Vol. 2, Issue 11 - March 17, 2016

MARCH 17, 2016 KNOXMERCURY.COM

NOT TOUCHING THIS ONE V.

2 / N.11

Critics say Knox County’s abstinence-based sex education presentations inspire shame, blame, and fear • by S. Heather Duncan

NEWS

Construction of $100,000 Gravity Trail All Downhill From Here

JACK NEELY

Robert Birdwell: A Farewell to Knoxville’s Artist of Urban Scenes

MUSIC

Kelle Jolly Unveils Knoxville’s First Women in Jazz Jam Festival

Q&A

Erik Larson, Bestselling Author of Long-Form Narrative Nonfiction

LMU Celebrates National Athletic Training Month National Athletic Training Month is held every March in order to spread awareness about all that athletic trainers do.

Athletic trainers are health care professionals who collaborate with physicians and specialize in the prevention, emergency care, diagnosis, treatment and

rehabilitation of injuries and sportrelated illnesses.

The Athletic Training Program at Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) provides students with the unique opportunity to gain real-world practical experience in athletic training very early in the student’s career. Under the direct supervision of a preceptor, the athletic training students utilize knowledge and skills learned in the

classroom to become an integral member of the Sports Medicine Team at LMU. The program is part of the School of Allied Health. Graduates of the program receive a Bachelor of Science in Athletic Training.

For more information about the LMU Athletic Training Program, please contact Celest Weuve at 423.869.6908 or celest.weuve@ LMUnet.edu.

Your career path is here.

www.LMUnet.edu 2

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

March 17, 2016 Volume 02 / Issue 11 knoxmercury.com

CONTENTS

“Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.” —Charles Bukowski

14 Sex in the Classroom COVER STORY

Even within the limitations of state law, students, graduates, and some parents are taking issue with how sex education is taught in Knox County—by an educator hired away from a Christian-based abstinence organization after outside presenters were banned from teaching sex ed in Knox County schools.

Critics, who have voiced objections and filed formal complaints, say they support sex education but find Knox County’s version factually misleading, sexist, and fear-based. S. Heather Duncan reports on their allegations and examines the district’s presentation of the abstinence-based program.

NEWS

13 Gaining

Momentum

Last summer, the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club won a $100,000 grant competition from Bell Helmets to build a mountain-bike gravity trail in South Knoxville. The money is being spent on hiring national trail experts for its creation, including the International Mountain Biking Association’s Trail Solutions division for most of the trail’s construction, worldrenowned mountain biker Neko Mulally to design the rock garden, and stone mason and trail-builder Knight Ide to build it. And it’s set for a May unveiling, as McCord Pagan reports.

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DEPARTMENTS

OPINION

A&E

4 6

8

20

36

Letters to the Editor Howdy Start Here: By the Numbers, Public Affairs, Quote Factory PLUS: “Ghosts in the Machine”

by L. M. Horstman ’Bye Finish There: Sacred & Profane by Donna Johnson, Crooked Street Crossword by Ian Blackburn and Jack Neely, Spirit of the Staircase

by Matthew Foltz-Gray

10 12

Scruffy Citizen Jack Neely bids farewell to Robert Birdwell, Knoxville’s artist of urban scenes.

Perspectives Joe Sullivan urges a revamp for how at-large City Council members are elected.

Possum City Eleanor Scott considers the plight of a bird in Fellini Kroger.

21 22 23

CALENDAR Program Notes: The Knoxville Music Warehouse blog unleashes March Radness.

Shelf Life: Chris Barrett recommends some moves you can freely stream at the public library’s website.

Music: Rose Kennedy talks with Kelle Jolly on her new festival, Women in Jazz Jam.

24 23

Spotlights: Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, Evelyn Miller Young Pianist Series: Mayuki Miyashita Q&A: Jack Neely talks with Erik Larson, who has turned long-form narrative nonfiction into a best-selling genre.

Movies: Lee Gardner finds a bit too much going on in Mountains May Depart, being screened by Public Cinema.

March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3

LETTERS Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015

MOMS IN JAIL

Threatening a new mom with jail time does not help improve her life, the life of her family, or the public health of our communities. Addiction is not a choice. It is not something to be judged or demonized. It is a health issue.

Enacted in 2014, the Tennessee fetal assault law does just that—forces pregnant women and new mothers without any treatment options into jail instead of making sure they have access to treatment. It is a completely ineffective way of addressing the very real problem of drug use in Tennessee.

This policy is set to expire in July of this year, but a bill has been introduced that would permanently extend it. House Bill 1660 is going to be heard this week. As someone who has worked with people who have gone through recovery, I know that scare tactics are not only ineffective, but also cruel. It is also unfair to attempt to push women into treatment when Tennessee has less than a third of the beds needed to provide the care mandated by the state’s own laws!

Tennessee lawmakers should oppose House Bill 1660, let the fetal assault law sunset, and push for fair policies that support the health of women and their babies.

Amelia Caron Knoxville

NO BACKDOORS

If you’re a traveler that flies, you are required to use a TSA-recognized lock to secure your luggage. This allows TSA agents to use their master keys to inspect your luggage without breaking the lock. While they’re convenient for the authorities, it is insecure as the TSA lock can be easily picked open by anybody regardless of who you are.

This issue was exacerbated when the master keys were compromised, enabling anyone with a 3D printer to produce keys that can open hundreds and thousands of Travel Sentry locks.

Why guess number combinations when I can exploit the lock’s backdoor?

This illustrates why the Apple vs.

FBI case is a very big deal. In the 4

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

investigation of the San Bernardino shooting, the FBI has been trying to break into the shooter’s iPhone for information related to the case. While Apple have complied with all valid subpoenas and warrants, they have been fighting the FBI’s attempt to compel them to create a backdoor into the iPhone. This is because such a investigative tool would render smartphones, computers, whatever insecure by design. The use of the backdoors wouldn’t be exclusively available to the FBI, but anyone with the know-how to use it. Once a very bad person learns how to utilize the feature, they could do a lot of harm with it.

Your phone has communications, photos, and other information you probably want to keep private. This is why your phone should be designed to stop all unauthorized persons from accessing your device, without exception. This is why you would support Apple’s opposition to the FBI. Zack Nelson Sevierville

THE HYPNOTIZING POWER OF DONNA

I had to write to tell you that I have just spent the morning reading this column. [Sacred & Profane, biweekly column by Donna Johnson] I was absolutely sucked in—Ms. Johnson’s writings are phenomenal. I wish there were more. Please keep her. And I’m going to get a copy of your paper this evening, and every week hereafter.

Cheers!

Brande Murphy Knoxville

PRECIOUS WORDS

Stephanie Piper [At This Point, monthly column] is a treasure!

John Jagger Maryville

EDITORIAL EDITOR Coury Turczyn coury@knoxmercury.com SENIOR EDITOR Matthew Everett matthew@knoxmercury.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jack Neely jack@knoxhistoryproject.org STAFF WRITERS S. Heather Duncan heather@knoxmercury.com Clay Duda clay@knoxmercury.com CONTRIBUTORS

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Chris Barrett Ian Blackburn Patrice Cole Eric Dawson George Dodds Lee Gardner Mike Gibson Carey Hodges Nick Huinker Donna Johnson

Rose Kennedy Dennis Perkins Stephanie Piper Ryan Reed Eleanor Scott Alan Sherrod April Snellings Joe Sullivan Kim Trevathan Chris Wohlwend

INTERNS

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS Terry Hummel Joe Sullivan Jack Neely Coury Turczyn Charlie Vogel The Knoxville Mercury is an independent weekly news magazine devoted to informing and connecting Knoxville’s many different communities. It is a taxable, not-for-profit company governed by the Knoxville History Project, a non-profit organization devoted to exploring, disseminating, and celebrating Knoxville’s unique cultural heritage. It publishes 25,000 copies per week, available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader. © 2016 The Knoxville Mercury

Underground to New Sounds The next week presents multiple opportunities to witness modern interpretations of history.

On Thursday, Mar. 17, poet Nikki Giovanni will speak at Pellissippi State Community College’s Magnolia Avenue campus (1610 East Magnolia) about her 2007 book of cultural history, On My Journey Now: Looking at African-American History Through the Spirituals, Giovanni, probably the best-known modern poet to come from Knoxville, was born here in 1943, and though she spent most of her youth in Cincinnati, her closeness to her Knoxville grandmother brought her back to Knoxville every summer. She became most famous in the 1960s when she was allied with the radical Black Power movement, known for her uncompromising calls for racial justice. However, her intimate memories of family and friends here in the 1940s and ’50s still inspire many of her new poems, including those in her 2013 collection, Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid.

celebrated on May 5-8 with a local festival called Knoxville Stomp (see knoxstomp.com).

On Tuesday, Mar. 22, the Friends of the Knox County Public Library sponsor a reading by bestselling historical author Erik Larson, famous for his book The Devil and the White City and, more recently, Dead Wake, about the U-boat torpedo sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania. For more, see knoxfriends.org.

Larson will be reading from Dead Wake.

Knoxville has little connection to the sinking, although one of the Lusitania’s most famous victims, Alfred Vanderbilt, was familiar with this part of the country; his Uncle George had built the Biltmore mansion, near Asheville.

Larson will appear at the Bijou Theatre, which dates from the era of the Lusitania.

The week of the disaster in May, 1915, the Bijou was featuring a locally produced play, The Girl from Out Yonder.

Built mostly in the 1880s and ‘90s, the brick buildings of the 100 Throughout the weekend of Mar. 18-20, block of Gay Street have large lower floors that, before the big singer and WUOT jazz announcer Kelle Jolly viaduct project in 1919, used to be on the street level. Knox Heritage will host the first-ever Women in Jazz Jam offers a rare tour of “Underground Gay Street” for dues-paying Festival, at several locations. (See the Ever hear stories about “Underground members on Mar. 24. (Non members can join on site.)

Mercury calendar.) The festival will herald Gay Street”? In 1919, the city addressed Gay modern performers, most of them young, Street’s dangerous hill problem by building but will pay homage to Knoxville’s own a long new viaduct to span the railroad history of women in jazz. Here are two you need to know about: tracks at about the same level as Gay. The project covered the first floor of several buildings on the 100 block of South Gay Street, turning once-lively Singer Ida Cox (1896-1967) was a major jazz and blues recording artist of the first-floor retail spaces into subterranean basements. Today “Underground 1920s and ’30s, famous writing her own songs like “Wild Women Don’t Have the Gay Street” consists only of two corridors beneath the sidewalks. All but a few Blues.” She lived with her daughter in East Knoxville during the last 20 years of traces of the Edwardian era have been removed over the last 97 years, and in her life, during which time she made her last recording, a record album called many cases, the old street level has been converted to modern uses. However, Blues for Rampart Street, in New York, with the famous Coleman Hawkins Quintet. the space still fascinates.

On Thursday, Mar. 24, the vigorous preservation nonprofit known as Knox Leola Manning, an East Knoxville cafeteria worker who was a singer and Heritage will feature a rare and unique tour for members, “Underground to songwriter on the side. In 1930 cut a few sides at the St. James Hotel. Later New Sounds.” Membership is open to the public with the payment of annual known as Leola Ballinger, she lived most of her life in obscurity. When she died dues: $25 for students and seniors, $50 for individuals or families. The “New here in 1994, she apparently didn’t know that her almost-forgotten recordings Sounds” part comes on the other side of the tracks, where the same tour will were starting to get the attention of jazz and blues aficionados around the world. include a look at two much-talked about music venues: the Mill and Mine Some of her true-story songs, like “Arcade Building Moan,” which is about a fatal building on Depot Street, a large new event space due to host shows during the fire on Union Avenue, and “Satan Is Busy in Knoxville,” which is about some upcoming Big Ears festival; and Fifth Avenue’s First Christian Church, a horrific murders in the city, have been covered by local performing artists, gorgeous 1915 sanctuary designed by then-young architect Charles Barber, including Jolly, in recent years. Manning’s only recordings are included in The which will likely serve as a performance space in the future. (For more Knoxville Sessions, soon to be released in a box set by Bear Family Records, and information, see knoxheritage.org.)

Source: The Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, Knox Heritage

The Knoxville History Project, a new nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of and education about the history of Knoxville, presents this page each week to raise awareness of the themes, personalities, and stories of our unique city.

Learn more on www.facebook.com/knoxvillehistoryproject • email jack@knoxhistoryproject.org March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 5

HOWDY QUOTE FACTORY

GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE BY L. M. HORSTMAN

The forced cancellation of the Trump speech has shown once again that many on the far political left are some of the most intolerant and hateful people in this country.

—Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. on his Facebook page, apparently concluding that protests against currying the favor of white-supremacy groups are now the realm of the “far left” rather than just, you know normal humans.

From August 27-31, 1929 and March 29-April 7, 1930, two of the last great location recording sessions of the era took place in Knoxville at the St. James Hotel, producing some of the finest old-time music on record.

Introducing…

Mack Sievers

Fiddlin’ Bill Sievers Willie Sievers

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

3/17 SEEED ANNIVERSARY PARTY

3/19 COMMUNITY FARMS WORK DAY

3/18 LECTURE: MANHATTAN PROJECT WORKERS

3/21 MEETING: IC KING PARK EXPANSION

THURSDAY

6:30-7:30 p.m., Morningside Community Center (1617 Dandridge Ave.). Free.

Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development is a nonprofit that works at both making clean-energy technology available Knoxville’s low-income communities and creating and sustaining jobs for Knoxville’s urban young people. Meet the students currently in the program while also celebrating this “pathway out of poverty.” Info: seeedknox.com.

FRIDAY

11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., Historic Westwood (3425 Kingston Pike). Free.

Knox Heritage’s Lost & Found lunch lecture series continues with author Richard Cook, who will discuss his new book, Ignored Heroes of World War II: The Manhattan Project Workers of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Note: Parking is free in the Laurel Church of Christ parking lot next door (3457 Kingston Pike). A free lunch buffet will be served beginning at 11:30 a.m.

SATURDAY

9 a.m.-noon, Beardsley Community Farm (1719 Reynolds St.) Noon-3 p.m., Abbey Fields Farm (1400 Washington Ave.) Want to get in touch with your inner farmer while also helping out our urban farms? Both Abbey Fields and Beardsley have a community work day today. Plus, you can hear Abbey Field’s Brenna Wright speak about community farming at Stanley’s Greenhouse (93029 Davenport Rd.) from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; Beardsley also offers a gardening class at noon.

MONDAY

4-6 p.m., City County Building, Small Assembly Room.

Free.

Last year, Knox County acquired a 70-acre tract that adjoins IC King Park and connects to Maryville Pike. This will increase the park size to 219 acres, allow for a safer entrance, and add new amenities (via the county’s application for a TDEC Local Parks and Recreation Fund Grant). Make your own recommendations! Info: knoxcounty. org/parks.

BY THE NUMBERS

The Cost of Business?

$3.7

billion Minimum total of state and county subsidies provided to businesses in Tennessee since 1995. Counting tax breaks (which are sometimes impossible to tally), the sum is likely much higher.

$6

million Total in state subsidies to companies in Knox County, according to available data, 2008 through 2014. The largest was in 2014 when the state gave $2 million to Fresenius USA Manufacturing, Inc. for “acquisitions and retrofitting.” Fresenius is an international company that produces medical devices.

$819

million Highest amount in subsidies given to one company in Tennessee: Volkswagen. The company made headlines for paying its production workers the lowest rate in the industry after opening its Chattanooga plant in 2011.

17

Tennessee’s rank in value of subsidies, totaling $3.7 billion, provided to private businesses compared with other states, according to available data 1995 through 2015.

—Clay Duda

Source: Public Records; Good Jobs First “Subsidy Tracker 3.0”

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

I

t all began with the Tennesee Ramblers.

Fiddlin’ Bill Sievers, his daughter, Willie, and son, Mack, were a family music business. Bill was a barber by trade who learned how to play old-time music from his grandfather; in turn, Bill taught his own children.

They toured widely and were hugely popular locally, employing novelty trick playing such as fiddling with a pencil and various guitar stunts.

On that first day of the 1929 St. James sessions, they’d

barely begun recording when someone, caught unawares, opened the creaky door to the soundproof recording room and ruined the take.

The Ramblers good-naturedly began again.

There were six recorded sides released, but the Sievers later only remembered recording two, wondering if the other four, played as warm-ups to the actual performances, were accidently released by Brunswick.

Two sides or six, we’re lucky to have ’em.

To be continued…

Tennessee Ramblers St. James Sessions Recordings: Garbage Can Blues (1929) Tennessee Traveler (1929) Ramblers March (1929)

In My Dear Old Sunny South (1929) Hawaiian Medley (1929) Give The Fiddler A Dram (1929)

To hear the music of these artists performed live, go to Knoxville Stomp May 5-8, brought to you by the Knoxville Public Library’s Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound.

HARRY CONNICK, JR. THAT WOULD BE ME

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 7

big. His superiors saw officer potential in him, though, and he wound up in officer-training school in Buffalo, N.Y., and later trained on radar. The war ended before he had to deal with it very intimately, and on the GI Bill he went to UT. He was in engineering school until one Buck Ewing came to town and founded UT’s first-ever School of Art. In those days Birdwell especially admired Pablo Picasso and his innovative instinct.

“He was very well spoken,” remarks his son, Robert, “But he saw things he could just express through art.”

From UT he went to the University of Iowa’s well-reputed School of Art, and returned home with an MFA and a notion of making a career as an art teacher. In the 1950s, though, when the Tennessee Valley Authority was hosting world leaders who came to Knoxville just to behold the public-power phenomenon, TVA still had a strong esthetic sense, and rarely built any sort of facility without a mural or some interesting tile work attached to it. For years, TVA was our Lorenzo de Medici. TVA was hiring artists, and paying better than UT. Birdwell settled in for 29 years as TVA’s staff artist.

There he befriended some other interesting artistic sorts, like Charlie Krutch, an older colleague who was also a Knoxville native. The TVA staff photographer’s industrial scenes have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art. (It was Krutch who left the money for a downtown park.)

But all the while, Birdwell was doing things on his own. To keep from bothering his colleagues at TVA, he

SCRUFFY CITIZEN

Robert Birdwell, 1924-2016 A farewell to Knoxville’s artist of urban scenes

S

ix weeks ago I attended the opening of the Knoxville Museum of Art’s Knoxville Seven show.

Still hanging, it’s a show devoted to seven brash young artists who from the late 1940s and the early 1960s challenged mainstream habits in a city not famous for visual art. Some of their work has been on display upstairs at the Higher Ground exhibit for the last few years. It won’t surprise anyone that the ones that drew me were the ones depicting downtown Knoxville. Robert Birdwell made mid-century downtown look legendary and slightly dangerous. He liked to suggest an element of mystery and unknowability, which may be the only honest way to present a city, especially this one.

The Knoxville Seven show presents two big oils depicting Gay Street, both modernist, one more abstract than the other. You can look at them for a long time before moving on, and then you’ll come back.

It’s altogether a fascinating show, presenting the surprising breadth of all seven artists, and there were hundreds of people at the opening. It was one of the biggest art receptions I’ve ever attended. There were lots of well known and important people there but one stood out. He was a tall, slim, distinguished-looking fellow in a black beret, visible over the tops of the heads in the crowded room with the Robert Birdwell paintings. He was, in fact, Robert Birdwell.

