People who had a way with words in the news last week:
“I really think we’ve arrived at this point in American consciousness where our politics is our national religion.”
— Pastor Micah Fries, speaking Friday during an event in Chattanooga titled “The Posture of Our Politics: Conversations on How Our Political Engagement is Forming Us Spiritually.”
“There’s a consistent history of the media taking Trump’s comments out of context. That is absolutely true. I have never heard him say anything other than honorable, complimentary things about our veterans and about our military.”
— U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tennessee, while speaking to reporters in Chattanooga, on comments by former President Donald Trump denigrating the Medal of Honor and other comments the Republican presidential nominee has made about service members.
“The meaning of liberalism and conservatism are constantly changing. That’s one of the problems with the way that we think and talk about politics, in terms of this left-right spectrum.”
— Hyrum Lewis, author and political scientist, during a recording of a “You May Be Right” podcast, hosted by former Tennessee Govs. Bill Haslam and Phil Bredesen, at a meeting of the Chattanooga Rotary Club.
“What we’re doing here is changing lives. We change communities. We change a student’s life, which changes a family’s life. And having buildings that represent the importance of what is happening at a technical college is crucial. This building is going to show that.”
— Flora Tydings, chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents, during the groundbreaking for Chattanooga State Community College’s new education and training facility, which will serve students in the school’s service-based professional programs such as aesthetics, barbering, cosmetology and massage therapy.
Staff photo by Matt Hamilton / Flora Tydings, chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents, speaks Wednesday during a groundbreaking ceremony at Chattanooga State Community College for its newest Tennessee College of Applied Technology building.“We are done. Nobody wants to plan anymore, so that’s good.”
— Dan Reuter, head of the Chattanooga Area Regional Planning Agency, announcing the conclusion of the Plan Chattanooga, a city and county planning process launched last year.
“Our members have seen them at work in their communities and documented unsafe practices, including failure to wear proper safety equipment, failure to secure ladders and other equipment putting the worker and nearby vehicles and pedestrians at risk, and failure to mark work areas with safety cones. We are encouraging members of the public to use extra caution when encountering these worksites.”
— Richard Honeycutt, vice president for the Communications Workers of America Union, on “undertrained managers and contractors” handling work normally done by striking AT&T union members.
“He originally had a number of pet rabbits, and he was keeping them apart by gender, but eventually he had a health crisis and it became too difficult for him to keep them separate. They ended up breeding with each other unintentionally, and the population grew out of control.”
— Kirsten Peek, public information officer for the Humane Society of the United States, on the rescue of more than 100 rabbits from the home of a Chattanooga man who reached out to McKamey Animal Center for help when he realized he could no longer properly care for the animals.
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