"The purpose of this meeting is to ignite a bottom-up, inside-out approach to addressing the epidemic of gun violence," Wharton is quoted in a release as saying. "I have repeatedly described gun crime as a public health crisis, and it must be treated just as we would any disease: with containment and prevention one person, household, block, and neighborhood at a time.”

The community congress, which will include citizens, law enforcement officers, business owners, and other stakeholders will take place at Golden Gate Cathedral, 3240 James Road.

Four recent murders have taken place within a four-square mile area of Golden Gate Cathedral.

I heard a rumor today that the local Salvation Army has raised the $25 million it needed to match the $60 million from Ray & Joan Kroc Trust to build the Kroc Center on the fairgrounds.

Which could mean they'll be breaking ground very, very soon.

Details to come.

"We are convinced that in order to dramatically improve education in America, we must first ensure that every student has an effective teacher in every subject, every school year," Melinda Gates said. "These communities have shown extraordinary commitment to tackling one of the most important education issues of our time."

To read specifics about what MCS plans to do with the funding — to be awarded over six years — here is an earlier blog post.

The announcement of the grants culminated a yearlong application process. Other funding was awarded to Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida, Pittsburgh Public Schools, and a coalition of charter school management organizations in Los Angeles.

The assembled crowd wasn't too happy with the plan to demolish the buildings on the south side of Madison at Cooper. The plans for the property also include a new grocery store, but some community members are concerned no matter how well-intentioned the developers that a discount grocery store will open there.

Now SquareTalk.org is asking community members for input on what businesses "old or new" they'd like to see be part of the new Overton Square. The Memphis Regional Design Center will then forward those responses on to the developers.

So far, the sole response calls for a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe's.

The developers plan to submit their plans to the Office of Planning and Development in early December.

You can also see the results of the regional design center's earlier Overton Square survey here. A majority of the web respondents wanted to see a combination of preserving and demolishing the buildings on the south side of Madison. Almost 70 percent said they wanted to see a grocery store in the area.

“As far back as you want to go, parents have always known who the best teachers were at a school. Students have always known,” said MCS superintendent Kriner Cash. “For educators, it was a bit like the blind man and the elephant.”

Though the Junkyard is located temporarily at the old Marine Hospital near the National Ornamental Metal Museum, founder Lisa Williamson would like the art museum’s permanent home to be on Broad Avenue.

“I’ve been looking at Broad Avenue for a long time,” she said at a meeting of the Historic Broad Avenue Business Association last night. “If it were just up to me, I’d put it here in a second. Everybody’s rallied around me … I already feel at home here.”

The Junkyard will be an interactive art museum using found objects and architectural salvage to create climbable sculptures. Though many childrens museums try to prepare kids for adulthood, the Junkyard — and museums like it, such as the City Museum in St. Louis — would encourage teenagers and adults to be kids again.

The bus ride was a test run for Go M.A.D. Transit, which stands for Midtown and Downtown.

"For the past several months, we've been trying to find ways of linking Midtown with Downtown," said Playhouse on the Square's Jackie Nichols. "Tonight, we're taking the route and enjoying each others' company."

With 24 stops, the M.A.D. Dash would link four colleges, eight neighborhoods, 10 arts venues, and eight cultural sites, and, if last night was any indication, take about an hour to make the full loop.

The bus' double loop, which would be centered on Overton Square, would go west on Linden, south on Main Street to the National Civil Rights Museum, east on Madison, then head north on Cooper and around Overton Park, south on East Parkway to Cooper-Young, and then back to Overton Square.

I wasn't there — deadline day and all — but the order dictates that the salaries of city employees will be posted to the city website. The website will also include a list of city contractors and the size of their contracts.

"Personnel costs and outside contracts comprise the majority of the city budget," Wharton was quoted as saying in a release. "Taxpayers should know how those funds are being spent and with whom."

If you were one of the people upset about Anderton's, you might also be interested in the future of nearby Overton Square. Memphis Heritage will be hosting a meeting this Thursday, November 12th, to talk about the proposed Overton Square development. It will be at Memphis Heritage's Howard Hall, 2282 Madison, at 6 p.m. The developers have been invited to attend.

In June, the City Council passed a resolution that stipulated that any demolition at Overton Square would have to be approved by the council. The move was designed to insure there is a dialogue between the community and the developers before any permanent action is taken.

