Month: November 2016

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We Recommend We Recommend

Opera Memphis’ Marriage of Figaro

Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro is one of the world’s most beloved and frequently performed operas. Surely, Opera Memphis’ General Director Ned Canty will have some singular concept or wacky spin to set it apart from all the other Barbers of Seville.

“For a Ned Canty opera, it’s relatively un-wacky,” Tierney Bamrick says. As Bamrick, Opera Memphis’ marketing director, further explains, Mozart’s operas are sumptuous enough on their own and filled with lots of goofy Abbott and Costello-style slapstick. “We just decided to lean into that.” Of course, there’s a concept. There always is. But this time around, it’s less about the opera and more about the place it’s being performed.

“We pulled together an orchestra and cast that reflects the level of diversity in Memphis,” Bamrick says.

“The idea came out of our production of The Magic Flute from last year. We had a really diverse cast, and Lecolion Washington [of the Prizm Chamber Ensemble] commented on that. We were like, ‘Oh,’ because we hadn’t thought of it that way. Classical music has a bad rap for being homogenous, and here we were doing this thing. So we said, ‘Let’s make it a thing for Figaro.'”

The late 18th-century setting is also a gift to Opera Memphis costume designer Sona Amroyan-Peric, whose background is really fashion design, not costuming. It’s a chance to go full-on decadent with velvet, lace, brocade, and fancy buttons.

The story is classic fluff about a pair of servants who thwart their master’s wishes and get married. There’s lots of people falling out of windows and hiding in closets. But there’s more to Mozart’s madcap romp than meets the eye, and the music — from the famous overture to the last fading notes — is pure joy.

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We Recommend We Recommend

JustLarry’s Hollywood Follies at the Hi-Tone

Larry Clark’s just gotten off the road after working several circus dates. He’s a clown, a comedian, a magician, a juggler, a daredevil, and a sideshow aficionado able to amaze and entertain ladies, gentlemen, and children of all ages. But his latest project, JustLarry’s Hollywood Follies is for older boys and girls of legal drinking age. It’s a little naughty, a little nice, and built for maximum glamor.

“We want people to dress up old Hollywood,” Clark says, confident his audience will follow through. The last time JustLarry booked a Hi-Tone show, the sellout crowd came all dressed up, and nobody even asked. It was a tiki-themed burlesque, and Hawaiian shirts were thick. This time around, tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door — but still only $15 if you’re all dolled up.

The Hollywood Follies is a classic variety show with magic and juggling and stripping, teasing, comedy, and music by the Rolling Head Orchestra. “Oh my gosh,” Clark says. “We’ve got these two guys from Playhouse on the Square who’ve learned how to play instruments and tap dance at the same time. It’s really cool.”

Clark’s worked the Greatest Show on Earth. He’s juggled chainsaws on tour with Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. He’s driven somewhat shorter nails up his nose for Jim Rose. He’s currently preparing one of his rare, Memphis-only solo shows. “It’s the most challenging thing I’ve ever planned,” he says. That one’s not opening till January, though, and right now that’s all he’ll say.

“I want to showcase variety,” Clark says, describing Hollywood Follies. “There’s a lot of good stuff in Memphis that doesn’t get seen in Memphis.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

How the Two-Party System Went Off the Rails in Shelby County

On Saturday morning, a line of local Republican Party members stationed themselves on the northwest corner of the intersection of Poplar and Kirby Parkway, waving Trump/Pence signs and those of local GOP candidates. When passing motorists honked or shouted encouragement to them, they reciprocated with cheers of their own.

Most of the sign-bearers were recognizable as activist members of the Shelby County Republican Party, and, as one of them commented to a bystander, “We’re the only political party in Shelby County!” This was a reference to the fact that the demonstrators’ counterpart, the Shelby County Democratic Party, had been dissolved in August — technically, “decertified” — by state Democratic chair Mary Mancini, presumably with the approval or acquiescence of the party’s state committee.

Mary Mancini

Mancini’s action had come after months of members of the official Shelby County Democratic party squabbling over what to do about the matter of funds unaccounted for during the tenure of a former local chairman, Bryan Carson, who had resigned under pressure the previous year. Some wanted to prosecute, others wanted to settle, and, when Mancini attempted to mandate a settlement from Nashville, a majority of the local party members rebelled against both her and newly elected Shelby County party chair Michael Pope, who had independently signed off on a settlement.

Mancini’s decertification action would follow in short order, but it would be unfair to regard it as solely a response to the Bryan Carson affair. As Mancini had noted in an earlier warning statement, the Shelby County Democratic Party had undergone “many years of dysfunction.”

The SCDP’s disorder had many origins: the ferment arising from demographic shifts in the party’s base; a loss of funding as deep-pocketed donors either passed away or turned toward independence or Republicanism; a running dispute over whether the party should adopt an open-door or closed-door policy toward newcomers with mixed or uncertain political credentials; the disabling residue of past scandals like the Tennessee Waltz; and — ironically, under the  circumstances — a reduction in party influence and morale stemming from the weakening of Democratic strength in the state at large.

Finally, the local party was riven by too many ego trips and pedantic arguments over procedure.

So much for the SCDP as such. It should be said, though, that in the 2016 election year, various other groups did their best to sustain the burden of political activism — among them, the Germantown Democratic Club, the Young Democrats, and the Democratic Women of Shelby County; civic organizations and politically oriented churches in the inner city; Democratic-leaning environmentalists and pro-choice advocates.

Meanwhile, the Shelby County Republican Party endured — and could boast at its several regional club meetings and various annual banquets an impressive roll call of elected public officials. But, as Saturday’s line-up at Poplar and Kirby indicated, its center of gravity had moved eastward over the years, reflecting suburban sprawl and white flight. Like the national version of the GOP, the local party had goals of broadening its ethnic and social base and had made some gains in that regard among African Americans, Latinos, and Asians, though these were essentially modest and incremental.

