Do you remember April? It seems like an age ago, but it was just three or so weeks ago. Time flies when you’re watching society descend into authoritarian madness.
Anyway, it seems that April 2022 was when the QAnon “groomer” panic really took center stage in the national media landscape, largely propelled by Republican-led criticisms against then-nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene accused three Republican senators of being “pro-pedophile” for the crime of announcing they would vote to confirm Jackson. I hate to give that human garbage fire any oxygen, but unfortunately it’s necessary to illuminate my point.
This is how the radical right-wing branch has taken over the Republican party — anyone who doesn’t follow marching orders is not only ostracized but becomes the target of a smear campaign that needs no grounding in fact. (Now we’re getting to that “point” I mentioned earlier.) The current groomer panic has little to nothing to do with protecting children. I admit that most Republican voters do want to protect the innocent; that’s what makes this alarm bell such a powerful motivator. But the people weaponizing the word are operating from a place of political calculation, not a desire to keep kids safe.
Last week, a report by third-party investigator group Guidepost Solutions outlining the Southern Baptist Convention’s mishandling of sex abuse allegations made nary a ripple in the media landscape.
The report says that survivors of abuse shared allegations but were met with “resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility.” There are local examples, including Bellevue Baptist Church’s current pastor failing to immediately fire an offender, according to a Houston Chronicle report in 2019.
It’s heinous. It’s wrong that trust should be taken advantage of, that children are hurt, and that the protection of the organization is prioritized over the safety and support of victims. I’m sickened and saddened, and I cannot even imagine the hurt that the victims suffered. I also cannot help but notice that, when faced with real documented examples of the thing they claim to hate the most, there is relative silence from the right. The Guidepost Solutions report recommends the creation of an “Offender Information System” database. Here we have an actionable plan to help prevent further abuse. Why isn’t MTG tweeting about it? More recommendations are expected to be announced at a national meeting scheduled for June 14th-15th in Anaheim, California, so maybe people are waiting to see what happens. Then again, waiting for more information doesn’t seem to be in the wheelhouse for these folks.
If the allegations against the SBC are a little too charged, consider this. The same week, a Kroger store in nearby Southaven, Mississippi, was hit with more than $13,000 in fines over unsafe conditions and child labor violations. “Investigators have found the store allowed three minor-aged workers, all 16- and 17-years old, to load a trash compactor with the keys in the machine to allow operation,” writes reporter Bob Bakken for the DeSoto County News. “The Labor Department investigators also found the employer allowed a 15-year-old employee to work more than three hours on a school day and more than 18 hours during a school week, all violations of the federal child labor standards.”
It seems to me that church and business are often held up as being above reproach, so these real-world instances of child abuse and endangerment don’t fit an established narrative. Neither do they provide fodder for future mud-slinging against Democrats.
The week before, 192 out of 208 House Republicans voted against H.R. 7790, the Infant Formula Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2022, which would provide “$28 million in emergency supplemental appropriations to address the shortage of infant formula in the United States.” The bill passed, at least in the House, but with little help from the party of forced birth.
The groomer panic isn’t about protecting children. If it were, we would take abuse allegations and child labor violations seriously. If it were, the vote for the Infant Formula Supplemental Appropriations Act would have been unanimous, and the expanded child tax credit, which expired in December, would have already been renewed.
People will be hurt. Children and teens will continue to be put in danger, while misdirected malice will express itself as violence against the LGBTQ+ community. Words have weight, and no one should be treated as a pawn in a political game.
So please, think before you hop on the panic bandwagon.
Like all homeroom teachers, managers, parents, and, yes, editors, I have a few axioms to which I return with regularity. One is that each issue of the Flyer needs to be a buffet. There should be something for everyone’s own particular tastes, and, ideally, we will tempt the news hounds with an arts column they might not usually seek out, feed the music lover some politics coverage.
So this week, I find myself not needing to comment on much of the larger stories making the rounds. It would be overkill, a buffet with three different kinds of Brussels sprouts. “At Large” columnist Bruce VanWyngarden covers the tragic shooting in Buffalo, and the way media echo chambers amplify the poisonous rhetoric of white supremacy. Jon W. Sparks looks at Ukraine in this issue’s excellent cover story, and film editor Chris McCoy does double duty by covering last weekend’s abortion rights protest. Toby Sells has the history and potential economic impact of the fabled third bridge over the Mississippi River on lockdown, and politics writer Jackson Baker unpacks the geographic intersections at the heart of the District Attorney race. And, in “The Last Word,” frequent Flyer freelancers Bryce W. Ashby and Michael J. LaRosa are absolutely on top of the situation with regard to immigration and education. To return to my buffet analogy, we have ourselves a healthy and comprehensive news diet this week.
So, with a deadline looming, I’m going to share an anecdote, something I had originally thought was Just for Me, an experience to be enjoyed but not recounted.
Last weekend, I took a walk. That’s not unusual. I take more walks than a retiree with new tennis shoes. This walk was something else, though. Almost a year after I moved back into my childhood neighborhood, I decided it was time to be hopelessly self-centered and walk past my childhood home while listening to the song I wrote about it. Was it needlessly sentimental? Without a doubt. Somewhat gauche, self-mythologizing to the point of egomania? You better believe it. But it’s not as if anyone would ever know about it, right? (Again, deadlines will make one do strange things — like confess to your entire print readership that you are a sad, sappy sucker.)
So, headphones on and music cranked, I walked past a particular house on Faxon. I thought about climbing a certain tree, watching for pill bugs in my dad’s flowers, about my sister’s old habit of eating my crayons. Do the new tenants still see orb-weaver spiders in the hedges, I asked myself. And I remembered my eighth birthday party, when I got a set of cheap toy walkie-talkies, and I wondered if kids still go wild for the things. In the age of smartphones, I imagine the shine has worn off.
The memories aren’t all centered on that house either. I walked past the Pham family’s house across the street and thought about Mailan and me chasing my fox terrier around the yard. Further down Faxon, I passed under the mulberry tree, the sidewalk stained in a Jackson Pollock spray of purple, where I used to pick berries with Aunt Sue, who wasn’t my actual aunt.
