Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Cyber-Trolling

Last month, the Knox County Libraries installed a software product, "St. Bernard," on its public computer terminals. The aptly-named new software blocks access to pornographic sites on the Internet.

The effects were swift and dramatic. Two days later employees at the main library were asking, "Where did all the people go?" There was a dramatic drop in library regulars who hung out at the library every day. At least 20 folks disappeared when the porn access went away.

Although each library patron who uses an Internet terminal must sign an agreement not to view pornography at the library, the coincidence was too strong for library personnel to dismiss.

Down Cumberland Avenue, librarians at UT Library, which does not use software to block the cybernasties, reported complaints from students who could not get computer access because a bunch of people—maybe 20—had taken over many of the computer terminals.

The Name Game, Part Deux: Larry, Larry Bo-Barry...

These are hard times, right? So maybe we're getting a wholesale price on all the new signs necessitated by City Council's orgy of renaming city streets and landmarks after themselves and other notables. Take the recreation center formerly known (until last Tuesday's City Council meeting) as the North Knoxville Recreation Center. Now, there's a long green directional sign on the east side of Broadway at the corner of Edgewood indicating that the Larry G. Cox Recreation Center is thattaway. One block east, on the corner of Edgewood and Acker, there's another long green Larry G. Cox Recreation Center sign pointing north. About 300 feet northward, near the corner of Acker and Ocoee, there's a third Larry G. Cox Recreation Center sign pointing west on Ocoee, which makes an ambling curve, veers northward and winds by a branch library and a low brick building with a big wooden sign out front with the words Larry G. Cox Recreation Center burned handsomely into its face. So is all this signage necessary? Probably not. Folks in North Knoxville are a wily lot, and probably can be counted on not to confuse the Larry G. Cox Recreation Center with the Larry G. Cox Field at Oglewood and Kenyonon the west side of Broadway adjacent to Christenberry Elementary School.

That Old Gospel Ship

Sunday night, after mayoral candidates Bill Haslam and Madeline Rogero finished up their forum at Patrick Sullivan's in the Old City, Rogero took a drive down to the waterfront and boarded the Star of Knoxville for a tropical gospel cruise sponsored by Full Armour Church and its pastor, the Rev. Nathan Best. The boat was rocking with a gospel show MC'ed by Hallerin Hill on the main deck and a DJ spinning Caribbean melodies up above. The late night cruise featured numerous gospel artists and lots of prizes. In his youth, Best, a member of the Fairfield Four, which won a Grammy for performing "Lonesome Valley" in the film "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou," was a member of the classic R&B group, the O'Jays. He finished up the evening with a song from his "Christian Love Songs" album, which he dedicated to his wife, Sherry. The night ended with dancing, and Rogero doing a mean electric slide. For more information about the next gospel cruise, July 13, call the Full Armour Church at 544-7005

Museum of @rt

Tuesday morning, the Knoxville Museum of Art's young director, Todd Smith, outlined some exciting changes the museum will be taking, starting now. He calls his new KMA a "new paradigm in regional art museums," and some of the changes sound more than sensible. The museum is now opening mid-day, and staying open into the evening, when most of us have a greater opportunity to go. As part of the nocturnal emphasis, they're launching Suburban [sic] Thursdays: weekly art, film, and music events edgier than the successful but usually mainstream Alive After Five, and aimed at a younger, college-age crowd. The new KMA will also feature a permanent "Design Lab," a changing exhibit of architectural and other forms of design, in the gallery to the left of the entrance.

Going along with all that is a new logo, roughly transcribed as km@. The @ sign used to be an old-fashioned way to mark prices for tomatoes, but was itself repositioned in the '90s as a hallmark of the high-tech. Smith explained that the @ evokes new forms of communication (as he said that, a cell phone went off, as they did repeatedly during his short talk). Don't get used to it: by 2004, the @ sign will be about as exciting as a ZIP code, and km@ will be considering other designs.

Smith says km@ will be the regional center for imagery; on a roll, he went on to allege that "Images are fast becoming the preferred mode of communication, moving to eclipse the written word." Us print people are skeptical about statements like that, and more so after we had a good look at the new design lab's display of Crandall-Arambula's redesign of downtown. The exhibit is altogether prettier and more comprehensible than most urban-planning displays. But over and over, as dignitaries examined each color-coded poster, we overheard the query, "What's that?" At the exhibit, declarative sentences are rare, and paragraphs unknown.

Sometimes the written word can help. Some folks end up in architecture school because they don't like to write, but there's nothing wrong with a well-turned paragraph or two. Some folks are still literate, even in 2003, even in Knoxville.