People who had a way with words in the news last week:
“We live in the United States of America. The word ‘united’ means together, and we have never been together. And, that’s our biggest problem. We live in the ‘Separated States of America.'”
— Larry “Bear” High, owner of Bear’s Barber Shop, speaking during a discussion led by Chattanooga artist Kourtney Brown.
“If you’re playing in the NFL, you want to be in the Super Bowl. Well, having ‘Hamilton’ in Chattanooga is kind of like having made the Super Bowl in some ways because it’s obviously the biggest show out there.”
— Nick Wilkinson, CEO of the Tivoli Foundation, speaking about the two-week run of “Hamilton” at Memorial Auditorium.
“You are a coward, a punk. I hope you get the max, and I hope you get what you deserve in prison.”
— Kameetta Moon, during a sentencing hearing, to D’Ante Jones, who murdered her son
“There’s so many kids out there with bright minds and bright futures, they just don’t know how to get to that point. Harrison Bay was the stepping stone for that.”
— Senior Noah Wilkerson on the expansion of Hamilton County Schools’ career and technical education hubs. Wilkerson credits one of those hubs, Harrison Bay Future Ready Center, with helping him to prepare to study engineering in college.
“By passing this bill, we’ll give consumers more opportunities to purchase local food, and we’ll give more small businesses the opportunity to thrive or start in their home kitchen to test the idea.”
— State Rep. Michele Reneau, R-Hixson, on the passage of her first bill that expands the sale of homemade food items.
“Every day, Sarah was involved, has been involved and I think will be involved in making our community a better place. Being repotted is incredibly energizing, and my sense is that’ll be the case with Sarah as she transitions into something else.”
— Former Tennessee U.S. Sen. Bob Corker on Benwood Foundation President Sarah Morgan’s retirement.
“In the words of his trial counsel, the petitioner’s actions ‘turned a pretty good self-defense case into a not very good self-defense case.'”
— Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Tom Greenholtz on the reversal of post-conviction court findings in the second-degree murder sentencing of Bledsoe County’s Casey Lee Anderson.
“We have a head start. Yet, what they’ve done is commission study after study. They’re following some kind of gated process rather than doing things in parallel, running them in series, and we’re losing our advantage. We’re losing the time advantage. They’ve only just now filed a notice of intent to file.”
— U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee on the pace of TVA’s small modular nuclear reactor project at Clinch River.
“I think, just knowing what a Department of Government Efficiency would do, I could quite frankly see how this wouldn’t be aligned with the mission-critical aspect of what government efficiency would mean to the taxpayer.”
— Doug Windland, who worked for the federal contractor Battra for 12 years, on the contracts getting terminated by the Department of Government Efficiency
“This isn’t cookie-cutter. We all have different thoughts around what our finances need to look like as we get older and get closer to retirement.”
— Erlanger’s chief administrative officer, Wendy Fournet, encouraging staffers to schedule financial counseling sessions in light of the return of lump sum payouts by the health system’s pension program.
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