Come on up, the good chair's saved for ya this time.

How was your weekend, honest answer? Ours was a loud one, and I'm still recoverin' in the best way. Meemaw's mad at the crossword after pickin’ us up from school, and Clementine's reignited her obsession with Haikus. 🙄

Anyhow. We got a lot to catch up on, and it’s taken everything in me to wait ‘till ya got here to tell ya about it!

As always, we’ve added a fresh track to this week’s issue purely for vibes as you read. Click the link below before ya start reading if you wanna listen, or listen to the full Chattynooga playlist on Spotify!

This week's Front Porch Partner is Mindstream, who're handin' out a free guide to masterin' Claude AI at work. Meemaw don't trust a robot, but she does trust free.

Every lil' click from neighbors sends $1.87 jingle janglin' straight into the Chattynooga coin purse without even signing up for the dang thing, so maybe consider it yer good deed for the day. Appreciate ya, neighbor!

Take it away, Mindstream!

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La Paz Yard Sale
Saturday, August 15 @ La Paz | 8:30 AM - 1:00 PM

There’s some bargain hunting to be done at the La Paz Yard Sale this weekend! Proceeds from Saturday’s yard sale will benefit the Latinx Relief Fund, which supports local families who have been separated due to detention. Have a few treasures of your own to pass along? La Paz is accepting gently used donations all week through Friday. 

🛍️ I’m gonna pop some tags

Coffee Break Chattanooga
Friday, August 14 @ WTCI PBS | 8:30 - 10:00 AM

Start your Thursday with coffee, pastries, and some good company at Coffee Break! Spend the morning meeting people from around Chattanooga and learning about some of the cool organizations and projects happening across the community. Clementine has it on good authority that this one is worth waking up early for (IYKYK).

☕ We love coffee and public media

Walnut Branch Vol. 6 Launch Party & Pop Up Exhibit
Friday, August 14 @ Studio Ours | 6:00 - 8:00 PM

WSP’s The Walnut Branch is celebrating Volume 6 and the more than 100 writers and artists who filled its pages! The launch party will feature a one-night pop-up exhibit with many of the original artworks from the new edition, and most will be available to purchase. Grab your copy and support the creative folks who made it happen.

🎨 Print’s not dead!

SPLASH Summer Youth Arts Festival
Saturday, August 15 @ Miller Park | 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM

Miller Park is the place to be for creative kids this Saturday! Kids can try hands-on art activities, catch live music and dance performances, bounce on inflatables, and cheer on local youth during the talent showcase. Bring the family out and spend the day making and playing together!

🧑‍🎨 Make a SPLASH

River Games Chattanooga
Friday, August 14 - Sunday, August 16 @ Ross’s Landing 4:00 - 11:00 PM

Things are about to get EXTREME on the Tennessee River! This massive action sports festival takes over Ross’s Landing with extreme competitions, live music, and nonstop action right along the riverfront. When the competitions wind down, the music turns up with live performances to keep the party going all night long.

🤙 Baby, let the games begin

Nooga Knockdown Roller Derby Tournament
Saturday, August 15 - Sunday, August 16 @ Camp Jordan Arena | 

Chattanooga Roller Derby is closing out the 2026 season with one last KNOCKOUT! Nooga Knockdown puts teams from near and far head-to-head for two days of hard hits and tournament action. Come cheer on Chattanooga and make the last matches of the year some of the loudest! 

🛼 Let the good times roll

Got somethin’ you wanna tell the community about?

Tell us all about it with our new and improved events form, or just reply to this email with your event details and we’ll go from there!

The whole porch crew piled into the Boneyard yesterday evenin' — Meemaw, Clementine, and our two occasional interns when we gotta lug heavy things along, Intern Logan and Amy — fashionably late, as is our custom. That sadly meant we caught maybe the last minute and a half of Call Me Spinster, which I’m still spittin’ mad about. Meemaw patted my arm reassuringly and murmured somethin’ along the lines of, “We got here when we got here,” which is just her way of sayin' it was my fault for drinking that extra latte before leavin’ and she's bein' nice about it.

But that was not the end of this shindig, 'cause then Swayyvo got to tootin', and lemme tell ya — that horn had the whole room leanin' the same direction. Ain't nothin' quite like standin' shoulder to shoulder with a couple hundred neighbors all listenin' to the same thing at the same time. Meemaw calls that "church, just with better shoes."

Here's what we were all there for, though: Hearsay Press put out their first print issue: an actual, hold-it-in-your-hands, smells-like-ink magazine all about Chattanooga's music scene and told neighbors to come experience just a taste of the talented people showcased in their first volume for themselves as a community.

