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Chalkbeat Shows How Many Children Returning to Memphis Schools

CREDIT: Laura Faith Kebede / Chalkbeat

Laura Faith Kebede / Chalkbeat

Amy Reckard teaches online in her classroom at Brewster Elementary in early January. Elementary students are more likely to return to classrooms starting next week, according to district data.

Following national trends, Memphis elementary students are more likely to return to classrooms than middle and high schoolers, according to data the district recently released.

The school-by-school breakdown provides parents and others insight into how many students will be returning to school buildings.

About 38 percent of elementary school students in Shelby County Schools are expected to head back when the district’s buildings start reopening Monday. About 29 percent of middle schoolers and 24 percent of high schoolers are expected to return March 8th.

Ten of the district’s 140 schools have more than half of students returning to buildings, according to the new details from a parent survey first released in December. All but one serve elementary students.

Shelby County Schools officials did not provide racial demographic data of students based on the type of instruction their parents chose.

Superintendent Joris Ray said that all students will continue learning through live video conferencing so parents feel their children are being instructed equally. Overall, 32 percent of students are expected to attend online classes from a classroom, while the remaining students will take online classes from remote locations, based on the district’s parent survey.

Although younger students have had a harder time keeping up with online classes from home, some parents don’t believe it’s worth their time to send their children to classrooms if they’ll still be learning through a laptop or tablet. Other parents say they don’t trust the district will keep buildings clean or that students will have enough soap, hot water, and paper towels to keep their hands clean based on past experiences. District officials said soap and paper towels will be restocked every day, rather than when they run empty.

Charter schools in the district can make their own reopening plans and most networks are offering in-person instruction or plan to soon.

The school-by-school breakdown below is current as of mid-December when district officials released the parent survey results. Though parents can change their choice ahead of reopenings March 1st and 8th, the totals have not changed drastically, a district spokeswoman said.

Chalkbeat Shows How Many Children Returning to Memphis Schools

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Cover Feature News

The Old Age of Aquarius

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

The Farm School in Summertown, Tennessee, is a kid’s dream come true.

Students decide their own class schedule, who will teach what subjects, and where they’ll go on field trips. In addition to traditional subjects such as trigonometry and English, they also take classes on “Personal and Planetary Well-Being” (a hippiefied biology class) and “Radical Civics.” Last year’s history class was titled “History of U.S. Imperialism.”

On a Friday morning, nine youngsters, ages 10 to 17, are gathered in a circle in a modest classroom. Some sit on ragged couches or recliners. Others sit cross-legged on the floor. A few gently rock in computer desk chairs. One kid fiddles with a buck knife.

Their T-shirt-wearing teacher/principal, who calls himself Peter Kind Field, also sits on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest as he reads the students’ short stories aloud.

In the center of the room, a black-and-white rabbit hops aimlessly. Some students reach out to pet the bunny as it passes. When it heads in Field’s direction, a few kids giggle. Field looks down to find the rabbit nibbling on his paperwork.

“Cookie, stop eating my attendance sheet!” says Field, laughing. More giggles from the students.

This is not a traditional school. But then again, the Farm is not a traditional place.

Justin Fox Burks

Alan Stuart Graf reaches radical civics at the Farm School.

Founded in 1971, this sprawling commune was a safe haven for West Coast hippies seeking a place to call their own. In the days of tie-dye and free love, 250 free-thinking young vegetarians, mostly from San Francisco, settled in Summertown to form their own society.

They purchased 1,000 acres of lush rolling hills and wooded forest an hour south of Nashville. They started a soy dairy, where they made tofu and soymilk, and a vegetable farm. They built houses from scratch. A horse-drawn cart hauled five-gallon bottles of water from the nearest town. When children were born, the “Farmies” set up a school.

Early settlers turned their life savings and all their possessions over to the Farm, and resources were shared equally. In its heyday, the Farm’s population exceeded 1,500. It was an experiment in communal living, and somehow it worked. For a while anyway.

Today, the Farm is run democratically, and its population has dwindled to about 300. It’s one of a handful of surviving hippie communities, and most of its original members are nearing retirement age. Fortunately, for the Farm’s future, some of their children have stuck around and are now having kids of their own.

“We’re trying to get more young people, so we have a constant turnover. We want enough children being born and raised here that we have an even distribution of ages,” says Albert Bates, who’s lived on the Farm since 1972. His children and grandchildren still live there.

In an age where global warming is a growing concern and oil prices continue to rise, the older Farm members believe their style of earth-conscious, community living is more relevant than ever. But whether the third generation will stick around to keep the community alive is anyone’s guess.

Justin Fox Burks

Teens direct their own learning

Hippie Haven

The road to the Farm doesn’t look much different from any rural Tennessee route — green fields, woods, an occasional grazing horse. But visitors know they’re in the right place when rusty grain silos adorned with flaking paintings of colorful mushrooms come into view. Deeper into the Farm, small homes with outdoor murals of trees and sunbeams dot the landscape.

Just off the main road at the Farm’s modest health-food shop (appropriately named the Farm Store), residents pick up ready-to-eat meals such as Thai peanut tofu sandwiches (most of the Farm’s members are still vegetarians) or grocery items.

Aside from the abundance of healthy food choices and multihued murals, the scene looks like that of any other small country town. But it’s evolved quite a bit from what it was.

“In the late 1960s, the young people were gathering in San Francisco, and they eventually watched the hippie movement disintegrate out there due to all the human frailties. There were just too many people and nothing for them to do,” says Douglas Stevenson, an original Farm member who now runs the community’s website design and video production company, Village Media.

Stephen Gaskin was an English professor at San Francisco State University at the time. He began holding weekly spirituality classes each Monday night to give young people a positive place to gather. As class topics centered more and more on the importance of community, close bonds were formed.

When a group of clergymen held a conference in San Francisco on how to deal with the hippie movement, they invited Gaskin to speak. They were so impressed, they asked him to go on a nationwide speaking tour.

