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News The Fly-By

Eyesore No More

Businesses may come and go, but in 2005 and 2009, the Flyer ran two stories about the gone — 21 abandoned, dilapidated, or just ugly buildings that were a blemish on the areas around them.

Among those were Clayborn Temple, the Ambassador Hotel, and Celebration Station. Some of the structures have since been demolished, but a handful have been redeveloped or have renovations coming soon. Here’s an update on four of the 21 Flyer “eyesores.”

Dustin Azlin

Chicago Pizza Factory, 2059 Madison — Now Chiwawa

In the early 1980s, the once-bustling Overton Square saw a decline in activity after Beale Street reopened. The Chicago Pizza Factory closed in 1989 after 17 years under Jerry Caruthers, the owner of the property. The building stood unoccupied for 22 years.

In 2011, the Memphis City Council approved a redevelopment proposal for Overton Square. The following year, entrepreneur Taylor Berger, of YoLo frozen yogurt fame, and partners announced plans to open Chiwawa, offering Mexican food and hot dogs, at the location.

Alexandra Pusateri

“Honestly, I’ve been looking at that building since I was a kid,” Berger told The Commercial Appeal in 2012.

The architects redesigned the old Chicago arch sign to feature “Midtown is Memphis” with accompanying lights on the expanded patio.

Sears Crosstown Building, 495 N. Watkins — Now Crosstown Memphis

Sears, Roebuck, & Co. built its 1.4-million-square-foot landmark in 1927 as a shopping hub and warehouse. The giant building had been empty since the 1990s, after the Sears catalog distribution center closed.

In 2012, plans to turn the space into a “vertical urban village” were announced. Eight health-care, education, and art organizations have committed to the location.

For the past couple years, Crosstown Arts has held public events on the building’s ground floor. Last weekend, the building closed so renovations can begin, although the $175 million redevelopment project is still awaiting a $15 million commitment from the city.

The Crosstown Development Project plans to have the location open by 2016 after 24 months of construction.

Prince Mongo’s Planet, 56 S. Front — Now Memphis in May Headquarters

The property at 56 S. Front became vacant after the closing of Prince Mongo’s Planet, a bar opened by Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges. After it was shut down for nonpayment of taxes in 1995, the property was slated for two other prospects before the Memphis in May organization purchased it in 2011.

After plans for a boutique hotel fell through, the property dropped in price during the recession, according to Jim Holt, the president and CEO of Memphis in May International.

“We had been looking for years for a permanent office in the downtown core,” Holt said. “It was a chance for us to eliminate a long-term blight.”

Lowenstein/Rhodes-Jennings Building, 66 N. Main — Now Servicemaster by Stratos

The 1920s were a busy time for 66 N. Main, which classic department store Lowenstein’s and furniture company Rhodes-Jennings occupied during the decade. By mid-2005, when the building made the Flyer‘s eyesore list, the Lowenstein was beyond decay.

The Lowenstein was renovated in 2009 after Court Square Center was chosen by the Downtown Memphis Commission to redevelop the building. Luxury apartments, office space, and anchor tenant Servicemaster by Stratos now occupy the Lowenstein.

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

MemphisFlyer.com

Greg Cravens

From “Letters to the Editor” and a letter about Memphis police trying to stop people from filming encounters with law enforcement: ”The police have a very good reason to want to stop people filming them while they do their jobs. Just imagine if you had someone sitting behind you at work, filming your every move. It would be nearly impossible to Twitter, Facebook, check your email, play Candy Crush, or make pithy comments on the Flyer website.” — Jeff

From “Proposed Brick-and-Mortar McDonald’s May Derail Plans to Build a Parking Garage for Food Trucks,” a parody piece about opposition to various planned local projects:

“Upcoming items on the Land Use Control Board’s agenda: the proposed Popsicle Stick Skyscraper, the world’s largest magnifying glass, the Escalator to Nowhere and various other Simpsons puns.” — barf

From “Concerns Arise As Gate to Evil Dimension Opens on Madison Avenue Bike Lane,” a parody piece about a hell-demons spewing from the bike lane:

“Oops! My bad. I may have accidentally conjured the beast after enjoying a few too many beers and a plate of roasted jalapenos the last time I was at Chiwawa.” — Tina Pierce Sullivan

Tweets

From a tweet about Midtown Nursery fighting plans to build a food truck restaurant on his site. The nursery owner believed he had a verbal agreement to renew his lease:

“This makes me sad for the nursery, but it shows that verbal agreements mean nothing.” — Alyssa Perrella @alyssa_perrella

Facebook

From a post linking to a Flyer story about a gun found in an Overton High School student’s backpack:

“So, the kid goes thru metal detectors every day and still puts a gun in the backpack … things that make you go hmmmm.” — Paula Hall

Categories
Cover Feature News

New Deal on Beale

There’s a new deal on Beale. Or there soon will be.         

