When Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter visited Memphis earlier this year to assist Habitat for Humanity in revitalizing the Bearwater Park neighborhood, he met a once homeless man who planned to become a first-time homeowner when the project was complete.
“He told me that seven years ago, he was living under a bridge,” the former president told The Flyer. “He was addicted to drugs, and he decided to turn his life around. He got a job at a fast food place, and now he’s in charge of Chick-fil-A’s kitchen.”
And soon he can purchase his first home.
Following the work of more than 1,500 volunteers, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis will dedicate 21 homes, 19 of which were part of Habitat for Humanity’s 2016 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project. The Carter’s also worked on ten beautification projects in Uptown and six Shelby County “aging in place” ramp projects. Habitat’s dedication will commemorate the realization of the project.
Those interested in purchasing a home must be first-time homebuyers who meet a specific criteria: a demonstrated need and the ability to repay a zero-interest mortgage. Habitat homeowners will attend a multi-week homebuyer education course. They’ll also complete 350 to 400 hours of “sweat equity” by working on their homes, the homes of others, and volunteering at the Habitat ReStore — a nonprofit home improvement and donation center.
Homeowners must also put down a $1,000 down payment and save $1,000 for an emergency fund. After purchasing their homes, they will make monthly payments to Habitat’s Fund for Humanity, which supports the organizations ongoing mission.
The officers involved in last year’s shooting death of Jonathan Bratcher will not face criminal charges.
Bratcher, 32, was killed Jan. 27, 2016, near Mississippi Boulevard and South Parkway East after firing at officers while fleeing from his vehicle to avoid arrest. His car was being pursued by police on traffic charges.
“Weighing the totality of circumstances of Jan. 27, 2016, no criminal charges will be filed and no indictments will be sought against any officers in the death of Jonathan Bratcher,” Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich said Wednesday. “I believe a jury would find that the officers had lawful justification to fire their weapons at the suspect in self-defense, in the defense of others and in order to affect an arrest.”
[pullquote-1] Weirich’s statement follows the district attorney’s review of an investigative file compiled by the Violent Crime Response Team of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI). The TBI investigates all fatal shootings that involve Memphis police officers and the Shelby County Sheriff’s department per a memorandum of understanding signed last October by those parties and Gen. Weirich.
While by law TBI’s investigative reports are not open to the public without a subpoena or court order, Gen. Weirich filed a petition Tuesday in Chancery Court asking a judge to open the investigative report to the public. A hearing on that request has not been set.
There are several Memphis filmmakers with multiple projects appearing in this year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival. One of the most prolific local filmmakers is Laura Jean Hocking, who boasts involvement in eight different projects screening during the weeklong festival. She co-directed the short narrative film “How To Skin A Cat” and the short documentary film “A.J.”; and created music videos for John Kilzer and Alex Da Ponte. As an editor, she cut the music documentary Verge and the narrative feature Bad, Bad Men. Melissa Anderson Sweazy’s music video “Bluebird”, and did initial assembly on frequent collaborator Sarah Fleming’s “Carbike”. Oddly enough, it all started because of her culinary prowess.
Jamie Harmon
Filmmaker Laura Jean Hocking
It was early 2000s and Laura Jean Hocking was doing craft services and props for her friend’s films. While helping out with her husband C. Scott McCoy’s film Automusik Can Do No Wrong, Hocking wound up peering over the shoulder of The Invaders director Prichard Smith. “I watched Prichard edit, and it just clicked. It was an epiphany,” said Hocking. “And I knew right then and there that I wanted to do this for a living.”
Hocking’s epiphany sparked an insatiable thirst for editing jobs. After she purchased an instruction book for Final Cut Pro, and completed every lesson in it, Hocking set out to edit a feature film she had just finished writing with McCoy. “It was 52 speaking parts, and everyone thought I was out of my mind to tackle that as my first editing project,” recalls Hocking. “After that, I wanted to edit any and every thing.”
Solomon Phillips in Laura Jean Hocking’s video for John Kilzer and Kirk Whalem’s song ‘Until We’re All Free’
More than 15 years later, Hocking pretty much has. She’s also produced, directed, or written countless other films. Two of her Indie Memphis projects in particular showcase Hocking’s ability to tackle subjects that can elicit a wide range of emotional responses.
In “A.J.” a short documentary that introduces audiences to the delicate work of the Kemmons Wilson Center for Good Grief, Hocking, fellow producer/director Melissa Anderson Sweazy, and producer/cinematographer Sarah Fleming decided to focus on an element of grief underexplored in documentaries — recovery. “We see the dark side represented in film plenty,” said Hocking. “We wanted to show how people get out of grief and how they get to the other side of it.”
