Remember Ike?

Devin and Sandra Greenwald of Brookport, Ill., do.
On the morning of Sept. 14 as the winds picked up, they decided to walk outside their aging Brookport, Ill., home to pick up limbs from the remnants of Hurricane Ike. Sandra Greenwald heard a crackling noise and looked up only to see a large oak branch smash into their house and shift it off the foundation.
The Greenwalds estimate the winds blew 70 mph that morning. That wind destroyed their home and forced them to live in a hotel for three months. Insurance has helped pay the hotel bills but not enough to cover the cost of a new home.
Last summer, they had looked at manufactured homes from Clayton Homes in Paducah and delayed making a purchase. But once that tree smashed into their home, they had no choice.
While at Clayton Homes, they entered a drawing for a new television set. As luck would have it, they actually won the drawing, but yet they didn't have a home in which to put it. The Greenwalds have now bought a home from Clayton and hope to move in by New Year's Day.
Just in time for Devin to watch all those bowl games on the 32-inch TV.

Cookie cheater

Last year I had the bright idea of making homemade gingerbread dough with my son that we would put out for Santa. After finding flour in the cracks and crevices of my kitchen at my old house three months after that experiment, I decided this year that I would simplify my life. Mommy turned to her elves at Nestle Toll House to simplify matters and hopefully, also not to make a horrific flour mess in the kitchen. Less mess, right?

Wrong. I'm typing this with flour on my countertop and on just about everywhere else in the kitchen. I think the black cat now looks like a skunk because she strolled under the counter in the middle of rolling out the dough.

Still, my son and I are having a blast rolling out the dough and cutting it with our gingerbread boy cutter. He doesn't know I've cheated this year and not mixed the dough from scratch. We won't tell Santa, will we?

Merry Christmas!

You Don't Say

The most popular story on the New York Times' Web site Wednesday dealt with the use of butter in cookies. Really?

All sarcasm aside as anyone who bakes (and eats) cookies knows that the secret indeed is butter (lots of it) to make the cookies yummy. The article talked about the care required with the handling of butter for making cookies. For instance, how many of us have popped a stick of butter in the microwave and ended up melting it instead of "softening"? The trick, the article says, is to cream the butter and keep the butter dough cold.

Apparently once butter melts, it's finito. Who knew?

The colder the butter, the better the structure of the cookie.

I learned more about butter in five minutes than I knew in all the years of fiddling around in the kitchen. It's well worth the time to click over to the nytimes.com and click on the top article of the day.

Anyone have any other thoughts on cookies and baking?

A Dog Named Beau

How can you not love a face like this?



Reader reaction to my story about Beau, a special-needs rescue dog from Metropolis, Ill., has been positive. Several readers have called to request Beau's address so that their dog can send him a Christmas card. How sweet! A few others have called to thank us for running an uplifting story about a dog.

Willodean Berkley of Reidland said had she known about Beau's story, she would have suggested that her pooch, Lilly Bell, a 2 1/2-year-old Pomeranian, relinquish her spot on the cover and let Beau have his day in the sun.

I'm sure that all the pets in the calendar have their own story.

Beau appears to be doing well with physical therapy in St. Louis. Christina Lewis sent along other photos of a happy pooch during water therapy. He's now able to walk on the underwater treadmill for 10 minutes, and his prognosis looks good, she said.

"I am a little sad that Beau will not be coming home this weekend, but when I pick him up on Tuesday, he will be home a full five days before we return," Lewis said. "With any luck, he will be able to walk on his own next week."



Anyone who would like to send Beau a card, mail to Eric and Christina Lewis, 7243 Riepe Ridge Road, Metropolis, IL 62960.

Several readers have asked about donations. Lewis said any donations may be mailed to the rehab clinic.

The address is:
Veterinary Specialty Solutions
"Beau" Taylor-Lewis
1021 Howard George Drive
Manchester, MO 63021.

Beau's e-mail is beau0507@yahoo.com.

Proceeds from the sale of the Precious Pet calendar benefit the McCracken County Humane Society and the Paducah Sun's Newspapers in Education program. In a tough economic year like this one, forking out $5 for a calendar can go a long way to making a difference in the life of a cat or a dog at the shelter. Anyone who has a pet knows that the cost of food has risen dramatically in the past year. Consider that the shelter must supply food for kittens and puppies and adult cats and dogs.

The calendar is available at the Sun's office.

What is Royal Icing?

Sun Managing Editor Duke Conover questioned me about Royal Icing as he edited the story on Wednesday's Taste page about gingerbread houses. Since he didn't know, I figured quite a few people probably want to know the back-story on this form of icing and why exactly is it "royal" or "Royal," depending on the usage and context.

