Tag: Bruce VanWyngarden

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At Large Opinion

The X Factor

Elon Musk (Photo: Frédéric Legrand | Dreamstime.com)

So, I go on vacation for two weeks and Memphis lands a deal with Elon Musk — “the world’s richest man” — to build the largest supercomputer in the world in the former Electrolux plant. What? 

From a BnB in upstate New York last week, I read a well-reported (if slightly breathless) story in the Daily Memphian, wherein reporter Sophia Surrett told the behind-the-scenes chronicle of how the Greater Memphis Chamber, led by CEO Ted Townsend, managed to convince Musk to bring his multi-billion-dollar project to the Bluff City. Selling points included our city’s ample water supply, cheap land costs, and the chamber’s willingness to work fast. Memphis was pitched in a zoom meeting with Musk and his associates in March, while Townsend was in Austin for SXSW. Musk apparently liked what he heard and over the next three months, the deal was consummated.

If things go according to plan, the former Electrolux facility will soon house a tech startup called xAI and will, according to an unnamed source in the Daily Memphian story, create “less than 200 jobs.” It will use approximately 1 million gallons of water per day, about 1 percent of the city’s current daily use. In addition, xAI will need up to 150 megawatts of electricity to run the facility — enough energy to power 100,000 homes.

Local environmental groups, including Protect Our Aquifer, issued a cautionary statement: “Before we welcome xAI with open arms, we must consider how an industry using such a tremendous amount of electricity will further impact communities already overwhelmed with pollution and a high energy burden, such as those around the xAI facility in Southwest Memphis. … Will xAI bear the cost of TVA’s fuel adjustment fee in times of high energy demand? … With our recent history of severe weather events and rolling blackouts, TVA and Memphis Light, Gas & Water must work closely with this facility to keep energy use off peak-demand hours. … During times of emergency, our utility providers must have a plan to ensure that residents receive the power and water they need ahead of corporate demand.” 

Good points, all. There is some talk that xAI will get involved in building a system that will use wastewater or river water to handle its cooling needs, but it’s just talk at this point. However it goes, this appears to be a big deal. And Musk is a big deal, a guy who sends Space X rockets and Starlink satellites into space, builds futuristic Tesla cars (and goofy trucks), and owns X (formerly Twitter), the world’s largest news and social-messaging platform. 

But that raises — or should — another concern: Musk, who says that he has Asperger’s Syndrome, has configured X’s algorithm to ensure that his voice is the most prominent on the platform, meaning he has 187 million followers who can see his posts. He is a mega-influencer. 

He’s also an anti-vaxxer who recently posted a photo of Dr. Anthony Fauci under the caption: “You’re all beagles to me. Crimes Against Humanity.” Additionally, Musk is anti-trans, anti-DEI, pro-Trump, pro-Tucker Carlson, anti-Ukraine, pro-Russia, and has retweeted the “scientific” graphs of @eyeslasho, which claim to prove that “Black people in the US are overwhelmingly more criminally violent than whites.” Not a great look for a CEO looking to set up in a majority Black city. Musk has also retweeted some blatantly anti-semitic X posts. A real peach, this guy. 

To put this in some sort of context, however strained, there is little doubt that other business and corporate leaders  — in Memphis and elsewhere — share some of Musk’s beliefs and politics. The general attitude of those looking to expand their city’s economic base, i.e. political leaders and business types like those in the Greater Chamber, is to downplay (or ignore) such things as long as the greater good — jobs, investment, and a bump for the city’s reputation — is achieved. CEOs gonna CEO, the thinking goes. 

By that measure, it appears that Memphis has landed a big fish, one that will maybe bring a few more fish in its wake and provide more good-paying jobs than the 200 initially surmised. But the bottom line on the xAI deal is yet to be determined. And how — or if — this transaction will benefit the Memphis economy or the average Memphian is unknown. Musk is a wild card, given to mercurial, offensive, and impulsive moves. Call him the X factor. 

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News News Blog

CMI to Release Book by Bruce VanWyngarden

Everything That’s True by Bruce VanWyngarden, with illustrations by John Ryan

Contemporary Media, Inc., the parent company of the Memphis Flyer and Memphis magazine, announced today that it is publishing a collection of the writings of Bruce VanWyngarden, who was Flyer editor from 2001-2021. The book is titled Everything That’s True.

