Month: July 2010

History Lesson

Post author By Bianca Phillips
Post date July 29, 2010

When it comes to a concentration of historic structures, Cordova is no Midtown. But that doesn’t mean the suburb doesn’t have old buildings of value.

At a meeting last week at the Bert Ferguson Community Center in Cordova about Memphis’ Preservation Plan, Graydon Swisher of the West Tennessee Historical Society listed several structures still standing in old town Cordova, including the train depot on Macon Road.

As Swisher named historic Cordova locations, Emily Trenholm of Livable Memphis marked the spots on a large wall map. The addresses will likely be added to a new online database of more than 700 historic and culturally significant structures throughout the city.

The database is part of the updated Memphis Preservation Plan to protect properties already on the National Historic Register, properties that are 40 years old and eligible for the register in 10 years, and sites that may not qualify for the register but have significance to the community.

The existing preservation plan was drafted in 1997, and more than 40 volunteers are doing the legwork on the update, which includes hosting a series of 16 public meetings to decide which structures should be added to the database.

“The need for the database is really important. We wanted all the city agencies to see what is considered historic to help with planning,” said Nancy Jane Baker, manager of the Memphis Landmarks Commission. “We don’t want to run into this last-minute ‘you can’t tear this down because it’s historic’ thing.”

On Union in Midtown, some of the avenue’s remaining historic structures — the Union Avenue United Methodist Church, the Nineteenth Century Club, and the Scottish Rite building — have become endangered. Though the database wouldn’t necessarily save those buildings, it might raise awareness of their importance.

“This is more of an informational tool than anything else,” Baker said. “With the Scottish Rite building, the database would help the University of Tennessee system to know that this is an important building to the community.”

Besides basic address information, the public database will also include information on whether a structure is threatened by neglect or redevelopment.

Cathy Marcinko, the Memphis Preservation Plan facilitator, said the database should be ready by the end of the year.

For more information on the remaining public meetings, call Nancy Jane Baker at 576-7170.

Politics Politics Feature

Other Contests

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date July 29, 2010

CREDIT: JB

David Pickler and Ken Hoover, county School Board rivals

In addition to the races chronicled in-depth in Flyer cover stories last week and this week, there are several important “down-ballot” races requiring a decision by the voters. Sketched out here, some or all of these may be revisited in online accounts at memphisflyer.com before Election Day, August 5th.

Judicial Races: Voters who feel confounded when trying to decide whom to vote for in five judicial races should know they have lots of company.

CIRCUIT COURT JUDGE, DIVISION 4: The incumbent is Lorrie K. Ridder, who was appointed in April 2009 by Governor Phil Bredesen to replace the late Rita Stotts. Ridder has campaigned hard to retain the position. Gina Higgins, almost as omnipresent as Ridder at campaign events, and Michael Floyd also seek the position.

CIRCUIT COURT JUDGE, DIVISION 8: The incumbent here is Rhynette Northcross Hurd, appointed by Bredesen in March. Hurd, a former law professor like Ridder, has personal and family connections to civil rights pioneers and to the Memphis musical universe. Joedae Jenkins, Venita Martin, and Robert “Bob” Weiss are all respected lawyers who have campaigned seriously.

CRIMINAL COURT JUDGE, DIVISION 3: The six lawyers running to succeed the retiring John Colton Jr. all have pockets of support. They are: Latonya Sue Burrow, Bobby Carter, Claiborne H. Ferguson, Larry H. Nance, Gerald Skahan, and Glenn Wright.

GENERAL SESSIONS CRIMINAL COURT JUDGE, DIVISION 7: This one is basically a raffle. First of all, the names of the 20 competing lawyers, at least half of whom have credible support: Bill Anderson Jr., Taurus Bailey, Mischelle Alexander Best, William D. “Billy” Bond, Damita Dandridge, Bryan A. Davis, Erica Gatewood, Rhonda Wilson Harris, Dennis R. Johnson, Cathy Hailey Kent, Herb Lane, Rick McKenna, Sherrie Miller Johnson, Derek Renfroe, Janet Lansky Shipman, Terrance Tatum, Tim J. Thompson, Randall B. Tolley, Karen Tyler, and Carolyn S. Watkins.