Final papers are expected to be filed in bankruptcy court this month, and if they’re approved, city leaders — the mayor and city council — will hold full sway over Beale Street, one of the biggest tourist draws (and moneymakers) in Memphis and Tennessee.

AC Wharton

Clearing this final hurdle will end a decades-long engagement between the city and Performa Entertainment Real Estate Group, the private company formed in 1983 to manage and develop the Beale Street district for the city of Memphis. Years of money squabbles between the city and Performa turned into lawsuits and what Memphis mayor A C Wharton calls a “long nightmare.”

Indeed, the sky will soon clear over Beale Street, but no one is quite sure what lies beyond the parting clouds, a fact that leaves many hopeful, anxious, or both.

Herman Morris

But Wharton knows one thing: City officials will not run Beale Street, not in the long-term anyway. A company will be hired to manage all of the city’s properties there, to develop new attractions to draw even more people to the spot, and to generally “out” Beale Street, Wharton says, “because we’ve simply not done that.”

Of course, no one yet knows which company will be hired. Requests for proposals will be sent out from city hall, and they’ll be vetted and approved by the mayor’s staff and the Memphis City Council. But high on the lists of many is a company that already lives on Beale in that big Grizzlies den.

How We Got Here

This final hurdle with Performa has been a long time coming.

Back in the day: Beale Street before the neon returned

City officials decided to revitalize the abandoned street in 1982. And the city now owns most of the buildings in the Beale Street area, the same way it — and its taxpayers — owns trash bins, police cars, and copy machines.

But city officials didn’t want to run Beale Street back in 1982 either, so they assigned the master lease of the property to the Beale Street Development Corp. (BSDC), and that group approved a 52-year sublease for the buildings with Performa. Performa would collect the rents, take a cut, and pass the rest to the BSDC, which developed business on the street, took a cut, and passed whatever was left over to the city.

The city claimed it wasn’t getting paid by the BSDC and sued them in 1999. Then the BSDC sued Performa for the money. Performa then sued both the city and the BSDC. In 2010, Performa and the city came up with a deal to transfer management of the street back to the city. But the BSDC fought it.

Then in October 2012, U.S. bankruptcy judge Jennie Latta ruled that Performa did not owe any money to the BSDC, a decision that gave the company a clear path to transfer Beale Street operations back to the city.

City and company officials have spent the past year finalizing the details of that transfer. The last outstanding bit of work is for the city to pay Performa $600,000 for amphitheater upgrades made to W.C. Handy Park. City attorney Herman Morris has said that money will come from taxes collected on Beale Street.

Performa was expected to file the documents about the payment and the final transfer in Judge Latta’s bankruptcy court earlier this month. But the company asked for a delay and is now expected to appear in court again on November 27th.

If the deal is done, Performa will be released from the turbulent deal, and the company will get 5 percent of all Beale Street rents until 2032.

“At least that [deal] has brought certainty, and you can always hope for a better deal, but this nightmare, this long nightmare, had gone on long enough,” Wharton says.

Why Beale Street Matters

The four-block strip has been called the soul of Memphis, a historical treasure, a gold mine, a sinners’ den, and a tourist trap. No matter what you call it, get used to it. As long as Beale’s music booms, its neon blinks, and its libations flow, it will be the Memphis icon out-of-towners will ask you about — and what the world will continue to see of the city as televised basketball games cut to commercial.

It’s important to the city’s history, both as a onetime thriving African-American business district and a music magnet. The latter set the stage for the explosion of music for which the city would become world-famous.

Beale is certainly a key player in drawing tourists to Memphis. But more than that, it is a strong card in the hand of those who woo event planners shopping cities for their next big conference.

Kevin Kane

“It’s an important part of the Memphis sell,” says Kevin Kane, president and CEO of the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau. “It’s an important part of the Memphis product.”

