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, […]

Frances Hodgson Burnett is often considered a British writer. However, she began her professional writing career when she lived in Knoxville. Her name is known around the world. Her books, several of them still in print, have inspired more than 50 […]

The William Hastie Natural Area, part of the Knoxville Urban Wilderness, is named for a federal judge who pioneered civil rights and was arguably America’s first black governor. He was born in Knoxville 111 years ago on Nov. 17. When […]

People who grew up knowing Central Avenue are just now getting used to calling it Central Street, as their great-grandparents did. It makes sense, by the pattern we’ve set up. But we’ve complicated things, and, as is often the case, […]

When Knoxville first celebrated Veterans Day, it was headline news. At 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, Germany officially surrendered to the Allies, and the news was cabled around the world. Allied leaders famously arranged the signing of the armistice, […]