City Councilman Tom Marshall wants to set the record straight about a couple of things.

First, he is against adding another layer of design review for downtown buildings and no fan of design review at all, for that matter.

Second, he has no conflict of interest involving homebuilder Kevin Hyneman, contrary to the impression left by a story Sunday in The Commercial Appeal.

“My feeling is design review is design censorship,” said Marshall, who is an architect. “Architects and builders need to follow bulk regulations on scale, setback, greenspace ratios, and things like that, but design review needs to take a broad brush.”

The issue has come up in connection with possible future development on Mud Island near Mud Island River Park, which is under the control of the Riverfront Development Corporation. Hyneman’s company owns roughly 20 acres west of The Pyramid and has proposed putting suburban-style houses on it. The RDC wants something grander.

The CA story said Marshall “made sure the property was exempted from design guidelines” and noted that Marshall’s firm has worked for Hyneman.

“I never even talked to Hyneman about this,” said Marshall, who saw the story when he came back from vacation. “But the newspaper inferred that there is some conflict on my part. I designed an office building (Quail Hollow Office Building) for Hyneman and some other owners two years ago, but there is no business relationship between me and Hyneman now. Frankly it is one of the best looking office buildings in Memphis.”

Marshall said downtown building plans are already reviewed by the Office of Planning and Development, the Land Use Control Board, the City Council, the Center City Commission, and in some instances the Landmarks Commission.

“What if one says one thing and another group says something else?” he says. “The owner is screwed. We celebrate our environment, especially something as eclectic as Midtown, by allowing a variety of design.”

Dear Christian Brothers University,

You don’t know me, but I am a 1997 graduate of your school, where I got a solid education and learned some stuff too. But I must admit I’m still confused about why you forbade Reverend James Lawson to speak at CBU back in July.

It seemed like you were afraid of what he might say, but I just read where Calvary Episcopal Church let Rev. Lawson speak at their place instead and he was real nice about what you did to him, so I can’t figure out what you were afraid of.

I remember hearing in philosophy class that you can learn a lot by listening to other people, even if you don’t always agree with what they say. (I also remember trying to reach a consensus on whether morality is relative or absolute, but we ended up ordering pizza instead.)

Like all of you, I prefer to think that I’m a pretty good person. I don’t shoplift, litter or talk on the phone while driving. I donate to charity, I floss almost daily and I love kids. Oh, and I’m also pro-choice like Rev. Lawson.

See, I really wish that we lived in a perfect world where all babies were born into loving homes. But until we teach sex education to our children, and until more pro-life adults adopt unwanted kids, and until we realize that expecting chastity from teenagers is plain silly, and until everyone has free access to birth control, and until men stop raping women Ñ well, it seems like we could try harder to fix the problem from the other end, you know?

I’m not afraid of your opinions, so long as you don’t use bullets and bombs to make your point, and I have nothing but respect for those who truly act on the belief that all life is sacred. You’ve got to admire a person who speaks out equally against abortion, fur coats, capital punishment, insecticides, warfare, hamburgers, terrorism, leather shoes, euthanasia and antibiotics.

I don’t actually know any people who do all of that, but I like to think they’d exist in a perfect world.

But let’s talk about CBU now. Y’all must be extra qualified to judge Rev. Lawson. I mean, didn’t you risk your life on civil rights marches? Weren’t you jailed for protesting injustice and war? Wasn’t the hatred and saliva just hell to wash out of your hair after those sit-ins? And haven’t you been banned from speaking on college campuses because people were so afraid of what you might say?

I bet you have some great answers to my questions, so I will wait until I hear back before I respond to your latest alumni fundraising appeal.

I read one of Rev. Lawson’s speeches once where he explains his response to the people who enforced racial segregation: “My sense of their being human beings nevertheless in spite of their behavior towards me was forgedÉ[by] a need, at least in me at the time, to be a human being and to resist evil, not by imitating evil, but by seeking to overcome it with good.”

That seems like such sensible advice (watch out, Ann Landers!) that I’m going to stick it on my fridge next to a quote from another brave man who was silenced because people were afraid of him: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

I know the grammar and spelling are kind of funny– being as how the guy didn’t have the benefit of an English degree from CBU like me– but it’s an interesting idea anyway. Don’t you think?

