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.

Spring in the Smoky Mountains

We are happily settled in our new Appalachian home. 

We’ve had so many adventures; it’s hard to decide which the best were. 

Spring Crocuses in our TN Garden

Certainly our career transitions have been exciting – Irene is teaching pre-school full time in the Head Start program and Steve is in his third semester teaching American Government at Walters State College. We went to Peace Corps with very different backgrounds – Irene as an Interior Designer and Steve in business, but Peace Corps service as volunteer teachers does change lives – not only of our wonderful Jamaican kids, but clearly our own calling too.

"Plein Air Poppies"

Irene's Art Show

Irene's Art Show

"Tennessee Dawn"

Irene has been very successful in pursuing her artistic life. She’s had her paintings and photography in 3 local shows (including a solo one-woman show of 28 pieces) and won a 2^nd place ribbon in a juried photography show in Morristown. She will also have 3 pieces in a Knoxville show in May.

Testimony - County Commission

"Side by Side" in the Christmas Parade

Steve has applied his civic interests with a focus on social diversity. He testified at the County Commission  about a restrictive marriage resolution and he organized a citizens' march in the town Christmas parade promoting the strength of cultural diversity by walking “Side by Side”.

Here’s a potpourri of pictures – a bit of travel, concerts and festivals, birthdays, and more:

Chattanooga - summer weekend

Dinner in Chattanooga with Steve's High School pal Chris Asmussen

"Murder at Mama Mia's"

         

   

Fund Raiser for Humane Society

Concert - Oak Ridge Boys in Greeneville, TN

Judege Dennis Inman lecturing Steve's Government Class at Walters State College

Shamrock Shuffle 5K - Irene crossing the finish line

Wearing of the Green for the St. Patrick's Day Race

Steve finally built his shop in the garage - he's a happy little carpenter

Solar Eclipse - it was 98% in TN

Solar Eclipse - or just weird old man

and...what's a year without birthday celebrations? Here's Irene with her 60th Princess Tiara.

...Steve's sister Nancy and her husband Cliff just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. We send them our love and congratulations!!

Time flies when you are having fun!

One year ago today we moved to Morristown, Tennessee. So many good happenings have been part of our lives – here are some of the highlights. However, we have so many readers around the world in many countries, and I must say that we strongly oppose the unraveling of our moral national fabric. I love our system of democracy which has a long history of respect among people of different opinions, but our president has lost the trust of many Americans – we hope that as more citizens and elected officials find the courage to speak out, we will see changes and begin to rebuild our partnership with people of good will around the world.

So – what are we doing these days?

Irene has been busy. We’ve been married since 2009, but Irene kept her last name (in order to get her Peace Corps security clearance, she had to apply using the name she had ‘used for at least 2 years’), so in May we petitioned the County Court , and she is now officially Mrs. Irene Ledesma Lawrence!

...at the courthouse: Meet Mrs. Lawrence

She is thrilled to have started work with the local Head Start agency as a Teacher’s Assistant. After our experience in Jamaica, Irene decided that her passion was to continue giving by teaching little kids – I am so proud of her. Also, she is continuing her education in a college program to earn her ECE (Early Childhood Education) Certificate.

And, she has grown as an artist – doing amazing work…both painting and photography. She will have a booth at the big “Arts in the Park” fair in September, and she had a piece accepted for a juried show too. Check out her website www.DiGrayLady.com.

Colorado Columbine

Universe Applauds

California Poppies

 Serena, our “Jamerican” dog who travelled home with us from Jamaica, got a new baby sister in May. Hannah, a 1-year old Coonhound Walker, adopted us at the local animal rescue shelter.

Steve started two new projects recently. He will be teaching 2 freshman classes in American Government at Walters State Community College, and he is continuing his work in international education as a teacher for www.Global-LT.com providing customized ESL and integration support for large local corporations’ new managers and engineers relocating to Morristown from other countries.

Who would have thought that a girl from Southern California and a guy from New York City would love living in rural Tennessee so much? We are a mile away from one of many large lakes and we can even see a bit of the Great Smokey Mountains from our house. Morristown has great theatre, a good college, some fun restaurants, very good medical care, and of course very welcoming neighbors. No state income tax and low cost utilities contribute to a very affordable cost of living; we wish the nearest ocean beach was closer than a 5-hour drive, but…our life is good!

Lunch at Brumley's in nearby Greenville, TN

We always welcome your comments. We wish you peace, good health, and fun times!

What have we been up to these last 3 years?

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Over the last 6 months, since we’ve been home in the USA, we have mentioned this blog to many new friends. So, here is a ‘short’ summary of our service in Jamaica. If you find some of this interesting, then please surf through some of the more detailed posts since March 2014.

Students at work

Students Learning

And, if that isn’t enough, take a look at some of our earlier travels and a bit of our experiences after we returned to the USA and then settled in rural Tennessee.

Steve's School

Irene and I were Peace Corps volunteer teachers in 2 rural primary schools in Jamaica for 2 ½ years. We worked with students from “infant” which is like pre-K through grade 6 to help them ‘catch up’ in English reading and writing.

Adelphi Town Square and shops

Steve's School

Post Office

We lived in the small town of Adelphi in St. James Parish – 22 kilometers from Montego Bay. The town had less than 1000 people, 2 very small shops, a police station and a post office. We had a small apartment which we reached by walking up a steep hill. We did have electricity, cold pipe water (sometimes), and we bought bottled gas for our cook stove. Jamaica does have good telephone coverage, so we had cell phones and internet access too.

The path up the hill to our apartment

Our home

Our View

The market

Our favorite Rasta Vegetable seller

the open market

Peace Corps gave us a monthly stipend for food, rent and transportation. We shopped in the open local markets and cooked our own meals – we also had our own organic garden where we grew some local vegetables. We were not allowed to drive a car, so we relied on local transportation. We were about 6-8 hours away from the capitol of Kingston which we reached by taking the “country bus” over very bumpy windy roads.

The road to Kingston

The Bus

Dinner with our neighbors

We loved our work and our many new friends in our community. Jamaicans are genuinely warm and friendly people. We arrived as foreigners and left as family – and if we helped a few young students read and write, then maybe we really did change the world!

Our wonderful first host family and neighbors

Friends

Our Peace Corps volunteer group

Obama came to visit

We loved our Peace Corps Service and will always miss Jamaica!