Opinion

When Governor Beshear took office in December 2007, he joked that he knew the cupboard would be bare, but that he didn’t expect it to be gone.

Since then, he has overseen more than $430 million worth of cuts, all without touching Medicaid and our classrooms.  Unfortunately, with the nation’s economy showing no signs of improvement, he and the General Assembly learned in November that this would not be enough.  Our state economists told us that another $456 million would still need to be trimmed by the end of June.

When Eminence High School English teacher, Cara Puckett, offered me the opportunity to be a guest judge for her students’ Poetry Out Loud competition, I eagerly accepted.

I like poetry, I like teenagers, how hard could it be?

Then I checked out the Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Project website and started to appreciate the complexities.

Participants were to choose two poems from a list of thousands spanning hundreds of years and representing all the different types of poetry.

On Feb. 3, the snow caused considerable headaches for many motorists. The timing of the snow and more of it than was forecast caused many parents to have concerns about the safety of their children while traveling home from school. I, like every employee of the Henry County Public Schools, make the safety of our children my number one priority each and every day. It gives me great comfort to know that the transportation staff performs their duties with a great amount of professionalism.

On behalf of the City of Eminence, I would like to thank the many, many volunteers who gave of their time to assist the citizens of Eminence and Henry County during the recent snow and ice storm emergencies.   The list is so long that I cannot mention everyone by name, but you know who you are.  I am so proud to live in a community where people care so much for one another.

We would like to express our sincere appreciation for Tommie Kendall and his sports coverage in our community.  We will always value the support and encouragement he has provided to our swim team.  Since 2004, he has attended nearly every meet in order to provide accurate and pertinent information to our local community regarding our swim team.  This includes traveling several miles to away meets which take place in the evenings and on weekends.  Our sport is not the exception, he does this for all sports in our county.

On behalf of the citizens of Henry County I would like to express our appreciation to the following businesses and individuals that gave up their time and donated food and supplies for the Community Center and other shelters during the recent ice storm: Dairy Queen, Cook’s Pharmacy, Norm’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Chat-N-Nibble, Dollar General Store, Family Dollar Store, Cowboy’s, Five-Star B.P., Scribers Station, Hometown Pizza, New Castle Café, Eminence City Council Members, Eminence Police, Henry County Sheriff’s Department, Red Cross, North Central Health

With all due respect to Mother Nature, please, turn off the snow machine. Well, okay, more accurately, don’t turn on the ice machine again.

While some of our residents may still be without power, I count my blessings that we were only out for about half a day.

When our power conked out just after 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, Derek and I huddled up with extra blankets, and the cats, and read. All day.

We were a little stir crazy — not being able to check e-mail, or Facebook, or play a video game or two.

Monday night into Tuesday morning, Henry County received a winter storm that practically shut it down.  Residents lost power all over and police officers in Eminence set out to check on everyone, especially the elderly. The Fire Department opened their doors and was called on almost immediately. City workers had already started working overtime trying to make our streets passable. The Eminence City Council was opening the Community Center insuring that residents from all over had shelter.

Henry County is blessed with many generous hearts.  We’ve had so many people ask us what they could do to help the community.  Everyone knows that times are hard with this economy.  It has only made the kindness in the hearts of the community come together and want to help those less fortunate.  To the pastors, church groups, work groups, teachers and staff, students, families:  thank you!  We thank you for the food and supplies that many have brought in for our community pantry.  We thank you for the monetary donations and providing “Santa&rdq