… kick off for annual campaign with the local YMCA’s here in Chattanooga. One night when many of the staff members and some local boosters gathered for a program meant to inspire all attending to be aware of all the ways Y programs provide support, benefits, assistance to the people in the community where they provide services. More than a place to get on a treadmill, attend a yoga class or water aerobics, but also reaching out to the community to support those in need: thousands of free meals through grand funding, intervention programs for at-risk teens. Nutrition information including weekly classes with meal prep. for cardiac care patients and diabetics, a Mobile Market that travels the city into under-served neighborhoods to provide fresh fruits and vegetables as well as staple items for communities in food deserts.
There was a table full of finger foods, provided by a catering service, lots of decorations on the theme to encourage everyone present to ‘get on board’. All designed to encourage attendees to go out into the service area with a desire to make the contacts necessary to help garner funding. Meeting the challenge with enthusiasm for the goal of well over one million dollars to fund improvements to buildings and programming. Decorations included various modes of travel, including a fully restored Land Rover that served for years in mission work in Africa, as well as models of trains, planes, trucks. Hot air balloons in miniature as table decorations as well as models of vehicles meant to inspire a sense of ‘let’s get going!’
… as a result of cold weather, dry skin, when my sad, sore little fingerprints literally split open. It is possible a contributing factor is using the amazing Dawn dish detergent. If you pay attention to a world news: when there is an oil-petrolem crisis on the high seas, you know that the best thing to get the gunk off wildlife is Dawn. If it will clean crude oil off water birds feathers, pelts of animals that live in the ocean like seals, otters, it will certainly get the residue from spaghetti sauce or bacon grease off a pan. As well as dry out skin to the point that hands will get dry and crusty, with the grooves in fingers starting to crack and bleed.
People who work in jobs that require frequent hand washing like hospitality, food service are at risk excessively dry skin. Workers in health care, medical field are likewise prone to have difficulty with keeping skin hydrated enough to avoid the literal cracks that create open wounds due to sanitation requirements. Rubbing in lotion to counteract the effects of the soap and water, only to need to wash again, and remove that benefit of soothing, softening hand creams.
Dry, dry, dry: see where the corner is split open: so sore it hurts to try to put a button through a button hole.
Putting a little dab of antibiotic ointment on the crack, and covering with an ill-fitting bandaid has helped. The tips where the split is visible are so tender, it hurts to type. Really tender, where the valley between the ridges of the print have opened. Leaving an small crevice that looks almost like a narrow slice, due to dry skin, cold weather, too-effective dish detergent.
Thick creamy lotion is helpful, but every time hands are washed, it requires starting over.
As one heals, another one appears. They just keep cracking open. Possibly a part of the problem is dry skin due to indoor heat, and getting older- with less cushion under the epidermis. Wrinkles from looser skin begin to appear on the face, and body in general – due partially to gravity of course, but also skin just gets thinner as we age, with less collagen being generated. Plus not as flexible or quick to recover from injuries, neglect, daily life.
… by first time author, United Kingdom resident Tom Michell. Published in 2015, he wrote the book about his experience of accidentally rescuing and caring for a bird while living and working in South America. His time living in Argentina was as a young man when took a position at a school, established by the British, when so many countries around the world had been colonized by Europeans.
Traveling in Uruguay, when on a school break, shortly before he was required to return to work in Argentina, he was walking near the beach and discovered a place where hundreds of penguins had washed ashore, covered in oil, dying when they could no longer swim. The petroleum was a result of large tankers flushing out their holds with seawater, and leaving great masses of toxic waste on the surface of the ocean, where the penguins would be swimming to catch fish. As a person with no experience in animal rescue, he impulsively attempted to pick up one of the dying birds, to help. Believing, without a plan, he could take it back to the apartment where he was staying to clean it up and return it to the beach.
With some success, he was able to get the bird mostly clean, but in doing so removed all the natural protection that keeps the feathers waterproof. When he took the bird back to the beach, it refused to go. Causing it to return to the man who cleaned,and now felt responsible for the bird. Considerable hilarity, told with a very dry sense of humor, he reports getting the bird through customs when returning to Argentina by placing it in a net shopping bag, then covering the bag with an upside down paper bag with slits cut for handles.
