The Southern Highland Reader

REGIONAL--I’d seen a few references to this video during the past few days, but didn’t give it much attention until Gulahiyi posted it.

As it so happens, a Tennessee news crew was filming at the site of a small rockslide along the Ocoee river gorge when a Department of Transportation geologist showed up, listened to the ground for a minute or two, then suggested maybe everybody ought to move back a little. That was when a much larger chunk of the mountain came down, and the news crew caught it on tape.

The story reminded me of a time when I was (much) younger, and was doing some construction work in a fairly deep, hand dug ditch. Improperly braced, no doubt. We were doing our thing when we noticed that the walls of the ditch had begun to move — not to slide, but to sort of vibrate, or ripple in the oddest way. It fell in behind us as we raced out.

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.

NATIONAL–11th District congressman Heath Shuler has been cleared by the House ethics committee of any wrongdoing in a Tennessee land deal, according to the Washington Post.

An excerpt from the Post:

According to a letter sent to Shuler Wednesday by the ethics committee, that IG investigation “could not find any evidence that you violated any ethics rules.” And after its own “thorough review,” the committee said it “has determined that your actions in these matters were not improper in any way and did not violate House rules.”

Read the piece here.

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.

NATIONAL–11th District congressman Heath Shuler is the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation over a land-swap controversy in Tennessee, according to the Washington Post, which acquired a leaked memo that discloses the investigation.

Here’s the Post’s lead:

House ethics investigators are reviewing an allegation of “preferential treatment” in a land deal involving Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), a former Washington Redskins quarterback, according to a July committee document obtained by The Washington Post.

Read the Post story here.

The Hendersonville Times News and the Mountain Xpress were the first to report the story in our area.

Our series of posts shown to the left outline the details of the controversy.

FRANKLIN–On Saturday, November 7, come celebrate ten years of stewardship on the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee’s Tessentee property in Otto. The Celebration begins at 11:00 and continues until 4:00 and includes music by the Frog Town 5, tours of the property, annual conservation award presentation, and demonstrations by Cherokee artisans and others. All activities are FREE for the entire

Tessentee Bottomland Preserve. Ralph Preston photo.

family, and food may be purchased on-site from Big Mountain BB-Q. In November of 1999 LTLT purchased 60 acres at the confluence of Tessentee Creek and the Little Tennessee River. This was the first land protected on the free-flowing Little Tennessee, and now a decade later – with 30 land protection projects – more than 5200 acres and 35 miles of river frontage have been conserved.

LTLT’s purchase of the Tessentee Bottomland Preserve not only launched an extraordinary river corridor conservation initiative, it also created a laboratory for land restoration and stewardship in the valley. At Tessentee LTLT purchased an old dairy farm with diverse soils, abundant water, and an historic farmstead. LTLT conducted a detailed inventory and sought expert advice in developing a management plan to restore the rich and diverse natural and cultural heritage resources found here in the heart of the upper Little Tennessee River Valley.

The riverbanks have been stabilized and reforested, and a wetland area has been partially restored. LTLT began their invasive exotic plant control program at Tessentee and initiated the long process of converting fescue pastures to more diverse grassland habitats and open woodlands.

At Tessentee LTLT first began its collaboration with Cherokee artisans in the management and harvest of rivercane. This collaboration has expanded to the establishment of experimental plantations of butternut and white oak for production of other traditional artisan materials. The Tessentee Preserve is stop #53 on the NC Birding Trail with the preserve’s bird list at 115 species and butterfly list at 42 species and counting. Here one can hike the most extensive trail system found on any LTLT property. Volunteers have also helped to restore the historic farmstead – by restoring the apple house, smoke house, and in recent months the foundation of the historic farmhouse.

Now a decade later, the Tessentee Preserve is a rich mosaic of wildlife and plant habitats, and it serves as a microcosm of LTLT’s stewardship and restoration work in this historic valley. It is a wonderful place to walk and to appreciate the extraordinary richness and diversity of the upper Little Tennessee.

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.

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.

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.

PARROTSVILLE, TN.–Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton, a famous moonshiner whose penchant for self-promotion far out-strips his liquor-making skill, exhausted his get-out-of-the-clink free cards yesterday in Tennessee, and was sentenced to a year-and-a-half behind bars for making white liquor and doing various other things he ought not be doing as a convicted felon.

Sutton has managed to whip up a frenzy of support on the internet, but the facts of his arrest were hard to overcome. From the Knoxville News Sentinel:

Agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives put a cork in Sutton’s operation March 13 after he sold an undercover agent about 300 gallons of untaxed whiskey and agreed to sell another 500 gallons, ATF Agent Gregory Moore wrote in an affidavit.

