The first trangender-focused exhibition at Brooks Museum of Art will open on Saturday.
The exhibition, “On Christopher Street,” by New York-based photographer Mark Seliger, features portraits of transgender individuals in New York’s Greenwich Village.
Greenwich Village is said to be the birthplace of the LGBTQ rights movement following the police raid on the historic gay bar The Stonewall Inn in 1969. That raid sparked protests on the street that would later be commemorated with Pride marches all over the world.
Seliger began taking the portraits in 2014 and continued for about three years, capturing 60 subjects. He started with a small camera kit, taking pictures after work as a way to document the neighborhood.
Christopher Street, a safe haven for many, began to change and Seliger wanted to capture the community before it completely transformed.
“I’d stop people on the street and ask if I could take a quick portrait of them,” he said. “ I wasn’t sure where the project was going, but it evolved from there.”
As Seliger continued snapping photos, he asked himself what was unique about his portraits. Then he realized he was beginning to tell a story about identity, focusing on transgender individuals. Seliger said he wanted to dig deeper and learn more about the subjects of his photos.
His subjects told him stories of their successes and accomplishments, as well as the hurdles they had to overcome to become who they are today.
“My subjects were being the truest to themselves as they had ever been, as if it was the first time they’d really been seen in this light,” Seliger said. “That was really kind of an amazing moment.”
Taking the portraits, Seliger also said he began to learn more about the importance of identity.
“As I was learning about the idea of being comforted with who you are and how you identify while being the truest to who you are, I realized that’s important to your own personal worth and connection to others and yourself,” Seliger said. “That was very meaningful to me.”
At the end of the day, Seliger believes his portraits capture the human experience, which is “remarkable, profound, and terrifying.”
For those that view his photos, Seliger just wants them to gain a new sense of understanding and awareness for the human struggle.
“Ultimately, it’s for the viewer to determine how they want to react to it,” Seliger said. “We give them as much information as we can in order to lead people to their own level of clarity. But I think the work is eye-opening and hopefully will start a conversation that we need to have about gender and inclusivity.”
Brooks’ curator of European and decorative art, Rosamund Garrett, said Seliger’s photos not only showcase the trans community, but also tell the story of gentrification.
“For years, Mark has witnessed the steady erosion of the rich cultural diversity of the area and its replacement with luxury boutiques,” Garrett said. “His striking portraits not only celebrate the trans community but also represent a cautionary tale about gentrification. This message is as resonant in Memphis in 2021 as it has been in New York City and other communities around the country for years.”
The exhibition will run from Saturday, September 18th to January 9th. Seliger and four of his portrait subjects will be present at the hybrid virtual/in-person opening reception on Friday. The event will be live streamed here.
Additionally, Brooks is hosting a panel discussion with Alex Hauptman from OUTMemphis and Kayla Gore from My Sistah’s House about Memphis’ LGTBQ community on Saturday.
Sacramento now smells like “smoke and homeless people” and, perhaps, we should “cull” the 5 percent of society “that give the other 95 percent a bad name.”
These were but two public statements from key witnesses in a four-hour hearing on state bail reform in Nashville Tuesday. Neither of these statements brought public repudiation from any House or Senate member in the room.
A joint session of House and Senate member of the Tennessee General Assembly convened Monday and concluded Tuesday to hear from a long slate of witnesses on bail reform in Tennessee.
The panel heard from bail bondsmen, heads of professional bail organizations, companies that work on monitoring technology, sheriffs, judges, district attorneys, legislators who have worked on bail issues in other states, local elected officials from across the state, and at least one national organization looking to reform the money bail system altogether.
But the two days of hearings were largely pro-industry affairs with a conservative-leaning, lock-’em-up, tough-on-crime philosophy. Many seemed interested in nitty-gritty topics like bracelet-monitoring tech and sharing stories about locals cops letting someone go on bond only to make trouble again. Few, it seemed, were interested in an overhaul of the money bail system itself that, largely, allows those with money to walk free until their trial and those without money to sit in jail.
The hearings came with many surprise statements from witnesses, many probably used to speaking from the heart, not in public, and not before a legislative panel. It also had surprise moments from some lawmakers, too.
Tuesday’s first witness was Jeff Clayton, executive director of the American Bail Coalition. He told the group he’d traveled the country talking about bail reform.
“Last week, I spent in lovely Sacramento, California, which smelled like smoke and homeless people,” Clayton said, apparently in reference to recent wildfires there and the city’s homeless population.
Again, not a single legislator spoke a word against this insulting remark, including Sen. Mike Bell (R-Riceville) who presided over the hearing.
Gardening, specifically pests in a cucumber patch, was on the mind of Memphis-based Ernie Arredondo, president of the West Tennessee executive board of the Tennessee Association of Professional Bail Agents, as he thought about criminals. In a bit of rambling testimony, he also suggested, maybe, getting rid of a chunk of society.
