Author: Louis Goggans

Shortly after Rena Loyd adopted her terrier mix, Daisy, from Memphis Animal Services in late January, she noticed the dog was showing signs of illness.

“She was not eating or drinking,” said the senior administrative assistant at Smith & Nephew. “I literally had to take a syringe to squirt water into her mouth because she was lethargic.”

A week after the adoption, Daisy died of distemper, an airborne, highly contagious viral disease. On March 27th, almost two months after Daisy’s death, a distemper outbreak in the animals shelter’s adoption area resulted in the euthanization of more than 100 dogs over a four-day period. (According to animal shelter director Matthew Pepper, a few of those dogs may have been euthanized for reasons other than distemper.)  

Sickness spreads quickly at the animal shelter at 3456 Tchulahoma since animals are held in close proximity to one another. But a new city animal shelter designed to prevent the spread of disease is set to open in late summer.

More than twice as large as its predecessor, the new shelter at 2350 Appling City Cove will feature 30 central heating and air conditioning units, a quarantine area for sick animals, and a surgery suite. The current shelter only has one ventilation system.

Mel Scheuerman, the city’s administrator of design and construction, said the current shelter’s setup increases the spread of disease: “When you’ve got animals in close contact and you don’t have the space to isolate new animals that come in, you raise the opportunity for contamination.”

Although the current shelter’s design may have contributed to the March distemper outbreak, Memphis Animal Shelter advisory board member Cindy Sanders said steps could have been taken to lessen its impact.

“A distemper [outbreak] of this magnitude doesn’t happen overnight,” Sanders said. “The euthanization shouldn’t have been a knee-jerk reaction. There are measures that could have been taken. Cleaning methods and housing methods could’ve been put into place at the first sign of the distemper. But it seems they buried their head in the sand and waited until it was a full outbreak.”  

Animal advocates like Sanders have been waiting a long time for the new shelter to open. The project has been in the works for more than five years.

Scheuerman said the shelter’s construction delay has been due to lack of funding. The project, initially proposed in 2005, needed $10 million to be completed but was only provided $5 million initially.

Once complete, the shelter will offer education and training classes to teach citizens how to be responsible pet owners.  

“The prominent issue for us is to help the community become aware of responsible pet ownership. We wouldn’t need animal shelters if they [were responsible],” Pepper said. “Letting your animal outside to roam is not good for the community.”

What will happen to the current shelter, which is owned by the Memphis Airport Authority, has yet to be determined.

Pepper said the new shelter is not a cure-all for Memphis Animal Services’ problems. Shelter employees will still be responsible for providing good care and customer service.

“The building [itself] is not going to greet people when they walk in,” Pepper said. “It’s not going to care for the animals or educate the community on correct pet ownership. That’s our job.”

Toothbrush shanks, cell phones, and cocaine are among common contraband items confiscated inside the Shelby County Jail over the past few years.

But the recent bust of a guard attempting to smuggle forbidden goods into the jail sheds new light on the problem of staff sneaking drugs and other items to inmates.

In early March, Shelby County deputy jailer Rumeal Moore was busted in a contraband sting when he took marijuana, loose tobacco, and $300 from an undercover officer on Hickory Hill Road. Moore was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell and attempting to bring contraband into a penal facility.

Moore is the most recent example of jail staff caught smuggling contraband into the jail at 201 Poplar. Mark Dunbar, assistant chief deputy of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, said the department has indicted more than 90 employees for the crime since 1990.

“Some employees have a tendency to develop friendships with inmates, but they let these people start manipulating them,” Dunbar said. “Once they do one favor for them, it’s difficult to stop.”

Jailers administer daily “shakedowns,” an intense search of inmates and their cells. Shelby County Jail director Robert Moore said the jail conducts more than 100 scheduled shakedowns a month, plus more than 200 unscheduled, random searches.

In addition, employees must now stay inside the facility during their eight-hour shifts. Before, employees could come and go, which enabled some to smuggle contraband in with them more easily.

“There’s a lot of outstanding employees in that jail who work hard, but it’s those few bad apples that make the facility look bad as a whole,” Dunbar said.

The most common forms of contraband found in the Shelby County Jail are marijuana, loose tobacco, and cocaine. Other items found have included knives, bullets, Oxycontin, and even a stereo system. Sometimes inmates create contraband from allowed items, such as knives carved from toothbrushes.

Moore said contraband is a lucrative trade for employees and inmates. A pack of cigarettes, which are not allowed in the facility, sells for roughly $50 in jail.

So how is it possible for inmates to get away with smoking cigarettes or other drugs?