And, while the Trump phenomenon of 2016 may have redirected some alienated members of the white working and middle classes toward the GOP — again, as in the nation at large — the signals of xenophobia, misogyny, and personal erraticism emanating at regular intervals from the party’s presidential nominee seem clearly to have put off an indeterminate number of the professional classes and soccer moms who have made up so much of the Republican ecosystem in recent years.

The GOP rank and file would seem to be maintaining their loyalty, and the statewide Republican ascendancy is in no danger of immediate overthrow, though new rivalries in its infrastructure and scandals of its own — the Jeremy Durham affair in the General Assembly being a case in point — bode for possible difficulty in the future, especially if, at a time when lifestyle issues seem as dominant as traditional economic ones,  millennials in the state’s major cities, left-leaning in the main, begin to assert their strength more actively.

The bottom line: Isolated evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, neither major party has the coherence of yore. Both have gone off the rails to some degree, and the 2016 election could determine which one gets back on track.

Senior editor Jackson Baker is the Flyer‘s political columnist.

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Politics Politics Feature

Trump vs. Clinton: A Race to the Bottom

Anyone possessing enough claim to citizenship to have registered to vote surely realizes what the marquee race on the local November 8th election ballot is — a duel to the death (politically speaking) between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald J. Trump.

Never mind that the results of this race are basically foreordained for local voters. Clinton will win Shelby County handily on the strength of the county’s largely African-American voting majority. This is a majority that rarely bothers to come out for local partisan elections, which Republican or GOP-endorsed candidates manage to win with regularity.

But the presidency is a different matter. The votes will be there for Clinton, as they were for Barack Obama and other Democrats going back, including the first Clinton, husband Bill, back in 1992 and 1996.

Trump, however, will win Tennessee and its 12 electoral votes on the votes of diehard Republican voters, coupled with those of assorted new believers in his movement  — which is hard to define but real as rain to those who have been caught up in it since June 16, 2015, when the billionaire developer made that famous elevator descent in his Trump Tower to announce his candidacy to an assembled media.

At the time, Trump’s candidacy was widely considered a joke, notable mainly for an attack, regarded as highly impolitic, upon “rapists” and other putative offenders streaming across the nation’s porous southern border from Mexico.

The candidate’s flamboyant wealth, his playboy lifestyle, and his The Apprentice TV show were further aspects of Trump’s vita known to his fellow Americans. His political profile was sketchy at best, though he attracted widespread attention in 2012 when he flirted with a presidential race, largely via his public endorsement of the controversial and later discredited “birther” theory, which held that President Obama had been born in Kenya and hence was ineligible to hold his office.

To the surprise of most political observers, and certainly to the 17 or so other declared contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump’s passionate advocacy of building a wall on the Mexican border, his determination to expel an estimated 11 million illegal aliens, and his denunciation of “bad” trade deals like NAFTA and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) became the chief ingredients of a bare-bones platform that, aided by a volatile attack-mode style vis-à-vis his “establishment” opponents, gave Trump the aura of an all-purpose change agent and made him the sole survivor of a tempestuous GOP primary period.

For her part, Clinton had first become known nationally as the wife and political partner of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and as his loyal, steadfast supporter during a series of crises, including proven and suspected sexual escapades, that bedeviled his initial presidential candidacy as a Democrat in 1992 and continued through his two terms as president. Despite his turbulent tenure, which included an impeachment at the hands of congressional Republicans and his acquittal, the charismatic president presided over a long stretch of peace and prosperity and remained popular in the nation at large.

After they left the White House, the former first lady won a U.S. Senate seat from New York and waged a hotly contested Democratic primary race for president in 2008, which she lost to Illinois Senator Obama, who then asked her to serve as secretary of state. Though her service in that office remains a point of contention with partisan Republicans, Clinton earned a reputation in that and her other incarnations as a tenacious and able, even gallant personality, though her penchant for secrecy and absence of transcendent charm like her husband’s remained liabilities.

Through it all, Hillary Clinton remained a heroine to many for her championing of diversity and her implicit assault on the glass ceiling of male dominance, and she won the Democratic nomination for president on her second try in 2016, though Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a declared “democratic socialist,” would give her a difficult primary challenge via the appeal to youthful voters of his call for a “political revolution.”

In some ways, the Trump-Clinton contest, though generating what may well be a near-record turnout, has been a race to the bottom, with both candidates struggling to maintain the loyalty of their rank-and-file party members and each suffering major embarrassments — Trump through erratic debate performances and revelations of a rakish past, Clinton through an unending crisis over her admittedly ill-advised use of a private email account as secretary of state.

For more on developments in the presidential race, see this week’s editorial.

 

Contested races on the Shelby County ballot:

CONGRESSIONAL RACES:

Republican nominee David Kustoff (8th District) and Democratic incumbent Steve Cohen (9th District) each have challengers of record: Democrat Rickey Hobson and five independents for Kustoff, Republican Wayne Alberson and a single independent for Cohen, but neither Cohen nor Kustoff will have much trouble winning. Both, as it happens, are expending considerable effort for their party’s presidential candidates.

 

STATE HOUSE RACES:

District 83: Republican incumbent Mark White has an energetic (but under-funded) Democratic opponent in University of Memphis professor Larry Pivnick, and the challenger has the additional obstacle of running in a former swing district, bridging city and suburbs, that has turned dependably GOP red.

 

District 86: Democratic incumbent Barbara Cooper once again faces her biennial GOP challenger George T. Edwards III and once again will turn him away easily in this inner-city district.