“It is just always a few things that will spoil your whole crop,” Arredondo told the panel. “If you don’t get the beetle bugs out of your cucumbers or where your squash is, they’ll eat up all your plants and kill it.
“Let’s say 95 percent of people are doing well. We just need to find a way to cull the other [3 percent, 4 percent, or 5 percent] that give the other 95 a bad name.”
Kansas state Rep. Stephen Owens was past his prepared testimony and well into question time before Bell, with obvious anger in his voice, reprimanded him.
“It almost cast a cloud on your testimony that you didn’t start out with, “I’m vice president of the bail bondsman association of Kansas. That I make my money in the bail business and I make my money in the monitoring business,’” Bell told Owens. “If chairman [Rep. Michael Curcio (R-Dickson)] hadn’t look it up online, we would have never known that.
“You come back before this committee again, at least in the Senate, I want you to lead with that before you say anything else.”
Owens explained that he gave up his position with the association when he was elected but admitted he was in the bail industry.
Look for even more surprising, silly, and strange moments, in our YouTube video.
Discover Memphis Naturally announced the launch of its outdoor-focused Fieldaze festival. The three-day festivity is set to host its inaugural event in Downtown Memphis this November 5-7.
The festival’s goal is to showcase the wide range of outdoor assets that Memphis boasts. Attendees can expect plenty of competitive running, biking, and kayaking events, alongside other leisurely programming. Fieldaze will also run concurrent with November’s Downtown Dining Week.
“Our outdoor amenities are proving to be a catalyst to visit Memphis, and we know both from our data and anecdotal engagement with Discover Memphis Naturally that locals are enjoying new outdoor discoveries around our city and region,” said Kevin Kane, President & CEO of Memphis Tourism, a partner of both Fieldaze and Discover Memphis Naturally. “What better way to celebrate our great outdoors than by concentrating the array of offerings into one weekend?”
Headlining the weekend are the Peer Power Big River Crossing Half Marathon +5K, the Huzzah! On the Harbor Kayak Race, and the Grit & Grind Gravel Grinder bicycle race. But there are plenty of other fun activities, like the Kosten Foundation 5K, salsa and line dancing classes, yoga, and live music. And as a supplement to the festival, the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC) will host free fitness and recreational activities November 1-7.
“Whether you’re a racer or a regional visitor, a local family or a foodie, we can’t wait to welcome you back Downtown during Fieldaze and Downtown Dining Week,” said Penelope Huston, DMC vice president of marketing. “Whether it is a David Quarles Zumba Class, Salsa lessons from Cat’s Ballroom, TikTok dance classes for the whole family, or a little Sunday Skate Day, there’s truly something for everyone.”
Wiseacre’s Downtown location will act as “home base” during the weekend and is hosting a Friday welcome party.
For a time when I was younger my mother, sister, and I lived with my Uncle Frank and Aunt Patty in Arizona. Frank was a manager at a Walgreens and worked long hours, so we didn’t really see him too often. But on the odd occasion when we would all go somewhere in his van, he had a little catchphrase he liked to drop on us.
“Click it or ticket,” he would say. Inevitably, this prompt would be met with an eye roll from then-12-year-old me. I always buckled my seat belt. Always. But Uncle Frank’s son was an adult — already moved out, graduated, and employed — and Frank always seemed to view his sister-in-law’s offspring as perpetual toddlers. I get it. He was a few years away from retirement, with a grown kid and a house and a van he’d worked hard to pay off early, and any money he had managed to squirrel away was supposed to pay for time on the golf links, not go to a citation he got because his nephew couldn’t be bothered with wearing a seat belt. Why risk it? Better to remind us.
That phrase, though, comes from a campaign to encourage seat belt use. And if you think Tennesseans see themselves as rough-and-ready, rugged individualists, that Memphians embody the “you can’t tell me nothin’” ethos, boy howdy, let me introduce you to some Arizona wannabe cowboys. They’ll talk about the Wild West, about the showdown at the O.K. Corral, about how tough you have to be to survive in the unforgiving desert. In general, it is safe to say that these are not proponents of government regulations. But no one wants to pay a fee. As far as I know, my Uncle Frank harbors no strong ideals about seat belts one way or the other, but he wasn’t about to pay Maricopa County because of them.
That’s why I think President Joe Biden’s push to mandate vaccines (or weekly Covid tests) for businesses with more than 100 employees, as announced last week, is a good idea. Some people can only be motivated by tangible, predictable negative consequences. Sure, getting sick is a negative consequence, but it might not happen.
Right now, Tennessee leads all 50 states for cases of Covid-19 per capita. Last week, on September 10th, we reported the worst single day and worst week in new cases in the entire length of the still-ongoing pandemic (so far). The Volunteer State is averaging more than 6,800 cases a day, about 100 cases for every 100,000 people. “We’ve had the tools in our hands,” Dr. Diego Hijano, an infectious disease expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, told Flyer news editor Toby Sells in last week’s cover story. “But as we keep resisting vaccination and mitigation strategies, it will prolong the time.”
