Davis-Kidd more than just a store to our family

Because I Said So column for The Commercial Appeal

April 28, 2011

Last weekend, I took the kids to the new Woodland Discovery Playground at Shelby Farms and to the Memphis Farmers Market Downtown. Over those two days we came in contact with hundreds of fellow Memphians and families.

These places and events have become more than a place to swing and slide and buy collard greens or strawberries. They are the places we go to visit and catch up with old friends or meet new ones. The common interest is there, whether it’s having children or having an appetite.

We are all birds of a feather.

For a city that’s been known far and wide and unflatteringly for its divisiveness along racial, economic and educational lines, it is wonderful to finally see citizens clamoring to be together. It’s good to be able to share this coming-together with my own and so many other children as well.

As Memphis gears up this week to welcome the world to our largest backyard party, the Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival, it’s comforting to think of the smaller, year-round gatherings for us to enjoy. And the past few years have seen more and more of these opportunities, from the free concerts at the Levitt Shell to smaller neighborhood festivals to the plaza of the FedEx Forum before a Grizzlies playoff game … (read more)

No adversity could keep flying man Gordon Hall on ground

Feature story for The Commercial Appeal

April 24, 2011

Gordon Hall dropped out of high school because he found its pace too slow, too rooted in the ground, and he needed to fly.

“I had some hard times in high school,” said Hall, who lives in Bartlett. “My mother wanted me to go to college prep school, but I had no desire to go to college, and I flunked out of high school. I had no desire to learn algebra, chemistry, geometry and physics, all the stuff they were trying to jam down my throat.”

Ten days later, in 1946, he was in the Air Force training to be a Morse code radio operator, eventually being sent to the Aleutian Islands for 14 months. The northern Pacific Ocean, he said, was a place that “impressed me more than any other place I’ve ever been.”

Growing up in Connecticut, his father worked as a fireman or engineer on steam locomotives during the Depression to support Hall and his five older sisters. But while his father was moving across the terrain at ground level, his son had dreams of soaring.

Hall writes in his memoir, “Tiger Lead, Your Flight Is Up,” published in mid-March: “Ever since third grade, I used to lie on an incline in the grass during the lunch break and I would spend time looking up at the beautiful, soft, billowy, white cumulous clouds as they floated with the wind. I was absolutely entranced at the thought of being a bird or perhaps a bird man or even being able to fly an airplane among those puffy white clouds floating in the blue sky.” … (read more)

Social media opens new world of business

Technology feature for The Memphis Daily News

April 18, 2011

Feedback is not like it used to be, says Shauna Wright. There was a time when a bad experience with a company meant telling a neighbor or a few friends, but in today’s ever-shrinking world, those friends can be a thousand miles away and number in the hundreds.

Because of this phenomenon, the burgeoning field of social media management has taken off with the speed of a Google keyword search, and Wright and others find their days full of tweets, status updates and blog posts. And some of this work is happening from a breakfast table or patio lounge chair, as many managers choose to work from a familiar home rather than a corporate environment.

“So many people are on Facebook and Twitter that their information gets out there and it’s basically free advertising for them to be posting,” said Christie Jarvis, who set up a virtual assistant business from home several years ago but found herself more and more taking over the social media responsibilities for her clients … (read more)

It’s survival of the feddest as students brave TCAP

Because I Said So column for The Commercial Appeal

April 14, 2011

Once every year as grade school students, our regular curriculum of multiplication tables, phonics and dodgeball would be put on hold so that we could take something called the California Achievement Test. It was ostensibly to find out whether Tennessee’s elementary school kids were smarter than those of California. I hope I did us proud.

Our usual lessons, like Han Solo frozen in carbonite, were still there, though merely hibernating and awaiting that standardized diversion to end. During that week, it was imperative that we show up to school on time and with two No. 2 pencils sharpened to acute points.

Other than the pencils, I don’t remember much else that was expected of us during these daylong timed tests except to sit still, focus, keep the lead within the little answer ovals and erase thoroughly if necessary.

That menu has changed … (read more)

Taco Bell Tuesday Club: Old friends swap reminiscenses, tall tales at weekly gathering

Lifestyle feature for The Commercial Appeal

April 14, 2011

If you have stopped for lunch at the Taco Bell at Estate and Poplar in East Memphis recently, odds are you’ve encountered a group of raucous, overgrown boys eating and reminiscing.

What you have wandered into is the Taco Bell Tuesday Club.

“We were always sitting in here on Tuesdays, and it started out as a joke, ‘Hey, why don’t we start a club?'” said 60-year-old Stanley Rogers.

That was eight months ago, and the five founding members — Ernie Vescovo, a broker with First Horizon; Ronny Birmann, a retired traveling salesman; Ernie Barrasso, a retired casino executive and disco owner; Bud Cowgill, owner of Cabinet Services, and Rogers, who works in IT — have grown into a roster numbering more than 60.

The average age is about 65 (the oldest member, at 85, is Albert Caccamisi), and the parameters of the club are loosely defined, though members do have identification badges on lanyards and matching baseball caps with the bold letters “TBC” (Taco Bell Club) and a likeness of a taco embossed across the front.