For 30 years or so, I’ve known

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

people who knew him back then, but I didn’t, and I didn’t know for sure that he was still around. I introduced myself. We had a short chat about his perspectives of Gay Street and the fact that he used to have a studio on Market Square. He was 91 years old. He was genial and gracious and seemed very happy to be there. We agreed we’d talk more in the near future, and I was looking forward to that.

Last week, he died. Since our meeting didn’t work out, I talked to his widow, Ann, and his son, who’s also named Robert Birdwell, an Oak Ridge caterer and an aspiring artist himself.

The only Knoxville native in the Knoxville Seven, Robert Birdwell grew up one of 10 children in a family of modest means. They lived in the West View section, near Lonsdale. His dad was a barber, and the family struggled.

His sisters worked in a local button factory. Even as a kid, Robert was always sketching things, like his favorite funny-pages characters.

When he was 10, it was the middle of the Depression, and they moved to Kingsport, which at the time was doing better than Knoxville was.

He attended Sullivan County High.

Tall and lean, he was a natural at basketball. One season playing for Sullivan County, Birdwell was the leading scorer in the state.

He graduated in 1943, which was a brave year to graduate from high school. He wanted to be a pilot in the Army Air Corps, but washed out, maybe just because his feet were too

Courtesy of the Knoxville Museum of Art/Ann and Robert Birdwell.

BY JACK NEELY

set up his own personal studio downtown, for a time in the fascinating old Ross Flats building on Church, and then in a second-floor corner studio in the old Peter Kern building, years before it was a hotel.

“He loved Market Square and all the people in it,” his widow, Ann, recalls. “He sketched the little ladies selling flowers and vegetables. Mrs. Ford, who sold cottage cheese, and Myrtle Price, who sold corn and peaches. They’d see him coming, and they’d start straightening their hair.

They just loved him.”

He also liked to sketch the old men who loafed on the benches. They didn’t necessarily love him. But sometimes he’d give them some money, enough to tolerate a young artist and to convince them to sit still.

Birdwell’s TVA work was visible throughout the valley. His mural depicting the history of TVA was for years prominent in the lobby of the East Tower. His family thinks it’s now in storage somewhere.

In later years, he was less obvious downtown. He moved to Halls in the ’70s and retired from TVA in 1983, but taught art at Maryville College for some years after that. He eventually settled in Powell, but maintained a studio at the Moses Center in Mechanicsville until about a decade ago.

His art can still be seen in some TVA sites and, as it happens, at two different shows: the KMA show, and another at the Oak Ridge Art Center, called “Family Affair.” He requested that he have no funeral. To remember him, he asked, just go see his work, and give something to the arts. ◆

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March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9

PERSPECTIVES

Now’s the Time City Council election changes are needed

BY JOE SULLIVAN

I

t’s time for City Council to set in motion an amendment to the City Charter that would rectify the ridiculous way in which elections of at-large Council members are conducted.

As matters stand, a candidate for any of three at-large seats on the nine-member City Council can get a majority of the votes cast in the city’s nonpartisan primary election in September yet have to run again in the November general election against the second-place finisher or even if the September winner is unopposed.

Such a runoff requirement is a travesty and should be eliminated. To do so, a City Charter amendment is needed that would put at-large City Council contests on the same footing as mayoral elections. If a candidate for mayor gets a majority of the votes in the September primary, he or she is therewith elected. A November runoff occurs only if no candidate gets a majority in a multi-candidate primary.

Mayor Madeline Rogero is expected to announce her support for such a charter amendment any day now, and Deputy to the Mayor Bill Lyons foresees prompt consideration

by City Council. Assuming Council approves it, the amendment would go on the ballot for voter approval in this November’s state election, which is the only time that state law allows for

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

action on municipal charter amendments.

This year represents the most opportune and perhaps the only time in the next eight years for City Council to initiate the change. That’s because all nine Council members are now term-limited and therefore don’t have a vested interest in the outcome, which won’t be the case again until at least 2024.

No change is contemplated in the way in which elections for City Council’s six district seats are conducted. Candidates for each of these seats run purely in their districts in the September primary.

The top two finishers in each district then run against each other citywide in the November general. This unusual—but I believe meritorious— way of electing Council members serves to make them accountable both to their districts and to the city as a whole.

A November runoff for the three at-large seats also made some sense prior to 1996.

Up until then, candidates for all three seats competed against each other in a free-for-all September primary. The top six finishers in the primary then battled it out in a November contest in which the top three finishers got elected. However,

this construct created confusion among candidates and voters alike as to who was running against whom. So in 1996 Council approved and the voters adopted a construct in which the three at-large members are elected in separate contests for seats designated A,B, and C. These contests probably would have been put on the same footing as the mayoral election at that time except for one hitch. The hitch was that only one of the six district Council seats is on the same election cycle as the at-large seats. That seat, then as now, is the 5th District and its incumbent at that time, Larry Cox, successfully pleaded with his colleagues not to subject him to running alone in a citywide election with very low visibility.

According to Lyons, Rogero is expected to recommend a solution to this problem that would place all six district seats on one election cycle and the three at-large seats on the other.

On a transitional basis, whoever is elected to the 5th District when it’s next contested in 2019 would get a six-year term. So the transition would not be completed until elections to four-year terms in all districts are held in conjunction in 2025.

Rogero is also expected to make the case that holding all the district Council elections in conjunction would call more attention to them and help enhance voter turnout. Only 4,768 of the city’s 73,000 plus registered voters bothered to turn out in the city’s 2015 primary when Rogero ran unopposed and only one of the three incumbent at-large

Council members on the ballot had more than a nominal challenger.

A higher voter turnout can be anticipated in 2017 when the five district seats on the ballot will all be vacated by term limits, and spirited contests are likely for succession. The last time this happened in 2009 there were 7,987 votes cast in the general election.

This is still a very low rate of voter participation in city government, and Lyons hopes that can be improved. However, he spurns the idea of holding city elections in conjunction with state elections in August and November of even-numbered years as a way to boost the turnout. Such an “artificial inflation of turnout” would “risk getting our nonpartisan elections contaminated by partisanship and drown out local issues,” Lyons contends, and I concur.

Once Rogero has made her recommendations, Vice Mayor Duane Grieve plans to convene a City Council workshop to consider them and get public input. The workshop would be open to consideration of any other ways in which city elections might be modified, including the way in which district Council members are chosen.

But Grieve, who represents the 2nd District in West Knoxville, is a strong proponent of the present method. “I think it’s extremely important for district candidates to run citywide in the general. That way, they really learn about the whole city and gain much broader perspective,” he asserts. ◆

This year represents the most opportune and perhaps the only time in the next eight years for City Council to initiate the change.

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March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 11

residents referred to us long-haired bearded freaks in bell bottoms and tank tops, but there was never a more descriptive term for that place than ‘Fellini Kroger.’”

The name has stuck, despite the challenge among some, namely musician and performance artist Jack Rentfro, that “Gummo” Kroger, after Harmony Korine’s 1997 film set in third-world parts of Nashville, is a more culturally and aesthetically appropriate fit.

“We may be living in the last days of empire (Satyricon) but a guy in a wheelchair yelling at everyone in the parking lot, and poor, zombified people using up their EBT cards on TastyKakes and diet store-brand colas, comes a lot closer to the trash-horror of Harmony Korine’s Gummo than any of Fellini’s saturnalian, pansexual circuses,” Rentfro says, Rentfro continues, “Have you ever seen Marcello Mastroianni riding horsey on a beautiful young party girl there [Fellini’s La Dolce Vita]? If we must have a cinematic reference point, [Gummo] is a far more accurate evocation of Broadway Plaza and its notorious anchor store.”

Why the eagerness for a cinematic reference point at all?

Reflected on a screen, even the most degrading and bizarre circumstances achieve glamor. Designating the Broadway Kroger an art zone transforms the gaze of a shopper into a camera lens. Poverty and insanity become high art. It may debatable whether participating in the cinematic reference game fosters tolerance and celebration of diversity, or makes someone a condescending asshole.

POSSUM CITY

Bird of Paradise A lofty view of the North Broadway Kroger, and how it became nicknamed after an Italian director

BY ELEANOR SCOTT

12

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

circulated that employees are tired of the bird and are planning to shoot it down with a BB gun.

The graphic artist and performer Ken Clayton says he gave Broadway Kroger the name “Fellini Kroger” in 1971 after moving into a house on Thompson Place.

“I had seen Fellini’s Satyricon that spring,” says Clayton, “[Fellini] searched Europe for extras that were truly unique without makeup or costume devices. I noticed quickly that the old Broadway Kroger denizens rivaled if not surpassed the variety in Satyricon. At the time I was just starting on my masters at UT and had several frat brothers and friends who lived in the old North Knoxville area. I started telling them that the locals who shopped there reminded me so much of all the weird characters in Satyricon that shopping there was like being in that Fellini movie.

“We used to have lots of parties and friends over and we’d send them to the Fellini Kroger to get beer or ice or snacks. You have to realize that the old Broadway Kroger was not the modern store we have today but a smallish store with cramped aisles populated by a plethora of strange, even scary, folks.

It was truly a trip to another dimension for a college frat boy and his pals. It was also a time roiling with cultural change and I am sure we appeared as a foreign and unfathomable to them as they did to us. We viewed each other with wary suspicion and haughty disdain. I have no idea how the local

Eleanor Scott is a freelance writer and columnist living in East Knoxville. Possum City tells small stories of wildlife and people thriving on the edges of the city.

As appealing as I find the concept of Fellini, I count myself as an advocate of Photo by Jill Dyer Green

A

wild house sparrow has been living in the North Broadway Shopping Center Kroger, aka the “Fellini” Kroger, for months. The bird has sparked interest and affection among customers, with candid photos posted on social media, at least two threads on the Friends of the “Fellini” Facebook page, and the suggestion that the bird should have its own Twitter account.

The sparrow’s tweets and dramatic swoops overhead bring a fresh perspective to the Kroger experience, usually traversed in linear fashion, cart wheels squeaking on the vinyl as shoppers etch-a-sketch their way up and down aisles. The bird draws attention to the lofty ceilings and alternate dimensions of the store; now perched on the chip display, now jumping aisles to peck at spilled cat food, now in the rafters among the escaped birthday balloons. It is as if we are shopping in an aviary.

“Now that we’ve visited other area grocery stores, we prefer the quirky character of Fellini’s employees and shoppers,” says Jill Dyer Green, who recently snapped a photo of the sparrow and posted it online. “We look for the bird on every visit now. It’s fun. A welcome change from the sleepy robotic monotony of other stores.

Whatever happens to the little feathered fellow, I hope he is treated humanely.”

Apparently the bird trap, a white box with a spring lid atop a case in the produce department, continues to be unsuccessful. In January a rumor

But the Friends of Fellini Kroger seem to have a self-deprecating awareness of their own eccentricities, understanding they may well be part of another shoppers “Honey, you’ll never believe what I saw at Fellini Kroger” story.

Imagine living in the Fellini 24/7 with a bird’s eye view of the place. If only sparrows had tiny movie cameras, just think all the priceless footage she might be collecting.

I wanted to see if Kroger corporate management would admit to plotting to shoot the bird down with a BB gun.

Kroger spokesperson Melissa Eads would only say, “We work with professionals to catch and release the bird and that is what happened in this case.”

This Old World bird is not native to America, so it is not protected by federal wildlife laws. It is legal to eat it, or keep it as a pet. The Wikipedia entry for house sparrow says it is “a symbol of lust and sexual potency, as well as of commonness and vulgarity.”

As of press time, the bird remains free in the store.

As appealing as I find the concept of Fellini, I count myself as an advocate of a moniker update. It was the sparrow eating spilled cat food in the pet aisle that struck me as less peacock-in-the-snow of Fellini’s Amarcord, and more slurping-spaghetti-in-the-bathtub, Gummo style.

Fellini. Gummo. What do you think? ◆

a moniker update.

Photos by McCord Pagan

Gaining Momentum Construction of that $100,000 grant-winning gravity trail is all downhill from here

BY MCCORD PAGAN

T

he pickup truck groans and lurches forward as it slowly maneuvers its way up the brandnew gravel trail to the build site overlooking South Knoxville. Freshly overturned dirt and newly cut branches line the road.

A tree branch slaps the windshield of Brian Hann’s mud-spackled F-250 as he turns another corner up the hill.

“Ah, I say I’m going to cut that thing down every time I come up here,” Hann grumbles. “Every time, every time…”

Hann is the project manager for all trail construction in South Knoxville’s soon-to-open Baker Creek Preserve, which includes the area’s first-ever gravity trail for mountain bikers. At the top, Hann greets some of the workmen on the project, one of them with chainsaw still in hand.

Nick Pavlis, Knoxville City Council member for the 1st District, is tagging along this morning to check on the progress of the double-black diamond mountain bike trail here in the Legacy Parks Foundation’s newest addition to the Urban Wilderness.

“I never had any idea it would be this

magnificent,” Pavlis says. “It’s beyond anything I could have comprehended.”

The former vice-mayor spends most of the trip taking pictures and asking questions, all the while obviously excited about the progress on the trail and what it means for South Knoxville. “It puts South Knoxville on the map,” he says.

A double-black diamond is an expert-level trail, and the Devil’s Racetrack has earned that ranking and then some. The wooden planks of a 10-foot-tall arcing wall greets visitors, awaiting bikers to challenge it. Below that, a rock garden leads to the bottom of the hill with a small jump half-way down for the bravest mountain bikers.

With its name harkening to South Knoxville’s history of moonshine, Devil’s Racetrack is designed to allow mountain bikers to use gravity to propel them downhill, and it became famous long before its construction.

Last summer, the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club won a $100,000 grant competition from Bell Helmets to build the 7-mile Devil’s Racetrack. The money is being spent on hiring national trail experts for its creation, including the International Mountain Biking

Association’s Trail Solutions division for most of the trail’s construction, world-renowned mountain biker Neko Mulally to design the rock garden, and stone mason and trail-builder Knight Ide to build it. Other expenditures include machine rentals.

The trail is now about half-finished and will open to the public in May after undergoing safety tests, says Matthew Kellogg, president of the AMBC. “It allows us to attract a different user than we’ve had in the past. It allows them to broaden their skill base,” he says. “We’re one of very few towns that can boast we have upwards of 60 miles of trail out of our backdoor.”

The 100 acres of previously-vacant land was donated to Legacy Parks in 2013 by the Wood family. When construction is finished, the Baker Creek Preserve will have a total of eight trails, five of which are mixeduse, and three exclusively for biking.

Legacy Parks is building the seven other trails with a $200,000 Recreational Trails Program grant from the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation, with names based on local lore like Pappy’s Way or Cruze Valley Run, all of which should be finished in May along with the Devil’s Racetrack.

A bridge over Red Bud Road (largely funded by REI) will also be finished soon to safely connect the trails with the larger Urban Wilderness South Loop, Hann says. In addition to the trails, a grant from the Siddiqi Foundation and donated time and expertise from local landscaper Earthadelic will enable Legacy Parks to create a play area near a kids’ bike loop, using natural elements and

materials found on the property.

The rock garden in the Devil’s Racetrack is one of the most unique in the country and puts the trail on par with some other world-class mountain biking trails, says Hann, who also serves as chair of the Legacy Parks Trails and Greenways Task Force.

“We brought in the best trail-builders in the country to get this thing done,” he says.

The Professional TrailBuilders Association, which ended its conference in Knoxville on Friday, always builds a Legacy Trail in its host city as a parting gift and as a way to teach local mountain bikers about trail construction and maintenance. Its Legacy Trail here connects South Doyle Middle School with the adjacent neighborhood and the rest of the Urban Wilderness.

One of the best aspects of the Devil’s Racetrack and the Baker Creek Preserve is that the entire community is behind the project, Kellogg says. The boulders in the rock garden were donated by the city of Knoxville and Earthadelic, and many small business and AMBC members have donated their “sweat equity,” he says, giving residents a stake in the park when it’s complete.

“Part of our mission is to educate the public on trails,” Kellogg says, and by encouraging residents to assist in some basic trail construction and maintenance, it can lead to more interest in mountain biking and use of the Urban Wilderness. AMBC members regularly volunteer to build and maintain trails, called “trail days.” All tools and equipment are provided by the club. More info: ambc-sorba.org.◆ March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 13

Critics say Knox County’s abstinence-based sex education presentations inspire shame, blame, and fear • by S. Heather Duncan

14

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

L

et’s talk about sex.

But without, well, actually talking about it. To be more precise, let’s talk about not having sex. We’ll learn about how it can ruin your future—unless you are a happily married husband or wife. And you’ll learn a few methods of avoiding the pitfalls of pregnancy and disease, but with the understanding that the only reliable prevention is abstaining from sex altogether.

That is the general gist of the Knox County Schools’ sex-education curriculum, partly due to limitations placed by the state Legislature and partly due to local design. Sex education has been a contentious topic across the country as cultural norms shift, pitting parents, school administrators, legislators, and public-health officials against each other. Tennessee strictly limits what kind of sex education can be offered—even allowing teachers to be fined for any missteps— and dictates an abstinence-based curriculum that ultimately leaves teens without enough information to make informed decisions about sex. Although the most vocal parents in recent years have wanted less sex education rather than more, scientifically sampled focus groups in Knoxville show a widespread demand for more comprehensive sex education, which research has shown is the most effective at preventing teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and even early sexual activity.

Even within the limitations of state law, students, graduates, and some parents are taking issue with how sex education is taught in Knox County—by an educator hired away from a Christian-based abstinence organization after outside presenters were banned from teaching sex ed in Knox County schools. Critics, who have voiced objections and filed formal complaints, say they support sex education but find Knox County’s version factually misleading, sexist, and fear-based.

The issue has galvanized young people to action. Two recent Knox graduates have started a group called Just Educate to argue that the district’s approach is not only ineffective but, as presented, offensive and damaging to women and to anyone who is not heterosexual. College students Mikaela Faust and Caroline Rowcliffe got together in a classroom on their last day of high school at

Content Requirements for Sex and HIV Education Must Stress Abstinence Must Cover Contraception

Hardin ValleyofAcademy to brainstorm Percentage Knox County Schools ways protest the flaws see in hightoschool students whothey have the district’s sex education presentaever had sexual intercourse tion and to argue for comprehensive sex education in Tennessee.

38.8%Faust saw36.7% 40As a senior, younger friends react badly to the sex education30presentation in her school.

“I think typically girls felt the most targeted because there would be jokes 20 about wearing revealing clothing making you a ho that are just totally 10 demeaning, especially if you are a 14or 15-year-old girl already dealing with 0 self-esteem problems,” she says.

