Month: July 2005

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

MEET THE NEW BOSS…

CREDIT: Steve Steffens

Doubt that Harold Ford Jr. is nimble on his feet? Disbelieve that his organization lives and breathes and still has clout? Assume, in fact, that they’re not still in charge of local Democratic Party affairs?

Don’t.

One week after suffering a defeat at the local party convention which should have been decisive – at least symbolically – Ford and the Fordites sponsored a “Unity” breakfast at Café Francisco downtown in honor of new Democratic Party chairman Matt Kuhn and his freshly elected executive committee.

Cutting to the chase, here, in part, is what Kuhn had to say on Saturday to the gathered faithful: (These included numerous members of the “Convention Coalition” and the party’s Herenton/Chism faction, whose votes, together, elected young Kuhn over a Ford-sponsored candidate, the estimable David Cocke.)

:

Kuhn: “It is so good to see everybody here together.…Last week at this time we came together as a party. And I want you to know that the first call I received was from our congressman, Harold Ford Jr (applause) Thank you. Jack Kennedy once said that a rising tide raises all boats….Now, I don’t know a whole lot about sailing, but I know something about politics, and I just want to say that the rising tide we need to understand and we need to realize this in Shelby County…the rising tide in next year’s election is sending a Democrat from Shelby County to the United State Senate….”

“So when our candidate for Senate was not there with us last week, I actually smiled and knew what he was doing and thought it was a good thing. What happened last week was about coming together. And I want to tell you a little something about why I think that and why I think it’s important. In 2000, when Al Gore needed someone to give the keynote address at the Democratic convention, Harold Ford Jr. was for us. He was there. And in the past election, when John Kerry needed someone from Shelby County to provide vision, leadership, Harold Ford Jr. was with us. This past Thursday, on the floor of the House of Representatives – you labor folks will know what I’m talking about – Harold Ford Jr. was with us. In August of 2006 and in November of 2006 we need to be there for him.”

Afterward, Kuhn seemed to be aware that he might have crossed way over a line. (There’s a primary on, after all, involving another candidate for the U.S. Senate – state Senator Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville, who spoke at last week’s Democratic convention , which Ford, as Kuhn indicated, had been absent from — and party officials are normally obliged to remain netural in such matters.) When asked about what he’d said, the new chairman tried to maintain that his remarks weren’t really an endorsement

Not an endorsement? That’s like saying Breyer’s Ice Cream is non-caloric. Stuff me with such a “non-endorsement,” Mr. Chairman, and I’ll turn into a pig and run for something myself!

To be sure, not all of Kuhn’s votes from last week’s convention at the University of Memphis were from Democrats miffed at the congressman’s cautious-to-conservative political posture over the last couple of years. Many were, though, and many of those who weren’t were seriously out of love with his local organization. And that’s not even to mention the Herenton/Chism organization, chief rivals to the Ford people.

The fact is, no other candidate for chairman – not even longtime loyalist Cocke himself – could have sung such an open-voweled hosanna to the congressman as did Kuhn. What does he say to Kurita the next time she comes around? What does he say when his committee meets, not many days off, to reorganize?

But give it to the congressman and give it to his people: They turned around a messy situation in record time. Besides Ford himself, Shelby County mayor A C Wharton – who had co-sponsored Cocke along with him – addressed the throng. The third member of Cocke’s triumvirate, Asssessor Rita Clark, kept her silence, though she was an elbow’s length away from the action, putting (as they say) her hands together.

Even some of the congressman’s habitual Internet scourges – like Steve Steffens of Leftwingcracker.blogspot.com – were caught up in the swoonfest (which had an abundance of blue Ford-for-Senate buttons being sported by attendees). In the first post-breakfast posting on his blog, headed “It Was a Good Morning for the SCDP,” Steffens praised Ford’s “rousing” speech and made much of the congressman’s $2500 donation to party coffers (ponied up in response to a challenge from none other than Joe Cooper, who started that game off with a $1000 gift), and pledged henceforth to keep his remarks “constructive.” (Another helping, if you will, Mr. Breyer!)

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss? Hmmmmm, we’ll see. But never again doubt that Harold Ford Jr. is one hell of a politician – perhaps one more formidable than his adversaries can hope to match.. One can sum up the last week thisaway: The King is Dead (not). Long live the King!

RUMORS & RUMBLES:

Given his proper Kudos in Matt Kuhn’s address to the troops Saturday was one Jim Strickland, a former party chairman who was probably primus inter pares among Kuhn’s early boosters for chairman. (The others, also mentioned by Kuhn, were Nancy Kuhn, the new chairman’s mother; and Randa Spears.)

