Tennessee Governor Bill Lee addressed the shooting at Nashville’s The Covenant School in a YouTube video issued Tuesday evening.
Lee said, “We will act to prevent this from happening again.” But he laid out no specific next steps and said, “Prayer is the first thing we should do” and that “there will come a time to discuss and debate policy.”
Here’s the transcript of Lee’s full address:
“Tennesseans, I want to say a few words about what our state experienced yesterday. What happened at Covenant School was a tragedy beyond comprehension.
Like many of you, I’ve experienced tragedy in my own life, and I’ve experienced the day after that tragedy. I woke up this morning with a very familiar feeling, and I recognize that today many Tennesseans are feeling the exact same way — the emptiness, the lack of understanding, the desperate desire for answers and the desperate need for hope.
All of Tennessee was hurt yesterday, but some parents woke up without children, children woke up without parents and without teachers, and spouses woke up without their loved ones.
Maria woke up this morning without one of her best friends, Cindy Peak. Cindy was supposed to come over to have dinner with Maria last night after she filled in as a substitute teacher yesterday at Covenant.
Cindy and Maria and Katherine Koonce were all teachers at the same school and have been family friends for decades.
Four other Tennesseans and members of the Covenant family —Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Mike Hill — were taken in an horrific act of violence.
Six innocent lives — three of them were children.
We are enduring a very difficult moment. I understand there is pain. I understand the desperation to have answers, to place blame, to argue about a solution that could prevent this horrible tragedy.
There will come a time to ask how a person could do this. There will come a time to discuss and debate policy.
But this is not a time for hate or rage. That will not resolve or heal. Everyone is hurting, and remembering that as we grieve and walk together will be the way we honor those who were lost.
We can all agree on one thing — that every human life has great value. We will act to prevent this from happening again. There is a clear desire in all of us, whether we agree on the action steps or not, that we must work to find ways to protect against evil.
Yesterday, while we saw the worst of humanity, we also saw the best of humanity in the police officers who ran into danger, directly toward a killer with no regard for their own life thinking only about those kids, those teachers, those administrators.
I had the opportunity to speak with Officer Engelbert and Officer Collazo today — two brave Tennesseans whose actions saved lives.
Gratitude doesn’t begin to cover it — for the utter selflessness of putting their lives between a killer and the innocent.
I am calling on the people of Tennessee to pray. For the families of victims, for the Covenant family, for those courageous officers, for the family of the shooter, for those who are hurting and angry and confused.
Prayer is the first thing we should do, but it’s not the only thing.
Law enforcement officials and educators across our state have been working for years, especially in the last year, to strengthen the safety of schools. That work was not in vain — the courage and swift response by the teachers, officers, and this community without a doubt prevented further tragedy.
There will be a time to talk about the legislation and budget proposals we’ve brought forward this year. And clearly there’s more work to do.
But on this day after the tragedy, I want to speak to that which rises above all else.
The battle is not against flesh and blood; it’s not against people. The struggle is against evil itself. We can’t forget this — and it’s very difficult — but we are called to not only love our neighbors, but to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us, to pray for those who intend harm.
There is hope in the midst of great tragedy because God is a redeemer. What is meant for evil can be turned for good.
May we grieve in the days ahead, but not without hope. May we also act with wisdom, discernment, and grace.
Desmond Bane goes up for a layup against the Orlando Magic on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (Credit: Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images)
In the 113-108 victory over the Orlando Magic, the Memphis Grizzlies set a new franchise mark for most home victories in a single season (33-5) and improved to 48-27 on the season.
Desmond Bane led all scorers with 31 points, five assists, and three steals.
Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins spoke about Bane’s improved play. “Obviously, he’s improved so much over the season with his decision making, his playmaking, his downhill attack,” Jenkins said. “He wasn’t getting it going from the three-point line early, but he knocked down a three in the second half, which was big, obviously free throws.
“There’s just a lot of trust that, with all the development he’s shown in the offseason, and this season, just our attention.”
Xavier Tillman Sr. posted a career-high 20 points and nine rebounds. “The way I play, the way I get my baskets, is all off creating for my teammates,” Tillman said after his career night. “I get a lot of my stuff off the pick-and-roll versus me ISOing and stuff like that. If I am aggressive, it is because you see guys throwing pocket passes, and they’re able to find me a lot of times. If I’m not scoring or whatever, it’s because the defense is doing a pretty good job of being active, so my teammates don’t really like that pocket all the time, but if you do see I’m aggressive, it’s because they’re able to find that tight pocket when I’m open.”
“Well, first off, we got the win – that constitutes a good game if we win, first and foremost,” said Tillman about his individual performance. “Then, secondly, for me individually, just doing my role to a T, if I get some offensive rebounds, I’m really proud of that. If I’m getting guys open on my screens, I’m really proud of that. Then, if I’m finishing like today, if I’m finishing those drop-off passes, that’s my teammates trusting me to make the play. If I’m finishing those, I’m really proud of that as well. So those three things are the main thing, as well as defense too, making sure that I’m guarding my matchup, and I’m limiting their tendencies and all that good stuff.”
Jaren Jackson Jr. contributed 16 points, 10 boards, and 3 blocks, and Luke Kennard added 16 points, 5 assists, and 5 boards off the bench. Dillon Brooks scored 13 points and provided 3 assists and 3 boards.