CMI CEO Anna Traverse Fogle: “Flyer readers may remember the time we announced that Bruce VanWyngarden planned to retire. We ended up keeping him in the editor’s chair for 14 months after that announcement. When you are lucky enough to publish a writer like Bruce, you don’t let him get away if you can help it. Bruce writes about Memphis and about humanity with a deftly calibrated wisdom; no one can blend grace, generosity, and acerbic wit better. When Bruce did (sort of) retire, earlier this year, he immediately went to work compiling Everything That’s True. I’m grateful that Contemporary Media had the chance to publish this remarkable collection, and more so that my fellow Memphians will be able to linger on Bruce’s words and wisdom.”

The book consists of selected columns and features from the Flyer and Memphis magazine, and is illustrated by noted Memphis artist John Ryan. The publishing date is officially October 22nd, but advance orders for signed and personalized copies are being taken now at Memphis magazine’s Shopify site.

Bruce VanWyngarden
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News News Blog

The Memphis Flyer Announces Its New Editor

Bruce VanWyngarden and Jesse Davis

I am pleased to announce that the next editor of the Memphis Flyer will be Jesse Davis. 

Outgoing editor Bruce VanWyngarden first announced plans to step back on January 30, 2020. Then Covid-19 changed so many plans, including his: Better to maintain continuity in a time when not much felt familiar. His ongoing leadership over the past year-plus has been invaluable. Now, it’s time to let him step off what he has called “the editor’s weekly treadmill.”

VanWyngarden has served as editor of the Memphis Flyer since 2001. Over the past two decades, his guidance has kept the paper relevant, progressive, and fiercely independent. His weekly editor’s column is a mainstay in the local conversation. He will transition into a new editorial role with Contemporary Media. In this role, he plans to continue writing a regular column for the Flyer, while also using newfound time to tackle larger feature stories. 

Davis is uniquely fit to step onto the editor’s treadmill. A native Memphian and 2009 graduate of the University of Memphis, he has worked for over five years at the Flyer, serving as chief copyeditor, calendar editor, and staff writer (all at the same time). He also is our resident book critic, penning book reviews for the Flyer as well as Memphis magazine and Memphis Parent. Jesse possesses a rare blend of abilities that position him well to occupy to this important role: attention to detail; passion for big, bold ideas; and a sense of how to nurture and inspire a team. 

There is much more to say about Bruce VanWyngarden and everything he has done for the Flyer, and by extension for Memphis. In his words, “It’s been a wonderful 20-year run as Flyer editor, and I’ve been blessed to work with so many marvelous and talented folks, now, and over the past two decades. But it’s time for me to change gears. The editor’s job is a weekly carousel that doesn’t stop. It’s been a great ride but I’m stepping off. I know Jesse will do great things with the paper. He is blessed to be able to work with an amazing team of writers, editors, and designers, sales execs, and management staff — as I have been.”

Davis comments, “In the time I’ve been with the Flyer, the publication has seen its share of shake-ups. That’s natural in any industry, and print journalism is no ordinary industry. It seems the world changes a little more and a little more quickly each day, and we’ll do what it takes to keep up. Part of that means challenging ourselves to grow, to meet the needs of all Memphians. To be snarkier. To cover something even weirder than the crystal skull found in The Pyramid (for more on that particular piece of Memphis trivia, check out our recent “?s Issue”). 
As editor of the Flyer, I plan to expand and deepen our coverage, to meet our readers wherever they find themselves, and to bring you news, reviews, and opinions that are relevant to you, that serve you in some way. There’s more to say, of course, but plenty of time in which to say it. In the meantime? See you next week.”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

A Moment of Felicity

Bruce VanWyngarden

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.”

This is the instructional essence of what I believe to be the best single book on how to write well: The Elements of Style. Published in 1918 by William Strunk Jr. and amended and updated through the years, most notably by New Yorker writer E.B. White, who called it: “a forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English.”

It has come to be known as Strunk & White, and it was particularly useful in the newspaper business when I was coming up, serving as a young editor’s guide to making writing better by making it more concise. For the first half of my career (You young whippersnappers!), I wrote and edited only for print, because, well, that’s the only place writing appeared — on paper, from trees, like God intended.

Unlike the web, paper is a finite space, limited by a measurable number of pages and the requirement for a readable type-size. That’s why word counts are so critical. This column, for example, has to be between 700 and 750 words every week, give or take an adjective. After 40 years of practice, I’ve gotten pretty good at writing to fit. I can scroll down a block of 12-point type on my computer and tell you within 25 words how long it is. It’s a fairly boring skill, to be honest, useless as a party trick or on TikTok.