Y'all, the thing is gawrgeous. Photography and design that makes our local venues look like the cathedrals they are, type set with real care, and pages that you can tell their team members fussed over 'til it was right. It ain't a zine somebody stapled together on a Tuesday (no shade to them fellas, we love a scrappy print just as much). This however showcases the raw beauty and talent within Chattanooga’s lineup of musical talent in a whole new realm that our city has been deservin’ of!

Hearsay's motto speaks volumes towards their mission of their curation, “This isn't coverage. It's community.", a perfect description of how Chattanooga comes together to create something greater than it started.

Keep up with Hearsay’s shenanigans on their website or over on The Gram for stories, show calendars, and all the Chattanooga music goodness, ya won’t be dissapointed!

I got home from the Boneyard still buzzin' and made the mistake of tryin' to explain somethin' to Meemaw at eleven o'clock at night.

See, I’ve started fallin’ asleep to videos from Jon Jon, a fella that folks 'round here call the Happy Urbanist. Coincidentally, I learned a new phrase that I laser-etched into my brain folds: incremental development. Basically it means a town that gets better little-by-little, instead of just ploppin’ a big wad of money down from out-of-towners and making yet another apartment complex. Instead, imagine a hundred of yer neighbors each doin' one small thing they could afford, one after another, 'til there's a street where there wasn't one.

So there I am at the counter tryin' to explain it with my hands goin' every which-way like Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Meemaw's watchin' me over the rim of her cup like I'm the weather report in a language she don't speak. Finally she set the cup down, "So… it’s like a quilt?"

I smacked my forehead, thinkin’ she was just catching onto every other word again like she does during a lot of my tirades, "...Ma'am?"

She then pointed at the back of her rocking chair — the cedar-and-butterscotch smelling rocker that sat in the corner of her cozy living room wayyyy before I was even thought of, "How long you reckon that took me?"

I shrugged, “I dunno. Couple years?”

She chuckled and shot a hasty correction, "More like ‘leven," she said. "And I never once sat down to make a quilt. I was just makin’ squares of fabric. Had scraps, an evenin' to myself, and kept goin’ till I got bored or hungry. Then I started back up every other night'." She got that look she gets. "Show me where the plan is on this, sugar. Ain't one. There's just eleven years of me not quittin'."

And then she lets out one of her many Meemaw words of wisdom:

She went on about how a fancy dress can only ever be a fancy dress, but a good plain apron's been an oven mitt, a dish rag, a bandage, and a sling for my arm when I was nine and thought I could fly off the shed (Listen… I’ve learned since then). Small stuff can change its mind. Big stuff just sits there bein' the one thing it was built to be 'til it ain't needed no more, and then it's a eyesore on the street.

That's when it clicked on me what I'd actually watched happen last night:

Hearsay Press is a square.

Volume One ain't a finished thing — it's one evenin's worth of light. A scrappy little crew did the next piece they could actually do, and 'cause they did it, so many neighbors ended up standin' shoulder to shoulder in a bar on a Sunday afternoon for no reason but seeing our community win. Ya can't order that for same-day delivery off a website. Somebody's gotta stitch it.

So with that, I ain't gonna tell ya to go build somethin' big, neighbor: Just make a new square that makes sense to branch from your first one Wanna make your own art magazine/website/thingamajig? Get folks in a room and go from there. It only happens if you make it happen sometimes!

If you keep puttin’ enough squares from you or your community of folks, you’ll start seeing the real effort that comes out of it together!

School is back in session and as you know I’m very excited about it. But would you believe that we haven’t written ANY haikus for class yet? I guess poetry isn’t really a first week back activity, but they’re my favorite. And if a teacher won’t make me write haikus then gosh darn it, I’ll do it myself. Here’s my little collection of haikus for life lately. Enjoy.

scratch, scratch, scratchy scratch
you would not believe the size
of this dang bug bite

the sun shines so bright
but the rain just keeps pouring
why does it do that?

why do i have to
go to bed so early now
oh yeah… the alarm clock

bubby’s my best pal
but tell me why he only wears
clothes for the winter

i went to coolidge
to frolick in the fountains
sad, they were turned off

Whew. That went longer than I meant it to, which is what always happens when there's somethin' good to tell.

Thanks for sittin' a while with us, neighbor. I know your inbox has got about four hundred other things hollerin' for ya, and ya picked this porch.

Sun's droppin' behind the ridge and Meemaw's already clatterin' plates around in there like a woman feedin’ a bootcamp barracks. So go on, git.

If this week gets heavy on ya, ya know where our steps are.

Bababooey,

— Bubby & Clementine