The Shelbyville Idea Podcast

Caleb O. Brown
  • 5.0 (1)
  • News

News and Notes from Shelbyville, Kentucky shelbyvilleidea.substack.com

Episodes

  1. 04/12/2025

    Derby Comics & Games' Tony Lakas on Building Community, Business Models, and Punitive Tariffs

    This episode was recorded on April 5, 2025. Thanks for reading The Shelbyville Idea! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this work. Caleb O. Brown: This is The Shelbyville Idea. I'm Caleb Brown. In this episode I speak with one of the owners of Shelbyville’s Derby Comics and Games, which opened in 2023. We discuss his background, the business of game and comic stores, how he thinks about making a business out of creating a community, and why Trump administration tariffs will disproportionately cost their customers and cause many similar stores to fail. Tony Lakas, one of the owners of Derby comics and games in Shelbyville, Kentucky. If you're not aware of where it is, you have to look it up because from the road, Mount Eden Road, it's not easy to see, but more people ought to know about it. And my family and I have been going there for a while and we were very excited when it opened because we thought, oh, great, a gathering place for nerds and geeks who are friendly and want to play games and are interested in that sort of community. So I was very excited when your store opened. Tell us about yourself. Tony Lakas: Okay, so if we just wanna get to the store part, in about 1994 I was just finishing up some college and then I went into the workforce. I didn't like the workforce and I was playing magic the gathering at the time, along with all the nerdy stuff beforehand battle Tech, all this. And there was no stores in Anderson. And I walked into a place called Anderson Comics, and then they had folks in there around a table playing magic at the gathering in this little comic book shop. It was an 800 square foot cinder block, tar roof, gravel parking lot. Oh, scary stuff. So I said, that is awesome 'cause there was no play spaces in stores at the time. This whole thing had just started up. So event centers were not a thing. All of them were boutique stores primarily, except for in college towns. TL: So I said, that's a cool idea. So I found out this guy was trying to sell. So I went and put a mortgage on my house with the help of my parents a little bit. So I am lucky in that regard that I did have the means to do it without taking out loans. And I bought the business for more money than was ever worth. But that was my first mistake, along with many others along the way. Even I make them now. So we started the store there and we called it The Danger Room, which is the most silly name you could ever think of, because the phone calls we would get would be the all sell guns there. And no one knew what a danger room was, other than like a very few limited, even geeks, even the magic players and stuff did not know what a danger room was. COB: So what is the reference there? TL: The danger room is the room in which the X-Men train for Marvel, where it's a safe place, but they can use all of their powers and things to full extent because the room is designed to withstand it. And then they also make dangers and obstacles and fire and everything else. So it's an obstacle course trading room for overpowered mutants and they could use, so it's safe and it's dangerous. So it's called the Danger Room. So that's what we named it. “… there is this pretty strict rule at our store is that we are all geeks. Leave your religion, your politics, and your hot button issues at the door and be prepared to speak with and interact with people who are not aligned with all of your beliefs.” COB: I see. TL: I didn't know anything about comics, so I got some person in that knew comics. So my roommate from college and the... I've always tried to surround myself with people who know more than I do 'cause I know a little bit of everything, but not a master of any. So anyway, so we opened up the store, we ran that, I moved it when Pokemon hit to a much larger location. We expanded to several locations at that point. As I got older, I was looking at possible semi-retirement at the ripe old age of 40. So we started paring down the stores as a deed of necessity because there was a shrinking market and everyone was jumping into the market at that point. There was several stores opening. COB: I wanna talk about that because you've talked about the different models of the way that these stores kind of run and some are better than others. And the community that I see at Derby comics and games, people playing magic, people playing, what's the Star Wars card? TL: Star Wars Unlimited. Thanks for reading The Shelbyville Idea! This post is public so feel free to share it. COB: Star Wars Unlimited. People play Lorcana, which is the Disney Trading card game, which my wife and I unfortunately discovered pretty early on. And we deeply regret dropping many hundreds of dollars on cards and playing constantly here. Now my wife has introduced my older son to the game, which is just terrible 'cause I think he really