Month: January 2015

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

A Most Violent Year

During a screening of A Most Violent Year, I had a revelation: I’m sick of movies about New York gangsters. I like The Godfather and The Godfather 2 as much as the next guy. Francis Ford Coppola’s twin masterpieces are rightly held up as some of the best American films ever made. I understand that a generation of filmmakers was inspired by them. But come on, people! That was 40 years ago! Can we maybe find some other group of people besides the Mob to represent the economic, social, and moral struggles of Americans reaching for the dream?

If you asked Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) if he was a gangster, he would say no. He’s in the heating oil business, and he’s got a plan to expand. When the film opens, he’s in a real estate deal with a Hasidic Jewish family who may or may not also be gangsters. It’s 1981 in New York City, so apparently everyone is a gangster: Abel’s wife Anna (Jessica Chastain) comes from a mob family and keeps a close eye on the heating oil businesses’ second set of books. As you might expect from people who may or may not be gangsters, the terms of the real estate deal are not particularly good for Abel. But the plot of land is on the Hudson River, and it’s got some disused oil storage tanks on it that Abel plans to use as a basis for a new oil terminal that he can use to build his completely legitimate heating oil business into an empire.

Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain

Excited yet? Maybe you will be as Abel winds through meeting after meeting with the bank and potential investors in his attempt to scrounge up enough financing to pay off his creditors and avoid losing his down payment on the vital plot of land. Because as anyone who has ever seen Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace will tell you, a string of endless boardroom meetings where people talk about arcane trade and finance issues always makes for riveting cinema.

Abel and Anna, accompanied by their trusty lawyer Andrew Walsh (Albert Brooks), are beset on all sides by mysterious opponents trying to sabotage them. The district attorney Lawrence (David Oyelowo) is investigating their company for … well it’s never quite clear, but it has something to do with the second set of books Anna is hiding in their fancy new house that looks like somewhere Al Pacino’s Scarface would have flopped. Anna looks great in the New Wave nightmare of a home, styled as she is after Michelle Pfeiffer’s cocaine-crazed Elvira. But at least Tony Montana and Elvira were doing something more interesting than late-night accounting.

There’s also a shadowy bunch of gangsters hijacking the company’s oil trucks before they can get to market, which provides the movie’s sole interesting sequence, a running gun battle across the Queensboro Bridge. So you see, A Most Violent Year is not a very violent movie. It would probably be better if it were. Instead, it’s mostly a bunch of men trying to look intimidating while eating Italian food.

And yet, as The Godfather proves, it is actually possible to make a good movie about intimidating people eating Italian food. That gets to the heart of the problem with A Most Violent Year: It’s a cargo-cult movie. It has all of the trappings of a gangster epic without actually understanding how to use those trappings or why they work. Take The Sopranos, for example. James Gandolfini was a guy who could really eat intimidatingly. Isaac, on the other hand, just looks lost. And the writing isn’t strong enough to keep those mealtime conversations interesting. The dialog is flat, the story flabby and incoherent right up to the part where writer/director J.C. Chandor throws up his hands and craps out a deus ex machina ending. I’ll leave you with the final note I took during the movie: “The sideways gun is just icing on the shit cake.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Universal Parenting Places Will Help Kids Who Exhibit Negative Behaviors

CREDIT: Louis Goggans

If the populations of Knoxville and Chattanooga were combined, they still wouldn’t equal the number of adults in Shelby County who experienced some form of abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction as a kid.

A new privately funded task force recently administered an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) survey, and it showed that 52 percent (an estimated 361,200) of adults in Shelby County had at least one adverse childhood experience. These are categorized as things like child abuse, domestic violence, neglect, and alcoholism in the family.

For those who encountered adverse childhood experiences on a more consistent basis, the likelihood of them being unemployed, abusing drugs, having poor health, contracting sexually transmitted infections, or attempting suicide was significantly higher.

To intervene with kids who may be at risk of heading down a similar path, two Universal Parenting Places will be opened here this spring. The goal of these centers will be to aid and educate parents whose children are exhibiting negative behaviors on how to combat these issues before they progress.

“We have places for people to go once they’ve already experienced serious trauma and they’re having the symptoms, but we don’t really have a network of prevention,” said Barbara Holden Nixon, ACE task force chair. “When the normal challenges of childhood arise, there’s not a place for them to go to get help and guidance before those problems become a serious issue. We can avoid so many of the problems that we are dealing with on the back end if we deal with them on the front end and really get to the root of the issue.”

