Author: Jesse Davis

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Winds of Whimsy, or Whither Went He, Wandering Wallaby?

Photo: Jesse Davis

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?

Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Wallaby Escapes from Memphis Zoo

Lick Creek (Credit: Jesse Davis)

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.”

We will update this story as more becomes known.

Categories
Art Art Feature

Comedian Lucy Wang Represents at the Green Room

Lucy Wang (Courtesy Lucy Wang)

Comedian, playwright, and Crosstown Arts resident artist Lucy Wang has been in Memphis for about three months. In that time, she’s weathered an ice storm, discovered an appreciation for the Bluff City’s famously clean drinking water, visited Elmwood Cemetery, and cultivated her own Memphis Mafia. In other words, though she’s based out of Los Angeles, California, when she’s not an artist in residence at Crosstown anyway, she’s more or less an honorary Memphian now. And this Friday, Wang will bring Represent!, her one-woman comedy show, to Crosstown Arts’ Green Room. 

“I did something on WYXR,” Wang says, discussing the work she’s done to promote her upcoming performance. And, it turns out, that performance is something of a milestone for the still relatively new event space. “I’m going to be the first comedian to perform at the Green Room.”

When asked which, if any, of her art forms she prefers, Wang says, “Both mediums you have to respect your audience.” But, she continues, “Comedy is very engaging and it’s instant feedback. It’s one of the greatest sounds, right? Laughter.”

Comedy can be like tricking someone into eating their vegetables. Wang knows people want to laugh — need to laugh — and not everyone is prepared to sit down and have their heart wrenched in a theater. Even though her comedy often deals with serious subjects, there’s an element of levity that helps the medicine go down, so to speak. “Sometimes you can cross the red/blue line with comedy,” she says. “Maybe what you were talking about has some validity because you found an angle.”

Her upcoming comedy show represents only some of her artistic output though. As with most of Crosstown’s resident artists, Wang has been putting in time on a larger work while she’s in Memphis. As part of her residency, Wang is working on a musical comedy about Dr. Morris Fishbein and Dr. John Brinkley, two historical figures on opposite sides of a fight over the ethics of medicine. “Brinkley was a charlatan quack doctor, and he got famous by doing goat glands transplants,” Wang says.  She has been outlining the musical and doing research — lots of research, an important component of Wang’s comedy and playwriting — while she is in town. 

“Fishbein is the first Jewish doctor to be the head of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medicine Association. He made JAMA what it is today, and AMA, the American Medical Association,” Wang explains. At the time, she continues, “The medicine was the Wild Wild West. … There was so much reckless disregard.” Fishbein made a practice of exposing reckless doctors, which is certainly a category Brinkley would fall into. Wang says the play is also about the national obsession with youth, noting that the transplanting of goat testicles (yes, you read that right) was advertised as a miracle cure to help people stay young and to aid in flagging fertility or virility. “It’s like if you’re over a certain age, you’re over the hill,” Wang quips, noting that the national obsession with youth is particularly evident in L.A.

The comedian says she hasn’t noticed the same mania for youth in Memphis, but it would be hard to compete with Hollywood in that regard. It’s safe to say that Wang’s observations are on point, though. She is clearly a keen observer and someone driven to know more about the world in which she lives. Memphians who attend her Represent! performance will be the beneficiaries of her observation, as she has worked on weaving in her experiences to give her comedy show a little “Memphis flavor.”

“When I first came to Memphis — it’s the first place I’ve really traveled after the pandemic — a lot of my friends told me not to come. They panicked. They told me not to come. That’s part of the comedy, ‘You’re gonna die!’ Because the Asian-American population here is very small,” Wang recalls. “When Tommy Kha’s photograph got taken down, they said ‘See! See? You’re going to be erased! You’re going to be marginalized!’ But I think the South is more than that. Memphis is more than racial and civil rights strife. We have these stereotypes because we don’t leave our house. We have these stereotypes that Southerners are conservative and anti-Asian and don’t read books. I mean, the thing about Maus came out, and people were like ‘You can’t go there! They don’t value good books. They don’t value history.’ And that’s the comedy. I am scared. But if I don’t leave my house, I’ll never know, and if I do leave my house, I’ll see that there are some really great people here.”