We have the tools to prevent this; they’re accessible. But we’re volunteering to be sick, to die, to put nurses and doctors and now teachers at risk. Not to mention anyone who has a heat stroke, car crash, heart attack, or any other accident or illness that necessitates immediate medical treatment. Sorry, folks, but the ER is full.
Of course, I recognize I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but it feels wrong somehow to see this information roll in, to have this platform, and to say nothing. There are certainly other things I’d like to write about. (Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris’ panel discussion last week in which he took swings at tax breaks for businesses, for starters. In Memphis, we’re flat-out addicted to PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes] deals, and it’s a habit we need to break. But being the most dangerous place in the U.S., when it comes to contracting Covid anyway, seems to be a more immediate priority.) With a great pick-up rate, there must also come great responsibility, as the old alt-weekly editor’s credo goes.
“Parents know better than the government what’s best for their children,” Governor Bill Lee tweeted last month. Governor Lee doesn’t believe the government should govern. The government isn’t a monolith though. There are different branches, different levels. The idea that it’s all one thing — all corrupt, all swamp — just absolves our leaders of the responsibility to provide for those they purport to govern. That’s why we need a federal mandate. Because the whims of a few here are putting all of us at risk, on so many levels. (Again, don’t do anything that might land you in the ER for the foreseeable future.)
So I’m all for a federal mandate, for an expensive ad campaign. You think people didn’t grumble about wearing their seat belts or stepping outside to light up a cigarette?
If you want to watch some great half-hour comedy, follow the tracks of executive producer Taika Waititi. If you’re a Marvel True Believer, you know the New Zealander as the director of Thor: Ragnarok, as well as the guy under the motion capture for Korg, Thor’s alien drinking buddy. But as an executive producer, he’s been quietly amassing a Norman Lear-sized string of great television.
Waititi got his start in TV as part of the team that made Flight of the Conchords, a standout of the ’00s comedy boomlet. The musical world, where characters can go off into a visual flight of fancy while singing a song, has subtly influenced everything he’s done since. So has the humor, which invites the audience to laugh at its characters’ absurdities and vanity, but never puts anyone down.
In 2014, Waititi teamed up with Conchords Jemaine Clement to write, direct, and co-star in What We Do in the Shadows. The film took the mockumentary framework of Man Bites Dog and The Office and applied it to a dysfunctional group of vampires living as flatmates in Wellington. The film gleefully skewered horror tropes, and like Conchords, was elevated by great characters and keen observation which finds the humor in everyday conflicts and setbacks.
<i>Wellington Paranormal</i>
In 2018, Waititi and Clement drummed up a television spin-off for Shadows that went in an unexpected direction. Instead of following the vampires, they focused on the two police officers who kept getting called to investigate disturbances in the vampires’ home. It turns out that the vamps aren’t the only weird things Officers Minogue (Mike Minogue) and O’Leary (Karen O’Leary) see on a daily basis. Wellington Paranormal deftly mixes Cops and The X-Files. Sgt. Maaka (Maaka Pohatu) serves as a low-rent version of A.D. Skinner, sending the Mulder and Scully figures out to investigate supernatural phenomena like a haunted Nissan 300ZX, alien body-snatcher replicator pod farms, and the constant menace of zombie outbreak.
Wellington Paranormal was a hit in New Zealand and was only recently released in the U.S., but its success spawned a full-fledged Shadows TV adaptation, transported from New Zealand to Staten Island. Waititi helped launch the show’s first season, directing three episodes including the pilot and “The Trial,” an instant classic where the ensemble cast of Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), and Colin (Mark Proksch) are judged unworthy by a council of vampires consisting of high-powered cameos from actors like Tilda Swinton and Wesley Snipes. Waititi stepped away from the show after the first season, but it has only gotten better. Now in its third season, it has fleshed out the character of Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), added the great Kristen Schaal as a series regular, and finally acquired the budget to match its story ambitions.
<i>Reservation Dogs</I>
Waititi’s latest TV venture is also set in the United States, but not in a place that usually inspires comedies. Reservation Dogs follows four teenage friends growing up on a Native-American reservation in Oklahoma. Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) is the reluctant leader of the group, who starts off the pilot episode by stealing a potato chip delivery truck and selling it to a chop shop run by meth heads. Elora (Devery Jacobs), Cheese (Lane Factor), and Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) are saving the ill-gotten gains from their petty crimes to leave the reservation for the promised land of California. The series was developed with Sterlin Harjo, a longtime indie filmmaker who mined his childhood as a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma for stories and settings. It’s definitely a comedy but not a laugh-out-loud kinda show — the second episode revolves around the difficulty of accessing healthcare on the reservation, for example. As Bear and his buds get into low-stakes scrapes, which feel very high-stakes to them, the ensemble expands as they encounter one memorable character after another. Harjo’s voice is dominant, but you can see Waititi’s influences in the magical realist touches, such as the spirit of a less-than-heroic warrior ancestor who haunts Bear, dispensing advice of dubious value.
