I found out the hard way being married to a taxidermist can be hazardous to your health.

It started out innocently enough. I was cleaning house when my husband Tim came in from his taxidermy shop. He needed me to hold a deer steady while he bolted it onto a plaque. He made it sound so easy and simple. I should have known better.

Lying on his work table was this huge deer head with a massive set of twisted antlers. I wasn’t even sure where to put my hands to hold it steady. Tim told me to stand behind the head and hold it.

Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Nineteen

My pastor recently asked me to teach the adult Vacation Bible School class at our church this summer. I asked him if there was a book or specific topic he wished me to address. He said that he could get me a book or that I could choose one of my own.

I came home and examined my bookshelves. I found a book by Bill Hybels entitled Who You Are When No One’s Looking: Choosing Consistency, Resisting Compromise. What a fascinating subject, I thought.

In the early 1930s, before a large dam was built beneath the forks of the Clinch and Powell Rivers, a little girl of early pioneer ancestry lived in a white two-story house across the Powell River from the mouth of Cedar Creek. She was born there, as had been her uncle, who also lived there with her parents, maternal grandmother, three younger siblings and an older cousin. Their home was on a large farm encircled by a bend of the Powell River on three sides.

Two weeks ago, we examined the verbal covenant that God extended to each successive generation of mankind, from Adam to Abraham, which can be summed up as follows: If you do what God says, He will bless you. If you disobey God, He will curse you. Now we are going to examine God's written covenant.

A number of years ago I found a cookbook at a thrift store that didn't follow the usual pattern for cookbooks. This one had Canadian recipes in it. How would that be different from any other cookbook, you ask? Well, for instance, it had recipes in it for carabou. Food City doesn't carry reindeer meat. There were also a few other exotic foods that we don't find in East Tennessee.

One recipe seemed to jump off the page, yelling “Try me!” So I did. It had a different name in the book, but I re-named it “Canadian Hamburger Vegetable Soup.” It is easy and delicious.

Union County Farmers Market kicks off the 2018 season 9 a.m. Saturday, May 5, in Wilson Park, and this year is shaping up to be the best yet.

I will be at Okie’s Pharmacy in Maynardville on Saturday, May 12, 2018 from 11 am to 1 pm signing copies of my new book, More Tales from the Hills and Hollows of East Tennessee. This is a 261 page soft cover edition. This book is a compilation of historical short stories about local people. New Sentinel columnist, Sam Venable, was kind enough to write the introduction. The cover illustration is by my daughter, Sheri Kimberlyn Peters Hensley.

In a Journal of the American Geriatrics Society study, many well-functioning and highly active older adults experienced back pain, which was linked with poorer perceived and observed walking endurance.

With living “green” becoming a thing these days, you’ve probably heard the benefits of composting yard and kitchen waste. It’s good fertilizer, adds organic matter, improves soil moisture, and the environmental upshot is you’re sending less stuff to landfills and septic systems. But despite the positives, few people compost for various perceived negatives: no room, maintenance hassles, too complicated, bad smell, etc. As a composter I would be considered a passive one, bordering on lazy. I don’t worry about any of the above and my waste still rots down without smelling.

Along the banks of the Clinch and Powell rivers, the passage of the TVA act brought a level of distress and disruption to the citizenry unseen since the American Civil War.