Author: Jen Clarke

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Opinion The Last Word

Make MATA Free: Improve the Lives of Thousands of Memphians

(Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Last spring I found myself in a position of unimaginable privilege. For the first time in my adult life, I had a car that worked and was paid off. No weird rattles, squeaking brakes, bald tires. I hate the term “adulting” for philosophical reasons, but it was one of those times in my life that made me think “so this is what it’s like.”

Then I started anticipating the inevitable break-in, wreck, or other misfortune that would set me back again and put me in my cosmic place. “Just watch,” I’d say. “Something’s going to fall out of the sky and land on my car because I don’t deserve this.”

A month later, as a chunk of road debris hurtled toward my windshield on I-40, I thought, “Well, there it is.”

Justin Fox Burks

What’s the MATA?

The damage turned out to be minor, but being virtually carless for a couple weeks reminded me how difficult it is to thrive in Memphis without a vehicle. My home and my office are two miles apart, putting me on the road a grand total of 10 minutes a day. I know I have it easy. But I tried to plot a bus route home from work and MATA’s trip planner told me “LOL, walk” — which I did, a couple times. And let me tell you, it sucked! If that’s more optimal than the bus, we’ve got a problem with the bus.

I can shrug and catch an Uber, but someone who has to schlep across town for a $7.25-an-hour job does not have that luxury. The bus ride from Whitehaven to Downtown takes about an hour one-way, not including the wait. Anyone who doesn’t have access to a car has their opportunities limited by the number of hours in a day. I’m heartened by the county mayor’s commitment to transit equity, and I’d love to see MATA viewed less as the nuisance in the right lane on Poplar and more as a reliable way to get around. Improving and expanding service are obviously high priorities for increasing ridership, but there’s one more way to get people to hop on.

The New York Times last month published a story about a growing trend in cities that have seen bus ridership increase up to 60 percent. All they had to do was waive the fare. Should Memphis try something similar? Yes, it sounds counterintuitive, as the city and county look to infuse more money into MATA, not less. But public transportation can’t work unless it’s an option for everyone, versus the only option for some. There are two ways to do that: Make it convenient, and make it affordable. $1.75 a ride seems affordable, until you factor in the time investment and the fact that $70 a month does not fit everyone’s definition of “affordable.”

“Oh, but who will pay for it?” Let’s just get this out of the way: the same people who pay for every other public good. I have little patience for those who bristle at paying for services they don’t use, as if we could allocate our taxes to the projects we care about. I don’t have kids, and my house hasn’t burned down yet, but here I am, still dutifully paying for schools and the fire department. If you live in Cordova and have never seen a bus, I’m sorry to hear it — but you chose the Germantown Parkway lifestyle, friend. And you’re contributing to the road congestion and pollution that better public transit would solve.

Actually, that makes a pretty good case for a toll. How about, say, $1.75 each way for commuters on 240 and 385? While cities that waived bus fares saw an increase in ridership, they didn’t see a decrease in the number of cars on the road. This is because people who ride the bus generally don’t have cars. Such is the case in Memphis, where bus riders typically live in poorer neighborhoods. Why should they pay to be part of the solution?

In addition to the wheel tax the county commission is considering, there are other car-centric ways to fund free transit. On any given day in Midtown, the city could make a boatload ticketing cars parked illegally on the street — too close to the corner, in no-parking zones, in front of fire hydrants. Maybe some incentives could encourage businesses to dig in and support a transit fund. Who knows? It’s not impossible to make transportation a right, not a privilege.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.

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Opinion The Last Word

As Iowa Goes … Why We Need to Rethink the Primary System

CREDIT: Pancaketom | Dreamstime.com

With the confetti swept and the holiday credit card statements sent for payment, it’s time to dive into what promises to be a well-fought and civil presidential election season. In just three weeks, we’ll find out which of the 12 (at press time) Democratic hopefuls survives the gauntlet. Who will emerge from a year of hand-shaking and folksy photo ops in Iowa, electability still intact?

That was a trick question. The four candidates who have been leading the whole time will persist, and so will the four billionaires who have no chance. If you had more money than you could ever use, wouldn’t you spend it on a vanity campaign and not something frivolous like, I don’t know, earthquake relief or fighting the Australian wildfires? Guess that’s why I’m not a billionaire.

