Family, community, and self-care are areas that Alyshia Victoria, who was recently hired as an Extension Agent in Union County, voices as focuses of importance in her life and in the county. Alyshia began work at the extension office shortly after the New Year and has been hastily working towards training and educating herself in a wide array of activities and programs in order to best serve the community.

Joe Pat McDonald smiles when he remembers his mother, the late Winnie McDonald.

And it's not surprising that he does. Mrs. McDonald passed away 15 years ago at the age of 95, but in those years she touched so many lives as a teacher, author and the Union County Historian. Joe Pat remembers growing up with Mrs. McDonald, his father the late Tad McDonald, and sister Sharon, in Sharps Chapel and later Maynardville. His mother, he said, had a great love of language, reading and poetry, and she loved all of her students, too.

Being from the south, I love to sop. Sop is another word for soak. My Mamaw Jo used to say “Sopping wet” instead of soaking wet. You can sop any type of juice with any type of bread. When I was a girl, I sopped Mamaw Myrtle’s homemade cornbread with juice from my pinto beans. My Papaw sopped every time he ate.

In the past, chiropractic treatment got mixed reviews from physicians. However, in early 2017, The American College of Physicians released new guidelines. It now supports the use of nonpharmacologic therapies, such as chiropractic and acupuncture, as first-line treatments for low back pain, before using medication.

A while back, I was about halfway through a busy Tuesday morning volunteer shift, greeting visitors, answering questions, and running the cash register. A young woman who had been standing back from the front desk came up to it and said, “They said I could use a phone here. I don’t know where I am and I’m kind of freaking out here.” Before I could answer a man standing nearby handed her his phone and, after she made a call, his wife came up and started talking to her. They walked out the door together.

If memory serves me correctly, the then sitting Union County Board of Education ousted sitting Director of Schools David F. Coppock in spring, 2001. Three months later, a new director, Dr. James Pratt from Albertville, Alabama had been hired. It was Dr. Pratt’s philosophy to let principals hire their own teachers and to make very few changes his first year in office. He did make at least one change during his second and final year—he moved me from principal at Sharps Chapel to principal at Luttrell.

Watching television back in the early days of TV was much different than what it is today. Of course, the screen was tiny, 12 inches, compared to those now available. Black and white it was. We could only imagine that the tree leaves were green and that pretty dress the star of the show was wearing was candy apple red. However, we had good imaginations. After all, we had our ears tuned to the radio for a decade or so. The sound effects of that era prepared us for the magic of black and white television. We could now see what before we had only heard.

If you read my stuff much, you know that I am unabashedly proud to be mountain bred. I love our southern Appalachians mountains. The terrain, the climate, the plants and animals, the culture and history, all blend together to form a unique place to live.

What is it about cats that so fascinates humankind? Those who love them extol their fiercely independent natures, their lithe and beautiful lines, intelligence, and adaptability. They show endlessly cute pictures of kittens and cats playing, purring, cuddling, and meowing. On the other hand, I have seen Facebook posts where cat haters talk about how stealthy, unintelligent, nasty, and evil they are. Those people describe some of the things they would do if a cat was ever unlucky enough to sneak in their houses. That kind of polarity has been around for eons.

Back in the late 1990s, there was a quirky band called Servotron. In my opinion, they are quite forgettable, but one of their songs finds its way into my head from time to time – not because of its quality or its tune, but just because of the images the title evokes. They called it, “All Robots (Report to the Dance Floor).” Every time I think about it, I conjure up mental images of mechanical beings gyrating to the beat of electronic dance music. In my head, they step, bend, twist and execute all sorts of inorganic-looking moves. It’s chaos.