Justin Fox Burks

A rabbit attends class at the Farm School.

Not one to abandon his students, Gaskin invited them all along. The students gathered money and purchased old school buses in order to tour the country.

“By the time we got to the end of the tour, we had 50 school buses full of people and I’d spoken in 42 states,” says the 72-year-old Gaskin, who still resides on the Farm with his wife Ina May.

“But we metamorphosized on the caravan. Before, we’d been a bunch of people failing out of college or living with our mothers,” Gaskin says. “When we got back to San Francisco, we didn’t want to go back to doing that kind of stuff. We’d become something new while on the road.”

The group began to look for a place to form a commune. They’d had a pleasant experience when traveling through Tennessee, so they began looking for land near Nashville.

When the FBI got word that a group of hippies was looking to settle down in Middle Tennessee, area realty companies were advised not to sell to them. But the group eventually found a sympathetic landowner who offered to sell his thousand acres in Summertown.

“We were a bunch of hippies. We didn’t have any credit, but the landowner, Carlos Smith, carried the note himself. We ended up paying him back better than he expected,” Gaskin says. “And we outfoxed the FBI.”

Justin Fox Burks

Mushroom murals on a grain silo, a reminder of the Farm’s origins origins in 1971.

Life was hard in the early days, as the former city-dwellers learned to live off the land. As Gaskin fondly remembers, “All we had for plumbing was a bucket. We were very collective in the beginning, but when you’re poor and there’s a lot of you, that’s the only sane way to be organized.”

“Everything came about by need,” says original member Thomas Hupp, who now works at the Farm’s book-publishing company, which prints hundreds of popular vegetarian cookbooks. “We developed a farm crew to grow the crops and a baby crew to deliver the babies. Eventually, we bought an old printing press and said, let’s make books on who we are and what we do.”

Everything at the Farm was given a simple title. The book company was called Book Publishing Company. The soy dairy was called Soy Dairy. The main road was named Farm Road.

“We were careful in the beginning about what we called ourselves,” Hupp says. “We called everything what it was to keep from becoming a slave to symbols.”

The place operated as a collective. Each person was provided food and plenty of land to build on. Some of the women who’d learned to deliver babies while riding on the caravan set up a midwife center. Soon, pregnant women from across the nation were traveling to the Farm to give birth.

Justin Fox Burks

A Caravan bus, a reminder of the Farm’s origins in 1971.

The group even formed a nonprofit organization called Plenty International to help people in other countries affected by natural disasters. More than 100 volunteers traveled to Guatemala after the 1976 earthquake and helped build a soy dairy.

As word spread about the Farm, hippies from around the country began arriving by the busload. Some came to visit and never left. Barbara and Neal Bloomfield came to deliver their baby through the Farm’s midwife program.

“We made good friends, and we decided we wanted to raise our children in a community,” says Barbara Bloomfield, a vegan cookbook author who raised her three kids on the Farm.

The Farm’s population rose to 1,500 by 1983, but with more and more people drawing from slim resources, the communal system began to fall apart.

“We’d gotten to a place where we weren’t even keeping good books because we were so big,” Gaskin says. “So we decided to break the collectivity and start having people pay dues.”

The Big Change

Not everyone was pleased with the new set-up, dubbed the “changeover” by folks still living on the Farm. Many who’d migrated to Tennessee for the communal experience weren’t prepared to earn their own salaries or own their own homes. Others were disenchanted when they realized the experiment wasn’t working. People left in droves. “It was a great dissolution. Some people were, like, the dream is over. We’ve failed,” Stevenson says.

For some, life got easier after the changeover. Neal Bloomfield earned a good living operating a construction company. The new system allowed him to keep his profits rather than turn them over to the collective.

Justin Fox Burks

Barbara Bloomfield prepares boxes for the Farm’s book publishing business.

“We didn’t mind keeping our own money,” Barbara says. “The old Farm was definitely fun, but it got intense.”

Attorney Alan Stuart Graf, who’d been living on the Farm since 1972, wasn’t as pleased with the new system and left.

“One of the biggest problems we had back on the old Farm was who was going to do the dishes,” laughs the ponytailed lawyer. “I left in 1984, when I realized the Farm wasn’t doing what it set out to do in the first place.”

The population scaled back to its original size and remains fairly stable today. But unlike many others who left, Graf returned in 2006 after spending years working as a civil rights attorney in Portland, Oregon. Today, Graf works as a Social Security and disability lawyer, teaches radical civics at the Farm School, and serves on the Farm’s board of directors.

He’s grown more comfortable with the way the Farm operates today.

“If someone doesn’t like something now, they can get a petition together with 15 percent of the voting members,” Graf says. “We still try to base our system on the highest principles of humanity: love and compassion.”

Today, a seven-member board of directors operates the Farm. It takes responsibility for the Farm’s financial assets, oversees health and safety, decides where roads are built, and deals with construction issues on communally owned buildings. (The land, the Farm store, and tofu dairy are still collectively owned.)

“Every year, people put in proposals on what should be in the Farm’s budget,” says Barbara Bloomfield, who serves as chair of the board.

Justin Fox Burks

Ina May Gaskin teaches a class in midwifery at the Farm, located south of Nashville.

Members pay $75 a month in dues. The money goes toward basics like water and roads. Members can pledge to add more money to the budget for extras such as maintaining the swimming hole or the community cemetery.

New members are always welcome, but the Farm’s membership committee must first evaluate the finances of potential members to ensure they’re economically viable.

“We’ve evolved quite a bit. We were only communal for 10 years, but we’ve been living like this for over 20 years,” says Stevenson, who stuck around through the change. “We’ve had time to finish our houses and people have gotten careers. They’re gaining real incomes.”

One thing that may strike visitors as strange is the lack of farming on the Farm. After the governing system changed, so did the need for residents to grow their own food.

