Tag: Thanksgiving in Memphis

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Trail Markers

Last Sunday, I found myself confronted with a beautiful sunny afternoon and no obligation to do anything but enjoy it. The ground was still too wet to mow/mulch that layer of leaves covering my front yard. Darn it. My wife was staring at legal work in the den. My best golfing buddy was elsewhere. I’ve lost all interest in pro football. What to do? It was a blue-sky day, temps in the mid-50s. Perfect for a little exercise and recreation. I decided to walk nine holes at good ol’ Overton Park.

The round started out well. I made a couple of pars, then set off on the trail through the deep woods between holes number two and three. Imagine my surprise to find a massive(!) tree had fallen and obliterated the path and surrounding area, blocking all progress. Then imagine the weird sight of a man carrying a golf bag through a thick forest, climbing over logs, pushing through underbrush, looking for a way to the next tee box. Fore! Only in Memphis, I thought. But then I remembered, “Hey, I can write about this.” Which is how a lot of my thought patterns go, to be honest.

Links at Overton Park clubhouse

So, I ended up being thankful for the misadventure, for a new perspective on golf, and for the opportunity to forge a new trail. And since it’s Thanksgiving week, a time when giving thanks is the whole point, please indulge me while I do just that.

I’m a lucky man. I’m thankful for my health (knock on wood) and for my family and my friends here in Memphis — and, well, all over. If you live on the planet as long as I have, you leave a trail. And not just in the woods at Overton Park.

I’m thankful for this job — for the nearly 20 years and the 1,000 or so issues of the Flyer that have had my name atop the masthead as editor. That’s a good run in this business. Or any business, for that matter. I’m thankful to have been blessed to work with so many talented, smart, funny, loveable folks through the years. I’m even thankful for the one or two jerks — you know, for contrast.

I’m thankful for the usual motley ensemble of family and friends that will come together Thursday at our house to enjoy a dinner we all create. I’m thankful for our dining room table’s extra leaves, so we can all sit and toast each others’ health and taste each others’ food and offer gratitude for this annual gathering of kindred souls.

I’m grateful for my wife, Tatine, who defends the defenseless in court every day and who makes her mysterious sweet potato “yellow mush” for Thanksgiving dinner, and completes my life.

I’m thankful for my daughter, Mary, who maintains our silly tradition of making Paula Deen’s ridiculous green bean casserole, year after year, and for her husband, Richard, who brings his terrible jokes; for Jackie and Jahn, whose hair-colors change with each visit, and who bring mountains of cheese for their spectacular macaroni; for my stepson, Roman, just graduating from college, and for his dad, Kevin, who brings his famous scalloped potatoes from Little Rock; for our friend John, who provides moist stuffing and dry wit; and for our friend Harrell, who brings his guitar, tales of Beale Street, and a bottle of champagne.

I’m grateful for my too-seldom-seen siblings in New Mexico and Missouri and Minnesota; for my son Andrew in New York (or on the road, making his music); for my stepdaughter Agatha and her husband, Alex, in Brooklyn, and for their beautiful new twin boys, who’ve brought Tatine and me into the world of grandparenting; and for our wonderful French relations in Marseille, whose family I had the good fortune to marry into. 

And speaking of the French, I’m grateful to them and to the Californians who make the wine we drink with dinner; and to the Kentuckians who smoke the big turkey my mother always sends us, even in her 95th year.

Most of all, I’m grateful for the opportunity to enjoy another Thanksgiving, another year around the sun, another marker on the trail of this life we’re all walking together.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Be Thankful, Memphis

CREDIT: Tony Bosse | Dreamstime

At some point, it became a Thanksgiving tradition in my family to go around the table and have each of us say one thing we’re thankful for before eating dinner. Food, family, health, and a job are a few of the common answers. Like clockwork, my sister starts to get antsy when someone takes more than their allotted 30 seconds or has the audacity to mention more than one thing they are thankful for.

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. Partly because of the sweet potato casserole my mom makes, but mostly because of the company it brings. For as long as I can remember, my family has spent the holiday with my uncle, aunt, and cousin from Nashville. My uncle, affectionately known as “Uncle Bubba,” was more or less the life of the party. He had stories and jokes for days. His jokes were mostly crude and hardly ever funny, but they never failed to fill the room with laughter. His presence was huge. And then in spring 2016, he passed away. He was sick, so we knew it was coming, but we didn’t expect it to come so soon.

The year he died, Thanksgiving was different. As we’d done in the years before, we went around the table and said what we were thankful for. We stumbled a little, searching our hearts for something to be grateful for while accepting that a person we love would never spend this day with us again.

The truth is, it can be hard to be thankful in the face of some things others are going through. The city in which we live has a lot of issues — crime, poverty, food deserts — to name three. These are real problems that by no means should be ignored, but Memphis is so much more than a poor city rife with crime. These things don’t define Memphis, and we shouldn’t let them diminish our gratitude for the unique city we call home. We still have a lot to be thankful for.

Here are just a few things — some big, some small — that Memphis has going for itself.

Development: Memphis has a slew of new developments in the works Downtown. One Beale, Union Row, and the recently announced Pinch District redevelopment are just a few. These projects mean more jobs for Memphians and more money for the local economy.

Sports: Even if you’re not a sports fan, I’m sure you know by now that the Memphis Tiger football team — 10-1 this season — is hot. Just as hot is Penny Hardaway’s Tiger basketball team (5-1, so far). Even with James Wiseman out until January, this Tigers team is special to watch and will likely do big things. And let’s not forget about Ja Morant and the Grizzlies. The rookie point guard is unbelievable on the court. His moves, his passes, his clutch shots. Wow.

