'Small Town, Big Heart'

This story appeared in the May 18 edition of The Anderson News.

When she starts singing it's sometimes hard to remember Mikaya Taylor is just completing fifth grade at Robert B. Turner Elementary School.

But the local girl, who has been performing the country and bluegrass music for about a year might be the perfect mix of youthful exuberance and a maturing voice that is turning heads.

“Was your day good today,” Taylor asks with a huge smile.

As she did in November for an interview about her new-found success, Mikaya gives the impression she's a typical, talkative 11-year-old girl.

Until, that is, you push in her new CD.

“Gentle river take me away
to the time of happier days
All I need is love and company
Gentle river bring him back to me.”

The Allison Krauss song is the first of 10 on Mikaya' just-released project. The CD, “Mikaya Taylor: Small Town, Big Heart,” is a collaboration between Mikaya, her mother, Traci Taylor, Old Town Recording Studios of Berea and Blind Dog Studios of Crestwood.

Local musician Kevin Chilton plays banjo on the CD.

The album is a collection of classics including covers of songs by Krauss, Loretta Lynn, Emmylou Harris and Ralph Stanley among others.

Among her favorites is a cover of the Osborne Brothers' bluegrass hit, “Listening to the Rain.”

Mikaya says she has been singing that one just over a month, or just in time to put it on the CD.

“It seemed like everyone kept asking when she would have one. Even the festivals were asking. We decided we had better get one,” Traci Taylor says.

Mikaya is scheduled to sing at the Bardstown Bluegrass Festival and the Festival of the Bluegrass at the Kentucky Horse Park in June. She also has several other dates scheduled.

Since her story first appeared in The Anderson News in December, Mikaya has been an invited guest for a gathering of Tomorrow's Bluegrass Stars in Nashville.

“That was so much fun! I met Nathan Stanley,” she says of the grandson of the bluegrass music legend.

Traci says the trip, which covered four nights, was paid for by some local sponsors.

In the last few months, Mikaya has also gotten a new guitar for Christmas and received a new mandolin as a gift from some members of a Georgia-based group, Recycled Grass.

All the while, Mikaya was working toward her new CD, which was recorded over 17 hours in three sessions from April 10-30.

“It was fun!” Mikaya says with a giggle. “I only messed up once. It was hard to do because the band had never played together.”

In addition to Chilton, band members on the CD include musicians who have worked with bluegrass legends like Bobby Osborne and J.D. Crowe.

And listening to the CD, one can understand why Mikaya's mom says, “Her voice has changed. It has gotten so much more mature.”

Mikaya's calendar has begun to be a bit more busy with bookings, many being around Lawrenceburg, but she has also been contacted about appearing at many area venues, including the Capital City Opry in Frankfort.

Mikaya's success also led to a bit of celebrity status at Turner Elementary. “(Principal Wayne) Reese started telling some of the teachers, they told some other teachers and they told some of the kids,” Mikaya laughs.

“Now some of the kids want her CD,” Traci smiles. “Her school work comes first. That is why I don't book her too much.”

Currently, Mikaya doesn't have her own band, something her mother is pursuing.

But even with her maturing voice, Mikaya is still an 11-year-old.

“I want a hoverboard,” she giggles.

It's something not every kid has.

Even fewer have their own CD.

About “Small Town, Big Heart”

Mikaya Taylor's first CD includes several country or bluegrass classics, including covers of Loretta Lynn's “Blue Kentucky Girl” and Dolly Parton's “Jolene.” The CD also has some newer songs such as Darrell Scott's “You'll Never Leave Harlan Alone,” which has been covered by Brad Paisley, among others.

The CD costs $15 each or two for $25. It can be purchased online at mikayataylor.com, messaging Mikaya Taylor on Facebook or by emailing kentuckysingingangel@gmail.com.

Restroom directive greatly impacts sports

This column appeared in the May 18 edition of The Anderson News. 