“We don’t farm as much now. It’s economics and scale,” Gaskin explains. “We can buy organic soybeans cheaper than we can grow them because we’re not a big grower anymore.”

But other Farm businesses continue to thrive. Barbara Elliott runs the soy dairy in a building next to the Farm Store. Every couple of weeks, her small crew produces 3,500 pounds of tofu, as well as soy milk and soy yogurt.

Justin Fox Burks

“We started this in the 1970s to include a variety of protein in our diets,” Elliott says. “Eating soy and plant protein also helps the environment.”

Some of the tofu is sold in the Farm Store, but they also ship the bean curd to health food stores in Nashville. The soy milk and yogurt are sold locally.

Business is also booming at the Book Publishing Company, where about 250 titles of vegetarian cookbooks, nutrition guides, and books on midwifery and Native American spirituality are currently in print. Since 1972, the company has published around 400 titles.

“Our company has actually doubled in the past couple years,” Hupp says. “It began as a creative way to generate income for the Farm. It was the one place where we got to use our college degrees.”

After the changeover, the Farm School began charging tuition to pay teachers’ salaries. As a result, many Farm parents began busing their kids to area public schools. Today, the Farm School’s 20 or so students are a combination of Farm children and kids from the surrounding communities.

Justin Fox Burks

“Traditional schools do things backward,” says Field, who moved to the Farm to teach after working in New York’s public school system. “We’re interested in empowering children and allowing them to learn about what they’re really interested in.”

The Farm also has a small medical clinic set up for basic care and boasts an extensive midwife-training program. After learning to deliver babies by accident on the caravan, Gaskin’s wife Ina May wrote Spiritual Midwifery, now considered the definitive guide on home birthing techniques.

“We didn’t plan on being midwives. I was an art major and Ina May had a masters in English. But by the time we got here [in 1971], we’d delivered nine babies on the caravan,” says Pamela Hunt, who teaches midwife training courses. “Now about 120 people come here every year for workshops.”

Going Green

At the Ecovillage Training Center, the Farm’s training site for green technology and construction, various clay buildings sit unfinished. The largest one, boasting a carved green dragon spanning the length of the building, sits near the far end of the one-acre site.

Inside the cave-like Green Dragon, an experimental structure built from adobe clay, cord wood, and straw bale, things are very much still under construction. The eyes, nose, and mouth of a half-carved Aztec warrior figure protrudes from one wall. His mouth is constructed to be used as a fireplace. Another wall features jutting rocks that will one day serve as a climbing wall. Outside, a tarp covers the unfinished roof.

Justin Fox Burks

Albert Bates of the Farm’s Ecovillage Training Center

Albert Bates, director of the Ecovillage Training Center, says the building will one day serve as a recreational facility for the center’s apprentices and interns. The construction of the facility has been a project for Ecovillage interns using green building techniques.

The Ecovillage Training Center was developed in 1995, when Farm residents saw an emerging need for alternative, sustainable building practices. Today, people travel here to get hands-on training.

While studying at the Ecovillage, students stay in a solar-powered inn. It can accommodate up to 30 people without drawing from the conventional power grid.

Rainwater is collected for the interns’ showers, and the graywater run-off sustains the site’s organic garden. Steam from the Ecovillage’s adobe sauna heats the straw-bale greenhouse.

Though many of the Farm’s homes and businesses purchase electricity from the local power company, the Ecovillage remains as a model for how to live and build off the grid.

“We began as hippies leaving San Francisco to find spirituality. That was way before the term ‘ecovillage’ was even coined,” Bates says.

But Bates, who has authored a book on global warming and one on surviving the peak-oil crisis, hopes his center can influence not only Farm residents but others concerned about their carbon footprint.

“I think the U.S. is going to be going through major economic turmoil pretty soon. The subprime meltdown is one example,” says Bates. “These kinds of things will allow us to expand our horizons and what we mean by a sustainable economy.”

If and when the U.S. does find itself in that scenario, the Farm will be prepared thanks to the technology at the Ecovillage. Gaskin says they’re also prepared to farm again, if necessary.

“We know if times get hard, we’ve got 500 acres that we’ve been grazing horses on for years,” Gaskin says. “We can get right back into farming our own food.”

Of course, the ultimate fate of the Farm hinges on whether or not the younger generation stays. Bates estimates that only one-third of the Farm population is under 30.

“We’re trying to create a space where our kids feel welcome,” Stevenson says. “We want them to settle down here, because in addition to green building, sustainability is about how to pass on ideals from one generation to the next. When we’re dead and gone, we’d like for them to stay here and carry on.”

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News

New Desegration Order Causes Controversy in Shelby County Schools

AP — Officials in Shelby County, Tenn., complain they’ll have to spend millions to satisfy a federal judge’s “arbitrary” desegregation order. It’ll mean busing minority students up to an hour away and replacing hundreds of white teachers with black ones, they say.

In Huntsville, Ala., under a similar court order, students can transfer from a school where they’re in the racial majority, but not the other way around.

“So which ruling do I violate?” asks a perplexed Bobby Webb, superintendent of schools in Shelby County, where Memphis is located. “The judge’s ruling now, or the earlier rulings that we can’t discriminate against people on the basis of the color of their skin?”

Front-page court battles over integration are mostly a thing of the past. But according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, there are at least 253 school districts still under federal court supervision in racial inequality cases and those are just the ones in which Justice intervened.

Many of the more infamous names Boston, Little Rock, Charlotte, N.C. are gone from the list, having satisfied judges with their desegregation efforts and being granted what’s called “unitary status.” In the last two years alone, at least 75 districts have won such status …

Read entire article.

— Allen G. Breed

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News The Fly-By

Weapons Test

CREDIT: ODVDVEER | dreamstime.com

Last Wednesday, Markees Smith, a 15-year-old Manassas High School student, was arrested after his handgun accidentally went off, shooting a 16-year-old classmate in the arm.

