Beech Tree News Network

FRANKFORT – This June marks the 35th anniversary of the Kentucky Supreme Court’s famous Rose V. Council for Better Education, which determined that the commonwealth failed to abide by Section 183 of the state’s constitution requiring the legislature to “provide for an efficient system of common schools throughout the State.

I read once that you teach people how to treat you. No one knows this better than my cat, Brother. Brother’s nose seems to be perpetually cold, and he has decided that the only way to warm it is to bury it in the crook of my arm, while sitting on my lap. He purrs loudly as he does this in order to bring to my attention the fact that he is happy with this arrangement. If I notice he is happy, I won’t move from my spot, where he is sitting happily in his spot, and he can continue sitting on me until his nose is warm or he grows weary of sitting on my bony legs.

Military Kids Day, the annual event hosted at the Kentucky State Capitol, is scheduled to return on Tuesday, February 27. Senator Stephen Meredith, R-Leitchfield and other lawmakers encourage families and children in their districts to participate.

There were some great commercials in the ‘80’s.  The first of which was on NatGeo’s ‘80’s Top Ten was the mighty mouth of John Moschito.  His motormouth was tailor-made for a decade that had a need for speed.  He says “I taught myself when I was 12 and pretty much was told to shut up for 15 years”.  John Moschito’s world record was 586 spoken words per minute.  To harness John’s talent, FedEx ad

John Kennedy said, “I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.” Recently, our winter days have kept me inside, and I’ve been reading, too. Some of the topics I’ve read about include longer days, pancakes, and corduroy. First, curiosity caused me to search for information on the Internet about the lengthening spring days. I found the length of daylight on the winter solstice is about 7 hours, 14 minutes. Then the days begin getting longer. By New Year’s Day, daylight increases to 9 hours and 15 minutes.

Throw-Away Girls Recently, I read SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE, an historical novel based on Ireland’s Magdalen laundries, by Claire Keegan. Until I read this book, I had always seen the Irish people as being constantly victimized by outsiders like the British. It seems, however, that every country has an event in its past that is cause for national shame. The Magdalen laundries and the treatment of the girls housed there is Ireland’s event.These laundries represented more than just a place where people sent clothes to be cleaned.

We are very close to the end of the National Geographic ‘80’s top 10 fashion countdown so this week will be a bit longer.  Settle in as we pick up our countdown at #4.  Run DMC are the first hip-hop band to make it big on the charts and they were about to make streetwear history.  Yes, the first was technically The Sugarhill Gang with what is .  credited as the first rap song, “Rapper’s Delight” but this isn’t about those guys.  Darryl “DMC” McDaniels: “when we did our first album, Run’s brother Russell Simmons was like “y’all need stage wardrobe”.  We wanted to be authentic and real.  Our

I’ve figured out why I don’t mind loading the dishwasher, but I despise emptying the dishwasher.  I figured this out while taking down the Christmas decorations and locating the storage containers for each particular decoration.  When I load the dishwasher, everything goes into one big metal box.  When I empty the dishwasher, I have to move around the kitchen to return the clean dishes to various shelves and drawers.

This week, I’ll continue my ‘80’s streetwear fashion column.  In the 1980’s, Ray-bans was a brand on its way down.  They decided to get busy getting noticed.  A young Tom Cruise wore them in the movie Risky Business and sales shot up from 15,000 in 1980 to 1,500,000 in 1986.  Talk about capitalizing!

It seems like an odd thing to say, but music has always been a part of war.  Drums and fifes and songs show up in stories about war, as well as feature films about war.  Patriotic songs are written and sung during and after war.  War and music appear to be a strange juxtaposition, until you consider that music is an expression of the soul, and war does so much damage to the soul.