Yes, covering your nose and mouth with a mask is annoying. Yes, it causes your glasses to fog. Yes, it makes communication more difficult. And yes, it stops the spread of disease.

The lack of a national plan to deal with the pandemic led to a disorganized and uncoordinated set of responses. Project Apollo and the Manhattan Project show what we can do when the response to a challenge is unified.

Rather than assuming all students are behind when schools reopen, we should begin the school year providing grade-level content and addressing lost-learning challenges as they are identified.

Around the world, nurses are demonstrating their compassion, bravery and courage as they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Never before has their value been more clearly demonstrated.

The Stockwell and Abbott families started a Downtown lunch spot 40 years ago that inspired a son’s lifelong belief in city-building: ‘Nine-year-old me didn’t doubt Downtown could rally, because I had seen my own family do it.’

A German student learns to love America. She also learns that American students are baffled by Trump's election, and that some want to carry guns on campus.

Children may face immediate and long-term consequences of COVID-19 – from delays in seeking medical attention for current illnesses, to chronic toxic stress, to the threat of communicable diseases due to delayed vaccinations.

My family of five popped into our hairdresser’s backyard for a quarantine cut. We got good cuts over good conversation, muffled slightly by our masks.

I planned five hours of my work week at Shelby Farms, waking up bright and early, packing up lunch, protective gear, my 7-year-old and heading from my Downtown home to the park. Before long I ordered a hammock from Amazon and found us a spot near Beaver Lake. 

While children are not now in traditional classrooms, they are learning lessons. Don’t be surprised if the next generation floods the health care industry with new workers whose knowledge and ideas will be married to selfless compassion.

The Tennessee Department of Education and Gov. Bill Lee should use federal stimulus money to restore our children and their schools back to the position they were in prior to March 20, 2020.

Hundreds of people in Memphis will tell you that Brooks made life worth living again or saved their marriages. If ever I was in the dark pit, I called Brooks, and he talked me out.

Studies show that anxiety, heart rate, blood pressure and respiratory rate can be reduced by listening to music, and that music has been linked to better sleep while on a ventilator in the ICU. Health care professionals have described a reduction in stress and empathy fatigue from listening to music.

This month's playlist is accompanied by news about the Music Export Memphis COVID-19 Relief Fund, which to date has awarded more than $100,000 in grants to individual Memphis musicians.

For as long as we can remember, Ramadan has been a communal activity. Perhaps coronavirus is a sign that we need to slow down and remember what’s important in life. 

The boundaries between work and home have completely broken down, and life will not really return to normal as long as parents don’t have any place to send children during the day.

Ask your doctor if the test you’re taking is specific to COVID-19 and have him or her review with you its limitations, particularly if the test is not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Downtown projects at One Beale, FedEx Logistics' headquarters and Union Row are working toward completion. What's missing in the pandemic is pedestrian vibrancy.

Many of the heroes who are attending to the sick and dying in our hospitals are immigrants: 25% of physicians in the United States are foreign-born, and 1.5 million immigrants are employed as doctors, nurses and pharmacists. 

A true return to pre-COVID-19 life in Memphis will require either a vaccine or the development of herd immunity.

Community Legal Center and Memphis Area Legal Services are receiving "panicked calls from people who have been furloughed or fired and who lack money to feed their children and keep a roof over their heads."

Even as we re-imagine and advocate for 21st-century facilities, we must do so knowing that learning can no longer be contained in the four walls of a classroom, nor should it.

We’ve watched Memphis’ social distancing “grade” drop down to a D. I think it shows how bad we all are at staying away from each other. On a smaller scale – the me scale – I’ve been finding more and more ways to socially distance … with people.

At the same time I was lamenting our Easter plans, I forced myself to pause and look around. I was spending a Saturday morning playing with my children in the yard and smoking a pork shoulder on the grill. Our current condition had “forced” us to find a way to spend the entire day as a family.

The city’s decision to temporarily close Riverside Drive converted the noisy and congested road that divides the Riverwalk from Tom Lee Park into a centerpiece of bustling pedestrian activities.