Memphis Flyer 4/18/2024

THE FIGHT FOR THE WETLANDS

Environmentalists and developers clash over the future of Tennessee’s wildest spaces.

The Fight for the Wetlands

Environmentalists and developers clash over the future of Tennessee’s wildest spaces.

Three Tax Concepts

Working through the complexity of personal tax planning.

p11

On Meditation

Whichever form you choose, it’s an important tool in our self-care and healing toolbox.

PHOTO: JON TYSON | UNSPLASH

PHOTO: THOMAS NORDWEST | CREATIVE COMMONS | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

PHOTO: COURTESY PROTECT OUR AQUIFER

April 18-24, 2024

MEM ernet THE fly-by

{WEEK THAT WAS By

Flyer staff

Memphis on the internet.

MCKINNEY TRIBUTE

e Memphis Botanic Garden lit its new Youth Education and Tropical Plant House in blue over the weekend to honor Memphis Police Department O cer Joseph McKinney, who was killed in the line of duty last Friday, and his two injured colleagues.

ECLIPSED!

Skywatchers donned glasses and cast eyes toward the heavens last week to watch the eclipse. Many watched in Memphis (like on the Greensward above), where it would reach only a partial eclipse. But many hit the road west to experience the total eclipse, snarling area tra c on the way home.

BURNT-OUT P

“Anyone have a clue as to what happened to the letter ‘P’ at the Rental Parking Garage?”

Keith Powell asked in the Memphis Airport Watchdog Facebook group.

Glen omas, the public information o cer for the MemphisShelby County Airport Authority, promptly responded that “there was an electrical re in the light that caused this. We are working to get it replaced.”

Questions, Answers + Attitude

Edited by Toby Sells

Shoot-out, Robata, & Black Arts

Police-involved shooting kills o cer and suspect, restaurant closes, and a new fundraising campaign.

MPD SHOOT-OUT

A police-involved shooting le an o cer and a suspect dead and others injured last week. e event sent a shock wave of grief, sympathy, and anger through the community.

Memphis Police Department (MPD) Ofcer Joseph McKinney was killed in the event in Whitehaven. Jaylen Lobley, an 18-year-old assailant in the shootout, was also killed.

It began around 2 a.m. on Friday as three o cers investigated a suspicious vehicle near Horn Lake Road and Charter Road. Two suspects opened re as police approached the vehicle. e o cers and the two suspects sustained gun re.

O cer Joseph McKinney was killed in the line of duty last Friday. He joined the Memphis Police Department in 2020.

Lobley was arrested by MPD in March 2024, according to Chief of Police Cerelyn Davis. e suspect was released at that time without bond. is drew the ire of many who called for tougher sentences and laid much of the blame on Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy.

However, Mulroy said his o ce “strongly argued against lowering the bond” on Lobley in March, “citing the defendant’s danger to the community.”

“My office was actively prioritizing the Lobley case, identifying him as a high-risk offender,” Mulroy said in a statement.

Lobley could not post the $10,000 bond levied in the March arrest, according to state Sen. Brent Taylor. He was released on his own recognizance by Shelby County Judicial Commissioner Chris Ingram, Taylor said.

“I will be searching for ways to hold judges and judicial commissioners accountable when setting bail and to explain why their bail amounts are lower than the MPD recommendation, and in some cases lower than the District Attorney’s bail recommendation,” Taylor tweeted last Friday.

e Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating the case. As of press time, an online fundraiser for McKinney’s family had reached nearly $152,000.

ROBATA CLOSES

Robata Ramen and Yakitori Bar closed its Overton Square location Sunday. e restaurant opened in 2014 on Overton Square as a new concept by Memphis restaurateur Jimmy Ishii.

“We regret to inform you that our last day of business in Overton Square is Sunday, April 14th,” the restaurant posted to Facebook last week. “We would like to thank all of our customers that we have served over the years! Please come see us this week before our nal day!”

SUPPORTING BLACK ARTS

Memphis Music Initiative’s (MMI) newest fundraising campaign not only aims to support Black-led nonpro ts, but it also aims to dismantle elitism involved in arts funding. e youth development organization is known for engaging with Black and brown youth through music and art and recently announced their 25 x 25: Creating Change for the Culture fundraising campaign, with hopes of raising $25 million to support “local, Black-led and -serving arts organizations by the end of 2025.”

“25 x 25: Creating Change for the Culture establishes a groundbreaking funding model in which Black- and brownled and -serving youth arts organizations are funded to support sustainability and institution building,” MMI said in a statement. “[Seventeen] partner organizations in the MMI network will receive $1 million each; $3 million will support incubation and responsive grantmaking, $2 million will fund centralized operations, and $3 million will be invested in capacity-building e orts.”

Some of the partners in MMI’s network include AngelStreet Memphis, Memphis Black Arts Alliance, Young Actors Guild, and more.

Visit the News Blog at memphis yer.com for fuller versions of these stories and more local news.

PHOTO: MEMPHIS POLICE ASSOCIATION CHARITABLE FOUNDATION

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LGBTQ By Kailynn Johnson

Trans Lift Up

OUTMemphis’ newest micro-grant program aims to help transgender, nonbinary, and genderexpansive individuals with non-emergency and gender-a rming resources.

According to the organization, the Upli Fund will “provide $500 grants for individuals who identify as transgender, nonbinary, or gender-expansive who are 18 and older, to support unique nancial barriers to opportunity, or, simply, a li up in Shelby, DeSoto, Crittenden, Tipton, and Fayette counties.”

Some of the “non-emergency” needs include career or education advancement, investment in physical and mental health and well-being, and legal expenses and similar expenses.

“ e program will not cover everyday expenses like food and rent, and participants will be asked to provide narrative feedback on their experiences up to six months a er receiving the grant,” the organization said in a statement. “ e program is funded in perpetuity for 12 grants per year thanks to a signi cant contribution from Lena Chipman and Amanda Banker.”

Molly Quinn, executive director of OUTMemphis, said they have witnessed transgender individuals defy discrimination daily, and this grant is in response to these obstacles.

“Knowing the barriers trans people face in the Mid-South, we believe mutual aid is an act of resistance,” Quinn said. “ e Upli Program connects resources directly to individuals by their peers. Transgender individuals deserve the same access to opportunity and stability as all — and they know best what they need.”

“We’ve needed this help. Now somebody has finally put help into place.”

TaMesha Kaye Prewitt, the trans services manager for OUTMemphis, said the need for this program is in response to things she has seen in her ve-to-six months in her o cial role, as well as her perspective of the transgender community.

“We’ve needed this help,” Prewitt said. “Now somebody has nally put help into place.”

Prewitt is aware they “can’t make everybody happy,” but she said there was

a dire need in the community for support and funding, and that people come to her every day in hopes of nding funding for their unique expenses.

“You name it, I’ve heard it,” Prewitt said. “ ings that I’ve seen on my own, things I’ve needed myself, have all been topics of conversation.”

According to Prewitt, people in minority communities already face discrimination and ostracization in society, making everyday activities such as shopping more di cult. She said the mircro-grants can help minimize these di culties while also helping with some of the needs that are unique to the individual.

are $500.

“I have trans women who come to me who are sex workers,” Prewitt said. “We can’t judge somebody for what they do, but we want to give you harm-reducing ways to do it.”

Prewitt said when granting awards they are looking for transgender individuals as well as those su ering from the HIV epidemic. ey are also looking for nonbinary individuals and Black trans women, who Prewitt said get the “short end of the stick” most of the time.

Black trans women are also most at risk of violent death in America, according to 2023 numbers from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). At least 32 transgender or gender-expansive people were killed last year, according to the group’s annual report. Of them, 84 percent were people of color. Of those, 50 percent were Black transgender women. Most of the victims were killed by partners or people they knew.

“While the details of these cases differ, it is clear that fatal violence disproportionately a ects transgender women of color — particularly Black transgender women — and that the intersections of racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and unchecked access to guns conspire to deprive them of employment, housing, healthcare, and other necessities.”

PHOTO: SHARON MCCUTCHEON ON UNSPLASH e micro-grants

April 18-24, 2024

POLITICS By Jackson Baker

The Last Straw?

O cer McKinney’s killing stirs rage and a demand for action.

Push is coming to shove in the public outrage stemming from the shooting death last week of MPD O cer Joseph McKinney. And the shoving, on behalf of stouter crackdowns on local crime, is coming from more sources than ever before.

Mayor Paul Young, who has arguably been somewhat slow on the draw in eshing out his crime program, cruising along with an interim police chief and nobody yet to ll his ballyhooed position of public safety director, is suddenly all cries and alarms.

Sounding almost like some of the more active Republican critics of Memphis crime in the legislature, Young released a statement including these words: “Together, let’s petition our judges and the DA for stronger, swi er sentencing for violent o enses. If you are part of the judicial system, hear my voice rst. We need to work together to do better for our community.”

DA Steve Mulroy himself expressed anger that a $150,000 bond that he’d previously set for previous crimes committed by the youth suspected in the death of O cer McKinney had been somehow amended by a judicial commissioner to allow the youth back on the streets through his own recognizance.

And Shelby County Commissioner Mick Wright, a leading critic of the current crime wave, was warning, on behalf of his commission mates, “We are not nished. … You’re going to see some judges get exited stage le if I have anything to say about it.”

It was a de nite irony that, scarcely a week a er the MPD had announced the 100th homicide in Memphis this year, Young scheduled this week’s public celebration of his rst 100 days in o ce at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church.

Perhaps the mayor will use that occasion to outline further his and the city council’s plan for a new nonpro t organization to reverse the crime trend.

• Former Shelby County Democratic chair Gabby Salinas, who in recent years ran two close races against established Republican o ce-holders, has a di erent situation on her hands this year.

She’s running for the state House District 96 seat being vacated by Democratic incumbent Dwayne ompson. Not a Republican contestant in sight so far, but Salinas has four Democratic rivals — Eric Dunn, Telisa Franklin, Orrden Williams

Jr., and David Winston. She remains the favorite.

• As mentioned in this space of late, Democrats are seriously contesting the state House District 97 seat now held by Republican John Gillespie. Mindful of the potential perils of procrastination, they brought out some heavy artillery last week.

At a fundraiser for party candidate Jesse Huseth at the home of attorney Robert Donati last week, an important attendee was 9th District U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, the county’s senior Democratic o ce-holder, who formally bestowed his endorsement on Huseth and was critical of Gillespie for legislative actions intended to shi various aspects of law-enforcement authority from the city to the state.

