1. health and fitness

Quotations from Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World (2010), by HRH The Prince of Wales
Everything in Nature is interrelated: the bee to the flower; the bird to the fruit tree; man to the soil
(page 19).
The interdependent web of connections, relationships and flows of energy, the finely woven tapestry of life,
is undoubtedly the greatest marvel ever placed before us
(page 7).
The tropical rainforests are to me without doubt the most incredible terrestrial ecosystems on Earth
(page 38).
The cover image was created by Russel Hulsey, artist, in celebration of the visit of HRH The Prince of Wales
and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall for the Harmony and Health Initiative, March 20, 2015, sponsored by the
Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil. The music notation is taken from the original, hand-written score for
“Kentucky Royal Fanfare,” composed for the occasion of the Royal Visit by Teddy Abrams, Conductor of the
Louisville Orchestra.
HARMONY and HEALTH
INITIATIVE
March 20, 2015
Louisville, Kentucky
Together let’s preserve our world’s Sacred Air, Water and Soil,
so as to create the healthy communities that are essential for the survival of all of life.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.WELCOME
IV. CIRCLE OF HEALTH
A GREETINGS FROM MAYOR GREG FISCHER................6
A KENTUCKY’S HEALTH REPORT CARD...................... 48
Governor Steve Beshear
A MESSAGE FROM WENDELL BERRY
AND MARY BERRY.................................................7
A GREETINGS FROM CHRISTINA LEE BROWN...............8
A GREETINGS FROM TED SMITH.................................9
A INSTITUTE FOR HEALTHY AIR, WATER AND SOIL...... 10
A WHY LOUISVILLE’S INSTITUTE FOR HEALTHY AIR,
WATER AND SOIL WANTS TO MOVE HEALTHCARE
BEYOND THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE............................ 12
Veronica Combs
II. HARMONY TOUR
A 1.KENTUCKY CENTER FOR AFRICAN
AMERICAN HERITAGE....................................... 16
A 2.CATHEDRAL OF THE ASSUMPTION...................... 18
A PRINCIPLES OF HARMONY................................... 50
Kathleen Lyons
A PHYSICAL HEALTH............................................... 52
Ted Smith
A HUMAN HEALTH: THE TOP PRIORITY...................... 54
Aruni Bhatnagar
A HEALTH HARMONICS............................................ 56
Gordon R. Tobin, MD
A SPIRITUAL HEALTH: PUT FAITH TO WORK............... 58
Martin E. Marty
A HEALTHY SPIRIT, HEALTHY EARTH......................... 60
Father John S. Rausch, GHM
A 3.POPLAR TERRACE............................................ 21
A A NATURAL COMMONWEALTH............................... 62
Greg Abernathy
III. WELCOME TO LOUISVILLE AND KENTUCKY
A THE FUTURE ECONOMY: PURSUING SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY IN BUSINESS (ABRIDGED).............. 66
Stewart Wallis
A DEEP HISTORY AT THE FALLS OF THE OHIO............ 28
John R. Hale
A LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS STATE................... 30
Keith L. Runyon
A FOOD HEALTH..................................................... 68
Sarah Fritschner
A LOUISVILLE, A COMPASSIONATE CITY.................... 32
Thomas M. Williams
A PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH: LOUISVILLE’S
WATERFRONT AND THE BIG FOUR BRIDGE.............. 70
Jack Trawick
A LOCAL FOOD SUSTAINS LIFE
AND GROWS THE ECONOMY.................................. 34
Stephen Reily
A “I LOVE MOUNTAINS”........................................... 38
Burt Lauderdale
A CULTURAL HEALTH............................................... 72
Barbara Sexton Smith
A IT ALL TURNS ON AFFECTION (ABRIDGED)................. 74
Wendell Berry
A LOUISVILLE NEIGHBORHOODS.............................. 40
Tom Stephens
V.EXHIBITORS.................................................... 76
A THE COUNTRY ESTATES OF RIVER ROAD................. 42
Meme Sweets Runyon
VI.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.................................... 78
I
WELCOME
GREETINGS FROM MAYOR GREG FISCHER
MESSAGE FROM WENDELL BERRY AND MARY BERRY
GREETINGS FROM CHRISTINA LEE BROWN
Founder
Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil
GREETINGS FROM TED SMITH
Executive Director
Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil
INSTITUTE FOR HEALTHY AIR, WATER AND SOIL
WHY LOUISVILLE’S INSTITUTE FOR HEALTHY AIR, WATER AND SOIL
WANTS TO MOVE HEALTHCARE BEYOND THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE
Veronica Combs
Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil
Kentucky’s extraordinary geography, which includes glades, prairies, forests, wetlands, rivers, caves
and mountains, is the biological foundation for ecosystems that teem with diverse native species,
some of which are found nowhere else in the world.
GREETINGS FROM MAYOR GREG FISCHER
F
ifty-seven years ago this month, on a bustling city corner
just a few blocks from what is now Louisville’s Metro
Hall, the beloved Trappist monk Thomas Merton had an
epiphany that still speaks to Louisville today. Suddenly,
he wrote, all the ordinary shoppers and business people
appeared to him as if they were shining “like the sun.”
In that inspirational moment, Merton was gripped
by an overpowering realization that the busy individuals
before him were not strangers, but fundamentally
connected, glorious in their shared humanity.
“They were mine and I was theirs,” he wrote in his
diary. “We are already one.”
It does not surprise me that Merton had this famous epiphany in Louisville – because I, too, see the glorious
human potential of every citizen, and the fundamental connection and interdependence of us all, shining in our city
streets every single day.
We are a city guided by three values: health, lifelong learning and compassion. Compassion is our ethical
compass that ensures the benefits of health and lifelong learning are applied equally to all people.
Our compassion is most obviously on display at the annual “Give A Day Week of Service” – with more than
150,000 volunteers or acts of compassion documented last April. But our compassion is not just a yearly event – it’s
how we work with each other each and every day.
We are social entrepreneurs – innovators who are constantly looking for ways, through the application of creativity,
intelligence and compassion, to live out our greatest calling to help unleash the human potential in every citizen.
For example – we do not just pay lip service to the value of schooling. Instead, we have, as a city, committed to
a “Cradle to Career” system of education and career preparedness that recognizes that whether you are a three-yearold preparing for kindergarten or a professional seeking a new certification, you must constantly be learning in order
to succeed.
Cradle to Career education includes a range of services and programs:
• At the early-childhood level, the city library is encouraging parents to read 1,000 books to children before
kindergarten, a simple, affordable and highly effective way of helping prepare children for school.
• At the K-12 school-age level, we are working with the local public school district to increase out-of-schooltime learning opportunities. The goal is to keep more children progressing toward their full potential and
graduating ready for college and careers.
• At the post-secondary level, our 55,000 Degrees program is progressing toward the goal of increasing college
attainment rates in Louisville – now, at a record level of 41.2 percent, outpacing the national average of 39
percent.
• And at the career level, we are making clear the pathways between college and career, making the
opportunities to keep learning more accessible, and ensuring the skills we are teaching closely align to the
needs of the workforce.
In the same way, we are working every day to improve the community’s health – using a “health in all policies”
approach that understands that everything we do, from bike lane planning, to farmers markets, to transportation
options, should be considered with health in mind.
Louisville is a city of great diversity. We are the home of Merton, whose birth centennial we are marking this
year, as well as the great sportsman and humanitarian, Muhammad Ali. Ali – perhaps the only great compassion
leader who made a name for himself in boxing! – once noted that “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world
to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really
haven’t learned anything.”
In Louisville, we understand that just as friendship is more than being friendly – compassion is more than just
having empathy. It’s not just about understanding other people’s circumstances or sympathizing with their burden.
It’s about embracing our common humanity and helping to lift each other up through the journey of life, with all of
its challenges and joys.
Only then will we truly shine like the sun!
6
MESSAGE FROM WENDELL BERRY & MARY BERRY
CHARLES, PRINCE OF WALES
SIR:
Y
our presence among us honors us. We have taken courage
from your courage in opposing those who destroy for
short-term profit the substance, health and beauty of this
world, which we did not make and cannot conserve except in
obedience to its natural laws and to the divine imperative of
human stewardship.
You will not be surprised to learn that in Kentucky, as in
much of the world, the ways of conserving the land, the water
and the air are repeatedly blocked by the combination of
corporate wealth, political connivance, academic complacency
and a deficit of hope where hope is most needed.
Here as elsewhere, the damages done by surface mining
are severe, permanent and largely unrestrained; the loss of
land to “development” is, arithmetically, unsustainable; our
use of our forests is for the most part ecologically unsound;
Wendell Berry (center) with his daughter, Mary Berry
our farmlands are eroding under an increasing burden of
(left), and wife, Tanya Berry.
annual grain crops; those lands are priced beyond the reach
of aspiring small farmers; and our streams are everywhere degraded by chemical and other pollutants.
But I believe you will be unsurprised also to learn that in Kentucky, as in places similarly exploited and threatened
all over the world, there is a growing number of people and groups of people competently aware of, and determinedly
opposed to, the diminishment of the natural health and beauty of our state and our world. We are proud to welcome you
into the company of friends and allies who, like you, are unrestingly committed to the work of ecological sense and sanity.
It is a pleasure to tell you that this good work is nowhere more concentrated or better led than in and around
Louisville. You will be especially glad, we think, to know of the effort here to establish a regional food economy
involving the metropolitan center and the neighboring rural counties. This project is firmly established both in city
government and in the heart of Mayor Fischer. Useful studies have been done. There have been many meetings and
much conversation. The farmers markets of the city are thriving. Restaurants are featuring local food. More and more
local farm products are moving into town.
The Berry Center has partnered with the city of Louisville to repair the long-broken connection between
Louisville and the farmland and farm communities that surround it. The Center, established in 2011, is working
to turn the strength of a local food movement into cultural change. We hope to establish a model for urban-rural
connectedness that will bring health and well-being to the city and the countryside.
No work done to repair our ruinous industrial agriculture will be successful if we don’t address the fact that
there are too few farmers. Wes Jackson says that a certain “eyes to acres” ratio is essential for good farming. We are
working on putting an economy around a local agriculture that will allow farmers to farm well and properly. There
is precedent in this state for an agricultural economy that took farmers out of their role as gamblers, price-takers,
on the agribusiness free market. The Producer’s Program, in which the Berry family has been involved for three
generations, worked well in our state for sixty-five years to protect farmers in the marketplace. We are committed to
using that program as a model to once again bring parity to farmers.
All of this is hopeful and hope-giving, but it is still far from enough. Obviously it is not possible in only a few
years to bring about a large demand and a large supply simultaneously, virtually from nothing, and to the mutual
benefit of producers and consumers. We know nevertheless that our farmland will not be well cared for until its
caretakers can afford to care well for it. That is the economic sense and sanity that must support our endeavor for
ecological sense and sanity. To that most necessary work, which we happily share with you, in independence and in
solidarity, we pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
Most sincerely and respectfully yours,
Wendell Berry and Mary Berry
7
GREETINGS FROM CHRISTINA LEE BROWN
DEAR PRINCE CHARLES,
I
t is such an exceptional honor to us that you and The Duchess have so
kindly chosen to visit with us here in our early-American city in this
magnificent state of Kentucky, which we so love.
• A place in middle-America filled with the great cultural richness and
ethnic diversity of its immigrant past;
• A place revered by our Native American ancestors because of its
exceptional natural abundance;
• A place historically significant as the “Gateway to the West;”
• A place in time, where multi-generational families cherish their
roots, forever probing the timeless cultural and spiritual heritage that
is both the inheritance of the past and the promise of the future.
Kentucky’s rich, 200-year history pairs the struggle for survival with a
tradition of hospitality, borne out in caring for one another in a joyful spirit
of compassion and warmth. The members of our entire community are
extremely proud to share our lived history with you both on this 20th day of March in 2015.
Being graced with the perspectives and wisdom of both Your Royal Highness and Her Royal Highness makes
us all hopeful that together, we will begin to catalyze conversations that will help to build a worldwide acceptance of
harmony and health as the twin priorities upholding a new paradigm of values and beliefs for a culture appreciative
of the interdependence and interconnectedness of all living species. The gift of your presence cannot but inspire us
to embrace, as you do, the truth that “When we fail the earth, we fail humanity.”
With the publication of Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World (2010), you directed all of us who had
lost our way to reconnect with Nature by enabling us to envision its harmonious unity of which we are a part. You also
challenged us to begin a local and global conversation about the intimate relationship between “harmony and health.”
In your vital leadership on behalf of the preservation of life, Prince Charles, you are without peer in our world.
We thank you for persistently asking each of us to begin constructive conversations about recognizing and serving
health needs, and creating out of the ashes of Industrialization a new culture and belief system that understands
and values health as a universal right of each entity within the human and natural world. A healthy existence can
only be achieved through healthy air, healthy water and healthy soil because they are, as you teach us, THE TRUE
SUSTAINERS OF ALL LIFE.
Prince Charles, your inspiration is the driving force behind the Circle of Health adopted by the Institute for
Healthy Air, Water and Soil. Thanks to Harmony, many of us are now more clearly able to become agents for change
leading to a common goal – healthy humans/healthy communities. As I believe you understand better than anyone
else, our health will be safeguarded only by ever more effective collaboration among leaders of the institutions that
influence all aspects of our life. These include education, natural environment, built environment, economics,
healthcare and spirituality. We know that chasing singular causes in the complex world of interconnectedness
is a waste of effort and resources. We need instead to explore and find comprehensive solutions, each of which
prioritizes health in its own sphere. Economists, business executives and healthcare providers must be as intent
upon conserving resources and protecting our air, water and soil as ecologists are. The basic goal of harmony
is “to see the world in a grain of sand;” to see the whole in each tiny part. Only through such vision, at once
far-reaching and precise, can health and its twin, harmony, be realistically anticipated.
We are and shall remain exceptionally grateful to you both, Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall,
for being such unselfish, wise public servants and for so generously consenting to come to Louisville to share with us
your vast wisdom. We are and we pledge to remain committed followers of your principles of harmony! We present to
you this book, “The Harmony and Health Initiative,” with the hope that this, your Louisville Harmony Initiative, may
become a global project that will spark worldwide a truly “new way of looking at our world.”
With great appreciation and affection,
Christina Lee Brown
8
GREETINGS FROM TED SMITH
Executive Director, Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil
A
s the Executive Director of the Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil,
I am pleased to welcome our British visitors, His Royal Highness The
Prince of Wales and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, along with
their friends from the United Kingdom. At the same time, I welcome with
enthusiasm all of their friends and supporters on this side of the pond.
This is certainly an appropriate occasion for me to acknowledge with
great gratitude the leadership that Prince Charles has shown for almost
40 years in his persistent efforts to save our planet and its people from
the ravages of what we now call Climate Change. If Prince Charles has
a peer in persistent, eloquent and enlightened environmental leadership
it is surely Kentucky’s own Wendell Berry, who has long inspired us all.
One of the outstanding achievements of this Initiative is bringing together
these two outstanding spokespersons who have devoted their adult lives
to safeguarding the health of our planet and its people. Theirs are the
shoulders upon which the Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil stands,
and our resolve to promote the priority of human health in our city, nation
and world is our tribute to them as our inspired leaders.
9
T
he Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil was founded in April 2014 by Christina Lee Brown for the single
purpose of improving the state of health in the local community. The truth upon which the Institute was founded
is that human health and the health of air, water and soil are vitally connected. The challenge to the Institute was to
educate the entire community to understand this truth so that everyone, under its leadership, would be able to play a
role in raising the level of health in Louisville.
Dr. Ted Smith, Director of Mayor Greg Fischer’s Office of Innovation, is the first Executive Director of the
Institute. One of his first initiatives was to declare Louisville an urban laboratory, staffed by citizen scientists, among
others. As the director of the urban lab, he has placed a high priority on gathering data and on drawing upon a
wide range of outstanding resources in the analysis and dissemination of the derived information. The first project
is focusing on air quality, an issue of vital local concern due to the high prevalence of respiratory illnesses, asthma in
particular.
