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Articles by Ike Adams
SEC Remains Focused on Public Disclosures Made By Life Sciences Companies
On September 5, 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a US$1.25 million settlement with biopharmaceutical company, FibroGen, Inc. (FibroGen), finding that FibroGen made false and misleading statements regarding the results of cardiovascular safety analyses of FibroGen’s anemia drug candidate, Roxadustat.
EPA Chemical Safety Rule Raises Questions About Authority
ADVERTISEMENT Don't want ads? Subscribe or login now. By Justin Savage, Ike Adams and Aaron Flyer (April 25, 2024, 4:17 PM EDT) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized a rule that imposes novel board reporting regulations and signals that the agency may seek a role in regulating corporate governance.... A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence.
Implications of the SEC’s Recent Enforcement Action Against Activision Blizzard
On February 3, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or Commission) settled an enforcement action against Activision Blizzard Inc. (Activision), a publicly traded video game development and publishing company.
Ike Adams' Points East column started with an editor's quiz about 'talking down-home'
The Sentinel-Echo was the first newspaper to run Ike Adams’s column, which ran for nearly 40 years. Adams’s column was born after he answered a quiz put together by then-managing editor Charles House in Sept. 1981 about “talking down-home.” According to Ike’s brother Andy, Ike was invited to write a column about mountain living thereafter.
DOWN HOME TO POINTS EAST
As editor of the Richmond Register, one of the best and worst parts of this job is the amount of words I have to read each day. Alas, it is not always a leisurely activity. As a general rule, I try to read through every story or column twice. Once for context, and then another pass where I put on my editor's goggles and search for misplaced commas, misspellings, and other grammatical errors.
Ike Adams' last goodbye
EDITOR'S NOTE: Longtime Richmond Register columnist, Ike Adams, passed away on June 18. This farewell column was written by his wife, Loretta. Ike asked me last week to help him get out a final goodbye column to his readers. He was simply, too weak and sick to do it himself. That plan never panned out because his illness took complete control of his mind and body. He left this world on Friday, June 18 resting peacefully at the Hospice Compassionate Care Center in Richmond.
POINTS EAST: Medical issues causing need for life change
This is going to be another short column because I simply don’t have the energy to make it any longer. However it does feel like news worth breaking and the beans need to be spilled this week because they represent another life changer for Loretta and me and one that we have been dreading for the last 2 years. The short end to a much, much longer story is that we have decided to put me in homebound hospice care.
POINTS EAST: Angel, friends come to rescue in time of need
Back in early March, it became obvious that Loretta and I were going to have a wheelchair to get me into and out of the house, especially on those rainy days when I was making trips to the hospital three or four times a week with no let up in sight.
Chair from angels makes happy June
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on June 02, 2021 By IKE ADAMS Back in early March, it became obvious that Loretta and I were going to have a wheelchair to get me into and out of the house, especially on those rainy days when I was making trips to the hospital three or four times a week with no letup in sight. So we made arrangements to buy one at a medical […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
Kindle saves day!
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on May 26, 2021 By IKE ADAMS In June of 2016, Loretta and I embarked on a 10-day road trip to Houston to visit our daughter, Genny, (Geneva Tesh), who had recently given birth to our newest grandson, Zachary (Zach). At that point in my life I was still reading on a 15-year-old Kindle. One of the first ever made, it didn’t even have a back light. […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
POINTS EAST: Keeter resting high on that mountain
This is probably the hardest column I’ve ever tried to write and there are no guarantees that I’m going to be able to pull it off. Tears keep falling on my keyboard and every time I attempt to type another word, my vision blurs and a baseball seems to be stuck in my throat. I had no idea that a totally shattered heart could be this devastating. My brother, Keith, (Keeter) passed over to the other side last Friday and I was too physically incapacitated to even make it to his funeral on Sunday.
Birds are still ‘mocking’ him
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on May 19, 2021 By IKE ADAMS When the sun in the morning peeps over the hill And kisses the roses round my windowsill Then my heart fills with gladness when I hear the trill Of those birds in the treetops on Mockingbird Hill Tra la la, tweedle de de, it gives me a thrill To wake up in the morning to the mockingbirds’ trill Tra la […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
Unexpected death of a brother leaves hearts shattered
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on May 12, 2021 By IKE ADAMS This is probably the hardest column I’ve ever tried to write and there are no guarantees that I’m going to be able to pull it off. Tears keep falling on my keyboard and every time I attempt to type another word, my vision blurs and a baseball seem to be stuck in my throat. I had no idea that a […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
POINTS EAST: Remembering snow in April and a fishing trip
Whatever day it was last week when we had a little snow, I’m thinking it was before April 20, at least one weather forecaster was gleefully honking his horn and proclaiming it to be the latest snow we’d had in over 100 years. I’m a bit skeptical about that because I lived through one in 1987 or 88 that was still on the ground during most of the last week of April during whichever of those years it fell.
