COVID-19 has flooded reporters with daily data and I’ve been swimming in it for a year.
Nearly every single day, I’ve watched my inbox for an email from either Joan Carr, public information officer for the Shelby County Health Department, or, more recently, Chip Washington, the public information officer of the department’s COVID-19 Response Team. They became daily pen pals, and I looked forward to hearing from them, though they had no idea I did. I am just one of dozens of reporters and officials on a daily email blast.
These emails come at around 10:30 a.m. They come with such a regularity that once I wrote to Daily Memphian reporter Omer Yusuf when one hadn’t come by noon, worried I’d been booted from the list. (I hadn’t.) There have been slight changes in the ways this data has been delivered since March 2020. But I know the rhythm well enough to know that the updated data on demographics and geography (what I call the “data dump”) comes on Thursday and the new weekly average test positivity rate comes on Friday.
Early on, I just published the health department’s stark black-and-white data graphic, a grim report card. It was the rawest presentation of information describing a virus that seemed to have no mercy. But those numbers didn’t show context. A frightfully high new daily case count did not tell you about all the people who had recovered and how many people were actually infected at that moment.
So, eventually, I made an infographic — a dashboard of information. It was colorful but it wasn’t intended to distract from the harsh realities of COVID-19 battering Shelby County on a daily basis. The colors were meant only to contrast data points, giving a clear picture of the situation as it stood each day.
Nearly every day I worked with that infographic and those numbers like a craftsman might work with leather and thread. Once, I got an email from an alt-weekly reporter at Charleston’s City Paper who wanted to build an infographic for her paper. She said mine was “beautiful” — and that’s high praise as far as nerdy newspaper infographics go. But I built ours hoping only to give our readers information at a glance. I hoped that would help them feel more in control in a situation that seemed to threaten to burn out of control at any moment.
And that’s what “doing the numbers” provided me for a year during this pandemic. I get nervous on an airplane because I can’t see out the front windows. Reporting on these numbers every day helped me to better expect the turbulence of this virus. With them, I could better predict when a new health directive would bring further restrictions or a loosening of rules and, maybe, the length of the pandemic.
With the numbers, I could watch government policy turn into physical reality. Business restrictions were so painful to watch that I couldn’t imagine bearing them, though I knew many who did. Mandates on masks changed us all. But I watched as they — and many other changes — would change these numbers and, thus, our COVID-19 situation in Shelby County. The policy nerd in me was fascinated while the citizen in me was annoyed, flummoxed, and sometimes angry.
These were never just numbers to me. They’re people, my people, Memphians and Shelby Countians. A healthcare worker friend told me early on about being with COVID patients as they died, usually alone, in the ICU. It was like burning up from the inside, the person told me. I’ve thought about that when I’ve reported every single death since March 2020. It weighs on me and brings a dense gravity to a situation that deserves it.
As I write this, 1,570 people in Shelby County have died from COVID-19, a virus and a death risk that did not exist here a year ago. If that doesn’t sound like a lot of people to you (it’s 1.7 percent of all COVID cases here as of Friday), gather that number of people in your mind and put them on the floor of the FedExForum, put them on the Peabody’s rooftop patio, put them in Minglewood Hall, put them in your backyard. It’s a lot of people — each of them someone’s parent or grandparent or spouse or child.
I’ve used the past tense when referring to “the numbers” here. That’s because, as of this week, we’re going to stop reporting them every weekday, as we have since March 2020, though we’ll still do a weekly wrap-up. This is not because the pandemic is over, far from it. We do it because the data has stabilized for now and readers don’t seem to need that daily dose of control. But rest assured I’ll keep my eye on these numbers every day and if news is there, I’ll be there, too.
If you enjoy any sort of music or news that’s slightly off the beaten path, you may ultimately have a bit of Scotch tape to thank for its availability on the radio. Back in 1967, when President Lyndon Johnson was about to sign the Public Broadcasting Act into law, the language was being debated up to the last minute, including the use of the word “radio.” In Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio, author Jack Mitchell describes how the words “and radio” had been removed from the document only days before heading to Johnson’s desk. At the last minute, the bill’s author used tape to add the two words back in, thus laying the foundation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, including National Public Radio and its nearly 50-year legacy of local affiliates.