She continues, “I have a Memphis Mafia. I came her with three names, and they basically helped me get through this ice storm. I arrived here the day before the ice storm, and I thought, ‘Oh my god, my friends are right. I am gonna die here!’ … But I had the names of three women, and they helped me. They barely knew me, but they were friends of friends.” The friends of friends snapped into action after the February ice storm, and asked if she needed blankets, a flashlight, or a ride to the grocery store. “Southern hospitality is real,” she says. 

It can be difficult to draw hard distinctions between Wang’s comedy and her plays, because the latter helped pave the way for her comedy. And vice versa. “When I get a theater interested in my work, they would often tell me they couldn’t cast. They would say there are no good Asian-American actors, or nobody funny,” she says. “So Gloria Steinem is the one who convinced me to do comedy. She’s the last person who told me to do it, and then I decided to do it.”

“I felt like if I didn’t go up there, then the final word would be ‘well, we cannot cast,’” Wang says. “So I got into comedy because I wanted to be included. … It was a way for me to say ‘Hey, I exist.’ Because diversity is a fact, and inclusion is an act.”

Lucy Wang performs in Represent! at the Crosstown Arts Green Room, Friday, April 15, 7:30-9 p.m.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Same City, New Eyes

Back in the days of lockdown (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

To anyone who may have been driving around Memphis last weekend, please accept my sincere apology. I was playing tour guide to my aunt and uncle, who were visiting from North Carolina, and, being somewhat distracted, I made what my sister called some “interesting” driving decisions. So if you saw someone still stopped at a green light, pointing out a particular piece of architecture or a local landmark, that was probably me. I hope I didn’t make you late for an appointment.

Besides being absolutely roasted for my inability to be a somewhat competent distracted driver, the day was a delight. My aunt is from Memphis and my uncle was stationed here when he was in the Army many years ago, so they’re not totally new to the city, but it still felt like a chance to see my hometown with new eyes.

Before I delve into our itinerary, know that I know we barely scratched the surface of any meaningful Memphis to-do list. But I tried to cater to everyone’s personal interests as much as possible.

First, we went to Crosstown Concourse, which my aunt pointed out has been much transformed since its time as a Sears building. Indeed.

We took in the last day of photographer Jamie Harmon’s “Quarantine Portrait” exhibition, and I was struck again by the power of so many faces seen through so many windows and screen doors. Though I had seen many of the portraits before — even written about Harmon’s work while it was still in progress — seeing them all collected was another experience entirely. Though I don’t truly believe we’re fully out of the Covid woods just yet, it brought home how much has changed in the past two years. Often, perhaps as a side effect of my profession, I tend to focus on the seemingly negative changes — the loss of trust, the fragmentation of communities — but I was forced to confront the many ways things are better than they were in April 2020. It was a catharsis to revisit that time from the safety of an art gallery, and with loved ones in the same room. That is a blessing I must endeavor not to take for granted.

While at Crosstown, we stopped at the little reading area, where my nephew enjoyed finding books about dinosaurs. It’s a place I’ve walked past many times but hadn’t taken the time to appreciate. How many such spots must there be in town?

Next, we made our way to Broad Avenue, to give the out-of-towners a chance to peruse some arty knick-knacks and to reward my nephew with some ice cream after his patience with the exhibition. He’s 4 years old, so his tolerance for the gravity of any situation is tenuous at best. My fiancée, who is passionate about the built environment, enjoyed being able to talk about the work done in both locations. My nephew enjoyed a cup of chocolate ice cream and the faux-flower-wearing skeletons at Sugar Ghost Ice Cream and Bubble Tea.