Preoccupied with family and business matters, lawyer Strickland has been absent from many (perhaps most) significant party affairs of late, including Saturday’s lovefest – whose sponsors were not necessarily his cup of tea. But he does exist and indeed was an early hand in the Kuhn-for-chairman idea – maybe even the first mover.) And the 2003 city council candidate still has political ambitions of his own.

Two likely candidates for the position of Juvenile Court Judge, which longtime incumbent Kenneth Turner is said to be vacating next year, are municipal judge Earnestine Hunt Dorse, a 1998 candidate who has declared for the race, and Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey, who – pending the outcome of an appeal of a term-limits ruling – has not.

The question of who leads in the two legislative races on Thursday’s primary ballot depends on who’s doing the opining: Some still think that Ophelia Ford should finish ahead in the Democratic primary for the District 29 state Senate seat. Reasoning? The family name still counts for much, and the field is large and fragmented. Moreover, she is said to be on the verge of sending out an impressive campaign mailer. And, finally, the seat was held for decades by brother John, who resigned it in the wake of his many legal difficulties.

Others think the Fords as a unit either are not contributing or cannot contribute to sister Ophelia’s campaign effort, and many note her absence from candidate forums and other meet-and-greet affairs.

Meanwhile, almost everybody besides the Ophelia-boosters sees state Representative Barbara Cooper to be at or near the lead in the Democratic field, with House colleague Henri Brooks close behind. Another state rep. John DeBerry, is thought to be lagging.

Southwest Tennessee Community College prof Steve Haley soldiers on and makes converts in a campaign that is more than usually issue-conscious. Haley actually espouses an income tax – at least to the point of having it “on the table,” and he doesn’t shy away from criticizing Governor Bredesen’s TennCare cuts as unnecessary. Kevin McLellan, another white candidate and a former Southwest cadre himself, takes a contrary view that Bredesen is more sinned against than sinning.

Want to respond? Send us an email here.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Eats Yer Spinach

At the salad bar these days, I forgo lettuce entirely. Nothing against lettuce, but where else do you have to pay $5 to $8 a pound for it? On the other hand, a plate full of Baco-Bits represents quite a savings over what it would cost to make bacon at home.

But alas, even I might find a full plate of bacon too much. So I build my salad around a whopping pile of the baby green that eats like a meal­ – spinach.

And I’m not the only one wolfing down spinach. In my lifetime, U.S. consumption has quintupled. Americans haven’t eaten this much spinach (2.4 pounds per year per capita, according to the USDA) since the 1950s, when Popeye gave the industry a boost.

Back then, spinach was usually eaten from cans. Today, Americans like their spinach fresh and young – although not necessarily in that order. Baby spinach is the nation’s new green darling, according to a recent Bon Appetit survey of diners’ favorite vegetables. People are buying pre-washed baby spinach by the bag, mostly grown in the Southwest. Me, I like my baby spinach. But it doesn’t compare to a succulent, dinnerplate-sized leaf, fresh straight from the ground.

In the same family as beet and chard, spinach is thought to have originated in ancient Persia (now Iran). Spinach arrived, via Nepal, in seventh-century China, where it is still called “Persian Greens.” Spinach didn’t hit Europe until the 11th century, when the Moors brought it to Spain. Known for a while in England as “the Spanish vegetable,” the name was shortened and modified to “spinach,” before Popeye lengthened it to “spinachk.”

Spinach’s list of nutritional qualities stretches longer than Olive Oyl’s legs. Vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber, folic acid, omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, iron, you name it – but if iron is what you are after, make sure to cook the spinach with lemon or some other acid, which makes that rust-prone nutrient more accessible.

Spinach does have one downside. According to the Environmental Working Group, spinach is one of the 12 common food crops most likely to be contaminated by pesticide residue. The most common pesticides found on spinach are Permethrin, Dimethoate, and – get this – DDT, which is known to cause cancer, birth defects, and reproductive damage.

Wait a minute … Wasn’t Dichlorodiphenyltri-chloroethane (DDT) banned in 1972? Banned for use in the U.S., yes. But we continue to manufacture and export it by the ton to developing nations. One of the reasons, arguably a good one, is DDT’s mosquito-killing power, which is a big help in the global fight against malaria. But it’s no secret that farmers in developing nations still use DDT on their crops, and the joke is on us when some imported spinach is found to contain significant traces of DDT. The other reason DDT is found on spinach is that it persists in the environment for years. Domestic spinach can still contain traces of DDT that was sprayed before 1972. Pesticides, so the saying goes, don’t know when to stop killing. Thus, more than almost any other item of produce, spinach should be purchased in organic form.

