Month: January 2004

Categories
Art Art Feature

The Year in Art

The Cannon Center opens; symphony returns to downtown.

The Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, the centerpiece of the Cook Convention Center’s $92 million renovation, opened in January 2003 with the 50th-anniversary performance of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. It was something of a triumphal return for the symphony, which had been without a proper home for the better part of six years. The renovation began with the demolition of Ellis Auditorium in 1996. The center was originally scheduled for completion in ’99 but was plagued with delays and cost overruns.

The Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau has since estimated that, in addition to cost overruns, Memphis lost between $30 million and $40 million in tourist-related business during the convention center’s extended renovation.

The Cannon Center’s 2,100-seat state-of-the-art auditorium is a multi-use facility that can accommodate both musical and theatrical performances.

Changes force the Memphis Arts Council to reinvent its educational programs.

The Greater Memphis Arts Council (GMAC) took a number of hits in 2003. In June, the skeleton crew manning GMAC’s Center for Arts Education (CAE) handed in their collective resignations, including GMAC’s vice president in charge of education, Amelia Barton. Barton’s name had long been synonymous with arts education in Memphis, and her departure started a firestorm of speculation.

GMAC continued to send mixed signals about its popular educational programs. Arts council president Susan Schadt insisted that, in spite of the cuts and the loss of personnel, the CAE would continue to offer the same kinds of quality programs that had earned it a national reputation for excellence. On the other hand, board president Tommy Farnsworth III insisted that many of the organization’s programs were financially untenable and compared the CAE to “The Blob.”

The CAE’s Summer Institute, an annual event that brought teachers and teaching artists together, was canceled, and contracts with teaching artists were voided. This riled teachers and led a number of teaching artists to end their relationship with GMAC.

The CAE had faced large budget and staff cuts in 2002, and 2003 promised to be worse. The truly odd thing about all of this was GMAC’s unwillingness to inform the public about their budget woes. While they did send press releases to various news outlets, Schadt did not want to be interviewed. When asked why, Schadt said, “We actually didn’t, and still don’t, want to alienate our elected officials. We know they are having some hard decisions to make. I know the county is trying to be as fiscally responsible as they can, and we want to try to work with them as much as we can. Is it painful for everyone involved? Absolutely. I’m sure it pains Mayor Wharton to have to cut arts. He specifically said that to us.”

This diplomatic approach resulted in more than $300,000 in budget cuts. While Mayor Wharton may have felt GMAC’s pain, he clearly didn’t feel a great deal of pressure to act otherwise.

The CAE was not scrapped, though programs were put into “suspended animation.” Ticket subsidies for school groups actually increased. Barton was ultimately replaced by Memphian Peggy Seessel, an education specialist, who, given time, might be able to revitalize the incredible shrinking CAE.

Only time will tell. One way or the other GMAC, a fund-raising body vital to the health of many Memphis arts organizations, lost a bit of credibility during this ugly ordeal. Letters to the editor poured in to both the Flyer and The Commercial Appeal, and teachers lobbied to have GMAC removed from their workplace giving program.

The Power House gets serious.

Early press concerning Delta Axis’ conversion of the Power House, an antiquated steam plant on G.E. Patterson in the South Main Arts District, compared the gallery-to-be to the Guggenheim expansion in Bilbao, Spain. The comparisons were rather silly given the fact that the space lacks the Guggenheim pedigree. It’s tiny, not an expressionist-inspired titanium monstrosity designed by world-renowned experimental architect Frank Gehry, and, of course, it’s not in Spain. But all that aside, it’s still a stunning space and one of the most significant downtown renovations to date.

Over the past year, Power House curator Peter Fleissig has brought a number of world-class artists to Memphis. The gallery closed out its first season with the powerful photography show “American Night” by Paul Graham.

Theaters ditch top dogs.

In a surprise move, Theatre Memphis chose not to renew the contract of its relatively new executive producer, Ted Strickland. Strickland had been hired on the strength of his managerial skills to stop Theatre Memphis’ downward slide that started in the 1990s under the guidance of Sherwood Lohrey and escalated under Michael Fortner. Strickland was successful in stopping the slide and the quality of performances increased dramatically during his tenure, but apparently that wasn’t good enough for the board.