Among those regarded as serious contenders are Bailey, a member of a well-known political clan; Best, a former judge; Anderson and Bond, both of whom seem to have support in the suburbs; Lane and Renfroe, who have name identification from previous political activity; Tolley, who is backed by a phalanx of progressives; and Shipman, a highly regarded lawyer who has served as Shelby County human resources director.

GENERAL SESSIONS CRIMINAL COURT JUDGE, DIVISION 10: Incumbent Lee Wilson won appointment by the Shelby County Commission last year to replace the late Tony Thompson in this division, which concerns itself with domestic violence cases.

Like fellow appointee Ridder, whom he often accompanied to campaign events, Wilson has worked hard at making the case for his reelection. His opponent is the well-liked former General Sessions Court clerk, Chris Turner.

Contested Legislative Primary Races:

STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DISTRICT 84 — Joe Towns Jr., the longtime incumbent, has a spirited primary challenge from Mitzi Turnage, who’s in real estate. Towns may be in more trouble with the state Election Registry for his perennially late disclosure filings.

STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DISTRICT 86 — Two Republicans, Harold Baker and George T. Edwards (the latter a repeat), are vying for the right to take on incumbent Democrat Barbara Cooper in the fall.

STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DISTRICT 87 — Incumbent Democrat Karen Camper has opposition from Justin H. Settles. She’ll take it seriously.

STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DISTRICT 99 — Incumbent Ron Lollar, a known quantity, is opposed by Tom Stephens, an unknown quantity, with a perhaps predictable result.

Contested Shelby County

School Board Races:

DISTRICT 1: Snowden “Butch” Carruthers vies with Charlene White.

DISTRICT 3: Lara A. McIntyre confronts David Reaves in a seat vacated by longtime incumbent Ann Edmiston.

DISTRICT 5: This is the hot one. Perennial board president David Pickler is under serious challenge from Ken Hoover, who charges that Pickler has been in power too long and often acts unilaterally. The incumbent disagrees, saying board member Dianne George is boosting Hoover as payback for policy disagreements.

Film Features Film/TV

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Post author By Greg Akers
Post date July 29, 2010

Opening with a masterful, 20-plus-minute re-creation of the infamous 1913 Parisian premiere of the ballet The Rite of Spring and shot through with a gorgeous mise-en-scène that makes the film as much about place as people, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is the art-house companion piece to last year’s more-traditional biopic Coco Before Chanel.

The bulk of the film takes place in 1920: after the Russian Revolution has forced Igor Stravinsky (Mads Mikkelsen), his consumptive wife Katarina (Yelena Morozova), and their children into exile; after Boy Capel, the love of a lifetime for Coco (Anna Mouglalis), has died; and before Coco creates Chanel No. 5 — “a fragrance worthy of a woman.”

Coco gives the Stravinskys a place to stay and Igor a place to work at her country home. The house becomes a main character in the film, too — director Jan Kounen explores its striking black-and-white interior with a camera that tracks and swirls and defies gravity.

In Coco Before Chanel, Audrey Tautou gave the fashion icon a fresh-faced luminance that seemed to put the 20th century on notice. Mouglalis’ Coco is necessarily older, and she brings to the role sex and command, lithely knifing through the film like a shark fin.

Mikkelsen keeps Stravinsky’s passion in reserve, but when the composer is at work, in the throes of inspiration, you can hear all of the roiling emotions battling for high ground.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is in French and Russian with subtitles. It’s full of Stravinsky compositions that probably will further illuminate the proceedings for the musically informed viewer. For the ignorant, such as myself, it nevertheless left a rich aftertaste.

Opens Friday, July 30th at Ridgeway Four.

Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Post author By
Post date July 29, 2010

Voice in the Wilderness

Sometimes a single voice crying out in the wilderness can awaken a slumbering public with its honesty, clarity, and insight. Such was the clairvoyance of Tom Holland in his recent letter (July 22nd issue) regarding the Union Avenue United Methodist Church/CVS controversy. We, the uneducated, were informed that June West and her “group of loonies” are only interested in keeping business from locating in Midtown by opposing the CVS plan. Holland’s probably right — she’s definitely got a screw loose somewhere. And speaking of lunatics, let’s not forget Jack Belz and his ill-fated plan to save the Peabody Hotel, the Save Our Shell group which fought to preserve and ultimately give us the Levitt Shell, and all the folks who battled for 19 years to keep I-40 from going through Overton Park. I agree with you, Tom: They’re all nuttier than a fruitcake.