According to Betty Crocker, the icing has a smooth, matte finish suitable for making lasting decorations like gingerbread houses and cookies. Traditional Royal Icing contains powdered sugar, egg whites or meringue powder, lemon juice and varying amounts of water. It's also known as glace and originated in England after being used on Queen Victoria's wedding cake.

The queen's chef published a book in 1862 about how to use the icing on wedding cakes, which were, believe it or not, fruitcakes (yes, the much maligned holiday food). The white icing signified the purity of the bride. The icing also sealed in the freshness. No snide jokes about fruitcakes, please.

In modern times, the icing is used as a "glue" for holding decorations together, particularly on gingerbread houses.

And that's the rest of the story.

15th anniversary passes quietly in Cadiz

People say that time will heal all wounds. Perhaps that's true, but some people will always remember the night of Dec. 15, 1993.

Seven Trigg County boys were killed in a one-car crash on U.S. 68. It was one of the most horrific wrecks local reporters and police remember.

Dale Garner, Jeremy Gordon, David Lawrence, Jesse Lawrence, Patric Perry, Joey Rogers and Steven Wallace had piled into a red 1988 Honda Civic to drive about a mile up U.S. 68 to the Hilltop Market for their dinner break. The Trigg County teens worked at Knight and Hale, a game call manufacturer, part time. A few minutes after the boys left that evening, Hilltop employee Ruth Bridges saw an ambulance pass by.

Steven Wallace lost control of the Honda on U.S. 68, crossed the center line and hit an oncoming truck driven by Stephen Richardson, Wallace's girlfriend's father.

The scene that night was surreal. Seven teens' lives snuffed out 10 days before Christmas. I was a young reporter back then and covered the wreck. All Sun photographer Elizabeth Courtney and I knew was that a wreck near Cadiz had fatalities. We didn't know how bad it was until we arrived at the scene, and Kentucky State Police spokesman Chuck Robertson held us back for a few minutes and then took us to the site.

The bodies were removed by the time we arrived, but we could still see their books and cassette tapes strewn along the highway.

Fifteen years later, no public observances were planned. Former Cadiz Record sports editor Scott Brown, who drove then-Cadiz Record Editor Matt Sanders to the scene, said the families of the boys have had their own turmoil in the days since that fateful night. The families initially had formed the Seven Friends Foundation, but Brown said he doesn't believe the foundation still functions.

"They may do something on their own, but I don't think they have had any type of organized event since either the second or fifth anniversary," Brown said.

Still, it's a day many people in western Kentucky will remember.

A Fun New Year's Eve Activity

Looking for something fun to do on New Year's Eve besides stay home and watch Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve for the thousandth time? Check out the must-see, must-dance party of the season -- The Charity League's 81st annual Snowball. For a donation of $40 a person, you can dance the night away with your friends and other party-goers on stage at the Carson Center.

It's a great community event, and I'm not just saying that because I have to sell tickets, either. In past years, it's been a treat to watch some of Paducah's most talented ballroom dancers twirl the night away with ease and elegance. And then there's the rest of us who have two left feet.

And if you're out in blogland and decide you want to go, drop me a line at llandini@paducahsun.com.

A Great Kentucky Voice

Longtime Courier-Journal columnist Byron Crawford wrote his final column for the Louisville newspaper on Thursday. Apparently, he was among the 51 cuts at the C-J, and from what I'm reading on other blogs, he took a voluntary buyout. I've heard that the buyout was pretty decent. The 51 cuts come on top of a round of 15 layoffs in August. The C-J's parent company, Gannett, cut thousands of positions across the business on Thursday in the latest round of layoffs.

Crawford had probably the best job in Kentucky journalism. He was allowed to travel across the state to the back roads of little bergs that barely exist, places like Kentucky Bend down in Fulton County, that tiny crook of land that sits out in the Mississippi River, or Pine Mountain in the eastern part of the state. I met him when he came through Paducah years ago on a speaking tour. I was a young journalist then, but I already knew that I preferred the feature stories that Crawford favored, the personalities and the places of our great state. I had that opportunity for the past 13 years to write feature stories, but retirements and restructuring here forced some changes within the local paper, but thankfully I still have a job in the media.

He was one of my writing heroes. I admired the way he told a story and brought the quirks of Kentucky to life for many of us who might not ever travel to these tiny bergs in the backside of nowhere. And I'll miss reading his columns. Like so much of the media, perhaps he will consider a blog to continue his column writing.

