Jay GreesonIt's hard not to be excited that the "Price is Right" game show is coming to Chattanooga.
Man, for a lot of us, that is the background show of sick days of childhood and class-skipping mornings in college.
"The Price is Right" is an American icon right there with apple pie and fireworks on July 4.
Seriously, what speaks more to our society than silly T-shirts, free stuff and laughing at ourselves in T-shirts as we try to get free stuff.
Of course, when I announced this to the family about the game show coming to town after reading about it this week in the Times Free Press, our family bulldog Bo went running into the laundry room and hid under the dirty clothes.
Somewhere, Bob Barker must be smiling that his message of spaying and neutering still rings true to this day.
Do what?
In the private sector, embezzlement is a crime. Even one of those punishable by prison and stuff.
In the public sector around here, it appears that shuffling almost $30K of funds you are entrusted with to a foundation your daughter runs is worth a week's suspension.
So it goes for Lurone Jennings, the head of the Chattanooga Youth and Family Development department, who admitted to what can kindly be called mismanagement of public funds. Jennings will be suspended for a week and will be issued a formal letter of reprimand and have to attend some ethics seminars.
Did anyone consider having the Jennings family pay those funds back to the city department that has them ear-marked for other purposes?
Now that's a mouthful
Late last month, we talked about the irony of the 2016 word of the year being 'post-truth.'
Post-truth, of course, is a reference to this election season, and in the words of the good folks at Oxford means "objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."
And then there was the Dictionary.com folks who picked xenophobia as the word of the year. That, of course, means a fear of foreign things, especially some foreign words of the year.
Meet "Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung" - Austria's word of the year - and good luck trying to pronounce it.
Not unlike post-truth, the Austrian tongue-twister was borne from a crazy political process. It means "postponement of the repeat of the runoff of the presidential election."
And if you think the American political process for the top job was crazy, think about what happened in Austria. The first round of voting happened in April, followed by a runoff in May that was annulled by some irregular numbers. The revote in October was postponed because of error-filled absentee ballots before a Dec. 4 revote that led to Alexander Van der Bellen winning.
So maybe the Austrian process deserved a word like "Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung." A lot of our country could have described our presidential selection with an assortment of simpler four-letter words.
Saturday's star
Board member Rhonda Thurman speaks during the meeting of the Hamilton County Board of Education on Monday, March 7, 2016, in Chattanooga.There are a lot of stars among us, especially this time of year. Our hearts are bigger and we are more aware of our day-to-day blessings.
But this week's star is a name we far too often take for granted.
Most of the news coming from the Hamilton County Board of Education over the last 12 months has been less than savory. Lawsuits. Tanking test scores. Bus crash fatalities and injuries.
Thursday's school board meeting was no different. In fact, in a time when municipalities are looking at pulling out of the system, the school board was forced to discuss what steps it is trying to take to prevent the state from taking over the failing schools within our county.
So there was a lot going on, but here's a tip of the cap to Rhonda Thurman. The often-outspoken school board member stood tall in her position before a room full of vested and emotional parents. She told the Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts magnet school contingent that she was against spending all of the county's facility money on building them a new school.
Regardless of which side of that issue you fall, Thurman's willingness to state her belief openly and with conviction - regardless who is in the audience - is a trait we wish was not such a rarity among our county's elected officials.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6343.