While most of the nation’s spinach is grown in California, Texas, and Arizona, this time of year it shouldn’t be hard to find organic spinach locally. The Farmer’s Market is the most obvious place, followed by stores that make an effort to market organic produce.

When heated, spinach cooks down remarkably. If you want to cook it at all, baby spinach can be tossed onto a dish as it’s leaving the stove, and the heat of the food will wilt it. But if you have a nice quantity of spinach, you might want to try the following Indian dish called saag paneer, which means “spinach and cheese” in Hindi. Fry half a cup of chopped onion or shallots in two tablespoons of butter. Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt and one tablespoon of garam masala, an Indian spice mixture available at many stores and online. Let this cook together for a few minutes, then add the equivalent of two bunches of spinach to the pan and half a cup of cheese curds. Season with salt to taste. Cook with the lid on until the curds are soft.

My final suggestion is something I call “Scrambled Spinach Omelet.” If you don’t eat meat, you can skip the pork belly and use oil instead. Otherwise, begin by preparing the pan with a strip of chopped bacon. While it’s cooking, add chopped onion and peppers, if you like those things. Meanwhile, beat as many eggs as you want to eat, beating in salt, pepper, and mashed or pressed garlic. When the stuff in the pan is almost ready, pour in the eggs. While the eggs begin to cook, drop little dollops of cheese (I like Brie, chevre, and/or Parmesan) on top of the gently cooking egg pancake. Add a whopping handful of baby or chopped spinach. When you smell the eggs starting to cook, stir the contents of the pan until the eggs are to your liking. n

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Happy Couple

< So far this decade there have been at least nine Hollywood comedies to star at least two of the following five actors: Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, and Vince Vaughn. The media have lately dubbed this gaggle of actors the "Frat Pack," a moniker probably inspired by the Vaughn-Ferrell-Luke Wilson frat farce Old School, but one that makes them sound dumber and less engaging than they actually are.

At their best, these actors make broad, high-concept comedies that are brighter, funnier, and sunnier than the bleak Rob Schneider vehicles and Saturday Night Live spin-offs they get lumped in with. (Ferrell is an SNL graduate, but his star so exceeds other SNLers of his generation that lumping him into that comic category seems too limiting.) Still, these films function better as a collection of moments than as full-fledged movies and work best when they stay true to the comic ethos made famous by Seinfeld: “No hugging. No learning.”

Wedding Crashers, which stars Vaughn and Owen Wilson as a pair of divorce mediators who spend “wedding season” every year infiltrating ceremonies to romance horny bridesmaids, boasts the funniest trailers of the year. But if you’ve seen enough of these kinds of movies, you still fear that Wedding Crashers will scrap its surefire premise to make room for a drearily conventional plot. You worry that the good times can’t last with hugging and learning on the horizon.

In Wedding Crashers, this fear is only halfway fulfilled. The film does indeed dispatch its comically fertile premise early on, in 20 minutes of giddy, satisfying montage that ends with Wilson’s and Vaughn’s respective prey being twirled from the dance floor to the bedroom. Wilson’s and Vaughn’s characters prepare for “wedding season” the way some guys prepare for fantasy baseball – brushing up on the peculiar rules and customs of their chosen hobby, scouting wedding announcements for choice nuptials to attend, preparing pseudonyms and back stories to deploy, handicapping the quality of the food and liquor.

And though the chance to woo romantically primed women for one night of dishonest sex (using such tactics as dancing with the flower girls, making balloon animals for kids, and forcing fake tears at the “I do” moments to charm prospective targets) is the ostensible goal, you also get the sense that their excitement over wedding season runs deeper: It’s not just the women they crave but the weddings themselves, which really are the best and happiest parties. As Vaughn says to one of his soon-to-be-divorced clients, it doesn’t matter if the band’s any good, because music is in the air, and everyone is happy.

Wedding Crashers takes knowing shots at wedding culture (Wilson and Vaughn take side bets on which Bible verse a bridesmaid is about to read), but it also revels in the rituals. These guys seem as drunk on booze and finger food, ethnic customs and dancing (always, at the end, to “Shout!”) and loopy fellowship, as much as on the promise of bedding a bridesmaid.

Wedding Crashers could have spent the whole movie following Wilson and Vaughn to one wedding after another without thought to character development and left me happy, but instead it does exactly what you fear, exchanging its undeniable premise for a sketchy, familiar plot: Wilson falls for a bridesmaid at one wedding, where another bridesmaid (they’re sisters, natch) falls for Vaughn. Somehow they make it work. Mostly.