     I wonder what would happen if sometime during the spring, a thoroughbred horse owner concluded that his prized 3-year-old colt really identified as a filly.
     Could he petition to let his horse run in the Kentucky Oaks or the Black-Eyed-Susans Stakes? Or if he wanted to still run in the Triple Crown races, would he get a 5-pound weight allowance?
     Absurd? Of course, it is.
     But it’s no more absurd than the directive out of Washington last week that could greatly affect sports as we know them.
     While much has been said about President Obama’s administration sending a directive to allow transgender access to bathrooms, the letter sent to school systems across the nation last Friday goes much further than where someone can relieve himself. In the “Dear Colleague” letter, you will find some of the most ridiculous gobbledygook to ever come out of Washington.
     And that is saying something.
     The nine-page document, footnotes and all, can be found online at http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201605-title...
     The portion of the letter most are debating is headed “Restrooms and Locker Rooms.”
     The section says schools may offer separate facilities on the basis of sex, i.e., a boys’ room and a girls’ room, “but must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity. A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so. A school may, however, make individual-user options available to all students who voluntarily seek additional privacy.”
     The letter makes it very clear that “gender identity” is to be equated with “sex.”
     In other words, what you feel is what you are.
     The letter also deals with athletics, saying that schools can sponsor sex-segregated teams but a school can’t “adopt or adhere to requirements that rely on overly broad generalizations or stereotypes about the differences between transgender students and other students of the same sex (i.e., the same gender identity) or others’ discomfort with transgender students.”
     So, what we have to look forward to is a boy who claims he’s a girl demand to join the girls’ basketball team and have access to the locker room.
     Think it can’t happen? Think again.
     Several states already have laws allowing student-athletes to compete based on “gender identity.” While Kentucky has no such law, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association already has a transgender and cross-gender policy.
     Earlier this year, a transgender student at Fremd High School in Illinois won access to the girls’ locker room. According to the “Chicago Tribune,” a large number of parents were predictably upset at the ruling, which was based on an interpretation of the Title IX act of 1972.
     Whether the student was seeking access for gym class or for a scholastic sport does not matter.
     What is so bothersome about the directive is that local officials have often tried to provide accommodations as a compromise.
     Several media colleagues have told me about area schools that have had girls on their football teams in recent years. While that does not mean those girls are identifying as boys, there is a principle in that the schools provided separate dressing room facilities.
     At Anderson County High School, the policy is if someone identifies as a transgender, a private restroom facility is provided.
     But, according to the directive, that’s not good enough. If a biological boy identifies as a girl, he should have the right to the girls’ locker room and vice-versa.
     That is utter insanity.
     From this corner, it is more than just where someone goes to the bathroom. It’s common decency. Gender dysphoria, the clinical term for those who fell they are the opposite sex, is listed as a disorder in psychiatric manuals.
     Do we really want treatment of a disorder by discounting the rights of privacy, modesty and decorum and replace them with social engineering in locker rooms?
     And, of course, if schools don’t allow such nonsense, they risk losing federal funding.
     It is interesting that Johns Hopkins University, a pioneer in performing sex change surgeries, no longer performs them and the longtime psychiatrist in chief there has been a vocal opponent of the surgery for several years. Of course, those who want to promote this discount that information since it doesn’t further the agenda.
     The irony of this nonsense is that while this total rejection of morality affects scholastic sports, the games provide some insight into the fact that the sexes are very different.
     Take basketball where a high school team with a 6-2 center would likely be feared in the girls’ game but draw yawns when the boys take the court. Even the ball the girls use is significantly smaller than the one for the boys. It was a great move as it recognized some differences.
     Or take track and field. Last week, I attended the regional meet and looking at the results, the top girls’ performances would be well back in the standings for the boys. That doesn’t demean the girls or say the boys are superior.
     It does acknowledge there are fundamental biological differences that God created. The emotional differences are just as great.
     Unfortunately, it looks like those in power in Washington and their cronies want to ignore reality.
     My hope for the students, many of them athletes, is that the local school board will have the courage to stand with the many, including Gov. Matt Bevin, around the country against this politically correct nonsense.
     Common decency and morality applies to everything in life.
     Including the sports world.
     Back to that confused thoroughbred. Growing up on a farm, I learned you can alter a colt and it will change his behavior, sometimes dramatically. But it doesn’t make him a filly.

Christian teachers deserve our prayers for their work in a ripe mission field

 When I carried a note pad into the Anderson County High School gym for that first basketball game I covered as a member of the media, I thought I would be writing about sports and talking with sports figures.

What I quickly found out and am reminded of nearly every day is the fact that my writing is usually about people. There have been good people, shady people and people who would fall somewhere in between on the character scale.

And most of those people are teachers. 

My job is with a small-town weekly newspaper. That means I spend a lot of time around high school sports. 

Make that A LOT of time spent with teachers. They might be coaches to most people, but usually, they are people who have what amounts to a second job at the field. During the day, most are teaching history or science or math.

And I see the good ones in action doing what they do best, which is impacting the lives of young people. That's real coaching. It's real teaching.

I see it first hand almost every day. 

My wife, Stephanie, is an elementary school teacher. Just like those good coaches I had watched for years before I met her, I found that her greatest desire is to positively impact young people during the time they are with her. 

From the number of hugs she gets when we are out and about – “That's one of my former students,” she usually says after one of those moments – I would say she is often successful. 

I'm partial to teachers, probably because an aunt spent most of her life educating kids about reading and writing – her specialty – and most importantly about life.

But things have sure changed in the classroom.

For example, when a kid cursed a teacher in my aunt's day the consequences were having a mouth washed with Lava soap or a paddling – or both – along with a conference with a parent who repeated the punishment, now a teacher can talk to a kid or have a conference with a parent, but little else. It's not necessarily a change for the better.

Through my elementary school years, we started the day with a Bible passage and prayer. It was the same for many people I know, but not now.

And while I lament that “secularists” and “progressives” succeeded in removing those precious acts of faith and the heritage of faith in our nation, it is still possible for Christian teachers to be influential in the spiritual lives of children. 

Obviously, teachers can be an example. Over the years, I have had several coaches share their desire to be the light of Christ through their programs. The same can happen in the classroom.

We live in a world where some kids sometimes come to school from homes where one or both parents are on drugs. Kids live in homes where one parent, sometimes both, is missing. I could go on and on  but will refrain. It's depressing enough as it is.

It's why I have often said one of the greatest mission fields in thew world today is the American public school system. 

Let me interject I have nothing but admiration for the many Christian schools in America today. The ones I am familiar with do a marvelous job. But theirs is a different mission and different environment than the public schools. Parents choose to send their children to the private schools where the climate is friendly to Christianity.

Christian public school teachers serve in an environment growing increasingly hostile to Christianity, yet they somehow share the light of Christ the best they can.

Too often, we see stories of public school teachers seemingly in the profession to further a political agenda or more interested in the pay rather than performance. While there are certainly educators who fit those descriptions – I have met several – it is unfair to lump them with those hard-working souls who go above and beyond what should be reasonably expected simply to make the life of a child better.

And there are countless teachers who do that with their commitment to Christ as the blueprint for their mission.

Those people deserve our applause. And our prayers.