FedEx Stage Amy LaVere • 2:30 P.M. This local heroine up and got hitched to Austin’s Will Sexton, and now they’re inseparable, both onstage and off, to great musical effect. Her upright bass playing and plaintive singing lead the group through her original songs, with echoes of country, gypsy jazz, blues, rockabilly, and moody mambo. […]
Posted inEditorial, Opinion
Good Tidings
As the Tennessee General Assembly winds down, we find ourselves more gratified than usual. For one thing, the solons up thataway managed to bite the bullet and actually pass a major new tax bill to fund long overdue improvements in the state’s seriously needy roadways. The good thing about the 6 percent tax increase on […]
Posted inPolitics, Politics Beat Blog
Field Is Set for June 15 General Election in House District 95
Collierville School Board member Kevin Vaughan wins 7-person GOP primary, will go against Democrat Julie Byrd Ashworth and independents Robert Schutt and Jim Tomasik.
Posted inEditorial, Opinion
Monuments and Memories: The Confederacy and Jim Crow
Sometimes there is an obvious synchronicity at work in human affairs. There certainly seemed to be something like that going on this week in relation to the question of monuments and memorials. Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans took decisive action to dismantle and remove three Confederate-related statuaries from places of prominence in his city […]
Posted inEditorial, Opinion
Shhhhooot!
For some time now, there have been legal restrictions on the purchase of epinephrine products, which, under such brand names as Sudafed, were long used freely by sufferers from sinus conditions and colds to eliminate nasal congestion. But, as chronic sniffle victims know well, to buy such a product now requires purchasers to sign a […]
Posted inEditorial, Opinion
Memphis Census News is Troubling
For the last week or so, local residents have been digesting the news from the U.S. Census Bureau that the metropolitan Memphis area, encompassing nine counties in three states, managed to increase its population by the grand total of 888 people during the period July 1, 2015, through June 30, 2016. This was troubling news […]
Posted inEditorial, Opinion
Tennessee Legislature Trumps Cities’ Laws, Again
As has been amply demonstrated in the Tennessee General Assembly, Memphis is often on the short end of the stick when it comes to legislative actions. One recent case in point, covered in “Politics” this week (p. 8), was the action of both state Senate and state House in rejecting the city’s right to prescribe […]
Posted inEditorial, Opinion
Haslam’s Gas Tax Proposal Faces Conservative Opposition
The fat lady has not yet sung on Governor Bill Haslam’s proposed gas-tax bill to pay for overdue infrastructure and roadway improvements. Which is to say, the issue remains in doubt — perhaps technically, perhaps more definitively, depending on action in the legislature this week. Governor Bill Haslam But state Representative Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster) last […]
Posted inEditorial, Opinion
Ill at Ease in the Trump Era
For better, and mostly worse, it’s now the era of Trump — which is either a little over a month old or almost four months old, depending on whether it’s dated from last November 8th, Election Day, or January 20th, when the current president was inaugurated. A sense of dismay, joined at times with outrage and […]
Posted inEditorial, Opinion
Strickland’s Lists
Publicity regarding 81 persons deemed needful of a police escort while in City Hall has gone national, to the embarrassment of the city of Memphis and to its mayor, Jim Strickland, in particular. The bottom line, affirmed Strickland to members of the Rotary Club on Tuesday, was that the list is now “under review.” As […]
Posted inEditorial, Opinion
Resisting From the Left
Josh Cannon The modish word “proactive” presumably says something both quantitatively and qualitatively more than “active” does, and there is compelling reason to believe that it and other linguistic transformations are not lapses or even inventions so much as they are collective and subconscious adaptations to revisions in reality. That said, here’s a word with […]
Posted inFrom My Seat, Sports
Q & A: Memphis Open Tournament Director Erin Mazurek
Erin Mazurek The ATP World Tour returns to the Racquet Club of Memphis this week, the 41st consecutive year of professional tennis in the Bluff City. It is the third Memphis Open under the watch of Erin Mazurek. You’ve got two tournaments under your belt. What have you learned about tennis fans in Memphis, and […]