I write in response to Chris Zagst’s letter concerning Kentucky Chautauqua presentation of Daniel Boone by Kevin Hardesty at Fort Boonesborough.

While he actually didn’t even see Kevin Hardesty’s show, he made some erroneous assumptions by looking at the wonderful pictures that The Winchester Sun included in the paper.

He questioned the accuracy of Kevin’s presentation based on his costume and the fact people were enjoying the presentation.

I have worked at Kentucky Humanities for nearly 22 years and have worked with the Kentucky Chautauqua program since its inception. We take seriously our mission of “Telling Kentucky’s Story.”

Our Kentucky Chautauqua is one of the programs that allows us to tell Kentucky’s story all over the state. We provide more than 400 presentations each year in schools and community venues.

In order to become a Chautauquan and represent Kentucky Humanities, a person goes through a rigorous year of preparation and reviews before we put our stamp of approval on the presentation. Each Chautauquan works with a scholar, a drama consultant and a costume consultant in addition to coming in for two reviews in front of a panel of scholars and drama consultants before doing presentations in public venues.

Many of the scholars who work with our presenters and serve on the review panels are the state’s most prominent historians.

Historians are also matched to each of our Chautauquans based on the content of their presentation.

Kentucky Humanities is proud of our flagship program, Kentucky Chautauqua. We also know there are many other re-enactors, historians, teachers, etc. educating the public about the humanities. We support the efforts of anyone that is promoting history, literature, philosophy, anthropology and all the humanities disciplines.

Kathleen Pool

Associate director of Kentucky Humanities