Male Female Last summer, shortly after it was founded, Just Educate conducted an online student survey that generated Percentage Knox County Schools more than 200ofresponses—most very high school students who critical of the curriculum andhave how it was taught—and making a video ever had sexualbegan intercourse based on interviews with local high60 students. An early version55.3% school of the video, in which teens talk about what 50 they’d like in a sex-education 40.2% class, is 40 35.8% already posted on YouTube and linked through the Just Educate Facebook 30 page. In22.2% the long term, Faust and 20 Rowcliffe want to create similar surveys 10 0

Births per 1,000 women aged 15 – 19 Less than 20 30 –39.9 20 – 29.9 40 or more

Highlights of the Guttmacher Institute’s “State Policies in Source: Guttmacher Institute, March 2016, Brief, Sex and HIV Education” and the National Center for Health Statistics CONTENT REQUIREMENTS WHEN SEX EDUCATION IS TAUGHT and videos with teens in other East Tennessee counties, helping young • 18 states and the District of Columbia people approach their own schools require that information on contracepabout improving sex education. tion be provided.

Rowcliffe brought her concerns • 37 states require that information on about Knox County’s sex education abstinence be provided. presentation to the Knox County • 25 states require that abstinence be Board of Education in December. She stressed. says school district staff agreed to • 12 states require that abstinence be Among sexually active Knox County Schools high school s make some changes, and she is covered. pregnancy theinstruction last timeonthey hopeful the lessons will improve thisused to prevent • 19 states require that the had sexual i spring. But when others complained importance of engaging in sexual activity about the district’s approach to sex ed only within marriage be provided.

Withdrawal 14.9% in the past few years, they say they too or other• 13 method states require discussion of sexual received assurances of changes that orientation. haven’t come.

• 9 states require that A shot** 4.6%discussion of “I’m open, but it’s too early to start sexual orientation be inclusive. celebrating,” says Faust, a freshman at • 4 An states IUD* require only negative Middle Tennessee State University. information on sexual orientation.

“We haven’t seen proof that this is • 13 states require the inclusion of Condoms going to change, and until we do, I’m information on the negative outcomes not going to give up the fight.” of teen sex and pregnancy.

• 27pills states and the District of Columbia17.7% Birth control SURVEY RESULTS require the provision of information The non-scientific Just Educate about skills for healthy sexuality No method was used 17.1% survey, publicized through social (including avoiding coerced sex), healthy media and by word of mouth at decision making, and family communi0 sex education 10 is taught. 20 30 schools and churches, prompted cation when responses from students across Knox

March 17, 2016

9th grade

10th grade

11th grade

12th grade

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 15

40

38.8%

36.7%

30 20 10 0

Male

Female

County, Rowcliffe and FaustSchools say. “I Percentage of Knox County think lot of people excited highaschool studentsgotwho have about it because it gave them a chance to ever had sexual intercourse speak up about something that had been time,” 60 bothering them for a long55.3% Faust says. “You read those responses 50it’s just heartbreaking. … That and 40.2% was straw for me. I 40 like the last35.8% realized the severity of the issue.”

30 Almost 22.2%half of those surveyed said they 20 were offended by something the teacher said in the sex-education 10 presentation, 36 percent said they felt 0 targeted or blamed at some point by 9th and 10th 11th described 12th the teacher, 64 percent grade grade grade grade the experience as completely negative.

Many of the commenters on the survey expressed opinions that the sex-education presentation was “fear-based,” sexist, reliant on “slut-shaming,” and peppered with homophobic jokes.

“Literally all I learned in my lifetime wellness class was that a penis goes into the vagina,” one student commented on the survey. “Oh, and that if you have sex you are worthless and will die of HIV/AIDS 90% of the time. If you don’t, you’ll be part of the 10% who get pregnant. And then die.”

The survey was conducted through online platform SurveyMonkey, and it’s unclear whether there was any mechanism to prevent someone voting twice. There is also no way to be sure every respondent was an actual Knox County high school student.

“We can’t give a lot of credibility to this survey, but it raises a lot of questions,” says Dr. Kathleen Brown, director of the Masters of Public Health program at the University of Tennessee, “If that’s how [sex education] is being received and perceived, then that’s a problem” says Brown, who is also the former director of community assessment and health promotion at the Knox 16

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

Source: Knox County Schools Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2013

Percentage of Knox County Schools high school students who have ever had sexual intercourse

other position and interviewed candidates, and Lucas came out on top and we hired him,” explains Alves.

Hurd has a bachelor of arts in religion from Carson-Newman College (now University) and has been a youth minister or abstinence teacher for almost 20 years, with certifications from the National Abstinence Associa—Mikaela Faust, who cofounded Just Educate with Caroline Rowcliffe tionstudents, and Whythe kNOw Abstinence Among sexually presentation active Knox County Schools high school method to survey students about Knox County Schools’ sex education Advanced Training, his used to prevent pregnancy the last time they had sexual intercourse (2013) resume shows.

Melissa Tindell, public affairs director for Knox County Schools, Withdrawal says teachers may choose to handle 14.9% or other method the sex-education lesson themselves, County Health Department. brief lessons in the sixth and eighth but almost none do.

Knox County Schools officials say grades, and again in ninth or (more A shot** 4.6% “Many of our teachers know the they have investigated such comoften) 10th grade as a one- to two-day students in other capacities as their plaints before. lesson in the Family Life/Wellness An IUD* Parents are given notice coach,” Alves says. “The practice of “Whenever we have concerns curriculum. engaging others for this aspect of the brought to our attention—whether beforehand so their children can opt out. curriculum came out of that awkwardrelated to this aspect of the curriculum Knox County Schools had a Condoms 44.0% or others—we take those seriously and long-standing practice of bringing in ness, and that’s why we thought it was we want to address them,” says guests to teach the lesson until the important for somebody who was Birth control pills assistant superintendent Elizabeth high-profile controversy when a 17.7% trained to have a consistent message.”

Alves. She says the district has seen the Hardin Valley Academy parent “I think the goal was: ‘We’ll bring was used Planned Parenthood’s 17.1% survey but can’t investigate individual No method protested in a person less controversial than comments in it without knowing the presence in classrooms. In response, Planned Parenthood and we’ll tightly students’ names and interviewing them. a panel of health department, school control 0 10 20 30 what they 40 teach,’” says Tori She says she has observed the system, and Carson-Newman UniverMills, external affairs manager for presenter give his lesson three times, sity experts found Planned ParentPlanned Parenthood of Middle and unannounced, and never heard hood’s presentation was “generally East Tennessee. “Of course there’s anything derogatory. (Rowcliffe very appropriate and aligned with not sexism and homophobia written questions whether supervisor obserspecific academic standards required into the curriculum, but what you say vations are a reliable gauge of what within the Tennessee curriculum.” off-hand that is not written on the usually happens in the lessons.

However, one of its slides showed the PowerPoint slide isn’t regulated.”

“When your boss is there, you’re going Planned Parenthood website address, Mills took her job after the school to be on your best behavior,” she says.) and the website contained information district stopped allowing outside Alves says regular teachers remain in that was not approved. McIntyre presentations; she says she doesn’t care the classroom during the presentation announced all sex education in the who provides the lessons as long as and have never complained about it. future would be taught by school or they are nonjudgmental and accurate.

The district reviews and updates the health department staff.

“By hiring an educator who presentation on a regular basis.

Interestingly, just a month or so teaches toward his values—who [they] But the presentation is more than later, a parent objected in writing to think is okay to have sex with, when the words on a PowerPoint. Especially the Justwait presentation offered at it’s okay to have sex—Knox County is when you’re talking about something West High School. Unlike the protest not controlling the message in the as sensitive as sex, a lot of the impact against Planned Parenthood, his way that they think they are,” Mills comes from the delivery. Parental objections didn’t make the news. says. “I think even within the current concerns about Planned Parenthood’s Ralph Hutchison provided a copy constraints of the state law, that we delivery led Superintendent Jim of the letter he wrote to McIntyre can do better.”

McIntyre five years ago to ban outside asking the school district to disavow presenters—then immediately hire one the Justwait presentation verbally to DEFENDING THE GATEWAY of them to become the district employstudents and in writing to parents. He Local public school districts in ee who now teaches sex education. called the presenter’s jokes and Tennessee are limited by state law to The man chosen was Lucas Hurd, who language “bluntly offensive.” McIntyre an “abstinence-based” curriculum. was a youth minister and had presenthad already decided not to use outside This approach emphasizes that the ed sex education for Christian-based presenters, so it appears no review of best choice is to refrain from sex Justwait (an organization whose name the Justwait presentation occurred at before marriage, but it also covers the is still on his PowerPoint). that time. basics of the reproductive system and Rowcliffe says that’s how Just But although Hutchison says he birth control. It heavily emphasizes Educate got its name: It provides a was verbally assured Hurd wouldn’t the risks of teen pregnancy and deliberate alternative to Justwait. be back, Hurd was subsequently hired sexually transmitted infection. to do the job at every school.

Tennessee law says Family Life “We developed a job description instruction should “promote sexual AT THE HEAD OF THE CLASS and advertised it as we would any risk avoidance through abstinence Sex education in Knoxville is taught as

“I think a lot of people got excited about [the survey] because it gave them a chance to speak up about something that had been bothering them for a long time.

You read those responses and it’s just heartbreaking.”

and encourage sexual health by teaching students the consequences of non-marital sexual activity.”

The state also supplies another reason regular teachers might want to avoid handling sex education. In 2012, the Tennessee Legislature approved a bill forbidding teachers from discussing “gateway sexual activity,” even allowing fines up to $500 for doing so.

Gov. Bill Haslam signed the bill drafted by the Family Action Council of Tennessee. The Nashville-based group had claimed some teachers might be promoting oral sex as an alternative to intercourse.

Critics say the definition of “gateway sexual activity” is so vague that it might cover any kind of touching at all, including kissing or hand-holding. A parent who believes “gateway sexual activity” has been promoted can file a complaint with the superintendent; it must be investigated and reported to the state education commissioner. To pursue legal fines, the parent would have to file a lawsuit.

“We’re not sure where all the boundaries are,” Mills says. “What can we still do that’s inside of this law? I’m not sure, and that’s scary.

That’s what you get when you [pass] legislation that’s not based on factual information.”

Although the general perception seems to be that local parents want a narrow, abstinence-focused curriculum, that may not be true, Brown says.

A 2012 study prepared for the Knox County Health Department by the University of Tennessee College of Social Work found the overwhelming majority of participating parents and all the teenage girls favored a curriculum that covered more topics than just abstinence and the biology of sex.

The study used roundtable discussions with parents from Knox, Cocke, and Hamblen counties, recruited using a randomized telephone sample, as well as roundtables with girls ages 16 to 18.

Dr. Martha Buchanan, director of the Knox County Health Department, cautioned that it’s difficult to generalize from focus groups because of their small sample size. But they are useful for gathering information about attitudes in a setting that helps people feel more comfortable and open.

UT’s report indicated that many teens and parents were frustrated with sex education being taught through a brief drop-in from a

“We want to be culturally appropriate and sensitive to the community, but telling students ‘Just don’t do it’ has never been found to be effective.”

—Dr. Kathleen Brown, director of the Masters of Public Health program at the University of Tennessee

stranger. Instead, they wanted a full curriculum related to decision-making skills that would start in third grade and add different elements related to healthy relationships, puberty, and sex as the children mature.

In the focus groups, parents who didn’t want sex education in school were a minority. Those who did object were concerned that the approach wouldn’t fit their value system, particularly as it relates to homosexuality. Still, just three of 79 parents said they would not allow their child to participate in a sex-education class that included information beyond abstinence.

Although the resulting health department report was shared with the school district, Buchanan says she doesn’t know if Knox County Schools used the information to shape its sex education unit.

Tennessee’s “gateway sexual activity” law and other aspects of its approach to sex education have made unflattering national headlines. For example, last year The Nation published an article on the disconnect between Tennessee’s “abstinence-based” curriculum and the fact that Memphis was leading the nation in sexually transmitted infections.

But efforts to change the state’s approach rarely gain traction in conservative stomping grounds.

Another grassroots push for comprehensive sex education in East Tennessee emerged last summer when Stephanie Bertels, with Women Matter of Northeast Tennessee, posted petitions to expand sex education. Between two online platforms, the petitions garnered less than 200 signatures.

In spite of their brief exposure to abstinence-based sex education, many local teens are sexually active. A 2013 Knox County Health Department risk behavior survey conducted at 14 high schools across the district found 38

percent of high school students reported having sex at least once.

Among seniors, the likelihood was 55 percent.

In contrast to the abstinence-only and abstinence-based approaches, comprehensive sex education provides a broad overview of contraception and sometimes detailed information about consent and healthy relationships. Research has shown that comprehensive sex education is more effective at reducing pregnancies, infection rates, and even sexual activity.

“If you look across developed countries, we (the U.S.) have the highest rate of teen pregnancy.

Comprehensive education is more likely to be associated with countries which have lower rates of teen pregnancy and STD’s,” Brown notes.

“We want to be culturally appropriate and sensitive to the community, but telling students ‘Just don’t do it’ has never been found to be effective.”

The American Psychological Association in 2005 examined 15 years of research to conclude that comprehensive sex education is more effective at stopping the spread of HIV. The group passed a resolution in favor of “empirically supported sex education.”

“Only comprehensive sex education is effective in protecting adolescents from pregnancy and sexually transmitted illnesses at first intercourse and during later sexual activity,” wrote psychologist Maureen Lyon, chair of the committee that produced the report.

APPEALS FOR CHANGE

Alves says three complaints about the sex-education presentation have been made with the school district during the past four years, none substantiated.

Some critics say they have approached the abstinence educator, Lucas Hurd, directly with objections

Source: Knox County Schools Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2013

0

Male

Female

Percentage of Knox County Schools high school students who have ever had sexual intercourse 60

55.3%

50 40 30 20

35.8%

40.2%

22.2%

10 0

9th grade

10th grade

11th grade

12th grade

and suggestions about his presentation, or asked school district leaders to change aspects of it. They say they were initially hopeful but felt duped when nothing changed.

Ralph Hutchison wrote a threepage complaint in 2011 after his elder daughter heard Hurd’s Justwait presentation, and again in 2014 after his younger daughter attended it (with Hurd then a school district employee).

The first time, Hutchison says, an assistant principal assured him that Hurd would not teach the class again.

“Three years later, my second daughter entered 10th grade at West and, to my amazement, came home to report a similar experience,” Hutchison wrote. “This time my letters brought a response from a woman in the administration who apologized and said the young man had been made aware of the inappropriateness of his lecture. She would not assure me it would not happen again.”

Madeline Lonas, now a senior at the L&N Stem Academy, says she approached Hurd with suggestions after seeing his presentation as a sophomore. At that time she was a peer educator trained to answer questions related to sex and protection by Planned Parenthood’s FYI program. Among other things, Lonas says she asked Hurd not to make jokes about girls.

“He said he’d take into account my suggestions,” she says. “Then he went to the next class and did the exact same thing.”

Rowcliffe expressed satisfaction with her meeting with Hurd and district administrators, who explained that students were misunderstanding remarks Hurd had made. She says she feels confident the meeting can March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 17

36.7%

JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM

The Knoxville Mercury asked UT’s Brown, director of its Masters of Public Health program, to review a version of the Knox County sex education PowerPoint presentation for accuracy and tone.

“There is a degree of accuracy to a lot of it,” she says. “But it seems to me we’re not presenting the pro’s and con’s, just the negative aspects.”

For example, the slide covering condoms emphasizes only their failure rate based on “typical use:” using a condom only in some (but not all) sexual encounters, and using it incorrectly.

“You’ve got to explain, which is part of informed decision-making, that if it’s used properly every single time, it can be more effective than that,” Brown says. This is an example of a problem with the overall tone of the presentation, she says: “You don’t want girls leaving thinking women are doomed, or young people thinking, ‘Why bother using birth control?’”

Two slides about hormonal birth control (the pill, patch, etc.) give no information about their effectiveness at preventing pregnancy—but they accurately point out that they offer no protection from sexually-transmitted diseases. This is followed by a slide 18

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

Among sexually active Knox County Schools high school students, the method used to prevent pregnancy the last time they had sexual intercourse (2013) Withdrawal or other method

14.9% 4.6%

A shot** Source: Knox County Schools Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2013

lead to positive changes. She asked that Hurd provide students more information about the variety of birth control options available and tell students directly that the state limits the content of the lesson.

Jean Heise, humanities superviFemale sor for Knox County Schools, says Hurd is now going to make a statement that his presentation follows nty Schoolsstate law and state health objectives. ho have But she couldn’t name any other of urse Rowcliffe’s “really good suggestions” that would be used. Heise says lengthening the list of birth control 55.3% options to include more that can be controlled by the female partner “isn’t 0.2% feasible” because there’s not enough time in the presentation.

There apparently is time, however, for slides featuring questionable adoption statistics (“1 in 6 U.S. families includes an adopted child,” 1th 12thwhich appears incorrect given that ade grade according to the U.S. Census, 2.3 percent of American children are adopted) and anti-abortion information (a fetus picture similar to those often used in pro-life ads).

An IUD*

44.0%

Condoms

17.7%

Birth control pills

17.1%

No method was used 0

10

20

30

40

*Too unreliable to report ** Limited reliability-interpret with extreme caution

about their possible side effects, many of which are uncommon, Brown points out.

One slide says a quarter of all new HIV cases are among people younger than 22. Brown says it’s really among people under age 24, and most are close to the older end of the spectrum. She also questioned the statistic that claims one in four teens graduate from high school with a sexually transmitted disease.

She noted that at least one statistic cited was 20 years old and needs to be verified for accuracy in 2016.

The claim Brown found most troubling is that “over 70 percent of teens who become pregnant are abandoned by their male partners.”

“Abandoned is a really powerful word. It suggests they leave and you never see them again,” Brown says.

“That’s not what the research and various surveys would suggest. There is a higher level of father involvement.”

Brown says she thinks the district needs to conduct an outcome-based evaluation to see what students know before and after they hear the sex education lesson and what they still remember a year later.

“If we feel really good and comfortable with what we’re doing, we shouldn’t have a problem with doing an objective evaluation,” she says.

BEYOND THE FACTS

Many students interviewed by the Mercury, or surveyed by Just Educate, say Hurd tries to make his presenta-

tion funny as a way to help the students feel more comfortable with an uncomfortable subject. But some found his approach inappropriate, citing jokes that mock women and gays as well as tactics that inspire fear and shame in girls.

Erin O’Brien, a senior at Hardin Valley High School who first attended Hurd’s presentation as a sophomore, says, “I remember feeling really scared and like I had all this pressure on myself. He really emphasizes that guys only want one thing: ‘Why buy the cow if I can get the milk for free?’”

The emphasis on women is obvious in the PowerPoint presentation. A slide shows the female reproductive system but not the male’s. The slides related to teen pregnancy emphasize women making the choices and bearing all the financial and emotional burdens. There is not a single slide about how pregnancy can affect a teen father’s finances, emotions, or future; fathers are only mentioned in the context of abandonment (and of older guys taking advantage of younger girls for sex).

O’Brien says the message was, “The guy is going to leave, and you’re going to be stuck with being undesirable.” It also reinforces to guys that abandonment is what’s expected of them, she says.

O’Brien and some friends in the Progressive Hawks club decided to attend the sex-education presentation again last fall. O’Brien says Hurd told the girls that even McDonald’s wouldn’t

hire them if they were pregnant—although it’s actually illegal to refuse to hire someone for that reason.

