The new Montessori Middle School in Louisville is hosting their 1st Annual Farm Festival on Saturday, May 10, 2008 from 11AM to 4PM at the school, which is located at 3725 Louisville Rd (map).

This event is open to the public and there is no charge for admission. Tickets for activities and refreshments will be sold at the festival. Click read more for a press release with more details...

Darwin Day, Events this week!

199 years ago today was the birth of Charles Darwin.
It is also 149 years ago that On The Origin Of Species was published. Read it at: Link...
Also in audio at Link...

Local Darwin Day events have been organized by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. A schedule of events can be found here at the UT Evolutionary biology web site: Link...

A big evening event occurs tonight Feb. 12, 2008 at UTK. A lecture by Dr. Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education,
INTELLIGENT DESIGN, IS IT SCIENCE? IS IT VALID?
Tomorrow evening, Feb. 13, 2008 will be the film, WAR ON SCIENCE,INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN THE CLASS ROOM

Forrest Erickson

Knoxville News Sentinel: Pellissippi buys Hwy. 321 property for new Blount campus

The 39.5-acre property was purchased from James A. Bumgarner and Dorothy B. Petree for approximately $1.18 million. The land is located on Highway 321, with access from South Old Grey Ridge Road and Nelson Lane. The property fronts both sides of Highway 321, with about 3.5 acres on one side of the road and the remainder on the other side.

Interesting opinion today in the DT. It seems literacy is a problem for local residents also. Check out the title. LOL.

Lieracy Important for Immigrants as well as Local Residents

Link...

Seriously, uneducated immigrants often have little demand of their own language, making English that much harder to learn. I see this first hand almost every day. The educated person usually does not need to leave his country to provide for his family. Our huddled masses are mostly uneducated.

WATE report: Why people fake addresses to get kids in Maryville schools

Sure, everybody in East Tennessee knows that Maryville schools are some of the best. Alcoa's aren't far behind, and they have a diversity bonus. (We won't mention the Blount County school system.)

This is an interesting follow on to Elrod's previous discussion. As great as Maryville schools are, shouldn't we hold all of Blount County's schools to the same standard? And Knox County's?

And for that matter, shouldn't we hold every school system in the state to the same standard? Is being at the top of the list of the last place finishers any real accomplishment? In the current Tennessee and Blount Co. political environment, one might easily conclude "yes."

Anyway, somebody should do a "best practices" study to figure out why Maryville schools excel. Maybe the rest of Tennessee could learn from it.

I'm guessing it has less to do with Maryville's four-time consecutive state championship football program (which is pretty impressive) and more to do with parents who are involved in their kid's education.

What's in the Maryville water that makes parents and kids and teachers make Maryville schools so great? Do the higher expectations create higher self-fulfilling expectations? Is there a progressive Maryville College influence? Is it the Daily Times? Denso? Does it have something to do with a town still small enough to pay attention to important stuff like education yet big enough to have a budget to fund it?

What do y'all think?

The program is in jeopardy, and you won't believe why. Read the call to action here.

A 9/30/07 letter to the editor in The Daily Times proposed using remote parking lots and shuttle buses to Maryville High School as an alternative to paving over the neighborhood surrounding the high school in order to expand the school's capacity.

While I respect this forward-thinking transportation solution, I think we need to refocus the conversation. I am dismayed that we are talking about transportation solutions before education solutions. We need to pull these issues apart.

We exhaust ourselves planning for our cars. We seem unable to separate conceptually human beings from the steel that transports them. We conflate cars and citizenship, and we build communities that require people to have access to cars in order to fully participate in the community. We plan as if hospitality to cars in our downtowns or high schools or neighborhoods is the same as hospitality to people.

The truth is that too often we build spaces and host activities that aren't worth much of a commitment. We'll only participate or shop or eat when it is easy...when the commitment requires little more than the time it takes to navigate our cars through drive-through windows or into curbside pick-up spaces.

On the other hand, there are spaces and activities that are worth our commitment, and we participate even if car access isn't easy. We figure out how to get there because we want to be there. As a community we need to focus on building spaces and hosting activities worth caring about...worth committing to. Transportation to those spaces and activities will follow.

Let's make the Maryville High School expansion discussion about education. When we figure out the best way(s) to educate our children, there will be myriad ways of dealing with transportation. The transportation solution should follow and fit the education solution.

Just wanted to get the word out about the following events, swiped from an alert from CAPPE (Citizens Against the Pellissippi Parkway):

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 7pm, Maryville College (location to be announced)

CAPPE is one of several local organizations co-sponsoring a presentation by Gerry Cohn, Southeast States Director for American Farmland Trust (AFT). AFT is a national non-profit organization that has worked for decades to help individuals, communities, organizations and local and state governments develop programs to strengthen and preserve farming and agricultural land.

AFT’s key strategies are:

Transform U.S. farm policy to strengthen the future of American agriculture;
Protect the best land by supporting effective state and local farmland protection initiatives;
Plan for agriculture to keep farming viable and help communities balance growth while protecting working land;
Keep the land healthy and productive by encouraging stewardship practices that safeguard our nation's natural resources.

Gerry will share with us what other communities have done to protect farming and agricultural land. He will help us think about the kinds of programs and initiatives that are appropriate for Blount County . The mission of AFT is to stop the loss of productive farmland and to promote farming practices that lead to a healthy environment.

You can learn more about AFT at Link...

Co-sponsors currently are the Center for Strong Communities at Maryville College , Foothills Land Conservancy, The Raven Society and CAPPE.

OCTOBER 27, 3:30-7pm, 6th Annual Rural Preservation Party & Auction!

Kelmont Farm Barnyard

We’ve moved our signature event to the fall to take advantage of cooler temperatures and harvest themes. We’ll have live music, our famous bake sale, pumpkin painting, an auction, cakewalks, a costume parade and contest, and other activities being planned.

Note: My family attends this every year and wouldn't miss it for the world! Lots of fun.