With fuzzed-out Fender guitars jogging my memory, I thought about baby albino raccoons walking in a line behind their mother, about being chased by a dog after school, about walking to Overton Park to catch tadpoles in Rainbow Lake. I remembered a one-legged cardinal splashing in a bird bath, season after season.
On the other end of the street, I passed the newly renovated house where Mr. Ben used to live. He was the man who first took my dad to donate blood, a tradition that my sister and I continue to this day. In a way, anyone who was ever helped by a pint of my O- is part of Ben’s legacy.
I got to experience something that was vanishing even then, though I was too young to realize how precious it was. I grew up knowing my neighbors, learning from them. I grew up, at least for about eight precious years, with a sense of community. I was within walking distance of public green space. I knew who in the neighborhood made the best cookies, who bought the fancy fireworks for July 4th.
There are places I could turn this column — the need for walkable neighborhoods; the way automobiles rewrote the built landscape; how “grind” culture and income inequality keep folks too tired and busy to enjoy that most wondrous of Southern pastimes, the leisurely porch conversation; that any demagogue who spreads fear and hate in a calculated attempt to fracture a community is the antithesis of all that’s good about humanity — but why bother?
If you can’t read between the lines, I don’t want to beat you over the head with those ideas. Besides, I’ve hit my word count, and once we get this paper off to press, I think I’ll have time for another long walk around the neighborhood.
Things seem a little different these days. Recently, I attended the Beale Street Music Festival, to cover the event for the Flyer, but also because live music is one of life’s greatest pleasures. After two years without writing a BSMF recap, pounding out 1,000 words the Monday after felt blessedly normal.
Don’t get me wrong. Those paying attention know that weekly positivity rates on Covid tests are ticking back upward. Covid isn’t gone. But events are happening, I’m vaccinated, and when I watched Cory Branan rip through “The Prettiest Waitress in Memphis,” I was able to enjoy the song instead of wondering just how many of the people in the crowd were Covid-positive. Anyway.
Last week, I went to a friend’s annual work party at a local brewery. That evening I met some friends for dinner and drinks. We shared stories, talked about work, and my friend admitted that she wasn’t moved by a recent live production of Macbeth she attended. Uncultured swine that I am, I said that for me, no theater-going experience has ever topped the time when, on a junior high field trip, I saw a college production of Dracula. (Remember that — we’ll get back around to it in a bit.)
As the evening came to a close and we prepared to head our separate ways, the conversation turned to a certain intangible but undeniable something in the air. I felt it at BSMF too — there were odd moments, times when the enthusiastic audience seemed not to know what to do. One of my dinner companions shared a story of a mild verbal interaction that spiraled into threats of physical violence. She described one of the parties involved being held back by her companions, clinging to the door frame, trying to pull herself across the threshold to start a fight.
Things seem a little different these days. There’s something simmering under the surface.
That was on my mind the next day when I caught a screening of the new Doctor Strange flick. It was okay. As a longtime fan of The Evil Dead, I appreciated the signature touches of director Sam Raimi. And there were moments when I thought, “Hey, here I am in a theater again. How wonderful is this?” The spell was nearly broken, though, by another moviegoer in my row who talked through the entire film. I considered saying something. I have before. Once I turned around and fake-apologized to a chatty couple, “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. Did we stumble into your living room? It must be awkward for all of us to be here. I hope we don’t ruin the mood.”
But I kept my mouth shut. I thought about saying something, even considered being polite instead of snarky, for a change. Then I thought about being stabbed to death in a Marvel movie and decided it wasn’t worth it. Everyone’s on edge.
Things seem a little different these days. It’s been in the back of my mind since the March 2020 debate between now-President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, when Biden said he was not in favor of Medicare for all or any single-payer system. Both candidates admitted we were experiencing an “unprecedented moment” in history, but in the midst of that moment, the leading candidate appeared more committed to maintaining the economic and social status quo than to finding a solution. More than two years later, I haven’t gotten over it. It just feels crazy, this insistence on individual solutions to large-scale problems. This belief that nothing should change. Or that civility or bipartisanship are goals to be prized in and of themselves.
Speaking of unchanging, some 125 years ago this month, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published. Its plot points and motifs make the 19th-century novel a fair companion to today’s world. It’s a story of greed, wealth, and disease, of old systems refusing to die, sucking the life from young blood. Told in the form of letters, diary entries, and newspaper clippings, it gives the reader a broad view of the horror, something none of the characters can see as a whole. So the reader knows Count Dracula is a vampire, while the characters grope blindly in the dark. That’s often what it feels like these days.
Discussions on pressing problems are siloed, divorced from a larger reality. Meanwhile, we soldier on, going to work, paying bills, meeting friends for dinner and to discuss that certain something that taints the atmosphere, like the stench of burned sugar wafting from another room. People discuss workforce issues without mentioning the more than 994,000 Americans who have died of Covid. The shortage of baby formula hit the headlines the same week as the SCOTUS Roe leak. Something must be done to address these issues — but nothing that risks fundamental change.
There’s something in the air, and we’re reaching for the air freshener instead of looking for the source.
Many of the most memorable Memphians are transplants from other cities. Consider famed composer W.C. Handy, born in Florence, Alabama, who notated the Memphis blues. Grizzlies star Ja Morant, who most fans agree embodies the spirit and soul of the city, is from South Carolina, not Tennessee.
Maybe it’s something about choosing Memphis, recognizing the magic here, that helps newly minted Memphians find the frequency of this musical place. Maybe it’s simply that living elsewhere grants perspective, and thus a deeper discernment. If that’s so, it would go a long way to explaining poet and author Tara M. Stringfellow’s uncanny understanding of the Bluff City.
Stringfellow, whose debut novel Memphis (The Dial Press) was released in April to rave reviews (The New York Times called it “rhapsodic”), is a Memphian. But she hasn’t always been. Though her family has deep roots in the city from which her novel takes its name, Stringfellow grew up on a military base in Japan before moving to Memphis when she was a child. She has also lived in Ghana, Chicago, Cuba, Spain, Italy, and Washington, D.C., before settling in Memphis (again) as an adult. Perhaps serendipitously, she finished her novel, during the coronavirus pandemic, in Memphis.