Not long after that, in the mid-1970s, there was an explosion of independent, listener-supported community stations. And since then, public (NPR-affiliated) and community (volunteer) radio stations have offered the best alternatives to commercial music and news radio. For all the touting of “choices” offered by market-driven institutions, commercial broadcasting can take on a dispiriting sameness. As brilliant as pop culture may be at times, let’s face it: A city’s creative life depends on art that rises above the demographic- and market-driven ethos of commercial media.
Memphis might have been very different if nonprofit radio had not taken root here. But take root it did, and now the city boasts four non-commercial stations that are driven and supported by their listeners. April is an especially auspicious time to honor that legacy, it being the month when two of our most venerable stations were founded. Here’s a look at the state of non-commercial Memphis radio today.
Darel Snodgrass and Kacky Walton show off their NPR temporary tattoos. (Photo:courtesy of Darel Snodgrass)
WKNO (91.1 FM): The Mother of Mid-South Public Radio
“In April of next year, the station’s going to be 50 years old,” says Darel Snodgrass, director of radio at WKNO-FM. “We went on in April of ’72, which was only like three months after NPR was formed. The only program they had was All Things Considered, so all the rest of the time was filled with classical music.”
As Snodgrass points out, that twin commitment to both news and music has defined WKNO ever since. “There are not many stations that do what we do anymore, that have programming that mixes news and classical music. Most stations have added HD channels and split it, with all news on one and all classical on the other. There are only about five or six stations in the country that do what we do, and mix them. It makes us kind of unique.”
Though one might imagine that a kind of homogeneity pervades NPR stations across the country, there’s actually a lot of diversity among them. For one, stations differ radically in the degree to which they weave local news into the content of national programs. Snodgrass is justifiably proud of WKNO’s commitment to Mid-South news. “Doing local news is hard. It’s a lot of work, and we’ve got people now who do wonderful work. That’s one of the things I’ve been so pleased with over the last 10 years: the growth in our local news reporting.”
But it’s no surprise that the onetime music major and current music host is even more proud of the station’s commitment to his preferred art. As he explains, it is not just music in the abstract, but music as curated by devoted DJs in real time.
“This [NPR] station is unique in that we individually program our own shows. We pick our own music. This just doesn’t happen anymore. Even other classical music stations have a program director who’s telling them what to play. And of course commercial stations are all heavily programmed, mostly from New York and Los Angeles. So Kacky [Walton] and I consider ourselves to be extremely lucky. We can use that freedom to respond to things. If it’s a gloomy, rainy day, we can play something uplifting.We can react to things both locally and nationally, which a lot of people just don’t get to do. It’s kind of amazing, honestly.”
Kacky Walton, the station’s music coordinator and other music host, agrees. “You can respond to events,” she says. “The best example was after September 11, 2001. We just had news for I don’t know how many days. But when we finally went back to music, there was still that feeling of sadness, and you had to be really mindful of playing something with the appropriate mood to it. It was difficult, but at the same time, I discovered a lot of music that I hadn’t really played before.”
This was especially true as the lockdown conditions of the pandemic set in last year. Radio took on a new importance in people’s lives. “In hard times, radio gives you a sense of community,” Snodgrass says. “We heard a lot from folks who were listening to a lot of classical music. They may have previously been going to their jobs every day. Now they’re at home, listening to classical music, because it’s a haven, it’s a refuge. It provides a sense of security and continuity. These are pieces that have been around, in some cases, for hundreds of years. And they’re still there.”
WKNO was one of the first affiliates to join the NPR family, benefiting from the largess of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but not long after its launch, there arose an alternative take on nonprofit radio in the heart of Midtown. In fact, for many years, it was only in Midtown, because the station’s 10-watt broadcast couldn’t reach any farther.
“I think I came to the station in 1978, two years after it went on the air,” recalls Judy Dorsey, the longtime station manager for WEVL. “I was strictly a volunteer. I was just interested in it. I’d read about it in the paper and couldn’t believe we had something like this in Memphis. Granted, it was only 10 watts. You could only hear it in certain areas of Midtown. But just the fact that it was there and people were doing this was very exciting to me. And when I first went down to the house where it was located, I knew, ‘Here’s my people. I found ’em.’”
