Only a month to go for Freak Power at the Frazier ("Hunter S. Thompson’s Campaign for Sheriff").

This is a wonderful exhibit. We also enjoyed the Frazier's bourbon tasting. The tastings continue but the exhibit is in its last month.

Freak Power: Hunter S. Thompson’s Campaign for Sheriff
Curated by Daniel Joseph Watkins
April 30 – September 2, 2019.

Hunter S. Thompson came home from the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago disgusted yet motivated by what he’d seen: protests violently suppressed, riots, corrupt politicians, and abusive cops. Back in Aspen, he found more of the same. The local police and sheriff’s departments were targeting hippies, charging them with absurd crimes, harassing them on the streets, and trying to push them out of town. He knew something had to be done and he realized it had to be done by people like himself. The hippies, intellectuals, and freaks had remained silent long enough. The time had come to organize and seize political power.

Freak Power tells the story of Hunter’s plan to become Sheriff, take control of Aspen, and transform it from a conservative mining town into a mecca for artists, rebels, and activists. Through original print material from the campaign, photographs, and political art, Freak Power chronicles a little-known period in Hunter S. Thompson’s life, a period when he wrote prolifically about politics, the environment, drugs, and American values. As the conservatives and freaks battled it out, the campaign became fraught with violence, accusations, and moments of absurdity that bordered on fiction. As weird a tale as Thompson ever wrote, his own forays into politics may have been his wittiest and most thought-provoking escapade of all.” — Excerpted from the jacket of Freak Power: Hunter S. Thompson’s Campaign for Sheriff (2015) by Daniel Joseph Watkins, curator of the Freak Power exhibition. Book available for purchase in the Frazier’s Museum Store.

The Kentucky Bourbon Trail Welcome Center, now open for visitors at the Frazier History Museum.

Photo credit: Frazier Museum.

Recently I attended a seminar, took the test and became a Certified Tourism Ambassador. The gist of the morning's instruction was to know more about one's area of residence, and to be able to be a more helpful human being as it pertains to visitors.

In some ways, being a CTA merely formalizes what I've been doing since the Public House opened in 1992. As a guy who has traveled a lot, and at one time organized motorcoach tours in Europe, I'm probably been better than average when it comes to grasping the imperatives of travel and tourism.

However, CTA instruction was a useful and informative experience, and I'm happy to have participated. It's something I take seriously and hope to use responsibly.

The corollary of all this is that if you're of the activist/agitator mentality, which might even describe me on widely scattered occasions, it can be hard to juggle conflicting impulses. Selling the merits of the community while being keenly aware of the community's demerits requires a degree of compartmentalization.

Hence my brief point here. Mayor Greg Fischer has successfully nurtured "bourbonism," a term he may or may not have coined. Concurrently, his terms in office have been marked by more than a few questionable actions and policies on other fronts.

Bourbon as a basis for tourism is the proverbial no-brainer, but there's a mirror image of rotgut, alcoholism and drunk driving. I offer this link in acknowledgement of both realities, and say to my friends in other locales that they should come here and pursue bourbonism -- while thinking very carefully about other sides to the coin.

Kentucky Bourbon Trail Welcome Center opens at Frazier History Museum, by Sara Havens (Insider Louisville)

For the 16 million tourists who trickle into Louisville each year chasing elusive bottles, master distillers and bourbon-making experiences — and for locals who keep those hard-to-find bottles hard to find — there’s now a starting place for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

The Frazier History Museum unveiled its Kentucky Bourbon Trail Welcome Center and “Spirit of Kentucky” exhibition Thursday morning to a crowd of media, local politicians, bourbon distillers and others in the industry. It’s now open to the public.

For a bourbon fan, it was fun to see numerous master distillers shaking hands, swapping stories and be just as anxious as others to get the first peek inside the immaculate Weber Group-created Welcome Center ...

Must see: "Spirits of the Passage" exhibit at the Frazier Museum.

My recommendation to those Highland Hills students capable of flaunting cluelessness in the absence of adult supervision is to proceed to the Frazier Museum for some make-up classwork.

Yes, I understand that in all likelihood, they had no idea what they were doing.

And yes, that's the entire problem, isn't it?

I know at least one non-freshman female city council member they probably will not see there, although maybe she actually did get around to visiting the Muhammad Ali Center on her own.

The exhibit is called, "Spirits of the Passage: The Story of the Transatlantic Slave Trade", and it runs through June 16.

The human spirit can never be enslaved.

The Frazier Museum launches a new exhibition in celebration of Black History Month that explores the circumstances of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the power of the human spirit.

The Frazier History Museum invites guests to experience one of the most powerful and important exhibitions it has ever displayed. “Spirits of the Passage: The Story of the Transatlantic Slave Trade” explores the power of the human spirit through a display of nearly 150 historical objects covering more than 350 years.

The 4,000 sq. ft. exhibition, on display through June 16, 2013, is in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the turning point it represented for thousands of enslaved people at a pivotal point in the American Civil War. It’s the first exhibition of its kind to examine the entire history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade from the 16th through 19th centuries, while also presenting the most up-to-date research and discoveries to the public. These include the latest marine archaeological discoveries, new research on key African societies and an exploration of the slave trade’s modern day legacies.

"Civil War: My Brother, My Enemy" concludes its run at the Frazier History Museum.

We viewed it yesterday, on the last day possible. The one part that stands to stick with me is the observation that after 1865, it became so important in Kentucky politics to trace one's experiences to the losing Confederate cause rather than the victorious Union, it had the effect of Kentucky seceding after the war was lost.