654. Well, first, there is this election going on

Hello - HELLO - to my seven faithful readers. I offer apologies for not writing since September 24th. As Led Zeppelin would say, "It's been a long time, been a long time . . ."

The truth is I've been busy with the elections. I work a full-time day job, then in the evenings we do politics - not from Pikeville to Paducah or, as I prefer, Ashland to Arlington [google it if you don't know where it is], but here in Jefferson County, where the extremes would be from Valley Station to Prospect or Fisherville to Portland. Saturday was a prime example of a full day which mixed all my jobs.

My day-boss, Louisville Metro Councilman Brent T. Ackerson, had a morning neighborhood meeting, then the rest of the day was filled with events here and there or planting yardsigns for Congressman John Yarmuth, mayoral candidate Greg Fischer, or US Senate candidate Jack Conway. Saturday evening the Kentucky Democratic Party held its Jefferson-Jackson Dinner with Illinois Senator Dick Durbin as the keynote speaker. My friend Michael Garton joined me for that, as well as a trip to the Garvin Gate Blues Festival over in Old Louisville later that night. Somewhere in there was a brief meeting with Greg Fischer outside of Central High School after his most recent debate. It was a long day and long night. I enjoyed every minute.

But such a schedule precludes spending much time doing two things I really like doing - travelling the backroads of Kentucky then writing about those travels in the blog. This morning I received a strong reminder of my missing pastimes based on a Facebook posting by my college friend Buddy Vaughn of Lexington. Buddy has been posting birthday reminders of Kentuckians from history and today's entry was that of John Preston Martin, a Prestonsburg merchant and one-term congressman for whom Martin County was named.

I responded to Buddy's post by noting, after a discussion about the family name Preston, that I have not been to Martin County in over twenty-three years. My last visit there was during the gubernatorial summer campaign on 1987. It is one of two counties with such a distinction - the other is Elliott. As many of you may recall, I maintain a map in my office of the counties I visit in a given year as well as an EXCEL sheet which covers all the county visits since 1979.

Once this election is over, I hope to get to a few more counties before the 2010 map is retired and the EXCEL sheet is updated. One of those will have to be Martin, now that Buddy has brought the absence from there to my attention.

Election Day is three weeks from tomorrow. Polls will open at 6:00 a.m. and close at 6:00 p.m. It cannot come soon enough.