The Southern Highland Reader

REGIONAL–The Hendersonville Times News, along with the Knoxville News Sentinel, have followed closely 11th District Congressman Heath Shuler’s real estate misadventure involving the TVA in east Tennessee.

The Times News warned early on that even the appearance of influence-peddling in real estate matters would recall memories of Shuler’s predecessor, Republican Charles Taylor.

In a Friday editorial, the Times News “wraps the thing up neatly, and says Shuler’s damage in this case is self-inflicted.

Here’s the lead:

KNOXVILLE–The Knoxville News Sentinel’s Josh Flory has closely followed the controversy surrounding 11th District Congressman Heath Shuler’s real estate dealings and contacts with the Tennessee Valley Authority, and has reported new information.

Shuler was cleared of ethical misconduct allegations last week by the house ethics committee, but a new report seems to contradict Shuler’s assertion that he did not contact the TVA to exert influence in what amounted to a personal business matter.

Read Flory’s post here. See more posts about this story in the left hand column.

GSMNP–National Geographic Traveler, in its sixth rating of worldwide travel destinations, calls the Great Smoky Mountains National Park “a national treasure surrounded by a bathtub ring of ugly, unplanned development.”

An excerpt from a story on the matter from the Knoxville News Sentinel:

The survey of 437 experts, which including travel writers, historic preservationists, ecologists and others, placed the Smokies in the next-to-worst category: “Places with Troubles.”

The judges whose comments were published with the story were slightly more lenient on the North Carolina side of the Smokies than the Tennessee side, which one judge described as displaying “the worst excesses of mass tourist development … ”

Tourism officials from Tennessee told the News Sentinel that the rankings were inherently biased against more popular and accessible locations.

Read the Knoxville News Sentinel story here.
Read the National Geographic Traveler story here.

GSMNP–Those thumps you heard earlier were tourism folks fainting dead away at the news that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will close its wildly popular Cades Cove loop for three months in the spring for repaving and sprucing up.

An excerpt from the Knoxville News Sentinel:

The park examined a “full range of options” to do the work, according to Superintendent Dale Ditmanson.

All would have required unsuitable detours for the 3,000 to 4,000 vehicles that enter the cove each day, Ditmanson said.

Night-time work also was considered, but the road would have had to be closed for the rebuilding of the sub-base.

The park chose to close the road and recycle it in place as the most efficient and “environmentally responsible” way to complete the work, Ditmanson said.

Read the story here.

REGIONAL–The Southern Appalachian Bear Study Group, a group of biologists from Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia who study black bear populations, think that the current population of bears across the Southern Appalachians is the highest on record.

An excerpt from Morgan Simmons’ story in the Knoxville News Sentinel:

The latest UT studies put the black bear population in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park at around 1,500, or about two bears for every square mile of the park.

The number of bears taken by legal hunting in Tennessee has increased dramatically since 1982, when the harvest was only 21 bears. In 1997, hunters harvested a record 370 bears. Many biologists thought the population had peaked that year, but then came the 2008-09 hunting season, when Tennessee hunters harvested 446 black bears for yet another record.

[Research ecologist] Frank Van Manen said that while the region may be biologically capable of supporting even more bears, it’s clear that in some areas, the population has reached its cultural capacity as determined by people’s willingness to tolerate bears visiting their bird feeders or breaking into their homes.

Read the story here.

CHEROKEE–In early September, the Knoxville News Sentinel’s Carly Harrington put together this overview of Qualla Boundary economic conditions, and talked to some folks that might not otherwise be heard in such a piece; among them, Leon Grodski and Natalie Smith, owners of Tribal Grounds Coffee and well-known multimedia artist Davy Arch.

The general theme: while the influence of Harrah’s Cherokee Casino has its pluses and minuses, the influx of cash that the casino brings is giving the Cherokee greater opportunity to control their economic destiny.

An excerpt:

While roadside shops continue to hawk their fake American Indian wares, locals say they are trying to get away from such “shot glass” tourist attractions, focusing instead on authentic Cherokee history and heritage.

