Month: September 2013

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Another Ford in the House?

CREDIT: JB

Ford kinsmen Justin (l) and Joe Jr. (r) chatted with Shelby County Democratic chairman Bryan Carson and Jake Brown at recent political get-together (unrelated to District 91 race).

  • JB
  • Ford kinsmen Justin (l) and Joe Jr. (r) chatted with Shelby County Democratic chairman Bryan Carson and Jake Brown at recent political get-together (unrelated to District 91 race).

The presence of California show-biz attorney Joe Ford Jr. at a recent Memphis get-together of self-proclaimed progressives sponsored by Liz Rincon and Associates was already an obvious signal of something.

That was even before he clarified it by confiding he would be spending considerable time in Memphis during the next month helping out his cousin Kemba Ford in her attempt to win the District 91 state House seat.

This is the seat made vacant by the death this summer of Lois DeBerry, the revered former longtime Speaker Pro Tem who had held it for four decades.

Kemba Ford, the daughter of former state Senator and Tennessee Waltz figure John Ford, is herself a fairly recent returnee from California, where she spent several years working as an actress. She ran a respectable race for the Memphis City Council in 2011, forcing well-financed establishment opponent Lee Harris into a runoff.

Her inroads with labor and other traditional Democratic Party sources are expected to give her an edge against seven opponents in the forthcoming October 8 Democratic primary. (No Republicans filed in the heavily Democratic inner-city district, and only Libertarian Jim Tomasik, on the ballot as an independent, will contest the November 21 general election.)

And there is, of course, the Ford angle. Joe Ford Jr., who made something of a stir in 2006 as a candidate in the 15-strong Democratic-primary field for the 9th District congressional seat won by Steve Cohen, isn’t the only family helper.

So is his father, a former Councilman, County Commissioner, and interim County Mayor. So is his brother, County Commissioner Kemba Ford. So are Councilman Edmond Ford Jr., and his father, also a former Councilman. And the rest of the extended family, including sometime residents Harold Ford Jr. and Harold Ford Sr., are expected to lend a hand. Even Daddy John, long since released from a prison rap and now working at brother Edmond Ford Sr.’s funeral home, has residual clout in the district and will count for something.

As if all these advantages weren’t enough, Kemba Ford proved herself to be articulate, knowledgeable, and energetic candidate in 2011 and will no doubt be so again.

The rest of the field includes two political neophytes with DeBerry in their last name — one, Dwight DeBerry, an apparent cousin of Lois DeBerry, and another, Doris A. DeBerry-Bradshaw, the sister of District 90 Rep. John DeBerry (no relation to Lois). Others were some traction are Raumesh Akbari, Joshua R. Forbes,, Terica Lamb, Clifford N. Lewis, and Kermit Moore.

But the race would seem to be Kemba Ford’s to lose. A victory by her would complement the presence in the state Senate of Aunt Ophelia Ford, and that’s one more helper.

Categories
News

Has the Memphis Airport Hit Bottom Yet?

Bianca Phillips reports on the repercussions from the latest flight reductions by Delta Airlines.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

“Proof” Proves that Theatre Memphis Has Still Got It

CREDIT: Proof of life at Theatre Memphis

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  • Proof of life at Theatre Memphis

The 2013-14 theater season has kicked off with memorable interpretations of Les Miserables at Playhouse on the Square, and Red, just across Cooper St. at the Circuit Playhouse. Not to be outdone, Theatre Memphis has followed its uneven and not very funny production of the 20’s era comedy The Royal Family, with an understated, thoroughly engrossing production of David Auburn’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner, Proof.

Set in Chicago, Proof aims to measure the distance between genius and insanity while telling the story of Catherine (Jillian Barron), the daughter of a brilliant, recently deceased mathematician, who must prove that an important mathematical breakthrough originated with her, not with her mentally-ill father.