Dunbar compares the situation to a concert: “I reluctantly went to a Kid Rock concert once. While I was there, I could smell marijuana being smoked, but I didn’t know where it was coming from. That’s how it is in jail. There’s so many people, so it’s impossible to monitor everyone. You might smell something, but you don’t always know where it’s coming from.”

Since more than 60 percent of the facility’s employees grew up in Shelby County, Moore said many workers know inmates prior to their incarceration.

“One of the inmates may be their friend, their next door neighbor, or their relative,” Moore said. Prior relationships can make it more difficult for a jailer to deny the inmate desired contraband items.

Q.B., a Memphis resident who preferred to not reveal his full name, spent two years behind bars and over that time, he said he witnessed a tremendous amount of contraband being smuggled by jailers to inmates.

“Why would you put yourself in a situation that risks your career for someone who’s already incarcerated and in deep water? It’s not worth it at the end of the day,” Q.B. said.

Besides drugs and weapons, Dunbar said cell phone contraband is also a major problem. Steven Rucker, a 21-year-old Memphis resident, said his incarcerated brother communicates with him from jail via cell phone and also possesses a portable PlayStation gaming device.

But Rucker said he doesn’t agree with the smuggling of contraband to inmates: “As long as you have contraband, you’re going to have killings, raping, and violence. There’s always going to be someone who wants to take what you have.”

Overly caffeinated drunkenness may be a thing of the past in Tennessee if a couple of state legislators from Memphis have their way.

Senator Reginald Tate and Representative Karen Camper are co-sponsors of a bill that would end the sale of energy drinks in bars and restaurants where alcohol is served.

Tate said he created the bill after the Memphis Police Department (MPD) informed him of numerous incidents involving the consumption of alcohol mixed with energy drinks.

Unlike the effects from traditionally mixed drinks, the combination of a highly caffeinated energy drink and liquor conceals the feelings of intoxication. Vodka, Jagermeister, and rum are commonly mixed with canned energy drinks, like Red Bull or Monster.

“It’s telling your body two different things at the same time,” Camper said. “The alcohol is telling the body, Hey you’re drunk, and the energy drink is saying Man, you’re fine. Keep drinking. It’s definitely risky behavior.”

If passed, the bill would fine and suspend the liquor license of any Tennessee establishment that violates the new rules.

Although Tate said he based the bill on incidents that occurred in Memphis, MPD spokesperson Karen Rudolph said the consumption of alcohol mixed with energy drinks has led to more problems in other Tennessee jurisdictions.

“I created the bill as a result of incidents that erupted at bars and restaurants [where people had consumed] caffeine and alcohol,” Tate said. “There’s some type of reaction that people get from doing both. It gives people an adrenaline rush.”

Brian McCade, the manager of Newby’s on Highland, said Jager Bombs and Vodka Red Bull cocktails account for 10 percent of the bar’s sales.

“If the bill is passed, it would definitely have an effect on us,” McCade said. “We sell about 50 to 60 of those types of drinks on a busy night.”

Keith Clark, a bartender at the downtown Huey’s, said the bill wouldn’t affect their beverage sales because the mixture isn’t popular there: “We don’t sell [more than] two to three on an average day.”

Although intoxicated people may provoke trouble no matter what they’ve had to drink, Tate believes the combination of liquor and energy drinks makes violence more likely.

“Many students are coming from bars and getting stopped by police officers,” Camper said. “They’re so hyped from the caffeine that they don’t realize they’re drunk. This causes a lot of them to get arrest records they don’t need, endanger other people’s lives, or hurt officers because they don’t know their strength.”

The bill was filed in February. It’s been assigned to the state and local government subcommittees of the Tennessee House and the Senate and is being reviewed.

Move over, Mark Zuckerberg. There’s a new social network in town, developed by University of Memphis senior Antavius Flagg and his twin brother, Antonio.

Antavius, a 25-year-old liberal studies major, said he had no idea the website he and his brother created for residents of their hometown of Jackson, Tennessee, would blossom into an international social networking hub. But as of last week, the Flaggs’ Night Fun Live! site featured more than 1,500 members from across the globe.

The brothers created the site last July to provide Jackson residents with information on local parties and other social events. But it quickly transformed into a forum for people around the world to chat on various topics.

Since its inception, the site — NightFunLive.com — has averaged an estimated 100 new members per week.

“The idea came to me after a great night on Beale Street,” said Antonio, who lives in Jackson. “I wanted to create an environment online where people could be entertained or party online with people across the world. I see Night Fun Live! being the social network for the young and young at heart.”

Although the networking site shares some similarities to Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, Antavius said Night Fun Live!’s mostly international membership sets it apart.

