No Title 913

Josh moves up
Remember Josh Anderson, the Kentucky minor league baseball player on the cover of last month’s Kentucky Living? He’s been promoted from the Lexington Legends. He’s now playing for the Avalanche in Salem, Virginia.
Congratulations, Josh!

State Fair celebrates its 100th
August 19-29 you can celebrate the 100th Kentucky State Fair with a special exhibit on the Louisville grounds. A 22,000-square-foot retrospective, Kentucky State Fair 100: The Exhibition, will present hundreds of photographs, scrapbooks, advertising, and artifacts. The exhibit will also re-create times and places throughout State Fair history.

For more than a year, fans of the State Fair have phoned and written letters and e-mails to share their memories of fairs long ago. Many have contributed postcards, premium books, ribbons, and those coveted State Fair giveaways to the Fair Archives.

Special programs will be offered in conjunction with the exhibition as well. Musicians and vocalists will entertain fair-goers with a medley of songs performed at the fair over the decades. A variety of trivia games will keep the family guessing as they make this historic journey through the past.

The very first Kentucky State Fair, in 1902, grew from a basic economic need posed by the newly formed Kentucky Livestock Breeder’s Association: to strengthen the national standing of Kentucky’s herds. This first State Fair was held at Churchill Downs, and 75,000 people attended. For a 50-cent admission, those first fair-goers witnessed races of the new steam automobile and the top attraction: a head-on collision between two locomotives.

The State Fairs of the first decade also supported the Commonwealth’s great horse traditions, provided a showcase for the year’s harvest, advanced the state’s industries, and encouraged excellence and competition in the domestic arts.

The history of the fair encompasses Kentucky’s growth and change in communications, transportation, technology, and even fashion. The Kentucky State Fair has become the training ground, the testing site, and the public showcase for the state’s progress. To borrow a promotional phrase from the early decades of fair history, the State Fair is “Kentucky’s Parade of Progress.”

The story of the Kentucky State Fair will also be available in a new publication, 100 Kentucky State Fairs: A Pictorial History, on sale at the fair beginning August 19. The 200-page book will feature a written history, illustrated timeline, and hundreds of wonderful images.

Visit the Kentucky State Fair Web site for additional information, www.kystatefair.org.

Cycling for charity
It’s time for the Touchstone Energy Motorcycle Charity Poker Run V. The event, which benefits the WHAS Crusade for Children, starts at 12:30 p.m. EDT Saturday, September 4, at South Kentucky Rural Electric Cooperative in Somerset. Riders will stop to draw cards at Danville, Lawrenceburg, Shepherdsville, and finish at Elizabethtown.

Registration starts at 10 a.m. and basic entry fees are $10 for each bike and rider and $5 for a co-rider. Cash awards include $100 for best hand, $50 for worst hand, $50 for the rider that came from the farthest away, and $50 for the oldest bike that makes the whole trip. For more information on registration, entry fees, and other details, call Frank Owen Brockman at Farmers Electric Cooperative, (800) 253-2191, or e-mail at fbrockman@farmersrecc.com.

Last year’s run attracted 170 motorcycles carrying more than 200 people, and raised more than $3,100 for the Crusade.

Maysville’s Civil War
The fifth annual Civil War Living History Weekend takes place August 14-15 in Old Washington, a historic district of Maysville and birthplace of General Albert Sidney Johnston.

Activities will include battle maneuvers right in the center of town with medical demonstrations, Civil War collections, company drills, artillery demonstrations, recruiting stations, mail call, review of troops, Civil War speakers, a Ladies Tea, Ladies Hat Contest, and an old-fashioned street dance Saturday night in Town Square. Duels and Town Folks dramas will take place in and around town. A church service will be held at Albert Sidney Johnston Museum at 11 a.m. Sunday. General Johnston, General Robert E. Lee, President Abraham Lincoln, President and Mrs. Jefferson Davis, along with other historic figures of the era, always participate in various ways.

For more information, phone (606) 759-7423, e-mail phyllis@maysvilleky.net, or visit the Web site www.washingtonky.com.