Steve Mulroy spent a night with Occupy Memphis and shares his thoughts on the experience.
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Month: November 2011
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Scrooge Gone Wild
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Cops and Protesters: Deja Vu
Randy Haspel says he’s seen this cops vs. protesters phenomenon before. Read this week’s Rant.
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C-USA Picks: Week 13
LAST WEEK: 5-1
SEASON: 70-20
FRIDAY
Houston at Tulsa (both teams 7-0 in C-USA play)
UTEP at UCF
SATURDAY
East Carolina at Marshall
Memphis at Southern Miss
Rice at SMU
Tulane at Hawaii
UAB at Florida Atlantic
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Tigers Fall Short Against Georgetown, 91-88
The Memphis Tigers went to overtime for the second game in a row at the Maui Invititational. This time, their luck didn’t hold.
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Letters To The Editor
A Serious MATA
Finally! As a regular customer of Memphis’ extremely flawed public transportation system, I was thrilled to read that MATA is undertaking a complete do-over of its routes and will begin utilizing GPS (“What’s the MATA?,” November 17th issue). Welcome to the 21st century, people!
But the most important quote in the article was from MATA’s Tom Fox, who said, “Drivers will be held accountable if they are early or late.” It’s about time, literally. I’m so tired of finding out I’ve “missed” a bus that came by 10 minutes early.
Angela Farmer
Memphis
Effective Teachers
Mike Carpenter (Viewpoint, November 10th issue) is giving out the information that a lot of public school teachers have heard so much of over the last several years. It is true that effective teachers make a difference in the classroom. The fact is that the Memphis City Schools are full of many really effective teachers. They are making a difference in their schools. If they were not effective, the achievement of the students attending Memphis City Schools would be a whole lot lower than it is right now.
Our teachers are making a difference in the classroom. Let’s support our teachers, our students, and our parents to help them make better lives for themselves as they prepare for the journey of their lives.
Andrew Proctor
Somerville, Tennessee
Flouting Regulations
Again and again, large banks flouted banking regulations while paying only small fines for playing high-stakes poker with our money. Nothing has changed. They are still doing it!
What the banks are doing is often illegal and almost always morally wrong. We can send them a message. Cancel your credit card. Move your money to a local credit union. Keep those dollars in Memphis. One small act of defiance against the powerful, when repeated a million times, will create the world we all want to live in.
Bill Stegall
Memphis
Send in the Clowns
That a significant portion of the American people would give even passing consideration to the current field of Republican presidential candidates is as severe an indictment of our education system as could possibly exist.
Apparently, the GOP took Stephen Sondheim literally and, in fact, sent in the clowns! Too bad they can’t “pray away” the wacky!
Jay Sheffield
Germantown
Wrecked
In response to Louis Goggans’ article (“Broken Promise,” November 10th issue), I feel that what the city of Memphis is doing to the former wrecker service employees is very unfair, because only some of the workers were relocated to other jobs while the rest were forgotten.
The city promised all of the workers would be relocated to other jobs within the city, but they failed to make good on their promise. Because of that, their families are going hungry and suffering in tough economic times. Some might even risk losing their homes and other assets. The city claims to want to promote new jobs, but obviously they cannot even relocate a small amount of their own workers within the public sector. “A City in Motion” won’t go very far on broken promises.
Brandon Lutts
Memphis
The Pits
A review of Tennessee state and city symbols will reveal that we honor mockingbirds, irises, and the tulip poplar, among many others. Can consideration be given to making the pit bull the symbol for Memphis?
It’s an animal with a questionable reputation that many believe to be unwarranted. It offers a friendly disposition to those who know the breed — a no-fuss dog with the tenacity to do well in often difficult situations. And it’s dearly loved by its owner. Sounds like Memphis to me.
Ted Norman
Memphis
Trikes
I want to thank Bianca Phillips for the article “Tricycle Travel” (November 3rd issue). As a Memphian, I was unaware that there was now an alternative method to enjoy getting around downtown — and without increasing pollution.
Memphis needs more entrepreneurs who are willing to risk their capital to make a better city and help the environment. This idea — brought from bigger cities — will also help create job opportunities.
Gabriela Quiroz
Memphis
E.L. Doctorow wrote, “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Doctorow’s metaphor works pretty well as a blueprint for living: Stay focused on the journey — the road we can see ahead.
