Month: May 2012

Categories
News The Fly-By

Doctor Score

CREDIT: Dreamstime

In the age of faux Google reviews used to boost business, a Memphis health organization has launched a legitimate way to determine whether or not a local doctor or medical center comes highly recommended.

Healthy Memphis Common Table has recently added new data to its Health Care Quality Matters website, now providing public reports and ratings for hospitals, medical offices, and patient experiences.

Patricia Tosti, project manager for the Common Table, said the website’s new additions will not only benefit patients but also medical practices and physicians, enabling them to view their strengths and weaknesses.

“They can log into their own private and secure portal and find out what their ratings are, and they can compare it to their peers locally,” Tosti said. “Also, the organization has a public report available. It can help physicians take a look at areas where they’re doing really well and also areas where there’s room for improvement.”

Aside from the ratings of medical establishments, the website also provides specific information regarding four areas: diabetes, heart disease, women’s care, and pediatrics. The site explains what each of the areas are, their risk factors, and some community statistics.

Although the website has been active for years, the new data was made accessible to public viewers at the end of April. The Common Table hopes that it will help patients determine which medical practices will provide them with the best care.

“Along with word-of-mouth about what physician to choose, this can be another element in selecting a physician in the community,” Tosti said. “It’s [also a good tool] for people who are new to the community.”

More than 130 medical establishments are rated on a scale from best to good to fair. Medical establishments featured on the website include Baptist Memorial Hospital, Delta Medical Center, St. Francis Hospital, and Frayser Medical Center.

The establishments are rated based on claims data submitted to health insurance companies, which provides the information to the Common Table.

Dr. Susan Nelson of Harbor of Health said she’s unhappy with her medical practice’s current rating on diabetes care but thinks the website will push the Harbor of Health to improve.

“My group’s ratings are terrible,” said Nelson, a family practice doctor. “I realized that that either means that they don’t have good data or we need to improve. Either way, I think it’s a positive thing because it’s going to get me to look at those issues and see if we’re doing the things that they’re reporting on. Or if not, why are our ratings so low? What can we do to make that better?”

The website provides public reports and ratings on hospitals, patient experiences, and medical offices. Current medical office information and ratings on the website are from 2010 and 2011.

Patients aren’t allowed to log on and rate offices and hospitals currently. However, customers can provide feedback on their experience with a particular practice or physician. An establishment’s rating can be improved or decreased based on this. Nelson thinks this may be one of the website’s drawbacks.

“This quality reporting is confusing for doctors and patients initially,” Nelson said. “Patients don’t really know what to do with that information. Doctors are confused, because it’s only a small segment of your practice. Say you don’t do this one test right, does that mean that you’re a bad doctor? No. It’s only a part of the picture. Initially, it’s going to be confusing for everybody who’s choosing it, but I think it will get better and ultimately be to everybody’s benefit.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Natural Medicine

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Hundreds of years ago, Native Americans living along the Mississippi River bluffs relied on available herbs as medicine. Today, many of those native plants are endangered or threatened, but the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa is making an effort to conserve traditional herbs.

A new medicinal plant sanctuary that includes black and blue cohosh, trillium, Tennessee coneflower, and goldenseal is opening on the grounds of Chucalissa on Saturday, May 19th.

“We’re growing plants that were traditionally used by either the African-American or Native-American cultures who lived in southwest Memphis in pre-history up to today,” said Robert Connolly, director of the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa.

The sanctuary isn’t contained within a greenhouse but rather spread naturally throughout the forest trails surrounding Chucalissa. Native plants will soon be marked, and there’s a seating area for school groups to listen to presentations about natural medicine.

Planting for the sanctuary began last month, and although some new plants were put into the ground, others were transferred to the sanctuary from areas where they were growing naturally around the museum.

“As this expands, we intend for people to be able to crop them and use them as they were originally used,” Connolly said.

Connolly said the museum would rely on a trained herbalist to crop the plants. Some of the more endangered plants might not be made available to the public.

The idea for the sanctuary was born out of an email survey sent to Chucalissa’s newsletter recipients. More than 60 percent of respondents said they wanted to see the museum focus on developing the natural environment around Chucalissa.

“We created an arboretum in 2008, and we’ve been partnering with T.O. Fuller State Park. We’ve tied our trail system into theirs. We already had an herb garden, so this sanctuary was a natural extension of that,” Connolly said.

The sanctuary was funded through the University of Memphis’ “green fee,” a $10-per-semester student fee that goes toward university sustainability projects. The C.H. Nash Museum is maintained by the U of M.

Herbalist Glinda Watts, who will be lecturing at the opening-day event, has been pushing the museum to develop a plant sanctuary for some time.

“Right now, Chucalissa is a depository for ancient artifacts. It holds the bones of the last remnants of people who lived long ago. It’s dedicated to the dead,” Watts said. “But why not have something out here that has to do with living and promise and green things?”

Although the museum eventually plans to crop some of the native plants for medicinal use, Watts said it’s important for people to understand that cropping be left to the professionals.

“We’re hoping to raise awareness that these plants should be conserved,” Watts said. “Every time I walk through Overton Park, I see less and less of its wildflowers, because people are digging stuff up. If you want one, buy it from a nursery or a native plants sale.”