The relationships in Proof are emotionally raw, and excruciatingly real. Before she says a word you can read the fatigue and depression in Barron’s posture, as she putters around the backyard of her family home. As Claire, her parachute sibling whose support over the years has been primarily financial, Taylor Wood drops in from New York like the last great superpower. She’s well-intentioned but clumsy and willing to do whatever it takes to fix problems that may or may not exist, in a landscape she barely understands.

Stephen Garrett’s comic sensibilities serve him well as a younger mathematician attempting to begin a relationship with Catherine, while sifting through her father’s papers. He charms through the smarm, enduring this Kate’s onslaughts like a modern day Petruchio.

I’ve seen Sam Weakley do more detailed character work in shows like All My Sons and August: Osage County. But he’s never been any more effective than he is as the too-real memory of a loving parent, broken by forces beyond his control.

Richly textured and inventive lighting is icing on the cake.

Proof is at Theatre Memphis through September 22

Categories
News

More Problems for Beale Street Landing

John Branston reports on troubling new issues at the ill-fated Beale Street Landing development.

Categories
Opinion

Another SNAFU at Beale Street Landing

CREDIT: John Branston

Benny Lendermon

The American Queen won’t be docking at Beale Street Landing when it comes to Memphis Friday. Instead the luxury river cruise boat will tie up at the north end of Mud Island for the second summer in a row, as will other visiting cruise boats.

The mooring arms of the 400-foot dock at Beale Street Landing are being detached this week because of low water at the mouth of the harbor. The daily excursion boats can still use the dock. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is not dredging the harbor this year due to budget cuts.

Meanwhile, the Riverfront Development Corporation’s contract runs out at the end of October. The RDC was on one-year contracts the last two years. The most recent one expired at the end of June — days before the big Fourth of July fireworks show on the river — so it was extended four months. Benny Lendermon, head of the RDC, said he is optimistic it will be renewed.

“We are in negotiations for a long-term contract,” he said in a dockside interview Thursday.

The RDC is also negotiating with a restaurant operator for the landing after no bids were received following the broken deal with the previous operator. The new prospect is said to be Beale Street restaurateur Tommy Peters.

The $42 million riverfront project has been plagued with problems and controversy almost since its inception. Here’s a snapshot history in Memphis Flyer photos.

Mooring arm of BSL dock

  • Mooring arm of BSL dock

The mooring arms raise and lower the dock, which consists of two 200-foot-long barges. They are being temporarily disconnected this week. The river is within five feet of a record low. Lendermon said it would have been possible but costly to design the dock for minus-15 feet on the river gauge, well below the record low. The RDC fired the dock contractor and a lawsuit is pending.

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This plywood section of sidewalk from the shady space outside the future restaurant to Riverside Drive and Beale Street was supposed to be decorative tile. Another contractor screw-up.

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Restaurant partners Charlie Ryan and Bud Chittom decided in May not to go ahead with a much-needed food and beverage oasis, one of the main reasons for building the project in the first place. Ryan says there is not enough parking. A venue for parties and special events is one possible outcome. The only business inside the building is a gift shop and ticket office for daily excursion boats.

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The multicolored elevator shaft, also known as the Beale Street Landing Rubik’s Cube, is the focal point of the project, to the dismay of some local urban design critics. It is supposed to represent . . . oh, never mind. It speaks for itself.

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The American Queen, whose regular visits were supposed to partially justify the cost of Beale Street Landing, will tie up at the north end of Mud Island Friday, just as it did last June when the water was low. Passengers get a bonus tour of Mud Island and Harbor Town by bus or limo enroute to downtown and their hotel. Lendermon said the dock at Beale Street Landing could be back in business for the big boats before the end of the cruise season in November.

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The black fence between the landing and the parking lot is supposed to come down within a week, making it easy for visitors to Tom Lee Park to climb the grassy hill to the top and the fine view of the river. It will also make it possible for some crazy vandal to drive up the hill. There will be a gate of some kind, like the ones currently in use at the parking lot entrances. As for the parking lot next to the landing, it is either not big enough (for a restaurant) or unsightly and unnecessary (design critics and proponents of a more pedestrian-friendly riverfront) because it separates the landing and the rest of Tom Lee Park.