Pancaketom | Dreamstime.com

Candidates of the corn

Iowa’s outsized relevance is one of many baffling traditions that proves this country’s electoral process needs an overhaul. What started as a response to a legitimate threat to democracy in 1968 has become, like the Electoral College and two-party system, “just the way we do things,” for better or worse. The Iowa caucus is like a large-scale version of a New York Times profile of “undecided voters” in a Rust Belt diner. I’m sure they’re all fine people, Iowans. They just don’t deserve the attention.

Iowa has a population of 3.15 million. That’s total. The population is just slightly larger than that of Puerto Rico, a territory that does not even get to participate in the election. Los Angeles has more people than Iowa. New York City has more than twice as many people as Iowa.

Defenders of the state’s vanguard status — most of whom live in Iowa — say the state’s small size allows candidates to interact with voters one on one and sample a slice of real American life. The state is more than 90 percent white, so that slice is more like a sliver. The second state to vote, New Hampshire, is also more than 90 percent white — and even smaller. It’s almost as if this is done by design to preserve the influence of white people in an increasingly diverse electorate!

Iowa doesn’t represent the country electorally, either. In 2016, about 171,000 Democrats and 187,000 Republicans voted in Iowa’s caucuses. The winners, Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz, won 50 and 27 percent of the delegates, respectively. Neither candidate won the general election, not that any of us need to be reminded.

In fact, the Iowa caucus has correctly picked only three first-term Presidents: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Bill Clinton got less than three percent in 1992. He came in fourth place, two spots below “Uncommitted.” Yikes. A real barometer, that caucus.

As much as I enjoy watching middle-aged dudes try to look natural while eating a corn dog, the state fair butter-cow shtick is played out. Kamala Harris ate a pork chop with her bare hands, and she’s not even in the race anymore. Joe Biden didn’t eat anything: How is he even competitive? As political views go, “Wow, that candidate really humiliated himself. He wolfed down that turkey leg like a pro. I bet he’d show Vladimir Putin who’s in charge” is just as misguided as “The ‘You’re Fired’ guy really tells it like it is.” Maybe that’s just who we are.

I understand primary season is a huge windfall for the state. Des Moines’ tourism board estimates $11.3 million in economic impact in the week leading up to caucus day — and that’s just Mike Bloomberg’s ad spend. (Did you hear? He Will Get It Done.) But if the primaries were really small-D democratic, every state would be voting on the same day — preferably one that isn’t nine months from Election Day. Let’s do the whole primary on Super Tuesday. Iowa voters no doubt take their caucus seriously, but media buyers and TV pundits are the only other Americans benefiting from this exhausting slog.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.

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Opinion The Last Word

Trash Matters: About Those Proposed Changes to Garbage and Recycling Schedules

With the holiday season in full swing and spontaneous weather that turns autumn foliage into cold mildewy blankets, one cannot be blamed for letting the lawn debris pile up. At least that’s what I tell myself most years, when the neighbors are taking their Christmas lights down and I’m trudging through a six-inch wall of decomposing leaves to get to my car in the morning.

This year’s different, though. When we cranked up our backpack blower last weekend, we were among the first on our street. For someone who usually ends up overpaying someone to vacuum our front lawn into a truck in, like, February, it was a major feat. Most years I’m shamed into action by my fear of judgment, or worse, of a letter from code enforcement. I’m on the ball this year, motivated by a message from the mayor, whose blight reduction strategy has taken a bizarre detour.

What a damn mess

Last week’s weekly email from Mayor Strickland’s office started on a hopeful note. Great news! We fixed our garbage collection issues! Everything’s been running like clockwork. Well, of course it has. The bar was low. When you reward contracts to the lowest bidder, you get what you pay for. Garbage collection is thankless work: If you don’t pay well, there’s no reason to care. Hire the people, give them the tools they need, and compensate them appropriately. Do this in literally any situation and there’s a decent chance you’ll succeed. The bad news is: Now that we know how much it costs, we have to stop doing all the stuff that was working. Makes perfect sense.

There are two possible scenarios here. One, the mayor’s people miscalculated the long-term cost of bringing the job in-house, hiring the people and purchasing the equipment necessary to do the work properly. Or, they overestimated the community’s enthusiasm for paying more for a basic public service. So they requested a more than $7 per-month rate hike that Memphis City Council, unsurprisingly, did not approve. I’m neither a politician nor an economist, but increasing the cost of something by more than 30 percent at once seems like a tough sell. Yes, Strickland said they “may well have to” propose a rate increase, but that’s about the equivalent of your dad saying “we’ll see” when you ask to borrow the car.

