Where's the "est"?

My last post extolling Kentucky's beauty on a recent drive seemed a bit braggadocious, as if I had some kind of pride of authorship in making my native state something special. I am particularly sensitive to this feeling as I just returned from the Netherlands where I kept commenting on it being the "est"--the prettiEST, the artiEST, the quaintEST.

Will is a friend I met through Rotary on a previous trip to Amsterdam. On my recent trip Will showed me that famed Dutch hospitality as he had me over to his home in the very center of old Amsterdam, then on Sunday he took me to a number of small villages--places all the tour books say "you simply MUST go (dahhh-ling). " Vollendam and Marken are two of the most picturesque. They are seaside villages with the typical Dutch wooden homes, windmills, cows and geese that just oozes with quiet, quaint serenity.

Like my drive through Central Kentucky, what accentuated this tour was the unbelievably dramatic skies. Even Will gazed and repeated in his Dutch-accented English "This is Fan-TAWS-tik". One could now see what inspired Vermeer and Jan Steen to paint those Dutch countryside landscapes featuring the very same multi hued clouds stretching across the bright blue sky that we were then experiencing.

One could be forgiven for believing--and saying--that this spot at this time was the most beautiful place on earth, the bEST.

Fact is, though, that across the globe there were countless others right at that exact time who were similarly experiencing there own Nirvana. For each of us, THAT what we were then experiencing was, for us, the "EST." Objectively were we to share each others' milieu we may agree that ALL such places were EST.

And while Kentucky and its people are wonderful, the quest for EST is a non-starter. It is an irrelevant and limiting journey.

Truth be known Jack Daniels is still the most popular single brand of whiskey. And in Haarlem, a village just outside of Amsterdam, I met a Thai gentleman working in his aunt's restaurant who lived for 5 years in both Knoxville and Lexington. He said by far Tennessee was much friendlier and more accepting to him.

So is Kentucky EST? Yes, it's est and so is the place that touches your breast.

Moo on! RFD 12/10/04