Month: May 2012

Categories
Music Music Features

Rock and Rant Hall of Fame

“It’s a late date to be saying it, and I mean no disrespect to the people of Cleveland, who I’m sure are a fine people and a spiritual people — but Cleveland ain’t ever gonna be Memphis.”

— Memphis’ Sam Phillips at the first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Banquet, 1986, via Stanley Booth’s Rythm Oil

“Blow it up! Blow it up! Blow it up before Johnny Rotten gets in!”

— Columbus’ Ron House on “RnR Hall of Fame,” 1995, from Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments’ Bait & Switch

Those two public pronouncements from defiantly independent regional music icons bookend a bitter process in the world of Memphis music. Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, one of the first inductees, was voicing his disapproval on having his hometown passed over for the museum site in a city with less claim on the music but a bigger public check to offer.

Nearly a decade later, with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame finally set to open in Cleveland, Ohio punk/indie mainstay Ron House made his own principled stand against the project, a defiant punk “no” in the face of a civic celebration.

A 66-second spoken rant with noise accompaniment, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments’ “RnR Hall of Fame” was historic on impact. Railing against an institution that, in his worldview, doesn’t “induct” but “indict,” House protests imagined future exhibits of a venue he sees as inherently exploitative, snarling with comic audacity: “I don’t want to see Eric Clapton’s stuffed baby! I don’t want to see the shotgun of Kurt Cobain!”

House had been an Ohio music-scene fixture for more than a decade at that point, spending much of the ’80s as frontman for Great Plains, which released three albums in the middle of that decade on the notable national indie label Homestead Records. Lower-key, brainy, mildly rootsy, Great Plains were roughly similar to better-known regional indie stalwarts such as San Pedro, California’s Minutemen and Phoenix’s Meat Puppets. They doted on Midwestern history (“Rutherford B. Hayes,” “Black Sox Scandal”), local-scene color (“Columbus Dispatch,” “Letter to a Fanzine”), and other cultural items (“Dick Clark,” “Martin Luther King and Martin Luther Drinking,” “Alfalfa Omega”). It was a pre-internet, get-in-the-van/fanzine era in which most cities had one or two indie/punk bands for the local scene to rally around. The Great Plains were Columbus’ entry — and a good one.

After nearly a decade since Great Plains’ 1987 finale Sum Things Up, apparently unaware that musicians are supposed to mellow as they get older, House reemerged with Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments — a louder, coarser, angrier outfit where House’s more agitated vocals (and outlook) were matched by the under-recognized guitar work of partner Bob Petric.

“RnR Hall of Fame” is such an eternal moment that it has tended to obscure the rest of the record that surrounded it, but Bait & Switch is a legit lost classic from an era when indie and punk bands were ascendant — so much so that this cheap, confrontational album was actually marketed by major-label-connected American Recordings, then making a name for itself via its work with Johnny Cash.

The album showcased Stooges-style Midwestern proto-punk — a sneaky-smart blend of grimy guitars, yowling vocals, and a prowling mid-tempo pace.

“I was born at the start of this song/I never thought I would last this long,” House mewls on the opening “My Mysterious Death (Turn It Up),” which sets the tone. “Down to High Street” is a rock-show call to arms, so to speak: “There’s a time for getting drunk alone/But not now/There’s a time for staying sober at home/But not now.” “Negative Guest List” (“Even if I pay I can’t get in”) puts House in a confrontational position against a scene he confesses he needs. “Quarrel With the World” sums up the mood.

Best of all — discounting “RnR Hall of Fame” — is “Cheater’s Heaven” — a delirious, drunken tale of a married man on the hunt for an illicit encounter: “The woman was long-legged, red-haired, and married/We staggered time and toasted cemeteries/We mourned the loss of lime in cheap liquor/We wondered which way to our homes was quicker.”

A follow-up, 1997’s too-appropriately titled Straight to Video, didn’t have the benefit of American’s muscle or the same kind of reach, though it’s a very good record on its own less momentous terms — less a document of the band’s musical worldview than a series of snapshots of low-rent “love” life. The band’s apparent swan song, 2000’s No Old Guy Lo-Fi Cry, was nonexistent to anyone but scene diehards. The band went kaput soon after, but most members remained in the Columbus area and have played the occasional reunion show. Now, apparently, they’re back on the road: The Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments gig that showed up on the Hi-Tone Café schedule awhile back — and is set for this weekend — is one of the most unlikely but most interesting bookings on the local calendar this year.

Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments with Sharp Balloons and Flamin’ A’s

Hi-Tone Café

Friday, June 1st

9 p.m.; $5

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Food Deeds

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

So maybe you can’t have your cake and eat it too. But as it turns out, you can have your cake and the Food Bank can have it too.

That’s because Tender Loving Cake donates a pound cake to the Mid-South Food Bank for every one of their gourmet coffee cakes purchased.

Founder Bill Oates came up with the idea when his daughter first told him about Tom’s — the brand of shoes that donates one pair of shoes to a child in need for each pair sold.

“We just borrowed that concept,” Oates says, “because it’s the right thing to do.”

Last December, Oates launched Tender Loving Cake with the help of wholesale baker Ed Crenshaw. Crenshaw makes cakes and other baked goods for local grocery stores and restaurants. So Oates, a graphic designer by trade and an inventor and idea-man for fun, found the perfect fit for his business model. The 501(c)3 sells 48-ounce upscale coffee cakes for about $32 each, which then subsidize the donation of a less expensive 35-ounce pound cake to the Mid-South Food Bank.

The Tender Loving Cakes are baked from scratch and come in two flavors: cinnamon pecan and sour-cream blueberry. They can be shipped anywhere for about $11. Currently, Oates is only donating cakes to the Mid-South Food Bank, but he’s in negotiations with Second Harvest Food Bank in Middle Tennessee, the Arkansas Food Bank in Little Rock, and the Mississippi Food Network in Jackson. And eventually, he’d like to sell other kinds of cakes.

The bakery, where you can pick up a Tender Loving Cake and avoid paying the shipping fee, is on Summer Avenue near White Station.

Tender Loving Cake, 5041 Summer

(230-8485), tenderlovingcake.com

L’Ecole Culinaire is expanding its course offerings to include a 10-week certification program for Nutrition and Dietary Management. The certification allows chefs at hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted-living organizations to communicate better with dietitians.

Chef Emmett Bell, a certified dietary manager himself and formerly a chef at Le Bonheur, is heading the program. He says the certification does not mean chefs will be considered registered dietitians.

“That’s a two-year degree,” he says. “Certified dietitians work directly with the doctor, and then they come to the chef or the manager and convey a patient’s dietary needs to us. [The certification] makes it easier for us to communicate with the dietitians and understand what they need.”

The program covers food safety, management of food service, human resource management, and nutrition and practical application. For the nutrition portion of the coursework, L’Ecole is bringing in a registered dietitian to teach the science behind the disease-oriented diets that certified dietary managers implement.

“We already have a Healthy Lifestyles class as part of our associate’s degree,” Bell says. “But with the guidance of a registered dietitian, we’ll learn about renal diets, how to cook low-fat, high-fiber meals, how to make healthier substitutions in recipes, and things like that.”

The program begins in late July and will run every 10 weeks. The course prepares students for the Certified Dietary Manager test. L’Ecole Culinaire does not currently proctor the test but hopes to in the future.

Bell says this won’t necessarily mean that your hospital food will taste better.

“Probably not,” he says with a laugh. “But we will learn how to cook with exactly what patients can have. We’ll know when we can use substitutions instead of leaving an ingredient out. So yeah, maybe it would make their food taste better.”

L’Ecole Culinaire, 1245 N. Germantown Pkwy. (754-7115), lecole.edu

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Courtesy of Esto Photography

They had me at “Pomp and Circumstance.” Some of you know that I work by day at the Soulsville Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Stax Music Academy, and the Soulsville Charter School. And I know that this has already been in the news, but I can’t help it. I have to weigh in on a group of high school students who will forever be known as the Soulsville 51.

