For many years, school officials have talked about the increasing need for counselors and social workers in our schools - a need so great it can't be filled simply with career counselors of old that we Baby Boomers and Gen Xers knew in school.
Tennessee state officials continue scrambling to cover their exposed backsides.
Imagine the furor among the GOP if, during and just after the Barack Obama administration, more than dozen of his campaign officials were arrested, referred for federal investigation, indicted, forced to resign or otherwise became enveloped in scandal. Not just controversy, but really ugly scandal.
In June of 2017, then-newly chosen Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Bryan Johnson sat in the front row of the 150-plus-strong audience seated before the Hamilton County Commission as it passed without fanfare a $691.5 million county budget with no tax increase - an increase that was sorely needed for public school needs.
Elvis - er, a Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest - has left the building. Tennessee's Capitol building.
A self-styled techie, Chattanooga's new mayor, Tim Kelly, sits at a desk filled with electronic devices that include two big computer screens, a tablet and a cell phone.
It's hard not to get caught up in the new space race - the tourism space race that makes us mortals close our eyes and dream of seeing the earth as a blue marble instead of planning a trip to the Tennessee Aquarium or to the Grand Canyon.
Hypocrisy is running rampant in Tennessee. No, this is not a new problem - seeing as we're a red state and Republicans and hypocrisy go together like bread and butter, cookies and milk, PB&J - you get it.
The signals aren't subtle. Just this year, the west has had historic heat and wildfire - after previous historic years of heat and wildfire. We've watched devastating storms, drought that's shrinking major reservoirs, an ice storm that crippled the entire state of Texas.
In the idealistic Americana paintings of Norman Rockwell, police were seen as community minders and menders.