The Institute’s latest project is AIR Louisville – a partnership that
includes Metro Louisville, the Institute, and the technology company
Propeller Health. The goal of this two-year program is to distribute
1,100 sensors to people with asthma who live in Jefferson County. The
sensor fits on top of an asthma inhaler and tracks when, where and
how often the inhaler is used. This information feeds into an app and a
website. A person with asthma can track this information and share it
with his or her doctor. Having an electronic record of this information
can help patients manage their symptoms and identify asthma triggers.
An anonymous version of this data will be used to create a map of
asthma attacks around Jefferson County. This will help city leaders
figure out which neighborhoods to select for tree planting or traffic
calming projects.
AIR Louisville is recruiting citizens, employers, health plans and
doctors to participate. About 10 percent of Louisville’s population
has asthma, and this breathing disorder is the top reason children miss
school. Louisville is the first community in the country to test this
collaborative approach to making life with asthma easier. In this project as in all others to be undertaken by the
Institute, the driving goal is to clarify the connection between the health of air, water and soil and human health.
For more information about the Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil and about becoming a member, please
visit the website – http://instituteforhealthyairwaterandsoil.org/
10
The historic Wolf Pen Mill restored by Sallie Bingham.
11
Photo by James Archambeault, Courtesy of River Fields, Inc.
WHY LOUISVILLE’S INSTITUTE FOR HEALTHY AIR, WATER AND SOIL
WANTS TO MOVE HEALTHCARE BEYOND THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE
Veronica Combs
O
ur general approach to life is to fence off each segment in its own box. It
feels neat and tidy to keep the different elements of life divided up – not
touching, like food on an old-fashioned school lunch tray.
I don’t talk about politics and religion at work. If my job stresses me
out or interferes with cooking dinner every night, that’s just the way it goes.
If I have to cancel plans to go to a baseball game because the air is too hazy
on a given day, I’m not going to pick up the phone to call my Metro Council
representative to complain.
This approach lets us avoid uncomfortable conversations. It keeps us
from connecting the dots that link our mental health to our work performance
to our family life to our environment and back again to our physical health.
These divisions are breaking down, though, as people around the country
are trying to understand why our healthcare costs are so high. If we have the
best healthcare system in the world, why do so many people skip their doctor
visits and not take their meds and eat the wrong food?
Maybe it’s not because we are lazy and foolish by nature. Doctors and executives and researchers are going
beyond the “blame the individual” reaction to solve this problem. They are connecting the dots between what
happens inside a doctor’s office and what happens outside it. These connections are becoming impossible to avoid.
It turns out that sometimes people don’t get refills on their high cholesterol prescriptions because they have to
choose between paying the heating bill and buying the medications. Some people with diabetes don’t track their
blood sugar because they are too busy taking care of an elderly parent.
Researchers and doctors and entrepreneurs are coming up with new ways to understand how problems outside
the doctor’s office – work, the commute, bills, caregiving, buying and cooking food – are preventing people from
taking care of their physical health problems. Here are a few examples of how the idea of health is growing to
include all elements of a person’s life:
• Dr. Victor Montori eloquently explains the burden of care of patients and how “the system” makes
it hard for people to take care of themselves (think about your last interaction with a hospital or
doctor’s office): http://medcitynews.com/2013/06mayo-doc-stop-blaming-patients-healthcareindustrys-take-on-non-compliance-is-all-wrong/.
• Entrepreneurs – like the people at Ask Aunt Bertha (http://blog.ted.com/need-help-ask-aunt-berthaerine-gray-helps-people-in-need-find-social-services-in-their-area/) – are making it easier for people
to get job, food, transportation and housing help.
• Health systems in Hennepin County in Minnesota are putting mental health doctors and physical
health doctors in the same office for one-stop shopping.
• The California Healthcare Foundation recently sponsored a contest designed to make it easier for
physicians to understand a patient’s life outside the doctor’s office (http://www.health2con.com/
devchallenge/chcf-design-challenge/).
• Rebecca Onie is the founder of Health Leads, a nonprofit that helps doctors prescribe (http://
healthleadsusa.org/) food, heat and other basic resources, along with prescriptions for medication.
Instead of building a new electronic medical record system that includes a check box for “enough food in the
house?” or doing a study about public bus routes and access to doctors, the Institute has come up with the Circle
of Health. This is our test for how healthy our city is. We are evaluating how each element of our city – economic,
cultural, spiritual, environmental, psychological, physical, nutritional, intellectual – supports our overall health.
12
What if you have a job with a great paycheck, but no time to exercise? What if your child would like to be on
the track team but doesn’t have a safe place to run? What if you don’t have the transportation to get to church every
week? What if access to an arts program boosts a child’s mental health? What if cleaner air were baked into a health
insurance policy just as prescription drug coverage is? What if there were an air quality score on Zillow – right next
to the crime map – and you could search for a new place to live based on how healthy the neighborhood is?
We don’t have the answers. We are just starting to ask these kinds of questions about health and to stretch the
idea of health beyond BMI and annual check-ups and cancer treatments. We want everyone to join us in asking the
question, “What does X mean for your health?” Sometimes X is your job, and sometimes X is the ability to go to a
basketball game, and sometimes X is being able to walk around your neighborhood and talk to other people who live
there.
This is why we built the Circle of Health – to show that virtually everything in your life affects your health. It’s
also why the Institute invited HRH The Prince of Wales to visit Louisville.
Veronica Combs, a writer, editor and content strategist with wide experience in digital media, joined the staff of the
Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil in January 2015 to manage the Robert Wood Johnson research project and
to strengthen the Institute’s relationship with Louisville’s business, healthcare and nonprofit communities.
Seeking Health for all, through a culture of
Harmony and Compassion
13
Kentucky has 12.7 million acres of commercial forest land - 50 percent of the state’s land area. The main
species of trees are white oak, red oak, walnut, yellow poplar, beech, sugar maple, white ash and hickory.
Kentucky ranks third among hardwood producing states.
As a border state, Kentucky harbored sympathy for both North and South in the Civil War, although it did
remain officially with the Union. Some say that Kentucky joined the Confederacy after the War. In no
instance was Kentucky’s dual-sided sympathy more apparent than in the memorial services for the fallen of
both sides that were presided over by Bishop Spalding of the Cathedral of the Assumption.
II
HARMONY TOUR
1. KENTUCKY CENTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE
Keith L. Runyon
2. CATHEDRAL OF THE ASSUMPTION
Kathleen Lyons
3. POPLAR TERRACE
Meme Sweets Runyon
The Kentucky Normal and Theological Institute, forerunner of today’s Simmons College of Kentucky, opened in
1879 as the first African American controlled institution of higher education in Kentucky.
HARMONY TOUR
1. KENTUCKY CENTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE
Keith L. Runyon
W
hen colonial settlers arrived at the Falls of the Ohio in 1778 and built a fort that would, in time, become the
city of Louisville, they were a hardy group. Included in their number was a black slave, Cato Watts, who had a
particular talent for playing the fiddle, which he did with great gusto. “The first Christmas party in Kentucky would
have ended in dismal failure but for the fiddling of Cato Watts, a Negro servant who had come to Louisville with
one of the families in the George Rogers Clark expedition,” wrote G. W. Jackson in his 1940 article “The Negro in
Kentucky,” published in the Negro Educational Association Journal. For Cato Watts, the ending was not at all merry.
Accused of killing a white man, he became the first person executed by hanging in the new settlement.
This story is emblematic of the history of whites and blacks in Louisville, which quickly became one of America’s
most bustling cities in the 19th century, not in small part because of its geographical location, precisely between
North and South in the early republic. Though other states had many more slaves, Kentucky depended upon their
labor to plant and harvest tobacco and other crops. Louisville became a city where slaves were bought, sold and
exported “down river” to markets in St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans. Key campaigns of the Civil War were
developed in Louisville (including General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea, planned with General Ulysses S.
Grant at the city’s Galt House Hotel). Because Louisville remained in the Union, however, its merchants grew rich
and its fortunes expanded as a staging and transportation hub.
With this complicated past, the City of Louisville has had good reason to delve into its racial history and to
focus on the many contributions of African Americans to its history. In the early 1990s, when a national focus on
black history intensified, a group of African American educators, artists, journalists and historians collaborated to
begin to give the long and rich history of black Louisvillians a showcase. Originally known as the Louisville and
Jefferson County African American Heritage Committee, in 1994 it was reformulated as the Kentucky Center for
African American Heritage. With government and private support, the foundation acquired the historic brick trolley
barn at 18th Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard, and in the first decade of the 21st century, despite financial and
administrative setbacks, pursued renovation and building a collection.
Construction began in earnest in 2001, and in the years since, the Heritage Center has been a key component
in efforts to revive the historic Russell neighborhood, one of the city’s most attractive, with large quantities of brick
housing stock. Indeed, this is a part of Louisville’s distinctive architectural heritage: In the 1920s, it had the largest
number of brick houses per capita in the United States. This sturdy kind of construction enabled the neighborhoods
to survive over the decades, even in times of disrepair.
The Heritage Center’s financial problems slowed the achievement of its full potential, but as the Russell
neighborhood (and adjacent Portland neighborhood) become sites for reinvestment, the museum/meeting space has
become increasingly popular for important civic events. In 2012, it was the site of the Center for Interfaith Relations’
Festival of Faiths, “Sacred Fire: Light of Compassion.” Programs and discussions of compassion at that weeklong
festival led to Louisville’s designation in February 2013 as the nation’s largest “compassionate city.”
A final note about the history of the Heritage Center building: In the decade after the Civil War, some eighty
years before Rosa Parks integrated the public buses of Montgomery, a Russell neighborhood resident was expelled
from a Louisville trolley car after refusing to move from the “whites only” section. Mary Cunningham Smith filed
a lawsuit and won, the result being the desegregation of public transportation in Louisville in the 19th century.
How appropriate it is that the barn where trolleys were housed and serviced in those times should be the site for
celebrating the heritage of African Americans in Louisville.
Keith L. Runyon was an editor and writer for The Courier-Journal in Louisville for 43 years before his retirement in
2012. He is now involved in civic leadership and public relations and writes regularly for Louisville Public Media and
for The Huffington Post.
16
Source: Two Centuries of Black Louisville (2011) by Mervin Aubespin,
Kenneth Clay and J. Blaine Hudson. Used by permission of the authors.
The Kentucky Center for African American Heritage.
Western Branch of Louisville Free Public Library in 1927.
The Russell neighborhood, home of the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage,
was listed in 1980 almost in its entirety on the National Register of Historic Places because of the
architectural significance of its mansions, churches and public buildings.
17
HARMONY TOUR
2. CATHEDRAL OF THE ASSUMPTION
Kathleen Lyons
T
he first Roman Catholics in what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky arrived in 1775, having emigrated from
Maryland. They were, by and large, of English descent, people whose ancestors had arrived in 1634 aboard
the Ark and the Dove, in search of relief from the harsh anti-Catholic penal laws of their native country. At the
time, Kentucky was wilderness country in the crown colony of Virginia. Nonetheless, the tide of emigration from
Maryland continued, and the first settlement by Catholics was made in 1785 at Pottinger’s Creek, currently Holy
Cross.
While Catholicism in Kentucky took root in the area near Bardstown, its presence in Louisville by 1830 was
such that major construction of a central church was undertaken. St. Louis Church, on the site of the present
Cathedral of the Assumption, was completed in 1830, and from the start, it assumed the leadership and social service
responsibilities of a cathedral in the medieval tradition. Three of its early pastors (Ignatius Reynolds, John McGill
and Martin John Spalding) became bishops elsewhere; Catherine Spalding of the Kentucky-based order of religious
women, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, established an orphanage and was instrumental in founding an infirmary
and an academy for girls on the church grounds.
That the frontier settlement at Holy Cross became a thriving community is apparent in the establishment of
the Diocese of Bardstown in 1808 by Pope Pius VII, with the French émigré Benedict Joseph Flaget appointed
as Bishop. It is interesting to note that the other dioceses established in 1808 were in Boston, New York and
Philadelphia.
As Bishop of Bardstown, Flaget was, in fact, Bishop of the West, as his diocese included most of the new states
of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, along with the Louisiana Purchase of
1803. He began his new duties in Bardstown in 1819 when St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral was consecrated. Within a
generation, Bishop Flaget was to take up residence in Louisville when Pope Gregory XVI in 1841 moved the diocese
from Bardstown to Louisville, with St. Louis Church serving as the cathedral. At this time, Louisville was a major
American city and would number among the top 12 cities in the nation by 1850. Commenting on his visit to the city
in 1842, Charles Dickens noted that he and his wife had been “as handsomely lodged” at the original Galt House as
they would have been “in Paris.”
When the diocese was moved from Bardstown to Louisville, Bishop Flaget was 78 years old and had long
endured the hardships of his frontier mission. Nonetheless, in what proved to be something of a parting gesture
for this remarkable pastor, he was not long at St. Louis Church when he is said to have looked to the construction
of a new cathedral as the “most prominent” need of the diocese. After entertaining some alternatives, the decision
was made to demolish St. Louis Church, only 18 years old, and to build a larger, more impressive structure in
keeping with its importance as the mother church of the oldest diocese in the West. The cornerstone for the present
Cathedral of the Assumption was laid in 1849 and construction was completed in 1852. A new era can be said to
have begun with its dedication; the old era had come to an end on February 11, 1850, with the death of the venerable
Bishop Flaget in his 87th year. His remains were solemnly placed in the crypt beneath the main altar of the new
Cathedral of the Assumption in 1852.
In the new era ushered in with the Cathedral of the Assumption, the “Church of the West” was recognized as a
bold and impressive leader. The local Catholic paper called the cathedral structure “an ornament to our city, and,
as a work of art, inferior to none in the United States.” Bishop Martin John Spalding, Bishop Flaget’s successor,
speculated that the Cathedral’s steeple, 287 feet above the pavement, might be the highest spire in North America
and certainly the most graceful.
While the urbanization of the frontier church in Kentucky tells much about the zeal, courage and flexibility
of its leaders and members, it does not begin to exhaust the history of the Cathedral. The fuller account lies in the
Cathedral’s becoming over the years, in the words of T. S. Eliot, a place “where prayer has been valid.” Such is a
place of revelation, drawing upon the holiness and courage expressed through the faith, hope and charity of all who
have gone before and now deliver their timeless message of peace and unity from their graves.
As a place “where prayer has been valid,” the Cathedral of the Assumption has been the seat of eight bishops
and/or archbishops since Flaget. It survived the “Bloody Monday Riot” of 1855 and preserved its neutrality during
18
the Civil War, celebrating in 1862 a Mass commemorating the fallen from North and South. Later on in the century,
the Cathedral, in addition to providing for the liturgical needs of its parishioners, sponsored civic and cultural events
open to the entire community while continuing its services to the poor. It was a haven of rescue for victims of the
devastating flood of 1937, which forced 175,000 Louisville residents from their homes, and continues to this day to
serve lunch to homeless persons 365 days a year.
As a downtown parish, however, the Cathedral of the Assumption suffered the effects of the flight to the suburbs
after World War II. In 1983, when Father Ron Knott became pastor of the Cathedral parish, its membership had
declined to approximately 100, and the structure was in desperate need of repair.
Early in his tenure as the eighth Ordinary of the Archdiocese of Louisville, Thomas Cajetan Kelly, O.P., in 1985
assembled an interfaith group of citizens led by Christina Lee Brown to form the Cathedral Heritage Foundation to
raise the funds for and oversee the restoration and revitalization of the Cathedral of the Assumption. The structural
renovation was completed in 1993, restoring the Cathedral to its glory days as “an ornament” to Louisville; parish
enrollment climbed to 1,400. The effort at revitalization led to the broader mission of expanding the role of religion
in the entire community. This effort culminated in the foundation of the Festival of Faiths in 1996, which had for
its purpose the celebration of religious diversity in a community whose social infrastructure had become far more
diverse than it had been, owing to the large emigrations from the East during the 1980s and beyond. In May of 2015,
the Festival of Faiths will observe its 20th anniversary, drawing upon the religious template made up of Hindus,
Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Baha’is and indigenous persons as well as unaffiliated ones who wish to
join in the celebration.
At every phase of its remarkable history, the Cathedral of the Assumption has served as a significant religious
presence in the heart of Louisville. While faithful to the tradition of Roman Catholicism, the Cathedral has,
from the outset, shared in the hospitality and the generosity of diverse houses of worship and their members. Its
history attests that it could adapt to the rigors of the frontier as well as to the sophistication of the city. All of this
contributes to its most estimable achievement, becoming a place “where prayer has been valid.”
