When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall

Reminiscing about a year of our lives, and suddenly feeling a bit of cool weather, reminded me of my mother’s favorite song, Frank Sinatra singing Johnny Mercer’s Autumn Leaves – hence the title of this blog today.

Who would’ve thunk that a girl from southern CA and a guy from NYC would love living in rural east TN? If you are new to our story, we live in Morristown, a community of 30,000 people with a wonderful Main Street, and the beautiful Appalachian Mountains, lakes, and nature all around us.

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Farm to Table Dinner in the Middle of Main Street

A major milestone for Irene was earning her Early Childhood Education Certification at Walters State College.

Graduation - Early Childhood Education

She’s been working at Head Start for 2 years, and recently started a new grant-funded role as a Positive Behavioral Support Advocate working with teachers, kids, and parents. In her “spare time” as an artist, Irene has taught ART classes for the local after-school program (140 kids and parents), the Boys & Girls Club summer program, and is starting her own family oriented international art classes at the Rose Center for the Arts in Morristown. Check out www.DiGrayLady.com. 

Irene with some of her paintings and art-chairs.

We travelled to southern CA in March to see Irene’s mom and family – and visited with our sons’ families, Travis and Abby; and Jason, Etchie and grandson Levi.

Travis and Abby, and Momma Lola in California

Etchie, Jason, Levi, and Momma Lola

Dollywood, the theme park in Pigeon Forge, TN is a major attraction in our area. We finally made it there around Christmas time. There is so much to see there; we will be visiting again this fall when Abby and Travis visit TN.

Christmas Elves at Dollywood

Dollywood Christmas Lights

TN is a bastion of political conservatism; but that didn’t stop Steve from running as a “Progressive Fiscal Conservative” for the Morristown City Council. He garnered a lot of support, and although he “came in second place” he earned a measure of respect and he still contributes to public meetings. He is also working with a volunteer group to bring a huge FREE MEDICAL clinic to Morristown next year (www.RAMusa.org).

Morristown’s local Citizen Tribune Newspaper (6 or 8 pages long, 6 days a week) is a great way to catch up on town events. It’s always fun to see something about ourselves in print too.

Steve continues to teach American Government and Political Science at Walters State (recently recognized as the BEST community college in the state). He’s been able to attract some important guest speakers for his students including our US Congressman, our Mayor, US Federal Judges, and our local TN State Representative. Steve and a college faculty colleague (both are Retuned Peace Corps Volunteers) received a grant to advance Hispanic Student Success in higher education; the project is called RHiTA and has received statewide recognition for its mission success.

What would a Steve and Irene story be without some food pictures? Within an hour of our rural home - whether in Knoxville, Greeneville, Sevierville, or just for local beer and wings, we have a choice of some creative restaurants in some lovely settings.

 And, of course, our “girls” are doing great too! Both Serena, who adopted us as a pup in Jamaica and will turn 5 in October, and Hannah our Humane Society rescue continue to give us joy with their wags, licks, and barks. Although they have a large fenced yard to romp, we changed a panel to “chain link” so that they could watch the world more easily instead of peering through the spaces between the old wooden fence slats.

Serena and Hannah

We will continue to make social media posts on Facebook: (https://www.facebook.com/SteveLawrence.Tennessee 

and https://www.facebook.com/irene.ledesma) just in case you want to “Friend” us there . We always look forward to your comments and messages too. 

With love; Irene and Steve.