The 13-member Shelby County Commission has entered a new four-year term with eight new faces. Those new commissioners soon will have to make key decisions while, at the same time, learning about the ins and outs of county government.

It’s hard to say who’s happier to see light at the end of the tunnel for the Lamar corridor’s infamous gridlock. Is it owners and operators of trucks that clog the commercial artery and feeder streets, burning fuel, polluting air, wasting drivers’ time and slowing the movement of goods?

“Liberal science” is one of those terms that sort of makes sense after somebody takes 10 minutes to explain it but seems baffling on first hearing. Is it an oxymoron – science isn’t supposed to be ideological, right? Or is it, as conservatives might fear, science from the left end of the political spectrum?

Welcome to The Memphis 10, which, starting this Thursday, will be a (mostly) weekly collection of observations – commentary, criticism, news, links, songs, etc. – on the week in Memphis.

It was unusually cold in Memphis – even for the dead of winter – with a couple inches of fresh snow on the ground when I checked in at the metro desk of The Commercial Appeal on Jan. 10, 1977, for my first day as a general assignment reporter. My initial assignment, of course, was to write a weather story. Then as now, even a minor snowfall is a serious disruptor in Memphis and front-page news.

About 18,000 times each year, the state of Tennessee suspends the driver’s license of a Shelby County resident for failure to pay traffic fines and fees, according to data obtained by the nonprofit advocacy organization Just City. A disproportionate number of those drivers are black, making the fines a social justice issue, said Just City executive director Josh Spickler.

A $245 million concourse modernization is just getting started, but already Memphis International Airport officials are looking down the runway toward the future.

State Rep. Johnnie Turner can hardly believe civil rights cold-case legislation worked so fast, leading to the reopening of an investigation into the 1940 death of NAACP leader Elbert Williams.

At 4:43 p.m. Thursday afternoon, Memphis assistants Josh Storms (strength and conditioning) and Sherman Morris (director of recruiting), look at each other, realize they are sitting in the wrong places, stand up and swap seats. “He has to be on my right,” said Storms, as he settles into his place in the back of the conference room. “We do this every game. I’m not saying it has an impact on the result, but I’m not saying it doesn’t, either.”

After years of hopeful rumors followed by a confirmation then speculation and delay, Trader Joe’s is here, it’s near and you need to get over there. Anyone who was making the 400-mile round trip to the closest Trader Joe’s in Nashville can’t really complain too much about driving from Midtown or East Memphis when now we can travel a few miles out Poplar instead of hauling down I-40. It seems to have caught on already.

An investigation by the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis reveals MPD is a prominent outlier in a national movement among police departments to fully record the questioning of suspects during homicide investigations, making its detectives frequent targets for allegations of impropriety.