“The tribe is spending money to create a nicer experience that’s more culturally oriented and authentic. The goal is to move away from the touristy trinkets from China,” Groski said.

After the park opened, people from other places were attracted to the area by the lure of tourism and its financial prospects. The tribe, in need of money, allowed them “to market their junk.”

“They wanted any kind of business they could get. We weren’t generating revenue to support the infrastructure,” Arch said, noting that there’s more tolerance and acceptance of the Cherokee culture today.

“Things are looking up. We have more control of our destiny now than the last couple hundred years. It’s changing.”

Read the piece here.

REGIONAL-The smidgen of Tennessee lakefront property at the heart of a controversy involving 11th District congressman Heath Shuler was listed as a Shuler asset in 2007, but not 2008, reports the Hendersonville Times News.

An excerpt:

Shuler, who went into real estate development in East Tennessee after his career as a quarterback at the University of Tennessee and the NFL, claimed ownership of between $9 million and $42 million in real estate assets in his 2007 financial disclosure statement. The largest asset was the Cove at Blackberry Ridge near Knoxville, which became the subject of a TVA inspector general’s report into whether the agency was showing favoritism in granting water access development permits.

The entire story.

KNOXVILLE-11th District Congressman Heath Shuler on Wednesday denied knowledge of the working of a land deal between the Tennessee Valley Authority — over which he has some oversight in Washington — and a land development company in east Tennessee in which holds interest.

The Tennessean’s lead:

North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler said Wednesday that he did not contact the Tennessee Valley Authority while the agency was considering a water access deal that was key to a housing development in which he was an investor.

The Waynesville, N.C., Democrat’s statement appears to contradict the conclusion in a report by TVA’s inspector general released Tuesday, and it further clouds a complex and politically charged issue.

The Tennessean’s story is here.

REGIONAL–The Knoxville News Sentinel and reporter Josh Flory have followed for over a year the story of Rep. Heath Shuler’s involvement in a real estate development company that swapped some land with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The significance is that the TVA is a federal agency, and that Shuler sits on a committee that provides oversight of that agency.

Here’s some background.

In a blog post today, Flory reports that a TVA employee seemed to be playing duck’n'cover. Flory’s lead:

A former TVA employee allegedly provided false information to the agency’s inspector general in connection with an inquiry that involved U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, according to an IG’s report.

The allegation was included in a report that was released to the News Sentinel under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

According to the TVA IG’s “Report of Administrative Inquiry”, which was released on Monday and dated June 9, the former employee denied knowing that Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat, held an ownership in The Cove at Blackberry Ridge LLC, a waterfront project in Roane County.

<snip>

The controversy centers on TVA’s Maintain and Gain Lakeshore Management Program, which allowed landowners to gain water-access rights in one location by trading rights they owned somewhere else on a reservoir.

Last year, the News Sentinel reported that an entity with ties to Shuler — a former University of Tennessee football star — received approval for a transaction that provided 145 feet of water-access rights along the shoreline of Watts Bar Reservoir in Roane County.

That entity, The Cove at Blackberry Ridge LLC, agreed to relinquish 150 feet of water-access rights in Rhea County and also provide about $15,000 for a shoreline bank stabilization project at a different location on Watts Bar Reservoir. Investors in The Cove at Blackberry Ridge included Shuler, who was formerly a member of the House transportation committee’s Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. That subcommittee is one of two congressional panels that provide formal oversight of TVA.

Read the whole piece here.

KNOXVILLE–Author Cormac McCarthy’s childhood home, recently named to the top of a list of endangered Knoxville-area places, burned to the ground earlier in the year.

In this followup, the Knoxville News Sentinel’s Fred Brown calls up his inner McCarthy to describe a stately but derelict farm house, ill-used by criminals and vagrants and owned by a recluse.

Brown’s lead:

A thick silence hangs over the charred remains. The place is humid, moist even, behind a lush, green curtain of tangled brush and bamboo that arches over the short, muddy road. Two brick chimneys stand sentinel-like; another is half-gone. Rusted and warped appliances and pipes are jumbled in the middle of the black mass, bent from searing heat and fire.

