Oak Ridgers who want to “study up” in preparation for the upcoming June 5 election have several opportunities to do so.
Several candidates and the pro-Crestpointe group “Future of Oak Ridge” have already held campaign kick-offs or rallies, and the local AARP held a candidates forum last week. Upcoming opportunities include:
Tuesday, April 24 (that’s today) - Citizens Oak Ridge organizing meeting for the Crestpointe bond referendum, 6:30-8:30 pm, Oak Ridge Civic Center Craft Room
Friday, April 27 - Open House for Ellen Smith for City Council, 6-8 pm, Midtown Community Center (corner of Oak Ridge Tpke and Robertsville Rd). Please attend to meet me, talk about issues, and enjoy the hammered dulcimer music of Oak Ridge’s own Allen McBride. Please attend!
Tuesday, May 1 - League of Women Voters candidate forum, 6:30-9:30 pm, City Room (A-111), Roane State Community College Oak Ridge campus.
Thursday, May 3 - City Council candidate forum sponsored by Advocates for the Oak Ridge Reservation and Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning , 6:30-8:30 pm, Midtown Community Center
Tuesday, May 15 - League of Women Voters forum on Crestpointe bond referendum, Pollard Auditorium (on ORAU campus)
Now for something completely different…
A “Thinking Blogger Award” designation (image at the right) has been spreading around the “blogosphere.” Blogger CE Petro at Thoughts of An Average Woman (a strong lady who sells herself short when she calls herself “average”) included me on her list of 5 “thinking bloggers.”
In order to mention this award here I am supposed to identify 5 more bloggers whose work I find to be thoughtful or thought-provoking. I’m not a blog addict, so I don’t carry a list of these in my back pocket, but I do visit a variety of blogs and blog-like sites from time to time that provide insightful analysis and/or thought-provoking and informative content. Not including CE Petro’s exemplary blog and omitting sites like Tennessee Politics Blog that are great news sources but light on thought-provoking analysis, here are five that I find interesting and relevant to the local community focus of this blog:
Citizen Netmom - Oak Ridge school board member Angi Agle has provided some impressive analysis and explanation on topics related to local schools and school funding, along with interesting perspectives on many other topics. She and I don’t always agree, but this entire list is about thinking, not conformity.
KnoxViews - East Tennessee is full of opinions, many of which can be found here.
Cyburbia - Not technically a blog, but a diverse and continually-updated source of interesting links and commentary about community planning and development.
Smart Growth America - A blog-like resource on “historic preservation, the environment, farmland and open space preservation, neighborhood revitalization and more.”
Appalachistan - Often-original thinking about life and local issues on the other side of the Knox County line.
In less than 24 hours, I experienced two events that illustrate some of things that people value in this community.
Tuesday evening’s staged reading of the one-act drama “Remembering Miss Meitner” at the American Museum of Science and Energy attracted a diverse crowd. We came to see some accomplished local actors tell a story that is fascinating to many Oak Ridgers, but would get little attention in most other places. Lise Meitner was one of the most brilliant physicists of her generation and had a central role in the discovery of fission, but was denied the recognition she deserved for reasons of politics (her family was Jewish and the Nazis controlled Germany) and strong male egos (she was a woman). I knew the story only in very broad outline, so I learned some science and history, while enjoying some fine performances. Few communities offer so many rich opportunities for people who appreciate science and the arts.
Next, the featured speaker at Wednesday’s Literacy Luncheon, Mim Eichler Rivas, told about the interesting directions her life has taken — as an increasingly successful author, co-author, and ghostwriter — following her formative years in Oak Ridge (where she grew up the daughter of a physicist who had a strong interest in film and drama). Several times in her talk she remarked about Oak Ridgers of her generation who are achieving a diverse variety of worthwhile things and explain it by saying “we’re from Oak Ridge — it’s what we are supposed to do.” I wish that every child could go out into the world with the same special sense of self-confidence, personal worth, and duty to serve that she described. I’m not sure that today’s local kids feel quite as special as her generation did. However, by raising funds for adult and child literacy programs in the local area, the sponsors of the Oak Ridge Literacy Luncheon (Altrusa International of Oak Ridge and the Oak Ridge Breakfast Rotary Club, with support from many other local businesses and organizations) aim to help as many people as possible to live full and productive lives.
I’m too young for Medicare, and my elderly family members don’t live in the local area, so I’m no expert on this matter, but I do want to pass along this “word to the wise”…
Covenant Health (the operators of Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge, Fort Sanders, and several other major Knoxville-area hospitals) will no longer accept “Medicare Advantage” insurance from any provider except Cariten Senior Health and the company that used to be called John Deere, now called United HealthCare of the River Valley (also called “Secure Horizons”*). Apparently March 31 is the deadline for changing plans. Seniors who carry Medicare Advantage insurance from any company other than these two and might need nonemergency care at MMCOR would be advised to change insurors.
The best advice is “Don’t sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan—if you can avoid it,” since these plans can change providers at the drop of hat.
*Note also that there are other Medicare Advantage plans called “Secure Horizons,” but only plans from United HealthCare of the River Valley in Moline, Illinois, will be accepted at these hospitals.
There was an air of excitement at Thursday evening’s meeting of the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association (ORHPA). Professional museum consultants who have been working with the Partnership for K-25 Preservation, the local Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association, and the national Atomic Heritage Foundation unveiled their concepts for making part of the K-25 site into an historic museum and a heritage tourism attraction that tells part of the story of the Manhattan Project. There were even two different brand-new scale models of the museum concept on display.