Her debut evokes the history of her new home. Memphis is the story of three generations of Black women in Memphis. It follows young Joan, her sister, her mother and aunt, and her grandmother over the course of 70 years. It is a story both tragic and triumphant, a family saga that charts its way through the turbulent waters of racism and violence and complicated relationships, but ultimately toward forgiveness, growth, and the power of hope, art, and community.
In the novel, Joan’s grandfather built a house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass — only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. That loss echoes through generations. So too does the kindness of the Douglass community, the power of painter Joan’s art, and the ways a family can leave a legacy, all brilliantly evoked in Stringfellow’s lyrical prose.
Local bookseller Becca Sloan calls Memphis “an exquisite take on Memphis over the years, a celebration of Douglass, an ode to Black womanhood, to community, to identity, sisterhood, strength.”
Nicole Yasinsky, marketing manager at Novel bookstore, says, “Tara Stringfellow’s poet origins shine through in her lush descriptions of everyday things, and her characters are ones that will stick with me forever. She manages to guide us through generations of trauma and pain while also highlighting the beauty, joy, and resilience of her characters and this city. We were thrilled to host Tara at Novel for her book launch party — to a sold-out crowd — and sales and love for the book continue to grow. Almost every day, I see someone discovering Memphis and Tara Stringfellow for the first time, and I feel certain she has a long and brilliant career ahead of her.”
Tara M. Stringfellow (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
A Poet’s Beginnings
Setting is key, in fiction and in life. Just as Stringfellow’s novel is inspired by family history, her life as a writer was nourished both by her Memphis roots and her time spent abroad. “Memphis has always been my ancestral home,” she says. “I’ve been coming here in the summer since I was a little girl, but I mainly grew up in Okinawa, Japan. I spent my formative years there, my childhood there. That’s probably the reason I became a poet. It’s a beautiful, beautiful place. Living on a tropical island, learning how to swim in the sea, eating noodles, and watching anime is going to make somebody a little weird. What was I supposed to become except a poet?”
Her father is a retired marine and is now a congressional liaison. He was an officer in Japan, and Stringfellow’s childhood experiences there gave her perspective. She says she didn’t experience racism there as a young Black child, at least not in the way she does in America. “I can’t tell you how valuable, how privileged that is,” she says.
After her father read her a poem when she was only 3 years old, she knew she wanted to be a poet, so she dedicated herself to writing and a love of poetry. The push and pull of her life on a tropical island and her roots back in the States helped her develop her voice. She grew up “always knowing that I was from Memphis, and calling back to my folks in Memphis,” she remembers. “Long-distance calls from Okinawa to Memphis … It was kind of the perfect confluence of events.”
Eventually, Stringfellow’s family left Japan, moving back to the U.S. Later, after her parents’ divorce, Stringfellow remembers, “We moved cross country in a van.”
With her mother, she moved to her great-aunt’s house in North Memphis, a time and place that would inspire settings in her novel. “Douglass kind of raised me for a bit,” Stringfellow says, “and I loved it.”
The Road to Memphis
Travel is an undeniable part of Stringfellow’s story, both her true life’s tale and the plot of her novel. “I believe wholeheartedly in it. I do. I know I say this from a rather privileged position, but even when I was dirt-poor teaching English at White Station, I saved my pennies all year, so I could live abroad in Cuba, in Italy,” Stringfellow says, adding that the experience was “awakening for me as a writer.”
Long before she (with her faithful hound, Huckleberry) settled in Memphis, Stringfellow was on her way, paving the road to Memphis. She lived for a time in Chicago, a city with ties to the Bluff City. There she worked on her poetry, following the compass of her artistic ambition. “I would do a lot of spoken word events, a lot of poetry readings. Chicago’s great for that,” she says. “I loved it. I just knew I wanted to do this, so I would just do odd jobs.”
While odd jobs can help make ends meet, even poets sometimes long for a little stability and security. “I said, ‘Oh, I have to eat food. And that costs money,’” Stringfellow remembers. “I went to law school. It’s something I did, but I didn’t really want to be an attorney.”
Practicing law is often lauded as the perfect post-graduate profession for those who excelled at writing in their undergraduate years. But even if one has a talent for it, if their heart is pulled, like a lodestone, naturally magnetized, toward a different horizon, then all the success in the world counts for little. “I was just this poet who would show up and say, ‘Well, I’m here because my poetry didn’t sell,’” Stringfellow laughs, adding, “People would just look at me like ‘You’re not here to hustle and be a Supreme Court judge?’” She was as smart and ambitious as any of her peers, but her ambitions would lead her down a different path, on the winding road back toward Memphis.
Stringfellow graduated and became an attorney. She got married and eventually got divorced. Each change took courage. How many great novels are never finished because the author-to-be fears to leave a sure thing and strike out into the unknown? “I gave it all up. I got divorced,” Stringfellow remembers. “I went back to Northwestern at night to their MFA program, which was not fully funded. I paid for it out of pocket,” she says, “and I wrote. On a wing of a prayer.” But her faith in herself paid dividends. She kept writing, and she met with an agent. “I said I had a book,” she says. “I just knew I had a hit. I was like, ‘No, I’ve been preparing for this my whole life. This is destiny and faith.’ So I became dirt-poor and invested in myself, and my parents understood.”
It’s clear that her family means much to Stringfellow; she mentions her mother and father frequently in our conversation. “I’m already blessed because most parents, I don’t think, would say that to their children,” she says. “People say life is short, but life is long when you make the wrong decision.”
So, as she wrote her way toward a publishing contract, Stringfellow kept her faith. Meanwhile, the world was in turmoil — political instability, one of the largest social justice movements in U.S. history, and a global pandemic made the backdrop as she continued to believe in the future she envisioned. “We all thought like, ‘Lord, what’s gonna happen?’ I had a book deal, but we didn’t sign the contract for months.”
Still, she says, there was comfort in drawing the story inside her out into the world. At the time, she lived with her father, a poet and her first reader, sharing her vision for her novel with him.
“I had no idea I would get this book deal. During my life, I didn’t think anyone would want to read a story about Black women in a house in Memphis. I thought maybe somewhere a small publisher would take a chance on me and maybe it would strike big, but maybe not,” she says. “I was ready and willing to give my life to the canon anyway. And to teach and maybe get a poem in a magazine.
