Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

An Extraordinary Machine

It’s been a minute since I’ve written in this space, dear readers. Time both drags and zips by, and I hope you’ve all been well in the interim. For anyone who has followed my columns since April when I broke my foot, I’m excited to report that I’m walking again — without training wheels, so to speak. I ditched the orthopedic boot a month or so ago. I battled with and lost to the ankle brace — it was uncomfortable and none of my shoes fit over it, so it was sent to early retirement. The wheelchair and walkers have been locked in the vaults of my mind, a memory I hope to never revisit (except when I return those items to their rightful owners — thanks for the borrow, y’all!). I’ve finished week four of physical therapy, and I’m able to walk — in supportive shoes — with minimal pain. 

I say minimal. It still hurts, but compared to what I’ve endured since spring, this stage is a walk in the park. There’s nerve damage — a constant dull burn and numbness. My foot still swells if I’m up and about, even around the house, for more than a few minutes. And there are ligaments that feel like tight rubber bands pulling toward a snap with each step. I can’t seem to walk down a set of stairs — my foot doesn’t want to work that way — but I can walk up them. 

I was thinking about a form I filled out at my last physical therapy appointment. It asked to rate things like putting on socks and shoes or walking a mile on a 1 to 5 scale of difficulty. I answered “little difficulty” or “no difficulty” on a few items, which, in hindsight, I still have quite a bit of difficulty doing. But as I gave each task a score, I was mentally comparing them to how I felt two or three months ago. The fact that I can even do these things feels like a miracle now. (Still no hopping, jogging, or running, which all received a side-scribbled “N/A” on the scale.)

Another miracle is that I’ve gotten back to my almost-daily ritual neighborhood walks. Those sacred meditations in motion where I can see the seasons change in the leaves, admire the sunlight shimmering across puddles, feel the cooler breeze against my skin. It seems I missed all of summer stuck inside mostly immobile, and my body knows it. My muscles have had to put in extra work just to be upright — my back, shins, and calves aching from a measly mile walk. But I’m gradually adding more distance, more time with shoes to pavement, taking care not to overdo it. 

On a recent stroll, crisp leaves scattered the sidewalk in little cyclones, and the wind bent branches on decades-old trees towering overhead. I stopped, as I always have, to photograph flowers and butterflies and sprouts peeking through cement cracks. I spoke to my favorite old neighborhood dog, who, although she acknowledged me with a side-eye from her lounging spot in the yard, was too cozy in a sunning session to be bothered to rise and greet me. My lungs were full of fresh air and my soul filled with gratitude. For a while I walked with one earbud in listening to quiet tunes, but then there was a louder sound. Not the whir of speeding cars on the nearby thoroughfare or the chatter of neighbors conversing on their front lawn. It was a pulsing in my ear — my heartbeat. I paused the music and listened to my body’s life force, felt the drumming in unison with my steps. Reminding me that the past — that held so much pain — is gone. That my body — this extraordinary machine — is mending as it should. That this aching — this firing of blood and muscles — is necessary to fully heal. That my internal drum — pounding as I march ahead — forges on. As the last long sighs of summer give breath to fall, this path — right now (right now, right now) — is exactly where I’m supposed to be. 

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Staycation Daydreams 

Welcome to our annual Staycation issue! This year our team chose to revisit (or visit for the first time) some Memphis mainstays — the Peabody, Stax, Beale, and more — places that consistently draw tourists, and, to some degree, mark (to outsiders, at least) the major beats of our city’s pulse. In years past, we’ve highlighted lesser-known locales to encourage deeper exploration of what makes the Bluff City tick. This edition, though, serves as a reminder of just a few of the landmarks that can’t be missed — even if you drive by them every day on your work commute without a second thought — if for no other reason than to knock them off your Memphis bucket list. Maybe this is the summer to leave the “I’ve never been to Graceland” choir and join the “I’ve been there — I loved it!” crew. (I have been to Graceland once, thank you very much.)

Although my healing bones aren’t quite ready to go on any museum tours or Downtown jaunts, I’ve had a lot of daydreams about future excursions. After three months of limited mobility — wheelchairs and walkers and orthopedic boots — I’ve never looked more forward to venturing out beyond the doctor’s office or grocery store. Scanning the Flyer’s weekly calendar of upcoming events, there’s always a handful of things that catch my eye. Speaking of which, while some weeks — such as this one — our calendar is cut short due to available print space, there is always an extensive list of local happenings on our website. Check our calendar page or bookmark events.memphisflyer.com and plan your next adventure!  

