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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Jackson Baker’s post, “Bill Clinton Touts His Wife’s Virtues in Memphis” …

That big blue arrow on Hillary’s logo, sticking out there horizontally, looks suspiciously like a piece of Bill’s anatomy in a blue dress. An unfortunate choice.

OakTree

Her logo — an H with an arrow pointing to the future — might be corporate bland but no more so than Obama’s election-era logo. I’ll take it (and her) over a trucker cap with “Make America Great Again” screenprinted on the front.

BP45

Even without the symbolism, it’s graceless. It looks like something you might paint on a hospital’s rooftop helipad.

Chris Davis

Bill Clinton is starting to remind me of old man Herbert on Family Guy.

Nightcrawler

About Martha Park’s cover story, “Memphis Burning” …

The cover article, “Memphis Burning,” was an excellent piece of history to share during Black History Month. There are so many stories that have languished in untold history about the injustices imposed upon African Americans.

The article ends just as James Weldon Johnson began his investigation of the incident on behalf of the NAACP. His investigation led to the organization of the Memphis Branch of the NAACP, along with Robert R. Church , Ida B. Wells, and a host of black business and professional leaders.  In 1917, Memphis was one of the first Southern cities to open a branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which had been organized in 1909. The Memphis Branch will celebrate its centennial in 2017.

Madeleine C. Taylor, Executive Director

Memphis Branch NAACP

About Chris Davis’ post, “Memphis Zoo’s Tiger Says He Isn’t Sorry” …

I blame the parents.

Jeff

Watching the slow-speed chase on CNN right now, with Mohan in a white Bronco. I think a zebra is driving him.

Dave Clancy

I think part of the problem is forcing the cats to mate in such a confined setting. If only there were a large open green space adjacent to the zoo …

CL Mullins

About Jackson Baker’s post, “Trump’s No Pussy” …

Who is doing the most celebrating for Bernie Sanders’ big win in New Hampshire? Republicans are ecstatic. They know that Sanders could not win in November; any Republican nominee could beat him and his socialist pie-in-the-sky ideas. That one word, “socialist,” has doomed Bernie Sanders’ chances of winning, and Republicans would make sure by crucifying him as “socialist.”  

Why can’t Democrats figure this out?

Lowell Robbins

About Lesley Young’s food column, “Mardi Gras in Memphis” …

How can you have a story on Memphis Mardi Gras food places without mentioning a place that’s called Mardi Gras?

Located at Cleveland and Galloway in Crosstown, Mardi Gras has the most authentic Louisiana home cooking north of the border! You won’t find a better corn and crawfish chowder anywhere — or gumbo or anything else for that matter. Give them a try! Since they came to the neighborhood, we’ve been regulars!

Bunty Ethington

About Frank Murtaugh’s post, “Houston 98, Tigers 90” …

This team has no killer instinct. They get a lead on a team, but then they lose focus and fall apart. That begins with the coach.

I have posted in the past that I really love Coach Pastner as a person (as well as I could “know” him by watching his interviews and reading about him), but I do not know that he is the right coach for the Tigers to again be an elite team. If we continue with him, we will always be a middle-of-the-road team, with an occasional run to the Sweet 16 (hopefully). We have the talent for much more than that, and I fear the only way to realize the fulfillment of that talent is to have a different coach.

David Morelli

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About the Flyer post, “Venerable Sportscaster Jack Eaton Dies” …

I have no idea how many hours of Jack Eaton’s voice I heard over the years. Rest in peace, Jack. You made a lot of people happy. And what better monument to a life is there than that?

OakTree

What a wonderful person. I worked with Big Jack for many years at Channel 5, and he was always a delight to be around. He will be missed by us who grew up watching him and laughing at his rhymes. My condolences to Erma and his family.

Cyndy Grivich Tucker

The voice of a region, we called him Big Jack.

Larry and Louisville, it’s a Tiger comeback!

Tiger football he called, in good times and bad.

Great Scott, for Jack Eaton, we all should be glad.

Frank Murtaugh

About Martha Park’s cover story, “Memphis Burning” …

We appreciate the story, “Memphis Burning,” by Martha Park, with Andrea Morales’ beautiful photos and the Flyer‘s willingness to join in the work to recover Shelby County history that has been hidden too long.