Watts will talk about native plant conservation at the opening-day ceremony, which runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Also on the agenda are a talk on Shelby County native plants by Memphis Botanic Garden curator Chris Cosby, a session on making medicinal teas, tours of the sanctuary, and a screening of the documentary, Numen: The Nature of Plants.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Counting the Chips

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In a community where head-on collisions in the public sphere are becoming commonplace, a new one is about to occur. We can designate it as Strickland vs. Wharton — a term that is both shorthand metaphor for a more complicated conflict and a literal foreshadowing of a likely political contest to come.

In a nutshell, Memphis mayor A C Wharton has proposed a 47-cent tax increase in order to pay for the last year of the city’s liability to Memphis City Schools and to provide what the mayor describes as a streamlined version of essential services. Second-term councilman and current budget chairman Jim Strickland not only resists the idea of a tax hike, he has publicly called for quite the opposite — a tax decrease that would reduce the current city property tax rate by roughly half as much as Wharton’s proposal would raise it.

Strickland, who represents a largely Midtown/Poplar Corridor constituency, has pinpointed the city’s problems as stemming from three specific areas — “schools, crime, and taxes.” And, while a budget plan of his own, vented last week, promises to do justice to the first two issues, Strickland lavishes most of his argument on what he sees as a growing tax burden on Memphians, one disproportionate, rate-wise, to the rest of Tennessee and one which he says is causing people “to vote with their tail-lights,” fleeing to nearby suburbs.

Contrasting his own proposal with that of Wharton, Strickland recommends budget cuts that become more serious the further away they are from the categories of public safety, school spending obligations, and “services directly affecting the public.”

He presents figures purporting to show that the mayor’s budget plan would result in a city tax rate of $3.68 per each hundred dollars of assessed value on a taxpayer’s real property and a combined city/county rate of $7.68. That would expand the current city rate of $3.198 and the current city/county rate of $7.21.

Strickland’s own figures for an “initial tax cut” in his plan (presumably tax cuts would continue in later stages) are $2.91 for a city tax rate and $6.193 for a combined city/county tax rate — a measurable decline.

Most council members at present find themselves somewhere in the middle between Wharton and Strickland on the tax issue, and somewhere in the middle is where the final budget will likely rest.

In the meantime, Strickland, acting in the role of budget chair that has seen him preside over several budget sessions so far, in which various unions and city departments have presented their wish lists, has called for maximum public participation in a culminating public budget session at City Hall on May 22nd.

Win or lose in the current showdown he has invited with Wharton, the councilman, who has long harbored mayoral ambitions, will have paved the way for another possible public reckoning down the line — say, in 2015.

• There’s no getting away from it: Money and the lack of it both figure large, not only in government but in political campaigns.

When 9th District congressional candidate Tomeka Hart opened up her headquarters in Chickasaw Crossing on Poplar last Thursday night, she made it a point to say she was running against “two millionaires, actual millionaires, one in the primary, one in the general election.”

The reference to “two millionaires” was Hart’s way of designating current 9th District incumbent Democrat Steve Cohen and George Flinn, the wealthy radiologist/radio magnate who is a candidate for the 9th District seat in the Republican primary.

There is no question that Flinn’s personal fortune can be measured in the several millions. In a losing 2010 race in the Republican primary for the 8th District congressional seat won by current incumbent Stephen Fincher of Crockett County, Flinn spent something like $5 million out of his own pocket. He also spent prodigiously in a race for Shelby County mayor in 2002, overpowering veteran Republican Larry Scroggs in the GOP primary but losing to Democrat Wharton in the general.

Flinn’s Republican opponent in the current Republican primary is the woefully underfunded Charlotte Bergmann, who was the GOP nominee against incumbent Cohen in 2010 and finished well behind him. Though she remains active and has done what underdogs normally do (and normally do in vain) — i.e., challenge the highly favored Flinn to debate — her chances of reaching the general (where she lost badly to Cohen in 2010) are remote.

Hart, too, will have trouble getting there. Admitting her relative lack of fund-raising success so far, Hart said, “Pundits want to see how much money you’ve got in the bank, and then they write you off. If it was about money, I wouldn’t be out there, because we knew in April I wouldn’t have money, right? If it was about money, I’d have been gone a long time ago. But it’s about work.”

Hart is reasonably well known, both for her leadership of the local Urban League chapter (from which she has taken a leave of absence) and as a member of the former Memphis City Schools board and current Unified Shelby County School Board. It was she, along with fellow board member Martavius Jones, who took the lead in the surrender of the MCS charter in late 2010 (a fact that could potentially cut both ways for her politically).

But she is no match, name-recognition-wise, for Cohen, the three-term incumbent and longtime former state senator who has been a major factor in both Memphis and Tennessee politics for more than three decades.

And there’s that “millionaire” thing. Technically, Cohen would seem to be a millionaire. According to the watchdog site OpenSecrets.org, Cohen’s net worth in 2010 (the last year for which such information is available) was between $1.3 and $3.8 million, making him the 111th wealthiest congressman out of 435. (Hat-tip to Marty Aussenberg for this nugget.)