On the same day, 20-year-old Eddie Smith was arrested at Fairley High for bringing a gun onto school grounds to confront a 17-year-old female student. While wrestling the gun away from Smith, a school security officer broke his hand.

The day before, a gun was recovered from Ridgeway High when a 14-year-old student was caught putting it inside a classmate’s folder.

Following last week’s incidents, the Memphis City Schools administration is asking schools to beef up weapons screenings. Currently, schools are required to perform nine random weapon checks per school year. The new request does not mandate additional screenings but leaves it to the discretion of principals.

“They’re not saying you have to do 15 as opposed to nine. They just want them to be more frequent,” says MCS spokesperson Shawn Pachuki. “They may come up with a [new] number down the road.”

School board member Tomeka Hart says the current requirement is only meant to be a minimum number of screenings.

“That certainly does not mean that a school only has to do nine,” Hart says. “We need our policies to be broad enough so that we’re not hand-holding our principals. We expect our principals to know their communities and to tailor their practices for the needs of the community.”

Prior to last week’s shooting, Manassas, a small school with fewer than 600 students, performed random metal detector screenings once a month.

“This was a student who knew there was a chance he’d be checked that day, and he still brought a gun to school,” Hart says. “He knew if he brought a gun to school, he’d be kicked out for a calendar year. We can’t get a whole lot tougher on our policies.”

Memphis City Schools adopted the use of metal detectors in 1996, but last year the district set a minimum number of screenings per year. Hart says using the metal detectors on a daily basis would take too much time.

“If it takes an hour to get kids through, do we start school an hour early or do we miss an hour out of the education day?” Hart asks.

At least one school, Booker T. Washington High on Lauderdale, conducts daily weapons checks. Principal Alisha Kiner says school doors open at 7:30 a.m., and students are screened upon entering the building. Those with backpacks enter one door, and those without are screened at another door. The school’s 755 students filter through screening until the tardy bell rings at 8:10 a.m.

“Believe it or not, we still find something every once in a while,” Kiner says. “To be honest, parents need to check their kids before they leave the house. That would make it so much easier.”

Every middle and high school in the district is equipped with at least one walk-through metal detector and two metal detector wands. Additional walk-through units are added per 500 students, and schools get more wands for every additional 300 students.

It can take six people to operate a check at small schools and up to 20 staff members at larger schools. Some schools opt to perform checks before class and others surprise students with random wand checks during class.

“They could set up a checkpoint in the hallway between periods. Kids walk out [of class] and then, bam, there’s a set-up there,” Pachucki says. “Or they might walk into a classroom and announce, okay, everybody, we’re going to do a metal detection check. Principals have the discretion to do them when they want and as frequently as they want.”

The real problem, Hart says, lies within the communities. She says educators should do a better job talking to parents and kids about guns.

“We have to get into our communities and talk to our parents. We need to go find out, from that particular family, what is it about your child that made him or her decide to bring a gun to school today?” Hart says.

Despite the three incidents last week, Hart says gun incidents at city schools are infrequent. However, MCS was unable to provide statistics of gun incidents by press time.

“We have to put these incidents into perspective,” Hart says. “It’s rare that kids bring guns into our schools. We have 115,000 students. Even if 20 kids in a school year bring their guns to school, the board has to look at the big picture.”

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Cover Feature News

Summer in the City

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Point/Counterpoint Justin Fox Burks

The best things in life are all about juxtaposition. Chocolate is sweet yet slightly salty. Roller coasters are scary but safe. Contrast is interesting; it’s exciting. Think fusion restaurants, tanlines, baked Alaska, point/counterpoints …

I admit, taken alone, summer days aren’t anymore interesting or enjoyable than a day trapped in a sauna. But combined with a few simple pleasures, summer days can be the best time of the year.

The same ice cream that is okay in the winter and good in the spring tastes heavenly at the height of summer. A waffle cone stuffed with a double scoop of Rocky Road is a good way to cool your core temperature from the inside out (and part of the fun is savoring every single bite before it can melt into a soupy mess).

During other times of the year, frozen juice on a stick is uninspiring. Add a summer day, a truck with a bell, and an aging hippie, and that same popsicle has the pull of the Pied Piper.

Summer days don’t just make food better. That polluted pond you wouldn’t touch during April or May? Try to stay out of it in July.

When sweat is dripping down your nose and your skin is reddening like a tomato on the vine, nothing is more refreshing than a cannonball into a cool body of water. Summer days lure you into swimming in a lake, wading in a river, floating in a pool, or jumping waves in an ocean.

You might feel self-conscious in your bathing suit or you might not like the feel of sand squishing in between your toes, but once you’re in the water, you won’t regret it.

Summer days give people an excuse to indulge. Maybe it’s the shared cultural memory of summer freedom; maybe it’s just too hot to do anything except what makes you cooler, but summer days mean doing what feels good.

Looking for a way to beat the heat? Take in a mindless summer blockbuster. Not only do you get to sit on your butt for two hours while your favorite action heroes save the world from aliens or hunt for buried treasure — talk about contrast — movie theaters seem to crank up the air conditioning 11 months out of the year.

The degree change is palpable as you walk toward the ticket booth. Once inside, you breathe a sigh of relief. It’s nice and cool and dark.

And just about the time you start getting chill bumps and begin cursing your shorts, the movie ends. You walk back outside. The temperature that was once muggy and oppressive feels warm and cozy. (Your sunglasses have fogged up, but that’s another story.)

Water-gun fights, sprinklers, washing the car, blowing soap bubbles … none of these things are any good without summer days.

They might be hot, but they’re all about staying cool.

Summer days in Memphis have their charms — if you like sweat, car seats that burn your thighs, and the back of your neck gettin’ dirt and gritty.

I don’t like those things. So there’s little doubt in my mind that summer in this city is much better in the nighttime.

Sure, I could list the obvious Memphis nightlife charms — a cold beer on Beale, listening to James Govan bring the Stax sound back to life at Rum Boogie; downtown rooftop parties; relaxing on Tsunami’s tiny patio, watching the Cooper-Young hipsters walk by — but Memphis’ true summer charms are often more subtle, more hidden away.

