Author: Zac Hill

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Q&A: John McCall

Since its inception in 1991, John McCall’s ArkWings Foundation has taken more than 600 local inner-city youth on weeklong trips to the American Southwest in an attempt to nourish their bodies, minds, and spirits. McCall, an associate professor with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, has the teenagers spend part of their time climbing, rappeling, hiking, and canoeing and another part distributing medical supplies at a Native American pueblo. Once back in Memphis, the community service continues. — By Zac Hill

Flyer: Taking kids on camping trips to New Mexico isn’t most people’s idea of medical care.

McCall: Medicine is an integrated process. A lot of medical schools around the country — Harvard, Duke, Stanford — have mind-body institutes. It’s about reconnecting medical schools to teach more than just the allopathic aspects of medicine.

For so long, we didn’t know how to measure that stuff, so the emotional and spiritual aspects of health got carved up and locked out. Really, we’re trying to help people answer life’s three questions: Where did we come from, what are we doing here, and where are we going? … People are hard-wired to ask these things.

What happens on the mission trips?

Taking care of yourself to take care of others is a fundamental principle. We take the kids out to work with some of the Native American groups in New Mexico, and we distribute health-and-wellness kits as part of a Fourth of July parade. We do all kinds of outdoor activities, but the kids constantly say their favorite part is the parade. “For the first time,” one of them said to me, “somebody wanted something that we had — and we had something to give to them.”

That’s our “transformational experience”: getting these kids outside of their everyday environment, breaking the cycle and planting the ideas that there is something else in the world besides what they’re used to. Most of these guys have never been out of Memphis.

What happens when you get back to Memphis?

When we come back to the real world, we see the kids once a week, do service projects, and talk. We collect medical equipment from hospitals and doctors’ offices. The kids help pick this stuff up and take it to a warehouse where we transfer it out. We give the equipment to medical mission teams that are going overseas.

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The Long Road Home

CREDIT: Benjamin Howell/Dreamstime.com

For the thousands of Katrina evacuees still living in Memphis, hope may be on the horizon. Louisiana’s “Road Home” program — a collection of services charged with spearheading the recovery effort — has set up temporary offices at the Holiday Inn Select on Airways.

As part of the program, a displaced homeowner can receive up to $150,000 to rebuild an existing home, purchase a new home in Louisiana, or relocate out of state. The average dollar amount awarded for each claim is $76,162. In total, the program has $7.8 billion in funds earmarked directly for homeowners.

“The way the program works is there’s a meeting after the application,” says Tiffany Alexander, public information officer with ICF International, the firm overseeing the Road Home program. “We have been asking people to come to Louisiana, but there are so many people applying that we decided to go on the road to help them.”

Applicants can schedule interviews at the Memphis location until April 29th. After the 29th, the Memphis office will be closed.

Critics of the Road Home program have pointed to vast post-interview delays as evidence of an understaffed and overloaded department. They blame bureaucratic red tape and excessive anti-fraud measures for failing to put money in the hands of displaced victims. As reported by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Louisiana legislature ordered a special panel to investigate ICF’s handling of its contract.

As of April 16th, only 7,800 of the program’s more than 125,000 applicants have received funding.

ICF counters that it is over a year ahead of schedule based on its initial October 2006 contract and that customer surveys reflect that 93 percent of people are very satisfied with the program. They also cite a 15 percent fraudulent claim rate in neighboring Mississippi’s housing program to show that rigorous prevention efforts are necessary “to protect homeowners from fraud and to ensure that those who benefit from the funds are eligible Louisianans.”

Statistics support ICF’s claim that the Road Home process is become more efficient. Of the families that received Road Home funding, more than 6,500 of those awards were given within the last two months, according to a February PBS report.

“The Road Home program represents the largest recovery effort in U.S. history,” says Alexander. “With such a large undertaking, a verification process and safeguards against fraud must be put into place, but every effort is being made to assist homeowners in any way possible. That is one of the reasons we are in cities including Dallas, Atlanta, and Memphis.

“Many Road Home employees are applicants themselves,” she adds. “They are going through the exact same process they are guiding others through.”

Katrina evacuees who would like to apply for Road Home funding or schedule an interview can call 1-888-Road-2-LA or visit www.road2la.org.

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Pops Goes …

Shortly after the Elvis birthday pops concert in January, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra (MSO) marketing department received an ominous anonymous note: “We have Robert. Be very afraid.”

