News - Friday, July 26, 2013

As a trust and estate lawyer, Alan Cates of Husch Blackwell has seen people at their best and their worst. While the anger and resentment he’s witnessed have saddened him, the way others have dealt with difficult moments has encouraged him. “I’ve seen siblings fight, but I’ve also seen extraordinary acts of generosity, when someone accepts that momma meant for them to share,” he says.

Chattanooga city officials gathered at 3250 8th Avenue in East Lake Thursday, July 18 to kick off the construction of a new fire station. The old Station 9 was constructed in 1929. Ground was broken for a larger Station 9 that will be much more energy efficient. Addressing those present, Mayor Andy Berke said building this modern fire station will make the East Lake community safer. After Fire Chief Lamar Flint and City Councilman Chris Anderson made brief remarks, it was time to take up shovels for the groundbreaking. Joining them were city council members Larry Grohn, Yusuf Hakeem, Jerry Mitchell and Ken Smith, state representative Vince Dean, representatives of the architects who drew up the plans for the new station, and several residents of the East Lake community. The project is expected to cost $1.3 million and will take roughly 180 days to complete. (David Laprad)

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team is in a familiar place this season – defending its Southern Conference crown. The defense starts with a strong home schedule, a tournament in the Pacific and a slightly shortened Southern Conference lineup.

Ten new brown signs were recently installed by the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the city of Chattanooga along the interstate and side streets directing visitors to the International Towing & Recovery Hall of Fame & Museum.

Cheryl Mish, executive director of the museum, said, “This has been a wonderful project to see come to fruition. The Tennessee Department of Transportation has been instrumental in this process and the City of Chattanooga officials have been extremely effective and agreeable in making this a reality. We are ecstatic with the results and thank everyone involved for a job well done. We also believe this will be a great addition to the tourism in the City of Chattanooga and hope that it will cause a higher volume of visitors to stop to see the museum, which in turn will give the museum the opportunity to tell them about the other great things to see and do in this great city.”

July 15 marked the fifth anniversary of the day that civic and government officials gathered with Volkswagen executives at the Hunter Museum in downtown Chattanooga to announce the decision to build an automobile manufacturing facility in this emergent mid-sized Southern city.

Is it better to fail or to not try at all? I think if you asked most people, they would pick failure. Not because they want to fail, but only because that’s what they’ve always been told. We all know you can’t accomplish anything without trying. But if that’s true, why is it so easy to not try? How is it that we can stand by and let so many of our dreams float by like clouds rather than trying to accomplish something? Failure is built into every great success story. If you don’t fail, you don’t succeed.

Last week, I traveled to my daughter’s (April) house in Arlington, Tenn. She, my son-in-law, Brandon, and my three grandchildren, Paige, Gwynn, and Landon had just returned from a short vacation, where Gwynn had been sick with a virus the entire time. They enjoyed themselves immensely; it’s just difficult being out of town with a sick little one.

The court has viewed Woody Allen’s movie, Midnight in Paris, read the book, Requiem for a Nun, and is thankful that the parties did not ask the court to compare The Sound and the Fury with Sharknado.” Thus begins a seven-page opinion entered July 18, 2013, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. See Faulkner Literary Rights, LLC v. Sony Pictures Classics Inc., 2013 WL 3762270.

When my husband, Pat Murray, and I moved to Chattanooga, we were planning to stay six months to a year–tops.  We saw Chattanooga as a pretty place we wanted to explore and then move on.

We’re fast approaching the two-year anniversary of our arrival and we still haven’t started making plans to move on.  The main reason for this change is the Chattanooga Business Development Center (BDC).

The sleepy drive to work on Monday received a slight jolt of adrenaline when I saw the blue lights a couple hundred yards ahead. It was a wreck – nice way for somebody to begin the week. As I drove by, I saw the city truck, one of those large, yard waste monsters. Close behind it was the crumpled front of what looked to have been, less than an hour before, some kind of mid size sedan. “Texting and driving,” I thought to myself.

This past week (and in the weeks to come), Don and I have been moving. We have purchased another house that’s much smaller, and the yard – well, the new place is a patio home, so it’s just about non-existent. In other words, we have purchased a home that’s more practical for us. As we grow into our “golden years,” there are other things we want to do other than spend time keeping up with a large home and yard.

As a child growing up on Signal Mountain, Todd Henon spent most of his time outside. Whether he was working, or hunting, or fishing, his father always had him and his siblings outdoors doing something. As an adult, Henon can now go inside, but he still spends as much time as possible in the open air.

June marks the 17th month in a row that both home sales and prices have been higher than the same month last year. The median price of homes sold in June was $193,750, which is 12.6 percent higher than the median price last June. The RE/MAX Housing Report, a survey of MLS data in 52 metropolitan areas, also found that home sales in June were 4.1 percent greater than sales in June 2012. The housing recovery, which began in 2012, is continuing to produce significant increases in home prices and sales, while the number of homes for sale remains much lower than one year ago, 23.9 percent lower than June 2012.

My youngest granddaughter, Gwynn, is a redhead. My oldest son had red hair and Gwynn’s grandfather on her daddy’s side has red hair, so it runs in the family.

Recently my daughter was studying facts about red-headed people and came across several interesting ones. I decided the topic of hair color facts would make a good trivia puzzle, so no matter what color of hair you have, check out the trivia below. You might find something about your hair you didn’t know!

When my sister and I were young, we played a game in which I would hide in a closet, she would open the door, and I would jump at her and scare her. She knew I was in there, and she knew I was going to jump at her, but she always opened the door hesitantly, dreading that moment when the jolt would come. No matter how many times we played this game, I never failed to scare her.

Dear EarthTalk: 

Hurricane Sandy brought more sea water onto shorelines than I’d ever witnessed before and many communities near where I live are now being required to raise their homes up. What is the prognosis for sea level rise in the years immediately ahead? 

Saturday, July 27

TVA has snakes in its insulators, according to Earl Taylor, chief of transmission system maintenance, a branch of its electric power system. To combat this new menace, the TVA is starting a small snake farm to study snake repellents.

Saturday, July 26

A house-to-house canvas is being made by the Sons of Veterans seeking accommodations for encampment visitors for the G.A.R. Reunion to be held in Chattanooga September 15-20. Vice-chairman J.W. Eastman has been kept very busy.

McKamey Board of Directors meeting

Wednesday, July 31

There will be a special meeting of the McKamey Board of Directors Wednesday, July 31, at 4:30 p.m. The meeting will be held at the McKamey Animal Care Center, located at 4500 North Access Road.