The 2019 mayor's race is shaping up as a three-way contest representing the past, present and, perhaps, future of city politics.

Here are 20 songs from the Memphis music catalog that will improve your commute one day this week.

John will be lamented and loved as a survivor and casualty of addiction, a saint and sinner, a gentle and tormented soul whose life and death, head and heart, darkness and light were a parable, a revelation, a psalm.

For those of you who don’t understand the idea of tomato aspic, understand this: You’re living in the South and at some important point in life, you'll be in a place where it’s wiggling right in front of you. A place like the Calvary Waffle Shop during Lent, for instance.

The beauty of Tom Lee Park is the unobstructed expansiveness of it all. It could certainly use some improvements, but keep it simple. Let this park be a park. 

Addiction is an illness. Mental health conditions are illnesses. No judgment, shame or feelings of guilt are needed from us; only love, support and treatment.

'I don’t know where Rashad is. I don’t have a heaven or a hell to put him in. But I believe that he experienced heaven on earth in my classroom.'

'Ministers and those in other healing professions are called to use their own woundedness in the healing of others. At times, such openness can become an occupational hazard – becoming overwhelmed by the exposure to such pain.'

As written, the Tennessee bill prohibits abortion as early as six weeks, before many people even know that they’re pregnant. Similar versions of this bill have been declared unconstitutional in other states.

Because the legalization movement has made marijuana sound healthy, more people are using it. Daily intake nearly tripled from about 3 million users in 2005 to more than 8 million in 2017. 

Every Friday at The Way, John Kilzer would greet those who were new to recovery, who were afraid and alone, with these words: “We are going to love you, and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.”

Instead of trying a new, unproven program with dubious accountability to the taxpayers who are funding it, why don’t we double down on the initiatives that are already working across the state?

The very first politically wired, insider Memphis land grab was a done deal when the Chickasaw Nation was pressured into ceding almost 7 million acres at about 4.5 cents apiece, around 99.5 percent below market value.

"I am a scientist at a world-class institution where a lack of power is unimaginable, but Venezuela's blackout is affecting me personally. Fear, uncertainty, helplessness is what the outage has generated in all Venezuelans."

White inmates represent 58 percent of the total federal prison population, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The First Step Act, designed to lower mandatory-minimum sentences, shouldn't be considered an altruistic act exclusively for black inmates.

Trump is going to be on the ballot in 2020. By the time an impeachment process got under way, voters would already be casting ballots in Iowa and New Hampshire. Let the American people take care of removing Trump if that’s what they want.

A teacher's dilemma: "I felt the tension rise in me, the tension of being told 'no,' and I felt the clear choice to either escalate the situation or to draw near to the student."

The global governing body of the United Methodist Church reaffirmed its position on traditional marriage, including prohibition on ordaining LGBTQ+ people as pastors and prohibiting LGBTQ+ people from being married in the church. "This decision has caused much despair among people I love and respect," a pastor writes.

Vouchers would take money and support out of the public school system. Public education is a right, and if we give up on it, we abandon our responsibility to the future.

The City of Memphis uses some creative methods to fund projects such as Union Row and The Fairgrounds youth sports complex, and those methods are often misunderstood, says a city deputy chief operating officer. 

Lt. Richard 'Tito' Lannom’s remains were recovered on a rocky island off the coast of North Vietnam, through a joint project of Americans and Vietnamese, in which both sides try to heal wounds from the war that ended in 1975.

Tennessee spends nearly $11,000 on each student’s education annually. With ESAs, parents could direct a portion of their child’s funding to the schools and programs they choose, including homeschooling, private and online schools, as well as traditional public schools.

In the United States, at least 30 million people of various ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder – that means roughly one of every 10 Americans will have symptoms of the disease. The prevalence is even greater in certain high-risk populations, including younger women, the LGBTQ community and members of the Armed Forces.

Memphis has provided the world with some of the great love songs, but love is not always easy. Here's a playlist that takes heartbreaks, loneliness and love gone wrong into account.

Ernest Withers, the famous Memphis photographer, was also Ernest Withers the informant, a man whose life illustrates Martin Luther King's description of man's dual nature.