Last week, six years in the making, the Soulsville Charter School had its first-ever graduation. You may have heard or read that 100 percent of the graduating seniors were accepted to college and that they earned a combined total of more than $3.8 million in scholarships and awards. And they got accepted to some good schools, including Smith College, Wesleyan University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Tennessee, Oberlin College, Tufts University, and others. If you saw Friday’s edition of The Commercial Appeal and read Geoff Calkins’ article about this, you probably saw the photograph of a young man, Jameel Best, in his cap and gown at the ceremony. As recently as last summer, he didn’t think he was going to college at all. He was accepted to all eight colleges to which he applied and got a full-ride scholarship to Tuskegee, where he plans to study forestry because he loves animals. He is one of my new heroes.

Lots of these students came to the Soulsville Charter School at least two years behind in school. And of this first graduating class, 45 percent of them have been at the school since it was founded in 2005 with 60 sixth-graders. I can’t begin to tell you what it was like last week. The excitement around Soulsville was palpable on every inch of the campus. On the day of the graduation, some of us had to be there at 4:30 a.m. to meet the crew to film a live remote for MSNBC’s Morning Joe with ESPN analyst Digger Phelps, who flew in to attend and speak at the graduation because he believes so passionately in the school. Reporters and videographers were all over the place for days. James Alexander and Larry Dodson of the Bar-Kays came and had a congratulatory impromptu jam session with and for the students that was so off-the-chain it was like they and the students had been rehearsing together for years. By the time the graduation was over last Thursday night, I had been going at it for 18 hours; not one minute of it was work.

I say all this because when I first started out in this Soulsville project back in 1998, the corner of College Street and McLemore Avenue looked like an urban war zone. The original Stax Records building had been demolished a decade earlier and the site was nothing but a weeded, cracked-concrete empty lot covered with broken glass and garbage. Next door to the lot, where the Stax Music Academy now stands, was an abandoned 65-unit apartment building with no windows and knee-high trash in every unit. There were few opportunities for the kids in the neighborhood, which, by the way, is a great neighborhood, with a lot of older residents who have lived here all of their lives.

I just never imagined back then that I would be watching 51 high school seniors graduate from a school here. I knew having a Stax Museum would be great, but who would have known that a young lady I’ve watched grow up since the sixth grade would leave as our valedictorian on her way to Wesleyan?

I can brag on this school all day long every day because I don’t take any of the credit for it. I’ve never before seen teachers and administrators like the ones here. They come before the sun is up and stay until after it’s down and they do truly care about these kids. This is not to criticize any other school or any other teachers because there are great ones here in the city, but I think this is one remarkable success story for the students, their families, the faculty, the city of Memphis, and all of the former Stax Records artists who made all that great music to merit having a museum in their honor and a way to carry their legacy into the future forever. We know we stand on their shoulders. They are the ones who should be the proudest of all because if it weren’t for them, Soulsville wouldn’t be what it is today — and who knows if those 51 students would have done what they have done?

Categories
Cover Feature News

The “New” Paradigm

CREDIT: Dreamstime

Probably no local official has experienced more frustration over high Delta airfares than 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, who serves on the House Transportation Committee and on its airlines subcommittee but, as a member of the minority party these days, finds that his ability to force action on the majority Republicans who control the House is limited.

Because of his committee assignments, Cohen took some early hits on the “Delta Does Memphis” website, including one from Democratic primary opponent Tomeka Hart and others from commenters he suspects of being politically motivated. He brands as a “falsehood” someone’s widely circulated tweet that he “didn’t want to be involved.” He says he’s had numerous and frequent conversations about the fare problem, especially of late — with Delta, with possible competitor Southwest Airlines, with airport authority head Arnold Perl, and with various business leaders.

Cohen said last week he’d told Delta that “a lot of prominent people and just regular people are complaining and that I’d like to know if they can do anything at all to reduce the fares. The odds are, they’re not, because they’re in the business not to take care of Memphis but to take care of Delta stockholders. The truth is, it’s an issue dependent on market conditions. Since deregulation, there’s not much you can do about it.”

At a subsequent press conference with reporters at his home, Cohen was candid about there being few legislative avenues for correcting the fare problem. Like other informed observers, he saw competition as the basic answer. 

