River Times magazine

A publication of the Mississippi River Corridor – Tennessee

Summer 2012

Project writer responsible for all editorial content of this 32-page magazine. Stories written include: the Memphis Blues Trail; American Queen Steamboat Company, Ingram Barge, Buckaroo Hatters, Unique Museums of the Corridor, Sustainable Shelby, the Hatchie River, Mississippi River Trail and Chisholm Lake Store.

River Times 2012

Former Memphians join in ‘scavenger hunt’ to uncover bygone Memphis for website

Feature story for The Commercial Appeal

July 29, 2012

Historic-memphis.com began its cyber-life as a website for the alumni of Memphis Tech High. Begun by Gene Gill, a 1951 graduate of the school, the content soon outgrew the parameters of its yearbook-like platform. More specifically, the historical aspect of the high school, which dates to 1913, took on a life of its own, and with it, an interest in all manner of Memphis history.

“I called Gene and said, ‘The Tech site is dying on the vine … but we’re getting all these hits on the little portions that we have regarding the historical side of Memphis,'” said Dave French, a co-founder of the historic Memphis site and a 1969 graduate of Tech High.

The school site (memphistechhigh.com), while still active but no longer updating, is the dusting of ashes out of which arose a Phoenix or, more precisely, a Memphis, in all of her past glory. On the new historic-memphis.com site, there are photos and a wealth of information accompanying them on movie theaters, schools, restaurants, hotels, parks, entertainment venues, department stores and train stations, among many more. Yearbooks from area schools, event programs, diplomas, postcards and other marginalia can be found as well.

French recruited longtime friend (and 1969 Immaculate Conception graduate), Maureen Thoni White, to help with the research and scanning of photos and books. For the three admittedly novice historians, the site is a labor of love; there is no money made from it, nor are there any plans to monetize it.

“It’s full of useful information and is well done,” said G. Wayne Dowdy, manager of the history department at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library and author of several books on Memphis history, including “A Brief History of Memphis.” “It may not be a ‘scholarly’ website, but then again it doesn’t pretend to be. In my opinion, having a group of passionate collectors post information on Memphis’s past is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the city’s history. Plus, it’s valuable when history is presented in a fun — even when the subject itself is not fun — and accessible format, rather than a stolid, academic one. In many ways, history, particularly local history, is too important to leave solely to historians.” … (read more)

Don’t worry kids, Dad is watching whether you want him to or not

Because I Said So column for The Commercial Appeal

July 19, 2012

Hang on: My kids want you to watch them do something.

They want you to watch them jump in the pool. They want you to watch them swim across the pool. They want you to watch them jump rope, climb a tree, play a drum, eat a peach and act a fool.

Nothing happens with these children unless someone else is watching.

Did I do this? Did I instill this need for attention in them? Or did they miss the point of George Orwell’s “1984”? The constant surveillance of Big Brother was supposed to be a bad thing, kids. (“Hey, Dad, watch me misinterpret a theme in classic literature!”) Or perhaps it is Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and his culture of “look at me, I’m doing this right now” that has infected and inflated their egos.

I’ve heard a lot of talk recently about “helicopter parents,” those parents that hover over their children, noticing every move, nudging them in the right direction, keeping them as safe as possible in the dangerous world of play dates and roller skates. Is this helpful or ultimately detrimental to a child’s well-being and sense of autonomy? I have no idea. You raise your children the way you see fit, and I’ll raise mine by shouting commands from the sofa in my office.

But then they find their way into my office. “Watch me tie a shoe. Watch me count to 100. Watch me spill this milk.” They advertise their every anticlimactic activity in a manner even more irritating than television promos during sweeps week. It’s as if Dave Brown was going to not retire every single evening at my house.

I don’t recall this need for attention as a child, though it’s possible I begged my parents to watch me struggle with my Stretch Armstrong, become more and more confused by my Rubik’s Cube, or watch “The Six Million Dollar Man” again.

I know I don’t do it now. You won’t see me saying to my kids, “Hey, watch me come up with another metaphor. Watch me Google up a thesaurus.”

I suppose we parents all hover to a certain extent. It’s become part of our buckled-up, helmeted, surveillance-heavy society. But I try to mitigate it. I send the kids outside to the backyard, down the block and to the park in an effort at encouraging them to do things on their own.

