Working Diary

The following are occasional jottings relating to research for the green guide in and around Lexington, Kentucky:

November 3, 2007

       On a crisp sunny Saturday afternoon, my husband and I took our grandson Matthew to High Bridge Park on a cliff above the Kentucky River.  The trip was inspired by a comment in the September 23rd Lexington Herald-Leader, "If you're looking for a quick, free outing, go to High Bridge Park in southern Jessamine County."  With both dramatic scenery and an awesome example of human engineering, the park turned out to have much to offer to visitors of all ages.  

    John Roebling, who built the Brooklyn Bridge, designed a suspension bridge across the river, which was never completed because the railway company that had ordered it, went bankrupt.  The Cincinnati Southern railway opened a bridge of cantilever design on the site in 1877.  At the time it was the highest bridge in North America, 277 feet above the river at low water and 1130 feet long.  In 1911 the same company built a new track thirty-one feet above the old, which it then removed.  The track was doubled In 1929. No obvious changes have been made since. 

    An observation platform juts out a short distance over the gorge.  From it we could see the bridge to our right and the confluence of the Kentucky and Dix Rivers far below us. To our great satisfaction, two trains crossed the bridge while we were at the park.  You hear the approaching trains long before you see them, and we had time to run to the lookout before the trains reached the bridge.  The first train was going south  and the second, north, toward Lexington.  Like a train we saw in Lexington the other day, also going north, the second train was loaded with containers from foreign shipping companies:  Maersk, Capital, Hamburg Süd, Italia, Hanjin . . . For a moment I forgot the splendor of the gorge and wondered if the contents of the containers had been inspected when they were removed from the ships in which they had crossed the ocean. Passenger trains used to use the bridge, but passenger trains no longer cross Kentucky.

    The park has a children's playground at the far end; but Matthew preferred to swing in the hanging black metal benches placed on the lawn for the relaxation of adults.  On the site there is also a small museum with pictures showing the bridge's history, and a long, Victorian-style pavilion, built in recent years to replace a pavilion that had become so decrepit that it was demolished.  The scattered trees on the site are large and varied.  Matthew became impatient with my attempts to determine the species of a big oak, but shortly thereafter made his own botanical discovery, proudly pointing out to us a cactus.  It was indeed a cactus and a large one at that, incongruously growing in a tree stump. 

    High Bridge Park can be reached by traveling south on Kentucky 29 from Wilmore to the river.

June 23, 2007

      Matthew, my grandson, and I participated in the first Buildings and Bluegrass Tour, sponsored by the Fayette-Alliance.  The Alliance, which supports development within the existing city limits of Lexington, Kentucky, and preservation of the farmland in Fayette County outside these limits, designed the tour to show infill developments in downtown Lexington and a sampling of county farms.  Participants chose to visit one of three quadrants of farmland: East, North, or West (on the south side of the city, the urban service boundary extends to the county line).  In each of the three quadrants, they visited three farms, two of them horse farms.  The tour was by bus.  Unfortunately, in the downtown we simply drove past the chosen sites:  Main + Rose Lofts, The 500's on Main, and Artek Lofts, all three of which are under construction, and the Pepper Distillery District, a proposed project that will center in the last distillery to produce bourbon in the county.  At each of the farms, we left the buses for half an hour and heard from the farms owners or representatives.

     Touring the West Quadrant, Matthew and I visited first Walnut Lawn Farm, a 400-acre farm in the family of the current owner, Bob James, since 1842.  Bob and his family now grow tobacco, corn, wheat, rye, and soybeans, and have a small herd of cows and calves.  The James do not irrigate, and their crops are suffering this year from what Bob James described as at least a hundred-year hailstorm and, though the crops are still green, a drought.   Strong supporters of the preservation of farmland, they have placed all their land that is in Fayette County into the county's Purchase of Development Rights Program (PDR).  The second farm we visited, the 276-acre Winter Quarter Farm, is also in the PDR program.  The owner, Don M. Robinson, and his son  raise some of their own thoroughbreds, but they also board thoroughbred mares and their foals, and break and train yearlings.  The farm had its origin in Duntreath Farm, which was on land now occupied by a subdivision.  The third farm we visited was Darley, formerly Jonabell Farm, purchased in 2001 by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai .  Totaling some 800 acres, it is home to the Sheikh's U.S. stallion operation.  Twelve stallions are standing at the farm for the current breeding season, and we saw three of them, including Bernardini, who won the Preakness in 2006.  

