In a part of town once known for industry, manufacturing and commerce, that has seen difficult times over the past few decades, one man is an industry unto himself.

Nelson Smith III is well known in the North Memphis area known as New Chicago. “The Pied Piper” of the neighborhood, he calls himself, and his neighbors are welcome to use his studio’s phone, and in warmer weather, friends and characters will sit for a chat with the garage door flung wide.

A Memphis institution, as a drive around town over the years would attest, his work could be seen on signs and sculpture from Libertyland to Shoney’s restaurants to Holiday Inn and even Danny Owens’s adult entertainment clubs. He has been involved with industries as varied as service and automotive, the military and entertainment.

“I’ve been all over — California, New York and all of those places — but my home’s been here, and I’ve done all of my work here,” Smith said of his nearly 45-year career. “Artwork and sculpture, I’ve done thousands of pieces all over Memphis and around the country.”

His very studio, in fact, was the one-time Currie’s Club Tropicana, which saw acts such as Ray Charles, B.B. King, Little Junior Parker, Fats Domino, Isaac Hayes and “any black artist who was known at the time,” Smith said.

Little of that club is now recognizable, filled as it is with lumber, plaster, fiberglass, a Pontiac Firebird being remodeled little by little into a Ferrari, past works and new ones. However, the artistry is still mixed in with the mortar, falling like sawdust all around the floor … (read more)

Last week began the home stretch into Christmas. The light of a red nose is visible at the end of the tunnel for kids who have been staring into the darkness of the school year with very little patience and much, much hope.

‘Tis the season of joy. ‘Tis the season of the off-key, of missed cues and flubbed lyrics.

I spent last week on the circuit, touring the many musical performances of my kids’ schools, their harmonies through the holidays.

The oldest, Calvin, on saxophone, and some of his bandmates from White Station Middle School serenaded shoppers at the Wolfchase Barnes & Noble. In addition to holiday standards “Jingle Bell Rock” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” they played the Chinese melody “Kangding Love Song.”

A portion of the sales that night went to benefit the middle school, while a majority of my kids asked me not to sing along with Johnny Mathis on the drive home … (read more)

In Danny Presley’s position, it never hurts to have perspective and a healthy sense of self. In fact, those traits are necessary for survival, so Presley lives by two rules: Never take yourself too seriously, and lighten up.

The former Memphis police officer and current deputy Shelby County attorney supervises 14 assistant county attorneys, is assigned to a number of boards, commissions and committees to provide legal advice, and is a member of the ethics commission.

Presley also handles litigation and has tried cases for both the city and the county in local, state and federal courts here and in Cincinnati.

He’s been doing internal administrative investigations since 1995 and has

been involved in high-profile cases including the recent inquiry into ethics violations by General Sessions Court Clerk Otis Jackson, defense in the lawsuit filed by losing candidates in the Aug. 5 elections and investigating misconduct in the motor vehicle administration … (read more)

At an age when most people are coming to terms with having to make their own beds in the morning, Laura Echtenkamp has awoken, made her bed and is lying in it, too.

The 25-year-old entrepreneur bought the specialty retail shop Reverie Fine Linens and Down in September. She went to work there as an intern studying interior design and home furnishings merchandising at the University of Memphis, and stayed on as a permanent employee after graduating in 2008.

The original owners, Harold and Margie Steinberg, began the business 23 years ago and approached Echtenkamp about purchasing the store late last year when they decided it was time for retirement.

After talking it over with her mother and stepfather, Lisa and Doug Thomas, Echtenkamp said, “I couldn’t stop talking about all the things I wanted to do and all the ideas that I had.”

The store is known for its fine bed linens and down comforters, pillows, decorative accessories and nightwear; brand names such as Sferra, Scandia House, SDH, Ann Gish and Nancy Koltes. Changes will be minimal and mainly seen in an increase in basic inventory carried, a larger selection of children’s bedding and some younger styles from her core brands offered.

“I feel like we were missing a younger market that we could have been taking advantage of, so that’s one of the things I want to jump on,” Echtenkamp said … (read more)

As a student at the University of Memphis’ Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law in the mid-1970s, Charlie Hill never suspected the word “tweet” would become part of his lexicon.

But as social media usage broadens and reaches from the individual to the corporate, it is becoming increasingly important for those corporations to understand how posts to Facebook, blog entries or the seemingly innocuous tweet – a 140-word message posted to Twitter – might compromise company secrets, policies or marketing plans.

“This whole area of what is and what isn’t private in social media is evolving daily, so there are no hard and fast lines and you can’t apply a traditional analysis of what’s private conduct versus public conduct,” said the 58-year-old Hill.

As part of his employment law practice with Glankler Brown PLLC, Hill provides advice and training to businesses on the legal aspects of social media and whether to include social media policies within their company policies.

“Courts are starting to try to draw a line between protecting an individual’s right to privacy versus what’s public communication,” he said.