Kathleen Lyons is Professor Emerita at Bellarmine University where she taught English for 34 years. She is currently
active in interfaith and ecological roles and continues teaching as a volunteer in a program for retirees at Bellarmine
University.
Sanctuary of the Cathedral of the Assumption.
19
Organ and choir loft of the Cathedral of the Assumption.
Vaulted ceiling of the Cathedral of the Assumption.
20
HARMONY TOUR
3. POPLAR TERRACE (HISTORICALLY NAMED “LADLESS HILL”)
Meme Sweets Runyon
P
oplar Terrace was once part of the 300-acre farm owned by William and Lucy Croghan, sister of George Rogers Clark,
the great American explorer and partner in the Lewis and Clark expedition which began in Louisville. Their home,
Locust Grove, is one of Louisville’s eight National Historic Landmarks. In 1847, this property with several hundred acres
was purchased by Jesse Chrysler, who then built the historic Chrysler House at the entrance of Longview Lane.
Poplar Terrace was developed by Albert Brandeis, President of A. Brandeis and Son and organizer and director
of the Lincoln Savings Bank and Trust Company. Mr. Brandeis was the uncle of Louis Brandeis, Justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939. Louis Brandeis was a frequent visitor to the estate named Ladless Hill. It was so
named by its owner, who was obviously very distressed to be the father of only lassies, no lads.
The land for the estate was purchased in pieces beginning in 1898 and containing over 60 acres at one point.
The first Brandeis house on the site burned. The main house was subsequently designed by McDonald and Dodd,
prominent Louisville architects. The home, built from 1911 to 1912, is a two-and-a-half story residence with
Craftsman styling, stucco walls and a tile roof. An arched porte-cochere leads to the service court.
Other contributing elements to this National Register property include the historic garage and the interurban
shelter. A long curving drive leads from valley up to house which is sited atop the river bluff with fields below. Stone
steps wind up to the house from a stone gateway to what had earlier been an interurban stop.
Additionally, formal gardens are a contributing historic resource. They were added in the 1950s, then again in the
1980s to the 1990s. The sunken garden, with central pool and surrounding terraces on the north side of the house, was
designed by Henry Fletcher Kenney in the 1950s. The gardens have been substantially reworked and expanded by the
present owners. It is thought that some of the terracing probably dates back to the Brandeis ownership.
The placement of the home is typical of those in The Country Estates of River Road, as many of these historic homes sit
on the bluff, providing a glorious view of the Ohio River, with its bottom lands serving as the foreground. The bucolic view
is a contrast to but also much in harmony with the more complex, formally-designed landscapes of the estates above.
Meme Sweets Runyon is executive director of River Fields, a land trust and the largest conservancy organization on the
Ohio River and one of the oldest such organizations in America.
Poplar Terrace.
21
The aquatic systems of the state are home to rainbow darters, ghost crayfish, salamander mussels
and an impressive array of other species that constitute some of the greatest levels
of freshwater diversity on the planet.
Kentucky’s Green River, ranked fourth highest in aquatic biodiversity in the United States, is home to 74
species of freshwater mussels, many of which are listed as endangered. The Green River also supports at least
nine species found nowhere else in the world. Mussels play a critically important role in our ecosystems, being
one of nature’s most efficient water filtration systems. A single mussel will filter an average of eight gallons
of water a day – and will help to eliminate E. coli and many other pollutants from the water.
The neighborhood of Old Louisville is the largest preservation district in the United States featuring
Victorian homes and businesses; it is the third largest historic preservation district in the nation.
III
WELCOME TO
LOUISVILLE AND KENTUCKY
WELCOME TO LOUISVILLE
DEEP HISTORY AT THE FALLS OF THE OHIO
John R. Hale
LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS STATE
Keith L. Runyon
LOUISVILLE, A COMPASSIONATE CITY
Thomas M. Williams
LOCAL FOOD SUSTAINS LIFE AND GROWS THE ECONOMY
Stephen Reily
“I LOVE MOUNTAINS”
Burt Lauderdale
LOUISVILLE NEIGHBORHOODS
Tom Stephens
THE COUNTRY ESTATES OF RIVER ROAD
Meme Sweets Runyon
Jug Bands, in which players used whiskey jugs to make their unique form of music,
originated in Louisville around 1900. In 1903, Kentucky Derby fans first heard the legendary
Louisville Jug Band. The tunes composed and recorded by its leader, Earl McDonald,
continue to have an impact on jug bands around the world. The National Jug Band Jubilee
is staged each fall at the Brown-Forman Amphitheater of Louisville’s Waterfront Park.
WELCOME TO LOUISVILLE
The Belle of Louisville, oldest excursion steamship in America.
Benedictine, invented by Louisville chef Jennie Benedict.
24
WELCOME TO LOUISVILLE
Carol Sutton, first woman managing editor of a major American daily newspaper, The Courier-Journal.
The Hot Brown, Louisville’s unique dish invented at The Brown Hotel.
25
Source: Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio (1987) by George Yater.
WELCOME TO LOUISVILLE
Chewing gum was given to the world in 1873 by Louisville druggist John Colgan.
Louis Brandeis, a Louisville native and the first Jewish Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court.
26
WELCOME TO LOUISVILLE
Source: Churchill Downs
Color lithograph of Louisville, published in 1855 by P. J. Palmatary of Cincinnati.
Queen Elizabeth II attends the 133rd Kentucky Derby.
27
DEEP HISTORY AT THE FALLS OF THE OHIO
John R. Hale
Director of Liberal Studies and Adjunct Professor of Archaeology, University of Louisville
L
ike London, the city of Louisville stands at a uniquely strategic site on a great river. Ancient Romans founded
London at a natural crossroads – the furthest point downstream where the river could be spanned by a bridge, and
the furthest point upstream accessible to sea-going ships. The 18th-century American founders of Louisville took
advantage of a similar natural crossroads. Here, a rocky shelf at the Falls of the Ohio formed a natural bridge for
north-to-south foot traffic across the wide river. At the same time, the Falls created the only barrier to navigation on
the river’s entire one-thousand-mile length. And as with London and its River Thames, Louisville’s destiny has been
shaped by the Ohio River right down to the present day.
The Ohio is one of the youngest of the world’s great rivers, its serpentine course having been carved out by
melting water from the glaciers of the last Ice Age. As these glacial torrents cut down through soil and stone, they
laid down the clays that today support Louisville’s pottery and brick industries, and the sands that provided raw
material for America’s first plate-glass factory, across the river in New Albany, Indiana.
The fast-flowing stream also exposed to the light of day a Devonian coral reef, almost half a billion years old,
a relic of the time when this spot on the earth’s crust was covered by a warm inland sea. Captured in the sheets of
limestone were the fossilized bodies of horn corals, trilobites, and sponges. Thanks to the investigations of geologists
from the University of Louisville, more species of prehistoric life forms have been identified at the Falls of the Ohio
than at any other spot on earth. It was in fact the hard, resistant ridge of this coral reef that brought the Falls into
existence.
These limestones also contained nodules of flint or chert, a shiny black, blue and gray stone that also crops
up in the white cliffs of Dover. The flint beds and nodules exposed along the Ohio River near Louisville were of
exceptionally high quality. They provided a perfect source of sharp blades and spear-points for the big-game hunting
tribes of humans who migrated into eastern America towards the end of the last Ice Age. About ten thousand years
ago at the Falls of the Ohio, a group of prehistoric hunters used their spears to kill a mastodon – an extinct species
of woolly elephant. The animal’s skeleton came to light in the early 19th century, with the hunters’ flint points still
lodged in its bones.
After most of the Pleistocene “megafauna” had been driven to extinction, the Falls of the Ohio remained prime
hunting grounds for a major protein source of the prehistoric American diet: white-tailed deer, attracted to the river
by the drinking water and rich vegetation along its margins. Immense herds of bison also passed through the area
annually, fording the Ohio River at the Falls and in time creating a “Buffalo Trace” that ran from the grassy prairies
on the north side of the river to the distant salt licks on the south side. Paved with asphalt, this ancient trail now
serves as a highway through Indiana and Kentucky.
Animals also provided the materials needed by spiritual specialists among the prehistoric tribes. Downstream
from the Falls of the Ohio archaeologists discovered the burial of a shaman or “medicine man” who practiced the
healing arts some five thousand years ago. With him was buried the sacred rattle with which he had called the
supernatural powers. It had been lovingly crafted from the leg-bone of a bear, the shell of a tortoise, and a handful
of smooth white river pebbles inside the shell.
The abundant freshwater clams in the Ohio River gave rise to a “Shell Mound Archaic Culture” at about that same
time. During times when meat was scarce, clams could be harvested from the river shallows by old and young, men and
women alike. The shiny white shells from innumerable prehistoric clambakes eventually piled up into an artificial hill
at the Falls of the Ohio known as the “Old Clarksville Shell Mound.” Within such mounds were preserved the delicate
treasures of a lost age: bone fish-hooks; shell gorgets decorated with outlines of supernatural beasts; and artifacts made
of beaten copper that had been traded hand to hand all the way south from Lake Superior.
Once the local tribes had secured the seeds of maize, originally a Mexican crop, this new staff of life allowed
populations to skyrocket. A great prehistoric city with huge earth mounds grew up in what is today downtown
Louisville, taking full advantage of all the natural features and resources that abounded at the Falls of the Ohio. An
important north-south highway called the “Warriors’ Trail” ran from the Great Lakes region down to the Gulf of
Mexico, crossing the Ohio River at the Falls. The evidence of ancient artifacts discovered at Louisville shows that
the Falls had become a gathering point – a place of ceremony and hospitality – for people whose homes lay scattered
over half a continent.
28
Source: City of Louisville.
With the arrival of Europeans, what had long been a natural and prehistoric human crossroads rapidly became
a crucial center for traffic, both on land and on the water. Steamboats and railways followed the routes blazed by
prehistoric canoes and hunting parties. Today, the questing spirit of those earlier peoples has impressed itself on a
new generation, with links to every corner of the globe, who have brought a new spirit of enterprise to this ancient
meeting place of rock and river.
The Falls of the Ohio, a popular place to observe Louisville’s “deep history.”
Cumberland Falls, in southeastern Kentucky, is the only waterfall in the world
to display regularly a Moonbow.
Kentucky has more miles of running water than any other state except Alaska. The numerous
rivers and water impoundments provide 1,100 commercially navigable miles (1,770 kilometers)
and 92,000 stream miles in total .
29
LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS STATE
Keith L. Runyon
“I
, too, am a Kentuckian.” So spoke Abraham Lincoln, the
nation’s 16th president, as he made his way east through Illinois,
Indiana and Ohio to take office in 1861. Speaking in Cincinnati,
little more than a mile north of the Kentucky shore on the Ohio
River, he reminded the audience, which doubtless included some
people from his native state, that he bore no ill toward people of
the Bluegrass. As he would repeatedly do during the following
four years of war, he implored Kentucky to remain in the Union,
for without that key border state, he believed that the North could
not prevail.
Those Kentucky roots were real. Abraham Lincoln’s
grandfather, also named Abraham, settled on a four-hundred-acre
farmstead in eastern Jefferson County (of which Louisville was
the county seat) in 1782. This Lincoln, a Virginian, had been a
captain in the Revolution and was a man of some substance. As
such, the Lincolns were among the first families of the Bluegrass
State. Tragedy struck four years later when Abraham was slain by
an Indian warrior as his three sons looked on.
One of those boys, Thomas Lincoln, would become father of
the future president. His wife, Nancy Hanks, gave birth to young
Abraham on February 12, 1809, in a rude log cabin just above
Sinking Spring near what today is the town of Hodgenville. In
the single room, Thomas and Nancy lived with their elder child, a
Louisville sculptor Ed Hamilton and his Abraham
daughter named Sarah, who was two. As was true for many other
Lincoln statue.
Kentucky settlers, Thomas Lincoln was in constant disputes with
government authorities over the title to his property, and many were taken advantage of by swindlers. Two years
after Abraham’s birth, the little family moved 11 miles away to a 230-acre farm at Knob Creek, where young Abe and
Sarah went to work in the fields as soon as they could toddle.
The Lincoln family was always uncomfortable in Kentucky, not just because of the uncertain title to their
lands, but also because of the widespread use of slave labor for farming and other pursuits. Nancy Hanks Lincoln,
Abraham’s mother, was deeply religious and opposed slavery on that basis. Thomas, his father, would become
religious over time, and his opposition would be rooted in his strong Baptist upbringing. When young Abe was
seven, the family would abandon Kentucky and move to southern Indiana, almost certainly crossing through the
port at Louisville, to settle on a farm near the present town of Dale, about 95 miles west. Life would take Lincoln
farther West and North, eventually to the town of New Salem, Illinois, where he was an unsuccessful shopkeeper,
the postman, and in time a politician. There also he made a lifelong friend, Joshua Fry Speed, five years younger
than Abraham, who became his business partner and lifelong confidant. Speed was born on the Louisville plantation
Farmington, which his father, Judge Joshua Speed, had established.
After his business ventures failed, Lincoln decided to read the law and was admitted to the bar in 1837, at
which time he moved to Springfield, the capital of Illinois. There fate would again bring Kentucky into his life, this
time in the person of a young woman from Lexington, Miss Mary Todd, whose sister, Elizabeth, was married to
Ninian Edwards, the son of a former governor of Illinois. They became engaged, but Lincoln broke it off and left
for Louisville, where he stayed for a month at the Speed plantation. At Farmington, Lincoln witnessed first-hand
an estate built upon slavery. It was on an earlier trip through Kentucky’s largest city that Lincoln had witnessed the
notorious slave pens along Main Street near the river where black men, women and children were kept in conditions
unfit for human life. He also observed a slave auction at the Louisville wharf, an occasion that hardened his
opposition to what Southerners called “the peculiar institution.”
Abraham and Mary Todd reconciled and were married in November 1842; now the future president’s wife’s
family were all Kentuckians, and most of them lived in Lexington.
30
In the succeeding 18 years, as he emerged as an important political figure in Illinois and as a successful
lawyer representing the railroads and other business interests, Lincoln often thought of returning to
his native state, especially in the days when he was campaigning for the White House and immediately
afterward, when he traveled by train East to the Nation’s Capital. As it happened, Lincoln never would
return to the state where he was born, but he continued to believe that Kentucky was vital
to the Union’s survival. “To lose Kentucky,” he once wrote, “is nearly the same as to lose the
whole game.”
The Bluegrass State, schizophrenic at times about its allegiance to Lincoln’s Union or
to the Old Confederacy, has never failed to claim and admire its native son, who has, over
the years, become generally accepted as the greatest of all American presidents.
Particularly in the area from Louisville south to Hodgenville, the Lincoln name
adorns many public buildings, including a number of schools. The Lincoln
Institute, based in Simpsonville, was a private boarding school created for black
students after Kentucky passed a law segregating all institutions of public learning
in 1904. Among those who were trained at the Lincoln Institute was Whitney
Young Jr., longtime leader of the national Urban League and a key figure in the
Civil Rights Movement.
In 2009, the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, the city of Louisville
dedicated its own Lincoln Memorial to the 16th president. The centerpiece of this
memorial, built in the Waterfront Park not far from where Lincoln witnessed the slave pens and auction, is a seated
statue of the president, sculpted by the noted Louisville artist Ed Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton, who also has sculpted the
“Spirit of Freedom,” a Washington, D.C., memorial honoring African American troops of the Civil War, is among the
most noted living black artists today.
In the Great Flood of 1937, George Bernard Gray’s statue of Lincoln appeared to stand on the water. The statue remains outside the
main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library.
Kentucky is the state where both Abraham Lincoln, President of the Union, and Jefferson Davis, President of the
Confederacy, were born. They were born less than one hundred miles and one year apart.