Another excerpt:

McCarthy, considered by some critics and scholars to be America’s greatest living author, won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2007 novel “The Road.” Another novel, “All The Pretty Horses,” won the National Book Award in 1992, and a movie made from his book “No Country For Old Men” won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Picture.

Read the piece here.

REGIONAL/NATIONAL–The Knoxville News Sentinel reported on Tuesday that the story about congressman Heath Shuler’s involvement in a small Tennessee land swap with the Tennessee Valley Authority isn’t dead.

From my earlier post on the subject:

The swap essentially provides water access at Watts Bar Resevoir to a [housing] development called The Cove at Blackberry Ridge, in exchange for an equal amount of shoreline elsewhere on the same lake and $15,000. Shuler is an investor in the Cove at Blackberry Ridge.

Shuler has ties to the development company, and sits on a committee that exercises oversight over the TVA. This suggests the possibility of conflict of interest, although no evidence of such has been presented. When I posted about it a year ago, it struck me as much ado about not-so-much, but the News Sentinel reported in its Tuesday that a sealed report on the matter has been forwarded to the house ethics committee.

The News Sentinel, by the way, has sued to have the report made public.

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK–Each year, wildlife managers in the Smokies hunt and kill wild hogs — wild boar, feral pigs and mixtures of the two — because the animals are non-native, somewhat dangerous and because they do a lot of environmental damage.

This year’s hunt netted over 500, which is the most in over two decades, according to a story in the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Excerpt:

Since the late 1950s, the park has removed almost 12,000 wild hogs. The animals are a target for control because they’re non-native, and they do considerable damage to the ecosystem by eating rare plants and salamander, defecating in streams and churning up the ground.

The park’s hog population traces back to the early 1920s, when a herd of European wild hogs escaped from a game reserve on Hooper’s Bald in Graham County, N.C. By the 1940s, the wild hogs had spread into other counties as well as the Smokies.

Kim DeLozier, chief wildlife biologist for the Smokies, said he believes the park’s hog population has been augmented in recent years by the addition of feral hogs – domestic pigs that have escaped or been released into the wild.

Read the whole piece here.

By avocation, Rachel Pollock, Lead Crafts Artisan at PlayMakers Repertory Company of Chapel Hill, handles elaborate, often obscure costuming design for stage and film.

She graduated from the University of Tennessee some while back, after designing her own academic major of costuming for stage and film that combined the disciplines of dramatic interpretation, fiber art, and life drawing with masters classes in costume design, history, and technology.

More recently, as one of her innumerable side-projects, she created some of what she calls “millinery as sculpture” for a show at the Knoxville Museum of Art. The medium in which she worked was cornhusk weaving common in the early 20th century and before — an art that is very nearly dead.

Writes Pollock at her blog La Bricoleuse:

None of the Tennessee milliners once known for shuckery hats are still practicing the craft. Surviving hats and purses made of cornhusk plait can be found in the archives at Western Carolina University.

Working only from images of shuckery hats in the Hunter Library’s “Craft Revival” Digital Archive at Western Carolina University, La Bricoleuse deduced the technique for plaiting traditional shuckery braid and created the Roane County Collection, three couture hat styles inspired by popular cocktail shapes of the 1930s and 40s.

Meanwhile, the show at KMA is a fundraiser for United Mountain Defense and its support for victims of the TVA Kingston coal ash spill that happened late last year.

Writes Pollock:

If you didn’t hear about the spill–which some have called the worst environmental disaster in the history of the US–it’s not a surprise. It wasn’t in the news much. GQ Magazine, of all places, has a really well-researched and extensive in-depth 17-page article on it, entitled “Black Tide,” here in their most recent issue. If you prefer photojournalism and first-hand soundbites, photographer Carlan Tapp has assembled a striking and succinct seven-minute audio slideshow here.

KNOXVILLE/REGIONAL–Public television will air the newest Ken Burns documentary this September. The much-anticipated production, called “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” will feature the Great Smoky Mountains heavily. The Friends of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will screen an hour-long sneak preview June 1, at the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville. In conjunction, the Museum of East Tennessee History will offer free admission from 4-7:30 p.m. on June 1, immediately prior to the film screening.