One correction: “Responding to Racism” is the name of a group at First Congregational Church where conversations were first held about this project. “The Lynching Sites Project” is the name of the group working to memorialize lynching sites and victims.

Randall Mullins

On that day when Ell Persons was lynched, parts of Memphis’ soul and bloodlust was momentarily sated. God bless America and her founding ethos and fathers for the gift that keeps on giving.

Jr. Golden

Stand for Children, the organization working to destroy public education, is listed as something people should support in this story. Stand seeks to create more segregation through charter schools and vouchers. They do not work for justice.

MegHank

About Joshua Cannon’s story, “A Look at Mud Island Park Redevelopment Proposals” …

So many developers, so many self-serving visions based on public money financing private profits, so many promises that the public will somehow profit from spending millions and millions on projects that aren’t feasible for the private sector.

Half our 911 calls aren’t answered within the national standard time, but we have millions to “help” build yet another Midtown grocery or a 500-room resort with a parking garage and front-door monorail service?

ALJ2

I don’t get the need for three new bridges, but the ML Professional Properties proposal strikes me as the most promising in terms of providing tangible benefits for city residents. After all the tax dollars spent on Mud Island over the years, city residents deserve to enjoy some tangible benefits.

Strait Shooter

About Jackson Baker’s post, “There’s an 8th District Congressional Race!” …

Given that a Republican will win this election, Tom Leatherwood wouldn’t be a terrible choice. He has run the Shelby County Register’s office efficiently, and his office has done a great job in getting county records digitized and online.

Kelsey, on the other hand, is a twit. Get him out of the state legislature. Working for a health insurance company turning down claims for kids’ kidney transplants would be more his style.

Packrat

About Frank Murtaugh’s post “Connecticut 77, Tigers 57” …

This game was as close to a desperation game as a team can get. What the devil happened in the locker room at half-time? It was as if a different team took the floor in the second half. How can a team be so competitive and then barely show up?

I watched the game with two visiting friends from Connecticut. There was great banter, but by game’s end, I was speechless.

Teams do not owe fans wins, but they do owe them a competitive effort.

Mike Tremaine

Categories
Editorial Opinion

America’s Messy Democracy

So what are we watching? Just what is the point of these extended quadrennial primary rituals, lasting for a year or more, that lead up to the selection of a national leader? Questions like these are often raised in a presidential

election year, usually by people who maintain that all the fuss and bother are unnecessary — that a presidential campaigns is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.

We don’t deny that an idiot or two may be in the primary mix this year, along with a surplus of blowhard rhetoric. But that’s the point of these endurance contests. Presidential primaries are the boot camps of American democracy. Whether by conscious design or not, they go on long enough to winnow out the pretenders, to root out the unfit, and to expose and expunge fringe candidates and fuzzy philosophies.

The process usually works out that way, anyhow — although the advent of omnipresent social media have arguably taken everything to an extreme, replete with hasty judgments and complicated tangents. But in the age of Citizens United, the handheld media also offer the best — perhaps the only — corrective to outright control of things by a moneyed oligarchy. 

The difference between the American political system and most of the regimes in other countries that also call themselves democracies is rooted in the very wear and tear that critics of the process deplore. We do not — as, say, Great Britain does — allow for a change of leadership based on haphazardly scheduled and quick-running special elections or on votes by party caucuses. The Constitutionally ordained calendar of a national election every four years, and only every four years, necessitates the prolonged period of advance testing our would-be leaders are forced to go through. It also provides a means whereby outsiders have time to convert themselves into insiders.

And it works for both sides of the political dividing line. Small-town Democrat Jimmy Carter was able to break into what had been a preserve of big-state establishments and urban bosses, and his successor, Republican Ronald Reagan, came from the other direction, as a self-made man from the entertainment world into a hierarchy long controlled by corporations. This year’s candidate field has yielded even stranger prospects — of a TV celebrity on the GOP side and a bona fide (democratic) socialist on the Democratic side.