We spent a little bit of time talking about and looking at Summer Avenue, then we hopped back on North Parkway to hustle down to Greenbelt Park by the Mississippi River. It was a sunny, breezy spring day, and there were picnickers, joggers, dog-walkers, pot-smokers, cyclists, and everyone in between enjoying it. There’s something special about being close to the river, and we all felt it. Until I accidentally knocked my nephew off a tree while we were playing some game in which we were both (I think?) territorial spiders locked in bitter combat. Oops. Everyone was okay, though it was decided that perhaps it was time to move on.

We drove through the South Main Arts District, where my uncle used to pick up his contacts. We talked about the trolleys, the changes, the things that had stayed the same. We drove past a busy FedExForum and saw young people popping wheelies on ATVs. We waved as we passed both business and entertainment districts Downtown, and I pointed out a billboard of Ja Morant in the Vitruvian Man pose.

Eventually we made it back to my house to make dinner and play board games, not unlike how we used to spend so much time at my Grannie’s house when I was a child. It was modest, but not without its own magic.

I guess, in many ways, that’s true of Memphis, too.

Categories
Fashion Fashion Feature

Reno Warmath’s Unaesthetic Designs

The “Fake Friends” limited release (Credit: Reno Warmath)

Though he now resides in Los Angeles, California, Memphis-born musician and designer Reno Warmath says his hometown was an influence on his creative life. Like many of the Bluff City’s creative types, he is not content to confine himself to only one art form. He is a designer, a musician, and an entrepreneur, and his newest work — Renaissance art-inspired fashion — is available at unaestheticlosangeles.com.

I spoke with Warmath to find out about his fashion company Unaesthetic’s inaugural release, the “Fake Friends” collection. 

Memphis Flyer: Tell me a little bit about yourself. Are you from Memphis?

Reno Warmath: Yes, born and raised! My name is Reno Warmath and I’m a graduate of Christian Brothers High School and the University of Memphis Music Business program. I left Memphis after graduating college and ended up in Los Angeles pursuing a career in the entertainment industry. Since coming to L.A., I’ve had the opportunity to work on shows like For All Mankind (season 1, Apple TV) and Raised by Wolves (seasons 1 and 2, HBO Max) as well as starting a few projects of my own, one of which being Unaesthetic. 

We’ll get to Unaesthetic in a bit, but first, have you always been interested in fashion? 

The idea of being involved in the fashion world didn’t really come on my radar until my 20s. I was always interested in graphic design and creating visual media, but I never thought these skills would translate over to fashion. It was really when I started becoming aware of what Virgil Abloh was doing with OFF WHITE and seeing what other brands like Born and Raised or Palace were creating that I realized this space was for me. In my eyes, it’s more about creating compelling media to accompany the clothing. Designing clothes is just the first step — how can I use my brand to tell a story, maybe through photos, cinematically, or even live events? We live in a time where anyone can get into the fashion game. It just takes the courage to put your ideas on the table and see what you can create.

I know you’re also a drummer. Has making music influenced your art-making and fashion ethos? 

Believe it or not, I’ve been playing drums since the age of 1. Drumming has just become a part of who I am and it definitely has an effect on everything I do creatively. I think the main thing I’ve learned from playing drums all those years is that you only get out what you put in, and I’ve applied that mindset to my brand and all of my creative ventures. Drumming also gives me an outlet to free my mind and just reset my thinking. I’m definitely the most creative designer after a few hours of playing the drums.

The “Fake Friends” limited release is inspired by the Kiss of Judas by Giotto di Bondone. (Credit: Reno Warmath)

Can you talk a little bit about what beauty and aestheticism means to you? 

Fashion and beauty have been, for such a long time, synonymous with one another, but I think traditional beauty is not what it was a decade ago. Beauty today is not a standard, it is more about individualism and the idea that every person has their own unique beauty or style. This concept has given birth to so many new streetwear brands that all have their own identity and are being taken seriously in the fashion world. Streetwear brands have runway shows now, it’s wild. 

How did you get linked up with Unaesthetic? 