Cohen noted that the 97th, which was redistricted by the legislature last year, would now seem to be tilted demographically to Democrats in this election year — “up three points for Huseth and up ve points for Biden.”

As Huseth put it, the East Memphisbased district had lost “four solid-red precincts and picked up two light-blue precincts and two light-red precincts.”

e point of the redistricting, which was carried out by the General Assembly’s GOP supermajority, remains something of a mystery, although it is said that Gillespie signed o on it, thinking it gave him more potential access to‚ and opportunity to serve, the business community.

• No doubt emboldened by the local unpopularity of Governor Bill Lee’s schoolvoucher program, which was formally opposed by the Memphis-Shelby County School Board and by the boards of the six municipal school districts as well, Democrats are taking another crack at the state House District 83 seat held by Mark White, House education chair and a champion of vouchers.

At least one Democrat is: political newcomer Noah Nordstrom, an MSCS Spanish teacher.

PHOTO: BRANDON DILL | MLK 50 Paul Young

By Bruce VanWyngarden

Gettysburg, Wow

So much and so interesting and so vicious.

“Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. It was so much and so interesting and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful in so many di erent ways, it represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow. I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And, uh, the statement of Robert E. Lee, who’s no longer in favor, did you ever notice that? He’s no longer in favor. ‘Never ght uphill, me boys, never ght uphill.’

ey were ghting uphill. He said, ‘Wow, that was a big mistake.’ He lost his great general. And they were ghting. ‘Never ght uphill, me boys!’ But it was too late.”

You may or may not be familiar with the preceding paragraph. It depends to some extent upon how much of a political junkie (or masochist) you are. But even if you’re not familiar with it, you can probably guess the source. And if you guessed, Donald J. Trump, you win.

e presumptive GOP presidential nominee scatted the forgoing brain jazz at a speech in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. It was just one discursive, rambling aside in an oration that consisted of more than 75 minutes of discursive, rambling asides. Some highlights:

“China is sending illegals here to start a little army in our country.”

“I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.”

“I love women more than I love anything. I looove women.”

“Last night we had 20 people come to our country from the Congo. Welcome to our country. Where do you live in the Congo? We live in prison. ey’re bringing them in from Africa!”

“ e 2020 election was rigged, pure and simple. It was a disgrace and we can never let it happen again.”

“I’m perhaps the most honest guy in the world.”

Perhaps. And if you believe that, well, you’re an idiot. We’re past the point of pretending any of this is remotely normal, but here’s the worrisome thing: It actually is normal in one sense. It’s “normal” because it happens every day that Trump says something in public. A er nine years of listening to this guy, Americans have become inured to it; our politics have literally transformed. Trump has normalized things that would have destroyed the career of any politician before he came along.

Gary Hart was the front-runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination when revelations of an extramarital a air emerged and he was nished. In 2004, presidential candidate Howard Dean was deemed unelectable because he screamed “Yeah!” at a rally in Iowa. See ya, Howard.

You’re not “presidential” enough.

And Jimmy Carter was so cautious about a possible con ict of interest that he put his little Georgia peanut farm in a blind trust during his presidency, so as not to appear to be in the pocket of Big Peanut.

In contrast, Trump and his family made millions from his businesses while in o ce, including from a hotel in Washington, D.C., where foreign diplomats and lobbyists stayed in order to curry favor with the American president.

And just imagine the merde-storm that would engulf the mass media if Joe Biden bumbled his way through anything remotely similar to Trump’s lie- lled Schnecksville speech. ink of the outrage from the Confederateloving MAGA types if Biden invented a Robert E. Lee quote that made the general sound like a surfer-pirate.

Argh, dude.

As this presidential campaign stumbles into summer, and as Trump’s trial in New York takes center stage, it is becoming more and more obvious that the GOP presidential candidate has some real issues with, well, reality. Trump is quite literally making things up — creating stories, statistics, and personal anecdotes out of whole cloth. is is not an opinion; it’s a veri able fact: He’s a full-service ga e station.

e question becomes: Is he doing it knowingly — just running a hustle to get elected again — or is he truly losing sentience, unable to tell fact from ction? Does he truly believe all vaccines are bad, and that he is the most honest person in the world, and Robert E. Lee said “wow.”

If it’s the latter, well, that is so interesting and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful in so many di erent ways. And we are so in trouble.

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Thank you and have a good day.

PHOTO: JULIAN VANNERSON | PUBLIC DOMAIN, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Robert E. Lee

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Three Tax Concepts

Working through the complexity of personal tax planning.

The modern U.S. income tax began in 1913, and at rst it was very simple. Since then, virtually every congress and administration has layered on additional complexity to the point that the tax code is thousands of pages long and no one person can be expected to be competent in every nuance of tax.

As your income and assets grow, tax planning is more and more important. Consulting an expert is almost always a good idea, but here are three general concepts that cover a lot of ground when it comes to working through this complexity via personal tax planning.

Tax advantaged saving

Depending on income, employment status, and employee bene ts, there are various tax-advantaged ways to save. ings like 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, traditional and Roth IRAs, and HSAs are all potentially advantageous from a tax perspective. Generally, they either allow you to exclude money from your taxable income (to save taxes today) or allow you to pay taxes now but let the money grow tax free (so you can save on taxes in the future). Every situation is di erent, but it is likely in your best interest to max out these types of programs, even if you feel like you have “too much” money locked away in IRAs, or even if you want to retire early. ere are many ways to access retirement accounts early, such as the rule of 55, Substantially Equal Periodic Payments, or Roth Conversion Ladders.

Roth Conversions

In traditional IRAs or 401(k)s, the money going in is not taxed but any eventual withdrawals are taxed like ordinary income. With Roth accounts, the money going in is fully taxed but then any

eventual distributions are generally tax free. ere is a way to convert traditional money to Roth at any time — you just have to treat the money converted as though it’s income which is taxed. Usually, it’s best to defer taxes as long as possible, but in some cases it makes sense to take the hit and pay taxes early. If you plot a typical person’s lifetime tax paid, it is U-shaped — income and therefore taxes paid are higher while working, get lower a er retirement, and then rise later in life when required minimum distributions create taxable income. It can make sense to do Roth conversions during those low tax years just a er retirement when you’re likely in a low tax bracket.

Charitable giving strategies

Most people become more charitably inclined as they age, and understand the tax bene ts that giving can bring. ere are a number of strategies that can make doing good do even better when it comes to your tax liability. Donor Advised Funds are a way to move money to an account and take the full deduction at the time of the gi . You can never take back the gi , but you can continue to control it in the sense that the money can stay invested and can be donated over time to the charities of your choice. is lets donors take a larger deduction in certain high-tax times, so gi ing can be bunched up and then used over multiple years in the future. Later in life, Quali ed Charitable Distributions (QCDs) can be made directly from IRAs to charity to meet RMD requirements.

Conclusion

ese concepts are only the beginning of a comprehensive tax plan, especially if your income and assets are large. While these ideas are a good start, there’s no substitute for real advice from tax professionals and nancial advisors. We all have a responsibility to pay our taxes, but there’s no reason to ignore the opportunities a orded by the tax code when planning for your future — and it’s never too early to begin!

Gene Gard, CFA, CFP, CFT-I, is a Partner and Private Wealth Manager with Creative Planning. Creative Planning is one of the nation’s largest Registered Investment Advisory rms providing comprehensive wealth management services to ensure all elements of a client’s nancial life are working together, including investments, taxes, estate planning, and risk management. For more information or to request a free, no-obligation consultation, visit CreativePlanning.com.

PHOTO: JON TYSON | UNSPLASH

By Chris McCoy

THE FIGHT FOR THE WETLANDS

Environmentalists and developers clash over the future of Tennessee’s wildest spaces.

Huge cypress trees rise from placid waters of the Wolf River, moss clinging to their trunks. is land where the Wolf’s channels widen and the ow slows in Fayette County is called the Ghost River. It is one of West Tennessee’s most beautiful natural wonders.

Jim Ga ord knows the magic of the Ghost River. As recreation coordinator for the Wolf River Conservancy (WRC), he leads paddling trips on the rst Saturday of every month along di erent sections of the 100-mile-long Wolf. “ e water is a natural element to everybody. If you get on the water, it supports you, it relaxes you, it has a calming e ect on you,” he says.

April 18-24, 2024

Nowadays, the Ghost River is a Class I Scenic-Recreational State Natural Area. But it wasn’t always like that. It’s hard to believe that, as recently as 1995, the ancient wetland was almost destroyed. “ e Conservancy was founded in ’86,” Ga ord says. “In the mid-’90s, we found out that Peter Beasley had sold the Beasley Plantation to a development company. e development company actually published plans to go in and harvest all of the cypress and all the usable timber in the bottom land, and then sell o the land into what they called ‘farms’ — they were just narrow strips of land with river access that would have no restrictive covenants at all. So people could have purchased the land and done what they wanted to with it and

just have a little access to the river. Our rst conservation e ort was to save that 4,000 acres from development. Fortunately, we were able to, and we’re still using it now. It’ll be here for thousands of years and allowed to evolve naturally.”

A er that rst victory almost 30 years ago, the WRC has continued their mission of protecting the waters of the Wolf and making sure they’re available to everyone. But not all wetlands have the Ghost River’s rizz. Most of Tennessee’s approximately 787,0000 acres of wetlands are swamps, bayous, and muddy creek beds, tucked away in neglected corners of farms or undeveloped land on the edges of suburbs. But that does not mean wetlands are not valuable, says Sarah Houston, executive director of Protect Our Aquifer. In ood-prone West Tennessee, wetlands act as a bu er against too much rain. Less wetland acreage means more and bigger oods.

Jim Ga ord

“Wetlands really do us a big favor in absorbing oodwater, holding on to it,” Houston says. “And that water is either going to be slowly released into surface water or it’s going to be slowly released into groundwater. … Housing developments get built in what used to be wetlands or downstream near oodplains, and then they see regular ooding. ose developments probably should have never been

approved in those places because the water is gonna keep owing. Now, it’s just owing into your house.”

