Author: Halley Johnson

Friday night’s downtown power outage canceled a Redbirds game and the Orpheum’s production of Cats, but the casts and crews of FuelFilm:Memphis’ 48 Hour Film Launch pressed on. What started as a group of aspiring filmmakers discussing everything from vague ideas to detailed screenplays ended Sunday evening with a packed house watching five completed films.

The film launch is the latest in a series of monthly events from FuelFilm, each one intended to demystify a different aspect of filmmaking with an eye toward shooting more films in Memphis. The nonprofit operates on the idea that the city is full of people who have both the ideas and the drive to create great films — they just don’t always have the right tools or contacts.

“The idea is to put all these people in one place and make as many films as we can,” says Matt Beickert, co-founder of FuelFilm.

The film launch combined all the processes of film creation into one frenzied, improvisational process with a time frame that left no room for writer’s block.

“Our goal is not just to get filmmakers to make some shorts but to [help novice filmmakers] dip their toes in the water,” Beickert says. “Lots of people can’t spend a month working on a film, but they can spend a weekend.”

Thus, FuelFilm created a weekend moviemaking schedule: Friday night, people pitched their ideas, then put together casts and crews for those that received the most votes. All the shooting would take place on Saturday; the editing and screening would follow on Sunday. Easy enough, right?

“I had a friend call from Los Angeles, predicting all this contention,” says Jim Sposto, another co-founder. “I just said, ‘This is Memphis! Everyone’s going to be really cool about it.'”

He was right. About 75 people gathered at FuelFilm’s offices to pitch 12 ideas on Friday; they chose five, assembled crews, and produced the films by Sunday night. A few sponsors — Nikon sent over some cameras, Red Bull kept the caffeine flowing — and a lot of pitching in, from food preparation to sharing cameramen, resulted in the creation of a community in just 48 hours.

Among the five casts and crews were locals, commuters, seasoned filmmakers, and brand-new additions. Francis Is a Lion came from a 17-year-old writer, director, and producer. Soul, which received the most backstage buzz, started as an idea its sole actor, Jerre Dye, artistic director of Voices of the South, had on the way to the film launch. It seems the guys at FuelFilm are right about available resources.

“The people who showed up to make something in 48 hours — those are the people you want working with you,” says David Merrill, another co-founder of FuelFilm.

Beickert echoed that sentiment to the 150 or so attendees who watched the five finished films at Emerge Memphis.

“We’ve got the directors, the screenwriters, the actors,” he says. “Let’s invest in our community.”

When it comes to environmental issues, Memphis’ institutions of higher education aren’t just learning their lesson, they’re teaching it, too.

One of just 25 recipients in the country, Memphis Bioworks has translated its $2.9 million Energy Training Partnership Grant into training programs for “green jobs” at four area colleges. The grant, awarded under the American Recovery and Re-investment Act, encourages collaboration in creating sustainable jobs, says Regina Whitley, vice president of Memphis Bioworks’ marketing and communications.

“We’re putting together strategic partnerships to create regional efforts,” she says. “We really want to create diverse jobs for a diverse community.”

Southwest Tennessee Community College, Mid-South Community College, Dyersburg State Community College, and Jackson State Community College are working with employers to update their classes and create a total of 10 different programs set to begin this fall. Each is tailored to meet the needs of an increasingly environmentally conscious world. And since the grant focuses on training dislocated and unemployed workers, local workforce investment boards and union groups such as the National Electrical Contractors Association, which will facilitate the learning of solar installation, are integral to the project’s success.

“Our primary focus,” says Pauline Vernon, Memphis Bioworks’ director of workforce development, “is to help folks get jobs and to help them get jobs in the green economy.”

Other schools are going green, too. In 2008, Rhodes College applied for a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create an Environmental Studies program, which expanded the already existing Environmental Science minor.

The program joined the already active green agenda at Rhodes, which includes a community garden and an intensive ecology field-study in the Rocky Mountains.

“We want to really use Memphis to our advantage,” says Rhodes professor Jeffrey Jackson. “We’re in an urban location with many environmental issues.”

More recently, Rhodes increased that community-classroom interaction by creating the Cargill Community Environmental Fellowship, which will bring a member of the Memphis community to campus each year to serve as a mentor and liaison for students wishing to engage more directly with these issues. The newly named 2010-2011 recipient is Sarah Newstok, program manager for Livable Memphis. Jackson has high hopes for her term and those to follow.

“The fellows can help move students from thinking about environmental questions,” he says, “to putting them into practice.”

Christian Brothers University is on the road to creating its own environmental curriculum, jumpstarted with the recent creation of its Sustainabiliy Committee, a group of faculty devoted to understanding and facilitating green programs on campus.

“What it’s allowed us to do is to create a map,” says Paul Haught, chair of the committee and head of CBU’s Religion and Philosophy Department. Green activity has already taken over both students and classes, he says, pointing to the vow taken by the graduating classes of 2009 and 2010 expressing their devotion to finding environmentally-friendly jobs, CBU’s campus community garden, and the number of existing classes that will fit into the new sustainable curriculum.

