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 342 articles by Dan Conaway :
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
On John Simmons’ last visit, Carnival Memphis presented him their highest honor. That’s particularly interesting since John was instrumental in founding Curbi, the Carnival society named for those who stood on the curb and watched the Carnival parades go by.
As a scout, it’s up to you. If the food you make is inedible, you and your fellow scouts don’t eat. If you pitch your tent in the wrong place, you and your tentmate are going to get wet. If you don’t reach down to help, no one else climbs up.
A UT devotee remembers a heart-stopping 1968 game, but says, “This time around, I’m a Georgia fan.”
Citizens all over greater Memphis – all over the country – watch over things every day, caring enough about all of us to make sure the greater good is served by the maintenance of the things we care about.
What is the single rose we can take from that pile of a year? As hopeful as it may be, it’s not the vaccine.
What makes weddings cool has nothing to do with hundreds of people in church or a few in a cabin. It has to do with two people agreeing to share the trail, with all its ups and downs, and to get wherever they’re going together.
It was the last Christmas all three sons would share with our parents, although none of us knew that at the time, and the last Christmas I would be single, and I guarantee neither Nora nor I knew that at the time.
Despite all the cases reported – including people we know, people all of us know, say, the president – many of us still believe that COVID-19 is a hoax.