An important number is missing in the annual report card from the Tennessee Department of Education that came out this week: the number of graduates from each high school.
It’s a bad omission … John Branston has some thoughts.
Need a little inspiration for your holiday cooking? Or better yet, need a big push toward holiday meals to go?
Stop by Fresh Market Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the store’s annual “Taste of the Holidays Sampling Event” where the food is fresh, free, and someone else prepared it.
Breaking into the Top 5 now, with only one more post to go. With albums 7-5 on the list and classic singles leaping from a couple of those albums, 2000 was a very good year.
6.
Album: Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea — PJ Harvey (2000)
I admire most of Harvey’s albums, and all of them up to this point. But Stories from the City, Stories From the Sea is the only one I love — probably because it’s so full of affection itself. After years of tormented, severe, magnificent English blues-rock of her own imagining, Harvey crossed the Atlantic and made her love album: A woozy, breezy, blushing but endlessly rocking romantic ramble through Manhattan and Brooklyn. In truth, I hadn’t listened to it front-to-back in a few years before pulling it out during a summer vacation road trip this year. And I was taken aback at how gloriously well it had held up.
Song Sample: “You Said Something”
In case you missed the story in this week’s Memphis Flyer, here’s a piece I wrote on a hate crimes panel discussion that took place on the University of Memphis campus last week.
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Equality Project
by Bianca Phillips
Just one day after President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard Act, expanding the federal hate crimes law to include sexual orientation and gender identity, local lawmakers and University of Memphis law students discussed efforts to enhance the hate crimes law in Tennessee.
In a panel discussion at the U of M’s Cecil B. Humphreys Law School last Thursday, state representative Jeanne Richardson and state senator Beverly Marrero discussed a bill they’re co-sponsoring that would add “gender identity and expression” to existing state law. Attorney Murray Wells, Tennessee Equality Project board member Darlene Fike, and hate crime victim Jack Robinson also were on the panel.
Though “sexual orientation” was added to the state hate crimes law in 2001, Richardson introduced a bill last February to enhance the law with protections for transgender people.
“One of my colleagues actually said to me, ‘I don’t like [expletive] queers,'” Richardson told the panel. “I’ve been a lifelong Midtowner and downtowner and I haven’t heard those kinds of comments about gay people in years. But they’re alive and well.”
If the bill makes it out of the House, Marrero will have to convince her colleagues in the Senate to pass it as well.
“When I was teaching my kids right from wrong years ago, I never would have imagined that we’d still be dealing with this issue in 2009,” Marrero said.
Even though the federal law encompasses transgender people, Wells said a state law would offer stronger protections.
“At the state level, we’re far more equipped to deal with assaults. That’s the sort of thing the Shelby County district attorney’s office does, not the feds,” Wells said.
Locally, Wells represented Duanna Johnson, a transgender woman who was beaten by former Memphis police officer Bridges McRae in the Shelby County Jail. McRae hit Johnson on the head with handcuffs after she refused to answer to “he/she” and “faggot.”
McRae cannot be charged with a hate crime under state law yet, but he will face a judge on a federal civil rights violation on December 14th.
Richardson encouraged those who support adding transgender protections to state law to contact their representatives.
“Don’t make it easy for people to do the wrong thing,” Richardson said. “The more people who contact them about this issue, the more likely it is to pass.”
Justin Timberlake is in talks to portray Boo Boo in the film production of Yogi Bear, based upon the cartoon series from Hannah-Barbera. No lie. Variety sez so.
Further: Dan Aykroyd = Yogi. Anna Faris to play a documentary filmmaker. I smell Oscuster (an Oscar-winning box-office blockbuster).
No word yet if the script will have Boo Boo bringing pic-a-nic baskets back.
An important number is missing in the annual report card from the Tennessee Department of Education that came out this week: the number of graduates from each high school.
It’s a bad omission. Graduates are the end product of the system. Attendance and passing grades and accumulating credits are simply parts of the big picture. The goal is to graduate.
Bruce VanWyngarden offers a take on the Memphis Animal Shelter brouhaha.
Yahoo! Sports’ Marc Spears has an interview with Allen Iverson today and also includes this nugget about why Iverson did not sign with the Los Angeles Clippers this summer:
A.I. almost a Clipper?
Iverson can ponder what might have been when the Grizzlies visit the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday. Back in July, the Clippers seriously contemplated offering him a one-year contract paying up to $4 million so he could be a “Vinnie Johnson-type” player, a source with knowledge of the talks said. Denver Nuggets assistant Tim Grgurich, who was considered for a job on Mike Dunleavy’s staff over the offseason, also strongly recommended Iverson to the franchise.
The Clippers, however, were concerned about how Iverson’s addition would affect the development of second-year shooting guard Eric Gordon, along with other chemistry issues. The Clippers cooled on the idea after Iverson told Dunleavy in a phone conversation that he would have a serious problem with coming off the bench.
The possibility of signing Iverson became a dead issue once the Clippers acquired guard Sebastian Telfair and swingman Rasual Butler. But had A.I. been fine with coming off the bench, he could very well be with the Clippers now.
I found myself in Ripley, Tennessee, a while back, with no memory of how I got there. But I finally peeled off the duct tape, wrestled free of the shackles around my wrists and ankles, and hitchhiked back to Memphis.
Whew. That must have been some party!
But while I was in that lovely town, I wandered past this football stadium. It wasn’t a very large place, so I imagine it must have been for a local high school. What I most recall, though — in fact, it was the only thing I can remember about Ripley — was the curious sign on the place.
It’s called Tiny Knee Stadium.
Does anybody know why?