Like many others, Cohen invests hope in low-cost carrier Southwest as a competitor with Delta, but, conspicuously, he is no Pollyanna. As he sees it, Southwest, which operates several flights in Nashville and Little Rock, won’t do much in Memphis before 2013, when it takes over a few prior connections here of Air Tran, the budget line Southwest has merged with. Bluntly, he says, “They’re not coming here in a big way” but will essentially connect travelers to Atlanta. Maybe Southwest could be induced to add a flight to Midway in Chicago. “That’s nice, and Chicago is a great city, but it’s only one city.”

Cohen said he had asked his staff to look into remedies available in existing antitrust laws but doubted that the GOP majority would permit any new legislative remedies. Hearings in Washington were at the discretion of the majority party, but: “We could possibly have some type of hearing here in Memphis. Whether Delta or Southwest would lend their voices and participate? They’ve both been invited and have not indicated whether they would.”

The fare issue here is similar to what exists in other markets where a single airline maintains a “fortress hub” with the ability to overpower smaller lines, matching their rates if need be before driving them out, Cohen said. “It’s a predatory pricing situation, one the Justice Department hasn’t pursued. We’ve had deregulation for 30 years. It’s caused airlines to merge down to only three major carriers. There’s also the cost of fuel. But as airline fuel goes down, they don’t reduce their fares or increase their service.”

Cohen touted USAir’s Washington-to-Memphis service, which he used twice last week. “Their fares were cheaper than Delta. They were small planes. Their planes were full. It’s competition that will work. And I encourage that and continue to encourage it.”

Public pressure on Delta like that from “Delta Does Memphis,” which Cohen himself now contributes to, is helpful, but action from key business leaders would be more so, Cohen said. Meanwhile, he pledges to stay on the case himself. “I’ve been on this subject long before Debbie did Memphis or Delta did Dallas or whatever. I was there.”

COMMENTS FROM OTHER LOCAL OFFICIALS

Memphis mayor A C Wharton: “It’s a given that everybody wants lower airfares, and this is why I’m pushing the airport authority to get more competition in here. We’re working feverishly on the Southwest operation. We’ve just gotten the USAir three flights a day to Washington. So competition is the answer. We will never ever be able to regulate ourselves into a lower airfare, at least not at the local government level. I’m going to tell everybody, there ain’t nothing I can do about that. Ain’t nothing the city council can do about that. The competitive forces will have to drive that, and we can talk and talk and talk and talk, and, until the folks who run the airlines see that they can make a profit on it, things are not going to be improved. And this is why we’ve got to get competition in here. That’s the only answer.

“[Southwest Airlines has] got the regulatory clearances that they need. I understand that when you merge two airlines, you’ve got to make sure that you get it right. If you don’t get it right and the customers become dissatisfied after two or three flights, they’re going to find other carriers. So what I understand is, it’s just a matter of getting it right. There are no legal barriers to Southwest coming in and taking over [from] Air Tran. That’s on the way now.”

Tennessee governor Bill Haslam: “You can actually fly from Knoxville to London cheaper than you can fly from Knoxville to Memphis. So I think there are some issues. As a state, we don’t have any authority over their pricing policies. I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve always tried to encourage low-cost airlines to be here in Tennessee, because it does impact businesses as well as families and individuals who want to travel. It does impact our economic development when it costs folks a lot to fly in or out of our cities, so we’re working on it. Again, we don’t have any pricing authority that we can do with airlines. But it is an issue.”

Shelby County mayor Mark Luttrell: “I’m concerned as everyone should be about high airfares here. I understand that it’s a combination of things. I’ve heard a lot about the cost of fuel, but everybody’s experienced the cost of fuel, so I don’t think that that, in and of itself, is the reason. One of the reasons I hear is that we have such a low percentage of origination here in Memphis. Most of our traffic is people passing through, making connections. And how you attack that problem, increasing the city’s originations, comes with just trying to get more competition from other airlines in here. I don’t think I’m saying anything here that’s fundamentally different, that competition might help matters. But it’s evident right now that, with our lack of competition, Delta doesn’t feel compelled to address their flights.”

Tennessee Senate majority leader Mark Norris: “The last two weeks I’ve concentrated on getting the price of gasoline down. Now that I’ve taken care of that, people are asking me to look into diesel prices. I’ll get to airline fares just as soon as I can.”