“I didn’t do it for the fame at all. This is very shocking.”
Moments before Stringfellow’s book launch party at Novel, the bookstore sold out of her debut novel. (Photos: courtesy Nicole Yasinsky)
The Book of the Bluff City
“Memphis, we’ve just been through a lot,” Stringfellow says. “I really wanted to do something nice for us. People kind of forget about us, or they get famous and leave. I still live here. I live in North Memphis in a Black historic neighborhood. I want to live here until the day I die.”
The author talks of writing her novel while former President Trump made public comments “disparaging Black cities across this nation,” she says, referencing Trump’s vile remarks about Baltimore. “I was sick of that. Just because we’re poor and because there’s a lot of crime here doesn’t mean that we’re not beautiful people and worthy of high art. Memphis is the best city on Earth. I have lived everywhere. I don’t know of another place on this Earth that is so welcoming and warm.”
So she wrote something for Memphians to be proud of, to see themselves reflected in, with honesty and love. “I certainly did write it as a gift for Black women,” Stringfellow says. And she wrote for her family. “You owe it to your grandfather, who you’ve never met. You owe it to your grandmother who died way too young,” she remembers telling herself. “I’m just trying to write and write as well as I can.”
To do so, Stringfellow brings all her skills to the task. She has a keen ear for language, and a poet’s gift for word choice. “You can tell a story in fiction with the poetic tools,” she explains.
She says that when she envisions the scenes, she can hear her characters speak, note the differences of their accents. It’s telling that she mentions accents, as they are mentioned often in the novel; they give subtle shades of characterization. Stringfellow understands the social, economic, and geographic forces at play in the region, the difference between rural Mississippi and rural Tennessee, and how these forces converge on Memphis.
As we speak, she often talks of meter, of the sound and rhythm of words. She considers her artistic choices carefully; Stringfellow is as elegant and nuanced a writer as has ever walked the streets of the South, a region known for its talented storytellers. She has put in the work, read and listened, traveled and studied. She’s worn many titles, written across genres, and each new challenge has honed her skill, deepened her understanding of how words can evoke an emotion. She would need all those tools to tell the story of Memphis, one both emblematic of the region and profoundly personal.
Poets Are Political
It’s impossible to unspool the story of Memphis without acknowledging tragedy, and the overwhelming tragedy of the United States is its history of racism and oppression. Memphis is a city of small, tight-knit communities, where great strides were made toward equality and civil rights, and where just as much pain has been inflicted. For Stringfellow, some of that pain is undeniably personal.
“Growing up, I knew my grandfather was the first Black homicide detective in Memphis, but the circumstances of his death were as murky as the banks of the Mississippi from which his body was pulled,” she writes on her website. “I grew up with devastating, grief-laced stories about gorgeous and unknown Black folk. All I had as proof were quilts and stories. But I knew, intrinsically, that it would be my lifelong duty, like my mother in our kitchen, to make those tales sing.”
In this, Stringfellow’s passion is a vocation, a calling. She wields her words with responsibility, one made urgent by this sad truth: History repeats itself.
“When I was writing about the death of Myron, based on my actual grandfather,” she remembers, “George Floyd died that same day. … I’m sitting there writing the chapter in my daddy’s basement. That’s when I knew I had to dedicate the book to his daughter.” Stringfellow did just that, and wrote Gianna Floyd a poem as well. “Who’s gonna read this girl stories at night now? That’s a dad’s job,” she remembers thinking.
“I just felt like I was so angry. I needed a whole book to write instead of a poem,” Stringfellow says. “When people take Black men from this world, I don’t think they realize who and what kind of village they’re taking every time. I wouldn’t be the poet I am if I didn’t have my dad editing my work.” That reality is embedded deep within Memphis. Each loss is felt, not just once, but again and again throughout the years. Each trauma creates ripples that touch and distort many more lives.
The poet says it was vital for her to tell the truth, to call out injustice. “Poets are political. We reflect the time, like the news criers. I had to reflect what I see around me,” she explains. “My mom had to grow up without a father. Like, that’s a real thing.”
Stringfellow does more than illustrate the ills of our age, though; she also uses her novel to inspire. One message woven into the fabric of Memphis is this: Art is powerful, and it strives to stitch a community together, to be a catalyst for change. The message is seen throughout the novel, especially through Joan’s paintings. It’s something Stringfellow holds dear as well. Of art, she says, “It should make you cry. It should make you uncomfortable. It should bring up memories.
“It should spur you into some sort of action on your own path, to ask larger questions of yourself, as a human being on this Earth, what are you doing? And are you doing it well, are you doing it with love? If art doesn’t do that, then what’s the point?”
Phil Roeder | Creative Commons | Wikimedia Commons
I’m probably going to get a few things wrong in this column. Not factually wrong, but I am speaking from a position of privilege, which colors my perspective in ways that doubtless haven’t even occurred to me, try as I have to educate myself. I’m a white, straight man. True, I don’t own property, nor am I an evangelical Christian, but for all intents and purposes, I look a lot like the only group of people some Americans deem worthy of having rights. I have a presumption of my own bodily autonomy that some people have never enjoyed. So I’m going to write with the urgency I feel, and I might make some missteps. This is too important, though, and my platform is too prominent, for me not to risk making a fool of myself for a good cause.
Last night, as of this writing, Politico broke the news that the Supreme Court has, in a draft of a majority opinion, voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the case that guaranteed federal protections for abortion rights. Supreme Court drafts change, of course, so this might not be set in stone. Votes could change. Still, this leak seems to confirm that we’re on a course we’ve been on for some time.
To repeat a phrase I’ve made much use of in recent years, I’m disgusted but not at all surprised. In the Flyer’s March 24th cover story, “A Human Rights Disaster,” writer Chris McCoy covered the uncertain future of abortion rights in Tennessee. He spoke with multiple sources for the story, and every proponent of legal abortion access was clear about which way the wind was blowing: The right to a safe and legal abortion was in imminent danger. Today, I wish we could be accused of being alarmists.
