Month: October 2001

Seasonal Fallout

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date October 31, 2001

The first Democratic candidate to announce for Shelby County Mayor, state Senator Jim Kyle, has become the race’s first significant dropout.

Just before noon on Tuesday, Kyle had copies of a brief statement of withdrawal hand-delivered to his three primary opponents — Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, Shelby County public defender A C Wharton, and state Representative Carol Chumney.

The statement read in part: “Both the political landscape and the fiscal problems facing our state have changed dramatically since I began considering a race almost a year ago …” It went on to refer to the “historically long legislative session” and “political changes” and concluded, “This difficult decision has been made easier by the presence of excellent candidates in the Democratic primary. I wish them well.”

In conversation, Kyle amplified his reasons: “First of all,” he said, “we were in session too long, and that put me behind. Then we went to war, and that stopped everything again. Third, there was A C, who has as much name identification as I have. But what sealed it was when I determined we [the General Assembly] were not going into special session. That meant there was a very good chance I would be up there [in Nashville] for a long time next spring, and I needed that time.”

As Kyle noted, a special session, which at one point seemed certain for the current week, could have resolved the state’s financial issues. Without a special session, Kyle — a key member of the Senate’s Finance Committee — and other legislators are likely to become entangled in a lengthy regular session next year, possibly lasting into the summer as the last two sessions have. Kyle could not have campaigned effectively during that time and by state law could not have raised money during the session.

The departure of the outspoken and respected senator, who had planned to campaign aggressively for city-county consolidation, will probably provide a marginal demographic boost to both Byrd and Chumney — both whites — in a county where racial identity always counts for a substantial portion of the vote.

· Until such time as former city councilman John Bobango actually takes the bit in his teeth and gets out on the cinder track and formally starts his expected race for Shelby County mayor, the opportunity is still there for other name-brand Republicans.

To date, a number of GOP hopefuls have pawed the track warily, checked out either the odds or the Democratic field — which includes several highly touted runners — and, for whatever reason, backed away. Early on, most of these — like probate court clerk Chris Thomas — were conservatives.

As recently as last week, word went out that another such, County Trustee Bob Patterson, was thinking of running, but — although Patterson has not yet officially ruled the idea out — it now seems doubtful that he’ll risk his current position for a mayor’s race.

That’s the rub for so many prospects — the sacrifice of a safe seat in the pursuit of an unknown quantity.

As it turns out, there’s another mainline GOP prospect — one whose interest, ironically enough, may actually have been kindled by facts relating to an incumbency which he’d dearly love to keep.

This is state Senator Mark Norris, a former county commissioner. Elected to the legislature just last year without opposition, Norris rapidly became a player in Nashville. He was elected parliamentarian by the Republican Senate caucus and to a number of other party posts whose import was somewhat more than ceremonial.

In July, during the nitty-gritty last days of the 2001 regular session of the General Assembly, Norris became one of his party’s chief negotiators in the Senate’s ultimately futile effort to reach a bipartisan consensus on a budget measure,.

While his politics — especially on fiscal matters — were dependably conservative, Norris proved adept at maintaining sunny relations with his ideological opposites in the Senate and was a swing vote on occasion — as when he lent his vote to Democrat Steve Cohen‘s lottery bill, providing decisive momentum to put over a perennial proposal that had failed of passage for the previous two decades.

But Norris is the least senior Republican in a county which is slated to lose one of its Senate seats during the forthcoming reapportionment based on the 2000 census. Although both he and fellow Republican senator Curtis Person are members of the GOP’s reapportionment committee, their party’s say in the matter will be subordinated to that of the Senate Democrats, who are likely to place both the hugely popular Person, who has not even had an opponent since 1978, in the same district with Norris.

If worse comes to worst, and that happens, and, especially if Norris gets an inkling of it before the February 21st filing deadline for county races, he may think seriously of a return to the politics of the county, whose fiscal affairs absorbed him during his time on the commission.

· The chairman of the Election Commission, O.C. Pleasant, has all but decided on a race as a Democrat for Shelby County clerk, to oppose GOP incumbent Jayne Creson. Pleasant, who would have to face the choice of whether to resign his long-term position on the commission, also gave consideration for a while to the idea of running for county trustee.

· Pending the resolution of the district lines for county commission District 5, currently occupied by the retiring Buck Wellford, a Republican, most potential candidates for the seat are holding back on formal announcements.

Not Republican Jerry Cobb and Democrat Joe Cooper. Cooper, in fact, is busy constructing the elements of a platform. He, too, is a proponent of consolidation and called this week for the establishment of a Consolidation Charter Commission.

You can e-mail Jackson Baker at baker@memphisflyer.com.

Hot Properties Real Estate

California Dreaming

Post author By John Griffin
Post date October 31, 2001

This house is much more typical of Southern California than Memphis. The hills above Balboa Park in San Diego are filled with similar bungalows. Influences as diverse as the precise joinery of Japanese domestic architecture and the English Arts and Crafts Movement, which attempted to recreate the handwork of the medieval craft guilds, mark the style.

The period also saw a growing interest by architects in modest housing for the growing middle class. Bungalows (especially in California) were meant to unify interior and exterior spaces for casual living in and out. Here, there is a large front porch with exposed rafter tails and a deep roof overhang to facilitate outdoor living in all seasons.

The roof pitch is also low — that and its deep overhang emphasize the horizontal and tie the house to the ground. This line is strengthened by the siding, which changes from narrow boards to bands of shingles below the windows, adding a rustic, casual feel. Small multipane windows (which resemble leaded glass) in the upper sash and the dormers add further interest to the exterior.