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So near yet so far. A decent high-school quarterback could chunk a football from the dock to the southern tip of Mud Island River Park, but, alas, there is no close connection. To get to both, you have to walk or drive to or from the Mud Island entrance either at the parking garage across from City Hall or the parking lot at the north entrance to the river park.

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Jobs, as always, were one of the justifications for the project. Beale Street Landing was envisioned as a $20-$30 million project and grew to a $40-million-plus project. The grand opening date, pushed back several times, is some time in 2014. Will Memphians embrace it, or shun it as they did Mud Island River Park? Readers of this blog know I have been critical of the overdo, design, and buck passing, but the view is really nice, visitors won’t care about the back story once it opens, and I hope it works now that we have it. See for yourself, but bring your own snacks and drinks.

Categories
Memphis Gaydar News

LGBT Booths at Cooper-Young Festival

CREDIT: http://www.cooperyoungfestival.com

The annual Cooper-Young Festival is set for Saturday, September 14th, and as usual, there will be plenty of opportunities to learn more about local LGBT advocacy and pride groups.

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  • http://www.cooperyoungfestival.com

As always, the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center will be educating the public about their programs, which range from placing homeless LGBT teens into supportive homes and food pantry services to support groups and social potlucks. The MGLCC booth will be set up near the community center at 892 S. Cooper.

The Tennessee Equality Project will be registering voters and raising awareness about statewide LGBT legislation and equality efforts at their booth. They will be set up near Java Cabana on the north side of Young.

Mid-South Pride will be promoting the 10th annual pride parade and celebration, which is set for October 12th on Beale Street downtown. They’ll also be signing up volunteers for the event and promoting other fund-raising events between now and pride weekend.

There will be a Mid-South Pride after-party at Club Spectrum beginning at 10 p.m.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

“American” Football Picks: Week 3

LAST WEEK: 6-2
SEASON: 13-4

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SATURDAY
Memphis at Middle Tennessee
Eastern Michigan at Rutgers
Fordham at Temple
UCF at Penn State
Northwestern State at Cincinnati
Florida Atlantic at USF
Maryland at UConn
Louisville at Kentucky

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Sara Kyle, “a Tennessee Woman,” Edges Closer to Running for Governor

CREDIT: JB

Sara Kyle with the media in Nashville

  • JB
  • Sara Kyle with the media in Nashville

Sara Kyle, the wife of state Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle (D-Memphis) and a public figure in her own right from a once powerful Tennessee political family, just may be on her way into the political limelight again — as a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in 2014.

Without doing anything more than attending last Saturday night’s annual Jackson Dinner for statewide Democrats in Nashville, Kyle was a dominant personality at the event.

The longtime former member of the now sunsetted Tennessee Regulatory Authority was hailed from the dais by state Democratic chairman Roy Herron and others as a probable party standard-bearer next year, and responded to the crowd’s chant of “Run, Sara, Run” with a smile and broad waves.

“Run, Sara, Run” is also the working name of a website and draft movement, largely based in Memphis; three of its principals — Matt Kuhn, Michael Lipe, and Steve Ross — were on hand Saturday night and basked in Kyle’s reception by the crowd.

Kyle certainly is no stranger to politics. She was born into the extended Clement family, a niece to the late eminences Frank Clement and Annabelle Clement O’Brien — a former governor and a state senator respectively, each for several term — and cousin to former congressman Bob Clement.

She has also held public office herself, winning races for City Court judge in Memphis and for the old state Public Service Commission. When the PSC was transformed in the ‘90s into the non-elected TRA at the behest of former Governor Don Sundquist, Sara Kyle was appointed to the new agency and remained a member until resigning this year when administration-backed legislation limited the TRA’s scope and made it part-time.

In a later conversation with the Flyer and other media after last Saturday night’s event in Nashville, she would acknowledge a clear interest in running but would stop just short of declaring.