There will be two pilot sites for the Universal Parenting Places. One will be established at Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women and the other at Knowledge Quest.

The sites will provide both individual and group education sessions around children’s emotional and behavioral health. There will also be arts-related activities, such as performances by theater troupe Playback Memphis, presented at the sites. A children’s play area will be available for kids who accompany their parents.

The Universal Parenting Places will be open to all area families. Centers can be accessed on a walk-in basis or through pediatrician referrals.

Louis Goggans

The crowd at last week’s ACE Task Force public forum

Last week, a public forum on adverse childhood experiences was held at the Salvation Army Kroc Center.

The event was filled with community leaders and featured several speakers, including Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, Dr. Vincent J. Felitti (co-principal investigator of the ACE study), and Robin Karr-Morse (Universal Parenting Places consultant).

The results of the ACE survey were shared during the event. Among the statistics revealed were that 20 percent of county adults experienced childhood sexual abuse; 41 percent of adults were bullied as children; and 37 percent witnessed a shooting or stabbing. 


The random survey was conducted on 1,506 adults in Shelby County through telephone interviews. Participants hailed from every zip code in the county. They were questioned about childhood living conditions and mistreatment, family dysfunction, current health status and behaviors, and other issues.

According to the survey, one out of five adults experienced two to three adverse experiences when they were kids; 12 percent of adults experienced four or more. The negative experiences were more likely to affect those who resided in the inner-city, lacked a high school education, and/or were poverty-stricken.

“There’s a lot of stigma attached to most adverse childhood experiences,” Holden Nixon said. “Most people don’t want to talk about emotional abuse. They don’t want to talk about physical abuse. They don’t want to talk about the things that have been painful in their childhood.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1353

Secretly Admired?

Somebody at The Charlotte Observer has been sipping on some sizzurp and listening to Isaac Hayes records. A recent article slugged “Memphis for Romance?” notes that the Bluff City “has always had serious commitments to its music — world-famous blues, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, and all things Elvis.” But where most travel stories stop, this one keeps going, and you can almost hear the porn funk in the background as the author writes about our renowned barbecue, chicken, and pork. “But on Valentine’s Day, the city falls head over heels, dimming the lights and putting on a slow-playing record for all the local and visiting sweethearts looking for a special day or evening. It’s a sexy city gone romantic.” Right on.

Mississippi, Our Neighbor

Mississippi legislators have put forward a bill for a service that’s being called Venison Harvesting Program for Inmate Consumption. If passed, deer meat could be what inmates are having for dinner, solving a problem that probably doesn’t exist. “It costs $1.56 a day to feed an inmate,” Rankin County Chief Deputy Eddie Thompson was quoted as saying. According to media reports, the bill would make hunters feel better about killing more than they can use.

Mongo Says

As more and more area politicians dip their toes into the mayoral campaign waters, your Pesky Fly has begun to stalk social media pages operated by Memphis’ perennially barefoot candidate Prince Mongo, just to see what the old alien might be up to these days. Turns out Mongo’s been visiting retirement centers and learning valuable life lessons, like this one, which he recently shared on Facebook: “Spirits just learned a hard lesson: NEVER go to the Sr. Center and bring up Deflate-gate and try to explain to hard of hearing old men about playing with under inflated balls, NEVER!!!” Sounds like a platform coming together.

Categories
Music Music Features

More Reviews

Taylor Loftin

Welcome Young Champions

Pizza Tape Records

Recorded late last year, Welcome Young Champions is the first solo album by Taylor Loftin, a member of the local punk band Gimp Teeth. Whereas Gimp Teeth crank out songs that barely reach the two-minute mark, seething with aggression and immediacy, Loftin croons, plays acoustic guitar, and even plays piano on Welcome Young Champions, techniques you will not find on a modern hardcore punk record. The 17 songs on Welcome Young Champions were written and recorded by Loftin when he was visiting family in Slovenia, and it’s a safe bet that Loftin was the only Memphian who made a record near the Adriatic Sea last year. Welcome Young Champions is definitely an album engineered for the summer, but Loftin released it through Pizza Tape Records in November of 2014. Pizza Tape Records is also the home to locals like Loser Vision, the Leave Me Be’s, and Ugly Girls. Welcome Young Champions might be the first solo effort from Loftin, but he sure sounds like someone who’s been crafting acoustic pop songs for years. The uniqueness of tracks like “Kafka on the Shore” and “Burn it Up” show a songwriter who’s already developed his own style, and the lo-fi recording makes this collection of songs more intriguing to listen to. A great debut from a local musician to watch in 2015.

