Addendum: With Great Porch...
A reply to a missed connection, complete with receipts.
I wanted to reply to a reader who emailed me in response to last week’s post. If this was you, please know that I tried to reply to you, but your email server keeps rejecting Gmail’s requests to connect. Weird.
Now you get a public reply.
It seems I maybe wasn’t clear when I presented statistics about the Volunteer State, and I would like to go ahead and remedy that while simultaneously citing my sources (which I should have done in the first place).
When I say Tennessee is 48th in the nation for violent crime, that is to say only two states (Alaska and New Mexico) have higher crime rates. At 628 incidents per every 1,000 residents, we almost double the national average of 3481.
This “high number means low standing” scenario goes for each of the other categories as well – Having Multiple Chronic Conditions2, Premature Death Rate3, Child Poverty Rate4, Teen Birth Rate5, Obesity Rate6, and Education Rate7.
Re: the excessive drinking statistic: I believe the study I viewed may have been misleading, so the “9th in the Nation” label could very well be erroneous. From what I can tell, it seems the state simply isn’t turning in statistics to the federally recognized orgs doing the studies — still not a great look. It also appears that while the rest of the nation is mostly in a decline with regard to drinking, Tennessee’s drinking rate is an outlier, going up a whopping 7% while the rest of the nation declined 4%8.
Good ol’ Rocky Top, I suppose.
I love it here. Been in East Tennessee for 41 years and there’s no other place on the planet I’d rather be (except maybe Montepulciano in Italy’s southern Tuscany region, but that’s a different story altogether).
It’s because I care about it so much that makes me eager to continue fighting to help it improve.
Many times expressing disappointment with a city, county, state, region, or country is all too quickly labeled hateful or unpatriotic, when it is anything but. We correct our children because we love them and want them to do better. Likewise, we criticize our state and our country because we love them want them to do better.
Thanks for reading, and thank you even more for reaching out. More of that, please!
-jtf
“Violent Crime Rate,” U.S. News & World Report, Best States Rankings, accessed June 18, 2026, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/crime-and-corrections/public-safety/violent-crime-rate.
“Multiple Chronic Conditions: Disparity - State: Tennessee,” America’s Health Rankings, United Health Foundation, accessed June 18, 2026, https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/disparity/measure/multichron/state/TN.
“Premature Death Rate - State: Tennessee,” America’s Health Rankings, United Health Foundation, accessed June 18, 2026, https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/disparity/measure/predeath/state/TN.
“Child Poverty Rate Rate - State: Tennessee,” America’s Health Rankings, United Health Foundation, accessed June 18, 2026, https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/disparity/measure/childpov/state/TN.
“Teen Births,” National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last modified April 8, 2026, accessed June 18, 2026, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/state-stats/births/teen-births.html.
“The Most Obese States in America,” U.S. News & World Report, Best States Rankings, accessed June 18, 2026, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/the-most-obese-states-in-america.
“Education Rankings,” U.S. News & World Report, Best States Rankings, accessed June 18, 2026, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education.
Beth Warren, “Tennessee State Drinking, Alcohol Consumption Increases,” The Tennessean, August 27, 2025, https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2025/08/27/tennessee-state-drinking-alcohol-consumption-increases/85818011007/.
I was confused by that also, but I did my own homework to show what you just said here. Sorry, you got hate for calling a spade a spade. Haters gonna hate.