I know this is a touchy topic for some. My question is, if you are one of the Tennesseans celebrating this news, what have you done to make those seeking abortions safer? Do you advocate for systemic access to medical care? Social services for poor mothers? What have you done to protect women and people with uteruses in the workplace, to combat the gender pay gap, to reduce the hold of hierarchical, patriarchal power dynamics in every aspect of life? Are you for federally protected paid parental leave? Do you want sex education taught in schools, free afterschool programs for teens?
If you haven’t taken any of these and many other possible steps, if you voted for an anti-choice candidate and shared a political meme on social media and then patted yourself on the back for doing your part, you can’t in all honesty call yourself pro-life. You’re pro-forced birth, and there’s no other way to look at it.
When we get right down to it, it’s simple. Abortion is healthcare, and everyone deserves access to healthcare. That’s it. End of story. There are so many ways a pregnancy can be life-threatening for the pregnant person. And as for unwanted pregnancies, well, I truly don’t see how that’s anyone’s business but the pregnant person and their doctor.
I know that some people, on grounds of a religious objection to the termination of a pregnancy, will argue about the unborn child’s life. I hope they bring that same energy to advocating for universal healthcare and against the death penalty. Those folks aside, though, this seems to me to be about the consolidation of power. And I don’t think it ends with Roe. The constitutionally protected right to privacy doesn’t just support the right to an abortion. It’s also the legal reason behind access to birth control, for example, a right Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn has been publicly critical of. And Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion uses some troubling language, namely that rights must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Call me a progressive alarmist reactionary, but that doesn’t sound like someone who values any social justice progress made in the last 100 years. Some abhorent practices have deep roots in U.S. tradition.
Republicans have campaigned on overturning Roe for decades. What happens if they achieve that goal, as it seems they will? Do you think they’ll just declare mission accomplished, pack up, and go home? No. Look to comments made recently about interracial marriage, about LGBTQ+ rights. Look at the panic about trans people in sports. It’s not about the sports, folks.
Republicans aren’t alone though. Protecting Roe has been a campaign promise and a fundraising tactic for Democrats for as long as I’ve been an adult able to vote. Is that all it is — a carrot to dangle during election years? It would be nice to see a coordinated, unified response from Democrat leadership, but all I expect is a flurry of fundraising emails hitting my inbox.
I wish I had suggestions. I certainly think the filibuster needs to go. I think President Biden should sit senators Manchin and Sinema down and explain that they need to get with the program.
Instead of offering an actionable plan, I’m writing my conscience. This is wrong. It’s regressive and cruel, and anyone putting lofty ideals before the real-world lives that will be lost is the cruelest of fools.
Remember, ending Roe won’t end abortions any more than Prohibition ended alcohol consumption. All it will do is end safe abortions — and end lives.
When, with the flash of a press pass, I breezed through the Will Call checkpoint outside Memphis in May’s Beale Street Music Festival at Liberty Park on Sunday, I heard people checking the score of the Grizzlies’ first matchup against the Warriors. The Griz were down, but it was early in the game, and I couldn’t help but take it as a good omen. This year’s BSMF might be in a different location, but some things never change.
First on my list was genre-bending songsmith Cory Branan, backed by an ace crew of Memphis musicians including drummer Shawn Zorn, bassist Landon Moore, and Flyer music editor Alex Greene on keys. Is it a conflict of interest to say that Branan and band blew me away with their tight 25-minute set? Oh well, journalistic malpractice be damned! Though the band’s set was necessarily truncated by circumstances outside their control, thanks to the kind of behind-the-scenes logistical difficulties endemic to festivals as big as BSMF. One rule to keep in mind for any event with more than three bands on the bill: Embrace the chaos. We concert-goers were miles from the Mississippi River for this year’s MIM, but that wouldn’t stop me from going with the flow.
Cory Branan and band. (Credit: Jesse Davis)
Branan and band were locked in, ripping through a set of originals with precision and energy. The bass, drums, and keys, all high in the mix, evoked shades of Memphis music of yore, both soul and rock-and-roll, while Branan plucked notes from his Telecaster. The songwriter walks a weaving line between rock-and-roll, punk, and country, and his sound fit the tone of the Memphis festival. After a blistering rendition of “Prettiest Waitress in Memphis,” Branan quipped, “We appreciate your low standards.”
Jokes aside, as Flyer film editor Chris McCoy put it in his recap of Saturday’s festivities, “Judging from the reactions our folks have been eliciting from the throngs gathered in the shadow of the Coliseum, increasing the locals’ main stage time is the best decision Memphis in May has made in a long time.” Branan and band were proof positive.
Next up, I made my way to the Terminix Stage to catch a few songs from Indigo Girls. I made it to the stage in time to catch “Least Complicated.” Indigo Girls made use of two acoustic guitars, a violin, and vocal harmonies. It was soft and sweet, like a breeze on a sunny May afternoon.
Leaving the stage I met Flyer reporter Michael Donahue, who was working the crowd and getting photos and quotes for his “We Saw You” column. Not 60 seconds after Donahue and I met, someone approached the wild-haired writer to ask him if he was Brian May, best known as the guitarist for Queen. I laughed, and Donahue and I made our way to the Blues Tent.
Blind Mississippi Morris. (Credit: Jesse Davis)
The crowd at the Coca-Cola Blues Tent spilled out onto the pavement outside the tent. (Note: Asphalt is hot, much hotter than the turf at Tom Lee Park. Of course, asphalt doesn’t get muddy either, so any attempt at a comparison is more or less pointless. Again, I was reminded of the festival-goer’s refrain: Embrace the chaos.)
Without delay, a fan accosted Donahue for a selfie. I left the busiest man in party reporting to his work and wove my way through the crowd and into the shade under the tent. Inside, Blind Mississippi Morris was wailing on a harmonica, backed up by a tight trio of guitar, bass, and drums. The bass rumbled, the guitar jangled, and the harmonica growled and howled. It was a fine display of Delta blues, and I was again glad that the BSMF lineup was packed with local and regional acts.
After a bass solo and a veritable cannonade of drum fills, Blind Mississippi Morris’ set drew applause and cheers from an appreciative audience. “It’s time for us to go,” Morris said. “Thank you for coming out for us.”