District 88 incumbent Larry Miller and District 91 incumbent Raumesh Akbari, both Democrats, will make short work of independents Orden Williams and William King, respectively. How many times must it be pointed out that independent candidates, with neither money nor networks, do not win in partisan elections? Much the same handicaps apply to Samuel Arthur Watkins, a Republican running against incumbent Akbari, a Democrat in a Democratic district and a rising legislative star, to boot.

 

District 96, in greater Cordova, features a determined Democratic candidate, Dwayne Thompson, in a challenge both to the GOP’s better-funded and established incumbent Steve McManus and to the thesis that the district is forever dyed red, the odds heavily favor McManus, but Thompson is certainly trying hard.

 
MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS:

All Bartlett aldermen and school board members are running unopposed.

 

In Collierville, the aldermen’s races are unopposed as well, but the race for mayor features a second rematch between incumbent Stan Joyner and Tom Allen, a two-term alderman who has run for mayor four times already, twice previously against Joyner.

 

In Germantown, there is no mayor’s race on the ballot, but incumbent Mayor Mike Palazzolo is backing a slate for aldermen and the city’s school board that is mainly composed of incumbents against a group of challengers for each position.

Two aldermen’s races are contested. Palazzolo is supporting incumbent Dave Klevan versus Dean Massey in Position 3 and Rocky Janda versus David Nischwitz in Position 5.  

Three school board seats are on the ballot. Incumbents Linda Fisher in Position 1 and Natalie Williams in Position 3, and newcomer Mindy Fischer in Position 4 have the mayor’s support versus Laura Meanwell, Suzanne Jones, and Amy Eoff, respectively.

 

In Millington, Mayor Chris Ford is opposed by Terry Jones. Aldermen’s races are Missy Boyd Ervin vs. Bethany K. Huffman in Position 1; Al Bell vs. Hank Hawkins in Position 2; Frankie Dakin vs. Roger Taney Henderson in Position 3; Larry Dagen vs. Sherrie Hopper in Position 4; Donald Holsinger vs. Thomas L. McGhee in Position 5; and Jon Crisp vs. Don Lowry in Position 6.

Contested school board races feature Roger Christopher vs. Gregory Ritter in Position 1; Mark Coulter vs. Rosie Crawford in Position 3; and Louise Kennon vs. Ronnie Mackin in Position 5.

REFERENDA:

Lakeland voters will decide on whether to impose term limits of two four-year terms on city officials, while voters in unincorporated Shelby County will vote on allowing wine sales in grocery stores.

Memphis voters are asked to vote on a complicated charter amendment that, in effect, would redistribute to the city’s general fund some $5 million worth of utility tax revenues annually that have previously been destined to the county’s fund. (Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell has publicly opposed the amendment.)

And all voters within Shelby County can vote on a charter amendment requiring County Commission approval of any mayoral dismissal of the County Attorney. (Luttrell is opposed to that one as well.)

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Editorial Opinion

Trump/Clinton: Chaos vs. Competence

So you want to be president, do you? Consider this: The two most popular presidents of the previous century were probably Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Republican Ronald Reagan. Each possessed a fan base in the American electorate that was positively adoring, and both are still regarded as iconic leaders now, long after their service.

Yet for every day of their public lives as president, each was publicly vilified in the crudest and most disrespectful way. This is something worth remembering in these last days of the presidential race between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, a campaign that has been contentious to the point of sordidness.

The fact is that, even given the customary no-holds-barred nature of a presidential race, this one has been unprecedentedly nasty, with charges raining back and forth: Trump promising to prosecute Clinton; Clinton proclaiming Trump unfit; and both forsaking even the traditional perfunctory handshake following their final debate encounters.

With only days left in the contest, most public attention has been fixed on the controversial decision by FBI Director James Comey to reopen the bureau’s previously closed investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server during her service as secretary of state. The two candidates and their parties have each revised their former positions on the general propriety (or impropriety) of Comey’s actions.

Clinton has acknowledged that her use of the private server was a mistake — though the unfortunate possibility that emails relating to her service as secretary ended up on a computer jointly used by Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her disreputable, sext-happy husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner, should not be allowed to color our attitudes overmuch.

Surprise! Clinton is not without flaws. She can be secretive, calculating, occasionally devious, and she has been, as her Democratic primary opponent Bernie Sanders insisted, too cozy with Wall Street and big money in general. On the plus side, her election would finally smash the “glass ceiling” that has hitherto denied women the office of president. She is sincerely devoted to the issues of diversity and equal opportunity, and her positions on economic justice and tax fairness are definitely to be preferred to the xenophobic fulminations and trickle-down platitudes of Trump.

It is far harder to find redeeming qualities in the Republican nominee — who has been repudiated by an astonishing number of respected members of his own party. His personal background is one of Hefner-esque misogyny, and even his supposed business success is largely a matter of illusion, built upon double-dealing and welshing on his obligations. 

Trump has looked the other way from Russian intervention in our political affairs and that nation’s internet hacking on his behalf. Worst of all, he is willfully ignorant on issues of domestic relevance and cavalier regarding our relations with other nations. About all that can be said for Trump is that he has tapped into a vein of public unrest and desire for change.

The Flyer traditionally does not endorse at election time, leaving such personal decisions to our readers. We would be remiss not to point out the essential nature of the choice at hand, which boils down to a long record of competence and experience versus a legacy of unrelenting narcissism and its resultant chaos.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1445

Really, Today?

Last week Fly on the Wall shared a shocking scene from an airport gift shop in Austin, Texas.

It was the picture of a keychain, featuring the famous STAX snapping fingers logo. Only instead of saying STAX in block red letters across the top it said, “Austin.”

A hateful thing it was, but who could have anticipated a similar indignity would arrive so soon?

Last Thursday, the Today show posted what would have been a very nice piece about the Guest House at Graceland, if they only had some idea of where the iconic tourist destination is located.

