Selena Jackson

The Americana Music Association has announced that it will be presenting its 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting to John Hiatt. The AMA’s 7th annual honors and awards show will be held on September 18 at the Ryman Auditorium. The two hour awards show will be broadcast live on XM Satellite Radio.

Hiatt’s songs have been recorded by Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Emmy Lou Harris, Iggy Pop, The Neville Brothers, Roseaane Cash, Steve Earle, Willie Nelson and the Jeff Healey Band. He has also made numerous recordings under his own name and will be releasing a new CD in May, “Same Old Man.”

Previous recipients of the AMA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting have included:

• Willie Nelson
• Rodney Crowell
• Guy Clark
• John Prine
• and Billy Joe Shaver.

With the marathon in town and getting healthy on everyone’s mind, the kitchen table chat has been all about organic foods, nutritional supplements, exercise and all things healthy.

Aimee loves herbal supplements and always has a natural remedy for people’s symptoms. Today she was talking about her latest discovery, colloidal silver, which got everyone’s interest. Colloidal Silver is a trace mineral that people take to enhance their immune system. It also helps with stress relief, and some people take it to help improve sports performance and as a skin conditioner.

Some of you may have heard a story on the news lately about Colloidal Silver because a man’s skin turned blue and he was blaming the Colloidal Silver. Turns out the whole Blue Man thing was a fraud, and there was a lot more to the story about the stuff he took to turn blue. But it made interesting headlines and a sensational story if you like to read those silly weekly newspapers that talk about aliens and man-eating worms or real vampires and all those weird stories.

If you are interested in learning more about the Blue Man Fraud, go to the website by Purest Colloids and read the whole story.

This weekend is big doings for Nashville. We are hosting the annual Music City Marathon, with an expected participation of 30,000 runners.

The Nashville Convention Center and all of downtown is filled with runners and their families, friends and supporters as they settle in for registration and the early events.

The weather is not promising to cooperate for this huge event. Temperatures have in the 80’s this week and rain is expected Saturday morning.

The race starts at 7:00 am and many streets throughout downtown Nashville will be closed all of Saturday morning and into the afternoon to accomodate the runners and spectators.

The elite runners, those who have the best chance of winning based on other races and finish records, are expected to complete the 26.2-mile full race course at a pace of under five minutes per mile.

Two of my favorite words are “passive income.” That loosely means money you make without having to work for it. Almost everyone understands the concept of interest bearing savings accounts. That’s a good example of passive income, although in today’s world you aren’t going to make much money on a regular bank savings account. The next baby step to earn interest on your money is to buy a CD, which has lots of rules about how long you have to keep it, penalties if you cash in early, etc. Most people understand that, too, and it’s a great introduction to investments.

So if you understand those basics and come into a windfall of cash, you are suddenly faced with a lot of other investment options. That’s when you need to find a good investment counselor and have a professional go over your whole financial picture with you and plan out a future based on risk levels, comfort levels, time you have to oversee your investments, how quickly you can get it if you need it, and market conditions.

A good friend of mine inherited a significant amount of money when her father passed away and she learned about investments with a good financial advisor. She created a financial portfolio and has put the money into various investments and I’m so glad she was smart about it. We had lunch yesterday and we got around to talking about real estate. Imagine that!

She was telling me about a relatively new investment tool for real estate, called Tenants In Common, or TIC. This is similar to a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) that become quite the fad about 10 years ago. REITS are formed when a group of investors pool their money together to buy commercial properties as investments. The money they put in becomes shares of stock and as their property makes money the investors get paid dividends on their shares. A lot of community shopping centers are owned by REITS.

A TIC is also a way to pool your money together with other people, but you don’t get shares of stock, you own a share of the deed on the real property that you buy. Of course there are rules about buying and selling tic property, and you have tax benefits and financial risks, just like other investments, but this might be an attractive investment option for you. If you are interested in learning more about TIC, check out this web site by Cardea Commercial and talk it over with your financial planner.

What is it about the Thomas the Train movies that grabs the attention of kids everywhere? They are nothing more than a man reading a story book out loud, like any parent reads a bedtime story. And they are in British words and phrases, easy enough for an American to understand, but obviously different from what the kids here are used to hearing.

My grandson absolutely loves anything that has to do with Thomas the Train. I can send him any present - a book, a new train, a sticker book - that has Thomas on it and he loves it. I even found a website for him to play Thomas games and watch short Thomas the Train videos on the internet when he comes for a visit.