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Seven Days

Wednesday, August 20
It's disclosed that Townsend will hold a referendum in 2004 to determine whether alcoholic drinks may be served in its restaurants. Implications for the area's motto, "The Quiet Shide of the Shmokies," are unclear.

Thursday, August 21
About a hundred Blount Countians demonstrate outside the courthouse in Maryville, just because the county commissioners there voted themselves a 200 percent pay increase, with benefits.
Hasn't the word gotten out there yet? The economy is in recovery. Pay raises all around!

Friday, August 22
The Rev. Al Sharpton, the New York activist, is in town to speak at the First Calvary Baptist Church of Lonsdale's 100-year anniversary celebration. He says he is here as a minister, not as a candidate for president, although he is running for president. Just a coincidence.

Saturday, August 23
The Associated Press reveals that the future of Tennessee Meiji Gakuin, the only high school for Japanese students in the state, is threatened by declining student population since September 11. Naturally, Japanese parents are timid about sending their kids into the internationally acknowledged terrorist target of Sweetwater.

Monday, August 25
The Army Corps of Engineers is finally getting around to searching a World War II artillery practice range in middle Tennessee, according to an AP report, looking for unexploded rounds or "duds" that failed to explode 60 years ago. The duds should be easy to identify. They are the officials who failed to order such searches decades ago.

Tuesday, August 26
The University of Tennessee announces that security measures in and around Neyland Stadium will remain essentially the same this football season as they've been since September 11. For the uninitiated, the UT policy phrase: "fans may bring stadium seats without arms" means just that. No arms. Not even your little-bitty pistol.

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:
A couple of weeks ago we headed out to East Knoxville to take some photos for Jack Neely's Eatin' East article which ran in the last edition of MP. Along the way we also sampled some of the fare that Jack wrote about and found that it all was just as delicious as he said it was. So delicious, in fact, that we overdid it. Stuffed ourselves. So in an effort to "get our second wind" and finish our assignment, we decided to relax for a bit at the Conversation Pit, adjacent to Scruggs BBQ. Cold beverages, friendly staff—who could ask for more? As you can see, the Pit doesn't have a fancy flashing sign, so it takes a keen eye to find the place. In this case, the first respondent with a heightened sense of observation belongs to former Knoxville television news reporter Brennan Robison, now living in Atlanta. She will be receiving a copy of Blackjack: A Winner's Handbook by Jerry L. Patterson.

A Curious Man
County's new library director is 'a seeker'

Larry Frank is easy to pick out of a lunchtime crowd at the Tomato Head, a diminutive man in a dark suit and tie, small horizontal-frame glasses, a huge blown-back mane of shoulder-length dark hair and luxuriant mustache, graying just at the edges. He seems to indicate with his appearance and his references that he doesn't mind if you take him for a somewhat reconstructed hippie.

"This is becoming my hangout," the Detroit native says of this restaurant three blocks from the main library, where he works. He sits at an inside table along the wall, drinking from a pot of tea, and eating a goat-cheese sandwich. A friendly guy with a slightly raspy, high-pitched Midwestern voice that doesn't always carry over the hubbub of a busy restaurant, Frank bears no scars of the year of accusations and recriminations that resulted in his being here, drinking Zen Tea on a sunny day at the Tomato Head. The biggest furor in the history of the Knoxville's public library commenced last year, when the library board's irregularities in replacing a retiring director resulted in outrage among staff and patrons and unwelcome commentary in the national media. When Frank was recommended by a search committee, County Mayor Mike Ragsdale installed him after a majority of the board refused to give Frank their nod.

Frank might be obliquely referencing that when he volunteers that his conferences with employees are as informal as this conversation at Tomato Head. He mentions his "have a cup of coffee with the director" program. "I have a pretty laid-back attitude."

He talks about his "open-door policy," and seems proud to mention a recent event. A woman ran up to his car window at a McDonald's drive-through, when he was getting a shake. She said, "You're our new director, I need to talk to you." He was obviously happy to comply. He says patrons are welcome to call him any time. Just be patient. "I've got a lot of people I want to talk to," he says.

Frank declines to comment directly about last year's melee. "I don't live in the past," he says. "I don't have time. Knoxville did not get a good rap in the national media. But I don't have time to focus on negatives. My life's too short.

"I don't take advantage of this sort of thing," he adds. "I'm not a pile-on person. Let's see what we could do together."