‘A.J.’
On the flip side, the short film “How to Skin A Cat” demonstrates of Hocking’s ability to transition from the somber to the asinine within a single production year. And if you pressure Hocking enough, she’ll tell you it’s the film that she might love just a tiny bit more than her other film-children this festival, due largely to the ability to pay the actors and crew, thanks to the $7,500 in IndieGrant funds the project received. “Do you know how big that was? To be able to pay our actors?”Hocking asks.
In spite of a rapidly expanding filmography, Hocking has her sights set on the Memphis horizon and the future of Bluff City filmmaking. When people ask if she ever would consider moving to L.A., Hocking’s answer is a flat no.“Why would I want to move to L.A.? Here, I can make a difference,” Hocking notes. “It’s here that I have artistic freedom that isn’t usually given to you by way of a big studio.”
With a location of choice and the support of a close-knit film community, Hocking is poised to continue her constant self-challenge to try all things new in the world of filmmaking. And because her personal belief is to never cease trying new things, we are likely in store for watching a filmmaker whose list of works will continue to push norms. “After all,” Hocking added, “If you’re not learning, you’re dying.”
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.
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!
I can answer that question with a video I shot at Memphis’ first Tea Party rally in 2009. None of this started in Shelby Co., of course, and the machinery responsible for this year’s election has been grinding away for 40-years, at least. But this is the period when gloves came off. When it became okay for America to stop pretending it wasn’t bigoted at the core. So, return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when it was okay to go out wrapped in the flag, wearing a t-shirt depicting Obama caught in gun sights, with a face full of bullet holes.
Often, though not always, the Tea Party was portrayed as a patriotic, Christian movement, and you’ll hear that point of view repeated even today in places like American Family Radio — an allegedly Christian family of stations that, interestingly enough, began its foray into political programming in 2009. In retrospect, it’s difficult to see this movement as anything but a backlash to the election of America’s first African-American President, creating unusually lopsided momentum going into the typically sleepy midterm. And not just any sleepy round of midterms either, but elections that determined which party would get to redraw congressional districts, gerrymandering for maximum advantage.
In the video I’ve embedded audiences will thrill to the same white nationalist urges Trump taps into, and witness unfocused anger at every turn. Viewers will be amazed by anti-regulation speech built to leverage job insecurity against fair wages and worker protection.
What happened in 2009 was a kind of Right Wing tent revival — a renewal of vows exchanged long ago between America’s white working class and industry tools with no history of reciprocity. It’s a queer relationship with roots in the 60’s, when college draft deferment made education suspect — a class signifier separating those who fought for America (regardless of how they felt about it) from those protesting America.
Russian Roulette: The Resistible Rise of Donald Trump
Ironically, the seed that blossomed into Trumpism sprouted in 1968, while the Donald was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. To make desegregation meaningful, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected freedom of choice in the case of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, ordering the board to end racial discrimination, “root and branch.” Urban bussing policies that followed created backlash among a newly middle class (and newly suburban) set of former New Deal Democrats, bringing them first under the influence of segregationist Dixiecrat George Wallace, then into the trajectory of Richard Nixon, who made good use of America’s oldest cultural fault lines.
Nixon’s not known for being stylish, but he was a smart strategist. When his people observed that acting like a tough guy increased his support among the white working class, he ran with it, pitting America’s conflicted labor force against a crumbling New Deal, setting the stage for Reaganism, and the not-so-subtle messaging of “Morning in America.” And pretty much everything that’s happened since, including a pair of two-term Democrats with Nixonesque tendencies to answer the Left and Right with Conservative core policies.
[pullquote-1] It’s ridiculous how much Hillary Clinton hurt herself in this election cycle with her infamous “basket of deplorables” comment. While it’s undeniable, that the right side of our political spectrum, is responsible for a lot of clearly deplorable stuff, and tends to feel victimized whenever somebody stops them from victimizing others, America’s fucked up white working class isn’t completely wrong about feeling wronged. They’re just terrible at identifying the real enemies. Labor — which should have been a great progressive unifier — failed them in the 70’s, which is important for two reasons. First, it marked the end of anything like solidarity in a nation that was never that united, and always unable to account for class, factoring in the confounding variables of race and gender. This also relates directly to Clinton’s relentlessly uphill battles going all the way back to her 90’s-era work on universal healthcare since Labor’s historic failures frequently illustrated how sexism was more ingrained in American culture than virtually any other ism. Even in the relatively progressive UAW, multiracial coalitions for fairness on the shop floor crossed picket lines and openly mocked women striking for the same basic reasons. To this day women’s apparent advances are misleading, being more related to declines in male earning power than evidence of changing attitudes.