Wetlands also play an important role in mitigating climate change. e trees, plants, and mosses in swamps and bayous absorb carbon dioxide, the buildup of which causes global warming, from the atmosphere. In a regular forest, when the leaves fall and the trunks die, their de-

composition can release methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas, into the air. Or they can burn, throwing soot and carbon dioxide high into the atmosphere. But in swampy areas, organic debris falls into the water and is buried in sediment, where it cannot contribute to global warming. Much of the coal and oil we burn today was formed from remains of wetlands buried during the Permian period 290 million years ago.

As wetlands are drained, developed, or paved, they lose the ability to sequester carbon, and some of the stored carbon dioxide and methane is rereleased into the atmosphere. A 2016 paper by A.M. Nahlik and M. S. Fennessey, published in the journal Nature, found that “wetland soils contain some of the highest stores of soil carbon in the biosphere.” In some cases, up to 40 percent of wetland soil was carbon, compared to the 0.5 to 2.0 percent found in agricultural soils. e study found that freshwater wetlands were much more efcient at storing carbon than river deltas or saltwater estuaries. All told, the study estimated that the continental United States’ wetlands contain a whopping 11.52 gigatons of sequestered carbon. Ga ord says West Tennessee’s wetlands are valuable in another way. “In the Memphis, Shelby County, Fayette County,

PHOTO: (ABOVE) COURTESY WOLF RIVER CONSERVANCY

PHOTO: (TOP) COURTESY PROTECT OUR AQUIFER Sarah Houston kayaks the Mississippi.

Tipton County area, the most important value of that swampy area is what percolates down and actually recharges our water supply. If you talk to any expert, they’ll tell you that Memphis has the best water in the world.”

Houston’s organization, Protect Our Aquifer, watches over that valuable resource. Memphis is built over an underground aquifer containing as much freshwater as one of the Great Lakes. “It is our sole source of drinking water in Memphis, Tennessee,” she says. “It’s also all the water that industry and farmers use, too. It is one of the purest sources of water in the country, and it just happens to be right below our feet, easily accessible. Because of the way it was formed, over millions of years back when this area was actually a shallow ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and through a series of deposits of gneiss, quartz sand, and then thick clay layers, it created what we now call the Mississippi embayment. e majority of the water that’s actually below Memphis in the Memphis sand aquifer fell as rain 2,000 years ago, and has been in ltrating and ltering slowly over time to bring us that pure drinking water. And it is all out of sight, out of mind.”

WHAT IS A WETLAND?

e Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) de nes wetlands as “areas where water covers the soil, or is present either at or near the surface of the soil all year, or for varying periods of time during the year.”

at’s a broad de nition that has been more or less enforced since the passage of 1972 Clean Water Act. Federal protections for wetlands were expanded during the Obama administration, and then rolled back during the Trump administration.

en, in May 2023, a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Sackett vs. EPA forced the agency to limit its jurisdiction to only wetlands that have “continuous surface connection to bodies that are Waters of the United States.”

“If you can get a boat on it, it’s a ‘Water of the United States,’” says Houston. “If you can’t, then that’s not a federal government issue. What changed was this whole de nition of technically isolated wetlands, where they’re not directly next to a stream.”

e ruling removed approximately 63 percent of wetlands from federal protection, including most ephemeral wetlands. e rollback alarmed wetlands fans like Ga ord. “ e results of the EPA and the wetlands protection acts have been so e ective, I don’t think that we need to do anything at all to loosen those restrictions,” he says. “Because of agriculture practices and building practices, we let the water get pretty bad, just from the runo . It was deemed appropriate to put those protections in place, and I think we need to adhere to them because the results have been, in my mind, fantastic.”

which would lose protection under the bill is in West Tennessee. at includes Haywood County, where the new Ford BlueOval City is currently under construction. e $6 billion facility to produce electric vehicles and batteries is the largest single investment in Tennessee history. Houston calls the area “ground zero for this development pressure. … Haywood County is seeing tremendous growth. ey’re getting permit application a er permit application for these new developments. at is also the county that has the highest number of wetlands in the state. … Originally, the argument was, ‘ ese muddy tracts with some sprouts in them are being classi ed as wetlands, but they’re not and we need to get rid of them.’ en it became more about the pressure for growth and the timeline that we’re on. Getting rid of these wetlands in big tracts, acres and acres at a time, would speed up the opportunity for development to occur right now, especially in West Tennessee.” e potential impacts of wetland development would go farther than just BlueOval City. “We know that there are connections to the aquifer in that area,” says Houston. “ e wells that have been drilled for the [BlueOval] megasite are in the uncon ned part, so they’re in the recharge zone of the aquifer. And we know that band of the recharge zone extends into half of Haywood County and pretty much all of Fayette County.”

e state of Tennessee has de ned protected wetlands even more strictly than the federal government since the 1970s. “ e Supreme Court justices actually noted that this should be a state-level regulation because states di er so much in their water resources and their landscapes,” says Houston.

A er Sackett v. EPA, Rep. Kevin Vaughan (R-Collierville) introduced HB 1054, a bill which proposed to bring

the state’s de nition of a wetland in line with the new federal rules. According to a January, 2024 report by the Tennessee General Assembly Fiscal Review Committee, adoption of the bill would result in a 55 percent decrease in the amount of currently protected wetlands, or approximately 432.850 acres of the states’ 787,000 acres of wetlands.

Vaughan is a real estate broker and owner of Township Development Services, which o ers site selection, land planning and management, and government relations services to developers. In February, he told a legislative committee, “It’s your property, but a third party is going to tell you if you can use it. And if you can’t use it, then you have to pay another party money for you to be able to use your property. at’s the origins of where this bill came from.”

Houston says, “ e main argument was too much bureaucracy and red tape, and there is some validity to the concerns of the sponsor Chairman Vaughan. Sometimes, small wetlands that might have kind of sprung up require a permit, and it can add additional cost [to development] because with our wetlands regulations, you have to get a permit if you’re gonna damage them or remove them, and then you have to pay into a mitigation bank.”

THE BLUEOVAL FACTOR

Much of the wetland acreage

A big unknown is exactly how much of a role wetlands play in recharging the aquifer. It was long thought that water seeped through the soil in a relatively uniform manner, but recent studies in North Mississippi suggest that most of the recharging occurs in relatively small areas where the Memphis Sands are near the surface. e science remains uncertain, but as the POA puts it in a report distributed to legislators, “It’s not necessarily the type or size of wetlands, but the location that determines how valuable it is to recharge.”

PUSHBACK

Once the stakes of HB 1054 became clear, environmental advocates mobilized against it. “To me, wetland preservation represents one of our state’s most vulnerable natural ecosystems at this moment. Wetlands provide a safe haven for our country’s wildlife and serve as a crucial space for aquifer recharge. e preservation of our wetlands serves as a litmus test for the well-being of our environment,” says Memphis Community Against Pollution President KeShaun Pearson. e bill’s proponents were also mobilized. Adam Friedman of Tennessee Lookout recently reported on Build Tennessee, a political action committee formed in July 2022 by 18 owners and partners in real estate and construction companies, including Keith Grant, a Collierville developer and the former president of the West Tennessee Home Builders Associa-

continued on page 15

PHOTOS: COURTESY PROTECT OUR AQUIFER

(above) Fresh water enters the Memphis aquifer through creek beds such as this one, where the Memphis sands are close to the surface; (below) Sarah Houston

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Since welcoming little one, life expanded while my world contracted And every day, I push off one thing my own health More complexity, less time

Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer of new moms, with risks can last for months post-partum So, I’m taking action and starting the conversation, with not just my doctor, but with other moms I know, too

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tion. In less than two years of existence, the PAC became the fourth-largest spender on lobbying in Tennessee and donated to 90 lawmakers of both parties.

Protect Our Aquifer led the charge against the bill. “We don’t do a lot at the state level,” says Houston. “So we were planning on playing a supportive role in this. But since the majority of the wetlands were in West Tennessee, our mission is all about protecting the drinking water supply that happens to be underneath all of West Tennessee, and the majority of the House subcommittee members represented West Tennessee, we kind of got shoved into the forefront.”

The activists found allies on Capitol Hill. “I think it’s an abhorrent bill that is bad for our state,” says Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis). “It’s bad for our environment, and it is showing the influence of private corporations and entities and developers in our Tennessee legislature. It’s bad for democracy when elected leaders are literally carrying legislation for private companies and developers to the detriment of 7 million people’s environment. And as a person who cares deeply about environmental justice, I think this is a complete affront to the causes, the beliefs, the values that many of us share, Republicans and Democrats, people who are progressive and people who are conservative.”

Houston says they were open to revisiting Tennessee’s strict wetlands definitions. “Right now, any type of wetland is considered the same value. But in reality, there are some wetlands that are much higher quality. They’ve got no invasive species. They’re nice and healthy, and haven’t been trampled on by humans. A middle ground we want to find is, how do we categorize wetlands in the state based on low, moderate, and high values that could then determine how much mitigation credits are required, what really needs to be permitted, and what is okay with being removed.”

Houston says when the bill was first introduced in 2023, “it was put on hold because TDEC [Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation] promised that there would be stakeholder meetings to draft a good bill that everyone could agree upon that would create new categories for wetlands and address some of this red tape bureaucracy issue. Well, those stakeholder meetings never really happened in earnest last year.”

A TEMPORARY VICTORY

Houston and the POA testified in front of both Senate and House committees who were considering the bill. “Our information was really well received,” she says. “No matter where you live in West Tennessee, you have a pretty high regard for our aquifer and the drinking water supply.

“In early March, when the Senate committee heard the bill, the senators on that committee said, ‘Trying to categorize wetlands and create all these new definitions is a really complex process. We’re not gonna get it right this first try. So let’s move this to summer study and actually have the stakeholder meetings.’ Commissioner David Sellers, on record, promised to have the stakeholder meetings. So they, 6 to 2, voted it to summer study. We were like, ‘Holy smokes! We won! It’s dead!’ But then Chairman Vaughan in the House kept pushing the bill despite it being dead on the Senate side, which you don’t really see that.”

Pearson says, “Kevin [Vaughan]’s only aim is to open up more land for development with fewer regulations, especially around BlueOval, and over any potential objections from community members in majority-Black Haywood County or other areas that could be exploited by developers, with building happening that does not take into account environmental justice. … We know environmental justice and racial justice oftentimes coexist and you cannot have one without the other.”

