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.

From Sam Cooke to Motown, blues to the British Invasion to his own classic songwriting, Otis Redding’s groundbreaking 1965 album turned everything it touched into one man’s soulful sound. 

Impatience was always going to be part of this matrix: There’s a natural urge to get past bad situations without fully dealing with them. But a governmental failure has fed this impatience, and it didn’t come from Nashville.

These are not just places to go to find a thing you know you want. They are places to be. To share space with people who share your affinities. They are at their best when you go in just to browse and a book or record finds you. 

In a month’s time, during the late summer of 1878, the city’s population plummeted from 50,000 to 20,000, with the vast majority of those remaining infected by the fever. Crosby's "The American Plague" takes you to this crucible moment in Memphis history, and helps explain what it meant. 

John Prine was raised in Illinois and settled in Nashville, but he recorded three of his first six albums at different Memphis studios, including his classic debut, “John Prine.”

Shelby County has had deaths in 2.25% of coronavirus cases, compared to 1.61% in the rest of the state and 0.84% in Nashville’s Davidson County. Does this suggest that racial disparities are spiking higher rates locally? For now we can only guess. 

The bootleg T-shirts that inspire Rebecca Fava’s face masks were symbols of a city coming together. Her masks, and other homemade endeavors like them, are perhaps fitting symbols of the city in pandemic times — coming together by staying apart.

At a Chicago church, on the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Mississippi-bred bluesman Otis Spann delivered what arguably remains the most profound musical response to the tragedy. 

Our forced experiment in not-really-home-schooling is likely to accelerate educational inequalities. My kids have a fridge full of food, reliable internet and two still-employed parents at home. Many of their fellow public school students do not have all of these things. Too many may not have any of them.

The only Pulitzer Prize-winner with “Memphis” in the title, Peter Taylor's 1986 novel explores the fine social distinctions between Memphis and Nashville at mid-century. 

Managing the coronavirus pandemic will be an uncertain process that takes more than a year to navigate. Are big public festivals compatible with this new reality? 

There are no good answers now. Only bad choices and worse ones. But evidence suggests that going hard on social-distancing is the best long-term bet for both public health and the economy. 

With three hit singles, two turf-grabbing country covers, definitive secular and religious anthems and some of the most tender pop music ever recorded, 1973's "Call Me" is Al Green's finest moment.

Whatever you think of his policy priorities, Strickland prides himself on being a data-driven executive, and his managerial seriousness has served him, and the city, well in this unprecedented moment. 

While I was sitting in an oddly peaceful purgatory, people close to me have lost jobs and postponed weddings. I’ve eavesdropped on conversations about how to keep people employed while also keeping them safe. 

The city's greatest asset faces threats, Memphis has some 'High Fidelity' moments, and the mecca of chicken and donuts has an East Memphis location.

Stax greats Booker T. and Carla Thomas on stage together. Grizz great Tony Allen back at the Grindhouse. "Bluff City Law" in limbo but keeping hope alive. Plus, seven more observations on the month in Memphis. 

Memphis relocates to Dallas for Cotton Bowl weekend, three Memphis parks move forward in different ways, Memphis jazz moves underground and more. 

As a public space, The Peabody lobby is an enduring classic that defines the center of Downtown Memphis. Now, the Central Station Hotel lobby is an instant classic that does the same for South Main. One has ducks spinning around a fountain. The other has vintage vinyl spinning around a turntable.