Up Next
The Grizzlies will host the Los Angeles Clippers on the second night of a back-to-back tonight at 7 p.m. CT. Luke Kennard looks to get revenge on his former team.
Ja Morant sat out against Orlando due to right thigh soreness, but is expected to be available tonight against the Clippers.
Early on the morning of Feb. 5, 20-year-old Lantz Kurtz broke into a gas station in Palm Coast, Florida, and stole multiple items. He exited via the front door, apparently unaware that he’d left a big clue behind: his debit card, Fox35-TV reported. Officers responding to the alarm found the card and tracked down Kurtz, who told them he had intended to come back to the store and pay for the items. But Sheriff Rick Staly wasn’t having it: “Leaving a debit card behind does not absolve you from theft or committing a burglary,” he said. [Fox35, 2/8/2023]
Crime Spree
Robert Powers, 37, managed to terrorize multiple citizens of Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 6, WTAJ-TV reported. He allegedly broke into four different homes, telling one woman as he covered her mouth, “I’m Batman.” At the next home, he choked a man, went through his pockets, and held him hostage with a pocketknife. Next, he turned the man’s gas stove on and forced him into his truck, heading across town at speeds of more than 100 mph before crashing into a Jeep. Powers then kicked open the door of a nearby home and repeatedly asked, “Why’d you do this, mom?” as he walked through the residence. Finally, at the last crime scene, police were able to subdue Powers, who admitted he may have ingested meth or bath salts. [WTAJ, 2/7/2023]
Bright Idea
Jose Ruben Nava, former director of the zoo in Chilpancingo, Mexico, is under fire after officials learned that he slaughtered four pygmy goats to serve at the zoo’s year-end dinner, MSN reported. Fernando Ruiz Gutierrez, director of wildlife for the state’s environment department, said serving the goat meat “put the health of the people who ate them at risk because these animals were not fit for human consumption.” Nava is also accused of trading a zebra for tools. He was let go from his position in January after the death of a deer at the zoo. [MSN, 2/2/2023]
Irony
A 61-year-old butcher working at the Sheung Shui Slaughterhouse in Hong Kong died at the hands — er, hooves — of a pig he was trying to slaughter on Jan. 20, CNN reported. The unnamed man was knocked to the ground by the struggling pig, which had revived after a shot from a stun gun, and suffered a wound from a meat cleaver. Strangely, police said, the man’s wounds were to his hand and foot; a cause of death had not been released. The Labour Department extended its “deepest sympathy to his family.” [CNN, 1/21/2023]
Animal Antics
The Wyandotte (Michigan) Police Department opened an investigation in January after an officer was suspected of stealing another officer’s lunch while he was out of the room. The Today show reported that Officer Barwig was called away from the break room to assist in the jail; when he returned, K-9 Officer Ice was seen licking his chops, and Barwig’s sandwich was nowhere to be seen. “Officer Ice has invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and quite frankly is not cooperating with the investigation,” the department posted on its Facebook page. Later, dozens of attorneys offered to represent Ice in court, but the department decided not to pursue discipline or criminal charges. [Today, 1/23/2023]
Can’t Possibly Be True
Jesse and Deedee O’Dell of Tulsa, Oklahoma, normally spend around $10 for their Starbucks coffees, but on Jan. 7, their bill was considerably more, KOKI-TV reported. A few days later, when Deedee tried to use the same card at a mall, it was declined. That’s when the couple discovered that Starbucks had given itself a $4,444.44 tip on their $10.90 bill. They contacted the district manager, who said there’d been an “issue” with the network, and they received two checks to cover the enormous gratuity — but both checks bounced. While they wait for replacement checks, they’ve had to cancel a family vacation, “and the tickets are nonrefundable,” said Jesse. A Starbucks representative said new checks are on the way and the mistake was caused by “possible human error.” [KOKI, 2/7/2023]
Meggan Wurzburg Kiel (Photo: instagram @megganformemphis)
Election fever is beginning to show not only at the level of mayoral hopefuls but among city council aspirants as well.
A key race will take place in council District 5, focused on Midtown and East Memphis, where former Councilman Philip Spinosa will be seeking a return to office. It won’t be easy for Spinosa, who’ll be opposed by newcomer Meggan Wurzburg Kiel, whose fundraiser Monday evening at the East Memphis home of Frank and Jeanne Jemison turned out well over a hundred supporters. The attendees ran the gamut from the well-to-do, many of them prominent in business and civic circles, to familiar activists of the political center and center-left.
Kiel ran through her extensive résumé, which includes service in a variety of educational missions among inner-city youth and a prominent role in the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope (MICAH).
She noted that the council was “kicking the can down the road” in setting exact district boundaries, but urged those present to be ready on May 22nd, when candidate petitions can first be drawn, and “we will sign the petition together and have a really good time picking up officially the campaign.”
• On Saturday, some 100 or so cadres of the Shelby County Republican Party had a dissent-free reorganizing convention in which chairman Cary Vaughn, who was re-elected by acclamation, called for “turning the page” and distancing the party from the monolithic influence of former President Donald J. Trump.
As Vaughn commented to the crowd, “We need boots on the ground. We need new people. … We can’t get there with the same core group. … We have to truly look at how we market the Shelby County GOP. … We have to work on the depth chart, right?”
