American Values from Leigh Johnson on Vimeo.

American Values from Leigh Johnson on Vimeo.

What do we Americans value? Dr Leigh Johnson, philosophy professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, asked volunteers to tell her.

Last April, Across Tennessee published a collection of some of the viral videos of the Volunteer State.

But one thing that happens in the world of the internet.. There is always more!!

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In September, Nashville star Carrie Underwood responded-positively- to a 12-year-old’s sign asking “will you be my first kiss?”

What a year it was when the words “gangnam,” “Pussy Riot” and “Honey Boo Boo” entered the vocabulary?

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The Walden tree house evokes Thoreau's cabin paradise

The Weather Channel had showed the heat index of 106 on a recent Thursday afternoon in Nashville. Another check showed Death Valley, California was more comfortable. But heat indexes were not slowing down the children as the allure of tree houses kept young visitors running, climbing, exploring and discovering through Cheekwood Gardens.

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Great Smokey Mountains.. is he drooling because we look tasty?

The trail to Grotto Falls in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a popular hike for families. It was also a nostalgic visit for me, as I last walked that trail in 1974 with my family and a friend’s family. I still remember it was impressive to the nine-year-old me who was more interested in things like seeing a shrunken head at Gatlinburg’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum then the grandeur of the mountains. And for the forty seven year old me, the falls were just as impressive.

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Morgan Jon Fox’s film “This is What Love in Action Looks Like” shows a clash of cultures in Memphis

This is part 2 of a two part series. Part 1 is available here

Jaz Gray remembers films in school were a mixed blessing. “I remember in college and in high school, which was only a few years ago, when the teacher said ‘we are going to watch a film’ on one hand you were excited because you were thinking ‘at least I don’t have to do some work’ but on the other hand you knew it was going to be boring. When the lights go out some fall asleep,” Gray aspires for more. “For me a documentary is the opposite of that experience.”

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Craig Leake of The University of Memphis has been making documentaries since the 1960's. Photo by Linda Leake

This is part 1 of a 2 part series. Part 2 can be read here.

In Fall, 1988 Memphians got excited when Great Balls of Fire, a big budget bio-pic on Jerry Lee Lewis started filming in Memphis. Just few months earlier (but released later),  Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train was a love letter to the corner of GE Patterson and Main. They were not the first films shot in the Bluff City, but still something was different from earlier productions. Hollywood discovered the area for the classic Hallelujah  released in 1928. Decades later, the very forgettable Making the Grade was released in 1984 along with bits and pieces of other films. But in the late 1980’s Memphians were speculating now Hollywood was discovering the area and its look that was like no other.

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Saturday night, Gatlinburg

It would be a lifetime to hit all of the trails in Sevier County, better known as Greater Gatlinburg. The trails offer a communion with nature, a fitness challenge and just plain adventure.

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The State Flag

The point of this web magazine is to document the good and bad of Tennessee. But national attention recently has focused on the negative. Tennessee has been the epicenter in the “culture war” as to issues like same sex marriage. The state was also covered extensively over the murder and kidnapping of the Bain family of Hardeman County where two were killed and two were rescued. So here are some of the good things which are not necessarily exclusive to Tennessee but still some positives. In no special order:

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We get them in our in boxes, from Facebook Friends and Twitter- well not sure what you call people you follow on Twitter- but you have them to thank or blame. They are the flash mobs dancing to The Sound of Music, laughing babies,  funny pets and almost all other subjects imaginable.

They are the viral videos and what the hulu hoop was to the 1950′s, disco to the 1970′s, these are the fad of this generation.  It is hard to remember a time before You Tube and Vimeo.. you know, like ten years ago. But today they are home to some creativity often done solely for the desire to get one’s creativity out there. It is not without controversy as Edward Greenberg, a New York, New York intellectual property lawyer,  called “possessing the fatal flaw many artists have which is the overriding desire to be liked.”  Creativity becomes harder and harder to be a career as so many people do it for free. Steven Spielberg and James Cameron may not be nervous, but just ask that communications major who wants to create WITH OUT needing two other jobs.

Controversy or not, video sharing is not going away. So here are a few vistas of Tennessee through the eyes of YouTube and others.

