Month: August 2007

Categories
Music Music Features

Blue Mountain Returns to Memphis

It seems like almost yesterday when Oxford, Mississippi’s Blue Mountain arrived on the alt-country scene.

With songs such as “In a Station,” “Soul Sister,” and “Let’s Ride,” the band carved a niche for itself nearly a decade before groups such as Lucero and the Drive-By Truckers made their mark. Led by the husband-and-wife team Cary Hudson and Laurie Stirratt and anchored by drummer Frank Coutch, Blue Mountain effortlessly straddled the chasm between country and rock to serve up tunes that were equal parts Carter Family and Neil Young.

Then, after five albums, Hudson and Stirratt decided to call their marriage — and the band — quits. But the pair put aside their differences for a reunion tour that kicked off in St. Louis earlier this year.

Andria Lisle catches up with Blue Mountain in this week’s Flyer. Blue Mountain plays the Hi-Tone next Wednesday.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Fred Thompson Announces That He Will Announce For President Next Week

Former Tennessee senator and Law & Order star Fred Thompson announced yesterday that he will announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next week.

Thompson said he will announce his candidacy via video on his website (ImWithFred.com) on September 6th, then embark on a five-day swing through several early-voting primary states.

In a statement released yesterday, Thompson said: “I believe that there are millions of Americans who know that our security and prosperity are at risk if we don’t address the challenges of our time; the global threat of terrorism; taxes and spending that will bankrupt future generations, and a government that can’t seem to get the most basic responsibilities right for its citizens.

“The response that we’ve received makes me confident that we have an opportunity to change politics in Washington and across the country, and take on these challenges the way every generation of Americans has faced the challenges of their time — with unity, hard work and a belief that we will come out on the winning side.”

And on another note, ABC announced that it would not stop showing endless reruns of Law & Order, despite Thompson’s candidacy.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

The Appeal of John Ford

The John Ford saga isn’t over, but some friends of the former senator would probably breathe easier if it were.

Ford plans to appeal his conviction on a federal bribery charge in the Tennessee Waltz investigation. This week he was sentenced to 66 months in prison. But the FBI’s undercover sting operation has withstood previous challenges and jury verdicts are seldom overturned, so Ford’s appeal looks like a Hail Mary pass.

But the appeal could give Ford some leverage with federal prosecutors in Nashville, where he faces a November 6th trial date on charges related to his consulting work for Tenn-Care contractors between 2001-2005.

“If I were his defense attorney, I would be going to the U.S. attorney up there and saying, ‘you all have already convicted my client and he got 66 months, so what if we dropped our appeal?'” said Hickman Ewing, former United States attorney in Memphis. “Maybe they would say that if he would plead guilty to one count they would make it concurrent to what he already got. The bottom line is how strong they think their case is. I don’t know that they have got any videotapes. If they had not had videotapes here, it would have been a lot harder case.”

The Nashville case is complicated by several other factors. Different federal prosecutors are in charge of the Memphis and Nashville offices. Ford’s Nashville indictment came 18 months after he was indicted in Tennessee Waltz and delayed the start of his Memphis trial a few months.

On top of that, there has been a change in command in Nashville this year. The United States attorney in Nashville in 2006 was Craig Morford, who is now the number-two man in the Attorney General’s office in Washington. When the indictment was announced, Morford said it revealed “an appalling willingness to violate (his) duty by using his public position for personal gain.”

Whether his successors share that hunger to prosecute is not known. In a brief meeting in Nashville this week with this reporter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eli Richardson, who is one of the prosecutors in the Nashville case along with Paul O’Brien, would only say that there is a hearing in September to discuss a motion to suppress certain evidence. He said he could not discuss the case other than to confirm the November 6th trial date — the latest in a series postponements and reschedulings since Ford was indicted in Nashville on December 13th, 2006.

In Tennessee Waltz, Ford’s “business partners” were undercover FBI agents posing as executives of E-Cycle Management. He was paid $55,000. In the Nashville case, Ford’s main business partners were Tenn-Care contractors Doral Dental and Omnicare Health Plan, which was renamed UAHC Health Plan of Tennessee. Those companies, unlike E-Cycle, are very real. And Ford was paid more than $800,000 by them over a period of nearly four years.