Dawn Patrol

Police State EP

Kunaki Distribution

Dawn Patrol is a local metal band made up of brothers Tommy and Kyle Gonzales, along with bassist Stephen Bean. Championed by the local metal scene and media outlets like

Rock 103, Dawn Patrol seems to have hit the ground running since forming in 2012. Police State features artwork by Andrei Bouzikov, a twisted individual responsible for the gruesome cover art on the albums of high-profile crossover metal acts like Municipal Waste, Skeleton Which, and Toxic Holocaust. But Police State just doesn’t just look like a premier metal album; it rocks like one, too. Recorded last summer by Alan Burcham at Ardent Studios, Police State rides the line between hardcore and speed metal, with enough blast beats, double bass, and squealing guitar solos to make any metal purist satisfied.

Guitarist Tommy has been on the go since finishing school, joining New Jersey metal band Condition Critical on an extensive European tour last summer when he was only 18 years old. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Dawn Patrol is how experienced they sound despite their young age. Kyle already has drum endorsements even though he’s still in high school, and Tommy is Berklee College of Music-trained. Does Berklee offer a metal program? If so, Dawn Patrol would be at the top of the class.

John Wesley Coleman and the Gaylords

“Radio” b/w “Aliens” 7″

(Spacecase Records)

John Wesley Coleman might be from Austin, but his ties to the Memphis music scene run deep. As a member of the Golden Boys, Coleman played Murphy’s and the Buccaneer regularly, and the band also earned a spot at Goner Fest Nine. Not one to be tied to a single project, Coleman has released solo albums for numerous indie labels, including the Greg Ashley-produced Last Donkey Show for Goner Records in 2012. The self-proclaimed “Trash Poet” has numerous side projects, and Coleman has even released poetry and movie scripts in addition to offering a dirt cheap songwriting service in which he will write any paying customer a song about whatever they want for less than what an album costs these days.

It’s important to have all of that understood before listening to Coleman’s latest single “Radio,” the first with the Gaylords backing him. Both songs on the Spacecase single are stripped down and to the point, with Coleman repeating phrases like “I gotta radio” and “messin’ with my brain” over and over. While “Radio” builds to a climatic ending with swirling synthesizers and blown out guitars, “Aliens” is over in less than two minutes, leaving the listener to wonder if Coleman and company got abducted at the end of this recording session. If this brand of weird, fried psych punk is what the Gaylords are capable of getting out of Coleman, an LP would definitely be worth checking out. For now, this great single will have to do. Recorded by Dean Beadles, “Radio” b/w “Aliens” is available at Goner Records and Shangri-La or direct from www.spacecaserecords.com.

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We Recommend We Recommend

What Would Lucy Do? at BPACC

Lucille Ball was very good at playing a hot mess, but the funny lady was always in control. She became the first woman to run a major TV studio, and on top of all of her own memorable performances, we have her to thank for enduring classics like Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. But TV execs weren’t initially convinced that Americans would love I Love Lucy. More specifically, they weren’t sure that audiences were ready for a situation comedy featuring an all-American gal married to a Cuban bandleader. So a trial was proposed: To prove themselves, Lucy and Desi toured the country performing a vaudeville-style version of the proposed show. It was a hit, and the rest is history.

Suzanne LaRusch’s one-woman show, What Would Lucy Do?, may not be quite as glamorous or dramatic as a whirlwind tour by an emerging power couple determined to stay together and change the face of TV forever, but the collection of Lucy-inspired bits on display at the Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center this weekend will give audiences an opportunity to experience what it might have been like to see the queen of physical comedy do her thing.

Suzanne LaRusch

LaRusch’s Lucy impersonation is eerily accurate in part because the impressionist’s mother was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, about 15 miles from Jamestown, where Ball grew up. LaRusch realized there were a number of shared regionalisms. So doinLucy was a little bit like doing an exaggerated version of her own mom.

