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Seven Days

Wednesday, Oct. 10
Greg Pinkston, the City Council candidate from South Knoxville, denies he left the Knoxville Police Department under a cloud six years ago because a former girlfriend complained he was harassing her. Then he resumes harassing his opponent, Joe Hultquist.
The anthrax panic spreads to Maryville, where three women spend most of the day locked in the back of an ambulance after contacting an unknown greasy substance in a beauty salon. We hope this will all seem funny some day.

Thursday, Oct. 11
Knoxville-based Regal Cinemas, the nation's largest movie theater chain, files for bankruptcy protection to reorganize under new ownership. The movie industry issues a blanket statement denying that its collectively bankrupt imagination had anything to do with it.

Friday, Oct. 12
Mayor Victor Ashe announces that the state Department of Transportation has issued a one-year reprieve for two oak trees, hundreds of years old, near the I-40 interchange at Papermill Road. TDOT officials confirm that they won't cut the them down until 2002 because they want the trees to be even older before they ravage them.

Monday, Oct. 15
The Knox County Commission's Education Committee decides it doesn't need a monthly report anymore from schools Superintendent Charles Q. Lindsey. Is he allowed to sit in the back of the room and make faces?

Tuesday, Oct. 16
City Council lends its first vote favoring a referendum next year to switch city election cycles to coincide with gubernatorial and presidential elections, aiming to encourage greater voter turnout. One Council member grumbles that the turnout for the referendum may be low enough to prove, finally, that the citizenry really, genuinely doesn't give a hoot.

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:
Goodbye, Norma Jean. Turns out it's not just candles that have trouble with wind—at least, assuming it was wind that toppled this Marilyn Monroe statue in front of an old car dealership on Lovell Road (just north of the bridge over I-40). Some readers speculated it was vandals, clumsy movers or even an errant driver. In any case, it makes for one of the odder pop art installations we've seen in West Knox. (One reader also claims to have spotted it in Oliver Springs a few months back—a long way to travel on broken legs.) First right answer came from Kevin Crateau, who wrote, "I am available anytime to pick up my prize as long as I get to meet the girl in that dating line ad on the inside back cover. I'm sure she works there, right?" Suuuuuure she does, Kevin. We'll have her give you a call. In the meantime, we'll also send you a prize: a copy of Stephen Russell's Barefoot Doctor's Handbook for Modern Lovers. So you'll be ready.

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

CITY ELECTION EARLY VOTING
Wednesday Oct. 17 - Thursday Nov. 1
10 a.m. - 6 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Saturdays
Downtown West, Knoxville Center, the Civic Coliseum and the Old Knox County Courthouse.
New members will be elected for City Council Districts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6.

DISTRICT ONE CANDIDATES' FORUM
Thursday Oct. 18
7:30 p.m.
Laurel Theatre
Laurel at 16th St.
Sponsored by: Historic Fort Sanders Neighborhood Association, UT Student Government Association, League of Women Voters.

KNOX COUNTY COMMISSION
Monday Oct. 22
2 p.m.
City County Bldg., Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular monthly meeting.

A Symbol of Faith

A series of events aim to clear up misconceptions about Islam

Muslim women who wear the traditional hijab, or scarf, around their head and neck often inspire pity in other Americans.

"A lot of people look at it as a symbol of oppression, or male dominance," says Sadaf Shaukat, a UT student who is a member of the Muslim Student Association. "What it basically is is our identify as Muslim women. It's a symbol of faith and modesty, and our devotion to Islam."

To help clear up the misconceptions and stereotypes that exist, and to combat harassment of Muslims, the group is sponsoring a "Scarves for Solidarity Day" on campus Friday. Non-Muslim women will be given free scarves to wear to show support for Muslim Americans and promote understanding about the faith. White armbands will be passed out to men and women who don't want to wear the hijab but want to show support.

Similar Scarves for Solidarity are being sponsored at campuses around the country. The response at UT has so far been positive, with a number of other student groups interested in co-sponsoring, Shaukat says.

Not all Muslim women wear the hijab—like any religion, people vary in the way they worship. But Shaukat says the practice isn't strictly a Muslim one. "It's even in Christian and Orthodox Jewish religions," she says. "In many paintings of Mary, her head is always covered."

Jennifer Webster, a Christian student, says she's supporting the event to clear up misunderstandings about Muslim women. "When you see a woman wearing a hijab, the inclination is to think of her as oppressed or even backward, as though it were something forced on her by men or by some unreasonable tenet of her faith. We might think that she's not in charge of her own body; but that's not at all how these women see the situation....For them it is a personal decision, something they are free to accept or deny."

The event is one of a series sponsored by the Muslim Student Association called "Unveiling Ignorance," which started yesterday.

Tonight (Oct. 18), there will be two films on the Islamic tradition, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the University Center Auditorium. HIJAB: An Expression of My Soul is about American and immigrant Muslims at Berkeley who wear the hijab and why. Faces of Islam is a BBC documentary about the Islamic religion and culture.

On Thursday, Nov. 1, Dr. Rania Masri will talk about economic sanctions against Iraq and the toll they've taken on people who live there. The lecture is at 7 p.m. in the University Center Auditorium.