So they’re going to lay off 275 sanitation workers. They’re going to cut back services to what appears to be an even lower level than before solid waste collection was “fixed” in Memphis. Happy holidays to everyone who wished for a return to the good old days of spotty pickup and broken bins! Starting January 6th, there will be no more outside-the-cart pickup. Recycling will get picked up once a month, so pounds and pounds of recyclable materials will end up in a landfill. Sorry, it’s the only way, says the mayor. Better get those leaf bags to the curb by the end of the month or else they’ll be there forever.

This is a bluff, right? It has to be because I am struggling to reconcile “Memphis has momentum” and “brilliant at the basics” with “we cannot afford to pick up your trash.”

“I’m never a fan of raising rates, but this is our only option” might sound more sincere if I hadn’t just read about yet another developer getting tens of millions of dollars in tax incentives. None of those guys can chip in, so we’ll just wait around and let the trash pile up for a few weeks or months or years until city council comes around on the rate increase. Sounds like a plan. Maybe one hard rain will be enough to remind them streets flood when storm drains are full of leaves that didn’t get bagged because nobody is coming to pick them up. Here’s hoping the pothole budget is as flush as it was last year.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing strategist and an unapologetic Memphian.

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Opinion The Last Word

The NCAA is Wrong. The University of Memphis is Right.

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

You knew it was bound to happen. Here in Memphis, we just can’t have nice things. Riding the high from a Tigers football victory over previously unbeaten SMU and an impressive debut on ESPN’s College GameDay straight into a new basketball season filled with high, yet totally reasonable expectations, things were looking up for the ole Blue and Gray.

Until Friday, when my ride Downtown to FedExForum was disrupted by news that the NCAA had once again changed its mind about something.

On one side, you have a mother who wanted to be close to both her kids. You have an NBA legend who came from nothing, happy to spend his “retirement” elevating youth the way he elevated himself. You have a boy — seven feet tall, but still a boy — born with a preternatural gift, who needed the protection of someone who has walked in those same huge sneakers. On the other side, you have an institution willing to throw two generations of college sports superstars under the bus to prove — well, I’m not sure what the NCAA aims to prove with this, exactly. All over two acts of generosity: one to a university, another to a family.

Larry Kuzniewski

James Wiseman

Eleven years ago, Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway, who began his Memphis State career academically ineligible and finished it an All-American with an Elite Eight and the first triple-double in program history, who became a perennial NBA All-Star and the face of an iconic Nike line — donated $1 million to the University of Memphis. It was an incredible act of charity at a critical time for the university. As you may recall, 2008 was not a great year, economy-wise.

This largesse is the sort of thing the NCAA should be hailing as a success story.
However, that donation, in their twisted view, “indefinitely” qualified Penny as a “booster” and therefore disqualified him from ever helping anyone again. When Penny signed that check, he had no idea he’d see his namesake building every day at work 10 years later. James Wiseman was in elementary school. When Penny helped Wiseman’s family move to Memphis in 2017, Tubby Smith was coach of the Tigers. Sorry to say it, but, uh, nobody was boosting that operation.

By that logic, any season ticket holder should be barred from passing out candy on Halloween. Next time you’re stopped at a red light and see a kid in football pads asking for donations, tell him “Sorry. I’d love to give you my cupholder change, but I don’t want to jeopardize your college career.” No former student-athlete, then, can make a monetary donation to their alma mater without this excessive scrutiny. I’m no expert, but I remember learning something about a “chilling effect” in my constitutional law classes. How convenient for those who see the tide turning.

They are scared. They see what Penny is doing at Memphis: bringing NBA swagger to college in an environment that prepares players for what they really want to do. They see public opinion turning in favor of athletes’ rights. They see universities resisting their arbitrary enforcement. They see the changing faces on the sidelines. So they punish … the athletes?

They say their mission is to “support student-athletes on and off the field, in the classroom and in life” and they keep getting caught in a lie. If they supported Wiseman — who is completely innocent in all of this — they wouldn’t have “likely” rescinded his eligibility five months after they granted it. Instead, they waited until he had already played a game and couldn’t just go somewhere else. Because of their transfer policies and one-and-done rules, he has no choice but to fight. The NCAA cannot come out of this looking like the good guy.

