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Seven Days

Wednesday, September 24
A large fish kill in the waters of Kentucky Lake right below the TVA dam there is attributed by Kentucky officials to a surge of water from the dam that produced an excess of—are you ready for this?—oxygen. Oh yeah, those fish just rusted to death right then and there.

Thursday, September 25
A University of Louisville audit report says former U of L President John Shumaker's claimed expenses in his tenure there were "reasonable." Shumaker later resigned from the University of Tennessee presidency, largely because his expenses in Knoxville got out of hand. Sure, you know Louisville is a much more expensive town than Knoxville, more expensive even than Birmingham, where Shumaker kept flying on "UT business."

Friday, September 26
Citadel Broadcasting says it has rehired WOKI 100.3 The River's former morning drive guy, Phil Williams, to do what he's been doing since before half his listeners were born. Citadel let him go Aug. 1 when it took over the station. That's a pretty big crow to eat, but Citadel has a big craw in which to stuff him.

Saturday, September 27
Quote of the week: South Carolina football coach Lou Holtz says before the UT game that he loves coming to Knoxville and playing in Neyland Stadium, where he's never won. Trouble is, he says, whenever he does, "We have to play Tennessee." The proof is in the Vols' narrow win in overtime.

Sunday, September 28
Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair connects on 15 of 15 passes, near an NFL record, in demolishing the Pittsburgh Steelers, 30-13. Could be he'll be tempted to dislocate a finger on his passing hand every other week or so for the rest of the season.

Monday, September 29
Tennessee's DOT puts up 80 signs along highways across the state in a Record-A-Comment program that posts a phone number for motorists to call with suggestions. Uh, don't believe we'd have done that, fellas. What you'll hear could be what you deserve. And a lot of it, too.

Tuesday, September 30
Citizens of Knoxville who care about the city go to the polls to vote in the races for mayor and Council. If you could have and didn't, don't let's hear you bitch.

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:
Susan Oliver of Powell writes that she is "currently pregnant and on bed-rest except for my once-a-week trips to the OB/Gyn. Just this week during my weekly outing, I saw this very Knoxville landmark and thought, 'When is Metro Pulse going to use this in their Knoxville Found?' And lo and behold it is the very one for this week's guessing game."

The landmark of which Susan speaks is one of several brick monuments with glazed pottery insets featuring the Old North Knoxville Historic District logo.

According to their website, www.oldnorthknoxville.org, the neighborhood association "was established to preserve, promote and protect the neighborhood, which is a residential and business district built from the 1880's to the 1940's. It includes the triangle formed by Central Street, Broadway, and Woodland Avenue, as well as the area east of Broadway bounded by Cecil Avenue, Sixth Avenue, Glenwood Avenue and Broadway."

We hope everything goes well for Susan and that she is allowed to return to the world soon. But in the meantime we hope she finds her new copy of Parenting from the Heart, by Jack Pransky, useful.

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

MAYOR'S NIGHT IN
Monday, Oct. 6
5 p.m.
City County Building
Mayor's Office— Sixth Floor
400 Main St.
Meet personally with the City Mayor to discuss issues.

MARKET SQUARE PARKING GARAGE PUBLIC INPUT MEETING
Tuesday, Oct. 7
5 p.m.
TVA Auditorium
400 W. Summit Hill Dr.
Public input session relating to parking garage, related residential and retail development between Market Square and Walnut St.

POLICE ADVISORY AND REVIEW COMMITTEE
Thursday, Oct. 9
6 p.m.
Mount Calvary Baptist Church
1801 8th Ave.
Regular meeting.

Rambling for Shelter
Texans picket a Knoxville lender

Passers-by were puzzled when they stopped to listen to the tiny group of protestors along Church Avenue and Market Street next to downtown's Centre Square building last week. Puzzled to learn that the sign-waving demonstrators were all from Texas, for one thing, and that the homeless shelter they were trying to save through their protestations was located in Seguin, Tex., not in Knoxville where their small rally was taking place.

But the institution that financed the shelter building (a trailer home) is headquartered here in Centre Square. And the demonstrators were asking local residents to call the 21st Mortgage Corp. and ask the company to spare the shelter from foreclosure.

"We've been picketing nine or 10 hours a day since Monday, and we'll stay until our money runs out," said Jack Gandesbery, who has operated the home, known as J.C.'s Lighthouse, along with his wife Mandy, since 1998. The couple founded the non-profit Lighthouse as an extension of their own efforts as foster parents.

Gandesbery says the Lighthouse provides housing (hopefully temporary) and help to homeless youth and adults, aiding displaced would-be street-dwellers in finding jobs and low-cost permanent housing.