That esprit de corps fueled much of the counterculture, of course, including the little station that could. “There were a lot of what you might call hippies and assorted musicians. They were drawn to it almost immediately. And curious people like me, people who liked oddball music that wasn’t being heard.” As with the hippies that started the Memphis Country Blues Festival, there was an inclusiveness to the WEVL volunteers’ ethos that lent itself to diversity.
Judy Dorsey (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)
“I remember the first time I heard a live performance on the air,” Dorsey recalls. “I think it was [local blues legends] the Fieldstones. They played live on there several times, because we had connections with them. And they had what they called a Blues-a-thon. And I remember opening the door and there was Rufus Thomas up at the top of the stairs, doing the Funky Chicken!
“That was the first night that Dee ‘Cap’n Pete’ Henderson ever came to the station. He lived way over in Box Town, and had gone to Radio Shack and bought a big ol’ antenna, and stuck it up on his roof, just so he could hear the Blues-a-thon, because he’d read about it in The Commercial Appeal. Then he called the DJ on the air and the guy told him, ‘Come on down here! You know more about this stuff than I do!’ So he came down.” That encounter led to the late Cap’n Pete becoming one of the station’s preeminent blues DJs, whose shows are still rebroadcast to this day.
Homemade antennas and chance encounters capture the spirit of WEVL well, which has become a local institution on the strength of its do-it-yourself attitude. It persisted even as the station outgrew its original wattage in 1986. “Our first transmitter building, when we went back on the air in ’86, was all built with donated materials and volunteer labor. I don’t think we paid for anything out there,” says Dorsey.
The same personal commitment, and reliance on local pledges, has helped WEVL weather the cycles of funding and attrition. The Carter years were a good time to begin. “You had a lot of little 10-watt stations starting up at the same time as WEVL. A lot of them were born in that part of the 1970s. We’re charter members of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters — we were some of the first people to join it. Our first station manager and program director were getting paid through grant money from the federal government, and when the grant money ran out, that’s when they left. There were all kinds of different grants in those days. When all that stopped, that was a bad time. It was Reagan, he ruined everything. That was sort of a dark era, because we didn’t have any money to pay anybody. There was a period where it was strictly volunteers. It was a bit chaotic.”
But sometimes you can make chaos work for you, as WEVL’s longevity bears out. Today, they carry on much as before, still using the homemade record shelves made years ago, the epitome of listener-supported radio, with last year’s mid-pandemic pledge drive being one of the station’s most successful ever.
Marcella’s Memphis Soul Stew hostess Marcella Simien (Photo: Courtesy of Tommy Warren)
WYPL (89.3): Serving the Underserved, Dishing Out Memphis Magic
Though WEVL’s original 10 watts may have been rather weak, a station now using one of the region’s most powerful transmitters had even more humble beginnings. “We are now a 100,000-watt station, covering a 75-mile radius from the tower in West Memphis. That tower was actually donated to the library in 1997, and its power and size is a bit of overkill, but that’s the situation we’re in.” So reflects Tommy Warren, broadcast manager for WYPL, the station based in the basement of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.
Yet the station still retains its original mission of offering the vision-impaired and others readings of current newspapers, magazines, and books — one of only two such stations in the country. “It started out in 1978 as a ham radio kind of situation,” says Warren. “I am only the second radio manager here since then. Before me, there was a manager who was himself vision-impaired. He organized volunteers, and they’d sit in a little booth and read, and you had to have a ham radio at home to pick it up. It operated like that for about 15 years.”
When Warren came on board, he added an element to the readings by tapping into the huge digital archive of Memphis music in the library system. That has seen its audience increase dramatically, especially overseas, where the station can be heard online.
“We started doing all the music shows five or six years ago. Now we’re bringing in DJs like Randy Haspel and Lahna Deering and Barbara Blue. People who actually play Memphis music also come in here and produce shows.”
The new emphasis on music has made WYPL a real player on the community radio scene, although they, unlike the other stations mentioned here, do not depend on public donations. “Because we’re paid for by the city of Memphis, we feel there’s an obligation that we have to live up to. Especially through COVID. When there are emergencies, people turn to over-the-air radio for their first source of information.”