As this legislative session winds down towards an expected late April adjournment, Pearson says he is wary. “It is not likely that this legislation will move forward this session. However, due to [Governor Bill Lee’s school] voucher bill also being sought to be passed by

this General Assembly, it may become a bargaining chip for Kevin Vaughan and the Republicans to use to try and get it passed for his vote on the voucher bill. The reason I say that is, a number of Republicans have come out vehemently against the governor’s bill, and they’re operating on a very thin majority when it comes to the passage of that legislation, which is the governor’s signature legislation for this General Assembly. That’s why we must continue to pay attention and be engaged in this process because anything is still possible. I have seen how racism and white supremacy and capitalistic exploitation works here, and if you trust the process too much, then you will likely be duped by it because they don’t care too much about the process here.”

During the final week of committee meetings, HB 1054 was not reconsidered, much to the relief of activists like Houston. “Officially, the wetlands 2024 legislative session saga is over, and there will be a summer study this year to dig into the details and try to refine what our wetland protection laws can look like,” she says. “It’s good news. There’s still work to do, but there is good news.”

In the interest of transparency, we note that the Memphis Flyer is owned by Contemporary Media, Inc., whose board chairman, Ward Archer Jr., also founded Protect Our Aquifer. This reporting was conducted independently and relies on multiple sources.

WITHIN TOLERANCES

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VISION BOARD

CAT NAP

TINY BOMB PILSNER

BOMBAY IPA

TANDEM PILOT

SCOTTISH ALE

MEMPHIS STYLE

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ARM CHAIR AMBER

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PEANUT BUTTER CHOCOLATE MILK STOUT

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FIRESIDE

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LEFT-HANDED SCREWDRIVER

MEXICAN LAGER

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GOLDEN ALE

POPPY’S PILS

steppin’ out

We Recommend: Culture, News + Reviews

Class Dismissed

By Abigail Morici

Here’s a list of things I learned about recently that I didn’t realize I would enjoy learning about: hypnosis, refrigerator cats, the Transatlantic accent, Cabbage Patch Kids, toilet paper. And that would be thanks to Katja “Kat” Barnhart and Hayley Madden, hosts of the podcast Night Classy, which their intro touts as a “tipsy night class teaching the oddities and curiosities you never learned in school.”

ink weird history, pop-culture, science. “It’s eclectic,” says Madden. “Just whatever catches our eye that week that makes us want to sit down and talk about it with each other.” e two met as rst-year teachers in the Teach for America program in the fall of 2019. Both new to Memphis and fresh out of college, they say, they didn’t have any established hobbies outside of work. “I also wasn’t using my history degree,” Barnhart says, “so a podcast seemed like a fun way to do both of those things. And Hayley and I have such a good friendship. We could have fun and also get to scratch that history itch and research our curiosities and broadcast it for everyone to hear.”

MAY 16

THURSDAY 7 PM

In March of 2020 they released their rst episode with Alec Ogg, Barnhart’s boyfriend and owner of Memphis-based Parasaur Studios, as producer and editor. is, of course, was during peak pandemic, which, it turned out, was ironically perfect timing for launching a podcast. eir classrooms were empty, but they had extra time o — enough time to start to get the hang of things. Now, the pair have recorded more than 200 episodes of Night Classy, and that’s not even counting their Patreon bonus episodes.

But there’s another milestone on the horizon: their rst live show. And it’s happening this Saturday at 10 p.m. as they will be one of four headliners (and the only locally-based headliner) at the Good Vibes Comedy Festival. (Other headliners include Renard Hirsch, Jayson Acevedo, and Hannah Belmont.) “I’m glad that our rst show gets to be in Memphis,” Madden says. “Memphis is the heart of everything — how this happened — and so much blossomed from moving here.”

John Andrew Miller, who organized the festival along with fellow comedian Nate Jackson, says, “We decided on Night Classy very deliberately because the show is doing so well. ey have a great platform and I wanted to show that not only is Memphis comedy showcasing stand-up, but we also have high-level edutainment content. And they do a great job.”

As for the overall day, Miller says to expect “30 comedians from all over the country coming out to do 13 di erent shows. Basically, a variety pack of stand-up comedy productions — raw stand-up comedy with headliner shows, podcast shows, a storytelling show, an improv show, and a roast.”

“Memphis used to have the Memphis Comedy Festival. It’s basically been on a hiatus for the last few years. I, being an adventurous and entrepreneurial spirit within comedy, was pretty much certain that if we did all the hard work, we could pull o a successful comedy festival — since every major city has one. We lost ours. So I wanted to bring it back. It’s going to be a great time.”

Find out more at tinyurl.com/yzzvppde.

GOOD VIBES COMEDY FESTIVAL, HI TONE, 282 N. CLEVELAND, FRIDAY-SATURDAY, APRIL 19-20, 5 P.M.-MIDNIGHT, $30/SHOW, $50/DAY PASS.

VARIOUS DAYS & TIMES April 21st - 27th

Earth Day Festival

Shelby Farms Park, Saturday, April 20, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., free

Cooper-Young Porchfest

You will not want to miss Shelby Farms Park’s mascot, Bob the Buffalo, leading the way through the park’s Earth Day celebrations, during which adults and kids alike will have opportunities to experience, explore, and learn different ways of going green in Memphis.

Kick the festivities off with a Fun Run around Hyde Lake at 10 a.m. Plus, guests can get a preview of the 2024 Get Outside! Fitness program with free classes on the Visitor Center lawn.

There’ll also be plenty of music and food trucks for you to enjoy, and more than 25 organizations will have booths set up to discuss their approaches to sustainability.

Cooper-Young Historic District, Saturday, April 20, noon-6 p.m., free Staged on the eclectic porches of the historic neighborhood, this all-volunteer event will feature a mix of bands playing on residents’ front porches. Coupled with this event, the CYCA will also bring back their annual community yard sale that morning (8 a.m.-1 p.m.), setting the stage for a day of fun and community connection.

Find a full schedule and map of performances at cooperyoung.org/ porchfest.

The after-party will be on Young Avenue between Philadelphia and Bruce, starting at 6 p.m. You can enjoy a crawfish boil and performances by Dead Soldiers, Sweet Darlin, and Speaker Girl on the Shell on Wheels stage.

31st Annual Rajun Cajun Craw sh Festival bene ting Porter-Leath Riverside Drive, between Jefferson and Union, Sunday, April 21, 11 a.m.-7 p.m., free admission

The festival features thousands of pounds of fresh Louisiana crawfish, plus live music from nationally-known Louisiana zydeco bands and award-winning local artists on three stages.

Enjoy games including crawfish bobbing, eating, and racing; arts and crafts vendors; and the Kids Area for children ages 12 and under.

Funds raised at the festival support local children and families through Porter-Leath’s early childhood services, foster care, teacher training, mentoring, and more.

PHOTO: COURTESY NIGHT CLASSY Kat Barnhart and Hayley Madden

MUSIC By Michael Donahue

Wickedly Talented

James D. Gish on music, acting, and Elvis.

There’s something about James D. Gish that evokes Elvis.

He gets that from people. But especially since he began playing the dashing love interest, Fiyero, in Wicked on Broadway. “I’ll slick my hair for this show,” says Gish, 28, who is appearing in the musical through April 21st at the Orpheum eatre.

O stage, Gish’s hair has resembled the pompadour Elvis sported in his early movies. “Not on purpose. It’s sort of the way my hair sits.”

He isn’t trying to emulate e King on or o stage. But, ironically, ever since Gish was a child, Elvis was part of his life. “My family are such obsessive Elvis fans. When I was growing up, I had a dog named Elvis. And a er he passed away I had a dog named Presley.”

And, Gish says, “Let’s just say, the garage was full — every wall — [of] Elvis memorabilia that my parents, especially my father, collected over the years.”

His family still watches Elvis movies and “Elvis CDs are playing throughout the house.”

Images of Gish also are included at their home. If his face appears on a poster at a venue or if his name is printed anywhere, his dad wants it. It then gets added to the “Elvis and James D. Gish Shrine.”

His dad still calls him “Presley” or “Elvis.” As in “I’ll see you later, Elvis,” Gish says. Or “Oh, have a great night, Elvis.”

at actually translates to “rock star,” Gish says. “He’s very proud. And I’m very fortunate that he’s proud.”

Born in Las Vegas, Gish was raised in Bullhead City, Arizona. His family is related to the famous silent screen actresses Dorothy and Lillian Gish, he says. “I know that my grandmother knew Lillian quite well. She said she would always attend the family reunion. She passed away before I was born.”

But, for Gish, it was singing “as a very young kid” before acting, Gish says. He reluctantly joined the choir in high school. en the guy who was playing the Beast in the school

“I just kind of took to [theater] like a fish to water. It just felt right.”

production of Beauty and the Beast had to drop out. “He had issues with family, school, or something. And they asked me to do it. And I ended up falling in love with it.”

Gish’s rst Memphis visit was with his parents when he was 20 to participate in the United Professional eatre Auditions. “Of course, we toured Graceland and went to Sun Studio.”

Like other tourists, Gish’s dad paid to have his son make a little recording at Sun Studio. “Most people sing ‘Hound Dog’ or ‘Viva Las Vegas.’ And I, of course, sang ‘Music of the Night.’”

Gish remembers looking at his proud father. “You just see him crying. With his son singing show tunes at Sun Studio.”

In 2017, Gish recorded an EP, So in Love, which rose to number six on the iTunes Classical Chart. It was “sort of a

mishmash of a few di erent genres.”

e EP included an Italian aria as well as “soaring symphonic arrangements” of show tunes. And, he says, “We took Elvis’ ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ and adapted it into an up-tempo swing jazz number like a big band.”

Gish toured with the EP o and on for about a year before focusing on acting. “I missed having a full cast around me.”

He majored in business at Arizona State University, but at night he would audition for the Phoenix eatre Company. “I just kind of took to it like a sh to water. It just felt right.”

Gish eventually moved to New York. “ ere’s no book on how to become an actor in New York City.” It’s just “falling on your face until you start to crawl and then walk and then run.”

From a small role in Les Misérables, Gish went on to appear in leading roles in plays, including one of his best known — Fabrizio in e Light in the Piazza

Gish landed the role of Fiyero in Wicked on Broadway. “I love Fiyero because you get to play two very di erent people in one night, which is really cool. It’s fun to come on stage and get to be a ‘big shot’ — this cocky little punk who thinks he’s God’s gi .” en, in the second act, Fiyero’s character changes and he becomes more human. “He comes to know empathy, sympathy, and caring for other people.”

