Cloud Nine Higher

It's the week of Christmas 2021, and I am busy getting my law practice in shape so that I can spend time with my mother and brother for the holiday. Suddenly texts begin to come in from a professional colleague from summer time: Whitney Be a/k/a Whitney Blake. She has a dazzling idea for her next photo shoot: White lingerie, possibly with my favorite modeling accessory - angel wings (I own a black pair and a white pair that have been used by various models since Photo Shoot One in September of 2019). Sort of surprising to hear from her. At the time, I had photographed zero models since Whitney posed for Photo Shoot 12 on a series of days in August of 2021. So we try to find a time we can work together just before Christmas. But her family from Alabama (understandably) wants her home a couple of days in advance of December 25. We try for the next week, but Whitney's birthday is December 30, and she doesn't want to pose then. New Year's Eve is out, as her main pursuit in ...

Frankly, I was baffled in 2021 when many individuals in our great nation hesitated to be vaccinated against COVID-19. And while I realize the legal issues that the mandate initiated by the Biden administration through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) carried with it, I am personally pleased with the actions of our President. It is no secret that I have a heritage in the Democratic party. But I have gravitated toward independent status in recent years and no longer vote in primary elections. I have supported Republican candidates such as my friend state senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown/Memphis, Tennessee. But I am not Republican. As publisher of Cloud Nine Higher , I sincerely intend this to be a forum that is not partisan. I am fed up with the constant and childish bickering, complaining, and back and forth that is far from the distinguished debate we should be having about the issues facing us. The Obama, Trump, and Biden years so far have been the worst for ...

We have recently seen a lot of angst among Tennessee Democrats regarding the decennial federal census and legally required "redistricting" process - drawing a new map for representation in the state House of Representatives and Senate and, most prominently, a new map for the state's nine districts in the United States House of Representatives. Currently, Nashville and Davidson County are at entirely placed in the Fifth Congressional District and share this district with Dickson County and most of my native Cheatham County. These district boundaries are about to change. As best I can tell from the maps published by The Tennessean , I will be placed in the Seventh Congressional District, along with part of Davidson County and some thirteen other counties stretching as far south as Wayne County on the Alabama state line and as far west as Benton and Decatur counties in the Western grand division of Tennessee. The Fifth Congressional District will comprise part of Davidson an...