Halladay visits. (Photo: Shara Clark)

The first thing on my “once I can walk again” to-do list is just that — walking. I so miss my beloved neighborhood walks, even this time of year. Hot or not, I love admiring the saturated summer colors, the well-kept flower beds, the squirrels busy doing squirrel things. The sun beating down, forcing sweat from my brow and body. It just feels good (but damn the humidity!) — alive with heat and light and movement. Bonus points if I’m able to cool off in a neighbors’ sprinkler on my path. In the meantime, I’m staycationing, literally, at home. But I’ve made some new backyard friends to keep me company. Thanks to my boyfriend Chris, who picked up a giant bag of birdseed a few weeks back on a whim, I now have daily visitors: blue jays, cardinals, robins, finches, doves, the occasional hummingbird, and a curious crow we’re trying to attract that hasn’t done more than circle overhead thus far. The birds are familiar with his morning routine now — first a scoop of seed, then a fist full of peanuts in the shell. The blue jays come out en masse to beat the squirrels to the nuts. The smaller birds swoop in throughout the day to peck at the feed or soak under the spinning sprinkler (cut on just for the wildlife), sometimes offering a low flyover or a long, cocked-head look and a song from the power line above, what we take as a “thank you.” I watch from my little side-yard stoop as (the regulars have been given names) Roberto, Gibson, Rudy, Halladay, and friends make their rounds, cawing and flapping at one another or patiently taking turns at the food pile. 

Oh, and my lilies have bloomed! They shot up, thick-stalked and tall, within the last few days. The lush pink blossoms are always a welcomed return. Originally uprooted from my previous home and replanted here, they come back every year, somehow each time more beautiful, hardy and requiring no work on my part. Like those lilies in the offseason, I lie dormant for now, but will burst forth soon, stronger and more resilient. Bending toward the light and looking forward to experiencing all the city has to offer once more.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Farm Futures

Four generations — some old enough for their AARP cards and others too young to drive — gathered at Shelby Farms Visitor’s Center Saturday, December 1st, to brainstorm about the future of Shelby Farms Park.

At 1 p.m., about 30 adults, ranging in age from late 20s to early 80s, gathered at the center as part of a series of public input sessions. Later in the day, nearly 30 teens met in the same room for the same purpose, but their ideas couldn’t have been more different.

“I don’t want to see more development,” said Travis Handwerker, a middle-aged man who frequents the park to walk his dog. “I want to see the naturalness enhanced. I don’t want to see hot dog stands.”

Another man at the early-afternoon meeting echoed his concern: “I’d hate to see vendors come in.”

But hours later, several teens pitched the idea of opening a “green café” serving coffee and healthy snacks.

“How close is the nearest restaurant? And I’m not talking about a McDonald’s,” said 17-year-old Nick Finlayson of Middle College High School.

The Shelby Farms Conservancy asked attendees to place suggestions on notecards. The ideas will be compiled in a report and presented to the three design firms selected as finalists in the Shelby Farms master planning process.

Hargreaves and Associates of San Francisco, Berkeley-based Tom Leader Studio, and New York City’s Field Operations will use the input in their master plans. Those plans will be unveiled to the public in March during another set of input meetings.

“Many people are concerned about overdevelopment. They don’t want the park to lose its natural feel,” said Laura Adams, interim director of public engagement and development for the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy.

Adams said the most common requests have been more bathrooms, improvements to the outdoor amphitheater, and adding rustic camping sites. Sustainable energy, such as solar panels on the visitor’s center or windmill energy, are also recurring themes.

At the teen meeting, suggestions were a little more far-reaching. In addition to an eatery, teens would like to see a ropes course, a rock-climbing wall, a seasonal ice-skating rink, and a swimming pool with a water slide. One teenager even suggested a water park.

“Change is always good. That’s something that people [in the adult meetings] may have a problem with, but you have to develop this park to get teens to come out and use it,” said 17-year-old Brandon Asemah, president of the Shelby Farms Youth Alliance. “Memphis is not very teen or kid-friendly. Why do you think we have so much crime?”

Finlayson agreed. Though he lives in Midtown, he says he rarely visits nearby Overton Park because there’s nothing to do.

“Parks just being parks aren’t that appealing to teens,” said Finlayson.

But the adults and teens did agree on a few things: They’d like to see the park stay open later with nighttime family activities, such as live music or astronomy programs. And everyone seemed to agree that the restrooms could use an upgrade.

Said Memphis University School senior Chris Bloodworth: “It’s not groundbreaking or revolutionary, but how about some real bathrooms at this place?”

Categories
Art Art Feature

Plant, Animal, Mineral

In her exhibition at Clough-Hanson Gallery, “The Solid Matter of a Celestial Body,” Jillian Conrad leaps from high to low art and from the utilitarian to the metaphysical as she messes with the meaning of art and asks, “What is real?”

In the first moments of viewing Conrad’s Flat Earth Projections, we see every nuance of color, every chasm, every mineral vein of what could be a stone, a mountain face, or a meteor hurling through space before it burns itself out in the atmosphere. As we adjust to the darkness in the small room in which Flat Earth Projections are placed, we realize the crispest, most detailed artworks in the show have no substance. Conrad has magnified pieces of road rubble and projected their images on the wall.