The idea to create Unaesthetic came to me when reading a book called Philosophies of Art & Beauty: Selected Readings in Aesthetics from Pluto to Heidegger. The word “unaesthetic” got stuck in my head. I knew immediately I wanted to create a brand around this concept. I had already been toying around with repurposing Renaissance art works into modern designs but I had no real outlet for the creations. It took about a year and a half of research into the manufacturing side of creating a clothing brand and actually developing a visual identity for the brand before I decided to launch. 

Can you tell me a little bit about the “Fake Friends” collection?

The “Fake Friends” collection is Unaesthetic’s inaugural release with the main goal of establishing the brand’s concept. Modernized Renaissance street wear. I had a hard drive full of design ideas to choose from, but I felt the Kiss of Judas design really conveyed everything the brand was about. It was a play on the Renaissance period, religion being a major undertone, and presented the brand’s visual style being the very cryptic, Greek/Roman re-revival feel, so to speak. The rest of the collection consists of staple pieces featuring the brand’s Angel Logo. While the staple pieces will be revisited in future collections, the design-centric pieces will not be reproduced. 

Why did you gravitate toward the Kiss of Judas? 

My design workflow usually starts with me sifting through tons of Renaissance artwork and setting aside the ones that visually stand out to me. I try to look for pieces that I know I can extract a lot of various elements from. I then try to find some ironic meaning behind the moral of the work. For the Kiss of Judas, the concept of “Fake Friends” really jumped out and I thought that would be an interesting take. The painting by Giotto [di Bondone] alone tells such an interesting story. The subjects, Jesus and Judas, feel almost isolated while the chaos is circling around them. Giotto uses simulated motion and the bunching up of characters to make this scene feel very claustrophobic and chaotic. I loved the idea of isolating the central characters and placing them in a more serene environment as if they are floating in time and space. It’s a juxtaposition that you would only get by connecting my design to the original artwork.

What made you want to utilize Renaissance art in the collection?

I’ve always been drawn to the artwork of the Renaissance era. The work that came out of that specific area at that specific time is really just culturally fascinating. Every time I approach a painting to begin work I always dive deep into the historical context of that work and look for ways to tie it into my redesign. There is so much backstory to every piece of art from this era and I’m constantly learning new things when working on these designs. I really encourage people to take a look at artsandculture.google.com — it’s amazing the amount of data that has been digitally immortalized from this period. 

Where would you like to see your fashion go in the future?

Fashion is just the beginning. Unaesthetic is a cluster of ideas all centered around a theme. It’s not just a clothing brand, but a vessel for creativity that happens to start with clothing. The end goal, who knows. I’m currently working on narrative-driven cinematics for the brand as well making a push in the live event space. At the end of the day, I want to see how far I can push this thing. The more boundaries I can break, the better.

Is there anything else you would like to mention?

I would love to give a big shout out to Bad Timing (549 S. Highland Street, Memphis). Those guys are really cultivating the streetwear scene in Memphis and it’s awesome to see. If you’re in Memphis that shop is a must stop. I’m also working with another L.A.-based brand, 1-off Amore, founded by a fellow Memphian, AD. We are planning a one-of-a-kind runway show this summer here in Los Angeles. More information will be released via Instagram @unaestheticlosangeles.

(Credit: Reno Warmath)
Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Cancel Culture and Other Myths

Photo: Richard Van Der Spuy | Dreamstime.com

That does it. Let it be known, with the Memphis Flyer’s readership as my witness, that the 64th annual Grammy Awards officially obliterated the last ounce of patience I had for any argument about so-called cancel culture.

No, I’m not upset that Cedric Burnside’s I Be Trying won Best Traditional Blues Album — last year, the Flyer listed it as one of our top 10 albums of the year, and I’m always pleased when this publication’s record of excellent taste is affirmed.

Rather, I’m totally unsurprised but equally disgusted that comedian and serial masturbator Louis C.K.’s album Sincerely Louis C.K. won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album. A headline from The Hollywood Reporter really sums it up: “Louis C.K. Wins Grammy for First Special Since Sexual Misconduct Allegations.” For those who don’t know or don’t remember, in 2017 five women accused C.K. of sexual misconduct, including masturbating in front of them. The comedian eventually admitted that “These Stories Are True.”