The group has done marketing studies that give them a pretty good idea where future visitors will come from and what those visitors will want to see and do. (What a concept! I’d feel better about the Crestpointe proposal if I thought that the city was basing its decision-making on that kind of solid market information.) Oak Ridge already has great appeal for heritage tourists, and we could attract more such tourists and keep them longer if we could offer more visitable historic attractions.
The massive U-shaped K-25 building is scheduled for decontamination and demolition over the next couple of years (the schedule is uncertain due to uncertainties in the Department of Energy budget). The concept for K-25 includes keeping the north tower (the base of the U) and converting it to an indoor museum and visitor center. Although it’s a small part of the entire K-25 building, the building is huge. It would have space for several uranium enrichment cascade units, as well as other exhibits. (I can imagine parts of this great space becoming desirable as venues for after-hours business receptions, and possibly even social events). It’s not certain that the building can be preserved, but the Partnership for K-25 Preservation has high hopes…
The perimeter and height of demolished parts of the K-25 building would be marked on the ground and with a series of lighted poles. The “highwalls” formed by the basement walls on the interior of the U would become a pair of 1/2-mile-long murals. The long public space that would be formed was compared to the National Mall in Washington, DC (which is longer), and long plazas at Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, and St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
The consultants even showed plans for where the visitor entrance would be (off Blair Road, where it will give visitors a great initial view and avoid interference between the museum and future industrial park tenants in other parts of the East Tennessee Technology Park) and where people will park. I can already imagine watching the visitors arrive…
The group plans to get the K-25 overlook spiffed up before the Secret City Festival in June. Heritage trails in the vicinity, covering the Wheat community, Happy Valley, the S-50 site, the African Burial Ground, and other surrounding sights also should be marked and ready to visit soon.
City support is necessary to make this happen — from both citizens and the City Council. According to spokesmen Bill Wilcox and Gordon Fee, measures needed from City government include:
- - making heritage tourism a key strategy for future economic growth (I believe this is an important direction for the city as a whole)
- - getting support from CROET to ensure that the overall ETTP site plan is consistent with this strategy
- - getting Chamber of Commerce support for this future direction
- - aggressively supporting the National Park Service study of sites associated with the Manhattan Project
- - collaboration with the Atomic Heritage Foundation, East Tennessee Historical Society, and other regional and national heritage groups.
Surprise! Today’s Knoxville News Sentinel business section features a full-page spread about my husband, Rich Norby, and the ORNL research experiment he heads up. There’s an article and a large diagram of the FACE (free-air CO2 enrichment) facility where a stand of sweetgum trees is exposed to elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide in studies intended to understand how the future atmosphere will affect plant growth and carbon storage in forest ecosystems.
This came as a nice surprise — Rich did not realize that reporter Frank Munger (who talked with him recently) was preparing an article for publication. Positive attention is always appreciated, though.
I am glad that the law requires pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) to be kept behind the pharmancy counter and that purchase quantities are limited (currently federal law limits purchases to to 3.6 grams per person per day, or 9 grams per person per month). News reports say that the restrictive laws have reduced the number of illegal meth labs. That’s a good thing.
However, I have my doubts about the way the law is being implemented. With the winter cold season upon us, today I went to the Kroger pharmacy to pick up some 12-hour pseudoephedrine, which helps me avoid waking up in the morning with a nasty sinus headache. I asked for 2 10-packs of 12-hour pseudoephedrine (at 120 mg per pill, that’s 2.4 grams).
This was my first experience buying this medication since the new federal law went into effect. The new law is stricter than Tennessee’s previous law.
I filled out a form, then waited at the counter for about 10 minutes while the pharmacy tech studied my driver’s license and communed with the store’s computer system. Finally she came back to tell me that the computer would let me buy only one package of 10 pills, due to the daily limit of 3.6 grams. (But note that one package is just 1.2 g, which is just one third of 3.6 g).
After waiting so long already, I didn’t argue. I paid the grand sum of $1.65 (plus tax) for my purchase and headed off to pick up a few groceries. But I wonder what was going on. Did someone else with my name buy pseudoephedrine at some other store today? Or is Kroger just over-reacting? (If a 3.6-g limit is good, a 1.2-g limit must be even better…) Whatever the reason, the amount of time that the pharmacy and I expended on my small transaction (while a line formed outside the pharmacy area) was excessive. Unfortunately, the same thing is likely to happen again when my 10 hard-earned pills are gone. There must be a more efficient way to accomplish the worthwhile objectives of the law.
I’m beginning to feel like I am getting the hang of the “content management system” that I use to put words into this blog, but it still seems odd that everything appears in reverse chronological order, and the system has some fancy widgets that I have not yet figured out. (For example, there are still some glitches in the way the page displays in Internet Explorer, but it looks fine when viewed with Firefox.)
Many blogs are “all about me,” but that’s not the purpose of this blog. My focus here is primarily public: local Oak Ridge community public concerns and issues.
The links I’ve chosen to display on the blog sidebar include (1) a sample of area “interest” and “issue” groups that I think have worthwhile related content on their websites (this is not a list of groups I belong to — I belong to several of these groups, but I don’t belong to all of them, I don’t necessarily agree with all of them, and I have not listed sites for every local group I am affiliated with), (2) a selection of other bloggers that often (or sometimes) have timely comments on local public affairs (I include atomictumor, who has often commented on community matters in the past, but currently is pre-occupied with weighty personal matters — I wish his wife a full recovery), (3) area news websites, and (4) official government and government-like sites.
I have several partially written items “filed” away waiting to be shared here. I expect to trickle them out in the coming days and weeks.
Having been convinced that the online forum on this site was a clunky way to share my views with the world, I am joining the state-of-the-art world of online bloggers.
Please bear with me while I figure out how this thingamajig works. In the meantime, explore the rest of this website.
