Edmonson Voice Report: courtesy of Edmonson County Fair Pageants:
The Edmonson County Lions Club Fair Pageants was held at Edmonson County High School on August 26, 2023.

Alexandrea Marie Roberts, daughter of Douglas and Shawna Roberts, was crowned Miss Edmonson County 2023. No local contestant entered the pageant so a local winner was not named.

The remaining winners are listed as follow:

By: Katlyn Bullock, Technical & Digital Services Librarian | Library Marketing

The Library is gearing up to celebrate Community Helpers during the month of September! We feel that this will be a great way to honor individuals who service our community in different ways, and to introduce them and their occupations to the youth of our community. We will have events to go along with this theme such as community service leaders visiting during our Story-Time mornings every Thursday in September.

However, we would like to invite the community out for one extra special happening in particular and that is the first ECPL Touch-A-Truck event! Kids of all ages are welcome to experience and interact with life-size vehicles and the community support leaders who operate them! We will have vehicles such as: farm equipment, construction machinery, military & police vehicles, emergency service vehicles and so much more! We are so excited to work with so many outstanding individuals who are enabling us to bring this awesome event to the youth of our community!

If you are a member of the community who drives a vehicle such as we have described above and would like to take part in this event. We would like to ask you to contact us at: 270-597-2146 or email us at: aedwards@ecplibrary.com or kbullock@ecplibrary.com. We are taking applications on a first-come, first-serve basis and can only host a few of each type of vehicle. So, please do not show up with your vehicle without contacting us and receiving approval to participate in this event beforehand.

A new member of the Edmonson County Chamber of Commerce celebrated today with a ribbon cutting at their location, hosted by the Chamber.

While LifeSkills, a facility that specializes in community mental health, has been in Edmonson County for quite some time, many local residents may not know the services offered there, said Mark Saderholm, Director of Service Centers for LifeSkills.

"We've been around south central Kentucky for over 50 years and have a clinic in every county seat in south central Kentucky," he said. "We offer a wide variety of behavioral health services in these clinics that include psychotherapy, case management, therapy for children, therapy for folks struggling with addictions, we also offer psychiatric services, people who may need some help with medication, and we're tied in with both our adult and children crisis units across the region, meaning that any LifeSkills client, or anybody else can access crisis services. We also work with local specialty courts, formerly called drug courts, for folks that have been referred to the court system or probation/parole for some challenges, and by coming to treatment here, it meets the terms for their participation in court."

Saderholm also said while there are services that might not available at the local offices, local staff members can assist to connect folks to those services at other locations.

Chamber Coordinator Kayla Childress welcomed LifeSkills as one of the newest members of the Chamber.

"We are grateful that LifeSkills joined our Chamber community," she said. "We are not only here for our local businesses, but also our local organizations. We look forward to working with LifeSkills in any way that we can."

It's the third ribbon cutting in as many weeks for the Chamber, hosting the Edmonson County Health Department last week, and Warnell's Family Pharmacy and Soda Shoppe the week before that.

The Edmonson County facility is located at 205 Mohawk Street in Brownsville. They hosted several vendors, some food trucks, face painting, and a fire truck from the Bear Creek Fire Department.

To reach LifeSkills, call 270-901-5000, visit Lifeskills.org, or visit their Facebook Page here.

Darren Doyle, story:
A Brownsville historic home, which also serves as a bed-in-breakfast, just narrowly missed being named the best one in the state in a recent magazine contest.

The Reed-Dossey House, which overlooks Brownsville on Main Cross Street, recently placed second in Kentucky Living Magazine's "Best in Kentucky 2023" contest in a specialty lodging category.

The home, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, is owned by Tony and Sharon Zagaros.

"Sharon and I are very honored and proud to have placed second in the Best Specialty Lodging or Bed in Breakfast category in Kentucky Living Magazine’s Best in Kentucky 2023 contest," said Tony. "Our 1893 Reed-Dossey House did very well in the Commonwealth of Kentucky! We wish to thank everyone that supported us and voted for use! Cheers!"

The historic house is also home to the Edmonson Voice weather camera, used in the daily weather forecasts each weekday.

Live view of Brownsville from the Reed-Dossey House. The camera is on 24/7 and can always be viewed on the Weather Page of EdmonsonVoice.com, as well as daily weather forecasts with Landon Hampton.