I usually stop writing at around 850 words and start cutting from there. I’ve learned that pruning a piece almost always makes it better — distills it to the essence, removes verbosity and repetition.

Precise writing is becoming something of a lost art, mostly because articles and columns and essays crafted for the web no longer have to “fit.” The physical limitations of print provided in themselves a sort of editing function. No more. On the web, the words designate the space, not the other way around. Writers can let a million adverbs bloom, allow no self-indulgent digression to go unexplored.

I’m reminded of this each time I find myself scrolled neck-deep into a story online and asking myself, “When the hell is this going to stop?” It’s not a thought any writer wants to inspire in a reader, but it’s endemic on the world wide web without end: no word count, just boundless pixels waiting to be leisurely fondled into thoughtfully thoughtful thoughts.

Another of the maxims I’ve leaned on is this one, also from Strunk & White: “Aim for one moment of felicity.” The most applicable definition of that word in this case is “something that causes happiness, a pleasing manner or quality especially in art or language.” I’ve always taken it to mean we writers should attempt to offer the reader a little surprise, a bit of unexpected word-play, a fresh turn of phrase, a clever turn-around in the final paragraph. And so, with those words as my guide, I offer this: A career should carry no unnecessary parts; a life should make every day tell.

I’m retiring as editor of the Flyer, as of this issue. Twenty years is plenty. I’m going to continue to write a column each week, but I’m leaving the word counts and the pruning and the scheduling of stories to new editor Jesse Davis, who will be in this spot next week — and who I’m confident will do a wonderful job filling my worn-ass old shoes.

This weekend I’m leaving on a two-week road trip to the northeast to see longtime friends and scattered family and catch some trout in the Laurel Highlands on the way. I’ll be back in June on a new page with the same old word count. Thanks for reading.
Bruce VanWyngarden
brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Take Me to the Rio

The Rio Grande at Radium Springs (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

I crossed the Rio Grande river last week — several times, actually. It wasn’t that difficult. In fact, I could have walked across and not gotten my feet wet, much less my back.

In Las Cruces, New Mexico, where I was visiting family, the Rio Grande comes down from the northern part of the state and runs along the city’s western edge. Or at least it used to. Right now, the Rio Grande is as dry as a buzzard’s brunch — a 100-yard-wide strip of sandy dirt. The river has looked like this in Las Cruces from October to February for most years since the 1990s. The Rio Grande is “turned on” again early each spring by releasing water from the Elephant Butte Reservoir 70 miles upstream.

But things are changing, and not for the better. In 2020, water wasn’t released into the Rio Grande bed until late March, and the river was back to dirt by September. This year, the Elephant Butte Irrigation District says levels are so low that water won’t be released until June, and that the river will probably be dry again by the end of July. In New Mexico, the Rio Grande is no longer grande — or even a rio — for most of the year.

Historically, the Rio Grande used to flow year-round through the Mesilla Valley from Hatch (Chile Capital of the World), through Las Cruces, down to El Paso, at least at some level. Before the Spaniards arrived, Native Americans farmed the valley and fished the river’s waters. Then as agriculture began to increasingly tap into the river in the 20th century, the Rio Grande was dammed in several places to prevent seasonal flooding, capture snow-melt runoff from the mountains, and provide water as needed to irrigate many thousands of acres of pecans, alfalfa, lettuce, chiles, onions, and cotton. Now, there is enough water for agriculture — maybe — but that’s about it.

South of El Paso, where the river becomes the border between the United States and Mexico, the water level picks up again somewhat, as the river is fed by reservoirs in both countries. But drought (which doesn’t recognize lines on a map) is also affecting flow along the border.

It’s a good thing we have that beautiful 2,000-mile wall. Or, actually, I guess it’s the 452 miles of fencing that were already in place, plus the 80 miles that the Former Guy added. According to Google, there are 300 or so miles of barrier (fencing or wall) along the dry border between San Diego and El Paso. After that, we’ve traditionally counted on the Rio Grande to handle the job of stopping would-be immigrants: making them swim for it or die trying. We may have to rethink that strategy. Wading isn’t all that dangerous.

But I digress. Las Cruces is a lovely place. It has beautiful scenery, and it’s fun to drive around and take in the vast vistas of sky and mountains. (And also to drive into the desert with my brother and shoot at Amazon boxes using my late father’s old .22. We killed several.)

