First Baptist To Protest Male-Only Clergy Policy That proposed new Southern Baptist policy restricting the pulpit to men isn't a done deal yet, and if a major Memphis ministry has its way, it won't be. The Rev. Kenneth A. Corr, pastor of First Baptist Church, has denounced the pending alteration in the denomination's guiding principles, and his church and others, both in and out of the Southern Baptist Convention, are organizing a protest against it. First Baptist will play host to a "Prayer Response for Concerned Christians" at 3 p.m. Saturday at the church sanctuary on East Parkway. The meeting will serve as "an affirmation of women who are serving the church as pastors and a protest to the proposed change," said Rev. Corr in a statement to the Flyer. The move positions two of the Memphis area's oldest and most influential Southern Baptist churches on opposite sides of the controversial issue. The Rev. Adrian Rogers, the conservative pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, headed the committee which drafted the proposal, an amendment to the denomination's ad hoc constitution, the Baptist Faith and Message. Said Rev. Corr in the statement: "I was appalled and dismayed when I read the proposed change that limits the office of pastor 'to men as qualified by Scripture.' This proposed change is offensive to me and to many Southern Baptists for several reasons." The statement calls the proposal "a violation of the most fundamental Baptist belief in the right of every Christian to interpret God's Word and will for his/her life." It alleges further that the change would be "an affront to women of all Christian denominations who are serving or preparing to serve the local church as pastor a denial of the autonomy of the local church [and] an effort to make inclusion in our denomination depend upon particular interpretations of Scripture." Rev. Corr termed the proposal "another example of misogyny, or the hatred and distrust of women, and the desire of men to dominate." Summing up, he said, "I believe that it is an effort to further divide our denomination. It is important that our community understand that no one speaks for all Southern Baptists. The Baptist Faith and Message is a confession of faith or a consensus of faith for Baptists. It is not what all Baptists believe or must believe." The meeting this Saturday will involve other churches and even other denominations, organizers said. Among those expected to participate are representatives from Trinity Baptist in Cordova (the church which split off from First Baptist several years ago), Second Baptist, Union Avenue Baptist, Prescott Memorial Baptist, Second Baptist, Everett Memorial Methodist Church, Lindenwood Christian, Calvary Episcopal, and other churches and denominations. Among those definitely not participating will be Bellevue's Rogers, who last week said of the male-only resolution which his committee prepared, "We receive and affirm those doctrines revealed in the Bible, and we are unembarrassed to take our stand." The resolution will be voted on at next month's annual meeting of the convention in Orlando. It is the latest in a series of steps the denomination's conservatives have taken over the last two decades to strengthen the dominance of fundamentalists in the Southern Baptist Convention. Other actions have included purging suspected moderates from the teaching staffs of the denomination's seminaries and expelling individual churches which have offended fundamentalist dogma. Among those was Prescott Memorial, which appointed the Rev. Nancy Hastings Sehested as its pastor a decade ago and whose pastor is now the Rev. Sue Enoch. -- Jackson Baker $950 Million Suit Filed Against BellSouth Want to be a multimillionaire? Work for BellSouth, come up with some clever ideas, and then spend eight years trying to sue the company for stealing those inspirations. At least, that's what Mark Petty hopes to accomplish. In 1992, Petty filed suit for $12.5 million against the phone company. With the help of his lawyer Ira Thomas, of Memphis law firm Thomas & Thomas, Petty raised the stakes, asking for $800 million in February. BellSouth attempted to settle that complaint out of court for $300,000. But Petty isn't satisfied. Now, he's asking for $950 million. "We feel like this suit has every bit of at least a $100 million judgment," says Petty. He and Thomas re-filed the suit in federal court and retracted their state court complaint this week. A service technician who still works for the people he's taking to court, Petty was hired by the telephone giant in 1972. He claims he came up with more than 200 ideas that BellSouth now offers and from which the company has reaped billions. Some of those ideas -- which Petty and other employees were encouraged to share with their superiors for up to $200 a pop -- include repeat dialing and directory assistance charges. The suit has garnered a lot of attention in the business world, with articles appearing in The Wall Street Journal and Business Week. "This is a legitimate case, and I'm going to win eventually," says Petty. "They are profiting and have been profiting billions from the concepts I came up with. I think I'm asking for a reasonable share." -- Ashley Fantz Calipari