It’s time to send ‘An Idiot Abroad’

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

March 17, 2011

Here we are on spring break and landlocked by the cost and logistics of travel with so large a family, hobbled by gas prices that seem to know no ceiling.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about travel. I always do at this time of year when the kids are out of school and with summer vacation looming.

It’s an activity that has eluded this family as, over the years, we’ve accumulated people rather than frequent flyer miles.

The farthest I’ve managed to travel lately has been a journey up the remote to the farthest reaches of cable television where I found a reality travel program called “An Idiot Abroad,” obviously misplaced and lost on the dial in the strange environs of the Science Channel.

There is no science whatsoever to the show. The premise: Comedian Ricky Gervais and writing partner Stephen Merchant, the duo that exported the sitcom “The Office” from Great Britain, send their friend, the hapless and melon-headed Karl Pilkington, to the farthest reaches of the Earth to visit the Seven Wonders of the World … (read more)

Hidden Memphis: Downtown watchmaking school trained hundreds for post-war careers

Hidden Memphis series for The Commercial Appeal

March 13, 2011

During the early to mid-20th century in Downtown Memphis, as people bustled along on their way to shopping at Goldsmith’s Department Store, a movie at the Majestic Theatre on Main or lunch at Anderton’s, a group of students were hunched over fragile instruments, listening intently for the delicate movements of timepieces to tell them their problems.

For a brief period of time in Memphis, time was a growing concern. From 1940 until 1953, the Southern College of Watchmaking was a place where hundreds of people came from all over to learn the intricacies of and skills it takes to build and repair watches and clocks, before flooding back into the world as ambassadors from our city and of the time itself.

The building — a three-story brick edifice — is no longer there at 83 N. Second. The corner is now a blacktop parking lot hemmed in by the law offices of Burch Porter & Johnson in the old Tennessee Club to the south and the towering 100 N. Main building to the north. But in its time, said jeweler William McGary of Paducah, Ky., a 1949 graduate, “Court Square was our campus.”

Forrest L. Osborne, a Perry, Okla., native and the son of a doctor, founded the school at 776 Poplar near Manassas as a jewelry making and watch repair educational institution. A place where “crippled and other incurably injured persons” could learn a valuable and productive skill, according to a 1943 story in The Commercial Appeal … (read more)

YoLo in midst of targeted growth spurt

Feature news story for The Memphis Daily News

March 11, 2011

In February 2010, Taylor Berger’s wife introduced him to the concept of self-serve frozen yogurt.

Within half a year, he and partner Mike McCaskill had opened two YoLo Frozen Yogurt stores – one in Collierville’s Historic Town Square and one in East Memphis in the Erin Way Shopping Center. By the end of this summer, the pair plan to have nine more up and running.

The newest YoLo is set to open any day in Midtown at the corner of Madison Avenue and Cooper Street, next door to Lenny’s Sub Shop and Bari Ristorante y Enoteca. A Bartlett location will open in the Kroger shopping center at the corner of Stage Road and Bartlett Boulevard in May, with another East Memphis location to follow in the recently vacated Cold Stone Creamery space in Park Place Center.

There is also one planned for Cordova and the addition to the fleet of stores of a mobile YoLo, a restored 1965 Airstream that will be available to go on location for private parties and festivals … (read more)

Digital history: New online archive displays vast collections of library’s Memphis Room

Hidden Memphis series for The Commercial Appeal

March 3, 2011

If you are interested in a sepia-toned photo of the 1932 graduating class of Central High School or an 1836 letter from William Andusentte of New Orleans to Britton Duke of Germantown regarding cotton prices, you can put on your shoes and button up your coat before heading to the fourth floor of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library to see them.

Or, thanks to Sarah Frierson, digital projects manager for the library, you can put your feet up on your desk, give the mouse a few clicks and see them without ever changing out of your pajamas.

The Memphis & Shelby County Room, established in 1971, is currently home to 160,000 processed manuscript collections, more than 10,000 photos, tens of thousands of newspaper clippings and a special book collection of Memphis-related materials.

“The Memphis Room is one of the most extensive collections of local history material in the United States,” said Wayne Dowdy, senior manager of the history department. “There are very few public libraries that have the kind of in-depth research materials that we’ve got. It’s a great asset to the community because it tells Memphis’ story and Memphis’ whole story.” … (read more)

In my day, 4-year-olds didn’t carry cell phones

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

March 3, 2011

It’s the most timeless and ageless of toys, isn’t it? It’s not the rocking horse or the dollhouse. It’s not even the iconic Yo-Yo. It’s the cardboard box, big enough for a child of any age or size to crawl into and spend an afternoon.

Take a marker to the side of it, and it becomes a spacecraft or race car. As children, we spent days after Christmas or birthdays inside these vessels, transported to different worlds and faraway continents even as the actual toy or appliance it once housed sat nearby, ignored, utterly forgotten.

