Just when we’re coming up for air from the plague, the plague that is our Tennessee Legislature and governor have proved – again – that they’re still smothering in stupidity.

It seems past president Trump has some tax problems. I can relate.

The formation of the Soulsville USA Neighborhoods Development District was not an overnight creation but was and is, a culmination of years of hard work, planning and community engagement at the grassroots level.

‘Outside is as hot as the seventh circle of hell because it’s Memphis in summer. And yet, I stay. I’m home. My memories are in the grid and grit of this place, on this river, in these people, those here and those deep in my bones.’

Dan Conaway: ‘This is not about guilt. This is about awareness. If you were born white, you did absolutely nothing to deserve the privileges you’ve enjoyed because of it.’

What made them angels was the sacrifice they made expecting no recognition at all.

It seems that the people managing the museums want to call themselves something other than the Pink Palace. But we “the locals” will never call the Pink Palace anything else. Even with a primer to explain whatever a MoSH is.

We haven’t been on the big road trip in two years — the one we used to take every year to visit family and friends. We haven’t seen our son-in-law in two years, our daughter in a year and a half. Our dogs haven’t seen their dogs.

The remarkable Sweetens Cove Golf Club inspired Parks Dixon’s campaign to bring its designers to Memphis and turn them loose on Overton’s storied but long neglected nine.

Tennessee ranked 29th in U.S. News & World Report’s Best States ranking for 2021. ‘Here’s the scientific explanation, and I’ll try to be brief: Our state legislature is mean-spirited, small-minded, short-sighted. And cheap.’

Government support is grudgingly given to public schools, because of legal requirements. In fact, our state has been sued to provide even that support. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see Richard Myers call for private money to help public schools. 

While ignorance has always been preventable and COVID-19 is now preventable, nothing can prevent stupid in 100% of us. Not getting a vaccine is all about you, a selfish and self-indulgent exercise.

When she took over as executive producer, Theatre Memphis was full of debt with no endowment. Now the theater is in the black, full of hope, with an endowment, and a major capital campaign nearing completion.

Few companies understand what cub copywriters know: the public will shorten anything that’s too long for their use.

‘“Liberty” works in Philadelphia, where Bud Dudley and the Liberty Bowl came from, but it has no unique meaning in Memphis.’

People say wait, give things a chance. Take a limb and scratch it. Look for green. If there’s even a trace of green, there’s hope for recovery.

What have we learned from the hard lesson of Overton Park’s greensward? What has the COVID experiment taught us? 

Dan Conaway: While we ignore Mud island, we’re giving Tom Lee Park more plastic surgery than the attendees at the Academy Awards, and if we’re going to make the Fairgrounds ours, the Coliseum has to be part of it and original thinking is required.

Maybe the state’s largest population areas will get out the vote and get Tennessee into the 21st century. Georgia called. They want us to know that it’s possible.

The shot I’m getting is hard to get, and costs more than our first house. The stuff in this syringe must come from cells scraped from the belly of the dragon Smaug by Hobbits.

You may have seen the photo with the story about the brutal weather — firefighters pushing to free an ambulance stuck in the snow and ice. Michael Rowland was in that ambulance. Nothing brings the value of friendship into focus like a threat to a friend. 

Binghampton is at the very center of our city but far from the center of our attention. We drive through it en masse every day on Walnut Grove and Sam Cooper, largely ignoring the decline to our left and right.

The fight continues to easily access our history, to stand on our oldest ground above our best view of the Mississippi, to make traffic Downtown make sense.

It’s one of the more interesting things about daily life in Memphis, and one that just might kill you. We can’t drive. Worse. We’re proud of it.

Dan Conaway: “Our kids, Memphis kids, our tomorrow, have to get back in classrooms. Today. Period. Every day they don’t is another day falling further behind.”