Darren Doyle, story and photos:
You've probably seen the many videos and clips floating around social media and the internet, of people (idiots) munching down on the Carolina Reaper, the world's hottest pepper. Anyone that would do this for fun or for nutritional value should seek mental help. I know, because as someone who has eaten and enjoyed hot peppers my entire life, this was a unique experience that's not for the faint-hearted.

The hottest known pepper in the entire world is the Carolina Reaper, developed by Ed Currie, in a greenhouse in Rock Hill, South Carolina. It was certified as the world's hottest Pepper on August 11, 2017 by the Guinness Book of World Records. For whatever stupid reason, I raised two hills of them in my garden this year.

Peppers or other hot substances are measured from what's known as the Scoville scale. It is based on the concentration of capsaicinoids, among which capsaicin is the predominant component. Capsaicin is the ingredient in peppers that make them hot, and it's measured on the scale in Scoville heat units, or SHU.

You can see from the above graphic how different peppers add up on the scale. If you think jalapenos are hot...think again. According to the chart, the reaper is 150X hotter than the hottest jalapeno you've ever eaten. One hundred. Fifty times hotter. The reaper is something unlike I've ever experienced, and I'll get to that shortly.

First, I know there will be some reading this that will say "oh, it's not really that hot," or "they ain't no hotter'n my cousin's hot wings!" You can say whatever you want, but you're wrong. People eat for only two reasons. 1. Nutritional value 2. Enjoyment (or both, of course). Then I guess there's reason 3--when the doctor makes you drink that gallon of stuff before you have a colonoscopy but that's different article I'll write someday on "Edmonson Voice After Dark."

My Grandaddy, Wavie Skaggs, raised one of the finest gardens in all of Edmonson County, and he was a cayenne pepper guy. He raised hill after hill of them and ate the peppers with literally every meal he had. He'd sometimes catch us kids not looking (including me at about 5 years old) and stick a broken end of one on our lip. One thing he didn't do, was eat an entire pepper alone for the sake of getting attention or looking tough. The folks that are doing that are simply stupid.

No, I didn't do like the morons of the internet are doing, chomping an entire reaper pepper alone. You also have the folks that get sweaty at the Mexican restaurant, eating house chips and salsa. They smell the pepper and start crying. Why would you do this? You also have videos with dudes covered in tats with thick Duck Dynasty beards in "don't tread on me" or "Punisher" shirts. They must be tough, right? Well, it's the same reaction for everyone. I didn't eat an entire pepper at once, because we that enjoy hot peppers don't eat any peppers like that. The same as you don't eat an entire sweet pepper or onion at once. Peppers are usually meant to be additions to other dishes. Obviously, some of these guys knew they were in for it and ate the whole thing (or more than one) for the shock factor, but I did not.

I raised a nice little garden this year and just for the sake of doing so, I threw in a couple of plants of these reapers. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Well, I fussed around and found out. I ate about a third of one in one bite along with some tacos we had at home. I also didn't video myself so people could see me writhing in pain. That's also stupid. It's about as stupid as eating a Carolina Reaper.

So I took a bite of my taco and then bit into the reaper. At first, the heat was pretty normal, but the taste of the pepper itself was gross. It just didn't taste good. It was similar in taste to a habanero or bonnet, which are also really hot without much taste, but it tasted like it was scorched (no pun intended).

Within about 7 seconds, the heat was intense, but not like a hot cayenne, jalapeno, or serrano. I raised some nice serranos this year and boy, were they hot, but if eaten in small bites with other dishes, those were great.

What wasn't great was this stupid, cursed, no-good, four-flushing, slimy piece of worm-ridden filthy Carolina Reaper. With sweat and drool pouring, my throat was also on fire...but that wasn't the worst part.

My chest. I had a little trouble breathing and every breath in and out seemed as if they were fanning the flames of the pepper. It felt just like I had a severe sore throat with bronchitis, except when you're sick, it doesn't hurt too bad when you don't swallow, or when taking shallow breaths. In this case, there was no relief. No position I could get in worked, milk and bread, and all that are useless, and saying bad words just makes your mouth hotter, so I just started eating my tacos faster, hoping it would subside. It was bad for longer than I had hoped, and I only ate one-third of the pepper. I burped right after eating it. I'm pretty sure I singed the table with a short burst of reaper napalm.