RALEIGH–Raleigh television WRAL is reporting that the NC State Board of Trustees meets Thursday and Friday, and is expected to vote to approve the hiring of WCU women’s basketball coach Kellie Harper to head up the Wolfpack women’s program.

The station cites an unidentified source close to the search, and reports that the source is “99% sure”.

Our previous post on this subject:

North Carolina State University’s apparent disinclination to promote longtime Kay Yow assistant Stephanie Glance to head women’s basketball coach will prove unpopular among the Wolfpack faithful. It might be unpopular among the Catamount faithful, too, because WCU women’s coach Kellie Harper’s name is bouncing around like a ping-pong ball as a possible replacement.

The website basketballscoop.com has reported that the Wolfpack will hire Harper.

Here’s what that site wrote:

BasketballScoop has learned that NC State plans to hire Kellie Harper as their new head coach.  We expect an announcement early this week.  Harper has been the head coach at Western Carolina for the past 5 seasons, accumulating a 97-65 record over that time.  Harper was the point guard at Tennessee during their unprecetented run of three consecutive national championships in 96-98 (known then as Kellie Jolly).  During her tenure at Western Carolina, her teams have shown constant improvement and have made the NCAA tournament twice.  This past season they won their conference tournament for the second time in school history (both under her watch).

John Altavilla, who covers the national champion UConn Huskies women for the Hartford Courant, weighs in.

Here are pieces from Knoxville and Raleigh.

CULLOWHEE–Western Carolina’s baseball team, which got a lukewarm forecast in pre-season polls, is off to a fine start.

The Catamounts are 15-5 overall, and 6-3 in the Southern Conference after taking 2-of-3 from the Citadel over the weekend. The Cats are in third, behind Charleston, which took 2-of-3 from the Cats just over a week ago, and Georgia Southern, which visits Cullowhee the second weekend of April.

For their performances over the past week, Catamounts Stephen Notaro, a junior catcher from California, and Chris Masters, a junior pitcher from Marietta, GA, were awarded SoCon player of the week and pitcher of the week honors, respectively. More from the league office:

Notaro led Western Carolina with a .529 batting average (9-of-17) with five of his nine hits going for extra bases last week as the Catamounts went 4-1 overall. Notaro belted two doubles and three home runs for a 1.176 slugging percentage. The Thousand Oaks, Calif., native also drew four walks as a part of a team-best .619 on-base percentage. Notaro amassed nine RBIs on the week as Western defeated High Point and UNC Asheville in non-conference play and took two-of-three SoCon games from The Citadel.

Masters, a junior from Marietta, Ga., struck out a career-best 11 batters in his first career complete game Saturday, holding The Citadel to a single run while scattering six base hits in a 3-1 win. The left-hander limited the potent Bulldogs offensive line up to a .188 batting average and improved his season record to 3-1 with a team-leading 3.19 ERA.

Western’s early season success has included winning 2-of-3 at then-nationally-ranked Southern Cal and sweeping three from best pals Appalachian State.

Western travels to Knoxville tomorrow for a single game against the Tennessee Volunteers, who, under second-year coach and former WCU skipper Todd Raleigh, are off to a 9-12 start.

REGIONAL–One of the most iconic historic photographs often to be seen here in Sylva, on the south side of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is a shot of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s motorcade passing down Main St. after he dedicated the park in 1940.

Swarms of people hang out of every window, and at bottom left, a little blurry, FDR waves his hat from the back of a convertible sedan.

FDR in Cherokee, 1940. Photo by Ewart Ball for the Asheville Citizen-Times

The Park is woven tightly into the history of our area, as much for the families it displaced and for the industries it supplanted as for the environmental and cultural gem it has become.