But the Robert who had been kidnapped wasn’t Robert Moody, one of the three potential pops conductor candidates to succeed Vincent Danner but a cardboard cutout of him.

Cutouts of the three candidates, Moody, Matt Catingub, and Michael Krajewski, had been placed in the lobby of the Cannon Center as part of an ongoing, audience-guided selection process. The Moody cutout, worth about $200, was stolen from a Cannon Center storage room; the other two cutouts remain in the symphony’s possession and unharmed.

The symphony has been searching for a new principal pops conductor for more than a year and wants to take the pops series in a new direction.

“Not all orchestras who play pops have that natural talent for making the music bubble in a pops setting, but the MSO can do that, and our audiences sense it,” says Jackie Flaum, public relations manager for the symphony. “A good symphony can play Mozart and John Williams [film-score composer for Jaws, the Indiana Jones trilogy, and Superman] with equal skill. How can we do all that? The best way is to find a leader who loves and understands pop music in a symphonic setting.”

The MSO charged each candidate to program two concerts. Catingub’s background in big band inspired his September performance of “Misbehavin’ Nightly with Byron Stripling,” in which he featured his own music from the film Good Night, and Good Luck. Moody, meanwhile, wowed audiences with his “Star Wars and More,” a tribute to John Williams’ cinema scores, in which he tore open his shirt and turned dramatically to reveal that he was the Man of Steel at the climax of the Superman theme.

Krajewski’s “Hollywood Spectacular” debuted March 10th and featured music from blockbusters across the decades, including Ben-Hur and Gone With the Wind. His rendition of the “Colonel Bogey March” from The Bridge on the River Kwai even included a segment for audience participation. “I know you’ll want to whistle to this,” Krajewski said, and proceeded to divide them into “Group 1” and “Group B” to perform their respective parts.

Audience reaction has been positive across the board. “So far, they seem to like the candidates equally well but for different reasons,” says Flaum.

However, in a letter from the marketing department to the kidnapper or kidnappers, the symphony cautions that the cutout’s disappearance may adversely affect Moody’s chances.

“We do not negotiate with terrorists,” the letter says, and concludes with the bold affirmation, “WE ARE NOT AFRAID!”

Flaum, however, remains cautious. “We have no leads in the disappearance of the cutout of Robert Moody and no idea who would do such a thing. We have heard nothing from the cutout or the kidnapper since, and we greatly fear for the cutout’s safety.”

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New Life for the Lair

“Try to mimic the Flying Saucer in terms of beer presentation and selection.” That isn’t the type of order typically given to a college dining service, but Rhodes students aren’t complaining.

The school’s “Lynx Lair” was envisioned as a one-stop sandwich shop with a muted sports theme and some table games to pass the time — an alternative to the “Harry Potter” feel of Rhodes’ daunting main cafeteria. But faced with soaring food prices and a lack of student patronage, Rhodes Student Government (RSG) decided it was time for a change.

“Students have always given feedback to Aramark [the dining services company] and student government about the facility’s food options, wait times, and flexibility as a space student groups could use or simply hang out in,” says RSG president Andy Greer. “Over the years, layers of Band-Aid solutions have been applied: expanding the menu, adding refrigerated display cases, adding pool tables, adding booths. While these changes improved the facility a little, none addressed the core problem: The Lair feels exactly like its name — a giant, open space where everyone feels exposed.”

Greer hosted a series of focus groups in early September to assess student wants and needs and compiled his findings into a downloadable report(www.rhodes.edu/images/content/RSG/Final_Lair_Report.doc) that RSG would present to architects. The “Flying Saucer” suggestion was just one of the conclusions of the report, which also emphasized better food selection and a smaller, more private atmosphere.

“When students enter the facility, they won’t feel like they’re on a catwalk,” Greer says. “The entrance will shift to the patio, and there will be three zones, each with a separate feel: a pub area, an open area with the stage in the middle, and a softer seating area. The food-service area will be greatly expanded and will include separate stations for different types of food. Southwestern-style cuisine and a brick pizza oven are some examples.”

Student involvement didn’t end after the focus groups, however. Greer created “Redo the Lair” on the networking Web site facebook.com as a forum for students to voice their opinions, and he also put up a comment board in the entrance to the Lair. He gave those comments to the architects in official meetings in January and February.

