THE SHELBY INDEPENDENT

By Chuck Thompson | Opinion (Not the Sunday Column) OPINION – I’ve covered about a dozen different counties and a plethora of city and town councils in my career, but Thursday night was the first time I left any governing body public meeting so angry that I sent them a bill for my mileage and my time. They don’t have to pay it, it’s only a request, but I sent them one. (see photo below) I can promise you that the city has probably spent $48 on a lot of dumber and more pointl

By Chuck Thompson | The Sunday Column OPINION / HUMOR – There’s a reason you always see people smiling, it’s friendly / warming, healthy and contagious. People are more likely to buy a product or vote for a person that smiles than not. Miss America contestants don’t smile because they want to; they smile because it makes a difference to the judges and the audience. Smiling can also be comical, depending on the situation. In the movie Elf, staring Will Ferrell, his character

By Chuck Thompson | The Sunday Column OPINION / HUMOR – Pants and politics go hand-in-hand.   They do. It’s true. Pants and politics go “hand-in-hand,” even though you wear them on your legs; I guess one could say they sometimes can help get a leg up on the competition, and other times they’ll have you tripping over your own feet, so to speak. There’s so many sayings / puns / metaphors associated with pants:     Caught with your pants down     Keep your pants on.     Fly by

OPINION – I’ll go ahead and tell you now, this will be this last new Sunday Column for the year; next week’s will be a rerun, because like everyone else, I need time off for the holidays, too. I don’t have a staff of employees to fall back on. For 98.5% of the work, it's only me. Even if it’s a wire news story, or not, or my amazingly talented freelancer Lauren Becatti, who has contributed a few news article to build her portfolio, has quite simply been a big help and I hope