Guest Columns

They may only number in the tens of thousands out of a state of more than 4.3 million people, but it isn’t hard to imagine how much more difficult life would be without our first responders.

While their work is mainly a function of local government, the state plays a role as well in helping law enforcement, firefighters and other emergency workers do their job.

Ed Preston died Oct. 5. He lived across the street from us. He had been at the Hospice House and his wife, Lillian, asked my husband to watch over their house while she stayed with him.

They were married 64 years. Ed turned 94 on Sept. 30.

The evening of Oct. 5 — it was a Wednesday — I saw our other neighbor drive off with Lillian. When they returned a few hours later I knew something had happened.

My husband and I went across the street, and as Lillian got out of the car she said, “Ed died.”

While Kentucky is widely recognized for such things as fried chicken, horses and bourbon, it could be argued that our connections to the arts are just as considerable.

Legend has it, for example, that Kentucky was the first state to see a performance of a Beethoven symphony, which was conducted in Lexington in 1817.

Several weeks ago, meanwhile, the world marked the 100th birthday of an American legend, William “Bill” Monroe, the founder of Bluegrass music whose Ohio County home has become a shrine to many.

“Buy land,” Mark Twain once said.  “They’re not making any more of it.”

That investment advice has been taken to heart by the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission, which formally celebrated 35 years of service last week.

Since it began, the commission has permanently set aside more than 25,000 irreplaceable acres for future generations.  Their 60 nature preserves range from the Blanton Forest near Virginia to Three Ponds along the Mississippi River.