Wilson County Sugar Sideboard
Gift from Decorative Arts Trust

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art opened their newest exhibition Around Tennessee, 1820-1920 this past Saturday, July 5. The exhibition continues through September 7. Visit the Brooks page on Art Museum Touring.com (Link...) and the Events page (Link...) to see the activities at the Brooks this month. Including rare textiles, fine regional furniture, evocative paintings, and early silver from Memphis makers, Around Tennessee showcases works made in the state and surrounding regions.

Support your local galleries and museums! They are economic engines for your community.

Sherrie

In this heated election season, it's important not to lose sight of what's really important--college basketball.

This season is shaping up to be a huge one for our state. There could be as many as FIVE Tennessee teams in the conference. Memphis is playing for a #1 seed, and UTK and Vanderbilt should be locks at this point (barring a complete and utter collapse, which is never outside the realm of possibility for either team). In addition, Belmont and Austin Peay are both winning their respective conferences.

So, I would like to propose a Tennessee bloggers' bracket tournament. I just wanted to post this to a) gauge interest and b) see if yall think we should just keep this among ourselves or throw it open to our Elephant friends as well.

Finally, my first-round shocker pick--#13 Cornell over whoever the #4 seed is. I'm not biased, I swear...

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art exhibition introducing Claire Torina closes Feb. 4.

Claire Torina (American, b. 1985)
Untitled, 2007
Oil on canvas
Collection of the artist

Visit Art Museum Touring.com (Link...)to see what else is on display at the Brooks and some other Memphis museums.

Sherrie

UPDATE (from comments):

I thought everyone would like to know that this wonderful show closes March 2, not February 4. The Artist Talk for the show will take place at the museum's First Wednesday event, February 5 at 7:30pm.

Thank you,
Tomi Durgin
Assistant Curator of Education
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

(Cross-Posted at Silence Isn't Golden)

Someone (in this case, WSMV in Nashville) finally decided it was time to do a Presidential poll in Tennessee. It's about damn time! Of course, if they could have waited maybe three days later to do it, the results probably would have been far more accurate.

Joe Lance is following the news on a possible independent candidate discussed this morning.

Today's Washington Post contains an eyebrow-raising story by David Broder (which, as I write this, Bob Schieffer is also mentioning on CBS) about a bipartisan group that will meet at the University of Oklahoma next week, to discuss the possibility of an independent candidacy.

At the head of the table, as it were, is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former Democrat, and a former Republican, and now an independent. Other names that we've seen circulated before in terms of a bipartisan candidacy (such as that sought by Unity08): former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, a socially conservative Democrat who has worked in earnest to reduce global nuclear armaments; former New Jersey Governor and EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman; and former Sen. David Boren, who is now president of the host university.

He also says this, which I agree:

If the 2 major parties end up nominating polarizing or ineffective candidates, this Oklahoma meeting could be the start of one of the biggest political stories of 2008.

And there is a Tennessee connection.

It was announced yesterday that Gov. Ned McWherter will co-chair with Jane Eskind and Thelma Harper for Hillary Clinton's Tennessee Steering Committee.

Out And About Magazine has a complete list that I'm posting so you can see who will be closest to your area in the state.

Cross-posted at Newscoma

If you read this blog with any sense of frequency, all 12 of you, I think you probably all know that I’m a big fan on strengthening the sunshine law for citizens, not weakening it. If you’ve noticed over the past few weeks, some of us who blog who also work for “The Man” in media outlets, big and small, have been hammering this. We have done it for weeks. And I’m pleased to see some folks here in the great state of Tennessee who aren’t in media picking up on the cause. Joe Lance from Tennessee Ticket even included a list of bloggers in his latest column in the Chattanooga Pulse that included Bill Hobbs, Joe Powell, Smart City Memphis, R. Neal, Russ McBee, Jack Lail and myself.

It’s amazing to see even though some of us are politically divided that we agree on this. It’s not a political issue in a liberal or conservative kind of way, but more so it’s about the business of politics.

About three weeks ago, I drafted a letter about the importance of open meetings that I was going to send to all my blogging buddies as well as some folks not in Tennessee’s online community. In it, I was, in my eyes at least, sincere and presented a bunch of reasons why this law was important.

I trashed it.

I’ll tell you why. Because I’m thinking, and Michael Silence and I touched on this off-line not too long ago when I asked him the question of why the majority of folks weren’t paying attention although some bloggers were. He said something on the lines of that people don’t realize its importance until it affects them. So, I have gone locally to talk to people about this. The response hasn’t been overwhelming, to be quite honest, but then again I started to realize, once again, that the Average Joes in the world don’t really understand the law.

Yeah, that’s about right.

About two years ago, and I may have written about this before but it’s on my mind, a man I knew for the sheer fact that I’d put him on the front page with all mugshot goodness and was angry with me for awhile after a stint in jail called me. (I tell you the history to set up the fact that he had some issues, needless to say.) Anyway, he had gone to get a copy of his affidavit of complaint and his records from Circuit Court. They wouldn’t let him have it. He asked for my help. He just wanted to see what the officers had written. I ended up calling and got them within 15 minutes.

Why am I telling you this?

Read the rest here.

My first post here at TennViews. Thanks R. Neal for allowing me to do so and to Russ McBee for suggesting it in the first place.

From an article in Salon.com. Link...

"Americans should not be disqualified from voting because of their lifestyle choice to travel," said Hedy Weinberg, director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Tennessee, which went to federal court Tuesday to challenge the purge of RVers in Tennessee's rural Bradley County. "For our state and election commission to purge them from the list is unfair and is unconstitutional and flies in the face of our democracy as we know it."

Not everyone agrees.

"David Ellis, the former Bradley County Election Commission director who started removing full-time RVers, said they have no connection to the area and are simply "dodging their responsibility to pay their fair share" of taxes."

What do you think?