News - Friday, June 27, 2014

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has appointed a special Tennessee Supreme Court to hear a case from which four Supreme Court justices have recused themselves. The diverse appointees represent the three grand divisions of Tennessee.

The special court appointees include Rosemarie L. Hill, chair of the labor and employment section of Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel in Chattanooga, where she represents employers on a variety of employment-related issues, both in and out of court.

If one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, then Fred Friday is the richest man in Chattanooga.

As the owner of the local Junk King franchise, Friday and his crew have hauled off untold riches from homes, businesses, and more. Some of the spoils ended up in a landfill; some were recycled or donated to a local charity; and some were stored in Junk King’s warehouse on Jersey Pike.

The City of Chattanooga’s Department of Youth & Family Development (YFD) and the Partnership for Families, Children, and Adults Wednesday celebrated the opening of a new STEAM (Science, Tech, Education, Arts, and Math) Lab, I.AM.READY Resource Center, and redesigned gym at the Youth & Family Administration Building on 12th Street.

First Lady Crissy Haslam visited Chattanooga on Wednesday, June 25 as part of a statewide swing to launch the “First Lady’s Read20 Book Patrol,” a project through which she’s partnering with law enforcement to help encourage summer reading.

A Special Called Meeting of the Board of Governors, the Past Presidents and the CBF Fellows was held last week. The meeting was called in response to a request from Stephen Susano, executive director of “Vote Yes on 2”; and Herbert Slatery, Counsel for Governor Haslam, for discussion and endorsement of the Vote Yes on 2 campaign.

A few days ago, the National Association of Realtor published this information for its members regarding advertising properties as “coming soon.”

Some “coming soon” advertisements involve unlisted properties which may or will be listed with a broker in the near future, while others relate to properties subject to listing agreements in which the property is available to potential purchasers only through the listing broker and not available, temporarily or indefinitely, for showing or purchase through other MLS participants. In either case, “coming soon” properties are commonly withheld from the MLS.

Southern Land Company, master developer of Black Creek Mountain, announced the ground breaking of The Ridges, the newest enclave in Black Creek Mountain.

The Ridges will feature 95 new homesites located at the foot of Aetna Mountain. Southern Land Company is developing approximately 18 acres of the 62 total acres.

Our creature comforts must be the glue that holds civilized society together in its tenuous bond. Take them away, and you’ll have the violent, devastating world of “The Rover.”

Set in the Australian countryside, “The Rover” takes place ten years after a global economic collapse. It follows a hardened loner named Eric as he pursues three men who stole his car. Along the way, he captures the brother of one of the thieves, and they form what I’ll generously call an uneasy bond.

The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office along with other law enforcement agencies in Hamilton County have received numerous complaints over the last several weeks from citizens concerning the latest “Green Dot Card Scam.”

From June 6 through June 14, 2014, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office and the Tennessee Department of Corrections, in coordination with the Friends of the Festival and the Chattanooga Police Department, conducted a compliance check for sex offenders at the Riverbend venue.

It’s almost the Fourth of July, the day when we celebrate our independence as a nation and the many liberties we enjoy as individuals. Still, we have to keep working to earn some freedoms — such as financial freedom. But by making the right moves, you may eventually enjoy your own Financial Independence Day.

This past week hubby and I escaped for a few days to our favorite destination spot, Los Cabo, Mexico. We try to go there a few times a year. We don’t stay long, usually just four or five days, but it is enough get-away time that we come back feeling rested and refreshed.

The bus rolled to a stop outside the entrance to Pinehurst on the last day of the men’s U.S. Open. As we walked through the dust from the kicked around sand I thought, someone’s life will change here today.

It was time to spend some money so we joined the masses inside the huge merchandise tent. I’d been in a few scenes like this before, at the Masters in 1999, the U.S. Open at Southern Hills in Tulsa back in 2001, and the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah, outside Chicago. 

As a continuance of June being men’s health month, I want to focus on a subject that came up the other day in a conversation. I have a 32-year old friend who found out he was suffering from low testosterone.

Never had I related low testosterone to younger men, which, research shows, one of every four males over the age of 30 has. Low testosterone can indicate androgen (hormone) deficiency, if accompanied by low sex drive, erectile dysfunction, osteoporosis or fracture, and two or more of the following: sleep disturbance, depressed mood, lethargy or diminished physical performance.

A recent weekend found Uncle Vic traversing the road between Little Rock and the South Mississippi hometown of great-nephew R.P. The subject of an I Swear column in January of last year, R.P. will soon be 18 months old. 

U.V. learned the hard way that R.P. has developed the cutest little habit. Smiling and laughing out loud, he kicks hard three times with both legs right in the middle of a diaper change. (Ouch! He only got U.V. the first time.) 

On June 17, 2014, the European Union passed a unanimous resolution in which it accepted a Socialist/Communist Platform that called for all European countries to dissolve private ownership of property or businesses valued over 100,000 Euro, and each individual country ratified and agreed to that resolution within 48 hours. **Be advised, however, that the truth of the foregoing statement may be different than what the statement says, ownership of property will not actually be affected, there has been no real change in European law, and there is a strong likelihood that your investigation will determine this to be a totally inaccurate and fictitious statement.

^“Thanks for your Service”

By the time this column prints, Chief Stuart Thomas will have retired from his long career at the Little Rock Police Department.

It is a bittersweet time for the citizens of Little Rock and the men and women that serve on the Little Rock Police Force. His departure ends a career that started with an off the cuff challenge to a young man who did not like the way police were doing things.

I heard a story the other day, over at Sewell’s, about one of our Tennessee cousins having one of our other cousins from Texas come and visit recently.

It seems cousin Tex, who’s very well off, climbed into the passenger seat of Cousin Harley’s old rusty pickup truck and headed out to take a look around at what was growing on the Tennessee rock farm Harley is proud to call his own.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that…

1. What triggered the legendary feud between the hillbilly families, Hatfields and McCoys in 1873? The love between Hatfields’ daughter and McCoys’ son; The alleged theft of a pig; The raid of the McCoys’ Watermelon patch; The McCoys’ trespassing on the Hatfields’ land.

Fill in the blanks in the quote using the following words:

faithful, forgotten, society, sacred, rational, mind, 

created, mind, servant, intuitive, gift

“The ______ ______ is a ______ gift and the ______  ______is a______ servant. We have ______ a _______ that honors the ______ and has______ the______.”