News - Friday, September 7, 2012

Picture dumping a puzzle out of a box. As the pieces hit the table, they slide across its surface and scatter, leaving the person who opened the box to assemble them. This is an accurate picture of how life can be.

Now imagine dumping the pieces, but as they fall, they snap together and form a complete picture. While that might sound impossible, it’s not far from how Cassie Rieder’s life in Chattanooga came together.

Saturday, September 8

This year’s Chattanooga Fair-goers will be able to see the latest communications advances at Southern Bell’s 1962 Fair Exhibit, “Project Telstar.”

Boilermakers who had been on strike against Combustion Engineering since August 11 voted 888 to 171 Saturday to return to work Monday. The voting came at a special meeting of the Local 656 in the auditorium of Central High School.

September 12, 19 and 26

Street Smarts for Bike Share

Outdoor Chattanooga will host special sessions of its free Street Smarts Cycling Seminar for users of the Bike Chattanooga Bicycle Transit System at 6 p.m. on the above dates. Outdoor Chattanooga is located in Coolidge Park. Adults and kids ages 16 and older are invited take a short class on how to ride a bicycle in city traffic. OC is going to cover the rules of the road and then take an optional ride through the downtown area on Bike Chattanooga bicycles. To learn more, email terri@outdoorchattanooga.com or call OC at 423-643-6888.

Stuart Thomas avoided me this week at the Levison Towers. Usually, he will come down from his silk stocking firm on the 48^th floor, but word got out that I was working on an under analysis column deadline, and Stuart knows that anything or anyone who crosses my gaze when I am working on a deadline is fair game for my column. However, it is Stuart’s birthday next week, and lest he worry while on his private jet to Barbados, I have promised not to write about him this week.

I don’t understand the whole campaign warning people that, if they do not wear their seatbelts, they will get a ticket. What is the real reason behind the whole campaign? Is Big Brother concerned about our pocketbooks or are the powers that be concerned about our health? If they are concerned about our health, why don’t they just tell us that failure to wear a seat belt is a huge multiplier when determining the probability of death if you have a wreck? I am a lot less concerned about the possibility of getting a ticket for failing to wear a seatbelt than I am going through the windshield of my car.

"The whole thing is a gas. I dig it all, the mud, the rain, the music, the hassles.” – Young man known only as “Speed.” (Woodstock, 1969)

I was 12 in 1969 – that is, when I wasn’t 11. Either way, I was too young to get to Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York for that outdoor music festival people are still remembering. 

Trying to get acquainted with her first grade students at the start of school, a teacher recently asked them to tell her what has been the hardest thing they have ever tried to do in their short lives. Expecting to get the usual answers such as learning to spell their names or tie their shoes, she went around the room letting each child talk about their most difficult event.

Thanks for the cards and letters regarding how much you enjoyed the past few weeks’ return to our roots – our roots being quotations from “The Record,” that large, vague compendium of things people have actually said or written in court proceedings.

SpringBoard at The Company Lab is an exciting place for an idea to grow. It comes already planted in the mind of the participant but sitting dormant, waiting for water and fertilization. Over the course of eight weeks, it receives nourishment until it sprouts, its tender shoots peeking above the surface of the ground and ready to spread - ready for the world to notice.

In respect of all the sports events taking place in the states right now – football, baseball, tennis, soccer (have I missed any?) – I decided to do an all sports trivia. See how good you are at answering these questions:

1. “Fear Strikes Out” is a book (and movie) about which famous baseball player: Jim Bunning; Jim Piersall; Ted Williams.

A few of our out-of-town relatives came for a short visit during the Labor Day weekend, which prompted a lot of cooking and eating. One evening, we did “build-your-own-wrap,” during which we put everything a wrap might need on the table and then folks got a soft tortilla and made their own. This was a great idea because it cut down on the time spent in a hot kitchen making casserole after casserole, which is usually the fare at family gatherings.

“Who wants to bid on this bottle of sloshy liquid?” asked Karen Flores of Cornerstone Bank as Nine Boss of Century Title & Escrow teasingly hid the mystery item behind her.

The bidding went back and forth until someone finally won and claimed the 2007 bottle of Napa Valley Chardonnay.

The Home Inspectors of Tennessee Association at its annual business meeting this month elected Melanie Moore of Chattanooga to the position of vice-president for 2012 and 2013. This will be the second consecutive year Moore has served in the position. She was slated to be president but decided to remain VP so she could plan the next home inspectors educational expo, which she hopes to bring to Chattanooga in September 2013. Moore is the owner of Full Disclosure Home Inspection. The Home Inspectors of Tennessee Association is a nonprofit association of state licensed home inspectors. 

If you’re going to make a Prohibition Era mob movie set in the South, you might as well do it right. Your setting will have to bleed Southern, like a bullet-riddled Confederate soldier in the War of Northern Aggression. Moss and kudzu will have to drip from the trees; clapboard houses will have to look like a good push would bring them down; and small towns will have to be sparsely populated piles of rubble no Christian soul would walk at night. You’ll have to set the majority of the action in the hills, where there are more crickets than people; white lightning will have to flow from these mountains like water down the Mississippi; and the whole thing will have to be cast in a dusty pallor.

How many functions do you perform in your business? For example, most businesses have the following functions: sales, marketing, operations, client service, accounting and finance, administration, technology, human resources and leadership – to name a few.

Governor Bill Haslam and the Tennessee Housing Development Agency are inviting everyone associated with the housing industry to the 2012 Governor’s Housing Summit, to take place Sheraton Music City Hotel in Nashville October 9 and 10.

The summit offers training, exhibits and access to programs and those who run them. Visit www.thda.org to view the governor’s video invitation. A few of the topics to be explored include the coordination of housing as part of a community’s development, building support for new development benefits and updates on Keep My Tennessee Home for unemployed Tennessee homeowners. Check the Web site for the agenda and speaker updates.

Let me preface this column by noting that, yes, I have ties to the University of Alabama, and jumped at the chance to watch the Crimson Tide play an out-of-conference storied program like Michigan, especially at Cowboys Stadium, a.k.a. Jerry World, in Dallas. Hey, I went to the University of Arkansas and spent half the night inside the stadium Googling for updates from Fayetteville.

Trash … If it’s not biodegradable, or recyclable, then what do you do with it? What do you do with all of the half empty bottles of make-up, since the bottle is recyclable, or the old oil in the deep fryer? Another thought: How many times have you flushed old medications down the toilet?

Public Art Chattanooga has been hard at work this summer adding more pieces to its already impressive art collection. This month, PAC installed “Moment” by Albert Paley. Located on the corner of West Main and Broad Street, a major intersection in the heart of the revitalized Southside, the piece is over 14 feet tall and nearly seven feet wide. Public art has played an important role in the revitalization efforts of the area, and “Moment” will complement other public art projects including Art on Main, a rotating exhibition of 13 sculptures sited along the sidewalks of Main Street. The large-scale sculpture will also function as a visual beacon and gateway adjacent to The Main Terrain, a new linear urban park slated to open late 2012 and funded in part through an Our Town Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Recently, PAC issued a “Call to Artist,” seeking qualifications from artists or artist teams for the commission and installation of four trailhead markers for Stringer’s Ridge, an urban forest park in Chattanooga. Up to five finalists will be selected to develop concept proposals for this project. For more information, contact PAC by visiting publicartchattanooga.com.