From Bluegrass Politics:

Candidates for governor on ‘KY Tonight’ for 90 minutes

The three candidates for governor — Democrat Steve Beshear, Republican David Williams and independent Gatewood Galbraith– are scheduled to appear in their second and final debate Monday night on Kentucky Educational Television’s “Kentucky Tonight.”

The show will begin at 8 p.m. ET on KET and at www.ket.org/live and run for 90 minutes.  Bill Goodman will host.

Kentucky viewers with questions may send email, including name and town or county, to kytonight@ket.org or use the message form at www.ket.org/kytonight.

The phone number for viewer calls during the program is 1-800-494-7605.

Viewers may also submit questions on Twitter to @BillKET or #kytonight, or on Kentucky Educational Television’s Facebook page.

So we're encouraging our members to spend some time today coming up with one good question each to call, email, or message in to be answered by the candidates.  It could be a question about Mountaintop Removal Mining, Voting Rights, Economic Justice, Sustainable Energy, or any other issue you care about.  And please also tune into the debate to learn more about the candidates and their stances.

Creative and zany KFTC members in the Central KY and Scott County chapters took some time this weekend to visit zombie-related events and bring a spirited voter mobilization message to the community.  Some of them dressed as zombies themselves and at least two tried to eat our literature pieces... but

We passed out a total 2,500 of these handbills calling on people to vote in a tongue-and cheek kind've way.  Folks at the events loved them and we passed out all of the handbills very quickly despite the large numbers of them that we brought out. 

Our friends at Occupy Lexington also used the event to reach people by staging some good street theater and passing out flyers and candy.

The Election is now just 8 days away, but there's still time to learn about the candidates, spread the word, and vote on Nov 8th!

After the election join us at Al's Bar in Lexington to celebrate our people power and demand of the newly elected that KENTUCKY DESERVES BETTER!

Performances by: Madeline Adams Reva Williams Warren Byrom and Small Batch.

$5 cover, all ages. Proceeds from the door benefit the work of KFTC.

Zombies Can't Vote!

But you CAN!

Don't be a zombie! - learn about the candidates at www.KentuckyElection.org and vote on Tuesday, November 8th.

With Halloween close upon us, there are a lot of big zombie-related shenanigans across the state of Kentucky in the next few days. 

With the election just a couple of days after, we decided to use this opportunity to mobilize voters - and have a lot of fun doing it.  

So members will be at different events, handing out these handbills to encourage people to get out and vote. 

Some of our members will be dressed up as zombies - but zombies shuffle around slowly and people don't readily accept things from them.  So we could use non-zombie volunteers too.

Lexington - Meeting Sunday at 6:30pm at Phoenix Park, with another group meeting at Third Street Stuff at 7pm.  We'll then pass out handbills through the showcase at 7pm at Centrepointe Field and the Thriller Parade beginning at 8:30pm. 

Georgetown - Meeting Saturday at 6:45pm at the Lock and Key on Main Street.  Main St will close at 7pm. Zombies will rise and dance at 8pm.

For more information, call Dave Newton at 859-420-8919.

This week, the Madison County chapter invited local politicians to discuss the important issues facing the town of Berea. This November, Berea citizens will be voting to fill a vacant city council seat. The Madison County chapter--along with Berea

College student groups the Harvey Milk Society and the Student Government Association--held a forum where candidates for the city council seat were asked a variety of questions concerning their positions on important legislation and the problems facing Berea. 75 Bereans attended the forum to hear the candidates’ positions on the issues. 

Questions ranged from the candidates’ qualifications, their position on alternative energy sources, and whether or not they would support a fairness ordinance in Berea. After the moderators finished asking their questions, the Berea citizens present at the meeting were invited to ask their own questions. These questions covered a wide range of topics, from Berea’s water supply to the town’s reliance on federal and state grants. The candidates' forum turned out to be very successful, and was a great way to bring citizens and members of their government closer together.

The election is just around the corner and KFTC members are working hard to ensure that folks have enough information to vote and that they're ready to go to the polls on November 8th. This past Wednesday in Lexington members from the central Kentucky chapter made 235 calls to folks to make sure people knew where their polling location is and that they can see where the candidates stand on a variety issues by visiting Kentuckyelection.org.

This week, the Madison County chapter was joined by a special guest during their monthly meeting. The representative for Madison County, Lonnie Napier, joined the Madison County chapter to discuss some of the problems facing the region, along with some of the legislation Napier has proposed to address these problems. During this ‘lobby meeting’, the 22 Madison County members present grilled Rep. Napier about his positions on several of the legislative measures that KFTC supports, such as tax reform, restoring voting rights to felons, and protecting streams and water sources from mountaintop removal mining.

Napier expressed support for some of the bills that the members of the Madison County chapter brought up in discussion, but often withheld his support until he could read the bill in question. In all, the discussion was serious yet lively, with both Lonnie Napier and the chapter members showing mutual respect and concern for the issues facing the region.  Rita Smart, the other representative for Madison County, will be visiting the Madison County chapter at their next meeting.

Late last night, to accommodate schedules, faculty, staff, and student at Union College in Knox County gathered to discuss the possibilities of building a KFTC chapter on their campus.  Time was spent getting to know each other as well as the local and state-wide work of KFTC.  Not all the folks there were members, but everyone took membership forms and are excited to join the KFTC family and be a part of our next 30 years!  

Nine people talked through KFTC's current state-wide campaigns, their relevancy at Union, and how Union can add to this growing new power in Kentucky.  They all seemed to be hooked after one faculty KFTC member read the vision statement aloud.  By the end of the meeting, folks had planned to distribute nearly 50 voter guides and scheduled their next meet up as a film screening of the newly released I Was There: The first 30 years of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth for Monday, November 15th. 

Stay tuned!  There is certainly more to come from this exciting new energy in southeast Kentucky! 

The interim joint committee on local government will host a "discussion on solar energy" tomorrow, October 26th, in Frankfort at 10 am in the Capitol Annex room 171.

Join us to support Matt Partymiller and Denis Oudard of Solar Energy Solutions (which did the solar install left) and the Kentucky Solar Energy Society, both member groups of the Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance, of which KFTC is a member group.

The committee is co-chaired by Senator Damon Thayer and Representative Steve Riggs. Both are interested to learn about the opportunity Kentucky has to advance solar energy and how local governments can take action.

Floyd County KFTC members got together this weekend to host and attend a Mushroom Growing and Hunting Workshop. The event was hosted by Beverly May and Nathan Hall at Wilson Creek Farm. Tim Hensley, an experienced mushroom farmer, from the Berea area came to Floyd County and demonstrated inoculation techniques for shiitake and oyster mushrooms.

In preparation for the workshop, Nathan had to select and cut two varieties of trees and after cutting them into manageable logs bring them down the mountain! Thanks for all your hard work Nathan!

After inoculating logs, we were treated to a wonderful lunch prepared for the group by Beverly May. Not only were we surprised with a hot apple stack cake, but Bev cooked up some Hen of the Woods!

We ended the day by taking a hike to look for wild, edible mushrooms. Although it was late in the season, our group was able to find several species of mushroom and enjoyed a beautiful day outdoors with friends and family.

All participants were able to take home logs inoculated with shiitake and golden oyster mushrooms spores. These families should expect to see mushrooms popping up as early as next summer!

Check out more pictures from the day by clicking here!