Credit is due to the Wedding Crashers‘ women, who are equal matches for the male stars in a way women rarely are in these movies. Rachel McAdams is suitably winning as Wilson’s straight-(wo)man love interest, charming him – and us – when she stifles giggles at her big sis’ wedding as the “sailing enthusiast” groom exchanges self-written vows with his “first mate.” But Isla Fisher, as the enthusiastic paramour Vaughn tries to rid himself of until, of course, he falls hard for her, is the real treat, bum-rushing the boys club with a movie-stealing performance of unabashed sexiness, uninhibited goofiness, and crazy-eyed zeal. She needs to become a “Frat Pack” regular, stat.

Of course, Wilson and Vaughn, direct partners on screen for the first time, help things along with their own chemistry, matching easygoing with tightly wound, Wilson’s beach-bum sunniness with Vaughn’s maniacal true-believer seriousness in the face of even the most outrageous situations.

There may not be individual moments in Wedding Crashers quite as guffaw-inducing as the best moments from such “Frat Pack” standouts as Old School and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, but outside of The Royal Tenenbaums (an obvious ringer) or maybe Meet the Parents, it’s the best overall film of the bunch.

In the end, the two sides of Wedding Crashers‘ personality – the irredeemable premise and the redemption-based plot – can’t quite connect: Good-girl McAdams melting for Wilson moments after he admits to cruising funerals for easy play rings false. But a few other missteps aside (including an unfortunate subplot with McAdams’ and Fisher’s surly gay brother), getting there is a winning ride, making Wedding Crashers probably the best mainstream comedy of the year.

– Chris Herrington

Imagine, if you will, that you live a tightly controlled life: You have a diet that is monitored with each bathroom release and you work a meaningless job you neither understand nor enjoy. Everybody seems to be wearing the same outfit, sexual contact is forbidden, and your only source of introspection is your regular visit to the company shrink. That said, I imagine there are some readers out there for whom this happens to be true. Truer still is that there are those whose daily aspirations revolve around the prospects of winning the lottery. For the rest of you, agreeable escapist entertainment can be found with The Island.

Ewan McGregor is Lincoln Six Echo, a clone (shhh … don’t tell him he’s a clone. He doesn’t know.) living in a large beachside facility he believes is one of the last refuges from a great contamination that has destroyed all life on Earth. His life is a simple one, consisting of regulated food, mindless work, and impeccable exercise. And yet, this is not enough for Lincoln. He questions. He wonders. He’s curious. One day he finds a bug in a boiler room and is fascinated. Bugs are supposed to be extinct. What gives? Surely the government isn’t lying to him.

Scarlett Johansson is sexy lady clone Jordan Two Delta, friend to Lincoln and latest winner of the lottery. This lottery owes more to Shirley Jackson’s sinister short story than to Powerball, and in a key and suspenseful early scene, Lincoln discovers the nefarious truth behind the winnings and manages to escape the facility with Jordan in tow. The escape is reminiscent of the old joke about the Polish Navy having a submarine with a screen door in that this facility that is so regulated and secure has an easily accessible boiler room with a conspicuous exit into the real world. But never you mind that.

The real world, as it turns out, is 2019 United States. Fast rocket motorcycles, electromagnetic monorails, and the latest Microsoft all abound, and Lincoln and Jordan quickly learn (via help from the adorably scummy Steve Buscemi) that they must find the people from whom they were cloned in order to figure out their destinies and escape their pursuers. But the malevolent Dr. Merrick (Sean Bean), who is responsible for their cloning and the poor ethics behind it, has employed expert bounty hunter Albert Laurent (imposing Djimon Hounsou) to track them down at all costs.

Director Michael Bay, responsible for some of modern moviegoing’s most reprehensible entertainment (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor), actually acquits himself (somewhat) of years of tasteless exploitation by imbuing his trademark car chases and sun-drenched, almost pornographic cinematography on an intelligent premise and clever execution. Little distinguishes this from other, better science fiction, but with the classy cast (including Michael Clarke Duncan as Starkweather), you have at least a clone of a good time.

–

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Don’t Hide Our Past

Frankly, we have thought that the ongoing fuss over the existing names of certain downtown parks has been misguided. No change of name is going to eradicate the fact that, once upon a time, there was a Confederate States of America, nor that Memphis and Tennessee belonged to that short-lived and ill-fated experiment in nationhood. The founders of the Confederacy were not “traitors” (as one normally reasonable local official has declared), any more than were the Founding Fathers in their earlier declaration of independence from Great Britain. They made no allegiances to a foreign power. Their sin – a grievous one, and grievously answered – was commitment to the ignoble institution of slavery. This fact stains the honor and the memory of Jefferson Davis and General Nathan Bedford Forrest and the 13-state Confederacy as a whole. But it would be petty, as well as historically inaccurate, to ignore the extraordinary tenacity and heroism evinced by the aforementioned in that tragic event known as the American Civil War.

