Piet Mondrian, Dutch abstract painter and unwitting designer of the Partridge Family bus, was born 150 years ago.
In today's report: On the surface, an extraordinary two-day hearing last week revolved around a simple question: Should Knox County Sheriff's Office employee and former media relations director Martha Dooley have free personal use of a county vehicle? But it was unavoidably colored by the politics of the Sheriff's Office, not least because two of the witnesses — former Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones and current Sheriff Tom Spangler — are running against each other this spring in the Republican primary. Also taking the stand was former Sheriff Tim Hutchison, who hired Dooley 24 years ago, and Kimberly Glenn, who Spangler hired as his communications director after she ran his 2018 campaign.
Dooley claims Spangler took away the use of a vehicle that had actually been part of her compensation. She also says he has transferred her into a series of menial positions for political reasons. We listened in along with members of the Merit System Council, who will have to rule on Dooley's grievance. We attempt to untangle — or at least illuminate — the underlying politics.
Meanwhile, our Weekly Watch looks ahead to school board, City Council and Planning Commission meetings this week.
|
|
Knox County residents should now consider wearing masks in indoor public spaces optional, under the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
Of course, many Knox County residents have been treating masks as optional for quite some time. But the new guidelines provide some extra metrics in assessing a county's risk level. Knox County now ranks as having medium levels of COVID-19, after weeks in the high risk category.
The metrics focus on new cases and hospitalizations in assessing the COVID-19 burden in a community, and classify counties as low, medium or high.
Cases in Knox County have plummeted from the peak of the Omicron variant, and hospitalizations have followed. University of Tennessee Medical Center, Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center and Parkwest Medical Center were treating a combined 83 COVID-19 inpatients on Sunday, down from 327 one month ago.
Knox County residents can choose to wear a mask at any time, but it’s now not a universal recommendation.
According to the CDC, people with symptoms, a positive test or exposure to someone with COVID-19 should wear a mask. Those at high risk for serious illness should check with their medical provider about wearing a mask and other precautions.
The CDC recommends staying up to date with vaccines — less than 60 percent of the Knox County population is fully vaccinated — and getting tested if symptoms develop.
|
|
The Knox County Board of Education looks to have a lively couple of meetings this week. It will hold its monthly work session at 5 p.m. today, and its monthly voting meeting at 5 p.m. on Wednesday. Both will be held in the Main Assembly Room of the City County Building.
But the big-ticket, top-line issues are all at the end of the agenda. First, there’s a resolution to approve the hiring of an outside counsel to assist the county Law Department with the lawsuit that produced the ongoing mask mandate in Knox County Schools. This comes after County Commission granted the board the authority to do so last month.
Then there are two resolutions sponsored by board member Betsy Henderson, who represents the Karns/Hardin Valley 6th District. The first is a largely symbolic affirmation of the board’s support for parents’ right “to choose to mask their child or not mask their child.” The second is a broad declaration that “to the greatest extent possible that all school activities resume as normal and that parents be included to the greatest extent possible.”
And finally, the board will consider a raft of competing ethics complaints filed against board members over the last few weeks. Some parents accused Henderson, board Chair Kristi Kristy and board member Susan Horn of violating board policy by requesting the outside counsel authority from Commission. Other parents, from the anti-mask faction that has been speaking at board meetings for months, filed complaints against board members Jennifer Owen and Daniel Watson for alleged violations of various board policies.
The people who filed the complaints have been contacted and notified that they can appear at the board’s meeting Wednesday to make their case. If they don’t appear, the complaints will be dismissed. The meeting will be livestreamed on the school system’s YouTube channel.
|
|
Russ Frazier, chief of Knox County Rescue, is used to responding to emergencies. But he's doing it right now on an international level. On Friday, Frazier flew out of McGhee-Tyson Airport on his way to Ukraine, to join up with other volunteers from the nonprofit Global Surgical and Medical Support Group (GSMSG). The group sends volunteer medical professionals to provide services in conflict zones and disaster areas around the world.