POINTS EAST: If it thunders in February, it will frost in May
Old timers on Blair Branch used to say that if it thunders in February, it will frost in May. If that holds true, the Little Ette bunch bean seeds that Loretta and I dug out of the freezer and Andy planted in the garden last week, don’t have a chance. In fact, I’m sitting here hoping they are slow to sprout because it looks like we have a few more frosts headed this way in April. Ah well, we have enough seeds left to replant but not enough to share with anybody else.
Here’s hoping a May frost won’t come this year
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on April 21, 2021 By IKE ADAMS Old timers on Blair Branch used to say that if it thunders in February it will frost in May. If that holds true, the Little Ette bunch bean seeds that Loretta and I dug out of the freezer and Andy planted in the garden last week don’t have a chance. In fact, I’m sitting here hoping they are slow to […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
Ike Adams: Old Timer's Saying — Garrard Central Record
POINTS EAST / By Ike Adams (Paint Lick, KY - April 21, 2021) — Old timers on Blair Branch used to say that if it thunders in February it will frost in May. If that holds true, the Little Ette bunch bean seeds that Loretta and I dug out of the freezer and Andy planted in the garden last week, don’t have a chance. In fact, I’m sitting here hoping they are slow to sprout because it looks like we have a few more frosts headed this way in April.
POINTS EAST: The last hope of a fruit tree orchard
I can tell you for sure that the climate on Charlie Brown Road took a drastic change for the worse during the spring of 2014 and has yet to show any signs that it is going to change back. It wasn’t warming that did my little orchard in, however. It was April hard freezes. Last Friday night one got me again. This makes 8 years in a row that there will be no homegrown peaches, pears, apples, cherries or currants in our back yard. The jury is still out on Loretta’s blueberries.
Pickled pigs’ feet are hard to find, but delicious
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on April 14, 2021 By IKE ADAMS At this time two years ago, I weighed 186 pounds. It wouldn’t have hurt me to lose about 10 of them, so that’s what I did. By April of 2020 I was down to 176 even though I hadn’t intentionally done anything to lose the pounds. I had developed cancer but I promise you faithfully, that was not done on […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
POINTS EAST: Column has run for 40 years
After the column has had time to run in your family newspaper, I usually post it the following week, on Facebook. Many, if not most, of my social media friends do not subscribe to a newspaper that carries this column. For the record, I would not share it on Facebook if one of my papers complained. However, a recent Facebook query wanted to know how long I’d been pursuing the writing habit and the author obviously thought it was a retirement hobby or something like that.
POINTS EAST: Weak and stubborn after cancer procedure
Okay, I stayed under anesthesia at UK for a tad over 4 hours last Friday, 3 of which included removing cancer from my bladder and installing a stent in one kidney where the cancer had it blocked and another hour of chemo sprayed up my urinary tract to coat the lining of my bladder in an attempt to kill any cancer cells the surgery didn’t get. I am, by no means, out of the woods but the team of five urologists who worked on my plumbing are cautiously optimistic.
Prognosis: Cautious optimism
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on March 24, 2021 By IKE ADAMS I stayed under anesthesia at UK for a tad over four hours last Friday, three of which included removing cancer from my bladder and installing a stent in one kidney where the cancer had it blocked, and another hour of chemo sprayed up my urinary tract to coat the lining of my bladder in an attempt to kill any cancer […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
POINTS EAST: Uncle Stevie and the pawpaw trees
My Uncle, Stevie Craft, was partially disabled as a soldier in the Spanish American War and, to this day, I am ashamed to admit that I never knew the particulars of how he got that way. He simply didn’t want to talk about it and he didn’t. My memory has also gotten so bad that I may have forgotten. I can’t wait to talk to my brother Andy again next week. Uncle Stevie couldn’t do much in the way of manual labor.
POINTS EAST: Pea planting, not a day late
Old friend and Letcher County native, Jim Cornett, who has lived in Burnside, Ky. for many years, often reminds me, in late January, to not forget to get my peas planted on February 15. This year was no exception to Jim’s gentle reminder. Then, on the scheduled date, he emailed a note admitting that there would be no pea planting in Burnside in mid February. The ground there was frozen hard as a rock, just like it was on Charlie Brown Road, here in Paint Lick.
POINTS EAST: A catalogue to plant by
For those of you who want to save paper and who don’t want to spend many hours reading every sentence of several dozen seed catalogues, several readers have asked me to list the top three or four that I absolutely can’t live without. If I had to choose just one, it would be Twilley’s. They have the widest variety of sweet corn on the market along with numerous other vegetables that can’t be found elsewhere.