Pundits like to talk about a “values based” urban/rural divide. But that’s not right. When you break down the pieces, Donald Trump’s brand doesn’t align with anything uniquely rural or urban. His values, as they align with supporters, are best understood as, “classy casino” values” and Saturday Night Live brilliantly illustrated this with the “scratch off,” bit in its widely shared Black Jeopardy sketch. Forget about guns, god, and gays — The 3-G issues, framed and cultivated by talk radio, and cable news to suck consumers into a state of daily outrage, quite unable to explore common cause. The culture stuff is still simmering, but it was all pretext and prelude. People are finally ready to go to war for their God-given right to be as bad off as they are now forever — and the remote chance of inheriting a billion dollars from a rich cat lady they never met, but who greatly admired their work in the local newspaper’s comment section.
Russian Roulette: The Resistible Rise of Donald Trump (2)
Speaking of comments, few things from this year’s election reveal more than Donald Trump’s double-pronged scare campaign painting undocumented workers as potential rapists, and the “inner city” — an outdated Morning in America euphemism for “urban slum” — as a place where you can’t walk to the store without being shot. This is the fantasy world of TV news and “comment section America,” where everything exists without context and, in the flyover world of bedroom communities and interstates , often without contact.
Please forgive this momentary theater critic’s aside. But the more I ask myself how we got here, the more I’m reminded of the Vampire play Cuddles, a gruesome hit in New York and Great Britain, currently enjoying its first American production outside New York at TheatreWorks on Overton Square. In addition to being many other things, this nightmare before the apocalypse, is also a special kind of class satire. It tells the story of a joyless caregiver who lives in a lonely castle and locks her life’s biggest embarrassment away, feeding it a steady diet of fantasy, jelly sandwiches, and, on special occasions, a few drops of precious bodily fluids. The embarrassment — a young, deplorably dirty girl — is kept in an old, deplorably dirty place to insure her safety. She’s a vampire, you see. Or we’re told so. And true or not, the small, pale girl’s demeanor changes eventfully when the caregiver — a person responsible for everything the little bloodsucker consumes, from a normalized polluted environment, to information that’s almost exclusively fiction — decides she’s no longer willing to open an occasional vein. It’s not a terrible metaphor for the relationship of mainstream politics Left and Right to base voters. But it’s an especially fine reflection of the GOP and its cultivation of the “Silent Majority,” the “Moral Majority,” and the “Tea Party.”
Eventually, the monsters we make assert themselves. Which reminds me of another line from SNL’s Black Jeopardy, about animals that won’t hurt you — “What kind of dogs don’t have teeth?”
If you want to know how Trump happened, just watch the 2009 video and maybe you can take some small comfort in realizing we aren’t recently horrible. It’s short, so there’s no big time investment. And it’s full of revealing moments like when Conservative talker Mark Skoda starts preaching like John the Baptist, about the evils of regulation, and the need to support big Oil. He says all the right things to scare miners into not noticing nobody gives damn about the quality of jobs they may or may not lose anyway, or their place in a viable future economy. Skoda, who says he “loves being radical,” was absolutely paving the way for the unsuccessful person’s twisted image of a successful person to come along — a real man’s man, tough enough to look into the eyes of people who won’t abide anybody running down their country — and tell them he’s going to make America great again.
That’s how we got here. That’s the easy part. How we get out’s another story entirely.
Having said all that, go see Cuddles. It’s not perfect, but it’s not bad. I’m pretty sure the Halloween-loving New Moon didn’t intend to stage the season’s most prescient political satire. But boy, did they.
• Something is rotten in the state of defense at the University of Memphis. The last two games — losses to Navy and Tulsa — have exposed weaknesses that lay dormant through the Tigers’ 5-1 start. After allowing 6.8 yards per play (78 of them) in Annapolis, the Tigers gave up 6.8 yards per play (87 of them) last Saturday night at the Liberty Bowl. This is not the kind of consistency any Tiger coach is preaching. (In four of the Tigers’ five wins, Memphis gave up less than 4.5 yards per play.) Combine a nonexistent pass rush with an inability to stop the run — 447 rushing yards by Navy, 362 by Tulsa — and you allow, on average, 50 points as Memphis has the last two weeks.