The show is shaping up to be the best example of the humane, inclusive humor, which is Waititi’s much-needed contribution to our shell-shocked culture.
The issue of a possible city/county government consolidation for Memphis and Shelby County has been somewhat buried in the news cycle. In case you missed it, here’s the short version: Memphis City Council members Chase Carlisle and JB Smiley Jr. are floating a consolidation proposal that would be put on the November 22, 2022, ballot.
Let me cite the Daily Memphian’s report: “By the terms of the resolution, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland would appoint five citizens to the eventual 15-member body and take those names to a council committee for review within 21 days of the council vote approving the resolution. … A confirmation vote on the five by the council would follow within 30 days of the council approving the charter commission resolution. The resolution urges the Shelby County Commission to take the same action. … The charter commission would hold its first meeting Nov. 1 and complete its work August 1, 2022, with filing of the charter.”
Are you still awake?
This has about as much chance of passing into law as does a countywide anti-barbecue ordinance. Past efforts at conjoining county and city have failed for a reason. Remember the disastrous “consolidation” of the city and county school systems? Memphis City Schools shut down in order to merge with Shelby County Schools. The suburban municipalities would have none of it, forming their own districts and bailing on consolidation. For all intents and purposes, Shelby County Schools is now basically Memphis Public Schools under another name.
We are a bit like Afghanistan, where the U.S. government tried for 20 years to establish a national government, spending billions on infrastructure, weaponry, education, and our own blood and treasure. It all collapsed like a Jenga tower on a trampoline when the final date of U.S. troop withdrawal was announced. The puppet regime fled the country; the Afghan government troops evaporated; the Taliban walked into Kabul, unopposed.
The original withdrawal deal was set up by former President Trump, who released 5,000 Taliban troops as a gesture of good faith and pledged to remove U.S. troops by May. President Biden backed up Trump’s withdrawal date from May to September but didn’t change much else. The final week of chaos, hurried flights to safety via a massive airlift, and a last-minute suicide bombing that cost 13 American lives gave pundits and keyboard kommandos of every stripe a couple weeks worth of second-guessing, but not much else. Most Americans are glad we’re finally out of that hell-hole.
What did we learn? Afghanistan is a landmass with a prescribed border, but it is not a country and certainly not a place to attempt nation-building. Rather, it is a conglomeration of tribes and religious and ethnic groups, many of whom have been feuding for centuries.
Shelby County is also a landmass with a prescribed border and home to various tribes, most of whom have little in common, and some of whom have been feuding for decades.
How many times have you heard a Midtowner say, “I don’t go beyond the Parkways”? How many times have you read an online comment from a suburbanite disparaging Memphis’ crime? People who live in Bartlett, Millington, Germantown, Lakeland, Arlington, and Collierville don’t see themselves as Memphians. And why should they? They don’t live here. They have their own communities with schools, police departments, and governments. The proposed consolidation would leave the burbs intact as towns, but their citizens — as residents of Shelby County — would still have a vote in the referendum. How do you think that will go?
Memphis is blue. The rest of the county is red. We can come together over barbecue, the Grizzlies, the Tigers, and not much else. I love this city and I’m proud to call it home. People in Germantown feel the same way about their town. We can get along fine for the most part, as long as we avoid politics. We even make occasional forays into foreign territory for shopping, dinner, sports, or music. But putting together a consolidation package that would win 51 percent of the vote in this fractious county is not very likely to happen.
And let’s be honest: Nobody wants to go through an airlift around here.
Defining pop music is a treacherous task. Today, it suggests over-produced, sample-crammed dance tracks written by committees, but long ago, a Platonic ideal of pop came to be that had nothing to do with popularity per se. Rather, it’s built on the succinct blend of lyrics, melody, and rock rhythm that was pioneered in the ’60s but was never constrained by that era, evolving according to the inventiveness of each artist.
Call it “classic pop,” and Memphis has been graced with one of its finest practitioners for decades: Van Duren. The melodic and harmonic inventiveness of this restless singer-songwriter has never been easy to define. Some call his early work “power pop,” but even that limits the breadth of his imagination, which by the turn of the century had already brought a dozen albums of intriguing work, either under his own name or as the band Good Question. And when he began collaborating with fellow singer-songwriter Vicki Loveland nearly 10 years ago, things only got better, her soulful, strong voice blending seamlessly with his.
Now, with the October 1st release of the duo’s third album, Any Such Thing (Edgewood Recordings), both artists may have reached their pop apotheosis. “I honestly think that we’ve far surpassed anything we’ve done before,” says Duren. “It’s 10 songs and they’re all really strong. They’re all different, but there’s a thread that runs through them. They go to places we haven’t really gone before. Let’s face it, we’re not household names, so there are no expectations. That’s actually a plus.”
Loveland Duren (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
The duo must have known they had taken their craft to new levels when they booked time at some of Memphis’ finest studios, starting at Ardent in 2019 and ending up at Royal the next year. “I’ve been in Royal before, but never worked there,” he says. “And it just brought back the late ’70s to me, that old-school vibe.”
