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Seven Days

Wednesday, Jan. 23
The good news is the drought seems to be ending; the bad news is it's hard to cheer from underwater.

Thursday, Jan. 24
Floods are followed by winds that topple trees all over the place, leaving Knoxvillians wondering how bad it may get in two years when Victor Ashe leaves the mayor's office. His frequent observation, since term limits were adopted, has been, "Apres moi, le deluge."
UT's chief of research resigns following objections by university officials to pornographic materials in his computer. Same old complaint: Undue administrative restrictions on academic research.

Friday, Jan. 25
The news breaks that First Baptist Concord Church officials want the church to buy the Farragut Towne Shopping Center, a strip mall across the street. Southern Baptist Convention spokesmen immediately deny that they are seeking to buy the Wal-Mart Corp. to head off possible competition.

Monday, Jan. 28
Knox County Commission postpones action on a proposal to reduce the minimum width standard for parking spaces in the county, pending a review of how many commissioners drive SUVs.

Tuesday, Jan. 29
Warren Farrell, Californian, bestselling author and widely quoted male issues expert, tells a UT audience that "masculinity is a mental problem," then says, "Oops," and indicates he hopes the local press won't print that. Not to worry, professor. It ain't news, even in Knoxville.
In an unrelated "oops," The Grand Vista Hotel and Suites in Vonore's Tellico West Industrial Park ballyhooes its recent opening, citing the expectation that 75 percent of its guests will be people doing business in the park, on the same day that the impending closing of the big plant of Matsushita Refrigeration, the park's anchor tenant, is announced.

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:
You're not a true Southerner if you didn't know this one—South Knoxville, that is. It's a monument in front of the old Candora Marble Company office on the corner Candora Street and Maryville Pike in the heart of Vestal. It is also, respondent Trudy Monaco notes, the site of the South Knoxville Art and Heritage Foundation, which last year hosted the first annual S.K. Art and Heritage Festival, affectionately known as the "Vestival." The second Vestival will take place this year on Saturday, May 11, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (For more information or to volunteer, call Ms. Monaco at 454-5300.) As informative as Trudy's response was, however, she was not the first with the right answer. That was Sandy Leach, head of the Pendergrass Library on the University of Tennessee's Ag/Vet campus. We'd like to send Ms. Leach something for their permanent collection, but we can't bring ourselves to part with our copy of When Animals Attack! So instead, we will send her The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, a collection of short stories by author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

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

KNOXVILLE'S COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORP.
Thursday Jan. 31
11:30 a.m.
Lonsdale homes
2815 Badgett Drive
First of a series of 12 monthly board meetings to be held in neighborhoods and facilities throughout the community that are served by KCDC
KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL
Thursday Jan. 31
5 p.m.
City County Bldg., Large Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Workshop with a presentation on Universe Knoxville.
KNOX COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION
Monday Feb. 4
5 p.m.
Andrew Johnson Bldg., 1st Floor
912 S. Gay St.
Work session.
KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL
Tuesday Feb. 5
6:30 p.m.
City County Bldg., Large Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Consideration of city participation in the Universe Knoxville project is expected.
KNOX COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION
Wednesday Feb. 7
5 p.m.
City County Bldg., Large Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Regular monthly meeting.

Good Shepherds

Knoxville churches discover a new calling: environmentalism

You might not expect Knoxville's religious community to be a hotbed of environmental activism. This is a group that maintains a reputation for keeping its hands clean of the green agenda. But strange things are afoot in East Tennessee: churches are jumping on the environmental bandwagon in droves.

The buzzword is faith-based stewardship, and it seems like a contradiction in terms. There seem to be two major themes that perpetuate the stereotype that conservative Christianity is at odds with environmental concerns: First, there is the idea that Earth is merely a stopover on our journey to the next world. Second, there is the verse in Genesis where God says, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

But there has definitely been a shift in mindset among many in the Christian community. The new interpretation of Christian doctrine begins with the idea that since God created the heavens and Earth and everything else, then all his creation is a sacred gift that must be cared for. Anything that exploits God's creation is a sinful act of rebellion against God Himself.

Well, if you want to light a fire under a group of Christians, accuse them of being sinners.

Here in East Tennessee, the movement seems to center around energy concerns. This is not surprising, with the looming presence of TVA. Churches are doing various things within their congregations, but the first real interfaith initiative is being coordinated by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE)—a nonprofit citizen alliance that closely monitors TVA's energy policies.

Gil Melear-Hough, a green power organizer with SACE, basically stumbled into the idea as he was drumming up grassroots support for the Green Power Switch—a program through TVA where residents and businesses can buy electricity generated from renewable sources like wind and solar power. "I was speaking to clubs and Boy Scout troops," he says, "but my warmest reception was from churches...They were the group most willing to take action, not just talk about it." He admits that this caught him by surprise; he never thought: We need to go out and get the faith community involved. It just kind of happened. Call it good luck, if you will. Or divine intervention.

Melear-Hough's first major project was to organize a visit to Knoxville by the Rev. Sally Bingham, a priest in the Episcopal Church who is currently the environmental minister at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and co-director of Episcopal Power and Light, an arm of the church dedicated to energy conservation.

Eco-Sal, as Bingham is known to her friends, is not exactly the outspoken activist you might expect. She is a fair-complexioned woman of diminutive stature, and apparently the speech she gave to the public at the Good Samaritan Episcopal Church on Nov. 7 was one of the first times she had spoken outside of a worship service. Her delivery bore more of a resemblance to Marge Simpson than the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Nonetheless, Bingham is obviously passionate about her work, and she has no shortage of pithy sayings when it comes to stewardship. She likes to say that the first endangered species act was between God and Noah. She wants to see people reading the scriptures through green lenses. When discussing fuel economy, she asks the question, "What would Jesus drive?"

