Conaway: Learn. Don’t return.
Nostalgia can be fun and comforting. It can’t be a destination. Don’t long to go where you can’t go, long to make where you’re going better.
Dan Conaway
Columnist
Dan Conaway is a lifelong Memphian, fascinated and frustrated with his city, but still in love. A columnist since 2010, his distinguished advertising career has branded ribs in the Rendezvous and ducks in The Peabody, pandas in the zoo and Grizzlies in the NBA. Stories in Memphis tend to write themselves. He’s helped a few along. Two book collections of his columns have been published.
There are 321 articles by Dan Conaway :
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August 2019
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Dan Conaway
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July 2019
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Dan Conaway Conaway: A bright blue night in 1964
This was Memphis in the early '60s. You could see Elvis at a stoplight, Jerry Lee in a restaurant, and listen to "Wooly Bully" on the radio waiting in line for auto inspection right in front of Sam the Sham’s club.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Backward and forward in the zoo parking lot
Parking, the issue that buried decades of goodwill in greensward mud, will once again be used to define and differentiate the Memphis Zoo experience.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Those in charge of saving our lives can’t seem to save information
My doctors seem to have no idea who I am. I had back surgery in November and follow-up appointments since, but I’m still asked to fill out a complete online personal medical history, family medical history, and identity check including photos, front and back, of all requisite cards and documents in advance of my next appointment.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: A mixed drink in Memphis
The fates of a Holiday Inn-turned-Hotel Indigo and the empty Sterick Building are a study in the contrasts that define the city.
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June 2019
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Dan Conaway Conaway: We are killing ourselves
There is no excusing the murderer who took Glenn Cofield’s life or Brandon Webber’s self-destruction. There is also no excuse in the richest nation on Earth for the poverty and despair our policies produce, and the pressure that puts on law enforcement and support systems.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Life isn’t a line; it’s a circle
Our grandchild, born June 10, is part of the flow of the Mississippi where my father's ashes are, and the stream in upstate New York where my brother Frank's ashes are. Just as every one of us is an individual, every one of us is part of something larger, connected in ways large and small, and always to place.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: A brother remembers
He was 13 years older, the blond guy in the living room reading books and blowing smoke rings, off to college when I was 5, married and off to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop when I was 12.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: A Memphian’s real-life adventure serial
Richard Halliburton wrote a steamer trunk of bestsellers and syndicated articles, but to call him merely an author would be like calling Indiana Jones merely an anthropologist. And while Indy’s unbelievable fictional adventures are just that, Halliburton’s unbelievable adventures were real.
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May 2019
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Dan Conaway Conaway: The quintessential Memphis story of Clarence Saunders
Saunders' tale is a roller coaster ride from rock bottom to dizzying height and back again, a journey that left an indelible mark on the world.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Looking at Tom Lee Park
We’re about to spend $50 million to fix something that’s not really broken, and throw chump change or nothing at all at opportunities for true transformation.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Don’t fail this screen test
The NBC series "Bluff City Law" is about fighting for civil rights in Memphis, and there’s a very real chance it will be made somewhere else.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: You’re better than that
We must find a way to take the warmth around our tables, the generosity in our hearts, and what I believe to be the genuine decency of our nature, and carry it to the chambers of those elected to lead us.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Surely our governor has something better to do
Whether or not the voucher program becomes law, it’s bad law, and a self-inflicted wound to our new governor. He used his honeymoon period to shove school vouchers down the throats of just two districts already strangled for cash.
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April 2019
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Dan Conaway Conaway: The 2020 election is already getting old
If reelected, Trump will be 74 starting his second term and even his combover will be somewhere around 40. The two leading Democrats will turn 80 in their first term if elected, an age closer to terry-cloth robes and sunrooms than mantles of power and situation rooms.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: A tall challenge at 100 North Main
It's a building that could become a beautiful part of what’s next, or remain the biggest ugly elephant in our biggest room.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Pray for the Constitution
I don’t want my kids taught your religion on my nickel anymore than you want them taught mine on yours. Neither of us has the right to send them to that private school with the other’s money.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: This city’s soul resonates
When asked about Memphis, 55 percent nationally have a favorable opinion, up seven points since 2017. Among multicultural millennials, that favorability exceeds the national audience by 10 percentage points, up five since 2017.
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March 2019
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Making common sense
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris said it's his job to look at an issue affected by county government, look at how many people it touches, look at the cost both societal and fiscal, and look at where he can be most effective.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: The recipe for Lent
For those of you who don’t understand the idea of tomato aspic, understand this: You’re living in the South and at some important point in life, you'll be in a place where it’s wiggling right in front of you. A place like the Calvary Waffle Shop during Lent, for instance.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Kings of this wild frontier
The very first politically wired, insider Memphis land grab was a done deal when the Chickasaw Nation was pressured into ceding almost 7 million acres at about 4.5 cents apiece, around 99.5 percent below market value.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Vouching for innovation, not vouchers
Vouchers would take money and support out of the public school system. Public education is a right, and if we give up on it, we abandon our responsibility to the future.
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February 2019
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Ode to the olive boat captain
John Simmons gets a tribute that recognizes that he, not his imaginative inventory, was the treasure in his Memphis shops.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: A New Orleans story
Some cities just naturally make stories. Others just make noise. Orderly and predictable are safe, but funky and unique are a lot more fun. New Orleans and Memphis are what they are because of those latter traits.
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Dan Conaway Conaway: Right there in the parking lot
Despicable behavior isn’t new, people at their worst doing what they do because they can. What’s new is the lack of national outrage, the shrugging of our national shoulders, a coast-to-coast “so what.”
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