Author: Tom Eblen

The annual Mentelle Neighborhood picnic will be Sunday, Sept. 16, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the Cramer Avenue end of the Mentelle Park median. The Mentelle Neighborhood Association will furnish hamburgers and hotdogs; please bring your own drinks and a side dish to share. There will be music and special activities for kids. Everyone who lives in the neighborhood is encouraged to attend.

Mentelle Neighborhood is home to many writers and artists. Two of those writers have new books published.

Willie Davis will read from his novel, Nightwolf, at 6 p.m. Thursday (Aug. 30) at Brier Books, 319 S. Ashland Ave. Click here for more information.   Willie is a winner of the Katherine Anne Porter and Willesden Herald International Short Story prizes. His work has appeared in Salon, The Guardian, The Kenyon Review and other publications.

Jeff Worley’s latest poetry collection, Lucky Talk, also is available at Brier Books, where he gave a reading Aug. 14. Worley, an award-winning poet, has published nine previous collections and edited What Comes Down to Us: 25 Contemporary Kentucky Poets, which included a forward by another Mentelle neighborhood resident, Ed McClanahan.

Both Willie and Jeff live on Aurora Avenue, as does Brier Books co-owner Samantha Sipple, a poet and short-story writer.

Mark your calendar for two important Mentelle Neighborhood events. More details to follow:

• The neighborhood picnic will be Sunday, Sept. 16, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the Cramer Avenue end of the Mentelle Park median. The Mentelle Neighborhood Association will furnish hamburgers and hotdogs; please bring your own drinks and a side dish to share. There will be music and special activities for kids. All neighborhood residents are encouraged to attend.
• The Mentelle Neighborhood Association’s annual membership meeting, which will include the election of officers, will be Wednesday, Oct. 24, at 6:30 p.m. in the cafeteria of Ashland Elementary School.

Holly Salisbury, a longtime Mentelle Park resident and retired director of UK’s Singletary Center for the Arts, died unexpectedly Saturday after a routine medical procedure. She was 74.

A celebration of her life is planned at 11 a.m. Thursday at the Singletary Center, 405 Rose St.

Holly, a visual artist and art teacher, was active in the neighborhood. She will be greatly missed by her friends and neighbors.

Holly moved to Mentelle Park in 1978, renting the house of a family friend. It was in front of that house her father had proposed to her mother, she said in a Herald-Leader article in 2000. In 1986, Holly bought the house next door and lived there the rest of her life.

“I laugh and say I was meant to be in Mentelle Park,” she told reporter Bettye Lee Mastin.

For more information about Holly’s life, read this Herald-Leader news story and her obituary. Memorial contributions are suggested to Lexington’s Central Music Academy or Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra.

Randolph Runyon, who in May 2016 attended our historic marker dedication on Mentelle Park and spoke at our neighborhood history program, has published his book, The Mentelles: Mary Todd Lincoln, Henry Clay, and the Immigrant Family Who Educated Antebellum Kentucky  (University Press of Kentucky, $40).

It is an excellent read, with a lot of surprising information about this famous French couple Lexingtonians didn’t know as well as they thought. I have written my Herald-Leader column for Sunday’s paper about it. You can read it now online by clicking here.

The book is available in local bookstores, such as Brier Books on South Ashland Avenue or Wild Fig Books on North Limestone Street.

Runyon will be speaking and signing the book at a July 18 luncheon at Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate. Click here for reservations and more information. Ashland has offered to give Mentelle Neighborhood Association members the Ashland members’ discount on tickets. Space is limited.

It may be tiny, but you can’t miss the Tiny Library installed June 5 on the large lawn in front of Temple Adath Israel, 124 North Ashland Ave.

An initiative of the Lexington Public Library, it is one of about 30 book-filled boxes around the city. More installations are planned, but for the moment the box at Temple Adath Israel is the only Tiny Library in the Mentelle, Bell Court, Kenwick, Ashland Park, Chevy Chase, Fairway, Idle Hour, Shriners and Lansdowne Merrick neighborhoods along Richmond and Tates Creek roads.

(Mentelle neighborhood already has a couple of Little Library boxes neighbors have installed that aren’t affiliated with the Lexington Public Library.)

The idea is that passersby may take a book for themselves to enjoy or leave one that others might like. The library’s website describes a Tiny Library as a “miniature community center for sharing books. It’s hyper-local — right in your neighborhood — and it’s free, easy and fun.”

The box arrived at The Temple already stocked with books for children and adults. The Temple will be responsible for making sure it remains filled with an enticing array of choices.

The Tiny Library boxes were designed by Nomi Design, a Lexington firm that donated its services. They sit on a concrete base and are made of steel, wood and plexiglass, “with an eye toward elegance, durability and ease of use,” according Lexpublib.org. Sponsorship of a Tiny Library is $250 per installation. For more information, go to Lexpublib.org/tinylibrary.

Thanks to everyone who came out for the neighborhood garden party social Sunday afternoon. Special thanks to our hosts: Page Etchison, Esther Hurlburt, Shelby Reynolds and David Bartley. The event was made even more special by our talented neighborhood musicians: Daniel Mohler, Andres Cruz and Elaine Cook.  What a lovely afternoon.

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Take a walk down the Mentelle Park Median.  It looks beautiful thanks to the work of an amazing group of volunteers who came out last Friday and Saturday.   This group contributed a total of at least 50 hours’ sweat equity weeding, trimming trees and bushes, and spreading topsoil and mulch.  Special thanks to all for their hard work and expertise: Ray DeBolt, Jill DeBolt, Gil Dunn, Tom Eblen, Bill Fortune, Susan Janacek, Tom Lillich, Andrew Parker, Patrick Eavenson and Sam Wynn.

—  Jill DeBolt, Mentelle Median Committee co-chair.

Mentelle Neighborhood’s second annual all-neighborhood yard sale is Saturday morning.  Any neighbors planning to have their own yard sale that day are asked to chip in $5 to help advertise the neighborhood sale. If you want to participate, please email President Ann Olliges.

If you have good items you would like to get rid of, but don’t want to organize a sale in your yard, you may donate them to the Mentelle Neighborhood Association. The association will have a booth on the Mentelle Median near Cramer Avenue, with all proceeds going to the association. Please bring your items to the booth at 7 a.m. to help with pricing and display.