loves strategy games and he loves being competitive and that sort of thing. But talk about the models of different stores and why some fail and some succeed. TL: Whoa, okay. So I've mentored probably a dozen stores and probably two still exist. The biggest obstacle when you get into one of these businesses is that you get into it for a reason. I normally have a talk, I always tell everyone, if you're interested in opening up a store my first consultation is a steak dinner and a beer. COB: That they pay for. TL: Yeah, of course, of course. I mean, come on. COB: I understand that. TL: It could be a waffle and steak, steak, I mean, depending on what your budget is. But I'm more than happy. I want to talk to people about it 'cause I need to, and that first thing I have a discussion that says, wouldn't it be cool? And this is the thing, I talk to them, I go, okay, so why do you want a store? 'Cause wouldn't it be cool if, and then I have them list out what the wouldn't it be cools? It would be cool for me to have a place for my friends to hang out. It would be cool if I could play games all day. It would be cool if I could get my stuff at discount. It would be cool. Would it be cool, blah, blah. There's a whole list of reasons, there's no place here. I've never fit in just all kinds of different things. COB: Yes, the blue sky vision, if money were not an issue. TL: Yes. And then I have them do it “wouldn't be cool.” And then that's a lot of times they have to kind of stop and think, because they'd never even thought of the it would not be cool that I had to take a loan on my house or one of the games of the comic book industry collapses, which we might be in the middle of, but we'll get to that later. Just all types of things, that they're bad with money, their wife, there's a whole list. Again, I've done this so many times that there, if I recorded all the different answers, we'd have several pages to each. TL: And then once we get to the wouldn't it be cool and the wouldn't it be not cool? Then I have them weigh those things. I go look at these and tell me which one, and of course most of them get through that first... And I always tell them, if you can get through this first conversation, then we'll talk about some sort of real discussion about how to open payment and things like that. So the reason why stores fail is that they get into it and they don't know. They get into it underfunded, which I started underfunded. That's a whole other story, but I got lucky. They fail because they are a one trick pony that they specialize in. And this is my belief, again, there's other stores that do this, they do it very well and they've been around for years. TL: But to me, all that in one, like for many stores, wizards of the Coast is the owner and the creator of Dungeons and Dragons Magic the Gathering. And these two are like cornerstones of almost every game store nowadays. I mean, our game stores would not be so big without the advent of the collectible card game. There'd be a lot fewer stores out there. But if Wizard of the Coast was dry up tomorrow. COB: What's it called again? TL: Wizards of the Coast. COB: Wizards of the Coast. And they own Magic The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. TL: Yeah. And they are a wholly owned subsidiary of Hasbro. There's a lot of interesting stuff. We can talk about that too. But if that company was to dissolve today, I would dare say that one third of the stores in the country would close within a couple months simply. And two, like I said, underfunded, which also means undercapitalized, over leveraged. They don't have enough in savings or anything. Just like a standard household budget you should keep at least six months of expenses in reserve so that if something does go wrong or someone gets sick. So another reason why stores fail is because of illness or because they have partners that they're all great friends. And then that happens. And this is the first time I've had partners and I told them from the very beginning that we're gonna kick each other in the shins. We're not gonna be very friends anymore. It's just that's how it happens. But the partners I have fill a lot of my gaps and keep me grounded in what I'm doing. So I've been very blessed about that. So, other reasons why stores fail is that they can't get the credit. TL: They make a bad decision on product. Their business model does not allow for enough margin to be able to maintain the operations in which they want it to be. They have a vision of how the store goes, and then of course they want to be friends with everybody. So that's the other thing is what we called, what was it was called, we called them a pork chop shop. Basically, it's a term that we kind of coined amongst ourselves is how do you get the neighborhood dog to play with you and you put a pork chop around their neck. So symbolically we say that the game store for some people is basically the thing that allows them to build a community around them and allows them, so their entire outlook of who they are is intertwined in that store. And if a friend or a group of f