       By showing us three farms, each playing a different role, the Fayette-Alliance succeeded in showing the many facets of the county's farming operations.  Matthew and I would take such a tour again, if offered, to learn about other farms.  Information about the Fayette-Alliance is available at www.fayettealliance.com .

June 21, 2007, The Solstice

    Caught a Lextran bus this afternoon for what I am ashamed to admit was the first time this year.  I found that Lextran has been doing well during my absence.  The buses were on time and clean, and the drivers were polite.  Furthermore, even on one of the less-used route segements, Turfland Mall to Fayette Mall, in mid-afternoon,  I was not the only person on the bus in either direction.  When I disembarked on Clays Mill Road, six people remained on the bus.  At a Sierra Club meeting earlier in the week, David Coyte, president of the Commission for the Development of Regional Transportation (CART), pointed out that Lexington is fortunate to have dedicated funding for Lextran, as the bus system in Louisville is having to make cuts in service. Nevertheless, the Lexington buses are still underutilized.  The bus that I took, 4B, Versailles Road, is within walking distance of numerous residents in the vicinity of Clays Mill and goes not only to Fayette Mall and Turfland Mall but also to the downtown transit center; but I have never seen anybody waiting for a bus along that road.  If all of us concerned about the need for public transit, including myself, would ride the bus at least once every two weeks, we would help strengthen Lextran.  It will never fulfill its possibilities to help in the struggle against global warming, until it is used by people who own cars as well as by those without cars who rely on it to get to work.  Lextran schedules are posted at http://www.lextran.com . 

      To joint an initiative working for state funding for public transit, including rail, go to the CART web site, http://www.cartky.org and click on Transit First.

April 6, 2007

    This week my grandson Matthew and I attended the spring break program at McConnell Springs nature sanctuary off Old Frankfort Pike, near downtown Lexington, Kentucky.  Each of three morning sessions consisted of a walk through the preserve followed by activities in an indoor nature center.  Today the theme was the history of the area. Our guide took us from prehistory to thoughts about the future. He pointed out fossils embedded in limestone rock that had been formed at the bottom of the sea that once covered Kentucky; handed around a Native American scraping tool, as we stood beside the Blue Hole, a spring-fed pool, where Native Americans must have camped; told how the first white visitors to the Lexington area also camped at what is now the preserve and chose the name "Lexington"; pointed out the stone walls and fences remaining from a dairy farm that was later on the site; and led us to a massive bur oak that is 250 to 300 years old.  Under the tree, he handed around photos showing that the preserve was once an illegal dump, cleaned up by Lexington residents in the early 1990s.  He then asked the children to think about the future of the preserve.  The main problem facing the area he explained is invasive plants including winter creeper, garlic mustard, and Japanese honeysuckle, which are crowding out the native vegetation, as we could see only too well.  There is no attractive solution to this problem, which also plagues Lexington parks and the Arboretum woods. Eradication of masses of the invasives is extremely difficult and may require herbicides, our guide explained..  .  

          Expansion of the 25.5-acre preserve, which is owned by Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, would be desirable.  However, nobody raised this possibility, because the preserve is obviously hemmed in by houses on one side and industrial plants on the others.  We could hear the sounds of operating machinery as we walked through the area.  Given the preserve's surroundings, the richness of the wildlife is surprising and a credit to those who restored and maintain the area..