Those environs may have also inspired the exquisite arrangements for the material. A short list of the instrumentation includes strings, French horn, flute, and the perfectly Memphian horn section of Art Edmaiston, Marc Franklin, and Kirk Smothers. And while there are some flourishes of classic rock guitar on the stompers, the album as a whole is a keyboard-lover’s dream, with Duren playing some tasty Wurlitzer, longtime friend Liam Grundy of London on grand piano, and none other than the Rev. Charles Hodges on Hammond organ.
As Duren explains, the piano was more integral to his composition process than it had been for ages. Touring Australia in 2019, “we went back to those songs from 40 years ago, and that forced me to go back and readdress playing keyboards again, which I hadn’t done since before Vicki and I started working together seven or eight years ago. At that time, I didn’t want our songs sounding like the things I’d done before, so I started playing guitar only for a while.”
Loveland, for her part, brings her uniquely powerful voice to the proceedings. With a mother who was a big-band singer, it’s no wonder that her singing career began when she was 14. Her youthful experience singing four-part harmonies with her mom and older siblings clearly shows here, in the vocal blends she creates with Duren. And yet she really shines as a feisty, soulful lead vocalist.
That matches her penchant for writing lyrics with some teeth in them, echoing Duren’s own talents. “You tell me you love me / I think maybe you don’t / ’Cause you talk to me like I’m a second-class citizen / ’Cept when there’s somethin’ you want,” she sings. Later, she confesses, “I still love you / From a safe distance.” As with Duren’s best songs, she’ll unflinchingly dive into the complexities. The maturity of this duo pays off in the depth of their work and in arrangements that make the songs bloom with unexpected delights.
The Loveland Duren band will play a record release show at The Grove at GPAC, Thursday, October 7th, 5:30-8:30 p.m., $5.
Carmeon Hamilton introduces beauty and personal style to Memphis rental spaces in her new HGTV and discovery+ show, Reno My Rental. (Photos: Courtesy of discovery+)
“I have been holding a secret for so long,” says Carmeon Hamilton.
Now, the Memphis-based interior designer, lifestyle blogger, and Instagram influencer can let the cat out of the bag. She is the host, star, and driving force behind Reno My Rental, an unscripted design show premiering Saturday, September 18th, at 10 p.m. Central on the streaming network discovery+, with a simultaneous premiere special on cable channel HGTV.
Hamilton is a graduate of the University of Central Arkansas’ interior design program and has been improving Bluff City living spaces with her firm Nubi Interiors. First through her blog, then on Instagram, she has amassed an impressive online following. Among her fans is Alicia George, a makeup artist for film and television and vice chair of the Memphis & Shelby County Film Commission, who first met Hamilton at ArtsMemphis’ annual Art By Design fundraiser. “She has a style that’s a little Bohemian but very sophisticated. I love all the work I have seen that she has done.”
Hamilton says her goal as a designer has always been to improve her clients’ lives. “Living well, loving the way that they live, and taking those things that most people call the minutiae of life, those smaller things, and really understanding that every single element of the day, whether minor or major, really adds up to how well we live. Whether you’re eating off a paper plate or a ceramic plate, those minor moments are what allow us to understand that we can be grateful for the smallest things. That’s really the philosophy behind what I do — making sure my clients understand the importance of living beautifully.”
In February 2020, the designer was concentrating on using her social media skills to build her business when she was contacted by a casting producer on Instagram who said they were putting together talent for a new competition show. Hamilton says the process was secretive. “They just said it’s an interior design show. I had no idea what network it was for, what kind of vehicle it was, nothing. But they just keep saying, ‘We think you’re a great fit!’ I’m like, ‘A great fit for what?’”
(Photos: Courtesy of discovery+)
A New Design Star
The show, it turned out, was Design Star: Next Gen, a reboot of the popular HGTV reality competition series that premiered in 2006 and ran for eight seasons. Hamilton says she was a fan of the original series and was shocked when the producers asked her to compete against seven other designers from all over America. The grand prize for whomever made it through the gauntlet of challenges was $50,000 and a chance to create a new show for the fledgling streaming network discovery+. At first, she was hesitant to accept the role because she didn’t want to neglect her successful business. But her husband, Marcus, encouraged her to pursue the rare opportunity. “The entire process was very surreal. But definitely one I will cherish for the rest of my life,” says Hamilton.
When she got on set and met her competitors, she discovered she was not the only one with misgivings. “We were all very leery of going into a competition,” she recalls. “There’s always a villain and animosity and drama, and none of us wanted that. We all ended up being really close and really supportive, and I think that aspect made the experience that much more positive. … I walked away with seven new friends.”
Hamilton says at first her goal was simply not to be the first one eliminated. But week after week, through challenges like improving the ugliest room in America, up-cycling post-industrial buildings, and creating a thriving indoor/outdoor space, the other competitors fell away, and she remained standing. Finally, guest judge Jonathan Scott, star of Property Brothers, crowned Hamilton the winner.
