Kentucky Parks & Crafts Poster Series
Poster series celebrating Kentucky’s State Parks
If you grew up in Kentucky, I'm willing to bet you have some pretty amazing memories of visiting at least one of Kentucky's state parks. I know I do.
Every summer when I was a kid , my family visited Jenny Wiley State Park for picnics and family reunions. We'd go see plays at the outdoor theatre, and we'd celebrate my brother's birthday.
My cousin Amy and I cheese for the camera at Jenny Wiley State Park.
My brother opens some sweet Power Rangers gear at his birthday party, as my grandmother looks on. Jenny Wiley State Park.
Our state parks are pretty amazing. They're accessible to all Kentuckians, and they provide free recreation for folks of all ages. The 49 Kentucky State Parks cover approximately 45,000 acres of the Commonwealth, and they are one of only a handful of state parks systems that remain free of charge for users. And that's where things start to get a little odd. We have a lot of state parkland, and only a finite amount of park funding. Only $8 million was allocated to park maintenance from 2005 - 2015; in 2016, the Kentucky State Parks were allocated $16 million as part of a “Refreshing the Finest” campaign which funded projects like the renovation of the then fire-damaged May Lodge at my beloved Jenny Wiley State Park. It is estimated that, at present, the Kentucky State Parks System is still vastly underfunded with a total deferred maintenance for all 49 parks standing at a total of $240 million. We take our parks for granted -- they've always just been there -- but they take serious money to maintain.
The Kentucky State Parks Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit entity that serves as an independent fundraising, advocacy, and education resource for Kentucky's state parks. The KSPF, which receives no funding from the Commonwealth of Kentucky nor the Kentucky Department of Parks, exists to help the Commonwealth's state parks stay viable. It's a pretty important job, and you can help. You can donate directly to the KSPF, you can become a Friend of your local park by joining a group that donates volunteer hours and financial resources to an individual park, or you can shop the Kentucky Parks and Crafts Poster series to show the world which Kentucky State Park you love the most.
The Kentucky Parks & Crafts Poster Series is comprised of 16 art prints, priced at $20 each, which celebrate some of Kentucky's best-loved parks. I can't wait to hang the Jenny Wiley print and the Cumberland Falls print in my office; both remind me of wonderful childhood memories!
If you'll be in the Louisville area this week, be sure to visit Revelry Boutique Gallery this Thursday, May 24th, from 5:30 - 7 pm for the release party for the entire poster series! If you'd like to win a State Park poster of your own from HerKentucky and Kentucky for Kentucky, keep an eye on my Instagram and Facebook pages. And let me know in the comments below, what's your favorite Kentucky State Park?
What to Wear to Keeneland When It's Cold
Look great at the races even when the snow is falling!
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Oh, Kentucky weather. You're so unpredictable. You're sooooo hard to dress for.
It's Opening Weekend at Keeneland. And it's snowing. What do you wear to Keeneland's Spring Meet when it snows? I mean, today is the Blue Grass Stakes. It's a big-deal race -- a Grade 2 that very well could impact the Derby field. You'll see so many people you know... and the track is running on a snow delay! (The doors open to the public at noon rather than 11, and the first race is on time at 1::05 pm)
Of course, the answer is layers. Lots of layers. Start with a basic dress. I love this Talbots Ponte dress, and it's on sale right now! I have the navy, but the green is so pretty, too!
Add a chic jacket. My Barbour Polarquilt Beadnell is probably my all-time favorite jacket. It's so warm, and so pretty.
The final touch to a cold-weather racetrack ensemble is boots. Boots keep you warm and allow you to wear socks. They're always equestrian chic and appropriate for the track!
Are y'all heading out to the track today? What are you wearing?