Holds Basketball Camp John Calipari, head basketball coach at the University of Memphis, will hold a free basketball clinic on Monday, June 5th. The clinic takes place at the Germantown Centre Gym at 1801 Exeter Road. It is free and open to both children and adults. The clinic is a prelude to a series of camps the new coach is conducting during June and July. An overnight camp starts things off from June 11-15 and an NBA camp July 30-August 3 finishes the string. Calipari has a stellar group of pro players scheduled for the latter, including Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby, and Sam Cassell. Also included are a father/son camp (June 16-18), a team camp (June 19-23), an individual skills camp for high school players (June 23-25), and a day camp (June 26-29). The camps will be held at the Larry Finch Center on the U of M campus. Fees range from $375 (NBA camp) to $100 (individual skills). For more information, call assistant coach Tony Barbee at 678-2346. -- Dennis Freeland Gibson Plant Begins Guitar Production The first made-in-Memphis Gibson guitar came off the assembly line last month, and the head of the company hopes the downtown plant will eventually be turning out hundreds of them each day. Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz was in Memphis last week to check out the new factory one block south of Beale Street and to play a little guitar himself in a couple of jam sessions. Gibson had hoped to open the $20 million factory and Gibson Beale Street Showcase, a 300-seat cafe, three years ago, but ran into problems with the 15 agencies that had some sort of claim to the former urban renewal property. "It was a real bear to deal with this," says Juszkiewicz. "Being three years late is a major problem, but it has worked out okay." Gibson joins AutoZone Park, the Smithsonian's Rock 'n' Soul Exhibition (housed in Gibson's building), and Peabody Place as major new downtown attractions opening this year. "I was in downtown Nashville when their new arena came on-line, and it's sort of similar to the ballpark here," says Juszkiewicz. "The arena had a radical impact. Until then, most of the people frequenting Second Avenue were tourists, but as soon as the arena opened, about 50 percent of the people coming down were locals. I think both of those projects create that sense that you can go downtown and hear some music and have some fun. With our factory, exhibition space, and the Smithsonian tour, you'll be able to spend at least a half a day here with your family. I think that will add a lot to Beale Street, which is still pretty much a party street." Last week, the factory was operating well below capacity while Gibson hires workers and brings in machinery. Eventually it will produce mainly ES-style electric guitars, which are prominent in R&B and rock, Tobias bass instruments, and Slingerland drums. "Our initial goal is 100 units a day, but the plant capacity is 500 to 1,000 a day," says Juszkiewicz. Why downtown Memphis, which has no manufacturing to speak of and a scant supply of skilled labor? Juszkiewicz, 47, grew up in Rochester, New York, playing guitar from the time he was 8 years old, trying to copy B.B. King, Steve Cropper, and other guitar greats. An engineer with a master's degree from Harvard Business School, he and partner David Berryman bought Gibson for an estimated $5 million in 1985. "Gibson and Memphis is really the combination of two icons, and I think to the benefit of both," says Juszkiewicz. "Being an outsider, Memphis probably means more to me than it does to people from Memphis. There's just incredible talent and variety, but it's not all legendary stuff. There is a local, young scene which is very vibrant. So it's not just history but the future and cultural basis of Memphis music that dovetails beautifully into what Gibson has been." Gibson could use a boost. Two weeks ago it closed two well-known clubs in downtown Nashville, causing a firestorm of controversy. Juskiewicz says they had "some big shortcomings architecturally and musicwise" and will reopen after a makeover. Of greater concern, electric guitar sales have been falling, and Gibson is not a household name outside of music circles. Juszkiewicz's long-term strategy is to change that. "Two brands I really follow and study are Nike and Harley-Davidson," he says. "I call them lifestyle brands. Right now we are selling musical instruments to just musicians, but we're reaching out to what I call the vicarious market in the general population. You're buying a part of the musician lifestyle without necessarily being a top musician. That's the progression Nike and Harley-Davidson have gone through, starting with running shoes for runners and bikes for bikers, but in time it expands to a mass audience. We're probably 10 to 20 years behind both of those brands, but it's a well-worn path." Gibson plans to offer tours of the factory from a catwalk above the floor, but last week security was tight as production began, temporarily, with kits of guitar necks and bodies carved and molded in Nashville. A handful of workers were painting and fitting guitars. Eventually, the whole process, which takes three to six weeks depending on the instrument, will be done in Memphis, starting