It’s easy to spend our time worrying about the future, regretting the past, diverting ourselves from what’s directly in front of us. And too often what’s directly in front of us is a computer screen or a television, the ultimate diversions.
There are petunias and impatiens and roses blooming in my yard during Thanksgiving week for the first time in my memory. I joke with a friend that it’s a result of global warming. And maybe it is. But they are beautiful and in my “headlights” and I’m thankful to have them to look at for as long as they can survive.
I am thankful there are people in our midst like those at the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center, who devote long hours for little pay to help the poor and powerless. I’m thankful that there seem to be more and more people — including many of the wealthy — who realize that simply accumulating money is a meaningless way to live and that those whose sole life purpose is avarice are not holy men to be emulated and protected.
I’m even thankful for the Republican debates, the never-ending “Dancing With the Clowns” show that’s demonstrating week after week the shallowness at the core of most of the candidates — the exceptions being Ron Paul, who seems at least sincerely committed to something, and Jon Huntsman, who seems the least interested in joining the absurd pandering to the groundlings.
And I am thankful for the gift of being able to pay attention. The poet Mary Oliver reminds us, “such beauty as the earth offers must hold great meaning.” And she is right. From “The Summer Day”:
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Bruce VanWyngarden
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What They Said
About “The Letter” and rapper Don Trip’s rise to stardom:
“Unfortunately, one minor aspect of Mr. Trip’s rags-to-riches story is a stark and disturbing testament to a problem in our society that some chose to minimize or ignore completely. Selling illegal drugs on the streets while waiting for your rap career to take off has become analogous to aspiring actors waiting tables while seeking their breakout role.”
— Bakeman90
About “Occupy Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium”:
“I still think we could plug up all the holes, fill it with water, and stock it with bass.”
— jeff
About “Still Perkin'” and the Tea Party movement:
“The SCS was never the great school system that people claimed, and conversely MCS did have some great programs and some positive outcomes. There is no reason that the best of both systems could not be used to build a solid base for a new and better system.”
— mad_merc
About “Marshall 23, Tigers 22”:
“If we convert to hockey we would have a winning season since we are ahead after three quarters but not after four.”
— Jay Willis
Comment of the Week:
About “Rotary Club Study Points to Big Problems at Animal Shelter”:
“Stop hiring thugs and felons to care for lost dogs and cats. If you hire people who make a living from stealing from others, and people who abuse humans for fun, how then are we to expect anything different when they are put in charge of the care of animals?”
— hauntedmemphis
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Fly on The Wall
Avenue Cue
An impatient Washington Post food blogger had a smoky bone to pick with Chris George, the tight-lipped owner of Memphis Barbecue, a soon-to-be-opened rib joint in Crystal City, Virginia. When George, a veteran of various D.C.-area eateries, refused to talk at length about his secret rubs and down-home recipes, the blogger had this to say: “[George] did allow that he will serve wet and dry ribs, which, this being a Memphis-style barbecue restaurant, is a little like the owner of a burger joint saying he will sell burgers.” Snap.
Verbatim
According to an article in USA Today, the young whippersnappers of Occupy Memphis and their cranky-old-man counterparts in the Tea Party saw “eye-to-eye on some issues and clashed on others” at a recent summit. On one hand, both sides agreed that government is unresponsive to voters. On the other, “GET OFF MY LAWN!” Twenty-one-year-old Occupy Memphis speaker Tristan Tran described the meeting as “constructive,” while 68-year-old Tea Partier Pete Dresser said it confirmed his belief that Occupy Memphis is “a ramshackle movement that is not organized.”
Neverending Elvis
Jalopnik.com, a website featuring “daily automobile news and gossip for those obsessed with the cult of cars,” recently featured a bright-yellow 1971 De Tomaso Pantera that Elvis Presley purchased for his girlfriend/Hee Haw honey, Linda Thompson. Blogger Matt Hardigree admired the Pantera’s sleek European profile and its muscular 351 Ford Cleveland V8, but most of all he was impressed by a series of bullet holes that, according to Tom Kenny, collections manager for the Petersen Automotive Museum, where the car is on display, were the result of the Pantera’s failure to start. Jalopnik’s conclusion: “You don’t show up the king, even if you’re made of metal.”