POINTS EAST: Time spent in a sugar camp
A friend in Letcher County recently sent me several Facebook photos of a sugar maple syrup and sugar operation that is in full swing at Southdown Farms in Ermine, just outside Whitesburg, KY. I’m not sure what their visitation schedule is like, but you can find a ton of information on their website. You can also Google "KY Maple Syrup Association" and, most likely find one of more than a dozen similar operations scattered through the hills of eastern Kentucky.
POINTS EAST: Scaling back the garden, or not
The problem, at least for me, with having a garden worked up well enough that the soil is easily tillable is trying not to plant every square inch of it as well as tilling up another foot or so at both sides and the far end. As a result, our vegetable garden has nearly tripled in size over the 22 years we’ve been here. What started out as about 3,000 square feet is now a tad over 8,000. Forgive me if this column seems redundant because it probably is.
Can maple syrup really make your toes hurt?
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on February 17, 2021 By IKE ADAMS A friend in Letcher County recently sent me several photos on Facebook of a sugar maple syrup and sugar operation that is in full swing at Southdown Farms in Ermine, just outside Whitesburg. I’m not sure what their visitation schedule is like, but you can find a ton of information on their website. You can also Google KY Maple Syrup […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
POINTS EAST: The birds in the alcove
There’s a wide open, unroofed, unfloored, extension off the exterior wall of our dining room that’s about 8 feet square, give or take a few inches. Loretta calls it an alcove. The nicest thing I’ve ever called it is a hole in the wall. When I used to mow the grass, I called it a bunch of things, none of which can be mentioned in a family newspaper because it is virtually impossible to mow with conventional, lawn care equipment.
POINTS EAST: A wish for fish came true
I swear that I was not intentionally dropping hints for somebody to bring me a mess of fish when I wrote the column, a couple of weeks ago, about wishing I could catch some and how good I figured they would taste. Then a few mornings after the column ran, during one of those days when radiation treatments had me sleeping pretty much around the clock, I heard Loretta talking to someone in the kitchen. I thought it was my brother, Andy, and that I’d get right out of bed and see what he was up to.
Now that’s a bird’s-eye view
By Mountain Eagle Staff | on February 03, 2021 By IKE ADAMS There’s a wide-open unroofed and unfloored extension off the exterior wall of our dining room that’s about eight feet square, give or take a few inches. Loretta calls it an alcove. The nicest thing I’ve ever called it is a hole in the wall. When I used to mow the grass I called it a bunch of things, none of […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
POINTS EAST: Completing 5 days of radiation
The jury is still out, as to whether or not it did any good, but I just completed 5 consecutive days of radiation treatments and have a diploma to prove it. The treatments are aimed at easing my prostate cancer pain and nothing else has worked for longer than a week to 10 days at a time. The doctors say it may take up to month for this to do the trick if, in fact, it’s going to and that is far short of being guaranteed.
Crappie fillets bring some delicious meals
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on January 27, 2021 By IKE ADAMS I swear that I was not intentionally dropping hints for somebody to bring me a mess of fish when I wrote the column a couple of weeks ago about wishing I could catch some and how good I figured they would taste. Then a few mornings after the column ran, during one of those days when radiation treatments had me […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
POINTS EAST: Craving to fish
It’s been at least 2 ½ years since I’ve been fishing. I simply can’t manage to tie a hook on, thanks mostly to Mr. Parkinson and some other neurological issues and I’m too stubborn to ask for help. Actually, I doubt that I could crank a reel handle or take a fish off the hook if I lucked up and caught one. The last few times we went, my brother, Andy, had to clean and fry our catch and he seemed to enjoy the ones I caught even more than I did.
POINTS EAST: Catching a TV signal for a price
I’m not sure who has or doesn’t have access to cable TV service in our neck of the woods, but I do know, for sure, that Charlie Brown Road is not among the more gifted. We mostly rely on satellite TV, except for a few folks who still use antennas to make do with all the TV they want or need.
Dreaming of a fishing trip
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on January 13, 2021 By IKE ADAMS It’s been at least 2-1/2 years since I’ve been fishing. I simply can’t manage to tie a hook on, thanks mostly to Mr. Parkinson and some other neurological issues, and I’m too stubborn to ask for help. Actually, I doubt that I could crank a reel handle or take a fish off the hook if I lucked up and caught […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
POINTS EAST: Firecracker season in Letcher County
I’m not sure if it was, or still is, just a Letcher County thing, but when I was growing up the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day were unofficially called “firecracker season.” After school evenings and all day weekends consisted of an almost steady roar of exploding firecrackers, bottle rockets and less frequently but much louder/far more dangerous M-80s and cherry bombs that made the county sound like a war zone.