Also, Beale makes money, a lot of it. And that money ripples through the entire Memphis economy. A 2011 report estimated the street’s annual gross revenue to be in the $30 million to $40 million range. That money has produced more than $50 million in state, local, and federal taxes in the past 15 years, the report said.

Where We’re Headed

The most basic roadmap for the future of Beale Street is a 2011 report from a blue-ribbon panel of Beale Street business owners, corporate executives, professors, politicians, and others organized by Wharton. The panel devised and published dozens of ideas about the direction of the entertainment district.

Chief among those ideas was that the city should get more control of the district as it is “an indelible part of the Memphis image to people around the world and a powerful engine in the local economy.”

But the panel also recommended new directions for what Beale should be. For example, they said the street should get back to its roots, historically and musically, by better telling its history, by having more African-American-owned businesses, and by playing more “historically pure” blues music.

But even playing the blues, just one suggestion from just one of the panel’s committees, exposes a reality on Beale Street and possible difficulties for more civic influence on the district: Most of those on the street now run businesses, not state-funded museums.

“We love the blues, but what’s happened is that people have done what they have to do to pay their rent,” says Ty Agee, president of the Beale Street Merchants Association. “So, if people play dance music at this club and that’s what works for them to pay their rent and utilities and employees or if they play rockabilly at another, it’s all music, man, and that’s the way it is.”

But day-to-day decisions like what kind of music to play are a ways off. The street is in a holding pattern until the property and decision-making power is transferred. Anything new won’t emerge on the street for some time. But that hasn’t stopped those involved from dreaming about the wide-open possibilities.

Wharton has said publicly he’d like to see an expansion of Beale Street but says he fears he was misunderstood.

“They thought I meant we need to build some buildings and lay down some more asphalt, but anybody can do that,” Wharton says. “They got those knockoff places in Vegas that are fake, but we got the real thing. It’s not a matter of growing more buildings, as it is a richer, broader depth of experience, and getting down to the taproot of what Beale Street is all about.”

Wharton says he’d like to see a sign at Beale and Riverside that would help tourists find the place or to “see” Beale Street the way some “see” Hollywood by its iconic sign, a visual marker to set the place in people’s memories.

But more than anything, Wharton wants to expand the offerings on Beale Street, showcasing the street’s history in music and in story and drawing more people to the street. He says he’s inspired by what he’s seen in other cities, like the planned Great Chicago Fire Festival, which is expected to draw thousands to the Windy City.

Kane says Beale needs more daytime attractions. Agee says more live entertainment is needed in Handy Park. But basically all ideas are aimed at achieving the same goal: get more people to Beale Street, where they’ll hopefully leave some of their money behind.

But one thing that likely won’t change on Beale is the thrill of drinking outdoors on a public street. The seemingly simple idea is so powerful that other cities are looking to add it in their own recipes for urban revitalization.

Ohio legislators will soon consider giving the state’s bigger cities the legal right to organize open-air public drinking districts. So are government bodies in Las Vegas, Nevada, Lincoln, Nebraska, and other cities. Many of these cities point to the success of Beale Street and New Orleans’ Bourbon Street.

Wharton admits he only has vague notions of what new things will work on Beale or how to execute those ideas.

“That’s why they have folks who do this professionally, and that’s why it’s best not left up to me or others,” Wharton says. “We need professionals who know how to do this, and travel every day, and see what they’re doing in the world.”

Companies that do this kind of work will be front-runners in the hunt for a new Beale Street management firm. A deal to let the Beale Street merchants run the street was raised earlier this year but failed. Agee says they deserve a shot to manage their bread and butter.

“There are people here who could run the street better than anyone they could bring in,” Agee says. “Bring someone else in, and they’re going to get paid. If we did it, it’d be a glass box — everything would be aboveboard, and it would wipe out the middleman.”

City council member Lee Harris says he’d like a quasi-public, not-for-profit organization like the Downtown Memphis Commission or the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau to manage Beale Street. He does not want another for-profit company to get a long lease.

“The interests of those parties are sometimes incompatible with those of the city,” Harris says. “[Private organizations] want to risk-seek and swing for the fences, and I don’t think that works in most cases.”