It begins like most Elvis stories begin, with a clever/relevant song reference, but goes off the rails pretty quickly: “Elvis Presley once sang about the Heartbreak Hotel, but he couldn’t have known that one day, just steps from his home in Nashville, guests would one day be able to stay at the Guest House at Graceland.”

The error was soon corrected.

Verbatim

While we’re on the subject, “No. No. No, no, no. He wouldn’t,” Priscilla Presley was quoted in the Los Angeles Times. The former Mrs. Elvis was answering a question that’s probably been on a lot of people’s minds since the invention of social media — would Elvis be on Twitter, were he alive today?

According to Priscilla, he rarely wrote letters and was never the kind of King who liked to tell other people what he had for dinner.

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News The Fly-By

Cops, Weed, & Wells

Arkansas: One less choice on the ballot

The Arkansas Supreme Court disqualified one medical marijuana initiative from the November ballot, but voters will still be able to vote for a competing amendment.

The court disqualified the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act, otherwise known as Issue 7, because it found there were not enough valid signatures on the petition to qualify it for the ballot. The court disallowed more than 12,000 signatures, leaving the petition with 65,412 signatures. The petition needed nearly 68,000 signatures.

In response to the removal of Issue 7 from the ballot, the campaign behind the initiative, Arkansans for Compassionate Care, has called for voters to throw their support behind the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment, or Issue 6.

Issue 6 is the more conservative of the two initiatives, with fewer qualifying conditions that would allow a patient to receive medical marijuana and no provision for home growth.

DOJ to police Memphis police

It turns out that the Department of Justice (DOJ) showing up at your door can be a good thing, you just have to send out the invitation in the first place.

That’s what Chief Noble Wray of the DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) reiterated in a press conference last week. Flanked by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, U.S. Attorney Edward Stanton III, and Memphis Police Department (MPD) director Michael Rallings, Wray announced the launch of an independent assessment of Memphis Police Department’s community policing techniques and policies related to use of deadly force.

“This is a collaboration, and it’s important to know that,” stressed Wray, adding that the COPS program is an independent, objective assessment that the MPD entered into willingly.

MPD Director Michael Rallings speaks last week.

“The purpose is to improve trust between a law enforcement agency and the community it serves,” said Wray.

The review is extensive and detailed, and is expected to take up to two years to complete. During the review, community input will be sought through town hall-style meetings that the COPS office calls “listening sessions.”

Rallings acknowledges that a detailed investigation of this size and scope will likely yield some uncomfortable findings, but regardless the department is ready and willing to comply.

“We want to improve,” said Rallings, “and in order to improve … you have to open yourself up.”

The first listening session will be on Nov. 29th from 6 to 9 p.m. at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Midtown.

Sierra Club gets more time on well vote

The Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) delayed an appeals hearing for two wells proposed by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) at the request of the local chapter of the Sierra Club.

The Sierra Club filed the appeal on Oct. 4th. County law says at least 30 days is required between the receipt of the appeal by the SCHD and the hearing, which would make Wednesday, Nov. 3rd the earliest date for a review.

The proposed TVA wells would draw 3.5 million gallons of water daily from the Memphis Sand Aquifer, the source for Memphis’ famous and delicious drinking water, in order to cool a new power plant under construction.

According to Scott Banbury, Sierra Club local coordinator, at least four wells are needed to adequately cool the plant. TVA has already been granted three permits that can no longer be appealed. If the last two permits are denied to TVA, they will be forced to consider other options for obtaining the needed water.

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News The Fly-By

Milking Midtown

CREDIT: Apple Maps

Controversy over a new project at the Prairie Farms facility in Midtown has some locals hoping the milk plant will move, but the company’s owner said some are just looking for a “reason to kick us out of Midtown.”

Neighbors of the Midtown production facility complained recently to city officials about the trucks parked in the vacant lot behind the milk plant. Jim Turner, owner of the land and the Prairie Farms milk plant, said he wasn’t aware until recently that zoning laws prevented him from parking trucks there.

His company, Turner Holdings LLC, is now asking city officials for a zoning change that would allow the lot to be used for “vehicle maintenance, repair, warehousing, and temporary parking of trucks and trailers,” according to the company’s city application.

The Land Use Control Board (LUCB) is slated to review the request during its next meeting on Thursday, Nov. 10th at 10 a.m. A public meeting on the zoning change was slated for Monday at the Brooks Museum.

Apple Maps

The Prairie Farms milk plant sparks new controversy.

Neighbors plan to fight that zoning change. That fight includes a larger question as to whether or not a factory belongs at all in Midtown, and especially as a close neighbor to the burgeoning Overton Square entertainment district.

“That’s just no place for an industrial site right in the middle of that neighborhood,” said Gordon Alexander, a member of the Midtown Action Coalition. “Not only has the dairy changed, but the neighborhood has changed.”

Alexander said neighbors complain that loud noises and lights emit from the dairy site as early as 4:30 a.m. The 18-wheelers that haul in and out of the site are loud, congest traffic, and pose threats to cyclists using the Madison bike lanes.

George Cates, founder of Mid-America Apartment Communities, has said the site would be better used as a “hotel, retail, apartments, or for mixed use,” according to the minutes of a meeting of the Memphis and Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) board in June. Cates said the other uses would create more jobs and more tax revenue.

This, Turner said, is a move “to kick us out of Midtown.” He said an expansion project there will bring about 50 jobs and will clean up the site to better fit in with the neighborhood.

The company wants to build an eight-foot-tall fence and install extensive landscaping around the lot (and the entirety of the facility’s northern and western borders) to help shield the site from neighbors, like the Blue Monkey restaurant and bar and homes and apartments.

