A Negative Note on Beale Street Festival
To the Editor:
This year's Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival was a disgrace to our city. After attending all three days of last year's and the previous four years' events, I commented to my out-of-town friends that this was a festival not to be missed and that Memphis continually improved the event every year.
I succeeded in getting my friends to travel to Memphis for this year's event and I was completely embarrassed by what they saw. The toilets on Saturday night were not just disgustingly wet and dirty but were overflowing. The number of people admitted to the park was ridiculous. The sound was inadequate due to having to stand three football fields away from the performers or risk being vomited on (which happened to me and the friend I had encouraged to fly in for the event). And the amount of garbage covering every surface of the park was appalling.
Additionally, the entire park reeked due to attendees using every semi-private area they could find to urinate and/or spill their stomach contents. Even though my husband and I had tickets for Sunday, we declined to go after our experience on Saturday. I understand that many of these problems are unavoidable with large crowds consuming alcohol but it simply shows poor judgment to sell so many tickets. I would rather pay a few dollars more for admission than tolerate such conditions.
I will think twice before attending again and I will certainly not recommend it to friends without warning them to expect filth and interminably long lines.
Susan Greer
via the Internet
To the Editor:
Last week's excellent article ["Balancing the Books," May 8th issue] on the U of M's rise in national academic prestige did not list the many ways in which our university is vital to the future of Memphis. Allow me to try:
1. Provides quality higher-education opportunities at affordable cost.
2. Annual economic impact estimated at $510 million.
3. Presence of quality public university is crucial in efforts to bring new corporations (i.e. jobs) into our community.
4. Provides cultural and sports events which not only add to quality of life, but frequently bring valuable national recognition.
5. Supports local business, industry, and government.
It is time we appreciated this valuable asset to Memphis and the Mid-South.
Ronnie Burrage
Memphis
To the Editor:
In your cover story last week, U of M provost Ivan Legg says, "This state does not have education as a priority."
What does this state have as a priority? It is certainly not mental health. Another facility, the Emergency Mental Health Services' citywide Crisis Stabilization Unit, is supposed to close on June 13th.
It is certainly not higher education. As Jim Hanas wrote, "Faculty and administrators agree that the budget problems at the U of M demonstrate a lack of commitment to higher education on the part of state government."
We could go on and on. Again, what does this state have as a priority? All one can do is wonder. I admire and respect our state's movers and shakers, our state's public servants, but I am deeply disillusioned about what is going on.
Arthur Prince
Memphis
To the Editor:
[Re: "Partial Success," an editorial about all-white country clubs in the April 17th issue.] Get off it, Flyer. Name names. Just which are the country clubs around Memphis who don't admit blacks, and who are some of their most prominent members?
Jane Hixon
Memphis
To the Editor:
Regarding your light-rail article, it looks like Nashville has beaten Memphis out again. Every time we get a Republican governer from Memphis up there in Nashville, Memphis gets a raw deal. The last time, when Winfield Dunn was in office, they agreed to build a new medical school up in East Tennessee which has hurt UT-Memphis.
Perhaps we should look at what they are doing in New Jersey, where they are building a light-rail system as a turnkey project. That is also a popular approach in Europe.
Francis Millington
Memphis
To the Editor:
I agree with Richard Cohen's commentary, "Our Latest Quagmire" [May 1st issue]. Cohen says that by pushing for political correctness in the military, the Clinton administration has weakened our defense posture as well as the morale of the troops. For the sake of political correctness, standards are lowered to allow women in combat. Furthermore, in seeking to stop sexual harassment, in some cases the military has gone to the point of a silly extreme. For example, the Tailhook incident several years ago was just a case of post-adolescent fun.
The Democratic Party was once pro-military under presidents such as Harry Truman and John Kennedy. A coalition of Republicans and moderate Democrats need to force President Clinton to stop this assault on the military culture.
Arnold Lee Weiner
Memphis
RICK WAS BIGGER THAN ME AND A YEAR older. And though I would never have admitted it then, I was scared to death at the prospect of meeting him after school, as we had agreed, to "settle our differences." We each brought along a trusted second (luckily mine was a football player), but neither of us brought a weapon -- not even a pocketknife.
My disagreement with Rick ended, as most junior-high arguments at my school did, with a lot of posturing and no action. We parted company with an agreement that neither of us would claim the other chickened out and we both went home unscathed.
I thought about my near-fight with Rick as we worked on this week's cover story, "Voices from Humes." I am anxious to see how you respond to the story, told entirely in the words of five teenage students at Humes Junior High School in North Memphis. What came through loud and clear to me was the proliferation of violence and threats of violence in the lives of these students. Our subjects were chosen, not because they are athletes or honor students, but because they are in many respects typical students at an inner-city public school in a neighborhood which has seen far more than its share of violence in the last few years.
Their lives are so far removed from my own experiences, I can't begin to comprehend what they deal with in their day-to-day lives. Just listening to Lakeisha, Morris, Tanya, Terrance, and Stevin has brought me closer to understanding. I hope you can get past their raw, unfiltered language and find the humanity in their voices and in their faces. Their story of violence and, surprisingly, hope for the future, deserves to be heard. -- Dennis Freeland