31
LOUISVILLE, A COMPASSIONATE CITY
Thomas M. Williams
Attorney, Stoll • Keenon • Ogden
H
elen Keller once said that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of efforts to overcome it. Suffering
and compassion can be viewed as twins, and out of this relationship, HH The Dalai Lama tells us, happiness is
born. Adopting a similar spirit, Mayor Fischer signed a resolution naming Louisville a Compassionate City, in accord
with the Charter for Compassion, which was conceived by acclaimed scholar of religion Karen Armstrong in 2008,
and was unveiled to the world on November 12, 2009. Mayor Fischer signed the resolution almost exactly two years
later, on Armistice Day, November 11, 2011, at the site of sculptor Ed Hamilton’s Lincoln Memorial in Waterfront
Park.
Mayor Fischer has explained the significance of Louisville as a compassionate city in the single word, “one.”
“The way I view Louisville,” he says, is “we are one city, one community, one family. We are all one!” Unity is the
domain of compassion. The commitment to the Charter for Compassion began with an affirmation of our unity,
composed of many aspects of diversity, including the diverse experiences of suffering and caring. This commitment
has led to an intentional participation in an ever-expanding plan of action.
The anchor project for Compassionate Louisville is the Give a Day Week of Service, scheduled each year during
the month of April. In this well publicized and widely patronized event, city residents of all ages – grade-school
children, young professionals and retirees – take pleasure in offering their services free of charge to those who need
them. From pulling weeds, to meal preparation, to assistance with computer programs, citizens have the opportunity
to match their need to available services. In 2014, over 140,000 acts of compassion were completed, establishing
lasting relationships among the served and the servers, and creating civic cohesion. In 2012, Louisville had been
named the “most livable large city” in the nation by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, largely because of this project.
Not surprisingly, other cities and communities are emulating the Give a Day program, with willing assistance from
Compassionate Louisville.
The success of Give a Day has inspired other compassionate projects such as Compassionate Constellations,
which engage groups concerned with a particular audience and sphere of interest or need. Included among
the constellations are Compassion and Healthcare; Compassion and Seniors; and Compassion and Earth. The
Constellations program expands the opportunity for volunteerism on an ongoing basis, within a realm of activity of
choice. Currently six active Compassionate Constellations exist in Louisville.
Another notable organization within Louisville is the Compassionate Partners, composed of businesses,
churches, schools, nonprofits and other organizations that have adopted organizational compassion resolutions.
Partners are recognized as creative, dynamic entities that share innovative ways to experience compassion. Over 70
organizations have adopted compassion resolutions.
As citizen energy is increasingly directed to discovering ways to exercise compassion, Louisville does indeed
grow in the practices of a “livable city.” To fuel the fire of compassion so that its flames will continue to illuminate
the city, the Coordinating Circle of Compassionate Louisville has initiated the practice of naming as Compassion
Laureates individuals who are recognized as models of compassion through their lives of giving and sharing.
Compassion Laureates have been recognized in the areas of photography, earth and sustainable living, business,
meditation, interfaith action, and work for peace, for justice, and for homeless persons.
Other efforts to promulgate and sustain compassion as a foundational value in the city include monthly townhall meetings held in various locations across the city and open to all. Hosting organizations share their vision and
describe their programs of action aimed at creating a more compassionate city. Another program called Heart of
Gold Louisville features nonprofit organizations in a 30-minute televised segment, where they are invited to describe
their particular compassionate actions.
32
Source: City of Louisville.
Compassionate Louisville has become an evolving entity for the shared life through volunteerism within
metropolitan Louisville. Its core can be found in the Give a Day program, which determines to match need with
service. A compassionate city is one that has the courage and the confidence to meet the needs of its citizens by
drawing upon the human resources at its disposal. Compassion’s first demand is recognition of the other, or others.
Once this is achieved, Compassion’s next demand is phrased as a question: “What does Compassion want of us?”
The answer will be different for each individual. When Mayor Fischer signed the resolution naming Louisville a
Compassionate City, he acknowledged that what we call “the city” is a society of individuals, but a unity nonetheless.
Constantly reinventing this unity through caring activity is the chosen way of life for a compassionate city. This is the
city that Compassionate Louisville strives to be.
To learn more about Compassionate Louisville please visit its website, www.compassionatelouisville.org.
On November 11, 2011, Mayor Greg Fischer (at lecturn) signed a resolution designating Louisville a compassionate city.
Since 1949, the Kentucky Historical Highway Marker program
has erected more than 1,800 markers that highlight local and regional history
as well as items of interest, such as a century-old sassafras tree.
33
LOCAL FOOD SUSTAINS LIFE AND GROWS THE ECONOMY
Stephen Reily
S
eed Capital Kentucky was created to support the sustainability of healthy farming in our region and to boost local
food sales in our city, Louisville. We spend a lot of money on food, and our region’s economy grows healthier, as
we do individually, when more of our dollars are spent on food grown nearby. A healthy farm economy and a healthy
diet for our citizens are the envisioned goals of Seed Capital Kentucky.
Fifteen years ago, small-scale Kentucky family farmers lost their economy when it was no longer sustained by the
tobacco industry. This brought to an end the system launched in the 1920s and 1930s by leaders like lawyer John
Berry and Ambassador Robert Worth Bingham. Ever since then, the primary problem faced by Kentucky’s small
farmers has been to build a new farm economy. The 2000 General Assembly created an Agriculture Development
Board that has invested in creative solutions to the problem, including Louisville’s nationally recognized Farm-toTable program, which connects farmers to the urban institutions that want to buy their chemical-free food.
When Greg Fischer took office as Mayor of Louisville in 2011, he inspired us to expand investment in local
food, emphasizing the physical, economic, environmental and social benefits that would result. This vision is
consistent with Louisville’s history as a trading station on the Ohio River and as host to the Southern Exposition
(1883-1887), whose focus was on agriculture and manufacturing.
The newly established Seed Capital Kentucky was ready to respond to Mayor Fischer’s appeal with a variety
of strategies. We have funded technical assistance grants for over $100,000 to help farmers build sustainable
businesses. Moreover, we have endeavored to make information on this subject accessible to as many farmers as
possible through conferences and the Internet.
At each year’s Kentucky State Fair, we bring the Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner together with the Mayor
of Louisville to grant three “Local Food Hero” awards to regional farmers. Farmers are heroes, and it is important
that city dwellers tell them so. We provide an opportunity for city dwellers to become more familiar with food and
farm issues at an annual winter gathering, which includes a meal as well as discussion of the issues. With a capacity
for 400 attendees, this is a sold-out event, demonstrating the interest level in these issues.
Perhaps our most startling initiative was one undertaken in response to Mayor Fischer’s request for an estimate
of the maximum size that could be anticipated for the local food economy. We commissioned the United States’
first-ever quantitative evaluation of demand for local food among individuals and commercial buyers. We found
that the current demand for local food, among all neighborhoods and income levels, exceeds the current supply by
more than $300 million. Filling the unmet institutional demand alone would have a positive $800 million economic
impact on our region. Beyond the positive economic impact, expanding the potential of the local food economy
would ensure the survival of our family farms, restore Kentucky’s depleted soils, retain and create jobs, and elevate
the quality of life in our city and state.
In light of such prospects, we have been assiduous in searching for means to match the supply of local food to the
demand. We have used Kiva Zip to endorse loans to farmers and processors, confirming that capital is available to help
existing entrepreneurs who want to build healthier businesses in agriculture and food. We learned that farmers constitute
the greatest number of Kiva Zip borrowers, and they have the highest rates of repayment among all such borrowers.
Seed Capital Kentucky is now developing a 24-acre site that locates businesses along every stage of the food
chain – including farming, education, distribution, processing, retail and recycling – and is calling it the West
Louisville FoodPort. The businesses that locate at the FoodPort are expected to become more productive because
of their ready access to related enterprises. FoodPort’s neighborhood, with its 30 percent unemployment rate and
stagnant economy, also stands to gain as jobs become available and the economy perks up.
Our organization is fortunate to be able to benefit from an established infrastructure that promotes growth
and has a history of expanding to accommodate growth. Louisville enlarged its airport to serve as a UPS hub,
calling it Worldport. It also built a 2,000-acre business park for the establishments that work with UPS, calling it
Riverport. It is now time for FoodPort to join in this promising constellation. In so doing, Seed Capital Kentucky
is determined to use the best strengths of government, business and philanthropy to make lasting solutions that will
continue to connect us and feed us healthy food for many years to come.
Stephen Reily is an attorney, businessman, and social entrepreneur whose philanthropic energy has focused in recent
years on building the local food economy in Louisville and a more sustainable future for Kentucky’s farmers. In 2011
he founded Seed Capital Kentucky and continues to serve as its Director.
34
Source: Seed Capital Kentucky
Source: Seed Capital Kentucky
The planned West Louisville FoodPort.
An artist’s vision of the FoodPort’s Market Plaza and Visitor Center.
35
By 1840 Kentucky had become the nation’s leader in horse breeding and retains this position today. The Inner
Bluegrass region of Kentucky has the greatest concentration of horse farms in the world.
Kentucky Horse Farm
Photograph by Alexey Stiop, via Shutterstock
“I LOVE MOUNTAINS”
Burt Lauderdale
Executive Director, Kentuckians For The Commonwealth
K
entuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC) is a community of people inspired by a vision that foresees building
New Power and a better future. Together, we organize for a fair economy; a healthy environment; new, safe
energy; and an honest democracy.
We use community organizing and grassroots leadership development to win issues that affect the common
welfare. People become members of KFTC because they want to create tangible, positive change in their
communities and in Kentucky.
Founded in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky almost thirty-four years ago, today we are genuinely statewide.
We have more than 9,100 members who live in over 100 of Kentucky’s 120 counties. We have thirteen county and
multi-county chapters, local organizations formed by KFTC members to address their priority local issues and
support our statewide campaigns. Our chapters are based in both rural and urban communities, distributed across
the state – from Louisville to Whitesburg, Covington to Bowling Green, Inez to Danville.
The lifeblood of KFTC is its members. Their energy and enthusiasm, their passion and ambition course through
the organization, fueling our campaigns. KFTC members learn, practice and do. Our volunteer leaders develop into
passionate public speakers and persistent lobbyists. Some are trained as community water testers; others become
skillful activist artists. Some sit down for hours of strategy meetings; some sit down in front of bulldozers. They all
are members because of their fierce love of Kentucky.
It is no exaggeration to say that we have entered a pivotal moment in human history. Our global extractionbased economy has raced to the edge of an economic, political and ecological cliff. And so far, we have been unable
to back away from the precipice.
Today, as we consider the prospect of cataclysmic global climate disruption, we come together as Kentuckians,
for here in Kentucky, the true cost of cheap energy is all too apparent. Our people
and the place we call home have paid for this in poisoned waterways, polluted air,
scarred forests and wounded mountains. Our quality of life – measured in personal,
community and economic health – is near the bottom in the United States.
But in Kentucky, you can also find a path forward.
For over three decades, KFTC members have worked to preserve our health
and conserve our resources by empowering grassroots leaders and strengthening
our local communities. Our efforts include communicating new ideas of what is
possible, educating and engaging voters, and organizing. Today we are promoting
a just transition to a new energy economy by supporting energy efficiency and
renewable energy, by encouraging public and private investment to create jobs and
opportunity, by designing and demanding a fair and adequate tax system, by
seeking to restore voting rights and build a healthy democracy.
For more than ten years, perhaps our signature campaign has been our
effort to end mountaintop removal coal mining, the wholesale destruction of
our iconic Appalachian Mountains. To lift up the campaign, each year for
the past decade, hundreds of KFTC members have marked Valentine’s Day
by traveling to our state capital, assembling on the banks of the
Kentucky River and marching a mile to the Capitol building for
a rally to celebrate Kentucky’s treasured land, air, water – and
mountains – at I Love Mountains Day.
This year, KFTC chairperson Dana Beasley Brown, a young
mother and seasoned activist from Bowling Green, addressed the
crowd from the top of the Capitol steps and said:
We are gathered for the 10th annual I Love Mountains Day. We are
here to demand a just transition for workers and communities, and an
end to the destruction of our water, land, health and climate. But what
brings us together is far greater even than that. What brings us together
is our shared vision that Kentucky – all of Kentucky – deserves better!
38
Whether we live in Bowling Green or Louisville or Harlan or Red Lick, we all deserve good jobs that don’t
sacrifice our health and environment. We all deserve clean water and air, and access to affordable and clean
energy. We all deserve the right to vote, and decent candidates to vote for!
So while we have come to know this day as I Love Mountains Day, it is truly our love for this Commonwealth,
and our hope for a brighter and more just future, that unites us.
Dana Beasley Brown personified KFTC in her embrace of all Kentuckians, united in their fierce love for Kenucky.
Thousands celebrate Valentine’s Day by joining the one-mile march to the state Capitol to proclaim, “I Love Mountains.”
Members of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, sponsor of “I Love Mountains Day,” deliver their message on behalf of natural and
human health.
39
LOUISVILLE NEIGHBORHOODS
By Tom Stephens
Director, Center for Neighborhoods
L
ouisville is a city of hundreds of neighborhoods, urban and suburban, each possessing a unique character,
identity and sense of place. Healthy neighborhoods that are economically, socially, physically and environmentally
sustainable are the building blocks for great cities. And great neighborhoods are made up of healthy and engaged
people, households, institutions and businesses. Louisville has long been known as a city of neighborhoods defined
by their aesthetic appeal, social vibrancy, historic character, religious involvement and civic engagement. These are
the characteristics that make Louisville’s neighborhoods great places to call home for newcomers as well as native
Louisvillians with roots going back two centuries.
Louisville has a robust network of leadership organizations, staffed by both elected and volunteer
representatives. Among these organizations are the following:
• 26 elected Metro councilmembers covering all of Louisville and Jefferson County
• 15 Community Ministries serving every zip code in Louisville and Jefferson County and supported by
member churches and faith-based groups residing in their service area
• Over 30 Business Associations and Small Area Chambers serving the local business community
• 70 defined neighborhoods covering the entire urban service area of Metro Louisville, i.e., the
neighborhoods existing prior to January 6, 2003, when City/County governments merged
• 83 incorporated 2nd – 6th class cities within the metropolitan limits of Louisville and Jefferson
County, each with its own elected government, taxing authority, services and amenities.
• Over 250 Neighborhood Associations, Block Watches, and Homeowner Associations that are all
volunteer-led and focus on neighborhood safety, quality of life and community improvement
While the number and diversity of Louisville neighborhoods preclude a thorough review in this brief account, a
few examples might be found interesting:
• Louisville’s original town plan laid out streets adjacent to the Ohio River with the riverfront intended
as public property benefiting economic prosperity and physical health.
• The West Main Street district has one of the greatest collections of historic cast iron architecture in
the United States, second only to New York City’s SoHo district.
• The Old Louisville neighborhood is among the largest intact Victorian residential districts in the U.S.
and unique in that most of the homes are built of red brick.
• The Portland neighborhood was a prominent early settlement and an independent town situated at
the bend of the Ohio River near the Falls of the Ohio. Portland and Shippingport were important
portage and transshipment areas around the Falls. The construction of the Interstate system and
flood walls largely cut off access to the river for these neighborhoods.
• As the city expanded and industry grew, neighborhoods developed around the periphery, often
with names indicative of the economic, social or ethnic influences. Examples include Butchertown,
Smoketown, Germantown and Paristown.
• Smoketown is a historic African American neighborhood settled after the Civil War and Louisville’s
only historically black neighborhood that continues to this day.
Germantown has the highest concentration of shotgun houses in Louisville, and Louisville is second to New Orleans
in the number and stylistic variety of these narrow, elongated houses.
40
• The Russell neighborhood, just west of the Central Business District, was known as “Louisville’s
Harlem” and was the focal point of African American economic and social life in the first half of the
20th century.
• Numerous neighborhoods developed as the extension of streetcar lines made them more accessible.
These neighborhoods were often adjacent to parks and parkways or developed with park-like
amenities. Examples include Beechmont to the south, Shawnee to the west, and the Highlands to the
east of downtown.
• Interurban rail lines connected Louisville with residential communities further out including
Jeffersontown, Okolona, Anchorage, Prospect and others. Communities are now connected through
major arterials and state, U.S. and federal Interstate highways.
• Many of Louisville’s most beautiful neighborhoods, including Chickasaw, Shawnee, Beechmont,
Kenwood Hills, Bonnycastle and Cherokee Triangle, lie adjacent to the eighteen parks and six
parkways that make up the park system originally laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted.
Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. and his sons John Charles and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. were
responsible for an entire system of eighteen parks and six parkways that have shaped the city
of Louisville and provided a wealth of open spaces for its citizens. The Olmsted Parks include
Algonquin Park, Baxter Square, Bingham Park, Boone Square, Central Park, Cherokee Park,
Chickasaw Park, Churchill Park, Elliott Park, Iroquois Park, Seneca Park, Shawnee Park, Shelby
Park, Stansbury Park, Tyler Park, Victory Park, Wayside Park and Willow Park. The nearly fifteen
miles of parkways connecting neighborhoods and parks include Algonquin, Cherokee, Eastern,
Northwestern, Southern and Southwestern.
• Eleven pedestrian-only streets, or courts, are located in the Old Louisville neighborhood. These
courts include homes which face one another across a grass median and sidewalks, often brick.
• There are 1.75 houses of worship per 1,000 residents in Louisville and Jefferson County (based on
the 2010 population and Yellow Page listings).
Source: University of Louisville Photographic Archives
• There are 22.5 park acres per 1,000 residents in Louisville and Jefferson County (2014 City Park
Facts, Trust for Public Land).
The Piggly Wiggly grocery store stood at 28th and Dumesnil streets in 1925.
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THE COUNTRY ESTATES OF RIVER ROAD
Meme Sweets Runyon
T
he Ohio River is the natural masterpiece of Louisville. The river was one of only two highways for early American
explorers and settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries. These early Americans traveled the river for 971 miles
before encountering the treacherous Falls of the Ohio River and the exposed Devonian fossil beds that, if traversed,
would lead to certain death. To survive, they had to portage around the Falls or settle in Louisville, an option many
chose in the early years of this country.
A few created another masterpiece, the 700-acre nationally significant historic district, The Country Estates of
River Road, listed on The National Register of Historic Places. Hailed by the former president of the National Trust
for Historic Preservation, Richard Moe, as “one of America’s most significant cultural and architectural treasures,”
this historic district is in total harmony with the river and its corridor. This treasure trove of historically significant
sites and districts, laced with breathtaking natural and cultural resources, includes high-design Country Place Era
landscapes that are contiguous and uninterrupted. Surprisingly, it is the only manifestation of the Country Place Era
in Kentucky and along the entire length of the 1,000-mile Ohio River and is the most significant National Register
District of its type in America.
This district is the second largest in Kentucky and consists of all or portions of 21 estates dating from 1875 to
1938. The estates stretch along the Ohio River bottom lands and the river bluffs which rise above them. The essence
of Country Place Era estates is integrity of location and setting because the essence of the country place is the
interrelationship of the house set in the designed landscape.
The Country Estates of River Road landscapes were designed by nationally significant landscape architects, such
as the Olmsted firm, Marion Coffin, Bryant Fleming and Arthur Cowell. These landscapes build upon harmonic
connections with the natural resources, such as the Ohio River and its lands, the geology of the area and the
cultural land use. With no exceptions, the nationally prominent landscape designers used existing natural resources,
embellished and celebrated them. The district has not changed much since 1938. Charles Birnbaum, ASLA, and
founder and president of The Cultural Landscape Foundation stated, “Seldom have I witnessed a collection of
such significant works of landscape architecture with such a high degree of integrity. What makes this even more
extraordinary is that the landscapes themselves are in fact contiguous and uninterrupted.”
Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape design, was commissioned to create a park system for
Louisville in 1891. His concept was to create a system of parks connected to tree-lined parkways, and this
concept was most fully realized in Louisville, the ultimate park system of his career.
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Source: James Archambeault; photo courtesy of River Fields, Inc.
Source: James Archambeault; photo courtesy of River Fields, Inc.
The tree-lined entrance to Shadybrook Farm in The Country Estates of River Road historic district.
Harrods Creek offers recreational opportunities for the public in The Country Estates of River Road district.
43
To this day, in a striking blast from the past, Kentucky’s governors must swear an oath
before taking office that they have never fought a duel with deadly weapons.
More than $6 billion worth of gold is held in the underground vaults of Fort Knox.
This is the largest amount of gold stored anywhere in the world.
In 2012, immigrants accounted for just three percent of Kentucky’s population;
between 2000 and 2012, however, the immigrant population increased from 78,744 to 133,744
for a 70 percent increase, a faster rate than all but six states.
IV
C I R C L E O F H E A LT H
KENTUCKY’S HEALTH REPORT CARD
Governor Steve Beshear
PRINCIPLES OF HARMONY
Kathleen Lyons
PHYSICAL HEALTH
Ted Smith
HUMAN HEALTH: THE TOP PRIORITY
Aruni Bhatnagar
HEALTH HARMONICS
Gordon R. Tobin, MD
SPIRITUAL HEALTH: PUT FAITH TO WORK
Martin E. Marty
HEALTHY SPIRIT, HEALTHY EARTH
Father John S. Rausch, GHM
A NATURAL COMMONWEALTH
Greg Abernathy
THE FUTURE ECONOMY: PURSUING SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY IN BUSINESS (ABRIDGED)
Stewart Wallis
FOOD HEALTH
Sarah Fritschner
PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH: LOUISVILLE’S WATERFRONT
AND THE BIG FOUR BRIDGE
Jack Trawick
CULTURAL HEALTH
Barbara Sexton Smith
IT ALL TURNS ON AFFECTION (ABRIDGED)
Wendell Berry
10
%
18
%
OF CHILDREN
LOUISVILLE IS ONE OF THE MOST POLLUTED CITIES
IN THE UNITED STATES,
HAVING SOME OF THE HIGHEST LEVELS
OF PARTICULATE AIR POLLUTION IN THE NATION.
IN KENTUCKY
30.4
%
OF ADULTS
IN KENTUCKY
HAVE ASTHMA.
AMERICANS SPEND
AN AVERAGE OF
OF THE POPULATION IS
$
CONSIDERED OBESE.
8,745
PER YEAR
ON HEALTHCARE.
HEALTHCARE COSTS ARE NOW 17 PERCENT OF GDP,
AND ARE PREDICTED TO RISE TO 22 PERCENT BY 2039.
LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION CONSUMES
80
MORE THAN
%
90
OF ANTIBIOTICS USED
IN THE UNITED STATES.
OF THE FRESH WATER
IN KENTUCKY
IS CONTAMINATED
WITH MERCURY.
46
%
Seeking Health for all, through a culture of
Harmony and Compassion
47
KENTUCKY’S HEALTH REPORT CARD
Governor Steve Beshear
K
entucky has long ranked among the worst
states, if not the worst state, in almost
every category of disease or chronic health
condition. In 2014, Kentucky’s overall health
ranking was 47th, including:
• 49th in smoking;
• 46th in obesity;
• 50th in cancer deaths;
• 43rd in cardiovascular deaths;
• 50th in preventable hospitalizations;
• 50th in poor mental health days; and
• 48th in drug-related deaths.
Our poor collective health has had devastating consequences for families and the state, including decreased
worker productivity, depressed school attendance, huge healthcare costs, a poor public image and a lower quality of
life for our people.
There is a direct line from poor health to almost every core challenge Kentucky faces – whether that’s poverty,
unemployment, low education attainment, substance abuse or crime.
These entrenched problems require action and intervention. We have increased cancer screenings, expanded
access to substance abuse treatment and smoking cessation programs, and helped more seniors access critical
prescription drugs.
We’ve aggressively acted to reduce Kentucky’s addiction to prescription painkillers, expanding treatment
options and driving out those pill mills willing to kill our people to make a profit.
But the most dramatic change has been seizing the opportunity presented by federal reform to reduce
Kentucky’s uninsured population.
Big problems require big solutions, and the Affordable Care Act was a transformative solution.
Despite warnings that the law was too politically dangerous to embrace, I decided that the health of our people
was more important than partisan politics. And so Kentucky became the only southern state to both expand
Medicaid and create its own state-operated Health Benefit Exchange.
And look what happened.
Over half a million people used Kentucky’s Health Benefit Exchange – called “kynect” – to sign up for health
insurance during the first enrollment period.
Tens of thousands more signed up during the second enrollment period.
Seventy-five percent of these people – our neighbors, friends and families – did not have health insurance when
they enrolled.
This access has given them healthcare and hope, many for the very first time in their lives.
Just think for a moment about what this means. It means that our friends and neighbors can now afford to take
their children to the doctor. It means they don’t have to choose between medicine and food. It means that if they
have a health concern, they can get it diagnosed and treated before it becomes a chronic, life-altering condition – or
a disease that kills them.
Louisville native Abraham Flexner’s landmark study, Medical Education in the United States and Canada,
was published in 1910 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
and has been credited with reforming medical education in the United States.
48
And they can be treated in an appropriate setting – not in an emergency room, the most expensive place to get
care.
A national study has estimated that because of reform, about 26,000 more Kentuckians will get cholesterol
screening each year. Almost 7,000 more women will get a mammogram and over 10,000 more women will get a pap
smear. Another 14,000 people will get treatment for depression, and Kentuckians will visit the doctor half a million
more times.
Collectively, this means a higher quality of life, better attendance at school, a stronger work record and less
chance of bankruptcy due to illness or disease.
You can argue the politics, but you can’t argue the results. Kentuckians are getting healthier.
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PRINCIPLES OF HARMONY
Kathleen Lyons
B
ecause the word “harmony” refers to an agreeable combination of elements, it is a perfect description of health.
What is health if not a condition where all parts play their roles superbly well? “Harmony” becomes a massive
term when applied to planetary health, wherein myriad species interact in interdependent relationships, creating biosystems that are nothing short of a triumph of order and balance. The natural goal of all of these interacting systems
is to be healthy as well as health-giving. Health is a beautiful thing!
Today’s ailing world is scarcely a beautiful thing, as it frustrates the natural yearning for health. Species are
disappearing, with 150-200 becoming extinct every day, according to a 2010 calculation of the UN Environment
Programme, and biosystems, upon which healthy air, water and soil depend, are shutting down. HRH The Prince
of Wales, in his masterful study, Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World (2010), places a large share of the
blame on human behavior for this condition, and names economic collapse as one of its possible consequences: “If
we do not act very soon, the ongoing pollution of the atmosphere can be expected to cause damage to the economy
in the coming few decades that would be the equivalent of both world wars and the Great Depression combined.”
In a similar vein, former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin stated that our choice today is not between a healthy
environment or a healthy economy; it is rather between an economy devastated by an unhealthy environment or a
healthy economy resulting from a healthy environment.
The health consequences of an ailing planet are equally dire. Today we know that the human species and the
natural world will flourish or fail together. This is because, as Prince Charles points out, “we depend upon the world
that depends upon us and to have any chance of surviving on this planet and sustaining both the biodiversity and
the Earth’s many ‘eco-services’ that our survival hinges upon, we must begin to recognize the wider impact of our
predominant way of thinking and begin to heal the disconnection [from Nature] it has brought about.” We are out
of harmony with Nature, which is to say that health is failing both our planet and us.
We can, fortunately, reconnect with Nature, but doing so will require “a new way of looking at our world.”
Wendell Berry suggests that we need to see the world through the eyes of affection instead of greed, and Prince
Charles goes farther, suggesting that we must glimpse the vision of Nature’s “interdependent web of connections,
relationships and flows of energy, the finely woven tapestry of life, [that] is undoubtedly the greatest marvel ever
placed before us.”
Reconnecting with Nature is the only possible way to restore universal health and wholeness. Originating in
a “new way of looking at our world,” this restoration requires that we change our values, our perception of our
relationship to Earth, and our lifestyle and set health as the unarguable standard of expectation in every aspect of
our lives. The Circle of Health provided by the Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil identifies eight aspects of
health. Because these are aspects as well of “harmony,” their proper function might be codified under “Principles
of Harmony.”
HARMONY PRINCIPLES
• ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: Reflect in policy and practice the truth that health for air, water, soil, plant,
animal and human is one and indivisible.
• SPIRITUAL HEALTH: Live a full life by developing a spirit capable of soaring in awe and wonder in
perceiving “the finely woven tapestry of life,” which Prince Charles calls “the greatest marvel ever
placed before us.”
• ECONOMIC HEALTH: Insist that business take a leadership role in improving human well-being and
enhancing rather than depleting the planet’s natural resources.
• INTELLECTUAL HEALTH: Meet today’s challenge of incorporating into a single concept measures to
ensure economic, social and ecological health.
• PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH: Respect in policy and practice the fact that psychic health is influenced by
social and cultural surroundings as well as by the natural environment.
50
• PHYSICAL HEALTH: In healthcare, integrate state-of-the-art science and technology with practices
based on traditional wisdom that value human relationships, compassion and care for the whole
person.
• CULTURAL HEALTH: Grow Western cultural values and customs by adapting them to the 21st-century
pluralistic social infrastructure of our towns and cities.
• FOOD HEALTH: Keep in touch with the source of food in order to promote personal health and
oppose practices such as polluting, processing and over-refining food.
Building a culture that upholds the primacy of health means measuring our deeds in terms of their impact upon
the well-being of our planet, neighbors and heirs. No longer can we afford to deceive ourselves into thinking that
“efficiency” at the expense of planetary and human health is tolerable. Shifting our values and behavior to promote
the health of our world will alter not only the way we lead our personal lives but will necessitate new accountability
standards for our basic institutions: agriculture, architecture, education, healthcare, business and economics. A good
place to begin is with the “Harmony Principles.”
Under Darkening Skies: Eulogy for Black Mountain by Jeff Chapman-Crane
Folk art thrives in Kentucky, its products including pottery, hand-woven pieces, hand-carved
instruments and furniture, glass-blown art, quilts, baskets, brooms and more. This art often reflects
the beliefs and values of a group, such as the Shakers, or those of a region such as Appalachia.
51
PHYSICAL HEALTH
Ted Smith
Executive Director, Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil
P
hysical health is a condition in which all body parts function as they were designed to function. A good word
to describe the state of physical health is “harmony,” which refers to a system wherein all parts operate in
balance and order, creating a pleasing and smoothly operating unity out of diversity. This is the word that His
Royal Highness The Prince of Wales used as the title of his landmark study of planetary health, and it applies
to human physical health as well. The two, in fact, are intimately related, although until recently, this was not
widely perceived. The Western mainstream tended to envision Nature in a realm separate from our own where
it could be counted upon to safeguard its endless capital regardless of how we abused it through destruction
and depletion. Owing to this misperception, we have brought about such unhealthy changes to the planet that
it is losing its capacity to sustain life. This state of crisis has brought us to a moment of reckoning, forcing us to
take stock of our deeds and our needs. At this moment, we know that the inescapable truth is that our survival
and that of future generations require us to place a priority on health. Meeting this requirement will change just
about everything.
Placing a priority on health begins with the basic awareness that our physical health is totally dependent
upon healthy air, water and soil, the elements sustaining all planetary life. At this point we are also in a position
to ponder our own biological history. We cannot escape our intricate and interdependent connection with the
whole of Nature. Nature’s health is our health because we are, as Prince Charles tells us, Nature. The health of our
ecosystems, upon which we depend for the air, water and soil that sustain us, directly determines the state of our own
health. The late Thomas Berry explained the situation clearly when he noted that “planetary health is primary and
human well-being derivative.”
Placing a priority on health forces an examination of the long-held priorities that health will replace. In many
endeavors, efficiency has been an unquestioned value. Yet we know that efficiencies practiced in industry and
agriculture have created many health hazards. Tons of toxic wastes have been dumped into our streams from the
efficient extraction of coal through mountaintop removal, and acres of good farmland have been degraded through
intensive plowing and an extravagant use of pesticides in highly efficient industrial farming.
The priority of growth in our economy has been pursued with no apparent thought given to the circumstance
in which it is supposed to take place. We are facing environmental limits as well as a teeming world population of
nine billion people. Having fewer resources at our disposal and more people to share them scarcely seems to be a
condition that favors growth.
Many of our cities and neighborhoods have been built around expressways that cater to speed, rather than
around residences built to human scale, and in an environment that is safe and conducive to socializing and exercise,
such as walking, jogging and biking. The priorities of efficiency, growth and speed are those of the Industrial Age,
more suitable to machines than to people. The lasting legacy of these priorities is climate change and a planet left
holding on for dear life.
