County students focus on fitness

Crittenden County High School has added two additional advance physical education classes this year to keep up with demand, and in a video news clip posted here, we visit the school.

The students are starting to feel better about themselves, and their grades are on the rise. Socially, mentally and physically, the CCHS student population is becoming better. For 45 minutes per day, Coach Denis Hodge says students "get a personal trainer for free."

In this video news clip, you'll also see the amazing physical progress of one student who will be profiled this week in our print edition.

Better dental care for Crittenden County?

According to a story over at kentucky.com, dental health in Kentucky is on the minds of our legislators. What do you think about this? Submit your comments at the bottom. Here's a snippet of the story:

Proponents say a bill before the House Health and Welfare Committee would be a first step toward dental education. House Bill 186 would require all children entering public school to have their teeth checked.

"By getting this check-up they can actually get in the mold of going to the dentist on a regular basis," said Rep. Tom Burch, D-Louisville, the bill's sponsor.

Kentucky has some of the worst oral health in the nation. The state ranks number two in the nation for toothlessness among adults, and number one in toothlessness among adults of working age.

The teeth of Kentucky's children are not much healthier. Approximately 42 percent of kids ages 2 to 4 have active cavities. At any given point, some 4,500 3-year-olds, or 8 percent of the population, have a tooth ache, said Julie McKee, the state dental director.

Click here for the full story.

State tournament bound

Crittenden County can be proud of its high school girls' basketball team. The Lady Rockets earned a trip to the All A Classic for the fourth time in about 20 years by defeating Lyon County Saturday night at Smithland where the Second Region championship was held. The girls will play in Richmond, Ky., this week in the All A Classic State Tournament.

You can see a video clip of the Lady Rockets cutting down the nets Saturday on the home page of The Press Online or clicking here to watch it on YouTube.

The Press Online will be adding much more audio and video news reporting in the future. It's part of our expansion on the Web. Please understand that we're primarily print journalists making our first foray into video reporting. Some of the stuff may seem a bit amateurish, but from our review of YouTube's content, that doesn't seem to matter as much as getting the content out to our readers and viewers.

If you have any suggestions about our step into the video realm, please share your thoughts and ideas. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy our multimedia approach to new online content.

Polishing our cultural intellect

Welcome to this new feature at The Crittenden Press Online. For the past few years, we've held off on the creation of a news and commentary blog, but it appears this type of information stream is becoming ever more popular.

Part-time Press contributing writer and online consultant Matthew T. Patton, formerly of Dycusburg and creator of http://www.dycusburg.com/ now of Pennsylvania, has been encouraging this move for a time. Readers can expect regular updates, so check back often.

On the home front, I can tell you that about 9,000 Crittenden Countians missed an enlightening cultural event Thursday night at Fohs Hall where the Community Arts Foundation sponsored a fireside chat with Kathleen Guess, a local artist and former school teacher.

While Fohs Hall's Nunn Room glowed from the hues jumping off the gas fireplace logs, Guess spent a solid hour and a half discussing art from the Enlightenment to the contemporary "American Gothic" painted in 1930 by Grant Wood. It was a bit cool inside the historic old building as temperatures dipped to near single digits outside, providing a perfect backdrop for Guess' warming presentation.

"American Gothic" is one of the most recognizable and most parodied pieces in American art history. The painting depicts an Iowa farm couple in front on a Carpenter Gothic style home. Does anyone know who were the real life models for the work?

For a small town, Marion offers a great number of opportunities to polish our cultural intellect. We can thank the Community Arts Foundation for many of those opportunities. Some of those in attendance Thursday were Mayor Mickey Alexander and his wife Susan, Nancy Paris, Linda Schumann and Kim Hunt.