As an alumna, and, you know, a compassionate human, I’m proud to see the U of M stand up and say “that’s not fair, and we’re not going to do that.” Play Wiseman in every single game and take it all the way to the Supreme Court if it comes to that. Hang the 2008 banner, too, while we’re thinking about it. The rules may be the rules, but that doesn’t make them just. Universities like the U of M that don’t have the blue-blood prestige, monster TV deals, and big-conference paychecks can’t afford to sit back and shrug while the capricious NCAA clings to relevance. Let them vacate the entire season if this is the hill they want to die on. We’ll be there for the whole show.

Jen Clarke is an unapologetic Memphian and a digital marketing specialist.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

MEM’s the Word: A Defense of the City’s Airport

CREDIT: © Calvin L. Leake | Dreamstime.com

Please buckle your seat belts, put away all large electronic devices, and return your seat backs to the upright position as I deliver what might be deemed a highly controversial opinion. Having landed at 14 different airports this year, I can say with confidence that I actually kinda like Memphis International Airport.

Note that I said “I like it” and not “I think it’s good.” Because all airports are terrible by nature; each differs only in its individual brand of terribleness. MEM’s is about 65 percent cosmetic, and they’re working on it. I know this because a massive sign advertises that fact just past the TSA screening area. It’s easy to miss if you’re busy congratulating yourself for forking over $85 and your fingerprints for the privilege of keeping your shoes and belt on. “Best decision I ever made,” I mutter as I watch some barefoot chump fumble to extract his carefully-packed laptop from his roller bag. That poor sucker is going to spend 10 whole minutes in security. He couldn’t cut it at a place like DFW, where the line sometimes snakes out the door like the world’s most stressful nightclub. And if you’re unlucky enough to fly out after peak hours, it doesn’t matter if you have TSA PreCheck or not. Hope you’re at the right terminal.

© Calvin L. Leake | Dreamstime.com

An image of local musicians welcomes travelers to Memphis International Airport’s baggage claim.

Our airport feels small and quaint and, frankly, barely deserving of the word “International” in its name, but I’m not sure that’s the worst thing ever. Gate C22 may seem like a haul, but at least you don’t have to navigate a series of escalators and some internal tram network to get to it. Heaven forbid, the “AirLink” or “SkyConnect” or whatever name marketing chose in hopes of making the experience feel a little less like the inside of a bank drive-through canister is out of service and you have to squeeze your body and your baggage into an overstuffed shuttle bus. You’ll be longing for the simplicity of MEM, where a moving sidewalk is the most sophisticated form of transport we need. When it’s out of service, the floor’s still right there.

I am aware that if not for lack of busy-ness and its perceived smallness, I wouldn’t have so many airports to compare to MEM — because I’d be on way more direct flights. But until very recently, MEM was no smaller than it was in the 1990s — back when Northwest Airlines had the place humming all the time. Twice this summer I had to park on the top level of the economy garage and thought, “Hell yeah, girl. The airport is back, baby.” If you’re there at the right time on a Monday morning, it’s legitimately busy. But there’s a middle ground between our relatively chill experience and the bedlam one encounters at Newark, where panhandlers (Like, how? Did they buy a ticket?) roam the food courts.

I would give just about anything for a nonstop flight to New Orleans, and yes, I know the drive is easy but that’s four hours I’d rather spend eating. And how about direct flights to Boston and Seattle? A transatlantic flight would be cool, too. The traffic could quadruple and I’m not sure passengers would even notice. Maybe travelers would have to start arriving 30 minutes before their flights instead of 15. The airport’s biggest problem is that it looks like a 1970s airport movie set — honestly, who cares, as long as the WiFi works? Natural light and quiet places to work are cool, but who’s trying to hang out at the airport long enough for those features to matter? You will never complain about the walk to the garage after you’ve taken a shuttle to the cab stand at LaGuardia, where you’ll next wait in a line of a thousand cabs for what feels like an eternity before you even begin your journey into the city.

Memphis is one of the few places in the country, possibly even the world, where you can practically just roll up to the front door and catch a flight. More airports should be trying to be like ours, not the other way around.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.

