The artist Dolph Smith named his Ripley home Tennarkippi, but it's also a place where the borders of three states merge to create a particular state of mind. 

We can’t even stand up and come together as one to fight something that’s killing us for two or three months without falling apart. After all, we need our nails done and a haircut.

The dogs are loving COVID-19. We’re here all the time. Here for every squirrel alert. Here to charge the door for every delivery. Here for walks, lap time, ball chasing, floor wrestling, dropping food on the floor. And dancing to “The Monkey Time.”

Even though it’s in my state, Knoxville doesn’t know any more about barbecue than a pig knows about Sunday. However, there were a couple of places that provided affordable consolation in greasy bags.

The oldest active cemetery and most storied ground in Shelby County provides perspective, now and always.

You keep me going. Even the reader who called a recent column “a load of horsehockey,” and all those who’ve been more direct.

When you’re on camera, your background and work area are visible. Don’t make them the star of the show. For instance, a home bar in the background or a TV screen on a freeze frame of "Game Of Thrones" reruns.

A collection of old white men may sound like a Cabinet meeting in Washington or a Senate vote, but it was just another Tuesday and the regular meeting of my “and I’ll tell you another damn thing” lunch group.

Tennesseans don’t trust Tennessee to take care of them any more than they trust Washington to take care of them. The same people are in charge in both places.

We have sure and certain knowledge of homemade mayonnaise. Yea and verily, shrimp mousse and tomato aspic jiggle. Behold the turnip greens and be glad in them. Take the fish pudding by faith.

Dan Swanson made a table from two Minnesota oak trees. Posey Hedges makes new wood look a century old. Gaines Conaway is reshaping a farmhouse that partly dates to 1872. In a time of fleeting texts and ceaseless emoji, look for things crafted over time, relationships built from deeper places.

My second date with Nora Ballenger was a college rush party in 1967 at the top of the King Cotton Hotel, where the Raymond James/TBD building stands today. Accompanying us was a bottle of Wolfschmidt Vodka. Nora drank Tab. I drank the Wolfschmidt. All of it.

“Memphis has always been racially-fractured, and I don’t know where we’d be without the greatest duct tape and Gorilla Glue in the world ... music.” 

It’s just flat mean of the Tennessee Legislature to continue to deny even basic health insurance to some 300,000 working Tennesseans just to make a political point.

You may not think you know Rob Norcross, but you do. He was the architect for the most acclaimed minor league ballpark in the country, and for the home of grit and grind.

On Saturday, there will be a memorial service for Norman Blackley – “Cap” to so many – at the Memphis Botanic Garden. The place will be chock-full of stories. And gratitude.

A University of Tennessee fraternity brother invited me to lunch the other day, he said, to share my experience writing a column with his son. Instead, he turned to me and opened with, “Tell him the toilet seat story.”

This is about respect for time-honored process in a short-cut world, about pride in completion, about creating something for others. As chef Hallie said, “Baking is hard.”

We contain multitudes. 

The zoo parking versus Overton Park Greensward debate has come full circle in four years. Now the bulldozers and chainsaws – along with the fate of 200 trees – are on hold.

In a small town outside of London, in a pub known only to locals, I found myself standing next to someone I was in the third grade with at Memphis State Training School.

This is and always has been a city of promise, and a city that fails to live up to it time and time again.

A tribute to one of the great guys: The ones who knew you – not just your political beliefs or your fandom or your kids’ names or your tells in a poker game – you. 

Here are a handful of Memphians who've altered our music, our food, our landscape and the game of golf.

What these people have in common is Memphis – a place from which seemingly ordinary people send extraordinary things to the world.