VOL. 52 NO. 48
IN THIS ISSUE
Holiday Special Section Holiday cheer and more!
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See the special section inside
NEIGHBORHOOD BUZZ
Christmas parades
■ Fountain City Optimist Club Christmas Parade, 10 a.m., Saturday, Dec. 7, beginning at CiCi’s Pizza. Lineup, 9 a.m. Registration: $12.50. To preregister: 522-2796. ■ Gibbs Christmas Parade, 2:30 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 8, Gibbs High School to the Gibbs Center (IGA). Sponsored by Gibbs Ruritan Club. Lineup: 1:45 p.m. No entry fee; canned food donations accepted for the Corryton Food Pantry. Preregisteration/info: gibbschristmasparade@gmail.com; Larry Dougherty, 898-3532; Eddie Jones, 789-4681. ■ Halls Christmas Parade, 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, sponsored by the Halls Business and Professional Association. Route: Halls High School, proceeding along Maynardville Highway, to Neal Drive. Line up: 4 p.m. Info: Shannon Carey, 235-5324.
Halls Christmas Banquet Friday
The Halls Business and Professional Association will hold its annual Christmas banquet 6:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6, at Beaver Brook Country Club. WBIR-TV news anchor John Becker John Becker will be the keynote speaker. The Halls Man and Woman of the Year will be announced and a silent auction will be held. Info/tickets: Sue Walker, 925-9200.
Halls Breakfast Club to meet
The Halls Breakfast Club, a networking event of the Halls Business and Professional Association, will be held 7:30 to 9 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 3, at Hallsdale Powell Utility District headquarters on Cunningham Road. Coffee and light breakfast will be served.
Casualty event
A mass casualty incident will be staged Tuesday, Dec. 3, at Gibbs High. Students will be working with Rural/ Metro, Life Star and the Knox County Sheriff’s Office to simulate a brawl at the football stadium. The incident begins at 8:30 a.m. Cosmetology students will apply makeup for “victims” beginning at 7.
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challenges, Beaver dam creates opportunity By Jake Mabe
On one hand, it’s a challenge. A beaver dam in the stretch of Beaver Creek along the Halls Marsh created overflow that spilled onto the walking trail at the Halls Greenway near the Halls Branch Library. On the other hand, it’s an educational opportunity. “For years, my family and I have enjoyed watching the wildlife and activity of the beaver along the greenway,” says Aaron Maddox, who lives in a subdivision behind the greenway. “Over the past few weeks, the beaver have been building their dams up to the point that the water has been covering the path in one spot near the library. We think that this is a fantastic display of their abilities, creates more wetland for other animals, such as geese, and is what a greenway is all about. We have enjoyed watching geese congregate and swim where there normally is no water. “We were upset when we saw that someone (possibly the county?) had taken some equipment in and destroyed part of the dam to let the water flow through.” Knox County Parks and Recreation made the decision. “We had many calls both ways,” says Knox County watershed coor-
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A close-up of the beaver dam
A beaver dam creates overflow onto the walking trail at the Halls Marsh. dinator Roy Arthur. “We needed Arthur says the idea is being exto do something to control it. Even plored to put a diversion in to conthough the Halls Marsh is a flood- trol the water level and allow the pond with a diversion and still ed wetland area, it shouldn’t be beavers to make their dams. keep the beaver dam. It is fun to flooded all the time.” “We can control the size of the watch.”
Visit Victorian homes in Old North Old North Knoxville Victorian Holiday Home Tour. The tour runs 4-9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, and 12:30-5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8. There will be 10 other homes and one church, First Lutheran, on the tour. Advance tickets are $10 and are available at all area Kroger stores. On the day of the tour, tickets will be $15 at the ticket booth in the Woodland Avenue parking lot of Tennova/St. Mary’s. All participants should start at the Woodland Avenue lot to get their calendar maps and catch buses for the tour. The Wojciks moved to Knoxville from San Francisco in June 2011 and first lived downtown. Cullen is a lawyer, and Mary teaches art history at UT. Each found about the house in fall 2011 when it was still a work in progress. “We had the sense that Mary and Cullen Wojcik stand at the door of their Cornelia Street home, which is part of the it wouldn’t be too long be25th annual Historic Old North Knoxville Victorian Holiday Home Tour.
By Betsy Pickle
Reality-television stars are big these days, but few of them are 2,100 square feet. That’s something that sets Cullen and Mary Wojcik’s Cornelia Street
house apart. Their home was the subject of the recent DIY network show “Uncondemned,” which followed the progress of the home’s renovations by a team of neighbors who
may have lacked in skills but made up for that in passion. Their vision, combined with that of the Wojciks, will be on display during the 25th annual Historic
Here’s a neat break from the norm this holiday season. Join Friends of the Smokies for a halfday holiday hike in Sugarlands. Danny Bernstein will join the group Tuesday, Dec. 17, for a 5-mile walk along Little Pigeon River. The hike is (relatively) easy with a total elevation gain of 800 feet.
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Hikers will visit historic homesites, Sugarlands Cemetery and nearby Cataract Falls. In honor of Friends of the Smokies’ 20th anniversary, the Sugarlands Visitor Center natural history museum will be featured on the guided hike; donations to Friends of the Smokies have helped renovate this space and improve visitor services in the park.
This hike is $10 for Friends of the Smokies members and $35 for non-members, who will receive a complimentary membership. Members who bring a friend hike for free. Meeting locations will be in Asheville, Maggie Valley and the Sugarlands Visitor Center. Register at outreach.nc@ friendsofthesmokies.org or 828452-0720.
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fore other people could see what they (the neighbors renovating the house) saw and what we saw, and that we’d better get moving before it became clear how wonderful it was going to be,” says Mary Wojcik. “We saw it on a Sunday and got a Realtor the next day. We really wanted the house. “You get this perfect combination of historic home shell with a brandnew interior with historic accents, and then the LEED certification.” Last year’s tour drew 1,700 people, and the neighbors hope – weather permitting – that this year will be as successful. “It’s become a part of the Christmas in the City festivities, and people seem to really enjoy it,” says Roberts. “It makes them feel good; it gets them started in the Christmas spirit.” He recommends allowing about three hours for the tour.
Holiday hike in the Smokies By Sandra Clark
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December 2, 2013
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