As for roles he’d like to play some day, Gish says, “I would really like to play a very quirky awkward character who lacks all self-con dence. I think I would do a character like that justice. I never get the opportunity. I sort of just get typecast as a Fiyero. A lot of cocky jerks or leading man types.”

When he’s not on stage, Gish likes to write young adult ction books. He hasn’t tried to publish any yet, but, he says he’s currently working on a “young adult fantasy novel” that is “almost a historical allegory with fantastical elements.”

For now, Gish is taking care of business pursuing his work in the theater. He’s happy “the cards have fallen the way they have.”

PHOTO: COURTESY OF JAMES D. GISH James D. Gish

SAT JUNE 1

3-6PM OVERTON SQUARE

Kick off your Best Summer Ever at our annual Memphis Margarita Festival! Sample from the city’s best margarita-makers, and enjoy fresh local food, live tunes from DJ Zetta, and more!

AFTER DARK: Live Music Schedule

April 18 - 24

Brit Floyd: PULSE

A faithful recreation of Pink Floyd’s nal Division Bell tour, with a laser and light show, a circular screen, in atables, and theatrics. Wednesday, April 24, 7:30 p.m.

ORPHEUM THEATRE

Grace Morrison, Andy Sydow and Brian Blake

Friday, April 19, 7 p.m.

SOUTH MAIN SOUNDS

India Ramey

Saturday, April 20, 6:30 p.m.

SOUTH MAIN SOUNDS

Rhythm of Care

Hear from Raneem Imam with Fergus Barnes on guitar, and QEMIST. $10. Friday, April 19, 7 p.m.

COMEBACK COFFEE

Soilpimp’s Riesling Study with DJ Muggs

Saturday, April 20, 9 p.m.

CENTRAL STATION HOTEL

John Bass and Friends

$15, $20/DOS. Wednesday, April 24, 7:30 p.m.

THE GREEN ROOM AT CROSSTOWN ARTS

John & Kory

Monday, April 22, 6 p.m.

LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM

LaShonte’ Album Single and Video Event

Saturday, April 20, 3 p.m.

MEMPHIS LISTENING LAB

Lee Taylor: A Tribute to Di Anne Price

Saturday, April 20, 8:30 p.m.

BAR DKDC

Lil Texas: Planet

Battle of the Bands

Finals

Wednesday, April 24, 7 p.m.

LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM

Texcore

Ensemble

and Oteil & Friends, plus Steve Kimock, Jason Crosby, Johnny Kimock, Tom Guarna, and Lamar Williams Jr. Friday, April 19, 5 p.m.; Saturday, April 20, 3:30-7:30 p.m.

OVERTON PARK SHELL

Tar Creek With Eyeless, Aversive Control, AKBD. Monday, April 22, 8 p.m.

HI TONE

The Human Rights e Human Rights with Kween Jasira. $15. ursday, April 18, 8 p.m.

Bloodkin with Sunweight

$20. Sunday, April 21, 8 p.m.

HI TONE

Blue Tom Records

Album Listening Event

A listening session for Trinity Adair and Bo3’s latest EP.

Wednesday, April 24, 6 p.m.

MEMPHIS LISTENING LAB

Chris Hamlett with Mojohand, Mike Hewlett

Tuesday, April 23, 8 p.m.

HI TONE

Cypress Ensemble

April 18-24, 2024

$15. Thursday, April 18, 7:30 p.m.

THE GREEN ROOM AT CROSSTOWN ARTS

Devil Train

ursday, April 18, 10 p.m.

B-SIDE

Echoes of Angels: A Performance by Iris

Collective

Violinist Pedro Maia and cellist Otavio Manzano Kavakama take a musical journey.

Sunday, April 21, 2 p.m.

MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM OF ART

Frankie Hollie (Solo)

Saturday, April 20, 1 p.m.

LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM

FreeWorld

Saturday, April 20, 1 p.m.

RAILGARTEN

George Porter Jr. and the Runnin’ Pardners

Saturday, April 20, 10 p.m.

RAILGARTEN

Graber Gryass

Friday, April 19, 10 p.m.

B-SIDE

With Stained00, DJ Wholefoods, Potion2Poison $15$20. Saturday, April 20, 7 p.m.

GROWLERS

Lina Beach Friday, April 19, 8 p.m.

RAILGARTEN

MAD Presents: Road to Woodsfest featuring Vanilla Guerillaz! Featuring Vanilla Guerillaz, Neon Machine, Delek, and more. $15. Friday, April 19, 9 p.m.-2 a.m.

BLACK LODGE

Marcella & Her Lovers

Friday, April 19, 9 p.m.

BAR DKDC

Muck Sticky’s Reefer Muckness

Muck Sticky’s rst hometown show in 5 years, with Bonzai. $20-$24.20. Saturday, April 20, 7 p.m.

BLACK LODGE

Patrick Sansone

Infinity Mirrors Album

Listening Event

Sunday, April 21, 3 p.m.

MEMPHIS LISTENING LAB

Rock the Boat

Friday, April 19, 6 p.m.

LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM

Savannah Brister

Friday, April 19, 7 p.m.

OVERTON SQUARE

See You Next Tuesday With MouthBreather, Mutilatred, Breaking and Entering, Mammoth Caravan. $15-$18. Monday, April 22, 6:30 p.m.

GROWLERS

Shell Daze

Shell Daze Music Festival returns with a funk- lled lineup led by JJ Grey & Mofro

HI TONE

The Outer Band Wednesday, April 24, 8 p.m.

HI TONE

Thumpdaddy Friday, April 19, 10 p.m.

LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM

Twin Soul Saturday, April 20, 9 p.m.

LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM

W1NDOW with Coco & the Hitmen Another showcase from Women in Memphis Music. Wednesday, April 24, 8 p.m. B-SIDE

Just Groovin Experience Friday, April 19, 8 p.m.

HERNANDO’S HIDE-A-WAY

The Tonganoxie Split With the Gunslingers ursday, April 18, 8 p.m.

HERNANDO’S HIDE-A-WAY

Tyler Deaver Friday, April 19, 8 p.m.

HERNANDO’S HIDE-A-WAY

Iris Collective Kids’ Concert “Windy Day” Friday, April 19, 10:30 a.m. MORTON

Tom Wopat

$35. Friday, April 19, 7:30 p.m.

PHOTO: COURTESY CROSSTOWN ARTS Cypress

“Illuminations”

Bruce Brainard is well known for meditative, allegorical landscapes of in nite skies, elds, and oceans. Tuesday, April 23-June 1.

DAVID LUSK GALLERY

“It’s All Relative”

Morgan Lugo uses permanent materials, such as bronze, to speak to the lasting e ects of past experiences. Sunday, April 21-July 7.

METAL MUSEUM

“Progression”

Sowgand Sheikholeslami’s show features works encapsulating a diverse range of subjects. Sunday, April 21-July 7.

THE DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS

ART HAPPENINGS

46th Annual Art Auction

Art. Auction. pARTy! Over 150 local and regional artists are showcasing their unique masterpieces. $50/General Art Lover, $100/VIP Art Lover. Saturday, April 20, 5:30-10 p.m.

PLAYHOUSE ON THE SQUARE

Gallery Talk: Samilia Colar

A talk on the exhibition “Christian Siriano: People Are People,” led by local designer Samilia Colar. Wednesday, April 24, 6 p.m.

MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM OF ART

Open Late: Artists of the Memphis 2024” Exhibition

Get to know the artists featured in “Memphis 2024.” ursday, April 18, 5:30 p.m.

THE DIXON GALLERY & GARDENS

The Children’s Literacy Gala Programming will include a performance honoring the 400th anniversary of the publishing of the First Folio, and the second annual Educator of the Year Award. Saturday, April 20, 6 p.m.

TENNESSEE SHAKESPEARE COMPANY

BOOK EVENTS

Clare Mackintosh with M.J. Wassmer e author joins M.J. Wassmer in conversation to celebrate the release of her new books, A Game Of Lies and I Promise It Won’t Always Hurt Like is Wednesday, April 24, 6 p.m.

NOVEL

Friends of the Library Spring Book Sale e BIG semi-annual book and media sale to bene t the Memphis Public Library system.

ursday, April 18, 3-7pm; Friday, April 19, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Saturday, April 20, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday, April 21, 11 a.m.-2 p.m.

BENJAMIN L. HOOKS CENTRAL LIBRARY

Hampton Sides e author will celebrate the release of e Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook. ursday, April 18, 6 p.m.

NOVEL

J. Dana Trent

J. Dana Trent discusses and signs her new memoir, Between Two Trailers. Saturday, April 20, 5 p.m.

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH MEMPHIS

Memphis Rhythms

Two local authors share their stories and love for our city through rhythmic words. Free. ursday, April 18, 6 p.m.

ELMWOOD CEMETERY

Silent Book Club: Emily Henry’s

Funny Story

Celebrate the release of Emily Henry’s new romcom, Funny Story. Tuesday, April 23, 4-6 p.m.

NOVEL

COMEDY

Lil Pistol Starter

$20-$60. Sunday, April 21, 8 p.m.

CHUCKLES COMEDY HOUSE

Tre’ Williamson

$20-$60. Friday, April 19, 7:30 p.m., 10 p.m.; Saturday, April 20, 7:30 p.m., 10 p.m.

CHUCKLES COMEDY HOUSE

PHOTO: COURTESY

THE ARTIST

Lonnie

Robinson, Majesty, 2023, on display in “Memphis 2024.”

COMMUNITY

Earth Day Festival

FESTIVAL

With Bob the Bu alo, goat yoga, a kid’s zone, and learning stations. Saturday, April 20, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

SHELBY FARMS PARK

Earth Day on the Wolf River Greenway

Activities include removing litter, restoring trails, and enjoying the great outdoors. Saturday, April 20, 10 a.m.-noon.

WOLF RIVER CONSERVANCY

Party for the Planet

Includes a scavenger hunt, prizes, local vendors, and more. Saturday, April 20, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

MEMPHIS ZOO

DANCE

American Roots

CROSSTOWN THEATRE

Elevate

A Collage Dance performance. Saturday, April 20, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, April 21, 2:30 p.m.

CANNON CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

Africa in April: Beale Street Parade

An international diversity parade. Saturday, April 20, 9-11:30 a.m.

