Martin Luther King would have turned 93 on Saturday had he not been killed by a sniper's bullet on April 23, 1968, as he stood on a motel balcony in Memphis.

It was a hot time on this old Earth — all year long in 2021. It was the fifth-hottest year on record and one of the seven hottest on record in the past seven years.

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha! How can you be so ridiculous? And so blatantly partisan, racist and stunningly hypocritical?

No wonder many Republicans, and especially Tennessee and Georgia Republicans, are trying to talk about anything other than coronavirus and particularly its emerging variants.

It's bad enough that a segment of white Chattanooga worked for years to further disenfranchise - even run out - knowingly or unknowingly - thousands of Black families from our city.

Something's not right about the Hamilton County Board of Education. Maybe a lot is not right about our school board.

We say this often because it's true: All politics are local.

Jan. 6 has become a day so tragic that it - like 9/11 and the Dec. 7 - will remain both known and infamous simply by date alone.

Poor Marjorie Taylor Greene.

It wasn't enough that Tennessee's right-wing and wrongheaded leadership tried at every turn to handicap practical preventions for COVID-19, the increasingly insidious virus that even in the brief periods when it has waned has changed our lives.

This is the time of year when everyone begins looking for a crystal ball. Or a Ouija board. Or both.

We had hopes of waxing happy about a new year beginning brightly for us on Jan. 1, 2022.

We all need help sometimes. Because life is good at throwing curveballs. Especially this year and last.

Chattanooga Times editorial cartoonist Clay Bennett takes a look back at his favorite cartoons of 2021.

It is Christmas 2021, and it feels different this year.

In good and bad ways, this has been a catch-up week in our region, with some things long ignored at last being resolved, or at least refocused. Meanwhile, one other thing — COVID-19 — has roared back to remind us we've not made anything like enough progress on the practical preventions we've known we needed but continued to ignore.

Across Hamilton County, home to 374,826 residents, just over half of us - 53% - have received full vaccinations against COVID-19.

Got some last minute gift-giving to attend to?

After unemployment in Tennessee jumped to a record high 15.8% in April 2020, the jobless rate in Tennessee fell last month to 4% - the lowest since March 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the economy.

Omicron is here. Omicron is the new and still mystery-shrouded variant of concern in the ever-evolving coronavirus.

Was it just another tornado? Or is it climate change?

You have to wonder if the right hand in Nashville knows what the left hand is doing - especially with our money.

In front of a packed room last week, the Hamilton County Election Commission promised more transparency in the next steps of a once-a-decade election precinct mapping process.