We're used to large-scale alterations underway on sites Downtown, but landscapes are also changing at some promising and high-profile properties farther East. 

Those who are showing up for the pandemic version of Elvis Week are getting a first look at new interactive exhibits – "Elvis Movie Match Game," "Elvis Yourself" – that will become permanent fixtures at the complex across from Graceland.

Some find it galling that the City Council pulled back a public referendum on the police residency question. I dunno, I’d say the point of representative democracy is to elect officials and ask them to deliberate and make informed judgments.

We’ve had more time to prepare for remote learning than we had in the spring. But there are complications that our spring pause did not present: new teachers for most, new schools for many, and a first school experience for some. 

Nothing this week has been more distressing than to glimpse the sprouting seeds of a familiar political battle, this time over school openings. It was awful enough to see mask usage amid a pandemic turned into a test of political fidelity. Please, not this time.

Several takeaways from Thursday's COVID briefing and the rise in cases. Among them: We're not as bad off as Florida, but we're bad enough that local and CDC officials are alarmed.

The good news about the Memphis mask ordinance so far: People aren't really freaking out about it. The bad news: Too many seem to be simply ignoring it.

Our rising coronavirus rates pre-date the protests – they correspond to our general loosening of restrictions and specifically to Memorial Day – and there’s no specific tracing evidence at the moment that ties cases to them. 

When people ask why protests in Memphis have been so different than in most other cities, they’re fishing for a compliment. But there’s one aspect that is never mentioned: They have been smaller than in most other cities. 

The public protests of the past week would seem to violate current health directives against mass gatherings of 50 or more. Given the cause for the gatherings, it would be a mistake for officials to use that as a pretext for breaking them up. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t worry about them.

If there’s a commonality among many who disagree about protest tactics as well as those who by profession are on the other side of a line, maybe it’s a care for the city. Defensive pride in place is a Memphis throughline, and it may be serving us here. 

Protesters distributed a list of “suggested demands” at a weekend rally. Some are easier to achieve than others given the coronavirus-spiked budgeting chaos. All, perhaps, are debatable. But it would do the city great good for the current moment to become a more actionable one.

So, yes, I do not care about whether a college basketball player stands up for an anthem. To complain about such a thing in this moment seems to me pointless, trivial, a kind of profanity.

When the Memphis/Shelby County Joint COVID Task Force moved from daily to twice-weekly briefings this week, I saw it as a sign that living with the virus, and accepting that you’re living with it, means not being gripped by a crisis report day after day after day. 

The general footprint of the plan to renovate the park – three “stages” with separation and a smaller covered venue – mimics the footprint of Memphis in May's Beale Street Music Fest, but in a way that would make a good park even without it. 

The elevation of mask-usage into a kind of political symbol is a drag — it’s flat-out dumb — but it’s happened, and I’d worry that a government requirement, even a loosely enforced one, would increase the political strife around the issue without a commensurate increase in compliance.

It’s hard to imagine many places of Memphis’ size with history and culture so rich and a sense of place so profound.

The operational difference between “Phase 1” and “Phase 2” was always fairly narrow and has grown more so via “phase creep.”

The Forrest statue made the park unusable space for most Memphians. The Sons of Confederate Veterans lost the battle for the hearts and minds of Memphis, thank goodness, long before they lost the legal battle over moving the monuments to Forrest and Jefferson Davis. 

Before the pandemic, the Memphis Zoo was a choose-your-own-adventure endeavor, but for the time being, visitors will be guided in one direction around the exhibits. “If you’re just here to see the giraffes it’s going to take you awhile, because you’re going to have to walk the walk,” says zoo CEO Jim Dean.

The diversity of masks and their origins would be charming if it wasn’t yet another sign of official dysfunction in our collective approach to controlling a pandemic. 

The city and county can loosen restrictions, but a tour of Midtown and Downtown neighborhoods shows businesses and potential customers still have decisions to make. 

The past month has meant navigating a matrix of official restrictions and individual decisions, and so will the many months — maybe years — to come. 

Shelby County's path through coronavirus is a faucet not a switch: We'll gradually loosen the local economy, but will be prepared to restrict the flow of activity again if and when the virus spikes. 

A constant factor of Memphis life seems more pressing now than usual: To paraphrase Texas songwriter Joe Ely, we may walk the streets of Memphis, but we’ll have you understand, Tennessee is not entirely the state we’re in.