Along with you, I dream of the day that all buildings in Midtown built before 1980 are demolished and replaced with newer, more modern-looking architecture. Let’s start with Central Gardens and those out-of-date homes cluttering the landscape. The Brooks Museum should be next, followed by the Pink Palace, Cooper-Young, and Overton Square. Let’s tell the world that Memphis has arrived by bulldozing the Methodist Church and erecting a brand-new CVS Pharmacy in its place. We only have four drug stores within a mile of the location and need another one desperately! I’ve seen renderings of the proposed design and let me tell you, it is an architectural gem! Its box-like shape, cheap, mundane facade, and huge asphalt parking lot would even make Frank Lloyd Wright a bit jealous. Thank you, Tom. We all feel a whole lot better now.

Gordon Alexander

Memphis

Funding Schools

It’s not hard to check out. You can do a Google search and find out in about two minutes what the Tennessee Constitution says about funding schools.

Here’s what Article XI, Section 12, says: “The state of Tennessee recognizes the inherent value of education and encourages its support. The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance, support, and eligibility standards of a system of free public schools.” It goes on to say that the Assembly may also establish and support public institutions of higher learning.

The word “county” doesn’t appear anywhere in the section or anyplace else in the Constitution in connection with school funding. The Metro Government Charter Commission has several attorneys among its members as well as several attorneys who are advisers. Apparently, none of them has actually read what the state Constitution says about schools and school funding.

The charter commission’s report to the City Council and County Commission in a meeting on June 24th included this wording: “The Tennessee Constitution requires county governments to provide public school funding. Whether or not the current residents of Memphis are required to pay funding for Memphis City Schools will be determined in a court of law and is not a decision for the Charter Commission.” A similar statement also appears on the Rebuild Government website.

County government funding for schools varies across the state depending on whether the county includes any special or city school districts. In a situation upheld by the courts, one county in the state, Gibson, has no county school system and provides no funds for schools. The county is made up entirely of special school districts and a city school district.

Jimmie Covington

Memphis

Junk Food Tax?

Several states are considering adding taxes to soft-drink purchases for needed revenue. I see multiple cases of these drinks being purchased by people using SNAP (food stamp) cards.

By definition, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program should be just that: It should help needy families and individuals purchase nutritious meals and foods. However, not only are sugary soft-drink purchases allowed, but candy, cookies, potato chips, ice cream, and other treats are just a few items also allowed that hardly could be called “nutritious” by most anyone’s standards.

We must, by all means, help provide needy families and individuals with the nutritious meals and foods of their choice. But by minimizing the “non-nutritious” items in the diets of the people who most need quality foods, we would probably see a tremendous drop in obesity rates, particularly among those most at risk: children.

Further, no taxes are paid on any food purchased under the SNAP umbrella. If taxes were collected, just on these items (should they be left eligible), we would most assuredly see a significant increase in local and state sales tax revenues, along with the desired decrease in obesity rates.

Bill McAfee

Memphis

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Post author By Tim Sampson
Post date July 29, 2010

I’ve always been a little iffy about the constitutional mandate about free speech — only because there are so many people out there who say some pretty stupid things that hurt a lot of other people. Of course, I am a newspaper columnist in my spare time, so there are probably plenty of people who read this and think I should go crawl under a rock and keep my views to myself, too.

But what Andrew Breitbart did when he posted his column and the out-of-context video of Shirley Sherrod speaking to the NAACP was so wrong on so many levels you have to wonder why he still has a job.

Sure, everyone from the top down screwed up on this. Everyone jumped the gun. She was asked to resign after the video made it to the Internet and people saw and heard what appeared to be her making racist comments, when in fact she was talking about her own story of racial conciliation after the murder of her father when she was 17 and the burning of a cross on her mother’s lawn after that. The whole mess about the speech never would have happened had Breitbart not seen fit to help out the Tea Party by zeroing in on this woman and her remarks. And he claims he’s not a racist? Hmmm.

And even when the entire speech was made available, some pundits still found ways to criticize her. Jeffrey Weiss from politicsdaily.com began a column by chastising Breitbart for his “digital stenography” method of bad journalism but then went on to call Sherrod’s speech a “sermon,” because “it would be familiar to anybody who has spent much time in many African-American churches.”