By day, your friend’s pool is a simple refuge from the summer broil. You get hot; you jump in. Rinse, repeat, ad nauseum — and watch out for that 6-year-old with the giant water pistol. At night, that same pool becomes an urban oasis — dark, secluded, and just perfect for coping with heat and humidity that feel like you’re wrapped in a steamy Turkish towel.

You sip your icy drink. You chat with your friends. Occasionally, you slide into the inky pool and let the cool water embrace you. Perhaps you sit on a step; perhaps you swim a leisurely lap; perhaps you even take your cocktail with you. You’re not hot anymore. You’re cool. Real cool.

Nighttime in Memphis has other charms. Walking the streets of Midtown in the evening, the aroma of fragrant jasmine flowers lingers along every garden wall. Fellow strollers greet you with a smile on their non-perspiring faces. Porches are filled with conversation. You can see inside the warmly lit homes and check out people’s artwork. (Why do you think voyeurs work at night?)

And there is enough light left in a Memphis summer day to play nine holes after work without risking heatstroke. A golf course, any golf course, looks better in evening light. Your score will be better, too, if there’s no sweat dripping on the ball as you putt.

Or you can head to your favorite fishing hole (and I have many) at 7 p.m. and fish under the moon ’til midnight. You can sit on the bank and listen to the bullfrogs and whip-poor-wills sing if the fish aren’t biting. (Mosquito repellent is a must.)

You can go to a Redbirds game and savor the smells and sounds of America’s pastime under the lights. You can sit on the cool grass in deep left field, even if the game goes extra innings. I defy you to sit in a bleacher seat on an August afternoon for more than 20 minutes. Baseball, like almost everything else in Memphis, is simply better at night.

In closing, I must quote the great philosopher Olivia Newton-John, who screeched these immortal words (along with John Travolta) in Grease: “Oh, those summer ni-i-i-i-i-i-ights.”

Sorry, for putting that in your head, but all’s fair in point/counterpoint debates.

New reads on rock.

If summer sounds good, make it sound better with some good reading on rock. To start, start big: The Mammoth Book of Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘N‘ Roll (Carroll & Graf), an anthology of rock reporting edited by Jim Driver and drawn from the pages of magazines such as Cream, Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Rolling Stone, and Time Out. You know the territory. The topics come with the territory: “Bands, Booze & Broads,” according to the title of one piece here; “Wine, Women and Song” according to another; and “Blurred Vision,” according to a third. Congratulations, though, to two prize entries with two winning headlines: “Fifty Tabs a Day Turned This Man into a Tree (nearly),” on acid-guitar virtuoso Frank Marino, and “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth,” on foul-mouthed Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, who stands by his mates and his fans: “Our audiences drink a lot and I feel we owe it to them to stay drunk.” Roight!

It was 40 years ago today when the act you’ve known for all these years, the Beatles, released Sgt. Pepper‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and to mark the occasion, British music writer Clinton Heylin has produced The Act You‘ve Known for All These Years: A Year in the Life of Sgt. Pepper and Friends (Canongate), a detailed report on the creation of and reaction to the Fab Four’s history-making album. Pair it with Kenneth Womack’s Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles (Continuum), then turn Stateside to see Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds, and Influences of the Beach Boys‘ Founding Genius (Continuum) by musicologist Philip Lambert. “Inside the music” is right, because Lambert gets down — right down to the key changes, chord progressions, and lyrical variations in Wilson’s work. You think that most summery of songs, “Surfer Girl,” is a simple tune? Wrong. You think “Good Vibrations” is complicated as hell? Right.

Right or wrong, you love hip-hop. You hate hip-hop. So do writers and editors Kenji Jasper and Ytasha Womack in Beats Rhymes & Life: What We Love and Hate About Hip-Hop (Harlem Moon/Broadway Books), a collection of essays and interviews with the likes of Nelly, Ludacris, Scarface, Ice-T, and Mos Def. Fan or no fan, it’s enough to make the blood boil: early hip-hop, as argued here, was a reflection of political and social realities, a means of honest expression, versus contemporary hip-hop: a cash cow for corporate profits. Conclusion: It’s the American way.

It’s not the way of the Fleshtones in Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America‘s Garage Band (Continuum), by Joe Bonomo, who chronicles, as the publisher’s press release terms it, “the soul sucking pressure of the status quo” (new-wave division). In the case of the Fleshtones, that translates into 30 years of uninterrupted touring, of one time sharing practice space with the Cramps, of one time sharing stages with James Brown and Chuck Berry, and of sticking it out after the East Village scene that spawned the group went the way of all flesh: big bucks.

No telling who first penned the music and lyrics to “The House of the Rising Sun,” but it sure wasn’t the Animals, who made it famous in the mid-’60s, or Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, or Bob Dylan, who covered it. Maybe you can trace the song to Georgia Turner? Alan Lomax did. In 1937, he recorded the 16-year-old in Kentucky singing it. Maybe you can trace it to Homer Callahan? Ted Anthony does in Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song (Simon & Schuster), and to hear Anthony tell it, Callahan learned of the ruin of many a poor boy during corn-shucking season in the Appalachians. That’s a far cry from today, when the ruin of this song is sealed: as a cell-phone ring tone, as a popular item in Chinese karaoke bars, and as the soundtrack for Gatorade ads.

But for the record: The summer belongs to Strummer, in the most anticipated rock book of the season, Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer (Farrar Straus and Giroux) by Chris Salewicz. See the Flyer‘s upcoming literary supplement for a review. In the meantime and for a break from books, cue it and crank it: Verbena’s “Hot Blood.”

Class Acts

It may only happen about three times in your life: that ooey-gooey feeling of being temporarily ill-defined. A new

retiree might feel it, or a college graduate not yet entered into a career. It also describes the thousands of Class of 2007 students across the Mid-South.