“I really feel like the student feedback throughout this process has been, and will continue to be, the driving force of the design,” he says. “Students need to feel ownership of any space to make it successful, and I feel like this space reflects their input and not what ‘the administrators’ thought would be good.”

Construction begins after school lets out in May and should be complete by the time students return in August. Rhodes is contracting with Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas, the architects who worked on the Paul Barret Jr. Library and the “East Village” on-campus apartment complex.

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Please Stand By for Revolutions

There’s no such thing as a free ride, but at Revolutions Community Bike Shop, you can find an inexpensive one.

Since its inception in 2002, Revolutions has become a nexus for the local cycling community. Located inside First Congregational Church in Cooper-Young, it offers bike repairs, parts, and even the occasional bike tour of downtown Memphis. But it isn’t your ordinary bike shop — Revolutions also lets members have replacement bike parts for free.

“I was working at a local bicycle shop,” says co-op founder and executive director Anthony Siracusa. “Most of the kids that came in had no money for bicycle repair and ended up leaving before we could make their bikes safe and more user-friendly. Many would stop their bike by shoving their foot into the spokes. It inspired me to think that there must be some type of model designed to address this very problem: the fact that poor folks often rely on their bikes but often can’t afford retail bike shop rates.”

Siracusa developed an idea to provide people with affordable bicycles as well as the materials and training they would need to maintain them. He would keep costs down by building bikes exclusively out of parts donated by the community. People receiving the “recycled” machines could pay for them by working at the shop. From that vision, Revolutions was born.

For Siracusa, though, the shop is not only about bicycles. “We want to transform the relationship that individuals have with the bike shop and its community,” he says.

Memberships, which are open to the public, cost $40 and cover a basic bike frame as well as a year’s worth of replacement parts.

“What this means,” Siracusa says, “is that a member has access to the shop’s collective resources.” Members who don’t already own bikes can build a machine out of the shop’s parts library or can opt to have Revolutions mechanics put a bike together for them. After their cycle gets built, members learn maintenance skills from shop technicians and have access to spare parts should they need something.

“Memberships ensure that our shop is available to any and everyone who needs bicycle maintenance or bike parts,” Siracusa says. “In this way, we are creating an intentionally woven community of cyclists.”

Once a person’s membership expires, he or she has the option of renewing it for another year. Even if they don’t renew their membership, they can still keep their bike.

It might seem that Revolutions’ generosity would spell economic catastrophe — especially if people take advantage of the system. But throughout the shop’s operation, only two individuals have ever defaulted on payments.

“A central tenant of our program has been to provide bikes to both the working and non-working poor,” Siracusa explains. “We feel this service is central to what the bike shop is called to do.”

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A True Underdog Story?

Dodgeball, the gym-class activity turned adult-intramural pastime, is headed to Memphis, so watch out.

Starting January 17th, the Raymond Skinner Center will host the Memphis Dodgeball League’s inaugural season. The brainchild of Kevin Olsen, the league features 20 teams that will battle through a 10-week round robin to determine seeding for the Tournament of Champions. The winners of that tournament, held over two weeks at the end of the season, earn the honor of holding the soon-to-be-prestigious Dodgeball Cup.

“I’ve been wanting to set up a dodgeball league for about a year and a half,” says Olsen. “Everybody has at least one dodgeball story and most of them end with, ‘Man, that game was awesome.’ Why do we have to stop playing because we’re adults? I think a mortgage and car payments are every reason we should play. It’s therapeutic.”

Evidently, other people share his opinion. The very first day Olsen advertised the upcoming league on Craigslist.org, he received over 70 responses.

“It’s a great game no matter how you play it,” he says. “Memphis Dodgeball is geared for people like me — those who were always in the last two or three to be picked for anything in elementary school or junior high. We’ve grown up, and things have changed, and this gives us the opportunity to relive our youth.

“Every time I would get pegged in the face with one of those red rubber kickballs, I would think, Just wait, I’ll get you eventually. And now I can.”

League fees are $500 for a team of 10. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Skinner Center’s recreational programs for physically and mentally disabled youth. Additional monies go to league operations.

“When I started this, I wanted it to expand exponentially. The goal was 20 teams the first season. Then the summer season would be 30 to 40 teams spread between two divisions,” Olsen explains. “My goal is to be able to lease or purchase my own Midtown or downtown warehouse to convert for exclusive dodgeball use.”

Even though the league is currently for adults, Olsen eventually wants to start a youth league, as well.

