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Seven Days

Wednesday, July 30
Clayton Homes stockholders voted narrowly to sell the manufactured housing giant to a company controlled by financier Warren Buffett. Opponents to the sale said they feared the Clayton headquarters would be moved from Alcoa to Margaritaville.

Thursday, July 31
The News Sentinel reveals once more that Tennessee has not joined the ranks of states that require a vision test for a driver's license for aging motorists. The state's lawmakers have always argued that such a test was unfair, because those most affected would be unable to read the change in law.

Friday, August 1
A federal judge in Chattanooga dismisses a $50 ticket issued to a Cherokee Indian official for overstaying his camping limit in the Cherokee National Forest. The defendant successfully argued that he was on land he contends was wrongly taken from his family. The prosecution unsuccessfully argued that Native Americans have overstayed their camping limit in the United States by 250 years.

Saturday, August 2
The Associated Press reports that Citadel Broadcasting's stock offering on Wall Street was grabbed up at premium prices after the company decided to leave the format of WOKI-FM "The River" alone. The clincher was when Citadel left the name of the station unchanged rather than recasting it as "New Coke."

Monday, August 4
About 100 White Lily employees and their union backers picket the Knoxville plant after they were locked out by the company, who hired other workers to do their jobs. Members of the picket line warn consumers to watch out for "scabs" in their flour bags.

Tuesday, August 5
Sign of the Times: Beleaguered KUB argues before the city Board of Environmental Appeals that a recent spate of sanitary sewer overflows has been caused by heavy rains, not KUB negligence. A possible sign of the severity of the problem is that sanitary sewer overflows are occurring so frequently they are now being referred to as SSOs.

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:
We didn't anticipate that this one would be as difficult as it apparently was. We got only three correct identifications all week. This monument stone sits prominently at the entrance to the National Cemetery, which is located next to Old Gray Cemetery just off Broadway. The stone honors East Tennessee Union Soldiers that are buried there. Jeanie Watts, from Knoxville, was first with the right answer. We don't have any Civil War-era treasures laying about so we hope that Jeanie enjoys Battle Notes: Music of the Vietnam War by Lee Anderson. Good work Jeanie and thank you for reading Metro Pulse.

Open, Open Damned Square!
The Shakespeare show needs must go on

While the dust keeps flying from Wall to Clinch, Market Square's employees, residents, and business owners look forward to the day when the trucks and workers leave and the patrons and events return. By Cardinal Construction Vice President Jason DeBord's account, "nobody wants it to be finished more than I do," although he didn't want to speculate on the project's completion. Instead of waiting until then, the Tennessee Stage Company has stepped in, hard-hats not included, to perform As You Like It at the north end of Market Square Aug. 15 through 31.

During the play's three-week run, Cardinal workers will cordon off the north section of the square with orange fencing around a temporary stage and seating for up to 300 audience members. Work on that part of the square will be slowed rather than halted, DeBord said. Since the play is only being performed on weekends, DeBord said workers can continue construction around the pavilion area site on a limited basis.

"We'll do some work while they're there," he said. "But we won't do as much, because we can't leave it a mess." Construction on the rest of the square, in Union Avenue and in Krutch Park, will continue as scheduled.

The festival earned its original name Shakespeare in the Park for the 10 years it played at the Tennessee Amphitheater in the World's Fair Park. But the 21-year-old structure has been out of commission since 2000 due to needed repairs. TSC used indoor spaces—the Bijou and Black Box Theatres—for the past two years, but they wanted to get back outside in 2003. For this year's production, TSC investigated venues like Volunteer Landing, the World's Fair Park lawn, and Ijams Nature Center, all of which were beyond the company's budget, says board chair Brandon Daughtry Slocum. Collaborating with the city's Director of Special Events Mickey Mallonee and Cardinal Construction, the company found that, with some negotiation, Market Square could meet their needs.

Cardinal's flexibility made the project possible, Mallonee says.

"What we were able to do was to flip the construction schedule. Now they are getting the area complete enough for Shakespeare."

DeBord is positive about the cooperation between the city, business owners, and the theater company. "It was a decision we could live with," he says. "We were glad to oblige."

Slocum said she and founding artistic director Tom Parkhill have received support and appreciation from Market Square merchants. Bliss Home & Art owner Lisa Sorensen said she is happy to have the play bringing people and potential shoppers to the square. Market Square resident and building owner Andie Ray is letting TSC use her downstairs storefront for changing rooms. Neither was concerned about any delays caused by the play. DeBord, Slocum, and Parkhill communicated with merchants about the pros and cons of their plans.

"We talked to several business owners because any delay is going to impact them," DeBord said. "We wanted to make sure they were for it. They're very enthusiastic." With the relocation of Sundown in the City, plus the general obstacles created by 10 months of construction, he said, "they needed something."

If Slocum has her way, Market Square merchants will get overflow business from playgoers, adding to the ranks of downtown patrons and supporters.

"We're not just saying come down and see a show. We're saying ... you can spend a beautiful, wonderful, fun evening downtown. Even when it's chopped up."

—Paige M. Travis

WMD
Protesters take aim at USA's nukes

Hundreds of activists are expected in Oak Ridge this weekend to protest the country's nuclear arms program, which has been reactivated by the Bush administration to develop new types of nuclear weapons and upgrade the old ones.