The bottom line is that Davis and Forrest and the Confederacy are all, indelibly, part of our history. To ignore that fact and to rename three downtown parks, as some propose, in order to conceal it is pointless. It is the kind of historical revisionism practiced by the late, unlamented Soviet Union, characterized by officially sanctioned photo-cropping and “purges” of historical figures who did not fit the party narrative. As state senator Steve Cohen wisely observed in his dissent from other Center City Commission members’ decision to pass the name-change proposition on to the City Council: “That’s history. … Nobody can debate that Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Memphian.” And he noted that Ramesses the Great, prominently commemorated in a statue in front of The Pyramid, had been a tyrant who enslaved Cohen’s Jewish ancestors in ancient Egypt.

Putting all this in even greater perspective was a subsequent suggestion made – with evident seriousness – by local businessman Karl Schledwitz, who proposed uprooting Forrest and his wife, along with the well-known statue of the general mounted on his steed, and moving them to Elmwood Cemetery. Aside from the ghoulishness of this – just imagine the clanking machinery showing up on NBC Nightly News as the disinterral got under way – it is hard to imagine an action that would be more inflammatory to the sensibilities of those Memphians who would oppose such a dramatic alteration in the city’s landscape. And make no mistake: This would be an ugly fight and would bring the worst possible kind of attention to Memphis. Just this week, at its national convention in Nashville, the Sons of Confederate Veterans pledged $10,000 to wage a legal battle against the removal of Confederate monuments in Memphis. Is this really the kind of publicity that will lure an International Paper headquarters to our city? Do we really want this kind of nasty squabble to define Memphis’ image on the national news? Surely, our civic leaders have more important things to attend to.

And more constructive solutions to the current controversy are at hand. It has been suggested by some that memorials and statuaries be added to the downtown parks that would pay homage to the African-American side of our history and to its many worthy exemplars. We already pay tribute here and there to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Perhaps more is required, especially given the fact that Dr. King made his ultimate sacrifice here. And Memphis history has been graced by numerous other black heroes who could be honored by appropriate memorials.

What we need is more, and more diverse, recognition of our history – not less. We can’t progress into the future by trying to cover up the tracks of where we’ve been. n

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Female Aficionados

As a woman, I get especially proud when I meet a dynamic, talented female winemaker. It means she’s not afraid of the good ol’ boy wine industry. Women have made considerable advancement in the wine ranks, thanks to the commitment of many stalwart individuals. Still, there’s room for improvement. I recently Googled “female winemakers,” and three of the first four sites extolled the sex appeal of these ladies rather than their abilities. In a land that reveres fake boobs and facelifts, it’s kind of expected, but come on. It would be nice if kudos for female winemakers came for verve not va-voom.

Like many other industries, the turnaround began during the women’s movement in the early 1970s. In 1973, MaryAnn Graf, the first female graduate of University of California at Davis’ viticulture and enology program, became head winemaker at Napa Valley’s Simi Winery, a business with a tradition of employing female managers. Then Zelma Long, considered the most important woman in California wine history, started her career in the labs of Robert Mondavi Winery, moving to Simi as winemaker and eventually becoming the executive vice president of Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s California wineries, which includes Simi.

Inspiring many others were additional trailblazers such as Merry Edwards and Helen Turley, two women who also made it on their own. Edwards got her start in the early ’70s when, even armed with a Master’s degree in enology, she kept getting rejected after interviewers learned “Merry” equaled female. Undeterred, she eventually landed a position at Mount Eden Vineyards and is now one of California’s foremost vintners – male or female – producing unbelievable Pinot Noirs in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley.

Turley, the genius behind super-venerated, super-concentrated cabernets from Pahlmeyer, Colgin, and Marcassin, has been called the best winemaker in California by many writers and winemakers alike. She started at Sonoma’s BR Cohn, one of my favorite Cabernet producers, in the mid ’80s. After wowing everyone, she began an illustrious consulting career.

In Europe, gender equality in the wine world still hovers in the Middle Ages, but strong-willed females have made progress. In 1975, Maria Martinez, a warmhearted yet tough survivor, began her wine career in Spain’s Rioja region. After only four years of working in the cellars, she earned her spot among the esteemed winemaker ranks and has since been crowned “the Queen of Rioja” as the head winemaker at highly respected, 130-year-old Bodegas Montecillo.

When asked about her role as a high-profile female in this business, Martinez quietly replied, “I am in love with this profession … and I’m a fighter.” She sadly admits, though, that there are no other “respected” female winemakers in Rioja. (At a recent luncheon I attended in Tampa, Florida, honoring Martinez, only two of the 14 wine industry attendees were women.)

