When 12% of the voters can put a candidate in the top four or five, the votes in your Friday night poker game could put somebody over the top.

There is no better time to tell our own state, and the rest of the country, that we are a city that cannot be bought by the people who make the bullets and the guns that are killing us.

“We met a month before at the spring-fed pool at Allison’s Wells, a fading Southern Belle of a place — sort of resort, part art colony, part retreat from change deep in the Mississippi woods outside of Canton.”

Next week, the 70 best players in the world will be here — right here — to play the game like no one else in the world can.

“While I understand, and share, Virginia McLean’s passion to realize the vision, I submit that her passion has prohibited her from seeing the obvious.”

Johnson & Johnson called. They wanted to make sure I was still at it before they made their quarterly projection for shareholders.

“Sure, you can consider if the candidate would vote your way, or if your interests are going to be protected or pursued. You can consider whether or not you both share a love of fried green tomatoes, but without that checklist as your basic guide, all bets are off.”

I had earned a stomachache that I thought would prove fatal so, when my mother opened the back door and asked why I was doubled over on the steps, I threw up and confessed.

“There’s a quote that comes to mind. Max von Sydow said, ‘If Jesus came back today, and saw what was going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.’”

We make progress, and then we find another failing envelope, labelled in fading ink, full of old pics of people with life in front of them, their faces full of possibility, and hours are lost as we know them again, as we visit them again, as we return.

“Tennessee is flunking childhood education, and the valedictorian of that failure just might be Memphis.”

“Cas Walker was a Knoxville grocer, promoter, broadcaster, politician, con man and character. He wasn’t in denial about his outrageous business practices and politics; he knew they were outrageous, and he was proud of every one of them.”

“If you’ve seen any of these before, just laugh again.”

“With that tragic event came an understanding that we have the unique responsibility to reject everything that pulled that trigger, the national events and mindsets that were behind that bullet then and now.”

“Instead of dealing with a deadly situation now — deadlier by the day — the council pushed a decision on the ordinances to a referendum in August of 2024 — more than a year from now.”

“I’ve had as much fun inside windowless studio rooms working with Jack Parnell as in any space in a 52-year career.”

“Lies are fluid, based on fiction rather than fact, floating on a septic sea of deception, changing course to suit the lie, navigating an ever-false course, seeking an ever-false destination.”

“I didn’t mention that we put our house on the market that same day. Staged it, coughing. Fixed it, coughing. Moved ‘clutter' to storage, coughing. Then I moved into Methodist Germantown and left the rest to Nora.”

“This adolescent muscle-flex, this junior high hissy fit, this racist knee-jerk, this blatant abuse of power, this embarrassing lack of judgment put Tennessee in the national spotlight again.”

“Dinner at his and Carol’s house, or five minutes on the phone, or two minutes in the corner of a theater lobby at intermission – be assured – you’d spit out whatever you were drinking.”

Getting away from it all is all around us, and — if only for a morning in the woods or an afternoon or day on the water, or in a peaceful moment of reflection — we need but see it.

“Cops know that putting a loaded gun on the hip of a teenager, or in the hands of a high school cheerleader, a ‘watch this’ bubba, or a something-to-prove street kid is guaranteed lethal.”

“Few of us, and certainly not this writer, can truly know the gift of immense talent and the impact of fame and mountains of money at age 23.”

Tennessee has officially and legislatively become a judgmental, vindictive, homophobic, misogynistic, intolerant, small-minded, history-denying, science-denying, racially insensitive if not racist, and holier-than-thou state simmering in its own toxic stew.

“For a hundred Lents, words have been offered — mixed, seasoned, and served — from the pulpit of Calvary Episcopal Church just as ingredients have been from its kitchen below.”