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.

Do you remember S & H Green Stamps? How about Top Value Stamps? Or Gold Bond Stamps? The S & H Green Stamps stick in my mind. I have a few in a scrapbook somewhere. I collected them religiously. That means faithfully, constantly, conscientiously and with devotion. They had a sucker in tow. That sucker was me. If there was a special with extra green stamps I was there. Hopefully, it was for something I really needed, not just to fill out a book of stamps.

I spend most of my time on another planet. Not literally of course. My mind is usually somewhere else from where I am physically; therefore, I get nudged quite often. I’m surprised my ribs don’t stay black and blue from all the elbow action they receive.

A few years ago, I received a big nudge, but it wasn’t to my ribs.

Today, radio programming consists mostly of music and talk shows. It wasn't always that way. Back in the day, the late thirties and World War II days, drama ruled the airwaves. In the movie, “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou” there is a scene near the end showing an elderly couple sitting close to their radio listening to the political rally our hero was participating in. That scene has an element of truth in it. That was what we did – sit near the radio listening to the dramas being presented that evening. You knew better than to utter a word while the story line played out.

I am writing this on April 30, 2018. Tomorrow is the first day of May. My mind goes back tonight to May 27, 1983, the day I graduated from Horace Maynard High School thirty-five years ago.
Horace Maynard High School was located in the same building currently used as Horace Maynard Middle School. Our actual graduation week began with a tradition that each boy have a girl to “walk down the aisle” at the occasion. Anyone who knows me can tell that I was not “ladies’ first choice” back then.

I have always liked the taste of rhubarb. It is especially welcome after a winter of eating mostly canned fruit. Mother made rhubarb pie when the stalks were crisp and full of juice. We always had plants growing somewhere around the garden spot. Rhubarb doesn't demand much. Enough moisture to keep it alive during the hot summer months is about it. It is one of the first things up in the spring.