But a new Beale manager may, indeed, already be on Beale. Wharton says he is in talks with the Memphis Grizzlies about a possible management deal. He says nothing is finalized and won’t be until the city council has their say and a vote.

“The destiny of Beale Street and the destiny of the Grizzlies are inextricably tied together,” Wharton says. “It’s only natural that we talk long and hard with them, and we’re definitely interested in that.”

The Grizzlies organization did not make anyone available for questions on the topic. But Grizzlies and FedExForum COO Jason Wexler sent a statement: “In our discussion with the city and mayor, we have expressed our interest in participating in the continued visioning for Beale Street and Downtown. We understand how important Beale Street is to Memphis, and as a key stakeholder in Downtown, we want to be part of the process.”

Aside from the behind-the-scenes legal battles, most agreed that there’s not much wrong with Beale Street the way it is right now. Visitors can usually find something they like, whether it’s daytime tourist shopping or late-night partying and dancing. The merchants make money. The city has an ace in the hole for tourism and conferences. And the Memphis economy has a strong tourist engine.

“Beale Street is a success right now, where it sits,” Harris says. “It is successful and stable, and we need an operator down there who knows what they’re doing. Beale Street needs a steady hand.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Grand Divisions

“This ain’t no longer just a fight for snake handling. This is a fight for freedom of religion.” So said embattled pastor/snake handler Andrew

Hamblin who pleaded not guilty last week in front of a group of supporters wearing red to symbolize their gang affiliation or, as most media outlets described it, the “blood of Christ.” Hamblin, pastor of Tabernacle Church of God in LaFollette, Tennessee, and star of the reality show Snake Salvation, is fighting misdemeanor wildlife possession charges for keeping copperheads, rattlesnakes, and other poisonous snakes that pretty much every church-going soul living west of Nashville will reflexively behead with a shovel.

Memphis, England

Anglophenia, a BBC America blog chronicling “British Culture with an American Accent,” recently listed “10 Things British About Memphis.” A few of the choices make perfect sense, like the Tennessee Shakespeare Company, which is dedicated to staging the works of England’s most enduring dead playwright. The Memphis Cricket Club and the Peabody Hotel’s afternoon tea are both decidedly British, and the Brooks Museum’s Victorian “Crazy Quilt” is a pretty savvy choice. And then there’s number eight: the Memphis Geek Club Meet-up, which was chosen because “the group loves and celebrates all things in the Geekdom,” including Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, and Monty Python.

To Booze

I’ve never seen the ghost of Elvis on Union Avenue, but I’m pretty sure this is a spirit photo of Joni Mitchell, who turned 70 earlier this month.

Happy birthday, Joni. And well played, Kimbrough!

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Deep in the Heart

Even with six weeks to go, it’s safe to say 2013 is the best in film since 2003. Two offerings opening in Memphis this week — Dallas Buyers Club and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire — continue that trend.

Dallas Buyers Club is a true story based on the life and particulars of death of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a Texas bull rider who contracted the AIDS virus in the mid-1980s. The film starts in 1985. Rock Hudson is in the newspapers for having the deadly disease culturally thought of as a homosexual problem.

After an accident at work, Woodroof is taken to the hospital. The usual tests are run, but they come back with unusual results: He has tested positive for HIV. He doesn’t believe Drs. Saks and Sevard (Jennifer Garner at her most compassionate and Denis O’Hare), much less their prognosis that he has a month to live. “There ain’t nothing out there that can kill fucking Ron Woodruff in 30 days,” he says.

More than anything, Woodroof struggles with the news because he is not gay, as he tells everyone who knows his diagnosis. This usually comes out in some variation on, “I ain’t no faggot, motherfucker.” His temperament is so stabby because he’s a Texas cowboy, the apex of aggressive masculinity, who, we see through several early cock-and-bull scenes, rides the rodeo for fun, has a lot of sex with women, and can hold his liquor (and cocaine).

The first act follows Woodroof for those 30 days he’s been sentenced to, during which he loses all his friends, fights to be legitimately treated by the health-care industry, gives up and illegally procures the new drug AZT from a hospital orderly, and goes to Mexico to be treated by an expatriate physician, Dr. Vass (Griffin Dunne).

There, the doc tells Woodroof AZT is toxic and is killing him. Vass prescribes instead a battery of meds and dietary supplements not approved by the FDA but in common use elsewhere in the world. Woodroof gets better — not cured, of course, but not at death’s door. And he hatches a plot with Vass to get the medicine into the hands of other AIDS victims back home.

