The citywide brush pickup program will begin Monday, April 24, in Oak Ridge. Tree limbs as well as bagged yard clippings and leaves will be picked up. City collection efforts will follow the accompanying schedule as closely as possible.
Residents have always been very cooperative and we ask for their continued cooperation this year by following a few guidelines, a press release said. [Read more…]
Oak Ridge Chorus Director Jaclyn Johnson is pictured above with the Oak Ridge Chorus. (Submitted photo)
The Oak Ridge Chorus will perform Broadway classics and American music in a concert on Saturday, April 29.
The concert is presented by the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association. The chorus is led by Chorus Director Jaclyn Johnson, who was recently appointed.
It will be a “delightful evening of American music,” a press release said.
The concert will start at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at the First Baptist Church of Oak Ridge.
It will feature inspirational music of America and its people through folk songs, spirituals, and many well-known classics of the Broadway stage, including music from “Les Miserables,” “Hairspray,” and “Wicked,” the press release said. [Read more…]
The State Building Commission on Thursday unanimously approved funding for a new Anderson County satellite campus of the Tennessee College of Applied Technology—Knoxville. The new campus will be located in the city of Clinton.
Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally, an Oak Ridge Republican, presided over the meeting in which the project was approved, a press release said.
“I am extremely excited about the prospect of a TCAT satellite campus in Anderson County. Our technical colleges provide students the invaluable skills they need to compete in today’s job market,” McNally said in the press release. “Tennessee works hard to attract high-quality jobs to our state. It is important that those jobs go to Tennesseans. We have some of the hardest-working people in the nation right here in Anderson County. This new campus will give our outstanding people a chance to develop the skills they need to survive and thrive in the modern workforce.” [Read more…]
Nick Imperato accepts the Selma Shapiro Friend of the Child award presented posthumously to his wife, Pat Imperato, from Children’s Museum board member Suzan Bowman. (Submitted photo)
The Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge recently presented the first Selma Shapiro Friend of the Child award posthumously to Pat Imperato, a Museum board president and volunteer who gave generously of her time to many community organizations.
Imperato had a passion for community service and faced each day asking, “What can I do today to make this world a better place?” Museum board member Suzan Bowman related in presenting the award to Pat’s husband, Nick Imperato, at the Museum’s annual meeting.
“When she recruited me to be on this board, she told me that this Museum is one of the joys of her life,” Bowman said in presenting the award. “Pat gave so unselfishly of her time and energy to causes she believed in.”
The Shapiro family contributed $1,000 to the Museum in memory of Pat Imperato and in honor of the award. [Read more…]
Submitted photo
There will be a Coal Miners Reunion in Rocky Top on April 29. It’s hosted by the Coal Creek Miners Museum.
The reunion is scheduled from 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at Lake City Middle School in Rocky Top. It Will honor the miners that worked in the Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia coal mines, a press release said.
“The museum’s purpose is to honor the miners and the impact that they had on our communities, and now we want to host an event to bring the miners together to reconnect to each other and honor them for their years of hard work,” said Tim Isbel, chair of the Coal Creek Miners Museum.
There will be chili and soups, live music, door prizes, T-shirts for sale, and script vendors will be on hand to sale and trade script, the press release said. At 5 p.m. there will be a program to honor the hard working men and women who mined coal.
Tickets are $5 per person, and they can be purchased at the Coal Creek Miners Museum from Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., online at www.coalcreekminersmuseum.com, or at the door at the event. However, because of a generous donation, admission is free for anyone that has worked in a mine, the press release said. [Read more…]
Ryan Armstrong earned second place for his project titled “Quantifying the Evolution of Gas from Li-ion Battery Materials” under the mentorship of Gabriel Veith of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Along with a $750 scholarship and trophy, Ryan will travel to Los Angeles, California, in May to compete at the International Science and Engineering Fair. (Submitted photo)
Seven research students from Oak Ridge High School competed in the 66th Annual Southern Appalachian Science and Engineering Fair hosted at the University of Tennessee. The competition was held March 27-30 with the awards ceremony on Thursday evening. There were 55 Senior Division projects in competition, a press release said.
Five of the students were part of the Math, Science, and Computer Science Thesis course at ORHS that is advised by Tammy Carneim and Jessica Williams. The remaining two did their research independently with the help of teachers Deni Sobek and Sharon Thomas.
Ryan Armstrong earned second place for his project titled “Quantifying the Evolution of Gas from Li-ion Battery Materials” under the mentorship of Gabriel Veith of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Along with a $750 scholarship and trophy, Armstrong will travel to Los Angeles, California, in May to compete at the International Science and Engineering Fair.
Jasleen Narula earned fourth place and $100 for her project titled “Rapid High-Throughput Toxicity Screening of East Tennessee Water Samples Using Autobioluminescent Yeast Assay” under the mentorship of Steven Ripp. [Read more…]
Kristine Torrance, left, David Torrance, and David Bush, both with the TVA Norris Engineering Laboratory, and Ashley Zeringue and Bucky Smith, with the Children’s Museum, gather around the model of TVA locks and dams on the Tennessee River in the Waterworks exhibit. (Submitted photo)
Young visitors at the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge enjoy splashing and floating boats through the locks and dams in the TVA Waterworks exhibit. When the aging exhibit needed an overhaul to stay afloat, Tennessee Valley Authority employees and retirees joined members of the local carpenters union to plan and make the needed repairs.
