Comment on this story Seven Days Wednesday, Sept. 22 • Reports tell us that Knoxville police arrested a man trying to rob a Broadway mortuary in the middle of the night. The thief reportedly tried to evade pursuers by “blending in” with his funeral home surroundings, but the officers got suspicious when he was the only guy in the room without an erection. Thursday, Sept. 23 • In view of a quasi-adult-video store set to open on Lovell Road, County Mayor Mike Ragsdale says officials need to “revisit” a rule that allows the sale of adult movies so long as they make up no more than 49 percent of the videos in a given establishment. We agree that the rule needs revisiting; 49 percent makes for a pretty meager selection. Friday, Sept. 24 • Gov. Phil Bredesen announces huge cuts to curtail expenses in the state’s TennCare Medicaid program. We don’t mean to imply that his cutbacks were too severe, but according to TennCare, “Not Breathing” and “No Pulse” are now considered pre-existing conditions. Saturday, Sept. 25 • The University of Tennessee defeats Louisiana Tech University 42-17 in college football. We think that if tying a football game is akin to kissing your sister, beating La. Tech is like smashing her in the mouth. Sunday, Sept. 26 • Disgruntled school board members Robert Bratton and Chuck James skip a cookout dinner and depart early from a weekend team-building retreat in Townsend. How will the schools ever get our kids to behave when they can’t even get their own board members to play nice? Monday, Sept. 27 •Vietti Foods rolls out a series of commemorative chili-bean cans coinciding with this year’s presidential election—one model adorned with a label supporting George Bush, and one with a label supporting John Kerry. Not a bad idea. Although neither candidate really makes us think of eating chili beans, both of them put us in mind of their residuals. Tuesday, Sept. 28 • The News Sentinel reports that Mayor Bill Haslam and other local VIPs will be serving hot dogs Friday on Market Square as part of a charity fund-raiser. No thanks. Politicians may get away with a lot of antics, but we draw the line at letting them handle wieners in public. 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: “I immediately recognized [it], because I snapped a very similar photo myself... It is the miniature Cole Big Top Circus that was on display in the Jacob Building during the Tennessee Valley Fair. I especially enjoyed the elephants that swayed back and forth,” says radio personality and Einstein Simplified improv guy Frank Murphy. We’re pleased to present Frank with a very limited edition MetroFest t-shirt from the recent smorgasbord of local music.

Show and Tell
Carpetbag Theatre’s festival invites cultural activism

Two weeks into his job as the interim managing director of Carpetbag Theatre, Marquez Rhyne had a transformative experience that anticipated his role as organizer of the Show What You Know Festival. Rhyne was outside Asheville, N.C., participating in an Alternate ROOTS workshop called Eracism with a diverse group of folks divided into six groups. Each group’s goal was to create a movement-based work of art with elements of text, music, a quote, and it had to demonstrate support. What they came up with, Rhyne says, blew his mind.

“We created something together,” he recalls. “We linked arm and arm. We balanced on one another’s bodies. We connected on another level.” Rhyne’s amazement hasn’t waned; it’s only transferred to the six-day festival he hopes will impress upon people of Knoxville the significance of artistic and communal experiences.

Now in its third year, the Show What You Know Festival is a lingering offshoot of the now defunct Knoxville Festival Project that was part of the American Festival Project generated by Appalshop. Carpetbag continues the festival as an expression of its continuing efforts to use art as a means for social justice.

“We want people to realize that art can be used as a tool to communicate their needs and desires and to project how they feel and what they feel about their environment to effect change,” Marquez says.

The festival includes several events, some of which are what Marquez calls “learning exchanges”—meetings and workshops that occur in the spirit that those attending also have knowledge, experiences and ideas to bring to the table. Although each event is unique—Marquez himself participated in a few SWYK events last year without knowing they were connected under the larger event’s umbrella—they propose the common premise: Bring together diverse communities to create art, and through that art create bonds of understanding and communication.

“This isn’t some sort of liberal idea,” says Rhyne. “This is reality. We are as diverse as any other country, and yet we sometimes shy away from the beauty of our diversity, the inherent power—the creative power—that it entails.”

Rhyne is a talented actor, singer and dancer who performed in many Bijou Theatre productions over the past few years. He’s also an African American who is concerned with questions of access and inclusivity on an artistic and civic level. He says that, among his friends and colleagues, conversation about these issues has been ongoing, particularly since the “Whites Only?” cover story appeared in Metro Pulse Aug. 19. Just prior to this interview, Rhyne spoke to a white Knoxville resident who was “flabbergasted by the lack of inclusivity and the lack of foresight of certain individuals within our government,” Rhyne relates. The Show What You Know Festival, particularly the SambaEnsemble—the festival’s cumulative event on Oct. 10 in Market Square—intends to assemble more than just one population sample. Rhyne wants everyone to come, particularly older citizens who have plenty of life experience to share, as well as Latino men and women. Rhyne refers to the diverse roots of the samba, the Brazilian dance borne from African, Spanish and Portuguese influences.

“The very idea behind the SambaEnsemble is that you have cultures come together. There is no way we will create anything of lasting significance without doing something new. That’s what samba was: something new.”

Using instruments made at the Artshare event on Oct. 5, participants in SambaEnsemble will make music and dance in the samba parade. Rhyne already anticipates filling up Market Square with spirited dancing and drumming—so much that next year’s event will have to be moved to World’s Fair Park.

The Show What You Know Festival includes storytelling through sculpture and digital means at GalleryDayz on Oct. 6; a spoken-word and musical event called “Poetree: From Branches To Roots” Oct. 7 at the Emporium; a showcase of protest and empowerment songs at Songfest, Oct. 8; the Hispanic Heritage Festival at the University Center Oct. 9; culminating with the SambaEnsemble Oct. 10. Rhyne has been assisted by community groups such as the African American Appalachian Arts, Beck Cultural Center, Solutions Inc., the Literacy Imperative, HORA Latina, and the UT Center for Community Partnership.

“Nothing of value’s going to happen in a vacuum,” says Rhyne. “We’re going to have to drag all our stuff out and find something that does work. All we’re showing is that it’s possible.”

—Paige M. Travis

Vets on the Move
Memorial may go to Krutch Park

A move is afoot to move the proposed veterans’ memorial from Emory Place on North Gay Street to the Gay Street extension of Krutch Park, opposite the downtown Knoxville cinema site.

Bill Felton, president of the East Tennessee Veterans Memorial Association, which is raising funds for the memorial, says his organization has gotten good response from both city and county government officials to the move, which he says would “put it in a better setting,” alongside the route for Veterans Day and Memorial Day Parades and with much higher visibility than in the quiet confines of Emory Place. Details of placing the memorial in the park are yet to be worked out, he says.

“We want a really outstanding memorial there,” says Felton, who says the original design by architect Lee Ingram was of a marble wall with spaces for each war the United States has engaged in and descriptions of the wars and why the country was involved.

He says he expects to have a new rendering, suited specifically to the Krutch Park space, available to show Mayor Bill Haslam and the public soon.

The Emory Place site had the advantage of lying right between the Doughboy statue in front of old Knoxville High School and the National Cemetery, one of the oldest national cemeteries in America, where the veterans of at least six wars are buried. Parades honoring vets once went all the way there. Felton says some opposition was raised in the Emory Place neighborhood, but he declined to be more specific.

“We’re looking to do some other things as well,” says Felton, a retired Army colonel, “we want to help with an education program for our schools, so we can teach the young people why we fought in these wars.” He says the Knox County school system has responded favorably to that suggestion.

—Barry Henderson

VARDATE © 2004 Metro Pulse