ROBERT R. CHURCH PARK

Memphis Uke-N-Roll Jamboree

Four days of solid southern fun. ursday, April 18-April 21.

RENASANT CONVENTION CENTER

Rajun Cajun Crawfish Festival

Bene ting Porter-Leath. Free admission. Sunday, April 21, 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

RIVERSIDE DRIVE, BETWEEN JEFFERSON AND UNION

Spirit Fest Holistic, Metaphysical, & Crystal Expo

e largest metaphysical expo in the Mid-South. $11-$17. Saturday, April 20, 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sunday, April 21, 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

A celebration of Americana music through dance. Friday, April 19, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, April 20, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, April 21, 7:30 p.m.

AGRICENTER INTERNATIONAL

We Saw You.

with MICHAEL DONAHUE

Quinn Hurley did his best to get the Memphis Tattoo Festival to leave its imprint on Memphis. e event was presented by Tattoo Fest and the Explorer Tattoo Conference.

“We had a little over 3,000 attendees over the weekend,” says Hurley, director of operations for the three-day event held April 5th through 7th at the Renasant Convention Center. “For a market the size of Memphis, we de nitely consider the event a success. It’s hard to pin down exactly how many tattoos were done over the three days. I would expect that number to be upwards of 500.”

And, he says, “It can only grow from here — and will. e reception from Memphis-based tattoo artists, speci cally, was amazing.”

Hurley’s rst tattoo was the logo for the Guardians of the Galaxy. “I got it on August 5, 2014, which was the director’s birthday. And it wasn’t great, so I got it redone a couple of years later.”

Why do people want to get a tattoo? “It’s a way to express yourself. It’s literally a way to wear your heart on your sleeve.”

top: James Brooks and Tristan Shreves;

above: (le to right) Trey and Anthony Austin, Mad-e Zwiebel and Caitlin Campbell

below horizontal: (top to bottom) Taylor Bray and Lord Gregory Emerson, Josh Brooks and Adrian Hood;

below vertical: (le to right) Darby Robertson and Madelyn Caldwell, Alton_Sides and Matthew Vandergri

PHOTOS: MICHAEL DONAHUE

BOOKS By Jackson Baker

1666: A Story of Survival

Lora Chilton’s historical novel delves into the colonial era’s terrors and atrocities unblinkingly.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Lora Chilton’s historical novel 1666 may be the task of keeping the phonetically spelled names of people and places straight.

The story, based on a combination of what author Chilton refers to as “historical records and oral tradition,” is an inspired imagining of the struggle for survival of two members of the Indigenous Patawomeck (PaTow’O’Mek) tribe of Virginia (TseNaCoMoCo) following the attempted annihilation of the tribe by white colonial authorities in the year indicated by the novel’s title.

The primary characters, based on two women who may actually have existed, do indeed survive (though just barely), as, in the long run of history, has the tribe itself via surviving descendants, one of whom is Chilton herself. Her fellow Memphians may recall her as a prominent school board member and political activist (as Lora Jobe) of a few seasons back.

The aforementioned matter of

phonetic spellings is really no obstacle to an immersion in the tale, functioning rather to ground one in a gripping sense of Being There in a presenttense reality. (And there are welcome recognitions, as when one of the story’s ultimate locations turns out to be a teeming place called MaNaHahTaAn (Manhattan).)

What the story really is about is humanity’s unquenchable spirit.

The main characters themselves have a variety of names. Ah’SaWei (Golden Fawn) is also Twenty-nine (her number as a freshly enslaved prisoner) and Rebecca (while serving in a Barnados household). And, similarly, NePaWeXo (Shining Moon) is Eightyfive and Leah.

To repeat, none of this gets in the way. For each of the characters, the identities are both discrete and overlapping. Each stands for a different phase of the characters’ destinies — alternately horrific, heroic, and (relatively) mundane.

Those destinies occur within a meticulously outlined span of historical time in which the terrors and atrocities of the colonial era, described unblinkingly, are a basic part of the background and essentially define the course of events. But so, too, are the natural circumstances of life — love and sex prominently among them.

What did people of that milieu eat and how did they cultivate it? In what ways were their domestic tensions, coupling rituals, and emotional realities like or unlike our own? Chilton has researched it all and knows it in depth and can tell you.

And she does so with a dramatic, thriller-like sense of urgency that has us turning pages compulsively.

Some advance readers of the novel,

whose blurbs are included with the text, focus on the story as “tragedy.” That’s a way of saying that terrible things happen and are accounted for graphically.

But what the story really is about is humanity’s unquenchable spirit and, as such, is the furthest thing imaginable from being a downer.

FOOD By Michael Donahue

Irish Eyes Are Smiling in Olive Branch

Justin Ash brought a touch of the old sod to Olive Branch, Mississippi. He recently opened Ash’s Irish Pub, which, he believes, is the rst Irish pub in Olive Branch. “When you walk in, it’s like you get that heart-dropping moment,” he says. “Like a culture shock.”

For his pub, Ash created a “late-19th century, early 20th-century” spot, which he describes as “old world,” with “cobblestone brick, rough-cut timbers, and a walnut wood-looking bar.”

Decor includes wine barrels, street lanterns, stained glass windows, and a train station clock. Ash also features ags dating from as recently as the 2024 American ag to as far back as 762 AD, the earliest he traced his Irish lineage to on his dad’s side. His grandmother taught him how to cook Irish cuisine when he was a teenager. “And I just remembered.”

His Irish fare includes “shepherd’s pie, sh and chips, bangers and mash, Guinness beef stew, chicken and chips, and poutine.” For now, Ash only serves beer, but he eventually will serve cra cocktails.

Ash also wanted a convivial place, which is what an Irish pub is, he says. When you sit down at the bar, whoever is on your le side and whoever is on your right side are “going to end up being your best friend whether you like it or not. In a traditional Irish bar, it’s disrespectful not to speak to others. If you sit there by yourself quietly, it’s disrespectful. It’s a public house. at’s just the way things work. ere’s no such thing as a stranger.”

And, he says, “ e biggest thing was to give that feeling of hope and, I guess, belonging. Like my friends did for me when I was in the hospital.”

Ash was in his fourth deployment in the Army when he was injured in 2018 in northern Syria. “We were on a mission and our vehicle struck something in the roadway and it caused our vehicle to ip. And a ri e ripped o the le side of my face. I wound up at Walter Reed [National Military Medical Center] in Washington. I had to relearn how to read, walk, talk.”

His friend Tara McShea, who worked in civil a airs for the Army, o en visited Ash, who stayed in the hospital for

two-and-a-half years. She took him to Philadelphia to visit her family’s Irish pub, which got him interested in Irish gathering spots. He got a notepad and in about 10 minutes made a checklist of what he wanted his Irish pub to be like.

A er he got out of the hospital, Ash, who had been with the Marshall County Sheri ’s O ce before he le for his last deployment, retired from the Army and moved to Olive Branch. “I walked into an empty apartment in April of 2020 and started my life over.”

Over the next two years, Ash, who began working on his undergraduate degree in criminal justice when he was in the hospital, nished his associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees.

He found the exact location he wanted for his pub about two years ago. Originally, it was “an empty shell of a room.”

Ash used the money from his military and sheri ’s department retirements to open the pub. “I put all cards on the table.”

When you visit Ash’s Irish Pub at 9200 Goodman Road, you’re probably going to see Ash. “I’m the owner. I’m a cook. I’m

the bartender. I’m the waiter. I’m everything. … I’m all over the place back there. Cutting potatoes. Cutting carrots. Making stew. And making sh and chips. I might be out here wiping tables. I’m doing everything from 10 a.m. till 1 a.m. every single day.”

He plans to feature Irish music played on “traditional Gaelic instruments,” including violins and guitars, at his pub. Patrons will be able to “sit around the table and play together.”

Already, though, Irish — and everybody else’s — eyes are smiling at Ash’s Irish Pub. “Oh, my God. is past Friday night every seat at the bar was lled and they were singing, ‘No nay never,’ and slapping the top of the bar,” he says. “ ey were sitting there laughing together. And I said, ‘ is is beautiful.’”

PHOTO: SHEILA LAMB Justin Ash

Mississippian Justin Ash opens an Irish pub.

METAPHYSICAL CONNECTION

By Emily Guenther

On Meditation

Whichever form you choose, it’s an important tool in our self-care and healing toolbox.

There is a lot of talk in metaphysical circles about meditation. Meditation is an important part of a spiritual path, regardless of what label you use for your path. It is something I nd myself recommending for many of the questions people ask me. It’s not the only answer to most questions, but it is an important part of nding those answers.

It is believed that meditating can help us lead happier and healthier lives, even if we do not take the spiritual aspects of meditation into consideration. Meditating is believed to help people sleep better, reduce stress, improve memory and focus, reduce depression and anxiety, help people feel happier overall, and boost immunity.

My favorite is movement meditation. is is a great technique for those of us who struggle to quiet our minds or sit still. Movement meditation is where you perform movements with your body that do not require your attention and allow your mind to focus on your intention. Many people, me included, have found that when they are sitting still their mind is going a million miles an hour in 20 di erent directions. However, when we move or give our bodies something to do, our minds quiet down. Movement meditation is something you may be familiar with if you practice yoga or tai chi, but it is something we all can do. Taking a walk, dancing, or even cleaning your home can be a meditative experience if you let it. While your body is doing these repetitive movements, try to focus on what you want to manifest, the questions you would like answers to, your spirit guide that you’d like to talk to, or whatever else you need.

NOTICE TO ALL PROPERTY OWNERS

As required by Tennessee Code Annotated § 67-5-508, the property assessment records of Shelby County will be available for public inspection at 1075 Mullins Station Road. These records may be inspected Monday through Friday, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Any person desiring to inspect these records may do so at the above times and places. Property assessment records may also be reviewed through the Assessor’s website at www.assessormelvinburgess.com

THE SHELBY COUNTY BOARD OF EQUALIZATION WILL BEGIN ITS ANNUAL SESSION TO EXAMINE AND EQUALIZE COUNTY ASSESSMENTS ON MAY 1, 2024. THE COUNTY BOARD WILL ACCEPT APPEALS FOR THE 2024 TAX YEAR UNTIL 4:30 P.M., JUNE 30, 2024, THE LAST DAY OF ITS REGULAR SESSION.

