“I know that no one else is responsible for my happiness, but I am very appreciative of the people who add to it.” ~ Unknown
friends and colleagues
Remember I said Friday was a day filled with friends and colleagues galore? Here are many of those loved ones who greet me with smiles and hugs, and always make me feel more important than I really am. You have met almost all of them at some point here in the outhouse, except Sistah Lala (above with Melynda Price), Kayla Bush (above with Vanessa), and Mark Kidd (below beside Lacy Hale). So let me just tell you a bit about La’Shelle Allen aka Sistah Lala. She sang for us during lunch on Friday, and holy smokes, what a voice. Really, it was more like a church service. She has done opera all over the world, which I assume is how she landed in Lexington, since we have a killer opera program at UK, thanks to Dr. Everett McCorvey. As she sang, all I could think of was how much Shero would have loved her. She loved a good gospel song, and none more than any song Mahalia Jackson sang. If you’re not familiar with the great Mahalia Jackson, start here, and you’re welcome. I know Kayla Bush from her work on the SEEK project, but it had been so long since I’d seen her in person that, embarrassingly, I had to look at her name tag. Kayla may be the original Energizer Bunny. She’s got five kids, earned her master’s in ’23, teaches at KSU, and still finds time to work on the Elm Bend black hamlet project in Woodford County, which she presented on Friday. Uncovering the stories of communities that no longer exist is a major undertaking, but if anyone can do it, it’s Kayla, and she’s done an incredible job. Then I met Mark Kidd. I raised an eyebrow when Kathryn introduced us, but I thought to myself, “Nah, it can’t be.” As we talked, I was reminded again that there are no coincidences. Mark’s father is indeed the Mark Kidd, a photographer whose portrait work I loved so much in the 1980s that he photographed me twice. In fact, as Shero was going through her stuff last year, she found one of the photos he did when I was 21, and I talked briefly about it here. The junior Mark Kidd is an incredibly kind man with a deep interest in, among other things, the effects of mining on cemeteries in Eastern Kentucky. We mused on how his dad, from Prestonsburg, came to Lexington to work, and most of his clients, like me, were from Eastern Kentucky. Hillbillies can be a funny bunch. It was only right that the 606 delegates to the Monuments Workshop had our own photo (below). There are so many good people in my life, and I love the many ways new people come into it. Hero and Shero would love them all as much as I do.
homies
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