“It feels weird,” says Lindsey Johnson, two-and-a-half weeks out of White Station High School, where she had been voted “Most School Spirited.” “I feel a lot older. It kind of hasn’t hit me yet.

“A friend of mine said the other day, ‘When we go to school in the fall,’ and the thought that popped in my head was, high school, like I’d be back at White Station. But I’m not even going to be in the city.” Johnson is off to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Ashley Brooks is also just a few weeks out of high school — Harding Academy. She’s headed to Middle Tennessee State University next. “It’s awesome,” Brooks says about being out, “because I know I don’t have to go back and deal with all the high school stuff. But at the same time, it’s kind of scary knowing that I’m going to go into the real world.

“I feel like I’ve been [in high school] forever, and so I’m finally going, you know, away from the parents. I get to meet new people. It’s kind of overwhelming, though, thinking about it. Time’s ticking down: This summer’s going by a lot faster than I thought it would.”

What are high school graduates doing this summer? Johnson is working to save up for college (and maybe a sorority), and Brooks is in the job market too, but mostly they’re both logging hours with their friends.

Johnson says, “We hang out at people’s houses, go out to dinner. Sometimes we’ll all go see a movie or something. We have a little hot-wing place [Ching’s] on Getwell that we go to.”

Photo Courtesy of Lindsey Johnson

Catherine Taylor and BFF Lindsey Johnson

Brooks’ best friend is going to Baylor, “13 hours away,” as she describes it, painfully. “We’re trying to hang out as much as possible this summer. … But I told her, ‘You cannot get a new best friend. It’s not going to work.'”

“I’m definitely ready for a new city,” Johnson says on her decision to go to school away from home. “Oh yeah, gotta get out of this one.” She laughs. Why does she say that? “Willie Herenton! [laughs again] And I just want to get away from my parents too. I want to do something on my own.”

Brooks herself is looking for a change of scenery. Her graduating class numbered 80. “It was [hard to be myself]. People knew you way too much. They always know everything about you, and it’s really annoying, like you can’t keep secrets because there’s a big rumor mill.” But for Brooks, here’s the kicker: “I loved high school. During the years I was like, Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to graduate. But looking back, that was the best time of my life. I loved it.”

What’s taking place this summer is a coming-of-age rite that’s been occurring annually since time immemorial — at least since the 1950s. But it’s a brand-new experience for the class of ’07.

“One of my really good friends got a full scholarship to Furman, and he’s already left,” Johnson says. “We’ve had a class together every year since the 7th grade, and it’s really weird. I don’t want to not go to school with him, and I feel that way about a lot of other people too. It’s just strange.”

Brooks says, “It’s going to be hard, I already know. … One class I’m taking, there’s 175 people in my class, that’s going to be so weird for me coming from, you know, a class of 12 to a class of that size.”

Not that the Class of ’07 doesn’t have some advantages older generations didn’t. Johnson and Brooks agree: Geography-negating Facebook and text messaging looks to be a predominant form of communication with old friends.

And the future? If this experience has taught them anything, it’s that things do come to an end and that times do change. In a way, the future is already past. Brooks says, “College to me is one of those things that, once you do it and you’re done with it, you look back and are like, wow, I accomplished something huge.”

A Summer Concert Preview Photo Courtesy of Lindsey Johnson

Lindsey Johnson and Catherine Taylor

The Biggies

The last time the White Stripes performed in the Memphis area was September 10, 2001, at Earnestine & Hazel’s on South Main. If it seems odd now that one of the world’s biggest rock bands played a tiny downtown bar not generally known for its live music only a few years ago, well it was odd at the time too. The blues-fueled indie-rock duo of Jack and Meg White hadn’t quite crossed over at the time, but they were awful close. Even then, it was as odd a combination of band and venue as one could remember.

Nearly six years later, the duo’s return to the Mid-South highlights a diverse, active summer concert season. The White Stripes recorded their 2001 breakout album, White Blood Cells, in

Memphis, at Easley-McCain Recording, and Jack White has been back many times mixing various projects (the White Stripes’ Get Behind Me Satan, his side band the Raconteurs’ Broken Boy Soldiers, and the White-produced Loretta Lynn album Van Lear Rose). But, in support of their new album Icky Thump, the band will give its first post-stardom Mid-South performance on July 31st, at the newly refurbished Snowden Grove Amphitheatre in Southaven.

The White Stripes aren’t the only high-profile act in town this summer that’s managed to blend art and commerce. Hometown boy Justin Timberlake will give his first Memphis concert since August 2006 when he plays FedExForum August 6th. Last year, Timberlake played the New Daisy in a sneak-preview showcase of music from his then-forthcoming album Future Sex/Love Sounds. A year later, Timberlake returns riding a stadium show in support of what has become the biggest pop album of the past year. Punk-poppers Good Charlotte open.

If Timberlake has a rival as the biggest pop/R&B performer in the land, then its Beyoncé, who has dominated the airwaves for much of the past year with ecstatic hits such as “Check On It,” “Ring the Alarm,” and “Irreplaceable.” Beyoncé hits FedExForum July 7th.

And the controversial Crunk Fest concert moves up to FedExForum for its 5th anniversary show July 21st. At press time, the lineup was scheduled to include New Orleans rapper Lil’ Wayne, St. Louis’ Jibbs, and locals Yo Gotti and Eightball & MJG, among others.

Legends

Four of the true living giants of American music will make area appearances in July and August. Though he lives in Memphis, soul legend Al Green rarely performs here. That changes July 21st, when Green is scheduled to play the Live at the Garden series at the Memphis Botanic Garden. Now 61, Green has retained one of the greatest voices in any realm of pop music, as witnessed by recent recorded-in-Memphis comeback albums I Can’t Stop and Everything’s O.K. This summer, Memphis fans will get to hear it live in concert.