The front door is heavy planking with small windows at the top. The ornate door knob and plate show Art Nouveau influence, considered a much fancier style but still a delicious touch. You enter the living room which runs to a rear sun room. French doors allow the flexibility of uniting these rooms for larger gatherings. And off the sun room is a new deck, so that front and back porches could be added to the entertainment area with ease.

Built-ins feature prominently here. Bookcases flank the wood-burning fireplace. The back wall of the living room has benches with storage below and stained glass above. The dining room is separated from the living room by low storage cabinets with box columns above.

A tall hutch in the dining room has lights, installed during a recent renovation, in the upper cabinets. These and a new, appropriately Craftsman, center light fixture warm the dining room. A window seat looks out to the front. The nine-foot ceilings in these two rooms are paneled, a simple but elegant detail typical of this house.

The kitchen was completely redone. The original butler’s pantry and kitchen spaces were combined to create a large gathering space. New cabinets against two walls and a third ell allow for plenty of workspace, a breakfast bar, and a seating area. Behind the kitchen is the large laundry room with high windows looking out to the fenced backyard with its rear hedge of young crape myrtles.

There are two bedrooms, each of which have surprisingly large closets. The original bath was updated and a nice linen cabinet was relocated there. But the real fun is in the new master bath. The floor is tiled, and a second closet was added. There’s a double vanity and a large, glass-enclosed shower. The central spa tub is set under western windows where you can kick back at the end of the day and do your own California dreaming.

305 North Watkins

1,985 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths; $179,500

Realtor: Lovitt Co., 683-2433, Agent: Nan Lee, 458-6819

Opinion Viewpoint

Wait ’til Next Year!

Post author By Molly Ivins
Post date October 31, 2001

It now looks, with 20-20 hindsight, as though we should have taken a few more deep breaths before smacking that tar-baby that is Afghanistan. We’re running out of time for three reasons — winter, Ramadan, and the prospect of millions of people starving to death.

We’ve run out of time to set up a bridge or coalition government and so, of necessity, are throwing our lot in with the Northern Alliance. According to one Afghan women’s organization, the Northern Alliance is as bad as the Taliban and, in addition, consists of minority tribes who have always warred with the majority Pushtan.

We seem to have bombed everything bombable, including the Red Cross, twice. At this point, it seems to me, we can give it another month and call the war for the season, which is what the Afghans do, and wait ’til next year without any disgrace. What would be worse than disgraceful is causing mass starvation. The humanitarian-aid folks are getting frantic about this, and we need to stop and figure out what we can do about it.

The trick to smiting back those who smote us is to first figure out where they are. This means using creative diplomacy and plain police work. We need to hit them without killing the innocents around them, and, as Jim Hightower observes, that calls for a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. If it takes years, it takes years.

The administration is in some danger of sacrificing one of its most important assets, which is the trust of the American people. The problem is not that everyone isn’t singing off the same page but that some parties are being less than frank. And that is fatal to trust. There is no point in telling us our “surgical, precision bombing” doesn’t kill civilians — we’re grown-ups. We know.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, Congress is engaged in criminal folly. Not only has the House passed this sickening bundle of tax cuts to benefit IBM, General Motors, and General Electric, but they’re telling us that to defend freedom we must surrender freedom. In the name of democracy, we must abandon democracy. There are 51 emergency anti-terrorism bills packaged under the meretricious title of the “Proved Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act” — stands for patriot. Cute, eh? Among the more staggering proposals, PATRIOT authorizes indefinite detention of anyone “suspected” of any terrorist connection. The definition of “terrorist activity” is left largely to the FBI and the CIA, which have had notable difficulty grasping democratic principles in the past.

As though this weren’t bad enough, the CIA wants the power to assassinate people, just like terrorists. And the FBI, according to Walter Pincus, wants to break uncooperative prisoners by using drugs or “Israeli-style” methods. Why not just break out the bastinado and the rack?

Bush has already created the infelicitously named Office of Homeland Security (such a weird, Orwellian ring) and given it powers to match the National Security Agency with no congressional oversight of its activities or budget.

There is not the slightest evidence that any of the measures will do dog to stop terrorism. From what we know of how September 11th happened, we have a visa system so full of holes it’s a disgrace and a problem with airport security. There really is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. We can’t make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free. All that happens when we make ourselves less free is that we’re less free.

We also have an obligation to consider what kind of society we’re making in unseemly haste and leaving to our children and future generations. We urgently need a serious national dialogue about these issues, but all we’re getting from television is 24-hour exploitation of the anthrax scare.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Forth Worth Star-Telegram and a member of the Creators Syndicate; her work appears periodically in the Flyer.

We Recommend We Recommend

Out Of Its Shell

Post author By Lesha Hurliman
Post date October 31, 2001

Where do you get green eggs and ham in Memphis? Not on a car or in a train or on a bus or in the rain … but from Opera Memphis.

Opera Memphis’ Green Eggs and Ham, the musical interpretation of the Dr. Seuss classic, is playing at The Dixon Gallery and Gardens in conjunction with the “Art of Dr. Seuss” exhibit there. With the exception of the November 4th production, all of the shows are reserved primarily for pre-school and elementary groups in the area. And all of them are close to selling out.

“It’s really taken me by surprise,” says Cindy Ensley, director of education at Opera Memphis. “Usually people hear the word opera “

Ensley herself is steering clear of the word “opera” for this one due to copyright laws. “It is not technically, legally, or contractually an opera but rather a story set to music,” explains Ensley. “A concert piece, but it’s staged.”

