Posts tagged Knoxville
The Modern Southern Gentleman...
Where tradition meets the 21st century
My photo from the Self Evident Truths Project when they came through Knoxville. A huge shout out to iO for the awesome portraits! Check out all the portraits from the Southern Tour here and don’t forget to follow them here on Tumblr!
A Request of the Religious and Spiritual
I apologize in advance for y’all seeing this more than once over the next week or so.
I’m doing a project here at The University of Tennessee for a video class and I’m doing it on religion and prayer. I’m looking for additional audio for the video, so I have a request, especially for those of you with iPhones (I say iPhones because I know the audio quality capable on them). I’m wanting prayers/incantations from as many different religions as possible, especially non-Christians and especially if you speak a language other than American English. I have access to tons of different Christian denominations and American English speakers, so I’m trying to increase the diversity of language.
On a 2nd note, if you are in or around the Knoxville, TN area and are willing to be filmed for the project, it would be more than greatly appreciated. Again, non-Christians will take precedence because I have an abundance of them already.
My email address is ***jclayto4@utk.edu**** If you are comfortable being filmed, feel free to just shoot it to me in an email or if you’re open to being filmed or if you record any audio, shoot me a message with the attachment. I’d appreciate it if you’d include:
Your Name (for credit)
Your Religious Affiliation (if any)
Any other information you’d like to include such as age or location.
Thank you so much in advance!!!
~Johnathan
A Request of the Religious and Spiritual
I’m doing a project here at The University of Tennessee for a video class and I’m doing it on religion and prayer. I’m looking for additional audio for the video, so I have a request, especially for those of you with iPhones (I say iPhones because I know the audio quality capable on them). I’m wanting prayers/incantations from as many different religions as possible, especially non-Christians and especially if you speak a language other than American English. I have access to tons of different Christian denominations and American English speakers, so I’m trying to increase the diversity of language.
On a 2nd note, if you are in or around the Knoxville, TN area and are willing to be filmed for the project, it would be more than greatly appreciated. Again, non-Christians will take precedence because I have an abundance of them already.
My email address is ***jclayto4@utk.edu*** If you are comfortable bring filmed, feel free to just shoot it to me in an email or if you’re open to being filmed or if you record any audio, shoot me a message with the attachment. I’d appreciate it if you’d include:
Your Name (for credit)
Your Religious Affiliation (if any)
Any other information you’d like to include such as age or location.
Thank you so much in advance!!!
~Johnathan
(Source: polarbear1986)
thebluevolunteer asked:
I dont have a question, I just wanted to say that you have an incredible blog. Enjoying the posts.
Thanks, man! Appreciate it. And score for the Memphis guys sportin the orange, but always with a streak of blue for the home team! GO VOLS! GO TIGERS GO!
The Volunteer State
Self Evident Truths Project
Just an reminder, the Self Evident Truths Project will be in Knoxville Sunday, March 11th and Monday, March 12th. On Sunday, they’ll be at Lox Salon from 10a-5p. On that Monday, they’ll actually be on campus in the OUTreach Center here at UT. I have an appointment set for 3p, y’all should come!
As a little added incentive, UGA just broke the record for number of turn outs of any other city in the country in one city with 95. We need to break that!
(Source: polarbear1986)
An East Tennessee Amber Alert has been issued by the Knoxville Police Department for 14-year old white female Taryn Lea Rollins, five feet/one inches tall, 130 pounds, blonde hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing a long sleeve pink t-shirt and gray sweat pants. At approximately 8:45 EST she was forcibly taken from her front yard by a 30-40 year old bald white male and put into the back seat of a dark colored small sedan with tinted windows. The vehicle was last seen driving east on Houstonia Drive towards Ridgecrest Avenue. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Taryn Rollins is asked to call the Knoxville Police Department at 865-215-4010 or the TBI at 1-800-TBI-FIND.
Incident Date: 2/28/2012 20:45
(via ACTIVE AMBER Alert: Taryn Rollins – Knoxville,TN « AMBER Alert)
Self Evident Truths is a project I heard about a long time ago and, honestly, figured would fizzle out. It didn’t. I learned today that they are actually headed out on a tour of the South!
NYC based photographer, iO Tillet Wright, began this project in 2010, photographing a few hundred people in NYC. But the project has grown! And, as Southerners, our faces need to be seen and our voices heard. So often, we are left out of the conversation on LGBTQ rights all together. People assume we grow up and move away; we try to escape the South. We need to show them that we are here and happy! After all, if we all left, this place would never change. I encourage everyone that has the possibility to do so to turn out and have your photo taken.
Here is a list of the cities they will be in and when:
Oklahoma City, OK February 24 & 25
Dallas, TX
February 26
Little Rock, AR
February 27
Jackson, MS
February 28
New Orleans, LA
March 1 & 2
Mobile, LA
March 3
Birmingham, AL
March 4
Atlanta, GA
March 6 & 7
Athens, GA
March 8
Asheville, NC
March 9
Knoxville, TN
March 11 & 12
Finally!