    44 min

  2. 03/11/2025

    Aaron Reed: Farmer's Husband, Gun Dealer, and State Senator

    Caleb Brown: This is The Shelbyville Idea. I'm Caleb Brown. In this episode, I speak with 7th District State Senator Republican Aaron Reed. We talk about his background, why his wife is the real farmer in the family, his time in Frankfort so far this legislative session, gun rights in the commonwealth, and why your humble host is still prevented from owning a few backyard chickens. We spoke February 15th, 2025. Aaron Reed, State Senator from the 7th Senate district in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. This is your first term as a state senator. Tell us about yourself. Aaron Reed: Yes, sir. Thanks for inviting me over today. I'm from right here in Shelby County. I grew up in Chestnut Grove, which is north central Shelby County. My dad was a state trooper. He moved to Kentucky in '76 and graduated from the Kentucky State Police Academy. And I was born in 1977 shortly thereafter. And I grew up, running through fields and hunting and fishing all through northern Shelby County. And went to Shelby County High school, graduated in '95 and went on to Morehead State University. And I went there on a shooting scholarship actually. I was an air rifle smallbore shooter and that got me a pretty good scholarship to go to Morehead. And I studied sociology and criminology there. And in '99, I graduated and went straight into the Navy. I actually enlisted in the Navy. COB: So you graduated but did not try to become an officer? AR: Well, if we got time, I'll tell you a quick story on why. So. COB: Okay, go ahead, go ahead. AR: It's kind of interesting. I was all over campus, constantly running or swimming at the pool, working out. It had become my religion. I'd actually was signed up to be in the Marine Corps. I had an Officer Candidate pathway. I was going to Officer Candidate School. I believe it was my sophomore summer and I got a letter shortly before I was supposed to leave saying they wanted to bump me to the next summer because they had more senior guys that were ready to go. So when they did that, it kind of ticked me off. I was ready to go. And then I discovered the Navy SEALs about that time and really dug in and decided that's what I want to do. The Marine Corps is great. My dad was a Marine and there's no prouder branch of service than the Marine Corps, and I wanted to be a part of that. However, I did discover what Navy SEALs were all about. And when I found that, I was all in. So I was running and swimming. AR: A fellow, a classmate of mine, who technically he was a year ahead of me but he had fallen back a semester and needed an extra semester to graduate. So on my, I guess it was my senior year, early on, we connected. His name was Christian Galeski. He was actually a male cheerleader at Morehead. We didn't give him any crap for that, but soon discovered that was not a bad gig that he had. But he was in pretty good shape. And his dad was an officer in the Navy. And when he found out that I wanted to be a SEAL, he had had this, a similar dream apparently, and we connected and we started working out together. And I had already had a connection, relationship with the Navy officer, selection officer. AR: And since Christian was about six months ahead of me or a semester ahead of me in school, I went ahead and made the connection, called him up, and the OSO came out and gave us the PT test, the swim, run, push-ups, pull-ups, all that stuff. And we took it together, kind of, and both of us maxed it out, same score. And OSO said, Congratulations, Christian, you got the slot. And that's when I found out that there's only one slot per fiscal year, which the fiscal year hadn't even happened yet. He was pre-planning, and because Christian was ahead of me in school, I had just trained my competition unknowingly. And so he got the slot. AR: And OSO told me, like, you know what? You won't be able to reapply for this for another year. And I was already kind of upset that I didn't go to SEAL training already with a friend of mine. His name was Colin Thomas. He was on the rifle team with me for a brief semester there. And I really wanted to go, but my parents talked me into graduating, and so I graduated college, and then I enlisted. COB: All right, fair enough. AR: I know it's a long, long way around. I like to tell people I'm a farmer's husband. And it's fairly accurate. We do a lot of stuff together, but she's the daily grind on the farm. She's the one that's going out and pulling calves and pulling lambs and doing all that. She's really good at it, and she enjoys it. COB: So you are now, you're in your... Before we get to legislative stuff before we started recording, you were talking about you're a farmer, but really your wife is the farmer. AR: I like to tell people I'm a farmer's husband. And it's fairly accurate. We do a lot of stuff together, but she's the daily grind on the farm. She's the one that's going out and pulling calves and pulling lambs and doing all