According to Ensley, the show is very minimal because of the protectiveness of the the Dr. Seuss Foundation over Seuss’ artwork. Opera Memphis has been very careful to retain the whimsical, wacky quality of Seuss’ art in the stage set without copying it. “We have fun little hats and very colorful costumes. It’s very delightful.”

Ensley adds, “It’s a great stepping stone into opera.” It has all of the characteristics but in a digestible form — a familiar, easy-to-follow story that runs a squirm-proof 18 minutes.

The production is the original Green Eggs and Ham, word for word. The adult soprano’s part is the curmudgeon who “would not could not eat them here or there or anywhere,” while the child soprano’s part is that of the persistent “Would you? Could you?” Sam I Am.

“What I like about this piece is the music,” says Ensley. “It is so descriptive of the story. It’s not just noise. This makes sense.”

Green Eggs and Ham was first performed by the New Jersey Chamber Music Society in 1993 and its recording of the show has been compared with such children’s classics as Tchaikovsky’s Peter and the Wolf.

The music is by Robert Kapilow, the popular American composer who has written over 15 commissioned works including this, the first musical setting of a Dr. Seuss work ever allowed by the Dr. Seuss Foundation.

Part of what makes this music fun is Kapilow’s decision to weave in bits of recognizable music throughout, so that the audience begins to anticipate, for example, Chopin’s “Funeral March” when the curmudgeon says for the 20th time, “I do not like them, Sam I Am!”

The music for the November 4th show will be played by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra in conjunction with the Memphis Arts Council as part of its Family Arts Series. The show marks the opening of the season. Families of up to five can get into different events for $6. “We encourage families to attend,” said Sandy Kozik, program coordinator for the Family Arts Series, but adds that they will accept reservations for individuals.

The rest of the shows will be done with piano accompaniment. “It’s actually quite a fine reduction,” says Ensley. “It’s still all there.” To help educate the mostly young audience, members of Opera Memphis will spend a few moments before each performance explaining the music, making suggestions on what to listen for and when and how to listen for it.

Because of the great response to the upcoming shows, Opera Memphis is now planning on touring with it in the spring.

“We’ve gotten such a positive response from the schools, parents, and administrators,” says Ensley, “that in March, April, and May, we’re taking it, putting it in a van, and driving it around to pre-schools and elementary schools.”

Area teachers who are interested in taking their students to see one of the Dixon performances or to put their name on the list for the spring tour should contact Cindy Ensley of Opera Memphis at (901) 257-3100, extension 6. Inquiries on the November 4th show or the Family Arts Series should be made to the Memphis Arts Council at 578-2787 or visit their Web site at www.memphisartscouncil.org.

Politics Politics Beat Blog

KYLE OUT OF MAYOR’S RACE; NORRIS MAY GET IN

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date October 31, 2001

The Shelby County Mayor’s race lost one contender Tuesday but stood, down the line a bit, to gain another,

State Senator Jim Kyle opted out of the race, arranging for announcements of his withdrawal to be hand-delivered just before noon Tuesday to his three Democratic Party rivals, State Representative Carol Chumney, Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, and Shelby County Public Defender A C Wharton.

In the statement, as in separate remarks to the Flyer, Kyle cited the state’s desperate fiscal situaton as a reason for his decision to leave the race. Kyle, a key member of the Senate Finance Committee, had hoped for a special session this week to resolve Tennessee’s budget dilemma. It didn’t happen, and that meant, Kyle realized, that he and the rest of the General Assembly would likely be tied up to Nashville from late winter through early summer next year– a period during which he could neither effectively campaign nor, by the terms of state law, raise any money.

Another reason for his departure, Kyle acknowledged, was the recent entry of Wharton, “who has name recognition as good as my own.”

Meanwhile, another senator, Collierville’s Mark Norris, was considering a race for mayor at some point Ð especially if lawyer John Bobango ends up not running in the Republican primary. Norris, a former member of the county commission, is likely to see his senate district joined with that of long-term GOP colleague Curtis Person during legislative reapportionment, which will be controlled by Democrats in Nashville.

In another development, Shelby County Election Commission chairman O.C. Pleasant, a Democrat, acknowledged he was likely to run for the office of Shelby County clerk, opposing incumbent Republican Jayne Creson.

Film Features Film/TV

Ooey and Gooey

Post author By
Post date October 31, 2001

In the planet K-PAX, there are two suns and several purple moons. The light, according to K-PAX‘s hero and alien, Prot (Kevin Spacey), is twilight soft. Here on Earth, however, the cast of the sun is a good deal harsher, and quality of life depends largely on the angle from which you view it. The same can be said of the quality of K-PAX.

Prot just appears one day at New York’s Grand Central Terminal. Unable to explain himself satisfactorily (he has no luggage), Prot gets tossed into a mental hospital and into the care of Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges). Prot is clearly delusional, though there are things he says that make sense and some other things that are truths yet to be discovered.

If it sounds corny, it is. The whole idea behind K-PAX is that of letting go of the understood and being open to the impossible. Mental-patient Prot is the noble creature here, free of society’s gobbledygook and tuned into the real nitty-gritty so he can give us the lesson of the day: Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate. What’s more, Prot may just be that alien he claims to be. He can cure the sick and talk to dogs and work out complicated astronomical problems. For someone to bring about this wealth of goodwill and wonder he just can’t be human, can he?