“The majority of our audience is people from other nations,” Antavius said. “You have Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. Those sites encourage people to befriend people that they already know. With our site, we try to incorporate that, but we also encourage friending and dialoguing with people from all over the world, like India and Africa.

“The only place we don’t [have members from] is China because our site is blocked there. We encourage people to become more aware of the world as a whole, because it’s so much bigger than the area you live in,” Antavius said.

Antavius credits the site’s success to Facebook users from other countries transitioning to Night Fun Live! and thus creating a snowball effect with their peers.

Since the site’s main audience isn’t American, more than 40 language translations are provided on the website, which members can access by clicking the toolbar at the bottom of each page.

Another thing that distinguishes the site from other networking sites is video conferencing. Night Fun Live! members can use the site to create their own video chat rooms.

Members can also check their Facebook and Twitter accounts from the website and even look for jobs in the U.S.

“Of course, you can’t ignore the big elephant Facebook, but we don’t see them as competition,” Antavius said. “Night Fun Live! has a Facebook page, and we encourage our members to ‘like’ us on there.”

The brothers are in the process of creating a mobile application of the website for iPhones and iPads, as well as expanding the job listings to feature international careers.

To join Night Fun Live!, members must be at least 13 years old and adhere to the site’s regulations: no stalking, no spamming, and no profanity or vulgar uploads.

Although the site has only been live for less than a year, Antavius said he and his brother have big goals for 2012.

“A year from now, I hope to see even more membership,” Antavius said. “Some people can’t go a day without Facebook or tweeting, and we hope to have that same recognition. We hope people wake up and, before they eat breakfast, check what’s going on at Night Fun Live!”

When health expert and author Chet Sisk volunteered at a homeless shelter in Denver, he said he saw people donate food “he wouldn’t feed his dog.”

“Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, chicken-on-a-stick, and pastries. Basically things that would’ve been better off being buried in a local landfill,” Sisk said.

Sisk, founder of Quality Foods for Everyone, a program that provides organic, all-natural foods to homeless shelters nationwide, was at the University of Memphis last week speaking on the topic “Food Fight: How To Bridge the Food Divide Before Things Get Really Ugly.”

Sisk said bakeries often donate day-old sweets to homeless shelters and feeding programs. This practice holds true in cities across the country, and Memphis is no exception.

Jason Smith is the group coordinator for the Memphis chapter of Food Not Bombs, an organization that provides the homeless with healthy, vegetarian meals every Saturday. Smith said stores are more likely to donate baked goods than healthy foods.

“Baked goods are thrown out every day, but fresh produce is harder to come by,” Smith said.

Smith said Food Not Bombs wants to change the way Memphis’ homeless population eats.

“A lot of churches and shelters serve fried chicken, hamburgers, and hot dogs. We’re trying to provide an alternative to that,” Smith said.

Homeless people often have compromised immune systems, and unhealthy foods aren’t helping.

“Many are recovering addicts or are still suffering from addiction or alcoholism. Many don’t know when or where their next meal is coming from or where they’re going to sleep, so their health has already been ravaged,” Sisk said.

Brad Watkins, organizing coordinator of the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center, said it’s challenging for local shelters to provide nutritious food when they’re relying on donations, but he said healthier food for the homeless would cut down on medical costs.

Most local shelters do the best with what they have. Sister Maureen Griner, executive director of the Dorothy Day House of Hospitality, said volunteers bring meals to the transitional house on Poplar every Monday night. Past meals have included pork tenderloin, pizza, tacos, and chili. Volunteers are encouraged to bring healthy meals, but Griner said, unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.

Steve Carpenter, director of development at downtown’s Memphis Union Mission, said they normally serve some form of meat, vegetables, a starch, and bread at their free daily breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.

“We try to keep it as balanced as possible,” Carpenter said.

A volunteer at the St. Vincent de Paul Food Mission on North Cleveland said they serve bag lunches that include “sandwiches, something sweet, and something salty.”

“The plan is to provide guests with something nutritious,” said the volunteer, who asked to have his name withheld. “We normally serve bologna or peanut butter sandwiches, chips, and donuts or cookies.”

After falling victim to a carjacking in East Memphis a few weeks ago, Memphis hip-hop artist Jason “Da Hater” Harris has received nothing but love from his friends.

When Harris’ friends in the local hip-hop community heard about the incident, they banded together to create a collaborative mixtape to help their friend buy another vehicle.

Harris pulled over to help a lady change a flat tire at an East Memphis BP gas station on January 29th. As he placed her spare tire on, he discovered it was also nearly flat.

