Metro Pulse/Insights/A Knoxville Education

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Reflections on leaving the city in the mountains

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

Writing a farewell column is one of those formalities like thank-you notes for wedding gifts or flowers for a funeral, something that is more important for the ritualistic act than the details of its enactment. Everything I have to say to anyone who might read this can really be summed up in one sentence: Thank you, I'll miss you, take care of yourselves and take care of your city.

But this being my last editor's column, it's hard for me to just let it go at that. So here are some things I've learned in Knoxville.

The place you are is an important place. I don't just mean Knoxville—every place is important, and every place is important in its own way. Uncovering and understanding that importance, discovering what makes a place a place, is the only way to learn from it. I can't explain why exactly I came to understand this in Knoxville rather than the other places I've lived. Part of it, I suppose, can be attributed to creeping maturity. But a lot of it was having good guides—that includes all of my Metro Pulse mentors, but most especially Jack Neely. It took me a while to understand that Jack is not just writing about Knoxville's past; he's writing about its present and future too, and about the things that connect one to the other. Every city needs a Jack Neely, but there's only one of him, and Knoxville's got him.

It can be hardest to appreciate what is right in front of you. This is kind of a corollary to the first lesson, and I think it explains a lot of Knoxville's difficulties over the past few decades. Too many people in one capacity or another have tried to "solve" Knoxville's problems without really understanding or embracing the place. Or, maybe more to the point, too many people have been too embarrassed by what they perceive as Knoxville's shortcomings—its smallness, its scruffiness, its lack of "sophistication"—to appreciate how important those things are to its character and personality. Knoxville is and always will be a small city in the Southern mountains. That makes it a deeply fascinating and culturally rich place. Yes, it's a little rough around the edges, but those edges and the friction between them are what make it interesting. Two centuries of trying to sand them down haven't erased them. And that's a good thing. All the convention centers and planetariums in the world aren't worth one block of Central Street. Too much of what has been both done and proposed around here, either out of desperation or opportunism, has proceeded from a sense that Knoxville itself isn't worth much. If you love where you are, if you understand what makes it valuable, other people will love it too. And if they don't, well heck, what do you need them for anyway?

In a democracy, people who are more interested in amassing power than sharing it make lousy leaders. Insecurity is a terrible trait in an elected official, whether it's a mayor or a sheriff or a school board member. Anyone who needs a position more than the position needs them isn't really ready to serve. If someone has been in office for more than a year without ever publicly admitting they were wrong about something or apologizing, it should set off alarm bells. Everyone's going to make mistakes; it's how they handle the mistakes that counts.

"Important" people are no more likely to know what they're talking about than "unimportant" people. And they're a lot less likely to be honest with you.

Margaret Mead was right—"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." I've seen it happen in Knoxville over and over, and I hope it keeps happening. Don't pay any attention to people who tell you that no one will listen to you; they're just afraid someone might. And don't worry about what "they" might do to you for speaking up, whoever "they" are. The biggest weapon they have is intimidation. I hate to sound like a motivational speaker, but this is something I've learned from personal experience and a lot of observation: if you decide not to be afraid, there's not a lot "they" can do about it.

Not much works out the way you think it will. And that can be a wonderful thing. I never intended to stay in Knoxville more than a few years, and I certainly didn't plan on the complete re-ordering of my life that happened about halfway through (when I got here, I was still young enough to think I knew what I was doing). As it turns out, Knoxville's not a bad place to get divorced. And it's an even better place to get married again. Which leads to...

East Tennessee women are marvelous phenomena. One in particular. I love you, Julie!

There are worse places to be at 3 a.m. on the first day of a new millennium than the roof of a building in downtown Knoxville with champagne buzzing in your head and the V-roys ringing in your ears. As far as I'm concerned, the century got off to a fine start.

Contrary to our current national dogma, the best things in life and the world are not produced by people who are motivated primarily by money. People who are motivated by money are mostly good at making money. They're an important part of the mix, but they have a troublesome tendency to sacrifice a lot of valuable things along the way—because they don't understand that anything else is valuable. The best art, the best music, the best food, the best architecture, the best educating, the best writing, the best radio stations, the best ideas for restoring and rejuvenating neighborhoods and communities, the best construction, even the best investment banking—they all come from people who are doing something because they love doing it. If they do it well enough and get lucky enough, sure, they'll make money. But if you took away from Knoxville all the people who are doing things mostly out of love, this would be a much poorer city in every sense of the word. People who measure "success" solely by the bottom line are missing most of the best of what Knoxville has and is. Something for the economic developers to keep in mind.

Any city that can claim James Agee, Cormac McCarthy, Clarence Brown, Alex Haley, Chet Atkins, the Everly Brothers, Todd Steed, R.B. Morris, and Scott Miller (and many more besides) ought to do it as often as possible.

Whatever you're doing, if you're not having fun, you're either doing it wrong or you're doing the wrong thing. I have worked at three newspapers in the area—The Mountain Press in Sevierville, the News-Sentinel, and Metro Pulse. I enjoyed myself at all three, and there are people I like and respect at all of them. But of course, Metro Pulse stands out. It has been the constant during my time in Knoxville. The first person I ever met here was a Metro Pulse writer. My first Knoxville byline was in Metro Pulse. And when I finally came here to work full time, it felt weirdly like coming home. For the past five and a half years, despite the predictable ups and downs that come with sharing space and responsibilities with other people, there has never been a day that I didn't want to come to the office. I don't know what kind of work I'll be doing in the future, but I doubt I'll ever have more fun (legal and otherwise). There have been too many people in and out of these doors to mention, but I have to mention at least a few:

Lee, Coury, Hillari, Jack, Ian, Lisa, Barry, Shelly, Mike G., Joe T., Matt E., Zak & Joey, Scott M., new mamas Adrienne and Jill (yes, Metro Pulse is reproducing!), Kimberly, Heather, Martha, Matthew, Jay, Scott H., Ed, Gary, Clint, Mike K., Dugan, Joey H., Chris L., John S., the indomitable Ms. Bean, the equally indomitable Nora, Brig, Sharon, Tamar, Rick, Tonya, Katie, Paige, and probably many more I'm not recalling at the moment. Collectively, you're one of the strangest and most talented group of people anyone could ever hope to work with. And of course, more than any other place I've worked, Metro Pulse owes its existence to one person: Joe Sullivan, who (besides paying me) has inspired me even more than he's aggravated me—I like to think he'd say the same about me.

Sometimes you really do want to go where everybody knows your name. Bless the late, lamented Great Southern Brewing Co., bless Macleod's, and Manhattan's, and Tomato Head, and Harold's, and Crescent Moon, and the nascent Preservation Pub, and everywhere else friends and neighbors congregate. As for those friends, I doubt I've ever know a better, weirder, smarter, more entertaining group of people and partiers. If we ever come back to Knoxville (or maybe I should say when we come back to Knoxville, since nobody ever seems to stay gone), you'll be the reason.

Anything else?

Just this: "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."—Finley Peter Dunne. And this: Thank you, I'll miss you, take care of yourselves and take care of your city.