that. She's really good at it, and she enjoys it. COB: When you think about the regulatory environment for cows, lambs, or other, frankly, other livestock or even grown agricultural products, what stands out to you as being especially sort of nonsensical? AR: There's a lot of regulations. We have the... COB: Right. But in terms of some of those might make sense. AR: That's right. COB: Those might be reasonable to protect adjoining properties or protect from virulent communicable diseases among livestock. But in terms of stuff that just to you doesn't make sense and ought to go away, either federal or state, what jumps out at you? AR: Well, for being a guy who has a lot of skin in the game in defending his country, I tend to look at things through a lens of freedom and liberty. And when I get into the agricultural parts of things and realize there's so much regulation, like raw milk is always, it seems to be an issue. I mean, our grandparents and great-grandparents grew up on raw milk. Yet we all are still here. We're alive. You would think that raw milk was poison and you're going to be getting some kind of disease and dying from salmonella or whatever. I just don't believe that's the case. I think there is a way that you can sell raw milk to people who are adults who know what they're buying. COB: So that, to me, that's key is whether or not... When you're an adult. AR: Well, you're an American as well. COB: And, and you can make a decision about... AR: A decision. Imagine that. COB: I don't necessarily have a problem with being confronted with a piece of paper that says, Hey, here are, here's what the government thinks you ought to know about raw milk or certain other agricultural products. But again, if I'm an adult, it's, I should be able to decide what goes into my body. AR: Yeah, and you would think in Kentucky we would, it wouldn't be such a big deal. I mean, we just in January of this year, our last dairy farm closed here in Kentucky. I don't know if you knew that or not. COB: No. AR: Yeah, we, I think we had over 300 in Shelby County. Maybe I misspoke. In Shelby County. Did I say Kentucky? COB: Yes. AR: Okay. So, yeah, in January the last dairy farm in Shelby County closed. And I grew up working in tobacco for Gary and Sheila Reese over in Todd's Point and they had a dairy farm and I miss those days. I mean it was definitely a really cool perspective on how much work, hard working Americans put into their livelihood. And dairy farmers, they were legit. COB: So do you have a sense of what role, either regulation or taxes or some other, some other government imposition has played a role in that farm going under or other farms deciding to get out of that business? AR: I'm not sure exactly why they closed up. I think it was just so much work and pressure from maybe the big dairy, the folks that sell your milk. I think it was just kind of getting too expensive to come out just for one farm. And there might have been some pressure in that regard. When there was 300 of them here, the truck would load up and just go to all the farms and pick up the milk. I think it just, logistically, it was getting too tough. COB: Okay, so like the industry changing then perhaps. AR: Yeah, that's my guess is not being a professional or a subject matter expert on the topic. COB: In the legislature... We are recording this, I guess about what, halfway through the legislative session or thereabouts? AR: Yeah, we swore in, I'm only, I've only been a senator for a little over a month now, and three weeks of that has been in a kind of a break. We came in for a week, January 7th, to the, it was a Tuesday. We swore in and then we had that Friday and we went on break for three weeks, which I liked because I was able to kind of meet with folks the whole time and get the lay of the land, learn more about the process of, with the LRC and putting bills together, things of that nature. COB: So what has been the priority as you have seen. And we can talk about the structure and I can specifically wag my finger at you and complain about the structure of leadership and the backbenchers in the General Assembly. But what have been the clear priorities from your caucus this session? I'm a big Second Amendment fan and I'm one of the guys that realizes and I preach to lots of folks that hunting has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. AR: Well, the very first thing that I got to vote on was House Bill 1, bringing the income tax, the state income tax, personal income tax down from 4 to 3.5%. And it was my first yes vote. I voted on that. But I was able to give a floor speech, my very first Senate floor speech. And I got to quote the great Ron Paul when I said that spending taxes is the symptoms, but spending is the disease. So I tried to reiterate that the goal here is to get us down to zero on income tax. However, there's some folks that wanted to go straight to zero. And I'd love to do that, but I am not so sure that we could jump straight to zero without causing some serious issues on the wa