Whether you like K-PAX or not depends largely on your willingness to be led on this parade of hope. If you buy it, then the curve the film takes is that much more meaningful. If you don’t, then you can blame it on Spacey’s spaced-out performance. The burden of belief is all on him, and, boy, does he work it. His movements suggest he’s a tourist on this planet: His steps are shy and careful, as if testing the ground for stability, and his head swivels to check out everything. Later on, he runs through different ages: He’s a scared young boy, then an overconfident teen, and finally a man with a family. It may come off as Oscar-winning acting, or it could just be a hell of a lot of overemoting. — Susan Ellis

It’s a damn-near tragedy, really. Here she is, multiple piercings, heavy liner and heavier attitude, surrounded by a bunch of girls happily named Ashley. The real humiliation is that her name is the equally peppy Jennifer.

It’s just one of the many indignities that 17-year-old Jennifer (Leelee Sobieski) — call her “J” — suffers through in the ultra-light, super-awful My First Mister before she realizes what’s really important.

The path to that revelation is through a high-end clothing store, where she’s hired by Randall (Albert Brooks) to work in the stockroom. While J uses her goth look to intimidate, Randall’s merely curious. She goads him about his belly; he questions her about her nose ring. By not backing away from J’s hostility, Randall becomes something different entirely. He, this square, 49-year-old man, is dark teen’s friend.

The first quarter of My First Mister is promising. Sobieski’s scowl and Brooks’ gentle sarcasm mix well. She buys him a Hawaiian shirt; she takes him to get tattooed. He loans her money and makes sure she doesn’t rent a ground-floor apartment. They bond over music. She forces him to have fun, while he tears down her defenses a little.

And while everything between them is officially chaste, J wants to be Randall’s lover. She likes the way the word “lover” rolls over her tongue. It’s absurd. But that absurdity is dropped in favor of an ooey-gooey storyline that’s beyond cloying and beneath everyone involved — the actors and the audience alike. Is that paper airplane in the film really floating to heaven with a note to a departed loved one? Yes, sadly, it is. — SE

As far as scary movies go, I do not watch them. Well, if you count the slivers of screen visible between my fingers, then I watch “parts” of them.

13 Ghosts is different. It was actually quite good, in a ghoulish, not gross, sort of way. A remake of the 1960 William Castle film — this time directed by music video and commercial vet Steve Beck — 13 Ghosts revolves around the Kriticos family, which has seen its share of hard knocks. The mother (Kathryn Anderson) has recently died in the house fire that destroyed all their possessions; and the dad, Arthur (Tony Shalhoub), is just getting by. So, all the responsibility falls to Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth), the trustworthy daughter.

Just when they think all is lost, Arthur inherits a house from his estranged Uncle Cyrus (F. Murray Abraham), who has mysteriously passed away. The family gets to the house, which is made completely of glass, and loves it. They figure: put up some curtains and everything will be okay, right? Wrong. Soon Rafkin (Matthew Lillard), the tortured psychic, shows up and makes them see that their house really isn’t a house and good ole Uncle Cyrus really isn’t good. In fact, the house is a machine ruled by the devil and Cyrus is a collector of spirits.

Of course, the ghosts are conveniently located in the basement. In the original film, Castle lured theatergoers by promoting the “Illusion-O!” viewing glasses which allowed audiences to see on-screen spirits that were invisible to the naked eye. Although glasses aren’t passed out for the remake, the gimmick infuses in the movie. The actors cannot see the tortured souls without donning special glasses. And once they put them on, see the souls, and are attacked by the souls, they finally realize that “it’s time to get out.” Had any thinking person walked up to an all-glass house which contained a massive gear-shift contraption inside, they would have immediately known it was “time to get out.” But this is the movies and intelligence isn’t always in this script.

Either way, the family, Rafkin, and babysitter Maggie (played by female rapper Rah Digga of the Flipmode Squad) continue to battle the ghosts and finally Uncle Cyrus while simultaneously freeing all the trapped souls.

The film does a good job of scene-setting by having most of the action take place in the house. The ghosts look real but aren’t too scary and don’t yell mindless threats of death and destruction. It is clear that they, too, are victims of crazy Uncle Cyrus. Also, the film avoids the typical horror-film scenes of people running through the woods, ax murderers chasing teenagers through abandoned homes, and the continuous flow of victims’ blood.

Take your hands away from your face. This scary movie is worth watching. — Janel Davis

News The Fly-By

City Reporter

Post author By Flyer Staff
Post date October 31, 2001

Found Money

Juvenile Court connects families with overdue dollars.

By Rebekah Gleaves

Juvenile Court Clerk Shep Wilbun says he doesn’t know why efforts weren’t previously made to deliver over $2 million in child- support payments; he only knows that he plans to make them now.

“My feeling is that it’s unacceptable to have funds lying around like this when the children and families of Shelby County need it,” says Wilbun.

The program, initiated by Wilbun and called Funds for Families, exists to find the intended recipients of money paid into the Juvenile Court clerk’s office from 1970 through 1999. Wilbun says that in its first two weeks, Funds for Families has already written checks in excess of $15,000.

“The sad part of all of this is that we’re always talking about deadbeat dads, but here the dads paid the money and through some bureaucratic process the kids never got it,” says Wilbun.

Soon after he was appointed to the office of Juvenile Court clerk late last year, Wilbun learned that for nearly 30 years intended child-support payments had been returned to the court because the recipient’s current address or other information was unknown.

Much of the child-support money was then classified as undeliverable or unidentifiable, with the largest amount listed as undeliverable, meaning that Juvenile Court did not have a current address for the recipient. The second largest amount was in the unidentifiable account, meaning that the child or custodial parent’s name was not given when money was paid and the court could not determine to whom the money should be sent.

Using databases from organizations such as Memphis Light, Gas and Water and the Department of Human Services, Wilbun’s staff has been able to match some of the names with current addresses for the originally intended recipients. He also encourages others who believe they may be entitled to money to call to see if their case could be included in the identifiable list.