Jared “Jay B” Boyd, Shelby McCall, and Robby Grant (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
WYXR (91.7 FM): The New Kids on the Block
Yet another player in the nonprofit world of the airwaves arrived right in the middle of the pandemic lockdown last year, but the timing does not appear to have slowed its roll. Its frequency was already familiar to Memphians, having been where the University of Memphis’ station, WUMR, had lived on the dial for decades. But sometime in 2019, the U of M decided the jazz-only format and station management needed a change of course.
Robby Grant, executive director of WYXR, describes the process as an evolution of goals. “The University of Memphis knew they wanted to do something different with the radio station. They had an existing relationship with the Daily Memphian, and reached out to them, but the folks at the Daily Memphian said, ‘We don’t want to run an entire radio station.’ So they approached the Crosstown Concourse. The U of M wanted to get more connected with the community, so this was another way for them to reach outside of their campus. It made sense for it to be a partnership.”
For Grant, who has a background in software and web development, a crucial element was also making the most of digital technology to archive every show put on the air, which community stations in other cities have implemented. But once that infrastructure was in place, the shows themselves had to be created. (Including Flyer Radio, a show produced by Flyer staff featuring news, interviews, and Memphis music, and airing every Friday at noon.)
“They brought me in,” he says, “and I brought in Jay B [program director Jared Boyd] soon thereafter to really shape the programming. I had some ideas. I knew free-form radio allows a lot of flexibility for the community to be involved. I wanted some talk programming. I felt like that was missing. There’s some talk programming on a national level, but I thought there was a way to elevate more of the community talk. The Daily Memphian has their news part of it. So I was working on the nuts and bolts, bringing that together, getting agreements in place. When Jay B came on, we hit the ground running with the programming. We built on our networks, along with the applications process, to find DJs.”
By the time of their debut broadcast on October 5th of last year, they had 70 volunteer DJs, arguably with a greater programming diversity than any other station in the country. But it felt a bit like a minefield. As Boyd explains, “Frankly, moving from WUMR’s jazz-lover focus to a new format, a free-form radio station, was going to be a hard change for a lot of people, no matter what our content was. We were taking something away from the community that was extremely needed, in some people’s eyes. And that can be rough.”
Nonetheless, Boyd was determined to raise the stakes of the diverse programming. “People may not expect to hear community radio in Memphis, in the South, that has a space for hip-hop, house music, or punk. But the reality of Memphis is that those people are as much if not more representative of our community than the genres most people think of when they consider community radio. So how and why could we be representative of the community if we’re not representative of those people?
“And there are still places where we haven’t been able to find the right person, who understands what we do, and can present to their segment of the community. Like the Latinx community. But also the Vietnamese community and the Chinese and Japanese and Ethiopian and Somalian and Kenyan communities. There’s tons of cultures who pair their origins with the identity of being American and being a Memphian. But there are only 24 hours in a day, so we have to be creative about how to bring everybody on.”
Though there are more ambitious plans ahead, Boyd feels that the mix WYXR has settled on passes one key test, perhaps the toughest test of all: “The feedback we’ve been getting is that people don’t know how to explain what we do, except that it just feels and sounds like Memphis,” he says. “I wanted to lead with that.”
Editor’s Note: This month, WKNO, WEVL, and WYXR all have their seasonal pledge drives. We urge you to tune in and give generously.
The Shelby County Election Commission is seemingly due to have more of a partisan divide after the county’s Democratic delegation in the legislature cast votes over the weekend to provide the party’s two allotted members for the new commission term.
Renominated is Democratic member Bennie Smith, a dedicated party activist, especially on what have been hotly contested voting-machine issues. Out is Democrat Anthony Tate, who has voted with the commission’s three Republicans often enough to annoy a goodly number of his party mates. Nominated instead, is lawyer Kendra Lee, who has been active in the party’s voter-protection efforts and was a prominent supporter of Elizabeth Warren in last year’s Democratic presidential primary. She is policy manager for the Equity Alliance, a nonprofit voter advocacy group.
Other candidates for a Democratic position on the commission were Curtis Johnson, Jake Brown, and Henri Brooks, a former member of the state House of Representatives and the Shelby County Commission.
Meanwhile, the county’s three-member Republican contingent on the Election Commission is unchanged, members Brent Taylor, Steve Stamson, and Frank Uhlhorn having been renominated weeks ago for new terms by the GOP’s Shelby delegation. The five nominated members of the commission must be approved by the state Election Commission, a process that is usually a formality.