Ironically, Donald Trump’s own colossal fortune allows him, for better or worse, to circumvent the wishes of his party’s corporate elite, and Bernie Sanders has employed the simple force of ideas and the nickels and dimes of a mass following to make the special interests of his party pay heed. And, if they don’t succeed, whichever two candidates eventually become their party’s nominees will have been influenced by these two outliers.

It’s a messy process this year, to be sure, but then it always is. And, arguably,  it works as well as anything else that has so far been dreamed up.

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Editorial Opinion

Haslam’s Modest Brag-Bag

Given the fact that, even in Nashville, people were preoccupied on Monday with the forthcoming caucus results in Iowa, Governor Bill Haslam’s State of the State address garnered somewhat less traction than it normally

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam

would. Not that his address wasn’t well received. The governor’s brag-bag of boasts and proposals was like a decently packed post-Christmas stocking, containing a fair number of comestibles, even if lacking in the surprise hardwares — an unexpected wristwatch, a brand-new iPhone —that can give the annual gift-giving ritual the sense of holiday-style delight.

Or, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there was not much there there. Conspicuously missing in the governor’s message was any mention of the two great issues that have been more addressed in statewide commentary and political cross talk than any others over the past year —  Medicaid expansion and infrastructure repair. No Insure Tennessee pitch as with last year’s speech and no substitute proposal for accessing the billions of federal dollars still lying in wait for the state’s indigent population and struggling hospitals. No highway tax or any other concrete proposal (pun very much intended) for dealing with Tennessee’s deteriorating highways, roads, and bridges. 

There was a small revenue surplus to feel good about and a modest boost in the state rainy-day fund, but these did very little to diminish a sense of continuing austerity. Nor, given the continuing blockage of Medicaid funds, did the governor’s statements concerning a “really well-run” TennCare system raise many pulses. And his satisfied proclamations concerning the state’s plans for its diminishing real estate may have gratified the outsource lobby, but they gave the rest of us something of an empty-nest feeling.

To be sure, there is some good news on the education front, including an investment, said Haslam, of “more than 414 million in new dollars in Tennessee schools, more than $200 million of that toward increases to teacher salaries.” The boast that went with that was less edifying. As the governor said, “we’re not investing in the same old public education system in Tennessee.” The raise in standards he claims to have achieved is disputed by many serious educators, and what he calls the “expanded education options for children” could also be described as the draining away of local responsibility for education as the state Achievement School District, unmonitored by any elected body, picks off schools, keeping them from thriving local initiatives such as the iZone program of Shelby County Schools.

State employees will come in for some pro forma (and long overdue) pay increases, although Haslam accompanied this bit of lagniappe with some cold-shower rhetoric regarding “the hard work and discipline of our departments” as mediated by “the conservative fiscal strategy employed by the General Assembly, our constitutional officers, and this administration.”

The governor used much of his address to lavish praise on the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency and the state’s first responders. He did not dwell much on Tennessee Promise or his various initiatives to boost adult education in Tennessee, but he is no doubt entitled to some commendation for these efforts.

All in all, his State of the State address recalled that old line about it being “the thought that counts.” Thought is fine, but we cannot escape the feeling that a little more action would have counted more.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Richard Cohen’s Viewpoint column, “Time to Get Real” …

Bernie Sanders is a charmer, but when you come down to reality, there’s only Hillary and her “plans” who can take on the GOP. The Republicans would picture Bernie with images from the Soviet Union so fast your head would spin.

Cohen says Hillary has a lot of plans like it’s a bad thing. It’s good to have real, working plans, not just fake plans where things are free with no real way to pay for them. Bernie’s cool on a poster, but Hillary is your gal.

Elizabeth L. Miller

About Toby Sells’ interview with Chuck Brady of the Memphis Zoo …

As a former National Park Service ranger who has worked in parks where civilization and parks often run together — sometimes bringing with them parking challenges — I find it mind-boggling that Brady has not been able to come up with a solution for 30 years to the zoo’s atrocious parking situation.

If Brady were a park superintendent, he would have been replaced by now with someone who could take care of the parking problem. And the problem is deeper than just the greensward: The zoo clear-cut several acres of old-growth forest a few years ago and fenced off (from the public) more old-growth acreage. Its current overflow parking has left parts of the greensward a dust bowl with huge rutted-out areas, even more evidence of its destruction of parts of Overton Park.