February 22, 2007

    "Reduce, reuse, recycle" has long been a motto of those who think themselves green.  Nevertheless, many of us unthinkingly discard shoes simply because their heels are run down or their soles thin.  Today, wanting to save a pair of particularly comfortable walking shoes, I looked for the first time in the Lexington yellow pages for a shoe repairer.  Somewhat to my surprise I found several.  The nearest was Bluegrass Shoe Repair in the Garden Springs Shopping Center off Lane Allen Road, behind Home Depot.  The repair place  is tucked away in an arcade  going through the middle of the building from front to back.  Nevertheless, having phoned ahead (278-3031), I was able to go straight to it.  The owner gave me a card with the hours the store is open, Tues.-Fri. 10-6, except for lunch time 1-2:30, and Sat. 10-12.  He had the shoes ready for me that afternoon, sporting new heels and shiny with black polish.  The work was his, but, exiting with them, I felt a sense of accomplishment..

February 10, 2007

    This afternoon Bob, Matthew, and I checked out the Salato Wildlife Education Center on U.S. 60 near the Frankfort airport.  Snow was on the ground, and the temperature only in the twenties; but the center, operated by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife, retained its appeal.  The sun was out, and the animals who live in enclosures outdoors were much in evidence. In fact, we saw more of them than we had in the summer when they crouched in the shade. .  In mid-afternoon a black bear slept with its head outside of its den in the sun.  By four o'clock the bear had withdrawn from sight; but elk, deer, bison, bob cats, and bald eagles still enjoyed the sunlight in their respective areas. Indoors were fish, snakes, and an alligator turtle, who obligingly opened its mouth to show us the worm-like appendages on its tongue designed to attract fish. Matthew might have questioned an exhibit of a bird blind and other hunting equipment aimed at children, but he went right past it, as his attention was caught by a boat and fishing rods with which he could catch magnetic fish.  I was surprised to find an exhibit on old-growth forests with a 1936 letter from celebrated biologist E. Lucy Braun inviting people to a mass meeting in Lexington on saving Kentucky's remaining primeval forest.  For visiting hours and other information, call 502-564-7863.  

October 29, 2006

           Drove with my dog Tamarin to Pleasant Ridge Park, near Hamburg Place, this morning to find out whether work on the Brighton East Rail Trail has begun.  The trail is eventually to stretch 130 miles along an abandoned rail bed from Lexington to Ashland in eastern Kentucky.  This year one mile of trail was to be constructed from Old Bryant Road to Pleasant Ridge Drive and, according to an article in Pedal the Planet, an additional mile, from Pleasant Ridge Drive eastward.  Tamarin must have wondered this morning why I drove her across town to walk a quarter mile or so on slippery mud. The trail making is underway, but, even here, far from complete.

           Nevertheless, the trip was more successful than our other recent ventures to find new trails.  Earlier in the week we were unable to locate West Hickman Trail from Man of War to Veterans Park.  It may be there, but if so, it is not well marked.  Work did not appear to have begun on South Elkhorn Trail, which is supposed to lead away from Lochdale Terrace; but then, work on the trail may have been indistinguishable from the construction of houses in the area.  Lastly, but actually firstly in terms of our travels, we found that Town Branch Trail has definitely not expanded beyond the short segment completed last year.  At least, I didn't entice grandson Matthew to share any of our trips, with promises of walks.

           Later:  The November/December 2006 of Kentucky Cycling News from Pedal the Planet confirms that work is underway on Brighton East, but indicates that I missed nothing at the other sites.  Apart from Brighton East, no  construction work on new trails or new segments of existing trails was carried out in 2006.  The question then is:  Where has all the money gone?   

August 12, 2006

           Visited the cemetery at Fort Spring, on the top of a hill off Old Versailles Road.  Fort Spring, today represented by the cemetery and New Vine Baptist Church, is the site of a settlement called Reform or Slickaway that was formed by emancipated slaves.  By the 1880s Reform was a stable village with its own shops, school, and church and with some white as well as black residents. The earliest grave I noted is that of Kate C. Toles, who was born in 1882 and died in 1912, but possibly some residents were buried in now-unmarked graves in the central portion of the cemetery, which has been left open.  A broad green field slopes away from the cemetery. Between trees, I could glimpse the surrounding countryside, with the federal facilities near Masterson Station Park in the distance.  Whoever chose the location knew how to pick a site.  The only distracting factor today is the roar of traffic from Versailles Road.