Michell returns to his work, in the school where he is employed – then begins to think of how he can successfully keep the bird in his apartment in a boys dorm. Knowing he will have to tell others to get their support for his project, he starts by approaching Maria who works in custodial services. Gradually informing more staff, and eventually students who are all fascinated by a small water bird living in their midst. There is a terrace area on top of the building, where the bird is eventually installed, and seems content. With students constantly visiting, and enjoying feeding, helping with the bird’s care.
Michell recently read the book “Johnathan Living Seagull”, and gives his protege the name of the gull, with a Spanish translation: Juan Salvador. Over time, the bird is given the run of the school property, going for walks with Michell and students, out on the rugby playing fields, and eventually in the swimming pool. Realizing the bird needs to be returned to community with fellow penguins, he hopes to take his friend to become part of a nearby community in a zoo. Sadly the small enclosure with dispirited birds proves to be an unsatisfactory option. Michell asks Maria to care for his protege while he makes a trip to a place he might release the now-acclimated-to-humans bird. The entire neighborhood is delighted to make the acquaintance of Juan, when he is introduced to relatives, complete strangers, passers-by who come to see him. The trip is not productive, although the telling is quite entertaining.
Sadly, Juan Salvador dies. Left with friends when Michell is traveling during a school holiday, he returns to be told of the death of the penguin. The story is fascinating: ending with not so much ‘lessons’ as the subtitle indicates, but reflections on the time he had with the amazing bird. In only eight short months, he and all those who came to know Juan had lives made richer by their experience.
Interesting, educational and highly entertaining. I don’t recall where I read a reference to the book, but thought it would be interesting: just from the title! Requested from the Rossville Library, that participates in the Georgia PINES program, to borrow books from most of the holdings throughout the state, this book came from the Columbia County Library, in Augusta, GA. A delightful read.
… has been down in the twenties and teens at night during the week: sunshine happens by the middle of the day, with gorgeous blue sky to give the appearance of a pleasant day. If it weren’t for the biting wind, and chill factor that makes it generally unpleasant to be out roaming the neighborhood. It seems like the cold is tolerable as long as the sun is shining, mentally making the misery incrementally less miserable? Probably something psychological that has to do with being able to cope with hardships as long as you can look out into the world and see that clear sky and bright light, as opposed to overcast, dismal sky with no hope of a sprinkle of vitamin D.
Weather info that appears on the cell-phone screen includes ample bad news: you can seen hour by hour to know what the actual temp. the experts predict. Plus what the ‘real feel’ is: often several degrees off of that those professional prognosticators believe will be reality. Factoring in cloud cover and wind blowing directly under the crack in the door from the geographical North Pole. Better get crackin’ on those little fabric sleeves filled with sand to block that misery easing under the door that brings the indoor temp down…
What you see along the edges:Ice. There was probably enough moving water that it did not freeze solid, but in places that did not get direct sun, in shade or shadow all day, the ice never melted due to low temperatures.Run off from rain up on Lookout Mountain earlier in the week, such a downpour the water was still running in Glen Falls Creek two days later. Will eventually make it’s way to the Tennessee River.
Went for a walk in the sunshine one afternoon a couple of days ago, going up along the busy main artery through the neighborhood. Sidewalks are usually pretty clear, although people do pile up yard trash that sometimes sits for days or weeks before the city gets around to pickup. Occasionally a blocked sidewalk- but with painted bike-lanes on each side of the two lane St Elmo Ave., there is usually walking space.
The city has installed a four way stop several blocks north of the state line, making it much easier to cross that busy street. Not necessarily slowing anyone down as vehicles head into town, or south into Georgia, but it seems like most do come to a creeping almost-STOP before getting back up to 45 or 50 mph.There is a small business in a building that was once a store of some sort there where the STOP signs are mounted, a music venue that is open at night, with customers parking along side streets. Creating a need for forcing traffic to slow enough for getting safely across with all those vehicles filled with people who are too illiterate to read the 25 mph signs as soon as drivers arrive in TN.
