Hola, Stray Dog Pack!
We've been thinking about you guys and hoping that your summer is going great. If you haven't headed out for vacay yet, what are you waiting for?! We've been trotting around San Miguel and our home base, Chattanooga. We're staying cool and keeping our tails wagging.
Scroll down to see what we're digging right now.
Our marketing gal, Della has been enjoying summer by the pool at Chattanooga's new social club, The Common House. This newly renovated spot is truly like stepping out of Tennessee and into Europe. They've got beautifully designed common spaces, coworking areas, and an incredible pool. It's the best place to hangout AND they have hotel rooms if you ever want to spend the night in our hometown.
Our tech guy and in-office movie buff, Pete, recently went back to the movie theater for the first time in a really long time. He said, "I never thought I'd say I was going to the movie to see a Nicolas Cage movie." But he did... and loved it. He said Nicolas Cage was a standout and it's a must-see movie for the Summer.
Designer Jane just got back from San Miguel and is raving about Maria Brunel, a store run by her friend Guadalupe. The store is packed to the gills with amazing textiles from every region of Mexico (plus India, Vietnam, Jordan, and Panama). Every item is handwoven and intricately embroidered (some taking 5-6 months to make).
They've got pillows, bags, skirts, dresses, jackets, you name it... Jane says all of it is eye boggling and gorgeous!
In addition to being our head of customer service, Billy is a swimmer. He says, "I quit competitive swimming for thirty years, but over the last ten I’ve been in the water 3-4 times a week, usually at 5:45 AM with a batch of other older “master” swimmers at the same swim pool. In the summer we swim the open waters of the Tennessee River. When Covid closed my pool in February 2019, I took it as divine inspiration that I could take a little break. That break has now been a year and a half. My pool is still closed to Masters Swim group, so I have begun swimming at our community pool in downtown Chattanooga.
Like the watering holes of the Serengeti, on a hot summer day, everybody comes down to the banks and it is lovely to see our city’s rich diversity joyfully playing in the refreshing waters. The only crocodile in this swimming hole was a lot of African American kids are wearing life jackets, which is fine and good, but in general means they can’t swim, or didn’t pass or want to take the swim test. This led me down a rabbit hole thinking about Hamilton Ward’s 16 minute movie about the Civil Rights Movement and swimming pools which I watched last summer from the Bitter Southerner.
In this present time of exposing and confronting our past to heal the future, the whole idea of racism and the swim pool is one of the easiest to grasp...how the cost of dividing lines of the past perpetuate into the future. This was deftly drawn out earlier this month in an article titled “Teaching My Black Son to Swim.”
“Fixing racism” is like fixing a marriage or a relationship, as they say, “it is going to get a lot harder before it gets better.” The key is, you gotta want to fix it. We’ve got to want to acknowledge there is a problem, and define how you can do your part to fix it.
The swim pool seems like one of the easier divides to fix, and in most states there are struggling solutions. In the state of Tennessee we have Howard’s Hope, a non profit dedicated to teaching free of charge underprivileged children.