But, from the standpoint of wealth, the congressman is by no means in Flinn’s league, and he is not known, as the Republican is, for self-funding. At the recent opening of a Democratic headquarters in Memphis, Cohen underscored the difference. “While our Republican opponent is going to spend lots of money,” he said, “we’re going to let him spend it.” Whereupon the congressman went on to chide Flinn for not using his resources instead to endow local medical institutions.

More ominous for Hart is the million dollars or so the congressman has raised for his political war chest.

At her headquarters opening, Hart promised to focus on local issues in a way that she contended Cohen has not. The incumbent, she said, is “not about local issues, but all about national politics. … That seat should be completely about what’s going on in Memphis.”

Hart said she had asked Cohen for aid and support of the school-merger movement but had been turned down. “The response was he wasn’t getting involved in local issues,” Hart said.  

All of Cohen’s former opponents have tried to take some such tack, but so far to little or no avail. In fairness and in fact, the congressman keeps a very high profile on local matters, both personally and through the efforts of his staff. His office has continued the tradition of hands-on constituent service made famous by Cohen’s two immediate predecessors, Harold Ford Sr. and Harold Ford Jr.

And not a week goes by without Cohen figuring in some item of local consequence — whether in a ceremony honoring some local son or daughter (like the one last week for Lieutenant Colonel Luke Weathers, an African-American air ace from World War Two) or in announcing a $700,000 grant for LeMoyne-Owen College or $10 million for local health clinics.

“Forget what you might hear. We’re in this,” said Hart last week. But without a large local network (hers at present consists largely of fellow members of New Path, the local activist group that first boosted her into public life) and without real money to run on, she, like her GOP counterpart Bergmann, may have a hard time getting traction.

Given that neither is likely to engage her opponent in public debate, one wonders why these two African-American women, each bearing the burden (or the blessing) of underdog status, shouldn’t do something precedent-shattering and attention-getting like, say, debating each other. It’s as good as any other strategy they might have. And it’s free.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Laffer Redux

CREDIT: Danziger

Those of us with relatively long memories will recall the vogue of “supply side economics” that existed in national government for a brief spell in the early Reagan years — roughly from 1983 to 1986 or so, when a combination of traditional Republicans and resurgent Democrats imposed a more familiar brand of economics, one in which income (revenues) were made to equate as closely as possible with out-go (spending).

Before that happened, however, the ideologues in the administration of President Reagan got to operate fairly freely on the assumption that public demand was not the major motive force in market economics, but that boosting financial advantages to producers, more or less in advance of production, was a better way to go. The shorthand name for this was the aforesaid supply side economics, and the practical import of it was a reliance on tax breaks for corporations and big business (“job creators” in today’s lexicon) in preference to stimulating the demand side and taking care of the social safety net.

In fairness, the jury is still out on supply side, though it is a matter of fact that its initial severities in the workplace were a contributing factor to an immediate economic stagnation that may, in fairness, have also owed something to the inflation that had occurred late in the preceding Carter administration.

The relevance of all this to today’s Memphis and Shelby County? It was spelled out Tuesday in a talk to the Memphis Rotary club by Shelby County trustee David Lenoir, who, if not exactly a supply sider, is definitely an admirer of both Reagan and Art Laffer, the economist whose views animated supply side economics. Lenoir, who boasted some impressive statistics regarding his office’s improved ratio of revenues (i.e., tax collections by the trustee) to expenditures, invoked for the Rotarians the Laffer Curve, which holds that zero taxation equals zero revenues and that 100 percent taxation also produces nothing in the way of revenues and that, consequently, there is an ideal point along the curve of taxation whereon the positive effects of both taxation and governmental restraint are maximized.

The reason why the supply siders failed to make their case in Washington was the same reason that pure Keynesian economics (which advocates stimulus spending) came under suspicion. Both methods tended to produce federal deficits year after year.

The reason why attention to the Laffer Curve may be relevant to the budgets of Memphis and Shelby County now (and both of these are currently undergoing preparation — and debate) is that these local government budgets are required by statute to be balanced. Perhaps, indeed, there is an ideal point at which government expenditures and governmental services can be put into a best-case scenario, if not a perfect balance. The absence of deficits means that nobody is getting leftovers at the expense of somebody else. That kind of zero-sum accounting wouldn’t work for businesses, which must at all costs show a profit. It may work just fine for the ecology of taxpayers and their service providers.

Local government may not be the sphere Art Laffer had in mind, but it may be where — and only where — his method works.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Obamacare Redux

Representative Barney Frank gave a memorable exit interview recently to New York magazine suggesting that President Obama “underestimated, as did Clinton, the sensitivity of people to what they see as an effort to make them share the health care with poor people.”
       

The Democratic Party “paid a terrible price for health care,” Frank said. “I would not have pushed it as hard.”

Is Frank right? We know what Republicans unanimously think. What’s surprising is how many Democrats, with the benefit of hindsight, agree with Frank. Although they support the substance of the law, they are appalled by its political fallout and wish they had a do-over. Their thinking was summarized this week in the National Journal by Michael Hirsh, who wrote that by embracing health care reform amid the economic crisis, Obama confused his priorities and took his eye off the ball, much as President George W. Bush did when he invaded Iraq instead of worrying more about al-Qaeda.
       