It’s difficult to discern a leader of this party. Indeed, walking among them, the ringmaster of this circus seems to change from conversation to conversation, from colorful anecdote to anecdote … (read more)

Corporate spelling bee to benefit Literacy Mid-South

Event advance story for The Memphis Daily News

April 8, 2011

The Literacy Mid-South Corporate Spelling Bee is experiencing a R-E-V-I-V-A-L.

After a two-year hiatus, the adult bee will take place on April 28 at the Memphis Botanic Garden, hosted by Brad Carson of Classic Hits 94.1 KQK. The Daily News is a sponsor of the event. The entry fee for a team of three is $350, with all proceeds benefiting Literacy Mid-South and its programs.

Those programs include teaching people to read and to comprehend what they read to help them in further education and with everyday functions within society. Literacy Mid-South offers small classes and one-on-one training, including pre-GED courses, for adults.

“Our goal is to get our adult students up through pre-GED training, and we are the only Memphis organization that works with that population,” said Sallie Johnson, executive director of Literacy Mid-South … (read more)

City, community at heart of Montgomery Martin’s work

Special Emphasis: Construction for The Memphis Daily News

April 4, 2011

Construction, says Montgomery Martin, is hard. And he should know, having been in the business since 1978.

“You’re creating something out of nothing, you’re taking a raw piece of dirt, grading it off and digging holes and pouring concrete and creating an edifice for an environment to work in and live in,” Martin said. “That’s all very appealing and neat, and a necessary thing to do for society and for culture and for people to live and operate in.”

The projects of Montgomery Martin Contractors LLC, a mixture of residential, commercial and civic, are highly visible around town: Barboro Flats, Hope Presbyterian Church, Opera Memphis, Mercedes-Benz of Memphis, Memphis College of Art Fogelman Hall and Downtown graduate school, Harbor of Health, Briarcrest Christian School and Christian Brothers University Center for Life Sciences.

The projects are many and varied out of town as well, but it’s Memphis that Martin calls home and that he holds close to heart … (read more)

Hidden Memphis: On Film Row

Hidden Memphis series for The Commercial Appeal

April 3, 2011

Downtown district supplied Mid-South movie houses for decades

If you saw the 1969 version of “True Grit” in a local theater, the images on screen of a one-eyed John Wayne were produced from light streaming through film unwound from a large “platter” wheel.

That platter more than likely would have been sent to your theater from Downtown, from one of many one-story brick buildings that made up the district surrounding Vance and South Second Street, known as Film Row.

In an age when movie theaters would change their offerings several times a week, the films had to be ready to ship, and trucks would move in and out of the district at all hours of the night. For much of its tenure as a film distribution center, Memphis served the areas of Arkansas, West Tennessee, North Mississippi and the boot heel of Missouri.

The location was a natural with its centralized spot in the Mid-South, access to major roads and bridges, and the trains running through Memphis Union Station that stood only a block to the south.

Incidentally, if you saw Jeff Bridges’ performance in “True Grit” last year in a local theater, it was probably shipped from Hollywood on an encrypted hard drive and uploaded to a server for viewing … (read more)

At long last, waiting is no longer our kids’ only team sport

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

March 31, 2011

In my earlier days, I played for the St. Louis Cardinals. I was young, yet showed some promise. I weathered a few minor injuries, but kept at it and worked hard. I gave all I had for my team and our fans.

Of course I’m talking about playing soccer at the elementary parochial school in East Memphis. I always meant to try for something more, for a shot at a bigger show, but I never did get around to it.

My daughter, Somerset, recently joined a soccer team, a pretty big deal in our home. Of all the things we’ve only talked about doing in our years as parents, somewhere near the top of that list is getting our kids involved in team sports.

You might say that the team sport my wife, Kristy, and I excel in is procrastinating. “Field trip permission slip? I’ll sign it later. Social studies project? I think your mother is picking up some poster board tomorrow. Dinner? Soon … .”

Well, we’ve finally done it. Somerset is now a running and kicking member of the Second Baptist Bumblebees, a swarm of 8-year-old girls in shinguards.

So we’ll scratch that off our parental to-do list. Later … (read more)

Roundtable tackles trademark infringement

Event advance story for The Memphis Daily News

March 31, 2011

The law firm of Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC will hold a roundtable discussion Thursday on the topic “Use of Competitor’s Trademark in Keyword Advertising: Infringement or Not?”

The event is part of the American Bar Association’s Intellectual Property litigation series.

The subject of keyword advertising is relatively new in the sphere of intellectual property law. According to a New York Times article by David H. Freeman, Google’s pay-per-click advertising program – AdWords – garners the search engine behemoth more than $20 billion per year. The popularity of the program and rampant use by consumers renders it, and others like it, ripe for trademark infringement.

When a consumer searches for a term in a search engine – whether Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other – sponsored links from advertisers’ websites may appear in a section to the right of the page while regular or natural findings to the left … (read more)