News - Friday, October 18, 2013

Shelton Swafford Chambers is doing a spirited impression of her grandmother, one of the first women to attend the law school at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. The mimicry is part of the story she’s telling about the time the elderly matriarch summoned her after learning she’d be working at Decosimo. There’s one odd detail, though.

The number ten has special meaning to Thirty-One Gifts this year. The company celebrated its tenth anniversary on October 10 (10/10) by returning to Chattanooga to give back to the community where it was founded. The company last week  at Hixson High School announced it will endow the Cindy Monroe Values and Vision Scholarship, and together with Girl Talk, announced a mentoring program and camp for middle-school girls.

Steve Powers of Baker Donelson has been elected to a two-year term as chair of the American College of Transportation Attorneys (ACTA).

ACTA is a non-profit corporation comprised of transportation defense attorneys and insurance professionals who serve as a legal resource to a broad base of transportation industry businesses, including public and private fleet motor carriers, logistics and brokerage providers, freight forwarders, warehousemen, bus companies, insurance brokers and adjusting firms.

The Chattanooga Women’s Leadership Institute will present a series of financial seminars for women entitled Women Know: Financial Empowerment beginning Wednesday, October 16.

Women are faced with financial implications when they get married, when they begin or change careers, when they have children, when they divorce or lose a spouse, as they begin to acquire assets, when they retire, and as they begin to think about leaving assets to their family or to charity upon death. Women Know: Financial Empowerment is designed to provide women with the tools to better understand their current personal financial situation and to develop a financial plan for their future.

I've heard that power and money don’t change people; they just let people be themselves. There’s no question that the more money and/or power one has, the more freedom he has to do as he chooses. It’s easy to be yourself when you’re not constrained by outside sources or the lack of resources. The person behind the mask isn’t always pretty; the person behind the mask isn’t always kind. Sometimes, seeing the “real” in a person can be a pretty scary thing. A true test of character is what you do when you have the opportunity to be yourself and do what you want instead of what is right.

Recently, I made a road trip to Colorado, where I was the driver. Although I split the going trip into two days, I drove straight through on the way home – an 18-hour drive. It took some serious concentration.

And I consumed an energy drink – the 5-Hour Shot brand. I only had one, but in order to prevent me from getting sleepy when everyone else in the car was asleep, I drank the drink. However, I’m a healthy person, and I consume caffeine on a regular basis.

Harassing phone calls. What other term would fit? For months now – over a year, for sure, two years perhaps – at home, on our land line, we receive up to a dozen nuisance calls per week. This in addition to the unwanted marketing calls. Far more, really, than we ever received before the appearance a few years ago of the Do Not Call List. Or whatever it was called.

We seem to be putting down more roots the longer we remain in Chattanooga – and my volunteer hours are increasing proportionally. Besides volunteering for Wings to Soar, I also volunteer for the Chattanooga Audubon Society (CAS, chattanoogaaudubon.org).

To begin with, how does someone even become a heckler? Do they evolve to become what they are? Or do they march from the womb with an already highly developed moral conscience, outrage, and sense of civic duty? 

Maybe it’s just something they’ve repressed from the Sixties.  

Stop and think about October for a few moments – and close your eyes while doing so. (Well, maybe not, because then you couldn’t read my story!)

Beautiful yellow, red, orange and gold trees; fall squashes, pumpkins, and other fruits and vegetables; cooler and windier days; the smell of smoke from farmers burning their fields; leaves covering the ground and crunching beneath your feet; ghosts, goblins and trick-or-treating... There’s a lot to think about in one little month, and plenty to enjoy in 31 short days!

Chattanooga police officer Daniel Anderson spends his days putting bad guys in jail and helping people in need. The skills he employs allow him to fulfill his duty to protect the city and its people. Then his shift ends and his work as Realtor Daniel Anderson begins.

Defaulting on the nation’s federal debt could be disastrous for the U.S. economy and catastrophic for the housing recovery, cautioned the National Association of Realtors last week in testimony before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

This one is going to take a little thinking on your part… both mathematically and historically. Give your school days a refresher. See how many you can answer correctly.

1. What does 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 equal?

2. What is the most popular name requested for a boat? Retired; Love Boat; Obsession; wife’s name.

As I stepped outside after watching “Captain Phillips,” I took a deep breath. I was glad to be off the water, away from the men who had no value for human life, and no longer near the bullets that were a split-second away from boring a tunnel through my brain. It had been a harrowing two hours.