    32 min

  3. 12/30/2023

    What's a 'Step Senator'? Adrienne Southworth discusses her unlikely path to representing Shelby County in the Kentucky Senate

    This episode was recorded April 29, 2023. All errors in transcription are the responsibility of Caleb O. Brown. Please inform us of transcription errors at shelbyvilleidea@icloud.com. Caleb O. Brown: This is the Shelbyville idea. I'm Caleb O. Brown. In this episode I speak with seventh District State Senator Republican Adrienne Southworth. Given the fact that no one in Shelby County has ever voted for her, she calls herself a step senator. We talk about the 2023 and 2024 legislative session, school choice and housing policy amid big ticket economic development projects in Kentucky. You are the seventh Senate District Senator for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Thank you for coming by. Adrienne Southworth: Well, thanks so much for having me and doing this. I think it's fantastic. I've heard a few other communities, folks other places in other parts of the state doing similar ideas, and so as soon as I heard that this was getting going, I was like, yes. COB: So I moved to Shelbyville in 2020, in June of 2020 In fact. AS: Well, Welcome. COB: Yes, thank you. You know, one of the questions that I have for local people is what can Shelbyville do to be more welcoming of new Shelby-villians? Not to be confused with Shelby-villains, which is a different group of people in terms of, you know, priorities at the state and but trying to make sure that your constituents are represented well. What are the things that you hear from constituents? These are the things that must be addressed at the state level AS: Well, we do hear a lot of things from our folks, more out in the rural areas that are still behind in basic services. There's always, you know, sewer line issues. There's a lot of new development going on that creates its own firestorm. Particularly when I have a question from a residential area that has borrowed land from like three different counties out on the county line. And that was a big kind of tangle, you know, but I think that a lot of people that are coming into Shelbyville are coming from surrounding area. There are some that are obviously coming from far away, but we have a lot of people, particularly from Louisville 'cause Louisville's gotten to be really not a great place overall, when compared to nearby locations such as Shelby County. And so a lot of my constituents in Shelby County are either long since moved from Louisville or even very fresh from Louisville, but just a lot coming that direction. Shelby County's a very growing place and I think they're looking for a place they can be safe and live a more peaceful life. 'cause Louisville's kind of crazy. COB: I hear that a lot from people. In fact, I know several people that I've just met in the last two years who also moved to Shelby County in 2020. I wonder, so Shelby County is one of the fastest growing counties in the state. One of my issues is housing. And I have noticed that in various parts of the state Mayfield, Shelby County is an example. It it's hard to create new housing. There are a lot of hurdles and hoops that you have to jump through in order to just get, there's a lot of discretion that local officials have when it comes to allowing certain construction. Where do you come down on issues of zoning and land use and housing? The Shelbyville Idea is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. AS: Well, I will start with the baseline of everything I start with, which is constitutional property rights. I really struggle with heavy zoning and planning property restrictions, permitting, that kind of thing. Because in the question of property rights, you're always trying to figure out how to protect this person's interest when it gets close to the fence of the other person's interest. And so, you know, trying to figure out how to make that realistic. I think this is definitely from the local perspective you just mentioned, discretion. Discretion is a very difficult subject to deal with in the law because you have to have it in so many ways. It's the only way and other times it is the problem. And so it's just a really weird thing to talk about. 'cause there's not really one principle I can just slather on and say, here's how it goes. AS: But when we create state laws, and you know, of course what I do from the state law perspective, we give the parameters of what you can and can't do as far as you know, what you're gonna create for your local requirements and so forth. And I feel like we've set up a system that is not overly serving the people, really anybody, because there seems to be more focus on the red tape hoops rather than truly looking at the property rights of all of the people involved. So, you know, we are all familiar with zoning changes and notifying all the neighbors and so forth, but I've had cases where even all the neighbors are literally petitioning for something and they still can't get it through. You know, it's like, well now what in the world? And so I think you have to figure out always, ultimately how many rights could possibly be violated from all the parties involved. And then where is the best place to kind of be the safest, I suppose you could call it like a little sandbar in the middle of that ocean. You know, that's kind of where I focus on this kind of a high level look at it. But all these little nitty gritty issues always end up landing in that exact same spot. COB: I hear from Andy Beshear, who's in a reelection year as a Democrat in a state that is trending red. I hear from him these massive job announcements of these large factories and other facilities to, you know, build EV batteries or various other industrial production. And I wonder where are these workers going to live in a lot of these places? Do you think there's a role for the state to sort of assert the property rights of local people to say, Hey, we're gonna build some housing here and please don't try and stop us. AS: Well, that's a really interesting question and definitely one of the first things in my mind two summers ago when they wanted us to vote on that battery plant deal. And you've just loaded about three different issues in here. So I will talk about the housing rights, I'll talk about the governor's economic development, and then I'll talk about business in general. So the housing right. It's really interesting, particularly around that Ford battery plant. While I do live in Lawrenceburg now, my husband's originally from Frankfort. My home county in Kentucky is Larue County, which is next door to Glendale where that Ford battery plant is. And that has been a talk, I mean, ever since I was very young, that was all we talked about in that area was oh, such and such is getting ready to go into Glendale. Everybody knew there was all of these rumors about stuff that was going in Glendale and none of it ever transpired. AS: So when I saw it come past me now in the Senate as a voting measure, I was like, oh my word, it's actually happening. But at the same time, I just felt really bad for all of my old community because I don't see how they're gonna pull something like that off. It's gonna be a disaster for the logistics, you know, traffic and so forth. Because these things aren't just growing. You know, typically businesses come in and they plop down like, you know, warehousing or a plant and then they kind of expand from there, right? This is a... We did $410 million just in state support. That's not including overall impact. And it's going to affect the community and it doesn't have all the other surrounding support around it. We put in money for like training for workers, but you're exactly right. We didn't put training or we didn't put money in for everything else that has to go around that. AS: And granted it's a piecemeal deal, you'll end up seeing that. But for example, you know, my sister lives in a suburban area, not in this state who clearly can't plan their way out of a paper bag because you can't just put 5000 homes on a two-lane road with no new turn lanes or nothing, and expect to not have serious issues with traffic. And it's gotten so bad to where, you know, they just can't go places certain times of the day period. You know, that's just not the way we want this community to be. It's just not a good idea at all. And so that takes me to these governor's announcements on businesses you're mentioning. That really concerns me because I actually, of course used to work in an administration on the executive branch side with Lieutenant Governor Jenean Hampton. And so I was in all the weekly staff meetings with the governor's, high level staff, the cabinet and all that. So I don't know all the details, but when you have a government literally deciding who is gonna do business here and how much money we're gonna give them to come, it really concerns me. AS: And you saw exactly what was being done. No doubt. The governor does work on some economic development initiatives and trying to work deals out with companies trying to talk them into, Kentucky's a great place, please come here. We could really use you. That kind of thing. But the majority of the projects that I saw were not governor, had put the time and effort blood, sweat, and tears into it. It was quick, let's catch this PR while it's here so we can stick our name on something in the newspaper again this week. And they're just always looking for PR. And I struggle with that 'cause people just don't really know how it all really works. But in particular around this project, and look, this project could have easily been a project that the governor worked on for a long time, not in this administration. AS: So I don't know all the details, but when you have a government literally deciding who is gonna do business here and how much money we're gonna give them to come, it really concerns me. because you're kind of putting a finger on the scale and creating an artificial situation where this business may no

    42 min
  4. Latin, Cursive, and Human Virtue: A Little School for Big Ideas with Kathy Fehder (Episode 2)

    05/15/2023

    Latin, Cursive, and Human Virtue: A Little School for Big Ideas with Kathy Fehder (Episode 2)

