The first few minutes for a visitor at a Trappist monastery are pretty special. The member monks and priests subscribe fully to the line of teaching that when Christ returns, He will present Himself as a stranger in need. You ...

In addition to all the jockeying for the vice mayor’s post, Mark Brown stepping down from City Council to become a judicial commissioner also leaves his colleagues faced with the challenge of appointing a successor to his 6th District seat. ...

State Rep. Stacey Campfield is back in the news. Only this time, it’s not due to some publicity stunt or politically DOA piece of legislation like last year’s bill requiring death certificates be filed for aborted fetuses. Instead, “The Rep,” ...

You know the scene: George and Mary Bailey are bound for their honeymoon when they witness a run on the town’s bank. And, as a similar panic threatens to swamp George’s Bailey Brothers’ Building and Loan, he and Mary offer ...

The S&W’s salvation, as Jack Neely observed in last week’s story on the announcement that a restaurant will soon be returning to the space, is “a fairy-tale ending.” But it’s more than just the Cinderella story of a single building. ...

Before he went full time prophesying a peak oil apocalypse, author and critic Jim Kunstler made some pretty shrewd observations about the pitiful state of America’s built environment. One such observation applies pretty well to the current debate about the ...

Sidewalks are typically good barometers of a center-city’s health—the more bustling the better. Here’s hoping that, as the holidays approach, the sidewalks around Mast General and along Market Square are thronged with shoppers. Seems like not too long ago when ...

By the time you read this, we should know who the next president is. At least, I hope so. Another Florida hanging-chad debacle might be more than America’s creaky democracy can take, particularly after an election as contentious and as ...

Empty houses, overgrown lawns, and “for rent” signs replacing the “for sale” signs: As the foreclosure crisis continues to unfold across the nation’s cul-de-sacs, the reports coming sound strangely familiar. Like so many folks who fled the inner city for ...

“Retail Follows Rooftops” is an age-old axiom in the development trade. It’s also common sense. Sellers need buyers and will tend to set up shop where they’re concentrated. That simple fact propelled the growth of cities in the first place. ...

What do two of the most magnificent mansions that ever graced Manhattan, the Waldorf-Astoria, and the Empire State Building all have in common? The question occurred to me the other day after reading a blog post on the News Sentinel’s ...

This past Friday, The Glowing Body yoga studio and café and Magpies, the bakery that’s been serving up sweetness in the Old City for over five years, held a grand opening at their new space over on N. Central Street. ...

Violence, it is said, doesn’t solve anything. But it does grab headlines—and the public’s attention. One headline, in particular, caught my eye concerning last week’s tragic shooting at Central High. “Discipline concerns had been expressed,” said the piece, a mix ...

Off-Center City by Matt Edens: Amazing how quickly, in the wacky world of Knox County politics, an appointed board can go from obscure acronym to political football. It helps, of course, when there are millions of dollars at stake: five ...

Off-Center City by Matt Edens: In what could be an unprecedented occurrence in the annals of Knoxville road building, orange barrels may soon appear along North Central Street as part of a project to make the road narrower, not wider. ...