… in the coldest winter I have ever experienced, there is not good news from the rodent living down in a hole in Pennsylvania. The 2nd of Feb., historically known as Groundhog Day, seems to have grown into a big event. Lots of promotional activity and fol-de-rol when Punxsutawney Phil comes up from the below ground burrow where he resides. News outlets await the arrival, that is weather based: to determine whether the over-large rodent will come out on a cloudy, overcast day or appear in bright sunshine. If the day is drab, with insufficient sunshine to cast a shadow, we are told that Phil is prognosticating winter will soon end. If he appears on a bright sunny day, and it is obvious the groundhog has a shadow, appearing prematurely – we are assured the season of cold and misery will continue for six more weeks. Dragging the us well into mid-March before we can have any hope of warming, moderating weather.
Found in the February-March 2026 issue of Readers’ Digest.
The idea of celebrating the rodent goes back to some notion Europeans brought over from the Old Country as immigrants were crossing the Atlantic Ocean and settling in North America. In the way that there are a number of traditions dating back to before written, recorded history, this seems to be one. Hypothesis and theories related to prime time for planting seeds, growing crops, determining maturity, being aware of phases of the moon for best results, biggest yields as found in historical data, reported in Farmer’s Almanac – all come from years of accumulated knowledge by people who were weather aware. Totally dependent on things they could not control for planting, harvesting an abundant crop that would sustain livestock and humans through fallow seasons.
Without delving into the depths of Dr. Google, it appears the first mention of WASPs observing Groundhog Day was in 1887. But it seems likely the Indigenous people who lived in North America for centuries before the invasion of the Europeans who ‘discovered’ the New World, would have had generations of accumulated knowledge about best practices. In the same way they noted the changes in the natural world, observed seasons and named times of the year by the cycles of the moon, even as hunter-gatherers, before settlements that depended on agriculture, they knew about herbal remedies, would harvest from nature in season. They did not leave a written history to share their knowledge.
When I shared this with a friend, who was more than willing to commiserate with the bad news coming from Minnesota, I reminded her of my plain average ordinary south Georgia roots. How my upbringing in a small town with agricultural economy had been an influence. A family that was blue collar, people who worked with their hands to provide the necessities and some degree of fun: honest, self-employed, hard working focused on improving not just their personal situation, but hopeful to make an impact on those around them who were also plodding along through life. Desiring to help those less fortunate in the community, as they worked to make life a little less of a struggle for those in need.
Although we are all products of our environment, and the people who birth, nurture, raise, influence us – family, friends, neighbors, teachers – we can choose to make improvements. Both in ourselves, and in the community at a whole. Looking back at the lives of my parents and grandparents, it seems that they were people who were aware and did make efforts to help others improve their lives, raise their standard of living. Find small ways to benefit and enjoy from amenities and creature comforts as their lives and circumstances improved.
Grandparents who grew up working at manual labor: planting and harvesting, caring for livestock, putting in long hours at difficult tasks regardless of the weather or circumstance. A Dad who was capable, industrious, clever with his hands and mind, successful businessman, a respected friend who desired to make the community where he lived for decades a better place to live. A man who was honest as the day is long, compassionate, and willing to work for the betterment of the community at large.
What’s going on in our country? Where is the care, compassion, love, desire to help others, lift people up? Work together to improve tough, rough, undesirable situations? How did we get in this mess? How much of what we are seeing today can be attributed to the law-less mob that stormed the US Capitol building and attempted to overthrow the government? Are those same people in masks, armed, walking the streets of our cities wearing vests proclaiming ICE and killing innocents?
I told the friend who commiserated when seeing the small sign posted on the utility pole: If my dad, WW II Army survivor of the European campaign, were alive today, he would be calling his fellow veterans and telling them to get their muskets ready. Time for self-defense. Actually this would be that guy:putting out the call, raising the militia in that rural area where he lived, to let them know the Time is Now. Organizing the Home Guard to defend all those things the constitution of the US has assured us are inalienable rights for over two hundred years.
He is longer here to get up on the ‘soapbox’ and shout to express his opinion, I will do it for him….
… the weather experts: the temperature here in southeast Tennessee early on a Sunday morning on the first day of February is an unbelievable 13 degrees. Never have I ever! The info. provided on my cell phone includes the fact that the ‘real feel’ of that temperature is actually even lower at four degrees. We should assume that this is a way for the prognosticators to account for the wind chill, as there has been a brisk wind blowing for several days, making the temp. even when the sun is brightly shining feel as if someone is reaching a cold hand up your pant leg to chill you all the way to your bones.