    This interview was conducted on April 15, 2023. If you’d like to comment, feel free to add yourself as a paid subscriber, join our Facebook group, or respond on Twitter. The transcript below was generated electronically. Some errors may remain. Please send any corrections to ShelbyvilleIdea - at - iCloud - dot - com. Caleb O. Brown: Kathy Fehder, you are the Principal of Corpus Christi Classical Academy, which has, as of this school year, been relocated to Shelbyville, Kentucky. So tell me about Corpus Christi. Kathy Fehder: Okay. Well, it started out actually as Our Lady Guadalupe 23 years ago. And we were blessed to move into this location here in Shelbyville, right in the center of town, this past June. And we found that there's a vibrant community there, and so the result has been a lot more people really seeing the school. It's becoming more visible in this location, and so more people have come into the school as a result. COB: So the registrants, the young people, there are a lot more this year than there were last year? KF: Yes. Well, the thing is, and particularly since we didn't move in until actually July 1st, the end of June, there were people who hadn't heard about us in our other location in Simpsonville, even though it was there all those years. It was originally Our Lady Guadalupe and they had a high school called Corpus Christi. But at some point, we thought it best to merge, and so the name for the entire school is Corpus Christi and it became classical in 2015. So I've been there since 2016, this is my seventh year. “Our emphasis begins on human virtue, what it is to make a man, a person, virtuous. And then that moves into what we hoped will become young saints, people who understand there is a higher power.” Kath Fehder COB: So, tell me about the... because when I described Corpus Christi... Full disclosure, to listeners, my daughter attends Corpus Christi Classical Academy. When I describe the school to people, because my family, we're not Catholic, but when we interviewed at your school, it was immediately clear to us that this was a great... Gonna be a great option for our daughter. And so, when I describe it I say, "It is a Montessori Classical Academy Catholic school." What... Take those in turn if you want, but what do all those things mean? KF: Okay, Catholic school means that definitely we teach the Catholic faith. Our emphasis begins on human virtue, what it is to make a man, a person, virtuous. And then that moves into what we hoped will become young saints, people who understand there is a higher power. For Catholics, Christ is the pillar of truth, and so we bring all of that into the classroom. The classical tradition comes out of the church as well, we call it Catholic, and then classical because the emphasis of Catholic schools... Excuse me, of classical schools is truth, beauty, and goodness. So, like I've told you, I'm not a reporter, I'm not a public speaker, but I can recognize beauty and truth and goodness, and that's what we really want to infuse into our students who come into the school. They recognize that there is so much of that in the world even though it doesn't always seem that way. What is not, can be more dramatic, but it is to me, an invitation to know God if you understand beauty and truth and goodness. COB: So that's the Catholic portion of the... KF: Catholic and classical. COB: Oh, it is classical. KF: Classical, truth, beauty and goodness. And so... COB: Catholic and classical? KF: Yes. And so we do have an emphasis on... When we talk about things like beauty, we look at the literature that we study. We do not read pop culture, with... I believe that kids get plenty of that at home and in their other environments. But we read classical books, books that kind of have elevated vocabulary and that can really lead kids to understand there's a much bigger understanding, philosophy of life, than what greets the eye. And so we do have this emphasis on our supernatural destiny, but we read books, totally appropriate, developmentally, like things like Robin Hood, King Arthur. And so we do have an emphasis on our Western heritage because it was out of that that our faith sprung. So all of this is Catholic and classical. And as they develop, we also introduce things that really touch upon that beauty element, like cursive. But I want people to understand that cursive isn't just about beauty, it actually has a physiological developmental advantage that unfortunately many have abandoned. But it crosses the midline, there's so much to be said about cursive alone. COB: I have heard that cursive improves your memory of material that you are studying. KF: Yes, it does. Cursive enhances focus, attention to details, of course you can take quicker notes, and fluency of thought. Like I said, it crosses the midline, left brain, right brain, it is so... It's a game changer for people to understand how important cursive is to kids, it strengthens their memory. And in that vein, I would say classical also means that we study the Latin language. And Latin is not a modern language, I'm fluent in Spanish, but Latin is a classical ancient... We call it an ancient language, which is more like math, because it organizes thought and builds those... It gives us that building block, the grammar, to understand our own language. 50% of the English language comes from Latin. COB: So I had Latin in high school. KF: Did you? COB: And when we... When you and I spoke initially about whether or not... About setting up an interview and visiting your school, you said, "Yeah, we teach cursive and Latin." And I was like, okay, I'm sold. [laughter] I'm in... KF: I love it. COB: I'm in. And... KF: Not everyone understands that. COB: Yeah, and so... And I noticed at at a different point when I visited the school, that the Latin textbook that you use, is the Latin textbook that I used in high school. KF: No way, seriously? COB: Yes. Thank you Mrs. Richter of Calloway County High School for... KF: I love it. COB: … teaching Latin to us. And I really appreciate it, and you were talking about not being fluent in Latin, and I thought, well, it's kind of hard to find your local Latin community... KF: It is. COB: … your local group of Romans, to practice your Latin with. But it is... It goes to the core of how Western Romance Languages all developed and... KF: Totally. COB: It is a language that is structured in such a way that you can just give a random assortment of words, and they all already have their place in the sentence. KF: Totally. This is one thing. We study ancient Greece and Rome, and the thing is, we say Greeks with their brains because they were philosophers, they just... They were all about that level of understanding the human person. And then we say the Greeks with their brains, but the Romans with their drains. Because the Romans were engineers, we say, "All roads lead to Rome." And it was from there that so much spread out to the rest of the world. And so that engineering, that organized way of thought really builds upon everything we do in our own language, and that is why I can say that every year, not only with the National Latin Exam, but with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the ITBS, which is the standardized test we give to the whole school, our scores are the very minimum one year above grade level. But for example, I've had... This year, I had seventh graders testing in the college level across the board, and that's common, eighth graders, etcetera. COB: I wanted to make a note of that too, because... And I won't name the other schools, but we toured three schools when we were deciding where to send our daughter, and yours was the first. And I can remember you handed us a folder, and the first page of that... Inside that folder, the first piece of paper was a list of grade... Relative to grade level performance of students at your school. And the other two schools that we visited, we had to ask... One, we had to ask for that information because that's relevant information to parents who are trying to make a choice about a school, and neither one could provide it. KF: Yeah, it's very interesting. A lot of schools, I'm sorry to say, are getting away from... Well, there's not always a clear curriculum, that's one thing I do like about what we're doing, among many things. And that is, we have a fluid curriculum year after year. And I've been in other schools, I have five kids myself, they're all in their 20s now, well, one just turned 30. But essentially, you can ask for a curriculum, but from one grade to the next, oftentimes it's left up to the teacher to determine, and there isn't a fluid curriculum. For us, we try to also make it thematic. So all the classes are touching upon similar subject areas as much as possible. Specifically, we connect literature with history too, because that just builds up more knowledge of it, and I am not one to say, I'm gonna pull punches on kids. I like kids to understand expectations, so they know that this is the pattern and the standard for how we're going to present this. And it helps them to get orderly in their own understanding of such things as not just studying, but taking notes and things like that. KF: But... So one year might be a study of Greece, next year might be the study of Rome, the next year might be the middle ages, which are largely ignored in many places, but they have so much to offer. And then "the modern world" discovering, whatever. So, this also helps kids to remember, and all that we do is to strengthen the memory. I'll say one more thing about classical schools, recitation is a program that personally I can't say enough about. It not only builds confidence in the children, the students, because they can remember long beautiful poems and things like that, but it also strengthens their memory. What I found is many people today, unfortunately many kids, they're putting their memories into their devices, and so