“We’re finding out that we really have a lot of resources already in place,” Haught says. “So now we think: What can we do in terms of integrating these programs?”

Through the end of the month, leaders in business, government, education, and community organization will sit down with MPACT Memphis to discuss the state of the city. The nonprofit’s Feedback Chat series will cover issues — environmental friendliness, professional opportunities, and racial diversity — that young Memphians say the city needs to improve.

“We’ve invited a lot of people who don’t normally interact with each other,” says Penelope McDowell, MPACT’s communications coordinator. “It’s important that we ask leaders to speak but also the people who are going to implement the change.”

The Feedback Chats are the second phase of Voice of MPACT, a plan launched in July 2009 with an in-depth survey of how young professionals view Memphis, both now and in the future.

True to their name, the chats are open-forum conversations about the issues covered in the survey.

“We’re doing a lot of listening right now,” McDowell says, explaining that the chats are just that — conversations around a table where anyone present can speak. “We want to give people the opportunity to say what they want to say.”

So far, Voice of MPACT has focused on what a group of Memphians feel should be done, but the project is also concerned with what’s already happening in the city. McDowell says they hope to expose the holes in the system: the issues that aren’t being addressed or the great projects that no one knows about.

“Duplication is a prevalent issue in the nonprofit world,” she says.

Why focus on young professionals? McDowell says it’s no secret that many young, college-educated Memphians are leaving to find work.

“It’s not that people necessarily want to leave,” she says. “They like Memphis; they can see themselves here. But the opportunities aren’t presenting themselves.”

MPACT hopes that the combined effect of the Feedback Chats and the initial survey will help MPACT launch the third stage of its plan: taking action.

“This is the next generation of leaders,” she says. “What can we do to make them stay?”

MPACT’s Feedback Chats are free and open to the public and will be held July 19th, 20th, 26th, 27th, and 28th at 5:30 p.m. at the organization’s offices at 506 S. Main. Reservations are required. Visit mpactmemphis.org for more information.

The last earthquake to hit the New Madrid faultline caused the Mississippi River to run backward. A recent FEMA-funded study says the next one may put the entire western half of Tennessee out of operation.

Published by Illinois’ Mid-America Earthquake Center, the study outlines the probable effects of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake along the New Madrid faultline. Of the 10 states evaluated in the study, Tennessee was cited as the least prepared to handle such a catastrophe.

The study estimates that, in addition to 60,000 deaths or injuries in the state of Tennessee, the earthquake would significantly damage more than 250,000 buildings and displace 260,000 people from their homes. The cost of such a quake would be more than $56 billion in damaged buildings and infrastructure.

“It’s not your garden-variety disaster,” says Gary Patterson, director of education and outreach for the University of Memphis’ Center for Earthquake Research and Information. “An earthquake in the central United States would be much more devastating than one of the same magnitude in California.”

In Shelby County, such an earthquake would immediately reduce the functionality of hospitals by 95 percent, shut down most police and fire stations, and leave 85 percent of households without power or clean water.

“There are no plusses and minuses by those numbers, and there really should be,” Patterson says, pointing out that the study produces only approximate outcomes for an earthquake on the more severe end of the possible spectrum. But he also underlines the fact that taking precautions can help.

Based on the study’s predictions, the number of buildings that don’t meet current seismic codes poses the largest problem.

“It’s nobody’s fault that we only built for gravity before the 1980s,” Patterson says, “but those problems can be addressed if policies are made in a way that considers the hazard at hand.”

Seismic patterns show the likelihood of some kind of quake in the near future, and the study exposes how severe the damage could be if provisions aren’t made soon.

“It’s not like we think it’s going to happen tomorrow, but we really need to plan for a situation like this,” Patterson warns. “Past New Madrid earthquakes were really big, they really happened, and they could happen again.”

Two bits of news — that Cooper Street will be striped with bike lanes and that Memphis will soon have a bicycle/pedestrian coordinator — should give cyclists and walking enthusiasts more reason to hit the streets.

The yet-to-be-appointed bicycle/pedestrian coordinator position was approved last week as a project jointly funded by the city and the Memphis Metropolitan Planning Organization. City engineer Wain Gaskins says the position is meant to give the engineering office more knowledge of cycling standards.

“We’re really looking for someone who has experience with bicycling facilities in other cities, someone with practical expertise who can evaluate possible sites,” Gaskins says.

The position comes on the heels of a decision to add bike lanes to the stretch of Cooper between Central and Southern, which will undergo repaving thanks to a federal grant. The plan, says deputy city engineer John Cameron, is to limit Cooper to two lanes for cars between Central and Young and reallocate the other two lanes for cycling.

“We have this opportunity and desire from the community,” Cameron says, “and we hope to make bike lanes a part of that plan.”

