Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code can’t hold a bayberry candle to the symbology now present in Gatlinburg.

Christus Gardens, the longtime Biblical wax museum in this tasteful town, closed down, but has risen from the grave in the form of Christ in the Smokies Museum & Gardens, which offers the public a look at the birth, life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus in 11 scenes containing over 100 wax figures and open daily. The Museum and Garden, however, has a delightful secret: many of the figures now appearing in scenes from the life of Christ were once waxen versions of movie and television stars in the Hollywood Wax Museum.

Recycling is nothing new in wax world. Need to freshen up your museum? Buy someone else’s figures, change the clothes, get another wig, slap on a beard and bada-bing, you’re in business. Take a look at this photo of Mary from Christ in the Smokies.

Whom does that resemble?

Bingo! Katherine Hepburn. According to a highly placed source, the astute visitor to Christ in the Smokies can also detect Oprah in the Smokies, along with Kenny Rogers, Jane Fonda, Lee Majors, and many more. Jane Fonda, that devout soul, appears as one of the women in The Empty Tomb.

Here’s one more. Who is this happy Joseph?

Here he is in real life:

Lee Majors!

Whose says there are no second acts in America?  Jesus Christ in the Smokies, indeed.

This blog is part of a much larger website, also entitled Tennessee Guy, that contains travel and cultural information about Tennessee. Visit it here.

Tennessee’s Department of Tourist Development is rolling out a new way of promoting the state: Discover Tennessee Trails and Byways. According to a news release, “The concept behind the program is to leverage Tennessee’s visitor brands including Chattanooga, Knoxville, Great Smoky Mountains, Memphis and Nashville. Self-guided driving trails extend visitor’s stays by showcasing nearby regional gems such as Jack Daniel Distillery, Trenton’s Teapot Museum, Gray Fossil Site and Museum, the homes of three American presidents, our award-winning state parks and agritourism sites.”

You can see more here, but not much. I’m kind of surprised they have released this concept when so much work remains to be done on it.

While pushing various trails is nothing new, the first innovative part is a musical connection to Pandora, the on-line source of music. When I clicked on “Music Playlist,” the Pandora window opened to a station called “Tennessee,” and the very first song was Flatt & Scruggs playing the theme to the old CBS show, Petticoat Junction. Not quite sure what this has to do with Tennessee. I reopened Pandora and attempted to start a new station with the word “Tennessee,” but Pandora kept asking me which artist or song–people like Tennessee Ernie Ford and “Tennessee Stud”–I wanted to build a station around. The tourism people must have worked some deal here.

Of the 15 proposed trails, “The Old Tennessee Trail” is the only one really up and running. A couple of clicks down it reveal a potpourri of places to visit, with not much information about them. One entry is merely labeled “Historic Church,” and the entire description reads as follows: “Beautiful scenery marks this stretch of your country drive. Note the historic church as you stay with Leipers Creek Road, and imagine yourself here in the early 1800s as the area was being settled and farms were being established. Relax as you take in the countryside, where early settlers lived Tennessee’s history.”

Uh, right. Imagine yourself designing a website and actually finding out the name of the church and why it is historic. Rather than grousing on one’s own website, you can now go to the Facebook group site and make comments of your own. This is the second good innovation. Not many people have commented on Facebook–I just did–but it is interesting for state tourism people to give mere mortals a chance for feedback. This can be a double-edged sword.

Several people in the tourism info biz, yours truly included, have tried to figure out a way for a travel wiki, so it will be interesting to see how this Facebook one works out. Let’s keep an eye on it. In the meantime, kudos for using Pandora and Facebook–both widely used, and both free.

This blog is part of a much larger website, also entitled Tennessee Guy, that contains travel and cultural information about Tennessee. Visit it here.

Alex Jones, who was born and raised in Greeneville, Tennessee, has come out with a sobering look at the state of news in our country. He describes himself in the prologue of the book thusly: “I am in the fourth generation of a newspaper-owning family in Greeneville, Tennessee, and I knew the secret prides and anxieties that go with being in the clan that owns the local newspaper. My family still owns and operates the Greeneville Sun, circulation about 15,000, where my father is publisher and my two brothers and brother-in-law go to work every day.”

My sister, Carol Bradley, worked at the Greeneville Sun for a few years, and is mentioned on page 118 of the book, where she is described as “pretty and polite, looked younger than her years, and was one of the best reporters I’ve ever known, in part because the state legislators and other powerful figures she covered thought that being pretty and sweet was all there was to her. She was also tough and relentless, and could extract the most astonishing information from officials who later could not believe that this nice young woman would be so mean as to report what they said and did.”