A raid on Sutton’s property turned up guns, bullets, three 1,000-gallon stills, copper line, more than 800 gallons of moonshine, and hundreds of gallons of sour mash and other ingredients, federal court records show. He kept some of the mountain dew in a shed and some in a junk school bus.

More from the News Sentinel.

KNOXVILLE–University of Tennessee researchers have determined that a letter thought for 175 years to be fake is instead authentic, and that the letter — which threatened the assassination of President Andrew Jackson — was written by the father of the man who killed Abraham Lincoln.

From the Knoxville News Sentinel:

London-born Junius Brutus Booth was a famous Shakespearean actor and a manic public figure. He had three sons in the theater, including John Wilkes Booth, who later would murder President Lincoln in April 1865 at Ford’s Theatre in Washington.

First, I'll stun him with the toupee, then I'll finish him off with slings and arrows!

Another excerpt:

The letter, which addressed Old Hickory as “You damn’d old Scoundrel,” demanded that Jackson pardon two prisoners named De Ruiz and De Soto who had been sentenced to death for piracy in a high-profile trial of the day.

Pardon the pirates, the letter writer demanded, or “I will cut your throat whilst you are sleeping.”

Here’s the story from the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, its neighbors and partners are ready to celebrate the diamond anniversary of the congressional action that gave birth to the national park on June 15, 1934.

Throughout 2009 a series of special in-Park events and over 100 community events are planned in North Carolina and Tennessee. The month of January alone has 16 community events scheduled in Knoxville, Townsend, Gatlinburg, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and Fontana Dam in North Carolina that meet the themes of the 75th anniversary celebration.

Park officials applaud the work of the 75th anniversary community planning group which held meetings in neighboring communities, hosted by town leaders, for over a year to prepare for this milestone. The group–made up of a whole range of interests–included local and state officials and tourism representatives from Tennessee and North Carolina, partner organizations–Great Smoky Mountains Association, Friends of the Smokies, and Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont–and Park employees.

“The planners have worked very successfully together in developing a year-long agenda that provides visitors with an array of educational and recreational experiences in and outside the Park for enjoying the Great Smoky Mountains,” said Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson. To keep the community-Park bridge connected during the celebration year, the Park developed a partnership program where selected volunteers are serving as “Ambassadors”. These “Ambassadors” will represent the Park at many of the prominent events in the outlying communities and provide valuable information about the significance of the 75th anniversary.

The first of the Park’s special activities is a media event with state and local officials in April to recognize and celebrate the efforts of the North Carolina-Tennessee states and local governments and early Park support groups that led to the creation of the Park. The major public special events will occur during the “Anniversary Weekend”, June 13-15.

The first event will be on Saturday, June 13, when the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra (KSO) will perform in Cades Cove, reminiscent of its performance during the Park’s 50th anniversary. The Park has partnered with KSO through the Friends of the Smokies and the outdoor concert will be a ticketed event, based on a first-come, first serve basis. The process for obtaining a “vehicle pass” and other logistical details will be announced by early February and posted on the 75 th anniversary website. The number of vehicle passes that will be issuedwill be determined by parking capacity.

“The plan to issue vehicle passes, instead of individual tickets, increases the number of people that can attend since vehicles rather than people are the limiting factor. We will encourage those pass holders to fill each seat in their vehicle and carpool when feasible,” commented Superintendent Ditmanson.

In addition, visitors should be aware that the nature of the event will limit Cades Cove’s normal operation for a portion of the day. This too will be publicized broadly.

The other two events during the Anniversary Weekend are June 14 when the Park will hold an Open House at Park Headquarters, near Gatlinburg, to showcase Park operations and provide visitors with a “behind the scenes” view of administration and management activities such as search and rescue, exotic species control, wildlife management, archival displays, andexhibits on managing the Park’s complex infrastructure of roads, trails, and bridges. “There will be a lot of interesting visuals on hand, as well as Park employees to help explain the Park’s role in protecting and managing the resources and its visitors,” commented Superintendent Ditmanson.

On June 15, the Park’s actual anniversary date, programs will take place at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, near Cherokee, and highlight the cultural heritage of Southern Appalachians and Cherokee Indians through music, storytelling and exhibtry. The day will culminate with a groundbreaking ceremony of a new visitor center to be totally privately funded by Great Smoky Mountains Association and Friends of the Smokies.