Loss of TV signal isn’t such a bad thing in this day and time
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on January 06, 2021 By IKE ADAMS I’m not sure who has or doesn’t have access to cable TV service in our neck of the woods, but I do know, for sure, that Charlie Brown Road is not among the more gifted. We mostly rely on satellite TV except for a few folks who still use antennas to make do with all the TV they want or […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
POINTS EAST: Cutting wood to keep warm, not the gravy kind
We heated our old house on Blair Branch with a combination of wood and coal. The kitchen cook stove was started with a fire made with short, slender sticks of “stove wood”, as was the big “warm morning” heating stove in Dad’s and Mom’s big bedroom. After the wood fires were going strong, both were usually stoked with coal. The big bedroom/living room where my brothers and I slept was heated with an open grate fireplace that could be fired with both coal and/or large chunks of firewood.
POINTS EAST: Christmas time with Truman Caudill
My closest friend, when I was growing up on Blair Branch, was Truman Caudill. Actually Truman was my best friend off and on because his parents moved around a lot and often spent 1 or 2 years at a time in Indiana before his mom would move back home for 3 or 4 years while his dad would rent a room in a boarding house to stay up there and work.
POINTS EAST: Keeping the garden small this year
My younger brother, Andy, was already talking about gardening two weeks ago. He is ready to get all the tomato cages and fall bean hoops set aside and spend a day cutting down corn stalks and all the dead stuff that grew several dozen varieties of fresh vegetables between April and the end of last November. Seed catalogues are already piling up all over the house and Loretta keeps shaking her head. “I guess you want me to keep this,” she is prone to muttering almost every time the mail runs?
POINTS EAST: Sacrifices for the perfect Christmas tree
I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this story before, but if you are younger than 40, you probably missed it. In fact, if you are younger than 50, you probably didn’t spend a lot of time reading a weekly newspaper in the early 1980s unless an elementary school teacher forced one on you. I’m reasonably sure my column was in its infancy when I first spun this yarn, but I can’t find the original, so I’m guessing it was in the late 1970s to early 80s.
Christmas tree cutting brought out the turpentine
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on December 09, 2020 By IKE ADAMS I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this story before, but if you are younger than 40, you probably missed it. In fact, if you are younger than 50, you probably didn’t spend a lot of time reading a weekly newspaper in the early 1980s unless an elementary school teacher forced one on you. I’m reasonably sure my column was in […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
POINTS EAST: Loretta's late night veggie haul
If I had caught myself going to the garden three hours after dark, on a night when the temperature was supposed to drop into the low 20s, nobody would have been the least bit surprised. I love turnips and mustard greens so much that I’ll try to save them from a hard freeze if I’m able.
Falcon was welcome visitor
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on November 18, 2020 By IKE ADAMS Last Friday, noonish, I was sitting on the front porch soaking up the last warm day we’re apt to see for awhile, when Loretta stepped outside to bring me a cup of just-brewed coffee. I’m lucky she didn’t spill half of it in my lap because she was no sooner put the door than she began exclaiming, “Look, look, look […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
COLUMN: Too warm for long johns
I never thought I'd ever be saying this in November, but the high temperature this past Sunday was pushing 78 degrees. Since moving into my long johns a week ago today, I have been way hotter than I really wanted to be for most of last week and I am really looking forward to getting back to some weather that better fits my clothes.
Winter of 2020-21 will be similar to last two years, woolly worms say
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on October 28, 2020 By IKE ADAMS Apparently the National Association of Woolly Worm Winter Weather Watchers (NAWWWWW) is taking the shelter-in-place coronavirus precautions far more seriously than the human population. Of course members of NAWWWWW pay absolutely no attention to politics and that may be the reason so few of them have been seen out and about during these normally busy weather forecasting weeks.
Harvest time on Blair Branch
Mid to late October was pretty much the end of harvest time on Blair Branch before the 1960s and also the end of an era. By the 1940s, hillside farms were already dwindling down to inherited acreage that was far too small for a single family to subsist by living mostly off the land. Many, if not most, families still depended on raising big gardens for most of their food throughout the 1950s.
POINTS EAST: Seeing what the woolies look like
While I seriously doubt that COVID-19 has had anything to do with it, there have been some unusual weather and other nature phenomena going on since roughly the time it really took off. For example we certainly had more May frosts on Charlie Brown Road than at any time since we’ve bought the place in 1999 or, for that matter, since we moved to Garrard County in 1982.
What will the woollies predict?
Points East By Mountain Eagle Staff | on October 07, 2020 By IKE ADAMS While I seriously doubt that COVID-19 has had anything to do with it, there have been some unusual weather and other nature phenomena going on since roughly the time it really took off. For example we certainly had more May frosts on Charlie Brown Road than at any time since we’ve bought the place in 1999 or, for that matter, […] You are unauthorized to view this page.
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