"Ukraine is the perfect example of why GSMSG exists," Frazier said in a text message, "providing advanced medical care and training in austere environments when the need arises, regardless of government involvement."
Frazier is an M.D. with special training in emergency medicine. He practices at Methodist Medical Center in Oak Ridge, and besides his position with Knox County Rescue he is the SWAT tactical physician for the Knox County Sheriff's Office.
His wife, Kim, said Frazier has had previous support missions with GSMSG in Guyana, Sierra Leone and Sweden. (You may recognize Kim Frazier's name because she is running for County Commission District 11.)
She said Russ is expected to be in Ukraine for two weeks. On Facebook, she wrote that when the call came last Thursday night, "My 'yes' was not as immediate. Our boys 'yes' was laced with pride and exhilaration as there has been much conversation in our home about what is happening there and the honor shown by the Ukrainian people & leadership."
|
|
The papers continue to fly in the lawsuit that produced the mask mandate in Knox County Schools. Recent weeks have seen the plaintiffs in the suit ask U.S. District Judge J. Ronnie Greer to modify his mask order to match new public health guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and an entirely separate lawsuit from another group of parents and anti-mask activists directly challenging Greer's order.
Joining the scrum is a new motion from attorney and conservative activist Andy Fox, seeking to intervene on behalf three siblings who attend schools in Hardin Valley. Fox is asking for his clients to be added as defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed against the school board. That would allow Fox to mount his own defenses alongside those offered by the county Law Department and the other law firms circling around the case.
Fox's motion argues that all three of the children have been harmed by the court-ordered mask mandate, with damages including depression, breathing problems, acne, and loss of access to some activities. The youngest of the three, who is 9 years old, has been withdrawn from Hardin Valley Elementary and is being homeschooled because of the mask mandate, leading to a loss of social interaction and development.
Among other things, Fox appears to want to litigate the entire science of masking as a means of reducing infection. His motion laments that the county attorneys have so far not mounted such an effort. What Fox proposes to prove in court is that masking can't be a reasonable accommodation to protect children with disabilities, "because masking is not an effective tool against aerosolized virions."
The stack of filings now just awaits Greer's consideration and orders. Given the shifting CDC guidance and the reduction in COVID-19 case levels in Knox County, some response by the judge seems likely soon.
|
|
Last month, we reported on technology developed by SkyNano, a startup nurtured by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, that turns carbon emissions into carbon nanotubes, reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions while producing a commercial product.
ORNL is working with another company, LanzaTech, to develop carbon capture technology using microorganisms to produce acetone and isopropanol, which are chemicals that serve as the basis of thousands of products, from fuels and solvents to acrylic glass and fabrics.
Researchers from LanzaTech, ORNL and Northwestern University built on LanzaTech’s technology to develop the gas fermentation process, part of the company’s “carbon-negative platform,” which aims to help achieve net-zero carbon emissions in the coming decades.
“This bioprocess provides a sustainable alternative to today's production routes to these essential chemicals, which currently rely on fresh fossil feedstocks and result in significant toxic waste,” Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech, said in a statement. "We can reduce greenhouse gases by more than 160 percent, achieve carbon-negative production and lock up carbon that would have ended up in the atmosphere."
Michael Köpke, LanzaTech’s vice president for synthetic biology, said ORNL’s “unique capabilities” in DNA sequencing, systems biology and other disciplines helped refine the process.
ORNL’s “holistic systems biology approach” gives scientists a more comprehensive view of what’s happening inside a cell and how to improve it.
“By looking at the system as a whole rather than just an individual data stream, we can explore different avenues to enhance the generation of the desired product,” said Tim Tschaplinski, head of ORNL’s Biodesign and Systems Biology Section.
The research team’s methods, including a pilot-scale demonstration and life-cycle analysis showing the process’ economic viability, are published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
|
|
So far, no one has identified — or even offered a wild guess — at the location of the carved double doors featured in last week's Knox Found. Feel free to take another look and give it a shot.
|
|
Medium has never sounded so good. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