On a whim, I took my tack-sharp 95-year-old mother on a drive north of Las Cruces, through the farm fields of the Mesilla Valley to Radium Springs, where there is actual water flowing in the middle of the desert and where some of the world’s largest pecan orchards are located. We veered off toward the Rio Grande on a gravel road and found a couple of small, shallow pools in the riverbed — a lovely reminder of what used to be, and, sadly, probably not a harbinger of what’s to come.

In fact, if what I saw in Las Cruces is any indicator of where we’re headed with the Rio Grande, keeping the scary hordes of brown people from invading our pure Anglo-Saxon soil is just going to keep getting harder. It’s clear that Mother Nature — or climate change, if you’re an elitist — is conspiring against our puny idea of what makes a border.

It may come down to a choice between saving American pecans or keeping a few American wing-nuts happy. I stand with the pecans.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

White Flight

Did you read the online Vanity Fair article about a few Memphis Country Club types who supposedly took a private jet to Washington, D.C., on January 6th, to help “stop the steal” and participate in that day’s fun-filled and riotous activities at the nation’s Capitol building?

The story, by Abigail Tracy, was called, A PRIVATE JET OF RICH TRUMPERS WANTED TO “STOP THE STEAL”— BUT THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO READ THIS. Not exactly a subtle headline, or even a good one, but it got circulated like the hot gossip it was, fueled by viral Memphis social media reposts and tweets.

The story was classic “helicopter journalism,” in which an out-of-town reporter touches down (in the land of the Delta blues, in this case), scrapes together a little history, (shaky) local geography, racial demographics, some socio-economic tropes pulled from helpful local academics, and uses them to underpin what is basically an anonymously sourced story about something possibly outrageous that may have happened.

Can you get Bluff City Bingo?
(By Gary Bridgman)

What we do know — and VF reported accurately, via flight logs — is that a jet owned by wealthy Memphis businessman John Dobbs flew to D.C. and back on January 6th. A photo of Dobbs and a group of seven others posing beside that plane was posted for a brief time on an Instagram account of one of the alleged passengers under the tag @memphispatriots.

It quickly spread in certain circles. The presumption being that these eight Memphis bluebloods boarded the plane and flew to D.C. to participate in the insurrection promoted by former President Trump. Within a few days, the photo had been anonymously leaked to local media, including to me. I’m assuming other editors in town did the same thing I did: look to see if we could create an accurate, factual story around the photo. It proved a tough task. Nobody wanted to talk to us. One person did tell me the names of four of the people. She didn’t know the others. Calls to the individuals did not get a response.

So, we had a photo of eight people standing beside a plane. We had an identification of four of them. (A couple days later, we IDed two of the others; none returned calls.) The photo would indicate that these people were about to board the plane. Whether they did, we didn’t know. And if they did go to Washington, D.C., we had no way of knowing if they marched on the Capitol and assaulted cops or spent the day in the hotel bar. Presumably, if they were active participants, the FBI would come calling at some point.

But we didn’t have a story, just rumors and gossip, and media outlets that run unverified photos and unsourced gossip about the people in them often end up in court answering tough questions from libel lawyers.

Vanity Fair has deeper pockets, but they encountered the same stonewall. Then the VF reporter got very lucky. When she called Dobbs, he denied any knowledge of the incident, but he accidentally left his phone on for seven minutes after talking to Tracy, during which time he was heard to say: “Well, I told ’em, I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. … You must be talking about my dad or something. … God, the last thing I want to do is talk to them.”

Busted. The magazine had enough verification that it felt it could run the story, such as it was: Some rich Memphis people probably flew to D.C. in a private jet on the day of the Capitol riots. Also, they participate in the annual Cotton Carnival, a putrid vestige of white male privilege and mock-royalty silliness for millionaires.

Tracy did get some good background quotes from local historian and professor Charles W. McKinney of Rhodes College (who expounded accurately upon the racial inequities in the city), and other academic types. But there were a lot of unnamed sources quoted and the usual pantheon of Memphis tropes used by drop-in reporters were trotted out: Sun Studio, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, Stax Records, Beale Street, Graceland, and the National Civil Rights Museum.