This new facility will focus on the human history and cultural heritage of the Park and will compliment the existing visitor center constructed in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

The last of the in-Park special events will be held on September 2 at Newfound Gap to recognize a significant event in the Park’s history-the dedication of the Park in 1940 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The event –at the Rockefeller Memorial which straddles the Tennessee/North Carolina boundary at Newfound Gap–will have limited attendance. An invitation will also be extended to President Barrack Obama. If the President is able to attend, he will be the first sitting President since FDR to visit the most popular national park in the National Park System.

The event will be supplemented by live broadcasts to be screened for a broader audience in venues located in or near the Park in gateway communities.

In addition to the events mentioned above, visitors will have a chance to celebrate the Park through many of its annual programs and educational services which will also carry an anniversary theme. These will also be listed on the anniversary website as they become available-www.greatsmokies75th.org. This site tells it all, and makes it easy for visitors to plan their itinerary by providing links to the varied activities in the surrounding communities as well. The site will be updated frequently to provide viewers the most current information on theactivities and special awareness initiatives.

“We anticipate that the millions of people who journey to the Smokies will enjoy all that this year has to offer and will leave them with a better appreciation of this special place and a desire to share in its protection for the next 75 years,” said Superintendent Ditmanson.

REGIONAL–One conclusion easily leapt to is that college athletics are a broad source of funding for schools that play.

However, most athletics programs at colleges fail to cover their own expenses, and depend on student fees and other funding sources to operate.

The University of Tennessee is one of fewer than ten exceptions nationwide, and — eureka! — some folks over that way are wondering whether athletics might kick a little funding over to the other side of campus, given the 13% funding decrease the UT systems faces on a state level.

Athletics Director Mike Hamilton makes a persuasive argument that the athletics department already does, and that it stands ready to do more.

This story from the Knoxville News Sentinel gives interesting insight to the conversation, including the fact that at many schools the athletics and educational sides of things are financially independent of each other.

STATEWIDE–Federal judge Lacy Thornburg, of Webster, ruled in favor of North Carolina in its lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority yesterday, and ordered the TVA to install pollution control systems on its four plants closest to the North Carolina border.

From Clarke Morrison’s story in the Asheville Citizen-Times:

Judge Lacy Thornburg said in his order that pollution from TVA plants harms the health of North Carolina residents.

“I’m pleased that the court ordered the TVA to clean up air pollution coming from its plants closest to North Carolina,” said Attorney General Roy Cooper, who sued the giant utility in 2006. “This will help our air, our health and our travel and tourism economy.”

The lawsuit claimed pollution from the TVA’s plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky drifts into North Carolina and harms the health of people living here while degrading the environment.

The lawsuit seeks to force TVA to make reductions of emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and soot similar to those required of utilities in North Carolina by the Clean Smokestacks Act.

For those of us who’ve spent our lives in these mountains, it’s hard to wrap our imaginations around the idea of water shortages. Memories of summers prior to the mid-nineties include regular afternoon thundershowers, and regular large, wet storm systems from the Gulf of Mexico year around.

I admit my evidence above is circumstantial, but the rock-hard dryness of the past decade – whatever the cause – is fact, and now people in poorly-planned communities with sketchy water supplies are starting to feel a pinch.

There has been strong coverage lately of the woes of Southwestern US residents. They’re building cities where there is no water, and now are scrambling to address the issue. A good overview can be found here.

We’ve had a little relief lately, but the drought persists, and Atlanta’s much-publicized nervousness about its supply is manifesting itself in odd ways. Across the AP wire today comes a piece about a centuries-old border disagreement between Tennessee and Georgia. Seems that when the boundaries were surveyed, the line was placed a couple of miles too far south.

If the maps were re-drawn, Georgia would have a chunk of Chattanooga. More significantly, though, the peach state would contain the headwaters of the Little Tennessee River. If this sounds like a joke to you, you’re not alone. But they are, at least partially, serious.

More holdings-forth on this from the Chattanooga Times Free Press here, here and here.

POSTSCRIPT 4.6.08

We see by way of the AP wire that North Carolina and South Carolina are methodically re-surveying their border to “within a centimeter,” from Ellicott’s Rock (where, NC, SC and GA meet), to the sea. Most of the border, the story reports, hasn’t been checked since at least 1815. The original surveying was rudimentary, of course, and occasionally off the mark. There are no significant border disputes between these states, but much of the border is the same that was surveyed by Ellicott in 1811 and is the one in dispute in the Georgia/Tennessee ruckus.