But I don’t want to get off track. It’s not so much that C.K. won a Grammy that upsets me, though I can’t say I’m wild about that development. Rather, it’s that a very vocal contingent of the population will undoubtedly continue to crow about cancel culture despite clear indications that it’s nonexistent.

“What about former Mandalorian actor Gina Carano?” some devil’s advocates might ask. To which I would promptly respond, “Oh, you mean the woman who claimed that being a Republican — a choice one makes — is akin to being a Jewish person forcibly relocated, tortured, or exterminated during the Holocaust? Yeah, pretty tone-deaf and egregious thing to say, right? She’s the star of the forthcoming Western film Terror on the Prairie.”

Oh, and she’ll be at Fan Expo in Dallas in June. She’s still getting work, still collecting checks, and I would be flabbergasted if she doesn’t publish a ghost-written book about the evils of liberalism soon. Carano vs. Cancel Culture: My Stand Against the Elites or something like that.

Look, cancel culture is not real. It’s made up, a bogeyman to drum up right-wing outrage and pearl-clutching fear in Fox News viewers. “You can’t say anything these days. You can’t even publicly denigrate another person for their culture. I ask you, what is the world coming to?”

But why invent a completely cuckoo culture war? It’s the easiest way to get people to vote against their own self-interests.

I’ve made a point to shy away from fuming about hypocrisy — the hypocrisy is the point, it seems. It’s an expression of power, of tribal solidarity. But something about this whole cancel culture debate has really ruffled my feathers. Consider how big a fuss is made, nationally and locally, about protecting children. From critical race theory, from CBD and Delta 8, from predators, from confusion about why little Sarah’s got two mommies. And yet Tennessee state Rep. Tom Leatherwood’s HB 233, which sets up a common-law marriage between “one man” and “one woman,” has no minimum age limit. The Sexual Assault Center of Middle Tennessee said this in a statement: “The Sexual Assault Center does not believe the age of consent should be any younger than it already is. It makes children more vulnerable to coercion and manipulation from predators, sexual and other.” Does that sound like a bill presented by people overly concerned with protecting children?

We have got to get beyond these cancel culture/culture war concerns. There are real, dangerous threats facing us. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just this week released a report that it’s “now or never” if we want to limit global warming. Limit. Not stop, but limit. We are wasting time, energy, and money on spurious arguments when we should be working to end climate change, to end the current pandemic and prepare for the next one, to combat the housing crisis, to focus on any number of other concerns that actually limit many people’s quality of life.

If you agree, I suggest that you do as I will, and shut down any cancel culture talk with one little phrase. I think it will be as useful as “State’s rights to do what?” — the question I use to nip discussions about the “true” cause of the Civil War in the bud.

The next time someone tries to warn me about cancel culture, I’m just going to say, “Louis C.K. won a Grammy for his first special since his sexual misconduct allegations.”

Categories
Book Features Books

Tara M. Stringfellow Launches Memphis at Novel Bookstore

Author Tara M. Stringfellow is a poet, a traveler, a former attorney, a Memphian, and she will launch her debut novel — Memphis — Tuesday, April 5th, with an event at Novel bookstore.

The novel follows three generations of Black women living in Memphis. It’s at once a family saga, a story of the power of art, and a deeply political social commentary. There is much pain in Memphis, but there is hope and triumph as well. It is a heart-wrenching, inspiring, moving novel. And to write it, Stringfellow drew on both her imagination and her own experiences.

“Kind of like my main character in the book, I moved here full-time when I was 10 [years old],” Stringfellow says. Before moving here, she remembers phone calls with family members in Memphis; until she was 10 years old, Stringfellow lived in Okinawa, Japan. Her father, who is also a poet, was a Marine at the time. The author says the beauty of her childhood surroundings and her connection to family in Memphis helped nourish her love for poetry. And her work as a poet suffuses every page of her debut novel.

