PHOTO SLIDESHOW: Farragut’s 4th of July Parade
Photos from this morning’s Farragut 4th of July Parade from Julie Morris
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Certain, unalienable rights…
Gone on the 4th of July: RIP Jesse Helms
Jesse Helms has died.
PHOTOBLOGGING: Independence Day in East Tennessee
Great 4th-themed photos from Cathy McCaughan.
Check out the baby’s expression in this one!
Service & Sacrifice
Recently, some WWII vets from East Tennessee traveled to Washington DC to see memorials for themselves. Here are some of the wonderful photos they took on their trip.
Where are the lightning bugs this year?
That’s what Russell Biven wants to know.
More good food coming to Bearden
Cool. A new Earth Fare is opening where Bi Lo used to be.
The hope, said Murphy, is that people unwilling to drive to Farragut will be willing to come to the Bearden location, where he feels there is a stronger likelihood for foot traffic.
“I think Knoxville is an up-and-coming city in the South,” he said. “Plus, I just think that Knoxville is a city in size that can hold two Earth Fares.”
Flat screen TVs worse for environment than, well, apparently just about anything
A greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride, used to make the TVs, is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, said Michael Prather, director of the environment institute at the University of California, Irvine.
But no one yet knows how much of it is being released into the atmosphere by industry, a report in Britain’s The Guardian said.
Prather’s research shows production of the gas, which remains in the atmosphere for 550 years, is “exploding”.
It is expected to double by next year, from the current 4,000 tons produced annually.
But unlike other key greenhouse gases — such as carbon dioxide, sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs) — emissions of the gas are not restricted under the Kyoto protocol or similar agreements, The Guardian report said.
Prather and his colleague Juno Hsu — writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters — said this year’s production of nitrogen trifluoride is equivalent to 67 million tons of carbon dioxide.
That meant the gas has “a potential greenhouse impact larger than that of the industrialised nations’ emissions of PFCs or SF6, or even that of the world’s largest coal-fired power plants”.
Have you seen the new Wal Mart logo?
It’s supposed to be softer, and more “green” looking.
If you give a man a goat…
I’ve goven money to the very worthwhile Heifer International in the past, but I had no idea they were helping folks right here in Southern Appalachia.
Christy Smith’s family land in Southeast Kentucky supports chickens and goats they got for free. The family has named the animals, but they are not really pets.
Christy Smith explained they, “use them as meat so we don’t have to buy the high meat right now, and they help us with gas prices because they eat the grass so we don’t have to cut as much.”
The community is more than 20 miles of curvy mountain roads from the closest town. There are some small convenience stores between towns, but customers pay a premium for food there.
So the Red Bird Farmers Project provides free livestock, garden seeds, and training for families like the Smiths. It encourages sustainable farming in rural Bell, Leslie, and Clay counties.
A key part of the program is called Pass It On. Families give away some of their goats’ offspring and also pass on their knowledge.
“You get to share your information and what you’ve learned with other families and help them learn and grow,” said Smith.
Expanding the resources of the project beyond the initial family participants is important to the growth of the project.
“Families can come to their farm that’s already established and they can show them the pitfalls, what not to do, how to approach things and how to get off on the right foot so it’s really a community network, ” said Tracy Nolan with Red Bird Mission.
She said a grant from Heifer International will support the program for three-and-a-half years.
“It’s going to provide money for experts to come talk about goats and cattle and greenhouses and farmers’ markets,” said Nolan.
Selling extra eggs, meat, and vegetables at farmers’ markets is a possibility for project participants. So is getting milk, cheese, and wool from the goats.
You must watch this
You know, I think that if the recent movie adaptation of “Speed Racer” had starred these two as Speed Racer and Trixie, it would have turned out to be a huge hit instead of the flop it was.
Watch this whole video and tell me East Tennessee isn’t the greatest place on earth.
Bredesen hearts John McCain
Governor Phil Bredesen tells Real Clear Politics that “John McCain is very attractive as a candidate in a lot of ways.”
“I think John McCain is very attractive as a candidate in a lot of ways. And my own personal experience is that these elections where people are engaged enough that they know some of the details, they can easily differentiate the individuals within a party. In other words, I think John McCain can get enough distance from George Bush to not have that be an issue. … I’ve talked to friends of mine in California who can’t even conceive of the possibility that John McCain would win and I just tell them, ‘that’s not the way it is in a lot of parts of the country.’ We can win, but it’s got to be with an A campaign.”
(The Republican National Committee has sent this quote - with a link to the story - out as a press release to newsrooms all over the country today.)
The race for First Lady
This poll yesterday, showing that Americans aren’t warming to Michelle Obama, and that they don’t really know Cindy McCain at all, got me to thinking about the race for First Lady, and how it may shape up.
I suspect that the “Hillary Clinton factor” may be at play as part of the reason folks aren’t digging Michelle Obama. This is a working woman - an opinionated, professional, highly accomplished, run-the-show working woman. She’s no socialite, behind-the-scenes, “quit-my-job-to-support-my-husband’s-career” politician’s wife. And despite the fact that most women in America are working women, with real jobs, we still seem to have some cultural discomfort with a woman like Michelle Obama as First Lady. We seem to want a woman with a 50s kind of lifestyle to fit this very 1950s title (”First Lady”).
