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Why should we be surprised that at a time when everything is supposed to be about race, from the skin color of certain newspaper editors force…
Former Weekend editor Steve Wildsmith's thoughts on the election, and the rancor that still persists.
I do not believe that there are any undecided voters left in Pennsylvania. I say this after watching the recent Town Hall in Philadelphia, whe…
The thing about life is you get acclimated to it. Good or bad. War or peace. It becomes your normal. Even if you’re eating steak and lobster e…
I recently read an article announcing the passing of a new bill in the Tennessee State Senate that would allow adoption agencies to discrimina…
As a one-time (more than 60 years ago!) but long-out-of-touch friend of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), I have often wanted to write him to qu…
Tennessee has a rich news media environment with more than 120 traditional subscription-based weekly and daily newspapers; several free newspa…
National Newspaper Association President Matt Adelman, publisher of the Douglas (Wyoming) Budget, on Jan. 16 recognized the work of the House …
When I talk with citizen groups in Tennessee about open government, people tell me they want more information about what their government is d…
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up somewhere else,” Yogi Berra famously said, but if you don’t know where you’ve been, y…
I am a lifelong citizen of Blount County for nearly four decades, a graduate-prepared clinician, alcohol and drug abuse counselor, clinical su…
As the CEO of Cornerstone of Recovery, which has called Blount County home for three decades, I read with interest the recent front-page artic…
We took my granddaughter to the movies last month. “Frozen II.” The movie was fine. A little complicated for wee ones but fine. What wasn’t so…
Everybody hurts. So much so that we sometimes have difficulty seeing the pain of others. Especially if we may have contributed to it. It’s jus…
What is happening to our community? Not only did the Blount County Commission pass a resolution advertising us as a “sanctuary” for sick, crue…
Until now, it was possible to hope that the damage caused by President Trump’s terrible incompetence, ignorance and impulsivity in foreign pol…
Ask any Blount Countian about the things they hold most dear, and here’s what you’re likely to hear: God, family, these mountains. And they me…
The current divide in our United Methodist Church over homosexuality breaks my heart. I have given my life to revitalizing the church and brin…
When I was growing up as a kid, I loved it when my parents took us to the Golden Corral buffet. You had a tremendous selection of different fo…
Three cheers for America! And bravo for the Maryville City Police Department! Blount County just hosted its first-ever gay Pride event with no…
You can’t see hunger, but it is all around us. Forty million Americans — that’s 1 in 8 — are not getting enough to eat. And while hunger may n…
Our son played four years of Maryville High School football. To my knowledge, of those four years, he never missed a practice, scrimmage, game…
The Tennessee Court of Appeals in a ruling Friday put much-needed limits around the so-called investigative exemption that has been used by th…
If you look at the honest to goodness numbers, the election may have been close, the message was a landslide consensus of one people divided b…
Other Voices
Other Voices
Egypt's rising authoritarianism has been met with a collective shrug in Washington, which sends Cairo $1.3 billion in military aid each year.
Turkey's alert to NATO while increasing its involvement in the Syrian war threatens to drag the United States further into an already complex …