To which I guess we can now add: rich white guys who cosplay revolution, then fly home and don’t want to talk about it.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Perennials

The rain poured through the downspout near my bedroom window Sunday night. It’s a sound like low soft thunder, and it continued for hours, until it grew light through the window on the second morning of the spring time-change. Then came the sun, ambitious and bright, illuminating the green sprouts in the yard, the wet newspaper, the damp streets, an upstart azalea by the door, budding pink.

Over the weekend, we’d gone into the garden and clipped away the brown stems and leaves and withered branches of last summer’s flowers, finding the fresh growth emerging from beneath, the annual return of the perennials, the Earth renewing itself as it always does.

There were casualties. February’s deep freeze took out our venerable oregano plant. The senior rosemary bush could yet make it but appears to be on life support and may have to go to assisted living. The thyme, gnarled and ancient, is brown and crispy at its tips, but when I cut an interior branch, I find green. Thyme marches on.

The Monday paper is full of sad basketball news: The Tigers miss the dance again; the Grizzlies blow a big lead. I don’t care much. Do you? Maybe it’s just that sports seem sort of pointless and irrelevant — the shortened seasons, the missed games, the empty arenas, the sideline masks. The magic isn’t there. The Big Dance? Meh. More like a junior high sock-hop. (Do they still have sock-hops? Don’t answer.)

There are signs of new life everywhere. Each day brings news of more friends and family members who’ve gotten the COVID vaccine. As an ancient and gnarled human who’s now gotten both shots, I can attest that it is a relief that’s hard to put into words after a year of constraints and fears and relative isolation. A springtime of the soul.

On Sunday afternoon, the patios of Midtown were beginning to look like patios again. Slider Inn, the restaurants of Cooper-Young, and the outdoor dining spaces in Overton Square were filled. Railgarten was stuffed to overflowing with kids, parents, volleyballers, cornholers (sorry), even a band. Outdoors feels safer to a lot of people these days, and that’s a good thing. (Just remember to respect your server and put on a mask when they approach.)

Nationally, the news is also getting better. President Biden stated that he thinks there will be enough vaccine available that all adult Americans will be able to get a shot by May 1st. That’s six weeks, if you’re counting. The catch, of course, is that many adult Americans will choose not to get a shot, most of them because they’re suffering from another illness — a viral strain of ignorance and fear spread by absurd internet conspiracy theories and the willful dispensing of misinformation by right-wing media.

Getting a COVID vaccination is all part of the “plandemic” — a genetically engineered bioweapon from China. It’s a scheme by Bill Gates to make billions off the sale of the vaccine. Dr. Fauci is an evil genius who created the virus as a bioweapon to reduce the population and undermine Donald Trump. The vaccine is a plan to put microchips into our bodies so we can be tracked anywhere.

I didn’t make these up. The AP recently reported on 19 conspiracy theories that Americans (and others around the world) are using as a rationale to avoid getting the vaccine. They are brought to you by the same people who told you masks were worthless and COVID is no worse than the flu.

Meanwhile, ICUs in Paris and elsewhere are filling back up with victims of COVID variants that have worse symptoms and poorer mortality outcomes than the original virus. The good news is that it appears the vaccine protects you, even against the new stuff. That’s why the goal should be to get every person who wants a shot inoculated as soon as possible. Those who refuse will either get lucky as a result of the rest of us taking responsibility or they will get the disease and learn the hard way.

The lessons of spring are obvious. There are perennials and there are annuals — fresh green shoots and dead brown branches. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.

Bruce VanWyngarden
brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Come Into My Parler

CREDIT: Bryan C. Parker

Frank Murtaugh is managing editor of Memphis magazine, but he’s also been the primary sports columnist for the Flyer since 2001 or so. He writes a lot about University of Memphis sports and he does a terrific job. And it hasn’t always been easy. Frank’s seen some mighty lean years, especially in football, including the woeful Coach Larry Porter era.

Each week during the season, Frank writes a column called “Three Thoughts on Tiger Football.” Back in the Porter days, I used to tweet about Frank’s “Three Thoughts” column by saying “Frank Murtaugh thinks about Tiger football so you don’t have to.”

I write all this by way of saying we owe a similar debt to sfgate.com writer Bryan C. Parker, who did us all a solid by signing up for parler.com — so we don’t have to.

Bryan C. Parker

Parler, as you probably know by now, is a social media platform aimed at “conservatives” who are disenchanted with Facebook and Twitter. Here’s what Parker wrote: “Beneath the thin guise of the app’s self-proclaimed emphasis on ‘free speech’ lies the ability to say not just a hypothetical ‘anything,’ but specifically to share racist slurs and violent threats toward political opponents. On Parler, Nazi imagery flourishes, death threats abound, and conspiracy theories reign.”