The chairman cited a recent conversation of his with an African-American acquaintance, who told him, “We as African Americans want to be a part of the Republican Party in Shelby County.” Vaughn quoted the man as saying many Blacks were “pro-life, pro-God, pro-business, pro-traditional marriage, [and] believe in core values. But we’re not coming over under the Trump brand.”
Said Vaughn: “We have to find a way to say, look, there is room for everybody at the table with the Shelby County GOP. Now maybe we tear down the silos just a little bit so that we can come together [and] move this party forward.”
That didn’t sit well with Terry Roland, an absentee Saturday and Trump’s local election chair in both 2016 and 2020. Roland reacted with fury. “There are more Trump [voters] than not” among the county’s Republicans, he said, “and we aren’t taking a back seat to anyone. … Most of us won’t support anyone else, so I’m done with the Shelby County party after 36 years.”
• It is remarkable that Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis’ 9th District was the only Tennessean now serving in Congress that MSNBC could find to say something both sensible and sensitive in the wake of Monday’s fatal school shooting in Nashville.
In a lengthy interview, Cohen empathized with the victims and their families, expressed the need for significant gun-safety legislation (while despairing of finding enough Republicans on Capitol Hill to support it), and even doubted the safety of himself and others in the House, given the inclination of some GOP members to try to smuggle weapons onto the floor.
Nashville is a majority-Democratic city, in some ways more so than Memphis, but gerrymandering by the legislature’s Republican supermajority has contrived to split the state’s congressional districts in such a way that Republicans — like Andy Ogles, who sends out family Christmas cards showing everyone toting a firearm — are guaranteed to represent all the larger districts containing fragments of Nashville.
When Van Duren takes the stage at the Halloran Centre on Saturday, April 1st, he won’t be playing the fool or fooling around. Though the singer-songwriter is familiar as a solo performer on the local scene, this night will feature not only a full band, but a look back at what has been nearly 50 years of music from his pen. “If I’m going to do this,” he says, “I might as well do exactly what I want to do. And I’ve had this on my mind for quite some time. I want to address the breadth of the whole thing.”
That “thing” has been a roller-coaster career, careening through fat times and lean times, yet always centered on his carefully crafted songwriting. When Duren posted on social media about playing with his band Malarky at the original Lafayette’s Music Room in 1974, the set lists he included featured some stellar covers, heavy on The Beatles and Todd Rundgren, and he’s been aiming for that standard of quality ever since with his own songs. Not long after that, he was playing in the Baker Street Regulars with Jody Stephens and Chris Bell of Big Star.
“Musically, it was great, it was fantastic,” he says of those times. “I was playing bass and watching what Chris was doing on the guitar. It was a real education. But we never wrote anything together.” Rather, that’s when Duren leaned into forging his own path as a songwriter. “Jody and I worked on demos off and on, slipping into Ardent once in a while. Once or twice Chris came in with us and played some guitar on those tracks, but they were never released. Three or four of those were recut for my first album, but we never felt we were trying to emulate Big Star — we were just following our thing.”
That was a time when the power pop being invented by Big Star or Duren himself was commercial suicide. “I was thrilled just to be playing onstage with those guys. Though we only played six or eight gigs. We couldn’t get arrested. We couldn’t get any gigs. It was another square-peg situation. People just wanted to hear either Southern rock or disco. And we weren’t doing any of that stuff!”
Nonetheless, his demos got the attention of erstwhile Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and ultimately were his ticket out of Memphis. “They ended up getting me a recording deal with the label in Connecticut,” he recalls with typical understatement. That story, of course, is well documented in the film Waiting: The Van Duren Story, which “unfolds like a taut suspense thriller,” according to Goldmine magazine, detailing his starving artist days in Memphis and New York City as he strove to bring his songs to life. The 2018 film, its soundtrack, and the re-release of two albums’ worth of material from those days are what first prompted Duren to revisit those earliest days comprehensively.
“That was really the catalyst,” Duren recalls, “the whole film thing, from 2016 through 2019, and all the film festivals. I was forced to focus on the extreme past, and that was the spark that led to this thing at the Halloran.” Promoting the film in Australia even led to shows there that focused on his early work. In contrast to his most recent duo with singer-songwriter Vicki Loveland, the Australian jaunt “was an all-Van Duren tour. Vicki was with us, though, and she shone, as always. She was our secret weapon. We did five shows in Australia, and they were really amazing. People were stealing the set lists off the stage.”
But Saturday’s show won’t only feature Duren’s ’70s material. He’ll be drawing from all of his chapters, including the successful run from 1982-1999 with his band Good Question. “We worked all the time,” he recalls before turning to his collaborative work. “Tommy Hoehn and I also put two albums out together, recorded at Ardent with the young Pete Matthews as engineer. I’m really proud of those. So there will be some of that stuff at the show. And of course some Loveland Duren stuff, stuff from other collaborations that I’ve done, and material from all four of the solo albums I’ve done.” He takes a breath, then adds with a grin, “It will be pretty broad and adventurous.”
Van Duren will perform at the Halloran Centre, Saturday, April 1st, 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $37.50 and can be purchased here.
A paw-some performance (Photo: Courtesy Gregory Popovich)
Sit. Stay. Shake. Roll over. Play dead. You’ve seen these canine tricks done before. But have you seen a dog give a cat a piggyback ride? How about a group of dogs learning math in a classroom or a house cat showing off in a circus? Odds are you haven’t witnessed such sights, but you can see all that and more this weekend at the Popovich Comedy Pet Theater at the Buckman Arts Center.
