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This article is brought to you by Silver Birch Living of Kokomo. An independent life with a supportive hand. A different kind of affordable assisted living community. Silver Birch of Kokomo offers a full spectrum of personalized services to help older adults maintain their independence in a supportive, caring environment. For more information, visit Silver Birch of Kokomo online. Chick-fil-A is coming to Kokomo. Those are words thousands of residents have been waiting to hear.

(Listen to the radio version here.) This morning, when I was working at my desk, I suddenly noticed that one of my chickadees has a badly crossed bill. It obviously has trouble preening—its breast feathers are a mess—and it’s presumably having difficulty eating. I saw it just once and clicked a few photos before it flew off. For many years, I was in the habit of hand-feeding my chickadees from my home office window.

Sorry for the wait y’all. It’s been a hefty break since the last newsletter went out. Life’s been doing the damn thing and I’m going through a lot of internal changes and being open to whatever comes my way. I deactivated my Twitter temporarily for a little break, but I’ll be back soon enough… I had a weird series of synchs happen not so long ago, revolving around chicken and waffles.

I’ve always harbored a soft-boiled spot in my heart for “Chicken Run,” the 2000 stop-motion animation film from Aardman Animations, their first feature-length film. It’s basically “The Great Escape” done with chickens as the prisoners, trying to break out of the farm where they’ve been kept as egg-laying workers, but were threatened with getting turned into pies. A sequel has been laid at our feet, with Aardman partnering with Netflix to debut it exclusively on the streaming service.

In 2014, a young French sailor, committed to crossing the Atlantic solo on his sailboat, stopped in the Canary Islands to get a pet. He considered a cat, historically a popular animal on voyages thanks to their rodent-killing abilities, but decided against it. What Guirec Soudée wanted was a chicken. They were easy. They laid eggs. What could go wrong? People told him it would never work. The hen would be too stressed by the movement of the ocean.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Saturday, Jan. 6, 2024 — A powerful documentary about this reporter’s judicial conference arrest makes a first-day Internet sensation just as a federal court filing against the former chief justice jacks up the acidity level in a black-robed scandal metastasizing across Tennessee. By David Tulis / NoogaRadio Network Justice Roger Page gets a copy of my appeal brief sent to the 6th circuit court of appeals in Cincinnati just as the story about the expulsion and arrest of journalists explodes across the “cop watch” and “1st amendment audit” sector of social media.

In January 2017, I conducted an interview over the phone with Chief Keef. It was to be a part of a bigger Chicago Reader piece I had pitched which was to reflect on the five years since he’d emerged as a major creative force in the genre. The piece didn’t really come together—at a certain point, it felt like the boulder was too heavy to push uphill. At the time, the notion that he was ‘influential’ was still controversial, never mind the idea that he’d be held in high regard by a generation of fans, artists, etc as he plainly is today.

The mesh concept, which consists of two receivers running parallel to each other across the middle of the field, was first brought to prominence by air raid teams (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AdhKIkSoOAhl3eVcAIxNY9dlWfbIGFT8). However, over the last few years it has arguably become the most popular pass concept at all levels of football. The main reason is likely due to its simplicity and versatility. The key idea behind mesh is to create a rub for the underneath shallow cross receiver.

The cloud hanging over the Kansas City Chiefs offseason has been lifted after the Tennessee Titans reportedly traded for star cornerback L’Jarius Sneed. The compensation headed back to Kansas City is a 2025 third-round pick as well as a 2024 seventh-round pick swap.  After weeks of speculation since the NFL Draft Combine last month, it is the Titans that were willing to give Sneed the extension that he was looking for.