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Seven Days

Friday, July 20
The News-Sentinel publishes what we can only hope will be the last of the revealing emails between departed UT President J. Wade Gilley and his, um, assistant Pamela Reed. Gilley tells her, "everybody thinks you are cute" and notes she was "acting pretty frisky." All together now: "Ewwwwww...."

Monday, July 23
State officials say they're having trouble filling lifeguard positions at state parks. Have they tried calling David Hasselhoff?
Knox County Commission puts off voting on a curfew for minors. Commissioner Mike Arms asks for a 270-day deferral to allow for enabling action from the Legislature. All right, young man, but no longer—you have that ordinance back here on time.

Tuesday, July 24
Chamber Partnership major-domo Tom Ingram affirms that "downtown revitalization" is the Chamber's top priority. He says it's essential to help pay for the new convention center. You might recall that, originally, the convention center itself was supposed to revitalize downtown. Now downtown is supposed to revitalize the convention center? Which was supposed to revitalize downtown? Which is supposed to...ouch, our brains hurt...
Gov. Don Sundquist says the Legislature's patchwork budget is "miserable." Hey, you'd be miserable too with all those band-aids and baling wire stuck to you.

Knoxville Found

(Click photo for larger image)

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:
Well, just about everybody in town knew this one. Yes, it is a plaque on Jake Butcher's Plaza Tower building on Gay Street (a.k.a. the First Tennessee building) marking the site of the old Staub's Theatre. As respondent Greg Ganues (fresh from being subjected to a deposition for his participation in KnoxRecall) put it, Staub's "was an interesting place that was opened in 1872, by Peter Staub. Staub's Theatre rivaled the theaters of New Orleans and Richmond in both excellence and popularity. As an interesting aside, Adolph Ochs, its first master usher, went on to publish the New York Times." Yes indeed. Points for accuracy and scope, Greg. But not, alas, for timeliness. The first right answer came from one of our favorite capitalists and PBA board members, David Moon of Moon Capital Management. He gets up early, and his own office is just down the block in Riverview Tower, so he nailed this one effortlessly. As a prize, we'd like to give David a planning process for downtown Knoxville that he can take back to the PBA board. But those are apparently prohibited in this city, so he'll just have to settle for a genuine Native American "dream catcher." Courtesy of the Tennessee Aquarium. (That's in Chattanooga, you know. Where they have a downtown plan, and an urban design center, and a lot of other cool stuff too. Oh well. Maybe the dream catcher, which is supposed to "filter all dreams and let only the good dreams through," will help...)

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATE FORUM
Monday, July 30
5:30 p.m.
Family Investment Center
400 Harriet Tubman Street
Come meet the people running for City Council this fall. Bring your questions. And see who shows up.

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Tuesday, July 31
6:30 p.m.
Eastminster Presbyterian Church
4904 Asheville Hwy.
MPC will discuss the East City Sector Plan.

Corky's Pride

Remembering a gay Knoxville pioneer

As Knoxville Pride celebrated its 10th anniversary last month, one of the founders of Knoxville's public gay community lay dying in his hometown of New Orleans. Charles Allison Rees, "Corky" to all who knew him, died of liver failure on June 25, at the age of 43.

In 1984, Corky Rees helped found Knoxville's Ten Percent, a politically savvy organization that was the forerunner and model for Knoxville Pride, also co-founded by Corky in 1991.

"Corky was active in every part of Knoxville's gay community as we tried to build a sense of that community," says the Rev. Bob Galloway of the Metropolitan Community Church. "It was very disjointed before."

Rev. Galloway remembers those early days of the 1980s, a time when gay activism was ratcheting up across the country because of the new disease AIDS.

Stigmatized by the mainstream, gay men and people with AIDS (PWAs) found that if they didn't take action themselves, no one else was going to help them. Rev. Galloway was one of the co-founders of "a.i.d.s. response knoxville," or "a.r.k.," as it was originally known in 1985.

From about 1988 through 1991, Corky was the executive director for a.r.k. He also worked closely during that time helping Julia Tucker find needy clients to fill the Graham Apartments, Knoxville's first housing unit dedicated to PWAs. Julia remembers Corky fondly as "feisty and a free spirit."

Corky remained active beyond Knoxville in both gay and AIDS causes, as a member of the New Orleans Bear and Bear Trappers Social Club, and serving on the Mayor's Council on AIDS in New Orleans.

"Coming out" was a much scarier proposition here in Knoxville during the 1980s than it is today, thanks to Corky and the efforts of others like him.

It was perilous whether coming out as gay or as HIV-positive, with fears validated by events like a suspicious fire at a.r.k.'s offices late in the decade, or like the ugly, militant group who protested Knoxville Pride's first parade. Corky Rees was a local pioneer we cannot afford to forget.

—Ed White

Tax and Cut

Logging in national forests—including Cherokee—keeps losing money

Commercial logging in the Cherokee National Forest cost taxpayers more than $1 million in 1998, according to an annual report recently released by the U.S. Forest Service.

And it wasn't the only forest to bleed money on commercial cuts. North Carolina's national forests lost $2.4 million, according to the report. Overall, the United States lost $126 million, despite cutting 524,000 acres and selling 2.96 billion board feet (a board foot is a piece of wood 12 inches square and one inch thick).

The losses were not an anomaly; the forest management program consistently loses money. The last profitable year was 1994, according to the Forest Service, but those claims were disputed by the Government Accounting Office. Government and independent audits have found the Forest Service has run in the black only three times in its history—1955, '56, and '69, according to Harper's Magazine. The GOA has estimated that the Forest Service lost $2 billion on logging from 1992 to 1997.

