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Seven Days

Wednesday, March 19
War begins in Iraq. Mark this date on your calendars, boys and girls.

Thursday, March 20
Home Federal Bank announces that its 2002 net income was up 28 percent to almost $18 million. That ought to be enough to allow the company to restore the historic downtown Sprankle Building instead of tearing it down to make way for a parking lot.

Friday, March 21
Word leaks out that a Murfreesboro high school is canceling its exchange-student program with Germany because the German government didn't back the U.S. war in Iraq. Do we call those disappointed high school kids bloody Huns, now, or stinking Krauts, or what?

Saturday, March 22
The Lady Vols open their NCAA basketball tournament homestand with a victory over Alabama State. Wait a minute. Alabama's a state? We thought it was just a booster-backed university with a burning desire to restore its football program to prominence.

Sunday, March 23
A NASCAR race draws 160,000 fans to Bristol. Terrorists pass up the chance to target the packed racetrack. Except of course for Tony Stewart, the driver who terrorizes everyone within barking distance.

Monday, March 24
A Memphis police officer pleads guilty to taking money from motorists in return for not writing them tickets. His mistake was asking for bribes instead of simply palming the cash offered along with the drivers' licenses during traffic stops.

Tuesday, March 25
The Sons of Confederate Veterans, headquartered in Columbia, Tenn., reinstates one of its "army" commanders who'd been suspended for allegedly discussing the organization's confidential business in public. Safe to say his public utterances had nothing to do with any "rise again" rhetoric.

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:

Back in the '80s, Knoxville had something of a renaissance of guerrilla art. In those salad days, impromptu creative expressions in the most unorthodox of locales would surprise and delight the unwary passerby—for example, many an evening stroller would find themselves following the notorious purple footprints that made a meandering trail through the Fort Sanders neighborhood.

The purple footprints long since have faded or have been urban-renewed from existence, and their creators have moved on or retired. (And we won't tell if you won't, MP.) But one guerrilla artist is still plying her trade, and in the case of last week's Knoxville Found, plying it on plywood. The image in question is one of several Cynthia Markert has embellished upon the otherwise-unlovely plywood "tunnel" constructed in front of the Market Square properties that Scott and Bernadette West are renovating.

Across the gaping chasm formerly known as Market Square from the plywood tunnel is a Subway Sandwich Shop, and two of its employees, Amy Adams and Tara Atkins, were first to identify Cynthia's handiwork. To split the difference in their award, we're giving Tara and Amy the books Love Lessons from Bad Breakups and What I Most Love about You, trusting that they will be able to determine who will benefit best from which.

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

CBID PUBLIC INPUT SESSION
Thursday, March 27
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Crescent Moon Restaurant
718 Gay St.
The public is invited to come and express concerns, ask questions, and just mingle.

KNOXVILLE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORP. BOARD
Thursday, March 27
11:30 a.m.
KCDC Conference Room, 901 North Broadway
Regular meeting.

KNOXVILLE TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY
Thursday, March 27
3 p.m. *�Rooms 107/109
John T. O'Connor Senior Center
611 Winona Street
Regular meeting.

MAYOR'S NIGHT OUT
Monday, March 31
5 p.m.
Cal Johnson Recreation Center
507 Hall of Fame Drive
The public is invited to attend.

CITY COUNCIL
Tuesday, April 1
7 p.m.
City County Building
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting.

Alianza del Pueblo
Local Latinos get organized

Knoxville may have a handful of organization aimed at helping its Latino community feel at home in East Tennessee, but until a few months ago, none of them were run and organized by Latinos themselves. Last October, four friends decided it was about time Hispanics in Knoxville came together to start their own non-profit organization that focused on developing leadership skills and providing direct services to their community.

Alianza del Pueblo, or People's Alliance, was officially started in December with the combined efforts of Israel Arreguin, Tammy Haggard, Santos Aguilar and Marty Seamon. Together they discussed the need for a center where people could come to find information about anything from housing to healthcare.

"We all worked with different organizations such as Latinos Unidos," said Haggard, Alianza's administrator. "But we always saw this need to bring it together, to network it because it was too scattered."

Although Alianza is still in the organizing process, it already provides the community with a number of services. For a small donation, Alianza will translate birth certificates and fill out applications for driver's licenses and social security numbers. It also offers English classes, interpreters and information in Spanish about education, employment, and discrimination.

"The donations that we ask for are a very small value of what the services are actually worth, and we provide them whether somebody can pay for them or not," says Haggard.

Nevertheless, these donations barely cover the cost of the phone bill. Until they can afford a move, Alianza has a guest office in the building where Haggard runs her Labor Support Management company. Arreguin, Alianza's full-time director, recently returned from Mexico where he trained guest workers going to the United States and informed them of their new labor rights. Currently unemployed, Arreguin works up to 12 hours a day without pay, dealing with various problems and establishing relationships within the community.

"We want to provide direct services not only to Latinos, but to anyone that walks in the door and has a need," explains Arreguin. "Alianza is not going to be an isolated group thinking only of Latinos."

Despite the fund-raising obstacle, Alianza already boasts having a board of directors and nine enthusiastic volunteers. Its goal, to develop leadership skills among the Hispanic youth in Knoxville, started with a group of Pellissippi students from Puerto Rico, Haiti and Belize. Each volunteer oversees a specific project established to provide the community with tangible and immediate benefits. "I think we Latinos need to learn to run our own organizations and have our own agenda," says Arreguin.