The show, created by Gregory Popovich, features performances by dogs, cats, pigeons, parrots, a mini horse, a mini pig, and a few humans, including Popovich himself. Popovich, a fifth-generation circus performer, grew up in the Ukraine circus scene, traveling from city to city, never staying in one place long. As a kid, this meant he didn’t make too many friends — human friends at least. “Dogs were my friends,” he says, specifically the dogs his parents trained for their acts. “In fact, they were my babysitter when I was a very young, small kid. Sometimes for me it was easier to find communication with pets than with humans, believe me or not.”
Once he came to the U.S. and began working in Las Vegas as a juggler, Popovich wanted to bring back the pet-focused act his parents had honed and taught him back in the Soviet Union. “I asked my American friends where I could find some dogs, and they recommended local animal shelters,” he says. “When I first went to the animal shelter, I was surprised how many nice-looking dogs there were looking for a new owner. And because I came from the Soviet Union — in those times in Soviet Union, we didn’t have animal shelters — it was very exciting that the government in the United States supports the homeless pets. But, on other hand, I learned from the animal shelter staff how those pets came to the shelter, and I learned that people sometimes do not realize the pets have personality and do not respect their pets. And for me as a pet lover, it was kind of very painful. … Animals are people.”
From that moment on, Popovich knew that he would only include animals from rescues and shelters in his show. “My main goal is to show audiences, ‘Look, ordinary pets can be very talented, very cute.’ If after my show, someone from the audience visits a local animal shelter, I feel like my message reached its target.”
Currently, Popovich has almost 30 pets, all of whom live at his ranch-style home in Las Vegas, with a staff of five helping to care for them. In addition to teaching them tricks, part of the animals’ training includes getting them used to being on stage with an audience. “We want them to feel comfortable,” Popovich says. “As a trainer or as a master, I have to watch their body language.” So, if a cat or dog isn’t up for a trick during a performance, he respects that since he wants to highlight their personalities, not their ability to do a trick. The pets even participate in little sketches, showing off their unique temperaments. “That’s why we call it Pet Theater.”
Altogether, though, the show is a variety show, with humans also doing their own tricks from comedy to juggling to acrobatics. “The audience will have to decide who is more talented by applause,” Popovich says. “Believe me or not, the pets always win.”
Popovich Comedy Pet Theater, Buckman Arts Center at St. Mary’s School, Saturday, April 1, 5 p.m. & 7 p.m., $35.Purchase tickets here.
Scott Donnelly knew he didn’t want his food to be “generic cookie-cutter” Southern food after he became executive chef at The Memphian hotel’s Complicated Pilgrim restaurant.
Instead, Donnelly features items like samosas. “But instead of normal Indian ingredients, mine is black-eyed peas and collard greens. I want to have those nods to the South peppered here and there in the menu. But not strictly Southern.”
Donnelly, who began working at Complicated Pilgrim in 2021, created his first menu as “something not only approachable but unique to the area.”
His restaurant is in Overton Square, but Donnelly wants items like “bucatini with pancetta and roasted tomatoes, fresh basil, and a cracked egg tossed over everything. Nobody had that on the Square.”
Cooking wasn’t his first creative expression, says the New Jersey native. “When I was a lot younger I used to write poetry and short stories. It was just a way to express things.”
Donnelly, who moved to Memphis in 1982, played guitar in a punk band at clubs, including the legendary Antenna.
He got his first job in a kitchen when he was 16. That was when he discovered Memphians could drive when they were 16. “My dad was like, ‘Get a job so you can buy a car.’ I started working at a pizza place.”
Donnelly moved to restaurants after learning he could make more money as a server.
He discovered he liked working in the kitchen better than the front of the house at the old Bosco’s Restaurant & Brewing Company in Germantown.
Later, he got a job as sous-chef at the old Three Oaks Grill. “I was lucky enough to have really good knife skills.”
Donnelly read cookbooks and watched cooking shows. “As I grew and learned more and took in more, I decided, ‘You know what? This can be pretty awesome.’”
In 1995, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he went to the old School of Culinary Arts.
He also worked at a number of restaurants, including the old Abbey. That was where he learned to not overthink his food. The sous-chef told him, “Dude, you know how to cook. Just do it. Shut up and cook.’”
As executive sous-chef at the Ritz-Carlton, Donnelly learned “Good food shouldn’t be rushed.”
Early in his career working as chef de cuisine at the old La Maison on Telfair in Augusta, Georgia, Donnelly learned to cope with kitchen chaos. The executive chef told him, “If you want to grow and want to be what you aspire to be, you have to learn to deal with the ups and downs of the kitchen.”
Donnelly was in Georgia about 15 years before returning to Memphis, where his jobs included chef de cuisine at two now-closed restaurants: The Grove Grill and Ben Vaughn’s Grace Restaurant/Au Fond Farmtable. Donnelly learned to love “tight concise menus. No one wants to sit down to a menu that’s as big as War and Peace and try to decipher what they want.”
While he was growing as a chef, Donnelly learned, “Get the best products and treat them with respect. Cook them properly and you always wind up with a great result.”
A philosophy Donnelly continues to practice at Complicated Pilgrim is to always remember he and his staff are “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.”