I've seen it a million times. I've driven past it a million times. In fact, my first wreck in Memphis happened right in front of it (someone rear-ended me, totally not my fault).

So how could I miss it?

Quite simply, because it was gone.

The city first enacted a scrap metal ordinance in 2007. The ordinance requires dealers to tag and hold scrap metal for 10 days to give the police time to track down stolen material. To deter thieves from stealing metal from air conditioning units, vacant homes and buildings, or cars for quick money, sellers are not given cash immediately, but instead receive a voucher from the scrap metal dealer.

The proposed amendment includes a tag-and-hold provision for telephone wire and cable, copper tubing, metals that have owner identification on them, catalytic converters, chain-link fences, and railroad spikes.

"That covers all the metals that are normally stolen," said council member Jim Strickland.

This "semester," one of the sessions — happening tonight — is open to the public.

Richard Baron, co-founder and chaiman of McCormack Baron Salazar, will be speaking tonight as part of a panel discussion at CBU's Buckman Hall from 5 - 7 p.m. The cost of the event is $10.

Other panelists include Rosalyn Willis of McCormack Baron Salazar, Archie Willis III from Community Capital, and Architecture Incorporated principal David Schuermann.

The panel will discuss McCormack Baron Salazar's Hope VI projects across the country and in Memphis — including University Place and the still under construction Legends Park — and the company's "efforts to rebuild urban neighborhoods in central cities that have deteriorated through decades of neglect and disinvestment. Mr. Baron will discuss how they strengthen neighborhood social structures in partnership with community organizations and how their emphasis on community building encourages socio-economic and physical revitalization."

Memphis' population isn't growing, so as people move out into the suburbs, it means building new schools, new sewers, and new roads for basically the same people who just left the old ones behind. It also means everything is more spread out, so people drive farther, spend more time in their vehicles, use more gas, and spend more of their income on transportation. Not to mention that hollowing out the urban core deflates the tax base, leaving less money for services.

But, with all the reasons people leave the city, how can you lure them back?

"They run the gamut from a ditch to an 11-story office building," says Tom Moss, land bank administrator, of the properties.

Last week, the County Commission approved the transfer of 140 inner city lots to developer Harold Buehler to build low-income rental houses. Because the areas affected already have high rental unit and vacancy rates, the proposal sparked controversy over what exactly should be done with vacant lots.

Once someone stops paying their property taxes, it takes the county trustee about three years to acquire the property, though legal proceedings begin much earlier than that. The county holds a tax sale six times a year and, if the properties are not sold at auction, they eventually become part of the land bank program. A list of those properties is published each month.

"The market is smarter than anyone would ever be. These people have generally been by the property," Moss says of the buyers who frequent the county's auctions. "What gets sold is the existing houses. The vacant lots don't and the house in disrepair don't."

The project came under fire for a number of reasons:

1. The developer, Harold Buehler, was using land from the Homestead program, which had essentially been seized from people who had not paid their county property taxes.

2. Buehler himself had almost $900,000 in back taxes owed to the county, and was also getting tax credits to do the $12 million project.

3. The neighborhoods where the new houses will be located have a lot of vacant properties and a lot of rental properties. And vacant, rental properties. Because of the tax credits the project uses, those new homes will have to be rental properties for the next 15 years.

4. Not all the neighbors knew about a) the proposal before it came to County Commission, or b) the Homestead program, which allows people to obtain county-owned lots for a small application free and a deposit. If they build affordable housing on the lot within 12 months of obtaining it, they get their deposit back.

During the same week, Overton Park was named one of The Cultural Landscape Foundation's 16 Landslide sites for 2009.

This morning, as I was motoring down Lamar Avenue, I stumbled on just such an opportunity: An estate sale at the historic Snowden home.

And lots of things are 5's. Seriously, if you recycle plastic products, but you're not very observant about the numbers, you've probably been throwing 5's into your recycling bin without even knowing it.

I personally put 5's in my recycle bin to show that city of Memphis that there is a market for them to recycle them. I mean, if they're going to get pitched anyway, might as well try to do some good with them before they end up in a landfill somewhere.

But now there is a better way.

(And, in all seriousness, generally more than one something.)

