>> Hello, and welcome to season 27 of Kentucky Life.

I'm Doug Flynn, and today we're at Waveland State Historic Site in southern Lexington.

Currently, it's a state park with many amenities to enjoy.

From tours to teas, Waveland has a rich history to discover.

So let's head inside and see what stories await.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Sites like Waveland would be lost to history if it weren't for the preservation efforts of state historians, who ensure that it continues to link future generations to Kentucky's rich past.

Our first story also carries a message of conservation, with an interactive sculpture at the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest.

Renowned artist Jayson Fann has shaped repurposed wood and driftwood into a towering centerpiece meant to inspire and connect its visitors to nature.

[MUSIC] >> Nature is the ultimate sculptor.

So everything that we do is just really a study in the observation of these natural patterns and we try to integrate these natural patterns into the architectural work, exploring what the wood is already expressing and finding ways to integrate it into these community art spaces so that people can really appreciate nature and learn about the process that this wood goes through.

Jayson [MUSIC] >> Fann's an interesting artist because he uses his spirit nest to connect both cultural elements and historic elements with natural elements and science.

>> I am a musician, a visual artist, an educator, I would say a conservationist, and my work is based with natural wood and I create what I call spirit nest.

The spirit nest is a interactive sculptural architectural space, much like a bird builds a nest, although mine are large scale and sometimes as many as four stories high.

It's a place for people to gather.

It's a place for people to connect, and it's a community art experience.

Here at Bernheim, I'm creating a rather large installation.

It's about 30,000, maybe 40,000, pounds of repurposed wood, wood that normally would've been turned into firewood or been chipped and mulch or put in the dump.

And have created a architectural sculptural performance space, storytelling space.

>> Art engages people in ways that are different than science and education.

It is one of the ways that we fulfill our mission of connecting people with nature.

>> But there's also a really neat statement that sometimes things that we think are garbage, like invasive species or driftwood, are really something that can be reused, recreated, repurposed, and connects us deeper to the world we live in.

>> Everything is hand-gathered and directly from nature, so they're built rather unconventionally with unconventional materials.

The wood that I'm using right now for the installation at Bernheim is a combination of wood that I brought from California, which is eucalyptus wood, trees that naturally fell here in the property, the aromatic cedar.

Just incredible diversity of different kinds of woods.

So all of these woods are woven into the structures, as well as the wood that has come down the river and down the Ohio River into Kentucky.

And that wood has come as far as Pennsylvania.

And >> this is just the stuff that accumulates every year.

It gets deposited on the side of the river and we gather it up and we use it a little bit more in a decorative way because it's less structural.

>> They are structurally engineered, and a lot of times I have engineers come and inspect them.

And, in many cases, I'm required to because it's public art.

So >> as you can see here, this structure is bolted together, so wherever any two branches are touching, they're bolted.

And the way that I design and build these is that there is a kind of a weaving of interlocking shapes and they're constantly crossing over each other in various directions, which is creating this matrix of strength throughout the entire structure.

>> We're going to have a beautiful handmade drum out of a tree trunk and an elk skin.

Music is part of the human speed.

And so he likes to celebrate local people, music, indigenous people in music, and he draws all those into his projects.

So we found a beautiful piece of wood that was >> buried in a wood pile.

As we got all the rotten wood out and we got down to the solid wood, it's a spalted maple and it's just absolutely gorgeous wood.

And it's been a wonderful process of building that drum here and I'm excited to have it as a part of the installation.

I've made well over a hundred drums.

Each of them have a unique sound, and that sound is a combination of the wood, the kind of skin you use, and the kind of tension that you create.

Each drum is unique, and you really don't know what it's going to sound like until you make it, and especially with these one of a kind pieces.

And so by building a beautiful work of art with it, you're really honoring the life of this tree and creating something that can continue its life.

And if I can create beautiful art that is a contribution to a community and culturally and artistically, that's a great feeling.

I really enjoy that.

And it's quite an honor.

>> Many of our viewers may know the Kentucky writer Walter Tevis for his first novel, The Hustler, which was adapted into a successful movie starring Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason back in 1961.

But it wasn't until recently that one of his last books became an international sensation, with a little help from Netflix, of course.

Let's take a look at the author whose work was translated into one of the most popular and critically acclaimed television series of recent memory, The Queen's Gambit.

