Each week, the Flyer will feature adoptable dogs and cats from Memphis Animal Services. All photos are credited to Memphis Pets Alive. More pictures can be found on the Memphis Pets Alive Facebook page.
[slideshow-1]
Month: May 2016
Sam Leathers
Sam Leathers captured the final day of Beale Street Music Fest in all it’s glory, including moving performances by Yo Gotti, Courtney Barnett, and Beck. Check out his photos in the slideshow below.
Mario Reed is on the rise, both literally and figuratively. Reed gained attention in Shelby County back on September 12, 1997. He was a Millington Central High School football player, making what he thought was a routine tackle on a kickoff return. After the collision, he heard his teammates and his coaches shout to him to get up. But he couldn’t. “I couldn’t move,” he remembers. “I could only feel the wind in my face.”
Reed was told he would never have movement from his neck down. “I was going to be like Christopher Reeve,” he says, referring to the late actor who played Superman and later became a quadriplegic after a horse riding accident.
University of Memphis football Coach Mike Norvell and Mario Reed
“I’m a fighter,” Reed says. “You tell me I can’t do it and I want to prove I can do it.” More than 13 surgeries later, with a total commitment from Reed and his family, he continues to prove his initial diagnosis wrong. After nerve transfer surgery, Reed now has feeling and movement in both of his arms.
He says he’s not done. He has several goals in life. His ultimate goal is to do what he hasn’t done since the football accident: “Goal number one is to walk,” he says. “If I can take a step on my own, then my dream will be fulfilled.”
He hopes to have the nerve transfer surgery in his legs. He knows success is not a given.
For now, Reed is at least once again upright, thanks to the standing-power wheelchair he received April 11, the day before his 34th birthday. “It allows me to stand. I can lay back and stretch my legs out. It has 30 motions.”
The best feature is not is included in the manual: “I can talk to people eye-to-eye,” he says. “It makes me feel like I’m standing on my own two feet.”
Because of his new device, Reed was excited to attend the Memphis Chapter National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame Scholar Athlete Dinner, where he was one of the guest speakers. But the weekend before the dinner, he broke his ankle transferring from his chair to his lift.
{image-2]
Still, he showed up at the dinner to give out the award named in his honor: The Mario Reed Courage Award is given annually to the athlete or sports figure who has demonstrated the fortitude to overcome adversity. “It’s an honor to have an award named after me,” he says. “I have an award to present someone. It shows that life can throw you a curve ball, but never give up.”
Harold Graeter, a board member with the foundation agrees. “He’s a special guy,” says Graeter. “He goes through years of therapy. He goes back to Millington Central and graduates. He spends times volunteering. He is the perfect example of what courage is.”
Shon Coleman, a former St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Auburn football star who was drafted in April by the Cleveland Browns, is this year’s courage award winner.
Some of Reed’s other goals include directing a youth center and raising paralysis awareness. He’s working to do the former by volunteering at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Memphis. He hopes to achieve the latter through his non-profit, the Mario Reed Foundation. He is also producing a documentary about his life.
Once I saw the South of Beale’s Bar Pie Special ($11.50), I knew that I had to be adventurous for once.
This week, the bar pie is gator sausage, garlic, roasted red peppers, gouda, green onions and a chili-lime crème fraiche.
I have never tried alligator and was worried about how it would taste. I LOVED IT! I would compare the alligator meat to chicken and sausage. The meat tastes like chicken but better. It’s more flavorful, chewy, and it has the firmness of sausage. It fits right in on the bar pie. The roasted red peppers and green onions are fresh and the Gouda is nicely melted on the bread that is soft and grilled like a Panini. Lastly, the chili-lime crème fraiche adds a great kick of spiciness. If you like it spicy, you will love the sauce.
Grab it before it’s gone on Monday.
Brandon Dill
The Memphis City Council ordinance to legally capture the results of mediation on the use of the Greensward for parking began its way through the legislative process Tuesday, though some frustrated council members tried to pause the process by two weeks.
The ordinance as it is now, reads nearly the same as the March 1 resolution the council passed that gave the Memphis Zoo greater control of the Greensward and outlined other uses for Overton Park.
The ordinance, though, is a placeholder and is expected to be changed completely after mediation between the zoo and the Overton Park Conservancy (OPC) is finished by June 30. Council chairman Kemp Conrad said the ordinance will mirror the decisions that come from that mediation and set them into law.
