Category: Love

art, Chattanooga, community, Entertainment, Hugs, LGBTQ+, Love

Drag Diaries

By Maddie Van Horn

Filmed and edited by Maddie Van Horn.

Editor’s Note: The entertainers featured in this story are referenced by their Drag names instead of their real names for privacy reasons. 

Social media manager by day, Chattanooga’s favorite cocktail by night – Gin Von Tonic expresses her creativity through the art of drag and has gained a new community along the way.

“Performing is my favorite thing. I really love just being on stage. I love being the center of attention on my own terms,” Gin said. 

With 15 years of dance experience, Gin has always appreciated performance art, but it wasn’t until she started going to shows at the Palace Theater five years ago that she discovered her passion for drag.

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community, Health, LGBTQ+, Love, women

Activating Your Activism

By Maddie Charnes

Darin Wright amongst other women of the New Suffragettes creating new posters for an upcoming march. Tuesday, February 14, 2023. (Photo by William Chen.)

A mere 50 years ago, women celebrated the ruling of Roe V. Wade, but many, like Darin Wright, 58, have lived long enough to witness its overturning. The fight for not only women’s rights, but human rights and equality is a never-ending battle, and Wright is proving that it is never too late to take action.

“We called ourselves the New Suffragettes to honor the women that fought for our rights,” Wright said. “They were our inspiration.”

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Chattanooga, community, Daily Life, Family, Food, History, Love

A Family Thing

By Hannah Blair Hurt

Joe “Dixie” Fuller prepares his peach cobbler for his family restaurant Zarzour’s. Sunday, November 20, 2022. (Photo by Hannah Blair Hurt)

Walking through the door of Zarzour’s Cafe on Chattanooga’s Southside feels a bit like walking into a time capsule containing four generations of Zarzour family history, owners of the small brick building for over 100 years. The shelves and walls are adorned with an array of heirlooms and memorabilia, from family photos, celebrity autographs and newspaper clippings to Charles Zarzour’s naturalization papers from 1946, signed in Arabic.

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Animals, Chattanooga, community, Environment, Love, outdoors

Birds of Prey

By Haley Bayer

Alix Parks engages with Telly, a non-releasable Black vulture, in their usual handshake. Saturday, November 25, 2022. (Photo by Haley Bayer) 

Past the bustling noise and city lights of Chattanooga lies a home on Signal Mountain for all types of birds of prey on their way to recovery.

That home belongs to Alix Parks, the owner of Happinest Wildlife Rehabilitation and Raptor Rescue, 501c3 non-profit That used to accept everything from squirrels to rabbits, raptors and even songbirds. But after training a few other rehabilitators on other species, Happinest has become strictly a raptor rehabilitation center. 

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Chattanooga, community, Daily Life, Family, Food, Hugs, Love

Miss Nola’s Gumbo

Written By Hannah Blair Hurt

Video By Cassandra Castillo.

If you happen to be rolling down Brainerd Road on a Saturday afternoon, you may find multiple generations of the Taylor family packed into their food truck, stirring up some authentic cajun cuisine. 

Tacia Taylor, affectionately called ‘Miss Nola’ by some in the community, runs Nola Girls Gumbo while also working a nine-to-five and running a nonprofit organization. Taylor is no stranger to the food industry; her parents opened their restaurant in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans when she was just thirteen years old. 

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Anxiety, Chattanooga, community, Daily Life, Diversity, Family, LGBTQ+, Love

Backslide

Story By Seth Carpenter

Kyle Carmon takes a photo of him and his husband Joe off their apartment wall in preparation for moving day. Thursday, September 1, 2022. (Photo By Seth Carpenter).

On September 2, Kyle and Joe Carmon finished boxing up their Chattanooga apartment of one year and left for Minnesota. The Carmon’s did all of this in order to protect something many other couples might take for granted: their marriage.

“We were really considering living here for the rest of our lives,” Kyle said. “It’s strange how much can change in such a short amount of time.”

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Anxiety, art, Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, Family, Healing, Health, Hugs, Love, Music

Sparrow Song

Written By Rachel Jordan

Sydney and Brayden Guerrette practice in their home. For these siblings, the music was more than just a hobby; it was about mental health. Thursday, February 17, 2022. (Photo by Seth Carpenter)

Like many others, Brayden Guerrette and his older sister Sydney have had their fair share of their mental health struggles since they were young. Back in their hometown of Portland, Maine, during a very intimate exchange on their kitchen floor, Brayden Guerrette finally opened up to his parents and older sister about his dealings with depression. 

“We were just sitting there and he was just in tears, and as someone who is watching a family member and someone that they love go through something like that, it’s always very difficult because you don’t know what to do most of the time,” Sydney says. “All you can really do is be there for them continually.”

After this exchange, the Guerrette family took a leap of faith for the sake of their family’s mental health and sold their house, bought an RV and started their journey across the country in hopes of a healthy, fresh start. 

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Animals, Anxiety, Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, Diversity, Family, Healing, Health, Love, Military

Battle Buddies

By Madison Van Horn

Eric Dudash standing tall next to Phantom. Eric explained the trials that Warrior Freedom had to go through in order to be here today. Saturday, February 12, 2022. (Photo by McKenna Pegrim)

The heroes that serve in the United States Military face unimaginable challenges every day in service, but for many veterans that is only the beginning of a lifelong mental warfare. 

Eric Dudash is a veteran who served in the special operations command for over 30 years and suffers from PTSD. However, he has discovered an unconventional form of medicine: his service dog, Phantom.

Audio by Eli Rushing
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Chattanooga, community, Family, Healing, Health, Hugs, Love

Pandemic Pains

By Seth Carpenter

Marianna Cooper gets her youngest daughter, Katie James, an afterschool snack. Friday, November 19, 2021 (Photo by Seth Carpenter)

For nearly two years, Marianna Cooper has worried about bringing her work home with her. 

As a nurse in the float pool, Cooper has been working around patients with COVID-19 since the pandemic originally began in the U.S. Already, that would be more than enough to gnaw at anyone, but like countless others in her position, she has had more than just herself to worry about. 

From the beginning, Cooper’s three children turned her 12-hour night shifts at Parkridge into 24-hour ones as she was faced with the possibility of bringing home the deadly disease every time she walked through her door.

“It’s always in the back of your mind,” she said. “You worry about doing simple things like giving your child a kiss on the cheek because… what if you’d had an exposure and you didn’t realize it, and now I’ve exposed my child.”

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community, Diversity, Family, History, Immigration, Love, Military

Journey to Freedom

By Serretta Malaikham

Manichanh Sonexayarath feeds her husband Khampoon Sonexayarath. Manichanh became her husband’s sole caretaker after he suffered a stroke years prior. (Photo by Serretta Malaikham)

During the Cold War, my parents Manichanh and Khampoon Sonexayarath had chosen to flee their home in Laos, a country that was being treated as collateral damage. The country was neutral until it became a battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union. Today, Laos remains the most heavily bombed nation in history, with more bombs dropped there during the Cold War than all of World War II combined. 

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