[MUSIC] >> My father had had scarlet fever and that had turned into some type of heart condition and had to be hospitalized in California around the same time that his father lost his job and had to move from California, take the family from California to Kentucky and leave him alone as a 10-year-old to convalesce for a year in California.

I >> was born in San Francisco and when I was a kid, I was put into a hospital in San Francisco while my family moved to Kentucky, I had rheumatic heart, a children's heart disease, or at least so they told me.

Anyway, being immersed into Kentucky all of a sudden was really a shock to me.

I think that's what I was writing about in a deep way when I wrote The Man Who Fell to Earth.

>> He awoke in a taxi with the woman.

She was shaking him gently.

"Where do you want to go"?

she said.

"Where's your home"?

He stared at her.

"I don't really know".

>> And I think that experience threw me into being a kind of lonely, scared kid.

And I did a lot of reading and I trace my literariness to that part of my life.

I wasn't allowed to do sports because of the heart disease.

And I spent a lot of my time sitting in a chair reading books until I got old enough to go to the pool room.

And that changed my life in another way.

I suppose I grew up, became...

I learned how to swear and how to swagger in the pool room.

And it sort of replaced, for me, that part in my boy's life that is taken care of, for other boys, by playing football, basketball, whatever.

When >> he came to Lexington, he didn't fit in, and he never fit in until he found a pool table and Toby Kavanaugh.

And once he found a pool table and Toby Kavanaugh, he spent almost all his time at the Kavanaugh's house.

And they were wealthy and Walter loved that.

And so he was very happy with that portion of his life.

Toby Kavanaugh was Walter Tevis's best friend.

>> They would go down in the basement and play pool.

He taught Walter Tevis to play pool, and then they would sneak down to the Phoenix Hotel to >> see, what I call, the sort of grand old days of Lexington.

So these two boys from Chevy Chase would kind of wander down to get a taste of life on the other side.

And I think that must have really appealed to a young Walter Tevis because it appeared again and again in his work, in all its forms.

>> The Hustler came from my standing around in pool rooms when I was a kid, and then later when I was in college, watching all night games of pool, where guys would be playing for $500 bucks a game or something like that.

And the thrill, the excitement, of that for me was just enormous.

>> Pool, as a game, in both a factual and metaphoric way, I'm curious to know what its fascination is for you.

I don't know the source of the fascination for that game, that game for me entirely.

It meant an awful lot to me.

For a long time, I really wanted to be a first-rate pool player.

I thought it enormously important.

I practiced every day.

I liked it.

I got involved in the whole quality of the game, the rolling of the balls, the feel of pool rooms, the whole somewhat seamy side of life that you got into in pool rooms.

It had a tremendous fascination for me.

He studied >> some pretty serious literature and got two degrees, a Bachelor's and a Master's from the University of Kentucky.

And, most significantly, studied under A.B.

"Bud" Guthrie, who had won a Pulitzer Prize.

>> And then ended up teaching in Kentucky as well, even after he graduated.

Met my mother in Kentucky, so a large part of his life, formative years then, were living in Kentucky.

>> I first met Walter Tevis my sophomore school year at Carlisle High School in 1952.

It was the 1952-53 school year.

And he came as our brand new English literature teacher.

And, at the same time, Jamie Griggs was hired as the brand new home economics teacher.

And they met and it was in September of 1952.

>> Evidently, they clicked.

And my mother repeated to me that they had a very passionate relationship.

[MUSIC] >> I always had an elementary glibness with pen and paper and knew that I could do that sort of thing better than most people, but didn't really consider making a profession out of it until I graduated from college and became a high school teacher in Kentucky and found myself in kind of a economic deadlock, making a minuscule salary for a lot of work.

>> Tevis's early biography reads like something out of Dickens.

I mean, his family abandoned him in a hospital in San Francisco.

And, at some point, he gets plucked out of there and dropped into Kentucky.

It doesn't take a Freudian analyst to wonder what that has to do with The Man Who Fell the Earth and these novels that have to do with some kind of search for home.

>> I'm so excited, now, that his work is getting a second read.

>> I have so much pride for the work that he did and then going back and reading all of his books.

I didn't read them when I was younger, when I was a teenager.

So now I've read them all and I know him as a writer and I am just floored.

>> I think anybody who knew Walter realized that he was one of those writers who also had a capacity for self-deprecation and so much so that he probably never knew how good he was.

[MUSIC] >> Now, Lexington has its fair share of cemeteries and monuments, but located a few miles uptown is one of Lexington's two historically African American cemeteries, Cove Haven.

