Tennessee Williams was one of the foremost playwrights in the 20th century. He wrote close to 40 plays, 70 one-act plays, and several screenplays, achieving great success with The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947; Pulitzer Prize winner), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955; Pulitzer Prize winner),Continue Reading
In the year 2000, my sons Erik and Gabriel and I set out to create a video documentary of the people living in Free Hills, one of America’s last remaining Black settlements established before the Civil War. Located in hardscrabble Clay County, Tennessee, near the community of Celina, the FreeContinue Reading
Kin Takahashi was a five-feet-two-inch, 123-pound ball of joyous energy whose fire burned brightly for only thirty-six short years. But Mr. Takahashi shared his energy with all those around him willingly and without hesitation. It could be said that his life was so brief because he gave everything of himself,Continue Reading
White trash have been with us since colonial times – though they often went by other names. That’s the contention of historian Nancy Isenberg in White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. Isenberg also destroys assumptions about America’s allegedly class-free society in which all one needed wereContinue Reading
On a rainy day in late March our family decided we needed a day in the Smokies, or, to be more precise, under them. Our destination was Tuckaleechee Caverns in Townsend, Tennessee, about 25 miles south of Knoxville. The word Tuckaleechee is derived from the Cherokee word, Tikwalitsi (original meaningContinue Reading
My first “spiritual” teacher arrived simultaneous to the literary discoveries. Anything but spiritual and much older, he drew me at nineteen into a long and difficult entanglement, a liaison lasting years that would, these days, set off all the #MeToo sirens. The sum of it was traumatizing, but there wereContinue Reading
A few years ago, I visited the Coal Creek Miners Museum in Rocky Top (formerly Lake City, formerly Coal Creek), Anderson County, Tennessee. The facility provides a historical glimpse into the lives of coal miners in the Fraterville and Briceville mines, particularly from the late 1800s to the 1930s. TheContinue Reading
I’ve been friends with Ed McDaniel (aka Captain Ed) for over ten years. We met working in Facilities Services at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. We are union members of United Campus Workers (UCW), which we both were privileged to serve as Local President. We’ve spent a fair amount ofContinue Reading
Our evening was cooler than expected. A quick but fierce thunderstorm moved through our late July afternoon that day, complete with loud rolling booms, cracks of lightning, and a torrent of falling water. On the northern Appalachian Trail, among the beech, maple, and birch-covered Green Mountains of Vermont, our campingContinue Reading
As we discovered in the previous post, “Dead Without a Word: The Mysterious Assassination of John Kincaid,” John Kincaid II was a fierce advocate for the Confederacy during the Civil War. After his death, he was considered a martyr to some and a malefactor to others. His sons also foughtContinue Reading