The final ordinance, too, will include precise boundary lines for all of the park’s tenants and partners like the zoo, OPC, the Brooks Museum of Art, and Memphis College of Art. Survey crews are still completing their work on these exact lines. So, the final maps to show who owns what – namely, does the zoo retain control of two-thirds of the Greensward or more or less – remain unknown.
Conrad said the ordinance needed to begin through the process to be ready for the June 30 deadline. However, council member Worth Morgan said he preferred to vote on the matter after the maps were complete and available to the public.
Council attorney Allan Wade said the maps would be available before the third reading of the ordinance.
“We got the ordinance yesterday and don’t have the maps,”Morgan said. “We did the process pretty quick last time on the resolution.”
When the council passed the resolution in March, the item, its maps, and documents, appeared on the agenda the morning of the council’s regularly scheduled meeting. The council passed it from its committee meeting with no discussion.
Barely any council members discussed the resolution during the meeting that afternoon, even after dozens of taxpayers begged council members to postpone the vote while they gathered more information about the matter.
Council member Martavius Jones said he also wanted to see the maps for the ordinance and legal descriptions of them and wondered aloud, “What do we lose by waiting?”
“What do we gain by waiting?” asked Conrad. “If you’re going to make decisions to please the fringe element so they don’t get mad and do bad things, this job is probably not for you.”
Many council members were concerned the ordinance would somehow upset the mediation discussion now underway. Some feared the ordinance would strain the talks.
To this point, Morgan laid his assessment of the situation. Here’s what he said:
“There are a lot of people frustrated in this whole process. I’m not sure who is at the top, but somewhere close to the top includes me. This has been difficult to say the least.
At times, I swear I wish everyone would stop and not do anything, like put gravel down [on the Greensward] or commit vandalism, or say some of the nasty comments online that have no place in the rhetoric of this conversation.
“People have reached out to me on this and say the council doesn’t need to [do anything to upset the mediation process].
“To be perfectly clear to everyone. We [the council] support mediation. This [the ordinance] is in no way is a deterrent to it.
“The thing that would negatively mediation is people’s reaction to this ordinance if it is unjustly used, a reason to be uncivil.
“There is a cause and effect and people need to realize that.
“I’m not happy about those barricades. But the orange cone line wasn’t respected and police couldn’t control it. If that didn’t happen, then the stanchions would not be there.”
Morgan then spoke directly to Greensward parking protesters:
“I hope you’re reactions to this isn’t over the top and destructive to the process we are working so hard on.”
Council member Patrice Robinson called the ordinance “a sham” and said she didn’t care about it or its timeline until “we have a resolution to the problem.” Instead, she preferred to vote on the issue after mediation talks had wrapped.
“I need to know what the facts are and we don’t have the facts today,” Robinson said.
The ordinance was slated for a first reading Tuesday, May 3.
Sam Leathers
Beale Street Music Fest 2016.
Local music photographer Sam Leathers spent all weekend at Beale Street Music Fest shooting for the Flyer. A little bit of mud couldn’t stop the party down at Tom Lee Park, and Beale Street Music Fest goers braved the elements to catch big name artists like Neil Young and Cypress Hill. Here are some of Sam’s best shots from Friday and Saturday.
[Slideshow-1]
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland wants to use armed guards from a private company to secure Memphis City Hall and the new Memphis Police Department (MPD) headquarters but Memphis City Council members axed the plan.
Strickland’s 2017 budget included $650,000 for the new guards, instead of using officers from MPD. Antonio Adams, director of the city’s general services division, said the plan would put those police officers back on the street.
He said the plan was vetted and approved by former MPD director Toney Armstrong and by current interim director Michael Rallings.
But council members beat back at the plan, noting that the mayor has police protection and that they (council members) deserved the same, not “rent-a-cops or flashlight cops,” said council member Berlin Boyd.
The armed guards would have guns, Adams said. Also, the move would not remove the mayor’s detail nor would it remove the council’s officer. It is only the officers at the entrances to the buildings.
“So, everybody’s dead,” said council member Joe Brown. “Am I correct?”
The council defeated a similar move in A C Wharton’s budget last year.
Adams said he’d at least like to keep $400,000 in the budget this year for armed guards at the new MPD headquarters at the former state building at 170 North Main. He said MPD officials have “emphatically stated that they (MPD) will not be armed security at” that building.
The MPD headquarters, Adams said, needed 24-hour security as a whole host of of different people – suspects, victims, and family members – would enter the building at all hours.
