Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Watching the news this weekend was another exercise in political upheaval. I was grateful for a brief intermission on CBS with its “Sunday Moment in Nature”. Seeing the beautiful mountain scenes and watching the birds up close was heart warming, and much needed. But I needed more so we hopped in the car and drove over to Fort Oglethorpe. I wanted to revisit one of my favorite places, the old log cabin that belonged to the Native American Chief John Ross. The surrounding ponds with their fountains were truly a gift and I hoped that they would have still have birds flocking to them.
Continue reading Welcoming Moments of Nature – by Deborah Levine →

Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

I originally planned to write about the massive number of politics-oriented texts that I’ve been getting on my phone. They were unsolicited and annoying, regardless of which candidate they’re promoting. I know that many of you were inundated with these texts and shared my concern. When I searched online for directions on how to stop all this, I discovered that the Federal Trade commission doesn’t block political campaign texts and calls. Political campaigns are run by legitimate organizations that know how to go around the rules meant to stop robocalls and robotexts. I was going to share the advice of a blog, “How To Survive the Election Year and Political Text Spam That Comes With It”. But so much changed with the weekend assassination attempt.

Continue reading Can’t We All Stop the Political Violence – by Deborah Levine →

Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

It’s always a pleasure to go to Miller Plaza, listen to the music and watch folks set up stalls for a festival. The activity this past weekend began at 5pm so I got there a bit early to watch them get ready. Everyone setting up looked happy even in the intense sunlight and a few kids even hopped, skipped and jumped around. I admire these younger folks doing their best with a temperature over 90 degrees. Us older folks are especially vulnerable to these heat waves and even standing in the shade made me sweat like mad. I’m thinking that climate change deniers and Supreme Court justices should stand with me. Maybe a little heat exhaustion would have them promote laws and projects to protect us.  

Continue reading Justices, Come Experience our Climate – by Deborah Levine →

(originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Our middle-aged kids came to visit us and we wanted to do something special with them. But with the temperature in the mid-nineties, none of us could tolerate being outside for long. Fortunately, Chattanooga has wonderful opportunities to have fun indoors with full-speed air conditioning. Given our long-time fascination with political artifacts, we were eager to check out the exhibit, Path to the Presidency, hosted by the public library’s Local History and Genealogy Department and presented by the Robert L. Golden Institute of Art and History.

Continue reading “Path to the Presidency” at the library – by Deborah Levine →

Originally published in the Chattanooga Times Free Press

It was super exciting to be invited to the annual conference of Project Voice which has taken place in Chattanooga, home to the country’s fastest internet since 2016. Project Voice looks at artificial intelligence, but not the traditional artificial intelligence (AI) that analyzes historical data and makes future numeric predictions. Rather, the focus is on conversational and generative AI, terms I hadn’t heard until sitting in the conference. Conversational AI can hold two-way interactions with humans by understanding and responding in text or speech. Generative AI can take prompts and create all kinds of stuff that never existed before but are indistinguishable from human-generated content. I started to feel overwhelmed by this new information. 

Continue reading Why get “interested” in Artificial Intelligence – by Deborah Levine →

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

All too often we look at the elderly as outliers to society, and the presidential election is embedding in our minds that being old is a non-starter. It’s getting harder to look at an elderly person and feel that you’re experiencing a great moment. Instead, they’re recipients of our sympathy, and objects of charity. That’s why funding Social Security is the only political issue focused on seniors. And that’s women who want to advertise products or be newscasters on TV face-lift themselves silly. The value of being a senior citizen is fading. 

Continue reading Inter-generational education needed now – by  Deborah Levine →