After that generalization, he wrote, “Sherrod also describes an event that will surely make it into the Lifetime or Hallmark movie about her life: How her mother, now a widow, faces down an honest-to-God burning cross on her lawn. Goes out with a gun while other members of her community arrive to surround the bigots. But eventually allow them to leave in peace. (A powerful tale that, however, Sherrod did not witness because she was already away at college.)”

How could anyone be so condescending about a young woman losing her father to racially charged murder and a gang of racists burning a cross on her mother’s yard? A Lifetime or Hallmark movie? What about a documentary that would teach young people what others before them had to endure in the way of violent bigotry? Does this man think Holocaust survivors should have their own reality television show? And so what if she was away at college when they burned the cross on her mother’s yard? Just because she wasn’t there to witness it doesn’t mean that it’s not a horrible thing that happened to the people she loved most. If you think I took Weiss’ comments out of context, go to politicsdaily.com and read his entire column. And don’t worry; at least he doesn’t say that some of his best friends are black.

To me, the real story in all of this is a very positive one. If Breitbart hadn’t drummed up all this nonsense I don’t know that I would have ever heard of Shirley Sherrod. And what a cool woman she is. She did help those white farmers, Roger and Eloise Spooner, save their farm 24 years ago (the real topic of her speech that was taken out of context) and by doing so helped save herself from being so bitter about the horrible things that happened to her and her family. She carries a powerful message with her everywhere she goes, and she’s not afraid to say that she has been wrong. Is she perfect? No. No one on the planet is. But she has a lot to teach others — the main things, especially in this case, being the value of patience. I’m even going to go back and read some more of Weiss’ columns to see if the one on Sherrod was just him having a bad day. It happens to us all.

I hope Sherrod accepts the new position that the Department of Agriculture has offered her in its Office of Outreach, as long as it is a job in which she can be effective on a large scale and not just a mid-level peace offering. We need more people like her working for the greater good rather than tearing each other apart. Maybe she should go to work monitoring the Tennessee gubernatorial-race television commercials before one of the candidates comes right out and says he wants to build a wall around the state to keep others out. Maybe she could sit them down and teach them a thing or two.

Film Features Film/TV

Modern Family

Post author By Addison Engelking
Post date July 29, 2010

Because it succeeds (and fails) as a family drama instead of as a public service announcement about the competence of gay parents, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, like Brokeback Mountain, is some kind of cultural triumph. However, as anyone who’s seen Brokeback Mountain (or, further back, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) knows, cultural triumphs are not necessarily cinematic triumphs. It’s altogether unsurprising, then, that the film is a largely retrograde affair reliant on thin, conventional characters and hollow, self-congratulatory laughs.

The film is about the tensions that arise when Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), a pair of middle-aged parents, meet Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the sperm donor who provided the genetic material for their two teenage kids (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson). Early on, the film is unusually frank about some unflattering marital habits, like the sometimes-dutiful sex that’s as much about comfort and routine as it is about pleasure and the way in which married people reinforce their bond by criticizing outsiders and interlopers. When it becomes obvious that Paul is actually interested in hanging around the family he inadvertently helped create, though, these trenchant character observations recede into the background as standard conflicts about marriage, parenting, and maturity emerge.

The Kids Are All Right completes an accidental trilogy of recent independent, insular films about marginalized California lifestyles: Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg and Jay and Mark Duplass’ Cyrus. But a film like Nicole Holofcener’s New York-set Please Give embarrasses those movies because it is keenly aware of the ways class privilege complicates human drama. In contrast, the social-status markers in The Kids Are All Right function as ID badges that delineate the characters but don’t deepen them. Jules is the soulful one (Elvis Costello T-shirts, belief that “sometimes desire can be counterintuitive,” hippie-dippy parenting style), Nic is the uptight one (authoritarian eyewear, omnipresent cell phone, wine as her drug of choice), Paul is the rebel (organic restaurant, motorcycle, multicultural sexual partners), and Nic and Jules’ two kids are well-adjusted and nondescript (soccer, Scrabble, Vampire Weekend posters).

Where do these privileged cutouts of the bourgeoisie fight their battles? At the dinner table, of course, preferably one laden with exquisite red wine, properly cooked steaks, and locally sourced produce. It’s a mildly amusing bit of cultural criticism that the angriest, most passionate speech in the movie is about composting and organic desserts, but it’s telling that the potential laughs to be mined from that earnest lifestyle of careful, ethical consumption are not supposed to be as funny as Jules’ comic awkwardness when she stumbles through a vaguely racist dismissal of her Latino gardening assistant. Plus, there isn’t a single dinner here to match the discomfort or social challenges presented in 2008’s Rachel Getting Married or 2005’s underrated The Family Stone, which had the nerve to use gay icon Sarah Jessica Parker to question the limits of liberal tolerance.