According to the indictment, Ford owned a 40-percent interest in Managed Care Services Group (MCSG). The other owners were “Individual A” and “Individual B” in the indictment, but they have since been identified as Osbie Howard, former treasurer for the city of Memphis, and Ronald Dobbins.

Howard, former CEO of UAHC, testified as a character witness at Ford’s sentencing hearing last week. Assistant U.S. attorney Tim DiScenza challenged his testimony about Ford’s income and accused Howard of making a false statement to an FBI agent earlier this year about Ford’s income tax return. Howard took the Fifth Amendment when DiScenza tried to question him further. Ironically, he said his current occupation is ‘consultant, which means I don’t do much.”

According to court documents filed in Nashville, Ford earned $470,414 in 2004 and $470,938 in 2003. The indictment says Ford formed MCSG to get payments from Doral Dental and hid that fact while working as a state senator and head of a Tenn-Care committee. According to the indictment, Ford had another relationship with UAHC to be a “consultant” for $10,000 a month. He allegedly sponsored legislation benefiting UAHC and its predecessor and met with other state officials on their behalf.

A Nashville trial could be embarrassing or worse to other Ford “consulting” clients and business associates. According to case documents, they included the Oseman Insurance Agency of Memphis, the Armstrong Allen law firm, Hospice USA, Unum Life Insurance, Connie Matthews (the mother of two of Ford’s children), and former Shelby County Commission member Bridget Chisholm among others.

In summary, the Nashville case cuts to the heart of John Ford’s everyday business as a consultant. If the case goes to trial, it could go a long way toward clarifying what local and state elected part-time officials who claim that their full-time occupation is “consultant” can and cannot do. If it is dismissed, consulting will continue to be a gray area.

Ford has already received what is quite possibly a political death sentence. He is 65 years old and, assuming he does not begin serving his sentence until 2008, he would be 71 or older by the time he gets out. DiScenza made a point of urging sentencing judge Daniel Breen to give Ford a long sentence so he could not stage a political comeback and commit another crime, as former Memphis City Councilman Rickey Peete did.

Ewing said one option for federal prosecutors is to move to dismiss the case, provided he cooperates regarding other people. But he did not think that federal budget considerations would weigh on that, as a front-page article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal about the U.S. Justice Department suggested. Parodying a famous credit card commercial, he said, “Additional trial, $30,000. Appeal, $15,000. Getting a corrupt public official out of office, priceless.”

Despite his former $470,000 a year income, Ford has pleaded indigence and is being represented by federal public defenders now. He was not fined or ordered to make restitution in the Tennessee Waltz case, although DiScenza suggested his state pension should be used to pay for the cost of his incarceration. In the Nashville case Ford is charged with getting more than $800,000, but if prosecutors don’t think he has the money, that could influence their decision about whether to try him again, Ewing said.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: A Lost Man

There’s a guy I see three or four times a week. We don’t speak. We don’t have a relationship. I just see him — usually as I’m driving to work along Vance, somewhere between the MIFA building and Lauderdale Street. He’s been walking the same beat for years.

He’s very tall, 6′ 5″ at least. He’s thin and dark and quite obviously a lost ball in the high weeds. He wears odd, mismatched clothes — sometimes a green hospital shirt, sometimes a sports coat and shorts. His pants almost always end above his socks.

He always carries something — often a battered black briefcase, sometimes an empty plastic milk crate. His gait is slow. He drags his feet, his eyes staring blankly at the sidewalk. Sometimes he sets the plastic milk crate on the sidewalk and shoots a deflated gray basketball at it. The ball lands with a splat and doesn’t move. He slowly walks to the ball, picks it up, and shoots again. It’s a cruel parody of Hoop Dreams.

I’ve asked people here at work about him. I thought maybe he was a former Tiger basketball player who had hit hard times. But no one knows anything about him.

Last week, he was sitting on the curb at a stoplight on Vance as I pulled up to the corner. He looked at me. I looked at him. I lowered my window and said, “Do you need some help?” He stared, expressionless, then slowly shook his head no. It was the tiredest, saddest no I’ve ever seen.