Something I can happily report about my home state and adopted city. I recently talked about Stacey Campfield, a state representative from Knoxville, and his ever-so-enlightened comments about HIV infection, his most recent bigoted, inflammatory, and completely false statements. Don’t forget he is also the lead sponsor of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Well, I’m happy to report that other Tennesseeans are listening to the trash spewed form his mouth.
Anyone who has lived in Knoxville for any length of time knows that Gay St. is one of the best parts of downtown. Restaurants, bars, and a few unique shops surround the iconic Tennessee and Bijou Theaters and it’s just a generally great experience. Well, one of these restaurants took a stand when Rep. Campfield decided to make a (laughably ironic) visit to a Gay St. classic. Bistro at the Bijou is well known in the area and Cempfield decided he would stop by for a bite, but when owner Martha Boggs heard he was in the restaurant, she made a pit stop at his table…and told him to leave.
“I didn’t want his hate in my restaurant. “I told him he wasn’t welcome here… I feel like he’s gone from being stupid to being dangerous, and I wanted to stand up to him.”
She then took to Facebook and said,
”I hope that [Stacey] Campfield now knows what [it] feels like to be unfairly discriminated against.”
It’s so nice to know that even here in the most conservative part of the state, people are standing up for what’s right. I’ve always loved Bistro at the Bijou, but I’ll make sure my patronage is even more frequent now. Thank you, Ms. Boggs.
Yet Another Example of Tennessee Ignorance
Tennessee has been in the news a lot lately, it seems. And as much as I love my home state, I’m less than thrilled. None of the LGBT stories coming out of Tennessee have been the least bit positive. We’ve had a gay teen suicide, a father (as well as a pastor) inciting other church members to assault his son and son’s boyfriend when they tried to attend church, and now this. Bo Watson, a Republican senator of an unincorporated area just outside Chattanooga, and Richard Floyd, a congressman from Chattanooga, submitted a bill before the state legislature that would have required transgender Tennesseans to use the bathroom designated by the gender on their birth certificates. No big deal, right? Most trans* people simply change the specified gender on their birth certificates anyway. Wrong. Tennessee law prohibits this. Even if a person holds a Tennessee driver’s license, US passport, and any other official document stating one gender, if that’s not the sex of their birth certificate, it doesn’t matter in the eyes of the state.
How would they enforce this, you say? I’m assuming it would be bathroom monitors, just like elementary school. But in all seriousness, I have yet to see hw this would be implemented. It may be up to someone else to report it to some authority figure, and they in turn would alert the police. Yes, police, because any infraction would result in a $50 fine. Absolutely ridiculous.
Another thing to note: the way this bill is written would actually allow it to be applied to children taken into the bathroom of a responsible parent. Say a little girl needs to go potty and her dad takes her to the men’s room. Sirens sound, a gate slams down in front of the entrance, and a ticket prints out of the paper towel dispenser. I can’t imagine anyone actually trying to do that, but they could. That’s how broadly written the language is.
On a positive note, Senator Watson withdrew his support from the bill, effectively quashing it for now without sponsorship in the Senate. And no one from any of the other major Tennessee cities, (Memphis, Nashville, or Knoxville) have stepped in to replace him. Watson says that there are more important things to worry about in our state right now. He’s right. Representative Floyd on the other hand said:
“I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry… Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk. We cannot continue to let these people dominate how society acts and reacts. Now if somebody thinks he’s a woman and he’s a man and wants to try on women’s clothes, let them him take them into the men’s bathroom or dressing room.”
It is reassuring that most of the perpetrators of these acts of hatred seem to be at least septuagenarians, but it stains the view of our state in the eyes of the rest of the nation and the world. The link in the title takes you to a brief article about this, but there’s also a poll on that page. As of this writing, 88% of people think the proposed law is ridiculous; this is also encouraging. Feel free to tell them, or me, what you think about this.
The fact that it’s 62ºF at 8pm…
…3 hours after the sun went down…in December…in the mountains…is only one of the many reason I love living in the South!!!
Accurate map is accurate.
The University of Tennessee recently opened the New Norris House, a 21st-century home that revisits the old Norris community project. As background, during the Great Depression, the Tennessee Valley Authority built a model community as part of a water works project in Tennessee. According to the New Norris House site, the old Norris homes were innovative and included electricity and heating systems for the first time in the region.
The New Norris House builds on this history with a prefabricated home, solar hot water, rainwater collection, and all sorts of features that should reward the project team with LEED Platinum certification.
(Source: youtube.com)
Here’s my story today. It is about the first black undergrads who were admitted to the University of Tennessee. I got the pleasure to talk to one who still has ties to Big Orange…