Karen Morales, a Puerto Rican student, is in charge of forming a student union at UT to give Hispanic students the opportunities she says she never had. Morales hopes the union will plug into scholarships and channel high school graduates into the university where Hispanics make up one percent of the student body. Edwin Maldonado is another student who is eager to bring together the community by creating an adult soccer league made up of various ethnic groups.

"There's a lot of Hispanics around but I guess they're hiding somewhere," says Morales. "I see Alianza like the tree trunk, and then branches of everything coming from there."

Aside from the student projects, Alianza's future goals include establishing a center in the Lonsdale neighborhood to unite the low-income Hispanics, African-Americans and whites who live there. This month it will start providing Spanish and English classes in the existing center where African-Americans meet. Once expanded, the center will provide day care facilities, weekly transportation to grocery stores, a vegetable garden and a co-op where Latino women can sell their hand-made goods.

With the help of Haitian student Sebastian Clerge, Alianza hopes to receive financial support through grant proposals to local foundations. Meanwhile, the group has already outlined future projects aimed at tackling specific social problems. Among these is the idea of a credit union for Latinos to save money and build credit, in order that they may purchase a car without inflated interest rates.

Alianza also intends to create a Spanish-speaking group to deal with family problems, youth counseling, and alcoholism.

—Alexia Campbell

Institution in Limbo
Searching for an Oak Ridge museum peace

An Oak Ridge institution of more than 50 years standing, the American Museum of Science and Energy appears destined for renovation and perhaps a second thematic overhaul in light of altered federal priorities.

Founded in an old wartime cafeteria in 1949 as the American Museum of Atomic Energy, the entity moved in 1975 to its present location on South Tulane Avenue, where it assumed a broader science focus. But the future of the institution—which had been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to the level of about $1.2 million per year—was cast in the shadow of doubt when DOE announced in 2000 that funding the AMSE was no longer on the federal agenda.

DOE's chief Oak Ridge facilities contractor UT-Battelle took over operation of the museum in April 2000 and was instructed by DOE to devise a plan for the facility's continued viability. UT-Battelle did so, fashioning a six-point recommendation by which the city of Oak Ridge would take over operations in a gradual transition. In its final stage, the plan called for the museum to be run by the city, funded by more-or-less equal contributions from DOE, the city, ORNL, Y-12, a combination of various DOE contractors, and an endowment fund established during the transition.

What followed was a series of half-steps, equivocations, proposals and counter-proposals involving the city and DOE. The lack of commitment on either side left UT-Battelle to foot the bill in the meantime; the contractor has put more than $3.5 million into the operation since 2000. "It's been a heavy brick in our saddlebag," says one UT-Battelle official.

A major point of divergence was the city's decision to hire Amaze Designs, a consulting firm specializing in museum operations, to analyze the viability of Oak Ridge taking over the museum.

Amaze came back with an ambitious plan that called for an almost wholesale renovation of the museum, new exhibits and a new name: the Manhattan Project Heritage Museum. The retooled facility would serve as a repository for artifacts related to the Manhattan Project, birth-mother to the atomic bomb, and thus enable the city to charge a more substantial admission fee of $7 to $9 (current admission cost is $2 to $3.)

"It's a very aggressive proposal," admits Oak Ridge Mayor David Bradshaw. "It calls for something like what the museum would have been like had it been built today, rather than 25 years ago."

The city's most recent proposal, based on the Amaze plan, asked for DOE to make an up-front investment of more than $10 million in capital improvement money, as well as a commitment of several million dollars in operating funds over a transition period.

That was in February. DOE flatly refused, and AMSE's future appeared in doubt until earlier this month, when DOE Manager for Oak Ridge Operations Gerald Boyd stepped forward and pledged continued funding for the museum until a solution is found.

"We're not going to let AMSE close, but we have to come up with a better approach than proposal/counter-proposal," Boyd says, ceding that DOE may continue to provide some funding even after ownership of the museum is transferred.

Bradshaw says city officials realize the facility that the municipality will eventually take over will not be the wholly transformed and renovated entity envisioned by Amaze Designs. "We may not be able to do the home-run plan," he says. "But we're going to have to be more aggressive than we are."

And UT-Battelle and DOE officials aren't opposed to changes. UT-Battelle Director of Communications Billy Stair says that "many of the exhibits (at the AMSE) are very outdated, which is the kiss of death for a science museum." Boyd says that "it would be good to renovate the museum; it needs some upgrading."

With his announcement that the AMSE's funding would continue for the foreseeable future, Boyd also announced formation of a working committee of DOE chiefs, contractors and city officials to devise both a plan for change and a means by which the museum can be transferred smoothly from DOE to city control.

"It could continue to be a science museum, or it could be something else—a history museum devoted to the Manhattan Project, or to the city of Oak Ridge itself," Stair suggests.

"By definition, a history museum is more organic, doesn't have the demand of continual upgrading. It needs fewer staff. It may be less expensive. And it may need less space, which could free up space in the building for developing other income streams."

But the new "working committee" still lacks a timetable, a concrete means of enforcing the mandate for urgency implicit in the current state of affairs. Says Boyd, "We need to do it quickly, because it is a funding problem."

"Decisions need to be made sooner rather than later," Stair says. "You've got to think creatively on this, or you're not going to get there."

—Mike Gibson