A week after Green — almost certainly our greatest living male soul singer — performs, the greatest living female country singer sets down in Tunica, as Loretta Lynn plays the Grand Casino July 28th.

In August, the hard-touring Willie Nelson returns to the area to play the Mud Island Amphitheatre — his first concert within the city since pairing with Bob Dylan at AutoZone Park a few years ago. Finally, while former Beale Street blues boy B.B. King makes annual appearances at his namesake club downtown, he’ll play a bigger venue this summer when he performs at the Horseshoe Casino August 25th.

Country & Roots

Country and roots-music fans of all stripes have plenty to look forward to this summer. Mainstream country fans can catch heartthrob Keith Urban and folk-pop openers the Wreckers at FedExForum June 29th, as well as towering CMT fave Trace Adkins — with opener Tracy Lawrence — at the Snowden Grove Amphitheatre July 6th. Those who like their Nashville cats to sound a bit more traditional can catch Marty Stuart at the Bartlett Performing Arts Center August 16th.

Alt-country and roots-rock fans can get an early start on the summer this week as a couple of ace ex-Memphian singer-songwriters — Todd Snider and Cory Branan — team up June 21st at the Gibson Music Showcase. But the biggest local show in this corner of the musical world will likely occur July 12th, when alt-country cult-fave Ryan Adams plays the Germantown Performing Arts Centre. Finally, the originally queen of rockabilly, Wanda Jackson, makes an always-welcome local appearance August 12th at the Hi-Tone Café.

Best of the Rest

One of the more interesting local concerts this summer could be the one that pairs much-loved underground songwriter Daniel Johnston with local treasure Harlan T. Bobo at the Hi-Tone Café August 8th.

Expect many a thirtysomething Memphian to take a rockin’ trip down memory lane at the Snowden Grove Amphitheatre July 11th when two of the very best of the ’80s pop-metal bands — Poison and Ratt — kick out the jams. And modern-rock fans can decide if they like their guitar-rock on the mild side (The Fray at Mud Island, July 7th) or at maximum volume (Queens of the Stone Age at the New Daisy, August 7th).

Summer sex toys keep you cool when things get hot.

The White Stripes

“Oh when I look back now/ That summer seemed to last forever/ And if I had the choice/ Ya — I’d always wanna be there/ Those were the best days of my life/ Back in the summer of ’69” — “Summer of ’69”

When Bryan Adams penned those nostalgic lines back in 1980-something, it’s doubtful he was thinking about the naughty implication of the song’s title. These days, who can even say the number “69” without a little adolescent giggle?

Besides, the sexual act of “69” seems way more entertaining than Adams’ lame-ass summer memories. And here at the Flyer, we’re hopeful that some of our readers plan on trying that position and many others as the mercury rises this season. But sex can get hot (and we don’t mean “sexy hot”). We’ve compiled a list of sexual aids to keep couples cool when things get heated:

Glass dildos and butt plugs — Made from the same freezer-safe, heat-resistant material used in Pyrex cookware, these colorful handblown glass pieces can be stored in the freezer for safekeeping. And just like the cookware, these toys can go straight from freezer to “oven” (if you catch our drift).

Now, we know what you’re thinking: Is it really a good idea to put glass in your most sensitive area? Drew (who asked that we not reveal his last name) at Christal’s on Germantown Parkway says these toys are nearly impossible to break with normal use. Just don’t throw yours against a wall.

Glass dildos come in all colors, shapes, and sizes. The largest at Christal’s is a whopping five-pound, 11-inch, studded variety about three inches in diameter. Use with caution.

Good Head Oral Gel — This gel is designed to make the sometimes-unpleasant task of providing a BJ a little more, um, tasty. Fortunately, it comes in Mystical Mint, which makes for a slightly cooling sensation on the receiving end and a fresh-breath effect on the giving side. You won’t even need to brush afterward.

Eros Ejaculator by Lady Calston — Think water-gun-turned-vibrator. This phallic toy can be filled with water and then used like a normal vibrator. When the “squirt” button is pushed, a stream of water bursts out. It’s supposed to mimic ejaculation, but we think it’d be more fun to use the feature to attack friends at an outdoor summer party. Water-squirting dildoes trump the Super Soaker.

Impulse Waterproof Vibrator — Kay Mills, regional manager of Fantasy Warehouse, recommends this waterproof dildo. It works like the famed Rabbit Vibrator, with its bunny-shaped clitoral tickler and rotating shaft filled with stimulating beads. The main difference: This toy has a dolphin-shaped clitoris massager, so it’s perfect for summer evenings on the beach. Just make sure no one else is watching.

Flex-a-Pleasure Anal Edition — This butt plug is waterproof, making it perfect for that, er, romantic evening by the pool. Some plugs look like they could easily slip inside and get lost (an embarrassing trip to the ER, to say the least), but this one has a five-inch wand. At the end of the wand is an adjustable speed dial to control vibration.

Penis Water Bottles — Available at Christal’s, these plastic phalluses hold about 24 ounces of ice-cold liquid and come complete with a catheter-like straw protruding from the tip. Perfect for summer hiking trips, the gym, or even the office (just don’t blame us when you get fired).

Hot Hooters Warming Booby Oil — Now, this product doesn’t exactly promise a cooling effect. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Fortunately, this colorful warming liquid comes in tropical flavors so tasty they’ll whisk couples away to an island paradise. Available in Piña Colada and Strawberry Daiquiri, the oils give new meaning to “sex on the beach.”

If toys aren’t your thing, there are other ways to turn up the steam without turning up the heat.

“Try playing in the sprinklers after dark with the lights out in the backyard or maybe a sexy car wash,” says Drew at Christal’s. Mills at Fantasy Warehouse suggests making flavored ice using Kool-Aid and then taking a few cubes into the bedroom.

Regardless of how you choose to stay cool, don’t let the summer sun prevent you from getting any action. After all, you won’t be attractive forever, and your working parts may not work so well in the years to come.