According to board president Dan Conaway, Strickland was just not visible enough.

Theatre Memphis continues to look for an executive producer who can become a vital and visible member of the greater Memphis arts community.

Germantown Community Theatre likewise cut loose Leigh Walden, their executive producer since 2000. Walden quickly was replaced by Cori Stevenson, a recent MFA in directing from the University of Memphis with secondary emphasis in arts management.

Scratching the surface.

That’s just a taste. There was plenty more. Merchants in the South Main Arts District had a run-in with the law for giving away wine and beer during the popular monthly trolley tours. To some degree, that situation has been corrected. A handful of new artist-run galleries have opened all around town. The UrbanArt Commission continues to unveil new works of public art (some wonderful, some less so). The Memphis film community’s reputation continues to grow. Craig Brewer is poised to begin shooting his new film, Hustle and Flow (this time with a Hollywood budget), Morgan Jon Fox’s Blue Citrus Hearts continues to perform well at festivals around the country, and 9-year-old Memphis actress Hailey Anne Nelson has stepped into the spotlight with a role in Tim Burton’s most recent film, Big Fish. n

E-mail: davis@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Plenty

Compared to the wonders of recent years, 2003 could well be remembered as the year of no great films. But while there were no easy chart-toppers on a par with Mulholland Drive, Y Tu Mamá También, Ghost World, In the Mood for Love, or Topsy-Turvy, there was plenty of good stuff to go around.

Oddly, in a year that seemed a bit lacking in cinematic marvels, there were perhaps more audacious local screenings than ever before. Topping the list would have to be the week-long Indie Memphis-sponsored Muvico screening of The Cremaster Cycle, artist Matthew Barney’s epic art-world allegory. But there was also the highly unlikely appearance of Jean-Luc Godard’s defiantly anti-American In Praise of Love, which also screened at Muvico before appearing at the MeDiA Co-op’s First Congo screening space. And Malco got into the act with French director Gaspar Noë’s controversial, misanthropic shock-porn feature Irreversible, which lingered for 10 minutes on a brutal rape scene on its backward journey to confirming the axiom “Everything falls apart.”

And it was also a year of great performances in unexpected films, highlighted by a couple of over-the-top men and chameleonic women. Never mind Sean Penn’s overhyped turns in Mystic River and the Memphis-filmed 21 Grams, Johnny Depp was the actor of the year for performances in two films that weren’t even very good — the overrated Pirates of the Caribbean and the borderline unwatchable Once Upon a Time in Mexico. In both cases, Depp seemed to have wandered onto the set from a different film, his flamboyantly indulgent performances so entrancing that viewers could safely ignore the movie happening around him. And he was joined by Will Ferrell, whose gonzo commitment to whatever scenario he found himself in brought huge laughs to the otherwise underachieving Old School and the surprising Elf. (And let’s not forget George Clooney’s glorious scenery-chewing in Intolerable Cruelty.)

On the flip side, indie-identified actresses Patricia Clarkson and Hope Davis held coming-out parties with a variety of roles. With sharp turns in The Station Agent, Pieces of April, and the unscreened-in-Memphis All the Real Girls, Clarkson established herself as the spiritual den mother of indie film. And Davis was simply a wonder –in American Splendor, The Secret Lives of Dentists, and the January-screened About Schmidt (where she stole the film right out from under Jack Nicholson). Davis created unforgettable performances based on three dramatically different characters. She was the actress of the year.

And though 2003 didn’t peak as high as years past, it didn’t sink as low either. Sure, there was the usual assortment of dully pointless sequels — Terminator 3, Legally Blonde: Red, White, and Blonde, and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle –but X-Men 2 rocked! And this year’s Oscar bait was surprisingly decent. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (enough with the cumbersome titles, already) were fine examples of large-scale cinematic craftsmanship with little to offend. Mystic River and Cold Mountain were movingly personal films that reverberated with real-world concerns and didn’t strain too hard for effect. And the worst of the bunch, Seabiscuit, was merely stodgy, not at all an outrage.