Also like Joan, the main character in Memphis, Stringfellow says that she has strong ties to her old neighborhood in North Memphis. “Douglass kind of raised me for a bit, and I loved it,” she remembers. Community is a powerful force in her novel, as exemplified by this passage: “All of Douglass—the teenagers in love, the tired working men, the even more tired womenfolk—all of them stood on the steps of the porch Myron had built for Hazel, stood on the lawn, climbed up the branches of the magnolia and found seats where they could. The people in the neighborhood stood watch that night.”

Stringfellow finished writing the novel after returning to Memphis following the early months of the Covid pandemic. She says it felt right to complete it here. When she finished the book, she couldn’t help but think, “What has my family given for me to get here?”

In Memphis, Joan is a young painter whose love for her art both grounds her through some turbulent trials, and might eventually lead her away from Memphis. “I do connect to Joan in that way,” she says. “My passion for writing, I wanted her to have the same passion for art.” Stringfellow says she believes that Joan will carry Memphis with her wherever she goes. “Memphis will always be there in her home. And sometimes we have to leave home, to go to school or go somewhere. And I feel like it’s so nice to come back home.”

Though she has lived in other cities, states, and countries since her childhood, and though she lives in a different neighborhood now that she’s back in Memphis, Stringfellow is quick to profess her affection for the city from which her novel takes its name. “I love my neighborhood,” she says. “All my neighbors are real diverse, and we all just kind of take care of each other. I really do love living in Memphis.” Look for a longer interview with the author in the near future in the pages of the Flyer.

Tara M. Stringfellow is at Novel, Tuesday, April 5th, 6 p.m.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Not Your Father’s Batman

Adam West as Batman from the television series. (Photo: Wikipedia)

If you own a copy of Detective Comics No. 27, published in March 1939, you own a piece of history, and one worth a gold mine. Batman was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger. The character debuted in the 27th issue of Detective Comics, and he’s been punching and POW!-ing his way through the collective unconscious ever since. Not bad for an octogenarian who wears his underpants on the outside.

Producer Bill Dozier’s Batman television series, starring Adam West in the titular role, aired as reruns when I was younger, and I watched them with my dad. But my Bat-mania kicked into high gear when Batman: The Animated Series was released in 1992.

Decades later, I’m still a fan. Recently, my sister and I ate dinner at a local restaurant before catching a screening of the newest Bat-film. As we waited for our food, I drank a Memphis beer — a risky move considering the film’s nearly three-hour runtime — and asked my sister when she thought her son might be ready to visit Gotham for the first time. He’s about six months younger than I was when I started watching the Adam West reruns, so the timing seems right. Not to mention that my nephew tends to prefer characters who dress in black and act dramatic (He’s a huge fan of the evil queen in Snow White), so a cape-wearing weirdo who hangs out in a stalactite-encrusted cave should be right up his Crime Alley. The conversation got me thinking about different generations.

Batman, a part of the cultural milieu for so long, is a convenient vehicle for observing changing cultural norms and aesthetics. Though superheroes have conquered the box office in the last decade, somehow Batman seems to stand apart. Who knows why? Maybe it’s that Bats works on his own without elaborate stories mapped across the entire DC intellectual property universe. Maybe it’s just that he’s been around for 83 years.

My dad was the one who made sure I saw the 1966 Batman TV show. He also took me to see Mask of the Phantasm in theaters, and he was the one who rented Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns on VHS. He usually has kind things to say about Burton’s Bat-flicks, but if pressed, he always makes fun of Michael Keaton. Adam West, he’d say, is the best Batman, the “real” version. West is best; he didn’t need no stinkin’ rubber armor.

Whereas, if you ask me, Kevin Conroy, who voiced Bats in the animated series, is the best Batman. No contest. And my favorite Joker? Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger can sit down; Mark Hamill takes the crown as the Clown Prince of Crime. Why? His vocal range — he can go from mirthful to menacing on a dime. Or, more probably, because I watched the animated Batman show religiously while I was in the target age group.