Ball’s children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr., have given Larusch their blessing, dubbing her the “Official Lucy Performer,” and Lucie Arnaz has partnered with the impressionist to develop performances inspired by her mother’s life and career.

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We Recommend We Recommend

“Delicate Tension” at Crosstown Arts

Brittney Bullock has a story to tell.

“It’s a story about laughter, fellowship, and love,” she says. It’s also about “generational change” and how a traditional craft has evolved into modern street art.

Bullock describes “Delicate Tension,” the show she’s woven together for Crosstown Arts, as “a collection of multigenerational needlework.” The three-day exhibition brings together a unique mix of knitted and crocheted works by artists, hobbyists, and enthusiasts. Some of the collected needle-slingers meet up at local senior centers, while others are members of the Memphis Knit Mafia.

Knitted objects often mark events in a family’s history and are passed down, but that’s not always the case. “Delicate Tension” features a well-loved baby blanket and an afghan crocheted in sorority colors, alongside new pieces of work that range from the pretty and practical to the purely ornamental.

“I wanted to tell the story about this change from people doing this very intricate needlework to what’s called knit-bombing — people getting together and knitting around objects,” Bullock says, comparing abstract needlework artist Morgan Montalvo to Margaret Cook, who meets with her group twice weekly at the Pine Hill Community Center, to create the slippers and elaborate baby clothes that have earned her top honors at area fairs.

“Morgan is making pieces to display in the windows,” Bullock says. “She’s all about color composition and works on an unusually large scale using really huge needles.” The exhibit also includes pieces by multimedia artist Nikkila Carrol who incorporates ceramic figurines into her knitted work.

Categories
Music Music Features

Memphis Ukulele Band at Otherlands

Why are ukuleles everywhere? Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad to see people picking up instruments and making music together. Nothing in the world pleases me more. But Memphis went from approximately zero ukuleles to Midtown being waist deep in the things. I’m not complaining, just saying.

There are group lessons, which I have endorsed. Local bassist Daniel McKee knocked me out with a bass ukulele solo at Midtown Music. When the Germantown Performing Arts Center hosted Jake Shimabukuro, the Andres Segovia of the instrument, last November, Memphis raised his bet and called in our own Memphis Ukulele Band (MUB) to open. Yep, we have our own ukulele band. You can see them this Friday, January 30th, at Otherlands.

Memphis Ukulele Band

The band started when Sun Studio engineer Matt Ross-Spang, musician Jason Freeman, and local NARAS chapter president Jon Hornyak began jamming on ukuleles at Sun Studio. They play some Sun rockabilly, some Memphis Jug Band, and added a rotating cast of Memphis roots winners like Jana Misener, Mark Stuart, Lahna Deering, and Kyndle McMahan of the Mason Jar Fireflies. Freeman and Hornyak play tenor. Ross-Pang play baritone. Deering plays a concert model, and Stuart is on bass. All ukuleles. So how did the ukulele revolution get started? Better ask Memphis Grammy Big Kahuna Hornyak:

“We all play Kamoa Ukuleles. Larry Nager introduced me to the owner, Sam Bonanno, about three years ago when I first became fascinated with ukuleles. Sam asked me to help him get his ukes in the hands of working musicians. He came to Folk Alliance the last year it was in Memphis and had a booth and led ukulele workshops. In addition to all of us in MUB, Luther Dickinson, Amy LaVere and John Kilzer, and many others play Kamoa. It is amazing how popular ukuleles are now.”

Let’s get this Kanikapila started!

Categories
News News Feature

Memphis’ Political Morass

In an interview after he had been selected as the new interim

District 7 Memphis city councilman, a relieved Berlin Boyd admitted he had been temporarily been taken aback by a question from Councilwoman Janis Fullilove.

At first, warmly referring to Boyd’s previous interim tenure on the council after the resignation of former Councilwoman Barbara Swearengen Ware, who also happened to be a candidate for this year’s opening, Fullilove abruptly spit out a hypothetical inquiry into whether, if chosen, Boyd’s loyalties would lie with the seventh floor (code for Mayor A C Wharton) or with the constituents he’d represent in the 7th District.

To his credit, Boyd was unwavering in his answer. “I am my own man,” he said. “No one has given me anything in life. I have and will make my own decisions.” With those resolute remarks there was no need for any additional follow up.