But what about the good stuff? Well, here’s one critic’s opinion:

1. The 25th Hour: Spike Lee’s finest feature since 1989’s Do the Right Thing got lost amid a flurry of late-2002 releases that showed up on Memphis screens last January. But a year later it’s the one that feels most alive. Starring Edward Norton as a convicted drug dealer confronting his last day of freedom, The 25th Hour forces its audience to confront, like perhaps no film ever has, just what it means to send someone –anyone –to prison. That considerable achievement is but a small part of what makes this underdog of a film so powerful. Shot in Lee’s beloved New York City in the days after 9/11, it also feels like the definitive cinematic document of a terrible time in American life. And when — in a final, grandiose flourish — Lee’s camera takes off for a continent-spanning travelogue and hymn to “all the lives that almost never happened,” it simply overwhelms.

2. Spider: This intensely controlled minimasterpiece didn’t last long in Memphis (or anywhere else, for that matter), but it stands as one of director David Cronenberg’s greatest films –an unintentional answer to Ron Howard’s overblown Oscar winner A Beautiful Mind, featuring a daringly understated (nearly wordless) performance from Ralph Fiennes. Unlike Howard’s more celebrated glimpse at schizophrenia, Cronenberg doesn’t provide any dubious platitudes to put his audience at ease. What he offers instead is an intensely poetic, fairy-tale film suffused with existential dread and dream logic — like Kafka as told by the Brothers Grimm.

3. Adaptation: Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s selfish, anxiety-ridden attempt to adapt Susan Orlean’s nonfiction bestseller The Orchid Thief for the big screen becomes, in the hands of director Spike Jonze and lead Nicolas Cage, perhaps the most chaotically entertaining cinematic tribute to failure ever made. A film that unfurls as it’s written (until it starts to devour itself), this comic, postmodern puzzler also provides far more insight into the writing process than any literary biopic I’ve ever seen.

4. Lost in Translation: Sofia Coppola’s second feature is short on plot but rich with incident; nothing much happens, yet every frame is crammed with activity and nuance and emotion. Following two generationally divided Americans who strike up a brief friendship in Tokyo (including Bill Murray:a walking sight gag as alienation effect), Lost in Translation tracks the ineffable, finding its poetry in the city’s peculiar clash of the solemnly ancient and breathlessly modern and subsuming its sexual tension in late nights of sake and television and conversation and karaoke. (Murray’s “More Than This” is a heart-stopping moment.) The result is an ode to human connection that is bigger than (or perhaps just apart from) sex and romance.

5. Finding Nemo: This Pixar animation blockbuster was simply the smartest, funniest, and most elegant mainstream entertainment of the year, with an epic-journey narrative more consistently inventive and exciting than those provided by The Return of the King, Kill Bill Vol. 1, or Cold Mountain.

6. American Splendor: One might legitimately wonder whether file clerk, comic-book author, and professional misanthrope Harvey Pekar is worthy of a biopic in his own time, much less whether he’s a likable figure. But what makes American Splendor special is that it isn’t merely a biopic; nor is it merely an adaptation of the comic-book series that provides the film’s title. Rather, the heretofore unknown directing team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini triumph through their virtuoso juggling of different levels of representation and different types of visual content. And as deliriously acted by Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis, the film they end up with may well be the liveliest and most purely entertaining of the year.

7. The Pianist: One of the great disappointments in movies this year was the way the Oscars got our hopes up with a Best Director award for Roman Polanski and Best Actor award for Adrien Brody and then ended up giving Chicago the Best Picture anyway (with that smarmy presentation by Michael and Kirk Douglas). Oh well, here’s betting that Polanski’s knowing remembrance of life in Warsaw during the Holocaust — where Brody’s title character is less a protagonist than a witness — holds up better over time.

8. Capturing the Friedmans: The best of a year full of fine documentaries (see also Spellbound, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, and Winged Migration), Capturing the Friedmans begins with a certainty –Arnold Friedman and his teen-age son Jesse having pled guilty to several counts of child molestation in the ’80s — but, by the end, very little of its subjects seem established or even knowable. It’s a Rashomon scenario, with different voices giving achingly different accounts of the very same acts. The awful reality may be that everyone in the film is telling the truth.

9. City of God: This sensationalistic tale of Brazilian street violence was, in some ways, disconcertingly amoral, but as an act of pure film style it’s impossible to deny. The mise-en-scène is neorealist, but the cinematography, editing, and effects are hyperstylized, as if The Bicycle Thief had been reimagined through the post-CGI lens of Fight Club or The Matrix.