So, if my nephew ends up being a Bat-fan, I’m sure someday I’ll be disappointed in the version of the character his generation loves. To be honest, I hope that Batman becomes more and more anachronistic as society changes, as our understanding of crime and its causes and solutions evolves.

In fact, as our film editor pointed out in his review of the newest Bat-flick, Batman is already out of date. According to Forbes, “Overdraft banking fees, specifically, cost consumers $12.4 billion in 2020. Though it’s a decrease from the authors’ findings of overdraft fees totaling $17 billion in 2018, it’s still steep.” When we think of crime, though, we often think of shady-looking individuals in ski masks breaking into homes. But according to the FBI’s website, “Victims of burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.0 billion in property losses in 2019.” Granted, Forbes is talking about 2018 and 2020, and the FBI statistics reference 2019, but there’s still between a $9 billion and $14 billion difference between losses attributed to overdraft fees versus burglary. It seems Bruce Wayne could do more good for Gotham by buying Gotham Bank and eliminating those fees. And I hope wage theft isn’t an issue at Wayne Enterprises, or Batman needs to haul himself into Arkham for questioning.

Maybe, like King Arthur and Camelot, Batman and Gotham will be enjoyed long after the world portrayed on comic pages and on-screen loses any resemblance to our own. Or maybe we will sacrifice the World’s Greatest Detective on the altar of a changing world. Even a super-fan such as myself can see that’s a worthy trade. So keep Batman in mind when considering a potential solution to one of our many challenges. Whether we’re combating income inequality, climate change, racism, or any other of the world’s worst villains, those of us old enough to legally buy a drink might be uncomfortable with the changes we must make. “That’s not how we did things in my day,” we might be tempted to say. “Not my Batman.”

Well, it’s a new world, old chum, and this ain’t your father’s Batman.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Following the Script

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (Photo: Wikimedia | Creative Commons)

Sometimes I think about jumping ship. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I think I have some felicity with a turn of phrase. I have, on occasion, inspired an emotional response from my readers. Maybe I’m letting my ego run wild, but I think I could add something to any bench of speechifiers. Why not me?

What, one might ask, has prompted this flight of fancy?

Why it’s the senate confirmation hearing for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, of course! As I write these words, the hearings are still ongoing, and it’s becoming apparent beyond parody how different are the standards to which we hold certain individuals. Consider, for example, the stark difference in qualifications between, say, Judge Jackson and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, who grilled Jackson on the first day of the hearing. If you so happen to be surfing the world wide web, I suggest contrasting the two officials’ Ballotpedia pages.

Jackson “received a bachelor’s degree in government, magna cum laude, and a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard University in 1992 and 1996, respectively. She served as the supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review from 1995 to 1996.” Blackburn, just for comparison, “graduated from Mississippi State University with a bachelor’s in home economics.”

Jackson’s page also boasts a lengthy list of awards. But I shouldn’t be unfair. Blackburn’s name is in a New York Times headline this week. To wit, the Times published an article by Charlie Savage titled “Echoing Conservative Grievances, Blackburn Miscasts Jackson’s Views.”

If you’ve seen any of the video from the hearing, you already know that transgender athletes, progressive education, parental rights, and (of course) critical race theory (CRT) were on the senator’s list of grievances. Most of the issues were, to be generous, something of a leap. Blackburn misquoted her way through Jackson’s record, apparently attempting to prove that Jackson was an agent of the deep state, hell-bent on introducing her secret biases into the American legal system.

“Ms. Blackburn also described three instances in which Judge Jackson ordered the release of inmates, including ‘a convict who murdered a U.S. marshal,’” Savage writes in the Times article. “The cases appeared to match three Covid-era rulings by the judge under a compassionate release law. The senator omitted the context: The man who killed a U.S. marshal, for instance, did so in 1971, had since served 49 years, and was 72 at the time of his release, with myriad health problems.”

