Year of Elvis

EPE pulls out stops for 35th anniversary of singer’s death

Centerpiece feature for The Memphis Daily News

Jan. 5, 2012

When describing the upcoming 35th anniversary of the death of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Kevin Kern of Elvis Presley Enterprises said 2012 could bring more fans to town than ever before.

“Obviously this is an Elvis Week times two,” Kern said.

The New Year promises to be bigger and busier for Graceland, one of Tennessee’s largest tourist attractions, averaging 600,000 visitors annually, but which can see those numbers escalate during a major anniversary year. During Elvis Week alone in 2007 – the 30th anniversary of Presley’s death – Graceland saw 75,000 visitors.

With such high expectations, Kern said, the planning for the 2012 festivities began two years ago. “We traditionally have music events at the Orpheum or the Cannon Center, but this year they’ll be at the FedExForum, that’s the size and scope of a major anniversary year for us.” … (read more)

Our time machine is wrapped up in new year

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

Jan. 5, 2012

My great-grandmother, Catherine Zanone, always preached that if you work on the first day of a new year, then you’ll work for the entire year. Sage words of superstition from someone who lived and worked through the Great Depression.

I’ve always heard, as well, that whatever you do on the first day of a new year, you’ll do the entire year. It’s where resolutions come from, I suppose; the get up and go to actually get up and go, whether to the gym or a walk around the block.

I don’t cotton to resolutions myself. Yet, on the first day of 2012, among other things, I sat and watched the first episode of the new season of a wildly popular British television show called “Doctor Who.” It’s a show I’ve never watched, which makes me the minority in my own home. This past summer, my wife and kids spent mornings at the pool and then long afternoons watching past episodes and whole seasons of “Doctor Who” together. It seemed an entertaining bonding experience for all of them.

I thought I would make an effort this day, this first of the new year, to take an interest in their interests. I have to say, I still don’t get it. Just like resolutions, neither do I cotton to the show’s genre of science fiction. But my kids get it. They gasped and commented on subtleties gleaned from past shows; they laughed and cheered at this Time Lord (the Doctor is a Time Lord, for those fellow uninitiated).

Near the end of the episode we watched, the Doctor says that with the aid of his TARDIS (his a time machine, I learned) he has access “to everything that has ever been or ever will be.” … (read more)

Helping less fortunate integral part of plan for service-minded merchant

Feature story for The Commercial Appeal

Dec. 29, 2011

In 2005, with his wife pregnant with their first child, Mike Harvey felt the simultaneous tugging of fatherhood and entrepreneurism.

He stepped in that year to buy the assets of Babytime, a 40-year-old baby furniture store in Whitehaven. The business was solely an investment at the time, and Harvey, with a background in retail with Wal-Mart and in sales with the global pharmaceutical company Merck, hired someone to run the store. In January 2011, however, another urge tugging at his heart became too great to ignore and he left the corporate world to devote his days to Babytime and to another, higher calling.

“The reason I left Merck was less about the store and more about the ministry work,” Harvey said. “It’s about both, so I plan on spending 50 percent of my time here and 50 percent of my time doing some different ministry work. My belief is using the business as mission, local and international. We’re heavily involved in the community.”

Babytime, now headquartered on Trinity Road in Cordova, offers furniture for babies and new parents, bedding and children’s clothing. Classes and support groups in parenting and breastfeeding are offered as well … (read more)

Christmas spirit should be more than seasonal

Because I Said So column for The Commercial Appeal

Dec. 22, 2011

Charles Dickens and Ebenezer Scrooge remind us to seize the moment and to treat every day as though it were Christmas.

George Bailey and Clarence the angel remind us that no man is a failure who has friends.

Buddy the Elf reminds us that the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.

And Clark Griswold and Cousin Eddie remind us that it’s illegal to empty a chemical toilet into the storm sewer.

My 5-year-old daughter reminded me the other day that there are still no presents wrapped beneath our tree. There are presents, to be sure, just not wrapped as yet. But we’re busy, aren’t we? We parents with our jobs and bills and responsibilities. It’s easy to let the time of year slip away from us, or for its meaning to get lost in a knotted string of numbers and details … (read more)

Artistic talents set Jerry Lawler on path to become Memphis wrestling icon

Feature profile for The Commercial Appeal

Dec. 18, 2011

Jerry Lawler is known for his antics, bravado and showmanship in the wrestling ring, locally for years on Saturday morning and Monday night wrestling, and internationally for World Wrestling Entertainment.

The flashy character, with his king’s crown and single-strap unitard, is a difficult image to reconcile with the Lawler who quietly spends time at a drafting table, working in pen and ink, pencil and oil paints on images of Superman, Batman and Santa Claus. Yet the latter Lawler is the original Lawler, and it’s his artwork that led him to be a star on the wrestling circuit.

“I was 4 or 5 years old when I started drawing, and one of the reasons I feel indebted to Superman is that was one of the first things I remember drawing,” Lawler said. “I would draw Superman and Batman all the time. When I realized that some people actually make a career out of art, I thought at the time that that’s something I’d really like to do.”