This analysis has new resonance because of the recent Supreme Court oral arguments over Obamacare. Democrats are wondering if it was worth it to lose the House in 2010 and perhaps the White House in 2012 over a bill that may be declared unconstitutional anyway.
       

The answer is yes. To understand why, we need to be clear about the purpose of politics. It’s not to win elections — hard as that may be to believe in the middle of a campaign. Public approval as expressed in elections is the means to change the country, not the end in itself.
       

Insuring 30 million Americans and ending the shameful era when an illness in the family meant selling the house or declaring personal bankruptcy? Nothing to sneeze at, whatever the cost to one’s political career.
       

Frank is mistaken that the White House underestimated the political price. At various points, Vice President Joe Biden, senior advisor David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel advised the president to focus entirely on the economy and leave comprehensive health care for another day.
       

I asked the president in late 2009 why he overruled his team. He answered: “I remember telling Nancy Pelosi that moving forward on this could end up being so costly for me politically that it would affect my chances” in 2012. But he and Pelosi agreed that if they didn’t move at the outset of the Obama presidency, “it was not going to get done.”
       

Obama was right that his political capital would diminish over time. Even if the Democrats had delayed health care and held the House in 2010, their numbers would almost certainly have been reduced. Can you imagine trying to bring it up now or in a second term?
       

Hirsh argues that Obama should have stayed focused on the economy not for appearances’ sake but because it was worse off than he and his closest advisers recognized. This wrongly assumes that he could have done substantively more to spur a rebound or keep the benefits of recovery from skewing toward the top 1 percent.
       

It’s important to remember that Obama began his presidency with economic recovery, not health care. In his first month in office, he pushed through a mammoth stimulus package that, contrary to the analysis of Drew Westen and others, was as big as Congress would allow. There was no political appetite for a second stimulus before the first had even kicked in — the period when health care was on the table. In other words, the opportunity costs of health care reform were zero.
       

The “eye off the ball” critics have a point, but it relates to the second year of Obama’s presidency, not the first. Just as Richard Nixon had his “18-minute gap” on the Watergate tapes, so Obama had his 18-month gap, from the signing of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010 until the introduction of his jobs bill in September 2011.
       

If the president had pivoted more quickly from health care to a jobs agenda and signed a bill before the midterms, he would be better off politically and might even have helped the economy a bit.
       

But let’s not pretend health care reform was a fatal Iraq-style distraction from the main event. Instead of costing thousands of lives, it will potentially save many more with its incentives for preventive care, among other historic provisions.
       

The public might not appreciate it yet, but Obamacare took leadership and guts from the president whose name it bears. n
       

Joe Conason is the editor in chief of NationalMemo.com

Categories
Cover Feature News

Barbecurious!

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Memphis has long been host to the biggest barbecue act around — balancing gritty kitchen smarts with a sweet disposition and a slow-cooking way of life.

No doubt you’ve seen the main event: pork ribs crusted with salty, spicy rub and doused with sweet, smoky sauce; sandwiches piled high with tender pulled pork, dripping with tangy sauce and creamy slaw.

But there are other attractions in town — some you won’t find in a typical tourist guide or brochure. The fact is, Memphians will barbecue just about anything. Read on for a peek at some of Memphis’ uniquely delicious twists on barbecue basics. From cultural crossovers to barbecue beer — behold, the barbecuriosities!

Korean Barbecue at DWJ Korean Grill and Sushi Bar

Memphis barbecue purists probably won’t allow that what DWJ Korean Grill and Sushi Bar serves is actually barbecue. DWJ’s ‘cue is cooked over a gas flame right at your table — no wood or charcoal involved — and for some sticklers, that’s a deal-breaker. But when it comes to flavor and spice, Korean barbecue, like the best Memphis-style preparations, really delivers.

Barbecue pork bellies — which should really appeal to pig-centric Memphians — come to the table coated in a flavorful red chili sauce and laden with mushrooms and onions. DWJ’s barbecue short ribs are thinly sliced and not nearly as sweet as Korean ribs can be, which is a good thing. Lightly marinated in minced garlic and sesame oil, the ribs are served with plenty of condiments and can be piled onto lettuce leaves with a blob of rice, a schmear of bean paste, some fresh green chili slices, and thinly shaved chunks of garlic and eaten like a wrap. Too much fuss? Just grab your chopsticks and eat them right off the grill. — Chris Davis

DWJ Korean Grill and Sushi Bar, 3750 Hacks Cross, 746-8057

Lamb Riblets at the Rendezvous

This is counterprogramming at its finest. Who on earth would go to the world-famous Rendezvous and order lamb? I would and did. The serving consists of six or seven chunky, two-rib sections coated with Rendezvous dry rub. The lamb meat is much thicker than the Rendezvous’ pork ribs — plump, even — and pulls off the bone easily. It’s got a fine, tender, chewy consistency with a slight, lamb-y aftertaste. I added Rendezvous sauce to the rub and greatly enjoyed these off-the-beaten-path riblets.

The price is $18.75, the same as a full order of pork ribs, and the lamb riblets come with the same sides: slaw, beans, and a roll. I can eat a full order of pork ribs, but I couldn’t finish these — too much meat for one sitting. So, I took some home to enjoy the next day. Verdict: not baaahed at all. — Bruce VanWyngarden

Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous,

52 South Second, 523-2746

Char-Grilled Oysters at Pearl’s Oyster House

Fishermen scour the rocky coastline and sandy ocean floor to bring these pale, watery creatures to Memphis, so Memphis does what we do best: We barbecue them.

