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I need to apologize before I even get started. I am at a loss. For 22 years, we have strived to create a magazine that is all about bringing people together. Now, we find ourselves in a time—hopefully brief—where that’s maybe not the best idea.
As you read this issue, you’re reading information written in the wake of the announcements that—to limit the spread of coronavirus—schools were taking extended breaks and have canceled the boys and girls Sweet Sixteen. Athletic conference tournaments and the NCAA tournaments have been canceled. The NBA and NHL seasons are suspended. Schools are closing or moving classes online.
As I write, I’m shockingly aware of how often I touch my face. I feel the need to wash my hands every time I use my keyboard or answer my phone.
Events such as the Kentucky Crafted Market and the Southern Kentucky Festival of Books have been postponed. Alltech’s ONE Conference will be held virtually. Churches have stopped passing the peace, modified communion and canceled services. Incoming flights from Europe have been prohibited.
At press time, the events in this issue are scheduled to occur. With the situation in flux, as you sit in your home—hopefully safe, secure and well—we realize we may have missed something, maybe even something significant.
We ask that, before you travel anywhere, please call ahead. Please double check. If you’ve found something we’ve done incorrectly—left out or left in—before you appear at our door ready to slap some sense into us, please use hand sanitizer (or preferably soap and hot water).
It’s a difficult time for Kentuckians. It goes against the grain, cuts through the fabric. Our Commonwealth’s flag—our seal—boasts a handshake, the center of our understanding of social interaction and fair dealing.
In the Kentucky General Assembly’s first session, Dec. 20, 1792, legislators ordered the creation of an engraved seal showing “two friends embracing and the motto: United we stand, divided we fall.”
David Humphries, a Lexington silversmith, depicted the men in swallowtail coats instead of hunting apparel. Instead of the handshake, he had them hugging. Other depictions followed. The clothing changed with fashions, including different coats and top hats.
The men dressed in buckskin and formal attire first appeared in 1857 in the skylights of the House of Representatives’ chamber in Washington, D.C. The artist, whose name is lost to time, placed the pair in front of a row of columns and wearing garments resembling togas as overcoats.
“United we stand, divided we fall” comes from “The Liberty Song,” a pre-Revolutionary song. Many of our forefathers fought in the American Revolution, and land grants awarded for their military service are what brought them to Kentucky.
Some say Daniel Boone is the man in buckskin, representative of rural areas, and Henry Clay is the city-dweller. Generally, the pair is shaking hands. In other representations, the handshake is with one hand, and the other hand is on the opposite shoulder of the recipient, or the pair shares a supportive hug. Paducah’s Henry Ward, who as commissioner of conservation expanded the Kentucky state park system in the 1950s, said that a depiction with one man’s left hand grasping the other man’s right made them appear like they were dancing an Irish jig. In 1954, Ward asked Louisville artist Ernie Giancola to create a more natural-looking handshake.
In 1962, legislators solidified the seal, saying it should depict “a pioneer meeting a gentleman,” and artist Nan Gorman, who later served as Hazard’s mayor after the death of her husband, Bill (who famously served 35 years without a salary), designed the seal we use today.
Connections are a part of who we are. “Where you from?” is our most-used phrase. It’s not a nosy question; it’s asked because it’s the foundation to determine how we are connected and whom we might know in common. In our larger cities, it’s “Where’d you go to school?” Asked for the same reason—connections.
Kentucky’s first U.S. senator, John Brown, who built Frankfort’s Liberty Hall, said the seal was to show “two friends, in hunter’s garb, their right hands clasped, their left resting on each other’s shoulders, their feet on the verge of a precipice [on the edge of the unknown].” That’s where we find ourselves today.