For those of you who don’t know my mother, I like to call her: “Ms. Pioneer.” She would have preferred to live in the pioneer days instead of today.

When I was still living at home, our water heater went out. Before it was repaired, my mother ran water in the tub and then marched into the kitchen. “I’m going to take a bath like the pioneers did.” She politely ran water in a large bowl and stuck it in the microwave. “I’m gonna pour hot water in the tub.”

Traditionally, Lent is seen as a time of sacrifice, of giving up something. Some people give up chocolate, or drinking alcohol, or fast food; I met a young woman last week who was fasting for Lent. I didn’t get a chance to ask her what kind of fast it was, but at our small group meeting and potluck the only thing she had was water. For the last couple of years I’ve given up social media for Lent, and it has been surprisingly easy to do.

Continuing from "From Hearth And Hoe": " In October, 1935, TVA Camps 7, 13, 16, 19, and 22, for example, were engaged in soil erosion projects and special work on TVA lands. Three 110-foot steel fire towers were erected. Camp TVA-13 constructed a stone masonry fish dam on Stiner Branch. The dam, 30 feet high and 145 feet long, created a lake used by TVA's Fish and Game division to raise fish. Camp TVA-16, consisting of about 206 young men, mostly from East Tennessee, was organized at Sharp's Chapel on August 15, 1935.

Have you ever felt like just getting away from it all? Perhaps in moments of trouble or frustration you, like I, have thought how wonderful it would be just to keep driving in the direction you were going, turning away from all the job struggles, family worries, quarrelsome friends, and debt.

Here is an easy version of chicken pot pie. The hard work of cooking the chicken, preparing the veggies and making the sauce and biscuits is all done for you. It does take a while to bake, but you can be doing other things while it does. Nothing beats finding an easy entree for supper.

The above high rainfall we’ve had past couple of years seems to have caused a boost in lichens. Lichens are those flat light green blotches or hair-like tufts you see growing on tree bark and rocks. Like all life on Earth, lichens have found a niche where they can grow without much competition. Most older trees in our area have at least a small colony growing somewhere.

Most people who hear someone mention the Parthenon will think of one place—the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. However, for most folks in Tennessee, they also know of the Parthenon in Nashville, the “Athens of the South.” I have seen both.

In 1982, we held our collective breath as a little boy named Elliott desperately struggled to help his little alien buddy “phone home” in “E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial”. The diminutive, so-ugly-it-was-cute critter had to somehow contact his home world before he died from some unknown illness assumed to be associated with being on Earth. As the movie’s popularity soared, people everywhere could be heard quipping, “E.T. Phone home!” Even today, you can hear that quote used frequently as an attempt to inject humor into some activity around an attempt to communicate.

There is a new weekly video series airing on www.HistoricUnionCounty.com called “Uniquely Union.”
The show is hosted by Dr. Ronnie Mincey, a long-time contributor to the website and newspaper. You may have read his column “Mincey's Musings”. In this new video series, Mincey conducts interviews with Union County residents and business people that have helped make our county the great place it is to live and work.

At the February meeting, Union County Commission approved a resolution entitled “Resolution Urging Governor Lee and the General Assembly Fund and Begin Construction of Improvements on State Highway 33 aka Maynardville Highway from Knox County Line Northwardly to the Municipal Limits of Maynardville.”
This section of Maynardville Highway is the last one to connect Knoxville and Maynardville with a four-lane highway. The five miles from SR 144 to the Knox County line has been “shovel ready” for several years.