Our friend Susan Espiritu has finally posted her first video on the Knox TN Today YouTube channel. I ducked and dodged until there were no more excuses. We have launched a YouTube channel, but you’re unlikely to see me there. Enjoy!
I took Moose (black lab) around the trail at the soon-to-be Angora Frog Farm. Carol Evans said the play structures should be delivered any day, and I wanted to see if they are here. Not yet, but the ground is leveled and marked for each structure. I go in from the east end of the Crown College parking lot. Walk across some grass and past a bird feeder and enter the woods on the spot of gravel that’s visible. This is where the volunteers who built the trail entered.
The land has a kid-sized spring-fed creek on one side. I’m trying to figure a way to put motion-activated frog sounds by the creek. Maybe we’ll just find some frogs.
Brian Barber has updated the fundraising underway for the Gazan family of Hussam and Mai Abushawish. The family has relocated nine times since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli response.
Barber, a retired UT professor, knows the family. Hussam has a doctorate and was a professor at a college in Gaza that is now destroyed. Mai is a translator. Brian says donors have kicked in another $5,000 in 10 days – and the $15,000 raised is enough to send the three oldest kids to Egypt where they can live with grandparents. Their five kids are ages 23, 22, 20, 17 and 13.
Hussam and Mai have decided that getting all of the children out is their highest priority now. They will stay behind until we raise another 10k to cover their exit fees, Barber wrote. Read our previous stories here and here.
Sandra Clark is editor/CEO of Knox TN Today Inc.