“Why didn’t my predecessors do this? I don’t know,” says Wilbun. “That’s a question someone needs to ask them. I will say this: If they had done it, I wouldn’t have $2 million to give out now because it wouldn’t have been sitting there all this time. You have to assume that it wasn’t a priority of that administration, whereas it is a priority of this administration.”

Hold the Line

Class-action lawsuit filed against BellSouth.

By Rebekah Gleaves

Three Memphis attorneys have filed a class-action lawsuit against BellSouth, alleging that the telephone service provider negligently and fraudulently failed to inform qualified Tennesseans of the Lifeline discount program.

Bill Ray, BellSouth’s assistant vice president for external affairs for East and West Tennessee, told the Flyer that BellSouth has a policy against discussing pending litigation.

The Memphis attorneys, William F. Burns, R. Douglas Hanson, and Murray B. Wells, all of whom work for the firm of Glassman, Edwards, Wade and Wyatt, filed the complaint on behalf of Rebecca Gray, Margaret Rogers, and Hazel Cain. Each of these named plaintiffs claims to have specifically asked BellSouth representatives to include them in the Lifeline program but each says she was told that the program did not exist.

“One of our plaintiffs moved here from California and had been on Lifeline there,” says Wells, one of the attorneys representing the group. “She called BellSouth and asked specifically for the Lifeline program and was told that it was not offered in Tennessee.”

Wells also says the firm is currently seeking additional plaintiffs who are qualified for but not enrolled in Lifeline to add to the lawsuit.

Lifeline and Link-Up are programs jointly funded by the state and federal governments to provide residential phone service for about $8 a month to qualified Tennesseans. Anyone currently receiving Supplemental Social Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, food stamps, or Medicaid or anyone whose gross monthly income is equal to or less than 125 percent of the federal poverty level is eligible.

To fund the state portion of Lifeline, the Tennessee Regulatory Authority ordered BellSouth in 1991 to inflate its rates for all telephone lines by an additional fraction of a cent. Since 1991 BellSouth has collected this money from all Tennessee customers, though statewide only 36,000 qualified recipients are currently enrolled.

Land Grab

Whose waterfront is it, anyway?

By John Branston

Just in time for basketball season, interest in property near The Pyramid is heating up. Developers, landowners, and the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) were all jockeying for position last week in a busy round of negotiations and deal-making that involved Mayor Willie Herenton at one point.

At issue are both a choice piece of Mud Island and the North Memphis area known as the Pinch. In a nutshell, here’s where things stand:

· Developers Henry Turley and Jack Belz agreed to wait up to 60 days before rezoning property in the Pinch for the proposed “Uptown” redevelopment of public housing and vacant land. The RDC, supported by Herenton, sought the delay. Turley wants future Uptown residents “to get to go to the river, just like Harbor Town.”

The RDC sees the riverfront, including both sides of the slackwater harbor, as part of its own long-range development plan.

“Our whole emphasis is connecting to Uptown, too,” says CEO Benny Lendermon.

· Homebuilder Kevin Hyneman is expected to complete the purchase this week of 14 acres of Mud Island north of the park and south of Auction Street. Hyneman has had an option to buy the property from the group building the Echelon apartments next to AutoZone Park. The RDC is also very interested in this property.

“If it isn’t handled the proper way it can really screw up what we’re trying to do,” says chairman John Stokes.

· The RDC met for several hours last week with its consultants “to try to get a handle on the economics,” Stokes says. The most expensive parts of the plan include the proposed land bridge between downtown and Mud Island and the possible relocation of industry on the east side of the harbor.

· Landowners in the Pinch district, including Circuit Court judge Kay Robilio and her husband, Victor, want more money for their land than the city is willing to pay to take it by eminent domain. The Robilios own a half-acre lot two blocks north of The Pyramid that has been in their family since 1866.

“All we want is the opportunity to come out with enough money to purchase another lot that is as nice,” says Kay Robilio.

The sides are headed for mediation. Kay Robilio says the city offered something less than $30,000 and the Robilios countered with a higher number she wouldn’t disclose. The lot is appraised at $6,700 but speculators have driven up land prices in the area, which has been very slow to develop since The Pyramid opened 10 years ago.

Changing Focus

Hyde Foundation drops scholarships for Rhodes students.

By Mary Cashiola

For almost 20 years, Rhodes College has had eight Hyde Scholars on campus at any one time. But next year, there will be only six; the year after that, four, then two, and finally none. The scholarship, funded by the Hyde Family Foundation, is being phased out.

“Beginning next year, we will no longer offer Hyde Scholarships to new students entering Rhodes,” says Dave Wottle, Rhodes’ dean of admissions and financial aid. But, he says, the Hyde Family Foundation will continue to support the current Hyde Scholars until their graduations.

The scholarship paid for most, if not all, of the students’ room, board, and tuition. Anything not covered by the Hyde Foundation was taken care of by other funding from the college. Including tuition, room, and board, Rhodes costs about $26,000 a year.

Teresa Sloyan is the executive director for the Hyde Family Foundation. She says the foundation is pleased with the growth and direction Rhodes has shown in the previous years.

“When it was initially started many years ago, it was felt it was for a particular period of time,” says Sloyan. “The thought was, [the scholarship] will help them recruit locally and nationally.”

Sloyan cites Rhodes’ high national ranking as evidence that the school might not need the Hyde Family Foundation for that anymore. According to U.S. News and World Report, Rhodes is ranked in the top 50 of the nation’s liberal arts colleges for bachelor’s degrees.

