State Sen. Jerry Cooper, tried and acquitted on federal fraud charges, convicted of drunk driving (in a spectacular accident that he was fortunate to survive), and fined a staggering $12,000 by the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance — an agency formed by a bill that he himself sponsored — has announced that he will retire prior to the next election.
Surprise, surprise.
It seems that the last few years have seen substantial housecleaning in Nashville, but I suspect there’s more to come.
I’ve plenty to say, but with discretion being the better part of valor, I shall not. However, here’s some mind candy to keep you occupied in the meantime:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHWTLA8WecI]
Sort of puts things in a different perspective, doesn’t it?
Following the invocation and pledge, Mayor Beehan read the following statement on the loss of Ashley Paine:
The family of Ashley Paine has suffered a tragic loss. On behalf of this Council, and the city as a whole, I want to express our deepest sympathy to the family of Ashley Paine. This has been a tragic loss for the city, as well, and we as Councilmembers grieve for her family’s loss.
She was not only a blessing to her family, but to her town, her church community, and especially to Robertsville Middle
School.This loss, on a personal level, has changed us as indivuals and as a community. We have been deeply moved by this event, and the celebration of Ashley’s life.
This was a tragic accident, and in our opinion, not a time to place blame, but an opportunity to make a difference, and to refocus our community to be even better.
We will continue to work in partnership with the Oak Ridge School Board to create solutions to issues of traffic safety. And in the same vein, it’s time now to look at traffic safety issues all over the city, not only in and around our schools, but in our neighborhoods and our main arteries, such as the Oak Ridge Turnpike.
We need to ensure the our town is “walker friendly”. We should revisit our greenways, sidewalks and bike paths systems to make sure they are adequate, accessible, and safe. Our passion will be to make this a pedestrian friendly city. Greenways and bike paths are a great assets to communities that are revitalizing in America.
God bless Ashley, and her family. The entire Oak Ridge Community is mourning her death. And the same time celebrating her life, and what she has passed on to others that they may live productive and fulfilling lives.
May God bless her as she enters to his loving care, and may he comfort her family and friends with the knowledge that even though she was here a short time, by her life and death, she has made a tremendous impact on the lives of others.
Jim O’Connor then presented some of the solutions investigated by the City. The new school zone lights are installed and operational along Illinois Avenue near Robertsville. Speed and traffic light camera enforcement is being investigated. Pedestrian rights of way are being studied for Council to consider. More specific detail on these issues is requested for the December Council meeting, and Mayor Beehan requests that citizens utilize electronic communication (e-mail) on the city’s website to submit specific suggestions and ideas.
A discussion ensued as to the practicality of the pedestrian crossing buttons on traffic lights; the standard design in Tennessee is to have the pedestrian button on the traffic island, such that a pedestrian has to cross the turn lane before being able to activate the crossing signal.
The School Resource Officer is already working with students who walk/bike to school to promote safe practices.
Tom Hayes points out that speed is a major factor in traffic accidents in Oak Ridge. Tom Beehan points out that there will probably be some angry citizens when tickets are issued for speeding and running red lights, but that everyone needs to understand that this is for the overall safety of our residents.
On approval of the agenda, Mayor Beehan added a first reading of a zoning change for a new Tractor Supply in the old Food City East location. Next, he asked if there were any citizens present who wished to speak during the "appearance of citizens" (normally at the end of the agenda). He was prepared to move that to the beginning, but no one indicated a desire to speak. The agenda was approved as amended.
On the issue of rezoning Clark’s Preserve, there were no citizens to speak at the public hearing. Next, they addressed the proposed rezoning of 203 Michigan Avenue (site of the First Christian Church that burned) from residential to office, for a medical office park. Again, no one rose to address Council on the rezoning. The third item for public hearing was the 08/09 Community Development Block Grant plan; again, no one addressed Council on any of these three items.