For Horizon Line, Conrad placed a stone on a plywood shelf and then outlined the stone’s shape on the gallery wall. The jagged and soaring lines of Conrad’s elegant drawing remind us that the forms of abstraction, as well as landscape, as well as figuration, derive from nature.

Conrad then takes us inside Oz, three gleaming mountain-shaped panels propped up with wooden scaffolding and stones. With this work, she evokes abstract art’s holiest of holies — flat luminous fields of color — then knocks down the facade by revealing the nuts and bolts of mounting a show.

This is an artist who finds art not in discrete objects or esoteric aesthetics but in the way ideas and objects bounce off one another. So what is art; what is real? Conrad’s elegant, iconoclastic exercises in seeing suggest the answer is simple and unknowable all at once.

“Jillian Conrad: The Solid Matter of a Celestial Body” at Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, through December 5th

“Plants: Interior & Exterior,” Montyshane Gallery’s current exhibition, is not your garden-variety plant show.

Nancy White’s ceramic figure Owed To could be a metaphor for Mother Earth or for the Eve-in-us-all, still in the garden, still intimately connected to life. Eve’s slender green body looks freshly hewn from swamp moss and clay. She sits on the earth looking down; small animals rest on her shoulders; flowers sprout from her womb and limbs.

Melanie Spillman, an artist known for her delicate, sensual watercolors of troubled celebrities, chose flowers as her subject for the show. She paints darkness and grit as well as bright petals as she simulates umber weeds and earth with pigmented Mississippi mud.

Owned To by Nancy White, a work in ‘Plants: Interior & Exterior’ at Montyshane Gallery

With the adeptness of a basket weaver, Marian McKinney works the teals/taupes/turquoises of patinaed copper into complex mosaics. Her five-foot-tall copper Birdfeeders stand at the center of the gallery. Their large sunflower faces bend toward one another like human figures in conversation.

Unlike the proverbial young woman who fades into the woodwork and never gets asked to dance, Bryan Blankenship’s white-on-white Wall Flowers are anything but shy. In many flowering plants, female as well as male reproductive organs are phallic shapes. The pistils and stamens of Blankenship’s white flowers come in all shapes and sizes. They reach out from the center of open-mouthed petals producing sexual energy that is palpable.

Bluebells & Blueboys is Blankenship’s large, mixed-media work of painted and sculpted flowers climbing to the top of a ceramic trellis. The title’s allusions — to Gainsborough’s portrait of an 18th-century youth, an underground magazine, a gay night club, and the beautiful bell-shaped flower — remind us of the wide variety of sexual expression in humans as well as plants.

“Plants: Interior & Exterior” at Montyshane Gallery through December 15th

“Anton Weiss: Pursuit,” the current exhibition at L Ross Gallery, includes some of the most evocative abstractions of Weiss’ career.

The works are on large sheets of aluminum. The pigments, instead of soaking into cotton canvas, stay on the surface of the aluminum, accentuating the mutable, free-floating quality of paint and suggesting the constant flux and the nervous energy of our times. Small saturate patches of thalo blue, cadmium yellow, and scarlet are scattered across muted color fields.

Weiss also scatters scratched and gouged scraps of metal across the picture plane. Unpainted patches of aluminum reflect light. This is not the sunlight of the Impressionists or the luminous color fields of Abstract Expressionism but something more brooding and complex.

When Weiss was a child in Europe during WWII, he made a promise to himself “to create rather than destroy, to give back.” What Weiss gives back now — as the world is once again at war — are portraits of life as compelling as any literal or figurative depiction could be. Here are glimpses into truth, the moments of intense pleasure and pain, the forgetting and the letting go.

“Anton Weiss: Pursuit” at L Ross Gallery through November 30th.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

All Natural

I learned to garden in Los Angeles, filling my backyard with rosemary, lavender, and garnet bougainvillea. By the time I moved to Memphis, I was convinced I could grow anything, but my confidence was short-lived, hobbled by humidity, shade trees, and Tennessee clay.

Lucky for me, I found the help I needed from acclaimed writer and photographer Ken Druse, whose book The Natural Shade Garden became my bedside Bible. I read the book practically every night, learning how native plants such as trillium and wild ginger actually like growing under trees. By the time spring rolled around, I was ready with a plant list and a new philosophy: The best gardeners work with nature, not against it.

The acknowledged founder of the natural gardening movement in America, Druse has been pushing the ecological and aesthetic attributes of native plants for decades. He has been the gardening editor of House Beautiful since 1979 but still finds time to write, host a radio show, and come to Memphis for a lecture this Thursday at the Dixon. His talk begins at 11 a.m. in the Winegardner Auditorium, but come a little early for Druse’s 10 a.m. booksigning (several of Druse’s books will be on sale at the Dixon or bring your own) or a morning walk under the Dixon garden’s autumn-color canopy.

“The Ecological Value of the Natural Garden,” The Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Thursday, November 15th, 11 a.m. Free with the cost of admission.