Today's Features

After a career that has spanned nearly 40 years, Shelby County Parks and Recreation Director Clay Cottongim announced this week that will retire at the end of the year.

Cottongim, 58, said there’s no special reason he has chosen this time to retire; he just feels it’s time.

“It’s been thirty-eight wonderful years, and I’ve seen some goals come true, and I just want to retire and go on from there,” he said.

Jim Miller would be the first to tell you that his well-plotted path from boy journalist of Shelby County to adult author took a few side trips, the last of which ultimately if unwittingly landing him at his destination.

Miller, who grew up in the Clark Station area of Shelby, became Author James W. Miller as the result of a devastating hurricane that swept away his life and blew him forward and into the pages of his first book, Where The Water Kept Rising.

With this column, my 96th, the number of all my columns written for The Sentinel-News finally has equaled my age. I shall continue to write, subject to the editor’s tolerance, in order to reach 100 columns before my 100th birthday, hopefully well before.

We all are reminded about the inconsistency, in fact utter unreliability, of recent memory. A typical example is opening the refrigerator door to get a dish out of the microwave.

However, long-time memory seems to have an indelible quality. Once recorded, it can be forever recalled.

A Shelby County woman is recovering from Lyme Disease that she contracted during what she expected to be a peaceful walk on a nature trail in Jefferson County in August.

But in an instant, her mood turned from tranquil to terror, when she glanced down and saw hundreds of ticks climbing up her body; many of them had even made it up past her waist when she spotted them.