Lexington speedster tripped up by Web site’s computer

Technology is great, right — as long as it does what we want it to do.

If not, there can be red faces all around, like those at the American Family Association and its Onenewsnow.com Web site.

Onenewsnow handles a lot of Associated Press copy and its small staff doesn’t always have time to read every item before it goes to the Web, says Fred Jackson, the news director.

They programmed a computer to scan AP stories and make certain changes to keep the stories in line with the association’s conservative agenda. One change was to substitute “homosexual” for “gay.”

So when AP recently reported that runner Tyson Gay, a graduate of Lafayette High School in Lexington, had sped to victory and qualified for the U.S. Olympic team, the Onenewsnow computer changed Gay to Homosexual throughout the story.

“It’s been corrected,” Jackson said before The Buzz could get the first question completed.

“The organization I work for is not ashamed of the word homosexual so we basically told the filter that when you see the word ‘gay,’ you put ‘homosexual’ in,” he explained. “But as we discovered in this case, and I think one other, it doesn’t work when it comes to personal names.”

“There was good intent,” Jackson added, “but often with good intent, there comes the realization that it doesn’t work 100 percent of the time.”

Gay is in Europe and not available for comment.

Maybe he’ll see the humor in it as much as Jay Leno, National Public Radio and several Web sites that have weighed in on the switch.

 

 

Got goat milk? Bluegrass has cheese, too

“We have kind of labeled ourselves ‘dairy goat pioneers,’” says Todd Harp. “There are several people across the state who are watching Susan and me to see how it goes.”

Harp operates Foxhide Farm in Bourbon County and last week, he made the first official shipment of goat’s milk in Kentucky, according to state inspectors.

It went to Susan Miller, who operates Bleugrass Chevre farm in Clark County.

Bleugrass Chevre also produces goat milk, plus several kinds of goat cheese that are sold at the Lexington Farmers Market on Saturdays.

The shipment was a big deal for Harp and his 5-year-old goat business.

He has gradually developed a herd of 55 goats, including 20 “does” that produce about 23 gallons of milk a day.

Now he has a market for the milk and Miller has a source of milk to meet the growing demand for her cheese, Harp said.

Foxhide and Bleugrass Chevre are the only licensed goat milk producers in Kentucky, but many other goat farmers are interested.

Kentucky is either 3rd or 5th among the states in goat population, depending on which source you consult, said Harp, a 34-year-old state government employee and a part-time goat farmer.

State farmers need more marketable products to make up for the loss of burley tobacco and other crops.

“Here we have a good product and we have got to get it on the market,” he added. “We’ll see how big it gets.”

 

Frenchman saves our bacon with bourbon

It’s a tradition at the U.S. Embassy in Paris to hold a huge garden party on July 4th to celebrate our independence and the French role in defeating the British.

About 2,400 people attended this year and many of them may have noticed that the party had a distinctly Bluegrass flavor.

The explanation begins last spring when Lexington and Deauville, France, received special invitations to be one of four pairs of host cities at the garden party because of their long-standing relationship as Sister Cities.

“It was a big deal,” says David Lord of the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, but the bureau couldn’t afford to fly people to France for a garden party.

Then Lord learned that his Lexington friends, Laurent and Mary Jouet, and Lord’s son, Cameron, would be in Paris for other reasons on the 4th and were willing to staff a Lexington-Deauville tent at the embassy.

The discovery was followed by an idea.

Lord contacted Eric Gregory, president of the Kentucky Distillers Association, and Gregory supplied 10 cases — or 1,200 small bottles — of bourbon that could be handed out at the party.

The embassy said get the bourbon to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., and a military cargo plane would take it from there.

So Lord rented a large vehicle for a bureau staffer and his family who were going to the East Coast on vacation and they delivered the bourbon to an Air Force major in Alexandria, Va., who works at Andrews. She took it the rest of the way.

Mission accomplished, Lord thought.

Then on July 1, he learned that the bourbon was still at Andrews. Military priorities had grounded our gift to France.

Time for Plan B.

Laurent Jouet, a native of France, suggested that he, his wife and Cameron Lord go to liquor stores in Paris and buy enough really good bourbon for an old-fashioned “bourbon pour” at the garden party.