I’m not a great oyster aficionado, but I love the char-grilled oysters at Pearl’s. And what’s not to love? Oysters on the half-shell are sauced with a tangy, barbecuey, chipotle-garlic blend, then sprinkled with shaved Parmesan cheese. The little morsels are then shoved under a charbroiler long enough that the cheese gets browned to a chewy, crispy texture and the sauce is bubbling. A half-dozen, served on a rock-salt platter with a little spinach, also crispy and grilled, will set you back $9.99. But go for a dozen at $19.99. It’s seafood — how bad for you can it be? And these things are delicious. — Bruce VanWyngarden

Pearl’s Oyster House, 299 South Main, 522-9070

Cornish Game Hen at Cozy Corner

For 30 years, Cozy Corner, a tiny barbecue shack on North Parkway just east of Danny Thomas, has done things just a little bit differently from Memphis’ other pig palaces. Take, for instance, the most perfect thing on Cozy Corner’s menu: the barbecued Cornish game hen. So what if Cornish hens aren’t exotic game birds? And who cares if they aren’t always hens? These young chickens are Cozy Corner’s elegant, personal-sized twist on good old-fashioned barbecue chicken.

The Corner’s hens are cooked dry with a tasty spice rub until the skin is a beautiful mahogany color and the rich, smoky flavor goes all the way to the bone. They are served wet, with a thin, sweet-and-sour sauce that can be ordered mild or spicy but which might be more correctly labeled spicy and spicier. At $11 without sides, it may seem a little pricey, but it’s worth every penny. — Chris Davis

Cozy Corner, 745 North Parkway, 527-9158

BBQ Beer at Jack Magoo’s

While beer cocktails may be considered eclectic to the light-beer-drinkin’ masses, they’re not terribly uncommon. The British black and tan — half pale ale, half porter or stout — and the German Radler — half pilsner, half lemonade or soda — started showing up in pubs and biergardens close to a century ago and deserve their place in the world of beer. But the skeptics aren’t completely off the mark, with drinks like Jack Magoo’s BBQ beer out there.

A mix of Bud Light, Bloody Mary mix, Cattleman’s BBQ sauce, and olives garnishing, BBQ beer tastes more like a Bloody Mary than anything else. Its tomato, Worcestershire sauce, and peppery heat mixed with subtle, sweet barbecue notes make for a compelling combination. For those of you who enjoy a good Bloody Mary but are looking for an interesting take on the cocktail, this might be right up your alley — especially at a mere $2. — Andrew Caldwell

Jack Magoo’s Sports Bar and Grill, 2583 Broad, 746-9612

BBQ Tofu Burrito at R.P. Tracks

R.P. Tracks claims its barbecue tofu is “world famous.” And while international prominence might be a stretch, their deep-fried, ‘cue-covered bean curd is at least locally famous. It’s perhaps best known for its starring role in Tracks’ BBQ Tofu Nachos (tofu, black beans, tomatoes, cheese, and sour cream atop a bed of seasoned tortilla chips). But the BBQ Tofu Burrito may actually be the best tofu-to-mouth delivery method. The same toppings from those nachos are stuffed into a massive tortilla wrap (available in a white flour, wheat, sun-dried tomato basil, or spinach tortilla) topped with cheese (optional for vegans) and black olives. It’s a little hefty for lifting, so a fork (and maybe a to-go box) is recommended. Of course, you won’t miss out on those perfectly seasoned chips by skipping out on nachos. They’re served as a side item with Tracks’ signature garlicky tomato salsa. — Bianca Phillips

R.P. Tracks, 3547 Walker, 327-1471

Barbecue Brunswick Stew at the Germantown Commissary

Brunswick stew being served at a barbecue joint may only be considered sideshow in Memphis, the Mid-South, and the Delta. But in many other barbecue capitals in the South, Brunswick stew topped with pulled pork is a staple. Its recipe varies, and where the stew originated is up for debate, with folks from Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina vying for the honor.

The hearty soup offered at the Germantown Commissary comes chock-a-block full of stewed tomatoes, green beans, corn, and lima beans, and the restaurant’s signature hickory-smoked pulled pork makes a big island in the middle. You can get a bowl for $5.50 — a generous portion that’s a meal — or as a side dish for $2.50. Crumble in some of the slab of cornbread provided to lend some sweetness to the spicy endeavor. — Greg Akers

The Germantown Commissary, 2290 Germantown Road, 754-5540

The Original Barbecue Pizza at Coletta’s

Eating barbecue pizza in the “Elvis Room” at the original Coletta’s on South Parkway is a singular Memphis experience. The “we can turn anything into barbecue” ethos we celebrate in this issue was arguably born in second-generation owner Horest Coletta’s kitchen in the 1950s. The basic concept — a sturdy, medium-crust cheese pizza topped with smoked pork and barbecue sauce — has become fairly common, especially with chicken, and has probably been improved on. But this where it began. And the atmosphere can’t be beat. The wood paneling and checkerboard tablecloths transport you back to the era of the barbecue pizza’s creation, while the Elvis paraphernalia framed along the walls — which includes the front page of The Commercial Appeal from the day after his death and appears as if it’s been unchanged for decades — pays proper tribute to a former regular who may himself have been among the first to savor this quintessentially Memphis creation. — Chris Herrington

Coletta’s, 1063 South Parkway, 948-7652

Barbecue Portobello Sandwich at Central BBQ

In the beginning there was tofu.

