The Soundtrack of America is Made in Tennessee and you can hear great music at festivals like Tina Turner Heritage Days, Americana Music Festival & Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion. Here’s a look at other festivals and fall-themed activities going on across the state this week. For a complete list of events, visit ... (click for more)

Photography is sometimes referred to as a “hobby of a lifetime,” and in the case of Donna Bourdon, that bit of popular wisdom has certainly borne out. The Chattanooga-based photographer’s love of capturing images began when she was nine years old. “My parents gave me my first ‘Brownie’ camera, and I never looked back,” Ms. Bourdon says, adding that she upgraded to her father’s ... (click for more)

Officials of the Medal of Honor Heritage Center on Tuesday announced the center has reached a major milestone in its agreement with River City Company to build the new Heritage Center at the former Visitors Center building in the Aquarium Plaza.  This milestone, to raise more than $3 million by the end of 2018, was made possible, in part, by a $250,000 gift from Farrow Family ... (click for more)

Two tellers from the Hixson branch of the Bank of America testified Tuesday they are positive that Walter Frank Rice is the individual who robbed them at gunpoint last July 25. General Sessions Court Judge Lila Statom bound a bank robbery charge against Rice, 36, of 4734 Sabrina Lane, Hixson, to the Grand Jury. She raised his bond on the bank robbery charge to $250,000, calling ... (click for more)

Arming teachers with guns in the classroom, as Bill Lee proposes, would be the single most dangerous thing to happen to students in Tennessee history. Students and teachers in close proximity to loaded firearms daily? Across this state, in middle schools alone, there are probably hundreds of student/teacher conflicts a day. What if a student got hold of gun in a struggle with ... (click for more)

The word ‘ignobel’ is rarely used because only a few among us know that it means "characterized by baseness, lowness, or meanness." About 30 years ago, a glorious group of great scholars took a literary hatchet to form the word into ‘ig nobel’ so it could be placed in the dictionary as a term that means “a satirical social criticism that identifies absurd research.” Think of ... (click for more)