Opening Friday, July 30th

Studio on the Squar

Music Music Features

Grant at the Brooks; Antenna Redux

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date July 29, 2010

“People always ask me what I’m doing these days, so I tell them, ‘Whatever I want to do,'” says Marshall Grant, the original bass player for Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two.

Fortunately for local music fans, one of the things Grant wants to do is share his stories about his life on the road with Johnny Cash. On Thursday, July 29th, at 7 p.m., the Memphis chapter of The Recording Academy is hosting Up Close & Personal, an intimate conversation with Grant at the Brooks Museum of Art. As an added treat, Grant, whose visit coincides with the museum’s “Who Shot Rock & Roll” exhibit, has invited some special guests to sit in with him for a rendition of “Folsom Prison Blues” played on the instruments used during the original Sun recording session.

“I’m gonna play my bass just like Sam Phillips told me back when we were playing on The Louisiana Hayride,” Grant says of his impending performance. “He told me, ‘Marshall, whenever you get down there, I want you to get a microphone and slap the hell out of that thing.'” Grant has also loaned several Cash-era artifacts to the museum and will be available to sign copies of his book, I Was There When It Happened.

“You know, [the museum] only had one case, so I wasn’t able to bring all that much,” Grant says. “I brought the electric bass I played on Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and Johnny Cash at San Quentin. And I am also the proud owner of nine Grammys.”

Antenna Reunion Redux

Do you have a great story from the glory days of the Antenna club that needs to be preserved on film? The second annual reunion concert inspired by Memphis’ fabled punk club kicks off on Thursday, July 29th, with a meet-and-greet at the Buccaneer Lounge, and Memphis filmmaker C. Scott McCoy will be conducting interviews for his documentary about the club.

“Anyone who has an Antenna story that they’d like to share with us should come down and participate,” McCoy says. “If it’s good, it’ll make it in the movie!” The Live From Memphis crew will be assisting McCoy by filming the 26 bands scheduled to play at Nocturnal and the Hi-Tone Café on Friday and Saturday nights. Rocket Science Audio will also be recording the shows.

“We hope to release a DVD of reunion performances mixed with some vintage performances we’ve dug up on video from some of the reunion bands as well as some bands that couldn’t be here,” McCoy says.

The first Antenna club reunion, held in 2009, lured hundreds of music fans back to the corner of Madison and Avalon to relive a bit of their misspent youth.

“I guess I must have been living in a cocoon, because I had no idea that so many people were interested in this,” says former Antenna owner Steve McGehee. “Now I can see this getting bigger,” he adds, contemplating the possibility of developing the reunion into an annual festival with an outdoor component.

The Antenna was ground zero for punk, new wave, and alternative culture in Memphis. Bands such as the Crime, the Klitz, the Randy Band, and Tav Falco’s Panther Burns (featuring Alex Chilton) started playing there regularly in 1979. In addition to booking touring bands like Black Flag, the Meat Puppets, and Robyn Hitchcock, it was also the launch pad for many well-known local bands, including the Grifters, Pezz, the Oblivians, and Impala.

The noisy club quietly closed 15 years ago after a show by the alt-radio band Tripping Daisy.

Antenna reunion schedule, music starting at 7 p.m.:

July 30th — Nocturnal (formerly the Antenna): Small Room, Fluorescent Butt Jam, Pezz, Sobering Consequences, The New Mary Jane does the Grifters, Reigning Sound. Hi-Tone Café: Gasoline Grace, The Linda Heck Experiment, Four Neat Guys, Impala, Neighborhood Texture Jam, Soul Capitalist.

July 31st — Nocturnal: ’68 Comeback with Lesa Aldridge and Ross Johnson, Neon Wheels, Calculated X, Barking Dog, Randy Band, The Crime, Distemper. Hi-Tone Café: Sons of Mud Boy, DDT, RBS, Greasland, Eraserhead, Recoil, Raid.

