Of the many culture shocks I experienced moving from Ohio to the remote eastern Kentucky county of around 10,000 people my grandmother’s family calls home, none was greater than the stark contrast in schools. The district I grew up in, just outside of the Dayton city limits, was by no […]

From an attempted assassination and an historic withdrawal from the race, the 2024 election has already had more twists and turns than an Aaron Sorkin screenplay. I should be forgiven, then, for how emotionally invested I became in the veepstakes. I did not imagine ever caring this much about running […]

The morning of Friday, September 27 was “a normal day.” But by that afternoon, six of Robert Jarvis’ coworkers were dead.

There is nothing Papaw Jordan likes complaining about more than property taxes. It infuriates him that the government can make him pay for a piece of property he owns, the only home he has in a country where — from colonization to the the “manifest destiny” of westward colonial expansion, […]

How can a book be filled with broad generalizations, cynical misrepresentations, and ill-defined parameters — yet still feel true?  I’ve been grappling with that question ever since reading “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.” Published earlier this year, authors Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman argue that rural America […]

I became president of the Outlet Alliance, our version of what was then popularly known as a gay-straight alliance, my freshman year at Western Kentucky University. I held this position for three semesters before concentrating on my role in the Student Government Association.  In my capacity as the SGA Director […]