News - Friday, August 23, 2013

The Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce has named Howard Levine, an attorney for Miller & Martin, its 2013-2014 board chair.

Levine made his first major address in his new role at the Chattanooga Chamber’s annual meeting on Wednesday, August 21. The event took place at the Chattanooga Convention Center.

The Chattanooga Convention & Visitors Bureau last week hosted its 72nd annual luncheon at the Chattanooga Convention Center. The CVB was privileged to have the Governor of the great state of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, as the keynote speaker.

“I want to applaud the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau and everyone in Hamilton County for their hard work to increase tourism in the area,” Haslam said. “We have a lot to offer visitors to Tennessee, making tourism incredibly important to the state as one of our largest industries and specifically, Hamilton County, with 8,500 full-time tourism jobs.”

Twenty-three Chambliss attorneys have been selected by their peers for inclusion in Best Lawyers in America 2014. Additionally, Best Lawyers has named three attorneys from Chambliss as 2014 Chattanooga “Lawyers of the Year.”

Miller & Martin last week said 50 of its attorneys have been named to the 2014 edition of Best Lawyers, the oldest review publication in the legal profession. In addition six of Miller & Martin’s Chattanooga-based attorneys have been selected as “Lawyers of the Year” for the 2014 edition of Best Lawyers, including John R. Bode; Christopher A. Crevasse; Roger W. Dickson; Marcia Meredith Eason; James M. Haley IV; and Jonathan F. Kent.

James R. Silkenat, a partner in the New York office of the national law firm of Sullivan & Worcester and a member of its Corporate Department, took office last week as president of the American Bar Association at the conclusion of the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco. He will serve as president until the close of the ABA Annual Meeting in August 2014.

Asheville-based Tupelo Honey Cafe has set a Monday, September 16 opening date for its Chattanooga restaurant. Workers completed painting and other finishing touches at the restaurant last week, and the equipment and décor placements are set to take place by the end of the month.

The end of summer break has now become a reality. The traffic is a whole lot worse than it was last week. Leaving home at the same time you have been all summer will make you late to your destination. The act of indoctrinating and teaching children and young adults in a society creates a lot of traffic. More traffic also means you have more time to think on the way to work. All I could think about during today’s extended trip was how I could have better planned my morning to get on the road faster and, therefore, get to work earlier. What I really should have been thinking about was what topic I would talk about in this week’s column. Then I had an epiphany. I realized I could write about planning.

The Hamilton County Department of Education and all Hamilton County public schools now have new Web sites (hcde.org). The school board voted to renovate the sites last spring. The HCDE website contains a school year calendar, school menus, school news, inclement weather procedures and other resources. The web pages for individual schools and PTAs are located on the HCDE site, saving schools the cost of funding their own web home.

The crossword clue was “Gray areas, maybe.” The answer was BORDER LINES. With 11 letters, it fit nicely across the puzzle’s center.

When I saw the word “lines” was involved, I pulled for “blurred” to be the first word. Too many letters, though. In “Blurred Lines,” we have a pop culture-intellectual property dispute. News of which did not break until suit was filed. 

This article was originally published in the Hamilton County Herald on September 21, 2012.

I was sitting at my computer this morning wondering what my topic should be, but was drawing a blank. Then my good friend Jay sent me an email that he had received, and thought it would be good to use sometime. Little did he know that sometime would be right now!

The Chattanooga Sports Committee and the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau last announced that IRONMAN has chosen Chattanooga as the premier Southeast destination to host their 11th full race in the IRONMAN U.S. Series. Athletes will get to compete in IRONMAN Chattanooga on Sunday, September 28, 2014 and then annually through September 2018.

I guess when you get right down to it, everything comes down to personal taste; even, or especially, on the boob tube.

KM and I have been watching House of Cards with Kevin Spacy and Robin Wright, which is good –  really good, actually – but didn’t make the “Writers Guild 101 Best-Written Shows Ever.” Here is their list.

This column was originally published in the Hamilton County Herald on August 5, 2011. 

Cherry, Big Boys, Grape, Beefsteak, Brandywine, Plum - home-grown 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!

Ali Reeves was due at work at Chili’s, but she had to take a phone call first. On the other end was Realtor Jay Robinson, calling to discuss a condominium Reeves was selling at Loveman’s. The stress of having to take the call along with being late for her bar-tending job pushed Reeves to make a decision that would change her life: She was going to have to ditch the restaurant gig and commit herself full-time to real estate.

Knowing what’s coming in the real estate market and planning to take advantage of it is one of the keys to success for Realtors, especially following an extended period of undertainty. The Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors during its GCAR Information Gathering on Thursday, August 15 invited consultant Jeremy Conaway to discuss the major changes occurring in the industry and how Realtors can align their business plans. Conaway said the new “hyper market” is experiencing a great deal of activity, which should be stirring excitement in Realtors and encouraging them to discard their old ways of doing things and adopt new practices. (David Laprad)

RE/MAX Properties agent Beth Dodson on Wednesday, August 7 at Erlanger Children’s Hospital presented a check for $10,000 to Children’s Miracle Network. Agents contributed a donation from each closing they completed to the fund throughout the year. Cynthia Rhodes, Administrator and ACNO for Children’s Hospital at Erlanger, is shown at right accepting the check. (Photos by Bud Zier of RE/MAX Properties

1. Who was the first explorer to reach the South Pole? Ronald Amundsen; Robert Falcon Scott; Ernest Shackleton; Richard Evelyn Byrd.

2. What animals might be found at the South Pole? Polar bears; Penguins; Seagulls; none of these.

3. In the 2007-08 season, who was the MVP of the NBA Finals? Kevin Garnett; Paul Pierce; Ray Allen; Kobe Bryant.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler is an earnest, well-intentioned movie. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a film with a better heart. Unfortunately, it is content to let history be the story rather than use the past as a canvas for saying something substantive.

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.

Saturday, August 24

Emanuel Schatten, Nashville realtor and property developer, has purchased Brainerd Center, a business area fronting 360 feet along Brainerd Road, for $235,000. The property, located at 3617 through 3635 Brainerd Road, comprising about 3.5 acres of land, extending 460 feet to Cherryton Drive, was owned by Mendooga Properties, a New York City investment concern.

Saturday, August 23

The total registration in Hamilton County will probably reach only 8,000. Four precinct books are not in yet. The total in the city is 4,259. Not quite 5,000 of the 10,000 voters in Chattanooga have qualified during the general registration.

David M. Elliott and John R. Anderson are Directors at Grant, Konvalinka & Harrison, P.C., a full-service law firm in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Mr. Elliott chairs his firm’s immigration practice. They hope to have meaningful discussions of current events of legal significance.