Then came the bathroom.

Without revealing too much, you ever seen a space shuttle launch on TV? It was something like that. Maybe I'll share the rest some other time (again, Edmonson Voice After Dark).

So, my conclusion is this. Don't eat this pepper. It's terrible. It's hot, it's awful, it tastes bad, and there's nothing enjoyable about it at all. If you want to just so you can say you did, well, there's that, but let me save you the trouble. For one quick moment, my life flashed before my eyes. People have actually ended up in the hospital over these. I am a believer in Heaven and Hell, and I also believe there are horrible things happening right now in Hell. Somewhere in the middle of all that, someone's being forced to eat a Carolina Reaper.

Darren Doyle, story and photos:
It's been a long time coming, decades actually, but the Edmonson County Health Department has finally undergone some much needed upgrading and remodeling, and they celebrated today with a ribbon cutting with the Edmonson County Chamber of Commerce.

Matt Hunt, District Director for the Barren River Health Department, described the facility as a "key fabric of the community," which offers a number of services to everyone. He said the BRDHD, a district department that serves Barren, Butler, Edmonson, Hart, Logan, Metcalfe, Simpson, and Warren Counties, oversaw the remodel of the Edmonson County facility, which was more than 25 years past due.

"It's been quite a challenge, but a very rewarding project that started back in March," he said. "We went through the building and replaced all the old stick-on tiles with new flooring, we took two or three layers of wallpaper down, worked on the drywall, painted throughout the facility, a new front entrance door, and upgraded our security here."

Hunt described some of the services offered at the Edmonson County Health Department.

"We're here for clinical services, whether it be nutritional programs with our WIC program, we're here for new construction or renovations for houses--the economic side of the community--but we're also here to provide dental services in the community, health education in our schools, and more."

The BRDHD, which also manages and investigates communicable diseases, also issued daily press releases at the height of the pandemic as they constantly monitored the impact of COVID-19 in the community.

The Edmonson County Health Department is located at 221 Mammoth Cave Road, Brownsville, KY 42210, and can be reached at 270-597-2194, with hours of operation Monday-Friday, 8:00 AM-4:00 PM.

Edmonson County Chamber of Commerce Coordinator Kayla Childress welcomed the new addition to the Chamber, although the facility has been here for many years.

"Our local health department is certainly not new to our county, but we are happy to tell everyone about the new upgrades and improvements made here," she said. "We welcome the Edmonson County Health Department to the Chamber and wish them continued growth in our community."

To find out more about the BRHD, visit www.barrenriverhealth.org/

By: Katlyn Bullock, Technical & Digital Services Librarian | Library Marketing
Here at Edmonson County Public Library we would like to ask our community, friends, and family to join us in celebrating and congratulating our retired Library Director, Mrs. Jeanie Munsee, on her 39 years of dedication to the library. Jeanie has not only been a boss and a community leader, but she’s also been a true friend to her employees and the community.

Jeanie has always had a love of reading, and as a senior in High School she was employed at the Library. Then, in July of 1984, she was hired as ECPL Bookmobile Director. She drove the bookmobile faithfully for 13 years. During that time, she strived to make a difference in the lives of our bookmobile patrons, and especially the elderly by staying to talk when they had few family visits, by helping them pick their gardens after they had picked their books, and by being someone they and the community could depend on.

She was later promoted to Library Director in August of 1997. In her new position, she continued to bring great things to the community through our Library. She transitioned the Library, it’s resources, and it’s materials to a new and more spacious location on Ferguson Street in September of 2008. She also saved to purchase the big bookmobile for our county in June of 2018. She has always had a love for Edmonson County, and a deep-rooted desire to provide our county with a comfortable and hometown experience. In a previous article by Edmonson News in 2019, by Melissa Mudd, Jeanie had stated that, “The best is the friends we have made down through the years, and that is my reward and where I get my inspiration.”

We hope that everyone who knows and loves Jeanie will come out to help us shower her with cards for her retirement! We will have cards available beginning August 1st through September 1st.
 

Hilltop Quick Mart is located at 1372 HWY 259 N, in Brownsville at River Hill.

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