A recent showing of his artwork at Yalo Studio in Water Valley, Miss., drew nearly 500 people and sold almost $5,000 worth of art. His work will be shown Jan. 19 at 6 p.m. at The Booksellers of Laurelwood.

Lawler grew up in Ohio, Brownsville, Tenn., and Memphis.

He was born to a father who grew up on a farm, worked on the assembly line in the Ford Motor Co. plant and couldn’t read or write, and a housekeeper mother. Lawler’s parents encouraged him in his artwork as he spent time drawing Superman and other comic book heroes that continue to inspire to this day … (read more)

Sci-fi has become fact for wired-in generation

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

Dec. 8, 2011

I recently had the pleasure of sitting in on a lecture given by hometown son Joel Seligstein, Memphis City Schools graduate and current Facebook software engineer. He was in town from California to visit family and to speak to the eighth-grade CLUE class at White Station Middle School about his work.

It was like going back in time for me, sitting in a school auditorium again, a time machine lacking in leg room with the same small seats, the same smell of adolescence and apathy I remember from so long ago. Except this was the future. We were all there to hear about how the machines make Facebook run.

As a testament to Facebook’s popularity, it wasn’t until close to 20 minutes into the talk that Joel even asked the assembled 100-plus students how many use the social network. Naturally, nearly every hand went up, including mine.

But I wonder. Certainly many of those students, if not all, have accounts, and have for years. But how active are they? Two of my four children are online, yet their interaction seems limited to a status update here, a snarky comment there. My theory is that their lack of activity is due to the fact that I and their mother, and our friends, are on it. Many people still tend to think of Facebook as a kid’s toy, some sort of video game, yet I know close to 700 adults who participate.

When we were kids, our parents’ social network consisted of neighbors and work colleagues whom we never saw. We didn’t want any part of their social networking. We preferred them to be as anti-social as possible, to focus all of their attention on us and our need for action figures and the new fad of cable television … (read more)

In a turkey day first, the natives are coming to us

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

Nov. 24, 2011

Due to a cornucopia of circumstances, we are not making our annual trip to Georgia this November. For the first time in a decade we’re spending Thanksgiving in Memphis. Not just in Memphis, but we’ll be hosting the meal at our house. A first!

Instead of loading four kids into the van, piling in luggage and snacks on top of them with CDs, DVDs and enough plastic bags within reach to catch the inevitable car sickness, our own Mayflower Mazda is in dry dock. We’re sleeping in, moving about in our pajamas and preheating the oven.

We are staying in our homeland and the natives are coming to us.

In addition to being the first Thanksgiving in so many years spent at home, and the first ever in our house, it will be the first time I’ve cooked a turkey. How difficult could it be? Will it be the first time my kids have tasted raw bird or stuffed charcoal? Possibly … (read more)

Face time: White Station Middle School students get up-close visit with social-media site’s engineer

Metro centerpiece for The Commercial Appeal

Nov. 23, 2011

While visiting family for the Thanksgiving holiday, Joel Seligstein stopped by White Station Middle School to speak to more than 100 students about his job at a company they all “like.”

Seligstein has been a software engineer for Facebook in Palo Alto, Calif., since 2007.

His talk to the 13- and 14-year-olds was arranged through his cousin, Rachel Seligstein, an eighth-grader at the school, and Jennifer Brenneman, her CLUE teacher.

“You have a young guy, 26 years old, living the dream with Facebook as an engineer, and he got started in the science and math fields, so I wanted (the students) to see the relevance to what they’re currently studying,” Brenneman said.

Seligstein said the means to getting where he is, at a desk 30 feet from company founder Mark Zuckerberg in a corporation that feeds its employees three meals a day and provides pool tables, basketball courts and all the video game time a middle school student could dream of, was to “keep pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and trying new things.

“Any idea that you have, move fast and make it a reality; try it, and if it doesn’t work, try something else.” … (read more)

Memphians

Contributor of copy and editorial direction for Memphians coffee table book

The Nautilus Publishing Company; Oxford, MS

ISBN 978-193694603-7

2011

Genome Explorations searches genetic code for cancer cause

Health & Biotech story for The Memphis Daily News

Nov. 14, 2011

In a nondescript building on Jefferson Avenue, in what looks like an oversized kitchen with multiple refrigerators, Divyen Patel and his staff are searching genetic codes to find the switch that might, one day, turn off cancer.

At Genome Explorations, the business he began in 2001, Patel explains best what the scientists and lab techs do.

“We actually break down genetic disease on a genetic basis, and then try to understand what the causative agents are for any particular disease.”

Patel began work with technology he developed and brought to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, researching childhood cancers before expanding into adult cancers. The technology allows Genome Explorations to run 1.3 million to 3 million different tests on a particular tissue. The results can then be used to compare normal to diseased tissue to figure out just what went wrong genetically for that disease to occur … (read more)