Cooper between Young and Southern is a different story. Since that stretch is only two lanes wide, local business owners are concerned about the loss of street parking. Cameron says the issue is still being resolved.

Both Cameron and Gaskins hope the coordinator will make these projects more common and accomplished more quickly.

“We hope to continue the lanes all the way to Overton Park,” Cameron says. “We need someone who can focus on these problems and help prioritize what we can do in the near-term.”

Sarah Newstok, program manager of Livable Memphis, says that what’s already been recognized in other cities seems to finally be making an impression here. At the most recent City Council meeting, Chairman Harold Collins addressed Gaskins pointedly on the issue of making Memphis a bicycle-friendly environment.

“The City Council is beginning to understand that bicycle and pedestrian access makes for a livable city,” Newstok says. “It’s attractive for young people to live, to work, and to stay.”

But talk of a new coordinator or plans for implementing bike lanes don’t speak as loudly as results. Though Cameron says the paving initiative — including the new bicycle lanes — will be executed “in the next year or so,” Newstok is skeptical based on the city’s past performance.

“As an advocate for walking and biking, that’s not sufficient,” she says. “Other cities are able to design bike lanes within their engineering departments. It’s not abnormal.”

Two weeks ago, business consultants Doug Carpenter and Anna Holtzclaw took a three-word phrase they liked and decided to share it with the rest of the world. The resulting “Memphian By Choice” movement, anchored by a Facebook page, has garnered more than 800 followers.

“It’s for people who want to express that they choose to live here, whether they were born here or not,” Carpenter says. He and Holtzclaw agreed that the project should be free-form, encouraging people to react to the phrase however they choose.

And react they have. Contributors range in age, profession, and economic and geographical background, but most agree that Memphians should be more vocal about their city pride.

“I think that our city has suffered from a lack of self-esteem to the point that it is important to voice our pride in any way we can,” says Kathy Ferguson, who posted to the page early on.

Carpenter says that negative national press — Memphis was recently named one of Forbes magazine’s most miserable cities — was a big motivator for asking Memphians to explain why they choose to stay here. “With all that’s going on, the power of people just getting engaged, standing up and being happy with this city will do us all a world of good,” he says.

Those who have posted on the Memphian By Choice page have made it clear that the reasons to be happy here are plentiful.

“People are, for the most part, honorable, spiritual, and ethical, three qualities that make for great people and an outstanding community,” says Jimpsie Ayres, another contributor. “With our new mayor and our new attitude … I believe we are poised to enter a new era in Memphis.”

Carpenter notes how pleased he is that the project has gotten such a response with a simple Facebook page. “What I really like is that it’s not fabricated in order to be commercial,” he says. “It’s just part of the culture.” And the goal Carpenter and Holtzclaw had for the project has already been accomplished: People are talking.

“I want people to run with it,” Carpenter says, encouraged by the innovative uses of the catchphrase that he’s already seen, such as temporary tattoos. “You don’t have to check with us.”

“Independent bookselling is never an easy thing to do, but we love it,” says Cheryl Mesler, the owner and operator of Burke’s Book Store with her husband, local author Corey Mesler.

The Meslers are the fourth family to embrace the challenge of owning Burke’s, and they celebrated last week with a party for the store’s 135th anniversary. Among the attendees were Harriette Beeson, who owned the store from 1984 to 2000; Diana Crump, who owned the store from 1978 to 1984; and Patsy Burke, the widow of Bill Burke, the third and final member of the Burke family to operate the store.

The Meslers met in the store when both were staff members in the late ’80s and bought it in 2000. Though Burke’s has carried a variety of products over the years — toys, newspapers, and literary journals and magazines — the Meslers have expanded what they feel is at the core of the business: buying and selling used books.

“That’s always the most interesting part, the fact that our inventory changes constantly,” Cheryl Mesler says.

Their devotion to old books has served them well, as has the store’s most recent move, from a building on Poplar at Evergreen.

“We have foot traffic again,” Cheryl Mesler says of their 2008 move to the heart of Cooper-Young. “I’ve had people come in and say, ‘This smells like a real bookstore!’ That’s not a feeling you can get from a Kindle.”

Though they do stock some new books and magazines, it’s the couple’s attention to customer service that is a focal point. Burke’s carries textbooks for three local private schools, devotes an entire section to Southern writers, and buys all their used books from people in the community.

“We want to be a browsing bookstore,” Mesler says. “We want people to be able to come in and kind of slow down a bit.”

The Meslers have adapted to a web-based economy, cataloging and selling most of their inventory on their website and other online book communities. But the soul of Burke’s remains the books that come in and out of the shop every day.

“I have no fear that the printed word is going to go out,” Mesler says. “My husband says it’s the perfect little invention. You can’t improve on that.”

Burke’s may have opened in 1875, but its oldest book is Northern Travel: Summer and Winter Pictures, two volumes written by Bayard Taylor and published in 1866.

It also has Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, published in 1889, and Beacon Lights of History, by John Lord and published in 1886, in stock.