Elizabeth Blackwell, Frances Jane Coomes, and the History of Women Physicians in Kentucky
Elizabeth Blackwell
Today is National Women Physicians Day, in observance of the 196th anniversary of Elizabeth Blackwell's birth. The British-born Dr. Blackwell is remembered as the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States as well as the first woman on the United Kingdom Medical Register. What you may not know is that, prior to undertaking her medical training, Dr. Blackwell briefly worked as a schoolteacher in Kentucky!
Elizabeth Blackwell was born in a large, nurturing family in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England in 1821; her father, Samuel, was a sugar refiner. Following civil unrest in Bristol, Samuel moved the family first to New York City and later to Cincinnati. As the family fell on hard financial times, Elizabeth accepted a teaching position in Henderson, Kentucky, at a salary of $400/year. Ultimately, Elizabeth's time in the Bluegrass State was unsatisfactory. She found herself suited neither for the town nor the profession, and returned to Cincinnati after a few months, resolving to find a more fulfilling line of work. She worked as a music teacher in North Carolina, saving money for her goal of pursuing a medical education, ultimately enrolling at Geneva Medical College in upstate New York. The degree of medical doctor was conferred upon Dr. Blackwell in January 1849.
Fort Harrod
While Dr. Blackwell is widely known as the first woman to attain a formal medical degree in the United States, the first woman who was recognized as a physician in Kentucky actually predates the Commonwealth's statehood. Frances Jane Coomes and her husband William accompanied Dr. George Hartt to Fort Harrod in the 1770s. Mrs. Coomes served an apprenticeship under Dr. Hartt, and also is known as Kentucky's first schoolteacher. According to Dr. John A Ouchterlony, in his 1880 book Pioneer Medical Men and Times in Kentucky,
The husband was brave and intrepid; took part in many fights with the Indians, and had numerous adventures and hair breadth escapes. He reached a high age, and was much respected and honored; but it is especially his wife who claims attention in connection with pioneer Medicine in Kentucky. She was a woman of remarkably vigorous intellect, great originality and fertility of resource, and of strong and noble character. She certainly was the first female who ever practiced Medicine in Kentucky and according to some she was the first of her sex to exercise the beneficent functions of the healing arts of our State. She was physician, surgeon, and obstetrician, and her fame and practice extended far and wide, even attracting patients from remote settlements and not only in Kentucky, but in adjoining States.
Here's to Mrs. Coomes, Dr. Blackwell, and all of the other great female physicians for whom Kentucky was part of the story!
Five Tips for a Great At-Home Derby Party
When I think of favorite Kentucky Derby memories, there are, of course, stories about sitting right at the Finish Line, over-the-top Derby Parties, and elaborate hats. But, the truth is, some of my very favorite Kentucky Derby Memories are family parties when I was a kid. I can remember sitting in my grandmother's living room -- at a home where drinking or gambling would never be permitted -- and watching the Derby with my cousins. It was always so special to realize that Kentucky was the focus of the entire sports-loving world for the afternoon!
Here are some great tips for hosting a memorable Derby party at home.
1. Keep an assortment of great beverages!
When you think of Derby Day, of course you think of mint juleps! But, y'all know that everybody doesn't like the Kentucky Derby's signature cocktail. Try an Ale-8 "minty julep" mocktail for the kids. Keep some sweet tea and lemonade on hand for those who choose not to imbibe. Maybe mix up a batch of bourbon slush. Have a couple bottles of good bourbon on hand -- a high-wheat and a high-rye should satisfy everyone's tastes. And don't forget that crushed ice makes it all a little more festive!
2. Keep it low-key!
There's no need to pull out the fine china or even the silver julep cups. Make your guests feel comfortable with everyday serving pieces. I LOVE the mint julep cups from Louisville Stoneware. These carafes are only $3 at Target right now. And Derby glasses are always appropriate! I love using a well-loved quilt as a tablecloth. And colorful Fiestaware is always great for a party.