With the help of Rayon (Jared Leto), a transgender woman with AIDS, Woodroof organizes the Dallas Buyers Club, selling not drugs but memberships to a plan that consequently includes medicine. He makes an enemy of Sevard, whose patients are leaving traditional medical routes for the buyers club, and ultimately the FDA. Saks is in the moral middle ground. She believes in science but also wants health care to be more about cures than profit.

Director Jean-Marc Vallée tells the story with appreciated economy. The script (by Craig Borten, who interviewed Woodroof years ago, and Melisa Wallack) contains a few cutesy missteps. (“Screw the FDA, I’m going to be DOA.”) But Dallas Buyers Club is an exceptional film about living with severe illness, and considerably accessible considering the subject matter. The 80s must’ve sucked to live during as an adult.

Dallas Buyers Club‘s great success comes largely via McConaughey, who lost considerable weight for the part. McConaughey’s Woodroof is skin-and-bones rancor with a Dale Earnhardt mustache. His irascible, slow acceptance of others and then himself comes through in his relationship with Rayon. The film doesn’t overplay the odd-couple dynamic of the pair. Instead, it simmers, allowing the characters to get under each other’s skin and convey warmth and goodwill in nontraditional ways. Leto, too, is fantastic. Both will be showered with awards-season accolades.

Dallas Buyers Club

Opens Friday, November 22nd

Ridgeway Cinema Grill

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

The Hunger Games was a fun movie that had more going on thematically than you usually get from Hollywood spectacles ostensibly aimed at a YA audience. Plus, to quote my Flyer review, “the baseline lesson of The Hunger Games is don’t trust whitey, and I think that’s a good one to teach kids.”

The sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, is thankfully cut from the same cloth. It starts a few months after the last ended. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is back home in Panem’s District 12 (American Appalachia). She still illegally hunts game, but her family is better off than they were at the beginning of the Hunger Games cycle. Now they all live, along with Katniss’ boy toy Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and mentor Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), in mansions in Victor’s Village, part of their prize for having won the Hunger Games. Katniss’ pal Gale (Liam Hemsworth) works in the coal mines, and they still have a chaste, platonic-plus relationship.

Katniss suffers from PTSD, which is intensified when she and Peeta are forced to go on a victory tour of Panem, including District 11 (the South), which we last saw in riot after the tragic death of their tribute, Rue. In Catching Fire, District 11 is illustrated with cotton fields and impoverished faces. The crowd demonstrates its appreciation for Katniss, but the Capitol stormtroopers see it as political defiance and murderously respond. It’s a horrifying, effective scene.

Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) — lord, these names — takes over as the head gamesmaker who wants to make the event mean something. Every 25 years, the Capitol throws a curve ball to remind the districts that they are subjugated. The dastardly twist in this year’s Hunger Games: It pits previous victors against each other, a sudden-death all-star game. So back into the fray goes Katniss, like a premise too profitable to quit.

Catching Fire is on surest ground when the games begin, contextualizing the entertainment value of the battle scenes for the real audience better than the first film did; you don’t really want any of these gladiators to die. Lawrence, Hutcherson, and Harrelson are all very good. Jena Malone and Sam Claflin stand out in smaller roles. And Stanley Tucci returns as the scenery-chewing showman Caesar, filling a role that might’ve otherwise gone to Robin Williams, for which I am thankful.

Director Francis Lawrence capably administers the film. The districts have a tactile griminess and despair, and the Capitol is portrayed as a neon techno-Rome, equally shrewd and vapid.

Catching Fire is a significant upgrade over the book. The script by a couple Oscar winners, Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt, does a better job balancing Katniss’ vulnerability and strength — the book settles on passive — and finds a satisfying gait for the fastidious romantic three-legged race. Here’s hoping the third film is a tactical victory over its own disappointing source material.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Opens Friday, November 22nd

Multiple locations

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News

Beale Street’s Future

Toby Sells reports on the latest developments in the city of Memphis’ plans for Beale Street’s future.

Categories
News News Feature

Bee Good

As you survey the bounty of your Thanksgiving Day dinner this year, send up a word of thanks to the honeybee. From your Aunt Delia’s pecan pie to Nana’s cranberry-orange relish and that heavenly sweet potato casserole, all those fruits and nuts and vegetables are made possible as the result of pollination from bees. You may not realize it, but honeybees — European honeybees to be precise — pollinate about 80 percent of the foods we eat.