“The children love this exhibit even more, now that they have better access to it thanks to the carpenters. And it is safer for them in many ways thanks to the engineers. And they still love to get wet as they learn about locks and dams,” said Suzan Bowman, a Children’s Museum board member, speaking at a recent ribbon cutting for the renovated exhibit.
Bowman knew who to call for help when the Museum’s Facilities Manager Bucky Smith alerted the board that the exhibit needed refurbishing. She had worked for TVA for 30 years before her retirement and was president of the TVA Retirees Association. She realized that she knew many of the TVA employees who had built the model of locks and dams for the TVA barge at the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair, a model later donated to the Children’s Museum.
First, TVA employees from the Norris Engineering Laboratory visited the Museum to assess the model and discovered it was structurally unsound. Bowman then enlisted the aid of area TVA retirees, gathering a team to plan for improving the exhibit. Hal Stephens became the lead engineer on the project, with Bill Haire handling electrical engineering. Retirees R. Michael Parker, John and JoAnne Pantanizoppoulos, Bill and Sharon Pitkin, and David Gengozian also pitched in. [Read more…]
Two Jefferson Middle School sixth-graders, Avery Parish and Anshra Ajaz, along with former JMS student Kiri Nelson, won second place in the Middle School Collaborative category at the Ninth Annual Dogwood Arts Festival Chalk Walk competition on Saturday, April 1, 2017. (Submitted photo)
Two Jefferson Middle School sixth-graders, Avery Parish and Anshra Ajaz, along with former JMS student Kiri Nelson, won second place in the Middle School Collaborative category at the Ninth Annual Dogwood Arts Festival Chalk Walk competition on Saturday, April 1.
The girls planned their masterpiece for several months and spent eight hours drawing it onto the pavement at Market Square, a press release said. Their work depicted an old painting of a Kraken attacking a ship and then beginning to emerge in vivid colors from the frame. [Read more…]
This is the map of targeted zip codes where $15,000 in down payment assistance is available to qualified home buyers. (Map by Tennessee Housing Development Agency)
A program that kicked off in March offers $15,000 in down payment assistance to certain qualified home buyers in a Clinton area zip code and 54 other zip codes across Tennessee.
The down payment assistance is available through the Hardest Hit Fund Down Payment Assistance program, a federal program administered in the Volunteer State by the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, or THDA.
The help is available in Anderson County in the 37716 zip code. That zip code includes an area north and east of Oak Ridge, extending to Clinton and beyond along State Route 61 and north and south of the highway.
To qualify, home buyers must purchase an existing home in one of the 55 targeted zip codes. The purchase requires a THDA Great Choice Home Loan. [Read more…]
Michael R. Fitzgerald
Michael Fitzgerald, professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, will discuss relations between the United States and Russia at Lunch with the League on Tuesday.
Lunch with the League starts at noon Tuesday, April 18, in the Social Hall of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church. The church is located at 809 Oak Ridge Turnpike.
Fitzgerald served on the faculty of the University of Missouri before he joined UT in Knoxville in 1978. He received his master’s and doctorate degrees in political science at the University of Oklahoma. After he graduated from the Honors College at Western Michigan University in 1969, he served in the U.S. Army, including a tour of duty in Vietnam with the 25th Infantry Division, during which he received two Bronze Star Medals for meritorious service, a press release said.
“Relations between the United States and the Russian Federation steadily have declined over the past two decades,” Fitzgerald said in the press release. “Tensions between the world’s most prominent nuclear powers have risen to levels unseen since the worst days of the Cold War. A survey of the causes and contours of the deteriorating current impasse in U.S.-Russian relations leads to the conclusion that we are well into a second Cold War fraught with all the uncertainty and danger that defined the first. Effectively dealing with Putin’s geopolitical strategy to, once again, make Russia internationally relevant requires realistic thinking about Russian history, culture, and politics.” [Read more…]
The pilot of a small experimental or ultralight aircraft was reported to be okay after a crash in Anderson County near Oliver Springs on Saturday afternoon, April 15, 2017, authorities said. (Photo by Oliver Springs Fire Department)
Note: This story was last updated at 12:15 p.m. April 16.
MARLOW—The pilot of a small experimental or ultralight aircraft was reported to be okay after a crash in Anderson County near Oliver Springs on Saturday afternoon, authorities said.
The pilot was reported to have walked away from the crash and declined medical treatment.
Anderson County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Mark Lucas said federal officials have been notified of the crash of the registered aircraft. The cause of the crash isn’t clear. [Read more…]
A chocolate fountain coats fruit and marshmallows in sweet chocolate.
Sample chocolate desserts, savor the flavors, and support Agape House of Oak Ridge at its third annual “An Evening of Everything Chocolate” on Saturday, April 29.
The event will feature tables filled with chocolate culinary temptations from 6:30-8:30 p.m. in the Social Hall of Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church at 809 Oak Ridge Turnpike, a press release said. Guests will indulge in fudge, chocolate-covered potato chips and popcorn, truffles, chocolate-dipped fruit, brownies, and other special treats, including fresh baked-on-site chocolate chip cookies. Coffee, sipping chocolate, and water will also be served.
All proceeds will go to the direct support of Agape House, a nonprofit organization that provides transitional housing for the homeless, the press release said. Since opening in 2014, Agape House has helped 36 homeless families or individuals with short-term, temporary housing, and other support services as they work with agencies to gain self-sufficiency.
“Because of support from the community, 36 families have had their lives positively changed and are now on a path to self-sufficiency, with positive future stories to tell,” said Michael McCutcheon, director of Agape House of Oak Ridge. [Read more…]