Frank is intense in affect, if often vague in articulation. "The universe is in a flower," he says, in answer to a practical question the reporter has forgotten. He casually refers to Kierkegaard, Twain, Nietsche, Suzuki—and, twice, Paul Simon's song, "The Boxer." As a prominent figure in a hard-headed city, he promises to be a curiosity.

If Frank seems hippie-ish to some, it's instructive to know that during the actual hippie era, he was a Lutheran missionary in Japan. During his three years there, he published a book of poetry, called Silence. He says critics compared him not to other poets, but to painters. Unfortunately, it's not available in our library.

While there, he experienced some spiritual backwash: he began to study Buddhism. He left the Lutheran Church and traveled the world, sojourning in Burma, India, Hong Kong, Tehran, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Beirut. He worked in a kibbutz on the Sea of Galilee. He spent time in Greece, Italy, Austria. At one point he found himself in Scotland on Loch Ness, looking for monsters. "Never did see anything," he confesses. "But I had a great time sitting with a priest, drinking Guinness.

"Life is a constant exploration." He adds, smiling, "That's why I'm in Knoxville."

In the three decades since his wanderjahr, Frank earned several degrees and graduate certificates from Midwestern colleges. He worked in various libraries in Ohio and Michigan. The erstwhile Midwesterner is quick to note, "the longest place I've lived in my life was in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky," where he was in charge of the Boyd County Public Library in Ashland for nine years. They liked him, too; the local JayCees designated him Boss of the Year.

He's been more restless for the last nine years, serving as director of three public libraries in three states: St. Clair Public Library in Port Huron, Mich.; Onandaga Public Library in Syracuse, N.Y.; and Hinsdale Public Library in suburban Chicago. The 2003 Who's Who hasn't caught up with the fact that he moved to Chicago two years ago; they still list his residence in Syracuse.

Outside the library, Frank says, "I like to draw. I like to sculpt. I like the sensual feel of wet clay, and molding things, abstract art pieces. I like writing."

He's at work on a novel called The Arias Project. Many novelists are reluctant to reveal details about upcoming books, but if you express interest in The Arias Project, Frank will happily relate the whole plot. Fortunately for those who prefer the anticipation, he relates it too fast for a reporter to write it down. It has to do with a priest in ancient Alexandria, the city famous for its library, and his discovery of ancient scrolls which raise questions about the true nature of Jesus. The plot ties in to the modern world by way of a Coptic monk in Cairo and a student at the University of Michigan. In composing the book, Frank drew on his travels, as well as on his missionary's knowledge of Biblical languages such as Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

Frank speaks of Dickens as an inspiration for the novel, and, from the sound of it, for much of his life, including, maybe, how he happened to land in Knoxville: "That chance meeting, the glance that can change the whole direction of your life: Our lives are not as organized as we think they are," he says. "Every kind of confluence of events can change our direction.

"My greatest fear in life is rigidity. Not the aging process, because I feel robust. But rigidity in my thinking. I constantly stimulate my mind." Frank, who calls himself a "seeker," asks the old questions: "Why do I exist? Who are we? Why are we here? God who? What's a soul?"

Frank is happy to share his greatest fears, his deepest questions, and the plot of his unpublished novel. He's much more reserved about the sorts of questions most of us fill out routinely at the dentist's office, like his age and his marital status. To Frank, it's nobody's business. He does mention that he has two grown children, a son in college in Massachusetts and a daughter in Wisconsin. About his personal situation, he allows, "I have been married."

As for his age, he could pass for 40, but sources available at his library indicate that he's in his extremely late 50s.

Perhaps the most obvious change the intuitive new library director has wrought is the new Rothrock Cafe at the main branch, opened just yesterday. It's in the small exhibit space just off the library's Church Avenue entrance.

Named for one of Frank's more influential and colorful predecessors, former library director Mary Utopia Rothrock— author, editor, feminist, and architect of TVA's inventive library system—the Rothrock Cafe is open just weeks after it was proposed. Its haste surprised nearly everybody. Though the "cafe" doesn't yet actually serve coffee—they'll need the prerequisite licenses for that—it's open to those who want to bring their own, to sit and chat in a library setting.

Frank says he was partly inspired by the Chicago Art Institute, where people collect out front, to sit on the steps and chat. Folks driving by notice them, grow curious, and stop in. "I see the library as a place for relationships to develop, between information, between knowledge, between people, inviting, exciting, inspiring. A place people can use as an intellectual public forum." He plans a "poet's corner" on Thursday nights. He wants to put a piano in the basement meeting room, perhaps rent it out to interested groups. He wants to develop more public programs at the library—what he calls "Downtown Presents Uptown Events."

