Sherry Chandler

Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House.

Ronald Reagan took them off because he thought they were ugly.

There followed 26 years of retro thinking about energy.

Erik Reece read tonight at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. That was one of the things he told us.

He also told us that more people go to zoos than go to all major sporting events. People love their fellow creatures. Alas, not enough to keep from destroying their environment.

Meanwhile the new Paris Super Wal-Mart has put up its huge security lights and now Paris is a glow on the northern horizon as I drive from Lexington. And to run those lights, they blast to tops off Appalachian mountains with the same mixture that Timothy McVey used to blow up the Murrah building.

I am as guilty as the next person of letting lights burn unnecessarily. Mountains are dying for my sins.

If you want to get a look at some mountaintop removal, try this Google satellite view of Hazard, Kentucky.

Forgive me this bit of ego. Charles Whitt send this nice snapshot of me doing my presidential act and I thought I’d share it. My brain isn’t back in gear yet anyway.

Here’s my final take on this job of KSPS president: it was a conspiracy of friends and colleagues to make me look good. Everybody did their job to perfection and I just had to stand up andbe the public face of all this effort.

And for that I was given a beautiful Retro 1951 fountain pen.

By the way, none other than Mick Kennedy has volunteered to be the KSPS contest chair for 2007. Mick has done a splendid job with The Heartland Review and the Joy Bale Boone prize, not to mention the Morrison Gallery Reading series and I have no reason to doubt that 2007 will be a great contest year for us.

One other note, the dress & trousers are by LauraLee Petritz of Transformations, Inc out of Asheville, NC. It’s the only designer outfit I own.