Here’s the challenge for head coach Mike Norvell and defensive coordinator Chris Ball: Is the problem related to personnel or scheme? It’s almost surely a combination of the two. Ernest Suttles, Jonathan Wilson, Donald Pennington and their friends on the Tiger defensive line are not pressuring opposing quarterbacks. Worse, they’re not filling gaps when an opponent runs the ball. And the Tigers’ 3-4 alignment is clearly not built to withstand the push from the best American Athletic Conference teams. Norvell is cutting his teeth when it comes to involvement on the defensive side of the ball. Over the next four games, we’ll see if adjustments — large-scale — can be made to save a season currently in free-fall.
• One of the most famous records in sports history was the long-jump mark Bob Beamon established at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. When he flew through the air for 29 feet, two-and-a-half inches, Beamon broke the previous record by almost two feet, or seven percent. His record stood for 23 years.
Larry Kuzniewski
Mike Norvell and Matt Dillon
Saturday night at the Liberty Bowl, Anthony Miller broke a U of M record that had stood for 51 years . . . and by 34 percent. In catching 12 passes for 250 yards, Miller erased the single-game Tiger mark of 186 yards through the air, set by Bob Sherlag on October 23, 1965, against Mississippi State at the Liberty Bowl (during the stadium’s inaugural season). Miller now needs just 178 yards to become the second Tiger receiver to top 1,000 yards in a season. (Isaac Bruce’s U of M record is 1,054, set in 1993.)
But what about Mr. Sherlag? Not exactly a name that rolls off the tongue in casual chats about Memphis football history. I asked Tiger sideline reporter Matt Dillon — the Professor himself — about Sherlag, and enjoyed the lesson. Sherlag’s heroics helped an 0-3 Memphis team upset an undefeated (4-0), 9th-ranked Bulldog squad, 33-13. Sherlag caught passes from Billy Fletcher, a graduate of Southside High School in Memphis who became the first Tiger quarterback to pass for 1,000 yards in a season. Three of Sherlag’s ten catches that day were for touchdowns, which tied the Tiger record at the time. He was chosen in the sixth round of the 1966 NFL draft by Philadelphia, but saw his only action as a pro with the Atlanta Falcons, for whom he caught four passes for 53 yards.
• Let’s hope Saturday’s game in Dallas isn’t the crossing of two programs going in opposite directions. After a 2-4 start, SMU has won two straight, including a thorough (38-16) beating of once-mighty Houston on October 22nd. The Tigers and Mustangs have faced three common opponents. They’ve both beaten Tulane. SMU lost big at Temple, while Memphis beat the Owls at the Liberty Bowl. And they’ve both lost to Tulsa, though SMU fell in overtime to a team that just beat the Tigers like a yard dog (in their own yard). Memphis destroyed SMU in their last two meetings by a combined score of 111-10. I don’t get the sense this Saturday’s game will be a blowout, one way or the other. SMU remains two wins shy of bowl eligibility (4-4), so motivation will be at a premium on both sides of the field.
Day 2 of Indie Memphis continues the distinctly Memphis vibe set by The Invaders and the IndieGrant shorts bloc on day 1. Today, the focus is on music.
Sebastian Banks of Black Rock Revival in Verge
There are a lot of documentaries about Memphis music, but Verge is different in that it’s not a historical documentary. First time director Lakethan Mason set out to make a movie about seven musicians who are adding to Memphis’ musical legacy today. “The subjects were chosen by spending time with the music community,” Mason says. “We started off with about 13 individuals that we sought out from their social media presence. There were also artists I had known over my years as an artist manager that I wanted to capture. Of course, the film would have been six hours long if we’d gone with 13, so we narrowed it down to seven exceptional artists: Nick Black, Brennan Villines, Faith Evans Ruch, Kendell MacMahon and all the bands she’s been a part of, Black Rock Revival, Marco Pave, and Kia Johnson.”
Verge director Lakethan Mason
Verge follows the artists through performances and their day to day struggles to make it in the industry. “It’s not just about the music, it’s about what’s behind the music. We went behind the scenes and got to know these people. I wanted the world to know they’re more than just artists, they’re people, too.”
The most fascinating thing about Verge is the insights it gives into the depths of the musicians personalities that you don’t get to see from the audience, like Brennan Villines’ work for St. Jude, or Faith Evan Ruch’s nursing career. “What I was most impressed with, was that each of these individuals are creating their own path to success,” says Mason. “We often define success as, you’re going to be performing in front of hundreds of thousands of fans in arenas. But these people are defining their own success.”
Singer Nick Black performs in Verge
The film was produced with support from executive producer J.W. Gibson. “Verge is a homegrown project, from the artist to the filmmaker to the visionary,” says Mason. “There’s a tenacity of spirit that I see in Memphians. If they want to do it, they’re going to do it. We’re a maverick city. We’ve got the indie spirit. We do it our own way, but we don’t fit into a box. We don’t play well with the industry that wants to churn out sameness.”
