Knoxville Dogwood Arts Festival kicks off with ribbon cutting and luncheon

How I got there

This past fall, my neighborhood was blessed with two new additions, Rose and Harry Moseley.  They bought in the neighborhood because one of their children lives here.  Last week, Rose, who has been deeply involved in the Dogwood Arts Festival many years, invited me and another neighbor, Diane Neely to the luncheon.

Diane had to work so she drove separately.  I road with Rose in her bestie Joanne's car.  Our first stop was the ribbon cutting for Talahi Park in Sequoyah Hills.

Talahi Park

Talahi Park was nearly destroyed by weather and inappropriate plantings.  The Sequoyah Hills Association has worked with arborists and restoration experts to make Talahi Park beautiful for now and the future. Today was the ribbon cutting which officially opened the park for the public.

Talahi Park

Dogwood Arts Festival Luncheon

The luncheon took place on the grounds of the 2014 Knoxville Symphony League Show Home.  The home does not open for viewing until April 11, but the grounds are beautiful.

 Before lunch, there was easy jazz music and performers from the Cirque du Soleil Varekai show, currently performing in Ktown at the Thompson Boling Arena.  Enjoy the pictures!

Diane

Me

Of course, there were dignitaries and sponsors who spoke, as they should, but I was hungry.

The Tablescape

The Luncheon was so beautiful and catered by Crown Plaza.  The first offering was grilled chicken breast on red and green romaine lettuce, with heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, a parmesan tuile and a delicious balsamic cream sauce. Sorry, I forgot to photograph the first course, but I was hungry!

Dessert was beautiful and yummy.  There were strawberries and graham crackers involved, but I can't remember all the deets.

Dessert

Most of all, I want to thank my new neighbor Rose and her bestie Joanne for inviting Diane and I to share the luncheon with them and for all the years Rose and Joanne spent making the Dogwood Arts Festival what it is today.

Joanne and Rose

Color me basking in the glow of a beautiful East Tennessee Day and trying to figure out that Balsmaic Cream sauce.

Knoxville Citizens do Not pay Federal Taxes

Well, according the the Knoxville News Sentinel

On Sunday, March 30, 2014, the Knoxville News Sentinel contained an article entitled "Mayoral travel provides influential opportunities".  This line was in that article "A trip to Turkey cost nothing for local taxpayers, nor a recent trip to California because it was paid for by the federal government, but Rogero has traveled elsewhere at local public cost."  

Clearly, there was never an editor any where near this article. It is kind of run-on and could use at least one other comma.  

Do the very fine citizens of Knoxville have a waiver from paying Federal Taxes?  Is this an error by the writer of the article?  Did this come from Madam Mayor's office?

I am pretty darn sure that Knoxvillians pay Federal Taxes.  In that case, local money was used.  

FYI, to the Sentinel, the writer and Madam Mayor's office.  The Federal Government has no money.  All the money in Washington, D.C. comes from the denizens of every city, town, hamlet and burg in the United States of America.  Or, is borrowed in the name of the people by the federal government.

When the Mayor travels, she travels on Knoxville's nickel whether she knows it or not.  Since, I am in a snarky mood, I am going to say Miss Rogero doesn't know, not part of the education of an organizer for Cesar Chavez.

Why is Ina Hughs so hateful

Ina Hughs is another of my fav reads from the Sentinel because she is so consistent.  She is consistently hateful and mean.  Her "Oped" "April day celebrates our sense of humor" displays her love of cruel jokes.  May be it is because I prefer humor that is self-deprecating or everyman type.  I just don't think that calling a beloved grandchild on the phone, pretending to be from the DMV and telling him that he really failed his Drivers License Test is kind or funny.

Color me hiding in fear of Ina Hughs humor.

T

Operational Security in a Social Media Age

The Jihadi's are on Facebook, too.

It has been almost three and a half years and I still remember when it happened.  My son was a brand new 2nd Lieutenant and was attending Army Logistics University at Ft. Lee, Virginia.  I was chatting on Facebook with someone and scrolling through my news feed.  I tagged my son in a picture, made a few keystrokes in my chat and then went to my son's page and it didn't exist.  

Gone, completely gone.  Every picture from the past five years and every part or mention of my son was gone.  Panicked, I called his cell phone and he answered.  He informed my that he was erasing his social media foot print for Operational Security (OpSec).  The Army had highly suggested he take this step.

I know mothers of the deployed look for the green dot on Facebook.  The green dot tells the moms that wherever their child is in the world, their child is using social media at that moment.  Of course, I am jealous.  My son suspended is cell phone account and left his phone, actually, I don't know where.  

My son calls every two to three weeks using the steady supply of phone cards that we send him.  My husband and I each talk to him for about an hour.

Back in World War II, OpSec was an important security feature and motivation for the deployed military personnel and the average citizen.  The average U.S. citizen could feel part of the war by participating in Operational Security, tin collection and rationing.  

Today, the average U.S. citizen goes about life blythely unaware that there are even troops deployed in Afghanistan, let alone the many other sensitive duty stations around the globe.

It is up to us then, those of us who are aware, to be even more security conscious about where our loved ones are and what they are doing.  The entire Islamofacist world is on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and what ever app was designed today.  