Although the timber is sold to for-profit companies, once the Forest Service builds and repairs roads, plants new trees, mitigates erosion, handles the administrative matters and other costs, it usually loses money on the sales.

"These numbers speak for themselves, in that commercial logging is a disaster. Even Republicans have looked at these numbers and said, 'This is insane,'" says Richard Wall of the Sierra Club of Tennessee. "It would never be listed as a subsidy. It's listed as road improvement, or road maintenance because that's where the money is going. But it's a non-specific subsidy."

"It's welfare, to me," says Catherine Murray, chairwoman of Cherokee Forest Voices, a non-profit group advocating preservation of the Cherokee forest. "[Logging in Cherokee] has lost quite a bit. It's usually at a loss each year."

Of the 1,000 acres in the Cherokee that were logged in 1998, 41 percent (or 5.1 million board feet worth) was cut to provide wood to the commercial market, according to the Forest Service's report. These cuts brought in $475,000, but cost the Forest Service just over $1 million. Another 58 percent of the cuts were made for "forest stewardship" reasons—i.e. "sales being made primarily to help achieve desired ecological conditions and/or to attain some non-timber resource objective." These cuts (7.1 million board feet worth) brought in $723,000, but cost $1.23 million. The rest of the trees were cut for "personal use," including fire wood and Christmas trees. These cuts brought in $2,000, but cost $43,000.

Murray says that a great deal of the logging done in Cherokee is clearcutting or shelterwood cutting, in which most of the trees are cut, except a few that are left for seed source or cover. Cherokee Forest Voices has pushed to make sure that any timber sales made in Cherokee are "above cost." However, the group is also concerned about soil erosion, watershed damage, habitat loss and species extinction that logging causes, Murray says.

A spokesperson from the Cherokee National Forest could not be reached this week to comment on the costs. The Forest Service's report argues that although its timber sales program is losing money, there are other benefits, including tax revenues, jobs and creating desired habitat for certain species.

The Forest Service estimates that logging in the Cherokee forest created 189 jobs, $3.2 million in income and $394,000 in income tax.

Environmentalists contend that whatever income gains are made by logging pale compared to what is lost in tourism and recreational dollars.

The Sierra Club is lobbying to end commercial logging on national forest land.

"The total amount of logging done in the national forests is only a minor amount in the overall picture," Wall says. "It's only 8 to 10 percent of the logging done nationally. And that could easily be made up by the use of alternative fiber and conservation and recycling programs."

—Joe Tarr

A New View

Publisher hopes Knoxville can support a 'city magazine'

The glossy magazine currently sitting on area news racks with a smiling photo of America's Survivor sweetheart Tina Wesson on the cover isn't People, Us, or Vanity Fair. Instead, it's the first issue of the newly revamped Knoxville lifestyle magazine, CityView.

After 18 years of publishing in the Knoxville market as a business-to-business "advertorial" publication, the CityView name and franchise have recently been purchased from previous owner Betty Lou Sharp by 42-year-old Nathan Sparks, a local businessman with no prior publishing experience. Sparks, who owns Knoxville-based Renaissance Financial and who says that he at one time hosted a Nashville radio talk show, is acting as both publisher and managing editor of his new venture.

"I purchased CityView intending to hire an editor as soon as possible, but as the step-by-step process of changing the magazine began, I discovered that being both the publisher and editor was not only something I could do, but something I enjoyed," Sparks says.

CityView's new associate editor (and former Metro Pulse sales director) Charlotte Klasson says that as a "top 70" media market, Knoxville has been ripe for publication of a "city magazine." Other locales around the country of a comparable or larger size and economy—including Memphis and Nashville—offer local glossies focusing on the arts, business, and political life of the area they cover. These regional monthlies have their own trade association, City and Regional Magazine Association (CRMA), and website, www.citymag.org. Klasson says CityView will soon join the CRMA.

In addition to CityView's cover interview with Wesson, the inaugural issue under Sparks' ownership also includes a feature billed as a journalistic exploration of the hot and complex issue of Knoxville's downtown development. However, the piece turns out to be a long and somewhat fawning Q-and-A-style interview with controversial developers Earl Worsham and Ron Watkins. Outdoorsman and author Johnny Molloy contributed a piece on area hikes to the current issue, and the rest of the editorial content appears to mirror the advertorial format of earlier incarnations of the magazine.

According to Sparks, he anticipates that his magazine will "cover important issues that are not necessarily right for the [daily] newspaper or the alternative press," courtesy of freelance contributing editors such as local political reporter (and longtime Metro Pulse writer) Betty Bean and other experienced journalists. CityView's design is being handled by freelance art director Tom Russell, whom Klasson describes as "tops in the business in Knoxville."

With a current sales staff of three and operating out of an office on Mabry Hood Road, CityView will approximately double its current number of pages as the publication moves from a bi-monthly to a monthly publishing schedule with the next issue, according to Klasson. Currently priced at $2.95 on the newsstand and distributed to major outlets such as Wal-Mart and Bi-Lo by Anderson News, CityView is "already making a small profit," Sparks says.

"The growth in circulation—from 25,000 to 30,000—has already begun, including magazine sales in the Knoxville metro area and in Nashville, Chattanooga and the Tri-Cities, where CityView is currently on sale. Spot checks indicate many locations are sold out," reports Sparks. He acknowledges that's partly due to having Wesson on the cover. But, he says, "We believe our sales success will continue to justify continued growth in our circulation, as there is no shortage of stories that are best covered via our in-depth, magazine style."

—Katie Allison Granju