News The Fly-By

48 Hours

Post author By Halley Johnson
Post date July 29, 2010

Friday night’s downtown power outage canceled a Redbirds game and the Orpheum’s production of Cats, but the casts and crews of FuelFilm:Memphis’ 48 Hour Film Launch pressed on. What started as a group of aspiring filmmakers discussing everything from vague ideas to detailed screenplays ended Sunday evening with a packed house watching five completed films.

The film launch is the latest in a series of monthly events from FuelFilm, each one intended to demystify a different aspect of filmmaking with an eye toward shooting more films in Memphis. The nonprofit operates on the idea that the city is full of people who have both the ideas and the drive to create great films — they just don’t always have the right tools or contacts.

“The idea is to put all these people in one place and make as many films as we can,” says Matt Beickert, co-founder of FuelFilm.

The film launch combined all the processes of film creation into one frenzied, improvisational process with a time frame that left no room for writer’s block.

“Our goal is not just to get filmmakers to make some shorts but to [help novice filmmakers] dip their toes in the water,” Beickert says. “Lots of people can’t spend a month working on a film, but they can spend a weekend.”

Thus, FuelFilm created a weekend moviemaking schedule: Friday night, people pitched their ideas, then put together casts and crews for those that received the most votes. All the shooting would take place on Saturday; the editing and screening would follow on Sunday. Easy enough, right?

“I had a friend call from Los Angeles, predicting all this contention,” says Jim Sposto, another co-founder. “I just said, ‘This is Memphis! Everyone’s going to be really cool about it.'”

He was right. About 75 people gathered at FuelFilm’s offices to pitch 12 ideas on Friday; they chose five, assembled crews, and produced the films by Sunday night. A few sponsors — Nikon sent over some cameras, Red Bull kept the caffeine flowing — and a lot of pitching in, from food preparation to sharing cameramen, resulted in the creation of a community in just 48 hours.

Among the five casts and crews were locals, commuters, seasoned filmmakers, and brand-new additions. Francis Is a Lion came from a 17-year-old writer, director, and producer. Soul, which received the most backstage buzz, started as an idea its sole actor, Jerre Dye, artistic director of Voices of the South, had on the way to the film launch. It seems the guys at FuelFilm are right about available resources.

“The people who showed up to make something in 48 hours — those are the people you want working with you,” says David Merrill, another co-founder of FuelFilm.

Beickert echoed that sentiment to the 150 or so attendees who watched the five finished films at Emerge Memphis.

“We’ve got the directors, the screenwriters, the actors,” he says. “Let’s invest in our community.”

Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: The Man From Paris

Post author By Bruce VanWyngarden
Post date July 29, 2010

The man from Paris and I were having coffee and breakfast at an outside table at Miss Cordelia’s in Harbor Town. It was a warm, sunny morning, a prelude to another bright, soul-wiltingly humid July day in Memphis. The man from Paris was a business writer for Agence France-Presse. He was staying at my house under the auspices of the Memphis Council for International Visitors as part of a month-long sojourn in the U.S. He’d spent time in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, Atlanta, and other spots, mostly in the South.

As he observed the passing joggers, the lively conversations at nearby tables, the mothers walking by with strollers and dogs in tow, he remarked: “I’ve seen so many American cities with downtowns that are lifeless. This is really pretty striking.” And it was. From where we sat, Memphis was alive, urbane, interesting. The man from Paris was impressed.

He spent the day being squired around — to the Chamber of Commerce, to industrial sites on Presidents Island and near the airport, to the National Civil Rights Museum. When he returned to my house, he was hot and tired but pleased with the stories he’d found.

My wife and I took the man from Paris out to dinner that night at a Midtown restaurant. It was bustling and crowded and smelled of sauteed butter and smoky herbs. Over glasses of wine, we discussed his day and his thoughts on Memphis. Bottom line: He liked us. He was impressed. He even wanted to go see Graceland before catching his plane the next day.

Joining us at dinner was a representative from International Visitors, a Memphian who escorts foreigners around the city every month. She was pleased that the man from Paris had had such a good experience, but, as she confided to me, two other Memphis guests had not had such a pleasant time.

Two women visiting from Thailand — a professor and her interpreter — were staying at a hotel near Court Square. When they ventured out to walk around, they were immediately accosted by several aggressive panhandlers. Frightened, they hurried back to their hotel room and refused to leave again without accompaniment. Needless to say, these two won’t be writing love letters about Memphis. Just the opposite, I suspect.

Last week, when it came to international visitors, we went one for three.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com