Chamber of Commerce president John Moore: “We’re asking airlines in Memphis to expand in a contracting industry. Airlines today are more risk-averse than they’ve ever been before, because fuel prices are so volatile. You might take 18 months to look at a market and analyze it and watch what other airlines are doing, finally make a decision based on assumptions. You make an announcement to fly in there, and suddenly all the assumptions change. 

“This is not the only market where this is happening. Fares in general are increasing 26 percent. All the markets are dynamic. You’re looking at a different world now with bigger airlines, less service, higher fares. That’s the new paradigm.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Something to Bark About

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Overton Park is going to the dogs … literally.

On Saturday, June 2nd, the Overton Park Conservancy will cut the leash on a new fenced dog park, the first major capital project by the park’s nonprofit management group.

Appropriately named Overton Bark, the 1.3-acre park features two fenced areas (one for large dogs and one for small dogs), water fountains for people and dogs, and a modest agility course.

A fenced, off-leash park for dogs was one of the improvements survey respondents asked for when advocates polled park users last summer.

“The top thing people wanted, by far, was a clean and safe park, but a dog park was frequently mentioned,” said Naomi Van Tol, director of operations and capital improvements for the conservancy.

For years, many dog owners have allowed their dogs to roam free off-leash on the Overton Park greensward, but that’s a violation of city ordinance. The conservancy doesn’t have the authority to enforce that law, and Memphis Police rarely ticket people for letting their dogs loose in the park.

“It is traditional for people to have their dogs off-leash, but now we’re offering an option for people who want to obey the law and be able to run their dogs off-leash,” Van Tol said. “A lot of people want to socialize their dogs in an enclosed area, so they don’t have to constantly be right next to them.”

Each side of the Askew Nixon Ferguson-designed park will have water fountains with three heights, including one for people in wheelchairs and one for dogs. The dog fountain is controlled by a button that the dog’s owner must press.

“Maybe people can train their dogs to push the button,” Van Tol said with a laugh. “A large dog could probably figure it out.”

Benches and agility course hurdles are constructed from fallen trees, and native plants, such as buckeye and hydrangeas, are planted outside the dog park fence. The surface of the park will be partially covered in nontoxic wood chips to cushion the area and to prevent mud holes from forming after it rains.

“The dogs will love mud holes, but I don’t know if the people will,” Van Tol said. “Right now, we have the highest trafficked areas covered, but we’ll eventually cover the whole interior with wood chips as holes develop.”

Memphis-based pet store chain Hollywood Feed is sponsoring the park. They offered money for its construction, and they’ll be supplying the waste stations with bags. They’re also co-hosting the opening-day “leash-cutting” event on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“We thought as great as Midtown has been to Hollywood Feed that it’d be great to give back,” said Hollywood Feed president Shawn McGhee. “Our employees and customers use Overton Park, so we thought having a dog park there would be fantastic.”

Opening-day events include a one-mile fun walk and dog parade, a food truck rodeo, and live music by the Wuvbirds, the Side Street Steppers, and the Theoretical Monkeys. The grand opening is free, but the cost to enter the dog parade is $15 in advance or $20 on the day of the event. Proceeds benefit the Streetdog Foundation and the Overton Park Conservancy.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Amid New Estimates of Increased Costs, Suburbs Vote for Referenda on Municipal Suburbs

CREDIT: JB

Collierville Mayor Stan Joyner with press after vote

  • JB
  • Collierville Mayor Stan Joyner with press after vote

Faced with more than one set of estimates that it may cost their residents more than expected to fund new school systems, the governing boards of Shelby County’s six suburban municipalities went ahead Tuesday night and bit the bullet, voting to authorize enabling referenda on August 2.

Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett, Arlington, Lakeland, and Millington all approved ordinances to that end — most of them in a matter of minutes.

The reaction of Collierville Mayor Stan Joyner and the five members of the city’s Board of Aldermen may have been typical of the suburbanites’ determination to go their way, public-school-wise.

Although a decision to fund a proposed dog park at a cost of $135,000 required almost an hour’s worth of debate, and other items on Tuesday night’s agenda underwent considerable discussion, the several ordinances relating to municipal schools were disposed of as quickly as a county official could read them aloud and a vote could be taken.

