Opinion: Our kids are under house arrest
Dan Conaway: “Our kids, Memphis kids, our tomorrow, have to get back in classrooms. Today. Period. Every day they don’t is another day falling further behind.”
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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February 2021
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Dan ConawayOpinion: Driving us crazy
It’s one of the more interesting things about daily life in Memphis, and one that just might kill you. We can’t drive. Worse. We’re proud of it.
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Dan Conaway Opinion: Still crazy. Still right.
The fight continues to easily access our history, to stand on our oldest ground above our best view of the Mississippi, to make traffic Downtown make sense.
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Dan Conaway Opinion: We all need the bridge to Binghampton
Binghampton is at the very center of our city but far from the center of our attention. We drive through it en masse every day on Walnut Grove and Sam Cooper, largely ignoring the decline to our left and right.
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March 2021
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Dan ConawayOpinion: Fire and ice. And friendship.
You may have seen the photo with the story about the brutal weather — firefighters pushing to free an ambulance stuck in the snow and ice. Michael Rowland was in that ambulance. Nothing brings the value of friendship into focus like a threat to a friend.
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Dan ConawayOpinion: Fill a prescription. Or buy a house.
The shot I’m getting is hard to get, and costs more than our first house. The stuff in this syringe must come from cells scraped from the belly of the dragon Smaug by Hobbits.
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Dan ConawayOpinion: There are embarrassing people in our House. And Senate.
Maybe the state’s largest population areas will get out the vote and get Tennessee into the 21st century. Georgia called. They want us to know that it’s possible.
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Dan ConawayOpinion: If you’re copying, it’s not yours
Dan Conaway: While we ignore Mud island, we’re giving Tom Lee Park more plastic surgery than the attendees at the Academy Awards, and if we’re going to make the Fairgrounds ours, the Coliseum has to be part of it and original thinking is required.
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April 2021
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Dan ConawayOpinion: Close Riverside Drive to cars; open it to those who really count
What have we learned from the hard lesson of Overton Park’s greensward? What has the COVID experiment taught us?
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Dan ConawayOpinion: After an Arctic blast, scratch and look for green
People say wait, give things a chance. Take a limb and scratch it. Look for green. If there’s even a trace of green, there’s hope for recovery.
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Dan Conaway Opinion: When the name is wrong, the smell is no rose
‘“Liberty” works in Philadelphia, where Bud Dudley and the Liberty Bowl came from, but it has no unique meaning in Memphis.’
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Dan ConawayOpinion: What’s in a name? Put it to the Snuff test and find out
Few companies understand what cub copywriters know: the public will shorten anything that’s too long for their use.
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Performing ArtsOpinion: Theatre Memphis’ leading lady, a force in high heels and sequins
When she took over as executive producer, Theatre Memphis was full of debt with no endowment. Now the theater is in the black, full of hope, with an endowment, and a major capital campaign nearing completion.
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May 2021
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Dan Conaway Opinion: Not vaccinated? There are plenty of shady trees at Elmwood
While ignorance has always been preventable and COVID-19 is now preventable, nothing can prevent stupid in 100% of us. Not getting a vaccine is all about you, a selfish and self-indulgent exercise.
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Dan Conaway Opinion: Public schools are in a fight for their lives
Government support is grudgingly given to public schools, because of legal requirements. In fact, our state has been sued to provide even that support. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see Richard Myers call for private money to help public schools.
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Dan Conaway Opinion: We live in the Great State of Mediocrity
Tennessee ranked 29th in U.S. News & World Report’s Best States ranking for 2021. ‘Here’s the scientific explanation, and I’ll try to be brief: Our state legislature is mean-spirited, small-minded, short-sighted. And cheap.’
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Dan ConawayOpinion: A new course of optimism, from Sweetens Cove to Overton Park
The remarkable Sweetens Cove Golf Club inspired Parks Dixon’s campaign to bring its designers to Memphis and turn them loose on Overton’s storied but long neglected nine.
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June 2021
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Dan ConawayOpinion: A road trip from Memphis to Memphis
We haven’t been on the big road trip in two years — the one we used to take every year to visit family and friends. We haven’t seen our son-in-law in two years, our daughter in a year and a half. Our dogs haven’t seen their dogs. -
Dan Conaway Opinion: A pink palace by any other name won’t sound as sweet
It seems that the people managing the museums want to call themselves something other than the Pink Palace. But we “the locals” will never call the Pink Palace anything else. Even with a primer to explain whatever a MoSH is.
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Opinion Opinion: The importance of bridges
Bridges are magic. They connect, enable, overcome, elevate. They make big things possible when they weren’t before. They make it reachable for the many rather than the few, doable, accessible.
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Dan ConawayOpinion: Angels are and have been with us
What made them angels was the sacrifice they made expecting no recognition at all.
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July 2021
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Dan ConawayOpinion: I was born lucky, but don’t tell anybody. That’s illegal.
Dan Conaway: ‘This is not about guilt. This is about awareness. If you were born white, you did absolutely nothing to deserve the privileges you’ve enjoyed because of it.’
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Dan ConawayOpinion: And yet, I love my city
‘Outside is as hot as the seventh circle of hell because it’s Memphis in summer. And yet, I stay. I’m home. My memories are in the grid and grit of this place, on this river, in these people, those here and those deep in my bones.’
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Dan ConawayOpinion: We need the sharpest pencils in the drawer
It seems past president Trump has some tax problems. I can relate.
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Dan ConawayConaway: State of Tennessee’s in a state of denial
Just when we’re coming up for air from the plague, the plague that is our Tennessee Legislature and governor have proved – again – that they’re still smothering in stupidity.
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