By that point, I had settled on a loose plan to follow the natural path of the stages — they were arranged like the vertices of a giant “M” — so my next stop was the Bud Light Stage to see Ghanaian band Stonebwoy. I glanced at my phone to make sure I was more or less on time, and saw a text from the Flyer’s film editor: “I decided to come to the festival. Where you at?”
So, having just parted ways with Donahue, I met Chris McCoy and waited for Stonebwoy to finish their sound check. I heard someone in the crowd call out the score of the Grizzlies game. “Grizzlies are down 99 to 90,” he said. “It’s a game! It’s a game!” A few minutes later, the score sat at 99 to 93, with the Warriors leading.
Stonebwoy. (Credit: Chris McCoy)
A gentle breeze wafted across the audience, seeming to carry clean guitar notes and the sounds of saxophone. The bass and drums invited the audience to dance. Stonebwoy’s band wove Afropop and reggae grooves while the singer led the crowd in a call and response. “Say ‘Stonebwoy,’” he called. “Say ‘Memphis.’”
Next, McCoy and I made our way to the Zyn stage for the last half of Grace Potter’s set. When we arrived, the concert was in full swing, with the audience sprawling across the parking lot. With a Flying V guitar slung over her shoulder, Potter led her band in a riff on “Proud Mary.” Whether she was turning up for Memphis, or because her band is just that good, Potter and company suffused their set with samples of rock-and-roll, country, soul, and gospel. She’s a rock artist, but her sound is rife with elements of all the musical milieu that forms the bones of American music.
Grace Potter. (Credit: Chris McCoy)
“That was a dirty little carousing we just had,” the singer said. So, with the Liberty Bowl behind her and facing the Coliseum, Potter switched from guitar to what looked like a Fender Rhodes piano to tambourine, leading her band through high-energy song after song.
Potter sang a bit of Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got to Memphis” before praising the Bluff City. “This place is so full of culture,” she said. Later in her set, someone from the audience called out for “Apologies,” one of the singer’s quieter numbers. “I’m a rock-and-roll musician!” Potter responded. “Don’t you want to hear some rock?”
Bryan Cox as Michael Donahue. (Credit: Jesse Davis)
On the way back to the Terminix Stage, I saw someone in a flowing wig who appeared to be cosplaying as Michael Donahue. When I asked him if that was true, Memphian Bryan Cox confirmed that and said, “People keep asking me that.”
Modest Mouse. (Credit: Chris McCoy)
Then Modest Mouse took to the Terminix stage, opening with “Dramamine” from 1996’s This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About. The screen behind the band showed a shimmering rainbow seeming to cascade into an open cartoon casket.
The band worked their way through several songs spanning multiple albums. They played newer tracks, as well as hits like “Ocean Breathes Salty,” “3rd Planet,” and “Float On.” It was a solid set of layered songs from a band of indie rockers who have been at it for years.
The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band. (Credit: Jesse Davis)
At some point in the day, I caught some more groups in the Blues Tent, but nine hours of nonstop music has a way of making a jumble of my interior clock. I think I stopped by the Blues Tent on the way back to the Bud Light stage to catch Memphis rapper Moneybagg Yo.
As the sun set, bringing blessedly cooler temperatures, music fans packed the area in front of — and anywhere near — the stage. Moneybagg Yo pulled in a huge crowd, and the energy was high as people danced, drank, and waved their phones in the air.
Moneybagg Yo. (Credit: Jesse Davis)
“If you from Memphis, what side of town you from?” Moneybagg Yo called out, proving he has his finger on the pulse of his city. The bass on “Pistol by Da Bed” had heads nodding along as jets of smoke shot into the air in front of a giant stylishly glitched-out screen behind the performers.
“Every lighter up,” he said later in the set. “This shit’s special. You know why? ’Cause I’m from Memphis. We dream big.”
And it was special, as his set turned into the de facto headlining concert to close out that stage, as news made its way around that Lil Wayne had been forced to cancel, allegedly because of mechanical problems with his jet. No matter, Moneybagg Yo made the most of it, name-checking Memphis neighborhoods to a crowd of dancing, cheering fans.
To close out the night, Weezer took to the Terminix Stage. They ripped into “Hash Pipe” from 2001’s green-hued self-titled album. (The band has something of a penchant for releasing color-coded self-titled albums. At this point, it’s kind of a thing.) Bandleader Rivers Cuomo sang in a falsetto over crunchy guitar riffs and a gut-rattling bass line.
The band played a set that spanned their 15-abum discography, delivering hooks and crowd-pleasers aplenty. They offered up “Beverly Hills,” “My Name Is Jonas,” “El Scorcho,” and “Undone (The Sweater Song).” After a cover of “Enter Sandman,” Cuomo joked “Hey, Memphis! We’re Metallica.”
With the “exit night” refrain rattling around in my thoroughly rocked head, I made my way back to my car. After two years of a pandemic-induced pause, BSMF was back and, chaos aside, a definite success. As I drove home, I heard celebratory fireworks explode in the air above the city.
It’s no easy thing to pin down something as mercurial as a memory, as fleeting as a feeling, with nothing more than mere words. But to singer/songwriter Alex da Ponte, such an act comes naturally. Da Ponte is a poet’s songwriter, as evidenced by her recently released single, “The Revolution,” recorded at Pete Matthews’ and Toby Vest’s High/Low studio.
Da Ponte was surrounded by music and storytelling from an early age. There was always a piano around the house, and her family members are no strangers to singing as a means of passing the time. In fact, her great-great-grandfather was Lorenzo da Ponte, librettist for Mozart, who wrote the words to Mozart’s operas. So her felicity with a turn of phrase comes as no surprise. “I’ve written songs in a lot of different ways but it always turns out best when the lyrics come first and I put guitar to it later. I’m a writer before I’m a musician,” da Ponte says. “Writing, by blood, is my strong suit, I think.”
The songwriter has done the work of self-discovery, both as an artist and an individual, and her lyrics resonate with the hard-won wisdom of a gentle soul. As an out member of the LGBT community in the South, da Ponte’s journey toward embracing herself is one that has not always been met with approval. “I’ve always hated the idea of perpetuating the ideology that these things are abnormal because they’re not,” da Ponte says. “We are here. We have always been. I hope that as a gay artist my openness is one account of many that allows a more human view of people and relationships. Something for people to connect with and come together over.”