Sponsored by the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, the annual protests are held around the anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

The protests against the Y-12 plant come after the United States has changed its stance, ending a 10-year ban on the development of new nuclear weapons and making their use in combat more permissible.

"We just went to war against another country because they were developing weapons of mass destruction, and we're doing the same thing," says Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Detroit, who was arrested in Oak Ridge two years ago for blocking traffic and will be in town this weekend.

The Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge is in the middle of this controversy because it's currently refurbishing the county's 6,000 nuclear warheads. The plant is rebuilding the canned sub-assembly, which in a warhead contains highly enriched uranium and other substances that trigger a fusion reaction.

The U.S. policy on nuclear weapons changed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. The country is now developing so-called "mini nukes" and has made the use of nuclear weapons acceptable in war.

"Up until Bush's [January 2002] statement...the policy of our country and other countries was that nuclear weapons would only be used against other nuclear states," says Ralph Hutchison, director of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. "This is how we convinced Brazil and other countries not to pursue nuclear weapons. What Bush said is we'd used nuclear weapons against anyone who threatens us. And he named non-nuclear states."

"As long as we're building weapons of mass destruction, other countries are going to want to have them to protect themselves."

Proponents of nuclear weapons believe that possessing them gives the United States security against attack. But the nuclear arms protestors dispute that logic. The theme of the protest is "Disarmament Begins At Home."

"We're breaking down the non-proliferation treaty. "Gumbleton says. "So we're going to see quite a proliferation of these weapons. If we undermine that treaty, the world is going to become an extremely dangerous place and it's almost inevitable that [the weapons] will be used."

Gumbleton isn't sure if he's going to get arrested this time around but he does plan on partaking in the Fast For Disarmament. "The people of the United States are being far too complacent about what is happening," he says.

Hutchison says that Americans have a false sense of our country's own good intentions. "Somewhere deep inside people feel safer about our country having nuclear weapons than about India or Pakistan having them. I would say people who think the United States would never use a nuclear bomb, they are na�ve about history," Hutchison says.

To sit back and say we'd never use them—that's not how the rest of the world views us," he adds.

The fast starts Thursday and will include a procession each evening at 5 along Knoxville's waterfront. State Rep. Kathryn Bowers will speak Friday night at 8 at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church. A non-violence workshop will be Saturday at Church of the Savior and the main rally is on Sunday in Oak Ridge. For more details, see this week's calendar or check out www.stopthebombs.org.

—Joe Tarr

Howard Armstrong, 1908-2003
The passing of a legend

The one and only Howard Armstrong died last week, in his adopted home of Boston, at the age of 94.

The length of his career is astonishing enough, over 80 years in show business: that this musician who once made a living busking for buffalo nickels on dusty Knoxville streets in the days before radio, lived to sign his own CDs and broadcast on the Internet and cable TV. But just as astonishing as Howard Armstrong's longitude was his latitude: a fiddler, mandolinist, guitarist, and singer, he played blues, country, gospel, jazz, and Hawaiian, sometimes in German, sometimes in Polish, sometimes in what he called "my Tennessee Italian," learned from La Follette immigrant neighbors of his youth.

He lived long enough to be rediscovered, and rediscovered repeatedly. Two PBS documentaries: Terry Zwigoff's brilliantly ribald "Louie Bluie" in 1985, and Leah Mahan's sentimentally tender "Sweet Old Song" in 2002, so different in scope that they hardly overlapped, almost seem to be about two different people.

He lived the lives of at least that many. Born in Dayton, Tenn., raised in La Follette, he found some of his first audiences in WWI-era Knoxville. With a couple of pals, he began broadcasting on WROL (before Cas Walker ran the joint) and recording in the St. James Hotel's overlooked 1929-1930 sessions.

Known then as the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, they would be known on college campuses 45 years later as Martin, Bogan, and Armstrong. Armstrong was the personality of the string band, the witty, flirting, prankish one. They eventually made their way to Capone-era Chicago, where this band that played the blues further distinguished themselves by obligingly playing the blues in the language of Chicago's immigrant population, in Polish, German, or, Italian.

When his style of music was out of fashion, Armstrong fell back on his other talent, painting. Working as a sign-painter in Hawaii, he happened to be on the island of Oahu when the Japanese bombed it in 1941. He picked up some Hawaiian tunes that would be part of his act for the rest of his life.

Reuniting with old Knoxville pals Carl Martin and Ted Bogan in the early 1970s, Armstrong introduced authentic blues—albeit an eccentric, country/jazz form of it—to thousands. Slowly, all of his old pals slipped away. But he seemed to grow only more energetic in his 80s and 90s, marrying artist Barbara Ward, making new records, and performing in media uncontemplated in his pre-radio days, including one Internet-cable-TV simulcast, playing a regular gig in a neighborhood club until just last year.

We're grateful that Armstrong lived long enough to make several homecomings to Knoxville and La Follette in recent years. In October, 2000, he played an astonishingly energetic two-hour show at the Laurel Theatre, and attended a Howard Armstrong Day appreciation in La Follette (both became scenes in "Sweet Old Song.") Last July, when the KMA hosted a standing-room-only show of his playing with a screening of a new documentary called Sweet Old Song. We always hoped he'd make it back one more time, and somehow we can't convince ourselves we've heard the last of Howard Armstrong.

—Jack Neely