Next, Council heard the annual report of the Oak Ridge Heritage Railroad Authority. Approximately $1.4M in state funding has been garnered to maintain bridges and railroad lines.
On the rezoning of property at 203 Michigan and west Madison Lane, Ellen Smith noted that council members are in receipt of a petition opposing the rezoning. However, the petition was never submitted to the City Clerk, so it cannot be included in the minutes from the last meeting (when the petition was presented).
I’m not feeling at all well, so I’m hanging it up for the evening.
Tonight, hubby and I have tickets for a concert — one that none of our children are performing in.
The Trans-Siberian Orchestra is performing at Thompson-Bolling Arena, and we’ll be there!
For those unfamiliar with TSO, they’re sort of an odd combination of rock and symphony, bringing in elements of jazz for good measure. I’m sure that RealtorChick is putting short odds on my staying for the duration, given that I’m a bit noise-sensitive. Okay, more than just a bit. But this stuff is… different. It makes me wish I’d become a conductor, or at least that I could stand up and pretend to be without being laughed at.
As cold as it is today — I think the temperature right now, at 49, is as warm as we’ll get — something Christmas-y doesn’t seem out of character. Beyond that is the sheer complexity of the music, a brilliant modern remake of the classics (as in Beethoven, Liszt, et al).
Just for a taste, give a listen to A Mad Russian’s Christmas, or Wish Liszt (toy shop madness). There are quite a few more on the site, so browse at your leisure. And if you think I’m crazy for my taste in music, fine. Go rot your brain with disco.
Update: Best live show I’ve ever seen. Ever! I’m definitely buying tickets for next year.
Twenty years ago today, we each said “I do,” and we meant it.
Like most people, I suppose, we really had no idea what the future held, except that we would face it together. Even at 23, I was quite serious about that; when he proposed to me a few months earlier, I asked him if he was quite sure, because I would kill him before I would divorce him.
He accepted those terms. So I agreed to love, honor, and cherish — though not necessarily to obey — forever. What neither of us expected, though, was to find that we are closer, enjoying each other’s company even more, after two decades.
With the kids out of school on Fall Break and my parents (our reliable overnight keepers of the teens) out of town, we can’t really go anywhere, but we’ll go somewhere for dinner tonight.
Maybe we’ll get wild and go dancing, the way we used to.
Maybe not. Especially after our friends chose the Best Overland Park Divorce Lawyer to get them separated. This is where we can learn from mistakes and maybe we’ll just find a nice dinner somewhere, laugh about surprisingly ordinary things, and appreciate that we found each other. Laughter is a big part of what works so well — we’re just enough alike, but just enough different, to find humor in something every day. It doesn’t really matter what we do, we usually have fun if we’re together.
I like that.
A decade and more ago, there was a cute little boy in our neighborhood who spent many an afternoon at our house with Alpha — jumping on the trampoline, tossing a football in the front yard, even having a pie-eating contest once in the front yard. Those were the salad days of childhood, when happiness was a batch of warm cookies and a cold glass of milk.
One afternoon when Hubby was splitting firewood in the yard, this boy and one other watched, fascinated, convinced that they, too, could split a section of Oak with a single crack. Hubby couldn’t resist letting them try… but needless to say, they were unprepared for the weight of the axe or the stubbornness of wood. Nary a dent was made. The two watched in awe as Hubby continued making big logs into small ones, then took up catching fireflies instead.
Those were the salad days… the innocence of childhood.
As a young teen though, the boy moved out of his aunt and uncle’s house on our street, presumably back with his mother in some other part of town. Through middle school, he and Alpha grew apart — about the usual age when kids begin to define their friendships based upon mutual interests rather than geography. As high school approached, I began to hear murmurings that he was getting into trouble.
By the time he was 18, it wasn’t murmurings anymore — it was his name listed in the paper under police reports.