There’s been a lot of consternation about panhandlers downtown lately. And they are a problem. But there’s a big difference between a guy with a line of B.S. hitting you up for “enough money to catch a bus to Millington” and a guy who’s just lost and sick and alone.

And maybe this man really doesn’t need help. Maybe he has a family that takes care of him, feeds him, loves him. But I doubt it. More likely, he’s mentally ill, but not enough to be institutionalized. So he shuffles along Vance with nothing to do and nowhere to go — just an unquenchable urge to keep walking in Memphis.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

A Memphis police officer causes a ruckus in a local pancake shop when he nudges aside some paying customers who are about to take a seat at a table he believes — wrongly, as it turns out — is reserved for cops. When the customers complain, he tries to have them arrested. The whole thing ends with the policeman turning in his resignation. The customers probably never thought they’d be getting a side of bacon with their breakfast.

The majestic Sears Crosstown building is sold to local businessman Andy Cates. After years of neglect and absentee ownership, we’re glad to see the place in local hands. Now it’s up to Cates to figure out what to do with the Midtown landmark. We just hope he doesn’t decide to turn it into the world’s largest brick store.

Greg Cravens

A judge discovers that a Memphis man arrested for forgery has a string of 34 different aliases. Well, he was arrested for forgery, after all. Even the fellow’s own mother has never heard of most of them. Just wondering: How does he know when people are trying to get his attention?

An 11-year-old boy playing in the street — as 11-year-old boys sometimes like to do — is struck by a car near Hacks Cross Road. The boy is taken to the hospital and will recover from his injuries, but he’s then given a ticket for “obstructing traffic.” Yes — obstructing it with his own 11-year-old body. Yikes. Will that go down on his permanent record?

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Elvis: 1935-2007

In regard to the cover story in the Flyer I picked up in Memphis during Elvis Week (“Elvis: 1935-2007,” August 9th issue): Writers Greg Akers and Chris Herrington don’t know their facts or have been given false information. It is a shame that this article went into many foreign fans’ hands.

The very first paragraph is a lie: Elvis died at Graceland on August 16, 1977, not on August 6th at his Horn Lake, Mississippi, home. He was 42, not 72, when he died. Paragraph two is also untrue: Elvis never broke up with Colonel Parker at any time in his life and never went into mini-retirement, except when he gave four years to his country in the U.S. Army. And paragraph three is incorrect also: Elvis came back into public life in 1968 on national television, not in the 1980s. He performed in Las Vegas at the Hilton, not in Tunica.

And last, but not least, Elvis did not have a son named Jesse Vernon (who was pictured at the Circle G ranch). His only child was a girl, Lisa Marie. The whole article is just too hard to believe and doesn’t do your writers or Elvis justice.

Reginald Gleason

London, England

Editor’s note: Also, paragraphs five through 85 were lies.

Coalition Mayoral Forum

Jackson Baker’s article (Politics, August 16th issue) about the mayoral forum by the Coalition for a Better Memphis inspired me to share what I got out of the event. I went with an open mind to see which one of the four candidates would impress me.

John Willingham seemed tired. I think he did well as a commissioner and would vote for him if he ran again for a commission seat.

Herman Morris seemed energetic and determined, a man with a vision and a plan to get the job done. He impressed me as the most capable and as most knowledgeable. 

Mayor Willie Herenton kept talking about what a great job he has done. I thought: Great job for whom? I drove by impoverished areas on the way downtown, full of people barely hanging on. Maybe some builders and developers would agree with Herenton.

Carol Chumney: All I can recall hearing her say was that she needed to be mayor so she could solve all our problems. But wasn’t she on the City Council when they approved 300 appointed positions for the mayor at six-digit salaries when only 160 are allotted under the city charter?

We need new leadership to be in charge of the city. The old ones have lost their usefulness.    
R.J. Best
Memphis

MLGW “Rate Hike”

The mention of a “rate hike” in the August 23rd Flyer‘s “Cheat Sheet” is incorrect and doesn’t take into consideration the basic relationship of consumption to a person’s bill.

We [at MLGW] attributed that average increase to the current record-setting electric usage we’ve seen in the past few weeks. People in Shelby County are using more electricity than ever before and therefore can expect their bills to be higher.

