You might not be quick to assume Knoxville has a dog in the Philadelphia vs. Boston fight. But if Super Bowl 52 had happened a couple of centuries ago—back when the main sports were horse racing and cockfighting–there might have […]
You might not be quick to assume Knoxville has a dog in the Philadelphia vs. Boston fight. But if Super Bowl 52 had happened a couple of centuries ago—back when the main sports were horse racing and cockfighting–there might have […]
Knoxville in the past can seem like it does in dreams. It’s recognizably the same place, but familiar landmarks slightly twisted and with lots of unsettling differences, erupting with odd events that don’t make sense. During Christmas week, 1917, you […]
On the City Council ballot, for the first time I can remember, there are six women on the regular ballot, plus one certified write-in candidate. This election presents the prospect that three or even four women may be elected to […]
North Central is Knoxville’s coolest street. It’s changing rapidly, but with a crazy variety of far upscale and far downscale. The high-end tailors of John H. Daniel are hollering distance of second-hand shops and the old Freeze-O, where you can […]
Knoxville, thanks to some geographical and political good luck, doesn’t encounter many natural disasters. It wasn’t always like that. If anybody ever asks you about the worst natural disaster Knoxville ever experienced, it was about 150 years ago. It started […]
I often encountered that marble slab beside the sidewalk. On my way home from a a night in the bars and nightclubs of Cumberland Avenue, I would shift my route for fun, and to confuse whatever gumshoes were on my […]
Editor’s Note: Comedian Dick Gregory died earlier this month at age 84. Many Knoxvillians may not remember that the civil-rights activist was, almost 50 years ago, at the center of a signal freedom-of-speech controversy at the University of Tennessee. Ernest […]
Every summer for the rest of my life may remind me of one particular summer a long time ago. Sometimes it’s an afternoon rain, or a bright humid morning, or an accumulation of sunburned people in silly T-shirts, and for […]
If you’re puzzled about the claims made for the upcoming eclipse, don’t feel like a stranger. Reach a certain age, and you remember hearing a lot about eclipses, the first since sometime in the distant past, or the last until […]