I Miss The U of L-UK Sports Hatefests

One of the things that will get me thinking about the time and friends I left behind in Da Ville is when the annual sporting hatefests in football and basketball occurs between the University of Louisville Cardinals and the University of Kentucky Wildcats.

It's exacerbated by the fact that these schools are situated in the two largest cites in the state in Louisville and Lexington and both campuses are only a 70 mile drive along I-64 from each other.  

I still chuckle about the times during me living in Louisville Metro fans on either side of the Red or Blue divide would ask me during the week of the Battle for the Governor's Cup (football) or the Battle of the Bluegrass (basketball) whether I was a Cards or Cats fan.

They would not be satisfied with my 'I root for both teams' answer or 'I'm a University of Houston fan' in an attempt to stay neutral . They would continue to attempt to convert me into becoming a fire and brimstone spouting t-shirt wearing member of Cats or Cards Nation with a missionary zeal while lambasting every aspect of the other school..

When they say 'A House Divided', they mean it.   It's so serious that friends, coworkers, families, couples and spouses that went to either Louisville or Kentucky are trading barbs at each other whether it's in person or online.   The effort to recruit us noncommitted folks to the gospel of Cat or Cards worship intensified along with the hype for for the game.whether it was in Louisville or Lexington.   

During that week on the football and basketball schedules of both schools you have wall to wall saturation coverage in the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Lexington Herald-Leader and TV stations in both cities of the respective schools down to the microlevel, especially for the basketball game which is nationally televised .

You cannot escape it, so you sit back and enjoy the fun because bragging rights were on the line in addition to which school would get the lions share of the best instate athletes .  But yeah, it does make me miss you wonderful peeps I left behind in the Bluegrass State even more

As for which team am I rooting for?   The one with the African American head coach on the sidelines..    . 

Mitch McConnell Has A Major Bridge Problem

Louisville sits on the Ohio River directly across from the state of Indiana and has two major interstate highways, I-64 and I-65 that intersect there.  

Until Friday, there were only three bridges crossing it to handle that traffic.  The Clark Memorial, which is a four lane bridge almost century old bridge takes traffic into downtown Louisville, the John F. Kennedy, which takes I-65 over the Ohio not far from the Clark, and the Sherman Minton, which takes I-64 over the Ohio and into Indiana near New Albany, IN.   .  

There is the I-265 East End one that has been talked about for decades, was finally in the design phase while I was living there and would connect the Kentucky and Indiana sides of that loop interstate.  It is still in the contentious planning stages because it has been mired in lawsuits by River Fields homeowners on the Kentucky side of it with a severe case of NIMBY syndrome.



Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, (R-KY) who has famously said his number one goal this session was to make 'Barack Obama a one-term president' and opposes the American Jobs Bill that the POTUS proposed Monday to work on infrastructure problems has a major infrastructure problem in his backyard.  

On Friday the Sherman Minton Bridge was closed indefinitely by Indiana governor Mitch Daniels (R) because of a critical crack found in a major support beam on the double decker bridge that carries 80,000 vehicles per day between New Albany, IN and the west side of Louisville.   

It's an interstate bridge, but due to a longstanding agreement between the two states Indiana has responsibility for the Sherman Minton maintenance while the John F. Kennedy Bridge is Kentucky's responsibility.

“Because the safety of the thousands of people who use the I-64 bridge is of utmost concern, Governor Daniels notified me today of his decision to temporarily shut down the Sherman Minton until the structure can be inspected more fully,” said Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear (D) according to the Examiner..
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“I have directed the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to send a team of our state’s bridge inspectors, engineers, and consultants to help evaluate the situation as quickly as possible and assist the State of Indiana and the Federal Highway Administration.  These evaluations will begin immediately and will be coordinated with the Indiana Department of Transportation.  Our highest priority is confidence that the public’s safety is assured.”

The Sherman Minton Bridge was built in 1962 at a original cost of $14.8 million and is named for Supreme Court justice (1949-1956) and long-time New Albany resident Sherman Minton.  The bridge has the negative combination of being built with a tiered.arch design that makes it more susceptible to failure and a type of T1 steel that was popular with bridge building projects in the 1960's that is less resistant to cracking.       

The closure means there are only two bridges left mere yards from each other in Downtown Louisville to take cross river traffic across the Ohio with the escalating traffic headaches and ripple effects of its closure affecting the lives of people on both sides of the Kentuckiana region.

With the increased traffic traversing it, the Kennedy bridge is also a concern of people who live in the area since it contains the same T1 steel that the Sherman Minton was built with.  

It also has political ramifications on the Kentuckiana area's congressional representatives and senators who are predominately Republicans with the exception of Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Louisville) who has been at the forefront of efforts to get the East Ebd bridge expeditiously built.

So is Sen. Mitch McConnell and the Republican reps going to continue their partisan political opposition of the American Jobs Bill when he has a critical bridge in his political backyard that will take anywhere from three months to two years to repair or replace?

Stay tuned, this it going to be interesting to see how this situation plays plays out in the Kentuckiana area's politics as tempers from constituents on both sides of the Ohio grow shorter as the commutes get longer.

First Kentuckiana Gay Black Pride Event Is Off And Running

Got an e-mail from Dawn about the inaugural Kentuckiana Gay Black Pride opening mixer last night at the River Bend Winery  (nice place). 