“I try to run a real Zen house. We’re going to have times of being busy. Times when people’s personalities are going to clash. But we’re adults. We have brains. We have to be able to go with what we can control and go with what we can’t. And keep it as mellow and laid back as we can.”
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Sometimes, I give you suggestions that may, if you carry them out, jostle your routines and fluster your allies. But after trying out the new approaches for a short time, you may chicken out and revert to old habits. That’s understandable! It can be difficult to change your life. Here’s an example. What if I encourage you to cancel your appointments and wander out into the wilderness to discuss your dreams with the birds? And what if, during your adventure, you are flooded with exhilarating yearnings for freedom? And then you decide to divest yourself of desires that other people want you to have and instead revive and give boosts to desires that you want yourself to have? Will you actually follow through with brave practical actions that transform your relationship with your deepest longings?
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You have done all you can for now to resolve and expunge stale, messy karma — some of which was left over from the old days and old ways. There may come a time in the future when you will have more cleansing to do, but you have now earned the right to be as free from your past and as free from your conditioning as you have ever been. APRIL FOOL! I lied. In fact, you still need to spend a bit more time resolving and expunging stale, messy karma. But you’re almost done!
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Businessman Robert Bigelow hopes to eventually begin renting luxurious rooms in space. For $1.7 million per night, travelers will enjoy accommodations he provides on his orbiting hotel, 200 miles above the Earth’s surface. Are you interested? I bet more Geminis will be signing up for this exotic trip than any other sign. You’re likely to be the journeyers most excited by the prospect of sailing along at 17,000 miles per hour and witnessing 16 sunsets and sunrises every 24 hours. APRIL FOOL! In fact, you Geminis are quite capable of getting the extreme variety you crave and need right here on the planet’s surface. And during the coming weeks, you will be even more skilled than usual at doing just that.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): The coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to become the overlord of your own fiefdom, or seize control of a new territory and declare yourself chieftain, or overthrow the local hierarchy and install yourself as the sovereign ruler of all you survey. APRIL FOOL! I was metaphorically exaggerating a bit — but just a bit. I do in fact believe now is an excellent phase to increase your clout, boost your influence, and express your leadership. Be as kind you can be, of course, but also be rousingly mighty and fervent.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In his poem “The Something,” Charles Simic writes, “Here come my night thoughts/ On crutches,/ Returning from studying the heavens./ What they thought about/ Stayed the same,/ Stayed immense and incomprehensible.” According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you Leos will have much the same experience in the coming weeks. So there’s no use in even hoping or trying to expand your vision. APRIL FOOL! I lied. The truth is, you will not have Simic’s experience. Just the opposite. When your night thoughts return from studying the heavens, they will be full of exuberant, inspiring energy. (And what exactly are “night thoughts”? They are bright insights you discover in the darkness.)
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): If there will ever come a time when you will find a gold bullion bar on the ground while strolling around town, it will be soon. Similarly, if you are destined to buy a winning $10 million lottery ticket or inherit a diamond mine in Botswana, that blessing will arrive soon. APRIL FOOL! I was exaggerating a bit. The truth is, I suspect you are now extra likely to attract new resources and benefits, though not on the scale of gold bullion, lottery winnings, and diamond mines.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Do you have a muse, Libra? In my opinion, all of us need and deserve at least one muse, even if we’re not creative artists. A muse can be a spirit or hero or ally who inspires us, no matter what work and play we do. A muse may call our attention to important truths we are ignoring or point us in the direction of exciting future possibilities. According to my astrological analysis, you are now due for a muse upgrade. If you don’t have one, get one — or even more. If you already have a relationship with a muse, ask more from it. Nurture it. Take it to the next level.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Dear Valued Employee: Our records show you haven’t used any vacation time over the past 100 years. As you may know, workers get three weeks of paid leave per year or else receive pay in lieu of time off. One added week is granted for every five years of service. So please, sometime soon, either take 9,400 days off work or notify our office, and your next paycheck will reflect payment of $8,277,432, including pay and interest for the past 1,200 months. APRIL FOOL! Everything I just said was an exaggeration. But there is a grain of truth in it. The coming weeks should bring you a nice surprise or two concerning your job.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian poet and artist William Blake (1757–1827) was a hardworking visionary prophet with an extravagant imagination. His contemporaries considered him a freaky eccentric, though today we regard him as a genius. I invite you to enjoy your own personal version of a Blake-like phase in the coming weeks. It’s a perfect time to dynamically explore your idiosyncratic inclinations and creative potentials. Be bold, even brazen, as you celebrate what makes you unique. BUT WAIT! Although everything I just said is true, I must add a caveat: You don’t necessarily need to be a freaky eccentric to honor your deepest, most authentic truths and longings.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Some of my friends disapprove of cosmetic surgery. I remind them that many cultures throughout history have engaged in body modification. In parts of Africa and Borneo, for example, people stretch their ears. Some Balinese people get their teeth filed. Women of the Indigenous Kayan people in Thailand elongate their necks using brass coils. Anyway, Capricorn, this is my way of letting you know that the coming weeks would be a favorable time to change your body. APRIL FOOL! It’s not my place to advise you about whether and how to reshape your body. Instead, my job is to encourage you to deepen and refine how your mind understands and treats your body. And now is an excellent time to do that.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I invite you to make a big change. I believe it’s crucial if you hope to place yourself in maximum alignment with current cosmic rhythms. Here’s my idea: Start calling yourself by the name “Genius.” You could even use it instead of the first name you have used all these years. Tell everyone that from now on, they should address you as “Genius.” APRIL FOOL! I don’t really think you should make the switch to Genius. But I do believe you will be extra smart and ultra-wise in the coming weeks, so it wouldn’t be totally outrageous to refer to yourself as “Genius.”