To sign up for Parler, you must provide a phone number and email address. The platform claims it will not “sell” your information, but it will doubtless be used for something. Parler is funded largely by the Robert Mercer family, which has made millions on data mining. The app also has ties to Cambridge Analytica, which provided extensive voter micro-data to the 2016 Trump campaign.

Once you’re in, Parker reports, you are given a suggested follow list of right-leaning media and political figures: Sean Hannity, Ted Cruz, Dinesh D’Souza, Ann Coulter, Devin Nunes, etc. Beyond that, you’re on your own. You can post, follow people, start conversation threads, the usual social media protocol.

It quickly becomes apparent, writes Parker, that hardly anybody on Parler thinks Joe Biden won the election. Profane diatribes, wild election conspiracy theories, QAnon revelations, and racial and homophobic slurs abound.

Free speech in the United States has famously been ruled not to extend to the right to yell “FIRE” in a crowded theater. Does it extend to the right to call for executions of political enemies, to promote anti-Semitism and racism, to proudly post the Nazi swastika? On Parler, yes, it does. This is the free speech that Parler says is being suppressed and banned on Twitter and Facebook.

Parler is the newest addition to the right-wing media silo. Fox is on the decline with the true Trumper/white supremacist/racist/AngryKaren tribe. OANN, NewsMax, The Right Scoop, and others are the primary “news” sources cited on Parler. If you haven’t checked out OANN, let me just say, it makes Fox News look like NPR.

I remember when the FCC had a “fairness doctrine” that required TV and radio stations holding broadcast licenses to devote some of their programming to controversial issues of public importance and to allow the airing of opposing views on those issues. This meant that programs on politics were required to include opposing opinions on the topic under discussion. The rule also mandated that broadcasters alert anyone subject to a personal attack in their programming and give them a chance to respond. The doctrine was revoked in 1987, and its elimination was widely credited with sparking the rise of conservative talk radio, including Rush Limbaugh.

Giving equal time to both sides seems like such a quaint concept now. You don’t need a license from the federal government to start a website, and so here we are, with an online world where anything goes: from cute kittens to porn to racism to the most depraved corners of the human psyche, where the entire longitude and latitude of humanity can find a home — and validation for just about anything.

What to do? Few of us, liberal or conservative, want the federal government to regulate online content. Imagine what Trump could have done with such a power! But surely there are ways we can monitor and clamp down on violent threats, terrorism, and human depravity. Violent words can lead to violent deeds, as we’ve so often discovered.

Categories
News News Blog

The Flyer’s April 22nd Digital Issue

Here’s the story lineup for this week’s virtual issue. Enjoy! We’ll be back in print next week, April 29th. — BV

Letter From the Editor: Blue Skies From Now On — Bruce VanWyngarden

MEMernet: A Very Memphis Easter, a New Bar — Toby Sells

The Week That Was: Data, Abortion, and Domestic Violence — Maya Smith

The Fly-by: Displaced Actor Finds Work, Purpose Serving the Underserved — Toby Sells

Politics: Commission Gets $1.4 Billion Budget From Harris — Jackson Baker

Cover Story: Memphis Cultural Organizations Learning to Deal with the Pandemic — Jon Sparks & Chris McCoy

Steppin’ Out (Stayin’ In): Silky O’Sullivan’s Hosts Virtual Happy Hour — Julia Baker

Books: Corinne Manning’s We Had No Rules — Jesse Davis

Music: Chris Milam’s Meanwhile is a “Good Album for Quarantine” — Alex Greene

Food & Wine: The Rendezvous Adapts During Quarantine — Michael Donahue

Film: Oxford Film Fest Debuts Pioneering Online Format — Chris McCoy

Last Word: Coronavirus is a Dress Rehearsal for Global Warming — Alex Greene

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: A Very Memphis Easter, a New Bar

CREDIT: Jeffrey Seidman/Nextdoor

Lil Christ

Happy Easter from Raleigh Lagrange. from r/memphis

MEMernet: A Very Memphis Easter, a New Bar

Down at the Quarantina
Jeffrey Seidman/Nextdoor


Mornin’
Flyer editor Bruce VanWyngarden showed off his morning mane to Instagram followers over the weekend. It was, yes, hair-raising.
Bruce VanWyngarden/Instagram