One Thing I Love About Louisville: Shelly Zegart

To focus: One of the great things about Louisville is the enormous number of international "stars" in many fields who come here to speak and interact with us and with the university students, giving Louisville, for its size, unprecedented opportunities for access to great minds and great talent. To mention just a few, recently we heard the author Michael Pollan speak about the food chain and the health of the planet and his newest book, In Defense of Food, brought to us by the Kentucky Authors Forum. A few months ago we heard Gorbachov speak as part of the Global Issues Forum Series sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Ky and Indiana. We have heard Bob Woodward speak at Bellarmine, Anna Quindlen at the Library, and others at the Festival of Faiths. We've also recently been to the multiple venues around town exhibiting the art of Frederick Hart and I am not even beginning to list the many great musical opportunities, plays, art exhibitions, sports events and other incredible happenings going on at places large and small- like the Clifton Center, many of which are free of charge. Simply put cultural opportunities abound in Louisville.

In the early 90's when The Kentucky Quilt Project was producing a major quilt event called Louisville Celebrates the American Quilt we brought onto our team a woman from New York. She stayed downtown for several months and was constantly astonished at the level of the cultural opportunities easily accessible to her here that she could not even get tickets for in NY let alone having to pay the NY prices. What would she think if she came back now? It's virtually impossible to get to all the wonderful things happening in Louisville because there are just so many.  

Here are few things coming up soon that are definitely worth doing: go to the Gee's Bend quilt exhibition at the Speed over Valentines weekend when 16 of the most amazing elderly African American quiltmakers from a tiny isolated area of Alabama will be here to talk about their lives, their quilts, and how they have been nationally and internationally recognized by the art world (when all this started one of the quiltmakers said  she  didn't know what art was), buy tickets from the World Affairs Council to hear Colin Powell in April  and don't miss Greg Mortenson's talk about his book, Three Cups of Tea when he comes to the Authors Forum in April. Most of all stay tuned to Consuming Louisville for these and other special events, places and people.

Louisville is a treasure. We wouldn't want to live anywhere else. So many people, when they retire, leave for Florida and elsewhere. We are staying right here to become even more active members of this wonderful community and to be a part of all that Louisville has to offer.