The Shelby County Board of Equalization (SCBoE) is open weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 1075 Mullins Station Road, Suite C-142. Any property owner who wishes to appeal to the County Board of Equalization may file in person, online or by mail. Appeals may be filed online by 11:59 p.m. on June 30th. Mailed in appeals must be postmarked on or before June 30th. Failure to appeal may result in the assessment becoming final without further right of appeal. Please contact the SCBoE at 901-222-7300 for additional information or you may visit their website at boe.shelbycountytn.gov.

Melvin

Typically, in spiritual and metaphysical circles, when we talk about meditation, we are using it as a mindfulness practice, a devotional practice, and/or as a way to receive messages from the universe. However, meditation can be a di cult skill to cultivate. And it’s not like riding a bike, where once you’ve learned how to do it, you can e ortlessly repeat it. With meditation, sometimes things go well and sometimes you cannot turn o your monkey mind, as it’s o en called. We tend to think of meditation as sitting quietly, legs crossed with our eyes closed, listening for messages or being peaceful. And this is a great meditation technique. It is the form we see in movies or on TV, but Hollywood doesn’t explain that the people who meditate well in this way have usually spent a lot of time learning how to do so. It is not a form of meditation that many people can jump into easily when they begin the journey. If you have tried this form of meditation and it worked well for you, that’s awesome. If sitting quietly and listening for messages and not holding onto your thoughts is a little daunting for you, there are other ways of meditating.

You can also try a focus attention meditation. With this, you are going to focus your attention on an object. You can choose anything to be your focus point, from a crystal on your altar to a scrying mirror or gazing ball to the art on your walls. Get into a comfortable position and look at your focus object. Pay attention to the thoughts or experiences you have while looking at your focus item. Some people may even begin to close their eyes at some point in the meditation and try to visualize the object in their mind. Focus attention meditation involves focusing on something intently as a way of staying in the moment and quieting your inner dialogue.

Repeating mantras or a rmations can also be a form of meditation. And those who might need a little outside help with their meditations can look online for guided meditations. ese are scripted experiences that can help you reach a certain goal such as calmness, relaxation, sleep, or a deeper spiritual goal like nding a spirit guide.

I highly encourage everyone to nd a meditation technique that works for them. Meditation is an important tool in our self-care and healing toolbox.

Emily Guenther is a co-owner of e Broom Closet metaphysical shop. She is a Memphis native, professional tarot reader, ordained Pagan clergy, and dog mom.

Enroll Your Child in Pre-K

Pre-K will help give your child the basic skills they will need later in school. Plus some programs provide extra support, like devices, for home learning. And, depending on your income, it’s all free.

To enroll your child in Pre-K, visit: PrekMemphis.com

High-quality early childhood programs benefit the whole community. First 8 Memphis coordinates services for kids birth through third grade.

PHOTO: THOMAS NORDWEST | CREATIVE COMMONS | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Burgess Shelby County Assessor of Property

Saturday, June 15th

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Rawiya Al-Qasimi, a female reporter, was covering an event in Riyadh on March 4 when a Saudi Arabian robot called Android Muhammad unexpectedly slapped her posterior during a live shot, the Daily Star reported. Al-Qasimi pushed the robot’s hand away and rebuked him. Before the untoward touching, Android Muhammad introduced himself, saying, “I was manufactured and developed here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a national project to demonstrate our achievements in the field of artificial intelligence.” Ironically, had he been a real man, he might have faced jail time for his inappropriate behavior. [Daily Star, 3/7/2024]

Maybe She’s Onto Something Spanish artist Alicia Framis, now based in Amsterdam, has created the perfect husband: a hologram that she designed and named AILex Sibouwlingen, whom she modeled on past paramours, according to EuroNews. Framis plans to marry him this summer at a museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. On her Instagram page, Framis shares photos and videos of herself and AILex sharing meals and other elements of daily life. “Love and sex with robots and holograms are an inevitable reality,” Framis said. “They are great companions and capable of expressing empathy.” [EuroNews, 3/1/2024]

Truth Is Stranger Than Netflix

Loreen Bea Feralo, 55, and Karen Casbohm, 63, were charged with theft and gross abuse of a corpse after allegedly carrying out a Weekend at Bernie’s stunt in Ashtabula, Ohio, The Smoking Gun reported. On March 4, police said, Feralo and Casbohm — who were not related to Douglas Layman, 80, but lived in his home — loaded his corpse into the front seat of a car “in such a manner that he would be visible to bank staff” and drove through his bank, where they used his card to withdraw $900. The bank had allowed the women to withdraw from his account before, as long as he was with him. Having secured the funds, the women then dropped Layman’s body at the Ashtabula County Medical Center emergency room “without providing any information about the

man or themselves,” police said. They were able to identify the women and question them. The women, both of whom have significant priors, said Layman died at home. [The Smoking Gun, 3/7/2024]

Creme de la Weird

Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 80, of Vaughn, Montana, pleaded guilty on March 12 to two felony wildlife crimes after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks conducted a yearslong investigation, Business Insider reported. Schubarth was accused of buying, selling, and breeding “alternative” livestock, such as mountain sheep and mountain goats, for captive hunting operations. Between 2013 and 2021, court documents said, he conspired with others to create a large hybrid species of sheep that would garner higher prices from shooting preserves. To do so, he brought parts of Marco Polo argali sheep from Kyrgyzstan to the U.S. without declaring them. His other crimes include forging veterinary documents and shipping hybrid semen to other breeders. He faces jail time, fines, and supervised release. [Business Insider, 3/14/2024]

Recurring Theme

It’s baaaackkk. In the waning days of 2020, a tall silver monolith popped up in various locations in California, Texas, Romania, and elsewhere. Now, Wales Online reports, it’s back. The 10-foot-tall tower, which appears to be stainless steel, turned up near Hay-onWye in Wales around March 10, when Richard Haynes came across it while he was out for a run. “I thought it … might be a scientific media research thing collecting rainwater. But then I realized it was way too tall and strange for that. It was hollow and I imagine … light enough for two people to carry it up and plant it in the ground,” Haynes said. Stay tuned. [Wales Online, 3/11/2024]

Send your weird news items with subject line WEIRD NEWS to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com.

NEWS OF THE WEIRD

© 2024 Andrews McMeel Syndication. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You will be wise to summon extra love and rapport as you ruminate on your vivid upcoming decisions. Wouldn’t you like to bask in the helpful influences of smart allies who respect you? How nurturing would it feel to receive healing encouragement and warm appreciation? I suggest you convene a conference of trusted advisors, good listeners, sunny mentors, wisdom keepers, and spirit guides. Maybe even convene a series of such gatherings. Now is an excellent time to call in all your favors and get the most inspirational support possible as you navigate your way to the next chapter of your life story.

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): I suspect two notable phenomena will coalesce in your sphere sometime soon. The first is a surplus supply of luck. I’m not sure why, but the fates will be sending surges of good karma your way. The second phenomenon is this: You might not be entirely alert for the potential luck flowing in your direction, and it may not leap out and grab you. That could be a problem. Fortunately, you are reading this oracle, which means you are getting a heads-up about the looming opportunity. Now that you realize you must be vigilant for the serendipitous blessings, I’m confident you will spot them and claim them. FREE

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): If you drink alcohol, don’t operate a forklift or backhoe. If you gamble, protect yourself with safeguards and have a backup plan. If you feel called to explore altered states of consciousness, consider doing meditation, dancing, or chanting holy songs instead of ingesting drugs. If you have an itch to go hang-gliding or sky-jumping, triple-check your equipment. And if you have the urge to try to walk on the water, don a life jacket first. But please note, dear Gemini: I am not advising you to timidly huddle in your comfort zone. On the contrary, I highly recommend you stretch your limits. Just be secure and smart as you do.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): I plotted out my usual astrological reckonings for your current destiny. Then I slipped into a meditative trance and asked the spirits to show me future scenes that correspond to my assessments. In one prominent vision, I beheld you partying heartily, navigating your avid and inquisitive way through convivial gatherings. In other scenes, I saw you engaged in lively discussions with interesting people who expanded your understanding of the meaning of life in general and the meaning of your life in particular. I conclude that intelligent revelry will be a main theme for you. Productive excitement. Pleasurable intrigue. Connections that enliven and tonify your imagination.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The theory of synchronicity proposes that hidden patterns are woven into our lives. Though they may ordinarily be hard to detect, they can become vividly visible under certain circumstances. But we have to adjust the way we interpret reality. Here’s a clue: Be alert for three meaningful coincidences that happen within a short time and seem related to each other. I predict the emergence of at least one set of these coincidences in the coming weeks — maybe as many as four. Synchronicities are coming! You have entered the More-Than-MereCoincidence Zone.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Psychologists

J. Clayton Lafferty and Lorraine F. Lafferty

wrote a book called Perfectionism: A Sure Cure for Happiness. It’s based on their work with clients who damaged their lives “in the illusory pursuit of the unrealistic and unattainable standard of perfection.”

In my observation, many of us are susceptible to this bad habit, but you Virgos tend to be the most susceptible of all. The good news is that you now have an excellent chance to loosen the grip of perfectionism. You are more receptive than usual to intuitions about how to relax your aspirations without compromising your competence. As inspiration, consider these words from author Henry James: “Excellence does not require perfection.” Leadership expert R.R. Stutman adds: “If perfection is an obstacle course, excellence is a masterful dance.”

