WP Smith

The State of Tennessee is giving Starbucks $30 million to relocate some operations from Seattle to Tennessee. Starbucks is promising to create UP TO 2000 jobs OVER FIVE YEARS! If Tennessee had agreed to give EXISTING small businesses across the state $7500 as signing bonuses for the first ten new employees they hired plus another $7500 per each of those employees for new equipment, training, or as an incentive to participate in this “homegrown Tennessee economic development program ($150,000 per company), wouldn’t that have been a better way to invest that $30 million in growing jobs with businesses already committed to Tennessee?  And those jobs would be created almost immediately rather than over the next five years. Instead, Starbucks is having to convince employees who have no desire to be here to make the move to Tennessee.

I posted this photo of legendary cowboy Thomas Blasingame, who died while cowboying at he age of 91 once before, but now I have the fantastic AP obituary that was written about him. From 1989: CLARENDON, Texas -- A man believed to have been the oldest working cowboy in Texas died the way he wanted, stretched out in the prairie grass with his boots on, friends said. Thomas Everett Blasingame, 91, was found lying on his back Wednesday by fellow cowhands at the JA Cattle Co. ranch near Clarendon in the Texas Panhandle. His saddled horse was standing nearby. 'If he had written it down on paper, he wouldn't have changed a word,' said Buster McLaury, the cattle foreman on the ranch. About 400 people attended graveside services Saturday at the JA Cattle Co. cemetery near Clarendon. The last burial in the cemetery had been in 1899. Johnny Farrar, the ranch's business manager, said Blasingame was riding a young horse he was training just before his death. 'He must have known he was in trouble, dismounted and just laid down and died,' Farrar said. 'There were no bruises or scratches, so he wasn't bucked off.' Blasingame's son, Thomas E. Blasingame Jr. of Hereford, said the cowboy was laid to rest during a traditional 'cowboy funeral,' with the hearse accompanied to the graveyard by Blasingame's riderless horse and cowboys on horseback. There were lots of people there,' the younger Blasingame said. 'It was a pretty pleasant day. Things went real well.' Blasingame was born in Waxahachie on Feb. 2, 1898, and was a cowboy all his life. He came to the JA Cattle Co. in 1918, then left two years later to go to Southern California, New Mexico and Arizona. He returned in 1934 and remained at the ranch until his death. '(He) had chosen to be a cowboy when he was a little kid,' said Thomas Blasingame Jr. 'The reason he lived so long was because he did what he did for his entire life.' Farrar said Blasingame's job was to look after the cattle and horses, the ranch's fence and windmill. He said Blasingame displayed outstanding qualities for a cowboy of any age. 'It was exceptional for him at age 91, because he performed the job just as all other cowboys do,' Farrar said. Blasingame married his wife, Eleanor, when he was 35. He lived during the week at the Campbell Creek Camp in Palo Duro Canyon, 9 miles south of ranch headquarters. The camp had no electricity or telephone, and his wife lived in nearby Claude. 'He was a good, kind man to everyone,' Eleanor Blasingame said. 'When he died, it was the first time I've ever seen a bunch of cowboys just crying. They were all devastated by his death.'" I told y'all it was a fabulous obituary!

Introduce yourself with 10 bands you've seen live: 1. Metallica 2. KISS 3. Godsmack 4. Ted Nugent 5. Avenged Sevenfold 6. Kittie 7. Reverend Horton Heat 8. Static-X 9. Quiet Riot 10. Megadeth