The Notebook (Issue 17)
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The week of June 27th, 2022

It is an extraordinary gift and opportunity to invest in the health of one’s community. To do so endows the abundant crossroads of creativity and preservation, accessibility and innovation, tradition and celebration. 

 

In the years to come, we will have the great honor of seeing the University of Louisville’s Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute—New Vision of Health Campus spring to life in the historic “Heart of the City.” Stretching across West Muhammad Ali Street, this campus
will house interdepartmental offices and laboratories “where researchers [...] will study how natural, cultural, and personal environments affect human health.” 

 

This new campus will blossom from the roots cultivated by the racially integrated Business Women’s Club which broke ground in 1899 and served the city’s women for five decades. It will also grow from the grounds where the historic Black Business District once flourished in the 1950’s and early 60’s. Eventually leveled by urban renewal policies, many felt concerned that both the history and the cultural richness of the area had been laid to waste. 

 

And yet, decades later, we never stopped dreaming about the seeds of possibility buried beneath the surface.  Earlier this month, a partnership with the University of Louisville cemented what’s to come for the heart of our city and the many new opportunities therein. As we envision these new horizons, we invite you to invest with us, to dream with us, and to cultivate a New Vision of Health. 
The 2022 Cultural Pass is Here! Families in Greater Louisville will have the opportunity to visit 57 of the city’s arts and culture venues for free between June 1st and September 4th with the 2022 Cultural Pass. With both in-person and virtual opportunities to explore, all experiences are designed to inspire, foster creativity, and celebrate expression of heritage and culture. Children ages 0-21 can be registered through any local library website or by visiting your closest library branch. For more information on participating venues and offerings, visit https://fundforthearts.org/culturalpass/.
Chicago Archbishop Calls for Gun Safety Legislation. While many leaders for the Catholic Church have historically avoided political statements, Archbishop Blase Cupich spoke out hours after the Uvalde school shooting supporting the need for gun reform laws. In an interview with NPR, Cupich reinforced his position: "The Second Amendment, unlike the second commandment, did not come down from Sinai. There is an understanding that we all have in our hearts, engraved in our hearts, a natural law about the value of human life. And there is no amendment that can trump that." For more from his interview, you can listen or read here.

Kentucky Humanities: Celebrating 50 Years of Telling Kentucky's Story. For the 50th anniversary of Kentucky Humanities, Executive Director Bill Goodman will speak on five decades of preserving and celebrating Kentucky’s culture and contributions. The virtual event is sponsored by The Berry Center as part of its Josephine Ardery Foundation Distinguished Lecture Series and will be free for all participants. The discussion takes place on Thursday, June 30th at 7:00pm on Facebook Live. You will not need a Facebook account to watch the lecture — simply tune in! 
Nation’s First African-American Priest – and Current Candidate for Sainthood – Has Recently Unearthed Roots in Kentucky. Among the hills of western Meade County sits a three-mile wide basin once serving as the path of the Ohio River. Tucked even further into its hairpin curves sits a 216 year-old Catholic parish, St. Theresa of Avila. It was within this church cemetery that the grave of Matilda Hurd was recently discovered, the maternal grandmother of the country’s first African-American priest, Fr. Augustine Tolton. Baptismal records also revealed his mother and her five siblings were all baptized within the parish halls. While Fr. Tolton was born enslaved in Missouri, his parents escaped to the free state of Illinois where he was raised before eventually being ordained in Rome in 1886 at the age of 31. As Mr. Christopher Graney notes in the Vatican Observatory: “Out of St. Theresa grew a family whose faith roots ran so deep that, despite everything, they would bring forth as fruit the first African-American priest.”  For more on the “History and Geology in the Land of St. Theresa,” click through for more fascinating insights.
Save the Date: Festival of Faiths — November 9-12. The nationally acclaimed Festival of Faiths is back for its 26th year! This year’s theme, Sacred Stories: Contemplation and Connection, will focus on the power of both ancient and modern narratives as they inform, influence, and inspire living intentionally in our complex world. To sign-up for email updates, click here.

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