Sequentially, the voting was unanimous to withdraw a holdover ordinance for a May 10 referendum which was canceled in March after an adverse ruling from the state Attorney General; to substitute an identical ordinance with the new date of August 2, in line with subsequent enabling legislation enacted in Nashville; and to approve a third ordinance establishing November 6 as the date for School Board elections.

A proviso in each of the new ordinances allowed for a change in the date in the event of litigation or other delaying circumstances.

After the vote, Alderman Tom Allen acknowledged that city officials had been advised several weeks ago, at a meeting of the mayor and aldermen with representatives of the Tennessee School Superintendents Association, that creation of “a great school system” would probably require more funding than a study by the suburbs’ consulting group, Southern Educational Strategies, had indicated.

Allen said the Collierville group were told, “Instead of using about $7800 per student, we probably ought to go to about $10,000.” But the city could begin operations without rising to that level right away, he said. “As you know, there are a lot of unknowns. And to come in and tell you it’s going to require this, it’s going to require that, nobody knows right now.”

Allen conceded that the possibility exists for a later rise in current estimates of the right property tax level. “We don’t know, to be honest with you. Anybody who tells you they do know is lying. These are unknown, uncharted waters.”

Mayor Joyner noted a state-required allocation of “the equivalent of 15 cents on the property tax,” and he said that figure, which would generate revenues of $2.1 million, would be exceeded by the city’s plan for a ½-cent sales tax increase that would rise upwards of $3 million.

“We told the residents that if we need more money, we’ll come to you for more money. Our residents have told us that they’re willing to pay what it takes. You know and I know that at some point there’ll be a tough decision to make,” Joyner said.

The Collierville chief executive said, however, that he didn’t take seriously recent estimates of suburban-school expense by Shelby County Commissioner Mike Ritz indicating that all of the suburbs would be put to far greater expense in creating a school system than their consultants at the Southern Educational Strategies group have indicated.

Ritz said he, too, had been apprised of the advice received by the Collierville government group at their meeting with the School Superintendents Association, and made a new calculation of increased expenses required in light of the recommended. $10,000-per-student figure.

Note: the figures below have been corrected from the previous, imperfectly transcribed version of a table forwarded by Mike Ritz:

*According to Ritz’s latest calculations for five of the suburbs, that recommended per-student figure would increase their costs as follows:
* Bartlett: current tax rate, $1.49, increase of $2.91 to allow for the $10,000-per-student figure, to a new rate of $4.40 for a 195 percent increase
*Germantown ( current rate, $1.49) would increase by $2.11 to $3.60 for a 142 percent increase.
*Collierville (current property tax rate, $1.43) would up its rate by $1.85 to $3.28, a 129 percent increase.,
*Arlington:(current rate, $1.00) would go up by $7.46 to $8.46 for a 746-percent increase.
* Millingtoncurrent $1.23 would increase by $3.93 to $5.16, for an increase of 320 percent.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

An Old Forest Fairy Tale

If you missed Voices of the South‘s children’s theater festival this past weekend you missed the debut of one of my favorite original VOTS kids shows since Wilhelmina Millicent’s World of Imagination.

An Old Forest Fairy Tale, by company member Virginia Ralph, tells the story of a little girl who lives near Overton Park and develops a special relationship with the bugs and the frogs and the worms and other icky crawly things as well as the other birds and beasts. She’s whisked off to fairyland where she’s invited to participate in a play performed by a whale (in a tree costume), a drum-playing polar bear, a redbird, two fairies, and the (ex) planet Pluto. The play within the play — a light opera to be more precise— tells a true story about how a bunch of “old ladies in tennis shoes” saved Overton Park from being bulldozed to make room for the I-240 extension.

It’s a thoroughly charming hyper-local fantasy about conservation, and how ordinary people can join together, take a stand, and make a difference even if they’re mocked and bullied.

It was beautiful. And here’s a clip.

Keep an eye out for future productions of this short, sweet piece.

Also, if you like what VOTS does, they’re raising money to keep their children’s festival a pay-what-you-can event.

