News - Friday, August 30, 2013

The law did not initially attract Stacie Caraway with its practical applications, but rather with its philosophical underpinnings. As a pre-law student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, her interest was purely intellectual. She liked learning about the reasoning behind the various passages of the U.S. Constitution, and enjoyed studying the personalities of the nation’s presidents.

The new splash of color and steel at the south end of Veterans Memorial Bridge is the latest Ray Katz sculpture to find a home in the Scenic City. The Michigan-based artist installed the piece, titled “Sentinel,” on Tuesday, August 27 on the plot of grass where the bridge splits toward Georgia Avenue and Riverside Drive. The City of Chattanooga has leased the 16-feet tall sculpture for two years. Katz, who has sculptures displayed elsewhere throughout the city, said, “Chattanooga has been good to me. The public art program here is phenomenal. If I were able, I’d move here.” View more of Katz’s work at raykatzsculptor.com. Pictured: Katz, moments after installing “Sentinel.” (David Laprad)

It's the time of year when parents and children across Tennessee are back in school. As part of Professional Educators of Tennessee’s commitment to overall campus safety, we want to remind Tennessee drivers to remember that school buses are back on the roads and children will once again be in our crosswalks.

Volkswagen Chattanooga’s 650-foot-long roof sign and 33-acre solar park are now visible on Google Maps. The sign, on the roof of the body shop, is 633 feet long and 208 feet deep. The capital letters are 85 feet high and the lower-case letters are 55 feet high. The roofing signage is an acrylic, elastomeric, spray-applied coating. The sign was completed in September 2012. The solar park, which is the largest in the state of Tennessee, contains 33,600 solar modules and produces 12.5 percent of the plant’s energy needs during production. The solar panels were “turned on” in January of this year. To see the sign and the solar park, go to maps.google.com and type in “8001 Volkswagen Drive, Chattanooga, Tenn.” (Photo provided)

Baker Donelson last week announced that 236 of its attorneys have been selected by their peers for inclusion in the 2014 edition of The Best Lawyers in America. Twenty-five of the firm’s attorneys were also recognized by Best Lawyers as “Lawyers of the Year,” a designation given to a select group of individuals in high-profile specialties in large legal communities. Only a single attorney in each specialty in each community is honored.

Please find below 100 ideas, thoughts, and musings that will be easy to digest and could help you in the future.  Some of these are original, some are advice for kids, others are stolen from random places:

    1. There are plenty of ways to enter a pool. The stairs is not one of them.

Susan and I had a crash course in grandparent training a couple of weeks ago, keeping six-month-old Anna Clary for a weekend. This was an independent-study course, and we gave ourselves passing marks.  However, I’m always in search of materials to study for the next phase of grandparenthood.

Psoriasis. For some sufferers, it is irritating, embarrassing, depressing, and difficult to deal with. However, it’s a very common skin condition that affects almost 7.5 million Americans in some form.

Psoriasis is a chronic, autoimmune disease that appears on the skin. It can affect most any age, but onset is usually starts between the ages 15-35. Although it looks as if it is contagious, it isn’t. It’s usually a genetic factor passed down in families. 

Ensemble Theatre of Chattanooga will open Shakespeare’s comedy The Tempest on Thursday, September 5, as part of its 2013 season. The production will run through Sunday, September 15, with performances on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. All performances will be held at the theatre’s space inside Eastgate Town Center at 5600 Brainerd Road.

Continuing with the Writer’s Guild top 100 TV shows of all time.

Coming in at No. 53 is Northern Exposure – another critically acclaimed and long running show I never watched. But I do remember the main girl and her beauty mole. 54. The Wonder Years – another one we watched regularly with the kids. I thought it was great. 55. L.A. Law – always watched, but never with the kids. Susan Dey had me since her Partridge Family days. 56. Sesame Street – likely approaching genius stuff here. 

We have been moving this week. And last week. And it seems like the week before that, but that is probably just my exhaustion taking over. However, it has been two weeks now that we have been attempting to settle into our new home.

I hope that this will be the last move we make – ever. We had a larger house that accommodated kids and most all other friends and family members that wanted to spend the night. It was a wonderful home with lots of space to spread out and roam around, but the older Don and I got, the harder it was to maintain something that large and spacious. So we cut our living space in half. And we are loving it!

Realtor Ronald Wyers doesn’t want his clients to “have a home right now,” he wants them to “have a home right.”

“I want my clients to have a home, not the home to have them,” he says.

Wyers says the tougheset part of his job is keeping people encouraged when “right now” isn’t an option. “It’s not always easy convincing clients it can be done. I’m surprised by how fired up some people can be, and as soon as they see it’s going to take a while, they’re gone.”

Lisa Wallin and Byron Kelly bring down the house singing a cheeky rendition of In Spite of Ourselves at the annual Realtors Got Talent GARPAC Fundraiser, held Thursday, August 22 at the Walker County Civic Center. The event raises money to support state and local candidates that favor legislation that benefits the real etate industry and profession, including laws that help homeowners, and oppoose legislation that would harm the same. Special guests included State Senator Jeff Mullins, State Representative Jay Neal, and State Representative Tom Weldon. More photos on the following page. (David Laprad)

The following laws are real, however dumb they made be. Can you match the law to the state it represents?

1. It is “illegal to wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in church.” Arkansas; Kansas; Alabama; California.

2. “Law forbids eating in a place that’s on fire.” Illinois; Pennsylvania; Rhode Island; New York.

You’re Next should fail, but its deadly script earns it a passing grade.

The home invasion movie does so many things wrong in the first 45 minutes, I’m surprised I paid attention long enough to become interested. Director Adam Wingard shoots too closely to his actors, and instead of staging scenes, he seems to point his camera at randomly placed people. Also, after the invasion begins, it’s often unclear where the characters are or what they’re doing. Worse, the footage sometimes gets too shaky to be able to see what’s going on. Ten minutes into You’re Next, I wanted to snatch the camera away from Wingard and shoot the movie myself.