in Thunder Over Louisville, you can buy a ticket, leave the ballpark whenever you want to stroll around Waterfront Park, then have a great seat for the evening fireworks.
Way back in the 90s and 90s our minor league team played at the stadium in the Fairgrounds and was affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals. I enjoyed many a game there, too, watching the sunset, feeling the cooling breeze, and having beer sloshed on me.
The Bats stadium is pretty cute, though.
It's not a baseball thing - cricket's the same way for me. More of an ice hockey person - scoring chances both ends within seconds. But I will say that few things more than baseball give me that feeling of 'if only I had grown up here, maybe I would get this more and be more at home in this'. I do get the sense that for a lot of people an awful lot of baseball is about memories, atmospheres, stories, growing up etc. at least as much as about any present action. And if you missed the growing-up-with bit it's hard to catch up.
I almost got killed playing cricket as a teenager. Literally.
Craig
Baseball is in my soul, which is why my soul usually hurts pretty bad around mid-Cubs-season.
Ice Hockey reminds me of the time when I used to go to see the Peterbrough Pirates regularly for a few years in the early 1980s. It certainly was exciting, but it never had the attraction for me that soccer has. It was more to do with a then girlfriend, I admit.
We live a block from the Capitol Building (Frankfort is Kentucky's capitol). Slaves to Stereotype, the klan is holding a demonstration. I can hear them from down the block. I went over to investigate. Riot police are out making sure things stay peaceful.
It's a pretty large crowd there. It's the punk rock kids. The punk rock kids are out in force protesting the klan. They have signs promoting love, but they also don't forget to flip those fucking klan knuckleheads off from time to time.
Go, punk rock kids, go. You are beautiful people.
sometimes I'm tempted to think that smalltown upstate NY is not all that different from smalltown South, and in a lot of ways it probably isn't; BUT: no klan here. I mean there's still a lot of racist assholes, but the idea of a klan rally here is just inconceivable. So I'll stick with the north thank you. I'll take a late April snow over a klan rally anyday.
However, I also think that the legacy of racism and prejudice is different in North Carolina than in other Southern States. Slavery was less prevalent. Participation in the Civil War was less tied to maintaining institutional racism. Following the war, African-Americans were better able to carve out financial institutions for their own purposes. And in general, I think that there was less hostility to the Civil Rights Movement. The Greensboro sit-ins and the Joan Little trials were events that, IMO, could only have happened in NC.
Now, before I white wash too much, I should admit this is the home of Jesse Helms. There is still a history of racially charged incidents. And there are still a few Confederate flags around.
On better news, we drove into Lexington for a wedding Saturday. It was nice having a shorter commute to Lexington (as it is Louisville), and even better and more important, the drive was much prettier. The old drive from Harrodsburg was either ugly or dull, and the pretty parts got tiresome quickly. Now, we're really in the pretty part of horse country... with less farmland around.
After a fun Saturday night at a beautiful wedding, on our way out of town, we stopped in this neat little neighborhood of Lexington (already forgot what it was called, but it's in the North side, just before the border and the New Circle Road entrance before leaving Lexington proper). There were these old fashioned strip malls. I know strip malls invoke bad thoughts, which they should, but these were like just old stores set off the road. And they were very cool. There was several antique stores, a Goodwill, a old school diner, a chinese food joint that included veggie/tofu dishes on the menu, two TWO old-school barbershops, a neat liquor store, and a real bookstore.
We bought a bunch of books at the bookstore. It was so nice just experiencing a real bookstore again. No matter how many chairs and fake fireplaces they stick in a Borders/B&N, they can never recreate the awesome experience of browsing a real book store. We got some good stuff there, ate at the Chinese food joint, shopped the antique stores, just walked up and down the block of stores.
Inside the Chinese Food place (I think it was called Yummy Yummy Palace)... it was cool inside and the wall was made of windows and we were the only ones in there so it was completely quiet. Outside, it was sunny but some dark clouds. The street was quaint, not a lot of traffic. Long swaths of closely cropped lawn, full trees, birds, quaint buildings low to the ground so the sky was wide open... there is something so grounding about being inside a quiet place, separated by windows from outside & nature, and just observing the sun washing over lush green grass, trees swaying in a gentle breeze, leaves sparkling in sunlight, cars silent as they occasionally flit by, dark clouds playing with shadows... and silence from both sides of the glass windows. Even with that sensory separation (other than sight, obviously), I can still feel the sunlight warm my skin and the breeze go through my hair and hear the whoosh of cars and the chatter of squirrels and birds and hear the leaves rattle in the breeze... because it's so organic to all of us, that even when separated from nature, we are still a part of it. We can still feel it as long as there's some sort of connection (in this case, sight).
In a way, it's very comforting, and a reminder that we need not fear death, that we truly do become a part of that nature scenery again, and if it can reach out to me and induce visceral sensations like that though separated by glass, then surely after I die, there's a place in all of that for me too, and am I really dead if I can affect other people the same way as I was that day?
It had been awhile since I last felt that connection through separation. I was telling Katie that I think the last time was on our honeymoon, at our luxury suite in the mountains atop a hill. The living room had cathedral ceilings and the windows went from floor to ceiling, and staring through them at the mountain range and the clouds and they birds circling in the distance, and the forest treelines ribboning the cliffsides... the same thing, and in spades.
Anyways, it was a nice weekend.