In fact, bees are so important that Mike Studer, the state apiarist who inspects registered hives in Tennessee for disease and pests, routinely fields phone calls from farmers requesting bee colonies to help with their crops. A rancher in Middle Tennessee told Studer his cattle weren’t fattening up properly because his alfalfa and clover hay hadn’t been pollinated, leaving the feed lacking in important proteins. That connection “is something you just don’t think about,” Studer says. “That’s when it hit home to me just how important bees are to our food supply.”

Bees fly within about a two-mile radius from the apiary (the box which houses the hive), gathering nectar from flowering plants a drop at a time, visiting 50 to 100 flowers before reaching their nectar-storing capacity. The bee then returns to the hive, where it spreads the nectar throughout the comb and fans it with its wings to thicken it. The resulting honey — a healthy hive of 50,000 bees will produce 100 pounds of honey over the course of a year — produces food for the colony. Beekeepers gather a percentage of that for human consumption.

Commercial growers truck colonies of bees across state lines to pollinate everything from almond trees in California and citrus groves in Florida to apple orchards in Washington and blueberry bushes in Maine, making it “the largest agricultural migration in the world,” according to Richard Underhill, president of the Arkansas Beekeepers Association. Honey production, while better known to consumers, is actually a much smaller segment of the beekeeping industry.

Bees play a vital role in U.S. food production, but since 2007 honeybees have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Scientists call it Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a phenomenon in which worker bees abruptly disappear from the hive, leaving the queen and honey behind. Why it occurs remains a mystery.

Beekeeper Bill Hughes of Brighton, Tennessee, has observed losses firsthand. Since 2008, his colonies have declined from 400 to 60. Hughes, who has been keeping bees for 20 years, has checked many of his apiaries only to find them empty, the bees not dead but simply vanished. Studer and his colleagues report that feral bees, too, are all but gone. “I used to catch wild swarms,” Hughes says, “but if they’ve been poisoned by insecticide, the bees won’t breed,” further reducing their numbers.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that 33 percent of bee colonies have collapsed nationally due to CCD (and in some regions, that number is closer to 50 percent). While colony losses are not unexpected, losses of this magnitude set off alarm bells. Underhill calls it “the largest historical die-off in the history of beekeeping.”

It turns out that honeybees have many foes: fungal parasites, Varroa and tracheal mites, diseases like chalkbrood, and a lack of nutritional diversity. Even the use of altered seeds to grow crops like soybeans may play a role. But among its biggest foes is the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, which have become more prevalent in the last decade.

“Bees have been described as the canary in the coal mine, since conditions in the environment tell us we’ve altered the environment — from the amount of chemicals we use to the effects of global warming,” Underhill says. The bee decline has scientists scrambling to better understand these complex creatures and what can be done to stop CCD before it becomes an agricultural crisis. Studer says the USDA is working in concert with a host of universities, conducting multiple studies to better understand the factors that impact the health of bees. But the answers may be five years away. “It’s extremely difficult with so many different variables both inside and outside the colony,” Studer says.

So as you spoon that dollop of honey onto your biscuit at Thanksgiving, don’t take that sweet treat for granted. Honeybees need our help.

Jane Schneider is editor of Memphis Parent.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The JFK Generations

As a young boy, I did not want to grow up to be president of the United States. On a beach vacation when I was 6 or 7, my parents gave me a children’s biography of John F. Kennedy. Along with a similar volume about Abraham Lincoln. Each story had its inspiring moments, of course, but neither ended well. Especially in the mind of a child.

I’ve since become an amateur presidential historian, and, now enjoying middle age, I still don’t want to grow up to be president of the United States. That said, few people outside my family have had an impact on me the way our 35th president has. Considering I was born six years after JFK’s dreadful, history-changing ride through downtown Dallas, that impact speaks volumes on the importance Jack Kennedy continues to hold in the way Americans shape their values and the way we steer our lives. The calendar never hits November 22nd without making me pause.

