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Isaac Hyde's life is in flux. He has a wonderful wife and children, but necessity has taken him away for a year. Suddenly transplanted from familiar environs into a unique cultural arena of America, Isaac must adjust to an unfamiliar pace of life and form relationships with different individuals who become intertwined in his journey. What transpires during the next nine whirlwind months reawakens his sense of purpose and reminds him what matters most.
"From 1501 to 1505, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence. Leonardo was a charming, handsome fifty year-old at the peak of his career. Michelangelo was a temperamental sculptor in his mid-twenties, desperate to make a name for himself. The two despise each other."--Front jacket flap.
Sylacauga—Alabama’s “Marble City”—is blessed with an abundant natural resource that nurtures both its economy and its cultural heritage. Thirty-five miles long, at least four hundred feet deep, and more than a mile wide, the Sylacauga Marble Belt yields crystalline white marble frequently compared to the Parian marble treasured by Greek sculptors and the Italian Carrara marble often chosen by Michelangelo. Artisans have quarried Sylacauga marble for tombstones since the early 1800s, and architects prized it for years as dimension stone for buildings like the United States Supreme Court. In the early 1900s, Giuseppe Moretti and Gutzon Borglum both chose this marble for magnificent sculptures. When granite, better able to withstand industrial pollution, overtook marble as the preferred architectural stone in the 1930s, Sylacauga’s quarry owners shifted their focus to the production of ground calcium carbonate (GCC), a fundamental ingredient in manufactured products from toothpaste, foodstuffs, and disposable diapers to paints, caulks, and sealants. Many cringe at the idea of blasting and grinding marble into fine powder, but GCC is a vital factor in the local economy. Thankfully, the Magic of Marble Festival, first held in 2009, has revitalized interest in the artistic value of Sylacauga marble, inspiring sculptors from across the United States and masters from Italy to apply their skills to cream-white blocks of this beautiful stone and share their creativity with thousands of residents and visitors each year. This is the story of quarry pioneers, investors, artists, and artisans. It's also the story of their families, who fondly remember their lives along the edge of “the hole” that provided for them.
Conceived in 1853 as a canny real-estate scheme by two young investors expecting to get rich off the idea, Market Square came to be Knoxville's most public spot, a marketplace familiar to every man, woman, and child in the area. By the 1860s, it was the busiest place in a burgeoning city, a place to shop, work, play, eat, drink, and live. In a town that became bitterly divided by politics, race, and background, Market Square became a rare common ground: a place to buy all sorts of local produce, but also a place to experience new things, including the grandiose Market House itself, considered a model in a progressive era. Beset by urban blight by the mid-1900s, Market Square had become more of a curiosity than a point of municipal pride, and the neighborhood declined. After years of fevered controversy, the city razed the Market House and struggled to modernize the old Square itself. Through a combination of public and private efforts in the 21st century, Market Square seems to be returning to its original diverse spirit. Market Square details the colorful history of this wonderfully eccentric place, a place that is once again familiar to the whole community, suggesting why, on a good day, Market Square can resemble--as a reporter described it in 1900--"the most democratic place on earth." Jack Neely is the award-winning Secret History columnist for Metro Pulse, Knoxville's weekly newspaper. He is the author of From the Shadow Side and Other Stories about Knoxville, Tennessee, and, with Aaron Jay, of The Marble City: A Photographic Tour of Knoxville's Graveyards.
The Shawnee Indians would be surprised to find the name that they gave the area in 1748--Chalakagay--remains much the same; however, the area has changed quite a bit. New ideas surfaced with the building of the plank road that supported rumbling horse-drawn stage coaches through the "old town" and again in recent times when a piece of marble became the Falling Star sculpture, a memorial to the local 1954 meteorite. Around 1820, Dr. Edward Gantt discovered marble in what would become Gantts Quarry while on military duty with Gen. Andrew Jackson. The pioneering spirit of early settlers continued with the planting of cotton and the development of small businesses. The arrival in 1886 and 1887 of two intersecting railroads ushered in a period of rapid expansion. A "new town" business section grew up along north Broadway where the rails crossed. Old town businesses, along the Main Avenue Plank Road and Fort Williams Street, soon relocated to the new business area. During World War II, a movie was filmed in Sylacauga by the US War Office in response to the development of recreational opportunities for the influx of people coming to work at the nearby defense plant. Today, Sylacauga is nationally recognized for its marble quarries, business acuity, and educational and cultural resources.
Carl Janaway - The Smartest Bandit of the Cookson Hills Last Surviving Bank Robber of the 1930's, Builder of getaway cars for "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Nursemaid to Al Capone in Alcatraz Prison. by Gary D. Courtney The life, times, and character of one of the most elusive gangsters of the 1930's era, who survived by going straight after prison and becoming an upstanding citizen. Based upon the author's month-long museum exhibit of Carl Janaway's possessions and story, which filled the John Vaughn Library lobby at Northeastern State University. Famous Sheriff Grover Bishop, who killed more men (17) than Wyatt Earp, chased Carl Janaway over 3,000 miles, and couldn't catch him. Carl's wife was also a bank robber, called the "Blonde Bandit", of rough and rowdy Vian, Oklahoma. Janaway spent time in Alcatraz Prison with some of the deadliest gangsters of the time.