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No, it is not a mastodon. Kudzu covers trees off Airport Road in Rockwood

Harold (not his real name ) was intoxicated and in the Shelby County jail – “the 201” locals call it – at 201 Poplar in Downtown Memphis on January 17, 2002. It was not his first time in lockup, nor was it his first time being intoxicated. He started drinking roughly five times a week in high school and now was in his mid-thirties.  “I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I tried quitting a ton of times but I didn’t know how.” He knew that it was time for a change and this time was different. It was to be his last drink.

But could one of the area’s most annoying plants become a weapon in the arsenal of people like Harold, fighting that feeling of what he describes as “ you don’t want ever to take another drink but you don’t know how you are not going to?” According to traditional Chinesse medicine, the ubiquitous kudzu plant can be used to fight alcoholism.

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Hitting Coach Cory Snyder of the Jackson Generals greets members of Jackson's little leauge team, The Kings

Here in Tennessee if you want college sports, few states have better bragging rights. Looking for major league football and hockey?  Go to Nashville. Want NBA pro basketball, there is Memphis. As for baseball, the state is conveniently located between the Washington Nationals, Atlanta Braves and Saint Louis Cardinals. But there is more to the state and our national past time don’t write off Tennessee and the national past time TOO quickly.  Ten minor league teams – some in places many Tennesseans, have never heard of – play ball in Tennessee and though Hunter-Wright Stadium ( home of the Kingsport Mets) 2,500 seats will never be confused with Turner Field ( home of the Atlanta Braves with just over 50,000 seats). The feel is still there – ice cream out of a plastic helmet, free fly balls to the lucky fans and John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” over the loudspeaker.

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EVERYONE knows the tulip poplar is the state tree. Can you answer some tougher questions?

Do not get excited. No prizes will be awarded. Feel free to use Google ( how would anyone know? ) And when in doubt answering “C” will not help you as the answers are in alphabetical order. This, like the title says, is just for fun!

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The pillow in the corner shows Jackson was sick and in bed when Mathew Brady took this photo in 1845.

They are split-seconds frozen in time that tell the story of a place called Tennessee. The photos can be beautiful or ugly. They illustrate a split-second like Kevin Dyson’s near-win in the 2000 Superbowl. A fraction of a second earlier or later the photo would not have been nearly as dramatic. Or perhaps the scene has changed little. The natural beauty of Ansel Adam’s photos of the Smokey’s was enjoyed by him when he visited in the 1940s as it is today. And some notes on the photos – all of these can be found in various places throughout the internet. However where I could not find the owner of to the rights of the photo or royalties were cost-prohibitive, included only a link to the owner and or photographer’s website. There is a lot of use of copyrighted material without the owner’s permission but Across Tennessee will not participate in this practice.

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Jackson is in the middle of the towns hit by tornados, but Jackson and Madison County was not hit

Part 2 of a 2 part series remembering the 60th anniversary of  Tennessee’s Deadliest Tornado Outbreak. Part 1 can be read here.

As midnight hit, residents of  Tennessee towns, including Bolivar, Dyersberg and Moscow were searching for people, treating injured and trying to come to understand how their world of six hours earlier was so different from that moment. But the heavy weather had no signs of getting any lighter.

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Skies were threatening, the factors were there, but no tornadoes hit in this system last May in Memphis.. March, 21-22, 1952 the story ended differently

Part one of a two part series remembering the 60th anniversary of Tennessee’s deadliest tornado outbreak.

As spring began in 1952, Harry Truman was President and Gordon Browning was governor. US troops were involved in the Korean War. “Dragnet” and “I Love Lucy” had just been introduced that TV season.  “The Greatest Show on Earth” was in the theaters and Elvis Presley was still a high school student.  In West Tennessee weather felt more like an early May. Temperatures on March 21 hit 79 at Bolivar and Union City, 77 in Jackson and Brownsville and 75 in Moscow. But a cold front was poised to bring winter back for a while and drop the temperatures another 25 to 30 degrees. The official forecast in the afternoon paper was “Mostly cloudy this afternoon, tonight. Saturday; scattered thundershowers, windy and warm this afternoon and early tonight. Afternoon temperatures near 80. Cooler late tonight, low near 45.”

In eighteen hours sixty seven Tennesseans would die and another two hundred eighty three injured by tornados. Three hundred homes would be destroyed and more than six hundred others were damaged. Five more were killed in Middle Tennessee flash floods. Six million in property damage was the estimated loss- that is about $51.3 million in today’s dollars.  It became – and still is- Tennessee’s deadliest tornado day. Sixty years later memories remain.

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