News - Friday, August 16, 2013

Bankruptcy lawyer Kenneth Rannick feels the kind of empathy for his clients only life experience can provide.

As a young man, he’d done everything right: He had zero debt, good health insurance, and money in the bank. But then his carefully weaved tapestry began to unravel.

The Young Lawyers Division of the Chattanooga Bar Association recently held a fundraiser for the Hamilton County Juvenile Court’s Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program. This fundraiser provided backpacks and other school items for children who are victims of abuse and neglect and receive services from the CASA program. Members of the YLD presented these items to Judge Robert D. Philyaw last Friday.

Hamilton County Clerk Bill Knowles last week announced the steps he has taken to preserve and make public historic records maintained by his office.

One hundred fifty years of County marriage records have been transferred from deteriorating hard-bound books to online-accessible format for genealogists and other interested citizens. The records date back to 1857.

Volkswagen Chattanooga is the first auto manufacturer in the U.S. to offer its community a new driver training program that meets the Level 8 criteria set by the National Defensive Driving Institute. The event will be offered on the weekends of August 16-17, September 27-29, October 25-27 and November 22-24. It will serve as a fundraiser for all area schools as well.

Tennessee ranks 39^th in health, which is slightly healthier than we’ve been in the past, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

Earlier this month, I was excited to launch “Healthier Tennessee,” an initiative focused on encouraging Tennesseans to become more physically active, to develop better eating habits and to avoid tobacco use.  

Miller & Martin has joined a group of top U.S. law firms that have come together to promote environmental sustainability across the legal industry under the newly incorporated Law Firm Sustainability Network. The LFSN’s mission is to develop key performance indicators, foster knowledge-sharing, develop best practice guidelines, and recognize and promote sustainability innovations in the U.S. legal sector.

I rode the bus to school until right before my 16th birthday. Up until junior high, I rode the bus to and from school. After I started 9th grade at Bentonville High School, I usually walked to school and then rode the bus home. I walked in the morning because the high school was only about a mile from my house, and for some reason, there was a competition among my friends to see who could get to school the earliest. I rode in the afternoon for the social interaction.

Not long ago, around midnight, six students at the University of Cincinnati were watching TV in an on-campus apartment when three men burst through the door. While one of the men held the group at gunpoint, the other two gathered laptops, cell phones, video games and cash, and then all three fled out the door.

In an article titled “Mentally Fit” in the July 29, 2013, issue of The New Yorker, Patricia Marx writes, “[A] study of six hundred and seventy-eight elderly nuns analyzed essays they’d written in their twenties and found that the sisters who had used the most linguistically complex sentences tended to have the lowest incidence of Alzheimer’s, which is why I’ve added this unnecessary subordinate clause even though it’s been a long time since I was in my twenties.”

Great steak is not a lot of work, but you have to know what you’re doing. You can marinate, season, and dress a piece of meat until it’s a pale shadow of its former self, and end up with something appetizing. But Ruth’s Chris, a new steak house that opened in Chattanooga last month, takes a different approach. They buy the best available cuts of meat and then trust them to taste great.

I scrolled the Apple TV menu on Monday night, I had gotten all the way to the Foreign Documentary genre, wishing Monday Night Football would hurry and get here. KM, the lovely and brilliant, wondered aloud if the first episode of Breaking Bad’s final season would be available. It was! And $2.99 is a bargain to skip commercials, especially those car dealer ones. 

Cherry, Big Boys, Grape, Beefsteak, Brandywine, Plum - homegrown tomatoes are here, and I, for one, am plum tickled! One of my favorite ways of eating one is between two slices of Wheatberry bread with nothing but mayo, salt and pepper; however, that might be a toss up with sliced on a plate sandwiched between real mozzarella, fresh basil, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, and then drizzled with olive oil! Yum, yum!

Buyers agent Melissa Dorn is geared toward meeting the needs of others. Her clients are looking for the perfect home in the perfect location at the perfect price, and during her ten years in real estate, she’s become very good at finding those things. But there’s another person whose needs are even more important to Dorn: her daughter, Lilah.

“Meth is my life,” said Jim Derry of the Tennessee Methamphetamine and Pharmaceutical Task Force as he spoke at the Women’s Council of Realtors luncheon Wednesday, August 14 at the Choo-Choo Hotel, “but not in the way you think.” Derry spoke passionately to the group and its sponsors, including First American Home Buyer Protection and Full Disclosure Inspection, about the dangers of meth to a community. Most startling was the number of meth labs seized to date in Hamilton County: 820. To aid Realtors researching properties on behalf of clients, Derry pointed the group to www.rid-meth.org, which contains a searchable database of meth labs seized in an area. Those in the room gasped as Derry displayed the list of labs seized locally on a pull-down screen and scrolled through the addresses. Pictured: Derry with an assortment of common household items used in the production of meth. (The bottle on the podium was inert. Photo by David Laprad.)

Need more love in your home?

Then join Friends of Paws for the Cause and the Humane Educational Society for the 6th Annual Paws for the Cause Fundraiser. The evening will include food, complimentary wine and beer, and silent and live auctions. The emcee will be local celebrity Don Welch. The entertainment will include live music by Danny Boy Patnode from Nashville and a live, interactive, show by the Calo Gitano dancers from Atlanta,

Is it real or is it a rumor?

1. There are commonly supposed to be 360 dimples on what type of ball? Basketball; Rugby; Golf; Cricket.

2. Which of the following statements is correct in terms of equestrian statues? If the horse has one front leg in the air, the rider was wounded in battle; if the horse has both front legs in the air, the rider died in battle; both of these; neither of these.

The Chattanooga Police Department Explorers traveled to Savannah, Ga., to compete in the Summerfest Explorer Competition. This event is sponsored by the Coastal Empire Council and the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office. They competed in four separate events against 11 other Explorer teams. The Chattanooga Police Explorers placed first in the Escaped Inmate scenario, second in DUI Traffic Stop, second in Suspicious Person, and third in Warrant Service.

The best science fiction stories are those that take a piece of the present and extend it to the future to show the consequences of not changing our path. Good science fiction also acts as a metaphor for our way of life.

Elysium, a new science fiction film from writer and director Neil Blomkamp, does both. Unfortunately, it gets so bogged down in being a meaningful metaphor, it forgets about being a good movie.

Recipe for Networking Success

People are drawn to people they know and can trust; that takes time. A genuine concern for others is a key ingredient to any winning recipe. We’ve all been guilty of looking for the quick sale, the “low hanging fruit” if you will. Reality check! Those opportunities are few and far between. The recipe starts with collecting your ingredients (knowledge/resources/connections), mixing them together and always looking for ways to improve your end result (Product/Service). Sometimes, that involves letting them mature and then following up later. 

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan last week awarded public housing authorities in Tennessee, $49,540,429, which will be used to make major large-scale improvements to their public housing units. Of those funds, Chattanooga will receive $4,147,647.

The Salvation Army of Chattanooga’s ReCreate Café will present Walk In My Shoes: An Evening of Stories from Chattanooga’s Homeless August 16 at 7:30 p.m. This event is made possible by a Community Cultural Connections Grant received from ArtsBuild of Chattanooga.

Mark Making photo exhibit

Through Friday, August 30

Mark Making is celebrating four years with Mark Making: More Than Art, a photo exhibition of selected projects, available for public viewing August 2 through August 30 at the Association for Visual Arts, located at 30 Frazier Avenue. Mark Making is a Chattanooga-based nonprofit that empowers individuals and transforms communities through professionally-led public art projects, with a focus on the underserved. For information on viewing the exhibit, call Zach Atchley at (423) 227-3288.