Boyd countered that MPD headquarters is also filled with trained, armed police officers.
“They all have guns on their hips,” Boyd said. “I don’t have a gun on my hip. They can have all the security they want.”
Adams repeated the move was approved by MPD officials but Brown said “I don’t buy that,” noting that Armstrong was likely under pressure from Wharton at the time.
In a sprawling statement to help defeat the move, Brown described a new American tension, in which people are angry at government and “are not afraid to shoot guns now” and reminded that a man broke windows at Memphis City Hall recently.
“Around the country, I’ve seen officers shot up at precincts,” Brown said. “I’ve seen elected officials shot in St. Louis. For a few pennies, we’re not going to drop our guard [at City Hall].
“We’re in trouble. The average citizen is angry at anything that happens at City Hall.”
Brown ended his statements by noting that “in reality [MPD] can’t even secure Orange Mound” and that the city council “is going to stay protected, I don’t care what you [Adams], or the mayor or what anybody says.”
While Adams pleaded his case for the funds, council members eventually removed the money from the budget. Councilman Worth Morgan voted against taking the money out of the budget.
The amendment could be changed, however. All of the budget amendments made during the council’s budget review aren’t final until the council approves a final budget, which will probably come some time later in June.
Categories
What They Said…
Greg Cravens
About Jackson Baker’s post, “State House Declines to Override Haslam Veto of the ‘Bible Bill'” …
Such a colossal waste of time and our tax dollars. If only these fools put this much energy into solving real problems.
Jamie Outlaw
A little injection of sanity and common sense never hurt anyone, including the Tennessee state legislature. Well spoken, Steve McManus, the one who really addressed the matter as it should have been addressed.
Packrat
This whole story reads like a synopsis of an old Gilligan’s Island episode.
OakTree
About Bianca Phillips’ story, “Q&A With a Fast-Food Worker on Fight for $15” …
These jobs were originally created to be for part-time teenagers, working after school and on weekends, or seniors working the morning shifts. But the economy has turned these positions into ones from which people, mostly unskilled labor, are looking to support their families. If the minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour, I’m afraid the unskilled labor force is going to be competing with people who have working experience, even possibly college degrees. And although I agree the minimum wage is woefully overdue for an upgrade, I’m afraid doubling it won’t be the optimal situation for the current workers fighting for it.
Mejjep
He wants more money for the same work, and I want to know why he thinks he deserves it. He has put himself in this situation, and it is fair for us to know why. Good intentions don’t mean squat. What I really want to know is why, with all the retraining opportunities the government provides, he is still working at an entry-level position for minimum wage.
Arlington Pop
The problem with APop’s argument is that the minimum wage has been kept artificially low by conservatives for decades. If it had kept up with wages and cost of living from its inception, it would now be something like $21/hour.
The real argument is never stated — that the minimum wage sets the bar for wages across the board. If you raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, then all those slobs who have been toiling away in warehouses and factories and flower shops and kitchens for 20 years to work their way up to $15 an hour are going to want a raise, too. And if they get raises, then they will be making more than middle management, who will want raises, too.
This is what puts the fear of Jesus into the rent collectors. Such a law would create a massive shift of wealth out of the hands of the 1 percent, undoing 30 years of hard work buying off legislators to suppress wages.
That’s why the 1 percent works so hard to elect Republicans, who invariably crash the economy built up by Democrats. However, because they are only 1 percent of the population, they had to make a Faustian bargain with the Bible bangers and Confederate holdouts in order to hold onto power. The terms of that contract are finally maturing, and Donald Mephistrumpheles has come to collect their souls.
Jeff
About Toby Sells’ post, “Shelby Farms Development Clears Another Hurdle” …
Sad and shameful. But what else should we have expected from this sorry excuse for a city council? Follow the money, every time.
Barry Roberson
Soon they will be so successful, they will have to find overflow parking somewhere, somewhere close. There has to be a golf course close by they can park on. Isn’t that what golf courses are for?
CL Mullins
A new $160 million Tennessee State Museum will open in 2018 at Nashville’s Bicentennial Mall. The 137,000-square-foot facility will house artifacts from across the state, and each city will get its own chronological exhibit.
The museum broke ground earlier this month, and now its staff is on a statewide tour to inform residents of Tennessee towns and cities of the museum’s progress. The tour stopped in Memphis earlier this week
The Flyer spoke with the museum’s community officer Mary Skinner and Chief Curator Dan E. Pomeroy about the hurdles of the expansive project and what sort of representation Memphis will have. — Joshua Cannon
Flyer: When outsiders think of Memphis, they often think of Elvis and barbecue. How will the museum break that cliché in what’s represented about the city?