    32 min

  5. 05/01/2023

    Backyard Chickens, Partying Downtown, and Zoning with Sally Pollett Zaring (Episode 1)

    This interview was conducted on January 23, 2023. If you’d like to comment, feel free to add yourself as a paid subscriber, join our Facebook group, or respond on Twitter. The transcript below was generated electronically. Some errors may remain. Please send any corrections to ShelbyvilleIdea - at - iCloud - dot - com. Caleb O. Brown: Sally Pollett Zaring. Sally Pollett Zaring: Yes. COB: Tell me about yourself. I am relatively new to Shelbyville, Kentucky and I am just now learning about the people to know. You come highly recommended by several people who as far as I know do not know each other, and you're a new member of the City Council, so I can't ask you about terrible votes that you've made in the past because you haven't made... SPZ: Those are coming maybe COB: Maybe they're coming but, so tell us about your background and what... Just, what do I need to know about Shelbyville? SPZ: Well, I'm a small town girl, so I grew up here and actually just a little bit down the road, but I went away to college and I was gonna be a geologist and decided that I couldn't talk to rocks all day. People are my jam. So I changed my major to education, and both of my parents are teachers, my... They still are teaching in some way or another, but teaching was a calling for me because I'm all about building relationships, so I studied in Charleston in College of Charleston and at Vanderbilt and got some degrees there, but I wanted to come back to my hometown to serve as an educator into the town that I love, met my husband on a blind date, who grew up a little bit down the road from me, I didn't know him 'cause he's a little bit older, but... You know, we won't disclose ages. [laughter] COB: Good. That's much appreciated. SPZ: Yeah, yeah. But... So I've been at Painted Stone teaching for the last 21 years. I was there the first day the school opened and never wanna leave, so I think through COVID, a lot of us had time to sit and reflect and think about how we wanna change the world and what we want to do to make our little world better and teaching is not something that I want to change or leave, but I thought about how I could serve the public in other ways, so city council and local government is what I thought I could do to help make an impact. It's real important to me that I build relationships with the people that I work with, and so I've had several years of getting really close to families that I work with through school, and I noticed that there were some people new to town that didn't know everything Shelbyville had to offer, you know, the coolest tailor in town or the local coffee shop, the story behind those things, and so I found myself sharing my love for the town with the new families that moved in, but also I've been able to kind of get older families that have been here connected to resources that they need or get their kids involved with the library and the parks and things, so I thought this would be a good balance for me to serve outside of school and still serve the two things I'm passionate about, people and my town. COB: Well, I have yet to adequately prepare the list of questions that I want to ask everyone in government, and you're new to government, so I will write those questions and reserve those for other people. SPZ: [laughter] Great. “… we want to have a healthy community where people are active and involved and connected, and also I feel like our downtown is a really ... That's the heartbeat of our town …” Sally Pollett Zaring COB: But, why City Council? Why not fiscal court? Why not something else? Is this a stepping stone or is this just like, this seems like a logical next step for you? SPZ: Well, I think City Council is a little bit smaller than fiscal court. My dad served on fiscal court for 16 years, and so that's kind of his arena, and I wanted to do something a little different, but I feel like the last few months have been so inspiring and have sparked new passions within me that I didn't know. I mean, who thinks you're gonna get excited learning about code enforcement and cost of living adjustments. We don't talk about this in my kindergarten classroom, but... So there has been this fire that is burning inside of me, so I feel really blessed that I have this opportunity to serve in this manner, and I'll see where it goes, I would love to serve again in two years, we'll see, but it's just really been exciting. COB: For those who are unfamiliar or don't live in Kentucky, don't understand how the city government works in Kentucky, what is the purview of the City Council and what is the relationship that the City Council has with the mayor? SPZ: So in Kentucky, we have... Our county government consists of our judge executive and our magistrates, and so they make... They are divided into regions, and each magistrate represents a small region of the county, the city is represented in fiscal court through... Each magistrate has a little piece of the city that they