A series of conflicts between black and white residents of Jena, Louisiana began in September 2006 when a group of black students at Jena High School sat beneath a tree on campus that local custom had reserved for white students. The next day, three nooses were seen in the tree.

Fights between students in the aftermath of that event led to the arrest of six African-American students on attempted murder charges. One of the six has already been found guilty of aggravated second-degree battery, and a conspiracy charge.

The case has brought national attention due to the lack of charges against whites who participated equally in the violence following the noose incident. Rallies are planned across the country on Thursday.

This month, the venue is Celtic Crossing in Cooper-Young. There will be drink specials, free hors d'oeuvres, and live music.

Be there and get your Irish on!

Hart's name appeared on an indictment released by the clerk's office this month. The foreperson routinely signs indictments. She confirmed to the Flyer that she has been serving since July and expects her term to last another year and a half. Typically, there is more than one grand jury operating at the same time. Grand jurors hear prosecutors present evidence in criminal cases and decide whether or not to indict.

Hart is the second prominent Memphian to serve recently as a foreperson in the federal system. In 2005-2006, former Commercial Appeal editor Angus McEachran did the job.

Former Memphis school board member Michael Hooks Jr. was indicted on federal charges several months before Hart began her jury duty. His case is scheduled for trial later this year.

Fugitive Safe Surrender will be held at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church at 2231 S. Parkway East from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Prosecutors will be on site to make deals with fugitives facing outstanding misdemeanor or felony warrants. It's the Marshals Services' way of cleaning up old cases, and they’re promising "no scams, no gimmicks."

After the church closes its doors on Saturday, the Marshals will begin intensive fugitive sweeps with no favorable consideration given for those captured. In other words, Safe Surrender is your best bet for freedom.

For more, go here.

Though the company has not announced specific plans for the site, it says that preserving Anderton's distinctive façade will be a top priority.

To which we say amen, especially if the new tenant brings back those vodka gimlets.

Eagle will use a 37-passenger Embraer 135 regional jet on the route between the Home of the Blues and the City that Never Sleeps. Northwest employs full-size aircraft, while Continental Express connects Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) and Memphis via Embraer Regional Jets.

This is an "O&D" (origin and destination) run for American Eagle. Most passengers using the flight will be headed for New York itself, not looking to connect onward to other flights.

Of all three New York airports -- Kennedy, Newark, and LaGuardia -- it's the latter that specializes in origin and destination passage. — Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler

Their first acquisition was a group of paintings by Jackson Pollock, purchased shortly after his death in 1957. Over the next few years, works by other artists joined Art Today's collection, including those by Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams, to name just two.

With a goal of promoting "that which is historically significant in our time," the founders drew from their own experiences as artists and educators.

Now until December 2nd, visitors to Memphis Brooks Museum of Art can see the works of these women -- Nancy Glazer, Mildred Hudson, Adele Lemm, Marjorie Liebman, and Dorthy Sturm -- as well as a selection of some of their significant acquisitions, in a variety of media.

For more information call 901-544-60200.

From the International Herald-Tribune: There were a couple of lessons for design buffs to learn from the last round of contemporary design auctions. One was that design, like art, is becoming vertiginously expensive. Another was that Memphis is back again.

Yes, Memphis. Remember the Milan-based group of designers and architects, who split the design world after their 1981 debut? There were those who loved the postmodernist wit of their kitsch, colorful furniture, and others that loathed it. Like Diva, the De Lorean DMC-12, Bow Wow Wow singles and Betamax video cassettes, Memphis was then dismissed as an early 1980s blip. There still isn't a stick of the stuff in the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

All that's changing -- MoMA's antipathy apart. Among the most sought-after lots at Phillips de Pury's most recent New York design sale were 1980s pieces by Ettore Sottsass and Andrea Branzi, both Memphis designers, and Alessandro Mendini, who was their chief collaborator in the Studio Alchymia design group during the late 1970s. All of Memphis's hallmarks - super-sizing, dizzy colors, gaudy patterns and cheesy motifs - were visible in the most directional pieces at this spring's Milan Furniture Fair.

They will surface again at this week's London Design Festival. And cool young designers are suddenly citing Memphis and Studio Alchymia as inspirations.

"It's the wow effect," said Job Smeets, co-founder of Studio Job, the Dutch design duo whose Memphis-inspired objects often grace the windows of the Moss design store in New York. "When I open old Domus magazines and see those amazing pieces by Sottsass and Mendini, they seem so emotional and expressive. How were they able to think of those crazy shapes?"

Read the rest.

"Nobody is more disappointed than I am," says program director Jerry Dean of Air America's local demise.

So what, exactly, killed Progressive Talk in the Midsouth? There was certainly no shortage of optimism in January 2005, when Entercom, the Pennsylvania-based media conglomerate that also operates Memphis station 104.5 WRVR, launched WWTQ.

"The time is right for liberal radio," Michael Harrison, the publisher of Talkers Magazine, the leading talk radio trade publication, told the Flyer. Dean described local support for a progressive alternative to Rush Limbaugh and Mike Flemming as a "groundswell."

"It still seems like a good idea," Dean says, unable to explain why Air America attracted consistently low ratings and failed attract advertisers in solid blue Memphis. He suspects some advertisers were afraid to associate their brand with a liberal station.