I have been doing some things to try to mitigate the extreme-est of the cold and keep the worst-est out there – hoping to maintain some of the heat inside the house and keep it from leaking out between the cracks. Laugh if you must: but before you do you should do some research about bubble wrap. You probably did not know it was first invented as a wall covering? Anyone who has received a package with an item cushioned with the light-weight plastic knows it will protect fragile items. But it can also insulate. There is a youtube out there where a man demonstrated using several different methods to help hold heat in the house: hanging corrugated cardboard, a blanket, and bubble wrap in a window frame to determine which would be more effective. Hard to believe a poorly hung blanket was better, when the guy in the video tested heat conservation, but that is best left for another day…
I’m voting for bubble wrap: installed in a window in a bed room. And covering an unused external door that feels as cold as all of Scandinavia to the touch. The interior of the metal door might be insulated, or maybe not: people tend to cut corners when renovating rental property. I do know: this house is cold. Great in summer, living under a large oak tree that provides lots of shade, but not so wonderful in winter when the north pole blast brings the temperature down to single digits. Putting up curtains in doorways on tension rods in an effort to keep the cold at bay, and retain warming in rooms where I actually live.
The power bill from local provider came recently, and shows that some of my efforts might be making a difference. There is a risk, of course, of spending more to mitigate damage than savings – but if it is effective in the long run, worth the cost. High cost projects like changing out windows on older property for double or triple-pane glass, adding insulation in attics, as well as smaller projects like weather-stripping can make a difference in the long haul. Here, in rental property, when I realized how cold the air is seeping in around an exterior wall outlet, I have even taken the covers off to add a layer of insulation before replacing the cover to keep my expensive heated air in so it won’t leak out!
… written by Ariel Lawhon. The author lives near Nashville, Tennessee, a mother of four sons, claims she splits her time between the supermarket and sports fields. Reading the acknowledgements at the end of the book, it appears it was written during the covid era, when everyone in her household was at home, life was mostly chaotic surrounded by a bustling household. The book is was published in 2023 by Doubleday. Good sized at well over 400 pages, but such a well-wrought narrative, it is difficult to put down when it’s time to turn off the light and go to bed.
On a book list for a local group that reads, meets, discusses: excellent topic for brutally cold weather!
Based in Maine, in the late 1700’s, over the course of a bitter cold winter, the story tells of a small settlement along the Kennebec River. The Ballard family lives near the small town of Hallowell (possibly fictitious): Martha who is a practicing mid-wife, her husband Ephriam, and five of their six children. One adult child is married with a family, the others of courting or marriageable age, still living with parents. Ephraim runs a grist mill he built on a stream for power, near the Knennebec River, just north of the small community. Martha has delivered hundreds of babies, the closest thing the area has to a doctor, experienced in basic medicine from years of being called upon to treat injuries, with knowledge and opinions based on handling a variety of emergencies in addition to childbirth.
The book opens with delivery of a newborn, then Mistress Ballard being called to examine a corpse pulled from the frozen river, to determine cause of death. An unlikable man in life, Johnat Burgess body was gruesome after being frozen in the icy water. As Mistress Ballard studying the body, a young man interrupts, claiming to be a graduate of Harvard Medical College, with far more knowledge and expertise than a lowly, uneducated midwife. Ballard determines the cause of death to be murder: the body was brutalized then hung. The doctor, with only superficial interest, claims it was accidental drowning, as it was pulled from the river by townsmen.
Throughout the narrative, Ballard delivers a number of babies. One breech, assisting another midwife, a who is a transient, only known as Doctor. An elderly woman with much experience, and considerable knowledge of herbal healing, tinctures, harvesting and preserving native plants. Ballard befriends the wife of the local minister, attending to her injuries after she has been raped, while her husband is out of town. Concludes the woman has become pregnant from the assault, and attempted to abort by taking concoctions that would end the pregnancy.