Central BBQ, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary and is on the verge of opening a third location, has well established that barbecue is indeed central with its award-winning ribs, pulled pork sandwiches, and hot wings. From the start, says owner Craig Blondis, they knew they wanted to offer diners a vegetarian option. They tried a barbecue tofu sandwich, but they couldn’t figure out how to keep the tofu from falling apart, so they switched to the heartier Portobello mushroom.

The Portobello is marinated in a mix of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, oregano, thyme, and garlic and then grilled. The sandwich is topped with smoked Gouda, slaw, and the restaurant’s mild barbecue sauce.

Blondis estimates that he sells 30 to 40 of the sandwiches each week. And while he notes that he’s had customers request that the barbecue Portobello sandwich be topped with pork, he says that this one’s for the vegetarians: “It’s for people who don’t eat meat to take part in the experience.” — Susan Ellis

Central BBQ, 2249 Central, 272-9377

BBQ Spaghetti at The Bar-B-Q Shop

If you’re from Memphis, chances are you’re quite familiar with barbecue spaghetti. But outside the Mid-South, this spin on the standard spaghetti side dish is a true novelty. You might think barbecue spaghetti would be a simple concept, merely replacing a traditional Bolognese sauce with barbecue sauce and smoked pork. But, at the BBQ Shop at least, it’s not that simple.

“People think it’s just our sauce and oil,” owner Eric Vernon says, “but it’s not.” Rather, at the Vernon family’s Midtown institution, cooked spaghetti is finished off in a base that’s considerably sweeter than the Shop’s tart sauce and then mixed with an au jus left over from the cooked pork. This infuses the pasta itself with a smoky, sweet flavor entirely unlike the restaurant’s Dancing Pigs sauce, which is added to the top along with a pile of chopped pork. A personal confession: For about three or four bites, I think this is one of the best things ever. But I find it almost too intense for further consumption. It’s perfect for a side. Others have the stamina to make a meal of it. — Chris Herrington

The Bar-B-Q Shop, 1782 Madison, 272-1277

24th Annual ASBEE Kosher BBQ Contest

While the annual Memphis in May barbecue festival was gaining its current international reputation, a parallel local event has also landed a place for itself on the festival map. This one, the annual ASBEE Kosher BBQ Contest, on the sprawling East Memphis grounds of the Anshei Sphard Beth El Emeth Congregation, is held in the fall — at just about that time (October 21st, this year) when fond gustatory memories of the barbecue festival itself may have faded.

Which is to say, the ASBEE event (“the world’s largest,” and maybe the only one of its kind, say the sponsors), while it is genuinely kosher — in that no pork products are served and other dietary restrictions are observed — is open to everyone. As the proprietors put it, “You don’t have to be Jewish or kosher to join us!” 

Competition is usually in three categories, brisket and ribs and beans (yes, beans), with chicken recipes sometimes admitted. Radio legend and longtime Elvis bud George Klein is the emcee, and local celebrities, both Jewish and non-Jewish, serve as judges. A basketball tournament, a pickle-eating contest, and train rides and other frolics for the kiddies complement the eats. Nosh away! — Jackson Baker

1st Annual Cochon Heritage BBQ

When Cochon 555, a sui generis (dare we say, sooey generis?) swine-wine-and-dine event made its first stop in Memphis this year, foodies were beside themselves with joy. So when Cochon founder Brady Lowe announced that the inaugural Cochon Heritage BBQ event would be held in Memphis, we nearly swooned. This Labor Day, chefs, farmers, distillers, wine-makers, and pig-lovers will come together (at a location to be determined) to celebrate the union of heritage pork and whiskey for National Bourbon Month. Tastings, demonstrations, and some good old-fashioned competition will keep festivalgoers entertained while they stuff themselves to the gills with whiskey and pork. Above all, the event is dedicated to bringing heritage breed hogs back into the tradition of barbecue in one of the world’s biggest barbecue cities. — Hannah Sayle

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Shakespeare Under Glass

The Tennessee Shakespeare Company has more than lived up to the second word of its name. Now the still-young troupe will have a go at the first word with an outdoor production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. Williams’ beloved “memory play” is about family life in a cold-water St. Louis tenement during a time of economic crisis, when a “blind” America was having its fingers “pressed forcibly downwards on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.” It introduced the world to the struggling Wingfield family: Laura, a crippled, painfully shy collector of glass trinkets; Tom, an angry, poetic wanderer; and Amanda Wingfield, one of American literature’s most unforgettable mothers. It’s especially fitting that it was Mother’s Day when I spoke to actress Christina Wellford Scott, who just finished an exceptional run of King Lear with the New Moon Theatre Company, and asked her to tell me everything she knows about Amanda Wingfield.

