the James White Fort of blogging

Hello.

I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I have lived in the area nearly my entire life (possum-dodging in Vestal ‘til age three followed by a glorious return after high school; lean years eating out of styrofoam containers in mouldering Fort Sanders apartments; a drunken Fourth and Gill porch swing tour in my mid-twenties; awkward stints in Fountain City and Colonial Heights; first solo apartment in Park Ridge, located by scouring the classifieds for the vacancy nearest to Chandler’s Deli). Like many from Knoxville, I have also sought happiness elsewhere, at times in more cosmopolitan locales. While I have encountered much awesomeness on this globe (props especially to Bodymore, Murderland and East London), I have never found a place much like this city (or more generally, like East Tennessee). Blame whatever you like, whether nostalgia, hometown pride, or hillbilly/mountain stubbornness, but I have come to understand it as a city imbued with qualities that prevent a wanderer from ever disengaging entirely. Those that leave Knoxville usually feel a protectiveness over it (just look at Knoxblab!), and they typically boomerang. I am no different.

I have heard Knoxville get guff from haters both within its borders and without – from ambivalence about the South in general in NYC to delusions of adequacy in Nashville, from protestations that we are Yankees (perish the thought) in Baton Rouge, to the familiar sound of native complaint (typically heard from a fixed position under a duvet on a West Knoxville couch) of a nebulous want of “things to do.” To these naysayers, I say DING DONG, YOU’RE WRONG (except the latter, to whom I say “move,” to be interpreted variously as "_____ your ass and do something about it", or "_____ to a shitty metropolis and develop an expensive cocaine habit").

I will be the first to admit that my city is imperfect. However, and at risk of using words like “homespun” and “rustic” (or worse, invoking the moniker “Scruffy Little City”), it is often Knoxville’s very inelegance that endears it to me. It is a work in progress, like all of us that are worth knowing, and a project worth getting behind.

That’s why, every goddamned day, this will be a blog about the city of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Your humble servant,

Marble City Madman