with blocks of wood. Gibson wants to hire local workers, but the job market is tighter than it was five years ago when the project began. "We are not going to find a qualified guitar maker; we will have to train them," says Juszkiewicz. "But we have all kinds of jobs from unskilled janitorial help to food service in the Showcase to highly skilled spray painters. It's a fairly good spectrum. We will find them, and they will be local." -- John Branston We Have Air That Makes People Sick More than 17 million Americans suffer from asthma, and many of them may feel as if they spend their whole lives breathing through a straw. Since clean air can be a matter of life and death to anyone with respiratory problems, Memphians are being called to action. Representatives of the Tennessee Clean Air Task Force and the National Clean the Air Campaign gathered downtown Friday to showcase the dangers of power plant pollution. Smokestacks on a model of a power plant were labeled, "Asthma Attacks, Acid Rain, Mercury Poisoning, and Global Warming." The groups were joined by the American Lung Association to highlight their report, "State of the Air 2000," which reveals that three of Tennessee's cities (Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis) receive an "F" in air quality. They are among the top 25 dirtiest cities in the nation. "We know that smog triggers asthma attacks in thousands of children every year," said Janice Nolan of the ALA. "In fact, last year there were 180,000 asthma attacks and 4,500 emergency room visits in Tennessee attributed to high pollution days." The groups are fighting what they consider a noxious loophole. Under the 1970 Clean Air Act, Congress exempted pre-1985 power plants from new pollution control standards because the utility industry argued that they would eventually be phased out. But they weren't, and now aging coal-fired plants are the major source of complaints. The groups called on the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of the nation's largest air polluters due to its fleet of coal-fired plants -- many built during the 1950s -- to upgrade the utility's facilities. They also urged Congressman Harold Ford Jr. and Senators Bill Frist and Fred Thompson to support federal efforts to establish new standards for power plants. "Not only do we need to clean these dinosaurs up," said Dr. Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, "but we need to require all utilities across the U.S. to do the same." Smith declared that coal-burning plants in Tennessee contribute hundreds of thousands of tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxide, acid rain causing sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide, which contributes to the "greenhouse effect," into the air. "The bottom line is that we have air that makes people sick," Nolan said. Time will tell what federal representatives will do about pollution, but the groups urge supporters to write to them and TVA, advocating cleaner air. What asthmatics can do to reduce pollution is use less electricity, insulate their homes and set their thermostats lower in winter and higher in summer, clean and maintain air conditioners and heating systems, and urge local electricity providers to offer alternative sources of energy. -- Jamie Schmidt Making A Difference in Difference in Millennial Memphis Nothing but the sky for a roof -- sounds like a romantic idea, no? Well, perhaps for some, but for the estimated 12,000 homeless living in Memphis -- 2,000 of which are children -- it is an often-brutal reality. Homeless living is, needless to say, hard living. It wrecks the body and ravages the spirit. Though overnight shelters and soup kitchens do what they can to assist the disadvantaged, there is really only so much that these organizations can do. Over the years, the HOPE Health Center has made a tremendous contribution to Memphis' homeless community by providing not only free health care, but also by addressing underlying issues such as housing, job skills, education, and mental illness, to name but a few. There is, of course, a catch. Those who are, for one reason or another, unable to travel to the HOPE Health Center are likewise unable to reap the benefits it provides. Realizing that for the poorest of our community's poor, transportation can be a huge problem, the people at HOPE have proposed the development of a cab voucher program for the homeless. The service will allow for transportation of the homeless from any Memphis location to the HOPE Health Center during its regular hours of operation. For this worthwhile project, the HOPE Health Center will receive the 50th -- and final -- Making a Difference in Millennial Memphis grant. As part of its 10th-anniversary celebration, The Memphis Flyer has given away $50,000 in grants of $1,000 each. The money was provided by an anonymous Memphian who hoped to encourage what might be called good works -- little things that improve the quality of life in Memphis. The grants have been disbursed by the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis. In coming weeks, the Flyer will spotlight some of these grants and examine how they have "made a difference" in the lives of those who received them. Thank you, Mr. Anonymous.

