What about the boys?
The speaker at the 45th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Chattanooga earlier this week wasn't another Al Sharpton clone. He wasn't there to dwell on black deaths at the hands of police in Ferguson, Mo., or New York City. He wasn't there to parrot the type of hyperbole delivered last weekend by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, for whom President Barack Obama was a longtime disciple.
No, he had some different -- and valid -- things to say.
Umar Abdullah-Johnson, a nationally certified school psychologist and descendant of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, talked about the culture in schools in which students are "drugged" -- after learning disability diagnoses -- to fix their behaviors. For black boys, especially, he said, it's not a matter of behavior but of teachers not understanding their culture.
He may or may not be right about black boys specifically, but he's certainly correct about schoolchildren in general. While behavioral drugs undoubtedly help in some situations, they've turned other children into walking zombies.
Abdullah-Johnson said parents should be wary of such "kiddie crack" for diagnoses such as attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). For black children, especially for boys, ADHD should stand for "ain't no dad at home," he said.
Indeed, in 2013, 67 percent of black children were being raised by a single parent, usually a mother.
Black boys need male energy, Abdullah-Johnson said. If it's not available, they still need discipline from their moms, should be taught self-control and should be expected to do a task when it needs to be done.
He also talked about the fact 97 percent of teachers are female and 93 percent are white. The problem is not those teachers but that more male teachers and especially more black male teachers could offer more valuable role models.
Hamilton County currently has three charter schools, one only for girls. One for boys only might be a real turning point for some area youth.
Engage brain, then open mouth
Nine days before the special session of the Tennessee General Assembly opens to discuss Gov. Bill Haslam's Insure Tennessee proposal, some legislators and organizations are already opposing it or trying to abort it.
The governor -- unlike President Obama and Democrats who wanted his Affordable Care Act passed before people knew what was in it -- wants legislators and potential users to know exactly what's in the two-year pilot program. That's what the special session is about.
Haslam believes his administration has put together something uniquely Tennessee, something that will require no state tax dollars, something that would allow employees to join their workplace health plans and something that calls for personal responsibility. The details likely will continue to be worked out until the first day of the session.
But Americans for Prosperity already is attacking the plan as "Obamacare" on some radio ads and on others has singled out state Rep. Kevin Brooks, R-Cleveland, the assistant majority leader, for betraying a promise to oppose a state version of Obamacare.
Brooks, who says he still opposes Obamacare, took the ad in stride.
"My grandmother used to say [to] put your brain in gear before you put your mouth in action," he told Times Free Press reporter Andy Sher. "I don't think they've put their brain in gear."
Unlike Obamacare, since it's a pilot program, Insure Tennessee can end it after two years if it proves to be unworkable.
Good boom
If Tennessee Valley neighborhoods hear an occasional boom during storms, it's only an IntelliRuptor. Though its name sounds like something out of "Jurassic Park," it's something helpful and not something hurtful.
The IntelliRuptor PulseCloser is a system employed by EPB on some 1,200 poles throughout the area that detects problems along power lines and works to correct them. When a fuse blows on a circuit, it makes a loud, brief, metallic sound. The sound, according to EPB officials who offered media an explanation of the system Friday, means the system is working to repair an outage. What used to take two hours to repair now might take two seconds, officials said.
What they mean to EPB's system can be seen in their work after last February's several-inch snowfall in Chattanooga. Although the utility still had to restore power to more than 30,000 customers over four days, the IntelliRuptor saved more than 40,000 additional customers from losing power more for than just briefly.
"We're charged with improving the quality of life in Chattanooga," said Jim Glass, EPB's Smart Grid development team manager. "[The IntelliRuptor PulseCloser] translates to a lot of money" -- a significant "financial impact to commercial and industrial customers."