The Kentucky Derby is a two-minute horse race, but Derby season seems to be getting longer every year. This year’s celebration officially kicked off on Wednesday, April 18 at Louisville Slugger Field with the Taste of Derby Festival, an annual fundraiser for Dare to Care Food Bank. More than 50 businesses, from Heine Brothers’ Coffee to Martini Italian Bistro, were serving bite-sized samples to 1,000 people who paid $80 a ticket. The Taste of Derby raised more than $100,000 for charity, but it was a reminder that the Kentucky Derby means big business in Louisville. Every patron sampling bread pudding or beef-stuffed mushrooms at one or another booth was a potential customer.

Read more: Cashing in on Derby

Early in the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln wrote to a colleague that if Kentucky joined the Confederacy it would mean losing both the war and the nation he loved.  At the time, Kentucky was deeply divided between Southern sympathizers, pro-Northern abolitionists and those who supported both the Union and the “right” to own slaves.

Confused? “If you want a good headache, study Kentucky history during the Civil War,” says Louisville author Bryan S. Bush, who is making a career by digging into this fertile field of conflict and contradiction. In his book “Lincoln and the Speeds,” he tells how an 1837 encounter between Joshua Speed, a member of a prominent Louisville family, and Abraham Lincoln began a friendship that helped secure Kentucky for the North and enable its victory.

Lincoln called on his best friend and Joshua’s brother James to be his “eyes and ears” in Kentucky once the war began.  When it became apparent that Kentucky’s state militia was dominated by Confederate sympathizers, Joshua coordinated a clandestine operation with Lincoln to buy and distribute over a period of time about 20,000 weapons along with ammunition to a rival militia of Union loyalists.

In the Kentucky State Legislature, James Speed, an ardent abolitionist and future Attorney General for Lincoln, blocked initiatives by Southern sympathizers and secured laws which favored the North. Meanwhile, Joshua warned Lincoln that freeing Kentucky’s slaves would result in even stronger support for the South.

Read more: The Blue, the Gray, the Ugly

SPOTLIGHT:  “AWAKEN”
The Green Building Gallery, 732 E. Market St., presents “AWAKEN,” an exhibition of new paintings by Gibbs Rounsavall. The show runs through Friday, May 24. Rounsavall says the new work was inspired by the birth of his daughter, Edie, in 2011.  The development of the paintings mirrors that of the artist’s daughter. Each painting in the series is more complex than the one preceding it. Through movement and rhythm, the canvases become energized with a sense of harmony, a pulse, a life of their own. The gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday; and 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday. For more information, call (502) 561-1162 or visit www.thegreenbuilding.com. (Nulu/Downtown)

Read more: Community Calendar - May 2013

It was a snap heard ‘round the world – the night U of L player Kevin Ware’s tibia burst through flesh and sinew in the court battle for the Elite Eight win over Duke.

We all felt it, those who saw it couldn’t look away.  It was a lesson in anatomy and odds, a perfect storm that had to occur between body, bone and impact.

How could this happen? There was nowhere else for a thin bone to go but out.

And though the bone was shattered, the dream was not.  As surgeons were binding Ware’s leg, the nation pulled together in an empathetic sweep that stunned even those who couldn’t care less about the Final Four.

These young athletes – with legs longer than most of us are tall – sprint, dodge, and often become airborne. Maybe it’s a bone like the tibia that links human athletes to our equine superstars. Like ... fillies.

Eight Belles.

With compound fractures in both front legs, the filly stumbled into death after finishing second in the 134th Run for the Roses.

Read more: Running the Risk