Saint Patrick's Day or the Feast of Saint Patrick (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, "the Day of the Festival of Patrick") is a cultural and religious holiday celebrated on 17 March. It is named after Saint Patrick (c. AD 385–461), the most commonly recognized of the patron saints of Ireland.

Saint Patrick's Day was made an official feast day in the early seventeenth century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion (especially the Church of Ireland), the Eastern Orthodox Church and Lutheran Church. For Christians, the day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. However, it has gradually become more of a secular celebration of Irishness and Irish culture.

The day generally involves public parades and festivals, céilithe, and wearing of green attire or shamrocks. Christians also attend church services and the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol are lifted for the day.

By Lovina Eicher

• 4:50 a.m. - My husband Joe didn’t have to work today, so we were able to sleep later than usual. I get up as  daughter Elizabeth is awake and packing her lunch for work.

• 5:15 a.m. - Elizabeth leaves for work,  Joe gets up to check on the coal-stove while I fix us a pot of coffee.

• 6 a.m. - I wake up the rest of the children. They want coffee soup for breakfast while they get dressed for school. Seems this hour always goes fast. Usually someone can’t find their shoe or someone else has forgotten to do their homework so that it is rush, rush to get ready for  the bus.  Joe is outside cutting a quarter off  the 1740 pounds of beef we dressed Friday night.

The Butler City Council met on Monday, March 4. Members present in attendance were Dave Hopkins, Aaron Bonar, Gerald McElfresh, Paul Vanlandingham, Pat Taylor and Bonnie Bonar.

Bill Mitchell from Pendleton County Community Development presented to the Council the idea of a community forum at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 21. He told Council there should be a planning process for Butler's future. The forum will consist of the top five priorities for the city and what can be done or not done.

Flanked by a bipartisan group of legislators, Governor Steve Beshear signed into law House Bill 217, which makes some practical improvements to last year’s landmark prescription drug abuse legislation. The new law clarifies some protocols without diluting the original bill’s intent to attack the abuse of prescriptions in the Commonwealth.

“House Bill 1, which passed last year, was a remarkable and comprehensive effort to create real and substantial changes to upend prescription drug abuse, and it’s working,” said Gov. Beshear.  “Unlicensed pain management clinics have closed up shop. Prescriptions for the most addictive drugs have dropped every month since implementation. However, we recognized that a few issues needed to be worked out for the comfort of the most pain-stricken patients and for the practical needs of physicians, particularly in in-patient and long-term care settings. House Bill 217 makes those tweaks without reducing the impact of House Bill 1.”

By Janet Patton

A week after a first attempt, a hemp bill made it out of the Kentucky House Agriculture Committee with a nearly unanimous vote. But the bill still could die if House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, blocks a vote on the House floor.

Committee chairman Tom McKee, D-Cynthiana, said he hoped that the bill would move forward for the sake of farmers and for the jobs that he said hemp could bring to Kentucky.

McKee and state Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, who is pushing for the bill, both said they think the bill could pass easily in the House if a vote is allowed. The Senate passed the bill 31-6 this month.

“I’m voting for jobs,” says Chairman McKee

The House Agriculture Committee on Wednesday, March 6, 2013, voted 24-1 in favor of industrial hemp legislation.  Chairman Tom McKee (D-Cynthiana) made remarks prior to the vote stating “I’m voting for jobs and I’m voting for agriculture because if we truly see hundreds or even thousands of acres of industrial hemp grown, we are going to add to the receipts we now have.  It’s a crop we need to pursue.”

They say it is a miracle that a mother sheep can recognize her lamb in a herd of a thousand.  I can even do better than that.  Why, I can be in the middle of a million people on Manhattan Island and I can recognize my wife in no time, especially if I am somewhere I am not supposed to be.

Modern society has done wonders with DNA in pinpointing and labeling humans.  We as humans take pride in connecting our family history with important ancestors.  Sometimes I think it is good to research history and connect with our departed families, but we have to be careful in not taking a false pride.  We really had nothing to do with who we are.  We could just as easily have been born in the Australian Outback, as well as Pendleton County, Kentucky. The Good Lord determined where and to whom we were born.

Rep. McKee presenting a resolution to retiring University of Kentucky College of Agriculture Dean M. Scott Smith is attached.  Rep. McKee, at center right, and Dean Smith are flanked in the back by other legislators on the House Agriculture and Small Business Committee.

In some ways, the end of a legislative session is not much different from the final weeks of the college basketball season: Both take months of preparation and teamwork to be successful; and both are at their most exciting as the clock winds down.

That proved to be the case last week as the House and Senate looked for common ground on a wide variety of issues with only a handful of days remaining to meet.

Some of the legislative session’s most pressing issues have already been signed into law.  Last month, for example, many of our four-year public universities were given the authority to begin building more than $360 million worth of projects.  On Tuesday last week, Gov. Beshear signed into law House Bill 217, a needed update to last year’s far-reaching legislation that is cracking down on prescription-drug abuse.

Outside the Capitol this week, falling snow betrayed the calendar. Inside, there was no denying it’s March in Frankfort. Committee meetings, chamber proceedings and work days stretched well past daylight’s end.  Debates and discussions lengthened and intensified. Bills were passed with urgency from committees, from chambers, from the Legislature to the governor. It all signaled one thing: the end of session is near.

Kentucky has in place a process for improvement for struggling schools. When the State Department of Education cites a school for being persistently low-achieving, there are several available options the school board including restaffing, allowing an outside management company to lead a turnaround effort, or even closing. Senate Bill 176 will add another option: the local school board can allow a petition to convert the school to a charter school.  Please keep in mind that these are extreme measures for extreme situations. Unfortunately, the fact is that we have schools that are graduating only a small percentage of students. This is unacceptable and we must give parents, teachers, and communities every tool possible to make sure our kids are college or career ready.

The Kentucky Division of Water (DOW) is recognizing Groundwater Awareness Week, March 10-16, by emphasizing the importance of groundwater to communities as well as the actions Kentuckians can take to protect this vital natural resource.

Groundwater is the water from rain or other precipitation that soaks into the ground and moves downward to fill cracks and other openings in soils and rocks. It is an abundant natural resource and makes up 90 percent of all the freshwater in the world.