Pointedly, she declared no animus toward Governor Bill Haslam, her potential adversary. “I personally have never met Governor Haslam. I’m sure he’s personally well-liked I some sections of the state….I’ sure he’s a fine person. I understand his wife is from Memphis, and they’re well liked down here. But business is one thing and popularity is another.”

She continued: “I don’t agree with Governor Haslam on a lot of issues.” One of those concerned her own former agency, the TRA. “In his judgment he decided to abolish a consumer agency and make it part-time. Certainly I feel the citizens need a full-time service…an agency that will listen to them, take on problems and solve them.”

Kyle said that “citizens listened to me” in her earlier runs for office, and, in turn, “I sure listen to them.” Specifically, “in jobs where the rules are changing, they want me to hear them and listen to them.” In an apparent reference to Haslam’s decision not to accept Medicaid expansion funds, she cited “federal monies that are not coming into our state help our citizens, that are being blocked.”

She declined to delve into the particulars of that and other issues, emphasizing again that her current role is to “move about the state, listening to people.” Her de facto listening tour would last “for a few more months,” said Kyle, and for the time being she had no specific announcement plans.

If and when she did decide to run for governor, she expected to lean heavily on the help and advice of her husband, “one of the brightest political minds I’ve ever known.: Senator Kyle had launched a tentative gubernatorial candidacy in 2009 but suspended it some months later when he foresaw the Republican electoral tide of 2010. She was asked: How would her own experience be different?

“That was a different time,” she said, noting further that, as a PSC candidate in the ‘90s she had already had the experience of running a successful statewide race.

Kyle noted that her childhood was in Kingsport in East Tennessee, that she had finished high school in Dickson in Middle Tennessee, that marriage had brought her to Memphis, where she raised four children and won her judgeship, and that, from 1994 on, her state job had given her a wide focus.

“I’m a Tennessee woman,” she declared, and she sounded ready to demonstrate it on the stump.

Categories
News

Living in America

Alyson Krueger tells the compelling story of an undocumented Chilean immigrant family and their son, Sergio, whose life was saved at St. Jude.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Gibran vs. Brautigan

My wife and I went to an estate sale last weekend. We didn’t have to go far. It was held in the enormous old stone house across the street from our place, so we each wandered over a couple times on Saturday, and again on Sunday when all the stuff got marked down.

I’m not a big fan of estate sales. Too many dishes, too much weary furniture. I didn’t find much I liked, though I did buy the collected works of Richard Brautigan for a dollar. My wife bought a nice linen tablecloth and a small leather-bound edition of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

I hadn’t read any Brautigan in decades. I’d forgotten how quirky and singular his phrasing was. On a childhood memory: “I just kept getting smaller and smaller beside the pond, more and more unnoticed in the darkening summer grass until I disappeared into the 32 years that have passed since then.”

Or this: “One day time will die and love will bury it.”

Or, absurdly: “I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word ‘mayonnaise.’”

Reading this stuff took me back to my twenties, when I lived in San Francisco.

Not being an old hippie like me, my wife had not read The Prophet. She was charmed, and began reading passages to me: “The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.”

And this: “You often say; I would give, but only to the deserving.

The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.

Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and nights is worthy of all else from you.

And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream. …”

I fired back with a little Brautigan. “He looked as if he had been beaten to death with a wine bottle, but by doing it with the contents of the bottle.”

Gibran: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

Brautigan: “Finding is losing something else. I think about, perhaps even mourn, what I lost to find this.”

It was like dueling literary banjos. Gibran’s relentless sincerity and spiritual wisdom versus Brautigan’s ninja cynicism and stoned ennui. No winners. No chicken dinners. Just a little food for thought before bed.

So, despite the bozos who blocked our driveway every 20 minutes for two days, I think the estate sale was a good thing. My wife and I both found something of value, something to share.

And I’ve always wanted to write a column that ended with the word “mayonnaise.”