An outdoor farmers market, like the Union County Farmers Market at Wilson Park, is a wonderful place for a family outing. It should be fun for everyone and a fabulous learning experience for your children. The variety of sights, sounds and smells at the market automatically engage your child’s senses and are a fun way to foster curiosity, teach important skills and encourage them to think about where their food comes from. A few ideas to help you get started on a family outing to the market follow.

I didn’t really want to do it, but I was backed into a corner.
A few summers ago, Tim was injured and the doctor didn’t want him to do any strenuous activities for a couple of weeks. That included mowing the yard. I think that bothered him more than anything else because he is very particular about the yard.
Of course the grass grew during those two weeks and it drove Tim crazy. I suggested paying somebody to mow it. He suggested I mow around the house for now. He could get the back yard later. I wasn’t too keen on his idea.

Complementary practices such as meditation and mindful breathing helped patients manage chronic pain and in some cases reduced the need for medication such as opioids, according to new a study.

Opioid misuse and addiction are major public health issues in the United States, and approximately 70 percent of individuals who use opioids on a long-term basis have a musculoskeletal disorder, such as low back pain or arthritis.

I had the privilege of seeing several of my elementary school classmates last week. One of them, my friend Kevin White, reminded me of a circumstance that happened in third grade.
That was the year we received new reading books. We began the year with a book titled Looking Ahead. This book was the first of two third grade reading books from the same series as the famous (at least to my generation) Tip and Mitten. I loved that series—even the books had a special smell, and the pictures were inspiring in ways that I cannot explain. The first story in that book was “Eddie and the Desk”.

I have been hungry for cookies lately. Today I broke down and made some. They were from an old cookbook I found somewhere or other. What a disappointment, I have many tried and true recipes that turn out just fine every time. Why, oh why, do I continue looking for new ones. Anne reminds me of that fact every time I have a cooking disaster.

I will give you a little history as to why I am so eager to try new things. It runs in the family. After the war in 1948, a new car was offered in America. It was the Tucker. Wow! That automobile had more bells and whistles than could be imagined. “The Tucker is the car of the future offered today,” they said. Dad wanted one. He could taste it, he wanted one so badly.

Let me tell you about the Tucker. The engine was a rear mounted H-6 (horizontaly opposed, ohv, 335 ci, 166 bhp and 372 lbs/ft torque), whatever that all means.

In an earlier column I wrote about our version of English I like to call Mountain Speech, a unique and very old dialect that has been retained through mountain isolation to this day, though much has been lost. I’m going through a book called Smokey Mountain English that has thousands of words and phrases collected from mountain people throughout our region by linguistic experts. I’m going through the book looking for words I heard my parents and grandparents use and thought you might enjoy seeing how many you’re familiar with.

I have celebrated Independence Day in some amazing ways. When we lived in Athens, (Tennessee, not Georgia), there used to be an awesome fireworks display every 4th of July. The first one I remember seeing was in the Proffit’s Shopping Center on Decatur Pike. It was fairly small, but several people, including the Proffit’s family, forked out for the town to see some nifty fireworks. Later when the city built a park out near I-75, the display was held there. Much bigger, much more impressive. The fireworks were shot off to music played on the local radio station.

In June of 1869, the Warwick’s Chapel Community in Luttrell was blessed with a new place of worship. The first church gathering for Warwick’s Chapel Baptist Church was held at the home of John Ferguson, near the site of the old Curtis Phipps home. There were more than thirty-five constituent members who convened and organized the church, twenty-three of whom were from Cedar Ford Baptist Church, three from Cedar Grove Baptist Church, and nine from Powder Springs Gap.

County Commission rejected a request regarding sick leave accrued during a previous administration for employees who continued to work under the current sheriff. Sheriff Billy Breeding stated that the employees were requesting over 7900 hours of sick leave to be used for retirement credit only.