The United States was saved again by a Frenchman.

Other hosts at the garden party served beer and wine, Lord said.

“When the French learned we were serving whisky in our tent, he (Cameron) said at one point they were 10 and 20 deep” around the serving table. The Jouets and Cameron Lord were “the most popular people there.”

 

 

New Fazoli’s CEO heads straight for the kitchen

Carl Howard has two decades of restaurant experience so he knew where to find Fazoli’s heart and soul.

Within days of arriving in Lexington as the “fast Italian” chain’s new CEO, Howard began reporting for work in the kitchens of local Fazoli’s restaurants.

“I really wanted to get in and get to know how things work,” the 42-year-old Ohio native explained. “I’ve now worked every position in the kitchen and behind the counter” at Fazoli’s.

He’s also done a few more physical things like helping to unload delivery trucks.

Then there’s the paperwork. Howard helped the manager of one restaurant do the end-of-the-month reports that are sent to Fazoli’s headquarters. In that way, “I can see what the general manager has to go through.”

Coming up: Howard has meetings with the owners of Fazoli’s franchise restaurants who may or may not be happy with the company’s policies and performance.

He once owned a restaurant franchise so “I can be very empathetic when it comes to franchises and franchisees.”

Other local companies also put their new executives through the same sort of get-to-know-you process.

For some, the change can be dramatic.

Randall McGee became vice president of operations for Valvoline Instant Oil Change in April after 30 years with fast-food chains.

McGee got to go down in the grease pits to learn how to do oil changes on customers’ cars.

“We’re going to get you dirty,” the Valvoline trainer told him, but the teacher might have underestimated his pupil in this case.

McGee is an amateur mechanic who loves working on cars.

His time in the pits was “a blast,” he said later.

 

 

35 plaids to pick from and UK goes for blue

One official color wasn’t enough.

The University of Kentucky now has an official blue plaid.

By this fall, the first plaid items – a UK tie for men and a silk scarf for women – will be on sale, but no price information yet.

Every fan’s dream is about to come true, at least one plaid tie or scarf for Christmas.

Other official items will be designed, beginning later this year, by students in merchandising, apparel and textiles, or MAT, in UK’s School of Human Environmental Sciences.

The university said MAT students created 35 plaids that were reduced to the “final four” by a panel of industry and UK representatives. The winning blue plaid was selected by Internet voting.

“To be able to actually create a product which will be on retailers’ shelves is a real thrill for our students and all who have been involved in this effort,” said Scarlett Wesley, a UK assistant professor and coordinator of The Kentucky Plaid Project.

Merchants are cheering, too. They’ve got a whole new product line that will appeal to one of the state’s largest groups of spenders.

Next up, The Kentucky Paisley Project, for those who can’t stand straight lines.

 

 

 

 

Former senator comes to town for Exile, grandchildren

There was at least one national political celebrity in the crowd when the group Exile held its reunion concert at the Kentucky Theatre on June 19.

Trent Lott, the 66-year-old Mississippi native who served as both Senate majority leader and Senate minority leader during a 35-year congressional career, is a long-time Exile fan.

“The whole family came,” said his son, Chet Lott, who lives in Bourbon County. Exile leader “J.P. Pennington is a close friend of mine. We actually co-write music together.”

Both Lotts are musical. Trent Lott belonged to a barbershop quartet called The Singing Senators and Chet Lott sings, writes music and has produced two CDs with Pennington. One brought in more than $125,000 for Hurricane Katrina relief in the Lott family’s hometown of Pascagoula, Miss.

“My parents were considering coming down (to Kentucky) and I said ‘You ought to come down for the Exile reunion’ and so they flew in and we went to the show and it was awesome. They (Exile) sounded better than ever.”

As Pennington was leaving the stage to sign autographs, Trent Lott jokingly offered Exile his help. “On that one song where you sang a cappella, you needed a base singer,” he told Pennington. “I could have stepped right in.”

Lott left the Senate in December and formed a lobbying firm with former Louisiana Sen. John Breaux. Chet Lott, a veteran lobbyist, and John Breaux Jr. are also members of the Washington, D.C., firm.

