‘Clark County is home to the beautiful…’

I was doing some research when I saw it. And by research, I mean scrolling on my phone.

But to be fair, I was also answer­ing emails, check­ing my cal­en­dar, jump­ing on a Zoom meet­ing, try­ing to remem­ber where the oth­er half of the sand­wich I made for lunch dis­ap­peared to, return­ing a phone call, review­ing reports, look­ing at bud­gets, and glanc­ing at dates four and five years down the road for a pos­si­ble event that may or may not ever hap­pen, but still needs to be pen­ciled in. So yes, I was scrolling, but I was also very much working.

That’s how most days look.

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I scroll to stay informed. To catch com­mu­ni­ty updates, local events, head­lines, col­or palettes, and indus­try trends. I move back and forth between social media, news out­lets, and local cov­er­age con­stant­ly, often with a spread­sheet open in one tab and a meet­ing reminder pop­ping up in anoth­er. It’s not acci­den­tal. It’s part of the job.

And some­where in the mid­dle of all that, I paused.

It was just the begin­ning of an arti­cle. Cut off mid-sen­tence. A pho­to of down­town Winchester. And one sim­ple line that read, “Clark County is home to the beautiful…”

That was it.

No expla­na­tion. No list. No big claims. Just an unfin­ished thought.

Before I ever clicked to read the rest, it stopped me.

The arti­cle itself turned out to be 202 words, which in today’s scrolling, skim­ming, head­line-heavy world is hon­est­ly a respectable com­mit­ment. But long before I read a sin­gle one of them, that open­ing line had already done some­thing. It didn’t feel like a slo­gan or a mar­ket­ing phrase. It just felt true.

As the Tourism Director for Winchester–Clark County, Kentucky, I read and share many arti­cles. I send out fea­tures, announce­ments, and sto­ries about our home­town. Yes, that’s part of my job. But this one felt dif­fer­ent, because it wasn’t writ­ten by us. It was writ­ten about us.

And that mat­ters. Because words don’t just describe a place; they con­nect it.

We all grew up hear­ing some ver­sion of the idea that words bounce off and don’t stick. But any­one who’s ever lived in a com­mu­ni­ty knows that isn’t real­ly how it works. Some words do stick. They act more like glue, hold­ing sto­ries togeth­er, shap­ing per­cep­tion, and rein­forc­ing how we talk about home and about each other.

That unfin­ished sen­tence remind­ed me of that.

I spend a lot of time talk­ing about our his­to­ry, our events, our arts and music, our food, our trails, and our tra­di­tions. All the things peo­ple can expe­ri­ence here. All the places they can explore. But that sin­gle line was a reminder that some­times you don’t need a long list to name some­thing honestly.

Clark County is beautiful.

Yes, you can pur­chase a beau­ti­ful Winchester-Clark County post­card at the Tourism Office. But the beau­ty here doesn’t stop at what fits neat­ly on a post­card. It’s lived in. It shows up in peo­ple, in places, in shared his­to­ry, and in the every­day moments that don’t always make it into a photo.

It’s in the way down­town still feels lived in, not staged. It’s in the rhythm of dai­ly life, where store­fronts aren’t just busi­ness­es, they’re part of someone’s sto­ry. It’s in con­ver­sa­tions on side­walks, at events, at ball­games, and over cof­fee. It’s in the pride peo­ple car­ry for where they’re from, even when they don’t always put it into words.

And it’s also in what’s growing.

Part of my role is hon­or­ing what already exists while help­ing cre­ate space for what’s next. New ideas. New part­ner­ships. New ways for peo­ple to expe­ri­ence this place while still stay­ing true to who we are. Progress here doesn’t erase the past. It tends to show up along­side it.

Beauty here isn’t one thing. It’s lay­ered. It’s per­son­al. It’s shared.

It lives in the birth­place of leg­ends, yes, but just as much in the every­day lives of the peo­ple who call this place home. It lives in cre­ativ­i­ty and resilience. In humor. In hard work. In the way this com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to show up for one anoth­er, year after year.

When I talk about tourism, I’m real­ly talk­ing about peo­ple. About how a place feels when you arrive, and what stays with you after you leave. At its best, tourism is about pay­ing atten­tion and being thought­ful about the words we use, because those words have a way of sticking.

They stick when we say them to each oth­er. They stick when oth­ers say them about us. And over time, they help shape how a place is under­stood, shared, and car­ried forward.

So when I saw that unfin­ished sen­tence, some­where between a bud­get line item, a Zoom meet­ing, and a cal­en­dar reminder set years in advance, it remind­ed me why this work mat­ters to me.

Sometimes it takes a long arti­cle to tell a sto­ry well. And some­times it only takes a few words to say some­thing true.

Winchester-Clark County, Kentucky,  is home to the beau­ti­ful. When we say it to each oth­er, and when oth­ers say it about us, those words begin to stick, shap­ing how this place is under­stood, shared, and car­ried forward.

P.S.

I found the remain­der of the sand­wich. Multitasking is real, and pink Post-it notes absolute­ly pass for let­tuce. But that’s a sto­ry for anoth­er time.