And I think the reason many folks still don’t feel like they know much about Cindy McCain is because the McCain campaign wants it that way. Why? Because like most of us, she’s not perfect. Unlike most of us, however, she presents this facade of blonde, icily coiffed, Nancy Reaganesque husbandly adoration in public that is going to be jarringly at odds with some of the stuff from her life history that is going to emerge as the campaign season cranks up.
For starters, while the McCain campaign frequently mentions her service as the head of a charity providing medications to the needy, they obviously never mention the fact that she was busted for stealing narcotics for her own use from that same organization. But that stuff is going to emerge during the campaign. It will be part of the process of Americans getting to know Mrs. McCain. The issue of how McCain left his disabled first wife for Cindy McCain will also become better known.
We all have skeletons in our closets. I’ll bet a few will emerge from Mrs. Obama’s as well. But I do wonder how the McCain campaign will handle getting the public better acquainted with Cindy McCain without opening these issues back up. If I were she, I’d be aggressively forthcoming about my own past drug issues, and make fighting prescription drug abuse a cornerstone of my proposed work as First Lady (it’s certainly a major problem for many Americans), a la the very courageous Betty Ford.
But it doesn’t look like that is how the campaign - or she - plans to handle it. That’s a mistake.
Bravery lives
Wow. The details of the rescue of the FARC hostages in Colombia reads like a James Bond plot. Can you imagine the smarts and bravery it took to trick these guerillas into walking right into the trap?
Betancourt, 46, was airlifted to freedom Wednesday in an audacious operation involving military spies who tricked the rebels into handing over their most prized hostages — including three U.S. military contractors — without firing a shot.
The stunning caper involved months of intelligence gathering, dozens of helicopters on standby and a strong dose of deceit: The rebels shoved the captives, their hands bound, onto a white unmarked MI-17 helicopter, believing they were being transferred to another guerrilla camp.
Looking at the helicopter’s crew, some wearing Che Guevara shirts, Betancourt reasoned they weren’t aid workers, as she’d expected — but rebels. This was just another indignity — the helicopter “had no flag, no insignia.” Angry and upset, she refused a coat they offered as they told her she was going to a colder climate.
But not long after the group was airborne, Betancourt turned around and saw the local commander, alias Cesar, a man who had tormented her for four years, blindfolded and stripped naked on the floor.
Welcome words: ‘You’re free’
Then came the unbelievable words: “We’re the national army,” said one of the crewmen. “You’re free.”The helicopter crew were soldiers in disguise. Cesar and the other guerrilla aboard had been persuaded to hand over their pistols, then overpowered.
“The helicopter almost fell from the sky because we were jumping up and down, yelling, crying, hugging one another,” Betancourt said.
Are you a hypermiler? Do you know a hypermiler?
If so, WBIR reporter Robin Murdoch would like to talk to you for a story she’s doing. Give her a call at 637-1272.
Thanks!
Good thing she’s a nice teacher
Local blogger and teacher MamaTried is a lot nicer about this than many educators might be:
A student emailed me that she would be late turning in her work this week because her father-in-law died. I sent my ’standard’ reply something along the lines of ‘I’m sorry for your loss as I know how difficult it is losing someone you care about’ and then explained that I would allow her to make-up her work and gave her the time schedule for submission. I have a pretty strict ‘no make-up’ policy for timed quizzes but I always give students one ‘free pass’ per semester regardless of the reason. The student responded with a thank-you email saying she was really upset about her grandfather passing and she was glad it wouldn’t affect her grade. Now, I know it is east TN and technically her father-in-law could be her grandfather but I think she just got mixed up on her story which amuses me.
If it’s Thursday, it must be time for some….CUTENESS PHOTOBLOGGING
It’s becoming clear that the kids (and pets) of Knoxville Talks readers are just cuter than average.
“Dispensable” journalists
It’s seriously hard times in the news industry, and the LA Times announced yesterday that 150 newsroom jobs are being cut.
On June 5, in a conference call with bankers, analysts and reporters, Mr. Zell, the chairman and chief executive of Tribune, and Randy Michaels, the chief operating officer, said Tribune’s newspapers would print 500 fewer pages each week, a 12 percent reduction, to save money.
Mr. Michaels said that fact, combined with his conclusion that some journalists were so unproductive as to be dispensable, meant the company could get by with significantly fewer newsroom employees. He singled out The Los Angeles Times, citing figures that he said showed it had a far less productive newsroom than some other Tribune papers.
Michaels is the guy who came up with the brilliant scheme measuring each journalist in the newsroom’s productivity by how many column inches he/she produces each week.
…the struggling company has looked at the column inches of news produced by each reporter, and by each paper’s news staff. Finding wide variation, they said, they have concluded that it could do without a large number of news employees and not lose much content.
This is sad. Certainly, how much copy one cranks out each week is one measure of newsroom productivity. But what about the investigative reporter who spends 75% of her time ferreting out the great info she then writes about? Fewer column inches for her, but important reporting getting done. And what about the really great columnists, who may only publish a piece twice a week, but spend days crafting the perfect turn of phrase?
Sad.
Changes at that thar Knoxville News Sentinel
Congrats to all. It’s fun to work in a market with such a smart competitor.
Knoxville Talks Quote of the Day
Randy Neal on the new multimillion dollar contracts being offered UT coaches Pearl and Fulmer: “…maybe the hearing and speech pathology department should put together a football squad or something.”