					Fly on the Wall HANKS FOR THE MEMORIES Shortly after Castaway wrapped shooting in Memphis on May 16th, an AP article reported that the film's star, Tom Hanks, was spotted taking in a screening of Gladiator. Hanks is a method actor known for getting inside the skin of whatever character he plays, and we have to wonder if it was industry hype or his keen sense of perfectionism that lead thim to choose the Russell Crowe blockbuster. After all, in Castaway, Hanks plays an unfortunate FedEx employee whose plane crashes on an uninhabited island, forcing him to rough it Robinson Crusoe-style for a l-o-n-g time. And what would be the first thing on any rescued castaway's mind? You guessed it: big sweaty men in dresses hitting one another with sticks. PIG WORKS MIRACLES IN D.C. On May 25th Democratic Party leaders donned their nicest cowboy boots and their best pair of blue jeans and piled into Washington's MCI Center for an all-day fund-raising shindig that took in $26.5 million. In addition to the unprecedented take, several genuine wonders were observed. For starters, the lascivious Lenny Kravitz got the notoriously un-lascivious Tipper Gore's "bootie" shaking with his remake of "American Woman." Famously unfunny Veep Al Gore beat out Robin Williams for the biggest laughs of the evening by taking on both his archrival "W" and biblical-movie-star-turned-gun-nut Charlton Heston. "The last time Moses listened to a Bush," Gore quipped, "his people wandered in a desert for 40 years." The most impressive display of the evening however, was made by President Clinton who, in a moment of uncharacteristic truth-telling, commented, "I'm just kind of a gray-haired redneck trying to put in some good months here." We have to ask, what were they serving at this party that could cause such a startling concurrence of unlikely events? Why, beer, of course -- and ribs from the Rendezvous. HOMETOWN HERO? "It's lunchtime when John Elkington rushes in like a high-school quarterback after the big game. 'John, John,' people call out. He nods and waves as he heads for a place in the back, cleared just for him. He knows the owners, who greet him like a hero, and, in a way, he is. He came into a downtown that was a desert and built an oasis -- complete with music and beer." -- an account of developer John Elkington's lunchtime visit to the Rendezvous, from "The Beale Deal," Winston-Salem Journal, April 23, 2000. Elkington is proposing a Beale Street-type development for that North Carolina city, so the Journal sent a reporter to Memphis to follow him around for a day or so. Considering that one of those Rendezvous owners, namely city councilman John Vergos, has butted heads with Elkington in the past, it's hard to believe he would "greet him like a hero." BAPTIST HIJINKS We received the following from a local Baptist minister who prefers to remain anonymous: TOP TEN REJECTED TITLES FOR DR. ROGERS "BIBLE FOR LIFE" ADVICE COLUMN IN THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL. 10. The Bellevue Bible 9. Don't Ask Dr. Ruth; Ask Dr. Rogers 8. Dear Adrian 7. Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Prayer 6. My Faith Really Matters 5. Live From Six Flags Over Jesus 4. Ask Mr. Rogers 3. The Gurkin Man 2. From the Home of the Three Crosses And the number-one rejected title: 1. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood Of course, we think that Dr. Rogers should have taken his cue from another of the CA's wildly popular features and called his new column "The Sin Sage."
		Compiled by Chris Davis Send items to: P.O. Box 1738 Memphis, TN 38101 FAX: 521-0129 e-mail: davis@memphisflyer.com.

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