April 9, 2006    

            Yesterday our grandson Matthew and I had a bit of an adventure.  In the course of a walk, Matthew came across a nineteenth-century graveyard, only recently made visible by the clearing of underbrush from a grove of trees.  The grove is on or near a boundary between land undergoing commercial development and land owned by the city.  Therefore, the clearing may have been the work of the developer or of the city.

            The oldest grave with a readable marker is that of a man who was born in the county of Tyrone , Ireland , in 1785 and died in 1827.  Several of the gravestones have been broken and one of the graves appears to have been scooped out; but the damage may have occurred long ago.  What is obviously recent and therefore particularly disturbing is the fact that two large trees, an eastern red-cedar and what looked to me like a double-trunked hackberry have been cut.  The remains, on the ground, show no signs of rot.  Numbers are painted in orange on the dead and on the living trees. We hope that the upright trees are scheduled for preservation, not for felling, which to us would be a desecration. 

            The graveyard we found must be one of tens of thousands of family graveyards scattered around Kentucky, as described in an article in the Lexington Herald Leader April 3..

March 18. 2006

            Back in Kentucky, Bob and I took our six-year-old grandson to Hummul Planetarium and Space Theatre on the campus of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond .  Matthew had been studying the solar system in school and, as a result, had had his grandfather build him several planetariums.  As another Saturday loomed, a change of pace seemed in order.  The actual planetarium would be new to all of us.    

            A children's program is held at 2:00 pm each Saturday.  At present the subject is The Cardboard Rocket:  children on the screen build a rocket and visit the planets.  I learned a lot.  I don’t know if Matthew increased his store of knowledge, but he became absorbed in the story and was quite frightened that the rocket would not get off the planets on which it landed. After the children had returned safely to earth, the scientist presenting the program showed the evening sky for Saturday, with emphasis on Mars and two constellations, Orion and Big Dog with the bright star Sirius.

            Last fall I had given up trying to see the planets and stars from our street, because the lights of Lexington , which illuminated the sky, seemed to render them invisible.  But Saturday night, there were Mars, Orion , and his dog, over head, just as promised.  Magnificent.  Now all we need is another clear night so we can show them to Matthew.      

March 5, 2006

            Attended Primavère, an exposition on ecology and alternatives held annually in the spring in Lyon for twenty years.  The 2006 salon reflected the vitality of alternative movements in France , particularly in the Rhone-Alps area where Lyon is located.  There were 440 exhibitors, 110 speakers, and more than 30,000 visitors.  Issues presented ranged from opposition to nuclear weapons through alternative education to preservation of heirloom seeds.            I 

            I was struck by the number of organizations working to support nations in the developing world.  Perhaps because of France ’s colonial history, French activists as a whole tend to be more invested in helping people in the poorer nations than are social activists in the U.S.   I was also struck by the number of farms and companies selling hand-crafted plant products—herbal teas, ointments, essential oils . . ., some from plants picked wild and some from plants  grown on the farm.

            In a large “restaurant” area, visitors could eat food purchased from the stands.  I relished a bar of pressed figs, raisins, and nuts sandwiched between two thin sheets of rice paper (Noix et Noix), and a cone of organic raspberry sherbert made on a farm from fruit grown there (Sorbiop).  A huge children’s area offered youngsters a wide range of activities, including cooperative games.

            The only down side to the expo was the crowds, narrow passageways between booths, and resulting noise, which made it difficult to talk to people.  That Primavère is already outgrowing rooms at Euroexpo, a large convention center, can paradoxically be viewed as a mark of success.