Council member Worth Morgan urged everyone involved in the debate to “be as cordial and civil as possible,” and said there may be a third option available soon but was bound against giving any details.

“There are more options still being pursued right now,” Morgan said. “Right now, our efforts are focused on pursuing some of those options.”

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News The Fly-By

Disaster Resilient

CREDIT: Wolf River Conservancy

Local government officials outlined last week how they will use a $60 million federal grant to combat future disasters brought forth by climate change.

Leaders met last week at John F. Kennedy Park to announce their plans, a move that comes nearly 11 months after receiving a federal resilience grant to assist with unmet recovery needs following ruinous flood damage in 2011.

“For those who don’t accept science, too bad,” said Rep. Steve Cohen. “This project will work to protect us from future floods. We need to be on the frontline of preparing our people for the disaster that’s coming. It’s going to come because we’re ruining our earth.”

In January, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded Shelby County $60 million as part of its National Disaster Resilience Competition. Breaking up $1 billion and spreading it between select counties, states, cities, and Puerto Rico, it’s an initiative to strengthen the environment for future generations, said Ed Jennings, Jr., HUD’s southeast regional administrator.

Wolf River Conservancy

Paddlers hit the Wolf River.

“On behalf of the Obama administration, resiliency is a priority we’ve set,” Jennings said. “It’s not just about how we have enough money to rebuild housing or infrastructure, but that we protect ourselves for a new generation.”

Shelby County’s plan, Greenprint for Resilience, will restore wetlands and flood storage areas along the Wolf River to protect homes and residents. A portion of the grant will be allocated for repairs and upgrades to Rodney Baber Park and Kennedy Park, which, currently, is the only city park with a boat launch ramp into the Wolf River. A new Wolf River boat ramp was opened last week in Piperton.

About $9 million will go toward completing the 18-mile Wolf River Greenway Connection, said Keith Cole, executive director of Wolf River Conservancy.

“For many people, getting outside, enjoying the river, hiking and biking, that’s what the Wolf River Watershed is all about,” Cole said.

HUD’s grant will further assist the Wolf River Conservancy with mitigating future flooding and preventing soil erosion that could have negative affects on the Memphis Sand Aquifer. Native wildlife, too, will be better protected.

“The mission of the Wolf River Conservancy is just as relevant today if not more so since our founding in 1985,” Cole said.

Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the Greenprint plan was accomplished by officials at all levels of government working together. Pointing to a nearby softball field where he played as a teenager, Strickland said “the same thing that was true then is true now, you win with teams.”

Noting other recent “game changers” in the Mid-South, Cohen mentioned the new bike and pedestrian friendly Harahan Bridge, a $15 million dollar Tiger grant to increase downtown walkability, and a $30 million federal grant to revive Foote Homes. Though the Greenprint project isn’t “sexy like the Harahan bridge,” Cohen said it was just as imperative.

“This here, $60 million, this is a very big deal,” Cohen said. “Memphis is the city of good abode. This project is going to help people in need, and that’s what we need to do with our time on earth. This is what cities need to be known for.”

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Cover Feature News

Hoop City!

David Fizdale: The Prince of Process

“I don’t really get caught up in pressure. I’ve got a job to do.”

David Fizdale sits in a folding chair off to the side of the Grizzlies’ practice court, engaged in our conversation, but also watching the players still in the gym putting up some after-practice shots. “I approach it to win it every time.” Is the Grizzlies’ new head coach more interested in process than results?

“When I was at Miami, whether we necessarily had a team that could win it or not, we went after it the same way. And so, that was bred into me. And that’s the thing I respect so much about the Spurs organization, and now Golden State’s organization is becoming that. Cleveland’s becoming that. They expect to be there, and they prepare to be there every year no matter who’s on the team. And so that’s the mentality I wanted to bring to the organization. Because only one winner will be standing at the end of the year, but I want to try to put our team in position to be that team every year.”

Talk to this guy for 10 minutes, and it’s easy to understand why he’s already an NBA head coach. Everything he says is in earnest. Marc Gasol, when asked what he likes most about his new coach, said “he does what he says.” (Knowing Gasol, this is almost certainly a comment on the Grizzlies’ previous head coach, even if it’s a subconscious one.)

Fizdale’s natural leadership ability comes across in conversation, and if one examines how much has changed with the Grizzlies — entering the sixth season of the “Core Four” era — it’s clear that his arrival at the beginning of the summer set off a sea change within a franchise in the middle of the most successful run in its history.

This isn’t how teams used to operate. In the past, you were good for a while, then your guys got old, and then you were bad for a while until you got some new guys. While the stars of a team were in their prime, management’s sole responsibility was to bring in the best players available to patch the holes, to fill in where the “core” of the roster was lacking.

Veteran point guard Mike Conley

As the Spurs rose to dominance and magically stayed there, teams started to smarten up: If a team brings along young talent before their best players age out of their primes, their run of success can be lengthened. The good teams started to become as interested in player development as the bad ones — and now, arguably, even more so than the bad ones.

Much like their on-court product had defied the times, relying on post scoring and stifling, non-switching defensive schemes, the Grizzlies had defied this organizational model, too, burning off draft picks like farmers torching their rice fields, bringing in and relying on “proven veterans” (read: guys in their mid-30s who’d been very good somewhere else first), doubling down on the foursome of Mike Conley, Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph, and Tony Allen, determined to (grit-and-) grind them to dust until there was nothing left to use.

It seems more likely that the Fizdale hire is a symptom of a change in mindset than a cause of it, but regardless, the days of bringing in the Keyon Doolings of the world while consigning rookies to the end of the bench forever (unless they’re Xavier Henry) seem to be over. As the basketball on the court has changed, so has the mentality of the organization. Fizdale’s emphasis on player development was radically apparent even in the first game of the season, when rookie Andrew Harrison started at shooting guard and played 38 extremely uneven minutes, including crunch time of a close game. These are things that don’t happen for the Memphis Grizzlies if David Fizdale isn’t on the scene.