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Your body comprises 30 trillion human cells and 39 trillion microbial cells, including the bacteria that live within you. And in my astrological estimation, those 69 trillion life forms are vibrating in sweet harmony with all the money in the world. Amazing! Because of this remarkable alignment, you now have the potential to get richer quicker. Good economic luck is swirling in your vicinity. Brilliant financial intuitions are likely to well up in you. The Money God is far more amenable than usual to your prayers. APRIL FOOL! I was exaggerating a bit. But I do believe you now have extra ability to prime your cash flow.
David by Michelangelo (Photo: Massimo Lama | Dreamstime.com)
When Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to describe his test for obscenity in 1964, he responded: “I know it when I see it.” This much-quoted bit of judiciary shorthand was offered in the case, Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which the state of Ohio fined Nico Jacobellis, a Cleveland Heights theater owner, $2,500 for showing the French film, Les Amants (The Lovers), directed by Louis Malle and starring famed actress Jeanne Moreau.
Stewart went on: “I have reached the conclusion that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
In so ruling, Stewart struck a blow for art, in this instance a film that explored the emotional and physical dimensions of an affair, but that was not pornographic in any sense of the word.
One can only imagine what Potter might think of the school board and administrators in Florida who last week fired their principal for allowing a teacher to show sixth-graders in an art class what it called “pornography” — a picture of Michelangelo’s statue David, widely regarded as one of the most important artworks in the history of mankind.
The statue, which depicts David just as he’s about to go into battle against Goliath, stood in the central square of Florence, Italy, from 1504 until 1873, when it was moved indoors to Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia due to concerns about weather damage. It should be noted that the statue was originally commissioned to stand in a cathedral but was moved to the central square so that more people would have a chance to view its magnificence.
So why, you might ask, would the administrators of Hillsdale Academy’s Tallahassee Classical School object to its sixth-grade students viewing Michelangelo’s masterwork? What could be more “classical” than Michelangelo?
There’s a one-word answer, and I bet you can guess what it is: penis. Yep, David’s artistically sculpted junk is up there, right where it’s supposed to be on a human male, and this was a big problem for the administrators. Spurred by complaints from three parents, the right-wing idiocracy swung into action.
It makes me wonder if these folks have ever heard of Stormy Daniels. I mean, if you want to see what pornography really is, just google “Stormy Daniels films.” Try explaining that to little Braxton. And how are these Hillsdale administrators going to talk to their students about the forthcoming legal brouhaha surrounding former President Trump and the aforementioned woman he paid $130,000 to for doing absolutely nothing wrong at a hotel in Lake Tahoe?
(Note: It’s at this point that I’m duty-bound to remind you that if the name Hillsdale Academy sounds familiar, it’s because it is the smarmy religious-based operation to which Governor Bill Lee wants to give millions of your tax dollars in lieu of that money going to public schools.)
But finally, to be fair, I guess I have to point out that there is some historical precedent to Hillsdale’s overreaction to the sight of David’s massive marble peen. In the mid-1800s, Great Britain’s Victoria and Albert Museum installed a full-size replica of David in one of its central galleries. Upon her first visit, Queen Victoria staggered backward, hand to chest, and was heard to exclaim, “Oh my stars and garters! What am I looking at? Make it stop!” The museum then had a fig leaf created that was hung on the statue whenever the queen paid a visit. How, er, hard was that? Perhaps Hillsdale could show its students the fig-covered version.
No, it’s not a perfect solution, but these days it’s any port in a Stormy.
Tennessee Republicans want to start killing the state’s death row inmates again, enough so they want to bring in firing squads and “hanging by a tree.”
Executions in Tennessee are now halted, hamstrung on scientific protocols for lethal injections. An execution set to go ahead last year came nail-bitingly close before the governor issued a last-minute reprieve. When the truth finally surfaced, state officials admitted they did not follow their own rules to safely carry out the execution (and others).
Governor Bill Lee wanted to know why. The report he ordered came back right before Christmas. And it was hot. The findings were big enough and bad enough to halt all executions — including those by electrocution — in the state and to see two top officials fired. It also put the Tennessee process for lethal injections under review and repair.
Tennessee death row inmates with pending executions. (Photos: TDOC)
While that method is on hold, GOP members of the Tennessee General Assembly have spent part of this year’s session casting about for alternatives. Both the firing squad and hanging methods of execution they’ve suggested made headlines this session. The “hanging” notion never really received any serious consideration and came with a rare GOP apology on its harshness. Even though the firing squad idea seems harsh, too, that idea gained serious traction and continued to move through the Senate committee system as late as last week.
Another GOP bill sought transparency in the lethal injection system, making public the names of the companies that make Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs. Those names are now confidential via a special request by the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) a few years ago.
Lawmakers don’t often champion government transparency, especially when private companies are in the mix. And with this bill, transparency seemed secondary. The bill sponsor said if his bill could help fix the execution system, then executions could continue, hopefully without hiccups like last year’s that made victims’ families “wait for their day of justice to come.”