I also have to question his statement that “75,000 visitors would be turned away.” Those people can easily find free parking on neighboring streets with a short walk to the zoo entrance. And if he is so concerned about “citizens who can’t afford the zoo” and his free Tuesday program, why did he eliminate the free Tuesday program in the month of March, and why does he limit it to an extremely few hours of the day on Tuesdays, which creates congestion in those limited hours? Open it up all day, and I bet you would see that congestion disappear.

Brady seems like a naysayer, a narrow-minded leader who can’t solve problems. We need leaders with forward and innovative thinking.

Greg Russell

I would love to see the zoo and the Levitt Shell’s foundation collaborate on a parking garage. Zoo visitors could use it during the day, and folks coming to concerts at the shell could use it at night.

Karen Casey

So what Brady’s saying is, if I’m heading downtown for an event, and I see all that greenspace in Health Sciences Park (or whatever it’s called), I can just pull onto the grass and park under the trees? After all, it is public space.

No? I can’t do that? If I do my car will be towed?

I’m so confused.

Jeff

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s Letter From the Editor, “Wrestling With the Truth” …

“How do you monetize the digital product at a level that pays for a decent-sized news staff?” Bingo. That’s the central conundrum of the newspaper business these days. And make sure that staff includes a competent copy editor or three. I’m appalled at what I see passing as “final product” in so much content these days. Does anybody read this stuff?

I’m not talking about the Flyer specifically; it’s true of everything that gets offered up as news these days. (Spoken as the totally biased spouse of a former dedicated editor who got the axe a few years ago in a broad-stroke staff reduction at a mid-state daily).

John Shouse

About Michael J. LaRosa and Bryce Ashby’s cover story, “American Dreamers” …

Thank you for the story on local higher-ed opportunities for Latino students. I applaud my alma mater, CBU, for standing with these students in accordance with its Lasallian mission. I do question why your story pictures the students at Rhodes College, a school neither one attends. It’s misleading and does a disservice to both Immaculate Conception and CBU.

Aimee Lewis

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About some strange new reality show …

Yesterday I switched on the television during lunch and caught what appears to be a new reality show. The actors include some guy from an earlier reality show who played an angry boss with funny hair who was always firing people. The other key actor is a lady who claims to be a grizzly bear who wears lipstick and a bedazzled top.

The show appears to be about a guy running for president, who obviously could never be taken seriously, and a woman who speaks English straight from a blender. I believe the name of the show is The APOTUS,  or The Asinine President of the United States!

After watching what I assume was one of the first episodes, I was not able to find the show in my directory. Which is why I am writing. Do you have any idea who could be behind such a silly but immensely entertaining show? Also, do you know their airing schedule? I can hardly wait for the next episode!

Steve Janowick

About Jen Clarke’s Last Word, “Zoo Blues” …

I keep waiting for someone to explain how parking on the grass is hurting the park. Are these cars causing ruts that can not be repaired? Is the grass dying because cars are being parked there 60 days a year? What?

I understand the power issue. There is struggle between the parties over who has the right to decide how this portion of the Greensward is to be used. Fair enough. But what physical harm to the Greensward is being done?

Arlington Pop

I keep finding it odd that the Zoo can charge $5 for people to park on the grass. I don’t approve of parking on the grass, but shouldn’t the fee be only for parking in the parking lot? (Sort of like the difference between paying to sleep in a hotel room or in an alleyway if the rooms are all full?) The Zoo keeps using the excuse that they need the Greensward to accommodate visitors. I wonder if they would so enthusastically argue that point if they weren’t making parking fees off the lawn? Take that away and let’s see if they become more interested in a collaborative solution.

Steve Scheer

About Chris McCoy’s review of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi …

Denigrating/insulting a director/film is fair game, but read the stories of your “meathead mercenaries” before you slice them with your mighty, spiteful pen. Being a responsible and believable journalist is to attempt to know who you write about, no matter your politics. Don’t be so ugly.

Rebecca Balleza Thompson

About Bianca Phillips’ post, “Anti-Same-Sex Marriage Bill Dies in Subcommittee” …

When even David Fowler of the Tennessee Family Action Council says it’s unconstitutional, you know the bill was never getting out of that committee.

