Comment on this story Wednesday, April 21 • The state House Budget Subcommittee approves $20,000 in public funds for an amendment that would prohibit gay marriage. That’s unfair. Spending a lot of money so that two people won’t be married is usually called “divorce,” and we don’t see why gays shouldn’t have to pay for it themselves just like the rest of us. Thursday, April 22 • The Senate Foreign Relations Committee gives preliminary support to former Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe’s nomination as U.S. ambassador to Poland. Decades of tasteless ethnic jokes notwithstanding, someone in the Bush administration apparently decided we still haven’t given the Poles enough grief. Friday, April 23 • The owner of a Sevierville pornographic novelty shop pleads guilty to federal charges that he skimmed profits from his sex store to purchase real estate tax-free in the Newport area. In other words, he sold dildoes to buy into Cocke. Saturday, April 24 • Not a single former University of Tennessee athlete is chosen on the first day of the National Football League’s annual player draft. Which means that last year’s UT squad had the same number of top-drawer NFL prospects as Metro Pulse. And we don’t even have a recruiting budget. Sunday, April 25 • A hoard of middle-aged and senior women descend on West Towne for a shopping spree sponsored by the local chapter of something called the Red Hat Society. According to reports, the RHS is a national organization that encourages older women to live happier, more productive lives... by going to the mall? Monday, April 26 • Serving as a surrogate for her 34-year-old daughter, a 53-year-old Hendersonville woman gives birth to her own grandchildren (twins) at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville. For those keeping score at home, that’s the genealogical equivalent of an ingrown toenail on the family tree. Tuesday, April 27 • The Associated Press reports that David Brankle, 47, of Indiana has plead guilty to charges that he robbed 43 banks, including seven in Tennessee. Brankle was only captured because police found him with a stolen car in December, the report says. The guy robbed 43 banks, and he still can’t afford a second-hand Yugo? Knoxville Found 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: The art-deco sign greets clientele of the St. Oliver hotel on Union Avenue downtown next to Market Square. And because it’s visible from our world headquarters in the neighboring Arnstein Building, it seemed like an obvious selection. Congrats to downtown and North Knoxville denizen Bill Pittman for spotting it. In his entry he comments, “Ah...the St.Oliver’s signage...viewed by Britney Spears, Pavarotti and [Metro Pulse contributor] Scott McNutt on his wedding night.” There will be a Best of Knoxville t-shirt awaiting your arrival.

A Kosher Deal?
Demolition-by-neglect and the Pickle Mansion

What appeared to be one of Fort Sanders’ hardest losses occurred almost a year ago, when the distinctively grand brick house known as the Pickle Mansion, famous for its broad porch and metal-domed cupola, went up in flames. The fire of suspicious origin gutted the house on Clinch Avenue between 16th and 17th Streets and destroyed its roof. Since then, it has stood as a tree-shaded ruin while its co-owners, the real-estate concern of Brown, Brown, and West and attorney Joe Guess have sought a demolition permit.

In a decade past, the house would already be gone, but in this era of preservationism, the house has become a cause celebre. On April 15, about a dozen supporters, including some renovation architects and city Economic Development Director Bill Lyons, came before the Historic Zoning Commission to plead that a demolition permit be denied. They got that denial, and, apparently, more. After asking for a postponement, attorney Arthur Seymour, alluding to the possibility that the owners may be open to selling the house intact to possible renovators, withdrew the demolition application.

Commission member Faris Eid, himself an architect, expressed concern that the house, open to the elements, would deteriorate as parties debated its fate. Eid proposed that the Pickle Mansion be subject to the city’s new demolition-by-neglect ordinance, calling for the owners to take steps to protect it within 30 days. Passed in City Council last year and hailed as a victory for preservationism, the demolition-by-neglect ordinance has yet to be tested in court.

The house was built around 1899 by Confederate veteran and state Attorney General George Wesley Pickle. It has been a residence for over a century, going by various names. For a time, during the jazz age, it was the Delta Tau Delta house. It has been an apartment building since the ’30s, sometimes known as “Westover.”

However, Gen. Pickle called the house “Fort Sanders Hall”—a phrase which may mark the first time that the name Fort Sanders was applied to anything but the actual Union earthworks that still stood nearby. (At the time, the Victorian neighborhood was better known as “West Knoxville.”)

Last week, Mayor Bill Haslam approved the demolition-by-neglect ordinance, a surprise to some who had been skeptical about the new mayor’s preservationist instincts.

On Friday, Seymour filed an appeal to the Better Building Board on behalf of the owners, on the grounds of “economic hardship”—he says the property, assessed by the city at $265,000, could cost two or three times as much to renovate—and questions the validity of the application of the ordinance. “We did not neglect the house,” he says. “A third party burned it.” Seymour expects a hearing in May, and mentions that the owners would still have another avenue of appeal, through Chancery Court.

—Jack Neely

Taking a Stand
‘Women in Black’ keep up the vigil

Two years ago, Renee Jubran woke up on Easter morning with heavy heart. Although it was day to celebrate the promise of her Christianity, she couldn’t stop thinking about the bloodshed in her homeland, the occupied territories where Palestinians and Israelis were dying.