February 28, 2006

    In Lyon the most obvious "green" innovation is red bicycles. Two thousand red bicycles are available for use by the public 24/7.  They are parked, when not in use, at 176 key locations throughout the city. The user pays a deposit of 150 euros, which can be made by credit card. The deposit can be paid when a bike is needed for a specific trip or on an annual basis.  The first half hour of each use is free.  A bicycle can be rented at one parking area and returned to another.  Yesterday people of all ages were riding the red bikes to and within the city's largest park, the Tete d'Or.  Today I saw cyclists crossing a bridge over the Rhone River on their way to work. The bikes are well maintained. The system was the idea of the publicist J. C. Decaux and is managed by his company. Lyon has few bike paths but the bicycles should increase public pressure for more. An idea that needs to be widely imitated. More information is available in French at www.velov.grandlyon.com

February 20, 2006

    Walked along the Parisian equivalent of Rails to Trails, the Promenade Planté, a walkway on the former track of an elevated railway line near the Gare de Lyon train station. The Promenade allows people to walk, run or simply sit on benches above the traffic and contaminated air of the city streets. The sky was grey and rain threatened, but the path was in use by joggers, groups of stuents, couples out for a stroll, and people reading or enjoying a picnic lunch. In a few weeks the Promenade will be bright with flowers. The leaves of daffodils have already broken ground.

February 19, 2006

    Off to France today, and I must say that I heartily agree with Michael Fogler's opinion piece on transportation in the Saturday Herald Leader.  Lexington needs buses and possibly light rail cars running throughout the city on a frequent schedule.  It will be a joy to get around Paris and Lyon for two weeks without using a private automobile.  If time and access to computers permit, we'll post some "green" notes from France.  

January 19, 2006

    As the result of a phone call yesterday to Pedal the Planet with a question about the bike lanes on Richmond Road, my husband Bob and I drove to the store this afternoon to obtain further information about cycling routes in Lexington. When we saw the lanes, which the city painted on the outer edge of the road during a recent widening, we could see that only the boldest would use them, because cars turning right, cross the bike lanes at the frequent intersections and entrances to businesses.  Troy Hearn explained a back way to the store and kindly answered our questions; but, he had to admit, that within Lexington the pleasantest cycling routes begin and end abruptly rather than take cyclists to destinations they might want to visit.  Pedal the Planet turned out to have a large offering of bicycles and equipment.  Bob, the cyclist in the family, will likely return.

January 10, 2006

Visited the Kentucky office of the U.S. Geological Society (USGS) on the University of Kentucky campus this afternoon while my older grandson was having a cavity filled at the nearby U. K.Dentistry Clinic.  The lobby has a display of sparkling minerals, intermingled with information about Kentucky geology.  In the office itself one can pick up a variety of 8 l/2 x 11 inch maps and informative booklets free of charge, and purchase larger maps.  The staff is helpful.  I had a question about their computerized land use map of Lexington, which they readily answered. The most useful freebie that I acquired was “Watchable Wildlife and Birding Trails” from the West Kentucky Corporation (270-781-6858). The item I saw that I would most like to buy was a new Atlas of Kentucky, edited by Richard Ulak et al. and published by the University Press of Kentucky. 

December 30, 2005

Taking advantage of the favorable parking situation at the University of Kentucky when the students are on vacation, I went to the W. T. Young Library on campus to do research on the French nuclear industry.  While looking for Le Monde in the catalog of online periodicals, I came across the name Lexington Herald-Leader.  Was delighted to discover that the newspaper from 1983 to the present is available online at the university and can be searched there.  The city libraries offer an online index to the newspaper but not the articles themselves.  

December 16, 2005

 Janet Powell and I enjoyed lunch with Courtney Ham and Kim Frierson of Partners for Youth (PFY)/LEXfusion at Good Foods Co-Op on Southland Drive . Courtney and Kim explained their work and gave us valuable ideas for our own project. PFY/LEXfusion is conducting a Community Youth Mapping program through which young people identify resources for youth and situations in need of change in their neighborhoods. The program is aimed at empowering young people. Groups have already done preliminary mapping in the Woodhill and Martin Luther King neighborhoods. They will make maps to be displayed on neighborhood kiosks and, as we all agreed Friday, will contribute information to the guide to Lexington as a whole. Janet and I are looking forward to meeting youth mappers at the next meeting of PFY/LEXfusion in January.