Attitudes on the death penalty in general were expectedly divided during the session. Many Democrats lambasted the method as inhumane and questioned GOP bill-carriers to see if they felt the same way at all. They didn’t. They said so. Further, some even said they didn’t care if an inmate felt pain while they were being executed.
Most of the Republican discussion on the bills focused on the cogs and wheels the state needed to adjust in order to get its death penalty process back in working order. However, lawmakers in some of those talks found dark places, sometimes describing macabre scenes as they plumbed the itchy intrigue of execution’s nitty-gritty.
For now, though, the future of state-conducted death is unclear in Tennessee. Lee’s administration works in the background to get the lethal injection process in line and on line. In the foreground, GOP lawmakers push for new ways to get it done. On death row, inmates live another uncertain day.
Oscar Franklin Smith, the oldest person on Tennessee’s death row at 73, has had his execution temporarily reprieved. (Photo: TDOC)
“Sorry, I didn’t have it tested.”
The man asked for a double bacon cheeseburger, deep-dish apple pie, and vanilla bean ice cream. TDOC issued a statement on it.
This was April 20, 2022. Death row inmate Oscar Franklin Smith’s time had come. The Tennessee Supreme Court originally set his execution date for June 2020. Court motions by his lawyers set the date back one year to February 2021. That execution was stayed as Covid paused all executions in the state. When the pandemic suspension lifted in 2022, the warden at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison, home to Tennessee’s death row, was to alert Smith by April 7th that he had two weeks to live.
Smith, 73, was and is the oldest person on Tennessee’s death row. A recent mugshot shows it. He’s bald with shop-teacher glasses and a white beard that flows over pens and pencils in his shirt pocket to his chest.
In 1989, officials say Smith murdered his estranged wife, Judy Robirds Smith, and her two sons, Chad and Jason, who were 13 and 16 at the time. According to accounts from The Tennesseean, Judy was shot in the neck and stabbed several times. Chad was shot in the left eye, upper chest, and left torso. Jason was stabbed in the neck and abdomen.
A 911 call from the night was presented at trial. In it, the boys are heard crying out, “Frank, no! God help me!” A bloody handprint, identified as Smith’s, was found on the bedsheet next to his wife’s body, according to The Tennessean.
Smith was convicted of the murders in 1990. He’s been in state custody for 32 years.
Smith was moved to death watch last year at 11:50 p.m., April 18th, a Monday. He’d spend the next three days under constant surveillance in a cell adjacent to the execution chamber. On Thursday at 4:12 p.m., he was given his last meal — the burger, pie, and ice cream. A statement from the state said he received it but did not say if he ate it.
The lethal injection chemicals made for his execution had arrived at Riverbend the previous week, according to the report Lee ordered last year. That week, TDOC officials trained for the execution. On April 20th, a Wednesday, the lethal injection chemicals for Smith were moved to a refrigerator to thaw.
That day, Smith’s attorney, veteran death penalty lawyer Kelley Henry, asked TDOC if the chemicals had been tested for “strength, sterility, stability, potency, and presence of endotoxins” and requested a copy of the results. These tests are mandatory by rules established by Tennessee lawmakers in 2018 to ensure safe executions. The tests are important to ensure the drugs were manufactured correctly and because endotoxins can cause fever, septic shock, organ failure, or death.
TDOC asked the “drug procurer” (the name kept secret under state law) about the tests who, in turn, asked the “pharmacist.”
“No endotoxin test, it’s a different test but based on [federal pharmacy laws] the amount we make isn’t required,” they texted in response. “Is the endotoxin test requested? Sorry, I didn’t have it tested.”
With this, the governor’s report says, “at least one TDOC employee was aware that no endotoxin testing had been conducted on the drugs on the day before Smith’s execution.”
The next morning began with more text messages between the state and the pharmacy.
“Does [redacted] still have the samples?” read one text. “Could they do an endotoxin test this morning/today?”
“Honestly doubt it,” the pharmacy replied. “I would’ve had to send extra product for them to test it.”
The TDOC team readied for the execution — set for 7 p.m. — amid ongoing discussions about the testing between its office, Lee’s office, and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office. If the drugs had not been tested for endotoxins, TDOC would have to ask Lee for a reprieve.
At a 1:30 p.m. meeting, the pharmacist said chemicals for Smith’s execution were not tested for endotoxins. The procurer called it an “oversight.” With this, TDOC and the AG recommended the reprieve.
While a decision was being made, everything for the execution was still in motion. The TDOC staff were taking their places for the execution. The victims’ families and the media were being moved to the facility. At 4:30 p.m., the drug procurer and executioner removed the chemicals from the refrigerator and moved it to the execution chamber. At 5:30 p.m., the execution team prepared the syringes.
At 5:45 p.m., TDOC learned the governor would issue a reprieve. And then the warden told Smith. Setup for the execution was halted at 5:51 p.m. with work partially complete on the first drug.
“We are preserving everything,” reads a TDOC text from 6:36 p.m. “So don’t throw anything away or alter any stuff.”
The next day, the pharmacist said drugs used in two previous TDOC executions (Donnie Edward Johnsonand Billy Ray Irick) had not been tested for endotoxins and they had never been asked to test for them. The pharmacist did not know that such testing was even part of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol and investigators said a copy of the protocols had never been given to them.
On May 2nd, Lee announced a halt on all executions and hired former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to conduct a third-party review of Tennessee’s execution process.
