Dread was in the air that December, threats of terrorism and gruesome stories of mass killings in Europe. Even the pope was saying the level of killing was “unprecedented.” An editorial predicted the closing year would be remembered as “a […]

Charles Dickens never visited Knoxville, but may have had a bigger influence on our culture than any mayor. Until Dec. 20, Clarence Brown Theatre presents the holiday favorite, A Christmas Carol, a play based on the novel by English author […]

America’s resourcefulness about sources of outrage is inexhaustible. Is “Happy Holidays” a modern heresy of this secular-humanist century? Many Americans, when they hear that greeting, begin humming a merry song. “Happy Holiday” (the title’s singular, but the plural comes in […]

The Tennessee Theatre is always busy in December, as it is this year, with major musical attractions, a Broadway show, a classic film, and a favorite ballet. First opened in October 1928, as a “motion picture palace,” the Tennessee was designed […]

I often find myself in the middle of a conversation about Game of Thrones, House of Cards, The Walking Dead, and don’t know what to do. I do my best to keep up—it is, I gather, the duty of every American […]

You still have time to consider an inexpensive and unusual Christmas gift for a close friend or relative who lives in an old house. Surprise them with a history of their home! It’s easier than you may think. You can spend […]

On a rainy night in a crowded restaurant in the Old City, University of Tennessee Professor Robert J. Norrell and I may be the only middle-aged people in the whole room who didn’t watch a single episode of Roots on […]

It’s been an odd fall, and not just because I still have a yellow flower on my surviving tomato plant. This past weekend its leaves still smelled like July.  In the Old City, at the corner of Central and Willow, […]