I know they’ll go off on their own one day, far away to live their own lives. And they won’t travel like helicopters then, but like jets feeling the need to get away. Or more accurately, as teenagers they’ll ease out of the driveway onto a Memphis city street in a 26-year-old Volvo with no air conditioning and a missing taillight, and whispering to themselves, I’m sure, “Please don’t watch me. Please don’t watch me.”

But I will be. Left there in the driveway, finally landing after a lifetime of hovering, I’ll be there hoping they call soon to tell me what they’ve been up to.

Permanent link for The Commercial Appeal

Family health issues can be impetus to get healthy

Health & Fitness story for The Commercial Appeal

July 16, 2012

Ken Hall took his mother to the hospital last year for complications from congestive heart failure and kidney issues on the same day. While there, she was diagnosed with diabetes, a disease his father had already been diagnosed with. “It occurred to me that my dad’s taking insulin shots twice a day, now she’s going to have to start, I’m next,” Hall said. “It’s like a time bomb.”

As a proactive measure at the beginning of the year, Hall, director of communications for Leadership Memphis, set out to lose 20 pounds by his 50th birthday in February. His mission was accomplished by cutting out his almost daily fast-food drive-through habit and saying “no” to the Hostess cupcakes. As far as any previous exercise routine, Hall said, he “really tried to avoid it.” But with his new lifestyle came new habits, and working out on the elliptical machine for a half-hour every day was one.

“It was pretty darn easy,” he said of entering this regimen and his subsequent weight loss.

For 40-year-old Heather Griffin, the hardest part of her lifestyle change was cutting out sweets. “I’m a cupcake freak,” she laughs, “so in giving that up, that was more painful than running a half-marathon, actually.” … (read more)

Dad sees library card as ticket to new worlds for daughters

Because I Said So column for The Commercial Appeal

July 5, 2012

On a recent summer day, it came to my attention that my children were bored. This alert was not a subtle one; these are not subtle kids. The two syllables of “I’m bored” came out in the droning, whining tone of one of those French police sirens: “I’mmm bored … I’mmm bored.”

Because the temperature was creeping up toward 100 degrees, I packed up my two daughters and took them to the coolest place I could think of: the public library. Once there, I filled out enough paperwork to either get them their very first library cards or to buy a whole other child.

The proud girls were handed their new cards to sign on the back, and then each stared at the shiny rectangle of plastic as if wondering how to turn it on and download something. I told them that with those cards they could take any book in that building home with them.

And that they could now drive a motor vehicle within the city limits. “Really?” they said, wide-eyed and expectant. No, that’s fiction.

Is there anything we can give our children that is more exciting, more educational, more free than a library card? It is Alice’s rabbit hole, Dorothy’s yellow brick road, a winged Pegasus. That little piece of plastic can teach them how and where to satiate their curiosity, the responsibility of keeping up with the card and borrowed books, and that if they sound the alarm “I’m bored” within earshot of me, that they will be forced to better themselves.

Through the colorful forest of trees, we went into the children’s section of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, that gleaming glass and steel lodge of literature. The girls perused titles, pulled out some books to get a sense of them, put some back and found a few to take home. My youngest, Genevieve, leaned toward oversize picture books with their tales of tigers, bugs, little boys and girls, and fables from far away. Nine-year-old Somerset focused on her folded-up summer reading list from Richland Elementary School.

During summer breaks when I was a child, my mother would stop by the main library when it was at the corner of McLean and Peabody to pick up a stack of books recommended for a boy my age. It was like a 100-degree Christmas for me. I would make my way through the pile, and she would then return them for another. I don’t remember my first library card, but it must have been like being given a license to the world.

Watching my daughters and their growing excitement was especially heartening in today’s world of the Internet, Google and the immediacy of knowledge — some good, some bad.

As they walked among the rows of books, their heads crooked slightly to read the spines, it was like the slowest web browser imaginable. Yet it was a great way for me to learn of their interests and to see where their curiosity, if unleashed in a room full of history, science and stories, might take them.

Will there be other milestones as exciting? Sure. They will both one day receive a driver’s license, be accepted into college and get married. Those will be days of triumph and of excitement, days when boredom will be as forgotten as that overdue library book underneath Genevieve’s bed.

Permanent link to The Commercial Appeal