Community Guide is informative and helpful

I especially like the cover photo of our 2020 edition of the Community Guide magazine. It features Constable Ron “Bubba” Bowling and Judge Executive Pat White dressed in their garb for the Kayaking for Kids.

Don Estep is Publisher of The News Journal.

The cover is comical, but inside the magazine is valuable information.

You’ll find telephone numbers and information for emergency services, local government, utilities, churches, businesses and more.

It is a magazine you’ll want to keep handy throughout the year. I use it often and I find it easier to find the information I seek rather than trying to find it on Google or asking Siri on my telephone.

We have inserted a copy of the magazine in this edition of the News Journal for our local subscribers in the Corbin and Williamsburg area. If you want a copy come by one of our offices or visit any of the advertisers in it. They are free.

As you will recall, years ago we relied on a telephone book to find a number or address of services we needed. Our Community Guide offers much more than that. Thanks to the advertisers that make it possible. Hope you enjoy and use your copy.

• I can’t say or write anything that hasn’t already been said about the times we are going through. But as the health advisors have told us staying apart is the best weapon we have against this virus.

Coping by staying at home day after day is testing us. I read, watch TV, listen to music, and work on the computer.

As I read the Jim Host book last week he talked about having the first field reporter at a football game in the late 1960s.

That reminded me that in 1960 Ron Stewart, the engineer at the University of Kentucky radio station, WBKY, developed a remote head set for us to use at UK’s football games. It was a new development and a reporter at the school’s newspaper took a picture of me with the headset on. I still have a copy of it.

Since we only had one way communication from the pressbox at the top of Stoll Field we would use different colored flags to signal to the field reporter.

My spotter would hold up a yellow flag to alert the reporter to stand by and then when we were ready for him to talk he would then hold up a green flag.

The technology back then had not developed to what we have now. To practice announcing in front of a TV camera at the Radio Arts Department we used a cardboard box mounted on a stand and taped a soup can to it for the lens. That’s right, a cardboard box. We didn’t have cameras and no teleprompters. We read from a script.

Yes, it was primitive. I took part in doing radio dramas on the air. We did the live shows with sound effects, squeaking doors and all. That is how I got my start 60 years ago in radio at UK. It was fun but it was also educational. We learned to speak properly.