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Opinion The Last Word

Coco: On Pets, Passages, and Social Media

CREDIT: Jen Clarke

Coco was a tortie with golden, owl-like eyes. At 11 months, she still hadn’t grown into her ears, pointy and perky like her personality. I was at the Memphis Humane Society to look at another cat that may well have been her litter-mate. She wasn’t interested. But Coco, then called Yaya, had something special. Of course, she wouldn’t replace our calico, who had passed suddenly four months prior, but she would fill the space she had left behind. I was pretty sure she’d get along with our other cat; this would prove to be an understatement.

I didn’t notice Coco was missing two toes on her front paw until a few months later, when I was trimming her claws. I wondered what misadventures and misfortunes befell her during her time on the streets, her life before rescue. I swore I’d give her the comfortable, pampered life a cat deserves. I’d keep her belly full, her bed soft, her scratching posts tall.

I noticed a lump on Coco’s hind leg in January, a few weeks before her estimated fourth birthday. I took her to the vet — it was big, that’s not normal, we need to operate, she said. She removed the tumor, the adjacent lymph node, and most of Coco’s leg. My resilient cat quickly adjusted to life as a “tripawd.” After a few days, she was escaping her makeshift recovery suite and right back to jumping on counters. We were optimistic we had saved her. I was convinced that fourth leg was just for looks because its absence didn’t slow my kitty down.

Jen Clarke

Coco the golden-eyed tortie cat

About six months later, I opened Coco’s dinner and she didn’t come running. She had arthritis and an upper respiratory infection and tumors in her lungs. I spent the hardest month medicating, cuddling, spoon-feeding on my lunch break; every night I went to bed worrying that I was more committed to her life than she was. How would I know when it was time to let her go? Turns out, you just know. It was a Friday morning. I woke up and ran 10 teary miles to make sure I really thought it through. Sweating and sobbing, I called the vet to make an appointment. “She’s ready.”

I filled Coco’s last few hours with treats and chin scratches before I put her in the carrier with her blanket and favorite toy. I left the empty carrier in the car and went straight to bed, where I spent most of the weekend lonely and defeated. I had tried so hard.

Ten years ago, one of our candidates for city mayor would have found that hilarious, I guess. I try to imagine a context in which a stranger’s reaction to the pain of euthanizing a pet would inspire anything but empathy and pity — maybe she had a really ugly cry face? Still, no. It’s a hideous thing to say. I will never understand it. But 10 years seems like plenty of time to outgrow a bad attitude, so I can offer a little grace.

Experiences are like a playlist, a compilation of chart-toppers and experimental phases playing in the background whether we’re listening or tuned out. They matter, whether you validate them with a tweet or a TikTok or whatever. People forget this sometimes. That’s why I decided not to share anything about my cat’s passing on my Instagram or Facebook, opting instead to talk about her in person, the old-fashioned way, and only if I’m asked. Until right now, that is. It’s not that I welcome the discomfort of explaining to everyone who asks “How are your cats,” but because you can’t put it away, once it’s out there in pixels.

You have a public archive full of consequences. A bot will comment “Lovely!” in six months and bump a sad memory to the top of the feed, just as you were starting to get over it. Facebook in a year will show you what happened on this day because its algorithm sees all the likes and comments, but not the content. There’s an app called Timehop that curates everything you’ve posted on a certain date, to remind you how much fun you’ve had. Unfortunately, it also shows you how much you’ve evolved by reminding you how cringey your opinions once were. It doesn’t discern the moments you want to revisit from the ones you don’t. They’re all out there because you put them there. Whether you have public ambitions or are disinterested in reliving private pain, consider: Not everything is fit for publication.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Buck Stops … Where?

CREDIT: Gints Ivuskans | Dreamstime.com

As someone who writes words for a living, I’m admittedly not what one would call a “math person.” My grasp on economic concepts is tenuous, so please do not treat the following as financial advice. However, after enough people say the same thing, coincidences become patterns that even money dummies like me can recognize. Economists are forecasting a recession on the horizon. All the hallmarks are there: weakening global economic growth, declining yields on the 10-year Treasury note, house-flipping ads on the radio, and B-roll footage of face-palming stock market traders on news clips. Friends, I am worried about The Economy. And I have some questions.