The air tank at the BP station was empty, so the two drove to a nearby Shell station at Poplar and Kirby. As Harris pulled in, he saw a middle-aged white male sitting under the station’s sign, but he said he didn’t think anything unusual about it. After he finished pumping the spare tire, Harris looked up to see the man driving away in his white 1996 Dodge Intrepid.

Harris then pulled what he calls a “Mel Gibson Lethal Weapon move” on the car thief.

“I tried to run and jump through the window,” said Harris, an assistant football coach and health teacher at Whitehaven High School. “Once I saw the car rolling down the street, I began reaching in my pockets to call the police and realized that my phone was in the car.”

After the carjacking, Shalishah Franklin, communications manager at the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission and a friend of Harris, contacted 29 local musicians, requesting one track from each for a compilation album to help a “mysterious” friend.

“I did not tell them who it was at that time, and I did not tell Jason what we were doing because I wanted to make sure it would happen first,” Franklin said. “On the strength of trust in me, the supportive nature of our creative community, and the will to do good, I received 18 tracks in two days.”

Love 4 Da Hater, an 18-track collection of raw-but-soulful hip-hop, was created over a three-day period. The diverse catalog features music from “Da Hater” himself, as well as DJ Hush, Cities Aviv, Knowledge Nick, and many others.

The mixtape — actually a CD — is being sold at hip-hop venues and also is available as a MP3 download at loveforthehater.tumblr.com. Though the download is free, donations are encouraged.

Franklin hopes to raise at least $1,000. She said she’s not worried about people downloading the album for free online because the artists will still receive exposure. “We are steadily raising money through the online Pay Pal opportunity as well as at various concerts,” Franklin said. “That level of support in such a short period of time is what motivates us to continue to help Jason.”

Franklin said Harris often used his vehicle to give student football players rides to and from games and practice. She’s hoping donations and album sales will raise enough money to help Harris buy a new car. Harris’ Intrepid was paid for, and he only had liability insurance.

Kevin Smith, also known as DJ Hush, produced several tracks on the mixtape. Smith said people shouldn’t be fooled by Harris’ “Da Hater” moniker: “That’s his persona, but if you know anything about Jason, you know he’s anything but that.”

“I want nothing but love for ‘Da Hater’,” Smith said. “I hope he gets what he needs from the mixtape.”

Since his vehicle was stolen, Harris said he’s been catching rides from family members. He said he’s thankful for his friends’ efforts, but he’s reluctant to accept the money they raise.

“I did have an unfortunate happening,” Harris said, “but there’s people out here that are worse off than I am.”

In the wee hours of October 6th, 2006, downtown’s First United Methodist Church saw over a century of history go up in flames after a mysterious fire began in the church’s basement.

Despite a re-building effort that began in 2008, only a steel frame of a steeple and adjoining building sits in the sanctuary’s corner at Poplar and Second. Reconstruction of the church’s once-iconic sanctuary has been at a standstill for months.

The Rev. Scott Alford, the church’s senior pastor, said renovation is being done in phases, and that the holdup is because of the congregation settling back into its home.

After the fire, the church, dubbed First Church by its congregation, held services in temporary locations such as the Cannon Center, St. Jude’s Barry Building Conference Center, and St. Mary’s Catholic Church. The congregation returned home in December 2009 to hold services in the neighboring John R. Pepper Building.

“We’re celebrating being back on the corner here, and we want some time to continue rebuilding our presence,” Alford said. “We’re steadily moving in the right direction to be complete [with construction], but I really don’t know when that will be.”

Re-adjustment isn’t the only thing hindering the church from completing the sanctuary.

Alford said the church needs around five million dollars to complete the sanctuary’s construction, and they’re launching a capital campaign in March to raise more funding. Some citizens have already taken the initiative to help.

In September 2008, ophthalmologist Ralph Hamilton and his wife, Barbara, donated $1 million to the church. Bob Canady, husband of University of Memphis president Shirley Raines, provided the church with new stained glass windows.

First Church merged with Whitehaven United Methodist Church in January of last year. Adult Sunday school teacher Jack Christenson said the church plans to sell the Whitehaven church building to raise money for constructing the sanctuary.

Alford said the church hopes to receive support from the community to help fund the remaining cost to complete renovation.

On Sunday, the church celebrated its 185th anniversary inside the newly renovated Pepper Building next door to the incomplete sanctuary.

The Pepper Building, which only suffered smoke and water damage from the fire, now boasts a rooftop worship space, a courtyard, a chapel overlooking downtown, and Sunday school classrooms.

First Church, established in 1826, is the oldest congregation in Memphis, and its building dates back to 1893. At Sunday’s anniversary celebration, church members voiced their feelings about the fire.