Women who do get pregnant have three options, “but there’s really only one (keeping the baby) because the other two are not something you can live with, knowing that if you have an abortion you are killing a living child,” O’Brien recalls hearing from Hurd.

Lonas says she, too, thought the presentation put all the blame and responsibility for sex on girls.

Multiple women who responded to the Just Educate survey reported being told they need to avoid tempting or provoking men.

“Several times I felt threatened by the way that what we were taught reinforced rape culture by shifting responsibility for respecting women away from the boys and placing it entirely upon the girls (‘girls must cover up so boys don’t get the wrong idea,’ ‘boys just have sex drives that they can’t control so girls must not lead them on’),” wrote another survey respondent. “This is endangering me and my fellow female classmates who face the threat of sexual assault every single day.”

Although the Mercury was not granted an in-person interview with Hurd, Knox County Schools’ Tindell did convey our questions to him and returned three answers via email. We asked whether he intended to put the onus on just women to say “no” to sex, or to imply that otherwise they will no longer have worth to men, who will abandon them—or, if he did not teach this, why have so many students reported that impression?

“The Knox County Schools teaches a sex education curriculum that meets the standards set by the state of Tennessee,” he wrote in response. “I cannot make assumptions as to what impression students take away from the presentation and why.”

So why are there are no slides in the PowerPoint dealing specifically with the responsibilities or ramifications for boys, whether that has to do with pregnancy, disease or emotions?

“The Knox County Schools seeks to provide sex education for all students regarding the decisions, emotions, responsibilities and consequences that come with sexual activity, not just females,” Hurd writes. “Our program aims to teach life skills that help students identify healthy and unhealthy relationships,

understand sexually transmitted diseases and contraception, and make healthy life decisions.”

One version of the PowerPoint includes three slides showing a woman’s cervix distorted by cancer, infection, or scarring disease treatment. There are no pictures of penises infected with sexually transmitted diseases.

“It just comes down to the graphics we can show,” Heise says.

“It’s just not appropriate to show a penis. On a girl—it’s more inside.”

Brown says fear-mongering with gory pictures used to be a more prevalent approach decades ago, before the public health community came to understand that scare tactics don’t work.

The fear factor is offset with jokes, but many said the laughs came at the expense of others.

Lonas recalled jokes about fat pregnant girls and homosexuals: “Knox County is putting this man in front of our students and saying ‘Yes, it’s okay, you can say these things.’”

Hutchison, an ordained minister and coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, says he was outraged at the jokes his daughters heard during the sex-education lesson at West High School.

Hutchison’s elder daughter told her dad that Hurd “loosened up” the class with dumb-blonde jokes, called sexually active women “ho’s,” slurred gays, and insulted women. (A joke Hutchison’s daughter repeated to him: “What do you call a woman who can’t cook? Single.”) When his younger daughter took the class, she said Hurd laughed or coughed every time he said the word “penis.”

“Clearly the young man is immature, unfit to teach, and more interested in being perceived as ‘cool’ or ‘with it’ by the young people than in delivering a serious, straightforward lesson on STDs, informed consent, etc.,” Hutchison wrote in an email.

Lonas and Hutchison both independently describe a slide in the presentation that uses a branching chart to show how infection exposure magnifies with multiple partners.

They say Hurd identified one young woman who appears multiple times in the chart as having “ho-it-is” or “ho-ish tendencies.”

Faust says she heard a joke about how men in jail can’t be virgins. (“That’s a straight-up rape joke, and

“I remember feeling really scared and like I had all this pressure on myself.

He really emphasizes that guys only want one thing: ‘Why buy the cow if I can get the milk for free?’”

—Erin O’Brien, a senior at Hardin Valley High School

that just kind of makes me sick to my stomach,” she says.)

Again, Heise and Alves say they have never heard Hurd make an inappropriate joke during his presentation. (Alves acknowledged she would find the use of the words “slut” or “ho” inappropriate, but says she has no evidence they have been used.)

In our emailed questions to Hurd, the Mercury listed these alleged jokes and asked him whether he had made those statements; and if so, what their purpose was in his presentations.

“A significant amount of time has been taken to meet with both former and current students to review their survey responses, and better understand and address their concerns with the programming,” Hurd wrote in reply. “Additionally, as concerns with the material and how it is covered arise, they are addressed with me.”

RELATIONSHIPS AND SEXUALITY

Teens interviewed by the Mercury, and those who responded to the Just Educate survey, indicated that sex education in Knox County is so focused on marriage that it offers no information for anyone who is not on that path.

The final slides of Hurd’s middle and high school presentations say that “sex inside marriage brings pleasure, bonding and babies.” The next slide shows a timeline of life for a man that runs “Boy… Man… Husband… Father,” and the female equivalent.

Many teens commented that refusing to acknowledge any choices outside that framework is unrealistic and potentially hurtful. For example, there is no information about what to do if you think you might have a sexually transmitted infection, or how to treat one, several teens pointed out in the survey.

Failing to discuss the process of deciding whether to have sex (remember, the only right answer is to wait

until marriage) also means that teens don’t learn how to give or recognize consent, a skill that could reduce cases of sexual assault and rape. Nor does the presentation explain what rape or sexual assault are, and what to do if you are a victim.

“As a woman, I felt constantly under attack,” one survey respondent wrote of the sex-education presentation. “As a rape victim, I felt targeted, alone, and that the entire ordeal was my fault. I was embarrassed.”

Faust with Just Educate also wants to see more focus on consent “and who you can reach out to if you’re in a situation of sexual violence or rape, because I’ve seen a lot of my friends go through that and just feel so alone.”

Heise says rape is not part of the presentation because “it’s not explicit in the state standards.”

“Sexual-violence prevention should be part of this curriculum,” Brown states unequivocally. “The clarity someone has over what rape is and what is not—you know we’re dealing with that on college campuses,” including the University of Tennessee. (UT is currently being sued by a group of female students who say the university creates a “hostile sexual environment.”)

Brown notes that Knoxville teens regularly report being sexually assaulted. Almost 12 percent of girls surveyed at school by the health department in 2013 (and almost 6 percent of boys) indicated they had been physically forced to do unwanted sexual things, ranging from touching to sexual intercourse, at least once during the previous year.

“And how are we addressing that?”

Brown asked. “Are we addressing the violence associated with sex in our discussions of healthy relationships and sexual health? Are we creating an environment that allows a comfort level for someone to seek help?”

The sex education unit also completely ignores a portion of all students: those who aren’t heterosexual. There is no discussion of risks, sexual protection, or long-term relationships among homosexuals or transsexuals. If homosexuality is brought up verbally, students say, it is mocked.

“Jokes about transgender people and queer people made me uncomfortable, because I am both,” one person wrote on the Just Educate survey.

Another wrote, “I’m a sexual minority and I was actually told by my teacher in front of the entire class that my orientation was wrong.”

A few students who took the Just Educate survey commented that they thought Hurd did a good job. One person interviewed by the Mercury said she didn’t learn anything but found nothing offensive. Even those seniors and graduates who disapprove of it often recall finding it mostly silly at the time.

A few of the teens surveyed by Just Educate indicated that they didn’t want sex education taught at all.

But a larger proportion of surveyed students, as well as the teens in focus groups conducted by UT, said they wanted more information on how to have safe sex, and less emphasis on abstinence. And that’s an issue of state law.

The absence of comprehensive sex education at school doesn’t keep kids from learning about it—but it probably reduces the accuracy of what they learn.

“The only things I’ve ever learned about sex has come from my peers or from Google,” wrote one of the surveyed students.

That’s rather scary, since a 2011 Journal of Adolescent Health study concluded that websites where teens get their information about sex are frequently inaccurate. Of 177 sexual health websites examined, 46 percent addressing contraception provided incorrect information.

“Teenagers can learn more about sex better from each other than from a teacher. And because we do that, we are putting ourselves at risk because of unanswered questions that these teachers have permission not to discuss,” a student wrote on the Just Educate survey. “That’s not right. The government is practically pushing us to harm ourselves for the sake of saving their own faces.” ◆ March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19

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M

P rogram Notes

id-March—the time of year when everything gets bracketed together into some kind of single-elimination tournament-style competition based on the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. In that spirit, the Knoxville Music Warehouse blog is hosting a bracketed tournament called March Radness to determine the single best Knoxville song released since April of 2015, with brand-new acts facing off against established bands and a selection of tunes ranging from hip-hop and R&B to punk, metal, and hard rock, with, as you’d expect in Knoxville, a lot of rootsy/folky/ Americana offerings in between.

March Radness officially tipped off earlier this week, when first-round voting began. The organizers picked 32 songs for the tournament and, like the NCAA’s selection committee, ranked them in two groups, from first to 16th. Veteran bands Kelsey’s Woods (“When the Morning Comes Around”) and the Black Lillies (“Mercy”) earned the coveted top seeds, with newcomers

21 20

Shelf Life: On Demand

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

March Radness Blond Bones and Jamesen Rees coming in with the 16th seeds in their respective sections.

Other artists include Guy Marshall, Adeem the Artist, Electric Darling, Johnny Astro and the Big Bang, Benjamin iii and Taylor Br-ndn, J-Bush, Black Atticus, and Average Thought, ErybodyJones, David Francisco, the Monday Movement, Mass Driver, Pale Root, Zack Miles, Among the Beasts, Realm, Logan Brill, Mathien, Britson Maroney, William Wild, Tree Tops, Dixieghost, Thelo-que, Handsome and the Humbles, Honkonen, Via Vera, Freddy Ka$h, Hellaphant, Jubal, and Sweet Years. That may not cover every single artist who put something out on CD, cassette, vinyl, or Soundcloud in the last 12 months, but it’s about as comprehensive a list as a sane music nerd could compile.

Voting for the first round is already under way and continues through midnight on Thursday, March 17, at knoxvillemusicwarehouse.com. The organizers insist that the point of March

22

Music: Women in Jazz JamFestval

Radness isn’t naming a winner—it’s showcasing the local music scene.

“This tournament is less about competition and more about exposing Knoxville to great music from all over our fi ne city,” they say on the website.

“We strongly, strongly, in the strongest possible way encourage you to listen to both songs in each matchup in which you vote.”

The winner of the contest will get a trophy from Blank News in the spring. Voters will be entered in a drawing to win a pair of passes to the Rhythm N’ Blooms Fest in April.

Check the KMW website for information on future rounds of March Radness, and follow the contest on Spotify.

—Matthew Everett

The Knoxville Music Warehouse Blog is hosting a bracketed tournament to determine the single best Knoxville song released since April 2015.

23

Movies: Mountains May Depart

Shelf Life

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Be a Volunteer VisitKnoxville.com

On Demand Knox County Public Library offers a great selection of streaming video titles

BY CHRIS BARRETT

W

ith the spring thaw impending, we may now imagine scenarios too sublime to be interrupted by a trip to the library. Let us imagine that we are all worthy of instant gratification. And let us visualize a device—phone, tablet, desktop—capable of connecting to the Internet, along with our library card number and PIN. Now, why aren’t we watching streaming video?

Knox County Public Library offers hundreds of titles—classics, new releases, foreign fi lms, thrillers, mysteries, rom-coms, docs and more—available for instant streaming.

Any patron may stream up to five titles per month, and keep each title for up to five days. You can browse by title, genre, or release date. (The streaming video collection is currently being added to the library catalog, which will add lots of search functionality.)

You can put popular titles on hold.

You need not concern yourself with the menial task of returning an object to a library location, or the fi nes associated with failing to do so.

Neither you nor your friendly library staff will ever need to clean or repair these videos. What’s not to love?

As I type this, I’m streaming the beginning of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. While the credits roll I peruse KCPL’s list of videos available to stream, alert to fi lms that we don’t currently have on our DVD shelves.

Here are a handful worth dialing up:

GORKY PARK (1983)

This is a terrific time capsule for readers who came of age after the Cold War, based on the novel of the same name by Martin Cruz Smith.

William Hurt still has his hair as he goes up against Lee Marvin in one of

his fi nal feature fi lm roles. There is illegal traffic in religious icons, furs, and possibly humans. And there are some terrific glimpses of decadent privilege among the Moscow elite.

ROLLERBALL (1975)

If you are the least bit into the Hard Knox Rollergirls—or any part of the roller-derby revival—you need to see this. Add motorcycles with spiked wheels and killer pinballs loosed upon the track at high speed, with incentives to actually maim and kill. This may not be James Caan’s favorite resume bullet, but it’s a silly hoot.

THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT (1974)

This may have been our introduction to the mature Clint Eastwood—a real actor who could inhabit a character and deliver lines rather than spit, shoot, and blow cigar smoke on cue.

It’s also likely that he was rising to the occasion of being cast opposite young Jeff Bridges, who was born to act.

(Bridges was nearly born acting; you may know that he earned his fi rst credits as an infant.) This is a much-above-average heist/buddy fl ick.

If you have endured a dislocated shoulder, there is a scene you may wish to skip.

VOLU NTE E R

Visit Knoxville Volunteers Opportunities Include:

• Information Booths • Sporting Events • Festivals • Conferences • Exclusive Shopping Events • So much more...

Visit Knoxville Volunteers is for anyone interested in giving back, meeting new people, and encouraging community growth & participation through assisting with the needs of visiting group events.

For More Information: volunteer.visitknoxville.com

& Proudly present

March 11, 12, 18, 19 at 8pm March 13, 19, 20 at 2pm Walters State Community College Judge William H. Inman Humanities Theatre 500 South Davy Crockett Parkway • Morristown

Based on the motion picture “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”

BILLY BATHGATE (1991)

Tom Stoppard faithfully adapted E.L. Doctorow’s novel about Dutch Schultz and his eager young protégé. If you’ve seen it, you know that synopsis is easy to remember because Schultz’s moll (played by Nicole Kidman) nearly meets her end after correcting the Dutchman when he misuses the word “prodigy.”

The spot-on art direction and wardrobe make this a great period piece set in Depression-era rural New York state.

For tickets, visit www.etcplays.org or call 423-318-8331 Proudly sponsored by

March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21

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Music

mance, men are more than welcome.

“It’s just a women-led event, not women-exclusive.”

Jolly’s husband and longtime collaborator, Will Boyd, is playing a support role, too—as he usually does in Jolly’s career.

“Oh, Will is the one who tells me to get back in the car when I cry after accidentally dropping a contract in the mail with no stamp on the envelope,” Jolly says with obvious affection. “He reminds me to keep moving forward.

He helped me find musicians for out-of-town performers to hire for shows. And during the festival I’ll be depending on him to help managing the stage. He has experience serving in that role for the Knoxville Jazz Festival.”

Jolly met Boyd at South Carolina State University, but she says her jazz interest predated that meeting by decades. “If there was a time I didn’t love jazz, I can’t remember it.” Her first instrument was trumpet. “Then I played French horn and mellophone, too. I wanted to be a female Miles Davis. I even had Miles Davis stationery.”

But she wasn’t that good a trumpet player. “I was a better singer,” she says. “So I started singing jazz in high school. My high-school librarian, Phil Coventry, made jazz mixtapes for

Jazz Jam Kelle Jolly’s Women in Jazz Jam Festival celebrates an underappreciated side of jazz

BY ROSE KENNEDY

22

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

from scraping for performers, Jolly had an abundance to choose from.

“Luckily, many of them also play instruments like piano, saxophone and guitar,” she says. “But it was hard to find a woman drummer who was familiar with jazz. I was without one until Dana Gipson, who was playing piano with the Women in Jazz Jam Festival Band, told me she switched her music-degree emphasis from saxophone to percussion. She’s a saxophone player who also plays guitar, piano, and drums. Even as a freshman jazz major, she’s overflowing with talent.”

Publicity for the festival has relied on Jolly’s signature creativity and joy.

“In general, it’s hard to know what will convince someone to spend money on you,” she says. “The best way I know is to show them why they should come hear you. That’s why I have spent the last month performing everywhere from library story times to Mighty Musical Monday to busking on Market Square.”

Jolly says she wishes she could do even more—which she plans to do as the festival grows in future years.

“If I had a bigger budget, I would have rented the Goodyear blimp,” she says. “Are they still flying that? I really wanted an ice cream-like truck to drive around and sing from. I wanted to drive around with jazz playing from the truck like the ice-cream man, with a painting by Hawa Johnson on it.

Hawa designed the festival logo.”

Jolly is careful to emphasize that although this is a women’s perfor-

WHAT

Women in Jazz Jam Festival

WHERE

Various venues, including WDVX, Knoxville Museum of Art, Scruffy City Hall, and the Red Piano Lounge

WHEN

March 18-20

HOW MUCH Free-$35

Photo by Rose Kennedy

A

n audience member approached Kelle Jolly after a Tennessee Theatre Musical Monday appearance to tell her, “I didn’t know I liked jazz!”

Jolly had to reassure her: “It’s okay, it’s okay,” while the woman told her, “I didn’t know. I am so sorry!”

“She saw the light,” says Jolly. “It was like a whole new world opened for her. That’s a beautiful thing.”

That’s the effect Jolly has on people. From her Jazz Jam with Kelle Jolly on WUOT to her promotion of ukuleles far and wide to her participation in the Bijou Theatre tribute to Dolly Parton in January, she’s always introducing the good but unfamiliar, treading new ground, celebrating music of the present and reviving bygone coolness.

Her latest adventure, this weekend’s Women in Jazz Jam Festival, has her once again enthusiastically and doggedly bringing an underrecognized treasure to the collective attention. Her goal was simple.

“I wanted to showcase local women in jazz in one great show,” Jolly says. “I also wanted to bring regional women to Knoxville who I felt needed to be heard live.”

Performers include University of Tennessee graduate Christina Watson, who teaches jazz voice in Nashville—Jolly plays her music on the Jazz Jam—and Venus (The All Girl Band), who have performed in Knoxville with Brian Clay. “Knoxville is falling in love with them,” says Jolly.

Jolly herself will perform at Scruffy City Hall on Saturday night.

Some may be surprised that, far

me. That’s how I learned standards from the American Songbook.”

She’s continually growing, learning, digging up or shaking free some bit of lore that informs her performances. “Right now, I am inspired by women composers from Knoxville like Leola Manning and Ida Cox,” she says. “Their music is from the 1920s and ’30s, but it’s new to me.

And I am constantly thinking about how I can give the songs new life.”

Like she has so many times before, she experimented with a link to her go-to instrument. “Because I can play their bluesy songs on my ukulele, I feel like the music is in my hands. It’s in me, too!”

Jolly takes the whole process—the sharing, the publicizing—very seriously.

“This festival is a wake-up call,” she says.

“I can see it leading to more women-led music organizations. And more people looking for women musicians in roles other than singer. We can’t continue to leave the women behind.”

This project, and so many like it, are not just what she does—they are what she must do.