“I believe dodgeball is banned in the city and county schools,” he says, citing safety issues. “There’s something incredibly cathartic about dodgeball. I think teenagers need it as a safe, controlled way to act out aggression.”

Olsen has already contacted similar organizations in Horn Lake, Baton Rouge, and Nashville for some friendly cross-league competition. He looks forward to battling the Nashville contingent in particular:

“I’ve already called them out, and we’re going to prove that the dodgeball capital of Tennessee is on the Mississippi.”

For more info on Memphis Dodgeball, go to Memphisdodgeball.com

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Santa’s Little Helpers

It’s a little-known fact that Santa Claus lives on Chelsea.

For the last three years, Santa and his helpers at the Oasis of Hope Toy Store have made Christmas a possibility for over 850 North Memphis families.

The store is not open to the general public but is “designed for neighborhood families and those in significant financial need,” says Oasis of Hope chairman Tom Capon. With much of the store’s merchandise donated by members of Hope Presbyterian Church in Cordova, the store offers name-brand toys to disadvantaged families at an affordable price.

“Our desire is for North Memphis residents to have a quality neighborhood outlet to purchase Christmas gifts for their children,” says Capon. “The gratification people express at being able to provide for their families and themselves is immeasurable.”

Toys that retail for $10 at area stores cost about $3 at Oasis, while pricier items, those in the $50 to $75 range, sell for about $20.

Oasis staff work with area schools and community centers to compile the store’s invitation list, which is sent out to select families each year in mid-November. And even though shoppers save an average 70 percent off the retail price, Oasis staff members are adamant that toys should never simply be given away.

Former Hope Urban Ministries head and Oasis of Hope architect Cornelius Sanders envisioned the store as a way for people to earn something for their families and to create a sense of satisfaction that they could take pride in.

Pamela Chambers-Hill, the 2006 marketing chairman for the church’s Toys of Hope program, says she started helping because the program reached out to a group of people who are often overlooked during the holiday season. “There are a lot of programs out there that target the very, very poor. Meanwhile, people who are working hard to make ends meet get lost in the shuffle,” she says. “Not everybody qualifies for giveaways.”

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Sign Up, Sign Down

With Election Day a seemingly distant memory, the city is beginning to recover some sense of normalcy. Gone are TV ads about family values and the pipe-dream promises of myriad I-approve-this messages.

But on telephone poles, in empty lots, and on curbside greens, the fight is not over.

The recent election season saw over 20 million campaign signs posted on public property nationwide. For campaigns concerned with putting the signs up, the difficult task now becomes tracking them all down. In addition to being an eyesore, signs that overstay their welcome blur the line between “free speech” and “litter.”

Judge Larry Potter of the Shelby County Environmental Court has overseen over 50 lawsuits against offending candidates, including Bob Corker, Harold Ford Jr., and Phil Bredesen. Cases are still pending against a few fringe candidates who posted signs on street medians.

“These signs are a very real problem during political season,” Potter said. “They are a public nuisance.”

Environmental court does not have any jurisdiction over political signage on private property. The Shelby County zoning ordinance provides that “temporary political campaign or referendum signs including their supporting structures are permitted provided they are erected no longer than 90 days prior to an election and are not placed upon utility poles or within public rights-of-way.”

But according to Larry Jenkins, chief zone and sign inspector for Shelby County Code Enforcement, there is no official timeframe for the signs to be taken down.

This can cause campaigns to get lax in cleaning up the mess, particularly those of losing candidates who used all their money and volunteer power during the race itself.

Potter hopes people know that the court takes these matters seriously. Since January 2005, environmental court has fined over 35 different candidates.

“Fines are based on a per-sign basis. I usually do it on a sliding scale,” says Potter. “We have people that put out 300 or 400 signs at once, and we do get quite serious with them. It all depends on the number of signs.”

The court can assess up to $50 plus court costs per sign, though penalties differ depending on the nature of the signs.

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Q&A: Kevin Murray

It seems Homeland Security might need a good exterminator. Last month, four electronic listening devices — often called “bugs” — were found above the ceiling tiles of the local office of Homeland Security, the department charged with protecting the United States from terrorism.

If that sounds like an all-too-brief assessment of a potentially life-threatening situation, that’s because many of the details — including the reason for and the perpetrator behind the bugging — are uncertain. County officials initially indicated that the devices were found during an FBI sweep but later retracted that statement.