But what about those bad habits from the previous near-decade of Lionel Hollins/Dave Joerger coaching lineage?

“I wouldn’t call them bad habits; I would just call them habits of the system that they played in. You know, they had some big-time coaches before me. You talk about Hubie Brown, Dave Joerger, Lionel Hollins — who is a mentor of mine — these guys are big-time coaches. So they built a system around what they had and what made them successful. My system is different, and that’s all it is, is different, not better, not worse, and I’m just trying to break the habits from the old system to get them acclimated to the new system.”

Rookie guard Wade Baldwin IV

And how much of what Fizdale has brought with him — the easier vibe, the quiet determination, the general getting-down-to-business that has happened on his watch, the commitment to doing something different, old dogs taking it upon themselves to invent new tricks — how much of that is Miami Heat culture, and how much of that is Fizdale culture?

“It’s definitely a bunch of Heat culture, but I had to be … I had to morph into my own personality. So that it’s real, and it doesn’t come off fake. I put a lot of thought into this over the course of my career with the Heat, as far as taking something and morphing it into my personality where I can be genuine in my delivery.”

That authenticity goes a long way toward explaining the connection Fizdale was able to make with the hardest-to-please stakeholders in his project: the players themselves. Knowing he was taking over a group who’d played together a long time, he took it upon himself to win them over. “I tried to get that part out of the way this summer, by going and visiting every guy, one by one, and spending time with them individually. I really wanted to spell out each guy’s role to him. Before we ever got into the season. I wanted to spell out expectations. So by the time we got to training camp, I’d kind of already dealt with the tough conversations so we could just get to work and start preparing for a successful year.”

One of the toughest conversations, no doubt, involved bringing Zach Randolph, “#50 for the City” himself, off the bench instead of using him in the starting lineup — a hard sell for a proud player who admittedly still thinks he can (Randolph always stops short of saying “should”) be a starter.

Unfortunately for Randolph and his battalion of ever-loyal supporters, the signs of Randolph’s age-related decline have been apparent for a couple of seasons now, even as he’s put up solid offensive numbers. He can’t defend the new crop of power forwards in the league — the young guys just as comfortable shooting 3-pointers as they are dunking from the foul line. His lack of foot speed — as if a man made out of granite and tussin should be expected to move quickly — has made him a liability defending the pick-and-roll, causing problems as far back as the Grizzlies’ elimination from the 2013 Western Conference Finals by the Spurs. He’s never been much of a jumper, but as a new crop of hyper-athletic seven-footers takes over center position around the league, his shot is getting blocked more. Starting Randolph, making him the centerpiece of a modernized NBA offense, just isn’t tenable, no matter what sentimentalities would have us want to see it continue.

Zach Randolph

It’s a bold move, taking one of the two hearts of this team, one of the players most responsible for shaping their reputation for winning by sheer force of will and tactically deployed violence, and moving him to a supporting role. But that’s what Fizdale sees: a versatile team, reliant on movement and trust and pace, rather than elbows and hips and wanton destruction of the bodies of other tall men. Randolph doesn’t fit that picture, so to the bench he goes.

If “Grit and Grind” is to continue — and I hope it doesn’t, because in a city this creative we should be able to come up with something new by now — it’s going to have to be abstracted away from the floor itself, from the sets being run, from the post-up isolation possessions.

Fizdale already knows what it’s going to take. “We’re forging ahead. This is what we do. The past is done. One of our core values is ‘growth mindset.’ Growth mindset means you cannot be fixed in the past. You gotta have an open mind and be willing to work toward what’s going to make us the most successful team we can be.”

Given that in two of Joerger’s three seasons, the team rebelled against the changes he tried to implement during training camp, whether “growth mindset” is really taking hold remains to be seen. It’s probably the biggest question facing the Grizzlies this year.

Which isn’t to say it’s the only question, or even the only major one left dangling unanswered as they plunge headlong into the regular season.

Gasol suffered a fractured navicular bone last season, an injury that has ended the careers of other big men. His recovery was remarkable, and he says he feels better than he’s felt in years, but does that mean his foot will hold up to the stress of the rest of his basketball career, or is it going to drag him back down into injury quicksand?

Mike Conley, whom the Grizzlies signed to a $153M, five-year contract this summer, the largest in NBA history, until someone signs one in Summer 2017 under an even higher salary cap, has not been healthy at the end of a season in years. He and Gasol have both played an extraordinary number of minutes for players their age, and with rookies Wade Baldwin (who looks promising, if unpolished) and Harrison (who looks both less promising and less polished) as the only backup point guard options heading into the season, is there any way he can get enough rest to make it to the end of this one?

New signee Chandler Parsons is on a four-year, $94 million deal, had a knee surgery last spring that was supposed to sideline him for six to eight weeks, and still hasn’t been cleared for full contact (at least not at the time this was written). If Parsons returns to his former glory, he’s an offensive weapon like the Grizzlies have never had before, a versatile forward who can shoot threes, yes, but also create offense everywhere on the floor, able to be deployed in just about every offensive scenario imaginable. If he doesn’t ever return to his former peak, the Grizzlies just sunk nearly $100 million into the NBA equivalent of a toxic asset of rolled-up, foreclosed-on subprime mortgages.

And what about all of these young guys? JaMychal Green turns 27 this season, so he’s not really that young in NBA time and unlikely to find some new developmental plateau not yet reached. The rest are all unproven: Deyonta Davis, a second-round pick who was projected to go in the lottery. Baldwin, a talented young guard who may have been a steal. Jarell Martin, another guy with a history of foot injuries, who may develop into an extremely athletic, versatile forward, or who may not crack the rotation.