That exchange struck me as the epitome of the political morass in Memphis we have endured for decades. Never has a city administration and the council been at loggerheads as strongly as they are now. The past week’s announced mediation settlement of the long-delayed funding for Shelby County Schools only reflected the great chasm of distrust, contempt, and miscommunication that exists between the seventh and bottom floors of City Hall. With a city-wide election coming in October, the level of rancor would only seem to be headed toward even greater depths of political grandstanding, divisiveness, and the embarrassing exploitation of racial bigotry from blacks and whites alike.

But, 2015 offers us a chance to get on track toward positive change, and I’ll tell you why it should happen.

Since Councilman Jim Strickland officially entered the mayoral race, I have read the fervid Facebook comments of those who believe that a white candidate cannot possibly understand or embrace the hopes and dreams of a predominately black populace. But, isn’t a mayor someone who is supposed to be a visionary leader for all citizens regardless of his own ethnic background? Isn’t a mayor the chief executive who vows, “The buck stops here,” and then comes before the city’s governing body to make his case in person, rather than send others to do it for him?

Let’s be brutally realistic. It’s been almost 24 years since Willie Herenton became the first African-American mayor of Memphis. During his tenure, there were stellar successes, not the least of which was the extinction of many blighted areas in black communities that had come to symbolize degradation and hopelessness.

But tearing down those concrete facades did not really elevate the majority of the city’s black — or white — population. Memphis is still one of America’s poorest cities, and we still have one of the highest crime rates in the nation. Has black leadership on the seventh floor or black majority representation on the council changed the fact that 47 percent of Memphis’ black children are still caught in the cycle of generational poverty? We should have learned by now that the color of our leaders’ skin is irrelevant.

There are those who want to perpetuate the stale argument that a white man could only be elected to lead this city if the black vote gets split up among a handful of candidates, including the incumbent. I’ve lived in this city way too long to swallow the notion that because someone has my skin color, my life is automatically going to get better if he or she is elected to public office. When it comes to those we’ve voted for to lead this city over the past two decades, too many of us, black and white, have ignored the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Our choices shouldn’t be based on a candidate’s skin color, but rather the content of their character.

That’s probably why Boyd’s heartfelt response to Fullilove’s politically motivated question made such an impression on me. In this year of decision, we must closely look at those who promise results but whose track records would indicate otherwise. Go to political forums where you can see and talk to candidates, not just for the mayor’s office, but the council, as well. Then decide who you think offers the best direction for this city. If it will help, close your eyes and just listen to what they have to say.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Let it Be

Sometimes the do-nothing option isn’t bad. And that’s so with the Fairgrounds.

Ten or 15 years ago, doing nothing was not a good option. The Fairgrounds was blighted. It was basically an entertainment junkyard that included the abandoned remains of Liberty Land amusement park, Tim McCarver baseball stadium, and the stables and agricultural buildings that were part of the Mid-South Fair. The main entrances to Liberty Bowl Stadium were ugly and congested.

Today, the Fairgrounds looks a lot better from end to end, especially from the west side along East Parkway. The city greened and cleaned it. The stadium is beautifully lit, the faux entrance looks great, and Tiger Lane is an inviting, landscaped tailgating area for the Tigers, the Southern Heritage Classic, and the AutoZone Liberty Bowl. The blight is gone, except for the Mid-South Coliseum, a big space-eater that doesn’t look so bad.

The Children’s Museum is expanding, the Kroc Center is open, and there are two soccer fields, a high-school football stadium, and a track. Fairview school is renovated. The old Liberty Land is a disc golf course; there are worse things. There are lighted baseball and softball fields, a rugby field, and a skate park just north of the Fairgrounds at Tobey Park. A lot of this is free, if not first class.

A Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) for a youth sportsplex is proposed now by the city and was previously proposed (and approved in Nashville and Memphis) by developers Henry Turley and Robert Loeb. The financing is complicated, but the big part isn’t. The “T” in TDZ stands for tourism. Mayor A C Wharton says a Fairgrounds TDZ would be nice for local youth. Maybe so, but that’s not tourism. Tourism is getting somebody else to come to Memphis and stay here and spend some money.

A youth sportsplex was a great idea — in 1995. After that, lots of cities, big and small, figured it out. Let’s look at the competition within 250 miles.

Bowling is supposedly the “fastest growing high school sport.” The state meet is held in Smyrna, outside of Nashville. The venue has 52 lanes, so let’s say the ante is 50 lanes.