The media is a scary place to be right now with all the dire business talk and round after round of layoffs and forced retirements. It's sad for readers that longtime veterans like Crawford are taking the buyouts, but I'm sure that Crawford now will enjoy retirement or a second career.

Click to read his final column

Farewell, Byron. Good luck in your next phase of life. Please keep writing.

Christmas Tree 2

Office mate Adam Shull wrote about "The Office"-like experience of reporters jostling for the good dates on the vacation calendar.

Now we'll share our sad little Christmas tree with the rest of you. Last year, our first year as an office family, we bought a tree on the half-price sale at Hobby Lobby and decked the tree with lights and ornaments. We even hosted the "first annual Flip the Switch" ceremony.

This year, I hauled the tree out from the recesses of cobwebs and a funeral pyre of old notebooks under the desk on Black Friday. With the ALA (Adam, Leigh, Angie) Annex all to myself, I flipped the tree out of the box late that afternoon, fluffed the branches and left with the intention of decorating on Monday when my officemates returned. When I walked in Monday, they had already decorated with the trinkets of stuff we'd accumulated this year. No lights. No ceremony.

I think we'll keep it like this, Adam's cell phone charger and all. Let's just hope when his phone vibrates that it doesn't cause a New Madrid Earthquake rumbling and all the "ornaments" fall out.

Hey, in this dour economy, we have to brighten our work lives somehow, even if it's with a pathetic little tree.

Oh, Christmas Tree

I don't know if it's the recession or perhaps the friendly neighborhood Grinch, but several busy working mothers I've talked to recently have all told me the same thing about their Christmas trees. They're up and the lights are on, or somewhat on in the case of my sad pre-lit tree, but the decorations are missing.

My husband hauled our tree in from the garage Sunday night and found the other tree stashed in the attic. We got them both of the boxes and strung the lights (clear on my tree, colored on his and our son's), but it's now Thursday night and I glance at the tree in the living room. The lights are on. The star rests peacefully at the top, and a black cat snores underneath the tree. But only a handful of decorations have made a home on the tree, thanks to my 7-year-old son.


In past years, I would have freaked out by this point in December if my tree and interior decorations weren't up and just absolutely perfect. I've yelled at my husband in past years for the decorating ordeal taking three nights and lasting well into the first week of December. I've been on the verge of a panic attack before, all for a Christmas tree.

But this year, eh.

And I don't think I'm alone, either.

"Oh, I'm just fluffing," explained one woman for her excuse as to why the tree has sat undecorated for several days. "You know, the branches just need to fall out after they've been a box for a year."

"I got the outside lights and decorations done," another woman said. "But I haven't even started thinking about the tree or the inside. If I don't put all the ornaments on this year, I'm going to put them back up."

Perhaps after all the years that we've all worked ourselves up into a Martha Stewart-like tizzy to make sure that our homes look perfect inside and out, we're settling down and realizing that we don't have to hold ourselves up to an imperfectly perfect standard. In the midst of the recession, many of us are circling the wagons toward our home and family and not caring as much about the outside appearance.

What matters is our happiness, and if that means that the tree isn't decorated just perfectly by December 5th, so what. The decorations will make it to the tree eventually, even if they go on with just days (or hours) to spare until my company arrives. Until then, I'll enjoy the lights and spend time with my husband and son on the nights when John and I aren't working and Jack doesn't have basketball practice or other activities. After all, it's about making memories, not having the Martha Stewart standard of perfection. The Christmas season is about family and celebrating the birth of Christ, not about perfectly decorated trees.

The Great Christmas Debate

Forget the debate over ham or turkey at the Christmas table. The biggest debate raging in my house is clear vs. colored lights. I'm a stickler for clear lights. They're classy and traditional. My husband, though, wants colored lights. And every year when we drag the tree out of the deep recesses of the garage or attic, the debate rages again.

I thought I had solved it when we inherited his grandmother's pre-lit tree several years ago. End of debate. The lights were clear, and all we had to do was plug the tree lights into the wall. Viola! Leigh wins.

This year when we plugged the tree into the wall, only the lights at the top half of the tree still worked. As I was stringing another set of clear lights on the tree, my son looks up from his book and says, "Mommy, aren't you going to put the colored lights on?" A set of colored lights glared at me from the box of ornaments.

I look at John, who's feigning innocence as he eats dinner at the kitchen bar. He promises me he hasn't prompted Jack to ask for the colored lights. I'm thinking "Sure, you have." I could have interrogated the child but decided against it.

