A couple of years ago I came across a modern re-telling of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias on Daily Kos. Despite the passage of time, The New Ozymandias is still relevant as to the war, but […]

We walked through the ruins of Turkey Creek between our neighborhood and the movie theater, and witnessed a scene that might cause some degree of schadenfreude to overtake the activists who lobbied so hard to […]

I remember when the 100 block of Gay Street was so bleak it seemed like the only thing missing was tumbleweed buffeting between the curbs; and even after the old industrial buildings were transformed into […]

I’m deeply interested and involved in politics, but I don’t write much about it because everybody else does. And most of the other bloggers and commentators express my views better than I do. So I’m […]

I tried this out while vacationing in the Loire Valley this summer. It’s the best tomato dish I’ve ever tasted in my life, so if you’re looking for a new way to prepare all those […]

I read a very interesting New Yorker story about the Bosnian-born Chicago writer Aleksandar Hemon. For real Shakespearean backstory on his cultivation in letters in the former Yugoslavia, read this 2000 article from The Guardian, […]

Thanks for turning out, voters. From a look at the KNS web site thumbnails, Knox County is ruled by bleached, sun-dried blondes. Is this a Hee Haw backup singer reunion or local government?
(I’m crackin’ wise. […]

I had just posted to this blog a week before about the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and its cultural outreach. I think I mentioned its social justice work and how one member artist in […]

I’m not a Unitarian, but I’ve always respected the progressive attitude and rational agenda of the Unitarian philosophy. Thomas Jefferson, a lapsed Anglican, once predicted (in a moment of democratic, post-revolutionary high optimism) that one […]

Or, if you’re vegetarian, bake some pita bread or naan. Then you go to your garden or the farmer’s market and pick your cucumbers - that’s right, it’s tzatziki time in Tennessee. Time to make […]