“During the competition, they asked all of us, ‘If you had the opportunity to have your own show, what kind of show would it be?’ I think my original idea was named Hometown Hope. From the beginning, I wanted to do a TV show in Memphis. … My husband and I had goals to go into underprivileged and underserved neighborhoods and truly elevate their homes. I want people who are part of those neighborhoods to stay and cultivate those neighborhoods, but using my talents and resources to truly elevate the way they live, so that they have that much more appreciation for where they live.
“I shot Design Star in five weeks, ending in October. The show premiered in February, and I was announced the winner on March 31st. I actually have been working with the producers and the network since December, basically two weeks after I won Design Star, developing my show. I thought it was going to take a long time, but the network was excited. They’re like, ‘We’re ready to go. We want to get this show moving. We want to get you in Memphis.’ And it’s been a whirlwind ever since.”
(Photos: Courtesy of discovery+)
Rental Nation
“Reno My Rental is the name of the show,” says Hamilton. “We’re focusing on rentals, but not from the landlord’s point of view. It’s for the people who actually live in these spaces. A lot of renters have a problem with infusing their own personal styles and aesthetics into their homes, and that is what this show is about — showing people that can be done.”
Ming Lee Howell, executive producer of Reno My Rental, has been working in unscripted television for two decades. “There’s no premiere show right now on HGTV or on discovery+ that features or highlights renters,” she says. “A lot of millennials, I think, are choosing to rent because they’re traveling light and they don’t want the responsibility or the burden of a mortgage. They don’t want the maintenance that comes along with a house. So they’re trying to turn their rentals into homes. That’s why I feel it’s really relevant right now — the timing is right. And Memphis is a great place because you can rent whatever you want. There are so many different types of properties, from a historic home to a high-rise apartment building to a loft Downtown. And so, because there are these options, we get to play around with different types of renovations.”
Last summer, Hamilton, Howell, and a team of artisans, builders, and television crew worked on improving properties all over Shelby County. “We’ve been in Frayser, Cordova, Midtown, and Downtown off of South Main,” Hamilton says. “When I said I wanted to do the show in Memphis, they were dead set on making sure we showed as much of Memphis as possible. I have a belief that you can’t tell a Memphis story without telling all of it. It’s not just Graceland and barbecue; they have to see everything. Even the stops that we made in between the projects, like going to my welder’s shop in South Memphis, fabric shopping in East Memphis, my favorite coffee shop in Overton Square, 17 Berkshire — I want people to see the greatness of all of it.”
Six Memphians from all walks of life were recruited for the opportunity to upgrade their rental space. Alicia George was one of them. “A producer of a friend of mine posted that there was a design show coming to Memphis and that they were looking for rental houses. I got really excited. I love interior design, and I had a feeling it was Carmeon’s show because of Design Star. I had been following her for a long time.”
Potential guests on Reno My Rental are asked to submit two or three rooms in their home that they would like to renovate. “I have a unique story,” George says. “I’m a makeup artist that lives in the pink house in Central Gardens. … I have a sunroom that I do makeup in a lot, especially for brides and clients because there’s just a lot of good light in there. I wanted to turn it into more of a makeup studio space but still a livable sunroom, like a live-work space.”
Normally, a job like this would take Hamilton a couple of months, but Howell says they don’t have that kind of time. “We have to turn things around pretty fast, so each one of these is about a two-week renovation. We have two going on at the same time in our production schedule, and we’re doing two spaces at each renovation.”
Last April, Ashley Dyson and her husband Marquise moved from Midtown to a new home in Frayser, where they would have more room for their toddler daughter, Harper. Before the move, Ashley told Marquise she wanted to create a special space for him in their new home. “He was like, ‘Honey, don’t worry about me. Let’s just move into the house and get settled.’”
So when her friend sent her the application for Reno My Rental, Dyson knew exactly what she wanted to do. “So when it just all really started to come together, it was like prayers answered,” Dyson says.
(Photos: Courtesy of discovery+)
Home Work
At the Dysons’ place, Hamilton chose to work on Marquise’s den and the adjacent kitchen. “We focus on things that the tenants can take with them when they leave,” says Hamilton. “So this particular home, working with Ashley and Marquise, I got to know them through the casting process before we could get started with the design process. … I know that Marquise loves to travel, but he has a very stressful job. Ashley is there to support him, but she also loves baking and cooking because she has a connection with her mother, and she has a little girl that she wants to gift with that love for cooking.”
Once there’s a plan in place, the renovations begin. The renters don’t get to see the results until the work is complete. “It’s a weird thing,” says George. “You have to move out of your house for two weeks and totally trust and turn your house over to complete strangers.”
Dyson says the suspense was real. “We were getting little teases of things that were happening in the space, but we still had no real clue of what was going on.”
