Tired of Waiting
Concerning the letter writer [March 29] who vilified Knoxville as little more than a place to await death:
Such intemperate nonsense doesn't even begin to examine the town fairly. But it is tempting, considering the fact that the city has been gazing at its vacant downtown navel for at least 20 years (if we use the World's Fair as a baseline), cynically unwilling to address its own decline. And when it comes up with a proposal, it is either so ludicrous as building a Bastille at its center or surrendering the initiative to parties with vague agendas.
It is a town that doesn't even wait until its last, best progressive politician is cold in his grave to start dissing his memory. It is a town whose paper of record is headed by an opinion-leader so obsessed with trolleys that one imagines him scampering home after a day at the office to sit cross-legged in his den in front of his Lionel train set, engineer's cap on his head, toy oil can in hand. It is a town that routinely creates hostile environments for its artists, destroys its history and concedes the Big Idea to other burgs. For example, allowing Sevier County to co-opt right out from under us the aquarium concept that served Chattanooga's revitalization so well.
I don't even want to get started on Knoxville's shameful loss of the Smokies [baseball team] and concomitant chance to upgrade Bill Meyer Stadium as an anchor of future growth. We'll just have to wait and see whether the observatory is another dog-and-pony show.
No, Knoxville's not a place where we're waiting to die. It's a place where we're still waiting to live.
Jack Rentfro
Knoxville
We're Talking Narcissism
I have to agree with another letter writer—author Katie Allison Granju in "Loco Parentis" of April 5 is narcissistic.
She's the kind of person I encounter every time I go to a restaurant these days, the one who just has to drag along their little darling despite the fact that little darling has barely been socialized, or even civilized, at home. If she, and all the other folks who take children to restaurants, had any sense of compassion, they'd leave little darling at home or make other arrangements for them. But alas, no, they are just absolutely certain that the rest of us are dying to see and hear the antics of their offspring.
I cannot begin to count the number of meals I've had at local restaurants that have been ruined by some little savage running around tables, crawling over booths, or shrieking at the top of his lungs. And I don't mean blue collar restaurants, either. I've been to some fairly upscale places and had some moron bring in an ill-bred, ill-tempered child whose sole reason for being there is to ruin everyone's dinner.
Ms. Granju claims her brood are well mannered. Maybe. Maybe not. I'll take my chances in the company of adults rather than children who have to be the center of attention at all times and the subject of every conversation. I have yet to see an adult being called down for flinging french fries or being removed from a restaurant for crying.
Face it folks, kids are born savages and it the parents' duty to civilize them. And it's a parent's duty not to bring them out into public until they are civilized. Some kids today haven't arrived at that point even at age 16.
Forget about smoking and non-smoking sections—if it were up to me, every restaurant would have a children's section and a no-children's section. I'll take a little second-hand smoke any day over a screaming 4-year-old.
Ms. Granju gets no sympathy from me. I'm probably one of the people she's chased out of a restaurant. Here's a newsflash for all those parents out there who seem not to have noticed. There are other people in the world, and we shouldn't have to endure your failures as parents to civilize your kids.
Bill Stanley
Knoxville
Party with the Best
Get down to Market Street next Thursday, April 26, to party with Metro Pulse and its 2001 Best of Knoxville winners. Special awards will be presented to the Mega-Category winners and a $500 cash prize will go to the Grand Prize winner in our annual reader-ballot contest. There will be food, drink, door prizes and dancing to the splendidly strained strains of the Tennessee Schmaltz klezmer band. Beer sales proceeds will benefit the Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley. You all are invited.
—The Editors
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