“I’m part of a legacy,” she says. “My responsibility is to reflect the times of my life in my music while honoring those who paved the way for me.” ◆

INFO

womeninjazzjamfestival. com

Movies

Dearly Departed Jia Zhangke’s ambitious new film inspires admiration but not love

BY LEE GARDNER

I

t’s one of the oldest stories in the world: a young woman fi nds herself torn between two suitors—a poor but decent chap and a wealthy blowhard. This particular triangle, however, plays itself out in contemporary China, during the most tumultuous era of change in the country’s long history, and that allows writer/ director Jia Zhangke to make his ambitious new fi lm a very modern tale, indeed. But the telling contrast in Mountains May Depart lies less in the timeless versus the current moment than in gimlet-eyed takes on 21st-century Chinese travails versus two hours of soapy family melodrama.

Jia’s careful critique of China’s post-Mao boom, which defi ned previous efforts such as Platform, Still Life, and A Touch of Sin, continues here. You can’t miss it, in fact. The fi lm opens in 1999 with Tao (Zhao Tao) leading a community dance to a foreign pop tune—the Pet Shop Boys’ chipper disco hit “Go West.” Zhang (Zhang Yi) embodies the striving nature of the lyrics, and of much of China at the time, amassing businesses and cash and buying a car that he barely knows how to drive. His ambitions include making his platonic relationship with the lovely, guileless Tao into something more. But she seems content to hang out with stalwart Liangzi (Liang Jing Dong), whose affection for Tao is as obvious as his limited prospects.

Jia fi nds room for many wonderful character beats throughout, but especially with Zhang early on. He is such a blatant climber and bully that he should be utterly odious, but he’s so befuddled by his nouveau riche life.

He earns a laugh, and some sympathy,

when he not only pulls out his new cellphone to show off with a loud and pointless phone call, he pulls up the antenna, as if that ever did a thing.

But Zhang gets what he wants—including a male heir, whom he names “Dollar.”

At which point Jia jumps to 2014.

Tao leads a comfortable existence as an eminence in their provincial hometown, but she has lost everything else. Zhang has divorced her and moved to booming Shanghai with Dollar. Liangzi comes back into her life, but in a way that is sad for them both. In a moment of loss, she is reunited with Dollar, but he lives thousands of miles from his mother in more ways than one. It is the most subtle, and perhaps most successful, section of the fi lm.

The strengths of Mountains May Depart include the various ways through which Jia measures time. The puppy in one reel becomes the doddering old dog in another, just as the infant Dollar becomes the mercurial teen of the fi nal section. But these characters proceed around the same bend in the road time and again, brood and pop off on the banks of the same river, and live their lives under a towering historic pagoda that Jia fits into a shot every now and then. The contrast between what changes, and what doesn’t—a mother’s love, youthful confusion—animates the best of what Jia captures here.

But by the fi nal section of the story, set in Australia in 2025, Mountains May Depart has started to crumble under the combined stresses of its epic story, vaulting ambition, and directorial idiosyncrasies. Jia loves a telling symbol, and while some hit

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their mark (two women sharing a small, sad moment beneath a huge stone lion statue, a stand-in for China’s plus-size ambitions), others are puzzling (Tao witnessing a fiery plane crash on a lonely road). He muddles his tale of generational alienation and loss with an Oedipal May/December romance between Dollar (Dong Zijian) and his teacher (Sylvia Chang). It doesn’t help that neither Dong nor Chang are very good in their roles, and Zhang has to overcome maladroit cosmetic aging to make any impression as an aging tycoon-in-exile. There is much to admire about Mountains May Depart, but even with the plaintive soundtrack interludes plucking at every heartstring in reach, it’s tough to love. ◆

CLASSICAL TICKETS start at just $15

MARCH

BAIROS

Music Director candidate

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

Tonight & Tomorrow 7:30 p.m.

Tennessee Theatre Jacomo Rafael Bairos, conductor Elena Urioste, violin ADAMS: “The Chairman Dances” BARBER: Violin Concerto MUSSORGSKY/RAVEL: Pictures at an Exhibition Sponsored by Dalen Products & Bass Berry + Sims

APRIL

JARVI

Music Director candidate

WHAT

The Public Cinema: Mountains May Depart

WHERE

Knoxville Museum of Art (1050 World’s Fair Park Drive)

WHEN

Sunday, March 20, at 2 p.m.

DVORÁK CELLO CONCERTO

Thursday, April 14 • 7:30 p.m.

Friday, April 15 • 7:30 p.m.

Tennessee Theatre Steven Jarvi, conductor Susie Yang, cello A. SCHOENBERG: Finding Rothko DVORÁK: Cello Concerto ELGAR: Enigma Variations Sponsored by Partners

HOW MUCH Free

INFO

publiccinema.org

CALL: (865) 291-3310 CLICK: knoxvillesymphony.com VISIT: Monday-Friday, 9-5 March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 23

CALENDAR MUSIC

Thursday, March 17 ST. PADDY’S DAY ON MARKET SQUARE • Market Square • 5PM • Sevier County Celtic rockers Cutthroat Shamrock play for the very last time, ending a 13-year run of punked-up Scottish and Irish music. Ian Thomas the Band of Drifters and Amethyst Kiah and Her Chest of Glass open the show on the Market Square stage. • FREE THE ROYAL HOUNDS WITH FOUR LEAF PEAT • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE WARREN PINEDA AND JON MASON • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM SARAH CLAPP AND THE CATT MOKER TRIO • Bourbon Street Whiskey Bar • 6PM STOLEN RHODES • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 7PM • $5 FOUR LEAF PEAT • The Square Room • 8PM • Knoxville’s finest purveyors of traditional Irish music.

MR. ILL’S ST. PATTY’S DAY BIRFDAY BASH! • Star of Knoxville Riverboat • 8PM • Come celebrate Mr. ILL’s birthday and St. Patrick’s Day on the Star of Knoxville Riverboat with the Verns, Spaced Out and Vocci, with support by Earl Grae, Soultron, Secret City Cyphers and other surprise guests. • $15 THE YOUNG FABLES • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM THE JAG AND LASSO SPELLS WITH CREASE READER • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up.

RYAN SHELEY WITH JACK GRELLE AND RYAN KOENIG AND MATT WRIGHT • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM MOONSHINE BANDITS • Cotton Eyed Joe • 9PM • “California’s country hip-hop rebels.” 18 and up. • $10 GUY MARSHALL • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM • Guy Marshall’s main members, husband and wife Adam and Sarrenna McNulty, have been a staple in Knoxville’s Americana scene for the past five years. Armed with an infectious stage presence and an earnest arsenal of songs that touch on themes of whiskey and wallowing, the pair, backed by a rotating cast of musicians, have played gigs that range from providing a soundtrack to beer-soaked attendees of Knoxville’s Brewer’s Jam to securing a spot on the main stage of last year’s Rhythm N’ Blooms festival.

SAME AS IT EVER WAS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Knoxville’s best—and only—Talking Heads tribute band. • $5 THE BEARDED AND CLEARBRANCH • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE TENNESSEE SCHMALTZ • Scruffy City Hall • 6PM Friday, March 18 KELLE JOLLY WITH MIKE CULLISON • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE KIRK AND MEREDITH • Meksiko Cantina • 6PM • Acoustic Americana from two-thirds of the local trio Freequency.

KEVIN MCGUIRE • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM ALIVE AFTER FIVE: WOMEN IN JAZZ JAM FESTIVAL BAND STOMP • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6PM • A showcase of Knoxville’s finest jazz musicians and vocalists who also happen to be female in performance for the opening of the Women in Jazz Jam Festival. • $5-$10 JACK GRELLE AND RYAN KOENIG • Sugarlands Distilling Co. • 7PM • FREE 24

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

Thursday, March 17 - Sunday, March 27

MARC BROUSSARD • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • In 2004, Marc Broussard, then a precocious 22-year-old singer/ songwriter, released his major-label debut; he called it Carencro, after the Louisiana town where he was born and raised, and its thematic centerpiece was a hickory-smoked slab of Bayou soul called “Home.” That album and the three that followed revealed Broussard as an old-school Southern soul singer blessed with a rarefied gift and innate stylistic and emotional authenticity. • $23-$25 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE ZUZU WELSH • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up.

ANNANDALE WITH 3 QUARTERS DEAD AND AMONG THE BEASTS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM JAKE AND THE COMET CONDUCTORS WITH THE ROYAL BUZZ AND DUSTIN SELLERS • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM THE ROYAL HOUNDS • Preservation Pub • 9PM • 21 and up.

KEITH BROWN AND THE KB3 • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM SHIMMY AND THE BURNS WITH HANDSOME AND THE HUMBLES • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM KNOX COUNTY JUG STOMPERS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • The Knox County Jug Stompers come from all kinds of backgrounds—bluegrass, rock, acoustic blues, country music—but have settled on a more or less authentic reproduction of the jug music made popular throughout the South nearly a century ago by Gus Cannon and the Jug Stompers and other bands with similar names, like Clifford Hayes’ Old Southern Jug Band, the Dixieland Jug Blowers, and the Seven Gallon Jug Band. • FREE BLOOD, SWEAT, AND BASS TOUR 2016 • The Concourse • 10PM • Featuring Downlink, Dieselboy, Ede Gee, and Skinny B. 18 and up. • $15-$20 PROJECT WOLFPACK • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM WOMEN IN JAZZ JAM FESTIVAL • The Women in Jazz Jam Festival will uncover the stories of women in all aspects of the jazz genre, throughout the jazz community. Visit womeninjazzjamfestival.com for a complete schedule and information on venues and performers. • See story on page 22.

Saturday, March 19 LIZANNE KNOTT WITH JACK GRELLE AND MIKE KOENIG • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE ROCK AGAINST DEMENTIA • The Square Room • 3PM • World Rocks Against Dementia - Knoxville is coming together and will feature the Blair Experience, Cameron Sutphin and Clyde Fulmer, with a special guest appearance by Emily Roberts. • FREE KATY FREE • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM THE KELCY MAE TRIO • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up.

ERNIE HALTER WITH STONE BROKE SAINTS AND STEVEN SWICEGOOD • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Influenced by some of the legendary names of pop and soul, such as the Beatles, Elton John, Otis Redding, and Stevie Wonder, Californian Ernie Halter first began to make waves for himself with the release of his 2005 collection, Lo-Fidelity. All ages. • $12-$15 THE CHUCK MULLICAN JAZZ BONANZA • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE SWINGBOOTY • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM • Come join us for a night of gypsy swing, dancing, and fun. • $5 SUNSHINE STATION • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM • Bring your dancin’ shoes and hand drums and join trippy-hippy folk band Sunshine Station for a high energy

BANFF MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL WORLD TOUR Bijou Theatre (803 S. Gay St.) • Monday, March 21 • 7 p.m. • $15 • banffcentre.ca

If East Tennessee’s recent spring-like weather hasn’t inspired you to get outside and do some outdoorsy stuff—hike, run, walk, climb, bike, swim, paddle—then try this program of short films from the Banff Mountain Film Festival in Canada. Every year, the Banff Centre, a revered nonprofit arts institution in Alberta, Canada, stages a cinematic celebration of the outdoors, with dozens of documentaries about the outdoor life. The best of them are selected for the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, which hits dozens of cities around the world and showcases exhilarating footage of mountain climbers, surfers, explorers, scientists, and filmmakers in breathtaking landscapes. This year’s lineup includes short features on the American mustang, a trio of French explorers who paddled through the American West in 1938, and the treacherous first ascent of the Fitz Traverse in Patagonia, plus more than a dozen other short films. Inspiration guaranteed.

(Matthew Everett)

27

Q&A: Eric Larson

31

Spotlight: Mayuki Miyashita

CALENDAR show.

THE DAVID MAYFIELD PARADE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • David Mayfield may be one of the most original performers on the Americana scene. Known for his bombastic stage presence as much as his virtuosic guitar talent and songwriting prowess. • $5 THE MUCKERS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE DAVID AND VALERIE MAYFIELD • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM BROTHER MOSES WITH AMBROSE WAY • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

WOMEN IN JAZZ JAM FESTIVAL • The Women in Jazz Jam Festival will uncover the stories of women in all aspects of the jazz genre, throughout the jazz community. Visit womeninjazzjamfestival.com for a complete schedule and information on venues and performers. • See story on page 22.

Sunday, March 20 SHIFFLETT’S JAZZ BENEDICT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. • FREE THE LONETONES • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM THE ROAD TO ‘ROO BATTLE OF THE BANDS • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A band competition with the grand prize being a chance to play before tens of thousands of people at the Bonnaroo Music Festival this summer. Four bands will compete at Preservation Pub on March 8th followed by another four on March 13th and 20th, with the winners meeting on March 23rd to determine who gets the “Golden Ticket”. Come cheer them on.

WOMEN IN JAZZ JAM FESTIVAL • The Women in Jazz Jam Festival will uncover the stories of women in all aspects of the jazz genre, throughout the jazz community. Visit womeninjazzjamfestival.com for a complete schedule and information on venues and performers. • See story on page 22.

Monday, March 21 FORT DEFIANCE WITH JOSIAH AND THE GREATER GOOD • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE THE MATCHSELLERS • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • The Matchsellers is a bluegrass duo that began in the streets of former East Germany and now crisscrosses the US Interstate system year-round. • FREE DEAD SOLDIERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Dead Solders is an American Roots based band from Memphis Tennessee with influences ranging from Rock, Soul, outlaw country, to bluegrass and experimental music.

FORT DEFIANCE • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Tuesday, March 22 JULIE RHODES WITH SUGAR BLUE • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE KUKULY AND THE GYPSY FUEGO • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Numerous titles from the Fuego’s long and varied set list are associated with—or performed in the style of—the late Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt.

THE BARNYARD STOMPERS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Wednesday, March 23

LEWIS KNUDSEN WITH THE MAGGIE VALLEY BAND • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 6:30PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE THE HUNTER SMITH TRIO • The Bistro at the Bijou • 7PM • Live jazz. • FREE TENNESSEE SHINES: KEVIN GORDON • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • Hailed by The New York Times as “part Muddy Waters and part Carl Perkins,” erudite, swampy Southern songwriter Kevin Gordon will join us to perform songs from his new album, Long Gone Time. Gordon’s latest batch of songs groove and ramble like a stroll to and from your favorite juke joint. • $10 THE BARNYARD STOMPERS • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • Barnyard Stompers are a true C&W outfit from South Texas who combine the perfect mixture of Classic Country, Dirty Blues and Southern Rock along with their own unapologetic style to create some of the rawest, roughest, rowdiest Outlaw music ever heard. • FREE JOSIAH ATCHLEY AND THE GREATER GOOD • Preservation Pub • 10PM Thursday, March 24 TREVOR FINLAY WITH BELLE OF THE FALL • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE HAYLEY MCGINNIS AND STAN GIBERT • Bourbon Street Whiskey Bar • 6PM THE JOHN MYERS BAND • Scruffy City Hall • 6PM KARIKATURA • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • With bright horns, socially conscious lyrics and booty-bouncing beats, Karikatura delivers real songs that transcend style and genre. An organic synthesis of all the music heard blasting out of car windows and shops onto the streets of NYC, Karikatura lives where cumbia meets hip-hop, reggae meets klezmer and indie-rock meets afrobeat. • FREE KIP AND JERRY’S ROCKY ROAD SHOW • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM EMMA HERN • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up.

ABDU ALI WITH ELON AND DYLIJENS • The 1400 • 9PM • Erected from the ghettos of Baltimore, Abdu Ali raps, sings, and chats over unorthodox and future sounds, creating music that’s visceral, spiritual, and very real.

Unapologetically black and queer, Abdu Ali is bold, raw, and most importantly life-affirming. • $8 THE TREE TOPS WITH ORANGE CONSTANT AND BELLE OF THE FALL • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM THE APPLEBUTTER EXPRESS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM TRAE PIERCE • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Friday, March 25 HONEY AND HOUSTON WITH THE JON STICKLEY TRIO • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE ALIVE AFTER FIVE: MAC ARNOLD AND PLATE FULL O’ BLUES • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6PM • In late 1966, at age 24, Mac Arnold joined the Muddy Waters Band and helped shape the electric blues sound that inspired the rock and roll movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Mac now March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 25

CALENDAR resides in Pelzer, SC, where at the age of ten he got his first taste of the blues when he learned to play his brother Leroy’s home-made guitar.

THE ROYAL HOUNDS • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • Las Vegas headliners, The Royal Hounds, are a high energy roots rock n’ roll trio. • FREE DELTA RAE • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • It’s been a good few years for the relentlessly hard working six piece rock band from Durham, NC, whose sophomore album After It All will be coming out on April 7, 2015. Since the release of their debut album Carry The Fire in the summer of 2012 and 2013’s follow-up EP Chasing Twisters, Delta Rae has been profiled everywhere from NPR and Time to Forbes.

Live is where Delta Rae truly flourish, having spent the last year and a half playing to sold out venues from coast to coast. They’ve played pretty much every festival under the sun, including Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits and Voodoo, and are excited to be hitting the road again this spring. • $18 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE FREEQUENCY • Cru Bistro and Wine Bar • 8PM • Acoustic Americana.

BILL AND THE BELLES • Laurel Theater • 8PM • With striking three-part harmonies and masterful instrumentation, Bill and the Belles skillfully present the sounds of early country music. • $13 VALLIE NOLES • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Local singer/songwriter. All ages. • $5-$8 PAMELA KILCKA • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz.

Thursday, March 17 - Sunday, March 27

• FREE THE VIBRASLAPS WITH 40 OZ. BURRITO • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM THE JON STRICKLY TRIO • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE MOJO: FLOW • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM MAYHEM WITH DJ SCREAM, LIQUID FISHERMEN, AND LIQUID METAL • The International • 10PM • Chart topping, dance floor rocking, and taste making come naturally to Atlanta based DJ and Producer Mayhem. With over 15 years in the studio and the decks, he has garnished the attention of the heavyweights in every genre of his focus. Rooted heavily in Drum & Bass music, and with a discerning ear, Mayhem found himself making big moves from an early age. 18 and up. • $10 AFTAH PARTY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz, rock and poetry combine when Aftah Party hits the stage with an eclectic sound that can’t be matched. This 10-piece band, with three-piece horn section, has set out on a mission to combine their wide range of musical experiences and influences into a single dynamic and soulful experience for audiences. • $5 THE CHARLES WALKER BAND • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Saturday, March 26 BIJOU JUBILEE! 2016 FEATURING DREW HOLCOMB • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Some artists are able to articulate a vision at the very beginning of their career, while others hone their craft over time, growing into their vision as

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

they mature. “I am definitely in the latter category,” explains Drew Holcomb, a Tennessee-born, duck hunting, bourbon drinking, 1st edition book collecting, golf playing Eagle Scout with a Masters degree in Divinity from Scotland’s University of St Andrews who has spent the better part of the past decade as a professional musician – recording, writing, and touring with his band Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors. • $30-$115 BRIT LA PALM AND THE BARREL FEVER WITH ASHLEY MARTIN • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE HONEY AND HOUSTON • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • An original Americana quartet that blends country and blues influences with sweet “sister” harmonies and a little taste of gypsy on the side. • FREE DRY BRANCH FIRE SQUAD • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Celebrating their 40th year in music in 2016, Dry Branch Fire Squad plays aggressively traditionalbluegrass music like no other band in the realm today. • $13 EMI SUNSHINE WITH PALE ROOT • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • With a family musical lineage that goes back three generations, its no surprise that EmiSunshine is a natural performer. All ages. • $12-$15 SIRSY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up.

