Cover Story
An invitation for this time: We can explore the forests of ourselves
A startling irony of the novel coronavirus, both its emergence and the ensuing self-isolating that we’ve assumed, has been the fact that its spread has paralleled the increase of spring. While the economy has largely ground to a halt, and while the attendant unease, disorientation and fear has grown from the crisis, the world outside…
For the Ohio River Valley, an Ethane Storage Facility in Texas Is Either a Model or a Cautionary Tale
The Trump administration and industry leaders have pointed to a major petrochemical storage complex outside Houston as a model for the upper Ohio River Valley. If only they could find a place like Mont Belvieu, Texas, where geological features allow for large-scale underground storage of the chemicals used to make plastic products, there could be…
Want to reopen Kentucky? What happened here during the 1918 flu epidemic
If the past is any predictor of future performance, and it is in this case, then we should look at the flu outbreak of 1918 in Louisville before we gather together to reopen businesses and dance the Coronavirus Jig. As Gov. Andy has said repeatedly: We do not want to be Philadelphia, which suffered for…
It’s 4.20 — How Weed Users And Dealers Are Coping With Coronavirus
The Louisville dealer’s customers were asking for more weed than usual, he said. They told him that they were “stocking up” for the coronavirus. But, sooner than he had expected, they were hitting him up again for more edibles, flower or vape cartridges. “I found that they were smoking more, just because they were sitting…
10 Things To Do In Isolation This Week In Louisville (4/20)
MONDAY, April 20 4/20 Blaze it. Artist Margaret Archambault Facebook Free | 3-4 p.m. Instead of going to see Margaret Archambault’s new work at her studio, Tim Faulkner Gallery, the local artist will reveal her pieces from the series “Quaren-Spring” on Facebook — and discuss details about her process including materials used. Count Us In…
You can still gamble on horse racing, but don’t expect Kentucky tracks to open anytime soon
Sports betting options are currently thin, leading gamblers down strange rabbit holes such as email-chain NFL draft betting pools or slobbering at the crashed stock market like some sort of Patrick Bateman clones, but if you’re a degenerate looking for live action, never fear — horse racing is somehow still out there happening. Just not…
Glowing green: City lights up for COVID-19 fatalities
“Tonight, and every night that I have to report a fatality, it’s a small thing but we’re going to light the Kentucky Governor’s Mansion green. Green is the color of compassion, it’s the color of empathy. It’s also a color of renewal.” —Gov. Andy Beshear. And so across the state and Louisville, porch lights and…
5 Things To Do While Social Distancing In Louisville This Weekend (4/17)
FRIDAY, April 17 Guestroom Records Presents: Other Music Documentary Screening $11.50 | Any time Other Music was a New York record store that helped launch the careers of Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective and many other indie bands who gained popularity during the early 2000s. But, in 2016, Other Music closed in the face of rising…
Will it be beers or jeers with Gov. Andy? Tune in at 5 p.m. Friday to see
[Update: Protesters returned Friday… in vehicles… for a drive-by rally and did not interfere with Gov. Andy’s briefing.] Will they be back tonight, the 100 or so Pirates of Pandemic, those Scalawags of Scourge who tried to shout down Gov. Andy during his Coronavirus Good Counsel and Singalong Session on Wednesday evening? The Courier Journal…
Trader Joe’s sued over former worker’s coronavirus claims
A former Louisville Trader Joe’s employee is suing the grocery chain, saying he was wrongfully fired after raising concerns about health and safety conditions while working there during the epidemic. Two weeks before being fired, Kris King, a Trader Joe’s employee of over eight years, created a private Facebook page for local workers to talk…
Hospital visits declined after sulfur dioxide reductions from Louisville-area coal plants
By taking advantage of a “natural experiment” brought on by the closure of one coal-fired power plant and the addition of new pollution controls at others in the area, health researchers have documented how lowering air pollution improves the lives of asthma patients. Led by Columbia University’s Joan A. Casey, an environmental health sciences professor,…
Forecastle Festival 2020 has been canceled