The frontage of 422 N. Cleveland St. at Crosstown Arts for Brantley Ellzey’s SWEET.
With the orange and pink graphics (designed by Loaded for Bear) on the exterior of Crosstown Arts, one gets the feeling immediately that he or she is being transported back in time to a vintage candy shop.
The purity of the 22 pieces in SWEET, which artist/architect Brantley Ellzey spent a year working on, are a reaction to the contentious climate that the country finds itself in.
Over the past 15 years, Ellzey typically has done commission work consisting of rolled magazine, book, and other printed pages, something he refers to as “time capsules.” SWEET has the artist drilling down to the most simple form of his practice in terms of color and composition. Instead of patterned papers, he uses blank sheets of individually hand-rolled construction paper.
Ellzey sought out the inspirations derived from growing up in late 1960s Osceola, Arkansas — things like the Sears “Wish Book” catalog (also in a nod to the neighborhood’s affiliation with Sears, now Crosstown Concourse), childhood books, and the interior design and home decorating magazines that his mother received.
Other inspirations: Mary Blair, who worked for Disney studios, whose folk art and imagery Ellzey realized had inspired the way he perceived the world growing up. (Blair also designed “It’s a Small World.”) Also, modernist architects George and Ray Eames and Alexander Girard. In particular, Girard’s textiles are an obvious source of inspiration for several pieces, with bright, one or two color columned or checked patterns.
All of the pieces in SWEET are horizontal and face up except the Pixies (a reference to Pixy Stix), which on its base nearly reaches the room’s ceiling; Homer, which is a donut; and Honey, Honey, which is modeled after a honeycomb with rolled paper tubes facing outwards toward the audience.
There are grapes (with groups of rolled paper tubes in different hues of purple in the shapes of bunches), licorice, pink glittery spun cotton candy (surrounded by a contrasting cotton candy machine base designed by Perry Sponseller), and Laffy Taffy.
Elle Perry
Homer by Brantley Ellzey
The aforementioned Homer is an oversized homage to The Simpsons’ family patriarch and his love for the pastry. In real life, the piece is an inflatable pool raft with rolled paper paper-mached to it, topped with with three kinds of glitter replicating a donut, purple icing, and delectable sprinkles.
Homer includes a placard humorously forbidding both touching and eating the object.
All in all, SWEET accomplishes a tricky feat — invoking whimsical escapism while at the same time maintaining a high level of sophistication.
Dozens of workers buzzed around the Kroger’s new store on Union Tuesday morning, readying the store for its official opening on Wednesday at 6 a.m.
The new store will have a Corky’s BBQ, Murray’s Cheese Shop, a New-York-style sandwich shop, a Pan Asian Sushi Bar, a juice bar, pharmacy, a growler station, Starbucks, and more.
Gone are the days of squeezing through those narrow aisles. The new store is about 60,00 square feet, nearly double the size of the previous Union Kroger. Also, Kroger expanded its parking lot, situated just east of the store’s front door.
State attorneys want to increase disciplinary actions against Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich.
Weirich already faces discipline from the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Responsibility (TBPR) for her conduct during the 2009 murder trial of Noura Jackson. Weirich was the lead attorney on the case.
Jackson was convicted of the stabbing death of her mother, Jennifer Jackson. But the conviction was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court, in part, because Weirich failed to give Jackson’s attorneys a piece of evidence that could have helped Jackson’s case in the trial.
That piece of evidence is at the center of the state’s new request for more discipline of Weirich. State attorneys say Weirich never reviewed the piece of evidence, a handwritten statement from a witness. Therefore, she could not have determined whether or not the evidence would help Jackson’s case, and “failed to exercise appropriate diligence in this matter.”
“Ms. Weirich’s failure to exercise appropriate diligence caused actual injury to [Jackson], to the third parties who participated in the trial, to judicial resources, and to the administration of justice,” reads a petition to the court from Krisann Hodges, deputy chief disciplinary counsel for the TBPR.
In the petition, Hodges writes that should the board find that Weirich broke conduct rules “aggravating factors may be considered to justify an increase in the degree of discipline.”
“Ms. Weirich has substantial experience in the practice of law, which justifies an increase in the degree of discipline,” Hodges writes.
Hodges has requested that a hearing panel be convened to hear testimony and review evidence in the matter, decide whether or not Weirich broke rules of professional conduct and, if so, to order discipline against her.
Weirich has until late next week to reply to the new charges.
Jamie Harmon 
Larry Kuzniewski 
Elle Perry 
Elle Perry 
Elle Perry 