10. Mystic River: Clint Eastwood’s measured adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s literary thriller is a reminder of old-style Hollywood values –patient storytelling, elegant direction, tight plotting. A mournful meditation on revenge and guilt, violence and scapegoating, Mystic River deserves to be screened in a double-feature with the movie at the top of this list. Both films examine personal losses (and reactions to them) that echo national ones. And juxtaposing The 25th Hour‘s empathetic finale with Mystic River‘s bravely cold one — in which an Independence Day parade is portrayed as a cauldron of menace and isolation — is as damning a consideration as one can imagine of what’s happened in (and to) this country over the past year.

Honorable Mention: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Raising Victor Vargas, The Man Without a Past, Spellbound, Kill Bill Vol. 1, The Quiet American, Cold Mountain, The Magdalene Sisters, School of Rock, In America, The Secret Lives of Dentists. n

E-mail: herrington@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News The Fly-By

BLOWN AWAY BY 2003

Like Weeds

Many new businesses sprouted in 2003.

By Bianca Phillips

Olympic hopefuls can no longer hone their skills at the Mall of Memphis’ ice rink. Elvis Presley’s Memphis on Beale and its gooey fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches are history. Obscure metal bands don’t perform in the basement of the Map Room anymore, and the booty-shakin’ (or gunshots) at Denim & Diamonds is over. Even the world’s longest-running T.G.I. Friday’s is now R.I.P.

But don’t worry because the whole “Circle of Life” thing is true for businesses too. While a number of longtime Memphis staples closed their doors in 2003, a healthy number of promising businesses opened as well — from eaterys and clothiers to nightspots and gift shops.

™ The “New” Blue Monkey (529 S. Front St.) — We waited and waited and waited for this Midtown favorite to open its downtown location. Workers began to convert the old building at the corner of South Main and G.E. Patterson back in September 2001, and by the latter part of 2002, rumors were flying regarding the bar’s opening date. It finally did open in June, complete with a handcrafted bar made to look like a trolley, wine-label-covered tables, and some of the best Bloody Marys in town.

™ The Caravan (1337 Madison Ave.) — If you’ve driven down Madison on a weekend night and seen a group of freaky-looking punk-rock kids hauling music equipment into a little building across the street from the Circle K, you’ve seen the Caravan. The tiny, DIY punk/metal/hardcore club fills a void in Midtown by catering to the city’s burgeoning underground hardcore scene, hosting such bands as Hopes Like the Hindenburg and the Uninvited.

™ The Glass Onion Bar & Grill (903 S. Cooper St.) — With the motto “Where the Other Half Lives,” the Glass Onion fits right into the artsy Cooper-Young neighborhood. It’s a trendy restaurant by day, serving up a menu of 22-year-old Chef Zach Miller’s gourmet treats such as curried chicken Thai sticks and peanut-butter pork chops. By night, it’s a hip bar serving up local rock and more of the best Bloody Marys in town.

™ Hound Cake (247 S. Cooper St.) — A sign on the door of this Midtown dog bakery reads “Pets Welcome, People Allowed,” letting pet owners know that this is an establishment that puts pooches first. Serving up a variety of healthy, freshly baked treats, such as Peanut Barkers and Cinna-barks, and specializing in dog birthday cakes, Hound Cake gives man’s best friends a place to indulge in their favorite tastes while socializing with their fellow four-legged friends.

™ Muse (517 S. Main St.) — If you fancy yourself a fashion diva, this is probably where you should be shopping. The stylish South Main boutique carries a variety of designer garments and looks more like your best friend’s bedroom than a clothing store. Clothes hang in wardrobes or on racks. Some lay spread out on tables alongside matching accessories. But beware: With items marked as high as $400, Muse is not for the faint-of-wallet.

™ One Love Organic Juice Bar & Soulful Vegetarian Cafe (2158 Central Ave.) — If the South has made one culinary contribution to the world, it’s soul food. But for many Southern vegetarians, soul food — being heavy on the lard and light on the soy — has been off-limits. Now the cafe adjoining the Midtown Food Co-op offers collard greens and black-eyed peas sans the ham hocks, as well as a number of smoothies and vegetable fusions made from organically grown produce.