Ah yes, those dangerous 72-year-olds. What a menace! Surely, this is proof that Judge Jackson is “soft on crime.”

Is that all it takes? One has only to mumble their way through a list of talking points, and one of the nation’s two foremost political parties is all too ready to celebrate them? Don’t we expect more from our senators? There are only 100 of them! Can we not expect them to comport themselves with some dignity? At the very least, can they not misquote people during a nationally televised hearing?

Of course, the lion’s share of the blame is undoubtedly because Jackson is Black. I have no doubt that the complaints from senators and Fox News hosts are owed primarily to racism, particularly any so-called “concern” about the judge’s qualifications for the role.

It’s a disturbing trend and a truly sad state of affairs. And if people think this behavior is acceptable while on camera, imagine what must happen in so many interviews, meeting rooms, and who-knows-where-else across the country. The unnecessary scrutiny some people must contend with, the free pass others get to make mistakes again and again and again. What really frightens me is that there seems to be a significant portion of Americans who think that it’s normal to twist the facts to fit a narrative, for whom fact checking is an anachronism.

So I wonder sometimes what it’s like to join the party for whom qualifications only matter if you’re talking about the other team. Why be constrained by facts, truth, common decency, or the belief that everyone deserves a fair shot? It must be an easy gig, following that well-worn script, if you can find a way to sleep at night.

All you have to do is speak loudly and carry a big grudge.

Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Student-Led Produce Group Takes Root at University of Memphis

Black MajesTEA’s Nadia Foster and Olivia Roman with client (Courtesy: Black MajesTEA Co-op)

Black MajesTEA (BMT) Co-op is new but growing. BMT is a co-op led by University of Memphis students Nadia Foster, founder and executive manager, and Olivia Roman, creative director. Foster is also the founder of Black MajesTEA, LLC, a company that focuses on teas and tinctures rather than fresh produce, as BMT does. 

“I’ve always wanted to help bridge the gap of health insecurities and health disparities in Memphis,” says Foster, a native Memphian and senior at the U of M who enjoys dates (the fruit). “I wanted to start BMT Co-op to help address the need for nutritious, fresh, available fruits and vegetables. My family, as well as a vast majority of Memphians, live in food deserts and don’t have access within a five-mile radius to anything fresh.”

The co-op debuted at the end of January 2022. On February 11th, they stepped up their game, doubling their output by going from every other week to every week. BMT Co-op has also partnered with The Nine at Memphis apartments, a site near the U of M where many international students live.

Olivia Roman at the Tiger Pantry (Courtesy: Black MajesTEA Co-op)

Before her time as a student at the U of M, Roman, who is also a senior this year and whose favorite fruit is a red apple, attended Catholic schools, and says service was a criteria for graduation. “We were very service-oriented,” Roman says. “It became a pretty large part of my life, and I have a huge respect and appreciation for people working to end food scarcity and food insecurity in Memphis. This seems like a really good opportunity to continue that effort.”

The co-op gets anywhere from four to 11 or 12 customers a week. But, Foster says, “We have been seeing a steady increase.” They have donated to the Tiger Pantry at the U of M as well. “We’ve made it work so far.”

“We consider our measure of success just being able to help one person with affordable, accessible fresh produce,” Foster says.

“A lot of hard work and love is poured into this,” Roman adds.  “We are continuing to grow and are doing better every week.”

So what’s in store for Black MajesTEA Co-op after these seniors graduate? Never fear, Foster and Roman plan to keep a healthy relationship with the U of M. “We do get some of our fresh herbs from the U of M gardens,” Foster says. “After graduation we both have plans to continue working in this city and the area.”

“We’re very grateful to our Memphis community,” Roman says. 

Most important for BMT Co-op, Foster says, is ensuring that the produce remains accessible to Memphians. “We want to keep it at an affordable cost, keep it accessible, and keep it healthy.”

Nadia Foster with fresh produce (Courtesy: Black MajesTEA Co-op)