The first words Scott uses to describe Amanda, a mercurial character driven to something close to madness by the love of her children: tender-hearted, romantic, proud, intelligent, and witty. But there’s much more. “She has tremendous inner strength and determination and is tormented by fears about her children,” Scott says. “Sometimes I think Amanda can be off-putting and shrill in her hysteria and fear. I hope the audience recognizes the depth of her love for her children, as well as Tom’s heartache over the memory of his beloved sister and the mother who loved him, perhaps ‘not wisely, but too well.'”

Scott says she hasn’t rehearsed on the actual set yet and has no idea what practical challenges the cast will face bringing a play this intimate outdoors. “I look forward to the magical aspect of performing an expressionist play in nature,” she says. “We hope to connect with the audience in a very emotional and personal way.”

“The Glass Menagerie” at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, May 23rd-June 3rd. $15 previews, $25 in advance, $30 at the gate. tnshakespeare.org

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True Stories

Leah Keys isn’t the first person to realize that everybody has a story to tell. She is, however, prepared to do something about it. On Friday, May 18th, at Crosstown Arts, Keys launches Spillit, a curated quarterly storytelling event featuring a few professional performers and a lot of ordinary people you’ve probably never heard of but with something unique to say.

“Spillit is true, unscripted storytelling told in front of a live audience,” Keys explains, emphasizing that the stories are told and not read. “Every story lasts about 10 minutes. They come from the teller’s own life and can be about coincidences, failures, successes, tragedies, heroes … anything, really.”

Spillit’s first event is built around the theme “rites of passage” and collects a range of stories that touch on everything from spirituality to sexuality, mystery, and misadventure. Some are humorous, Keys says, while others are more hard-edged.

Spillit participant Kip Cole’s story is inspired by the time when a package he shipped was deemed “suspicious” by the post office, resulting in chaos. Melissa Sweazy will hold forth on a slumber party gone terribly wrong. Josh Campbell’s spiritual coming-of-age story will give the audience a sense of what it’s like to speak in tongues. And well-known Memphis yarn-spinner Elaine Blanchard will report on events from married life in an RV park.

And that, Keys says, is just a taste of what’s in store. “The response to this first event has just been incredible,” she says.

Spillit at Crosstown Arts, Friday, May 18th. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; stories start at 8 p.m. $8. If you are interested in sharing a story at future Spillit events, send your pitch to spillitstories@gmail.com.

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Music Music Features

Against the Grain

Annie Clark, the 29-year-old powerhouse behind the stage name St. Vincent, is standing at the top of the mighty hill she’s been climbing for the last five years. The Tulsa-born Clark’s third full-length album, Strange Mercy, released late last year to great critical acclaim, showcased a clearer artistic identity than before.

The album expands the raucous guitar thrashing that Clark explored in her 2009 album Actor while retaining an eerie contrast with the quietude of her 2007 debut, Marry Me. It’s an almost geometric progression, though the logic of it all is always undercut by Clark herself, who remains a captivating mix of fragility and volatility, threading seductively sweet melodies with frenetic disorder.

Clark’s guitar chops have their origin in her training at Berklee College of Music, where she spent three years before joining the freewheeling choral pop ensemble Polyphonic Spree at 22. Two years later, she toured with Sufjan Stevens in his backing band, bringing along with her a three-track EP called Paris Is Burning.

Those early songs captured a lot of the slower moments that remain in Clark’s music today, but back then her lilting vocal melodies filled out the spaces in the structural elements she continues to employ. Actor saw her injecting heavy, dirty guitar solos, often crashing them straight into the breathier, more orchestral elements that remained from Marry Me. Across the board, Clark’s songs often find her inhabiting other people and characters, like Marilyn Monroe in Strange Mercy‘s “Surgeon,” where desperation is undercut by lethargy, then supercharged with a searing guitar crescendo.

Clark’s subject matter has always teetered on the edge of sickening and sweet, contrasting sunny harmonies with sour imagery. The videos that have been released so far for Strange Mercy — a dystopic view of domesticity for “Chloe in the Afternoon,” where Clark is kidnapped by a family with no matriarch and forced to perform motherly and wifely duties, and a riff on Gulliver’s Travels for “Cheerleader,” where a giant Clark is hoisted into place inside a white-walled museum while onlookers gawk at her size — have explored the feeling of not fitting into situations or roles that one is forced into. Her recent explosion into what can now be clearly called heavy guitar-driven pop feels like a shattering of some of those real-life holes Clark has been pinned inside.

Most recently, she put out “Krokodil,” a vinyl single for Record Store Day. The song unleashes the underlying tension that fills Clark’s records.

“There’s a tremendous amount of aggression in what I’ve done before, but it’s just been subverted a bit and tucked away, more just kind of subtly menacing than outright crazy,” Clark says in a recent phone interview, explaining that for this single she decided to let it all out. “I thought, I really want to write a song that I can just go crazy on.”

Much of the press Clark has gotten over the years has concerned itself with her place as a female in the male-dominated indie sphere; the juxtaposition of Clark’s delicate physical presence and her formidable guitar-wrenching skills is fodder for much of that conversation. But there’s a universality to her music that sometimes gets swept under the “powerful female musician” generalization, and Clark herself has tried to evade that classification, deeming it entirely irrelevant.