If you have recently e-mailed, tweeted, blogged or written on someone’s “wall” – and chances are you have – then you know that rarely do those exchanges stay within the confines of a two-way conversation … (read more)

When I was a kid, the Christmas tree lights we had were the large, outdoor-style lights. They were painted bulbs of red, blue, orange and yellow, and the paint invariably chipped, allowing the pure white light to peek through. I don’t know where those lights came from; they predated me, but that strand was something we always had balled up in the collapsing cardboard box of decorations hauled from the attic each year.

For our first Christmas together after my mother remarried, my stepdad, Steve, came home with a 14-foot tree that just barely brushed the peak of the cathedral ceiling in our house in southeast Shelby County. In the place of a metal stand was a crude X of 2-by-4s hammered to the trunk just like in the movies. We raised it and used twine to tie it off to various places in the living room to hold it upright in a scene that would have made Clark Griswold proud. I’m not even sure how, or if, we decorated it to the top.

I’ve had a Christmas tree in every place I’ve lived as an adult, and all have had one thing in common — from my childhood tree weighted down with 50 pounds of lights to the towering spruce of adolescence and the very tree in our living room as I write this — they’ve all been real … (read more)

Attorney Greg Duckett is a man motivated by service to his community.

It is this commitment that has led him to the Tennessee Board of Regents, where he serves as vice chairman, membership on the Tennessee Election Commission and the boards of the Memphis College of Art, the National Civil Rights Museum and the Liberty Bowl Festival Association.

As senior vice president and corporate counsel for Baptist Memorial Health Care, Duckett was attracted to the work because “we all work for a purpose, and a number of us are blessed to have part of that purpose be more than just a salary to maintain our personal needs, but it’s that element of … I did something to help someone else, and Baptist, being a health care provider and service-oriented, fulfills that mission and need for me.”

Duckett, 50, is a native Memphian and graduate of Hillcrest High School who went on to Oberlin College in Ohio for his undergraduate work before returning home to receive his juris doctorate from the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law.

An interest in elected office guided his early years of college and the realization that so many elected officials are lawyers, as well as one of the most famous lawyers of the day, helped him narrow that focus.

“When you look during my era, it was the “Perry Mason” programs, but the real driving force was the public service component and, looking at what public officials had as a background and career, it piqued my interest,” he said … (read more)

Albert Harvey’s career longevity as an attorney is rivaled only by his 39-year career with the U.S. Marine Corps and the Marine Corps Reserves.

Having entered the Reserves just out of high school and going on active duty after college, Harvey retired from the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in 1997 with the rank of major general.

“I was kind of drawn to the military, I liked the concept. … Back in those days you pretty much had a military obligation even through there was no war going on at the time, there was still that obligation, so it was something you had to plan for and I just jumped in fairly early,” said Harvey, 71.

His influences for a military life began with his father, who had been in the Navy and was deployed to the Pacific during World War II, and a high school coach and band director who was in the reserves.

“My father was a dentist and said he would support me in whatever field I chose to go into, but please don’t be a lawyer or a Democrat, and I ended up both,” Harvey said … (read more)

The turkey is basted, and the yams are candied, the stuffing is seasoned to perfection, and the cranberries have been scooped from a can the way nature intended. At our table, the ravioli is smothered in red gravy.

It’s all tradition.

The food preparations, the travel and the feasting, they’re all ingredients for a holiday spent with friends and family.

But there’s more. There’s always more, right? The leftovers from Thanksgiving are as much to be celebrated as the feast itself. Whether turkey sandwiches and another sliver of pecan pie, or a plate full of whatever that casserole was and a slice of cranberry, it’s the stuff of anticipation.

This Thanksgiving, though, I’m thinking about the other leftovers, the extra helping of time spent with grandparents and the scoop of memories created by an afternoon of flag football, board games or perusing the next day’s sales circulars.

Once the meal is ingested and seconds are consumed, don’t be so quick to push away from the family table; linger, savor, ask for more … (read more)

There are as many Thanksgiving Day traditions as there are recipes for stuffing or opinions on canned cranberries.

Kimberly Baker, her husband and two children are strict vegetarians. Though they don’t preach the way of life, they adhere to it at every meal, and Thanksgiving is no exception.

“For us, it’s a choice that we make,” Baker said. “We don’t want to demonize anyone who chooses to eat meat, and we knew that we would be invited to other peoples’ homes where they were serving meat.”

Concerned that it became an issue several years ago for their 7-year-old son, Joseph, they made the situation special and showed him that vegetarianism is something to be valued within the family. After the family shops for the ingredients for a dish to be prepared and shared at a friend’s house, the Bakers turn the paper grocery bag inside out and cut it, decorate it and fashion it into a turkey likeness. The new work of art is hung on the front door as a sign to the “Thanksgiving Turkey” that this is a turkey-friendly house and that the family does not eat turkey.

“It always becomes an issue when you’re a vegetarian and you’re invited to a table where there’s meat, and we didn’t want it to be an issue,” Baker said … (read more)