Steve Beshear, the former Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, has a guesstimated net worth of $1.5 million. Mr Beshear spent almost his entire adult life in politics, and:

is an American attorney and politician who served as the 61st governor of Kentucky from 2007 to 2015. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1974 to 1980, was the state’s 44th attorney general from 1980 to 1983, and was the 49th lieutenant governor from 1983 to 1987.

He ‘suffered’ through an interregnum when he finished third in the Democratic primary for Governor, and he spent twenty years practicing law with Lexington’s prestigious firm of Stites and Harbison. Briefly put, Mr Beshear led a reasonably privileged lifestyle in the Bluegrass State’s second largest city.

The former Governor’s son, Andy Beshear, wound up leading a similarly privileged lifestyle, able to attend Vanderbilt University, the only private school in the Southeastern Conference, current estimated cost of attendance $80,546 per academic year, and then the University of Virginia School of Law, current estimated cost of attendance for out-of-state students $91,704 per academic year.

In 2005, he was also hired by Stites and Harbison. No ambulance-chasing for the younger Me Beshear.

The younger Mr Beshear was elected state Attorney General in 2015, and subsequently Governor in 2019.

When the COVID-19 pandemic, or panicdemic as I sometimes call it, arose in early 2020, Governor Beshear issued draconian executive orders which shut down much of the ‘non-essential’ businesses in the Bluegrass State. Fifteen days to flatten the infection curve, we were told!

View from Natural Bridge, October 23, 2021. Photo by Dana R Pico. Click to enlarge.

Fast forward to this autumn. The Pico family visited Natural Bridge State Park on Saturday, October 23^rd. It wasn’t a long visit, in that we didn’t have much time, so we took the skylift to the top of the bridge, from which I took the photograph.^[1]Photos copyright by Dana R Pico. May be freely used with proper attribution.

When one of my Twitter friends replied, “I am surprised more leaves haven’t turned yet!” I resolved to return in two weeks to repeat the photo. So, we returned on Sunday, November 7^th, and I got the photo, which will appear further down.

We had more time on Sunday, so while we took the skylift up, we decided to hike down Balanced Rock Trail, which ends not at the bottom of the skylift, but at Hemlock Lodge, the park’s hotel, gift shop and dining room facility.

Signs on the doors to Hemlock Lodge. Photo by Dana R Pico. Click to enlarge.

And Hemlock Lodge is where we found these signs on the doors, requiring masks for entry. Well, we didn’t have masks with us, and entered anyway, quickly discovering that the signs were mostly honored in the breach by park visitors, though employees did wear the infernal things.

What we also found was that the once-thriving restaurant was closed to dining! There were two ladies working therein, who would get carry-out orders. I asked them why the place was closed, and was told that the facility had been shut down due to COVID-19, and that was in March of 2020. Most of the staff had been laid off, and now, twenty months later, they still were not back.

Natural Bridge State Park is located in the Red River Gorge geological area, and straddles Powell and Wolfe counties in Kentucky. These are two very poor counties:

• Powell County: The median income for a household in the county was $25,515, and the median income for a family was $30,483. Males had a median income of $26,962 versus $18,810 for females. The per capita income for the county was $13,060. About 18.90% of families and 23.50% of the population were below the poverty line, including 31.00% of those under age 18 and 20.00% of those age 65 or over.
• Wolfe County: The median income for a household in the county was $19,310, and the median income for a family was $23,333. Males had a median income of $23,859 versus $18,952 for females. The per capita income for the county was $10,321. About 29.90% of families and 35.90% of the population were below the poverty line, including 50.20% of those under age 18 and 26.70% of those age 65 or over.

As much as people hear about jobs going begging for people, much of that is in suburban and urban areas; rural eastern Kentucky is not like that. When Governor Beshear — a Democrat, of course — shut down so much of the state parks, he put people out of work that had fewer prospects for finding something else.

View from Natural Bridge, November 7, 2021. Photo by Dana R Pico. Click to enlarge.

For restaurant workers? There’s Miguel’s Pizza, right across State Route 11 from the entrance to the state park, but it offers lower wages and doesn’t have state employee benefits. Governor Beshear, reared in wealthier Lexington, the scion of a prominent family, doesn’t really understand what he has done to rural Kentuckians, or, if he does understand, he doesn’t really care.

This has been the problem with the Patricians all along: they are so wrapped up in their own little worlds that they have lost any concept of what it is like for the plebeians. For the well-to-do, well, heck, two weeks to flatten the curve was nothing, they could handle it!

But for the working class, two weeks without their jobs isn’t nothing; it’s two weeks without bills getting paid. Governor Beshear doesn’t understand that, and doesn’t want to understand that.