“We woke up to go to church. Atrocities were going on in Jenin at the time, where they were massacring Palestinians,” says Jubran, a native of Ramallah who has lived in Knoxville since the ’70s. “I talked to my sister in-law, and I said I don’t feel like going to church and celebrating. I feel like wearing black to church to show that I am mourning dead people.”

Around the same time, Corinne Rovetti was sitting with friends at a Passover dinner. “Sharon had just come into power. We were fairly horrified at the road Sharon was leading Israel down. I felt compelled as a Jewish woman to stand up for peace. Some other women were having the same feeling, I found out.”

Since spring 2002, Rovetti, Jubran and many other Knoxville women have been holding vigils for peace at the Duncan Federal Building every Tuesday at noon, calling themselves “Women in Black.” This Tuesday marked two years.

They model themselves after a the original “Women in Black” group formed in Jerusalem in 1988 by Israeli women disgusted with their government’s policy. It has spawned similar groups around the world, some of which protest the situation in Israel, some other eruptions of violence, such as bloodshed in the Balkans.

The Knoxville group has no specific political agenda, other than advocating an end to violence and to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. The group includes Muslims, Jews and Christians.

“We hate to see killing on either side. There’s enough land for both people to live in harmony, like we did when I was a child,” says Jubran. “I have Jewish friends. We were born together, raised together, shared meals together. I cannot understand why this had to happen.”

The protests have ranged in size from nine people to about 150, says Carol Nickle. Tuesday’s rally had around 50 people. They stood at the Duncan building for a half-hour before marching to Market Square, where they formed a circle. They dropped flowers into the middle and then stood in silence, the gesture disrupted by a newspaper photographer who lay in the middle, clicking pictures.

They say the effects are hard to measure. They get mostly positive comments, along with a few heckles.

“It’s a way every week to work at deepening our commitment to peace,” says Brenda Bell. “It sounds hokey, but standing here every week in all kinds of weather gives you a chance to reflect.”

For Rovetti and Mary Harb—Jubran’s cousin and also a Ramallah native—the effect has been easier to measure. They met through the group and are now good friends.

“We’re peace-loving people. She’s Jewish and we’re like sisters. Why can’t everyone live this way?” Harb asks.

—Joe Tarr

Greening Big Orange?
UT’s environmental policy

Four years ago, the university’s Committee On the Campus Environment, working under the auspices of the Energy, Environment and Resources Center, completed a draft of an environmental policy for UT. Conceived in response to a report penned by two students about UT’s environmental record called “The Greening of the Big Orange,” the committee, co-chaired by Dr. Mary English, research leader of the EERC, and environmentalist author and philosophy professor John Nolt sent the draft to UT’s administration for approval in spring, 2000.

Things don’t move fast at UT under the best of circumstances, and these last four years have been famously trying ones in Andy Holt Tower. But after significant editing, UT does now have an official environmental policy. Last Thursday, Chancellor Loren Crabtree took the occasion of Earth Day to announce it.

The original draft was a lengthy document, detailing some specifics of a responsible environmental plan. The official version is much more digestible, at only seven sentences, and some of them are pretty vague at that: “UTK will encourage consideration of [italics ours] environmental impacts in all decisions made by university faculty, staff and students,” reads one. That’s the kind of wording that won’t keep anxious administrators awake at night. Bashful about absolute promises, UT’s new policy includes some easy-to-observe strive to’s and seek to’s and attempt to’s. But local cops may be relieved to know that “the university will ensure full compliance with existing environmental laws and regulations....”

However, a few of the new guidelines do have a little theoretical heft to them: “In its daily operations, UTK will attempt to conserve energy and to promote the use of renewable energy sources at the same time that it champions waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting.”

And one guideline might have been useful to some who have had their houses seized by UT over the years: “University growth will occur in ways that respect the surrounding human and natural communities.”

Deleted from the original draft were recommendations for green-power procurement, specific recycling programs, and a minimization of fossil-fuel use. However, English is quick to note that UTK has made strides in those regards, now employing a full-time recycling coordinator, and its students recently passed a green-power initiative.

The document does not address what may be UT’s biggest problem in one of the nation’s 10 most air-polluted cities. Though UT is well served by public transportation, a large portion of students drive, perhaps a larger portion of them than at most comparable universities. Partly encouraged by UT’s bountiful parking lots and the school’s lack of the sort of restrictions common at many universities, UT staff, faculty and students take an estimated 37,000 individual car trips every day getting to and from campus. And thanks to computers and the rising use of air conditioning, per-student electricity consumption has been on the rise for years; according to English, UT now consumes an amount of energy “equivalent to one quarter of the output of a large nuclear plant.”

Maybe guideline number five, “UTK will attempt to conserve energy and to promote the use of renewable energy sources,” interpreted strongly, will make a difference someday. English is pleased that UT is making real strides in making the campus more pedestrian friendly.

While admitting, “much remains to be done,” she’s encouraged that UT at least has an environmental policy now. “UT has come out and stated that environmental responsibility is a priority,” she says. “That’s never been stated before.”

—Jack Neely

April 29, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 18 © 2004 Metro Pulse