Have You Seen This? Part II: More Viral Videos of Tennessee
February 19, 2013 by Devin Greaney · Leave a Comment
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!!
Oh What a Year!: The offbeat Tennessee of 2012
December 21, 2012 by Devin Greaney · Leave a Comment
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?
The Art of Play: Nashville Tree House Exhibit Brings Fun and Creation to Cheekwood
August 9, 2012 by Devin Greaney · Leave a Comment
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.
Ursa Major: The bears of Tennessee
July 9, 2012 by Devin Greaney · Leave a Comment
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.
Docu-Memphis: Part Two of a Two Part Series
July 2, 2012 by Devin Greaney · Leave a Comment
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.”
True Stories: Memphis as Seen Through Documentary Films
June 25, 2012 by Devin Greaney · Leave a Comment
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.
Tennessee’s Playground: A weekend in Greater Gatlinburg
June 18, 2012 by Devin Greaney · Leave a Comment
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.
What’s Good Here?: Reflecting on Stuff We Like about the State
May 14, 2012 by Devin Greaney · Leave a Comment
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:
Have you Seen This?: The Viral Videos of Tennessee
April 30, 2012 by Devin Greaney · Leave a Comment
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.
Vine Meets the Wine: Can Kudzu Help the Recovering Alchoholic?
April 16, 2012 by Devin Greaney · Leave a Comment
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.