As a consumer, how exactly does one prepare for a recession? Should I refinance my home? Do I need to start stockpiling canned goods and ramen noodles and move my $46.09 in savings to a more secure place, like a mattress or a shoebox in my backyard? Is there a checklist I can hang on the fridge? I remember the last recession’s local impact, the industry bailouts, the golden parachutes, the stimulus programs. But I was barely out of college and my gruesome financial situation in those days was mostly a self-made mess. Was I affected? Of course, we all were. Between credit card debt, student loans, and my decision to pursue a career in journalism at the exact moment people decided to stop paying for newspapers, I would have been broke regardless. Can’t worry about your 401K when you don’t have one, folks, am I right?

Gints Ivuskans | Dreamstime.com

Donald Trump

Experts predict the next recession won’t be as severe or last as long as 2008’s financial disaster, but signs point to a downturn. Some say it’s already happening. So, what exactly is being done to prevent or mitigate a crisis, knowing just how bad things can get? Are we just waiting for China to blink and call off the trade war? Doesn’t seem likely. Are Nancy Pelosi and the bafflingly impeachment-averse faction of Congress banking on a crummy economy in 2020 and expecting to ride the wave of destruction to a win for the Democratic party? It’s so cynical and obviously doomed to fail, I’m sure it’s been pitched as a serious strategy.

In the meantime, I’m not sure I trust some CNBC talking head, the executive producer of The Conjuring 2, and a “fringe” economist whose views are said to “go against a strong professional consensus” to guide us out of the fray. President Deals, whose tariff tête-à-tête with China is apparently causing much of the market panic, swears the Federal Reserve Board is out to get him. He laps up the credit for low unemployment, but shaky markets and any other bad omens that make it to the Resolute Desk are a cocktail of fake news and Fed conspiracy. And high-ranking economic officials such as Wilbur Ross — the guy who said rising aluminum costs won’t affect the price of soup, a product that comes in an aluminum can — are downplaying recession fears on cable news shows. Forgive me if my concerns are less than assuaged. And I highly doubt buying Greenland would move the needle, even if it were an option.

According to the Treasury Department, the federal government has already spent more than $3.5 trillion in 2019 — that’s the most it’s spent over a 10-month period since the Great Recession. And the budget deficit is projected to top a trillion. Like I said, I’m no economist, but last year’s tax cut doesn’t seem to be paying for itself as promised. If spending is that high now, what happens when unemployment rises? Where is the next stimulus package coming from? Where’s the money going now? What happened to those Tea Party Patriots who cared so much about spending and deficits?

Even if a looming recession is “garden variety,” as Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi predicts, how many times is the so-called party of fiscal responsibility going to try the trickle-down thing before we put our collective foot down?

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.

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Opinion The Last Word

Go Fund America

Memphians take care of each other. That’s not boosterism; it’s a proven fact. The city consistently ranks among the most charitable in America, year after year. So I wasn’t surprised at the turnout at last Saturday’s “For the Love of Luke” benefit to raise funds for one of Midtown’s most prodigious and beloved musicians. I wasn’t surprised by the silent auction bids or the GoFundMe proceeds, either — or the quickness with which so many people offered their time and talents. If you missed it, I’m sorry you weren’t there for a hell of a show, but there’s another benefit at DKDC this weekend, and the lineup is just as good.

In these moments, I’m proud to live in a place where people rally to help each other out when they need it. But something gets lost in all the feel-good vibes surrounding these inspiring tales of community: We shouldn’t have to do this. For one thing, in a town that markets itself as a cornerstone of “blues, soul, and rock-and-roll,” it’d be nice if our cultural torch-bearers were a little better taken care of. But big-picture, it’s fundamentally screwed up that health care is treated as a commodity, rather than a right and a moral obligation, and that’s putting it nicely.

Remember the migrant caravan the GOP tried to elevate during last fall’s midterm elections as a campaign issue? There’s actually another caravan that, I think, represents a much more troubling issue: people with type 1 diabetes who have to make regular bus trips to Canada to buy insulin. Because, understandably, they can’t afford to spend $300-plus on a single vial. Millions of Americans are diabetic, and prices have tripled over the past decade while drugmakers make bajillions of dollars. Meanwhile, 26-year-olds are dying because they’re fresh off their parents’ coverage and forced to ration their life-saving medication. So far, Colorado is the only state that regulates the amount patients can be charged: no more than $100 a month.