™ Paradiso Theater (584 S. Mendenhall) — The Malco company has really outdone itself on this one. Besides its 14 screens, the Paradiso has an Internet cafe, a large-format screen, a video arcade, and a bar/cafe that serves fried ravioli, cheesesticks, tiramisu, cheesecake, beer, and wine. Italian motifs and a giant fountain in the lobby make the place look more like a courtyard in Europe than a movie theater, and according to Malco reps, the place was designed with the village from the film Cinema Paradiso in mind.

™ SmartMart (5133 Park Ave.) — Space-age technology meets convenience-store fare at a fully automated store in East Memphis. Busy drivers don’t even have to leave their cars to pick up a can of green beans and a six-pack of beer for dinner. They simply pull up to a computer screen, press a button, and voilÖ — their purchase appears. The brainchild of Memphian Mike Rivalto, SmartMart distributes products through a system of conveyor belts and dumps them into a shopping port, sort of like a giant, high-tech vending machine. ™

To Your Health

A “breakout” year for health, hospitals.

By Janel Davis

For some in the health-care industry or those touched by illnesses in 2003, Dick Clark’s countdown can’t come fast enough. A new year brings new hopes of cures — for diseases and for the industry’s financial woes. There were accomplishments but also significant failures.

In health care, the decisions of a few determine the outcomes for many. Politicians, drug companies, and even hospital administrators influence which medicines we take, where it comes from, how much it costs, and what each person pays for adequate care.

On the national level, legislators voted to make sweeping changes in Medicare. The plan is estimated to cost $400 billion over 10 years, with its most significant portion a prescription-drug benefit plan for seniors. While administrators of AARP supported the changes, AARP members and Democratic legislators predicted an eventual privatization of the program, ultimately increasing costs.

Locally, prescription drugs were also the source of controversy. TennCare, the state’s health-care program for uninsured children and adults, developed a preferred drug list to decrease prescription costs of $1.8 billion by $150 million. While this savings is necessary to provide supplemental care for the 1.3 million Tennesseans TennCare serves, it could have been done much sooner, especially as costs have increased steadily since the program’s inception in 1994. An independent study projected costs to run TennCare will reach $12.2 billion in five years.

The year began with Americans flooding hospitals and health departments seeking smallpox vaccinations. As the war in Iraq neared so did apprehensions about possible biological attacks on American soil. Shelby County instituted its own plan, administering the smallpox vaccine to a team of 45 public-health nurses and almost 1,000 hospital employees. While no case was reported in the area, a mass-inoculation plan is in effect for volunteers to administer the vaccine throughout the state in case of emergency.

As the year progressed, focus shifted to the respiratory disease RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, which affects babies and toddlers. Within a little more than a month, 51 cases were diagnosed at Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center. Although doctors assured the community that the illness was more nuisance than dangerous, parents were still warned to remove high-risk children from day-care and unhealthy settings.

Influenza was another threat. In November, 24 states were designated as suffering widespread outbreaks, and Tennessee was one of them. Experts predicted the worst flu season ever. By year end, the flu had claimed more than three dozen people in the U.S. and affected more than 600 Shelby County residents. Hospitals and clinics ran out of the vaccine, and Shelby County’s health department administered more than 15,000 injections.

The year also brought big changes for Shelby County’s three largest hospitals. Methodist Healthcare terminated delivery services at its downtown location, leaving the Regional Medical Center (The Med) to shoulder that responsibility for metropolitan residents. Methodist expanded its south campus, implemented a new record-keeping system, and unveiled its most notable accomplishment, HeartSTAT, for early diagnosis and treatment of heart attacks.

Baptist Memorial Hospital celebrated its 200th heart transplant, opened its Comprehensive Breast Center at its Women’s hospital, and became the first hospital in the region to use the da Vinci robot during surgery.

But neither Methodist nor Baptist faced the challenges of The Med. The financial burden on the city’s public hospital increased as people who were dropped from TennCare rolls sought medical care at The Med. While facing impending budget cuts and possible closing, the hospital made headlines again when its nurses protested a decision by hospital administrators to deny union representation to more than 500 nurses. That battle continues, but meanwhile The Med opened a rehab hospital, participated in various national studies, and further prepared for national emergencies.