Alex was a Neiman Fellow at Harvard, where I got to know him. He covered the press for The New York Times and won a Pulitzer, then left and wrote a book about the Ochs/Sulzberger family who came from Tennessee to make The New York Times into the best newspaper in the world. He now directs Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.

As they would say back home, Alex has done good.

One of the most attention-getting posts on this blog is this one about buying your own moonshine still. The lead article in today’s Salon.com is titled “Moonshine Returns,” and a trip to my local liquor store revealed a display from Leopold Bros, a craft distiller in Denver. I feel like the spirit world is compelling me to opine.

The Salon.com piece discusses how craft distilling, combining a nod from the slow food movement with a recession dose of thrift, would be a natural to follow the same path as home-made wine and brewing. But it’s not. And why? As writer Catherine Price puts it, “I’ll tell you why not: Distilling homemade spirits is a felony. Unlike wine or beer, which you’re allowed to make at home for personal use, making any sort of untaxed spirit on an unlicensed still remains very much illegal, punishable by a federal fine of up to $10,000 and five years in jail for each offense, plus state penalties.”

That sounds pretty fierce. All the more reason that craft distilling should be encouraged in Tennessee. Are you in a small town that needs some visitors? Set up a legal still and people will come see you. If you build it, they will come. They will watch. They will sample. And they will come back with their friends.

It’s not that hard to do, which brings me to the Leopold Brothers. According to their website, “Master Distiller Todd Leopold personally handcrafts every spirit we produce in a 40 gallon hand-hammered copper pot still that is so small you could literally wrap your arms around it.” Forty gallons–that’s all? Colonel Wilson will sell you a beautiful 30-gallon still pictured below for $2,075 plus shipping.

Believe it or not, Wyoming is getting into the craft whiskey business. Wyoming Whiskey Distillery, according to this article, is getting rolling in a town of 57 people.  Tennessee needs to get on this bandwagon.

What are you waiting for?

In the late 1970s, U.S. 441, the highway that bisects the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, was being repaved. Given the high traffic on that road, the work was being done at night. I was there writing a story on that nocturnal paving operation, when one of the Park people mentioned that CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite had come down the Tennessee side of the road too fast and had wrecked his car. He suffered minor injuries in the accident.

I cannot find any references to that accident on the Web. Cronkite doesn’t mention it in his autobiography; the word “Tennessee” doesn’t appear once in the book.  The crash–if it happened–took place at a time when the foibles of the famous were not instantly trumpeted to a celebrity-crazed public.

This year’s award for most imaginative Tennessee tourism public relations campaign goes to Bohan Advertising Marketing for the cover of their media kit for Pigeon Forge. The painting depicts a utopian Pigeon Forge of the future, where smoke-belching vehicles have been banned; where no garish signs visually assault travelers; and where bucolic, Heidi-like pastures rise gently to the surrounding mountains.  Surely, Smokies tourism heaven must look something like this.

From http://www.thenashvillecitycemetery.org

I ran across a blog with some great photos taken in the Nashville City Cemetery. Few people visit this place, which is across the street from Fort Negley. It was opened in 1822 and received many bodies from the Civil War.

Among the more interesting tales of a City Cemetery resident is that of Lt. Andrew Willis Gould, a hotheaded Confederate officer who was killed by General Nathan Bedford Forrest, an even hotter head. Seems that Gould felt that Forrest had questioned his courage, and during an ensuing argument Gould pulled out a pistol and shot Forrest in the hip. With one hand, Forrest grabbed Gould and forced him to point his pistol in the air. With the other hand, Forrest pulled out his pocket knife, opened it with his teeth, and stabbed Gould.

Gould fled, and Forrest was taken to a doctor’s office. On hearing that his wound could be fatal, Forrest, yelling “No damned man kills me and lives,” jumped off the examining table and charged out looking for Gould. It turned out that the young officer was the one who was mortally wounded. He died a few days later and was buried in Nashville. Forrest, despite his wounds, was back in the saddle within two weeks.

I don’t like snakes, but I love snake stories. While reading the April 20, 2009 edition of The New Yorker, however, I learned one potential Tennessee snake story that absolutely gives me the chills: Burmese pythons, which can grow to 20 feet or longer, have established themselves in South Florida, and could, over time, make their way to Tennessee.

