Jeff Wiggins delivering a letter asking for passage of HEROES Act

(Paducah KY) - On Thursday, Western Kentucky union leader Jeff Wiggins went to Senator Mitch McConnell's Paducah office to deliver a letter.

The Majority Leader was still in Washington working on a sorely needed compromise with the House on legislation. But Wiggins wanted to put his concerns about passage of the HEROES Act in writing in hopes staff would share with the Senator.

It took less than 72 hours for vandals to damage Leslie McColgin's signs.

But it only took a few hours for her neighbors to repair them.

Columbus KY had a Freedmen School like this one in South Carolina.

"From 1866 to 1868 Columbus served as our regional center for the Freedmen's Bureau which had been formed to help the former slaves. Schools were set up for both children and adults, marriages were formally recognized, legal advice offered, courses and a savings bank established, labor contracts were negotiated and enforced, medical and food aid supplied, and disabled former soldiers were helped to obtain their pensions. The Union Army garrison at Columbus provided protection for both the Bureau's employees and for the former slaves from the hostility of most local whites.

But this proved to be only temporary..."

Map of Middlesboro kyatlas.com

Middlesboro residents are pouring out their hearts to the Public Service Commission in handwritten letters, letters typed on letterhead stationary, in form letters and emails. At this writing over fifty letters are shown on the Public Service Commission website.

They are expressing their dismay at Water Services Corp of Kentucky's (WSCKY) latest request for a rate increase.

Their plea over and over again "Please listen to the public cry of the people of Middlesboro."

Bill of Sale for Hanna - one page July 5, 1841 (used with permission of Hickman County Museum)

One hundred seventy nine years ago on the day after Independence Day, an auction was held on the Hickman County Courthouse steps in the county seat of Clinton. It wasn't that unusual an event, debtor properties were sold regularly to pay off creditors.

This auction was different - the property being sold was not a farm or a horse or a crop. The property was a human being.

And her name was Hanna.

When the Cairo bridge closes Aug. 1, a normal 5-mile drive between Wickliffe, Kentucky, and Cairo, Illinois, will become an 80-mile detour via the Interstate 24 Ohio River Bridge at Paducah. Motorists who adjust their route prior to reaching the bridge can greatly reduce the detour mileage. Portable message boards are set up at key locations to alert travelers and truckers to the closure before they reach the bridge.

...Millions of citizen's health care is on the line, and despite the pandemic and resulting major recession, the Trump Administration and 18 Republican state attorneys general filed briefs late one night last week asking the Supreme Court to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as Obamacare...

views of the American condition from a small town front porch

The air was cool. The day was new.

Routines of the morning hours began to set in. Black coffee from combustion of Vanilla bean and Forgers roast, teased me into thinking that life was ready to proceed into, yet another day.

As the darkness of late night receded, from the dimension of the front porch, being replaced at a snail's speed, with a subdued light, reflecting through the prisms of thousands of new raindrops, life moved forward into place. Another day was being sculptured into position.

Ivan and Mary Potter shopping in Hazel KY

Meet the husband and wife team responsible for West Kentucky Journal.

Editor's Note: Updated - Ivan Potter retired from the Clinton City Council as of January 1, 2017.

WKJ now has over 6000 articles and 2.5 million yearly views.