Restoring vitality to the planet requires changing our values, our perception of our relationship to the Earth,
and our lifestyle by setting health as the unarguable standard of expectation for our basic institutions: agriculture,
architecture, education, healthcare, business and economics. All of these institutions have played a role in
bestowing upon Kentucky an air quality rank of 42nd in the nation and an adult asthma rank of fourth highest in
the nation. Because we operate our lives and our basic institutions as we do, Louisville has been named one of
the top 20 “most challenging” cities to live in with asthma, and the number one “Spring Allergy Capital” in the
United States.
52
Certainly adopting a priority on health is a challenge to leadership on all levels across the spectrum of society’s
institutions. Stewart Wallis, in accepting this challenge, has said that business leadership is now called upon to
become the primary force for improving human well-being while enabling us to enhance rather than deplete the
natural resources of our planet. Leaders will be successful in carrying out Wallis’s challenge only if the citizens of
the towns and cities of the Western world join with them in placing a priority on their own physical health. This
cannot be done unless we begin to care passionately about the quality of the air that we breathe, the water we
drink, and the soil in which our food is grown. Care must take the form of knowledge about topics such as air
quality, the thin and fragile membrane of atmosphere, pollutants, aquatic habitats, and the environmental services
of soil and other biosystems and of animals such as mollusks. As advocates for our own health, we will want to
know as much as we can about our relationship with other species in Nature’s grand cycle of life, in which we are
privileged to participate. The tether that binds us to Nature is our lifeline. We now know that we shall flourish or
fall together.
The Kleinert, Kutz and Associates Hand Care Center in Louisville
is one of the largest hand care practices in the world and as a training facility,
has admitted since 1960 over 1,000 Hand Fellows from 50 different countries.
53
HUMAN HEALTH: THE TOP PRIORITY
Aruni Bhatnagar
Smith and Lucille Gibson Chair in Medicine, University of Louisville
Director, Diabetes and Obesity Center, University of Louisville
Director, American Heart Association Tobacco Regulation and Addiction Center
H
umans flourish only in environments that are conducive to their health and well-being. Although all life adapts to
its environment, for most animals and plants, the environment consists primarily of their ecosystem. The human
environment, by contrast, is much more complex. It includes all natural surroundings, the totality of circumstances,
and the composite social and cultural conditions that affect the individual.
Like all other life forms, humans are affected by their geographic location, the cycles of night and day, and
the rhythms of the seasons. These features of the natural environment exert a powerful influence on human
health. In addition, the health of human beings is also determined by the community in which they live, and
the history, culture and technological capabilities of that community. Hence, the primary objective of human
civilization in promoting human well-being is to mold the entirety of the human environment to enhance health,
comfort and safety.
But uncritical technological advance has led to a mismatch with the rhythms of nature, the pollution of our
air, water and soil, and the development of urban living patterns that promote inactivity and overconsumption
leading to widespread disease. These developments undermine the primary goal of all human culture, which is
to promote human health and well-being. We in Kentucky are experiencing this problem first-hand. The Ohio
Valley accumulates most of the pollutants generated in neighboring areas and for most of the year has some of the
highest levels of particulate air pollution in the country. Moreover, more than 90 percent of the fresh water in the
state is contaminated with mercury; and because of high levels of pesticide use in the surrounding areas, as well
as an abundance of volatile organic compounds and metals generated by local industries, Louisville is one of the
most polluted cities in the country. These pollutants and toxic chemicals affect more than just our environment.
Studies have shown that exposure to fine particles in the air can lead to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, lung
disease and cancer. Not surprisingly, Kentucky is one of the unhealthiest states in the nation. Statewide, 10 percent
of children and 18 percent of adults have asthma. In 2012, the rate of diagnosed diabetes in Kentucky was at
10.7 percent, compared to a national median of 8.3. An astonishing 30.4 percent of Kentuckians are considered
obese. While many factors contribute to the poor health of Kentuckians, there is little doubt that living in clean,
health-conducive environments will help significantly in addressing the problem. To understand the extent
of the problem in greater depth, we must assess how urban environments affect human health. Based on this
understanding, we have to empower citizen scientists to exert greater control of their environment and to develop
new paradigms for urban living in which clean, healthy and harmonious environments foster human health and
promote human flourishing.
The techniques for the sand filtration of turbid inland water
developed by the Louisville Water Company in 1909 are now standard practice
in municipal water purification worldwide.
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Source: City of Louisville
Source: City of Louisville
Louisville’s skatepark is considered one of the nation’s finest, and it encourages fitness for young people.
The city’s extensive parks system offers runners many opportunities for exercise.
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HEALTH HARMONICS
Gordon R. Tobin, MD
Professor of Surgery, University of Louisville
H
ealth, like a great symphonic orchestra, expresses harmonies flowing from many elements, with interdependence
that sustains balance and vitality amidst constant change. Health, therefore, is a dynamic system that contains
many component systems interconnected by complex feedback channels working toward harmony. Its vitality is
both a consequence and a measure of their interactive effectiveness. Christina Lee Brown designed a fine symbol of
elements supporting health, which displays environmental, psychological, intellectual, spiritual, cultural, physical,
nutritional and economic health around a core of healthy air, water and soil. All of these elements are themselves
systems, and they represent more such contributing systems. Interdependence among these systems is essential to
sustain health.
Central in this system is the organism, called person or self in humans. Supporting systems, such as
physical, psychological and emotional, have long been recognized in traditional concepts of personal health.
Ability to maintain balance among these was described as homeostasis by pioneering medical physiologists and
psychologists, such as Doctors Claude Bernard, Walter Cannon, and Sigmund Freud. Related systems, such as
environment, stress, nutrition and safety, are now recognized to profoundly affect homeostasis and the state of
health. When elements fall out of balance, health deteriorates into disease. The systems must become rebalanced,
or progressive erosion and death result. Rebalancing has been the focus of medical disciplines, such as physiology,
psychology and medical care, with interdependent support from spiritual, emotional and environmental
correction or other positive interactions.
Individuals are also components of larger systems, which we find in family, friends, neighborhoods,
associations and nations. When these systems have effective interactive processes and balance, harmony is
created, and both the larger system and individual components achieve health, productivity, prosperity and
happiness. History records and celebrates the contributions of great movements, societies and cultures, which
bring rewards of health and happiness. However, if groups violate the interdependent harmony of their systems
through ignorance, cruelty, persecution, wars or genocide, the resultant destruction ultimately decimates the
health and happiness of the group and its members.
The principles of system interdependence and health consequences also apply to entire species, including
humankind. When harmony of interdependent supporting systems is impaired, populations suffer and diminish.
At extremes, extinction results. Organisms other than humans have some limited abilities to control balance
in their systems, and can enhance or jeopardize food gathering, shelter and safety to a degree. Humankind,
however, is unique in the scale of its ability to profoundly improve or profoundly destroy essential support
systems. History records inspiring examples of cultural, intellectual and compassionate achievements in many
arenas of endeavor. In health, a fine example of systemic improvement was the discovery by Doctors Louis
Pasteur and Robert Koch of microbial cause of disease in the late 19th century, and the resultant public health
movement. This campaign has brought health and the ability to seek happiness to individuals and populations
more than any other health-related process in history. However, it has still not reached many of the world’s
impoverished peoples. Contrasted with human constructive power is our proclivity to destroy the harmony
of interdependent systems, as shown by contemporary, human-caused environmental degradation, which is
producing widespread havoc on our planet and among other species. Currently, our actions are causing mass
extinctions in oceanic life, imminent risks of terrestrial extinctions and impending enormous disruptions of
human societies.
Humankind is also unique in its intellectual ability to understand systems and the principles of
interdependence, to analyze problems, to visualize the outcomes of good or poor actions, to create solutions, and
thus to restore balance and harmony to vital systems. However, weaknesses in our own emotional, psychological
and intellectual systems blind our vision and limit our capabilities, thus risking disaster. Unique among all
lifeforms, we have choices and powers to determine the health and survival of vast numbers of species, including
our own.
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Source: Louisville Orchestra
Understanding the interdependency of all things is a unique blessing. Health is one harmonic of ancient
chords echoing across vast expansions of time and space through systems that began at the moment of creation
and span the universe. The blush in children’s cheeks and our internal energy transport systems have elements
that come not from our nearby sun, but from ancient stars repeatedly exploded and re-formed since creation.
These cosmic harmonies may be poetically expressed, such as in “music of the spheres” or seen through equations
of astrophysics, but they are cascades of great systems that flow from afar into our present time and place. We
exist in a universe of interdependent systems, and our health and survival depend on their harmonic balance.
As this celestial symphony plays, its harmonics reverberate universally. If we choose not to listen to the great
principles that echo, it is at our own peril. If we are listening, the harmonies are magnificent.
In 2014, 26-year-old Teddy Abrams became the conductor of the Louisville Orchestra.
The city of Louisville’s town charter was signed in 1780
by Governor Thomas Jefferson of Virginia.
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SPIRITUAL HEALTH: PUT FAITH TO WORK
Martin E. Marty
Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago
A
s Americans began to move west in the last quarter of the 18th century, in search of religious freedom as well as
economic opportunity, they had to travel light, leaving behind much that had been important to them in their
previous homes. Not surprising, however, was the fact that they came with their faiths ready to be “put to work.” By
the early 19th century, they began to build structures for observing and celebrating their faiths. The Cathedral of the
Assumption, which in 1852 replaced the Bardstown Cathedral of St. Joseph as the Catholic cathedral of the West,
well illustrates this pioneer practice that inspired settlers across the religious spectrum.
We can continue to observe faith “put to work,” using the Cathedral of the Assumption as an example. In
recent years, beginning in 1985 at the initiative of Archbishop Thomas C. Kelly, O.P., and through the enormous
efforts of the Cathedral Heritage Foundation under the leadership of Christina Lee Brown, the Catholic
Cathedral has been magnificently restored and “put to work,” for the benefit not only of the parish and the
diocese, but of the community at large. Thanks to the generosity of diverse worshippers and others who valued
the presence of this Cathedral in the heart of Louisville, the restoration of the interior of the building was
completed in 1993, making it possible for the Cathedral and the city of Louisville to extend hospitality to people
of many faiths. In the tradition of the medieval cathedrals, the restored Cathedral of the Assumption continued
to host cultural events open to the community, while persisting in its services to the poor, particularly to our
homeless neighbors, in a lunch program open 365 days a year.
Perhaps the most notable achievement of the restored and revitalized Cathedral is the expansion of the “work
load” of religion in the Louisville area. This effort culminated in the foundation of the Festival of Faiths in 1996,
which had for its purpose the celebration of religious diversity in the community. This community had become
far more religiously diverse than it had been, owing to the large emigrations from the East and other parts of the
world during the 1980s and beyond.
Largely through the Festival of Faiths, Louisville has become nationally known as a city which encourages
interfaith activity. This activity can now take root in a new initiative sponsored by the Institute for Healthy Air,
Water and Soil called Harmony and Health. Harmony in this instance refers to the balance and order that exists
in Nature, in its remarkable system of interrelationships and interdependence among species, which weaves
a striking pattern of unity. The human species is a part of this system, dependent upon other species whose
function it is to keep healthy the biosystems that supply air, water and soil to the Earth. When we put the health
of biosystems at risk through waste and pollution, we endanger planetary health and thus the human health that
depends upon it.
The appeal for harmony and health is universal and one which challenges all faith communities and traditions
to “go to work.” This appeal, made by the Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil, is consistent with that made
for centuries by houses of worship and more recently by the Festival of Faiths. It is an appeal to come together as
one to promote the greater good of our entire universe. This is a timely appeal both scientifically and religiously,
coming at a time when religious differences are leading to great social tension. One scholar with a global vision
mourned: “We are experiencing on a massively universal scale a convulsive ingathering of people in their
numberless grouping of kinds. . . [including] religious. . . They do this to promote their pride and power and to
protect themselves from others who may be doing the same.”
Noting this disharmony in our own society, we look for the healing that will restore us and allow us all
together to “go to work.” Restoring health, to planet and to people, is the overall goal of the Institute for Healthy
Air, Water and Soil, and the precise goal of its current initiative, Harmony and Health. In the Institute and in
the project, Harmony and Health, we have an expansive opportunity for healing in an unhealthy, disharmonious
world. This is a true sign of hope for which we can all be grateful. In this healing, we engage in metaphorically
building our houses of worship, putting our faith, whatever it might be, “to work.”
Kentucky was admitted to statehood in 1792, becoming the nation’s 15th state
and the first state West of the Appalachian Mountains.
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Sufi Whirling Dervishes perform at the 2012 Festival of Faiths.
Buddhist monks chant a prayer at the 2014 Festival of Faiths, held at the Cathedral of the Assumption.
59
HEALTHY SPIRIT, HEALTHY EARTH
Father John S. Rausch, GHM
Glenmary Missioners, Ministry in Appalachian Justice Education
F
requently, participants on a spiritual day of renewal describe how they connect with God by walking in the woods
and appreciating God’s handiwork. Invariably they resonate with the images that evoke the majesty of God – a
mountaintop wrapped in morning mist, a spider’s delicate web, a flock of geese gracefully landing on a secluded
pond.
Instinctively, their hearts sing with the Psalmist: “The heavens proclaim your wonders, O Lord...Yours are
the heavens and yours is the earth. The world and its fullness you have founded” (Ps. 89:6, 12).
Creation whispers inspiration on retreat days, when individuals can regain their spiritual balance; but on
work days, creation sends a different message. “Use me,” it says, “to feed the consumption demands in an
ever-growing economy.” The impulse to produce more “stuff” brings stress and anxiety to the worker, while it
imperils the earth’s climate and life forces.
People of faith find themselves split between creation as a wellspring of spirituality and a source of wealth.
How is it possible to integrate the two ideas of creation so that people can earn their livelihood from its resources
and grow spiritually in the process?
Wendell Berry, author and philosopher, clarifies the struggle when he proposes a distinction in his essay,
“Two Economies.” For him, there exists the “Great Economy” and the “little economy.”
The Great Economy reflects God’s plan of creation, and like the reign of God, “is both known and unknown,
visible and invisible, comprehensible and mysterious.” Humanity can never know all species of plants and
animals, never totally understand the interconnectedness of living species, never grasp fully the core of the life
process. The intricate details of creation, including the myriad patterns of interdependence within an ordered
unity, suggest an overwhelming majesty. To live in harmony with the Great Economy means to serve God’s plan.
Within the Great Economy, however, we can manage a smaller circle of activities by the use of reason and
science. The little economy encompasses the money economy, the industrial economy and the economy of
the marketplace. While also intricate, the little economy values goods and services for their usefulness. The
mysterious harmony of creation gives way to the useful and the marketable. Mountains that are “useless” acquire
value as strip mines. “Worthless” wetlands are drained for expansive housing tracts, and the barren desert is
pressed into production through exhaustive irrigation. A problem arises when the little economy sees itself as the
real economy, or worse, the only economy joined in no way with the Great Economy.
From the beginning, Genesis lays the foundation for understanding the integrity of creation. Looking
at everything created, God on the sixth day “found it very good” (Gen. 1:31). Genesis does not say that God
found creation only “useful.” To safeguard creation, God put Adam (all humanity at the time) in the garden “to
cultivate and care for it” (Gen. 2:15), thus inviting humanity to become a co-gardener for nurturing life on Earth
and preserving the beauty of all that issued from God’s creating hand.
This stewardship motif precludes the haphazard disregard for creation that condones befouling the
streams, polluting the air, and ripping up the mountains. Furthermore, environmental concerns fuse with social
justice issues because society’s poor and vulnerable suffer the most from pollution and toxic fumes. Latino
farm workers face pesticide poisoning, while semiconductor workers risk chemical exposures that heighten
rates of miscarriages, brain damage and cancers. In America toxic waste dumps are frequently located near
neighborhoods where the poor and minorities are likely to live. In developing countries the poor, pushed to the
most marginal land, overfish, overgraze and overharvest – just to survive. Planet and people both lose.