“TDOC leadership placed an inordinate amount of responsibility on the Drug Procurer without providing much, if any, guidance, help, or assistance,” reads the report. “Instead, TDOC leadership viewed the lethal injection process through a tunnel-vision, result-oriented lens rather than provide the necessary guidance and counsel to ensure that Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol was thorough, consistent, and followed.”
In December — the day before the report became public — Lee fired Debbie Inglis, TDOC’s deputy commissioner and general counsel, and Kelly Young, the inspector general, in connection with the report’s findings. In January 2023, Lee picked Frank Strada to lead the department. Many believed Strada was hired to fix the execution system after he’d helped Arizona restart its program after an eight-year pause.
“That is not cool.”
Three weeks into the Tennessee General Assembly’s current session, bills were filed in the House and Senate giving the state’s death row inmates a new option for execution. A firing squad “just simply gives them that option,” according to Rep. Dennis Powers (R-Jacksboro), the bill’s sponsor.
During his many appearances before committees to explain and defend his bill, Powers has maintained that a firing-squad death is the “most humane and most effective way to do it,” with “it” apparently meaning to kill a Tennessee death row inmate. He says, according to a survey (that he has never shown in committee meetings), inmates prefer the firing squad.
When pressed on whether or not Tennessee should use the death penalty, Powers would fall back to a three-pronged argument: Capital punishment is legal in Tennessee, it’s not unconstitutional, and neither is his bill. He then leans in on the fact that executions are halted because of all the troubles given in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocols.
In the hearings, Powers was seemingly straightforward on the fact that killing a prisoner with a firing squad isn’t a harsh, outmoded (or even edgy-cool) method of execution. It is “not like the old Westerns when they stand up and put … a blindfold on and they’re standing there and they give them a cigarette or something.”
Other lawmakers listened thoughtfully to Powers’ rationale. Then, they’d give in to their curiosity. How would it be done?
In a special facility, Powers said, the inmate would sit in a chair and would be immobilized by some kind of apparatus. Officials would put a target over the inmate’s heart. Families would be invited to watch, as is the case with all executions in the state.
One marksman on the firing squad would shoot a blank so no one would really know who fired the fatal shots. He said other states have had more volunteers help to carry these out than they needed.
In a hearing last week, Sen. Todd Gardenhire’s (R-Chattanooga) curiosity on the matter got a bit dark.
“I’ve read that when somebody tries to commit suicide with a pistol or a shotgun, sometimes they flinch,” Gardenhire said. “They’re pulling the trigger and they just maybe blow half their face off, but they still live.
“I’m only going by what I’ve seen in Western movies. I haven’t ever seen a execution or an execution by a firing squad, you know, you say, ‘Ready, aim, fire!’ What happens if the guy or lady flinches and you don’t kill [them]? Do you reload?”
While professional in explaining the details, Powers has gotten frank about how he feels about inmates being put to death. Rep. G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis) read depositions to him from other states that said “death by firing squad would not significantly reduce the risk of severe pain.”
“Any type of death … it’s going to be painful,” Powers said. “The death that they promoted and carried out for another subject was painful, too. So I don’t have a whole lot of empathy for people that suffer pain during an execution.”
This is the same response given by the bill’s Senate sponsor. Last week, Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) was tearing the bill apart. A facility would have to be built. It was going to cost way more than the $50,000 fiscal note (maybe $1.5 million). The bill was unconstitutional, and every state that has passed it is in a mess of costly legal proceedings. Finally, she said, it is “morally wrong.”
“Why would we want correctional officers to sit there and point guns at an individual as a form of killing?” Lamar asked. “It’s almost legalized first-degree murder. That is not cool and we do not need to be a state that sits there and allows people to use individuals as if they’re dummies in a gun range.”
She finally asked Sen. Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains), the bill’s sponsor, “You don’t think this is pretty cruel?”
“You don’t know what that person did to that little girl or that little boy or that old man,” Nicely said. “No, it’s not cruel. It’s not cruel at all.”
The bill needed to clear one more hurdle in the Senate as of press time. The House bill cleared the committee system but will not be considered until after a state budget is passed.
“We don’t need to be doing this in secrecy.”
Rep. Justin Lafferty (R-Knoxville) wants the public to know the companies that make the state’s lethal injection drugs and he’s clear about why.
“If the lethal injection protocol had been more transparent, perhaps [Smith’s] last-hour stay would not have happened and the victims’ family would not have had to have gone through all of that and then, again, have to wait for their day of justice to come.”
The transparency issue tripped up some lawmakers considering the bill last week. Won’t that scare off the drug companies who don’t want to be associated with executions? Aren’t these drugs already hard to get? Won’t this open up the companies to get hounded by activists?
Neither journalists nor the FBI could find any documented case of threats to companies by death penalty abolitionists, Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, told the committee. The Tennessean found the state’s drug-maker was El Paso-based SureCare Specialty Pharmacy, and Fisher said they’ve not reported any harassment so far. She also said neither Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, nor Utah have such a secrecy “loophole.”
As for getting the drugs for executions, Lafferty relied on cold economics, saying, “If there’s a profit to be had, somebody will find a way to get the product to market.” As for the ultimate reason for his bill, he came to the point.
“If Tennessee wants to continue this as a method of execution, the secrecy around the process should probably come to an end.”