THE MARK BOLING TRIO • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE STONECUTTERS WITH BASK, REALM, AND MOUNTAIN KING • The Concourse • 9PM • Stonecutters is led by Vocalist/ Guitarist Brian Omer a veteran in the Louisville Metal &

Hardcore scene. Playing with Louisville natives My Own Victim who issued four albums out on Century Media and did several tours across Europe and United States. From the ashes of MOV Brian Omer put together Stonecutters with 3 other like minded musicians, which illustrates punishing, brutal, beautiful, soothing, and primal music for these uncertain and turbulent times. With influences ranging from Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Death, Neurosis, Motorhead, Sick Of It All & early Metallica; Stonecutters illustrates a mixture of these influences all rolled up into a very unique format. 18 and up. • $10-$12 CUMBERLAND STATION WITH LAUREL WRIGHT • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM SMOOTH SAILOR • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Smooth Sailor charts a course for pure listening pleasure… Presenting timeless 70s and 80s “yacht rock” at its finest. All aboard! • $5 THE NAUGHTY KNOTS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE STEF CHURA • Pilot Light • 10PM • Hailing from Alpena (MI) but eventually wandering downstate, Stef Chura began writing songs in high school before diving into the world of basement shows, dive bars and DIY touring. Though she’s been involved in various bands, when presenting her own songs (solo or backed by friends) Stef’s music is by turns foggy and obtuse or emotionally blunt, heavy lines delivered in a sweet mumble or a softly sinister howl. (Fred Thomas) THE NEW SCHEMATICS WITH SHINY PENNY AND GRADY MILLIGAN • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT AND THE NIGHT SHIFT • Preservation

CALENDAR A Long, Contorted Story Jack Neely talks with Erik Larson, who has turned long-form narrative nonfiction into a best-selling genre

BY JACK NEELY

E

rik Larson is one of the best-selling nonfiction authors of the last 20 years. The writer of several long, novel-like books of footnoted history— notably The Devil in the White City, about the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and a bizarre series of murders on its fringes—he has become known for the “dual narrative,” telling a story from two or more points of view. He employs that method in Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, which tells the story of both the passengers and crew of that doomed British ocean liner sunk by a German U-boat’s torpedo in May 1915, killing almost 1,200. But he also tells personal stories, previously little known, about the German U-boat captain and crew that sank the ship. A Pennsylvania native who now lives in Brooklyn, Larson has visited Knoxville before—his close friend Penny Simon, who assists as his publicist, lives here—but this is his first local speaking engagement.

How did you start writing history?

It’s a long, contorted story. I always wanted to write, like I always wanted to do a lot of different things—be a cop, a lawyer, or prosecutor. After college, I worked for a publishing company, so I was close to writing, and I saw the movie All the President’s Men, like a lot of people of my generation, and it inspired me. I applied to Columbia University’s journalism school and got in. I made a lucky leap to The Wall Street Journal.

That evolved into writing longer and longer magazine pieces for The Atlantic and The New Yorker. And I started thinking, I’m doing as much work on a single magazine piece as I would be if I were writing a book.

Do these popular works of long narrative historical nonfiction constitute a new genre?

A lot of people call it a new genre. A lot of people call it a new genre that I

started, but of course I didn’t. David McCullough was doing it long before I was. I read his fi rst book, Johnstown Flood, and it inspired me. There’s Barbara Tuchman and David Halberstam, and you can go back to Walter Lord, who wrote A Night to Remember, about the Titanic, in the ’50s.

How many liberties can you take in imagining scenes and conversations in the past?

I don’t think you can take liberties. …

In my work, anything that appears in quote is something that came from a historical document. I know there are those who do try to imagine dialogue.

But I don’t think you can do that and stay in the realm of nonfiction.

Several of your books relate stories from the late 1890s and early 1900s. Do you have a favorite era?

The decades on either side of 1900 I do find deeply compelling. It was a time when people really did think differently about themselves and their country and history. The people feel they can do anything. To mount a world’s fair in a year—by today’s standards, that would be unfathomable. That kind of belief can lead to disappointment and tragedy.

How do you feel about the future of print?

The future of print is good. People have been calling the book “dead” for a long time, but things seem to have stabilized.

Maybe as much as 50 percent read my books on Kindle, but my publisher had a banner year last year. And bookstores are experiencing kind of a resurgence.

What’s your next book?

I don’t kiss and tell. I’m working on something, but I’m still not convinced it will work.

There are other books about the Lusitania. Why write another?

I’ve always loved maritime history, and I think readers love maritime history. When I found the archives at Hoover Library at Stanford University, what I realized very quickly was that I thought we could bring something new to the party. This archive has such fi ne-grained detail. [He adds that several previous histories are based on “vastly and deeply” distorted scholarship.]

Erik Larson

One of the things people talk about in Dead Wake is the intimate descriptions of the German submarine known as U-20.

Bijou Theatre (803 S. Gay St.)

I don’t believe in unalloyed heroes, and ordinary villains have some redeeming side. The sub commander was just doing his job. People had known about the submarine commander’s log, memoirs, reports of interrogations, but nobody had used it to chart the routes, show how exactly the U-20 and the Lusitania came into the same area. If you can cut from one to the other, and you know one’s going to sink the other, that’s suspense.

WHO

WHERE

WHEN

Tuesday, March 22, at 7 p.m.

HOW MUCH $21

INFO

knoxfriends.org

March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 27

CALENDAR Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Sunday, March 27 SHIFFLETT’S JAZZ BENEDICT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. • FREE THE BROCKEFELLERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM UNIVERSAL SIGH WITH KRISTEN FORD • Preservation Pub • 10PM

OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS

Thursday, March 17 IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the first and third Thursdays of each month. • FREE

Thursday, March 17 - Sunday, March 27

Wednesday, March 23 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OLD-TIME JAM • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Regular speed old-time/fiddle jam every Wednesday from 7-9 p.m. at the Time Warp Tea Room. All instruments and skill levels welcome.

BRACKINS BLUES JAM • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM • A weekly open session hosted by Tommie John. • FREE Thursday, March 24 SCOTTISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month.

• FREE SECRET CITY CYPHERS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Who’s ready to get their art out to the world? This is Knoxville’s premier Open Mic-style event that allows mcs, poets, singers, musicians, dancers, comedians, visual artists, and others to not only have a place to showcase their talent, but a place to network with other artists, and build their fan base. • $5

Saturday, March 19 OLD-TIME SLOW JAM • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 4PM • A monthly old-time music session, held on the third Saturday of each month. • FREE

Friday, March 25 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OPEN SONGWRITER NIGHT • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Songwriter Night at Time Warp Tea Room runs on the second and fourth Friday of every month. • FREE

Tuesday, March 22 OLD-TIME JAM SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Hosted by Sarah Pickle. • FREE PRESERVATION PUB SINGER/SONGWRITER NIGHT • Preservation Pub • 7 p.m. • 21 and up. • FREE

DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS

Saturday, March 19 TEMPLE DANCE NIGHT • The Concourse • 9PM • Knoxville’s long-running alternative dance night. With DJ Darkness, Sir Diddimus, and DJ Fallen. 18 and up. • $5

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Thursday, March 17 KSO MASTERWORKS SERIES: PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • March presents a dance-like and whimsical program beginning with John Adams’ The Chairman Dances or “Foxtrot for Orchestra.”

The program also includes Barber’s Violin Concerto, Op. 14 featuring a return performance by Elena Urioste and concludes with Maurice Ravel’s arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite in 10 parts composed in memory of Mussorgsky’s friend and fellow artist Viktor Hartmann. • $15-$89 Friday, March 18 KSO MASTERWORKS SERIES: PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • March presents a dance-like and whimsical program beginning with John Adams’ The Chairman Dances or “Foxtrot for Orchestra.”

The program also includes Barber’s Violin Concerto, Op. 14 featuring a return performance by Elena Urioste and concludes with Maurice Ravel’s arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite in 10 parts composed in memory of Mussorgsky’s friend and fellow artist Viktor Hartmann. • $15-$89

C e n t e n n i a l

FLORENCE THE MACHINE

O l y m p i c

P a r k

Sunday, March 20 THE EVELYN MILLER YOUNG PIANIST SERIES • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 2:30PM • Join us in our 36th season for a series of three recitals by three internationally acclaimed pianists: Josh Wright (Feb. 21), Mayuki Miyashita (March 20) and Jiayan Sun (April 24).

Programs include classic and contemporary offerings for all audiences, from Bach and Beethoven to Chopin and Rorem. • $25 • See Spotlight on page 31.

THEATER AND DANCE

Thursday, March 17 TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY: ‘THE CAST LIST’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • TSC closes its annual New Play Festival with a world premiere of Gayle Greene’s play about a director’s worst nightmare. March 4-20. Visit tennesseestage.com. • $15 HEAD OVER HILLS’ • Knoxville Civic Auditorium • 8PM • In this comical journey to find love, a beautiful young professional falls for a smooth talking bad boy and soon learns there is more to being in love than just chemistry.

• $45.50-$51.50 Friday, March 18 TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY: ‘THE CAST LIST’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • March 4-20. Visit tennesseestage.com. • $15 ENCORE THEATRICAL COMPANY: ‘SPAMALOT’ • Walters State Community College (Morristown) • 8PM • Lovingly

&

I n t e r n a t i o n a l

MY MORNING JACKET

P l a z a

JANE’S ADDICTION (PERFORMING RITUAL DE LO HABITUAL)

AT THE DRIVE-IN · THE 1975 · DEFTONES · WALK THE MOON

THE DECEMBERISTS · YOUNG THE GIANT · THE HEAD AND THE HEART HUEY LEWIS NEWS ( ) · FOALS · SILVERSUN PICKUPS BLOC PARTY · THE KILLS · EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY S T. PA U L & T H E B R O K E N B O N E S · C O L D WA R K I D S · G H O S T SLOWDIVE · PHOSPHORESCENT · SHAKEY GRAVES · HOUNDMOUTH T H E B L A C K A N G E L S · S AVA G E S · AT L A S G E N I U S · D E E R T I C K AGAINST ME! · THE SWORD · EAGLES OF DEATH METAL · BARONESS CRYSTAL FIGHTERS · JJ GREY & MOFRO · FRIGHTENED RABBIT WOLF ALICE · PARQUET COURTS · BRIAN FALLON · THE STRUTS WILD NOTHING · THE FRONT BOTTOMS · UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA DREW HOLCOMB NEIGHBORS · THE DEAR HUNTER · THE VACCINES MURDER BY DEATH · THE ORWELLS · NOAH GUNDERSEN · STRAND OF OAKS HOP ALONG · LANY · KALEO · FOXING · SAINTSENECA · SON LITTLE JULIEN BAKER · COIN · OUGHT · DAY WAVE · ALL THEM WITCHES CAVEMAN · BEACH SLANG · DAVID RAMIREZ · JULY TALK · NOTHING CRAIG FINN · DIET CIG · MATT VASQUEZ · ALEX G · BARNS COURTNEY THE HIP ABDUCTION · POLYENSO · TWIN LIMB · ADIA VICTORIA THE SHELTERS · THE JAPANESE HOUSE · BASKERY

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

CALENDAR ripped off from the motion picture, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, Spamalot is the outrageous musical comedy that tells the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as they embark on their quest for the Holy Grail. Rude Frenchmen, cancan dancers, the Lady of the Lake and her Laker Girls, Killer rabbits, catapulting cows, and the somewhat odd Knights who say “ni” are just part of the adventures and dangers awaiting King Arthur and his knights. • $12-$22 Saturday, March 19 TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY: ‘THE CAST LIST’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • March 4-20. Visit tennesseestage.com. • $15 ENCORE THEATRICAL COMPANY: ‘SPAMALOT’ • Walters State Community College • 8PM • March 11-20. • $12-$22 Sunday, March 20 TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY: ‘THE CAST LIST’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • March 4-20. Visit tennesseestage.com. • $15 ENCORE THEATRICAL COMPANY: ‘SPAMALOT’ • Walters State Community College • 2PM • March 11-20. • $12-$22

COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD

Thursday, Feb. 17 THIRD THURSDAY COMEDY OPEN MIC • Big Fatty’s Catering Kitchen • 7:30PM • We will showcase local and touring talent in a curated open mic of 6 to 8 comics. The event starts at 7:30, and there is no charge for admission. • FREE Friday, March 18 THE FIFTH WOMAN POETRY SLAM • The Birdhouse • 6:30PM • The 5th Woman Poetry slam is place where all poets can come and share their words of love, respect, passion, and expression. It is not dedicated solely women but is a place where women poets are celebrated and honored. Check out our Facebook pages for the challenge of the month and focus for our poetry every month.

SMOKY MOUNTAIN STORYTELLERS WORLD STORYTELLING DAY • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 7PM • Visit www. smokymountaintellers.org.

Sunday, March 20 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

Monday, March 21 QED COMEDY LABORATORY • Pilot Light • 7:30PM • QED ComedyLaboratory is a weekly show with different theme every week that combines stand-up, improv, sketch, music and other types of performance and features some of the funniest people in Knoxville and parts unknown. • FREE Tuesday, March 22 OPEN MIC STAND-UP COMEDY • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM • Come laugh until you cry at the Longbranch every Tuesday night. Doors open at 8:30, first comic at 9. No cover charge, all are welcome. Aspiring or experienced comics interested in joining in the fun email us at longbranch.info@gmail.com to learn more, or simply come to the show a few minutes early. • FREE EINSTEIN SIMPLIFIED • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM • Einstein Simplified Comedy performs live comedy improv at Scruffy City Hall. It’s just like Whose Line Is It Anyway, but you get to make the suggestions. Show starts at 8:15,

get there early for the best seats. No cover. • FREE Wednesday, March 23 FULL DISCLOSURE COMEDY • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Knoxville’s long-form comedy improv group.

CALEB SYNAN • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM • Caleb Synan (Last Comic Standing, Conan) returns to Knoxville for one night of hilarity at Scruffy City Hall. Also performing are local favorites Tyler Sonnichsen and Jeff Blank. • FREE Sunday, March 27 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

FESTIVALS

Thursday, March 17 ST. PADDY’S DAY ON MARKET SQUARE • Market Square • 5PM • Sevier County Celtic rockers Cutthroat Shamrock play for the very last time, ending a 13-year run of punked-up Scottish and Irish music. Ian Thomas the Band of Drifters and Amethyst Kiah and Her Chest of Glass open the show on the Market Square stage. • FREE Friday, March 18 WOMEN IN JAZZ JAM FESTIVAL • The Women in Jazz Jam Festival will uncover the stories of women in all aspects of the jazz genre, throughout the jazz community. Visit womeninjazzjamfestival.com for a complete schedule and information on venues and performers. • See story on page 22.

Saturday, March 19 ETTAC: A NIGHT IN OLD HAVANA FUNDRAISER • Lighthouse Knoxville • 6:30PM • The East Tennessee Technology Access Center will hold their 5th annual “A Night in Old Havana” fundraising event at the Lighthouse Knoxville.

Tickets will include a dance showcase by Dance Tonight dance studio and an authentic Cuban dinner. Poker, a silent auction, a cigar and high spirits bar and more are available for purchase or donation. The March Madness game will be broadcast at this event. Proceeds will benefit people with disabilities in East Tennessee. • $25 EAST TENNESSEE KIDNEY FOUNDATION LUCKY KIDNEY RUN AND IRISH FESTIVAL • Market Square • 10AM • The 5th annual 6K run and 6K/2K walk start from Market Square, progressing from downtown to the Fourth and Gill neighborhood and back. Registration is now open at http://www.etkidney.org and costs $35 through March 9 and $40 thereafter. New for 2016 is the Irish Festival, which is 10 a.m.-3 p.m. in Market Square. Festival admission is free; tickets for children’s entertainment are available online during race registration or at the event. • FREE-$40 MARBLE SPRINGS ARBOR DAY CELEBRATION • Marble Springs State Historic Site • 1PM • In recognition of Arbor Day, Marble Springs will be having an Arbor Day celebration on March 19th from 1pm until 5pm. This event is free. Donations are appreciated with all proceeds going towards educational programing at Marble Springs. For more information please visit our website at www. marblesprings.net, call (865) 573-5508, or email info@ marblesprings.net. • FREE WOMEN IN JAZZ JAM FESTIVAL • The Women in Jazz Jam Festival will uncover the stories of women in all aspects of the jazz genre, throughout the jazz community. Visit womeninjazzjamfestival.com for a complete schedule and information on venues and performers. • See story on page 22.

March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 29

CALENDAR Sunday, March 20 WOMEN IN JAZZ JAM FESTIVAL • The Women in Jazz Jam Festival will uncover the stories of women in all aspects of the jazz genre, throughout the jazz community. Visit womeninjazzjamfestival.com for a complete schedule and information on venues and performers. • See story on page 22.

Saturday, March 26 TENNESSEE VALLEY CAT FANCIERS ASSOCIATION CAT SHOW • Chilhowee Park • 9AM • Knoxville will be the cat’s meow once again this spring. This event is a springtime celebration of pedigree and non-pedigree cats and aims to provide the cat lovers the chance to see over 40 feline breeds at the Jacob Building at Chilhowee Park. Tickets can be purchased at the door for $4 (seniors and students) or $6 (adults). • $6

FILM SCREENINGS

Friday, March 18 CRESTHILL CINEMA CLUB: ‘THE STRIPPER’ • Windover Apartments • 7:30PM • Topping our March bill will be The Stripper (1963), in which Joanne Woodward finds herself getting kicked in the face by life. Based on A Loss of Roses, the 1959 Broadway play by William Inge, The Stripper afforded the incomparable Joanne one of her very best roles. Woodward plays Lila Green, a vulnerable, aging showgirl who returns to her Kansas hometown after being abandoned by a brutal boyfriend and dumped

Thursday, March 17 - Sunday, March 27

by a second-rate theatrical act. Our location: The spacious clubhouse of the Windover Apartments. • FREE Sunday, March 20 PUBLIC CINEMA: ‘MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART’ • Knoxville Museum of Art • 2PM • The new film from Mainland master Jia Zhang-ke jumps from the recent past to the speculative near-future as it examines how China’s economic boom has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love. Visit publiccinema.org. • FREE • See review on page 23.

Monday, March 21 THE BIRDHOUSE WALK-IN THEATER • The Birdhouse • 8:15PM • A weekly free movie screening. • FREE BANFF MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL WORLD TOUR • Bijou Theatre • 7PM • This year’s World Tour features the best mountain films this year, showcasing amazing filmmaking talent from the world over to an audience that spans the globe. The 2015/2016 World Tour features a collection of exhilarating and provocative films that explore life in the mountains. They highlight remote cultures, intense expeditions into exotic landscapes and bring adrenaline-packed action sports into sharp focus. • $15 • See Spotlight on page 24.

Wednesday, March 23 SCRUFFY CITY CINEPUB • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM • A weekly program of movie screenings from the Scruffy City Film and Music Festival, Knoxville Horror Film Festival, and more.