Worse yet are the stories — pitched as evidence that the kids are all right and the next generation isn’t fully empathy deficient — of elementary-aged students pooling their allowances or giving up their birthday presents to help a classmate get a new wheelchair or some other health-care necessity for which money absolutely should not be a barrier. “That’s raising ’em right,” says the commentariat. Sorry, no. I’m not sure it’s possible to “raise ’em right” in a nation where a child with a disability has to rely on the generosity of her classmates, who are also children. The only lesson that teaches is that only people with money are allowed to live semi-comfortably, and everyone else is at their mercy, even kids. While that’s probably true, it certainly doesn’t make it right.

Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy because it’s next to impossible to budget for an unexpected health-care expense. On top of the bills, lost wages add up, and those rainy-day funds evaporate in minutes. Even for those with insurance, high-and-rising deductibles lead to high out-of-pocket costs. That means there are a lot of people out here with nagging pains and weird lumps they’re hoping will just go away on their own. And they’re waiting for the situation to get bad enough to justify the $500 or $1,000 or the firstborn child they’ll have to give up for some relief. GoFundMe, the most popular crowd-funding platform out there, has raised more than $5 billion and counting since its launch. Of course a third of their campaigns are for health-care costs. I bet another decent chunk is for vet bills, but I digress.

People seem to be more than willing, happy even, to contribute to these campaigns. I wonder if there’s an opportunity for GoFundMe to scale its platform. Maybe they can launch a national pilot program, where a little bit of money is taken from people’s paychecks and put in a big pool for medical care. That way, we all could just go to the doctor when we need to, without having to worry about missing a rent payment or getting a claim for cancer treatment rejected as unnecessary or getting sued by the hospital. Call it, I don’t know, “GoFundAmerica” or something. “GoFund Us All,” maybe. Sounds crazy, but it just might work.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Grit and Groan

CREDIT: REUTERS | USA TODAY USPW

While the local and national media were busy portraying Memphis as a town just happy to watch our Large Spanish Son succeed, I wondered if I was the only Grizzlies fan watching the NBA Finals with the acrimony of an ex who had just received a save-the-date from the one who got away. If nobody else is going to acknowledge that it’s still freaking weird seeing Marc Gasol in Toronto Raptors black and red, whooping and celebrating and chugging wine with some other teammates, I guess I’ll be the first.

When the Grizzlies sent Gasol to Toronto, I knew they were doing right by him, putting him in a position to win a ring without the pressure of having to be The Guy all the time. I just wasn’t prepared for it to happen so fast. It was beyond time for both sides to move on and start looking toward the future. But seeing your ex having a good time with somebody else at a place he never took you is never fun, regardless of who broke up with whom.

REUTERS | USA TODAY USPW

Marc Gasol holds the 2019 NBA Championship trophy.

“Oh, he does that now? Interesting,” I caught myself saying during Game 5. “Aggressive Marc showed up. Man, I miss these nights.”

Yes, the relationship outlived its spark and lasted about a year longer than it probably should have, taped together by memories of happier times. But that should have been us, dammit. Forget throwing a parade for Big Spain — how about a pity party for the city that was, to borrow a line from his new team’s pop icon, with him shooting in the gym. And we’ll get to do it all over again next season, when Mike Conley inevitably proves to be Utah’s missing piece. Hell, maybe Mike and Marc will end up playing each other in the Finals. Won’t that be a dream come true? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. It will be depressing.

Please do not get it twisted — despite my bitterness and the number of times I’ve yelled “Oh, for God’s sake will you just shoot it?” over the past few seasons, I am truly happy for Marc Gasol. I love nothing more than seeing people accomplish their goals.

Actually, that’s wrong. There is something I would love more, and that is seeing Zach Randolph and Tony Allen on a parade float, cruising down Riverside Drive. Please pause for a moment to ponder this amazing visual and consider how close it was to becoming reality. In some parallel universe, I like to imagine it has happened — maybe even twice. In that universe, Z-Bo’s hand never met Steven Adams’ face five years ago. The Grizzlies upset the Thunder and rode that momentum to the Finals. CJ McCollum’s elbow never got acquainted with Conley’s eye socket, and the Warriors never even got a chance to blow a 3-1 lead against the Cavaliers. A lot of things would have had to go right to secure those outcomes, and “everything going right” has only recently become associated with the Grizzlies brand, but fandom doesn’t have to be rational all the time. Fan is short for fanatic, after all.