3. Everybody loves a tiny bite!
Make boxed brownie mix something extraordinary by adding a splash of bourbon to the mix, then topping the cooled brownies with a liberal sprinkling of sea salt; cut into tiny, bite-sized squares. Serve sweet Sister Schubert rolls as sliders with salty country ham. Mini hot browns and individual-sized Derby-Pies® are always great tastes of Kentucky!
4. Play some games.
Download a jockey silks template and let kids (and grown-ups!) design their own silks. Draw names of the horses in the field from a bowl, so everyone has a horse to cheer for. (If your crowd is gambling-friendly, set up a small pool for the race winner!) And purchase cheap feathers and flowers from a craft store to decorate Derby hats. Purchase a few extra Derby glasses for party favors that will remind your guests of the fun day.
5. Sing My Old Kentucky Home!
Don't forget the state song. It's a great Derby tradition!
Here's to a fun, laid-back Derby at home!
A Conversation with Irrepressible Author Emily Bingham
HerKentucky editor Heather C. Watson interviews Louisville native author and historian Emily Bingham.
was at the top of HerKentucky's list of the summer's must-read books. The story of a charismatic Jazz Age debutante who scandalized Louisville society by kissing girls at the city's most exclusive clubs while charming London's elite Bloomsbury intellectual set , Irrepressible reads like a tightly constructed novel, deftly weaving through continents and eras to tell a lovely and ultimately tragic story.The second child and only daughter of Louisville politician, judge, and publishing magnate Robert Worth Bingham, Henrietta was born in 1901 into a Kentucky of thoroughbreds, cotillions, and country clubs. Her Louisville was a world most of us have only experienced in myth -- her grandmother Henrietta Long Miller owned an imposing mansion in Old Louisville and an equally impressive summer home in Peewee Valley -- but which was often too rigid for her tastes. Upon graduation from Louisville Collegiate School, Henrietta sought refuge first at Smith College (where she began an affair with magnetic young composition professor and heiress Mina Kirstein, whose family co-founded Filene's Department Stores), then abroad, where her gracious disposition and violet eyes captivated the free-spirited intellectuals of the Bloomsbury group. Among her confidantes and lovers were Wimbledon champion Helen Hull Jacobs and actor John Houseman; her complex and co-dependent relationship with her larger-than-life father cast a decidedly Southern Gothic shadow over her life of privilege.
Henrietta Bingham (image via The Daily Beast)
Ultimately, the societal norms of Henrietta's era -- it's heartbreaking to remember that, less than a century ago, gay Americans were forced into the closet by the imminent threat of criminal charges and physical violence -- along with a lifelong history of mental health and substance abuse issues ultimately dulled Henrietta's flame. The outré flapper and muse became known as a sad and embarrassing branch of the Bingham family tree. When Henrietta's great-niece, the writer and historian Emily Bingham, announced her plans to name her daughter for this relative whom she'd never known, the story goes, her family blanched. Henrietta's name was considered an unwelcome burden to saddle upon a new generation of Binghams, so Emily started reconstructing her great-aunt's story. In a twist so fortuitous that it seems torn from the pages of a Hollywood script, Emily Bingham found two perfectly preserved trunks in the attic of her family's estate. Henrietta's story unfolded through the trunks' contents -- a glamorous story of love, heartbreak, and adventure. Emily graciously answered some questions about Irrepressible for HerKentucky readers.
Henrietta's partner, Helen Hull Jacobs
HK: What was going through your mind when you discovered Henrietta’s trunk of memories?
EB: That day in 2009 was probably one of the greatest experiences I'll ever have as a historian. I went to that attic in my childhood home very reluctantly. I had peeked into the trunk some time before and seen a lot of very old shoes, hats, that sort of thing, and it was pure duty to spend hours on a frigid January day in the uninsulated space full of soot and lit by a single dangling bulb. The house itself was empty and did not contain my happiest childhood memories (though I did love exploring the vast attic where servants had once lived and where my father and his siblings had a lot of toys and books and old saddles stored).