The rise of women shouldn’t surprise anyone. Research has shown that women possess a better sense of smell than men, and more “supertasters” – those with more tastebuds and thus more sensitive palates – are female. And chicks drink. A 2003 study from the Wine Market Council found that 60 percent of Americans who consumed wine once or more a week were women. In that same year, Simmons Market Research Bureau reported that women consumed more than half of all wine.

And females continue to grow into the profession. Today, women make up almost 50 percent of the undergraduates at the winemaking program at UC Davis. Get ready world. Chicks have arrived.

Recommended Wines

Montecillo 2003 Bianco – Smells like summer, with fragrant lime and fresh, clean sheets. Tart lemon-lime and creamy vanilla in the mouth, with an acidic finish. Excellent value. $6.

Merry Edwards 2002 Pinot Noir Russian River – Oh my, how I love her wine. Earthy cherry, raspberry and blueberry home in on that one special spot in your mouth that ignites such pleasure. Elegant, classy, and sophisticated. $34. n

Categories
News The Fly-By

Compromise in Cordova

The fighting is finally over, and everybody’s happy – mostly.

The County Commission recently approved LaGrange Commons, a proposed development near Raleigh-LaGrange and Macon Roads in Cordova.

Residents of LaGrange Downs, a nearby subdivision, have been against the development that would place 133 residential lots in the wooded area behind their homes.

After a County Commission committee ordered the neighbors and developers to work out a compromise, the new plan called for 125 lots, a wooden fence separating the neighborhoods, and wider rear yards.

At the Commission meeting, the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development recommended the commission amend the proposal to include a barricade at the corner of LaGrange Circle North and LaGrange Downs for safety issues. It would be left in place until a traffic signal is installed at Macon and Raleigh-LaGrange roads.

“We got what we wanted in a way,” said LaGrange Downs resident Joby Dion. “It’s not really a victory. They’re still tearing down our woods, but that’s why it’s called a compromise.” n

Categories
Opinion

Man on Horseback

The real problem with Forrest Park is neglect, not the equestrian statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest or the controversial name. Like many other city parks, it’s a mess. The grass is knee-high and littered with trash and dead tree limbs, metal benches are bent and broken, and trees and bushes haven’t been pruned in years.

Normally, few people would notice any of this because the park on Union Avenue next to the University of Tennessee Medical Center is usually empty. For the last two weeks, however, every local television station and newspaper covered the Forrest Park controversy and took pictures of the statue. The national media are likely to follow when the controversy reaches the Memphis City Council. Now suppose you are mayor of our fair city and the Memphis Park Commission answers to you. You have been a public official for 25 years and know a photo opportunity better than most television news directors. Do you make sure a crew cleans up the park? Go see.

Assuming that Willie Herenton doesn’t resign, he could be voted out for apathy, if not in a recall election in 2006 then in the regular election of 2007. After nearly 14 years, the mayor simply shows no zest for the most basic duties of the job. How can Memphians have any confidence in the mayor possibly taking over MLGW, if his park commission can’t cut the grass and pick up the trash in a park in the news on one of the busiest streets in town?

Lawyer/developer Karl Schledwitz, a member of the UT Board of Regents, has proposed moving Forrest’s monument and grave to Elmwood Cemetery and having the city turn the park over to UT. It’s about time UT asserted itself. The medical school should be allowed to develop part of the park since the park commission doesn’t maintain it. A renamed, cleaned-up, and smaller park could help revitalize both UT’s campus and Union Avenue, which is bordered by several blighted buildings and vacant lots between the old Baptist Hospital and AutoZone Park. University medical centers in Birmingham, St. Louis, Nashville, and Jackson, Mississippi, are hubs of new construction, street life, and restaurants. The only restaurant near the UT Medical Center in Memphis is a McDonald’s.

Memphis has been in national newspapers and magazines a lot this summer thanks to Nathan Bedford Forrest, Craig Brewer’s movie Hustle & Flow, International Paper’s possible headquarters relocation, and the residential growth of Harbor Town, Uptown, and South End. Not all of the news reports have been positive. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman noted last week, Toyota shunned pitches from Southern locales and will instead put a new plant in Ontario. Memphis and eastern Arkansas – unlike Middle Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Kentucky – have made no headway in the car chase. As Krugman wrote, “Japanese auto companies opening plants in the Southern U.S. have been unfavorably surprised by the work force’s poor level of training.” Focus groups interviewed for an upcoming Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce report made similar comments.