And then there were the medical stories that captured our hearts, or at least our attention, such as the two sets of young, conjoined twins (from Egypt and the Philippines) who underwent separation operations in American hospitals. While both sets survived, 29-year-old Iranian females undergoing similar surgery in Singapore did not.

Obesity also became more of a health-care concern: 59 percent of Tennesseans were determined to be overweight and 23 percent obese.

On the Horizon

™ TennCare reform, which may include, at its most extreme, a reduction of its client rolls.

™ With rising prescription-drug costs, state-sponsored insurance programs may look to Canada and other countries for cheaper drugs, following the lead of New Hampshire.

™ The HIV/AIDS epidemic across the world will continue to be on the forefront as the number of people infected steadily increases among Africans, African-Americans, and young adults.

™ A push to stem the shortage of nurses and health-care professionals in the city through programs like the newly opened Memphis Academy of Health Sciences.

™ More public-private partnerships within the industry as hospitals work to maintain services while combatting declining budgets.

E-mail: jdavis@memphisflyer.com

Everybody’s Problem

Education is not just about the children.

by Mary Cashiola

If there’s one phrase I hate, it has to be “it’s all about the children.” Most often uttered by politicians to defend their positions, these few irksome words show up in almost every open discussion on public education.

It’s all about the children.

I say: bullshit.

Besides the fact that politicians use these words to show how warm and caring they are, the phrase is also something of a dangerous fallacy.

Yes, public education most directly serves children by, ideally, teaching them how to think for themselves and the facts and figures that they will need to do such thinking. But public education also serves those students’ parents, the community at large, and future employers. Education can keep kids from becoming criminals, while providing a knowledgeable workforce.

And if you think education isn’t a big business, consider this: The city school system is one of the largest employers in the county. Construction contracts for schools have multimillion-dollar price tags. Then there’s computer equipment, textbooks, and desks.

Local education affects everybody in town whether they know it or not.

I’m supposed to be writing about the past year in education, but I don’t want to. It’s not that there weren’t changes; there were. The city schools hired Dr. Carol Johnson to replace outgoing Superintendent Johnnie Watson. Just last month, Johnson proposed an administrative overhaul to streamline operations at the district level.

The county schools finally got funding for a new high school in Arlington to ease overcrowding. Twenty-two city schools moved one step closer to state-takeover, while county schools made the underperforming list for the first time ever. And the Tennessee lottery will begin in February, hopefully reaping funds for education.

But I’ve covered education for more than three years now for the Flyer, and each year makes me sadder and more disheartened. It’s not that there hasn’t been any good news; there’s just been so much more not-good news. The deck has always seemed stacked against the city schools, and in light of the higher standards of the national No Child Left Behind act, it’s almost as if they’ve been written off entirely.

The kids are, in general, poorer; their home lives are less stable. Early-childhood education seems almost nonexistent. Johnson recently said that she thought many children in the special-education program shouldn’t be there. But because these children were so far behind when they entered school, they tested as if they needed special-education classes.

Scary, huh?

I’ve spent the last few years listening to the problems and the possible solutions, the hardships, the test scores, the pleas for funding. And to be honest, I feel even more lost than I did when I started. Is the problem the school system itself: shoddy teachers, clueless administrators? Is it uninvolved parents? And are they uninvolved because they don’t care or because they have to work and can’t make parent-teacher night and PTA meetings? Is it the kids themselves? Are they too stupid to learn? Or are they too preoccupied with sports and music to think about math?

I’ve found that there isn’t one right or wrong answer, just a tangled mess of a school system. However, I’m at a point in my life where I know a lot of young couples either just having children or thinking about it. And I’ve never heard anyone say, “I’m going to send my child to our neighborhood city school.” Instead, they say they’re going to move outside the city lines before their children reach kindergarten. If they can afford it, they’ll try private or home schooling; or at the very least, they’ll shoot for an optional program.

They would like the city school system to be better, but, with all the other options out there, they don’t necessarily see it as their problem.

But I see it as a problem for me, them, and the whole community.