“During our strategic planning process last year, we decided to focus on K-12 public education,” says Sloyan. One of their most visible projects is the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Academy in North Memphis. The Hyde Family Foundation was instrumental in bringing KIPP to the Memphis City Schools board, including flying six of the board members to New York to visit the school.

city beat

Soul Man

Is super-cool Isaac Hayes the real voice of Memphis?

by John Branston

Writers talk about finding their voice, going through this and that style until they find one that fits. Will the voice of downtown be the deep soulful bass of native son Isaac Hayes?

Say this at least, he has an open field in front of him. Elvis is dead. B.B. King isn’t here enough and it’s been half a century since he made his mark on Beale Street. Rufus Thomas is too old. Shane Battier is too young. The mayors Herenton-Rout buddy act is becoming as tiresome a self-parody as its predecessor, the mayors Morris-Hackett buddy act. The chamber of commerce is the chamber of commerce. And nobody is going to pay money to listen to Jack Belz, Henry Turley, John Elkington, the Jernigans, or any other developer talk about real estate.

But Isaac Hayes is cool. His voice is way cool, up there — or, rather, down there — with the stentorian tones of Barry White, the Rev. Kenneth Whalum, author Shelby Foote, and Senator Fred Thompson. He could make a weather report sound sexy. When he goes into his deejay patter on WRBO-FM 103.5 about late-night love songs and the river and growing up in Memphis, he makes our town sound like one of the cooler places in the world. Take your trucker music and teenybopper tunes and shove it, Nashville! His bald head and shades are cool, an amalgam of Michael Jordan and Marvelous Marvin Hagler. His black clothes are cool, especially when he flashes that 100-watt smile. His blocky, muscular body is cool. Is this dude 60 years old or 26?

And best of all, his songs are cool, from the theme from Shaft to “Deja Vu,” which Dionne Warwick performed during her terrific set at the opening last week of his new club, Isaac Hayes Music • Food • Passion. Hayes graciously introduced her, but for reasons he didn’t explain he didn’t take the stage himself. Not upstaging a friend and fellow performer, even at the grand opening of your own club, is pretty cool too.

But just by being there, Hayes gave class, glamour, authenticity, and focus to a place that badly needs it. Like Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Detroit’s Renaissance Center, and Atlanta’s Underground, the name Peabody Place has been stretched too thin to cover too many different things in too many places. Directions to Peabody Place? Sure, are you looking for AutoZone headquarters, Belz headquarters, Cafe Expresso, Muvico, or Tower Records? If you live by the brand you can die by it too.

What the world needs now is love sweet love and a good dose of cool. The NBA knows it, hence Michael Jordan. Television knows it, hence the continuing popularity of Seinfeld reruns and NYPD Blue knockoffs. And Hayes knows it, as evidenced by his mug on bottles of barbecue sauce and cookbooks.

Memphis already has plenty of barbecue impresarios, not to mention hucksters who give the impression that they would happily sell diseased blankets to Indians. What we need is a voice.

Willie Herenton is cool, never more so than when he’s wearing a dark suit and standing tall in the stage lights of a dark room with a microphone in one hand and an audience in the other, as he was at the grand opening last week. But he’s carried the ball long enough. When others try to help him, as Rout did in installment 9,673 of their seven-year series of now-let-me-present-my-good-friend introductions, the wrong note sometimes gets struck, like when Rout joked that Warwick was “in the psychic business.”

“No, mayor,” she corrected him with a definite hint of ice. “I’m in the singing business.”

There will be many more such moments in the coming months as celebrities and the national media descend on Memphis to do their inevitable take on the “Cinderella Gets the NBA” story. Someone needs to get out there now and then and counter this tripe. Someone with stature, bona-fides, and cool shades. Someone whose story and whose ups and downs have the stab of reality in a world of illusion. And that someone is Isaac Hayes, once known as Black Moses and maybe now our next Jeremiah.

Cover Feature News

Greetings From New York

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date October 31, 2001

CREDIT: PHOTO BY STEVE COHEN

“If seven maids with seven mops

Swept it for half a year,

Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,

“That they could get it clear?”

“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,

And shed a bitter tear.

— Lewis Carroll

Through the Looking-Glass

NEW YORK CITY: Visitors to New York will have no trouble encountering what has been so widely publicized in the wake of the September 11th tragedy: an openness to the visitor that is somewhere between courtly and home-spun. What is normally the world’s busiest, noisiest, and most self-absorbed place — Manhattan Island — has developed small-town ways.

Example: I arrived in Pennsylvania Station from Washington, D.C., at 1 a.m. on Saturday. The mega-concert at adjoining Madison Square Garden — the benefit for the families affected by September 11th, featuring a Woodstock-like panoply of stars — was just concluding. The sprawling terminal abruptly filled with people, a youngish crowd, mainly — not unlike the attendees at a high school football game — hustling toward various exits or tracks. But the flurry didn’t last long, and soon the terminal was virtually deserted.

Meanwhile, I was standing at the south end of the floor, in front of an area marked “BAGGAGE CLAIM.” Its metal doors were locked shut, however, and closed off further by a pair of accordion gates. There was a cluster of policemen in a stand in the middle of the terminal — a sign of the vigilant times — and one of them assured me that when my train from Washington got downloaded I’d see the doors open and could claim my bags. It didn’t happen. While I waited I wandered some 20 feet from my computer bag, which I had parked in front of the gated doors. Another policeman was patrolling the floor. “Sir, is that your bag?” he asked courteously. It was, I answered. “Well, please try to stay close to it.” He all but tipped his hat.