December 10, 2005

Today I was shocked to discover that a patch of woods behind the Fayette Church of Christ on a corner of Clay’s Mill had been annihilated. My husband and I were driving down Pasadena towards New Circle, when I looked up from a book and, glancing to the right, saw bare dirt and a few torn roots. For a moment I didn't know where we were. Then I saw the church building ahead and I knew that, on walks back from Southland Park, Tamarin and I would no longer be able to cut behind the church and cross grass, under pine trees and beside greenery that gave the impression of being impenetrable.

How to record in a guide what has gone, especially when it occupied so little ground that we would have been unlikely to have described it were it still in existence? Yet its absence will make an appreciable difference. I wish I had noted the species. Only the White Pine stand out in my memory.

On our return drive down, Bob remarked, “There isn’t room for much of a woods.” In reply, I pointed to a stone sign in front of two new houses on Pasadena, adjacent to the bulldozed earth, “Pasadena Woods.” Enough woods to name a housing development after.

Just one of a succession of small changes in the area. The phrase "a thousand cuts" comes to mind.

November 12, 2005

My husband and I, with our grandson, visited today for the first time one of the Nature Conservancy’s preserves on the Kentucky River about twenty-two miles southwest of Lexington . The 600-plus forested acres encompass a stretch of the palisades, limestone cliffs along the river between Frankfort and Clays Ferry. Visitors are asked to stay on the trails, because of such hazards as “dangerous cliffs” and because of fragile vegetation. The problem today was finding the trails, as the ground had a thick covering of dry leaves; and the trail markers were discreet—small and widely spaced. .

We took a “loop trail,” which went north along the side of the cliffs, and back south higher up. Because the leaves had fallen, we were able to glimpse the Kentucky River through the trees, far below us. A turkey vulture rode the air currents above the river, and we caught sight of a pileated woodpecker in a wooded ravine. Our grandson pointed out a butterfly in a patch of sun on a mossy rock. We heard gun shots in the distance all afternoon—deer hunting season had begun in Kentucky --but only a handful of people were visiting the preserve, despite a day of brilliant blue sky and sunshine. We plan to return, but one of the few people we met advised us not to do so in the summer without high boots, because of rattlesnakes and copperheads.

August 24, 2005

Carried out some research for the guide in the Kentucky room of the downtown Lexington Public Library on East Main Street . The room has “vertical files” ie folders of newspapers clippings about various topics relating to Lexington . It also has a considerable number of books and microfilms for research on Kentucky history. A photocopy machine accepts coins. A librarian is on duty and ready to help. From the windows—and there are desks beside the windows--one looks down on Main Street and across at the Lexington Arts Center . All in all, a comfortable place to work.

And for lunch I was able to buy soup and fruit at a counter operated by Good Foods Co-op in the main lobby of the library. Sandwiches were also available. I identified myself as a member of the co-op and asked the person who waited on me how the service is going. “Very well. Downtown Lexington is good to us,” he replied.

Before leaving the library, I checked out the second hand bookshop in the basement, which is run by the friends of the library. The shop was surprisingly large. The books were many and were carefully arranged and the rooms were well lighted. Quite a few people were browsing or shopping. The store appears to be another success.

July 16, 2005

Visited the Loose Leaf Antiques and Collectibles Sale, held several times a year, in the Loose Leaf Tobacco Warehouse on Angliana Avenue . My purpose was in large part to see the building, one of the remaining warehouses in what used to be a bustling tobacco district. The outer walls are corregated metal, painted green. Inside is a vast open space—four acres, according to the Herald Leader. The structure is held up by exposed wooden pillars and beams. The floor is wood. A gigantic fan set into the front wall blows air into the building. I was seeking, in particular, two craftspeople who make furniture out of twigs and branches. I did not find them, but in the process of looking for them I walked what seemed like miles among vendors selling old tools, dolls, dishes, gramophone records . . . The warehouse is being reused now but for how many more years?

