Rotary’s International Dinner is an interesting and worthwhile event

If you are looking for something a little bit outside of the usual to do this weekend, let me recommend the Rotary International Dinner that will be taking place Saturday at the Laurel-London Optimist Club in London starting at 7 p.m.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

The annual dinner is a joint event hosted by the London Rotary Club and the Corbin Rotary Club, and it alternates each year between London and Corbin.

My wife, Cecelia, and I attended this event last year when it was held at The Corbin Arena and had a really good time. There was food from more than 20 different countries cooked for local guests.

I’m what you might call a picky eater and am not usually down for trying new things, but I stepped out of my comfort zone last year and tried something new.

I didn’t like all of the new foods that I tried, but I did enjoy a few of them.

Tickets are a little pricey at $40 each, but proceeds from the event go to the Rotary International Foundation to help the final drive to eradicate polio worldwide, which is a worthy cause.

If you are interested in attending, tickets are sold by Rotary members in London and Corbin.

Now for a few other random thoughts before I conclude this column.

• I was saddened to hear about the recent passing of Marc Hensley, who served as the director of Mountain Outreach at the University of the Cumberlands for 17 years. It seemed like that whenever I talked to him, Marc usually had a smile on his face.

He always struck me as someone, who had a passion for missions and helping people, which Mountain Outreach certainly did during his tenure.

He died on April 3 at the age of 58. His funeral was held Friday at Main Street Baptist Church in Williamsburg.

• On Monday, a gunman killed five people and injured several others during a shooting at bank in Louisville. A friend of mine has a son, who happened to be in Louisville Monday on a school trip. He had a bit of a stressful morning until he could get a hold of his son to make sure that he was OK.

Recently, a gunman killed six people during an attack on a private school in Nashville. I know another person, who had grandchildren in that school when this shooting happened.

These kind of things are starting to hit a little bit too close to home.

A part of me wishes that I understood what drives someone to kill multiple people like this. If I am being totally honest though, I am not entirely sure that I want to understand these people that well.

Some people scream that access to guns is to blame for the problem. Is there some merit to this argument? Maybe.

When I was in high school though it wasn’t uncommon to see vehicles in the student parking lot with rifles and shotguns inside as a lot of my fellow students loved to hunt. Some other folks probably had handguns inside their vehicles in the glove box.

Even though guns were just a few hundred yards away not even the meanest kid ever got mad enough that they grabbed a gun and started shooting people when I was in high school.

Somewhere along the way, people changed and in many cases not for the better.

I wish I had the answers but I don’t.

Maybe we start making society better by giving someone a kind word when they appear to be down or making a kind gesture to them. Not every time mind you, but sometimes this might be enough to keep someone from getting to the point where they snap and they hurt someone else or possibly hurt themselves, which is something we have seen far too much of lately.

• Before I conclude this column, let me clarify something after getting a phone call last week about something in the public records section of the newspaper.

When you read in the district court records that someone has received a 30-day jail sentence but that sentence is probated or conditionally discharged, it doesn’t mean this particular person had to serve 30 days in jail. Probated or conditionally discharged means that the person doesn’t have to serve the jail sentence if they stay out of trouble for a set period of time, which is usually 12 to 24 months in most misdemeanor cases.