Some Lighthouse residents past and present made the trek to Knoxville with Gandesbery on Sept. 21, the lot of them holing up in a couple of rooms at a Sevier County Motel Six and driving to Knoxville every morning for a long day of picketing. Twenty-year-old Megan, who came to Gandesbery two years ago to escape an abusive foster mom, says that "life is much better" since she entered the Lighthouse; she's since been given a job with the program. "I'm not ready to live on my own right now; this is like a real family to me."

Another sign-carrier, Jesse, came to the Lighthouse, battered and bruised from paternal abuse, with the avowed goal of becoming "a porn king and a drug lord." He's now a military reservist with a regulation crew and an almost disconcerting tendency to address everyone as "sir."

But admirable though J.C. Lighthouse's mission may be, it's not clear whether Gandesbery's demands are tenable. The Lighthouse trailer is owned by an elderly Seguin couple who not only allowed the charity to use the home, but also chipped in the majority of the roughly $1,400 mortgage payment.

Gandesbery says the couple, who recently came upon hardship and ill health, want the Lighthouse to be able to assume the mortgage in their stead. The mortgage company, however, has ignored his plea to lower the payments so the under-funded charity can remain and continue, he says.

"They seemed reasonable at first, but then they told us that if we have no more money to send, they have nothing to say to us," he says. "We've been chasing an open discussion ever since."

But 21st administrative assistant Misty Tocco says Gandesbery demanded that the mortgage company give up the trailer outright, and that in the meantime, the elderly homeowners have made no indication of transferring the home to the Lighthouse.

"He wants it donated, not negotiated," she says. "It's like somebody asking the bank to give someone else's car to them."

The protestors returned to Seguin on Friday. Monday morning, the Lighthouse phone number given to a reporter had been disconnected.

—Mike Gibson

Final Answers
Group forms local right-to-die chapter

The Hemlock Society is a national association of people interested in presenting options, including assisted suicide and euthanasia, to the terminally ill. Founded in 1980 and popularized by books by founder Derek Humphry and others, it has always been known by the name of the substance Socrates ingested to end his life. The society has just this year changed its name to the more prosaic End Of Life Choices, and its newest chapter is based in Knoxville.

Jerry Sillman, a South Knox County retiree, explains his motivation to found a local chapter in the simplest of terms. "It's personal," says Sillman. "I'm 80 years old, and I have congestive heart failure."

Sillman had been involved with Hemlock Society living in the Los Angeles area. He retired to a pastoral farming area in South Knox County in 1988. "We have everything else here, but we don't have that."

A member of the famously open-minded Unitarian/Universalist Church on Kingston Pike, Sillman and some friends announced a meeting earlier this summer. "We said, 'Let's try it.' Fifty people showed up," he says, most, but not all, of them Unitarians. "Many had horror stories about mothers and fathers who died. Death was the worst experience of their lives." They wanted to believe there was some alternative.

"There are enough of us to apply for chaptership under the national organization; we're now an official chapter." He says there's another chapter in Nashville, and even separate chapters in Asheville and Hendersonville, but until now, none in East Tennessee. The ambitious new East Tennessee chapter of End Of Life Choices will offer membership to everyone from Crossville to Kingsport.

Sillman hopes the organization will present new options to the millions who live across the region. "All we want is control," says Sillman. "If you want to stop food and water, if you want to disconnect medical equipment, or if you want early delivery." That last chilling phrase is the national organization's euphemism for physician-assisted suicide.

Suicide of any sort is illegal in Tennessee, as it is in all states except Oregon, and assisting suicide is often prosecuted as a felony. Sillman can get animated talking about it. "Knowing you have control—that's the most critical thing in the world," he says. In the past, he says, the Hemlock Society has concentrated on alleviating pain, he says, "but now there's more consideration of quality of life."

Sillman says the new chapter will have two directions: one to effect legislative change, another to support members who are dealing with terminal illness.

The organizational meeting will be held on Sunday, Oct. 19, at 2 p.m., at the Unitarian/Universalist Church. A panel made up of UT philosophy, psychology, and religion professors will discuss issues pertaining to the choice to end a life. Among them will be Dr. John Hardwig, head of UT's philosophy department and an authority on the subject.

Though Hardwig is not a member of the society, he supports its goals. "I think it's really important that people be aware of the range of options at the end of life," he says. Not just physician-assisted suicide, he says, but legal options, such as declining antibiotics for otherwise treatable pneumonia, or declining artificial feeding. Some of these options are rarely discussed by healthy people, but may account for as many as half of all in-hospital deaths.

Hardwig suspects there may be some religious opposition to the group's goals, but he observes, "There are certainly a whole lot of religious people that believe, because God is the creator of life, it doesn't mean we're gonna prolong life as long as we can." He emphasizes the importance of a living will: a document that lets family members know in no uncertain terms that a life should not be prolonged unnecessarily.

Sillman says most of the society's members don't have life-threatening illnesses now. But they do have one thing in common. "We're all gonna die," he says.

—Jack Neely