Ultimately I was guided toward the building’s far end, where in a corner I could see an overhead sign reading, “CUSTOMER SERVICE.” Hoisting my computer bag, I walked the length of the floor and entered a room where a heavyset black man sat at a desk with a cellphone or walkie-talkie at his ear. He said hello politely, and, after he had finished giving directions concerning an outgoing train to handlers at some unseen location, he walked with me back down to the other end, making conversation about the concert and the crowds that had just poured through. When we got to the gates, he went through a side door and returned, saying with a look back over his shoulder, “He’ll take care of you.”

Soon the doors of the baggage claim swung open, revealing a pot-bellied, gray-haired man wearing a T-shirt above his rumpled uniform pants. He appeared to have just awakened. “Need your baggage-claim tickets,” he said sleepily. I handed them over. Soon enough, he was at the side door and passed the bags through. “Have a nice time in New York,” he said.

In its imagery, atmosphere, and dialogue, the whole thing might have taken place in Jonesboro or Junction City.

IN MORE SENSES THAN THE DIMUNITION OF ITS SKYLINE, New York has been downsized and has accepted it — not least in its bonding with the hinterland and its apparent determination to become the ultimate Everytown, USA. Not once during my two-and-a-half days in the city did I encounter anything resembling hauteur or brusqueness or an unwillingness to be of service. Every cop, passerby, or straphanger, when asked for directions, gave them happily.

photo bY JACKSON BAKER

Some still hope to find survivors.

One morning I was running in Greenwich Village, in its heartland where 12th Street, Hudson, and Bleecker converge. In some ways, New York maintained its distinctiveness — notably in the diversity of the types who loitered in its multiethnic storefronts, walked its pavement, and sat on its park benches. They included all the tribes of humanity, from standard couples to grannies to mothers wheeling baby carriages to manifest hipsters to the pair of skinhead women who sat together on one bench, their bald pates inclined together like billiard balls in a rack. It was quaint, though, not alien — lesbianism as Norman Rockwell might have imagined it. Just as in the rest of America, flags or flag replicas were everywhere. As I circled Bleecker Park and headed up an asphalt alley, a car passed alongside and the driver leaned out, saying in an indeterminate accent, “No pain, no gain.” Then he smiled and sped away.

LATE OF A SUNDAY AFTERNOON, I headed south on Hudson Street in the direction of what is already known everywhere in the civilized world as “Ground Zero,” shifting streets in the direction of south and east, as I was directed. Whenever I looked westward from an intersection, I could see distant speedboats on the Hudson River. My destination, of course, was defined by what I was not seeing, the twin spires of the World Trade Center. Before September 11th they would have guided me all the way to the tip of Lower Manhattan from the Village in the heart of downtown. In the absence of visual imagery, I began to rely on my olfactory sense — imagining that it would guide me as surely as any beacon.

Even up on 12th Street, I had sniffed something that wafted into and out of my threshold of awareness. It came and went in faint, barely discernible whiffs, as if to give the most minimal possible hints of what I might soon be experiencing. As I walked, I sniffed away like some stereotypical wine connoisseur. First, I had a slight sense of scorched electronics, then, minutes later, one of crushed concrete, and — interspersed with these at uneasy intervals — an unmistakable whiff, even if infinitesimal, of what one smells around the house at home when a small animal has expired somewhere under a back porch. There was no way around it: The 5,000 deaths of September 11th were a part of the city’s very atmosphere.

I encountered the first barricade on West Broadway, the thoroughfare up which, I had read, Mayor Rudy Giuliani had raced with his immediate aides on September 11th to escape the cascade of falling rubble from the collapse of Tower One. Not all of the mayor’s party made it. One or two members of his rear guard had been lost in the avalanche. In that same small-town way with which I’d grown familiar by now, the cops manning the first set of barricades made a point of suggesting I could get closer by shifting over to Broadway and heading further south. Later, on Broadway, racing through one intersection to beat a red light, I heard one policeman say gently, “Sir, you don’t have to run.” Whether he meant that in the small or the cosmic way remained to be seen.

EVENTUALLY, ON BROADWAY, I would come upon the barricaded intersections at Fulton and John, and further down, where the clumps of tourists foretold their vistas even before I got there. One of the cops who had directed me earlier had assured me that my press credentials would get me as far in as I wanted. Whatever. When I got there I was content to see what I could from the same vantage points, generally a block or two away, used by the rest of the visitors. And that proved instructive.

PHOTO BY STEVE COHEN

One of many belaureled checkpoints near Ground Zero.

Yes, the devastation was obvious from the ground-up matter and mangled metal that one could see in the huge land mass sprawled between the gutted mammoth buildings that remained. The size of the forever-absent towers was dramatized by the bulk of those left behind, any of which would be prominent in any other cityscape. Monster machines moved around in the gathering twilight, shifting debris. There were focused shafts of high-energy light here and there where large steel beams were being cut through to make a path for machines and work crews. It was London during the Blitz, or Dresden, or even, as David Halberstam suggests in the current Vanity Fair, Berlin 1945. And one bonded with it — literally — telltale reflexive coughs telling you that motes of the catastrophe had entered your very lungs.

But even as this solidarity with matter and moment and clime was taking place — this ultimate “Ich bin ein New Yorker” — another realization was filtering in. Phase One of the disaster and its aftermath were over, and Phase Two, during which the horrific tragedy and destruction would cease to be fresh and become part of the ordinary, had already begun. You could see it in the paper and graphics that had been pasted and tacked across impromptu storefront bulletin boards. These had once teemed with pictures of the “missing” (a sad euphemism, that), along with heartbreaking handwritten requests from their survivors begging to be told they had been sighted somewhere. Now there were only a few of these left, replaced by remembrances of various kinds, poems, prose, and even articles of their clothing — all totemistic efforts to conjure them up for one last collective paying of attention; it was the tragedy of Willy Loman writ large, a kind of public funeral for these deserving nondescript, and it would have to do.