represent, however, the smaller government is our city government and that's our city council, so we have our six council members and our mayor, and people typically explain it as... Or they usually will say, "Oh, you work for the mayor." No, we work together. And so with that... COB: And I suspect at times you also work against the mayor. SPZ: Well, you know, I haven't had that experience, but I'm sure that has happened in the past perhaps. So with the council, our six members are the ones that do make the ordinances and the orders, the mayor will bring suggestions and topics and has put us on committees and divided the council into different groups, you know, made us a part of different committees to be involved within the city, so that way we have a little pulse on what's going on in the city and we can respond and share information with the mayor to help make decisions collectively. So we could come up with a suggestion for an ordinance and the council members along with the city attorney would help write the language for the ordinance, and we would vote on it together. Now, since we're a six member team, there's occasion we could be split, and that's when we need the mayor to help break that tie. COB: So the mayor is Vice President of the United States in the sense that he only gets to vote on special occasions. SPZ: Yes, yes. COB: Okay, great, and then... So when you run for office, as I understand it, you're a quite popular person, of the people that I've talked to who know you, they say, "Oh, I love her," and... So that's... SPZ: Well, I just surround myself with good people, that's the... COB: Okay. Well, there you go. But when you come in office, I can imagine someone like you could run for office and it would be, "I, Sally, I'm running for office," and they're like, "Oh well, great, I'll support you," but other people would have to run on something, which is to say they'd have to run on, "I wanna do X, Y and Z in Shelbyville." To the extent that that was the case, what did you run on? SPZ: So my lens, I have tried to keep. So I wanna make this a town that I'm proud to have my family in and I want other people to feel that way, so there's a lot of pieces of that, public safety, we wanna have a town that has police and fire and all of our services are fully funded to the best of our capability, but also we wanna have a great park system, we want to have a healthy community where people are active and involved and connected, and also I feel like our downtown is a really... That's the heartbeat of our town, and downtown Shelbyville is what gives us that unique look and that's our special stamp on Kentucky, there's no other town like Shelbyville in downtown. So I really want to preserve the things that make us unique and make us special, but also just enhance some things and think about some tweaks that we can make to make these things better for everybody, a town you're proud to call home. COB: So one of the questions I've been kicking around to ask essentially everyone in government, one of those questions really boils down to, what can Shelbyville do as a matter of policy to make itself more welcoming to new Shelbyvillians? SPZ: That's a great question. I think one thing that we have done that I would like to continue is we have a committee called the Downtown Reinvestment Fund, and that is part of City Council's budget in which we are putting money aside to invest in our buildings, historic vacant buildings downtown to attract businesses, so that's a matching grant, if there's a new business that wants to come in town, they can apply for this grant, and we as a city can help get them... You know, they buy the building, they put their business there and after the project is complete, we are able to provide them with a matching grant up to a certain amount of money, of course, but... COB: Who owns those buildings? SPZ: Those are private owners. So any of the buildings that are vacant downtown around our Main Street and Washington and all of the cool areas around Sixth Street too... Yeah, there are a lot of vacant buildings that don't have businesses in them, so I would like to continue to see money go towards those things, helping small business owners, but also helping keep that vibe and enhance that vibe of our downtown. I think that's one thing that would be important to keep within our budget, but also ordinances that are attractive to small businesses. COB: Okay, what about new residents? SPZ: Ordinances for new residents? COB: No, I mean making Shelbyville more attractive to be more welcoming. How can Shelbyville be more welcoming to new Shelbyvillians? SPZ: I think... I would say probably one of the most important things I feel is the safety... I think a lot of us feel safe here, and as we are a growing community, I would like to see that continue, so I think safety and funding things for safety is important, but also there are some ordinances that may seem a little tedious or annoying but could be

    27 min
  • 5 Episodes

About

News and Notes from Shelbyville, Kentucky shelbyvilleidea.substack.com

Information