Leftwing Cracker

Indefatigable Mark Pody and the ever-wily and inscrutable Mae Beavers can go stomp on their Bibles and hold their breath now that the sodomites have won. God won’t be mocked!

Packrat

About Toby Sells’ post, “New Trolley Purchase Hints at Program Progress” …

We know of at least five buses that caught on fire in the past year due to lack of funds for maintenance and new buses. These are unacceptably dangerous conditions that thousands of working families endure daily to keep this city running. How about we spend millions on buses, instead of trolleys and gentrification?

MemphisBRU

There is no reason there cannot be a mixed fleet other than possible decrease in maintenance efficiencies. Bring enough trolleys back to serve either Main or the Riverfront Loop, and purchase modern streetcars to operate on Madison and one of the two lines mentioned in the story.

Modern streetcars include low-floor entrances, which means they are fully accessible from a raised curb, so we can also eliminate all the wheelchair lift equipment in the stations that are served by a modern fleet. It is also cheaper for any future routes because a station can be nothing more than a raised curb adjacent to the tracks.

barf

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ post, “Zoo Removes Trees From Greensward” …

The Memphis Zoo has become a national embarassment. I used to brag about our zoo to my clients that live in places with nice zoos (San Diego, St Louis), and now they laugh at us as hicks parking in the yard. Oh, and don’t forget the Youtube video of the Zoo director losing his temper. We’re look just like a bunch of angry old white men. I’m sorry I ever gave even one penny to the Zoo.

Frank in Midtown

The actions of the Zoo clique continue to demonstrate that organization’s inability to work with other interested parties to create a workable solution to the traffic and parking problem created by the lack of forward-looking planning by Zoo and city officials. The Zoo clique wants to expand without regard to the Zoo’s neighbors. The decision to cut these trees is characteristic of the disregard for reasonable planning which has characterized the actions of the Zoo for decades.

Enrico Dagastino

This was an incredibly sneaky and insensitive and destructive act on the part of the Zoo. I hope they get all the publicity they deserve for this heinous act. They must be stopped, by legal means if necessary.

Memphis Tigers

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s Letter From the Editor, “Zooey and Bowie” …

Humans generally think by means of reference to Platonic ideals, and then use binary language to describe how closely the elements of their world hew to those ideals. We delude ourselves with such fictions, because then we can avoid the harsh reality of our own inability to comprehend the randomness and unpredictability of existence. We live in a web of constructed delusion, that places certain people and ideas at the pinnacle of that fictional hierarchy.

But the memory of those flavors is all we have to mark the passage of time. What lives inside are volumes of images, smells, tastes, and emotional reactions of pleasure and pain that are attached to these ephemeral constructs. Part of aging I think, is the realization that those constructs have a finite shelf life, and that as we move through time, our common vernacular derived from them becomes irrelevant.

What replaces it feels phony, because to our sensibilities, it is. But none of it was authentic from the beginning anyway, so we are left with a vague sense of something — dysphoria, nostalgia, cynicism — call it whatever you like. The writer has captured this sensation perfectly.

OakTree

About “New Year, New You” …

Although gun violence and traffic accidents remain the leading causes of death among young people, the most dangerous weapon for the rest of us is still our fork. Well over a million of us are killed each year by high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other chronic diseases linked to our meat-based diet.

But times are changing. According to Gallup, 22 percent of Americans are avoiding meat, and 12 percent are avoiding dairy products. Supermarket chains, along with Target and Walmart, offer a growing selection of delicious and healthy plant-based meats and dairy products. Animal meat consumption has dropped by eight percent in the past decade.

Let’s make this New Year’s resolution about exploring the rich variety of plant-based entrees, lunch meats, cheeses, ice creams, and milks, as well as the more traditional green and yellow veggies. The internet offers tons of recipes and transition tips.

Morris Furman

About the Oregon “Militia” …

Did you notice the anti-government hypocrites in Oregon were carrying American flags. The American government is why these militia types can protest. They wouldn’t get away with their armed, anti-government activities in any other country.

