Dan Conaway
Conaway: The game. At its absolute best, right here. Be proud.
Next week, the 70 best players in the world will be here — right here — to play the game like no one else in the world can.
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 332 articles by Dan Conaway :
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August 2023
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Dan Conaway
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July 2023
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Dan ConawayCalling the bluff: Gambling for a piece of the action
“While I understand, and share, Virginia McLean’s passion to realize the vision, I submit that her passion has prohibited her from seeing the obvious.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Moving boxes, Band-Aids, bruises and blood
Johnson & Johnson called. They wanted to make sure I was still at it before they made their quarterly projection for shareholders.
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Dan ConawayConaway: Everything has changed — except the checklist
“Sure, you can consider if the candidate would vote your way, or if your interests are going to be protected or pursued. You can consider whether or not you both share a love of fried green tomatoes, but without that checklist as your basic guide, all bets are off.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: The invaluable lesson of Johnny’s 75¢
I had earned a stomachache that I thought would prove fatal so, when my mother opened the back door and asked why I was doubled over on the steps, I threw up and confessed.
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June 2023
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Dan ConawayConaway: Health care is robbing us blind in broad daylight
“There’s a quote that comes to mind. Max von Sydow said, ‘If Jesus came back today, and saw what was going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.’”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Moving — the archaeology of lives
We make progress, and then we find another failing envelope, labelled in fading ink, full of old pics of people with life in front of them, their faces full of possibility, and hours are lost as we know them again, as we visit them again, as we return.
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Dan ConawayConaway: Hey, neighbor, could we borrow a cup of tomorrow?
“Tennessee is flunking childhood education, and the valedictorian of that failure just might be Memphis.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Chicken tossing days and dog dipping — a cautionary tale
“Cas Walker was a Knoxville grocer, promoter, broadcaster, politician, con man and character. He wasn’t in denial about his outrageous business practices and politics; he knew they were outrageous, and he was proud of every one of them.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Random wisdom. Or not.
“If you’ve seen any of these before, just laugh again.”
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May 2023
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Dan ConawayConaway: From King to Kent State, change burns in a nation under fire
“With that tragic event came an understanding that we have the unique responsibility to reject everything that pulled that trigger, the national events and mindsets that were behind that bullet then and now.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Memphis City Council — gutless against gunfire
“Instead of dealing with a deadly situation now — deadlier by the day — the council pushed a decision on the ordinances to a referendum in August of 2024 — more than a year from now.”
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Guest ColumnistsConaway: The chutzpah of deceit: Kelsey
“Brian Kelsey is certainly not the only example of the moral bankruptcy of so much of our society; he’s just a ready and easy pick of low-hanging rotten fruit.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: I hear a career. I hear my life. Thanks, Jack.
“I’ve had as much fun inside windowless studio rooms working with Jack Parnell as in any space in a 52-year career.”
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April 2023
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Dan ConawayConaway: $787.5 million worth of lies, give or take
“Lies are fluid, based on fiction rather than fact, floating on a septic sea of deception, changing course to suit the lie, navigating an ever-false course, seeking an ever-false destination.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: 11-foot ceiling down, huge primary bedroom and pneumonia
“I didn’t mention that we put our house on the market that same day. Staged it, coughing. Fixed it, coughing. Moved ‘clutter' to storage, coughing. Then I moved into Methodist Germantown and left the rest to Nora.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Down the rabbit hole with the Tennessee legislature
“This adolescent muscle-flex, this junior high hissy fit, this racist knee-jerk, this blatant abuse of power, this embarrassing lack of judgment put Tennessee in the national spotlight again.”
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Conaway: If you want to help, then help
This city already pays less for light, gas and water than any other in Tennessee, and less than most cities in the country. If we really want to help the poor with their utilities, there are subsidies, sliding scales and credits.
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Dan ConawayConaway: I could cry, but he’d have none of that
“Dinner at his and Carol’s house, or five minutes on the phone, or two minutes in the corner of a theater lobby at intermission – be assured – you’d spit out whatever you were drinking.”
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March 2023
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Dan ConawayConaway: Time to get away is close by
Getting away from it all is all around us, and — if only for a morning in the woods or an afternoon or day on the water, or in a peaceful moment of reflection — we need but see it.
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Dan ConawayConaway: When they came up with this, they must have been loaded
“Cops know that putting a loaded gun on the hip of a teenager, or in the hands of a high school cheerleader, a ‘watch this’ bubba, or a something-to-prove street kid is guaranteed lethal.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Ja not the first to pay price fame demands
“Few of us, and certainly not this writer, can truly know the gift of immense talent and the impact of fame and mountains of money at age 23.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Tennessee to reserve all federal funds for evangelicals
Tennessee has officially and legislatively become a judgmental, vindictive, homophobic, misogynistic, intolerant, small-minded, history-denying, science-denying, racially insensitive if not racist, and holier-than-thou state simmering in its own toxic stew.
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Dan ConawayConaway: The Word. And waffles.
“For a hundred Lents, words have been offered — mixed, seasoned, and served — from the pulpit of Calvary Episcopal Church just as ingredients have been from its kitchen below.”
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February 2023
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Dan ConawayConaway: Why does Memphis try so hard to be Philadelphia?
We’re showing all the originality of a bad band covering somebody else’s song, and not even a Memphis song at that.
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