The International Federation Of Black Prides president was there in full effect and was quite impressed with the initial kickoff event. 

The first annual Kentuckiana Gay Black Pride continues in Louisville through this weekend, so if you are in the Louisville Metro area looking for something to do or live in the Ohio River valley roll on down to Da Ville and check out the action.    They've done so for your pride events, show them some reciprocal love.

The pageant is tonight and since I wrote the initial post supporting the event and talking about the challenges in getting it started, they've added a Sunday In The Park event at Cherokee Park 

Thanks for the love KGBPA you showed me and the blog, and hopefully I'll be back in the area to check out the next pride event y'all put on.   I wish y'all much success with this inaugural one.  

Berea, KY Fairness Ordinance On Hold

A recently conducted survey commissioned by the Fairness Coalition determined that 83% of registered Kentucky voters agree that gay and transgender people should be protected from discrimination in the workplace, in housing, and in restaurants or other forms of public accommodations. 

The work continues on getting a statewide Fairness law ensconsed that would amend Kentucky’s Civil Rights Act to include protections based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity.    The Statewide Fairness bill this session was sponsored by my old state rep Mary Lou Marzian (D-Louisville) with a companion Senate bill sponsored by Senator Kathy Stein (D-Lexington) in the GOP controlled chamber.   For the first time ever the bill actually got out of committee and to the floor of the Democratic controlled Kentucky House for debate..

The work also continues as various cities in the commonwealth of Kentucky try to join Louisville, Lexington and Covington on the list of Kentucky municipalities that have Fairness non-discrimination laws on their books and Berea is one of those municipalities making moves toward doing so.

Yesterday there was a Berea city council meeting to try to advance the process and Berea City Councilman Truman Fields, who is spearheading the efforts there was absent from last evening's regular scheduled meeting of the Council.

No further action was taken on either the establishment of a Berea Human Rights Commission or an anti-discrimination Fairness ordinance for the city. For the past several months Councilman Fields has spearheaded the Berea City Council task force tackling these issues, and brought forth a bill at the July 19 meeting that would establish a local Human Rights Commission. While the proposed Human Rights Commission does not include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes, the bill includes provisions for the enforcement of additional protected classes as adopted by the Berea City Council. At the July 19 meeting, the Human Rights Commission bill received the first of two readings required for a vote.

Councilman Fields announced at that July meeting that a draft Berean Fairness ordinance prohibiting discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity would be presented at the second Council meeting this month, August 16.

"Though no action was taken tonight, we remain confident the Berea City Council will move forward with the establishment of a Human Rights Commission and propose a local Fairness ordinance as announced later this month," said Jason Howard of Bereans for Fairness. "We commend the City Council and its task force for their careful consideration in the drafting of these bills and their facilitation of a full public dialogue on the issues. We look forward to further positive movement towards Fairness in Berea."


I hope there will be better news to report from the Bluegrass state on August 16.

Black Trans History: Lucy Hicks Anderson

One of TransGriot's ongoing missions is to search out, find and post nuggets of our African American trans history.  I discovered this one courtesy of Black Past.org and  BlackAmericaWeb

While living in Kentucky I'd heard multiple stories about James 'Sweet Evening Breeze' Herndon from Dawn since she was from Lexington where 'Sweet Evening Breeze' is a legendary presence in the TBLG community there.  But they may also need to start talking about Lucy Hicks Anderson, who was born in Waddy, KY  where we used to get gas on our I-64 runs between Louisville and Lexington.

Lucy Hicks Anderson was born in 1886 in Waddy as Tobias Lawson.   When Lawson entered school she insisted on wearing dresses to school and began calling herself Lucy.  Since the transgender definition hadn't been coined at that time to diagnose what was going on in her life, her mother took her to a physician who advised her to raise young Lucy as a girl.

Lucy left school at age fifteen to begin doing domestic work and left Kentucky in her twenties to move west.   She settled in Pecos, TX and began working at a hotel for a decade until she married Clarence Hicks in 1920 in Silver City, NM and moved west with him to Oxnard, California.  She divorced him in 1929.   

While in Oxnard she continued to do domestic work but was also saving her money she earned from that job.  She eventually purchased some property near the center of town and later operated a brothel.   She also got married again in 1944 to Reuben Anderson, a soldier who was stationed at Long Island's Mitchel Field.  


It was the second marriage that brought the legal trouble into her life.   When it was discovered that Lucy had been born biologically male, the Ventura County district attorney decided to prosecute her for perjury. He asserted that Anderson committed perjury when she signed the marraige license application and swore that there were 'no legal objections' to the marriage.

Of course Lucy had a dissenting opinion. "I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman,” Anderson told reporters in the midst of her perjury trial. “I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.”   The jury convicted her of the perjury charge, but the judge sentenced her to ten years probation rather than send her to prison. 

However, Lucy's legal troubles weren't over.  Since she'd received allotment checks as the wife of a US Army soldier, the feds prosecuted her and Reuben Anderson for fraud in 1946.  They were both found guilty and sent to prison . 

After serving her time, she tried to return to her life in Oxnard but  the police commissioner threatened her with prosecution if she returned, so she moved to Los Angeles where lived out the remainder of her life until she passed away in 1954.