"The Civilizations of Islam: From Spain to China" will be Thursday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m. in the University Center Auditorium. It is a slide-show and lecture by Dr. Umar Abdallah of the University of Chicago and photographer Peter Sanders of England.

For more information about the series, contact the Muslim Student Association at 405-5527 or visit their website at www.msaknoxville.org.

—Joe Tarr

Opening the Door

At last, public input on Market Square. But is it too late?

After waiting months and even years for an official public input session on the future of Market Square, why are some of the Square's most vocal advocates giving short shrift to a planned Oct. 29 meeting?

Well, because they've been waiting months and even years.

"I think the timing of it is completely backwards," says Andie Ray, who owns a building on the Square and has been lobbying for better planning and public participation for more than a year. "We asked for a delay. Among other things, it would have enabled them to have this at the beginning of the process, where it should have been."

Knoxville's Community Development Corp., the agency that has ended up with responsibility for redeveloping Market Square following a rondelay that has seen a handful of proposals come and go, scheduled the "visioning" session in conjunction with Nine Counties One Vision. It is set for 5 p.m. on Oct. 29. (As of press time, the location had not been settled.)

"It's not about talking about the process of what shoulda coulda woulda happened," says Nine Counties executive director Lynn Fugate. "It's about talking about what the community's vision is for Market Square."

Property owners on the Square seem only marginally interested in the meeting, although those contacted say they'll attend. But following City Council's approval of the latest redevelopment plan for the Square, and KCDC's issuance of a request for development proposals, they wonder what a public input session at this point is supposed to achieve.

"Yeah, I'll go," says Susan Key, who owns an art gallery and residence on the Square. "But it's too little, too late. If they wanted to do something with the public on Market Square, they should have done it months and months ago."

The public meeting will be supervised by Nine Counties One Vision guru Gianni Longo, who guided the entire Nine Counties process. Fugate says Longo is coming in at the request of KCDC—specificially, at the request of KCDC board chairman Bill Lyons, a UT political science professor and local political analyst who has spent the last few months trying to inject new life and greater public participation into the Market Square plans.

"We've got to have an opportunity for people who are interested to buy in and participate and help shape it," Lyons says.

That's exactly the kind of language the Historic Market Square Association, made up of many Square property owners and their supporters, has been speaking for months—ever since Mayor Victor Ashe turned away from the mass acquisition proposals put forward under the now-dormant Renaissance Knoxville plan (that plan, based on proposals from developers Worsham Watkins International, envisioned a single owner and/or controller for the whole Square). HMSA even organized its own public input session last spring, which drew more than 100 people, and forwarded the results to the city—with little discernible impact.

Many HMSA members think the KCDC plan, which calls for a "coordinating developer," is poorly designed and unnecessary. But now that City Council has approved it, property owners wonder how much impact any public meeting will have. (Exacerbating the ambivalence is an apparent distrust of Laurens Tullock, head of the Cornerstone Foundation and the driving force behind Nine Counties. Tullock, who was out of town this week and unavailable for comment, embraced the Renaissance Knoxville plan, and many property owners and downtown advocates have not forgiven him for it.)

Lyons agrees there's no formal weight to the Oct. 29 meeting. But he thinks it could have an impact on any developers planning to submit proposals under the redevelopment plan.

"We expect anybody putting in any kind of proposal is going to make a lot of use of this," he says. "It's just good information."

The bigger picture is that Lyons, an advocate of more openness in local decision making, has been trying for the past few months to stimulate dialogue between the Square's owners and the often cloaked powers-that-be in KCDC and city government.

"I firmly believe the days of doing things in the back room are over," he says. "Too many people have access to too much information." Among other things, Lyons has been an active and vocal participant on the Internet forum k2k, which dwells on downtown development and local politics.

One topic he expects to be prominent at the meeting is the future of the public space on Market Square. Most discussion and debate of recent months has focused on the privately-owned buildings that line the Square rather than the plaza itself. KCDC's redevelopment plan implies that would-be developers should include ideas for the public space in their proposals, but gives little guidance. Lyons hopes some of the discussion next week will provide that.

Meanwhile, HMSA members are awaiting a report from consultant Bob Gibbs, whom they hired in August (with public money granted by City Council) to do a comprehensive study of the Square's retail potential. Key says the report will be finished sometime this week. Gibbs will come to town to give a formal presentation next month. Fugate, who notes that Gibbs and Longo are old acquaintances, says Gibbs' report will probably also be incorporated into the Oct. 29 meeting.

Fugate says the session will probably be run much like the early rounds of Nine Counties One Vision, with a large group discussion followed by small break-out meetings to brainstorm and prioritize ideas for the Square. One thing everyone agrees on is that they'd like to see a big public turn-out to show support for redeveloping the Square.

"In the best of all possible worlds," Andie Ray says, "the word will get out there and there would be a huge turnout... It would serve the function of the public feeling like they have input and they buy into what's happening." But, she says, that feeling will only develop if people believe that what they say can actually influence the end result.

"Do I actually think that's going to happen in this town?" she asks. "I don't know."

—Jesse Fox Mayshark