Fizdale isn’t worried about this stuff, or if he is, he doesn’t seem fazed by it. I pointed out to him that when a team is usually 28th in the league in pace, even 20th will seem like a major improvement.

“You could be better. Right?” he said. “You could be better. And so, this is what we do. I’m pretty stubborn when it comes to that stuff. And I’m going to constantly keep my foot on the gas and keep pushing them to get out of their comfort zone.”

The Grizzlies are way out beyond their comfort zone, all of them, from the top of basketball operations to the guys at the end of the bench, but I’ve never seen everyone in the organization this committed to growth. Fizdale is their prophet of change, and like Jonah at Nineveh, his message seems to have been received at once. There are no solid answers about what lies in the future for the Grizzlies; there is only process. “The process is all I focus on,” he says. “And, you know, let the chips fall where they may at the end of it.” — Kevin Lipe

Tubby Smith: A New Era Begins

Transition years happen in college basketball. With the exception of the program in Durham, North Carolina, and maybe Syracuse, New York, coaches keep their bags packed, with a variety of tie colors in their closet. But what about a transition era?

With the departure of coach Josh Pastner (overdue, according to much of the local fan base) and the arrival of Tubby Smith (by more than a few measures, the opposite of Pastner), the Memphis Tigers seem to be entering a season that will be transformative beyond the 30 to 35 games we’ll see this winter. Tiger basketball will be redefined under Smith, for good or ill.

Will the program return to the national prominence it enjoyed late in John Calipari’s tenure as head coach, or might it resettle as a good-not-great basketball home for largely local recruits, the kind of team that might or might not play in the NCAA tournament? (You might remember those teams from late in Larry Finch’s tenure as coach.) Who are the Memphis Tigers? And what can Tubby Smith do to help answer that question?

Calipari’s arrival in 2000 was a big deal, but the U of M has never — ever — welcomed a new basketball coach with the credentials of Orlando Henry Smith. In 25 years as a head coach, Smith has won 557 games and led five different programs — Tulsa, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Texas Tech — to the NCAA tournament. His 1997-98 Wildcats won the national championship, one of four times a Smith-coached team has reached the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight. He has three SEC Coach of the Year trophies on his mantel and just last season earned the same honor from the Big 12, when he led Texas Tech to the Big Dance. Smith was on the staff of the gold-medal-winning 2000 U.S. Olympic team and won the Naismith Coach of the Year Award at Kentucky in 2003. At age 65, Smith will not be surprised by anything he sees on a basketball court. Having reached a career — and life — stage where he can choose when and where to work (he’s declined multiple job offers), Smith has chosen Memphis.

“They called me,” says a grinning Smith, when asked why he’s now head coach at the University of Memphis. “It’s a great opportunity to help this program. I love what I’m doing. I’m healthy. I feel good about what I’ve accomplished in my career. There’s tradition here. It gets me closer to the east coast, closer to home.” (Smith was born and raised in Maryland.)

Sophomore forward Dedric Lawson

As for the expectations — a 19-15 record (like last season’s) doesn’t fly here — Smith spent 10 years in Lexington, Kentucky, so bring them on. “I don’t have anything to hide,” he says. “I’ll do the things I’ve always done, and do it to the best of my ability. I’ve never felt pressure. My dad taught me that long ago: Don’t think of coaching as pressure. Pressure is trying to feed 17 kids, trying to keep a roof over your head. I love the fan base here. But every program has a fan base that cares. The media can blow it up, even the administration. They don’t know the intensity level the players play at or the coaches coach at. We have our priorities and our goals. They’re pretty high, but they’re realistic.”

In forward Dedric Lawson, Smith will have one certifiable star on a roster that will count no more than 11 scholarship players. As an 18-year-old freshman last season, Lawson averaged 15.8 points and 9.3 rebounds on his way to being named Rookie of the Year by the American Athletic Conference. It had been more than a decade since a Tiger posted such figures and 34 years since a Tiger freshman reached these statistical heights. (Keith Lee averaged 18.3 and 11.0 in 1981-82.) Lawson was named the AAC’s Co-Player of the Year (with Cincinnati’s Troy Caupain) in the preseason coaches poll.

“Dedric is a complete player,” says Smith. “He needs to continue to improve his defense, his footwork. As far as understanding the game, he has great instincts. He needs to be a facilitator when teams stack against him. He needs to be a screener, move without the ball. The screener is usually more open than the cutter. If you want to be a scorer — and a good team player — you need to be a good screener.”

Lawson has managed to gain weight (he’s up to 235 pounds) while lowering his body-fat percentage. The trick: cutting fried foods and, begrudgingly, cheese from his diet.

There are only three other members of the Tiger roster who could be considered rotation players from last season. Junior guard Markel Crawford started 25 games in 2015-16, but his numbers — 5.3 points and 3.2 rebounds — will need to improve this winter, even as Crawford defends an opponent’s top perimeter threat.

Junior Markel Crawford will be a defensive stopper for the Tigers.

Sophomore Jeremiah Martin will be in the mix at point guard. The Mitchell High alum played in 29 games as a freshman but averaged fewer than 15 minutes per game. At such a small sample size, what does Martin’s 34-18 assist-turnover ratio really tell us?

Then there’s Dedric’s older brother, K.J. Lawson. The swingman was limited to 10 games by a foot injury and will play this season as a redshirt freshman (creating the oddity of K.J. playing a class behind his younger brother). His height (6’7″) and versatility will be valuable to a generally undersized team. Senior Jake McDowell (5.4 minutes per game last season) and sophomore Craig Randall (8.0 minutes) are back and will get floor time when injuries or foul trouble squeeze the rotation.