Although Herenton sometimes seems as burned out as a Fourth of July firecracker, he and the chamber have a chance to close a bragging-rights deal with International Paper, which will make a decision within 30 days. More than 2,000 other IP employees relocated to Memphis or were hired here since 1987.

Dexter Muller, a former city division director and interim CEO of the chamber, said, “We have to deal with it as a competition. This is too important to take for granted.”

The incentives package is likely to include moving costs for at least some of the 134 Stamford, Connecticut, employees, which Muller said can be as much as $30,000 per employee. IP’s executive compensation has been under fire from shareholder activists. Former CEO John Dillon, who retired in 2003, got $15.2 million in his last year, or 595 times the average U.S. worker’s salary of $25,500. His successor, John Faraci, made $4,884,333 in 2004. IP’s stock has been a laggard. A $100 investment in 1999 was worth $85 five years later. Paper industry peer group stocks were worth $113.

Wonder what the IP honchos and their wives will make of the gritty scenes in Hustle & Flow, or Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority Chairman Arnold Perl’s recent crack that Memphis minus FedEx is Shreveport.

Trivia note: The president of IP when the company moved to Memphis in 1987 was Paul O’Neill, later Treasury Secretary under President George W. Bush, whom he famously described in a book as being “like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people.” n

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Postscript

Thanks, Chris!

To the Editor:

I would like to personally thank Chris Davis for assuming in his article “Hustler” (July 21st issue) that all of Memphis has already seen Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow. I am going to go out on a limb here, but I am pretty sure that there are some of us who were not issued passes to private screenings nor invited to the Peabody Place premiere.

Usually, when a movie is reviewed before it comes out nationally, a general summary will do, sprinkled with personal opinions of the reviewer, as Chris Herrington does in his review in the same issue. Now that I know the specific ending of the movie, thanks to Davis’ tenth paragraph (as well as another key scene revealed in the next paragraph), my desire to rush out and see the movie has been diminished. Please, Chris, when you review Black Snake Moan, issue a spoiler alert, warning all of us that you will be giving away the ending of that movie as well.

Louis J. Stifter

Memphis

A Dichotomy

To The Editor:

The dichotomy of material in last week’s (July 21st issue) Flyer was stunning. First, the usual work by Keith English and Tim Sampson on Bush the Hated Dictator, then the article on the nice folks going to help prop up the Castro regime – complete with an icon of communist revolutionary Che Guevera on their bus (“Cuban Caravan”).

If English and Sampson were Cubans, just trying to have similar material on Castro published would probably put them in prisons that make the worst conditions for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay look like a resort. If a Cuban publication tried to publish the material, it would be closed or restaffed immediately, with the editors joining the authors in prison.

Since Castro forcibly took power in the 1960s, he has imprisoned, tortured, or murdered every opponent to his regime and his beliefs – including homosexuals. He had his own brother shot, supposedly for using the Cuban military to run one of the world’s largest drug cartels, but mainly for being too popular with the military.

Every bit of “prosperity” provided the Cuban people was paid for by the forced labor of their former USSR’s proletariat and their conquered “allies.” Austerity measures supposedly due to American restrictions funded the expansion of paramilitary and secret police units.

What a shame that the well-intentioned people in the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan can’t truly experience the treatment they are willing to accept for the average Cuban. Then, maybe they too would flee Castro’s paradise in makeshift rafts across shark-infested seas.

Herbert E. Kook Jr.

Germantown

Unfair

To the Editor:

As one of those who lost their TennCare coverage – unfairly, I think – I want to remind people how important it will be to vote in the next governor’s election, especially should Phil Bredesen decide to run again. This is the only way the people’s voice will really be heard. It is not the e-mails or the candlelight vigils that will change the system, it is the people’s voice. It is our state, and we should be calling the shots by putting people in office who will stand up for us. Let’s let them know just because we’re poor and sick, doesn’t mean we are worthless!

Peggy Dixon

Cinton, Tennessee

Busking Busted

To the Editor:

Busking is the tradition of performing in a public place for tips. Memphis history is full of buskers made good, including B.B. King, Furry Lewis, Memphis Minnie, and more recently, Robert Belfour and Richard Johnston.

Busking can lead to that first break that performers need – the first rung on the ladder to sucess. Some people, however, consider it to be panhandling with instruments. Bar owners often view buskers as competition. When the Beale Street administrators shut down Handy Park to busking, buskers found a loophole: They could play if they got the permision of a business owner. Carl Drew, Richard Johnston, me, and others enjoyed a brief resurgence of busking culture, but a couple of weeks ago, Beale Street management banned all busking after 8 p.m.

