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 :
Dan Swanson made a table from two Minnesota oak trees. Posey Hedges makes new wood look a century old. Gaines Conaway is reshaping a farmhouse that partly dates to 1872. In a time of fleeting texts and ceaseless emoji, look for things crafted over time, relationships built from deeper places.
We have sure and certain knowledge of homemade mayonnaise. Yea and verily, shrimp mousse and tomato aspic jiggle. Behold the turnip greens and be glad in them. Take the fish pudding by faith.
Tennesseans don’t trust Tennessee to take care of them any more than they trust Washington to take care of them. The same people are in charge in both places.
A collection of old white men may sound like a Cabinet meeting in Washington or a Senate vote, but it was just another Tuesday and the regular meeting of my “and I’ll tell you another damn thing” lunch group.
When you’re on camera, your background and work area are visible. Don’t make them the star of the show. For instance, a home bar in the background or a TV screen on a freeze frame of "Game Of Thrones" reruns.
You keep me going. Even the reader who called a recent column “a load of horsehockey,” and all those who’ve been more direct.
The oldest active cemetery and most storied ground in Shelby County provides perspective, now and always.
Even though it’s in my state, Knoxville doesn’t know any more about barbecue than a pig knows about Sunday. However, there were a couple of places that provided affordable consolation in greasy bags.
The dogs are loving COVID-19. We’re here all the time. Here for every squirrel alert. Here to charge the door for every delivery. Here for walks, lap time, ball chasing, floor wrestling, dropping food on the floor. And dancing to “The Monkey Time.”
We can’t even stand up and come together as one to fight something that’s killing us for two or three months without falling apart. After all, we need our nails done and a haircut.
The artist Dolph Smith named his Ripley home Tennarkippi, but it's also a place where the borders of three states merge to create a particular state of mind.
Gov. Bill Lee called the day the House passed the school voucher law last year an “historic day.” If so, the bar for historic days is lower than a salamander’s belly.
Much as I miss you, Memphis, I don’t want to see you up close for a while yet. And I’m going to keep finding ways to spend time without most of you so that I can see a lot more of you later.
I would like to dedicate the prom White Station didn’t have in 1967 to our classmates — the students of T.W. Patterson High — and to their quiet courage and inner strength.
Stranded by COVID-19 and the loss of a wireless connection while watching weather stall the SpaceX rocket launch, it's hard to find order in this first-world life.
I ran from the cops, people. I was driving drunk. The driveway I was parked in belonged to a prominent Memphian, then and now. Then and now, there’s every reason to believe if I’d been black in that driveway, I might never have left that driveway.
But don't worry. Our grandchildren could not possibly do anything but improve on that.
A funky triangle bounded by Park, Lamar and Airways would be the first shopping center where things would start to change, where black and white Memphis would mix and mingle, where Memphis would start to look like Memphis.
Italians didn’t deny COVID-19 and science itself. They didn’t lie about the number of cases. They didn’t point fingers at each other, or promote false cures, or stigmatize and demonize care and caution.
I was actually looking forward to holding gas pump handles with antiseptic wipes, considering hazmat suits in bathrooms, counting masks in Cracker Barrel, and Atkins breakfast bars in lieu of La Quinta’s breakfast bars.
As you wander the world and see a sign somewhere that says barbecue – by any spelling anywhere else – it’s best to just run. Barbecue in Memphis is quite simply the highest a pig can go.
Even if we can’t be there, we should join the rest of the world and watch. Even if you don’t like golf or don’t understand it, watch these guys play it like nobody else can.
We, the South, may be finally admitting that the primary cause of the Civil War was slavery, and that the loss of that cause should be celebrated rather than honored.
There will be a vaccine for COVID-19. In the meantime, we will continue to suffer from chronic, fatal stupidity.
While thousands considered Steve a friend, it never felt like thousands when you visited with him. It was just you and Steve. He listened to you, you the homeless, you the wealthy, you the mover and shaker and you the one being moved and shaken.