(Naomi Van Tol is a Memphian who works in the field of environmental conservatism).

It is hardly reassuring that State Senator Marsha Blackburn of Williamson County has now issued a formal statement of approval concerning the Sundquist administration’s proposed TennCare changes. This is the same Marsha Blackburn, after all, who wrote the infamous emails asking for “troops” that initiated the crowd disturbances at the Capitol on the night of July 12th.

As a dedicated spokesperson for the poshest suburban communities adjoining Nashville, Blackburn has never wasted any tears on the less properous and fortunate. And what she finds so commendable in the suggested new TennCare regulations — offered by the governor as a concession on behalf of tax reform — is the very premise that we find so lamentable in them.

What Sundquist has done to accommodate his critics on the right is bow to their demands to “fix” TennCare by pruning away large numbers of those currently being cared for. In essence, the TennCare population would be divided into two groups, with not quite half — predominantly chldren and uninsurables whose prior medical history had prevented them from being served by private insurors — being related to a limbo status.

Or, as Blackburn’s press release puts it: “Appropriately managing the group of insured and uninsurables and children that have been added to the program should lead to a reduction in the total program costÉ.”

That’s right-wingerese for ‘Cut ‘em loose so we can save a few bucks.’ Never mind that Governor Sundquist has argued in the past that these patients have attracted federal funding which more than offset their expense and that letting them go would constitute a burden on the state’s emergency rooms and thereby incite an increase in local jurisdictions’ property taxes.

The governor was right in the first place and is wrong now. Marsha Blackburn’s quick endorsement should have told him that.

OSAKA – If you need further evidence to show what a small villiage the entire world is becoming, this should suffice. In recent months, I have spotted the following T-shirt slogans here in the Kansai region of Japan, worn by young Japanese citizens. And folks, I couldn’t make this up….Used clothing from the USA and other western countries is a fairly hot commodity over here….

(Mark Davis, who grew up in Raleigh and attended the University of Memphis, now teaches English in Osaka, Japan.)

If it is possible that there is a subject that draws more passionate mail and comment than Memphis and its NBA arena it is anything having to do with Nathan Bedford Forrest, the famous Confederate general.

So it is somewhat surprising that the city administration and the University of Tennessee are putting an item on the city council’s agenda next week regarding Forrest Park.

The item would give the University of Tennessee at Memphis first right of refusal if the city ever decides to sell the park. City councilman John Vergos says he was asked to bring the item up for committee consideration by Pete Aviotti, special assistant to Mayor Willie Herenton. Vergos says he’ll do that much, although he opposes selling off parkland in principle.

Aviotti couldn’t be reached for comment. But UT officials insist nothing newsy is going on and they are merely keeping their options open. UT surrounds the park on three sides and would like to build a pharmacy school building across from the park on the northwest corner of Union and Manassas, but the Tennessee Legislature did not fund the project.

“We’re just looking down the road,” says Odell Horton Jr., vice chancellor for university relations. “To be honest, we’d like to have the park. It fits well in our master plan.”

But he emphasizes that he has no indications that the city plans to sell it. At any rate, UT would keep the park as green space if it ever did acquire it, Horton says.

Why, then, take any action at all involving the high-profile Memphis City Council and Forrest Park?

“If the city ever decides to sell it,” says Horton, “it gives us an opportunity.”

The park features a prominent equestrian statue of Forrest, who is considered a tactical genius by no less an authority than Civil War historian and Memphis author Shelby Foote. The remains of Forrest and his wife were moved to the park in 1906 from Elmwood Cemetery. The Sons of Confederate Veterans’ Forrest Camp observed the 180th anniversary of his birth last month at Forrest Park, carrying on a 96-year tradition.

The fiery general who grew up near Holly Springs, where the local history museum does a brisk business in Forrest souvenirs, is still good copy because of his connection to the Ku Klux Klan. Forrest was a slave trader before the war and a Klan leader after the war but disbanded it in 1869. In the last three years, monuments to Forrest have made news in Nashville and Selma, Alabama.

If the city administration is smart, it will let sleeping generals lie.