But that was yesterday. That was last century in the 1970s, when I was young enough to be struck wide-eyed by the gaping maw of a cardboard cave. It was also an era when things — television sets and stereos — were large enough to fill a box that could then become a lunar module. Everything now is smaller, flatter and encased and shipped in packaging more friendly to the environment, though not the imagination. Who wants to ride to the moon in a biodegradable spaceship, pretend or otherwise?

From what I can tell these days, the new cardboard box, the discarded refuse-turned-plaything of the 21st century, is the obsolete cell phone. The box it came in is certainly too small to climb into, but I’ve watched my 4-year-old daughter walk around for days with a slim flip phone cradled to her ear, lost in her own world and babbling on and on … (read more)

Nichols navigates way to firm’s Memphis business tax group

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

March 3, 2011

The key to any good planning might be plenty of quiet time to think and ponder through obstacles and challenges before arriving at a clear course of action.

For tax attorney Jack Nichols, 32, that time begins with the daily hour-plus commute from Oxford, Miss., to the offices of Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens & Cannada PLLC at the Crescent Center in East Memphis.

Though he’s been with the firm since 2006, he had been working in Jackson, Miss., until making the move to Butler Snow’s Memphis office just before Christmas last year to expand and develop the firm’s estate planning practice here … (read more)

‘Famous Face': At 94, Martha McAnespie still loves to make Schnucks customers feel special

Good News feature for The Commercial Appeal

Feb. 24, 2011

“They call me ‘the Schnucks lady,'” Martha McAnespie says with a twinkle of pride in her green eyes.

At 94 years old, McAnespie is the same age as the very concept of a supermarket, having been born one month after Clarence Saunders opened the first Piggly Wiggly in September of 1916 in Downtown Memphis.

McAnespie works Thursdays through Saturdays at the Schnucks at Quince and Ridgeway, in East Memphis, and she wouldn’t miss those workdays for the world. She went to work for Seessel’s 26 years ago after retiring from her job as a secretary in the Criminal Court Division of General Sessions Court.

“I don’t think I could have stayed on this long if it hadn’t have been for the company,” McAnespie said. “Everybody here is so good to me, the management and the employees, so then I try to pass that on to the customers and make them feel special.” … (read more)

Sportsmen gather for clean water summit

Spot news story for The Memphis Daily News

Feb. 18, 2011

Earlier this week, Ducks Unlimited hosted the Sportsmen’s Summit for Clean Water, a think tank of national organizations brought together to look at grassroots conservation and communication efforts in their various communities and ways to effectively enforce the Clean Water Act of 1972.

About 70 leaders from five organizations – Ducks Unlimited, the National Wildlife Federation, the Izaak Walton League of America, Trout Unlimited and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership – came from as far away as Colorado and Florida. The groups collectively represent several million members.

“We’ve been working for several years to re-establish the intent of Congress that was laid out in 1972,” said Scott Yaich, director of conservation operations for Ducks Unlimited. “Their full intent was that the Clean Water Act be used to protect and conserve wetlands and things like intermittent streams, recognizing that all these waters are connected to navigable waters where the longtime federal interest had been back to the 1800s.”

The groups involved in the summit have been working to restore protection to wetlands that have been affected by Supreme Court decisions in recent years … (read more)

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

Feb. 17, 2011

Every other week, the ballpoint baton is handed off from Stacey Greenberg, and it’s my turn to write this column. There is a routine I have come to follow.

I wake up, dress and put on my robe. I then lie down on the couch in my office with a notepad and pencil and begin the procession of my four kids who each have only a few minutes to entertain me. There is singing and dancing, some juggling, monologues and bawdy jokes. If this produces nothing, we move to the cooking portion of the auditions, where I hope inwardly for a small grease fire or slight food allergy that may flourish into a life lesson. It’s like a reality television show in which the winner gets the chance to be humiliated by me in the M section.

There is rarely any clear winner; these kids aren’t so funny or entertaining when I first wake up. So I go to my second source of inspiration, the twin muses of Facebook and Twitter.

I admit this is just to waste time.

Last week, finding nothing in my kids’ repertoire or online, I had the 4-year-old uncover the morning newspaper from the 6 inches of snow at the bottom of the driveway.

I read voraciously for any tidbit, anything to spark interest and relate somehow to being a parent … (read more)

Bearden’s Legacy Project archives present-day Memphis

Feature news story for The Memphis Daily News

Feb. 17, 2011

The Memphis & Shelby County Room at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library is a treasure trove of information about the area and its people.

Among the library’s catacombs of flat files, cabinets, boxes and shelves are hundreds of thousands of newspapers and magazine articles, maps, oral histories, school yearbooks and pamphlets.

And, of course, there are photographs. More than 12,000 photographs, many old black-and-white-street scenes and portraits in and around Memphis. These images are absolutely essential to researchers, historians and filmmakers.

“It’s just something I was thinking about, my God, how many images have I used? I’ve used thousands of their images,” said Willy Bearden, local maker of films such as “One Came Home” and documentaries for WKNO’s Memphis Memories television series highlighting Elmwood Cemetery, Overton Park, local garage bands and the history of the cotton industry … (read more)