April 2011
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05/13/11'30 Years/30 Lives' -- a PostscriptPoverty, fear, suffering, mortality. All of these conditions and more permeate the exhibit 30 Years/30 Lives: Documenting a Pandemic -- along with a strong but understated current of hope for a world where inequities and injustices often reign supreme. The photo exhibit by Minnesota professor and theologian Kimberly Vrudny kicked off with an artist's lecture late yesterday afternoon at Methodist University Hospital's Center of Excellence in Faith & Health. It looks at some of the faces of AIDS 30 years after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first announced that a new and deadly virus had entered the world. Since that 1981 announcement, about 25 million people have died of AIDS worldwide.Part of the exhibit is at the Methodist center and part is on display at... |
05/10/11'30 Years/30 Lives' Documents AIDS PandemicIt's difficult to believe that AIDS has been around for three decades, and even more difficult to imagine the lives it has stolen or the wounded it's left in its wake. But there's no mistaking the imprint the disease has left on the world since its first victims began succumbing to what then was considered a mysterious illness mainly affecting same-sex partners.Artist Kimberly Vrudny chronicles the advent and evolution of AIDS with her new photo exhibit, 30 Years/30 Lives: Documenting a Pandemic. She is scheduled to give an artist's lecture Thursday at 4 p.m. at Methodist University Hospital's Center of Excellence in Faith & Health. Her presentation will be followed by a reception at 5:30.The exhibit runs from Saturday until July 31 at the Center for Excellence,... |
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04/26/11Farewell to a LandmarkIf you had dared to hope that the former Sam Stringer Chickasaw Gardens nursery at 2974 Poplar would be bought by another garden center, consider that hope dashed to dirt. Although Sam Stringer Jr. couldn't say who's buying the property — located in a prime area near Chickasaw Gardens and the Benjamin Hooks Library — he does acknowledge that it's under contract and should close in July. Others knowledgeable about the deal identify the buyer as a national discount retailer.Stringer decided to sell the center in 2008 and concentrate on the Germantown location. While waiting on a buyer, he continued to keep part of the nursery open. In 2009, he leased the property to Mike Earnest, owner of Midtown Nursery at Central and Cooper, who has used it as a second location for the past... Posted at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments: 1 |
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04/21/11Say It Isn't SoLexington, Kentucky, has not been kind to Memphis recently. First, the state university lured away Tiger basketball coach John Calipari. Now the fate of a city treasure — Davis-Kidd Booksellers — lies in the hands of a bankruptcy court judge in Lexington.Davis-Kidd's parent company is The Joseph-Beth Group, which filed bankruptcy last year. But the East Memphis store has performed so well that Joseph-Beth's president, Neil Van Uum, not only never closed it (unlike several others in its chain) but intended to buy it back at the April 20th auction in Cincinnati. Instead he lost the bid to Gordon Brothers liquidation, which is among the companies selling off Borders bookstores.The Davis-Kidd bid still awaits a judge's approval. That will happen at a... Posted at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments: 2 |
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04/19/11Boycott UrgedOutraged over alleged abuse at Memphis Animal Services, also known as the Shelter, animal advocates are circulating a petition urging people to boycott Memphis until a new Shelter director is hired and the Shelter is reformed. The outrage was sparked by an image of a Shelter worker apparently hauling a dog off to be euthanized. In the picture, the worker appears to be picking up the mixed-breed animal by the skin of its back, an act that has prompted advocates to call the animal "the little suitcase dog."The petition originated on the Care2 Petition Site, a website that allows groups to circulate petitions internationally about topics that range from stopping price gouging on Canada's Internet, to protecting grey wolves in Montana.The petition, which we received from a... Posted at 05:07 PM | Permalink | Comments: 16 |
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04/14/11Life at 460 Tennessee StreetSome of you may not know that Memphis magazine is produced out of an ancient building downtown on Tennessee Street. It's not something we like to brag about. According to company lore, the three-story structure, painted the color of a used Band-Aid, originally served as a coffee-bean warehouse back in the late 1800s. Nobody has ever wondered why our city needed such a large building to store so many coffee beans, but that's our story, and we're sticking to it.We moved to this location in the mid-1980s, and were pioneers in this part of town. No other businesses or residences were around us. We chose the place because it was cheap rent. Let's face it, when you're surrounded by abandoned warehouses, and an overgrown patch of woods frequented by hobos blocks your view of the river, it's... |
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04/11/11Memphis Gets GracedOn a recent Tuesday night, I went to see The Grace Card, which you may recall was filmed in Memphis and has been running in theaters here since late February. It follows a middle-aged white cop, Mac McDonald, who's fairly toxic with rage and sorrow over the death of his son 17 years ago. When he's paired with a black cop, an act that stokes his fury, Mac's on the verge of seeing his whole life unravel if he can't get a grip on himself. The moment of reckoning comes when he shoots a would-be burglar at a warehouse, then realizes the victim is his other son — a boy Mac has barely been able to look at without guilt and anger for most of the child's life. The movie had me weeping with genuine sorrow one minute — and rolling my eyes at a plot twist the next. Sure, it's flawed,... |
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03/30/11The Memphis 35“What's on the cover next month?" The staff of this magazine gets that question all the time, and usually it's one that we can answer instraightforward fashion. Not so this month, because the April issue of Memphis, now on newsstands all around the city, is a bit unusual.It’s our Thirty-Fifth Anniversary Issue, and it boasts of not one but four different covers. For this special issue, the Memphis editorial and design staff has produced a magnificent photo-essay featuring thirty-five individuals whose influence we think was critical to the growth and evolution of this city over the period of Memphis magazine's existence. For our four different April 2011 covers, we chose to profile four of “The Memphis 35” whose contributions we felt were especially... |