The first amazing find was a massive silver flask with Henrietta's initials. It holds about two fifths of bourbon. Nothing like the discreet flapper flasks you might imagine.
Then I came across the tennis outfit that turned out to have belonged to Helen Hull Jacobs, the 1930s lesbian tennis champion. Her monogrammed shirt suggested a more intimate relationship than I knew had existed between her and my great aunt, and the clothes, which I sent to the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, RI led me to her diaries and scrapbooks and the "joyous and satisfying life" she shared with Henrietta in the 30s and 40s.
There were some little tiny folded papers containing white powder. I thought I'd come across some illicit drug but on closer inspection they proved to be "dog powders" for Henrietta's beloved border terriers and Pekingese!
And then, as I was about to leave for the day to relieve my babysitter, I saw that another trunk was hidden in the shadows in a corner of the garret room. At the very bottom is where I found the carefully tied up and almost perfectly-preserved collection of love letters from the sculptor Stephen Tomlin and the actor/producer John Houseman. Seeing Henrietta through their besotted eyes was one of the utter thrills of my experience with this book.
Young Henrietta. Image via The Daily Beast.
HK: Was there ever a time when you thought of turning back and keeping Henrietta’s story in the past?
EB: Absolutely. My editor didn't think the book was even possible given that I had no diaries and almost no letters from Henrietta herself. So it was almost DOA. But I pushed past that with some of the discoveries in the attic and elsewhere. There was a point when her depression and addiction melded with a sad and confusing time in my life and I wondered if the project might not make me ill.
Henrietta Bingham (image via Courier-Journal)
HK: I’m a Jazz Age buff, and a Kentucky native, so as I read, I was thinking both of the timeline of some of my favorite authors and historical figures (thinking, e.g., “OK, Scott and Zelda would have been here, or Gerald and Sara Murphy would have been here”) and of a very local timeline (saying things like “the Miller house was a block down from the Woman’s Club” or “of course they all thought Henrietta was a gracious hostess; she was a Louisville girl!”) It almost felt like Henrietta lived two completely separate lives –freedom in London and duty in Louisville. When you were working on the book, how did you feel that place played into Henrietta’s story?
EB: Henrietta felt very connected to her Kentucky and southern roots. There is a remarkable passage in the pages John Houseman cut from his memoir: see page 180-181. He was drawn in by the romance of Kentucky but later he came to see things in a more nuanced way. Here's a bit more of it: "I discovered that Louisville was, in reality, a typical middle-Western American city, indistinguishable from Indianapolis or Cincinnati, and that its main claim to national fame -- Churchill Downs, scene of the Kentucky Derby -- was ringed with factories and power plants that made it, without question, one of the most squalid hippodromes in the United States. Yet, for close to a century, from Foster to Fitzgerald, the legend of Louisville's romantic fascination had persisted--and not without reason. For in its own mysterious way the spell worked -- not only on public occasions such as the long Derby weekend, when the entire population, swollen by streams of visitors, lived in a state of collective alcoholic hallucination, but also, in a more intimate way, each time the natives came together and succeeded, through sheer emotional energy, in generating and sustaining an atmosphere of glamour and gaity that was no less magical for being achieved almost entirely with Bourbon and mirrors."
Henrietta loved her Miller grandmother. She also loved having a mansion to throw parties in. She dared to make passes at girls at the Louisville Country Club and kiss her lover in the elevator at the Pendennis. She went sledding in Cherokee Park and was pushed in a stroller in Central Park in Old Louisville. I was stunned when I figured out that for at least a year she and her father and elder brother occupied an apartment 5 doors away from me on Cherokee Road! London and Manhattan were much freer places for her, for sure, but I think she always wanted to come back and her thoroughbred breeding farm at Harmony Landing was the way she hoped to find her way in -- brave as a woman, a lesbian, and someone without direct experience in bloodstock (though her great uncle Dennis Long had two Derby winners in her childhood and that may have set her ambitions early).
