Six years ago, I was working at East Ridge Elementary School in Chattanooga. That school year I had volunteered to be on the social studies textbook committee where we would choose new textbooks to match the new state standards. Even though I was a librarian, I taught social studies lessons. I was also interested in how the process worked. On Tuesday, January 28th, I was with the group of about 25 teachers meeting in an old county building in St. Elmo, which sits at the base of Lookout Mountain, near the Incline Railway.

On the 12th of March, 1993, East Tennessee had a storm to beat all storms. One of its titles was The Storm of the Century. When my colleagues and I compared notes a week later, after school finally reopened, some had lost power, some lost water, some lost both.