Kevin Murray is the founder of Murray Associates, an independent consulting firm specializing in audio eavesdropping, video voyeurism, and espionage countermeasures. He says if you think you have found a bug, do not disturb the device and do not alert the eavesdropper by talking. Instead, secure the area, take photos if possible, and only tell those with a “need to know.”

We talked to Murray about just how easy it is to listen in. — by Zac Hill

Flyer: How easy is it to obtain a “bug”?

Murray: Electronic surveillance equipment that would have been considered Bond-ish in the past is now available (via the Internet) to anyone.

People who might not have considered spying before — due to cost, availability, technical knowledge, fear of discovery — have had all those stops removed.

What kinds of listening devices are available?

You name it; it’s out there.

What is the typical transmitting range?

Well, for radio, what they try to do is make the range as small as possible; you don’t want somebody else to stumble across it by mistake. The rule of thumb is to keep it low-power. However, there are devices where you can be on the other side of the world, dial in a phone call, and listen. Buy a cell phone with cash, then put the ringer on silent and configure it to answer automatically — you’re totally anonymous.

What’s the penalty for illegal audio surveillance?

Generally speaking, it’s never imposed to its fullest where you get jail time. There is usually a monetary fine. In civil cases, it’s around $100 per day for every day they can prove it’s going on, though state laws vary in the exact amount.

How do you detect a bug?

First thing you can do is a physical search — after all, there are only so many places within a room you can hide something. You just look around until you see something unusual. That can take a lot of time, and it’s a lot of work.

You can use a spectrum analyzer to detect radio transmissions, or a telephone analyzer to take a look at the phone and wire itself.

At the high end, you can use thermal-imaging cameras to detect heat that’s given off from a listening device. Whenever you put electricity through a circuit, some of the power is lost as heat. But even if you took a small bugging device and hid it within something else, it will still generate a small amount of heat. With a sensitive-enough camera, you can see the heat. So if there’s a book on your bookshelf that’s glowing red on the camera, you might want to take a look at it.

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Congress Cashes Out

Lakeland resident and Emory University student Tim Kopcial won almost $50,000 playing online poker his freshman year of college. But with a new bill passed by the United States Senate, Kopcial’s luck may have run out.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was added onto the Security and Accountability for Every Port Act, expected to be signed into law by President Bush on October 13th. Though the bill doesn’t explicitly outlaw most major forms of online gambling, it prohibits credit card companies and other payment providers from processing online gambling transactions.

The bill’s passage was sparked in part by horror stories about the prevalence of online gambling, especially among college students. The country was shocked late last year when Greg Hogan, a class president at his university and the son of a minister, robbed a bank to pay gambling debts he accrued during his freshman year. An estimated 1.6 million of the nation’s 17 million college students have gambled on the Internet at least once.

Andrew Meyers, director of the University of Memphis Gambling Clinic, attests that gambling addiction is a very real issue.

“When you look at the numbers, it’s pretty startling,” he says. “One to 2 percent of all Americans have a serious gambling problem, and another 3 to 5 percent have some degree of damage in their lives due to gambling.”

Those gambling addicts who use the Internet can be especially difficult to treat.

“It’s very fast-paced, especially sports betting. You can lose a lot of money very, very quickly, and there’s no human element present to help spot an addiction,” says Meyers. Still, he says, the Senate measure may be an overreaction. “In other countries, [online gambling] doesn’t seem to present the threat that it does to the United States. I suspect that the legislation has more to do with economic concerns than it does a moral attitude.”

Congressman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican who pushed through an anti-online-gambling bill in the House earlier this year, says the Senate measure should prevent some of the $6 billion from “getting sucked out of the economy.”

Gamers themselves are receiving the news with mixed reactions, though many are looking to fight the legislation. The Poker Players’ Alliance argues that poker — the most popular form of online gaming — is a skill-based game that should be exempted from the provisions of the bill.

Others say that the issue isn’t worth fighting because it is so difficult to enforce. Many avid gamers stopped using credit cards years ago, opting to route their funds through payment services such as BillPay.

“There are so many alternate means of payment that it is not going to stop what is happening here,” says Frank Catania, former director of gaming enforcement in New Jersey and president of Catania Consulting Group. “We are going to be spending a lot of money for enforcement, and it is going to be worthless.”

As for Lakeland’s Kopcial, he doesn’t see it affecting him. “I’m over it,” he says.