In addition, Shelby County residents have some of the highest electric usage in the nation. If you’ve got your thermostat set to 75 and the temperature’s 85 outside, your system doesn’t use nearly as much electricity as it does with the current temperatures. You can even use a gasoline analogy: The more you put in your tank, the higher your cost.

We hope that the Flyer can assist us in the future in helping customers to understand the relationship that their usage has with their bills.

Glen Thomas, Supervisor

MLGW Corporate Communications

Women in Black

It was good of the Flyer to write about the Memphis “Women in Black” (August 23rd issue). Like water on a stone, small acts of quiet and determined defiance can make a difference on this planet over time.

I have driven down Cooper on a number of Wednesdays and wondered, Who are these women and why do they do it? Now, thanks to the Flyer, I know. Hopefully, their persistent protest will inspire others to join in.

Casey Boyd

Memphis

Categories
News The Fly-By

Photographic Memory

CREDIT: From Memphis World

Museum curators receive plenty of calls from people willing to sell art. Most don’t result in deals, but a parcel of old photographs that came to the attention of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art last year broke the trend.

“We told the owner to bring them in, and it turned out to be this group of photographs from the Memphis World,” says Marina Pacini, chief curator of the Brooks. “We decided we had to have them.”

The World — a member of the Scott Syndicate of African-American newspapers — published downtown from 1931 to 1973.

The Brooks bought 222 World photographs and plans to host an exhibit of the pictures and the stories behind them. First, however, they have some work to do.

The photographs were sold piecemeal at an estate sale without any identifying information. Pacini and David McCarthy, professor of art history at Rhodes College, seized the problem as an opportunity to create a community project combining the images with their sometimes obscure historical circumstances.

“These connect us with a moment in Memphis history that we all need to know about,” says McCarthy, whose students have joined the excavation for information about the photographs. “We’re hoping we can find people in the photographs and do oral histories with them.”

Most of the pictures in the Brooks collection depict events between 1949 and 1964, such as the 1953 Dairy Council Luncheon and the 1951 opening of the W.C. Handy Theatre — everyday activities excluded from the typical narrative of Memphis history.

McCarthy will lead a seminar this fall with students researching and writing entries on each of the images.

“The photographs go against what you think of as typical for Memphis in that time period,” says Amber James, a Rhodes student who has researched the photograph (shown above) of a Universal Life Insurance transaction as part of a larger project on black-owned businesses in Memphis.

McCarthy, Pacini, and students read through microfilm copies of the World at the Central Library. They have found about 160 of the photos in the Brooks collection in the paper and noted the photo captions and photographer credits as they originally ran.

Pacini and McCarthy also assembled an advisory committee to help identify the photographs and set up a computer kiosk in the Brooks’ lobby that displays each photograph in the collection. People are encouraged to view the kiosk and help identify subjects of the pictures. “We’re trying to find anyone and everyone who can help us with this,” McCarthy says.

They would likewise welcome the appearance of other World photographs. The estate sale where the Brooks collection was acquired sold other lots of World pictures separately. “We don’t know what happened to the rest,” McCarthy says.

The exhibit will be on display at the Brooks in the fall of 2008.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

What Does Tinker Think?

Next year’s Democratic primary apparently will see a return match of Steve Cohen vs. Nikki Tinker for the right to represent the 9th District (an area which dovetails, more or less, with Memphis) in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The 2008 version of that race will be different in several particulars, to be sure. A plus for Tinker is the fact that she is unlikely to be, as she was last year, one of a dozen or so African-American candidates, most of them reasonably credentialed to serve in Congress, all of them competing for the same presumed voter base. To Cohen’s benefit is the fact that he will be running as the incumbent with a record of achievement — and certainly of effort — that his constituents can judge him on. Give the congressman this: He stays busy, amazingly so for a first-termer. Merely attempting to keep up with what he’s keeping up with and then reporting it puts any media outlet in risk of accusations of partiality. What are we to do? Tell him to take more vacations?

We have generally favored Cohen’s positions — and certainly his style — since we started observing him years ago as a state legislator. But the fact remains that we, like most local observers, were decidedly impressed by several figures in last year’s congressional race and would have been content if any of half a dozen of them had been elected.