Perhaps that’s why so much of da Ponte’s work feels anthemic. She knows something as natural as expressing love can be deemed a dangerous act. So her songs become a rallying cry for everyone brave enough to live in love, to show up for family when life gets messy, to be their truest selves.
Still, for da Ponte, openness has not always been easy. She found out earlier this year that she is autistic. “Finding that out was really incredibly helpful. Like finding out that I have a place in the world and in that place everything about me that was so bizarre or unusual suddenly makes sense,” da Ponte says. “There’s this new culture where people are embracing their otherness and ironically this is bringing people together and closing these gaps. I absolutely want to be a part of that movement.” She aspires to make music that people can relate to while also being a voice for lesser-heard groups.
“There were so many times when the merch table after a show was flooded with people who were touched by my lyrics and they wanted to connect with me as a person and I couldn’t give them that. That’s where my autism hurt me,” da Ponte says. “A big part of being successful in this industry is being able to cultivate a following and build relationships. So I felt I really held back, and at the time I didn’t know why. Now I know why. The diagnosis has allowed me grace with myself but it has also given me a better understanding of myself and the ways in which connection is possible.”
If da Ponte seems driven to accomplish much — self-examination, deeper connections, musical maturity and meaningfulness — she has her reasons. For a young artist, she has had more than her fair share of close brushes with death. Her younger brother died almost exactly a month before her son was born. “It was such an intense experience to watch my child be born and go home with a newborn all while in the thick of grief,” she remembers.
The singer’s late brother has inspired several songs. His voice and his laugh are even memorialized on “That Sibling Song” from da Ponte’s third album. She strove to capture her family’s passion for music in song, so she invited her family members to come sing on her album. “At the very end of this track you can hear my little brother say, ‘We’re related to Alex da Ponte. She’s aight,’ and then laugh. Had to incorporate him in some way. Any excuse to hear his voice. Part of grief, for me, has meant finding ways to keep him alive. Now he’ll forever be chuckling at the end of one of my songs and I love that.”
As da Ponte puts it, the songs keep coming still, but the songwriter confesses that she has held back some of herself in the past, stopped just shy of giving her all to her musical career. That’s why these days she’s throwing herself into her craft. Galvanized by the knowledge that life offers no guarantees of second chances, made self-assured by newfound knowledge of herself, da Ponte is devoting herself to her music, without excuses or inhibitions. Da Ponte has been hard at work on new songs — “Dead Horses” and “The Revolution” — and has resumed rehearsals with her bandmates Joe Austin and Kevin Carroll, after a pandemic-induced hiatus.
“I know real magic can happen if you stay open,” da Ponte says. “I can’t wake up 20 years from now wondering ‘What if?’ So this is it. I’m going all in.”
Alex da Ponte’s “The Revolution” is available on all the usual streaming services.
Of all the subgenres of rock-and-roll, “songs about playing music” is in my top three. I love the demystification of it all, the lyrics about jet lag and long bus rides and hoping to scrape a few dollars together. And maybe, when it comes down to it, I just love self-referential art.
When Big Star’s Alex Chilton sings, “I can’t get a license/To drive in my car/But I won’t really need it/If I’m a big star,” on “O My Soul,” casually dropping the band’s name into the lyrics, what can I say? I eat that up.
So, against my natural inclinations, I’ve done my best not to talk too much about the inner workings of the Flyer in these weekly columns. Partly to preserve an aura of mystery, which, I hope, our readers will find alluring. Partly because I’ve realized that the minutiae of what I think is interesting might not always make for the most entertaining or enlightening column. (And no, I don’t want to talk about my all-Batman column from a few weeks back. If you didn’t like it, I’m forced to believe that, ideologically speaking, you fall on the side of anarchy, violence, and mayhem — one of the Joker’s cronies for sure.)
When the news is big enough, though, it warrants spilling a little ink. And speaking of big, if you’re reading this issue of the Memphis Flyer in print, you might have noticed we’ve gone back to our previous larger tabloid size.
It took a lot to get here. Some of our readers might not remember that in the dismal days of 2020 we actually, briefly, went to a biweekly printing schedule. Not only that, but due to our longtime printer in Jackson, Tennessee, shutting down in early 2021, we’ve switched printers twice since the beginning of the pandemic, moves that then necessitated the change in layout size.
So, while our stalwart staff adapted to all the other changes the last two years have brought, they were also forced to adapt to different word counts and deadlines and image restrictions. The folks in our art department weren’t only shifting to work with far fewer opportunities for photos from the field, they had to redo (and redo again) our paper’s templates. Of course, each major change kickstarts a cascade of smaller ones, and that’s before we even begin to consider the rising costs of paper and freight, the dozens of other behind-the-scenes adjustments that would bore all but the most avid aficionados of alt-weekly newspaper production.
My point, though, is not only that it’s been an interesting two or three years. Everyone, the world over, has had to make changes, to adjust their expectations and long-held habits. No, my hope is to lay the groundwork for a well-earned celebration of where we are right now, at this precise moment, as you scan these words on your phone or laptop screen or hold the paper in your hands. I’m proud of and thankful for such a hardworking, creative, and unflappable team — the reporters, writers, editors, copy editors, designers, sales staff, and others who make this paper possible.
Thanks are also due to the businesses who choose to advertise with the Flyer, who recognize the worth of the investment and who keep this paper free and the website without a paywall. I offer my most sincere and heartfelt appreciation of you all, and I hope that our readers will patronize these local businesses (I know I do).
It’s fitting, too, that this return to our pre-pandemic paper size falls on the week of our much-beloved and highly anticipated annual “Music Issue,” absent for two years, in which we celebrate the triumphant return of another Memphis institution, Memphis in May’s Beale Street Music Festival. And that this year’s BSMF boasts the most Memphis bands on the bill in the past 20 years? Well, if that’s not a reason to celebrate, I really don’t know what is.
So let this be a reminder that none of the things we love in Memphis should be taken for granted. I know without asking them that the bands playing Music Fest this weekend worked and dreamed and defied the odds to be on those stages. They kept a candle burning, so to speak, through the long night of uncertainty, when no one could predict when we might come together for something as magical and, at one time anyway, commonplace as a concert. And I, for one, am thankful that they did.