That’s how close they got to glory — just a couple of unlucky breaks and some really, really questionable personnel decisions away. Remember that the next time you see someone comparing the Gasol and Conley trades to “sending them off into the real world” like a kid to college, as a fan told one local outlet. It wasn’t long ago that the Grindhouse was the real world that chewed up the Spurs and crushed the Clippers, where the MVP became Mr. Unreliable.

With an electric new point guard and some new people in charge, it feels like good times are on their way back to the corner of Beale and B.B. King. But the organization lingered a little too long in the glow of the Grit ‘n’ Grind era (ahem, Wrestling Night), so I think we’ve earned a little extra time to grieve. Hopefully Ja, Jaren, and company understand and can make room for the Core Four in their eventual championship parade. For the visual and for paving the way.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

TMI! Our Tiny Computers Are Making Life Hard.

CREDIT: © Sergey Khakimullin | Dreamstime.com

My sister sent $150 and a tube of saliva to a company in California she found online. They did some science, and now we have a new uncle and cousin. What a time to be alive. I shared this revelation with some friends and learned that The War was apparently a randy time for many granddads and papaws. Guess that’s why it was the Greatest Generation, huh? If your granddaddy served, you might reconsider springing for the Father’s Day offer of 25 percent off an ancestry kit plus free gift-wrap. Or don’t say nobody warned you when you end up with your own gift: uncovered family secrets and a diminished opinion of your grandfather.

Whatever. I get it. War is hell, boys will be boys, and all that. Maybe Grandpa didn’t know about his secret child. It’s too late to tell him, anyway — he’s been gone for 30 years. It could be a mistake or a false alarm. I don’t know how much I trust those mail-order DNA tests — certainly not enough to send my own specimen to their sinister gene library. I read the fine print.

© Sergey Khakimullin | Dreamstime.com

On the bright side, my sister’s spit sample tested negative for the terrifying gumbo of genetic risk factors the service can detect. “Doctor Google” induces enough hypochondria without foresight of the debilitating diseases that lurk in the future. Otherwise I’d spend the rest of my life shouting “I’m a-comin’!” to the heavens, Fred Sanford-style, every time I get a stomach cramp or forget where I put my keys. That’s the last thing I need. I lose those things every day.

As family secrets go, ours is awkward but not exactly earth-shattering. My grandmother isn’t around to have her feelings hurt. It’s just another thing to add to the growing list of things I wish I hadn’t found out, like the amount of sodium in a packet of instant ramen. I’m not sure if I’m afflicted with millennial unrest or I’ve recently unlocked a new adulting level, but I’m starting to reconsider my stance on knowledge being power. It’s kind of overrated. Between the things that can’t be unseen or unheard, immaterial crap, and general information overload, I’m starting to understand how people did live without this stuff. As someone who works in digital content and also has to watch a YouTube video to boil an egg, that’s saying something.

It’s wonderful that technology puts new realms of information at our fingertips. But only a sliver of it is essential; the rest is either pointless or false and it keeps getting harder and harder to distinguish or even keep up. On one hand, think of how many arguments went unsettled before we had tiny computers in our pockets. We don’t have to balance checkbooks to know whether we can afford to charge a pizza to our debit cards — the tiny computer will tell us. Heck, we don’t even need checkbooks anymore. That’s great, but that same computer is also responsible for showing me the infamous “pink slime” video and giving away the ending of Get Out. It has told me so many opinion-wrecking things, like which of my schoolmates grew up to be anti-vaxxers. Not long ago, one had to attend a class reunion to obtain that kind of dirt — it was once-in-a-decade intel. Now it comes with an order of essential oils.

This summer, I’m cutting back on the “Welp, could’ve gone my whole life without that” content I consume. It’s impossible to escape it all, but I know I won’t miss much — I already deleted Nextdoor and left my neighborhood Facebook group, and the high crime rate of loud noises and suspicious teens subsided immediately. Disabling alerts from The Washington Post cut my daily eye-roll tally in half. It’s not that I don’t care what happens in my neighborhood, or in the news. I just don’t need to be pelted with little arrows all day long. Just give me a calculator and an encyclopedia before I forget how to use them. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.