Kentucky by Heart: Some ramblings, musings and wanderings to pass the time during social distancing

By Steve Flairty
KyForward Columnist
Sometimes it feels good to allow this Kentucky-centric mind to do some wandering and then to share some of those disjointed thoughts with my readers. Long-time Courier-Journal columnist and author Joe Creason was amazing at that sort of thing, and my voracious reading of his works in my early years inspires me some five decades later.
I only wish I had a tenth of...
Kentucky by Heart: The work of C-J’s Allen Trout offers ‘folksy’ look back at Kentucky in the 1940s

Editor’s Note: This column originally appeared at KyForward January 9, 2018.
By Steve Flairty
KyForward columnist
I picked up an interesting title on a recent visit to a used bookstore in Lexington. Published in 1947 by the Courier-Journal, it’s called Greetings from Old Kentucky, by Allan M. Trout. It’s mostly a collection of long-time C-J writer Trout’s columns with the same title, which...
KyForward’s Gene Clabes among those named to UK journalism’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni

Staff Report
KyForward Executive Editor and co-founder Gene Clabes is among nine journalists who will be inducted into the University of Kentucky School of Journalism’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni Thursday evening.
The alumni to be recognized in addition to Clabes include an widely recognized photographer for National Geographic, a popular and beloved Courier- Journal columnist; the editor of...
Kentucky by Heart: The work of C-J’s Allen Trout offers ‘folksy’ look back at Kentucky in the 1940s

I picked up an interesting title on a recent visit to a used bookstore in Lexington. Published in 1947 by the Courier-Journal, it’s called Greetings from Old Kentucky, by Allan M. Trout. It’s mostly a collection of long-time C-J writer Trout’s columns with the same title, which originated in 1939. No doubt, some of the material Trout penned has its share of what easily could be construed as racially...
Kentucky by Heart: One man’s top 10 bucket list of books not to be missed — what are your favorites?

By Steve Flairty
KyForward columnist
My love of reading Kentucky-related books, particularly non-fiction, started as a child. Inspired by my father’s interest in showing our small family the people and places of the state, I devoured the biographies in the tiny Grant’s Lick Elementary School library dealing with the Commonwealth.
I read books about Daniel Boone, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, Mary...
Robert Treadway: Creason was to Kentucky what Cronkite was to America, and I miss him
I miss Joe Creason. That’s why I was thrilled to pick up a used copy of Crossroads and Coffee Trees: A Legacy of Joe Creason, posthumously published by the Louisville Courier-Journal, for which Creason wrote for 33 years. The book is a sequel to the 1972 Kentucky classic Joe Creason’s Kentucky, a collection of Creason’s shorter columns, published a couple of years before his untimely death in...