The Great Smokies National Park is the country’s most-visited, and for that reason, and because of its location, it also one of the most stressed. These days, just in time for the park’s 2009 75th anniversary, leadership from the northern side of the park has thing looking up for additional funding and the addressing of environmental concerns.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, has become the park’s biggest champion in Washington. He hopes President Barack Obama will replicate FDR’s visit sometime this year. Moreover, he’s in the position to help the park in many ways.

Read more in a story from the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Maryville Republican has developed a reputation as the Smokies’ biggest booster in Congress. His recent elevation to an influential position on the committee in charge of funding for all national parks is giving Alexander a chance to turn his words into dollars.

“I’m looking forward to that role as much as anything I’m doing in the United States Senate,” Alexander said of his new role as the top Republican on the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee.

Alexander said he sought the position primarily so he could make sure the Great Smoky Mountains gets its share of federal funding and to help the park deal with some specific problems, such as the blight that’s killing hemlock trees and the dirty air that on many days makes it hard to see the steep hillsides.

“From this position, I can work for strong national clean-air standards, which will make the air healthier and help get rid of the smog in the park,” Alexander said. “Ten million people a year don’t drive to East Tennessee to see the smog. They come to see the blue haze that gave the Smoky Mountains its name.”

CULLOWHEE – Tennessee poet Linda Parsons Marion will speak about her work during a presentation set for 12:20 p.m. Wednesday, March 25, at Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Center.

Marion’s visit to WCU is part of the spring semester Appalachian Lunchtime Series, which is sponsored by the Mountain Heritage Center and Ron Rash, WCU’s Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Culture.

Marion is the author of two poetry collections – “Home Fires” and a newly published work, “Mother Land.” She is poetry editor of Now & Then magazine and an editor at the University of Tennessee. She lives in Knoxville with her husband, poet Jeff Daniel Marion.

Lunchtime series presentations are held in the Mountain Heritage Center auditorium. Those attending are invited to bring their lunch.

The series will conclude for the spring semester with a Wednesday, April 22, presentation by the authors of a new Haywood County history book.

The Mountain Heritage Center is located on the ground floor of H.F. Robinson Administration Building. For more information, call the museum at (828) 227-7129.

COCKE CO., TN-Moonshiner and self-promoter “Popcorn” Sutton passed away yesterday, in Tennessee, at the age of 61.

Tennessee authorities think Sutton, who was reportedly ill and faced a long jail term for a recent conviction, might have committed suicide.

Full story from the Knoxville News Sentinel.

An excerpt:

Sutton spent the last three decades building a reputation as one of the South’s top makers of white lightning. He starred in various documentaries about the tradition and penned an autobiography, “Me and My Likker.”

Last month, he was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for illegally brewing spirits and possessing a firearm as a felon. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Greeneville confirmed that Sutton was supposed to begin serving his sentence later this week.

A raid last year on Sutton’s property turned up guns, three 1,000-gallon stills, more than 800 gallons of moonshine and hundreds of gallons of sour mash and other ingredients, records show. He kept some of the illegal brew in a shed and some in a junk school bus.

We’ve written before about Sutton here and here.

KNOXVILLE–Hancock County, TN, is one of Tennessee’s poorest counties, and has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the U.S.

Not surprisingly, OxyContin and Meth are big problems for longtime sheriff Doug Seal. It used to be the more lyrical white liquor, though, and the folks in Hancock County could flat produce the ’shine.

Seal shut down Hancock’s last still in 2002, and now he tours that still around in the back of a ramshackle 1951 Ford pickup, and gives educational spiels. It’s a pretty big hit at county fairs and such.

The Knoxville News Sentinel’s Fred Brown points out in the lede of his feature Sunday that there are a lot of strange things to be seen in Hancock County, but Sheriff Seal’s pickup with a still in the back has to rank right up there.

An excerpt from the piece:

A few of the state’s most famous moonshiners hailed from Hancock County, starting with Mahalia Mullins, aka “Big Haley,” a 500-pound Melungeon whose moonshine on Newman’s Ridge in Sneedville was memorable. Legend has it she was so huge that when she died in her cabin, the stone fireplace had to be torn out to remove the body.

Here’s a link.

Free-lancer Justin Fee took the photographs.