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which they never show to anybody,” wrote author Mark Twain. I agree that everyone is a moon and has a dark side. But it’s important to note that our dark sides are not inherently ugly or bad. Psychologist Carl Jung proved to me that our dark sides may contain latent, wounded, or unappreciated beauty. To be healthy, in fact, we should cultivate a vigorous relationship with our dark side. In doing so, we can draw out hidden and undeveloped assets. The coming weeks will be a favorable time for you Libras to do this.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your current state has metaphorical resemblances to idling in your car, waiting and waiting and waiting for the red light to change. But here’s the good news: I expect the signal will turn green very soon — maybe even within minutes after you read this horoscope. Here’s more good news: Your unlucky number will stop popping up so often, and your lucky number will be a frequent visitor. I’m also happy to report that the “Please don’t touch” signs will disappear. This means you will have expanded permission to consort intimately with influences you need to consort with.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I think it’s time to graduate from your lessons in toxic kinds of enchantment and launch a new experiment with healthy kinds of enchantment. If you agree, spend the next few days checking to see if any part of you is numb, apathetic, or unreceptive. Non-feelings like these suggest you may be under the enchantment of influences that are cramping your imagination. The next step is to go in quest of experiences, people, and situations that excite your imagination, rouse your reverence, and raise your appreciation for holy mysteries. Life will conspire benevolently on your behalf if you connect yourself with magic, marvels, and miracles.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Luther Burbank (1849–1926) was a practical

artist. Using crossbreeding, he developed over 800 novel varieties of vegetables, fruits, grains, and flowers. Among his handiwork was the russet Burbank potato, a blight-resistant food designed to help Ireland recover from its Great Famine. My personal favorite was his flaming gold nectarine, one of the 217 fruits he devised. I propose that Burbank serve as your role model in the coming weeks. I believe you have the power to summon highly pragmatic creativity.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): L.R. McBride wrote the book The Kahuna: Versatile Mystics of Old Hawaii. He describes the role of the kahuna, who is a blend of sorcerer, scholar, and healer. At one point, a kahuna gives advice to an American tourist, saying, “You have moved too fast for too long. You have left part of yourself behind. Now you should slow down so that part of you can catch up.” I’m offering you the same advice right now, Aquarius. Here’s your homework: Dream up three fun things you can do to invite and welcome back the left-behind parts of you.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In the course of my life, I have heard the following three statements from various people: 1. “Everything would be better between us if you would just be different from who you are.” 2. “I would like you more if you were somebody else.” 3. “Why won’t you change to be more like the person I wish you would be?” I’m sure you have heard similar pronouncements yourself, Pisces. But now here’s the good news: I don’t think you will have to endure much, if any, of such phenomena in the coming months. Why? First, because you will be more purely your authentic self than you have ever been. Second, because your allies, colleagues, and loved ones — the only people who matter, really — are likely to be extra welcoming to your genuine self.

FILM By Chris McCoy

Life During Wartime

“I nd that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some lms claim to be antiwar, but I don’t think I’ve really seen an antiwar lm. Every lm about war ends up being pro-war.”

Since Francois Tru aut, the great French lmmaker and critic, said that to Gene Siskel in a 1972 interview, many have speculated what he meant. Film and military propaganda have gone together practically since the invention of the medium. ere are any number of great lms that are antiwar in intent: All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory, and Apocalypse Now, just to name a few. But what I think Tru aut was getting at is that, for lmmakers, combat is just too sexy. ere are the life or death stakes that plotting thrives on, plenty of kinetic motion, and lots of explosions. Who doesn’t love a good explosion?

And that is precisely the problem. Even if you want to condemn militarism, wanton killing, destruction, and weaponized rape, the viewer is going to thrill to the exciting images and start rooting for one side to “win.” But this isn’t college football, this is human tragedy.

Alex Garland makes his intentions quite clear in Civil War. Early in the lm, photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) muses to her old friend Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) that when she sent images of war zones back to home to America, the implicit message was “Don’t do this! And, here we are …”

In this unde ned near future, the United States has fractured into four warring alliances of states: e Loyalists, who stuck with the former Union a er the unnamed President (Nick O erman) took on an unconstitutional third term; the

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New People’s Army of the Northwest; and the Florida Alliance, which is basically the old Confederacy except for Texas, which has joined California in the Western Forces.

Sitting in a hotel lobby in Manhattan, Sammy convinces Lee and her writer partner Joel (Wagner Moura) to let him join them on a trip to Washington, D.C., where the President is besieged in the White House. Sammy compares the situation to the “race to Berlin,” when the Nazi war machine collapsed in 1945, and Russian and American forces pulled out all of the stops to see who could grab the most territory before the surrender. (A weary Sammy observes that, once D.C. falls, the other factions will inevitably turn on each other.)

between two dueling sniper teams, hide in a suburban yard decorated for Christmas.

e only thing that matters now is how the President goes down, and that’s the story Lee and Joel are a er. e other passenger in their beatup Ford Expedition is Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a novice photographer who idolizes Lee. But Lee doesn’t think Jessie’s got what it takes to witness war and make news content out of it — or maybe, it’s that Lee sees herself in Jessie, before her heart went hard from watching countless people die.

Making the hero of the piece a journalist instead of a soldier is Garland’s way to make an actual antiwar lm. e road trip across the Northeast is alternately harrowing and surreal — o en both at once, as in the scene where Lee and Joel, caught

Garland takes inspiration from the breathless suspense of Children of Men, e in Red Line’s moments of transcendence amidst the carnage, and the journey into ultimate darkness of the aforementioned Apocalypse Now But the lm Civil War most closely resembles is Full Metal Jacket, which director Stanley Kubrick described as being about “the phenomenon of war.” Lee’s journalistic perspective lends the story objectivity. As she follows one unit of irregulars through a pitched re ght, we start to root for them.

en, Garland undercuts the emotional connection, as Lee photographs the victors gleefully machine gunning their prisoners.

It’s Kirsten Dunst’s job to make sure Kubrickian clinical detachment doesn’t sour into misanthropy. She’s

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Transform your life and our city.

Transform your life and our city.

absolutely riveting. As the horrors mount, Lee’s hard facade is slowly chipped away. Watching Jessie lose her rookie idealism and embrace the thrill of battle only makes it worse.

Civil War is as brilliant as it is harrowing. It’s been 160 years since we’ve seen real war in North America, even as we have been inundated with images of con ict from all over the world. is is not a lm about who is right and who is wrong in our current political struggle. It’s about what war looks like up close — and what America will look like if the better angels of our nature fail.

Civil War

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Alex Garland’s Civil War is as brilliant as it is harrowing.

Kirsten Dunst is riveting in her role as photojournalist Lee Smith.

McCoy

Our critic picks the best films in theaters.

Abigail

Fourteen-year-old Alisha Weir stars as the daughter of a gangster who is kidnapped by a group of criminals looking to ransom her for $50 million. But our antiheroes are in for a rude shock, when they discover Abigail is a vampire. She’s not trapped in here with them; they’re trapped in here with her.

Sasquatch Sunset

Graceland owner Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg star as a pair of Sasquatch mates trying to make it work in this crazy world. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter’s David and Nathan Zellner direct this mostly wordless comedy about love and our relationship with nature.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare Action-comedy maestro Guy Ritchie returns with this semi-comedy about the Special Operations Executive, a rogue British unit in World War II who pioneered the art of sabotage. Henry Cavill stars as a Gus March-Phillipps, who sets out to find a German submarine base and steal some cargo ships while they’re at it.

Monkey Man

Don’t sleep on Dev Patel’s supremely stylish beat-’em-up. Patel directs and stars as Kid, a down-on-his-luck dishwasher at a swanky New Delhi nightclub, who is secretly an assassin out for revenge against the politicians and priests who destroyed his community. If you’d like to see the ruling class of India get its collective ass kicked, this is the film for you. NOW

THE LAST WORD

By Mel Gurtov

Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza

Food insecurity and perilous conditions for relief workers show disregard for human life.

Among the many brutalities in war prohibited under international humanitarian law are starvation of civilian populations and deliberate attacks on aid workers. Here are some new ndings worth considering as we ponder the continued decline of human security in the Gaza ghting.

By now we are all familiar with the appalling food situation in all parts of Gaza. Now, a multiparty global initiative known as the IPC — or the Integrated Food Security Phase Classi cation, a standardised crisis-rating scale — has documented and closely analyzed the matter.

Half the Gaza population, 1.1 million people, now face “catastrophic food insecurity.” Unless a cease re can be agreed upon, by July just about the entire population will be in that condition. Moreover, “Famine is imminent in the northern governorates and projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024.”

e report further notes: “ e famine threshold for household acute food insecurity has already been far exceeded and, given the latest data showing a steeply increasing trend in cases of acute malnutrition, it is highly likely that the famine threshold for acute malnutrition has also been exceeded.”

Decreasing delivery of food and other basic necessities is a major cause of the famine.

“From a pre-escalation average of 500 trucks a day of which 150 were carrying food, in the period between 7 October 2023 to 24 February 2024, only 90 trucks per day, of which only 60 were carrying food, entered the Gaza Strip. Consequently, virtually all households are skipping meals every day and adults are reducing their meals so that children can eat. In the northern governorates, in nearly two thirds of the households, people went entire days and nights without eating at least 10 times in the last 30 days. In the southern governorates, this applies to one third of the households.”

We need to remember just how destitute the Gaza Strip was before the war. e IPC report reminds us: “In 2022, the Gaza Strip faced an unemployment rate of nearly 45 percent and, by September 2023, the poverty rate was at 60 percent, among a population that included nearly 70 percent of refugees. Due to severely constrained livelihood opportunities, in 2022, over half of the population was relying on humanitarian assistance as their main income source and about onethird on casual labour, with 70 percent of the population food insecure.”

As I noted in a podcast on opinion polling of Palestinians, many believe the war has nally focused international attention on Gaza’s desperate conditions.

Adding to the food insecurity in Gaza are the perilous conditions for humanitarian relief workers. at was brought home with the death of seven members of the World Central Kitchen in an Israeli raid that the Israeli Defense Forces have called a “tragic mistake,” but which WCK’s Chef José Andrés has called Israel’s “war against humanity itself.”

Prior to that attack, 196 aid workers had been killed in the war between last October and late March. at’s an astounding gure when, according to a group that tracks humanitarian assistance projects, no aid workers had been killed in all the Occupied Territories in the three previous years. Nor has any con ict zone ever experienced so many deaths of aid workers.

e unprecedented number of aid worker deaths in Gaza has raised accusations that relief organizations are being deliberately targeted. As one writer puts it:

“Israeli forces have targeted healthcare facilities, aid convoys, and ambulances with apparent impunity. Aid groups say they have shared the GPS coordinates of their facilities and convoys with Israeli authorities to avoid unintentional bombing — a strategy known as decon iction — but aid facilities continue to be hit. ‘ ere is complete disregard for the norms of modern warfare,’ said Bob Kitchen, vice president for emergencies and humanitarian action at the International Rescue Committee.”

Now, according to a report in e New Humanitarian, Israel has set up a separate, privately contracted aid system that it can protect and control, avoiding reliance on the UN’s relief organization as well as on NGOs.

Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is professor emeritus of political science at Portland State University and blogs at In the Human Interest

PHOTO: MOHAMED ZARANDAH | DREAMSTIME.COM

e war in Gaza has exacerbated food insecurity and malnutrition.