When you think about it, it all seems like nothing short of a minor Memphis miracle. Doesn’t it?
As I write these words, the Memphis Grizzlies have not yet played game two of their playoff stint against the Minnesota Timberwolves. By the time anyone reads this column, in print or on the Flyer’s website, game two will be over, and the Grizzlies will have won or lost. I know most Memphians don’t even like to consider the possibility of a loss from Memphis’ most winningest team, but statistically speaking, it is within the realm of possibility.
Of course, I hope the Griz devour the Timberwolves, that the loss in game one of the playoffs is the only one the team has for the rest of the year. I’d be lying if I said I was anything resembling a devout sports fan, but like any Memphian, I have a possibly more-than-healthy dose of hometown pride. Besides, everyone in Memphis seems to have a little more strut to their step when the Grizzlies are on a winning streak. If a clip of a particularly gravity-defying dunk by Ja Morant is circulating on social media, there are sure to be a few more smiles gracing local faces. It’s a beautiful thing, but it puts a lot of pressure on the Grizzlies, though, doesn’t it? It must be hard to fly so high while simultaneously carrying the collective weight of a midsized American city’s hopes and dreams.
That’s why I was beside-myself excited — gleeful, even — about last week’s wandering wallaby news. The story was a flash in the pan, a two-day whirlwind as seemingly everyone in the city followed the news of the mischievous marsupial’s disappearance from his home in the KangaZoo exhibit and mercifully quick subsequent discovery in a service yard on zoo property. It took social media by storm, I heard people talk about it in the store, and I brought it up while sitting in the optometrist’s chair and getting my eyes tested. Weird as it was, the story lasted just long enough for its more ardent followers to begin to worry, then, bam!, it delivered a happy ending, complete with the wallaby’s reunion with his fellows in the zoo.
I love the absurdity of it. We needed a feel-good story, and to really hit Memphians in the feels, there had to be an element of “Wait, say what?” to the tale. After a month or so of increasingly dire news from the Tennessee legislative session, with tornadoes every other week just to add a little danger and destruction to the mix, the fugitive marsupial story felt nothing less than heaven-sent.
What makes the story even stranger, is that I don’t think the news would have gotten out if I hadn’t asked two zoo employees wading through Lick Creek what was going on.
“A kangaroo escaped,” one employee told me, confusing the missing wallaby for its larger and more famous marsupial relation.
“We haven’t seen a kangaroo,” he continued, “but we did see a beaver. It was this big.” He held his hands about three feet apart. I nodded my head, mumbled something about a beaver, and almost twisted my ankle running inside to call Jessica Faulk, the zoo’s communication specialist, for confirmation.
The details of the story came together (the fugitive mammal was a wallaby, not a kangaroo), people kept their eyes peeled for a glimpse of the creature, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Maybe it was the storm from the day before that cleared the air, but whatever it was, we needed it. Sometimes the monkeys have to escape Monkey Island, if I may reference another local legend.
So, as long as Tennessee legislators are gracing the home page of The New York Times website for things like child bride bills and praising Hitler as an example of turning one’s life around after a period of homelessness, we need the occasional lighthearted “WTF?” story to break the tension.
I propose a new Memphis rule, one to help us shoulder the embarrassment of being located in Tennessee and to take some of the pressure off our basketball team, at least as long as we’re also still in a pandemic. (Well, we are, even if we’re sick of talking about it.) Every so often, a prominent Memphis tourist destination needs to rock the news cycle with a preposterous story. The responsibility shouldn’t all fall on the zoo, either. Take turns getting in on the action.
So I’ll leave you with this question: After the next two or three times Tennessee makes national news for embarrassing reasons, who’s going to borrow Isaac Hayes’ Cadillac from the Stax Museum and go joyriding down 3rd Street?
The sounds of splashing and voices echoing down Lick Creek, the small stream that meanders through the Vollintine-Evergreen neighborhood, alerted me to the sound of people wading past my house this morning.
I expected to find high school-aged teenagers playing hooky to try to sneak into the Memphis Zoo, but what I saw when I looked over the embankment was two zoo employees wearing rubber boots and shining a flashlight into a concrete-covered section of the creek.
“Are you looking for someone?” I asked, thinking I was just being a bit of a smart aleck.
“A kangaroo escaped,” one employee told me. The other person turned back to the creek and spoke to someone via a walkie talkie. I didn’t hear the entire exchange, but I did catch “didn’t make it this far,” apparently referring to the fugitive marsupial.
“We haven’t seen a kangaroo,” the first employee told me, “but we did see a beaver. It was this big.” He held his hands about three feet apart.
Lick Creek runs beneath the zoo and through Midtown Memphis, and I often see schools of small fish flitting through the shallow water. Ducks paddle along the creek, and I’ve seen a hawk hunt along the creek by day. That’s on a “normal” day though, when the water flows slowly and placidly. Yesterday, Memphis was hit by severe thunderstorms, high winds, and tornado conditions, and the waters of the creek rose to the height of its banks. One wonders if kangaroos can swim.
“We had trees down here and there, but our KangaZoo flooded really bad,” said Jessica Faulk with the zoo, when I reached out for comment.
Because of the storm, the zoo staff had team members relocate the kangaroos from their habit and to the animal hospital where they were quarantined. The zoo has three wallabies they had not yet announced, as the animals were still getting accustomed to the environment. When the zoo staff did a head count after the relocation process, they realized something was wrong.
It wasn’t a missing kangaroo — it was a fugitive wallaby.
“We had one wallaby missing,” she said. “They’re assuming it’s in Overton Park somewhere.”
She continued. “Our teams have been actively searching for him all morning. As far as we know, he’s alive and well and eating grass on the golf course.”
In a post to their social media page, the zoo said this: “Memphis Police Department is helping the search for the missing wallaby. If anyone spots the wallaby, please report it by calling the Memphis Zoo at 901-333-6500. Please include the location and time of the sighting in your message. Wallabies are smaller in stature than kangaroos. They are gentle animals … If spotted, please do not approach, and immediately call the number above.”