The 18th edition of Forecastle Festival has been canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak. The three-day festival was scheduled to take place at Waterfront Park July 17-19, with a lineup that featured headliners Jack Johnson, Cage The Elephant and The 1975. “Forecastle Festival 2020 will no longer take place this year,” read a statement on…
Savage Love: Quickies
Q: I am a super queer presenting female who recently accepted that I have desires for men. My partner of two years is bisexual and understands the desires, but has personally dealt with those desires via masturbation while my desires include acting. Her perspective is that the grass is greener where you water it and that my…
Gov. Andy Beshear and the Bare Minimum: He can do better, and so can we
Here in Kentucky, we’re on week three-ish of COVID-19 quarantine, and our governor, Andy Beshear, has gained local and national attention for his response to the global pandemic. Some have likened him to Mr. Rogers due to the comforting nature of his daily 5 p.m. Facebook Live streams. Others have dubbed him a sex symbol,…
The out-in-the-storm playlist: 8 local songs released in the last two months
Since the outbreak started, sometimes it’s been hard to pay attention to anything but devastating news. Of course, we’ve all been home more often, and some of us have been trying to find pop culture distractions, but there’s still a solid chance that great Louisville albums and singles have been buried under the weight of…
Thorns & Roses: The Worst, Best & Most Absurd (4/15)
Thorn: $4.6 million later, regrets? New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer’s latest, “How Mitch McConnell Became Trump’s Enabler-in-Chief,” contains so many nuggets of outrageousness and despair-inducing reporting that you must read it in its entirety. But here is one illuminating passage. She reports that the late Humana founder David Jones had long backed McConnell. He…
The Parade of Families, a drive-through nursing home visit
In-person visits are now banned at nursing homes and rehab centers, a reasonable but difficult precaution for residents and their families alike. Signature HealthCARE at Jefferson Manor Rehab & Wellness Center got creative: It held a drive-thru visitation for residents and their families dubbed the Parade of Families. One recent Monday, residents were escorted from…
The Hidden Hill nursery is alive with color
A spring tour of riotous beauty Bob and Janet Hill ran the Hidden Hill Nursery & Sculpture Garden in Utica, Indiana, for 19 years, cultivating rare and unusual plants he has collected from around the world. It was a second career for him, after retiring after 33 years as a metro columnist for The Louisville…
A meal in three acts, or… Dining out in the age of coronavirus
While we all long for the days when we can return to our favorite restaurants for a leisurely meal or to our favorite pubs for drinks with friends, we find ourselves making do with what we’re allowed to have in difficult days of social distancing. We also find ourselves doing our best, in a historically…
Not ordering a corona: 7 beers to ride out the epidemic
Sure, we all miss going to our favorite, local breweries for their latest concoctions and the joie de vivre of drinking with friends and strangers. As Whitney Martin, half of the LEO Beer Me! column, said so mathematically below, “my ability to enjoy beer is diminished by approximately 60% thanks to the COVID buzzkill.” But,…
COVID: The Metamorphoses
Given the recent need to lock ourselves in our rooms, obsessively wash our hands and wear makeshift masks at all hours lest we end up bloated meat pouches in garbage bags on refrigerated trucks, you may feel the urge to withdraw from your normal activities a bit. It can be tempting, for the weaker among…
No one ever really means ‘Ducking’
But a shout out is in order to AutoCorrect for Its accuracy on this one particular occasion… For the Ducks & Geese at Cave Hill Cemetery – You are the sentries of the afterlife, a Monty Python sketch in honking reality left to waddle amongst headstones and stand guard for those who came here to…
Hell, even Bernie endorsed him
Spoiler alert: This column ends with a formal endorsement of Joe Biden for president. I know, you are shocked. After all, I am a Democratic elected official. I voted to impeach Donald Trump, Biden’s opponent. I have publicly called Donald Trump unstable, nuts, crazy, a criminal, a threat to our democracy and most every other…
While the Democrats and GOP bicker over religiosity, the virus is winning
Ever since Gov. Andy Beshear announced a state of emergency in Kentucky on March 6 and local TV news began covering his nightly press conferences, the Commonwealth has been unusually nonpartisan if not downright politically purple. But, all of that came to an end in the lead up to Easter, when the battle over social…