Richard Johnston is the subject of a PBS documentory. Many people came to Memphis to see him. Beale Street shutting down busking is like North Dakota jackhammering Mt. Rushmore into gravel. Clarksdale, Mississippi, Helena, Arkansas, and many other sites are luring blues tourists. They welcome buskers. Let’s start working for the good of all of Memphis, not just the fat cats! Busking is free speech! Take back the street.

John Lowe (Johnnie Lowebowe)

Memphis

Editor’s note: Due to an editing error, state representative Henri Brooks, a female, was referred to as a “he” in last week’s Flyer.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Going Uptown?

Last Friday was homecoming for Verlean Gibson.

Gibson, who lived in Hurt Village for 15 years, celebrated the grand opening of The Metropolitan, a 19-building community on the former public-housing site. The combination apartment, townhome, and loft complex is the newest project in Uptown, the city’s public-private redevelopment of the historic Greenlaw area.

Gibson called it “an amazement.” Across the way is a little park and a cove of pretty little houses in a rainbow of hues.

“The difference is that there aren’t any gunshots. You don’t have to duck,” said Gibson. “You have quietness and peace.”

Gibson, a former president of the Hurt Village Resident Association, didn’t think she’d get to come back.

“We thought they just wanted to build new stuff and put the residents out,” she said.

For Gibson, Uptown is a success story, a chance for a different, better life. But buried beneath the tidy green grass and the balconied brick apartments are some hard questions: How exactly is the city using eminent domain? And what does affordable housing mean in actual dollars, especially downtown? The Metropolitan’s opening came just days after a City Council housing and community development committee meeting attempted to address those questions.

“These rents range from $562 to $772,” said council member Barbara Swearengen Holt. “Where’s the number that’s considered affordable?”

That same day, however, Memphis was cited as a model of affordable housing by HUD’s national director. And, factoring in the cost of living in Memphis – 7 percent lower than Atlanta, 6 percent lower than Little Rock, and 2 percent lower than Dallas – we’re already at an advantage.

But part of Memphis’ challenge, says city director of housing and development Robert Lipscomb, is the gap between affordability and the actual cost, especially in places such as College Park, formerly called LeMoyne Gardens, where the average yearly income is $5,000.

“It’s almost impossible without having subsidies,” said Lipscomb. “If you make $500 a month, how do you afford food and utilities and still pay rent? Even if you use 30 percent of your income on housing, that’s about $150. It’s still nothing.”

Developing affordable housing is made more challenging because of the need to balance what may be in the public’s best interest with that of individual citizens.

James Sneed, for instance, owns property on North Third Street. A Millington resident, he recently put about $6,000 into the house and says his college-aged son would like to live there. But the city would like him to sell. And if he doesn’t, they may begin the eminent domain process.

So far, 176 properties have been acquired for the Uptown project, 66 of them through eminent domain.

“The city doesn’t have enough money to clean up all these areas,” said Lipscomb. “To do that, we have to attract the private sector to help us. … We don’t acquire a person’s property if it’s occupied, because we think, philosophically, it might not be the right thing to do. But to move the development forward, we have to eliminate slum and blight.”

But Sneed doesn’t think his property is blighted. “I told them, just tell us what we need to do. We have the means to do it,” he said. “The train just kept pushing. …I want to keep my property. I want my family, my children, to be able to enjoy what other people will be enjoying.”

With current redevelopment in the city and the recent Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain, it’s an issue that’s not going to disappear anytime soon.

For Gibson, the redevelopment in Uptown is a dream. For Sneed, it’s a nightmare. It just goes to show that making a house into a home is hard, but sometimes, making a city into one is even harder. n

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

1. An audit reveals that city school warehouse workers have allegedly stolen half a million dollars of mechanical equipment. Among other things, the employees ordered more air-conditioning fans than needed and possibly sold the extras. See? If we hadn’t air-conditioned the schools, this never would have happened.

2. The Center City Commission approves a resolution to “consider and evaluate” renaming Confederate, Forrest, and Jefferson Davis Parks. We guess the only way to make everyone happy is to give these places completely innocuous names: “That Park By UT,” “That Park Down by the River,” and “That Park On Front Street by the Post Office.”

3. After a week on eBay, the boarding-house bathtub where James Earl Ray stood while shooting Dr. Martin Luther King has drawn no bids. Meanwhile, the owner of one of the few remaining Merrymobiles has put it up for auction on eBay. At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before someone decides eBay is the best place to sell that statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

4. George Howard Putt, who terrorized Memphis during a killing spree in the summer of 1969, was originally sentenced to 497 years in prison. Yet Putt faces a parole hearing next month. What’s the point of handing down the longest sentence in Shelby County history if you’re eligible for parole with – let’s see – 461 years left to go? n