Newscoma

As Squirrel Queen and I are out in Murfreesboro experiencing the world of high school basketball playoffs, I had a few minutes this morning as we are waiting to go to Murphy Center.

We went to the General Assembly yesterday to do a Day in the Life on our REP, Mark Maddox, who was very kind to include us on his day, which we are doing for the paper.

I would not want to be an elected politician.

Mark met with several of the freshmen, had a couple of meetings with Jimmy Naifeh (who SQ called Big Daddy. Not my Big Daddy, but he does seem to command an entourage wherever he goes), did the floor session and we went to the set time for press availability. There was education discussion, the English-only bill was brought up several times and Naifeh read a statement by former president Ronald Reagan as a good-hearted jab against the Republicans. Then it was budget meetings, Cover TN and the thing that struck me was that he kept talking to his kids and how he couldn’t wait to see them. SQ also said she was amazed by the set casualness of it all. It was formally informal if that makes any sense.

And that’s what struck me from the whole day. Mark talked about his daughter winning a symphony contest and he was quite excited for her, that will be held on Saturday. He talked about if he got home in time, he was going to go into the office. (He didn’t.) He’s the technology director for the Weakley County Board of Education. Then he was going to try to get back up to see the game today but said he didn’t know if he could work it out in his schedule. When he’s not in session, he’s very active around athletic programs in the area so this didn’t surprise me.

I would not want that schedule. The life of an elected official, although I knew this, is not their own. I feel that way at the paper sometimes but it was just a reminder yesterday.

Anyway, it was interesting and somewhat eye-opening because as I see Rep. Maddox all the time in Hooterville, I just see him as Mark.

Yesterday I saw him as our elected guy in Nashville and although I’ve been to the legislature quite a bit, for some reason, I had a personal reaction to it.

And I had at least one person call me Newscoma, which was weird and everytime any one does that, it just wigs me out.

Needless to say, it was all very intriguing.