“We try to incorporate them into small projects,” Hamilton says. “We went to the lumberyard together to pick out reclaimed wood, but they had no idea what any of this stuff was turning into or where it was going. So it’s all a surprise at the end. I’m waiting in the background, holding my breath, hoping they love it.”
Dyson says, when she saw her transformed kitchen, “pleased is an understatement. I was absolutely floored. I walked in and I just could not believe it.”
In Central Gardens, Hamilton transformed George’s sunroom and bedroom, where she kept a special piece of furniture. “It was actually a makeup vanity of my mom’s,” George says. “I probably learned how to do makeup at that vanity, where I saw my mom do it every single day. But it was in really bad shape. The finish had worn off of it and it had been really beat up. I had talked about lacquering, which is a really trendy thing, but I’ve always been scared of actually doing anything to it myself. I didn’t want to ruin it. And so Carmeon took it and had it lacquered, and it looks beautiful. So it was a whole sentimental thing — all the emotions were real when the reveal happened.”
An Emotional Ending
Howell says she believes Hamilton was a genuine discovery. “I’ve worked with a bunch of different types of people — celebrities and designers. For a first-season television designer, she is a star. She’s a natural. She knows what she wants.”
Hamilton says filming Reno My Rental has helped her appreciate Memphis. “I learned that this city is so ready to be seen in a positive light. Everyone has been so willing to do whatever they can to make this show successful because they feel like this is the best Memphis has ever been seen, and what the show could potentially do for the city. I know a lot of entrepreneurs and people who aren’t familiar with this place probably don’t understand the feeling of community. But this city does not struggle with that whatsoever.”
Hamilton says throughout the whole whirlwind of the last year, her husband Marcus was by her side, encouraging her. “He has been the biggest support. He and my son are actually part of the show. You’ll see them by my side.”
As Hamilton and the crew were in post-production, preparing for the show’s debut, an unimaginable tragedy struck. On the afternoon of August 29th, Marcus Hamilton was riding his motorcycle on N. Watkins when he was struck by a Mercedes, which was making a left turn onto Chelsea Avenue. Marcus died at the scene. The driver of the Mercedes, Carl Grandberry, was charged with failure to yield, driving under the influence, and public intoxication.
Hamilton, who was preparing to promote Reno My Rental, has not spoken publicly since the tragedy, except for a heart-wrenching post on her Instagram. “It is with deep sorrow and an eternally broken heart that I tell you that the love of my life, Marcus Hamilton, has passed away,” she wrote. “I am no stranger to loss, but this loss brings something beyond pain. Something I can’t describe. I’m now missing a major part of myself, and that void seems to grow more and more every second. I can’t bring myself to figure out Davin’s and my next step, because there shouldn’t be a need for one. But in the midst of this immense pain came a wave of support from the community of people that we’ve worked so hard to build. They are the only reason I have the strength and ability to put these words in writing. Thank you all for being one of the best parts of our love story, and loudly encouraging us to be the passionately flawed humans we were, living a life well lived. I only ask for grace and privacy as my family and I navigate this extraordinary loss.”
Carmeon Hamilton’s episodes of Design Star: Next Gen are currently available for streaming on discovery+. Reno My Rental premieres simultaneously on discovery+ and HGTV on September 18th at 10 p.m. CDT.
Let open discussion replace silence before it becomes deadly. (Photo: Piyapong Thongcharoen | Dreamstime.com)
After watching discussions on “YouTube University” about spirituality and suicide, I now have more questions than answers.
Suicides outnumber murders six to one in the white community. Suicide is the leading cause of death in the Black community among children ages 5 to 15. More guns are used to commit suicides than to protect or in self-defense. Every 73 seconds, someone in the U.S. attempts suicide. Every day, 139 of our family members, neighbors, and friends kill themselves. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, experts are warning that the rate of suicides in America will continue to increase.
My questions are: Why are we so passively silent about these very preventable deaths? Why have we created an environment where surviving family members struggle with shame and guilt? Why is the faith-based community tip-toeing around or just flat out not addressing this growing problem that persistently leaves more empty pews? Why is there a delicate effort to justify and explain suicide after it’s done, yet we observe September as Suicide Prevention Month?
As a 40-year veteran of the media, I know it is an unspoken rule that we do not cover suicide deaths for fear of promoting copycats. So far, the continuing increase in the number of suicides does not indicate that this news-gathering philosophy is working. While suicide numbers continue to climb with or without media coverage, American families across ethnic and socioeconomic groups are suffering in silence.
My family has not been spared. In 1989, I was working as a news reporter at a CBS TV affiliate. Predating cell phones, my family’s tragedy was broadcast to everyone in earshot of the newsroom’s two-way radio system. “Pamela, someone from your family called to let you know that your uncle” — and they gave his name — “committed suicide.” At that moment, my heart sank. My heart was broken for my aunt and her six children, and my first cousins. However, my first response back to the assignment desk editor was a very protective reaction for my DNA. “Oh, no. Thank you for letting me know. That was my mother’s brother-in-law.”