• Also taking on partisan dimensions is the issue of whether Shelby County should conduct property reappraisals at two-year intervals rather than the current four-year intervals. Requesting the change is Shelby County Assessor Melvin Burgess, a former Democratic member of the county commission, which will decide the matter.
Reportedly, the commission’s Democrats favor the proposal, and the Republicans do not. At its meeting last Thursday night, the executive committee of the Shelby County Republican Party voted unanimously to oppose the proposal, endorsing a statement that the change is unnecessary and “would increase the size and cost of government, would create additional irritation for taxpayers, and would likely result in higher taxes for many.”
The committee dispatched its point of view on the party’s email network in the form of a linked petition, stating, “Do you want your property reappraised every two years instead of every four years? Please sign the petition and email the Democratic County Commissioners and let them know that you do not support the change.”
What follows is a list of the official email addresses of the eight Democratic members of the County Commission: Eddie Jones, Michael Whaley, Willie Brooks, Tami Sawyer, Mickell Lowery, Edmund Ford Jr., Reginald Milton, and Van Turner.
• In the fallout of the 2013 city/county school merger and subsequent de-merger, three schools that lie geographically within the city limits of Germantown ended up in the Shelby County Schools district. All three schools — Germantown Elementary School, Germantown Middle School, and Germantown High School — have a majority of students from areas outside Germantown.
But ever since, there has been a desire in Germantown circles to reincorporate these schools into the Germantown system. Now that sentiment has taken the form of proposed legislation in the General Assembly. House Bill 917/Senate Bill 898, sponsored by Representative Mark White (R-Memphis) and Senator John Stevens (R-Huntington), would make it illegal for one district to operate schools that geographically are located in another district, in effect, transferring “the three Gs,” as they are commonly referred to in Germantown, to the jurisdiction of that suburban city’s school district. The legislation was due for consideration in both chambers on Wednesday, April 7th.
Tweet of the Week “You can’t explain ‘why’ you are cis. So, you shouldn’t need to understand why trans people are trans to know we deserve rights.” J. Dylan Sandifer (@jdylan901)
Ghostland?
Posted to Reddit by r/thestrada Reddit user r/thestrada posted a photo of himself at Graceland last week. “Ghostly faces in the window behind me at Graceland, October 2011,” he wrote. “Didn’t notice this until years later.”
Steal of a Deal
Posted anonymously to Craigslist Somebody from Collierville wants to sell you an autographed DC Talk tape for $800. The poster said the “authentic” cover, case, and cassette of the Christian rap/rock band was selling for $1,176 on eBay.
Krogerin’ Nextdoor user Helen Perkins said she spoke with the Kroger district manager about the much-bashed Union Kroger. The manager has a plan to make it “a whole new store” with long lines to be a “thing of the past.”
Sibling rivalry takes a back seat as brother and sister, Kat and Sanford Gore, work together to present a pop-up art show at the Medicine Factory in Downtown’s South Main Arts District.
Though the Gores share a familial familiarity, they have two distinctive styles.
Kat is a well-known painter. A graduate of Memphis College of Art, her work has been a favorite of interior designers, has shown in commercial galleries, and graced a Memphis in May poster. Kat’s style is markedly her own, whether a particular piece is whimsical or pensive. She uses muted color and imagery that may be bold or subtle, coupled with the occasional bit of mixed media. Her fans are always left to wonder what is coming with the next body of work.
Sanford is a bit more enigmatic, lower profile, exploring and creating quietly. Using a near-ancient wet glass technique and a modern camera, his photographic images are haunting or exuberant or both.
Show curator and producer Ken Hall, of Civic Engagement Consulting, says he is thrilled to be working with Kat again after coming out of isolation and months of quarantine.
“We worked on a show together about three years ago, which was a great success,” Hall says. “Her new body of work is really dynamic and exciting. Additionally, the pairing of siblings’ artworks in this show offers a dimension of depth, illustrating individual talents, which are synergistic in the gallery space. After limited social interaction, we will find that many artists have taken advantage of this time to create with more introspection and inspiration than ever.”
Artist reception for “Gore + Gore,” Medicine Factory, 85 W. Virginia, Saturday, Apr. 10, 10 a.m.-noon, free.
