A couple of weeks ago I was sitting with Tom Wolfe outside his Tom’s Pot Pies restaurant near the corner of Court and Vine streets downtown, and he suddenly pointed his long arm like a basketball center about to dunk. “That’s the dwarf,” he said dramatically, his eyebrows pointed for emphasis.  

On a recent Sunday night episode of 'Music from the Hills of Home,' the radio show I host with Wayne Clyburn on WNKU (89.7 FM), a listener brought up an interesting and timely question: 'How do you season an iron skillet?'  

I once opened for Ralph Stanley somewhere north of Cincinnati in a pre-fabricated building with one of those signs out front where you can change the letters by hand. It said, "Tonite Ralph Stanley," and that was about all it needed to say. When Ralph and the Clinch Mountain Boys took the stage, there was an uproar. "Stone Walls and Steel Bars," somebody yelled. "Rabbit in a Log!" "Clinch Mountain Backstop!" Ralph looked flinty, with a chiseled face straight out of southeastern "Virginny" where he was born and still lives.  

By the time you read this column, I'll have been inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Museum (IBMM) in Owensboro, Ky., which is right across the road from Rosine, the birthplace of Bill M  

On warm spring nights, the place to be is the corner of Vine and Court streets downtown. Universal Grille has tables set up along the sidewalk, roped off so they can serve alcohol outside legally.   

Just when I think I've seen it all, someone like Jeremy Allen Millsaps shows up. Then I'm amazed all over again at the range of artistic activity that proliferates in a buttoned-down city like Cinc  

I've been happier lately -- busy, moving with a new kind of buoyancy. The windows on my new "mid-town" apartment face south, and when the sun comes out it looks light and airy and gives my soul a l  

Piatt Park downtown is lit up for Christmas. Its graceful wintery arches are hung with garlands of swag, and the twinkling night lights make it look like a snow globe someone shook up and left to se  

Carteaux and Leslie, a fine used book store just a few doors from the corner of Vine and Court streets, is presenting an exhibition called Rensler's Revisited: A Fresh Look at Vintage Works From a V  

I started working at WNKU (89.7 FM) in November 1989, when popular Bluegrass DJ Ed McDonald left to pursue other opportunities. Sheila Rue, the station's general manager, asked me to host the show,