“I have a joke with a friend of mine that people will ask the ‘What’s it like to be a woman in rock?’ question, and my answer is the only difference is you get asked the ‘What’s it like?’ question,” Clark says with a laugh. “I don’t think about music in gendered terms. If somebody is surprised by the fact that I play guitar well, that’s kind of their own shortsightedness. That has nothing to do with me, really, and I think honestly, with the next generation, it will be even more of a nonissue than it is for me now.”

Her demure physical qualities do contribute to the power of Clark’s stage presence; the often expansive stages she plays on are filled with moving lights and the other members and instruments that make up her touring band, and at the center of it all is Clark. She’s tiny in comparison, but her solemnity and stillness demand attention, and once she’s gotten it, she careens off into distorted but structured delirium. It’s a captivating contrast that’s impressive to behold.

In a sphere packed with nonchalant surf-rock and lo-fi noise, Clark’s labored, thoughtfully crafted but easy brand of pop is refreshing. She expertly sews together fragmented pieces to make smart, pleasurable but always surprising songs, and that feeling is translated perfectly to her carefully tailored performances. What underlies all of Clark’s work is intention; she takes her job as a musician very seriously, and her reverence for the audience experience is clear.

“The great thing about music is that it has all these fractal consequences. You know, it may start as something and mean something to you, but then it works its way into other people’s lives and takes on a whole new life, and it’s like it’s theirs now,” Clark says. “So playing these shows on the one hand is obviously about me, because I’m the performer and the lights are focused onstage, but it’s really about the audience. It’s about them bringing their meaning of the songs back and me just trying to give them another dimension to the music.”

St. Vincent, with Shearwater

Minglewood Hall, Thursday, May 17th, 8 p.m.; $18

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Music Record Reviews

Record Reviews

Old times revisited.

This delicious Mid-South roots-music testament is the product of an impromptu three-day recording session organized by Luther Dickinson at his family’s Zebra Ranch studio. Admiring a photograph of Valerie June — at that point only an acquaintance — playing banjo, Dickinson began to think of other women in his acoustic/roots music orbit — Amy LaVere’s upright bass, Shannon McNally’s guitar, Sharde Thomas’ fife and drum — and how they might fit together into a band.

Dickinson summoned them all — like the set-up of a blockbuster superhero movie — to Zebra Ranch with the only instruction to bring along a couple of traditional songs or covers they’d be interested in playing. Almost instantly, they had a band. Three days later, they had this terrific, warm, loose-limbed album, recorded with the palpable intimacy and casual swagger that the late Jim Dickinson made a Zebra Ranch staple.

The eclectic material — all covers, ranging from ’60s/’70s folk-rock and singer-songwriter country to ancient country-blues traditionals — features each of the four women on lead vocals at least a couple of times and excels when the interaction is most tangible.

The album opens with the Mississippi Sheiks’ “Sittin’ on Top of the World,” a longtime regional blues staple. Thomas — the youngest member of the Wandering and the granddaughter of late North Mississippi blues legend Otha Turner — gives a charismatically indolent lead vocal after launching the song with interplay between her fife and Dickinson’s mandolin. LaVere, McNally, and June share vocals on the Byrds’ “Mr. Spaceman,” with LaVere’s bass and palpably compassionate line readings (“I hope they get home all right”) standing out. McNally gender-flips Kris Kristofferson’s “Lovin’ Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again),” playing off June’s banjo counterpoint. June wails her way through the Robert Johnson classic “If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day,” with Thomas and LaVere making the song motorvate in a way that’s rare.

These four women fit together so well — musically, vocally, conceptually — that it would be a shame if Go On Now, You Can’t Stay Here ends up being just a one-off project. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

The Wandering will make their live Memphis debut at the Levitt Shell on Saturday, May 19th. Showtime is 7:30 p.m. Free.

This Luther Dickinson acoustic roots-music project is as communal as the Wandering but maybe a little rowdier. Recorded on the quick, using vintage equipment, at Jimbo Mathus’ Como, Mississippi, studio, this second South Memphis String Band album improves on the band’s off-the-cuff debut both musically and thematically and turns the original trio into a quartet, with Dickinson, Mathus, and Alvin Youngblood Hart joined by Justin Showah, of Mathus’ band, along as a fourth member.

The interest, between Hart and Mathus in particular, in regional history and culture gives “Old Times There …” an unvarnished, confrontational vibe, both in Mathus’ originals and in cover material that draws on early 20th-century acoustic blues and jug-band musicians such as Gus Cannon, Furry Lewis, and the Mississippi Sheiks. Covers such as the Sheiks’ “Turnip Greens,” Cannon’s “Can You Blame the Colored Man” (a sardonic vision of Booker T. Washington meeting President Teddy Roosevelt), and Lewis’ “B-L-A-C-K” stand out on an album that dives into the rich, twisted racial history of America and particularly the South — slavery, war, reconstruction, Jim Crow.

“B-L-A-C-K” is recorded as an ebony-and-ivory duet between Hart and Dickinson that pays homage to a nervy version an elder Lewis did with white Memphis guitarist Lee Baker once upon a time. Instead of shying away from the messiness at the very roots of American “roots” music, the South Memphis String Band reclaims it all with a knowing irreverence. — CH

Grade: B+