This single act of suicide continued to take its toll on our family. My mother believed her sister, my uncle’s widow, grieved herself to death, dying three years later. Nearly 20 years later, the couple’s only son, my uncle’s namesake, took his life using the same method as his father — a gun. This time, it was my DNA. My first cousin didn’t leave a note, and we still don’t know why.
Ironically, I saw my cousin hours before his death. He was excited about starting a new job. I have replayed our conversation over and over, wondering what I missed and what I could have done.
I recently interviewed a mom who found her 10-year-old son hanging from his bunk bed with a belt around his neck. He could no longer shoulder the teasing and bullying he suffered because of a health challenge necessitating him wearing a colostomy bag. The first 10 minutes of our conversation were filled with crying and praying, not just for her strength, but for the moms and hurting children who are reaching out to her for help. She said one young man asked her, “If you say your son is in a better place, do you think I would be in a better place, too?” “Oh, my Lord … NO,” I said. We cried and prayed some more.
I am not an expert on suicide and I am not minimizing the reality of mental illness, but I will tell you that the suicide spirit is not new. In the Bible, in Matthew 4:6-7, Jesus was tempted when the Devil encouraged him to throw himself off the temple by saying, “If you are the son of God, He will send His angels to catch you.” Jesus overcame the temptation by saying that we are not to tempt God, and he resisted the voice of suicide. However, Judas committed suicide as Christ headed to Calvary to redeem Judas and all humanity of our sins. We must encourage each other by making sure that everyone knows that they do have a specific purpose that only they can carry out. What if Jesus had missed his purpose by throwing himself off the temple?
When it comes to saving lives, silence is not golden — it’s deadly.
Former Memphis media person Pamela D. Marshall is a talk show host at the WELLness Network and author of The Art of Forgiveness.
“Nothing better than butter” could be Amidah Saleem’s motto.
“My mom said I used to sit in the corner and eat butter,” says Saleem. “I literally would take butter out of the refrigerator and go hide.”
Saleem no longer hides in the corner; she uses butter — about 12 pounds a month — to make butter rolls in her business, Now That’s a ButterRoll.
“My mom has been making these butter rolls before I was born,” Saleem says. “And I took her recipe and tweaked it a little bit and made it my own. I started making them professionally 10 years ago, but I’ve been making them since I was 12 years old.”
Her mother made butter rolls from a family recipe on holidays, Saleem says.
Hoping Saleem would spend some time in the kitchen, her mother said, “Cooking brings you peace. Cooking allows you to focus and re-evaluate the day. Such a peace will come over you.”
But Saleem, who describes herself as “such a tomboy growing up,” preferred playing outside. “I grew up with four brothers.”
Making her own butter rolls at 12 years old was a fluke. “My mom was at work, and I couldn’t go outside.” Saleem decided to make a butter roll, but she didn’t want to strictly use her mother’s recipe, which includes nutmeg, sugar, and butter. She said, “Okay, I’m going to do it a little dicier. I love it, but let’s try something new.”
She added a secret ingredient, which she still uses to this day. And her mother’s words about cooking rang true. “It allowed me to put some passion and love and care into what I was doing. It kind of calmed me down and gave me such a peace. Just rolling and kneading the dough.”
Her mom’s friend tried Saleem’s first butter roll effort and said, “Now, that’s a butter roll.” Saleem didn’t make another until 12 years later when she was five months pregnant with her first child, Anthony Jordan Jr. She craved butter rolls, so she called her mother at 3 a.m. and asked her to make one for her. “My mom would not make it. She said, ‘You are grown up. You are married. It’s time for you to do your own cooking.’”
Saleem immediately went to Kroger, got all the ingredients, and came home and made her butter roll. “It took me about two hours to get back home and fix everything. It quenched a thirst like the best taste ever.”
Butter rolls became her thing. “I would make them for holidays. That would be my dish. I would bring it and everybody loved it.”
Her butter roll is the perfect comfort food, she says. “It’s one of those desserts where you just curl up on a couch with it on a cool night — it’s so warm and buttery — and just watch a good movie.”
She began selling them in 2015. “I got tired of people saying, ‘Can you make me one?’ I said, ‘I need to make some money off of this.’”
In 2020, Saleem got a business license and gave out samples and her business card to friends, family, and church members. She posted photos on social media. “People would text me. I would do videos where people were eating them, so I could get reviews. The more I posted, the more people purchased them.”
Her pastor, Tara Crawford, let her use the church kitchen to bake. “I started [making] maybe 10 or 15 a week. And now I do 15 or 20 a day.” She also makes caramel cakes based on her mother’s recipe, and she later added baked potatoes stuffed with steak, chicken, shrimp, her homemade Alfredo sauce — and lots of butter. Her website is nowthatsabutterroll.com.
Saleem, who people now call “Miss Butter Roll,” does all the work herself. “I get up at 5:30 every morning. The first thing I do is pray and give God all the glory. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be able to provide for my children.”
Then, she says, “I go straight to the church and get to rolling and cooking.”