When it comes to getting his dad to Kentucky, Chet Lott said he has two special lures: His children, Trent Lott III and Lucie.

“They come to Kentucky quite often to see them,” he said.

 

 

Church’s new commandment divides football fans

 

Those who regularly pass Southside Church of Christ on Nicholasville Road are used to seeing Christian messages on the church’s sign.

“Jesus is ready for you,” it might say. “Are you ready for Jesus?”

Then, a couple of days ago, the secular replaced the sacred on Southside’s sign: “UK Football Parking Pass 278-9533.”

What happened?

In a word, prohibition.

The church, located near UK’s Commonwealth Stadium, has rented out its parking lot on football Saturdays for a decade to raise money for summer mission trips, explained the Rev. Barrett Coffman.

“This is a prime location and typically our parking spaces are always sold out,” Coffman said. “But this last year, we made the move to a dry lot and in doing that, we lost some of our long-time parkers.”

“Dry lot” means alcohol-free. Parkers can tailgate, but not drink alcohol.

The empty spaces “were taken very quickly,” Coffman said. “We are already sold out.”

The sacred returned to Southside’s sign on Thursday evening.

 

 

 

 

This Big Mac is on the house

We all love getting something for nothing, especially if the freebie is for something we are doing anyway — like shopping for a house.

Realtor Teresa Parks-Crumbie, for example, is marketing a new house at 188 Berkshire Lane in Georgetown’s Stonecrest Subdivision.

She realized that there is only one way into the subdivision, located off U.S. 25 south of Georgetown, and that motorists must pass a McDonald’s Restaurant to get there.

So Parks-Crumbie ran an ad in the Herald-Leader offering a coupon for a free Big Mac to any family who came to see the house on a recent Sunday.

“We didn’t draw a crowd,” she said. “We had two people to stop by and they came because of the Big Mac ad.”

But it was “two more people than we would have had on a (typical) Sunday,” Parks-Crumbie said.

So she is planning to repeat the giveaway and also advertise it in the Georgetown paper.

“We want to get some homebuyers out there before back-to-school starts,” she said. “We want to generate some traffic.”

And that’s exactly what a free Big Mac can do.

 

 

Needing MBA students, Western turns to billboards

So what do you do if you start a new MBA program, but not enough people apply?

You turn to the old media, of course.

Western Kentucky University is using billboards in Bowling Green, Glasgow, Elizabethtown and Owensboro as well as ads in various publications to recruit 25 to 30 students for its first executive MBA program, reports The Daily News in Bowling Green.

“This is the first time we’ve had a program like this and we’re having trouble getting the word out,” said Bob Hatfield, faculty coordinator for the two-year program that begins this fall.

So far, a physician, a dentist, business executives and engineers have signed up.

And there’s the problem. There’s not one coach, political campaign organizer or Army sergeant in the bunch. Those are the guys who know how to recruit.

For more information about the program, call (270) 745-6581, especially if you are a coach, political organizer or a sergeant.

It rains at the airport and a blog is born

A rainstorm at the Cincinnati airport and the “community” that developed around her cell phone is the first installment in The Sylvia L. Lovely Blog that was launched this week.

To those who know her, the news here is that Lovely has time to blog.

Not only is the Frenchburg native executive director and CEO of the Kentucky League of Cities and president of the NewCities Institute, she chairs Morehead State  University’s Board of Regents, serves on the board of the National League of Cities and on and on. She’s also written two books and does commentary on National Public Radio.

“I do a lot of writing,” Lovely says. “It’s what I love to do. … I do this commentary on NPR (National Public Radio) and I just love that stuff. I just love it.”

With the blog, which you can link to at www.newcities.org, Lovely wants to “tell the stories of people who really make a difference every day.”

She believes the “epicenter of democracy right now seems to be at Al’s Bar” where the regular guys and gals hang out. Democracy is “messy,” she says, but it works and makes a difference.

She wants to get more dialogue going and she wants responses to her blog. All ideas are welcome.

People want to connect with with each other, Lovely says. They don’t know how because “we’re disillusioned, we’re angry, we’re bewildered.”

She hopes to bridge that gap and make connections.

“I think it will be a different kind of blog. It will be interesting to see where I go with it.”

Indeed it will.