The people who came to the barricades and intersections and stole their glimpses of the destruction and of the largest burying ground in American history were not so much pilgrims as they were tourists. As they stopped at peddlers’ stands and purchased their souvenirs — the NYPD and FDNY caps and the keychains, placemats, and posters bearing the likenesses of the lost twin towers — they were reminiscent of those who might be visiting the Alamo or Gettysburg or the scene of some other long-ago site of American grief. “Come on, honey,” one man told his apparent wife, “let’s go down to the next corner. You can see Building Number Six better from there.” And the never-ending smoke from deep beneath the smoldering surface of the ruptured fundament hit some middle between Yellowstone Park and Arlington National Cemetery.

ALTHOUGH NEITHER OF US KNEW IT AT THE TIME, state Senator Steve Cohen was in New York at the same time as myself, possessed by the same instinct as mine, to be there at Ground Zero and experience this pivotally important American moment, whatever it would prove to be, before it cooled and turned into something else, before it became, in fact, history. Acting on Mayor Giuliani’s public suggestion that “every government official” should come and see the site personally, Cohen secured an escort from the mayor’s office and, soon enough, was treading on Ground Zero itself. I will leave it to him to describe what he encountered in whatever detail and venue he wishes. For me, it is all summed up in an interchange he reports having had with his guide:

At one point, the mayoral escort, trying to provide a running commentary on the tangled, flattened, deconstructed plateau on which he and Cohen trod, began, “This is … “

“This is hell,” Cohen replied.

ON THE NIGHT TRAIN BACK TO WASHINGTON, I wandered back to the club car, which was filled with homebound firefighters from the Baltimore area. I struck up a conversation with some of them, who — like so many other firefighters from so many other places in America — had worked as volunteers with the FDNY’s own recovery teams and made a point of serving as an honor guard for the funeral rites that still occurred at Ground Zero whenever the identifiable remains of another policeman or fireman were found. There had been six such occasions during this team’s brief visit. All the firefighters, men tempered in various cauldrons themselves, agreed they had never seen horrors on such a scale before.

One of them was willing to spell out what it meant when the remains of once-living human beings were turned up. The nature of it all could be imagined from the fact that one victim was identified from the engraved Rolex watch on his arm — the only part of him that was found. This is why visitors to Ground Zero will so frequently report, “I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.”

Eventually, the man turned back to his mates, who were ordering one beverage after another, letting it hang, and heading home with an obvious edge to their club-car hilarity.

“How about it, dudes!” he shouted. “Who’s ready for another round?”

Editorial Opinion

Petty Obstructionists

Post author By Editorial
Post date October 31, 2001

Republican leaders Thomas DeLay and Dick Armey, the House of Representatives duo who opined in the wake of September 11th that it would not be “in the American spirit” to confer emergency benefits on those Americans deprived of their jobs by the terrorist attacks, are now doing all they can to sidetrack airport security.

Never mind that a bill to federalize airport-security forces passed the Senate with the absolute bipartisan unanimity of a 100-to-1 vote. Never mind that Americans are now united in their revulsion at the makeshift pseudo-security heretofore provided at the nation’s air terminals by poorly trained minimum-wage workers.

Never mind, for that matter, the obvious and overriding need for public safety, which would be provided by a security element federalized in the mode of the armed services and trained according to the same strict standards.

DeLay and Armey are now attempting to invoke party discipline and parliamentary protocol in order to hold up passage of the much-needed enabling legislation. The reason? A fear that a federalized security force would lend itself to unionization. Armey even has the gall to suggest that the airport-security bill’s proponents are practicing “politics” to keep at bay an alternative measure that would continue to rely on private security firms.

It is to the discredit of President Bush that he continues to support the measure favored by Armey and DeLay — just as his recently improved stature was undercut by his collaboration with them in new pork-barrel proposals and tax-cut bills benefiting the rich.

Senator John McCain, now so often the spokesman for responsible congressional Republicans, said it best Sunday when he termed the GOP leaders’ opposition to the airport-security measure “indefensible.”

So it is. Would that our commander-in-chief saw things as clearly!

Changing the Play

Based on their preseason performance, the Memphis Grizzlies may be a better team than the unit that struggled to win one-fourth of its games in Vancouver. New faces like Pau Gasol, Shane Battier, Brevin Knight, and Jason Williams give fresh hope to the team that will take the floor on opening night Thursday against the Detroit Pistons.

By the same token, Memphis may also find that The Pyramid is a better arena than many people want to admit. We’ll put the over-and-under on the number of games the Grizzlies will win at a franchise-best 30 and the over-and-under on average attendance this season at 15,000 (fans in seats, not tickets sold). At least eight games — Iverson, Shaq, Jordan, Robinson, etc. — should fill all 20,000 seats.

That would make for some nice paydays all around. Nothing like the pot of gold envisioned by Grizzlies owners and their friends last spring, but probably enough to make ends meet in the new and troubling world in which we live.

It was reported in last Sunday’s New York Times that car rentals in the U.S. are down 35 percent in the wake of September 11th. Rental-car surcharges, of course, are one financing component of the proposed new $250 million arena, along with hotel taxes, state aid, and user fees. It is obvious to anyone but the vested interests that none of those sources is going to measure up to projections in the near future — and possibly longer. The Grizzlies are now slated to play in The Pyramid for three years.

And it could be longer than that.

305 North Watkins 1,985 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths; $179,500 Realtor: Lovitt Co., 683-2433, Agent: Nan Lee, 458-6819