The state swim meet is held in Knoxville or in Nashville at the Tracy Caulkins Aquatics Center. If you want to compete, you don’t build a pool, you build an aquatics center. The pool must be 50 meters long and eight lanes wide, with a second rec pool and a diving area. That’s the ante.

Soccer’s premier venue in the Mid-South is the Mike Rose Fields in Shelby County, with 16 fields, a stadium, and 15 hotels within 10 miles. Oxford’s FNC Park has five lit-and-sprinkled soccer fields plus eight baseball fields and a BMX course. Who’s going to drive past those to get to Memphis?

Tennis? The state meet is played in Murfreesboro at a facility that is adding eight new courts in February. Nashville’s Centennial Park has 13 resurfaced outdoor courts and four indoor courts. Little Rock’s Burns Park has 24 terraced outdoor courts and six indoor courts. Memphis has multiple courts at Rhodes College, Leftwich Tennis Center, the Racquet Club, and Memphis University School. Trust me on this — I’ve been a hacker for 55 years — tennis players are picky.

Baseball and softball complexes virtually surround Memphis. Snowden Grove in DeSoto County has 17 fields. Joe Mack Park in Jonesboro, Arkansas, has 12 fields, all sponsored by local businesses. Jackson, Tennessee, has 17 fields you have probably seen at mile 86 on Interstate 40. The Game Day First Tennessee complex in Shelby County has 10 lighted fields. Let’s call the ante 10 lighted fields.

So it goes. Hockey? Nashville and DeSoto County have pro teams that help support rinks. Volleyball? The state meet is in Murfreesboro. Same for football and track. A central location beats Memphis, if you live east of Jackson.

Basketball Town USA? Maybe. Memphis often has the best high school and national AAU teams year after year. We’ve also got the Grizzlies. But our teams have to go to Murfreesboro to claim their state trophies every year because we’re stuck in the corner.

Location matters. Ordinary doesn’t cut it. Great beats good. Want to play? Ante up.

Categories
News The Fly-By

New Plan Established For Old Forest in Overton Park

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Parts of Overton Park — the Rainbow Lake playground, the dog park —have seen vast improvements, but the state natural area nestled in the heart of the park may be next on the list for upgrades.

A new Old Forest State Natural Area Management Plan focuses on recommendations to improve the Old Forest area within the park, including management goals and dealing with natural threats to the forest.

The plan was prepared by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, but the Overton Park Conservancy is spearheading the plan’s management. A yearly annual report will go through the state from the conservancy. The Old Forest is a state-protected natural area that encompasses 126 acres of the park.

A meeting held last Saturday detailed the Old Forest management plan for interested park users. Tina Sullivan, the executive director of the Overton Park Conservancy, opened the meeting with an overview of the changes coming for the Old Forest area.

Bianca Phillips

Overton Park’s Old Forest

“The board generally acknowledged that the Old Forest is one of the most important features that we needed to focus on,” Sullivan said. “We wanted to promote greater awareness and use of the forest by replacing those worn-out vehicle barriers that you see at some entrances in the park. One of the ideas we have for doing that is creating new entry portals that have some interpretive information and some maps.”

The plan also addresses how to deal with the invasive flora and fauna that grow in the forest. Plants typical of the South like kudzu and tree-of-heaven have grown to a point of concern. And it touches on care for aging trees in the historic forest.

“Obviously, old trees are like us. They don’t recover as well when they get injured when they get older,” said Eric Bridges, director of operations and capital improvements for the Conservancy.

Bridges also mentioned “excessive” trails, which are listed as a threat, particularly because their maintenance drains resources.

“We know we have a lot of trails in the Old Forest,” he said. “Some of them circle around each other and go to the same place, so because of that, no new trails are recommended in this plan. A reduction in trails is also recommended.”

The conservancy will also be partnering with researchers from the University of Memphis and Rhodes College to study the state of the Old Forest. Bridges added that the ecological state of the forest is dependent upon research, that recreation is secondary to the state and well-being of the forest.

“The idea is to encourage people to come into the forest and explore, to make it feel like a safe place to be,” Sullivan said.

The conservancy, which was founded in 2012, has completed a number of projects in Overton Park, including the well-received Overton Bark dog park, improvements to the playground, remodeled restrooms, and the bike gate sculpture at East Parkway.