We traveled to Cove Haven to learn a little more about the legacy behind this cemetery and its importance to black history in Lexington.

Georgetown Street in Lexington, Kentucky, has been home to many monuments of African American history.

Monuments of a community highly influential around the turn of the 20th century.

Monuments from a time of segregation.

But just a quarter mile off Georgetown Street stand the true monuments to black history in Lexington, in Cove Haven cemetery.

>> It holds the remains of some former enslaved people and that second generation following enslavement, who became the middle class entrepreneurs of Lexington.

>> Initially called Greenwood Cemetery, the tombstones have stood through time, guarding over the graves that hold the stories and memories of Lexington families.

For Dr. Gerald Smith, the cemetery is important for what he calls collective memory.

When we think about collective memory, >> keep in mind that, for a number of years, there were "decoration days", which is actually Memorial Day.

So it was an opportunity for families to gather in the cemetery and share memories.

Memories, experiences that are passed on from one generation to the next, which becomes a collective memory and it continues to evolve as each family visits the cemetery.

>> Standing tall is the marker for Henry Tandy, a builder whose firm laid the brickwork for the Fayette County Courthouse.

>> All of his family is buried around him.

Absolutely wonderful history, a building on university campus all across the state, and also here in Lexington, prominently the county courthouse.

>> Buried near the front of Cove Haven is John Bait.

Born into slavery in 1855, John graduated from Berea College and became a principal in Danville schools.

Lizzy Fouse would become the president of the Kentucky Federation of Colored Women and was founder of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA.

The humble tombstone of Dr. Mary Ellen Britton does not reflect what a giant she was of her time.

She filled the role as educator, suffragist and civil rights activist.

I think what really >> struck me about her was the photograph that I found of her at the Kentucky Medical Society Association that met here in Lexington.

And she's the only woman seated in the midst of all these men.

>> Today, the collective memory of this sacred land is inspirational.

>> They were folks who had such thought about the value and opportunities of education.

They had a certain love for their God, their communities.

They made you want to be something more than you had imagined.

They so often saw things in you that you didn't even see in yourself.

>> Dr.

Helm finds himself inspired by Green P. Russell, who was the first African American teacher in Lexington and twice served as president of the Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute for Colored Persons.

Now, Kentucky State University.

>> It becomes important that we understand even today that this cemetery that is located in this community, which was a very substantial historically black community.

Many of the folks who live here today do not even know how important this is as a memorial history for them.

>> One tombstone exists for a Kentuckian no longer buried here.

Whitney Young, Jr., a civil rights leader of the sixties and head of the Urban League.

Six thousand people filled the cemetery, along with Richard Nixon, on the day Young was laid to rest.

Shortly after the funeral, Young's wife had his body moved to her family plot in New York, but his tombstone remains.

But for thousands at Cove Haven serves as their final resting place.

Each has its own story and legacy for families to cherish and a community memory to pass on to future generations, >> Rest from their labors and their works do follow them.

The cemetery is so important to understanding the African American experience.

Once you've known the sacrifices, the struggles, the commitment, the meetings that they were involved in, how they organized, the passion, the love for the community, their family, then it means something different to me, understanding that their works do follow them.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Living in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky are numerous free roaming horses that have formed large herds.

Many of the horses are owned by locals who check on them regularly, but some have been abandoned.

Our next story highlights the Appalachian Horse Project in Jackson.

It's an organization dedicated to monitoring and maintaining the welfare of these herds.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Free-roaming is a practice that has been going on for many years in Eastern Kentucky.

Basically, it's what the name says.

It's free roaming.

Any horse that is pastured up here is free to roam wherever it is.

>> It started years ago with the local people putting their horses up here because, when you live in the mountains, there's almost no flat land, very little pasture, and when coal companies left their land and were no longer working on it and had seeded it with grass, it was the perfect environment.

We started the Appalachian Horse Project about six years ago and the coal companies were having problems with the free-roaming horses eating the grass they had planted.

And coal companies have to put down a bond when they start mining that says they will reclaim or put the land back to a suitable purpose.

And so when the horses would come in and see that nice young grass coming up, they'd eat it down all the way to the dirt, practically.

>> And the coal mine companies were having a hard time getting their bond money back because you have to prove that you've got grass growing.

So the complaint kind of came into the governor's office and they came to the Horse Council.