In the immortal words of Bryan Adams: “We were young and restless/ We needed to unwind/ I guess nothin’ can last forever — forever, no …”

Back here at home and there’s nothing to do? dreamstime.com

“Vacation, all you ever wanted,” but you’re stuck at home and there’s nothing to do? Stop complaining. There are mini-vacation spots all around Memphis, and they’re cheap to boot.

Start at the fountain on the Main Street Mall — the one with jets of water shooting out of the bricks in front of the trolley stop. Wear clothes, wear a swimsuit, or whatever (just don’t violate public decency laws). Run through the fountains! Stand in them! Act like you’re 11 again! How long you spend on this activity is entirely up to you.

Once you’re done, towel down a bit and walk over to the Madison Hotel. On the roof, you’ll find one of the best views of Memphis, with Mud Island to the west. Plus, they’ve got a bar up there.

Now go get something to eat. Hop on the trolley and head down to South Main. Grab a burger at Earnestine & Hazel’s, or perhaps a veggie plate from the Arcade, or a piece of quiche or cheesecake at the Cheesecake Store. After that, get something to drink at Bluff City Coffee and walk around South Main with your beverage.

As long as you’re in the area, stop by the National Ornamental Metal Museum and check out all the statues on the grounds. My favorite is the fountain, because it has a human head coming out the top. Plus, the Indian burial mounds are right out front. If you go past an abandoned hotel and turn right on Cotton Gin Road, there’s an RV park and a clean, isolated neighborhood straight out of the ’60s.

Not far from the Metal Museum, you can see the “old bridge” in the distance (Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge for outsiders). There’s a walkway on that bridge. Which brings us to another time-honored summer activity: feeling like you’re defying death. The bridge sways in the wind, it shakes from the weight of traveling cars, and giant trucks pass so closely you’re almost knocked over.

If that isn’t your style, you can go watch other people beat the snot out of each other. Every Sunday afternoon in Audubon Park, Society for Creative Anachronism members dress up like knights and hit each other with fake swords. It’s fun to cook up some popcorn, plant your ass on the ground in front of the action, and yell, “Have at ye, knave!” My recommendation: dress up like a dragon and charge them. I guarantee that half of them will love it and half of them will be deeply offended.

There are other things to do in this neighborhood. Admission to the Memphis Botanic Garden is free on Tuesdays, and the Dixon Gallery & Gardens is free on Saturday mornings. At 4 a.m., nearby Gibson’s Donuts on Mendenhall starts turning out the day’s delicious treats. For shopping, there’s a cluster of great thrift stores in the Highland/Summer area.

If you want to continue down Summer, be sure to stop at Games Plus, one of the few places left in the city where you can get video games made before 2000. Classic. Then head east to catch a movie at the Summer Drive-In or maybe play mini-golf at Putt-Putt Golf and Games.

The city has so much more to offer. There are the cheap beers at the P&H Café, stumbling down Jackson Avenue to get to Alex’s for post-3 a.m. Greek wings and shuffleboard, walking the abandoned railroad tracks in the southeast corner of Shelby Farms, bar-hopping on Overton Square, getting delicious Ethiopian food at Abyssina on Poplar, and so many other things that don’t involve Graceland, Stax, or Sun Studios (treasures of Memphis, though they be). Get up and go-go. Anyone who says there’s nothing to do in Memphis isn’t looking.

A local program is getting teens worked up. Justin Fox Burks

Main Street Mall; National Ornamental Metal Museum; Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge

“Well, I’m a-gonna raise a fuss, I’m a-gonna raise a holler, about a-workin’ all summer just to try to earn a dollar …”

Eddie Cochran’s dismal account of summer for the working American teenager includes a merciless boss, long hours, and a slender wallet. But for a number of area youth, there is a cure for the “summertime blues.”

The Memphis Summer Youth Employment Program (MSYEP) aims not only to provide participants with summer job opportunities but also to aid in character development.

According to Thurman Northcross, manager of youth services at the Office of Youth Services and Community Affairs, “Many summer youth employment programs around the country focus on crime abatement, but we choose to look at our program as promoting youth development.” Northcross has been involved with the program since November 2006.

To participate in MSYEP’s lottery — the program’s selection process — youth must be 14 to 21 years of age. Fourteen- and 15-year-olds who land spots in the program earn $5.15 per hour for a 20-hour workweek; 16- to 21-year-olds work 30 hours a week for $6 per hour.

This year, out of about 7,000 applications, the program had enough funding for 1,150.

Over the eight-week course, the teens work in a wide range of city-funded positions, including several not-so-typical jobs. “We have 20 kids researching the history of the downtown area,” Northcross says. “We have 16 other kids working on neighborhood mapping with GPS [Global Positioning System] equipment.”

As part of MSYEP, many of the participants also take classes that teach them skills they can use when they join the workforce. For instance, there are classes specializing in air conditioning, electrical, auto mechanics, welding, and graphic arts/advertising. Fifteen to 18 students are in each class.

Northcross says, “If businesses could agree to host and fully fund classes at the worksites, they would help develop a pool of kids working harder next summer. The classes connect the youth to aspects of the businesses.”

No matter what jobs the participants land, they learn the fundamentals of working in the real world, such as responsibility. “Even when they show up for orientation, we make sure they’re orderly and well-dressed,” Northcross says. “You have to have a zero-tolerance policy. Once you implement that message, they follow it. We’re trying to get kids to understand that this experience mirrors the real world of work.”

Northcross feels that regardless of their reasons for working, this year’s participants will find themselves more capable of success at the end of the eight weeks. All they needed was a little help. “They need some type of support to open doors for them. We owe it to the youth and the city to do that,” he says. His ultimate goal, though out of reach at present, is a zero-percent summer unemployment rate for city youth.

“Some kids don’t realize the potential they have,” Northcross says, and MSYEP aims to open their eyes. “Every kid who wants to work should have the opportunity. We need to give them all we can so they can be all they can be in life.”