For a moment, let's imagine the pool cue didn't rupture the teen's colon, didn't tear into his bladder. Let's imagine it did less damage. That means the 15-year-old freshman basketball player would have never been taken that December night to the Sevierville hospital.
Stop calling it hazing.
Is this what the '60s felt like?
It was there, on the afternoon of Sept. 19 - 99 days ago - that Alan Outlaw saw Cameron Bean for the last time. His shift had ended, and Cameron laced up his shoes and headed out the Fast Break door. He and Outlaw had been chuckling over some Internet joke, which meant Outlaw's last memory of Cameron - laughing, about to go for a run - was a fitting one.
By my count, the new "Star Wars: A Force Awakens" is playing on 13 screens in five local theaters today for a total of 94 Sunday screenings.
Construction begins soon to rebuild and widen the 2.3-mile stretch of U.S. 27 through downtown, from the Olgiati Bridge to Interstate 24.
Forty-five minutes into their presentation on Islam, the Quran and terrorism, Bassam Issa, a local Muslim leader, and Boyd Patterson, an assistant district attorney, turned to the crowd. Time for questions.
For the last two years, John Pregulman has traveled the U.S. to meet with Holocaust survivors. So far, he's sat down with 235 survivors. Living rooms. A bakery. A synagogue in Denver. A tiny apartment in Florida. A Holocaust museum in Chicago.
In the days after 9/11, Boyd Patterson, an assistant district attorney for Hamilton County, began reading the Quran.
The United States imprisons more of its own people than any other nation - democracy or not - on Earth. In 2013, more than 2 million people were locked up in local, state and federal prisons, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. (China? Around 1.65 million. Russia, less than a million.)