For instance, I’m a city girl by nature. I love the energy and the personality of a city, and were I — hypothetically — to have children, I would like them to grow up in a city. It doesn’t have to be in a field of high-rises, but I want them (my hypothetical children) exposed to culture, diversity, architecture, and art. But if urban schools are sub-par, it doesn’t matter how much art or culture they consume at home. I’d want to take them somewhere else.

So, in self-interest I believe the city schools are my problem.

I want to live in a place that is vibrant and creative; that has a prosperous economic base, jobs, and a bustling market economy (to feed my need for good shopping). Memphis needs more businesses. So either those businesses have to be homegrown or we have to lure them here. In the interest of economics, the city schools are my problem.

I also want to live in a place that is relatively safe, where I don’t have to worry about getting mugged in broad daylight or having someone shoot me for my car or my shoes or my jacket. Violence is everywhere, but highly educated populations are also highly mobile. The opposite is true of lower-educated populations, meaning: If today’s students don’t learn, they won’t leave. And if they’re uneducated, they’re at greater risk of committing crimes. There’s a reason why the cost of education is so often compared with the cost of prison.

City schools. My problem. Our problem.

It’s not only about the children. It’s about the future of a community.

E-mail: cashiola@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News News Feature

CITY BEAT

HERENTON IS JUST BEING HERENTON

Willie Herenton once told this newspaper to go to hell. You have to like that kind of style.

Herenton is the most popular mayor in the history of Memphis. That is a matter of fact. He has been elected to an unprecedented four consecutive terms. In the last three elections he got two to three times as many votes as his closest rival.

But if you read only the articles and letters in the daily newspaper, you might think Herenton is the Memphis equivalent of former California Gov. Gray Davis and on the verge of being recalled.

The latest “outrage” is his decision not to reappoint Herman Morris as president of Memphis Light Gas & Water. But why should there be a pity party for Morris? He makes $34,000 a year more than the mayor. He has held his job for six years, the same length of time as his three predecessors, despite having no previous experience as head of a large public or private organization.

There is no evidence that Morris was treated unfairly. Herenton was forthright in his criticisms of MLGW. There were no leaks, no anonymous slurs. In a public meeting that included Morris, MLGW board members, elected officials, and reporters, Herenton made several specific criticisms about the utility company. So far none of them has been refuted. For his part, Morris was gracious in accepting Herenton’s decision.

So why the fuss? Why is it front-page news if a reporter can find a single public official, Judge D’Army Bailey, to criticize the Morris firing and buttress the charge by dredging up the dismissals of a city attorney and a police chief several years ago? And why is Herenton bashed almost daily in the letters to the daily paper?

The reason is that Herenton’s style does not fit the standard notion of acceptable behavior by politicians. He is much too blunt. He says what he thinks, which is that after 12 years he has lost patience with two-headed government, the city school board, and MLGW.

A diehard group of Herenton haters, many of whom live outside of Memphis, bombards the daily paper with letters trashing city crime, city schools, and city taxes. Usually they end with a vow to leave if they haven’t done so already. Curiously, many of them praise MLGW despite its upcoming rate increase and frustrating customer service. The guess here is that this may well be an organized letter-writing campaign by MLGW employees, but I can’t prove it.

The whining is both tiresome and unfair. In New York, Detroit, Washington D.C., and other big cities, mayors are doing the same things Herenton is trying to do. Police chiefs and school superintendents and elected board members come and go all the time. The turnover in Memphis city government is no greater than the turnover at local corporations, sports teams, or a certain daily newspaper.

When Herenton is curt it usually doesn’t last. The man who once told us to go to hell is the same man who unfailingly answers questions from us and other news outfits and never goes off the record. Like it or not, it is clear what he stands for, which is more than can be said for politicians who hide behind public relations agents, platitudes, and a sickeningly sweet attempt to be all things to all people.

In a few days Herenton will make his annual state of the city speech. Here’s hoping he offends somebody.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

POLITICS

TRUE GRITS: On his second day of a Southern-states “True Grit” tour, General Wesley Clark, Democratic candidate for president, greeted local supporters at a Peabody fundraiser Tuesday morning He later appeared at a public rally at AutoZone Park. Among those at the fundraiser (l to r): lawyer Al Harvey, state Senator Steve Cohen, businessman Chip Armstrong.

