Book 42 of 50 – It Happened in the Great Smokies

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It Happened in the Great Smokies (affiliate link) by Michael R. Bradley is a nonfiction book. A collection of stories from the 1700s through 2016, this volume hits home because this area is our home. I wanted to learn more about outstanding people who have shaped the area we live in.

It Happened in the Great Smokies

Nonfiction title with short accounts of how our area developed

The Cherokees and the European immigrants lived together sometimes peacefully and other times not so much. Then the Civil War happened and people got split again, along different lines. Continue reading »


Fire Evacuation 2.0

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If you have been reading this blog for a long time, you may remember that we had to evacuate our house in 2016 due to extreme wildfires. Last week, a brush fire started five minutes from our house. We had to leave the house at midnight.

Girl on balcony

Our daughter on the balcony of the condo

The emergency alerts woke us up on the the cell phones. A policeman came to the door, too. The authorities evacuated our neighborhood and the one next to us – not the entire city of Gatlinburg. This brush fire started because of dry conditions, high winds, and downed power lines. Continue reading »


My Word for 2017

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“Onward” is my word for 2017. It came to me in an email from a friend who was inquiring about housing for a friend of hers, who lost her home in the Gatlinburg wildfires. When I told her we had already rented out the condo once we moved back into our home, she thanked me, added a few niceties, and ended the email with “Onward!”

Pioneers in Romania, 1986

Pioneers in Romania, 1986; source: Wikimedia Commons

It totally took me back to my childhood. In Communist Romania, school children were “Pioneers” – a scouting organization of sorts. Our motto was “Onward!” We used to have regular assemblies and the Pioneers’ Leader would say, “Pentru gloria poporului și înflorirea României socialiste, pentru cauza partidului, înainte!” (“For people’s glory and Socialist Romania’s flourishing, for the Party’s cause, onward!”) and we would answer, in a chorus, “Tot înainte!” (“Onward still!”)

Continue reading »