Today, at 20, he’s front-page news: accused of attempted murder. What went so wrong in the space of 10 years? What on earth could cause the young man — who, as a youngster was kind and polite — to steal without remorse, then later, to brutally, horribly, stab and bludgeon a former classmate, leaving him for dead in an alley?
By all accounts, Jon Grider is a nice young man. He did not deserve the fate bestowed upon him early Tuesday morning. My heart aches for him, and for his family, that he had to endure such a horrific night.
One lies in the hospital, fighting for his life. The other, while healthy, is looking at a life that is functionally over — a future of hard prison time, and little else. In Nashville this year, fully 20% of the murders were committed by children 17 and under (all but one of those were shootings). There’s no argument for leniency on my part, but yes, I do admit to sadness that it happened at all.
What is it that turns an adorable child into a cold-blooded killer, within just a few short years?
"Mom, I think we need some new pancake syrup. The viscosity is too high in this one."
— Delta, age 12
Geez, I had a decent vocabulary at her age, but I doubt I knew what viscosity was until high school — probably about the time I learned how to put oil in my car.
Just last year, there was great excitement in rural America over the installation of ethanol plants. Corn prices were rising, and everyone wanted in on the game.
Corn prices rose all right, but there’s one little problem that someone failed to consider: what are we going to feed our beef cattle? Our dairy cattle? With this year’s drought, in the Southeast, hay is downright scarce. Cattlemen are struggling, selling off their herds because they can’t afford to feed them.
The New York Times has a good piece today about the upheaval in ethanol, but they don’t devote more than a sentence or two — buried in the third page — to the effect that ethanol production is having on other food prices. Most of their focus is the instability in pricing, due to the rapid ramp-up of production capability with lesser development in getting the ethanol to the blending and resale points.
As ethanol competes for corn, however, corn as food becomes more expensive, but so does beef (which is fed corn), chicken (which are fed corn), pork, milk, eggs, butter, cheese, and so many of the staples on which we depend.
At least NPR has picked up on the problem.
Here’s an Apple I might just have to have a bite of… 
You have to admit: it’s sweet. It’s like the iPhone without the AT&T commitment (or the hack that I’m not prepared to tackle). For now, I’ll just stick to a plain phone on a plan with few surprises.
As for digital sound, I listen to a few tunes, but mostly, it’s audio books for long drives or to ease the drudgery of doing laundry and other mundane household chores.
Thus far, I’ve managed on fairly inexpensive devices, because I’m never all that far from my laptop to change out and reload the contents of my audio player. However, the new iPod Touch has an interesting characteristic: it has a built in browser and wireless capability. So, from anywhere there’s wireless access, I could check what’s going on in the larger world.
Or my e-mail, for what’s going on in the smaller world.
Or, I could watch a movie, in complete disregard of what’s going on in either the smaller or larger real worlds.
My first computer was an Apple II+ (minus the joystick, but with two floppy disk drives, 64k RAM, and a 300-baud modem, thank you very much); that was where I learned to program, back when Apples still came with a command-line interface and geeky teenagers could still derive some joy from the things.
Now, far more computing power than a pickup truckload of those things could have produced would fit in a pocket (or a phone, for that matter). Still, I might just have to have one of these, once Alpha’s next tuition payment is made.
After the municipal election and referendum in June, we picked up a lot of signs — mine, and others that needed to be removed as well. The candidate signs were returned to their rightful owners, and the "vote NO" signs went to the dump.
Except one, which Delta wanted to save. She wanted to burn it.
Somehow though, we all forgot about it, and it lingered in various places until this evening, when she brought a friend and wanted to torch it. Now given the serious lack of rain, this seemed ill-advised, but given Friday’s announcement that Target isn’t coming at all… I really wanted to. Then inspiration struck: the chiminea. Naturally, she requested some appropriate background music for the ritual.
The irony of it is, Delta doesn’t even know about the Target announcement. She just knows that our chance to get a bunch of cool stores kind of went up in flames on June 5, so now, she’s had her little revenge.
But I feel marginally better.