Frankly, President Kennedy belongs as much to mythology as he does to history. And this is a component of his legacy that must be accepted every bit as much as his policy decisions, the Peace Corps, or “Ich bin ein Berliner.” He had — still has — a charisma that, before him, could hardly be categorized as presidential. Just picture the men who directly preceded and followed JFK in the White House. Dwight Eisenhower was an American legend before he even considered a presidential campaign. Lyndon Johnson made the Senate his personal playground (and made a more direct impact on the way Americans live than did Kennedy). But neither looked especially dashing in a tux. Neither made women swoon. And neither married Jackie.

Kennedy was polarizing before and during his presidency, and he remains so today. Millions remain inspired by the hope (and yes, glamour) JFK personified, while just as many are repulsed by his womanizing, his manipulative father, and the proverbial silver spoon he had in his pocket on inauguration day in 1961. He may have been a war hero for his efforts in saving members of his PT-109 crew, but Kennedy had blood on his hands for the Bay of Pigs atrocity. Which Kennedy do we choose to remember?

It’s only since I began learning of JFK’s flaws that I’ve felt his influence closer to my own life, more in human terms. Who among us would have handled the life presented to Jack Kennedy better than he did himself? An older brother idolized, only to be taken in a fiery plane crash, a loss that thrust a young man onto a stage he may or may not have welcomed without that legendary fatherly shove. Factoring in his own experience in battle, his debilitating back pain (which forced him to wear a brace that factored into the tragedy of November 22, 1963), and a struggle with Addison’s disease, Kennedy had a sense of mortality most of us keep safely in another compartment of our minds. In succumbing to the lure of women outside his marriage, Kennedy displayed an immaturity in the only form he was ever allowed. No excuse, but a sad truth.

Was Kennedy a great president? Having not completed a term, he belongs in a different category of evaluation. For me, his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 was the stuff of greatness. Diplomacy begins in a room with your friends, your supporters. Kennedy helped avoid World War III by negotiating a policy, first with a divided cabinet and only then with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Did Kennedy save the world? That might be a stretch, but it’s in the conversation.

I’ve been to Dealey Plaza twice. For anyone who’s seen footage of JFK’s last moments, such a visit swallows your thoughts, freezes your tongue, and squeezes your heart. What was once the Texas School Book Depository — now the Dallas County Administration Building, with a museum on the sixth floor — is just brick and mortar. With windows. Such was the platform for a murder that changed the world? I’ve never been able to process this reality, not since first reading that children’s book almost 40 years ago.

I’ve also been to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Just as Dealey Plaza haunts, the library inspires, a reminder of how very alive its namesake remains. I never knew John F. Kennedy, but I feel like he knew men like me. Indeed, I breathe the same air. I cherish my children’s future. And I, too, am mortal.

Frank Murtaugh is a Flyer sports columnist and managing editor of Memphis magazine.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Poor Peter

Peter Pan star Lindsey Roberts quotes Gabriel Byrne’s character from The Usual Suspects: “No more jobs!”

“It was like that,” Roberts says, insisting that she was serious in 2010 when she turned in her green tights and her harness and said she was finished with Neverland. But like the pivotal character in any good heist flick, Roberts, who’ll return to the role of the little boy who won’t grow up when Peter Pan opens at Playhouse on the Square this weekend, has been pulled back into the game for one last shot.

This is great news for holiday audiences who’ll get to see Roberts flying high in a role she’s very nearly perfected. But for Roberts, who also played Harper, the waifish hustler in Memphis filmmaker Craig Brewer’s breakthrough The Poor & Hungry, opening weekend will be bittersweet. She will miss attending a party for the film’s long-awaited DVD release.

“People are posting like mad on Facebook, saying they’re looking forward to the party at Black Lodge Video,” Roberts says with a sigh. She’ll have to settle for soaring and crowing like a rooster and evading Captain Hook.

“I told [director] Jordan Nichols I needed to think about doing Peter Pan again,” says Roberts, who loves the part and the show but had needed to take a break from Tiger Lilly and the Lost Boys. “He said he wasn’t asking.”

Roberts and Nichols have pooled their institutional memories to remount and improve on the classic Playhouse on the Square Peter Pan.

“It should be just as much fun for the parents as for the kids,” she says.

“Peter Pan” at Playhouse on the Square, November 22nd-January 5th. Playhouseonthesquare.org

The Return of “the Poor & Hungry” DVD Release Party at Black Lodge Video, Friday, November 22nd, 9 p.m.