A Blog on McConnell Center Life

 By Macy Waddle      Each summer, the McConnell Center assigns a reading for all scholars which we discuss at our annual August retreat. This summer we were assigned  Jayber Crow  by Kentucky author Wendell Berry. This being my first time reading Berry, I found his writing style interesting, and his viewpoints on community and place intrigued me to pursue more of his work. This brief trip down a rabbit hole led me to a 1988 lecture for the Iowa Humanities department. On community and local culture, Berry says this, “A good local culture, in one of its most important functions, is a collection of the memories, ways, and skills necessary for the observance, within the bounds of domesticity, of this natural law. If the local culture cannot preserve and improve the local soil, then, as both reason and history inform us, the local community will decay and  perish, and the work of soil-building will be resumed by nature.”      For Berry, commu...

By Dyllan Tipton       When I first became interested in politics around seventh grade, I had no idea where to start or what I was getting myself into. As an avid news watcher, I frequently saw our national representatives on television, which sparked my curiosity about the political world. That curiosity led me to reach out to Leader Mitch McConnell’s office in June 2018, requesting the opportunity to meet with him in Kentucky. I connected with one of his field representatives, Andrew, and within a couple of weeks, I was invited to a business forum in Danville, Kentucky, hosted by Leader McConnell. Afterwards, I spoke to the Leader for a couple minutes alongside my grandfather. That moment was the turning point and marked my entry into the world of politics.      As I became more involved in local Republican politics through monthly county GOP meetings and Lincoln Day Dinners, I quickly realized that success in politics isn’t just about what you know—...

  By Kelsey Raymer Last year I had the amazing opportunity to present research on the racialization of Muslims at the National Honors Conference. This opportunity solidified my aspiration of continued research in oppression and is one of my proudest accomplishments so I would like to share a bit of it here. Saidya Hartman states, "...the fungibility of the commodity makes the captive body an abstract an empty vessel vulnerable to the projection of others' feelings ideas desires, and values; and, as property, the dispossessed body of the enslaved is the surrogate for the master's body since it guarantees his disembodied universality and acts as the sign of his power and dominion.” Racialization is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the act of giving a racial character to someone or something.” In my research I examine how the collectivist framework forced on the diverse followers of Islam acted as a catalyst for the heinous activity brought upon this community in the years foll...

 By Karmyn Jones      In preparation for our class trip to Scotland, we each read a chapter of How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman. This is a summary of my chapter:      The Scottish Reformation, started by John Knox, was a movement that transformed Scotland into a Protestant nation. Knox, a writer and preacher, spent his early years in exile and imprisonment before returning to challenge the Catholic Church’s authority. He convinced Scottish nobility and urban classes to embrace Protestantism. His influence led to the destruction of religious artifacts and the establishment of the Scottish Kirk, which imposed strict moral rules, with severe punishments for those who disobeyed. Knox and his ally, George Buchanan, created one of the most democratic church governments in Europe. They believed that political power was ordained by God but ultimately belonged to the people. However, tensions arose when Charles I attempted to undermine t...

 By Bradfield Ross      Since my last blog, I’ve seen some pretty good movies. Maybe even one or two great ones. Few warrant returning to the topic of my last blog, which was psychedelic fiction, better than David Lynch’s  Lost Highway . I first was introduced to Lynch my senior year of high school, but  Lost Highway  was a new viewing. The film, as I read it at least, is the story of a man who is plagued by insecurity around his wife, kills her (or at least goes to jail for it), and then attempts to rationalize his feelings of perverse disgust towards sex by altering his life story. Lynch, as always, is dealing with good and evil at war in the subconscious, but this particular film has a horrifying atmosphere that persists throughout the entire runtime. Other films of his certainly contain horrifying moments, but the persistent atmosphere, not just of dread but of actual horror, was as throughout as I’ve ever experienced. In my entry on Letterboxd I q...

 By Alli Geiger       Last year, I decided to switch my major. Before now, I was a Political Science major and did not have a clear idea of what I wanted to do. For the McConnell Center, I needed to either major or minor in Political Science. It just made sense to make it my major at the time, but I started to think more about what I wanted to do after college, and when I did that, Political Science did not make sense for me. I knew I belonged in the museum or nonprofit industry but from a writing perspective. I decided to switch to an English major and follow the Public and Professional Writing track. This has helped me reconnect more with writing. This switch has pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and work with publications. On February 10th, my opinion piece was published in the  Courier Journal.  This experience was a real tangible milestone for me and my writing career. I had spent so long wondering if writing was just a pipedream for me. Thi...

  By Hannah Cease      On March 24, 1981, the Louisville Zoo welcomed its first ever polar bear cub, Maku.       Over 40 years later, the conservation efforts at the Louisville Zoo continue with Bo and Qannik. Qannik was born in Alaska in January 2011 where she was tracked and monitored along with her mother and one other sibling. In late April that same year, Qannik was seen again but this time separated from her family. Polar bear cubs tend to stay with their mothers for up to two years while learning how to survive and hunt. Qannik was much too young to make it on her own and after an unsuccessful aerial search was conducted to locate the mother, she wandered near shore where she was rescued. She found her permanent home in Louisville in June 2011 where in collaboration with USFWS, it was determined to be the best home to meet her needs and help her flourish. Qannik has since become a beloved member of the Louisville Zoo as well as an important...

By Grant Avis      “My food comes from a Sysco truck, same as yours.”      I had to take my eyes off the road when I heard this, looking at my friend in the passenger seat, smiling defiantly. I knew he wasn’t being entirely serious. Though some do seriously believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows, I do not think anyone thinks that meat spontaneously generates in a semi-truck trailer. Yet, the point still stood - most of us do not have any connection with the source of our food beyond a Walmart shelf, momma’s fridge, or a McDonald’s counter.  It’s been several decades since a cow was slaughtered and butchered on my family farm in Grayson County, Kentucky. The seemingly supernatural and certainly alien forces of “the market” meant more production was needed from the hundred acres of woods and hills. Men in slaughterhouses could work more efficiently and profitably (according to the farm journals and extension office experts) than my grandparents, un...