Willie Herenton still trails Mayor Jim Strickland in the mayor’s internal polls. A televised debate would be Herenton’s chance to convince skeptical voters that he’s still got it. 

Mediation at Tom Lee Park hasn't quieted public debate about the future of the Memphis riverfront. Here are a series of observations on what we talk about when we talk about Tom Lee Park. 

Like the character of Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's novels, people are a mix of goodness and baseness. A lack of self-awareness can result in "blithe disregard for genuine grievances."

Memphis decided to bring the best of the urban past into the vitality of the urban present in a minor league ballpark.

Between 2010 and 2015, Memphis was the fourth fastest growing city for millennials. There's no better place in the United States to grow than Memphis, and right now there's no place growing quite like it.

Many of the people who help with butterfly counts are knowledgeable about birds, dragonflies, amphibians and plants. But if you’ve got eyes and can ask, “What’s that?” you can be a valuable participant. The next count is Sept. 7 at Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park. 

Memphis has seen its own types of gerrymandering and the political opportunism that undergirds those efforts.

The poet, farmer and environmental activist Wendell Berry understood that our hope is founded in our place.

An unassuming, 87-year-old, recently retired black sanitation worker provides a powerful and authentic endorsement of Jim Strickland.

MATA needs a silver buckshot strategy that incorporates a lot of different innovative approaches – including buses on heavily traveled routes and on-demand transportation in low-density areas.

As the confused reader response to “not … anti-racist” underscored, this is not a widely familiar term. Sawyer is seeking the mayor’s office, not tenure. That means persuading voters who haven’t sat in a college sociology or cultural studies class in a while, or ever. 

The city was the site of two battles during the Civil War, but the worst one came afterward.

Next fall, thousands of Memphis children will qualify to participate in the new Education Savings Accounts (ESA) Program. They can receive about $7,300 in the account, which can be used for tuition at private schools, tutoring, textbooks, school uniforms and computers.

If MATA is committed to providing first-class transportation for the residents of Westwood and Boxtown, it should consider a plan recently proposed by retired bus driver Lonnie Britton to run buses through both neighborhoods every 30 minutes so riders can get to the Downtown bus terminals in 30 minutes.

A tour bus of folks from Toledo hits the highlights: from the site of the first Piggly Wiggly, to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, to The Peabody. A Memphian along for the ride finds fresh cause for wonder. 

Investigators knew that the owners acted illegally by hiring undocumented workers. If they wanted to make this crackdown an example of equal justice, they would have pulled owners out of their offices the same day they snatched immigrant workers away from their frightened children.

In Tennessee, more than 70,000 citizen children live with an undocumented family member. If a large-scale immigration raid occurred in our neighborhoods, it would have ramifications among the nearly 14,000 Latino/Latina children attending Shelby County Schools. 

Modern-day progressives like to think that progressives from earlier eras were, like them, enlightened about everything. It ain’t so now and it wasn’t so then. 

A basketball league, an all-male mentorship program and 'restorative conversations' when students make mistakes are part of the Bruce Elementary principal's philosophy of education. 

We are just a president’s cruel tweet away from Baltimore, a look in the mirror at a majority-minority city reclaiming its historic buildings, its downtown swimming in development and promise while the city struggles with how to share that promise with so many drowning in poverty.

If you were asked for a thoughtful vision statement that could become the guiding light for our entire city, what would it be? 

Thoughts on Willie Herenton's attempt to make the Memphis mayor's race a two-man affair, the influx of scooters and the Memphis story at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. 

Positive Physics reaches about 13,000 students a year in 50 states and 76 countries. Memphis teacher Jack Replinger writes the problems. Memphis computer scientist Anthony Fizer maintains the site.

'Many of us have been taught that volunteerism and philanthropy should be completely selfless. I would argue that volunteering needs to be positive for the organization AND for the volunteer.'

The Tennessee Virtual Academy, a program under the Union County Public Schools, felt "like a custom-made school" for a student diagnosed with autism and epilepsy.