Let us practice OpSec everyday!

Government Functionaries Train Next Generation of Smarmy Scolds

They know better because they think they are better

In the Sunday, March 23, 2014 edition of the "Knoxville News Sentinel", there is an article titled "Students use body bags to show tobacco's effects".  According to this article, high schoolers volunteered to lay on top of body bags, with a statistic filled tombstone by their heads, on Market Square, as a physical show of the dangers of tobacco. 

  This is a project of the Knox County Youth Health Board.  According to the article, Kathryn Burklund set this up.  She is the public health education coordinator for Tobacco Use Prevention.  

Breaking new:  Use of tobacco products could endanger your health.

These kids are learning a lesson here.  Stupid and pointless gestures get approval from adults and media coverage.  How else would the next generation of smarmy scolds get trained.  These kids are the ones' who will be hectoring us in the future about how to live our lives to suit them.  Don't think, just do as your told.

If you cannot picture what a smarmy scold is, think of the movie "Animal House".  You know the guys in the fraternity Omega Theta Pi.  The fraternity that was not "Animal House"  Yeah, Neidermeyer and Marmalard.

That is who these kids are going to grow up to be.

Remind me to stay away from Market Square.

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March Madness

Shock and Horror in Knoxville

Lady Vols NOT in Obama's Final Four

All of Knoxville is reeling today from an Associated Press Story in the esteemed "Knoxville News Sentinel" that President Obama did not pick the Lady Vols for the Final Four, in his vaunted and highly anticipated March Madness Brackets.

Shock in Knoxville

This will teach you Knoxville.  Our President is notoriously thin-skinned.  He never, ever, ever forgets a slight.  If Knoxville will remember, Obama did not carry Tennessee in either the 2008 or 2012 Presidential elections.  He DID win Connecticut in both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections.  

With his pick of Connecticut, the President is telling Knoxville and all of Tennessee to go jump in the Tennessee River.  

And, according to the article, when he hosted Connecticut's Lady Huskies (such an unfortunate name) last year, he promised team center Stefanie Dolson a dance-off if Connecticut repeated this year.  Actually, although I am not a basketball fan, I say "Go Lady Vols", if only to prevent another humiliation for our uber-cool (cough, giggle, snort) President.

In other, far less important news, that plane is still missing, Vladimir Putin is still trying to make up for his shortcomings and there will be llama races in Knoxville's World's Fair Park.

From the shadows of the Great Smoky Mountains, that is all for now.

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Not having health insurance is not freeloading. Not paying your bills is freeloading

Not having insurance is not freeloading

Ina Hughes always manages to annoy me.  Ina Hughes writes for the "Knoxville News Sentinel".  She has a rather myopic world view and does not seem to understand the phrase "correlation is not causation".  Miss Hughes also does not seem to understand free will.

Apparently, Miss Hughes spent days in the hospital for tests and a medication update and wrote about it in her column today.  Miss Hughes saw a woman in an SUV (clearly living too large) park and enter the emergency room.  The woman wanted to see a doctor for a cold (clearly an idiot). 

When Ms. Hughes questioned the nurse, the nurse told her these people don't have a doctor, don't have insurance and don't pay.  Ms. Hughes posits that these people are freeloaders because they don't have insurance.  She also posits that they have car payments, eat out and have gym memberships.

The Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare is going to fix this because these "freeloaders"  will be forced to have insurance, in Miss Hughes world.

Big problem.  These people have free will and may choose to pay the fine and still not have insurance.  They may choose to wait until they are ill and then get Affordable Care Act Insurance.  Since we don't (yet) have debtors' prisons or jail sentences for those who do not take Obamacare, what is to stop them.

More importantly, I disagree with Miss Hughes that people who don't have insurance are freeloaders.  People who don't pay their debts are freeloaders.  In my world, people who don't have health insurance are taking a big risk.  In my youth, I turned down company offered health insurance for more vacation time.  When I did see a doctor, and you can see a doctor without insurance, I PAID the bill.

People who don't have insurance are gamblers.  People who don't pay their bills are immoral jerks.

Obamacare, The Edsel and New Coke!

Fourth Edition

It is not about the marketing!

The front page of the Bearden edition of the "Shopper News" has another article about the "Looming" Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare signup deadline.  Writer Betty Bean features a new quote from Mayor Rogero, 

"Faith leaders like you share a vision of a responsibility to care for our nation's sick, our nation's children and the overall health of our community."

Silly Southern Baptist that I am, I thought our "faith leaders" had a vision to get our Souls to God. But then, I am a backsliding Baptist so maybe I missed the Sermons about serving the State by having Health Care.

Ford Edsel

New Coke

More importantly, our Mayor Rogero, President Obama and all of the other Affordable Care Act pitch persons have failed to learn the lesson that companies like Ford and Coca Cola learned.  While the failure of Ford's Edsel and Coca Cola's New Coke are taught in Marketing classes where one would never find organizers/agitators, they are also of recent enough vintage that surely the Mayor and the President had to have heard a little about them

The lesson that Ford and Coca Cola both learned with their failed products is that - no amount of money or slick advertising campaigns will induce the public to buy a product that the public does not want!

You cannot jawbone us into it either.  Force is the only way!

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