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 356 articles by Dan Conaway :
If you have friends like that, you’re fortunate. If you have friends like that, especially in the time we’ve lived through and the people we’ve lost, let them know what they mean to you.
A lot of us forget that memory is selective and if we actually could go back to times we fondly remember, we would probably run from the reality we find.
In fact, Governor Lee’s stupidity could quite literally take your breath away and the breath of those you love.
Spouses and children and grandchildren and family histories — and genes — join us at table in spirit and stories and challenges. Just some guys ... talking about nothing and everything.
Only 24% of Americans identify as Republican... Only 30% identify as Democrat... Yet we allow ourselves to let those two parties label all of us as if we were one or the other.
‘You guys not only care about what I have to say, some of you have colorful suggestions about how I might spend my time and places I might go to spend it.’
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.
It seems past president Trump has some tax problems. I can relate.
‘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.’
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.’
What made them angels was the sacrifice they made expecting no recognition at all.
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.
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.
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.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
Few companies understand what cub copywriters know: the public will shorten anything that’s too long for their use.
‘“Liberty” works in Philadelphia, where Bud Dudley and the Liberty Bowl came from, but it has no unique meaning in Memphis.’
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.
What have we learned from the hard lesson of Overton Park’s greensward? What has the COVID experiment taught us?
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.
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.