Frankly, we never quite put Nikki Tinker in that category, though we certainly understood her appeal to many people — enough of them, along with formidable sources of financial support, to make her runner-up to Cohen in last year’s primary. Our basic problem with Tinker was that she declined, early or late, to stake out positions on the major issues. The sentimental story she kept telling about her grandmother was all well and good, but her prospective constituents deserved to know more about her views on the major issues of war and peace and governmental policy. For better and for worse, we know where Cohen stands on things.

Unhappily, Tinker has shown no more inclination than she did last year to convey her thoughts on the issues. Specifically, when her views about the currently (and, we think, unnecessarily) controversial Hate Crimes Bill (see Politics, p. 14) have been sought, she has not only been uncommunicative, she has been unreachable, leaving it to a spokesperson in far-off Washington to say that she is concentrating on “voters,” not issues. Whatever that means. The implication was that to discuss the things that matter most to her would-be constituents would somehow be a disservice to them.

The fact is, we think the current attack on Cohen’s vote for the Hate Crimes Bill — identical to the positions taken by his predecessor, Harold Ford Jr., and by every member of the Congressional Black Caucus in the current session — is a sham argument orchestrated by ad hoc partisans of Tinker for whom Cohen’s race is the real issue.

For her own credibility, we think it is incumbent that Tinker herself address for the record the Hate Crimes Bill — and other issues of the day, for that matter. That’s how she’ll win our respect.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Getting Around

CREDIT: Berlinfoto | dreamstime.com

Rhodes College junior Anthony Siracusa says that traveling by bicycle sometimes takes longer than expected. But not for the reason you might think.

“It’s a social activity,” he says. “You run into people on the street, and they want to talk.”

Even so, Siracusa hopes to get more bicycles on the roads.

Siracusa represented the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) at the Memphis City Council’s park committee meeting last week. Under a joint resolution, the council and the Shelby County Commission want to expand BPAC’s authority and designate it as a permanent standing committee of the area’s long-range transportation planning arm, the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). The MPO is expected to vote on the change during an August 30th meeting.

“This raises the political profile of BPAC,” Siracusa says of the proposal. “This was a committee organized for a specific purpose.”

BPAC was formed in 2003 to advise on a 25-year comprehensive transportation plan. Now, Siracusa hopes the group will be able to work more closely with the city engineer’s office to add bicycle facilities to area roads.

“One thing BPAC was adamant about from the very beginning was writing into MPO policy that every time a street is repaved, a bike lane is added,” he says.

In 2000, the U.S. Department of Transportation said that states receiving federal dollars needed to incorporate bicycle and pedestrian amenities into transportation pro-jects unless “exceptional circumstances exist.” However, only half of all states have complied, according to the national Complete Streets Coalition.

“Here’s the problem,” says local bike and pedestrian advocate Steven Sondheim. “The federal regulations say when you improve a street or make a new street, they recommend putting in bike and pedestrian facilities, unless there is some compelling reason not to. It’s a recommendation. It’s not a law.”

Though Memphis has designated bicycle routes throughout the city, riding on those roads can still be dangerous. (Insert your own joke about Memphis drivers here.)

“In the three years [since the plan was created], nothing has happened,” Sondheim says. “There is not one bike lane in the city of Memphis. There are some in Germantown and Bartlett.”

Though the MPO plan includes recommendations for bicycle lanes, the group has no authority to implement its plans. Humphreys Boulevard is the only current road project that includes bike lanes.

Perhaps Memphis is behind the curve. Across the country, cities are adding bicycle lanes as part of “complete streets” programs. The idea, utilized in Chicago, Charlotte, and Iowa City, is that public streets should accommodate a variety of transportation, including areas for motor vehicles, bicycles, mass transit, and pedestrians.

Some planners have argued that adding extra vehicle lanes has not reduced traffic congestion; it has just invited more drivers onto the road. Supporters of complete streets initiatives say biking and walking reduce congestion and help fight obesity-related diseases.

The American Association of Retired People and various disability groups are also fans of the program. The environmental argument is a no-brainer, especially with higher gas prices and global warming.