About the cafe, he says, "When I brought it up, people said, 'a year down the road.' I said, why? We can still do this, this and this," says Frank. "If you plan and plan, you'll find obstacles, reasons you can't do it. Instead, create a pilot program, test it, take notes, experiment. People have to learn about me. I have an idea, I will jump through all the necessary hoops."

As interesting as they are, improvements to the ca. 1970 modernist brick-and-concrete library on Church Avenue are temporary. Frank expects the library to vacate the building in the next few years.

"We're running out of space," he says. "We have 67,000 square feet. Based on current population current trends, current tech, we need 200,000 square feet. Nashville has 300,000."

Nashville's grand new library has bred envy in nearly every Southern city. "If the Nashville Public Library were the New York Yankees," Frank says, "the Knoxville Public Library would be the Toledo Mudhens.

"There are tens of thousands of books sitting in our basement. Boxes, stacked to the ceiling, of books! 15,000 waiting to be catalogued, some since last November." He means to make that a one-week turnaround, but it will be tough without a building big enough to hold all the new books coming in.

He wants to put the new library on Gay Street. "I want to be in line with that traffic," he says. "I recommended to the county two sites on Gay Street." He's not ready to discuss them specifically but says he has already gotten encouragement from several local businessmen who want to take advantage of the resource of a major public library.

Planning is in its earliest stages. "We're creating a foundation, gaining support, getting feedback, developing new appropriate strategies," he says.

"A public library is a very strong, potent economic force in the community," says Frank. "It can generate a local economy. More walk through the door of the library than attend UT football games—here and away."

Frank is up on state-of-the-art information sciences, and pushes technology hard. Grocery-style automated check-out machines have come up. But once Frank gets started talking about technology, don't be surprised if he begins to venture into sci-fi realms: voice-recognition software and talking holograms. Shorter term, though, Frank wants to enhance the library's website and other computer-based systems. "We've been at a standstill for some time in technology," he says. "The challenge is taking it to the next level. We want to allow patrons to enter the library virtually, even access parts of our collection." Will that make the old brick-and-mortar library less vital?

"Just the opposite," he says. "When you create electronic access, the greater the need for people to interface. For people isolated in their cars and homes, a library as public marketplace for exchange of ideas." He adds that even in this high-tech age, there are more paper-and-glue books being printed than ever before.

He expects wholesale changes to the branches: some of them, at least. The KCPL has long been said to be over-branched. County officials have hinted that one or more may be closed.

Frank admits that money and staff may be stretched too thin to maintain all the branches as they are. But, he says, "Larry Frank is not going to close a branch. What Larry Frank will do is to take a close look at partnerships, about children, seniors, schools, literacy. Instead of a branch per se, a different countenance."

He even foresees some new kinds of branches. "What's to prevent us from having an information kiosk at the mall?" he says.

He foresees that each library might have a theme of some sort, alluding to a lodge design planned for the library in semi-rural Powell.

Frank is a man of few prejudices, but does have an unusual one. "Don't even talk to me about grass," he says. "I don't like grass. I want gardens, with native plants, peace gardens that people can walk through."

Frank is smitten with his new home, or makes a good show of it. "One of the things that drew me to this area was its sense of soul," he says. "That means something to me. There's a laid-backness here, a country feel.... I love being so close to the Smokies, and the arts."

Staying with patrons, he hasn't yet found a permanent home. But he's looking hard, in all corners of town and country.

"Knoxville has the environmental thing and the cityscape to develop itself as a major cultural / arts community of the Southeastern US. It's waiting for that. People will come here to borrow ideas from us, rather than the other way around—which is what I see happening."

Among library supporters, there has been some anxiety about Frank's wanderlust: for the last several years he has changed jobs every time UT changed presidents. For his part, though, he says how long he stays depends mainly on "How long people want me here. I can say I want to stay here, but the public may have a different opinion."

How's he getting along with the board that didn't want to approve his hiring? "Haven't gotten any tomatoes or eggs," Frank says. "Haven't seen any tar or feathers. Or what is it you do in Knoxville?"

He praises County Mayor Ragsdale as "very forward-looking. I think he cares a lot about the library." Frank does propose that the library board's terms be limited. "This is the first place I've worked where the board hasn't had term limits. Here the board has such a longevity. It's a challenge to the board continually to reinvigorate themselves."

Frank hopes to change the way people in the region regard the public library, their community, and maybe themselves. "I want to make it a focus, not only for Knoxville, but for East Tennessee, and the entire region," he says. "A public library is a public university. We're the after-hours school."

—Jack Neely