There's gonna be a jazz show in Lexington on May 18th(?). Might be kind of avant-garde, but I'm familiar with both artists and am thrilled to go see it. I'm also going into Louisville Derby weekend. I'll be attending a meeting of the Louisville jazz society, and I just found out that the next night our friend Johanna (long long long time friend of my in-laws and who graciously bordered me and my peeps during wedding week) has a friend/jazz musician from Boston (don't know who), but he's visiting and doing a house show that night.
My jazz world is starting to open up.
Speaking of which, I'm about to start a sister site to Bird is the Worm, one which will cover local jazz, both the artists and the venues, and maybe other music/art related stuff in Kentucky. Not gonna say what the site is called until the name is officially registered, but I'll announce it this week.
Man, there's so much more to talk about. I can't get behind like this.
Cheers.
But from the New York State Museum:
There's knuckleheads everywhere I guess.
I keep forgetting that the Applebee's in my new hometown is what inspired this thread's title. I guess it still hasn't sunk in that we live in Frankfort now. If you don't feel like reading a long post, the summary is: I love this town, would be happy living here the rest of my life.
Since I last wrote, we've been through a summer and autumn here. We weren't around here much for the summer. My brother-in-law (my wife's brother) got married in Louisville, and we were there practically every weekend leading up to it (or somewhere else for a wedding event). There was a stretch where we were out of town seven of eight weekends. So, yeah, didn't spend much time here.
Autumn was beautiful. We're in an elevated valley, surrounded by hills. The colors changed everywhere, and everywhere I looked, I felt like I was in some vacation town and I had to be concerned about getting packed to go home. I always knew I'd end up in a beautiful town like this, but that doesn't mean the reality of it is gonna sink in any easier.
One of my favorite things to do over the summer was walk (sometimes a short drive) through my neighborhood toward downtown. Quaint wide tree-lined streets with old homes, then cross the old bridge over the river, stop by the library to drop off old books, pick up new. Then walk through another historical neighborhood before hitting the park where the farmer's market was held several days a week. Picking out fruits for juicing, vegetable for dinner, and then going back home and getting some writing done.
Because of money, we don't eat out much, but when we do, there are plenty of nice choices here. Granted, not like Chicago (obviously), but there's enough here that we don't feel like we're missing out on everything. Plus, we go into Louisville a lot, just whenever we feel like it. It's a 45 minute drive, so driving in after work, coming back the same evening is no problem at all. It really does feel like we're just in a Louisville suburb (as far as distance goes). Harrodsburg, we couldn't have done that while living there. Big diff between 1.5 and 3.0 hours round trip, yeah?
Our house (I believe it's called a Craftsman Style home) has a gas fireplace in the living room, which we've been taking advantage of. We got our first Christmas tree for the new Frankfort home. It was fun, though we weren't able to get it from the place we wanted to. There was this little nursery lot off the road, and every time we would drive to Frankfort just to get the hell away from Harrodsburg for the day, we'd see the nursery and say, if we ever lived in Frankfort, that's where we'd get our christmas tree from. Well, they were sold out by the time we got there. It didn't ruin the fun. We swung by the Kroger where they had some tree dangling out front on cords and no water to keep them fresh. It was kind of sad, and we were happy to liberate one of those trees and take it home. I chopped a bunch of grooves in its stump to help give it more avenues for soaking in water, which it did like mad the first two days... now it's sort've leveling off. That poor thirsty tree.
We adopted out our one remaining foster cat (Bea) to a nice home, of a new friend of ours. Apparently he's spoiling the hell out of Bea (who is a cat who always wanted some dude to spoil her), and she's getting nice and fat. She was one of the first cats I ever rescued from the animal shelter in Harrodsburg, and it's been a long journey through several foster homes and the humane society office before we were able to find a permanent spot, and we were both thrilled to place her somewhere where we wouldn't have to worry at night if she was okay and wonder if we'd made the right choice. She's doing great.
This neighborhood continues to show how friendly it is. We keep meeting people from around, just via walking. People walk around here (or walk their dogs or jog, etc). So different from where we were before, where nobody walked unless it was to get to and from their car.
I'm still interested in throwing some jazz shows here, and beginning to devise a plan. I got to see a bunch of shows in Lexington throughout the year. The same guy has been bringing avant-garde free improv shows in for the last decade. This past year, I've been able to see Jeb Bishop, Tim Daisy, Brotzmann, Jason Adaisiewicz, Tres Hongos, and more.
We've had five minutes of snow so far this winter. Literally, five minutes. The temp dropped like mad one afternoon recently, which made the condensation turn into lightly falling snow briefly before the temp went right back up and end the snowfall. I think air pressure and temps have some wildly varying swings because of the "bowl" that we live in (not quite a valley... it really looks like we're in a bowl).
I think that's it. Getting ready to spend time with the family for the holidays.
Cheers.
Craig
We still haven't been there, actually.
I'm probably selling Frankfort a bit hard. I've been in prettier towns, and I'm sure there's people out there that would scoff at me even referring to Frankfort as beautiful. But it is a very pretty town, and something about it just says "arrival point" to me, like after years of struggling, this is a great place to finally take a deep breath and let my guard down and plant some roots. Our neighborhood (South Frankfort, right by the Capitol Building) is super pretty. Quaint and all. The old homes, wide streets old trees, the curvature of the river, the old bridge, and the hills and slope of the land. And it's adjacent to a very quaint downtown and the official historical neighborhood (y'know you're in an old town with history when a historical neighborhood has to be considered even more "historical" than adjacent neighborhoods with tons of history).
I'm very happy here.