“I see a direct link between creating bicycle facilities and reclaiming streets for a healthier way of life,” Siracusa says. “Bicycle facilities typically reflect people-friendly cities. It’s a mark of livable communities where people like being outside. … Not to mention, bikes are fun.”

The history major would like to see a pilot program add bike lanes to a target neighborhood, preferably in Cooper-Young.

“People are already riding bikes there,” he says. “The least we can do is make them safer.”

But if Memphians want bicycle lanes, they are going to have to lobby for them.

“I wish we lived in a place like Chicago where the mayor got on a bicycle and led the way,” Siracusa says. “At the same time, Memphians have to decide: Do we want to see increased bicycle and pedestrian access in our city?”

Sondheim says a group of cyclists will be starting to identify specific roads for bike lanes as early as this fall.

“What we want is [more lanes] in the next year or two,” he says. “We can’t wait until 2030. That’s part of the problem with long-range plans.”

Sometimes, they just leave you spinning your wheels.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Death Row Dogs

In the Memphis Animal Services observation hallway, a tick-infested white pit bull is curled into a tight ball at the back of its cage. As a shelter worker approaches, it lifts its bony head, wags its tail, and runs to the front of the cage, as if hoping for salvation. Its ribs protrude from its skinny body, and mottled scars, likely the result of illegal dogfighting, mark its hindquarters.

Thirty-six pit bulls sit in metal cages along the hallway, the area where vicious dogs are held. The public is not allowed in this part of the shelter. In fact, because the dogs are considered dangerous, shelter volunteers aren’t allowed to walk them. Instead, the dogs eat, sleep, urinate, and defecate in their metal cages, which are sprayed down two or three times a day. Many will spend their last days here, eventually put down by a shelter staffer.

On Monday, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick entered a guilty plea on federal dogfighting charges after police uncovered evidence of the activity on his rural Virginia property. The case has drawn national attention to the issue of dogfighting. Memphis police spokesperson Monique Martin says the illegal sport is a growing problem in Memphis.

“We’re having more people call in and notify police that they have reason to believe dogfighting is occurring at a particular address,” Martin says.

Though not all were involved in dogfighting, the number of pit bulls picked up by animal control officers rose by 22 percent from 2005 to 2006.

Last month, four people were charged after Memphis police busted a dogfight in a South Memphis backyard. Animal control officers took six dogs. Several of the dogs were already injured, and a couple of dog owners were preparing pit bulls to fight in a bloodstained area of the yard.

“The setups here in the city are generally in backyards. They’re not professional-type rings,” Martin says. “Anyplace they choose to fight is well hidden, maybe behind a tall fence. That makes it hard for us to find.”

Confiscated dogs are taken to Memphis Animal Services where they are held in the observation hallway while their owner’s case goes through the court system. If the owner is convicted, the dogs are euthanized.

“We don’t adopt out a pit bull unless it’s a puppy,” says Tony Butler, operations manager for Memphis Animal Services. “A lot of these dogs can’t be rehabilitated. … They’re underweight and covered in scars that breed various infections.”

Donna Velez runs Hearts of Gold Pit Bull Rescue. Though she believes many of the dogs could be rehabilitated, she agrees that there is little chance of finding someone willing to adopt them.

“I don’t see that the shelter has any choice. There aren’t enough good homes that will take in a dog like this,” says Velez. “Even if [the shelter] had a professional temperament tester come in and pick out the very best ones that are wagging their tails, what would we do with them? Where would they go?”

Last week, the City Council passed a “vicious dog ordinance” that sends animal abusers to face stiffer penalties in Judge Larry Potter’s Environmental Court.

The ordinance also requires owners of vicious dogs to spay or neuter their animals. Though dogfighters are often charged under a state ordinance that specifically deals with dogfighting and cockfighting, the city ordinance gives authorities more teeth to convict people who do not properly care for vicious dogs.

“A lot of these dogs that are dangerous and vicious are used for breeding purposes in dogfighting. Now the ordinance says, if your dog is declared dangerous, it has to be spayed or neutered,” says Butler. “You can no longer reproduce these dogs for monetary profit.”