This may seem unlikely to readers of this column who are still clinging to the golf slacks of the former president and write me uncharitable emails, but I actually do research these weekly missives. I copy links to relevant or interesting articles into a “column fodder” folder on my desktop; I save interesting emails; I even look up stuff.
I also reread my Twitter feed, which isn’t exactly research, but sometimes it can capture the zeitgeist of a particular week. To wit: Editor & Publisher posted a story last Thursday about how their publisher had pulled off a stunning deal to buy all 1,100 Gannett newspapers, including TheCommercial Appeal. Whoa!
I read through the first couple graphs rapidly, slowing to reread only when I got to this part: “The new Operations Center is to be located about two miles northwest of Lebanon, Kansas, the geographic center of the contiguous United States. Newton will be recruiting retired NASCAR drivers to get the newspapers into each individual market within 72-hours of printing, which is, on average, two-days faster than currently being provided by most Gannett properties.”
Then I remembered the date: April 1st. Got me.
That same day, County Mayor Lee Harris issued a tweet urging all of us to get a COVID vaccine, citing the emergence of a highly contagious and deadlier Brazilian variant, which is definitely no joke. I’m a month post-vaccination and feeling somewhat bulletproof, though I still wear a mask in public. There’s no better feeling, right now. Seriously, if you’re sentient enough to be reading this and haven’t started the process of getting the vaccine, there’s really no excuse left, except “I’m an idiot.”
Later in the week, a Twitter debate broke out about which state had the absolute worst trifecta of governor and senators. Top contenders were Texas (Abbot, Cornyn, Cruz); Missouri (Parson, Hawley, Blunt); Florida (DeSantis, Scott, Rubio); Mississippi (Reeves, Hyde-Smith, Wicker); Alabama (Ivey, Shelby, Tuberville); and Tennessee (Lee, Blackburn, Hagerty). South Dakota (Noem, Thune, Rounds) also got some mention, to be fair, but the South truly owned this competition. So proud!
Speaking of pride, there were lots of tweets about the Tennessee legislature’s appointing Laurie Cardoza-Moore, an anti-Muslim, anti-BLM, 9/11 truther, vax-hoaxer, and all-around nutball to the state Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission, which, among other things, selects the textbooks used in Tennessee’s public schools.
Memphis Senator Raumesh Akbari interviewed the candidate on the Senate floor, picking apart her past lunacy and concluding, after questioning: “I cannot think of someone who is more uniquely unqualified to be in this position.” Senator Brian Kelsey, the ever-reliable GOP tool from Germantown, pooh-poohed the idea that Cardoza-Moore would be a problem, because, well, he’s Brian Kelsey.
Our legislators and governor also bum-rushed through an open-carry law that will allow any mouth-breathing crackpot to take a gun pretty much anywhere his tiny penis tells him to go. The law was opposed by all major law-enforcement organizations, attorneys general groups, and the vast majority of Tennessee voters. After the law’s passage, Governor Bill Lee made a quick call to the NRA to thank them for their support, making it pretty clear whose opinion matters to him. I really hope I live long enough to see these shameless GOP hacks get sent packing.
But it wasn’t all bad news. There were tweets about how the Memphis Fire Department, community advocate groups, and MATA set up a vaccination center for the area’s homeless, and inoculated dozens of folks who are living in the most vulnerable of circumstances. Good for them. And for us.
What else? I met a friend inside an actual restaurant for dinner for the first time in almost 13 months. We had steaks and split a bottle of Bordeaux and bitched and told the usual stories, and for a couple of hours, life seemed normal again — except for our longtime bartender saying we were starting to sound like the two old guys in the balcony in The Muppets.
Celebrate Mardi Gras twice this year when Cafe du Memphis returns May 1st with its New Orleans-style food, but in a new format.
The Rotary Club of Memphis’ annual festival, which benefits the Dorothy Day House of Hospitality, wasn’t held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, the event will be a drive-through event from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Malco Summer Drive-In at 5310 Summer Avenue.
In addition to food vendors, Cafe du Memphis usually features events for children and a jazz band, says event chair Lea Carr. “We are going to have music, but not a live jazz band,” she says. “We’re going to have music piped in.”
The food will be in closed containers, she adds.
The event is always held the first Saturday of every May. “So, that part did stay consistent.”