Anyhoo, the next one is this Thursday at the Ben Hooks Library and is probably about the number one issue for most Memphians: How to make your neighborhood safer.

With representatives from the Memphis Police Department and the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, the session will look at how officers and resources are distributed across the county, how you can influence public safety laws at the state level, and how you can make your neighborhood safer.

As always, you need to rsvp (so they know how much pizza they need), but the event is free. To rsvp, call (901) 725-8370 or email sarah@livablememphis.org.

In its October issue, the Sun magazine has a rather lengthy interview with James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century and a foremost writer on the unsustainability of suburban sprawl.

In the interview, Kunstler talks about the new subplots in the oil story: major oil-exporting nations holding onto their supplies for their own use, or entering into favored-customer agreements with other nations, as well as how declining oil supplies would impact transportation, agriculture, and even Wal-mart:

"It’s no exaggeration to say that every benefit of modern life — from airplanes and air conditioning to supermarkets and hip-replacement surgery — owes its existence in one way or another to cheap fossil fuel. In particular, the American way of life, which is virtually synonymous with suburbia, can run only on reliable supplies of cheap oil and gas. Even moderate deviations in price or supply will make the logistics of daily life difficult."

You can read a selection of the interview here. For the full article, you'll have to get the print edition.

[And yes, SG, I may have snagged your magazine. Are you really surprised? But I promise you'll get it back.]

Junkyard Memphis is an initiative inspired by St. Louis' City Museum. You can read more about it — and Junkyard founder Lisa Williamson — here.

Personally, I would love to see the Junkyard locate on Broad Avenue. It's got this whole artist community thing going on — UrbanArt is right there — plus Broadway pizza and my personal Cheers, the Cove. It would have great synergy and would probably help redevelopment efforts along Broad, as well. A win-win, if you will.

Less than a month earlier, however, candidate Mitt Romney had also teared up. That incident generated 14 stories.

The situations were similar. Both Romney and Clinton were answering questions. In both cases, their voices quivered and their eyes teared up, but they didn't cry. So why would Clinton's tears be so much more newsworthy?

Was the discrepancy because Clinton was an election front-runner? A Democrat? A woman?

Erika Falk, the head of the master's in communications program at Johns Hopkins University and author of Women For President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns, would no doubt attribute it to Clinton's gender. And armed with data from her book, I think she could make a very strong case to its truth.

I've been sitting on this video about food and cities for a few days, but it's well worth passing along.

In this TEDtalk, architect Carolyn Steel discusses how cities feed their residents: how urbanism grew up alongside agriculture, how ancient Rome effectively waged war against Carthage and Egypt to get its hands on their grain reserves — "one long drawn-out militarized shopping spree" — and how cities were physically shaped by food production and transportation.

One wonders what they might say about us now. Unfortunately — or fortunately, because we've barely lived that label down — they're kind of busy right now.

Time magazine is spending the next year in Detroit. They've bought a house, thrown a lawn party, and already written their first cover story about Detroit: "Notown: Hubris, racial tension, myopic politicians and the woeful auto industry brought this iconic American city to its knees. Here's how the Motor City can rise again."

I've long thought of Detroit as Memphis' unofficial sister city. Both cities are shrinking in terms of population; both have high levels of poverty; both have a rich musical heritage. See the subhead above. With the exception of the "woeful auto industry," doesn't it sound sort of Memphisy?

Take this, for example:

Ogle and other docents will be giving tours at the 100-year-old courthouse as part of its centennial celebration. The event is from 4:30 p.m. to 7 on the south lawn of the courthouse and is hosted by the Memphis Bar Association, Shelby County government, Memphis Heritage, and AIA Memphis.

"Guests will learn everything from the fascinating architecture and construction of the building to the notable trials that have taken place within its walls and the grand figures who have walked its halls. As part of the educational aspect of the event, the organizers have contracted with Icon Archive Company to install displays in the Courthouse's south corridor, as a lasting contribution to the facility. Case highlights will be an exhibit about the movies filmed at the Courthouse, including Great Balls of Fire, The Rainmaker, The Client, A Family Thing and The People vs. Larry Flynt. The Memphis & Shelby County Television and Film Commission has loaned several items from these films."

Frankly, I had no idea so many movies had filmed there (and now I'm thinking about a crime and punishment theme for next year's fashion issue) but I can totally see it.