Conaway: This is our time. But we have to realize it.
Dan Conaway
Dan Conaway was a freelance columnist with The Daily Memphian from 2018 to 2025.
We’ve all seen the clock array.
Multiple identical clocks mounted side-by-side on the wall. Maybe on the wall of a transportation hub — a train station or an airport. Or in the reception area of some company or somebody who wants to look important — a national force, a global presence. Perhaps in the bullpen or trading floor of a bond company or brokerage office.
The popular domestic choices are generally clocks showing the local time as well as the time in New York, Chicago, Miami, your choice of Los Angeles or San Francisco, Dallas or Houston, maybe Atlanta.
The international array is New York, London, Paris, Rome, maybe Tokyo or Beijing, Mumbai or Tel Aviv, Barcelona or Melbourne, somewhere in South America or the Arabian Peninsula.
And then there’s my doctor’s office.
His name is Shawn Hayden, and he is blessed with a key diagnostic talent increasingly rare in the field — a sense of humor.
On the wall of his reception area, right above the clipboards with forms to fill out and the screens for checking out, is an array of six identical clocks, giving you the time in, in order:
Germantown, Bartlett, Southaven, Memphis, Atoka, and West Memphis.
It was 10:43 in all of them when I was in his office last week.
If you’re wondering why Collierville wasn’t up there — or Millington or Lakeland and Arlington — or Olive Branch and Horn Lake — or why Atoka and not Mason, not Piperton or Rossville, or not Oakland — if you’re wondering any of that, you’ve already missed the point, and maybe that’s the point.
The time is the same in all. It’s our time. We share it. And it’s the most important time of all.
What time it is in all of the cities in those other arrays has nothing to do with what time the woman in that chair over there wants me to put the chicken in the oven before I come back upstairs. What dogs are doing in kitchens in Tuscany is meaningless to the two dogs in my kitchen who want me to drop a peanut this very second.
Whatever time it is in Temple of Blessings in Orange Mound, it’s exactly the same time in Second Presbyterian Church on Poplar Avenue, Calvary Episcopal Church Downtown, in Mason Temple and Temple Israel and in the Midtown Mosque on Jackson Avenue, in BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir on American Way and in Germantown United Methodist Church, in Collins Chapel and in Christ United Methodist Church and Christ Church Arlington, and in First Baptist on Parkway, First Baptist Broad, Second Baptist on Walnut Grove and Bellevue Baptist in Cordova.
And in any box under any overpass in Memphis and in any living room behind any gate in Collierville. By any fire in any barrel somewhere in South Memphis and in front of any fire in any fireplace in South Bluffs.
Our time.
When members of the Memphis City Council jockey for position and attention, all at the same time, they look like members of the Shelby County Commission doing the same, all at the same time.
Whatever time that is, it’s the same time in the communities where seven school boards meet in Shelby County, and nine governing bodies counting the state, who — make no mistake — stands ready and able to change any decision made by any of those governing bodies that annoys them. At any time, time after time.
And it’s the same time in our metro area, in Tennessee, in Mississippi, in Arkansas.
Our time.
More than 11 million people visited Memphis last year — 11 million. Conde-Nast Traveler named Memphis one of the “23 Best Places to Go in the U.S. in 2023,” and one of only two U.S. cities named in “23 Best Places to Go in 2023” in the world.
In the world.
The Carlisles gave us two Hyatt hotels, including the first Caption by Hyatt in the world.
In the world.
A world-class art museum a city block wide and built into the bluff is on the way. A world-class park will front the city and embrace the river this year. The Edge, South Main and the Snuff District are rising, as are projects in Germantown, Collierville, Lakeland, Arlington and Bartlett. And soon on The Walk and to the very top of 100 North Main. And in Southaven and Olive Branch and Hernando. And in the new luxury hotel and expanded casino in West Memphis. And soon in Stanton and Brownsville, and everywhere between here and there and BlueOval City, the largest Ford plant in the world.
In the world.
Since they started a few years ago, the not-for-profit Memphis Brand has been telling the world the Memphis story, and the world is paying attention. You might not have heard of them and that effort, and that’s fine with them. They’re not talking to you; they’re telling the world about you. About your soul. And the world is listening. This from their website:
“Since our launch, we have generated over 250 positive stories about Memphis and our citizens creating change — that equates to over 2.6 billion positive impressions worth $44 million in media value.”
This is our time, people. Ours. But we have to realize it.
After a schoolyard spat with the mayor, the Carlisles picked up their Grand Hyatt and went home, leaving a mudhole. Meanwhile, Memphis in May and the Memphis River Park Partnership still can’t agree on the cost of cleaning up the mess after the barbecue throwdown. And if you think that’s ugly, you ought to hear what Germantown and Collierville have to say about each other, and cover your children’s ears when any of our surrounding communities discuss Memphis.
And we can ponder “brilliant at the basics” as we bounce from pothole to pothole gazing across your choice of either dead or uncut grass in our parkway medians and on the hills of our overpasses.
Or we can decide it’s all about crime, not because it’s all about crime, but because we’re as intellectually lazy as our politicians who know they can blame any lack of progress or concern, or neglect, or guilt on, “It’s all about crime,” and then circle the city and point at it.
We all had an awful week in September of last year, but that week does not define us or the people we lost. They, we and you are far better than that.
The fact that violent crime is actually down, homicides are down and that real reform to deal with real reasons for crime is underway is an inconvenient truth.
Time for a check-up.
I’ll end where I began this column, in the doctor’s office. If the head is fine, looking good on the outside, sharp as a tack on the inside, but the ticker is off, all bets are off.
If the arms and legs are strong and raring to go, but the heart is not, we’re not going anywhere.
It’s healthy to love where you live, to be invested in your neighborhood, your schools, your churches, your lifestyle and your values, but it’s unhealthy for everything that’s important to you to not realize that you’re part of a larger whole.
Memphis is the heart of where we all live, and the reason it has a beat. That beat belongs to all of us, and all of us bear some responsibility for its health.
None of us can thrive, or survive, without it.
However, in all of our time zones, the prospects for 2023 are looking better. For all of us to improve, we simply have to do what the basic tenets of all of those houses of worship I mentioned call for: to care for and about each other.
I’m a Memphian, as are we all to some degree, and this is our time.
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