Prices are $10 for a half plate of beignets and coffee, or $20 for a full plate of beignets, shrimp and grits, and coffee. Those attending will drive through to pick up their orders. They may either take their food home or park in the theater lot to eat in their cars. All applicable health department protocols will be followed.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the partnership between the Rotary Club of Memphis and the Dorothy Day House of Hospitality, which provides temporary housing and support services to married couples or single parents with children. In the past four years, the Dorothy Day House has expanded into two more homes. This allows it to serve nine families simultaneously, and up to 25 families annually.
Taylor Hughes is executive director of the Rotary Club of Memphis.
Purchase tickets at Cafedumemphis.com or at the event.
Tennessee will sue the Joe Biden Administration for setting rules on the $3.7 billion in relief funding it wants to give the state.
Tennessee is set to get the funds from the federal government as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARPA). But to get the COVID-19 funding, states won’t be allowed to lower taxes on their citizens for four years, according to Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III.
Slatery joined a lawsuit with Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron to challenge the mandate. The suit, filed against U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, argues that “the tax mandate unconstitutionally usurps the authority of each state’s legislature to enact beneficial tax policies.”
The states have a constitutional right to implement their own tax policy.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery
“The states have a constitutional right to implement their own tax policy,” Slatery said in a statement. “We should not have to choose between accepting COVID-19 relief funds or surrendering to Washington’s attempt to override what only our elected officials in Tennessee are authorized to do.”
The suit calls the tax mandate “an unprecedented power grab by the federal government at a time when elected officials should be singularly focused on helping their constituents overcome the devastating effects of the pandemic. It usurps the states’ sovereign authority by coercing them into making the policy choices that a bare majority of Congress prefers, and a strictly partisan majority at that, without regard for the citizens of the states or the leaders they elect.”
“Kentuckians expect state tax policies to be set by the men and women they elect to represent them in the general assembly, and not as a result of an edict from the federal government,” Cameron said in a statement. “These COVID relief funds are essential to helping the Commonwealth and hardworking Kentuckians recover from the effects of the pandemic, and it is unconstitutional for the Biden Administration to hold the funds hostage if we don’t agree to Washington’s preferred tax policies.”
Have you ever wondered what made Memphis’ grande dame theater tick? On April 29 you can find out, while helping to keep the place going.
“The Orpheum Theatre Group is taking a creative, new approach to the virtual fundraiser,” says Orpheum Theatre’s president and CEO Brett Batterson. “The Hidden Orpheum uses the virtual space as an opportunity to showcase parts of the Orpheum people never see when they are visiting the venue in person. This is a fresh, exciting way to welcome Memphis and beyond into the inner workings of our historic building.”
The Hidden Orpheum is a streaming event where you can hear the untold stories of the great old theater at the foot of Beale Street, which has played host to thousands of performers, musicians, Broadway shows, and much more over the years. There will also be opportunities to bid on unique bits of Memphis stage history. Best of all, you can get a cocktail recipe or, with the VIP ticket, you can replicate the swanky Orpheum party experience at home with a custom, locally made charcuterie board and bottle of wine!
Like all the performing arts venues, the Orpheum is struggling to stay afloat until large-scale, in-person events are safe again. This unique, historic event is a great chance to help keep Memphis culture alive. Here’s a link to the announcement video, and a little video tour of the beautiful theater to whet your appetite.
Students practice coding in a CodeCrew class. (Photo courtesy of CodeCrew)
The NBA Foundation has announced a total of more than $3 million in grants aimed at creating employment opportunities, furthering career advancement, and driving greater economic empowerment in Black communities.
CodeCrew, founded by Nnaemeka Egwuekwe in 2015, educates and mentors Black students and professionals who are underrepresented in tech to become tech innovators and leaders through practical hands-on computer science training.
Egwuekwe said the grant would be used to provide support to a program for young adults training to be entry-level software developers. In the nine-month comprehensive course, students work in a small classroom and use real-world technologies to learn the fundamentals of coding and system development. The students, who receive a stipend, also get leadership training.
The Collective Blueprint, which partners with CodeCrew, has similar programs for young adults such as assisting with credential attainment in in-demand career fields including IT, healthcare, and the skilled trades. The nonprofit initiative was started in 2016.