Integrating the little economy into the Great Economy can begin with a compassionate regard for an
important part of creation, fellow human beings. “Enough in order to be more” means every person has a right
to food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and education to attain full human potential. “More with less” begs the
use of appropriate technology to meet our needs while treading lightly on the earth. And “attaining maximum
well-being with minimum consumption” introduces a spirituality that implies that happiness comes more from the
heart than from externals.
Earning a livelihood while growing spiritually awaits those folks whose lives are quests for God in God’s
garden. Living with respect to the Great Economy means living a sustainable existence, slower paced and
designed to human scale, conscious of creation. It means living deliberately with the mystery evoked by the
brilliance of a sunset, the majesty of a redwood, or the cry of new life from a newborn.
60
Lord God, yours are the heavens,
yours the earth; you founded the
world and everything in it.
Psalm 89: 12
61
A NATURAL COMMONWEALTH
Greg Abernathy
Assistant Director, Kentucky Natural Lands Trust
K
entucky is a place of great natural beauty defined by both its cultural and natural heritage. This commonwealth of
lush forests and flowing rivers sustains and inspires, yet has been exploited for nearly two centuries. Kentucky’s
resiliency, as well as the world’s, is dependent upon functioning natural systems that can withstand threats through
adaptation and change. Protecting and sustainably managing our wildlands is essential to fostering this resiliency.
Geologic forces have sculpted and shaped Kentucky, giving rise to a diverse living landscape. Eastern
Kentucky is part of the Appalachian Mountains. These mountains are home to the mixed mesophytic forest, one
of the most diverse temperate forests found on the planet, and are a major wildlife corridor through Eastern
North America. Central Kentucky is comprised of rolling grasslands and knobs with oak-hickory forests. Much
of this area is underlain by a vast subterranean world of sinkholes and caves. In far Western Kentucky, swamps
and sloughs drain into the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, forming part of the fourth largest watershed on the planet.
American black bears, cerulean warblers, monarch butterflies and painted trilliums, as well as over 19,400
other species of plants and animals, live in the diverse habitats found throughout Kentucky. Some of these species
are endemic and found nowhere else on the planet. Kentucky is nationally recognized for the diversity of fish,
mussel and crayfish species found in the state’s 90,000 miles of streams. The state is also part of the southeastern
United States, a global hotspot for salamander diversity.
Kentucky has a nearly 12,000-year history of human activity. Over the last 200 years these activities have
begun to severely impact biodiversity as human populations expanded, and as an economy based on natural
resource extraction evolved. Habitat conversion has fragmented the forests, eliminated nearly all of the prairies,
and degraded most of the remaining wetlands. Invasive species are outcompeting native species. Land, air and
water pollutants are further impacting the habitats that remain. Combined with climate change, these threats have
imperiled much of the state’s biodiversity; one out of every 26 species in Kentucky is considered on the brink of
extirpation or extinction.
Globally, species populations are declining at an even more alarming rate. The World Wildlife Fund’s Living
Planet Report documented a 52-percent decline in mammal populations worldwide over the last 40 years. The
factors driving this startling decline are habitat loss and degradation, species exploitation and climate change.
This report follows decades of conservation assessments that have recommended protection of wildlands and
large landscapes.
Conservation biologists have long advocated for large landscape conservation. Over 20 years ago, the
Wildlands Project called for protection of half of North America to stave off a mass extinction crisis. More
recently E. O. Wilson, a prominent conservationist and evolutionary biologist, has made a plea for setting aside
50 percent of the planet for conservation. Large landscape conservation strategies such as these recognize the
essential need for sound science and urgency for action. In addition, these strategies include the important role
of private landowners and the sustainable stewardship of their lands, as well as public lands.
Large protected areas of wildlands are an essential part of biological and economic resiliency. Biologically,
they offer critical habitat and migratory routes to the species that form the planet’s web of life. Diverse and intact
habitat is essential for species’ survival in a period of shifting climate. Additionally, wildlands represent a wealth of
natural capital and are essential to both economic and human health, a fact too often overlooked and neglected.
In Kentucky, investment in land conservation is relatively low. Only seven percent of the state is protected
in some way, less than in all surrounding states. These lands have wide-ranging stewardship approaches ranging
from biodiversity protection to multiple use management. Longstanding state government conservation funding
was just recently redirected, leaving little state funding for land conservation and illustrating the importance of
public-private partnerships.
Several ongoing large landscape conservation efforts are taking place throughout the state. The largest in
the state’s history, the Pine Mountain Wildlife Corridor, intends to protect the 120-mile-long forested mountain
stretching through southeastern Kentucky. Along the Green River in Western Kentucky, conservation efforts
aim to protect this nationally recognized aquatic biological treasure. Efforts to connect Fort Knox and Bernheim
Forest intend to safeguard and enhance important large forest tracts and riparian corridors within the Knobs
Region.
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Kentucky is a reflection of the world, a place of amazing biodiversity under escalating pressure from natural
resource extraction and urbanization. Wildlands, and their resiliency, are critically important to sustaining
healthy local, regional and global communities, and are an essential part of a transformational economy. In this
interconnected living world, local conservation has global significance. We must intensify efforts to protect our
land, air and water. Having lost so much already, it is essential that we protect and steward what remains.
Sunrise on Pine Mountain. Photo by Thomas G. Barnes
Luna moth. Photo by Thomas G. Barnes
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Majestic Pine Mountain in Harlan County, Kentucky
Photo by David Sanger, via Alamy
THE FUTURE ECONOMY: PURSUING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN BUSINESS
Stewart Wallis
The following is an abridgment of this article by Stewart Wallis which appeared in the Harvard International Review
(2013). Printed with permission. The entire article can be accessed at http://hir.harvard.edu/archives/10406.
F
or the first time in human history, human beings are forced to acknowledge planetary environmental limits.
This new awareness presents revolutionary challenges to business that are social as well as economic. Business
leadership is now called upon to become the primary force for improving human well-being while enabling us to
enhance rather than deplete the natural resources of our planet.
To assume this new responsibility, business leadership needs to promote an understanding within its own
ranks that change is urgent because our world is in a state of crisis, attested to by the following observations:
1. Reliable climate-change reports claim that we are on course for a minimum temperature rise
of four degrees Centigrade compared to pre-industrial limits. Despite warnings of the dire
consequences that these increased temperatures can have for humans and other species, humanity
has only managed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 0.7 percent per year in
the last ten years, when at least ten times this rate is needed. Furthermore, these modest gains have
been overwhelmed by a combination of increasing world population and growing GDP per capita.
2. Social inequality is rising rapidly within many countries, destroying the social fabric while
increasing personal debt levels and decreasing demand for goods and services.
3. Current economic structures worldwide are severely weakened by financial instability and massive debt.
4. Human well-being is not increasing in line with increases in GDP.
Our current economic system which is committed to the principle of growth can offer no solution to these
problems. The levels of growth that would be required to create enough good jobs to overcome the personal
financial distress experienced worldwide are incompatible with planetary environmental limits. Moreover, for
everyone on earth to live at the current European average level of consumption, more than double the planet’s
available biocapacity – the equivalent of 2.1 planet Earths – would be required to sustain us. If everyone
consumed at the US rate, we would require nearly five. We do not have five planets, or even two – we only have
one, and that one is in peril.
Finding solutions to the current crisis requires a shift in our fundamental thinking on policy issues.
Businesses of the future must minimize or eliminate waste and cease using non-renewable resources. They must
shift their focus from labor productivity to resource productivity, and, most importantly, they must redefine their
purpose. From maximizing shareholder financial value, they must discover their market value in the economic,
social and environmental value which they are either creating or destroying. I would suggest the following
resolutions to the most urgent policy issues:
1. Measures must be taken to counter short-termism, such as non-voting rights on shares held
less than a certain period, higher taxes on short-term stockholdings, and changes to investment
behavior of pension funds.
2.Change the corporate tax and incentive regime by imposing high taxes on pollution and use of
non-renewable resources and low taxes on renewable resources.
3.Change the way we value companies so that their market value reflects whether or not they are
creating social and environmental value as well as economic value.
4.Change the structure of businesses so that creating jobs, improving well-being and maximizing
returns to ecological resources are encouraged.
5.Reform banking and financial markets, beginning with separating investment banking from retail
banking and then changing the incentive structure within retail banks, which create the majority
of new money in our economies. The current incentive structure favors creating new money for
property and speculative investments; new incentives need to be created that favor investment in
sustainable technologies.
66
These are the issues we need to wrestle with as a result of what we now know about planetary limits.
Addressing these issues requires a shift in values that will enable us to see ourselves as stewards of the planet’s
resources rather than consumers. Our measurement systems must radically change in accord with a goal of
maximizing well-being while preserving natural capital so that we know the amount of well-being that is achieved
from each unit of natural resources used.
The radical changes in policy issues and in values that are required to address the current planetary crisis
convince us that we are operating within a defunct system of economics. The sooner we release ourselves from its
shackles, the better it will be for all of us.
Stewart Wallis is the Executive Director of the New Economics Foundation (NEF), an independent think-and-do
tank based in the UK that inspires and demonstrates real economic well-being through challenging mainstream
thinking on economic, environment, and social issues. Prior to joining NEF, Wallis was International Director of
Oxfam, and was awarded the OBE for services to Oxfam in 2002.
A bronze statue of George Washington by John Quincy Adams Ward, outside Federal Hall on Wall Street, New York City.
According to the Census of 2010, about one-third of Louisville’s adults had a bachelor’s degree or more.
In this same year, an ambitious program called “55,000 Degrees” was inaugurated to raise this figure to
40,000 people with bachelor’s degrees and 15,000 with associate degrees, creating a workforce for the
21st century in which 40 percent hold bachelor’s degrees and 10 percent hold associate degrees.
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FOOD HEALTH
Sarah Fritschner
Coordinator of Louisville Farm to Table
I
was in high school when I read that vitamin A deficiency was the leading cause of preventable blindness in
children worldwide, a deficiency that led to premature death from easily preventable diseases in Africa, Asia
and anywhere else where poverty and malnutrition existed.
A subsequent journey through nutrition education left me armed with the blunt instrument of very little
knowledge from a very young field of study. Vitamin A! Vision health worldwide! How hard could it be? I was Bill
Gates with a bag of carrots.
Of course, the restoration of health through food is a complicated subject. In my defense, I insist that I wasn’t
the only one looking for easy food solutions. Diet for a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé argued in 1971
that wholesale vegetarianism could feed the hungry, spread the wealth and help the environment, only to spend
decades afterwards urging the understanding of power structures that keep people poor.
Unlike Frances Moore Lappé, we have not matured significantly in our thinking about nutrition’s contribution
to health, and continue to promote straight-line solutions to complicated problems. From neighborhood gardens
to reduced salt in school lunches, we treat nutritional problems as though they were volitional matters, treatable
simply with willpower. In the process, we ignore much – our environment, our politics, our agricultural practices.
What of the 90-pound 8-year-old diabetic and his decision-making process? Food is the subject of 50 percent of
advertising he’ll see watching Cartoon Network, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and most of the food
is junk. Tax dollars support low corn prices so soft drinks and chips are among the cheapest foods available. In
addition, there is a “conscious effort – taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles – to
get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive,” says Michael Moss, author of Salt, Sugar, Fat.
Willpower has its limits.
Even the “mostly plants” advice of an expert such as Michael Pollan should be viewed with caution. Farmer
Joel Salatin can put on a pretty good rant about meat eaters versus vegetarians, pointing out that herbivores (cows)
grazing on perennials (pasture) created all the deep soil environments. Further, studies show that grassfed animals
produce the omega-3 fatty acids that can keep Midwesterners as healthy as fish eaters on the coast. In contrast, the
soybeans used to create vegetarian proteins are annuals that require tilled ground, with its attending issues of water
loss, erosion and microbe disruption. So some meat can result in healthy soil and healthy people.
And what if we do eat “mostly plants?” They aren’t as good for us as they used to be. Studies show that
many nutrients – calcium, iron, vitamin C and more – have declined in vegetables since 1930. Plant breeders want
species that grow faster and bigger, and nutrients can’t keep up. Bigger is not better, according to studies from the
University of Texas. Think of big, sturdy and shippable supermarket strawberries versus smaller, ephemeral local
strawberries from the farmers market. The smaller berries taste better, and they are probably better for us, too.
What strikes me in particular is that the bigger, better, faster mentality is also straight-line thinking that seems
ultimately as ill-conceived as my young adult fantasy of saving the poor through carrots. “Faster production +
increased size = bigger profits” is a universally accepted approach to business. Feeding corn to confined cattle and
administering prophylactic antibiotics make them grow bigger, faster, and, as a result, cheaper. The better to feed
nine billion people that will inhabit the planet, according to conventional thinking.
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says overuse of antibiotics is one of our “most serious
health threats” (80 percent of antibiotics are used in livestock production). Meat from confined production
contains fat of dubious value. Modern fruit and vegetable varieties bred to grow faster have fewer nutrients. The
fertilizer used on them pollutes water, kills ocean wildlife and kills microbes in the soil that some people say are
the next frontier of good nutrition and environmental health. If we grow animals on grass and grow produce
organically, we’re likely to be healthier.
That is, we’re likely to suffer less from heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes. The big four killers in our
country are all related to what we eat. Yet faster, better, cheaper is the agriculture we want to export to countries
with exploding populations. Will we export, too, our healthcare costs, now 17 percent of GDP and predicted to
rise to 22 percent by 2039? Will we export our obesity rates to the darkest corners of Africa? Here in Kentucky,
obesity afflicts more than one-third of our citizens, many of them children.
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If our goal is to live better, longer, perhaps citizens should consider what “cheap” means. The average
American spends $8,745 per year on health care. That’s not cheap. If we stayed only as healthy as the average
Italian ($3,200), we’d have more than $100 per week to spend on food that is good for us, good for the earth and
tastes good. Imagine: springing for strawberries that don’t crunch!
The simple equation of straight-line thinking provides a simplistic solution for a short-term goal that provides
health only to a few. We need to do the harder math.
Taco salad with grassfed ground beef.
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PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH: LOUISVILLE’S WATERFRONT
AND THE BIG FOUR BRIDGE
Jack Trawick
A
visitor to Louisville becomes aware that the Ohio River and the city have an inseparable relationship. Like
the first mammals shedding their gills and walking onto the dry land, Louisville emerged from the river when
colonials perched themselves at the top of a bank just above shallow rapids that had for eons impeded the flow of
the river and, consequently, the passage of travelers and their cargo to points downstream. These rapids – called
“falls” but really just a mile’s length of rocky shallows – had during the prehistoric era served as spawning waters
for fish and shellfish; as a feeding ground for flocks of migratory birds; and as an easy ford for bison and deer. The
spot was, therefore, a rich fishing and hunting ground for the original Americans. Possessed of a different mindset,
the first European settlers regarded the river shallows as an impediment to commerce that would need to be
overcome. The solution to the impediment would serve as a catalyst for the establishment of a town and port at the
headwaters of these “Falls of the Ohio.”
Upon the establishment of the town of Louisville in 1778, the river bank and plain above the Falls would be
expropriated as a landing for the transfer of trade goods and passengers; then, as a place for boat yards and ways,
and factories making bottles and cast iron; and then, in more modern times, as a staging area and transfer point
for all kinds of industrial commodities – sand and gravel dredged from the river bottom, and old cars crushed into
cubes and stacked like brownies for the dessert plate of a hungry giant. Coming downtown along River Road from
the eastern suburbs in the 1950s, my family would recognize the approach to this forbidden zone by the dank smell
of an always burning dump about a mile upstream from the old wharf.
Today we experience our river in an altogether different and marvelous way. About thirty years ago, the
city began the long and tedious effort of moving away the conical piles of sand and gravel, the junkyards and the
machines made to shred boxcars, the abandoned elevated rails and the oil storage tanks. We commissioned the
best planners to design a scheme to reclaim the floodplain from the artifacts of industrialization. We formed public
authorities to raise the funds and to organize and lead the many phases of work required to remake the longforsaken floodplain. In a city already known for its great municipal parks east, west, and south, we would now have
a northern park – this Waterfront Park – that would draw us all together, back to the place where the city began.
There was an old railroad bridge amidst all of this, called the Big Four Bridge, which took its name from the
defunct Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, which it served. The bridge was one of the oldest
of the spans that had first connected Kentucky and the South to Indiana and the North in the late 19th Century.