Community organizers: Have you noticed the way Memphians rally behind other Memphians and for the causes they believe in? We saw it in the fight to take down the city’s Confederate statues and in those who rallied behind Manuel Duran, and we still see it in undeterred activists who show up time after time to rally for and against issue after issue. We see it in the hundreds of nonprofits serving the city. We see it on college campuses and on the streets. Memphians know how to stand up when it matters.

Transit: Memphis is slated to get its first Bus Rapid Transit line by 2024. The service will change the way people get from Downtown to the University of Memphis area. It’s not the solution to all of the city’s transit woes, but it’s a start, and we’ve needed a start for a long time. The city has also upped its transportation game with the growing number of shared mobility options. We’ve got bikes, we’ve got standing scooters, and now we even have scooters with seats.

Tony Bosse | Dreamstime

Thankful for good views and green spaces

Public spaces: From the Mississippi riverfront to Overton Park to Shelby Farms, the city is blessed with quality outdoor spaces. The goal should be for all neighborhoods to have access to clean, safe, green spaces like these, but let’s not take what we have for granted.

None of these things should detract from the fact that there is still much work to be done in Memphis. I’m not suggesting that we ignore all the problems and live in blissful ignorance, but every once in a while it’s good to take a step back and be thankful for what’s going in the right direction.

Maya Smith is a Flyer staff writer.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Valentino Visentini | Dreamstime.com

Valentino Visentini | Dreamstime.com

Mayor Rob Ford

Well, the official publication date of this issue is Thanksgiving Day, and I was kind of nervous over the thought of writing a list of things for which I am thankful, because that just has “nightmare” written all over it.

I can’t stand all that gobbledygook. So you can image how thrilled I was to flip on the computer and find this in The Washington Post:

“As Comet ISON hurtles toward the sun, its million-year-long journey through our solar system may end with its violent death — or a spectacular sky show. On Thanksgiving, when the comet rounds the sun, professional and amateur astronomers alike will await ISON’s fate with bated breath. Its tail may get ripped off by a cloud of solar particles, or the sun’s brutal radiation and pressure may demolish it completely.”

Yes! A big fat explosion in the sky on Thanksgiving. That is my kind of holiday. None of this sitting around thinking about how fortunate I am and making mental — or, God forbid, spoken — lists of things about which I am thankful.

But if I did have to make a list like that, next on the list after Comet ISON hurtling toward the sun for a million years and then being demolished on Thanksgiving Day by brutal radiation and pressure would be Rob Ford. Yes, Toronto mayor Rob Ford. You gotta love that guy. He got himself photographed smoking crack out of a crack pipe, and his excuse was that he was drunk. Then he knocked down a city councilwoman while charging around the room like a wild moose. And as fabulous as all that is, it’s not as great as these recent remarks by Toronto Star reporter Christopher Hume about a newspaper columnist and former American prison inmate coming to Ford’s defense: “Writing about His Worship in a recent newspaper column, the Lord High Windbag prattled on about Ford as if his problems amounted to nothing more than ‘his full-figured, Archie Bunker style.’ Clearly, his Lordship brayed, this is a case of ‘rank hypocrisy from mouthy journalists and gimcrack municipal politicians, and … the confected and inflated sanctimony of prigs and twits.'”

Now, why on earth have I never used the term “gimcrack” on this page? I am going to every week from now on. And possibly “prigs and twits.”

“Why, old dear, have you succumbed to the message of this holiday season’s gimcrack advertising, when you know that such commercials are targeted to prigs and twits?”

I love this. I am thankful to be able to write sentences using the word “gimcrack,” and I am very grateful to Mayor Rob Ford for bringing this all about.

And speaking of the holidays, and commercials for crap no one needs, I saw something on the news last week about people who were already turning the parking lots of big-box stores into campgrounds. I don’t mean a few days before Black Friday; I mean weeks before it. Do these people not have jobs? Lives? Families? As I wrote on this page around this time last year (and I repeat this for a dear friend), “I am hightailing it to the parking lot of the nearest big-box store and camping out in the parking lot so I can be one of the first shoppers to hit the door running and buy, buy, buy. I can’t wait to be a part of the mob that storms the place. In fact, I hope I get trampled just to make it more exciting.”

But now I want to run around the stores like Mayor Rob Ford, drunk and on crack in the city council meetings up in Toronto — kind of like how Lobster Boy used to fly across the room in his wheelchair and head-butt his wife.

Ah, Lobster Boy. Now, that just makes me feel downright nostalgic. Not that I am “thankful” for nostalgia. It just reminds me of when I was in my 30s and had a beard that was not white. I should have been more thankful for that back then, but I’m sure I took it for granted.

So, aside from gimcrack, what exactly am I really thankful for this year (even though I promised not to do this)? I’m thankful that I haven’t seen an army of raccoons on my porch recently — although I did have a stare-down with a possum on said porch the other night, and I was sitting in my bedroom the other day when a chipmunk ran past my foot. I’m just waiting to find an armadillo in my bathtub any day now.

I’m thankful for Bettye LaVette, Mavis Staples, Bobby Womack, Singa B, and a great number of other singers who can put me in a great mood. I’m very thankful for Al Green’s Full Gospel Tabernacle, especially since when a baby starts crying in church during his sermon, he now shouts, “Shut up, kid!” and then just starts laughing and dancing around the pulpit, urging those in the crowd not to add that big extra shot of Grand Marnier to their margaritas, ’cause they just don’t need it.

And I am thankful this column is now coming to a close, because I have obvious issues that need to be addressed. Happy Thanksgiving.