Portland, Tennessee Blog

Studio16a is located in the same building as Hair Express, next to Keystop (Jr. Food/gas store) on North Broadway. Between Keystop and Eidson Farm and Garden.

Thank you for the encouragement and past patronage.

Dale Hensarling

When my children were in school, I refused to let them participate in selling junk for excessive prices. There are very few fundraisers where the product is worth anything near the cost. That includes Scout popcorn and Girl Scout cookies. Very little of the money you pay goes to the organization; most of it goes to the marketing people and promoters.

My attitude is that I would rather write a check for $25 to the school, troop or organization straight out. Then I know that every cent of my donation goes to the organization, and I don't have to deal with overpriced candles or wrapping paper. The real bonus to this method is that the children aren't out trying to sell to strangers.

The downside to it is that people are so greedy, they have to get something for their money. Most people won't just give the school $25 for nothing. And the kids are hyped up about the "prizes" they will recieve if they sell a huge quantity of the stuff! Not one of those kids needs the junk that is offered as prizes. A better prize would be increased effort in the classrooms, so they recieved a good education. That doesn't cost a cent.

I for one am so very happy that Studio 16a has returned. I know a lot of people have missed them. Where is the new location? I get several Christmas presents there.
Also, I agree with the people that are having a problem with the fund raisers. Enough is enough!! My son brought in his 2nd fundraiser last week. I threw it in the trash. Of course he was not happy that I did that. I told him that I would buy him whatever the prize was for selling any of the items.

I want to thank the Progressive for attending and covering our new store location and all the people who have shown up in the past week to shop and wish us well. I also want to thank Jody McDowell for being a respectable Councilman and always pro-business for attending. Thanks to everyone for giving a warm welcome back, and we hope for a good run of success in Portland.

Dale Hensarling
Studio16a

The schools need to have fundraisers that don't involve having children going all over the neighborhoods. They need to have events.....not children going door to door.

The worst thing about these fundraisers is how people lets their 7-8-9 year-old kids wander subdivisions all by themselves walking up to complete strangers' houses selling this stuff. I call this bad parenting. You have NO CLUE whose house they could be walking up to. Maybe the school needs to provide a tutorial...

Oh goodness, I remember the dreaded fundrasiers...although I am all for supporting the school,but those things turn into a popularity contest, and it starts so early. I wish they would do more personal fundraising, like car washes,bake sales,a carnival day...or even a pumpkin patch for this time of year would be a wonderful and new way to raise some money for the kids,and get them involved in an activity that not only will help their schools,but won't turn into a big competition over whose family and friends have more money...just my opinion,of course :)

I don't have kids in Portland schools, but I do have 2 grandchildren who attend, one in HS and one in Elem. No problems in either thus far, and since we are now out of the Middle school I suspect things this year will be smoother. The thing I have a problem with is the amount of fund raisers the elem kids have done within the first 4 weeks of school, OMG after the expense of getting school clothes and school supplies, follow that with 4 fundraisers back to back then pictures, talk about break the bank! I'm all for supporting the schools but really.... this is just way too much.

Mr Gideon is a breath of fresh air at the high school. Now if they could just get rid of those teachers that are tenured that cant be fired.

Mack
I do understand your concerns about the Around the Town posts, like Michelle noted it was at the request of another blogger that it was started plus there have been many times when I didn't post a new thread that someone has come on and asked when a new Around the town thread will be started. I think if you look back they have gotten quite a bit of activity, and we blog authors have taked topics from those threads to start a specific topic.

We will be more than happy to start a new thread at any time, this is your blog, we are just here to try to give opportunity to keep it active. Any suggestions on how to improve it can be addressed to charlie or we will forward them to him. Everyone has different interests we'de love to hear your's or anyone elses, maybe we could change it to Monthly, and do one for Sports, City Government, Schools, and Around Town, maybe they won't get bumped so fast. Any thoughts on this Idea anybody??

Ms. Escue--
One of my children attends JW Wiseman, and the other attends the H.S. I have yet to have trouble with JW. Wiseman. As for the HS. None yet. My son seems much happier with this school than last year when he attended PMS. So, to answer your question, so far so good.

With school reaching its 3rd month in progress soon, I am curious to see how everyone is doing this year...so parents, how is our school system doing thus far?

I called and spoke with Charlie a couple of weeks ago around the time he wrote that post. We talked for quite a while about a number of things including this very issue and I understood him to say that he wasn't suggesting to stop the Around Town threads, just that he would like to see more individual topics started as well.

I completely understand your point, I really and truly do, but Around Town was suggested by another blogger and has proven to be a popular place for people to talk about what they want to if a specific topic hasn't been started. Unfortunately, there isn't anything that can be done about topics eventually getting bumped off the main list, but they are stored forever and ever amen, by topic AND month, on the far right side of the main blog page.

I hope this helps. And by the way, good to have you back chattin it up with us.

I hope that this explains things

I was hoping we were going to do like the administrator of the board suggested and mainly have the blogs be about specific topics. All this "Around town" thing does is just knock other discussions further down, and off the board.

In my personal opinion. it would be better to have each blog be about a specific topic, like "football", or "the moving of city hall", and so on, because when we do the "Around town" thing, discussions get lost, and often repeated in numerous discussion areas.