A FIGHTING CHANCE?

Don’t count out Wesley Clark for the top job.

Or for the second job, either.

As for the first premise, the former NATO commander, first-year Democrat, and late-blooming presidential candidate demonstrated with two appearances in Memphis Tuesday that he’s learning the game of politics (and the lingo of his adopted party). He’s still a viable long-shot alternative to both Howard Dean and George W. Bush.

As for the second premise, Clark pointedly declined to rule himself out as a potential vice-presidential running mate for Democratic frontrunner Dean. (“The presidency is what we’re after, though. There’s no point in talking about anything else. That’s what I told Dean,” Clark said in an interview.)

Meanwhile, the candidate is picking up real and potential across-the-board support in Tennessee ranging from Rickey Peete’s North Memphis mafia to the inner council of Governor Phil Bredesen in Nashville.

Peete, state representatives Larry Miller and Ulysses Jones, and city council chairman-designate Joe Brown were on hand at a morning fundraiser at The Peabody. So were state Senator Steve Cohen and Shelby County Commissioner Michael Hooks. So was Assessor Rita Clark. So was Gale Jones Carson, a top aide to Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton. So were entrepreneurial presences Henry Turley and Karl Schledwitz. So, tellingly, were former Democratic chairmen and erstwhile rivals John Farris and Sidney Chism.

Absent but presumed present at a later Nashville event were Bredesen insiders Stuart Brunson, Byron Trauger, and Johnny Hays, who will, it is said, play major campaign roles for Clark in advance of the February 10th Tennessee primary.

Whether former Vermont governor Dean will do well enough in the forthcoming Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary to make the rest of the primary season a cakewalk is anybody’s guess. But Clark is developing his chops just in case.

At the Peabody fundraiser, Clark made an obvious effort to broaden his resume — heavy on foreign-policy experience — with talk of domestic issues. He buttonholed Circuit Court Judge D’Army Bailey, with whom he had an extended conversation peppered with phrases like “urban black youth” and “minority small business initiatives.”

Later, in an address to the 200 or so people who showed up for a rally at AutoZone Park, Clark continued such talk, embroidering it with references to “affirmative actionÉdiversity, and inclusiveness” and joining all that to an emphasis on the “values, both Southern values and American values” which he learned, he said, growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The circumstances of his upbringing, of course, constitute the bottom line, even more so than his experience in successfully prosecuting a war in the late Ô90s against ethnic cleansing and the Serbs. As a Southerner with an impeccable military background, he has a fighting chance, south of the Mason-Dixon lin, to depose President George W. Bush, whom he calls “one of the most divisive and polarizing leaders in American history” — thereby to fill what he perceives as a need for “better leadership” in America.

Some of his local supporters see Clark not only as a possible winner against Bush but as someone who could boost other Democrats running in Tennessee. “We’ve got some races down here, and we need somebody who’s willing to campaign in Tennessee and can do so successfully,” opened Farris, who doesn’t see Dean as the answer to his prayers.

Clark had got what supporter Paula Casey called a “rock-star” reception at AutoZone, and worked a passable call-and-response with the crowd. Later on, reflecting on the morning in the privacy of an AutoZone box, he agreed with an observer’s assessment that, with practice, he’s learning the new game of politics. At one point he held his palms out and demonstrated the difference between his left and right hands.

The left one is whole; the right one was shredded during his military combat in Vietnam as a company commander. Clark demonstrated that his right index finger is shorter than its left-hand counterpart: The metacarpal bone was shattered (later to be rebuilt) and the muscle attached to it was, he said, blasted by a Viet Cong bullet all the way up the length of his arm, exiting his body somewhere near the shoulder blade.

“I can’t shoot a basketball,” he said, “but there’s nothing wrong with my right-hand handshake.” Indeed, there’s not, as he demonstrated on Tuesday, and there’s no doubt that this determined warrior and athlete (he swims and exercises rigorously each morning) and former Rhodes Scholar is willing and able to adapt as needed in the pursuit of his newest goal.

And, in the revised climate of opinion following the U.S. capture of Saddam Hussein and recent hints of economic revival, Clark’s foreign-policy credentials make it at least theoretically possible that his party might ultimately adapt to him.