Emily Bingham. Image via author's website.
HK: You do an amazing job of, as you say in the preface, not presuming to speak for Henrietta. Yet, you’re very fair with your assessments of her mental health and her likely dyslexia. Was this a hard line to walk?
It's always hard to walk the line between empathizing with your subject and wanting to protect them and being frank about their weaknesses and shortcomings. I believe that readers don't just want "models" and can appreciate lives that are as complicated and imperfect as their own.
HK: If you had the chance to talk to Henrietta, what would you say to her?
EB: Sing for me. Play the sax. Tell me the stories of the musicians you loved and who, doubtless, found you pretty interesting, too. What was your favorite bar, show, concert, player? Where did you feel most free? Who did you really love? Finally, "You are in the world again and people still find you lovable and irresistible and are so glad not to have lost you altogether."
Thanks so much to Emily for the amazing interview, and for writing the summer's best book. Check back later this week as HerKentucky takes you on a photo tour of Henrietta's Louisville.
The Best Swag For Bluegrass Babies
So, I'm going to be an aunt soon. Like, any minute now.
Since I can't seem to stop shopping for baby clothes, I thought I'd share with y'all some of the best Kentucky-themed onesies that I've run across.
Born and Breaded Onesie, Kentucky for Kentucky. This just makes me laugh so hard.
Y'all Onesie from Kentucky for Kentucky. I wear the t-shirt version of this one all the time; my niece and I should coordinate, no?
Kentucky Kicks Ass Baby Onesie from Kentucky for Kentucky. Who can resist adorning a child with mild expletives?
Commonwealth Baby Thermal -- High Street Fly. This just looks so snuggly!
via High Street Fly
502 Onesie from WHYLouisville.
via WHYLouisville
Kentucky Home T Onesie via The Home T (available locally at The Prickly Pear) It's never too early to teach them where they come from.
via The Home T.
The HerKentucky UK Wildcats Personality Quiz
What does your favorite UK Wildcat say about your personality?
Here in Kentucky, it's hard not to be caught up in Wildcats fever right now.We've got more McDonald's All-Americans than Ole Miss has Miss America hopefuls, and you can't turn on the TV without hearing the question "Can Kentucky remain undefeated?"
If your favorite Wildcat is...
Willie Cauley-Stein:
You work hard and play harder. At work, you're known as the person who bills 80 hours a week and still has time to organize the company's Happy Hours. You probably also play video games while you're on conference Calls. (Click to Tweet!)
Trey Lyles:
People often describe you as "mysterious." Even your closest family and friends don't always know what you're thinking or doing... (Click to Tweet!)
Andrew Harrison:
You're a very loyal person. You stick by an idea or project until it comes to fruition. You may say "I told you so!" a little too often. (Click to Tweet!)
Alex Poythress:
You've had some health problems, but you know you'll be back in The Game soon. People should know better than to count you out just yet. (Click to Tweet!)
Karl-Anthony Towns:
You're intense and motivated. Some call you passionate, others call you explosive. You have huge successes and, often, huge disappointments, but you give life your all. (Click to Tweet!)
Dakari Johnson:
You've got a great sense of humor. People like to have you around, because you make them laugh and you can always reach the items on the top shelf. (Click to Tweet!)
Aaron Harrison:
You're a team player. You get the job done, and people know that they can always depend on you. (Click to Tweet!)
Devin Booker:
Friends, relatives, and colleagues genuinely like you. You get promoted frequently, and your accomplishments are often celebrated. (Click to Tweet!)
Tyler Ulis:
Your nickname might as well be "The Energizer Bunny." What you lack in height, you make up for in energy, talent, and personality. You're usually considered the life of the party. (Click to Tweet!)
Marcus Lee:
People consider you a truly unique individual. You aren't afraid to be yourself or to stand out in the crowd. (Click to Tweet!)
Who's your favorite Wildcat?