Iron girders and beams were assembled to form the span, resting upon pillars made of great hewn limestone blocks
around which the river current to this day continuously divides. It is unimaginable how the structure was all
erected without the cranes and equipment of modern public works.
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The old bridge lost its approaches in the 1970s, long after the railroad ceased operating. For a while thereafter, it
was only a great rusting lattice where pigeons roosted, watching the river traffic passing underneath. When the plan
for remaking Louisville’s riverfront was unveiled in the 1980s, the bridge was included in a distant future phase, to be
converted to a pedestrian bridge and accessed from the ground by an earthen ziggurat. When the time finally came
to make the bridge the crown for the new riverfront park, the ziggurat proved impractical owing to the mass of soil
required; and so a different plan called for a steel and concrete spiral ramp instead, supported by sturdy iron posts.
About a year-and-a-half ago, in 2013, the old railroad bridge was reopened as a pedestrian and bicycle bridge,
connecting Louisville to the town of Jeffersonville, Indiana, about a mile across the river. I went down to see it
the first weekend open, along with many hundreds or even thousands of other citizens and visitors. On a pleasant
but otherwise ordinary spring evening, everyone there was quietly enjoying what to all of us must have seemed an
unexpectedly extraordinary place. I remember feeling a remarkable sense of exhilaration, looking down the river
toward Louisville’s waterfront skyline, the Indiana hills and what remains even today of the Falls. If ever there were
a place that was to be uniquely Louisville on the Ohio, I thought, then here it is, now.
Jack Trawick is a city planner and sixth generation Louisvillian. He was director for 33 years of the Louisville
Community Design Center, which serves as the city’s center for neighborhood advancement.
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CULTURAL HEALTH
Barbara Sexton Smith
Chief Liaison for The Compassionate Schools Project
T
he cultural health of Louisville, nurtured by the Arts, is an indispensable source of joy and pride to its residents.
It feeds our soul and fuels our imagination, allowing us to transcend the here and now and glimpse the majesty
of greatness which inspires our battle cry, “Together through the Arts let us create a great American city!”
At the same time, Art sparks the vitality of other basic aspects of the city’s life, most importantly economic and
educational development. Louisville is recognized as a national model in demonstrating how the Arts strengthen
a community. In our region the Arts generate $259 million in economic activity every year. More than 1.5 million
people attend Arts events annually. We’ve seen 8,000 local jobs created by our Arts and Culture industry. And each
year we provide more than 400,000 Arts experiences for our school children. WOW!
We can do all of this because more than 20,000 individuals, foundations and corporations contribute hardearned income every year to our Arts and Culture organizations. Why? Because we care about each other and
about our future. Dr. Donna Hargens, Superintendent of the Jefferson County Public Schools, said, “This
community has identified educational attainment as our highest community priority. I see the Arts as an integral
part of our success. The Arts engage children, teach them to think creatively, inspire them to dream big and help
to keep them in school so they can thrive in an increasingly competitive and complex world.” Jim Welch, ViceChairman, Brown-Forman said, “Having a world-class Arts community in Louisville allows us to attract talent from
across the world – allowing Brown-Forman to compete globally.”
Through our “Every Child Arts Education Initiative,” our dream is for every child in the region to experience
the Arts in each year of his/her education. We make Arts programming accessible to all grade levels in seven school
districts across all disciplines – dance, theatre, music and visual art. Each year more than 90,000 school children
in grades K-5 get to experience a live play produced by StageOne Family Theatre. Third-grade students learn
conflict resolution and anger management by performing Shakespeare. Fourth- and fifth-grade students experience
live orchestral music performed by our Louisville Orchestra. Each year 20,000 high school students visit Actors
Theatre, while 500 of these students write their own ten-minute play for the annual Young Playwrights Festival. An
interrelated arts-based curriculum leads to improved attendance rates, higher academic performance, and increased
graduation rates. Scientific research has proven that Arts in the classroom develop students who are more likely to
vote and volunteer in their communities. Art works! It’s just that simple.
Results like these require an innovative spirit, collaborative minds and a community that embraces action. If
a community has a soul, it is found in the Arts. The Arts turn mere zip codes into thriving neighborhoods pulsing
with music, visual art and performances of all kinds. The Kentucky Opera and the Louisville Orchestra leave the
big performance halls and go into the community, taking Art to the people. Music without borders!
Suspend your disbelief and go with me for just a moment as we make two imaginary stops around town. A
quick drive by our Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Central Park will give you a snapshot of the longest running
free “Shakespeare in the Park” program in America. Last summer, during 56 nights more than 25,000 people of
all ages attended a free Shakespeare performance. People from all walks of life can be seen sitting under the stars
watching life unfold according to Shakespeare – together.
At the Academy@Shawnee and ESL Newcomer Academy, we will see Walden Theatre’s “Connecting Cultures”
residency program in full force. Our students are from all over the world and speak more than 100 languages.
They explore feelings about growing up in various cultures. They break down barriers and explore the social
narratives, stereotypes and personal histories that shape the lives of young people everywhere, regardless of origin
or expectation. Artists teach students to analyze stereotypes, improve language skills, strengthen emotional literacy,
express empathy, develop leadership and confidence, develop self-expression and creativity, and build community.
They teach students to build a community based on respect, understanding and compassion. The result is a
culturally robust and healthy community.
All of the above describes a great American city as built through the Arts. The quality of life is high and
economic and educational development robust. The city is safe, confirming research that affirms that Arts
involvement leads to a drop in juvenile crime and in repeat criminal behavior. The city is also healthy because Arts
nurture health and lead to shorter hospital stays, less medication and fewer health complications.
This is Louisville, our great American city, and we want to share it with the world!
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Source: Kentucky Opera
Photo by Bill Brymer. Source: Actors Theatre of Louisville, 2015
Kentucky Opera’s performance of La Bohéme.
Actors Theatre of Louisville’s performance of The Brothers Size.
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IT ALL TURNS ON AFFECTION
Wendell Berry
C
orporate industrialism itself has exposed the falsehood that it ever was inevitable or that it ever has given
precedence to the common good.
The problem that ought to concern us first is the fairly recent dismantling of our old understanding and
acceptance of human limits. For a long time we knew that we were not, and could never be, “as gods.” We knew, or
retained the capacity to learn, that our intelligence could get us into trouble that it could not get us out of. We were
intelligent enough to know that our intelligence, like our world, is limited. We seem to have known and feared the
possibility of irreparable damage.
But beginning in science and engineering, and continuing, by imitation, into other disciplines, we have
progressed to the belief that humans are intelligent enough, or soon will be, to transcend all limits and to forestall
or correct all bad results of the misuse of intelligence. Upon this belief rests the further belief that we can have
“economic growth” without limit.
Economy in its original – and, I think, its proper – sense refers to household management. By extension, it
refers to the husbanding of all the goods by which we live. An authentic economy, if we had one, would define and
make, on the terms of thrift and affection, our connections to nature and to one another. Our present industrial
system also makes those connections, but by pillage and indifference. Most economists think of this arrangement
as “the economy.” Their columns and articles rarely if ever mention the land-communities and land-use economies.
They never ask, in their professional oblivion, why we are willing to do permanent ecological and cultural damage
to “strengthen the economy.”
In his essay “Notes on Liberty and Property,” Allen Tate gave us an indispensable anatomy of our problem.
His essay begins by equating not liberty and property but liberty and control of one’s property. He then makes the
crucial distinction between ownership that is merely legal and what he calls “effective ownership.” If a property,
say a small farm, has one owner, then the one owner has an effective and assured, if limited, control over it as long
as he or she can afford to own it, and is free to sell it or use it, and (I will add) free to use it poorly or well. It is
clear also that effective ownership of a small property is personal and therefore can, at least possibly, be intimate,
familial, and affectionate.
If, on the contrary, a person owns a small property of stock in a large corporation, then that person has
surrendered control of the property to larger shareholders. The drastic mistake our people made, as Tate believed
and I agree, was to be convinced “that there is one kind of property – just property, whether it be a 30-acre farm
in Kentucky or a stock certificate in the United States Steel Corporation.” By means of this confusion, Tate said,
“Small ownership ... has been worsted by big, dispersed ownership – the giant corporation.” (It is necessary to
append to this argument the further fact that by now, owing largely to corporate influence, land ownership implies
the right to destroy the land-community entirely, as in surface mining, and to impose, as a consequence, the dangers
of flooding, water pollution, and disease upon communities downstream.)
Tate’s essay was written for the anthology Who Owns America?, the publication of which was utterly without
effect. With other agrarian writings before and since, it took its place on the far margin of the national dialogue,
dismissed as anachronistic, retrogressive, nostalgic, or (to use Tate’s own term of defiance) reactionary in the face
of the supposedly “inevitable” dominance of corporate industrialism. Who Owns America? was published in the
Depression year of 1936. It is at least ironic that talk of “effective property” could have been lightly dismissed at a
time when many rural people who had migrated to industrial cities were returning to their home farms to survive.
In 1936, when to the dominant minds a 30-acre farm in Kentucky was becoming laughable, Tate’s essay would
have seemed irrelevant as a matter of course. At that time, despite the Depression, faith in the standards and
devices of industrial progress was nearly universal and could not be shaken.
But now, three-quarters of a century later, we are no longer talking about theoretical alternatives to corporate
rule. We are talking with practical urgency about an obvious need. Now the two great aims of industrialism –
replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy – seem close
to fulfillment.
At the same time the failures of industrialism have become too great and too dangerous to deny. Corporate
industrialism itself has exposed the falsehood that it ever was inevitable or that it ever has given precedence to
the common good. It has failed to sustain the health and stability of human society. Among its characteristic
signs are destroyed communities, neighborhoods, families, small businesses and small farms. It has failed just as
conspicuously and more dangerously to conserve the wealth and health of nature.
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No amount of fiddling with capitalism to regulate and humanize it, no billions or trillions spent on “defense”
of the “American dream,” can for long disguise this failure. The evidences of it are everywhere: eroded, wasted
or degraded soils; damaged or destroyed ecosystems; extinction of species; whole landscapes defaced, gouged,
flooded or blown up; pollution of the whole atmosphere and of the water cycle; “dead zones” in the coastal
waters; thoughtless squandering of fossil fuels and fossil waters, of mineable minerals and ores; natural health and
beauty replaced by a heartless and sickening ugliness. Perhaps its greatest success is an astounding increase in the
destructiveness, and therefore the profitability, of war.
In 1936, moreover, only a handful of people were thinking about sustainability. Now, reasonably, many of
us are thinking about it. The problem of sustainability is simple enough to state. It requires that the fertility
cycle of birth, growth, maturity, death and decay – what Albert Howard called “the Wheel of Life” – must turn
continuously in place, so that the law of return is kept and nothing is wasted.
For this to happen in the stewardship of humans, there must be a cultural cycle, in harmony with the fertility
cycle, also continuously turning in place. The cultural cycle is an unending conversation between old people and
young people, assuring the survival of local memory, which has, as long as it remains local, the greatest practical
urgency and value. This is what is meant, and is all that can be meant, by “sustainability.” The fertility cycle turns
by the law of nature. The cultural cycle turns on affection.
This is an excerpt from the essay It All Turns on Affection by Wendell Berry, published by Counterpoint, copyright by
Wendell Berry, 2012.
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V
EXHIBITORS
AQUACELL
BERRY CENTER
BIOMETRAC
BRAIN INJURY ALLIANCE OF KENTUCKY
CARMICHAEL’S BOOKSTORE
CATHOLIC CHARITIES REFUGEE AGRICULTURAL PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM
COMMUNITY FARM ALLIANCE
CONN CENTER FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY RESEARCH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE
ED HAMILTON SCULPTURE EXHIBIT
EDIBLE LOUISVILLE
FARM TO FORK
FERN CREEK HIGH SCHOOL FOOD AND SUSTAINABILITY PROGRAM
FESTIVAL OF FAITHS
FIRSTBUILD
FUTURE FARMERS OF AMERICA
HEINE BROTHERS’ COFFEE
IDEAFESTIVAL
INSTITUTE FOR HEALTHY AIR, WATER AND SOIL
INTERAPT
JEFFERSON COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS 5-STAR SCHOOLS PROGRAM
KENTON COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT – TURKEY FOOT SCHOOL
KENTUCKIANS FOR THE COMMONWEALTH
KENTUCKY INTERFAITH POWER AND LIGHT
KENTUCKY NATURAL LANDS TRUST
KENTUCKY MUSEUM OF ART & CRAFT
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KENTUCKY PROUD – HOMEGROWN BY HEROES
KIVA CITY LOUISVILLE
LOUISVILLE GROWS URBAN GROWERS COOPERATIVE
LOUISVILLE METRO OFFICE OF SUSTAINABILITY
LOUISVILLE SUSTAINABILITY COUNCIL
LOUISVILLE WATER COMPANY
McALISTER STONE
NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION
NEW ROOTS/FRESH STOP
NORTON COMMONS
PROPELLER HEALTH
QRS RECYCLING
RAINBOW BLOSSOM NATURAL FOOD MARKETS
ST. CATHERINE COLLEGE BERRY FARMING AND ECOLOGICAL AGRARIANISM PROGRAM
SLOW FOOD BLUEGRASS
SLOW MONEY KENTUCKY
SPEED ART MUSEUM
SWEETGRASS GRANOLA
THE BROWN-FORMAN COOPERAGE
THE REYNOLDS GROCERY COMPANY
TRANSIT AUTHORITY OF RIVER CITY ZERO BUS
TWO CENTURIES OF BLACK LOUISVILLE: CIVIL RIGHTS AT A GLANCE
UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE CARDIOVASCULAR INNOVATION INSTITUTE
UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE COMPOSITE TRANSPLANTATION AND ENGINEERED TISSUE PROGRAMS:
KLEINERT, KUTZ & ASSOCIATES, JEWISH HOSPITAL, CARDIOVASCULAR INNOVATION INSTITUTE,
DIVISION OF PLASTIC SURGERY
WATERSTEP
WEST LOUISVILLE FOODPORT
YES! FEST
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VI
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his publication commemorates with great gratitude the visit to Louisville of His Royal Highness The Prince of
Wales and his wife, The Duchess of Cornwall. This visit is a momentous occasion, as it marks the first episode
in what is hoped to become a worldwide “Harmony and Health Initiative,” with a goal of ushering in a new Age
of Harmony. In the Age of Harmony, humankind will reconnect with Nature and her infinitely glorious cycle of
life, envisioning its network of interconnectedness and interdependence in an integrated view of humanity and
its surroundings. This view bridges diverse topic areas and interest groups, giving us an opportunity to become
effective agents for change leading to a common goal: healthy humans and healthy communities. To bring about
such change, beginning in Louisville, Kentucky, is the goal of the sponsoring organization, the Institute for Healthy
Air, Water and Soil.
The symposium marking the royal visit to Louisville has benefited from the time and talents of a host of people
on both sides of the Atlantic. To the staff at Clarence House in London, the British and American Embassies,
and in particular to Patrick Holden we are most grateful for guidance and courteous assistance in planning a safe,
productive and inspired visit. We wish to acknowledge Mayor Greg Fischer, the Institute for Healthy Air, Water
and Soil and The Berry Center. Their efforts have been complemented by a rich array of local leaders who have
participated as site hosts and discussion facilitators. A resourceful and energetic corps of volunteers has brought to
the program a wide range of talent and expertise. All have participated with good will and generosity, and they have
enriched the program through their service.
Among our volunteers, we also wish to acknowledge all who have contributed to this publication. This
includes those who wrote articles, provided photographs and images, created original art and designs, and served
as advisors, researchers and editors. Some have bylines and can therefore be known to all; many others have made
their contributions anonymously. The role of each one has been vital to the success of this publication, and we
commend their efforts.
To Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla, to our distinguished visitors from the United Kingdom and elsewhere,
and to all of the exceptional contributors, as well as to our readers, we raise our voices and our glasses in saying,
“Here’s to a harmonious life of good health!”
Christina Lee Brown
Chair, Board of Advisors
Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil
In honor of HRH The Prince of Wales and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall
and their Louisville 2015 Harmony and Health Initiative Visit,
Owsley Brown II, and our glorious children and grandchildren.
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