“Maybe most of all, my mother was a woman who loved her two boys, my brother and me, more than anything. It’s all in the obit. And it’s all entirely true. But then there are the parts that I left out.”

“The qualified immunity privilege serves as a cloak of protection reminiscent of Jim Crow laws and as a vestige of racism that perpetuates unequal treatment before the law. It is both bad law and bad public policy.”

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.

Road recklessness has been notable for more than a year, the rise perhaps coinciding with pandemic shutdowns. But it doesn’t seem to be diminishing, even as COVID restrictions ease.

One of the principal components of crude oil is benzene. It takes very little benzene to make a vast quantity of water completely undrinkable.

If the goal of more frequent reappraisals is not a bigger pot of tax revenue, what are we trying to accomplish? Is anyone clamoring to have the county government poke into their property value more often?

Baseball cards are becoming as hard to find as Lysol and hand sanitizer in the pandemic’s early days. A search at the old stores can lead to frustration.

The Daily Memphian bills this as an opinion piece, and the author makes efforts to endear himself to us as a local, but this is not an opinion piece by a local. It is astroturfing by the oil industry.

‘I now understand the science of groundwater aquifers and the complex of laws and regulations that keep an aquifer healthy,’ says geologist Deborah Baker Carington. ‘I also understand the very real risks an oil pipeline spill would pose to the region’s most precious resource, the Memphis aquifer.’

Lynne Turley taught music in the Memphis City Schools for 22 years. She believed that every child was musical.

RoboKiller predicts that scammers will design even smarter, more believable phone scams in the future. Spam calls could reach 70 billion and texts 90 billion by the end of 2021.

The judge deserves to be remembered as one of the most consequential public figures in Memphis during the second half of the 20th century, says Otis Sanford.

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.

At WYXR, a cast of musicians with global name recognition see the station as a vehicle to express a fascination with not only Memphis’ music, but Memphis’ people. 

CJ Davis will draw on her 28 years in the Atlanta Police Department, where she rose to commander of the Strategies and Special Projects Division. Isn’t that what Memphis needs, new strategies for fighting crime and making MPD more a part of the community?

Regarding Memphis solid waste collection, a letter writer says she would drop city services ‘like a hot potato' if other options for garbage pickup were available for citizens in Cordova.

Few companies understand what cub copywriters know: the public will shorten anything that’s too long for their use.

Derek Chauvin’s conviction should continue the reckoning on race that started after Floyd’s murder shocked the world 11 months ago. A reckoning we have longed for since the night Thomas Moss and his companions were taken out and lynched in Memphis.

‘“Liberty” works in Philadelphia, where Bud Dudley and the Liberty Bowl came from, but it has no unique meaning in Memphis.’

Dolph Smith studied and taught at what became the Memphis College of Art. Making the ladder Tennessee’s state tool was his idea. Mr. Smith didn’t go to Nashville. But he did write a letter. 

When it comes to a diverse pool of candidates, the list of finalists for the police director’s job is a homerun. Three are from inside the department. Three are women and five are African American. But this search comes with plenty of challenges.