Knoxville's version of Bingham's outfit is Tennessee Interfaith Power and Light—a new initiative started by SACE to encourage churches in the area to sign up for the Green Power Switch and to look at ways to save energy as institutions. Right now it is still embryonic, but Melear-Hough has been impressed with the support of many local church communities.

In addition to the Episcopal Church, which hosted the public meeting with Bingham, several other major denominations in the area have been active in environmental issues, including Methodists, Presbyterians, and Catholics.

The Knoxville Diocese of the Catholic Church established what it calls an Eco-Church Ministry in 1994 through its Office of Justice-Peace-Integrity of Creation. It is a "practical and spiritual approach to healing our wounded environment," says Sister Anne Hablas, and a way to promote action on behalf of the diocese. They are working to do away with all Styrofoam and paper products in favor of traditional ceramic plates and silverware; a parish-wide recycling project is underway; and two churches—St. Mary's in Oak Ridge and Seymour Catholic Church—have signed up for the Green Power Switch program. The big undertaking right now is encouraging every church to do a simple energy audit. "There's just a lot of ways in which water and energy could be saved among 45 churches," Hablas says.

Another local church active on the environmental front is the Church of the Savior on Weisgarber Road, a part of the United Church of Christ. They have actually included a blurb about caring for the Earth in their church mission statement, and Rev. John Gill listed about 13 different projects they are working on. "Most simply, this is based on the idea that the Earth is a gift from 'God the Creator' and therefore not our own," Gill says. "We have been put in a position to care for it." One innovative thing they are doing is supporting a local sustainable agriculture food cooperative, where individuals provide money up front and get food at the end of the month, depending on the level of production. Contributors help sustain the effort by taking on some of the financial risk.

The 24th Psalm says, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it," and this verse is commonly cited as a Biblical foundation for stewardship. One who mentions it is John Nolt, professor of philosophy at UT and all-around green guru. (This is a guy who cuts his grass by hand with a scythe.)

Nolt teaches a course on environmental ethics at UT and he has also written extensively about environmental topics. Nolt sees Psalm 24 as an important metaphor, a way of showing that destruction of the Earth is disrespectful.

One of the books Nolt collaborated on—What Have We Done?—is an environmental state of the region report for the upper Tennessee Valley and the southern Appalachian Mountains. One of the book's more interesting (and perhaps surprising) techniques is the use of a Bible verse at the beginning of each chapter as an epigraph. For example, the introduction quotes from Jeremiah 12:10-11: " . . . they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. They have made it desolate and being desolate it mourneth unto me; the whole land is made desolate, because no man layeth it to heart." Subtle, this is not. But Nolt says that he and the other authors were not trying to be cynical: "We weren't using the tradition in a disrespectful way. What Have We Done? was addressed to a popular audience in contemporary southern Appalachia, which is overwhelmingly Christian, and so we felt that quotations from the Bible would be most resonant for that audience. Some people have found it puzzling. A few have been moved by it." That number seems to be growing.

—Jason Gorss

KAT's Curious

What does Knoxville want its bus system to be?

Next week, KAT will kick off its Action Plan 2010 to find out what Knoxvillians want their public transportation to be.

The eight-month study will try to identify what the public wants KAT to focus on in the next decade, says Mark Hairr, KAT's general manager. KAT does a strategic plan about every five years, Hairr says. This one will cost about $208,000, with funding coming from the city, KAT, the Tennessee Department of Transportation, and the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization (formerly called the MPO).

"We want this plan driven by what people want in Knoxville," Hairr says. "We don't want a plan like consultants usually give you that says, 'Here's what works in Lexington, Kentucky.'"

Hairr says KAT has already done some of the ground work, in terms of bus inventories and rider surveys. It will be holding public surveys in different parts of the city, meeting with neighborhood groups and conducting phone surveys. It will be seeking comments on routes, fares, bus-sizes, location of hub centers, and marketing.

"This is a much more comprehensive look, not only three years out, but 10 years. It establishes a vision and identifies the steps to get through it," he says.

There are no immediate plans to change the current $1 fare (with a 20-cent transfer fee), but those will be looked at during the study. KAT might do what some other cities have done, reducing the fare and eliminating transfers, Hairr says.

KAT already has several plans in the works. It has $1.2 million in funding to buy three alternative or hybrid fuel buses, and may get enough money for seven buses, Hairr says. The type of bus hasn't been identified, but KAT is leaning toward a hybrid electric-gas bus. "We have to have something to handle the steep topography," Hairr says. "The thing you get with a hybrid vehicle is more pull. An electric bus can make it up these hills but if you've got a load of 20 or 30 people, it drains the battery."

The buses will be purchased later this year, he says.

KAT is also looking at regular diesel buses. It put a bid out for six 30-foot buses and has money to buy 10 new trolleys. "From 1982 to '93, KAT bought no new buses. There are 22 buses from 1982 still being used," he says. "When you see a puff of black smoke coming out of a KAT bus, it's probably one of those."

KAT is also looking at building a transfer station at what's now a parking lot in the 700 block of South Gay Street. The project would involve various partners and include offices, ground level retail, a day care center and a parking garage. Right now, KAT and the city are doing an engineering and architectural plan for the site.

KAT's $10 million annual budget is supported with $4 million from the city, $1.6 million from the state, about $2 million in grants and another $1 million in fares. It gives about 7,000 rides to 3,000 people each day.

In recent years, KAT has been expanding, with free-trolley lines between UT and Fort Sanders, and UT and downtown, as well as a late-night line connecting the Fort with the Old City on weekends. The number of riders has also been going up—increasing about 7 percent since last year.

—Joe Tarr