Categories
News

The Wiles-Smith Milkshake

Susan Ellis and friends tried the famous Wiles-Smith milkshake. Mmmm.

Categories
Opinion

Summer School

School’s out for summer, but the future-of-our-school-systems story is just getting warmed up and there will be no vacation for school board members, Transition Planning Commission members, and suburban elected officials and voters.

Here are some key dates to watch and some analysis of what will be known and unknown after each date.

On Tuesday, May 29th (after the deadline for this column), the elected boards in Germantown, Collierville, Arlington, Bartlett, Lakeland, and Millington will decide whether to hold referendums on August 2nd to establish and fund municipal school systems.

What will be known: whether there are any dissenters to what seems to be overwhelming support for “munis.” If the boards approve, organized campaigns will begin to take shape. The specific language of the referendum will be drafted. And news media can stop talking about referendums as a hypothetical, as we have done for more than a year.

What won’t be known: whether the funding, expected to be a 15-cent increase in property taxes and a half-cent increase in local sales tax, will be enough to fund the municipal system that may or may not have to pay a considerable sum for existing buildings.

On June 11th, the 23-member unified Shelby County school board meets in a specially called meeting to consider the employment contract of Memphis superintendent Kriner Cash and, possibly, Shelby County superintendent John Aitken. Billy Orgel, chairman of the unified board, called for the meeting last week. It immediately met with an objection from board member Martavius Jones, who said it was premature, but as of now the meeting is on.

What will be known: Cash has a contract until August 1, 2013. He opposed the merger and has applied for at least one other superintendent’s job. The board could ask him to publicly state his intentions, invite him to apply for the job as leader of the unified system in 2013, tell him he has no chance, or invite him to leave early with a buyout.

What won’t be known: who will lead the unified system as superintendent in 2013. Aitken is under contract until February 2015, but the current Shelby County system excludes 103,000 students in Memphis. The unified board could invite candidates other than Aitken and Cash to apply for what is sure to be one of the most unusual and scrutinized education jobs in the country.

By mid-June, the 21-member Transition Planning Commission (TPC) aims to have its full set of recommendations on a merger plan. The commission, which includes Shelby County mayor Mark Luttrell, Bartlett mayor Keith McDonald, and some members of the unified school board, has been meeting for eight months.

What will be known: which suburbs are going to hold referendums in August, and after that it gets tricky. The TPC is planning for a unified system of up to 150,000 students while knowing full well that the suburbs may not become part of it.

What won’t be known: whether the suburbs will break away, and whether the unified school board will accept the TPC recommendations, which are just that, on such controversial issues as closing schools and outsourcing. The TPC says the plan will “evolve” over the summer.

On August 2nd, there will be elections in Shelby County. Suburban voters will decide whether to establish separate school systems. And there will be a countywide election for seven spots on the unified school board. In September, the seven winners will replace seven people appointed as interim members by the Shelby County Commission. Some of the winners could be people already serving on the unified board. Calling this confusing would be an understatement.

What will be known: the willingness of suburban residents to tax themselves an unknown amount for a separate school system. This is the big one. If all six suburbs or even if only three of them go muni, it will be a devastating blow to the unified system.

Also known will be the names of the seven members of the unified school board that will govern a system that may or may not include suburbs. As of September 1, 2013, the terms of the 16 board members who formerly served on the Shelby County and Memphis school boards will expire. The seven members elected in August will constitute the Shelby County Board of Education and govern the combined school system. After September 1, 2013, the Shelby County Commission can expand and redistrict the school board so that it will consist of not more than 13 members.

Hey, no one said summer school was going to be easy.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Finally … Wiles-Smith Milkshake

Many years ago, on my first attempt to order a Wiles-Smith milkshake, the person behind the counter refused me service. Seems that on that day she had scooped so much ice cream for those famous shakes that her arm had given out.

On that day, I was sick with disappointment. Today, I’m sick because I had too much milkshake.

vanillashake.JPG

This is the extra-thick vanilla and strawberry ($3.50).

shake.JPG

We also tried the vanilla shake and chocolate malt.

chocolatemalt.JPG

Wiles-Smith Drug Store, 1635 Union (278-6416)