June 8, 2005

Rode on a LexTran bus for the first time. I had found the booklet with the LexTran schedules difficult to decipher. We do not live near a bus stop. What I needed was a place where I could park the car, take the bus to town, and then return by bus to the car. The only easy option, ie one that did not require crossing a major road at risk to life and limb, appeared to be the terminus of the Harrodsburg Road route, the Palomar Center .

The bus to downtown arrived at the designated stop on time. The driver was courteous and even cheerful. The bus was clean, and it carried other passengers—about eight going down and ten coming back. It was mid-morning so the passengers were an encouraging sign. My destination, the downtown public library, was only a short walk from the bus terminal. Everything about the trip was satisfactory except the terminal itself.

The terminal was appalling. The building is dark and gloomy, but that is not the worst. The buses line up along the curb outside the terminal. The passengers wait on a platform, beside the buses, under an overhanging roof. For scheduling reasons, the buses all seem to arrive and leave at approximately the same time. Between arriving and leaving, they idle their engines, and the fumes collect where the passengers are waiting. The powers that be will need to improve the terminal in order to invigorate the bus system.

May 11, 2005

Sought out African Cemetery #2 and found it to be a gorgeous green space. Apparently it is open to the public only at specified times, and we were unable to enter. Iron railings front the park; along 7th Street, and the sides and presumably the back are also fenced. Lines of graves with many small gravestones, extend away from 7th Street . Large trees are scattered across the back of the area. The grass is a lush green. A marker states that the cemetery has been in existence since 1869 and that many black leaders are buried there. A painted sign leaning against the wall at one side indicates that the cemetery is undergoing restoration, but with the possible exception of individual graves, restoration appears to be complete.

February 26, 2005

Set out to see the elusive Town Branch. Lexington was settled on the banks of this creek and from it took its orientation. The creek does not flow due east and west; and to this day city streets do not run due east and west or north and south. Conservationists are now constructing a trail that will eventually stretch, as close to the creek as feasible, from Masterson Station Park to downtown Lexington , where the creek has been buried. I had read a great deal in the newspaper about the trail or greenway. But where was the creek? For much of its above-ground journey through Lexington , it is behind industrial buildings. But today, after carefully studying maps, I found myself looking down into the dark waters of the creek near the corner of Forbes Road and Old Frankfort Pike. Then, driving on the pike towards town, I glimpsed it crossing under the road near a railroad overpass. The point at which it goes underground, near Rupp Arena, appears to be private land.

December 13, 2004

Visited the Childrens’ Museum on Short Street with five-year-old grandson Matthew. The visit gave me a sense of déjà vu, not without reason. It looked almost as it did when I took his eighteen-year-old brother there in his youth. That is not to say that it wasn’t fun for Matthew. He played with the bubbles in the bubble chamber, looked excitedly at a real live tarantula in a glass enclosure, sat in the cockpit of a training plane, and ran in and out of the huge plastic heart that has been pumping away for years. Matching the sea creatures in a book with those on a panorama, a feature that I did not remember from the past, engaged both of us for a considerable time. If Matthew would stay in one place more of the time, I’d learn a great deal at the Childrens’ Museum.

Later: The Childrens' Museum has been renamed the Explorium, but much inside remains familiar.


October 12, 2004

Explored Coldstream Park on Newtown Pike with my dog Tamarin. In 1957 the state bought 735 acres on the west side of Newtown Pike for an agricultural experiment station. Later the university decided to turn Coldstream into a research park. It gave the city 225 acres for a recreational park in 1994 in return for $3 million in sewers.

A large portion of the 735 acres is as yet undeveloped. Tamarin and I found plenty of room to hike, and we had the park almost to ourselves. We walked around a short paved trail near a parking area and then headed out through patches of trees and across fields. The day and the leaves were bright and our spirits high. The only problem was the cockleburs that stuck in Tamarin’s coat and that I had to try to remove lest she swallow them.

Conservationists should enjoy the park now, for the research park is to be developed in the center of the acreage. The recreational park will border it. Then hikers will have buildings on the one side and highways on the other.


 Copyright © 2004-2007 by Mary Byrd Davis