I keep stringing the lights. So far, I've won the battle again on the large tree and the front door decorations. I've caved, though, on Jack's tree. His little tree has colored lights. I guess we have reached a compromise.

Do you prefer colored or clear lights? Why?

Off-topic: Heath anniversary

I apologize to the readers who come here for food-related coverage related to the Sun's Taste page. My assignment has changed at the paper in recent months, and I'm back to reporting news and features in the region. As such, from time to time, my blog posts might reflect those events.

Walking into Heath High School this morning brought back memories of another gray Monday morning after Thanksgiving 11 years ago. A chill from the wind and snowflakes ran through my arms and hands as I opened the door to the lobby where Michael Carneal shot three girls - Nicole Hadley, Kayce Steger and Jessica James -- at the end of an early morning prayer circle on Dec. 1, 1997. Fortunately, I didn't have to go to the scene of the shooting that morning. My editors posted me at Lourdes hospital where I waited for information about the teens who were brought there after the shooting.

Later that afternoon, after sunshine penetrated the clouds, I had to take a yearbook back out to the school to ask for help in identifying Carneal's picture.

Eleven years later in the Heath auditorium, I listened as Darrell Scott told teens, many of whom were in elementary or preschool for the Heath shooting, about the day when his daughter Rachel was shot and killed outside Columbine High School in Colorado. He stood perfectly still as the images from the news coverage flashed on the screen behind him. I've covered plenty of assemblies before, and rarely do the students sit still for an hour, especially middle school students. This time, though, the kids couldn't take their eyes off the screen or their ears off Scott's words. His message was simple -- acts of kindness can touch lives. In a way, it was like the lessons that our parents taught us: practice the Golden Rule.

Jennifer Frazier was a kindergarten student at Heath Elementary at the time of the Heath shooting. She remembered exactly what she was wearing that day -- blue jeans, a purple turtleneck and a matching bow -- as she waited for her parents to take her to school. Instead, they came into the room and told her that something bad had happened at the high school and tried their best to explain a shooting to a young girl. Eleven years later, Frazier is among the high school students who want to accept Rachel's Challenge of kindness as a tool to solve problems and make their worlds better. Rachel's Challenge is such a simple, yet powerful, message: be kind to others and expect the best for yourself and for others.

I hope Rachel's Challenge will take hold in our local schools as a supplement to the standards parents try to teach at home. Just a child holding a door open for another child or a student taking time to talk to the new kid can make a difference. Darrell Scott told of Rachel's kindness to a young man with disabilities. Because she took the time to express kindness instead of criticism or name calling, the young man decided not to commit suicide.

Darrell Scott told me that he wishes he didn't have to travel to schools and give his presentation. But he does and does it quite well. Rachel's life may have been cut short, but her legacy can touch an entire generation and make our children better citizens for tomorrow.

One Happy Day

This is off-topic of food, but happy days are back for crafters and decorators. Michael's, damaged on Nov. 19 during a fire sparked by lights on a Christmas tree, reopened on Black Friday. My mother and I checked out the reopened store on Saturday, and while merchandise offerings are slim and mainly limited to Christmas, we enjoyed the thought that a crafters' treasure wasn't quite lost. One of the clerks told us that they hoped to have the store restocked in the coming weeks.

If you need cheap stocking stuffers, Michael's offers notepads and notecards, holiday tins and scrapbooking goodies, all for the super-expensive price of $1. A tin filled with candy would make a nice teacher's present, and you wouldn't be out a fortune, either.

Mayfield Home Tour

The Christmas season is ripe with opportunities to waste an afternoon for a sneak peek into someone's sense of style, particularly in home decor. The Mayfield Community Woman's Club will present its Holiday Home Tour and Bazaar from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday. Homes on tour are Garnet and Jim Hedge, 120 Arbor Crest; Sandy Cope, 410 Backusburg Road; Melanie and Marvin Kaiser, 506 Ky. 2005 and Gloria and Marshall Galloway, 342 Ky. 2005.

We visited the home of Garnet and Jim Hedge last week. Gloria Galloway, a local designer, showed us how she accented the bare windows in the Hedge's den with garland and affixed colorful, but inexpensive, ornaments. She explained that it helped to hide the bare windows and inject color into the room. See what you think:



The bazaar will include gift items from McAlpin's Sweets & Treats, Jucunda's Jems and Jewels and Zio's House of Glass. It sounds like a great afternoon to gather up some girlfriends and leave the boys at home with the NFL Game of the Week.

If you want tickets to the tour, stop by the Mayfield Mayor's office in City Hall weekdays.