Mary Skinner: The State Museum traces the roots of its large collection back to 1818 and has been collecting artifacts pertinent to the telling of Tennessee’s history for almost 200 years.
We literally have hundreds of objects (furniture, art, textiles, musical items) from Memphis in our collection, including a 1919 American LaFrance Type 45 triple-combination fire engine, an 1860s Rococo Revival mirror from the Hunt Phelan House, a collection of Ernest Withers’ civil rights photographs, a document signed by Abraham Lincoln concerning Civil War government in Memphis, and paintings by Carroll Cloar. The list goes on and on.
How is the museum determining what to fit and what to leave out?
MS: It is impossible for any museum with a collection as large as ours to put everything on exhibit for public view at one time. That is why the new museum will have separate galleries that will allow visitors to explore specific periods and themes more deeply — including our Civil War history, music, art and cultural issues of the day. These exhibits will be easier to change and update as we continue to acquire new artifacts.
How do you tell a state’s long and varied story through artifacts?
Dan Pomeroy: In order to be prepared to tell this full story, the State Museum has been aggressively and selectively adding to its collection of objects and artifacts for the last four decades.
This collection contains artifacts relating to notable personalities, such as presidents and governors, but also includes items designed to tell the story of other aspects of Tennessee, such as Native Americans, urban centers, business, manufacturing, labor, immigration, African Americans, art, crafts, music, children, home life, rural communities, women, sports, and common soldiers. These and other stories obviously intersect and are interwoven, which is part of the challenge to museum interpretation.
What do you think visitors will take away about Tennessee?
DP: The ultimate goal is to create as complete a story as possible for the people of Tennessee and for our state’s visitors. Tennessee’s story is a critical and significant part of America and the world, and, taken as a whole, it should be a source of pride and empowerment to Tennesseans everywhere. This may be particularly important for the tens of thousands of school children who will visit the State Museum.
Harriet Tubman
It’s wonderful that the $20 bill will at some point in the reasonably near future bear the likeness of Harriet Tubman, a genuinely heroic figure in American history and one whose life-or-death efforts on behalf of equality were put to the test as an active participant in the struggles of the Civil War. That she represents two groups — women and African Americans — who had previously been shunned in the ceremony of our currency (the paper version of it, anyhow) was, and is, an additional point to be celebrated.
And there’s no doubting that Andrew Jackson, the general and president whose likeness she will supplant, had his flaws. Yes, he was murderous to the Native American population of the South, whose members he mercilessly slew or moved aside to make room for white settlers. And yes, he was a slave owner, a biographical fact that, on his part as well as many, many others in the group we call “forefathers,” becomes less and less easy to accept, much less venerate.
It is understandable — especially in the wake of last year’s horrific slaughter of nine African-American church-goers by a neo-Confederate racist — that we should start a rethinking process about the events and establishments that bear the name of such known slave-holders. In Tennessee, the matter of changing the name of the Democratic Party’s annual Jackson Day banquet in Nashville was put to a vote of the party’s executive committee. To the surprise of some, the majority favored retaining the homage to Jackson. Was this fair or foul?
Partly, the vote represented a certain regard for tradition. The name “Jackson” is, after all, one of the most thoroughly embedded names in the landscape of Americana. But, beyond that, the issue is more nuanced than a simple recitation of Andrew Jackson’s grave misdeeds would indicate. The victory of Jackson’s ragtag army over a disciplined British force at the Battle of New Orleans remains one of the signal events of American history. His presidency, moreover, was characterized by systematic efforts to democratize the office (for whites, anyhow) and, a century before FDR, to combat and diminish the power of organized money. Less known is the fact that, 35 years before Fort Sumter, Jackson preserved the Union by backing down the first attempt at secession by South Carolina.
For that matter, if we are to cleanse the national honor roll of slave-holders, what should we do with the name of our national capital? George Washington, too, was an offender on that count.
Let us be real here. Grant, Sherman, Lee, Jackson — they all did things on the battlefield that would have made George “Blood and Guts” Patton turn his head. Woodrow Wilson quite literally set back the progress of desegregation in his time. But just as there are no saints in our national pantheon, there are no Hitlers, either.
So Andrew Jackson will be moved to the back side of the $20 bill, and the front side will become Tubman’s. That seems about right.