The story is one of daily lives, community activities from fall to spring of one year in their lives. Lawhon’s sources include the Ballard’s commentary of her daily activities, hand-written journals passed down through generations. These dairies are now part of the permanent preserved collection and available for viewing in the Maine State Library. This resource was the basis for a book that was invaluable to Lawhon, written by Laurel Ulrich,
Lawhon’s other books have been lauded with a number of awards, including New York Times Bestseller, and translated into numerous other languages. A writer of historical novels, tales that would require tremendous research, assistance from experts in a variety of fields to ensure accuracy of the details that make her stories such page-turners for readers.
…. path that is the Riverwalk, starting miles upstream on the Tennessee River, just below the Chickamauga Dam, and just sort of petering out on a narrow two lane street a mile or so from the house. For the most part, closely following the edge of the river, along the southern bank through commercial property, downtown, past the tourist attractions like Aquarium and Riverboat. Adjacent to developments with densely populated high-end housing, and small marinas with extraordinarily large, land-locked boats parked in slips. Through the area that was once abandoned foundry, slowly being developed into a baseball stadium, plus multi-use to linen the pockets of current owners.
Walking from the odd end where the bike/walking/skating/baby strollering path simply stops. The city has an office there staffed with employees that support Parks department, including people who are constantly driving golf-carts, patrolling to pick up trash from negligent citizens. Provides parking for people who want to walk or bike from the southern end of the trail, as well as rental bikes and a little fix-it station with tools for repairs if needed. When starting from the office, there is a large metal sculpture that has been in place a couple of years, still surprisingly un-graffitti-ed.
Almost immediately crossing a short bridge over a narrow creek that flows into the TN River. These signs are posted on the railing of the bridge, providing information for passers-by who walk the area. Including one that explains how some of the trash, carelessly dropped along the banks or in neighborhoods ends up in the River. People who are so indifferent to the environment seldom consider the consequences of styrofoam cups tossed from car windows, fast-food wrappers dropped in a parking lot, oil poured in a drain. We are all drinking the same water, recycled, cleaned, purified, running through household pipes.
On a grey, overcast day, when everything appears to be the same color, the boom that collects floating debris is hard to spot. But it is there, with a team of workers periodically coming in a boat to clear out the styrofoam, cans, bottles the boom catches before the refuse washes into the main body of the river.
There was another, similar sign posted adjacent to the one pictured: a warning meant to keep anyone from actually getting the polluted water on their person. Instructing visitors to the area to stay out of the creek: don’t wade, swim, drink. The creek runs through an area where the foundry was in operation for a hundred years, with all the metals that were used stored, heated, mixed, compounded, dumped on the property. Nothing safe about using the runoff for any reason.
… requested from the Rossville Library, just over into Georgia when not available in the Chattanooga Public Library system. The book was included on a reading list, and hard to find in the weeks prior to the group gathering for discussing. It sounded interesting, added to the never-ending list, and recently picked up from the library: read in about twenty four hours, when I got so immersed in the story I could not let it go.
A brief bio. about the author has roots in Native American tribes, acknowledging historians and researchers who guard tribal history as sources when she complied her story. Although fiction it is based on historical facts, relating a tale of migrant labor. The family of Indigenous people, part of the Mi’kmag from Nova Scotia travel to Maine each summer to work on farms when the berries are ripe and much labor is needed to harvest the crop. The work is seasonal, as they also pick other cultivated crops in season from potatoes to apples when each comes to maturity. Wages are abysmal, living conditions horrendous, with the Natives treated poorly, rampant racism towards the darker-skinned migrants.
The family of two parents, plus children have been working for Mr. Ellis for years, and return to help with harvesting the blue-berries. The youngest, Ruthie, disappears. Her brother Joe, believes he is responsible, and carries the guilt with him into adulthood. The family, and friends, other natives who also travel to work harvest search for Ruthie to no avail.
The story is told from the points of view of various family members: including a girl named Norma, as she ages. The reader will soon conclude that Norma, raised in a well-to-do family in Maine, is the abducted Ruthie: as Norma has inexplicable dreams that her parents dismiss, and are excessively protective as she is often confined to home, or privacy of back yard.
It is an interesting tale, the debut novel for author Amanda Peters, fiction, but based on history.
a cup of stone soup 