People talk about the terrorists in the Middle East; America has its own terrorists in the guise of white militias. Sheriff David Ward said that militia protesters came to Oregon with the express intent of overthrowing county and federal government,and hoped to spark a movement across the United States. Are these “militia activists” who are trying to force their will on the people any different than terrorists anywhere else?

Ron Lowe

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Two Parties in Tennessee?

There is a general recognition that the transition of Tennessee from a state whose politics were long balanced between Democrats and Republicans into yet another Southern Republican monolith dates from 2008. That was the year when a once obscure state senator from Illinois named Barack Obama completed a zenith-like rise to power, which took him through a brief U.S. Senate career into the presidency in the space of a very few years.

That was the year, too, when the state’s established network of Democratic activists and officials had largely coalesced around the rival presidential candidacy of former First Lady and then-Senator Hillary Clinton. Though she came out ahead in Tennessee on the “Super Tuesday” primary of 2008, her loss to Obama in the final analysis may have led directly to the unraveling of the Tennessee Democratic Party, which proceeded with geometric speed, beginning with Obama’s disinclination to campaign seriously in Tennessee and continuing with the rapid attrition of Democratic officials in every subsequent statewide election.

It remains to be seen whether any help for Democrats is to be had from this year’s version of “Super Tuesday,” coming in March, and featuring in the Democratic primary both Hillary Clinton and what could well be a viable effort from the latest upstart from the grass roots, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. We welcome their effort, in any case, and hope whichever of them becomes their party’s nominee will not forsake Tennessee in the 2016 general election.

Meanwhile, the Republican primary will be attracting its share of statewide attention with several GOP candidates likely to put in appearances in our neck of the woods between now and March. All in all, the idea of a two-party system, dormant in these parts for some time, will be at least temporarily alive and well in Tennessee, and we welcome that, too — even if it just turns out to be an interlude.

Frances Hooks 

We are long past the time when the wives of prominent men were identified by the public (and even by themselves) via the prefix “Mrs.” followed by the husband’s name. That tradition, once commonplace, disappeared decades ago with the acceptance (still ongoing) of gender equality and with recognition of the obvious —and increasing — reality that women have distinguished lives and careers of their own.

Frances Hooks, who passed away last week, was a perfect bridge between the former and current ways of perceiving spousal identities. There was never any doubt that she was a continuing and invaluable pillar of support for her late husband, Dr. Benjamin Hooks, during his own meritorious lifetime as minister, lawyer, judge, federal commissioner, and NAACP national director. But she was, both during and after her husband’s lifetime, prominent in her own right as an educator, guidance counselor, church and civil rights leader, and original member of the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis. 

Beyond all that, Frances Hooks was a paragon of graciousness and a source of constant joy, encouragement, and a relief from the daily rough-and-tumble of life to all who knew her. May she rest in peace.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Kevin Lipe’s post, “Thunder 112, Grizzlies 94: Next Day Lamentations” …

The Griz are playing like the coach has no idea at all how to put together lineups that make sense in terms of maximizing results. The players are playing like they realize this, can’t do anything about it, and are resigned to it. The big question to me is: If Robert Pera decides it’s time to blow it up and start over, does he think he has the front office and coaching staff to rebuild it, or does he need to blow up the whole organization?

Scott Pollan

You can’t blow it up without the multiple draft picks available to rebuild. Re-sign Conley and build around Conley and Gasol. Hopefully, hang on to Chalmers also. Do all you can do to hang on to your 2016 1st-round pick, which should be a mid- to late-teens if we hang on, then pick the most athletic and skilled wing on the board. We’ll probably overpay a bit, but a free-agent wing-signing would be nice also. As for Dave Joerger, I’ll wait to see how this year plays out, but it might be time for a coaching change also.

Midtown Mark

I think Joerger deserves more blame than Lipe is giving him. His biggest problem isn’t his substitutions or playcalling, it’s his apparent inability to motivate the team for any sustained period or be an effective emotional leader.

Managing egos and chemistry is a major part of running an NBA team, and given the number of meltdowns this team has suffered during his tenure, I’m not convinced Joerger’s able to command the respect he needs to do that. Say what you will about Lionel — he certainly had his interpersonal issues — but his Grizzlies teams didn’t quit on him.

Wondering

Anyone else remember when the most serious problem we had was whether the home crowd would boo Nick Calathes?