I was at the Horse Council and said, "Can you get a group together and try and figure out what we're going to do about this"?

So we formed the Appalachian Horse Project specifically to address that issue, and then we realized what a benefit it was to just have these herds and so we kind of went from there.

>> One of our biggest challenges is overpopulation.

The herds have grown tremendously in the last several years.

In the past, it was always a gentleman's agreement, as you may.

People would only graze their mares and geldings and they would use the property and the pasture for raising their colts.

And then, once they got old enough, they would take the stallion colts off.

So there was never a problem.

But then there was a downturn in the economy and people could no longer afford to keep and feed their horses.

They just brought stallions up here and that increased the population.

And that leads to too many horses, maybe, for one area.

During the winter, they tend to come off and lick the salt off the road and stay in the roads and they possibly could get hit by cars.

So it's a safety hazard for both vehicles and people and horses.

So we're trying to maintain and get the stallion population reduced.

>> One of our first goals is...

The most primary one is to keep the horses healthy, >> whatever that takes.

A lot of the horses up here are owned.

And then there's several horses that we don't know who owns them, so volunteers that come out feed through the winter and we put in hay, salt, and we also are starting to worm a lot of them the last couple years.

>> We kind of have three major sources of funds.

One is tours and the tours enable people to see them.

And it also enables us as a nonprofit to have a source of income.

>> A lot of people in the community do like them and other people that come down and damage their property, maybe not necessarily like them too much, but majority of the people in the area are happy they're here.

They can come visit them.

They feed them.

They bring their families up here and they just love them.

>> We have a lot of people that have never even seen or touched a horse that love to come up here and just be close to them.

There's something to be said for that, especially in communities or people that have other problems to deal with.

When they come up here, they're just... You can just see they have joy on their face.

It's just great to watch them.

>> People in Eastern Kentucky are horse owners and horse lovers and just a great bunch of people to get together and ride with.

We may not have the fancy barns and fences and pristine pastures as Lexington horse owners, but we love our horses just as much.

>> I think there are a lot of people that own horses that feel that it's cruel to leave them up here, but they've never been here, and so all I ask is that people that feel that way come up and see the herds.

See how happy they are, see how free they are, see how most of them are in pretty good shape.

As long as we can manage and keep the herds healthy, then there's no problem.

>> I believe the herds are here to stay.

The future, if we can get the population under control a little bit better, it looks bright for the horses.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Settled in the late 18th century by Daniel Bryan, nephew of famed pioneer Daniel Boone, Waveland became known for its large waving fields of hemp and grain, hence how it got its name.

Our last story takes us to a different type of plant.

One with a little sway and a whole lot of sass.

[MUSIC] >> Along the busy thoroughfare of Frederica Street in Owensboro, Kentucky, stands one of the city's favorite claims to fame: the world's largest sassafras tree.

Standing over 100 feet tall, this giant is 21 feet in circumference and is a tourist attraction for the city.

>> This tree is a part of our living history.

It's probably one of the oldest things in Davis County that is still standing.

You can just imagine buffalo roaming down this road and seeing this tree.

This tree was here with the buffalo and it's here with our people now.

>> Over 300 years old, this historic landmark dates back to a time when Native Americans knew of its many uses.

>> The Native Americans were very aware of this tree.

They used it for various medicinal purposes, especially to treat wounds.

They would rub the leaves on the wounds.

When the colonists came, the sassafras was one of the major exports from the colonies back to England.

You scrape off the bark and it'll have a citrus type of flavor to it.

>> This magnificent tree almost came to an early end in 1957, when expansion was planned for Frederica Street and the city wanted to cut it down.

The tree stood in the front yard of Dr. and Grace Rash.

Upon hearing of the plans, Grace Rash came to its rescue.

>> The city decided they were going to try to bulldoze it in the middle of the night.

So Miss Rash, being the avid hunter that she was, got word of this.

And so she sat down outside of the tree the entire night with her shotgun to make sure that nobody would ever ever touch this tree.

>> And, to this day, this giant still stands guard over the old Rash homestead, providing the people of Owensboro a unique treasure that towers over the landscape.

[MUSIC] >> Thank you for joining us as we kick off season 27 of Kentucky Life.

We're excited to showcase much more of the Commonwealth with the rest of this season, so be sure to stay tuned and don't miss a thing.

For the moment, I will leave you with this Kentucky Life moment.

I'm Doug Flynn enjoying life.

Kentucky life.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Funding for this program is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.