"But it's not like liberals don’t buy things," Dean says. "Cars, clothes, and everything else."

WWTQ never found an effective way to localize the station. The eponymous show briefly hosted by Memphis media veteran Leon Gray showed early promise, but Gray's conservative views on issues like evolution and gay rights didn't appeal to listeners tuning in to hear Randi Rhodes and Al Franken. In June 2006, Gray and the progressive talk format parted ways.

Dean doesn't agree that WWTQ failed to localize and remains complimentary Gray's performance. "I always thought Leon did a really good job," he says.

In his obit for the Leon Gray Show, Jim Maynard, a liberal blogger and sometimes political candidate wrote, "listening to [Gray] was almost as frustrating as listening to Mike Fleming on the conservative talk 600-AM. In fact, I doubt many people could tell the difference between them if they listened to them side by side on issues like gay rights, abortion, school prayer, creationism v. evolution, etc."

Not all of the blame for WWTQ basement level numbers can be blamed on the station's failure to localize. Air America has experienced numerous setbacks nationally as well. The station lost its flagship host when comedian and author Al Franken left Air America to run for Senate in Minnesota.

--Chris Davis

The annual Cooper-Young Festival will take over the streets of that neighborhood with its usual complement of music, arts, and food.

"It's a celebration, an end-of-summer party," says Lyn Patrick Myers, the festival's director. "It's about letting your hair down and just being around other people."

Last year's festival drew an estimated 65,000 people, and Myers expects that Saturday's crowd will be just as large.

The festival's list of vendors reveals the diversity and texture that give the Cooper-Young neighborhood its eclectic personality. Nearly every conceivable art and craft will be for sale, alongside cultural vendors, and representatives from local non-profit groups.

"There's really no stereotyping here," Myers says. "It brings a lot of people together who are never around each other."

Local indie-rockers Lucero headline Cooper-Young's musical line-up. The festival features three stages with music playing all day. Also appearing are the University of Memphis Jazz Band, singer-songwriter Blair Combest, and a number of local favorites such as Vending Machine and Jump Back Jake.

The Cooper-Young Festival begins at 9 a.m. Forecasters are predicting unseasonably cool temperatures in the upper 70s — perfect weather for having fun.

"It's like throwing a party for 65,000 people," Myers says. "I love it."

Cooper-Young Festival, 9 a.m.-7 p.m., Saturday, September 15th. For more info, vist the festival web site, CooperYoungFestival.com.

--Michael Flanagan

The soap-opera actress will be appearing at the Mistletoe Merchants promoting Hope Faith Miracles. The line includes necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and stationary.

Mistletoe Merchants is an annual shopping event that benefits the Mid-South Make-a-Wish Foundation. It will be held at the Agricenter International October 5th through October 7th.

Maureen Ryan, television critic for the Chicago Tribune notes the resemblance between the Cold Case plot and the West Memphis case, which resulted in the conviction of Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin, also known as the West Memphis Three. The murders and subsequent trials have been the subject of two documentaries and several books. The West Memphis Three have become something of a cause celebre among well-known musicians and many others who believe Echols, Misskelley, and Baldwin were wrongly convicted.

The Cold Case episode, scheduled to air on September 23rd, is called "Thrill Kill" and will follow the investigation of a 1994 case of two "seemingly nihilistic" teens who were convicted of murdering three 10-year-old boys.

The episode will also feature eight songs by Nirvana.

It's the annual Zoo Rendezvous, where members of the Memphis Zoological Society pay $200 a ticket to sample food and liquid refreshment from more than 80 local restaurants and bars, including Big Foot, Amerigo, Texas de Brazil, Bari Ristorante, the Melting Pot, and Tsunami. Guests will groove to The Disxtraxshuns/Funk de Ville, The Kathryn Stallins Band, the Bouffants, Doc Shots, and other musicians. Besides all that, they'll be offered the "Ultimate Tailgating Experience," courtesy of Jim N Nick's Bar-B-Q.

Sounds like a swell time -- if you're a zoo member. If not, you can sign up, and join the party next year. Call 333-6757 or go to www.memphiszoo.org.

Alfred Turner was convicted of facilitation to commit felony murder in the Emily Fisher trial in January 2007. With parole denied, he will not be up for another hearing until 2013. Fisher's daughter, Rebecca Fisher, said, "I cannot tell you how relieved I am."

William Groseclose was also denied parole. He is serving a life sentence for hiring two men to kill his wife, Deborah Groseclose, in July 1977. She was raped, stabbed, choked, and left to die in the trunk of a car.

Groseclose was originally sentenced to death and had been on Death Row for nearly 20 years, but had his conviction and sentence overturned in 1995. He, like Fisher, will not be up for parole again for six years.

Fisk has since fallen on hard financial times. With the collection as one of its major assets, university president Hazel O'Leary proposed to sell two of its pieces in 2005. The O'Keeffe Museum sued, arguing that the sale would violate the rules of the donation.

O'Keeffe wrote in a 1949 New York Times editorial that the institution could sell whatever pieces it did not have use for after 25 years.

The Crystal Bridges Museum, under construction in Bentonville, Arkansas with Wal-Mart money, is said to have made a $30 million offer to split exhibition rights for the collection.