The photo above is a python held by Skip Snow, a wildlife biologist in Everglades National Park, who is quoted extensively in The New Yorker piece, which was written by Burkhard Bilger. You can hear Bilger talking about his article here.

Here’s the scary part, with my emphasis: “Roughly a third of the contiguous United States lies within the python’s range, they (US Geological Survey zoologists) concluded, including all the Southern states and large portions of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.”

I hope I never live to see that day. The pythons are apparently very adaptable critters, and one wonders how the Holiness church snake handlers of East Tennessee and elsewhere will adapt to these monsters. All I can say is that if I ever to come face to face with a Burmese python in the wild–Tennessee or anywhere else–I will most assuredly start talking in tongues on the spot.

This blog is part of a much larger website, also entitled Tennessee Guy, that contains travel and cultural information about Tennessee. Visit it here.

Quick–where was this picture taken? Could be in East Tennessee or Middle Tennessee. No matter where it is, it’s a beautiful place, one that would be a joy to live near, commute alongside, or spend part of a vacation just driving past.

The photo was actually taken in the England, and it’s from the website of a remarkable group called The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).

And it’s just the kind of organization we need for Tennessee.

This organization has a great vision. “CPRE wants a beautiful, tranquil and diverse countryside that everyone can value and enjoy; a working countryside that contributes to national well being by enriching our quality of life, as well as providing us with crucial natural resources, including food. We wish to see the sustainable use of land and other natural resources in town and country. The countryside, including its villages and towns is ever changing, but we strive to ensure that change and development respect the character of England’s natural and built landscapes, enhancing the environment for the enjoyment and benefit of all.”

Substitute “Tennessee” for “England,” and I agree with everything in that paragraph.

Remarkably enough, the CPRE is headed by an American humorist. Bill Bryson, famous for best sellers such as A Walk In The Woods and The Life And Times of The Thunderbolt Kid, is the president of the organization.

Thanks to Daily Yonder, a wonderful site, for this story.

This just in from Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Mastriano; the Sgt. Alvin York artifacts that he discovered have been moved to the US.  I just have one question:  When will they come to Tennessee?

In February 2009, the actual artifacts recovered from where Sergeant York earned the Medal of Honor on 8 October 1918, were transferred to the Center of Military History (CMH). This included roughly 1,000 of the most important items, encompassing some 30 different types of American and 70 different types of German items, personal effects, equipment pieces, etc. The items included German and American bullets, cartridges, canteens, pieces of belts, buttons, combs, brushes, mirrors, whistles, bottles, bayonets, watches, first aid kits, entrenching tools, coins, gas masks, horse shoes, harmonicas, mess kits, straps, hooks, etc.

This endeavor goes back to our extensive research in the US and German archives to once and for all resolve the debate on whether there was evidence that York accomplished the incredible feat of capturing 132 German soldiers after eliminating a German machine gun position and single handedly fighting off a bayonet attack. The artifacts from the fight between York and the German Imperial Army were exactly where they should have been – even after ninety years. After thousands of painstaking hours in the French Argonne Forest, we carefully recovered these valuable pieces of American history.

After the recovery of these items was accomplished and our findings were concluded as accurate, we worked with officials in France, Germany and the USA to construct the Sergeant York Historic Trail on the battlefield and erected two monuments to forever preserve and mark the location where York’s incredible feat occurred. These were dedicated on the 90th anniversary of the event in October 2008. See www.sgtyorkdiscovery.com for details.

Moving the artifacts took coordination with an incredible amount of diverse government officials from Europe and the United States, customs, the US Army and the USAF. The flight was fantastic and we flew in an USAF C-17 cargo plane, we sat within eye-shot of the artifacts.

Upon arriving in Washington DC, we documented each item with professional artifact technicians from the Center of Military History, who now have responsibility for the items. They plan to first display these items in the Pentagon and then in museums around the nation (CMH has oversight of some 53 museums around the world).

During the handover of the precious artifacts, CMH conducted a ceremony that included members of the York family and the CMH leadership. The purpose of this event was to celebrate the preservation of the physical evidence related to one of the most amazing feats of heroism in American history.

As for our efforts in the Sergeant York Discovery Expedition, we thank all of the people in France, Germany and the United States who have helped make this happen. Our work is not done. We intend to continue to improve the SGT York Historic Trail in the Argonne Forest of France and to do our part to honor the legacy and heroism of Alvin York for the next generation.