Jersyko

About Jackson Baker’s Politics column, “Pending Matters” …

I am upset that Harris would challenge Steve Cohen. Is he running to Cohen’s right? Because Harris has always sold himself as a progressive, right down to picketing with union members.

In a chamber where seniority breeds power, Cohen has delivered for Memphis. He’s a well-known national figure on the progressive wing of the party.

As for Harris saying Cohen should not bother with resolutions to rid a federal building of J. Edgar Hoover’s name, I say Hoover was committed to harming MLK and the civil rights movement. I’m proud that Cohen represents me and my values.

BP45

Cohen is a transparent panderer to the black majority in Memphis and is an embarrassment in Congress.

Rags to Riches

I voted for Lee Harris to be my state senator and to show up, unlike no-show Ophelia Ford. I didn’t vote for him to run against my Congressman!

Stay in Nashville, Lee, and acquire some skills and knowledge and fulfill your obligation to me and others in your senate district to show up and finish a term for once!

Memphonian

Mr. Harris probably needs to start proving himself by trying to resurrect the state Democratic Party before he asks for more responsibility in Washington.

OakTree

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s letter from the editor, “Making Tennessee Great Again!” …

Stand your ground, Bruce. They’re skeerd of your Memphis attitude. All of us down here next to the Mississippi are violent and desperate, don’t ya know? My advice would be to growl real loud if they try to move you off. They’ll drop their bullet and run away for sure. Just like Barney Fife.

Thoughtful

To whom do I send the bill for my new keyboard?

B

Walking Tall 2016, amirite?

Jeff

Categories
News The Fly-By

City Clear-Cut Trees Near Bass Pro Without Permit

CREDIT: Naomi Van Tol

Less than 10 days remain in a cease-and-desist order issued by the Corps of Engineers that halted the clearing of trees and underbrush from the east banks of the Wolf River Harbor.

The clearing, initiated by Mayor A C Wharton’s administration, began in December, when more than 1,000 yards of trees and underbrush were razed from the riverbank — with much of the clearing occurring on the bank below the Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.

Shortly after, the Corps issued a cease-and-desist order to the city because they were operating without proper environmental permits.

Naomi Van Tol

An area clear-cut by the city without a permit.

“To me, it’s not a silly, minor issue. They need to do some serious mitigation for this,” said local environmental activist Naomi Van Tol, who noted the irony of a massive clearing she calls “unnecessary” occurring directly below a retail giant that touts conservancy as a core principle of their mission.

Van Tol and other environmentalists have several concerns about the clearing, but the potential destabilization of the riverbank stands out.

“Many of those trees are over a hundred years old. The trees, the underbrush … that’s what was holding the bank together,” said Van Tol, who witnessed large amounts of dirt being removed from the bank and dumped in the harbor.

Should any portion of the harbor collapse and create the need for corrective action, the cost will likely be shouldered by taxpayers, Van Tol said.

Gregg Williams, chief of the regulatory branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, signed off on the public notice of the cease-and-desist, but he would not speculate on potential damage.

“We’re not for or against the project. We’ll look at the comments. We’ll look at the assessment, and then we’ll make a decision once we have all of the information we’ll need,” Williams said.

Jack Sammons, the former chief administrative officer for the city, initially authorized the clearing as part of the Bass Pro public-private partnership to redevelop the Pyramid and the surrounding area. The clearing of the trees was to provide unobstructed views for patrons of Bass Pro and to make way for a floating boat dock for Bass Pro’s planned fishing tournaments.

Van Tol is quick to point out that an unobstructed view was already available from the observation deck, and the floodwalls surrounding the Pyramid already restrict view into the harbor and river.

“There was absolutely no point in the clearing. None,” Van Tol said.

When contacted, Bass Pro would only say that they had nothing to do with the decision to cut down trees.

“We were unaware that any trees were ordered cut down around our facility. This was conducted by the City of Memphis. This was not our decision,” Bass Pro spokesperson Jack Wlezien said.

An after-the-fact permit for continued work could be issued by the Corps, but according to Mayor Jim Strickland’s Chief Communications Officer Ursula Madden, no further clearing work is being planned at this time.