SPORTS AND RECREATION

Thursday, March 17 CYCOLOGY BICYCLES THURSDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology Bicycles • 10AM • FREE FLEET FEET GROUP RUN/WALK • Fleet Feet Sports Knoxville • 6PM • All levels welcome. • FREE NORTH KNOXVILLE BEER RUNNERS • Central Flats and Taps • 6PM • Meet us at Central Flats and Taps every Thursday night for a fun and easy run leading us right through Saw Works for a midway beer! • FREE RIVER SPORTS THURSDAY EVENING GREENWAY BIKE RIDE • River Sports Outfitters • 6PM • FREE KNOXVILLE BICYCLE COMPANY THURSDAY GRAVEL GRINDER • North Boundary Trails • 6:30PM CEDAR BLUFF CYCLES THURSDAY GREENWAY RIDE • Cedar Bluff Cycles • 6:30PM • FREE Friday, March 18 RIVER SPORTS FRIDAY NIGHT GREENWAY RUN • River Sports Outfitters • 6PM • Greenway run from the store every Friday evening from 6-7:30 pm. Work up a thirst then join us for $2 Pints in the store afterwards. http:// www.riversportsoutfitters.com/events/ • FREE Saturday, March 19 EAST TENNESSEE KIDNEY FOUNDATION LUCKY KIDNEY RUN AND IRISH FESTIVAL • Market Square • 10AM • The 5th annual 6K run and 6K/2K walk start from Market Square

at 10 a.m., progressing from downtown to the Fourth and Gill neighborhood and back. Registration is now open at http://www.etkidney.org and costs $35 through March 9 and $40 thereafter. New for 2016 is the Irish Festival, which is 10 a.m.-3 p.m. in Market Square. The event will feature live music, dancing and vendor booths, and kids will enjoy large inflatables and midway games. Clancy’s Tavern and Whiskey House will be selling green beer and Guinness. Festival admission is free; tickets for children’s entertainment are available online during race registration or at the event. • FREE-$40 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: BLACK MOUNTAIN • 9AM • Black Mountain is located in Cumberland County on the Grassy Cove Segment of the Cumberland Trail State Park.

Traversing Black Mountain offers the hiker an unspoiled view of Grassy Cove, a limestone sink, and of the surrounding mountains. The hike will be about 3 miles long and is rated intermediate (steep but short distance).

We will meet at the closed Huddle House restaurant at the north side of I-40 exit 356, at 9:00 AM. Leaders: Pete Berntsen, peteberntsen@gmail.com, and Billy Heaton, bheaton8@yahoo.com. • FREE Sunday, March 20 KNOXVILLE HARDCOURT BIKE POLO • Sam Duff Memorial Park • 1PM • Don’t know how to play? Just bring your bike — we have mallets to share and will teach you the game.

• FREE Monday, March 21 KTC GROUP RUN • Mellow Mushroom • 6PM • Visit ktc.org.

• FREE

SUPPORTS INDEPENDENT LOCAL JOURNALISM! 30

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

CALENDAR BEARDEN BEER MARKET FUN RUN • Bearden Beer Market • 6:30PM • Visit beardenbeermarket.com. • FREE Tuesday, March 22 CYTOLOGY BICYCLES TUESDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology Bicycles • 10:30AM • cycologybicycles.com. • FREE HARD KNOX TUESDAY FUN RUN • Hard Knox Pizzeria • 6:30PM • Join Hard Knox Pizzeria every Tuesday evening (rain or shine) for a 2-3 mile fun run. Burn calories. Devour pizza.

Quench thirst. Follow us on Facebook. • FREE CEDAR BLUFF CYCLES TUESDAY GREENWAY RIDE • Cedar Bluff Cycles • 6:30PM • cedarbluffcycles.net. • FREE Wednesday, March 23 KTC GROUP RUN • Runner’s Market • 5:30PM • Visit ktc.org.

• FREE FOUNTAIN CITY PEDALERS SHARPS RIDGE MOUNTAIN BIKE RIDE • Fountain City Pedaler • 6PM • Visit fcpedaler.com. • FREE SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: TRILLIUM GAP TRAIL • Smoky Mountain Hiking Club • #N/A • This hike will take the Trillium Gap Trail from the Rainbow Falls Trailhead to Brushy Mountain, and return. Hike: 10.4 miles, rated moderate. Meet at Alcoa Food City (121 North Hall Road) at 8:00 AM or at the Sugarlands Visitor Center at 8:45 AM. Leader: Ray Fuehrer, Ray.fuehrer@yahoo.com • FREE

Lloyd Branson 1853-1925 Emporium Center for Arts and Culture 100 S. Gay St. MARCH 4-25: Artwork by Melanie Reid; Three Views of Reality, new paintings by Brandon Douglas, Catherine Haverkamp, and Seth Haverkamp; artwork by the Knoxville Watercolor Society; and new paintings by Bobbie Crews and Judie Gaston.

Ewing Gallery 1715 Volunteer Blvd.

FEB. 29-MARCH 21: UT Student Art Competition.

Knoxville Museum of Art 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive JAN. 29-APRIL 17: Knoxville Seven, an exhibit of artwork by an influential group of Knoxville artists from the

1950s and ’60s, including Buck Ewing, Carl Sublett, and more. ONGOING: Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in Tennessee; Currents: Recent Art From East Tennessee and Beyond; and Facets of Modern and Contemporary Glass.

Liz-Beth and Co. 7240 Kingston Pike MARCH 18-APRIL 16: Spring Blooms, featuring work by Jeanne Leemon, Ursula Brenner, Jose Luis Nunez, Bill Cook Jr., Dan Miller, and Louise Ragle.

McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture 1327 Circle Park Drive JAN. 23-MAY 22: Maya: Lords of Time. ONGOING: The Flora and Fauna of Catesby, Mason, and Audubon and Life on the Roman Frontier.

ART

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts 556 Parkway (Gatlinburg) MARCH 19-MAY 14: Not to Scale, artwork by Arrowmont artists in residence Charlie Ryland, Drew Davis Johnson, Julia Gartrell, Sarah Rachel Brown, and Skye Livingston.

Art Market Gallery 422 S. Gay St. MARCH 1-27: Artwork by Lynda Best and Ron Smith.

Bliss Home 24 Market Square MARCH 4-31: Artwork by Lindsey Teague.

Broadway Studios and Gallery 1127 Broadway MARCH 4-27: Peep Show!, featuring figure work by local artists.

Central Collective 923 N. Central St. MARCH 4-29: Just Blousing, new paintings by Beth Meadows.

Clayton Center for the Arts 502 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway MARCH 1-25: Peace Is Patriotic: A Soldier’s (mis) Remembrances, new works by Mark Runge (a reception will be held on Friday, March 25, from 6-8 p.m.) and A Phrenology Study of a Mad Man by Mark Hall (a reception will be held on Monday, March 21, from 4-6 p.m.).

Downtown Gallery 106 S. Gay St. MARCH 4-26: Artwork by Allison Berkoy and Jonathan Lukens.

East Tennessee History Museum 601 S. Gay St. THROUGH MARCH 20: Celebrating a Life in Tennessee Art:

EVELYN MILLER YOUNG PIANIST SERIES: MAYUKI MIYASHITA UT Natalie L. Haslam Music Center (1741 Volunteer Boulevard) • Sunday, March 20 • 2:30 p.m. • $25 • youngpianistseries.com

In the music world, the definition of youth becomes hazy. For example, the Evelyn Miller Young Pianist Series has an age limit of 35, leaving quite a bit of territory for those pianists with the potential for international careers. In practice, though, most of the YPS performers are somewhere in their 20s.

On the other hand, there is no question that the pianist in this weekend’s second of three YPS recitals represents youth. At 16, Mayuki Miyashita has already made a reputation for herself with a number of prizes from national and international piano competitions and has made an appearance on National Public Radio’s From the Top. In 2012, she won the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12.

Miyashita was born in Hakodate, Japan, and spent her early childhood in the city of Hamamatsu, where she studied at Yamaha Music Hamamatsu. In 2011, she moved with her family to Maryville when her father’s work with the motor division of Yamaha brought him to the area. Since then, she has been a student of David Northington at the University of Tennessee School of Music.

Her program on Sunday afternoon covers a wide range of composers and styles, from the J.S. Bach Prelude and Fugue No. 20 in A minor to some Chopin ballades and waltzes to Toccata by contemporary American composer Ned Rorem. Listeners can also look forward to a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op. 53, No. 21, the “Waldstein” sonata.

Word has it that Miyashita and her family will be returning to Japan in May, so audiences should take this opportunity to see and hear this remarkable young pianist. (Alan Sherrod)

March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 31

CALENDAR Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church 2931 Kingston Pike FEB. 12-MARCH 30: Artwork by Heather Hartman and Jessica Payne.

LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS

Thursday, March 17 NIKKI GIOVANNI • Pellissippi State Community College (Magnolia Avenue Campus) • 6PM • Magnolia’s Beyond the Common Book Club presents Women’s History Month Guest Speaker, Ms. Nikki Giovanni, writer, poet, activist and educator. Featured Literature: ON MY JOURNEY NOW, an assortment of African American songs passed down from a people who used these songs as a means to escape the harsh life of injustice and slavery. Giovanni uses these songs to tell their story. • FREE Sunday, March 20 CIVIL WAR LECTURE SERIES: “MERCHANTS, MANUFACTURERS, AND FINANCIERS: SHOW US THE MONEY” • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 2PM • The McClung Museum’s 6th annual Civil War Lecture series is titled “An All-American City Endures: Knoxvillians at War 1860-1865,” and will examine Knoxville families before, during, and after the upheaval of war. • FREE Monday, March 21

Thursday, March 17 - Sunday, March 27

UT HUMANITIES CENTER VISITING SCHOLAR LECTURE SERIES • University of Tennessee • 3:30PM • UT Humanities Center visiting scholar lectures are Kenneth Pomeranz, University Professor of History, University of Chicago, “Late Imperial Legacies: Land, Water and Long-Run Economic Development in China” (March 21); Helmut Reimitz, professor of history, Princeton University, “On the Use and Abuse of the Roman Past in the Early Medieval West” (March 28); John Bryant, professor of English, Hofstra University, “Big Data, Small Data: Melville and the Humanities as Fluid Texts” (April 7); Barbara Savage, Geraldine Segal Professor of American Social Thought, Department of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania, “Merze Tate: Cosmopolitan Woman, Diplomatic Historian, World Traveler” (April 18). • FREE Tuesday, March 22 ERIK LARSON • Bijou Theatre • 7PM • Larson will discuss his latest book, Dead Wake, which once again brings a past event alive—this time, the last crossing of the Lusitania.

Reserved-seat tickets for the author event are $21 and will be available to the public on February 8 through knoxbijou. com, the Tennessee Theatre Box Office or by calling (865) 684-1200 (Ext. 2). For more information, please visit knoxfriends.org/erik-larson. • $21 • See Q&A on page 27.

Wednesday, March 23 REI SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK PRESENTATION • REI • 7PM • Have you ever been to Sequoia National Park? Interested in learning about it? Come join one of our Green Vests explore his photography collection of Sequoia after his National Park adventure. Visit rei.com/stores/knoxville. • FREE

Listening to WUTK can give you

FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS

Friday, March 18 DISNEY LIVE: MICKEY AND MINNIE’S DOORWAY TO MAGIC • Knoxville Civic Auditorium • 2:30PM • Join Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and the comical duo of Donald and Goofy as 25 of your favorite characters surprise and captivate at every turn of the knob. See the Fairy Godmother transform Cinderella’s rags into a beautiful ball gown in a split second; the Toy Story gang defy the dimensions of Andy’s toy box with the help of the green army men; and the spectacular stage debut of Rapunzel and Flynn Rider as they rise into the sky amidst the floating lanterns.

With special appearances by Snow White, Tinker Bell and Aladdin’s Genie, you never know what to expect or who might join in the fun. In Disney Live! Mickey and Minnie’s Doorway to Magic you hold the ultimate key to unlocking your imagination. • $21-$51 Saturday, March 19 MARBLE SPRINGS ARBOR DAY CELEBRATION • Marble Springs State Historic Site • 1PM • The arboretum will be open for self-guided tours throughout the event as well as guided tours happening on the hour. Stock Creek Task Force Education Committee will also be present with children’s activities and information on water quality in our community. This event is free. Donations are appreciated with all proceeds going towards educational

Mo y & Me!

www.shakykneesfestival.com

REGISTER NOW THROUGH APRIL 13

at HARD KNOX PIZZERIA in The Western Plaza Shopping Center for a chance to win a pair of weekend passes to

SHAKY KNEES 2016 MAY 13-15!

Stay tuned to WUTK and Follow our social media for more chances to qualify.

Grand prize drawing is APRIL 15

Swimming classes for small children.

Contact Jackie at 865-207-7297 for more information.

during a live remote broadcast between 3-5 pm.

From Knoxville’s Festival Hook-up, WUTK 90.3 The Rock!

Dive with us in Bonaire July 10-17!

Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

On the Air and Streaming 24.7.365 @ WUTKRADIO.COM or listen on your 32

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

smart phone and iPad app.

2543 SUTHERLAND AVE. 865-523-9177 • dive@skiscuba.com

programing at Marble Springs. For more information please visit our website at www.marblesprings.net, call (865) 573-5508, or email info@marblesprings.net. • FREE KTC WINTER YOUTH GREENWAY SERIES • Tyson Park • 8AM • Races from a half-mile to a mile for kids 12 and under.

Visit ktc.org. • $10-$25 Tuesday, March 22 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: AUDITIONS FOR ‘SNOW WHITE AND ROSE RED’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 4:30PM • Knoxville Children’s Theatre (KCT) will hold auditions for the upcoming stage production of KCT’s newest original play: Snow White And Rose Red, a mashup of two well-known fairy tales by The Brothers Grimm, as well as a satire of some familiar 1980’s movie moments. Auditions are by appointment only. Teenagers are needed, as are younger actors from 9 to 12. There are large roles for males and females. The minimum age to audition is 9 years old, and the maximum age is 18.

Rehearsals will begin on or around Monday, March 28, continuing through Thursday, May 5. Actors must also be available for all 14 regular performances: May 6 - 22, Thursdays through Sundays. To make an audition appointment: Send an email to Dennis Perkins at dennis@childrenstheatreknoxville.com. No calls for appointments, please. • FREE

CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS

CALENDAR Thursday, March 17 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 UT COLLEGE OF LAW FREE INCOME TAX PREPARATION ASSISTANCE • University of Tennessee • 5PM • As part of the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, students will offer free tax preparation help to members of the community. The program runs through Thursday, April 14, on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Suite 157 of the College of Law. For more information about the VITA program at UT Law, contact Morgan at 865-974-2492 or rmorgan2@utk.edu. • FREE MARCH YOGA MADNESS • The Central Collective • 5:30PM • Join Leslie every Thursday in March for March Yoga Madness. Leslie of Yogini is a Dancer will lead a fun flow class inspired by basketball and the teams that are in the madness. Brackets will also be filled out with prizes to be won. So wear your team colors and have fun with your yoga practice. All levels welcome, limited props and mats provided. • $80 INTRO TO ANCESTRY.COM COMPUTER CLASS • Blount County Public Library • 2PM • Would you like to know more about your ancestors? Are you curious about the lives of those who came before your grandparents and impacted their lives? Blount County Public Library Reference Librarians Melinda Rust and Brennan LeQuire, both with Masters degrees in Library Science, are offering a computer class to help you start your exploration on Ancestry.com. Ancestry provides access to more than 16 billion historical records, which can seem overwhelming to the novice researcher. While Ancestry.com requires a paid subscription, free access to it is available within the library building. There is no fee for the class, but pre-registration is required and space is limited. Call Blount County Public Library Reference Desk, 865-982-0981 x4, to register. Those completely new to computing should sign up for the prerequisite course, “Meet the Mouse,” which will be taught at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, February 17. • FREE Saturday, March 19 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10:30AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE INDIGENOUS VIBES STUDIOS AFRICAN DRUM AND DANCE CLASS • Indigenous Vibes Studios • 1:30PM • Our drum and dance classes are specifically designed toward making the drum and dance experience as easy and fun as possible to those with little to no background in drumming and dancing. • $10 INDIGENOUS VIBES STUDIOS AFRICAN DRUM AND DANCE CLASS • Indigenous Vibes Studios • 2:30PM • Our drum and dance classes are specifically designed toward making the drum and dance experience as easy and fun as possible to those with little to no background in drumming and dancing. • $10 WITH HOPE IN MIND CLASS • First Farragut United Methodist Church • 9AM • With Hope in Mind provides families the basic education and training needed to cope with caring for loved ones who are diagnosed with a mental illness.

The course includes coverage of medications, resources, and how to better communicate with someone who has bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, or other mental illnesses.

To register, contact Cookie Spillers, 865-671-0703, or Joyce

Judge, 865-966-4731. • FREE MARBLE SPRINGS PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP • Marble Springs State Historic Site • 11AM • This workshop will be taught by Doug Mills, videographer for the award winning Heartland Series. At this workshop guests will be taking pictures of the scenic historic site while developing some basic photography techniques as well as their own artistic vision. Guests should bring either a camera or, at the very least, a phone that takes pictures. Participants will be encouraged to submit their photographs for a photo contest where the winning entry will receive a one year membership to Marble Springs. Space is limited to 20 participants so please remember to register early. For more information or to register please call 865-573-5508 or email info@marblesprings.net. • $20 PAGAN/WICCAN TRADSHARE • Westside Unitarian Universalist Church • 11AM • Come on our and meet some of our pagan/Wiccan groups from around the area and learn a little bit about them. Workshops, food and fun.

Workshops and event free of charge, small charge for food. • FREE Sunday, March 20 GROW AND FLOW • Shanti Yoga Haven • 5PM • Bring more flow into your life! The evening will begin with energy healing, Qi-gong, Reiki workshops led by the wise, intuitive, and delightful Shamana Shanti- prepare to be present! ;)Workshops will be offered to those interested flow arts (juggling, poi, hooping) Move more Towards Balance and try the slackline! Check out Drew’s crystal workshop take a gander at his gorgeous private collection of crystals and gems. Bring your own hoops, poi, or any props of passion. and jam with us! Wether this is your first experience with flow or your hundredth, you will leave more deeply inspired and connected to your body mind and spirit. Just when you think that’s all.. ITS SHOWTIME!Sparks Manipulations will light up the sky with an absolutely stellar fire performance! Come the show magical atmosphere! PLUS Get hooked on the Haven, an grab some coupons for additional classes and workshops at this Unique and Sacred Community Space.

Monday, March 21 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 5:30PM • Call 865-5772021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

INDIGENOUS VIBES STUDIOS AFRICAN DRUM AND DANCE CLASS • Indigenous Vibes Studios • 5:45PM • $10 INDIGENOUS VIBES STUDIOS AFRICAN DRUM AND DANCE CLASS • Indigenous Vibes Studios • 6:45PM • $10 NIA CARDIO-DANCE WORKOUT TECHNIQUE CLASS • Broadway Academy of Performing Arts • 10AM • Email emilybryant24@yahoo.com. Blending dance arts, martial arts, yoga and healing arts in a 55-minute mindful fitness fusion.

KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: READY, SET, SOW • Davis Family YMCA • 1PM • Join Master Gardener Barb O’Neil to learn about direct seeding peas, potatoes, spring greens and annual flowers, plus setting out seedlings in your garden. Call 865-777-9622. • FREE DIVORCE RECOVERY WORKSHOP • Cokesbury Center • 6:30PM • Divorce can be a life-shattering experience.

Whether it was sudden or was years in the making, we all need to heal our hearts, rebuild trust and get on with the rest of our lives. You have a choice: you can either go through divorce or you can grow through divorce. The format includes both a large and small group presentations by trained leaders. Attend Divorce Recovery to begin reframing and moving on with your life. Cost for

the 14-week course is $75, which includes a book and workbook. • $75 Tuesday, March 22 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

UT COLLEGE OF LAW FREE INCOME TAX PREPARATION ASSISTANCE • University of Tennessee • 5PM • As part of the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, students will offer free tax preparation help to members of the community. The program runs through Thursday, April 14, on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Suite 157 of the College of Law. For more information about the VITA program at UT Law, contact Morgan at 865-974-2492 or rmorgan2@utk.edu. • FREE E-COMMERCE FOR ARTISTS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 12PM • Join us as we welcome Lisa Gifford Mueller, who will familiarize artists and creatives with hosted shopping cart software that is user-friendly to set up as well as the more advanced self-hosted open source shopping cart software. The focus will be on hosted shopping carts such as Shopify, Bigcommerce, Squarespace and Etsy. Find out which option is right for your creative business and how you can start selling your art or service today. The presentation is $5 for members of the Arts & Culture Alliance and $8 for non-members. Please register in advance via PayPal at http://www.knoxalliance.com/development.html, by phone at 865-523-7543, or by e-mail to sc@knoxalliance. com. • $5 Wednesday, March 23 INDIGENOUS VIBES STUDIOS AFRICAN DRUM AND DANCE CLASS • Indigenous Vibes Studios • 5:45PM • Our drum and dance classes are specifically designed toward making the drum and dance experience as easy and fun as possible to those with little to no background in drumming and dancing. • $10 INDIGENOUS VIBES STUDIOS AFRICAN DRUM AND DANCE CLASS • Indigenous Vibes Studios • 6:45PM • Our drum and dance classes are specifically designed toward making the drum and dance experience as easy and fun as possible to those with little to no background in drumming and dancing. • $10 UT VOL COURT PITCH COMPETITION • University of Tennessee • 5:15PM • Vol Court is a six-week entrepreneurial speaker series hosted by UT’s Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation that culminates in a pitch competition. Vol Court will meet from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m. every Wednesday beginning Feb. 17 in Room 104 of the Haslam Business Building. Anyone who participates in the March 30 pitch competition must have attended four of the five series meetings.

AARP DRIVER SAFETY SMART DRIVER COURSE • John T. O’Connor Senior Center • 12PM • Call 382-5822.

NIA CARDIO-DANCE WORKOUT TECHNIQUE CLASS • Broadway Academy of Performing Arts • 6PM • Email emilybryant24@yahoo.com. Blending dance arts, martial arts, yoga and healing arts in a 55-minute mindful fitness fusion.

CLIMBING FUNDAMENTALS • River Sports Outfitters • 6PM • Come learn the basics of climbing every second and fourth Wednesday of the month. Space is limited so call 865-673-4687 to reserve your spot now. Class fee $20.

Visit riversportsoutfitters.com/events. • $20

MEETINGS

Thursday, March 17

don’t miss These nEW books!

Southern Appalachian Farm Cooking

A Memoir of Food and Family RObERT G. nEThERland Paper ISBN 978-1-62190-223-2 / $29.95 Available May 2016 Call 800-621-2736 to Preorder

Jeff Daniel Marion Poet on the Holston

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The Adventures of a Dog and His Master on Mount Le Conte PaUl adamS Paper ISBN 978-1-62190-250-8 / $24.95 Available May 2016 Call 800-621-2736 to Preorder Facebook “f ” Logo

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March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 33

CALENDAR SCRUFFY CITY ORCHESTRA • First Baptist Church • 7PM • A new venue for musicians from the greater Knoxville metropolitan area, Scruffy City Orchestra, kicks off with regular rehearsals on Thursdays. Conductors are Matt Wilkinson and Ace Edewards. Prospective members, especially string players, are encouraged to contact Alicia Meryweather at ScruffyCityOrchestra@gmail.com for more information. • FREE THE SOUTHERN LITERATURE BOOK CLUB • Union Ave Books • 6PM • Union Ave Books’ monthly discussion group about Southern books and writers. • FREE Saturday, March 19 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Al-Anon’s purpose is to help families and friends of alcoholics recover from the effects of living with the problem drinking of a relative or friend. Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@ Farragutalanon.org. • FREE Sunday, March 20 RATIONALISTS OF EAST TENNESSEE • Pellissippi State Community College • 10:30AM • The Rationalists of East Tennessee focus on the real or natural universe. The group exists so that we can benefit emotionally and intellectually through meeting together to expand our awareness and understanding through shared experience, knowledge, and ideas as well as enrich our lives and the lives of others. The Rationalists do not endorse or condemn members’ thoughts or actions.

Rather it hopefully encourages honest dialogue, analytic discussion, and responsible action based on reason,

Thursday, March 17 - Sunday, March 27

compassion, and factual accuracy. Visit rationalists.org. • FREE Monday, March 21 GAY MEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 7:30PM • We hold facilitated discussions on topics and issues relevant to local gay men in a safe and open environment. Visit gaygroupknoxville.org.

Tuesday, March 22 ATHEISTS SOCIETY OF KNOXVILLE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 5:30PM • Weekly atheists meetup and happy hour. Come join us for food, drink and great conversation.

Everyone welcome. • FREE Wednesday, March 23 KNOXVILLE WRITERS’ GROUP • Naples Italian Restaurant • 11AM • Lisa Soland, author of Thump and founder of a children’s book publishing company, playwright and actor/director will be the speaker. All-inclusive lunch is $12.00. For information and reservations, call 983-3740,

by March 21.

ETC.

Thursday, March 17 EAST TENNESSEE COMMUNITY DESIGN CENTER CELEBRITY BARTENDING • Echo Bistro and Wine Bar • 4:30PM • Join the fun as celebrity bartenders, including Davis Tarwater, Olympic gold medalist, and Marshall Stair, At-Large

Member of City Council, serve as guest bartenders to benefit the East Tennessee Community Design Center.

This event is free, but the generous tips for our bartenders will be donated to the ETCDC. Proceeds from a special appetizer will also be donated to the ETCDC by Echo Bistro. Visit www.communitydc.org. • FREE POP UP DINNER WITH JONATHAN ZARAGOZA • The Central Collective • 7PM • The Central Collective’s second Pop-Up Dinner will feature a five course meal by Jonathan Zaragoza, traveling from Chicago, Illinois to share his love of food with the Knoxville community. • $65

River Trading Co. • 5PM • The next Community Partners Pints for a Purpose, which is set for 5pm-9 p.m. Thursday, March 24th, at Switchback Craft Beer Tavern/Little River Training Co., will benefit New Hope Children’s Advocacy Center. The Blount County Children’s Advocacy Center is dedicated to serving children who are victims of sexual and physical abuse or trauma through prevention, education, and intervention.Brought to you by Little River Trading Co., Blount Partnership, Kuhl Clothing. Thanks to our sponsors 100% of the nights beer sales proceeds goes to the advocate. • FREE

Saturday, March 19 NOURISH KNOXVILLE WINTER FARMERS’ MARKET • Central United Methodist Church • 10AM-2PM • The Winter Farmers’ Market, held in the Historic 4th and Gill neighborhood, will host farm & food vendors selling pasture-raised meats, eggs, winter produce, honey, baked goods, artisan foods, and more. Outside, food trucks will be serving up lunch from locally sourced ingredients.

Visit nourishknoxville.org. • FREE CRYSTALLINE LIGHT EXPO • Rothchild Catering & Conference Center • 9:30AM • Looking for like-minded people? Searching for spiritual information? Like pretty crystals and jewelry? Seeking holistic healing? Wanting insight into your life and what’s to come? Visit a number of gifted healers offering mini sessions for massage, energy healing, sound healing, aura photography, intuitive readings and much more. • $5 Thursday, March 24 COMMUNITY PARTNERS PINTS FOR A PURPOSE • Little Presented by

at the Clayton Center for the Arts Haslam Family Flexible Theatre

Fri March 18 - 7:30 PM Sat March 19 - 2:00 PM Sat March 19 - 7:30 PM Sun March 20 - 7:30 PM

$13.00* $13.00* $13.00* $13.00*

Tickets on sale at the Clayton Center Box

Office at (865) 981-8590 or online** at www.ClaytonArtsCenter.com/events. *Clayton Box Office will add a $1 ticket printing fee **Additional charge if ordered online.

www.FoothillsCommunityPlayers.com

2016 Season Opener

Saturday April 9th 10:30 am Journey by steam train along the Tennessee River, watch a Civil War style baseball game played by the Knoxville Holstons at the historic Ramsey House.

2560 University Commons Way, Knoxville, TN 37919 865-524-9411 • www.threeriversrambler.com

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

35

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

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’BYE

Sacred & P rofane

About Alcoholism When drinking ceases to be fun

BY DONNA JOHNSON

I

wake up—or rather, I am still up—from a night of mild debauchery at Sassy Anne’s, a bar in the 4th and Gill neighborhood where I live. My young friends, Magdalena and Lucy, are frying salmon patties and the grease sizzles and pops in the cold air—the front door is propped open and it is very cold outside. Magdalena’s tiny kitchen is lit only by colored Christmas lights that flicker on and off from inside the microwave, giving the room a magical quality wherein we are ageless, timeless, and ethereal.

We are out of booze and make plans to go to Raddy’s, the liquor store on Broadway that opens at 8:30 in the morning.

Magdalena and Lucy are texting people in the outside world endlessly, so I wander over and begin doing Magdalena’s dishes. I quite enjoy the experience. There are more plastic cups and glasses than I have ever seen outside of a bar or restaurant: red ones, sickening green ones, pale yellow translucent ones, and clear plastic ones that always seem to have a film no matter how much you wash them. After counting 94 cups and glasses, which I pile in a kind of ready-to-topple sculpture, I prepare to go to Raddy’s. When I count my change and a couple of green dollars, I realize I am still $2 short of buying a pint—so when I hear Lucy saying she needs to go out and buy a mop, I offer her mine, brand new, for $2.

“It’s a great mop,” I tell her. It is, as mops go, a great one. A beautiful shade of yellow, it has a lever on the side to squeeze the dirty water out, so that you hardly have to exert any effort all to clean the floor. I fetch the mop and Lucy hands me $2 with a solemn

36

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

look, dead in the eye, as if we are doing a major drug deal instead of colluding to buy some vodka.

I pass a mirror on my way out to the store and I’m shocked. My hair is sticking up all over my head and I have neglected to put on make-up, so that I look pale and ghastly and 10 years older than my 64 years. It is intensely disturbing to me when young people call me ma’am and give me their seats on the bus. It is a definite contradiction to how old I feel like I am, or would like to be again: 25.

“What are you looking at?” I ask the gaunt face in the mirror and she looks away. There has to be more to life than this, I think, then brush those thoughts away and hasten out the door.

At the liquor store, I discover that I am still short, so I take out my debit card. I have no idea if any money is on there, but hope for the best, and am pleasantly surprised to find I have enough to buy the vodka with $2 left over. I take my vodka home and give the $2 back to Lucy. “I’m gonna need that mop back,” I tell her. She hands it over like a weapon and the three of us go out to Magdalena’s porch to drink shots together as the sun shines through the glistening, golden gauze someone has thrown over the railing.

Nobody says much. Chemical remorse does not lend itself to conversation, nor are we feeling happy, joyous, and free, as they say in AA, which I attend once or twice a week— in part because they have good coffee, in part because they say things I need to hear. Chasing the ever-disappearing rainbow of the buzz is exhausting.

Further, it’s been a long time since the rewards of drinking outweighed the

consequences, and today is a perfect example. It feels like there are cobwebs behind my eyes; my body aches as though someone has poured poison in it. Someone did. That person was me and the poison was alcohol—day after day, night after night, so that one hardly knows the difference between being sober and drunk.

Magdalena goes inside to refill our drinks. She is wearing high, black lace-up boots, black and white striped leggings, and one purple sock. Her massive cleavage is in full view as is Lucy’s. She plays the song “Horse and I” by Bat For Lashes and we sit silently and smoke.

The sun is streaming through the golden gauze and at the same instant we all three put on sunglasses, like duelers drawing their guns. From out of the silence and golden light we see a woman get out of her tiny, yellow MINI Cooper and walk over to us. She is young and ravishingly beautiful, with long, brown hair and gray eyes. She is wearing a shirt with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it, tight jeans, and very expensive-looking cowboy boots.

“Rachel,” we cry in unison, and the young woman in her early 20s walks over and sits down. There are hugs and kisses all around. The last time I saw Rachel, approximately six months ago, she was driving away in her Mercedes guzzling an open bottle of vodka. Rachel has been in alcohol and drug treatment since then, and good health fairly oozes out of her.

Her skin is clear and golden, her eyes sparkling with clarity.

“Hey guys,” she says, her smile radiant, utterly charming as she spouts the program. “I go to meetings

three times a day. It’s what I do for fun now.”

Magdalena, Lucy, and I watch Rachel transfixed. We listen and sip our drinks while she talks and talks about sobriety. But we liked her better before, with the bottle of vodka. Now her happiness and health feels like a reproach, though we are certainly happy for her. I feel an intense longing to have what she has.

As Rachel drives away, Magdalena, Lucy, and I avoid looking at one another.

“Good for Rachel,” says Lucy, with a barely discernible trace of sarcasm. Magdalena and I nod in agreement weakly. Soon we disperse, to go back and confront our own self-undoing, alone.

After taking a shower, I wander over to my closet and rifle through my wardrobe. No shoes with laces. No mouthwash with alcohol. No hairdryers. I get out a suitcase and begin packing neatly folded, comfortable, safe clothing. I google various treatment centers and make arrangements to board my dog, Mallory.

I really need to do this, I tell myself. But one small part of me—the alcoholic, addictive part—is defiant.

As they say in the program, alcoholism is cunning and baffling.

Lighting a cigarette, I go to the phone to call the treatment ward at Blount Memorial Hospital in Maryville. As the woman on the other end answers the phone, I tell her my name and begin giving her the necessary information for my admission.

I drink the last shot of whiskey in one gulp. ◆

We liked her better before, with the bottle of vodka.

Now her happiness and health feels like a reproach.

Enjoy Happy Hour

Food Specials! bistro M-F 4 -7 PM ALL FOR ONLY

$5

■ BAKED ARTICHOKE DIP

March Events

Join us Saturday mornings at 10:30 for worksh ops on: • Community-sup port agriculture March ed 19

Margherita Pizza

■ ROASTED RED PEPPER HUMMUS ■ GRILLED BUTTERMILK CORN

BREAD WITH PIMENTO CHEESE

Now open Sundays 1-5pm

■ FRIED CHICKEN & WAFFLE ■ MARGHERITA PIZZA

Fried Chicken & Waffle

TURKEY CREEK 11383 Parkside Dr. ■ 865-671-6612 DOWNTOWN 141 S. Gay St. ■ 865-544-1491 www.crubistroandwinebar.com

Stanley’s Secret G arden at 305 S. Northshor e Drive Open March 23rd for the 2016 season!

Stanley’s Greenhouse 3029 Davenport Road | 865.573.9591 M-F 8-5pm | Sat 9-5pm | Sun 1-5pm www.stanleysgreenhouse.com

Bachelor of Fine Arts • Workshops clay • fibers • glass • metals • wood w w w.t nte c h. edu/c raftc e nte r March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 37

’BYE

Spir it of the Staircase

BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY

38

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 17, 2016

www.thespiritofthestaircase.com

’BYE

BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY

CLASSIFIEDS

Support the Knoxville Mercury and sell your stuff by purchasing an ad in our classifieds section.

FOR SALE

HOUSING

KEYBOARD FOR SALE: Yamaha Portable Grand DGX-305, like new. MIDI enabled, 76 keys, with pedal and metal stand.

PERFECT for practice/ composing/arranging.

Asking $385 OBO. Call: 307-262-9939.

1BR APARTMENT, $425 PER MONTH. - 5 minutes to UT and on the busline.

New paint and carpeting, nice neighbors in a divided house with several units.

Off street parking available.

In Parkridge, near Winona Street and the ball fields.

Application & credit check required. (865)438-4870

BLUE VINTAGE NORTHFACE HIKING BACKPACK, aluminum external frame.

Early 1980's or so, about 90 liters. Great condition for its age, but some wear. $100 OBO. 678-313-7077

$5 NEW YEAR’S SALE, local and handmade, unique and modern, repurposed vintage beads, hand-painted geometric necklaces, and more. etsy.com/shop/triciabee

WANT TO FIND A COPY OF THE KNOXVILLE MERCURY?

We’ve got a map for that!

Place your ad at store.knoxmercury.com

COMMUNITY

SERVICES J. DAVID REECE, Master Electrician. State of Tn. and City of Knoxville licensed. Insurance and references. Over 25 years experience. Commercial and residential service and repair, remodeling, and new construction.

CCTV, home theater, generators. Residential and commercial electrical design, inspections and consulting. 865-228-8966.

PLACE YOUR AD AT STORE.KNOXMERCURY.COM

BIG BOY - is a 4 year old American Bulldog! A true gentle giant, and so much fun. Visit Young -Williams Animal Center or call 865-215-6599 for more information.

OLIVER - is a 3 year old male kitty looking for a new family to play and snuggle with! He is microchipped, neutered, and up to date on shots.

Visit Young-Williams Animal Center or call 865-215-6599 for more information.

DOMINO - is just 3 m/o & looking for playmates for life! He’s a pit mix pup and will be microchipped, neutered, and up to date on shots when he goes home.Visit Young-Williams Animal Center or call 865-215-6599 for more information.

SAMMY - is a 1 year old female cat who waiting to prance into your life.

She is microchipped, spayed, and up to date on shots Visit Young-Williams Animal Center or call 865-215-6599 for more information.

TRIPLE T THROWDOWN THURSDAY

TEQUILA +

TECATE + TACO = $10

It’ll be updated as we add more locations.

If you’ve got suggestions, let us know. knoxmercury.com/find-us

ENJOY THE TACO OF YOUR CHOICE, A SHOT OF TEQUILA AND A TECATE BEER ALL FOR $10

AND...DON’T FORGET DRAFT BEERS ARE 1/2 PRICE AFTER 9 PM ON THURSDAY* * high gravity drafts not included

2200 Cumberland Ave sunspotrestaurant.com 865.637.4663 March 17, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 39

THE 2016

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THE 2016

NISSAN SENTRA STOCK # SE1601

With this coupon, get window tint at no additional cost with the purchase of any new Nissan from Ted Russell Nissan.

THE 2016

NISSAN ROGUE STOCK # RG1620

Expires April 30, 2016. One coupon per purchase.