Christenson said he could still remember getting the early morning phone call that his church was in flames.

“It was devastating to see a historic church like ours completely gone,” said Christenson. “It was just horrible. There’s no way to describe it.”

Congressman Steve Cohen spoke at the anniversary celebration, and he said he admired the congregation’s resilience.

Said Cohen: “It’s good to see that the fire did not destroy the body of the church, but worked as a phoenix to bring it closer together.”

University of Memphis mascot TOM II will soon be showing up all over town in celebration of the university’s centennial.

But fortunately for the live tiger mascot, TOM II won’t have to adhere to an exhaustive appearance schedule. Instead, 100 life-size tiger statues will be installed in locations around Memphis in 2012.

University supporters are already purchasing the statues through the U of M Alumni Association. Tammy Hedges, the association’s executive director, said buyers get the opportunity to work with an artist to design their tiger as well as choose the year it will represent.

“If you graduated in 1982, you can purchase that one,” Hedges said. “It will also have a plaque on it that will provide something important about that year at the university, as well as the buyer’s name, the artist who created it, and what they named their tiger.”

The university’s centennial public art campaign is similar to that of the 60th anniversary of the Germantown Charity Horse Show, for which 21 painted horses were commissioned and placed around Germantown in 2008.

There are two different fees for the U of M’s tiger statues: $5,000 allows a person to sponsor the statue and keep it forever; $3,000 will allow them to sponsor the statue throughout the centennial campaign. After the campaign, the statue will be auctioned.

Each fiberglass tiger statue will be around six feet high, two feet wide, and weigh 600 pounds. Buyers have a say in where their tiger statue will be located.

Hedges said, thus far, 21 of the 100 tigers have been sold. Mark Long, co-owner of Holiday Flowers Inc. and past president of the U of M Alumni Association, is one of the buyers.

Long, who was also involved in the Germantown Charity Horse Show campaign, helped come up with the idea to place the tigers around town.

“We want people to see what an asset the campus is and show what the U of M means to the community,” Long said.

Hedges said all 100 sculptures would be revealed on campus during an unveiling gala on September 10th. The statues will remain on campus throughout the holidays. In early 2012, they’ll be transported to sponsor-selected locations around town.

The last day to purchase a tiger is the day of the gala, and those that go unsold will be auctioned online to the public in 2012.

Connie Thiemonge, coordinator of the U of M Alumni Association, said the statues symbolize the growth that the U of M and the Memphis community have made over the last 100 years.

“The more people see the statues around town, they will get an in-depth understanding of the relationship that the school shares with the city,” Thiemonge said. “It’s generations deep.”

Fueled by the World Health Organization’s statistic that a child dies every six seconds from malnutrition, Ted Medlin has made some philanthropic efforts to make a difference.

In less than a year, the farmer and corporate lawyer from Germantown has helped to feed more than 700,000 people suffering from hunger in other countries.

Medlin’s first food program — Christ Feeds Haiti — took place in May 2010, a few months after the earthquake in that country. Hosted by Medlin’s church, Christ United Methodist, the program enlisted more than 900 volunteers and provided more than 150,000 meals.

In October of last year, Medlin held another food program at his church. That program provided 200,000 meals, 800 school uniforms, and 200 pairs of shoes for needy people in Zambia. Later that month, Medlin organized a food-packaging program in honor of World Food Day at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. That program packaged 355,000 meals to be shipped to starving people all over the world.

“They don’t have soup kitchens they can go to,” Medlin said. “They’re just impoverished and in despair.”

Medlin acquires 100-pound bags of soybeans, flour, and rice through humanitarian organization Outreach International.

“We mix [the grains] and put them in plastic bags that hold six meals — similar to freezer bags,” Medlin said.

As a result of his charitable work, Medlin was recognized in December with a replica of the Congressional Medal of Honor from the Danforth Plant Science Center.

The replica is based on the original medal presented to the late Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who introduced high-yield, disease-resistant wheat into Mexico, Pakistan, and India. Medlin credits Borlaug for his work to help the hungry.

Medlin said he found his calling in September 2009 when he traveled to Des Moines, Iowa, to attend a memorial service following Borlaug’s death. While there, Medlin met a couple involved with a food-packaging program to help the hungry in Tanzania.

“I’ve seen the eyes and faces of starving people in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia,” Medlin said. “It left me to wonder, What can I do? And when I experienced the program in Des Moines, I felt that I reached that moment in my life where I could make a difference.”

Medlin said his next food program will occur this summer: “We did 355,000 [meals] last time; this time we’re going to provide 400,000 meals.”