Among the newcomers, expect immediate impact from graduate transfer Christian Kessee, a sharp-shooting guard who hit 88 three-pointers last winter and led Coppin State with 14.6 points per game. He should fill the void left by Avery Woodson, who transferred to Butler following his junior season. Freshman Keon Clergeot followed Smith to Memphis after initially signing to play at Texas Tech. He could see time at point guard, likely spelling Martin until a starting five is firmly established.

The Tigers are not a big team, which makes Baylor transfer Chad Rykhoek (RYE-cook) perhaps the most significant swing variable on the roster. At 6’11” and 230 pounds, the senior has the frame for post play. But he hasn’t been able to stay healthy, hip injuries keeping him on the sidelines for two years now. Lawson cannot pull down every rebound or block every shot. Rykhoek could be instrumental in these areas. “Chad brings rebounding,” emphasizes Smith. “We need size and length, and Chad brings that. He’s a very good athlete; we need to be more athletic. He’s been a pleasant surprise.”

Junior Jimario Rivers — a 6’8″ transfer from Southwest Tennessee Community College who Smith considers one of the team’s best defenders — will also be called upon for blue-collar work inside.

Thousands of empty seats at Tiger home games forced the current transition. Longtime followers of the Tiger program turned away from Pastner’s teams, most visibly at FedExForum on game nights when most of the upper deck would be empty. It’s their view of the Tiger program — those ticket-buying fans who chose to stay home — that reveals as much as any game analyst or coaching critic.

Jon Neal is a 1993 graduate of the U of M and a longtime booster. He also became a close friend of Pastner’s after his young son endured a cancer scare at St. Jude during Pastner’s tenure as head coach. While he has nothing but positive impressions — to this day — of Pastner, Neal feels a change was necessary, and Tubby Smith is the right successor.

“Like any human being,” says Neal, “when you’re bombarded with negative stuff, it takes a toll on you. I could see it [in Pastner]. He’s the finest human being I’ve ever met. The only thing that I feel bad about Josh is that whenever there was a glaring need for something, he was resistant to listening to other people for advice. He felt he had a way to fix things, and sometimes he surrounded himself with people who did not help him obtain goals he set out for the team.”

Like many followers of the program, Neal saw the sudden departure of star forward Austin Nichols (for Virginia during the summer of 2015) as the beginning of the end for Pastner. “Josh was submarined on that,” he says. “Decimated. Everything about last season was set up for Austin Nichols being here with Shaq Goodwin. Players transfer from every school. But something happened here the last few years, and players couldn’t get away fast enough. Why are players leaving so rapidly after they were dying to get here [to play for you]? Josh was a career recruiter, but he didn’t … cultivate relationships after players [arrived]. This may have been his undoing.”

Neal sees Tubby Smith as checking most every box Pastner did not, starting with a comfort level even amid criticism from a fan base or the media. “Coach Smith has been doing this for so long,” he says. “He’ll be a master organizational guy. All roles will be defined. Each player will be developed to benefit the overall goals of the team. He brings a success story that precedes him. And he’ll bring a side of accountability that we haven’t seen in some time. People will come to watch winning, but we have to learn to win first.”

Ken Moody played for Dana Kirk’s last Tiger team (1985-86) and Larry Finch’s first as head coach (1986-87). Now a special assistant to Memphis mayor Jim Strickland, Moody is reluctant to blame Pastner personally for the program’s recent decline, but like Neal, he sees Smith’s arrival as necessary, even critical.

“We have some of the most astute fans,” says Moody. “We should never insult their intelligence by portraying something other than the facts. Regardless of what our won-lost record has been the past couple of years, our program is a respectable one that will always generate national attention from high school players and media.

“Coach Smith’s honesty and integrity are his best virtues. At his initial press conference, he talked about loving every player he has coached. He’s respected by all of his peers because he’s always done it the right way. When parents give you the responsibility to help shape their sons, they want someone like Tubby Smith to be the example.”

To a man, the Tiger players are motivated by the preseason poll that placed them fifth in the AAC (behind Cincinnati, Connecticut, SMU, and Houston). Crawford in particular has relished what might now be called “Tubby time” in these parts. “It’s been a business approach,” says the former Melrose High School star. “He brings family love and discipline, things we stand upon. There’s a sense of urgency to get us better. We’ll be playing hard for 40 minutes; fans won’t be in doubt.”

Smith grew up the sixth of 17 children, a born leader (by necessity) under the guidance of his father, Guffrie Smith, and mother, Parthenia. Among the early lessons Smith took from his dad: Debt, if managed intelligently, is not a bad word. Whether borrowing money to purchase real estate or taking home groceries in advance of payment, Smith’s dad always paid his debts. As his son emphasizes today, there was honor involved. And a communal bond forged between hard-working parents and those who helped raise a large family.

Somewhere in this life fabric is the reason Tubby Smith is now in Memphis, in charge of a program that has lifted — sometimes maddened — its large following for several generations now. Is Smith in debt to Memphis? Quite the opposite. (Smith’s contract will pay him more than $15 million over five years.) No, if Smith owes anyone anything at this point in his career, it’s the game of college basketball itself. And what better way to pay such a debt than to help a family — a basketball community — in need?

“I can’t do enough,” says Smith. “I can’t pay back enough, for what this game has meant to me and my family from the day I decided to get into teaching and coaching. Donna and I got married, and she made sacrifices. I’ve always said, the greater the challenge, the bigger the reward. The more you give, the more you receive. My dad had nothing. But it doesn’t cost a thing to be polite or do a good deed. If we all believed that, the world would be such a great place. I’m happy I learned that lesson.” — Frank Murtaugh

The Tigers play CBU in an exhibition at FedExForum on November 7th. The regular season opens on November 14th when Texas-Rio Grande Valley comes to town.