by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 30th, 2006 11:06pm CDT | Comments Off
Sometimes it’s easy to feel sympathy for our elected officials who, spending their lives in the hothouse that is Memphis politics, try to do something to show action, and in the end, it does just the opposite. That’s what we thought when we read The Commercial Appeal article about today’s high-profile press conference on yet [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 26th, 2006 1:56pm CDT | Comments Off
Government officials and agencies have an aversion to admitting they’ve made a mistake, but no agency is more tone deaf than the Memphis and Shelby County Industrial Development Board. Case in point. Yesterday, on the same day that Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton was in Nashville, engaged in hard-nosed negotiations to get more revenues [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 24th, 2006 6:27pm CDT | Comments Off
It’s always the innocent bystanders who get shot. That’s especially true in school politics, where the ultimate victims are always the students. Recently, in the latest salvo from the Shelby County School Board, Memphis City Schools was notified in a letter from county superintendent Bobby Webb that 155 students in an area being annexed by [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 22nd, 2006 5:21pm CDT | Comments Off
From the Hollywood Reporter comes this reminder of the most important asset of Memphis Music – the music being created right now – and why we need to do a better job of showcasing and supporting it. If we’re looking for the best indicator of success for Memphis Music, it’s measured by the money being [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 19th, 2006 6:19pm CDT | Comments Off
Yesterday, Memphis City Council and Shelby County Board of Commissioners had one of their infrequent joint meetings to discuss a bothersome issue for Memphis – the S-O-B’s. The news they got was B-A-D. In this case, we’re referring to S-O-B’s as in sexually-oriented businesses. The news from the consultants hired by the Office of Planning [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 18th, 2006 6:37pm CDT | Comments Off
The following is the City Journal column in the May issue of Memphis magazine by Smart City Consulting’s Tom Jones: Spray painted on a New Orleans wharf warehouse near the Lower Garden District: “Next time, we vote for somebody who cares.” Nearby, inside the 79-year-old po’ boy restaurant, Domilise’s, Karen, a petite 63-year-old with deep [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 16th, 2006 3:20pm CDT | Comments Off
John Charles Wilson is a breath of fresh air. In an interview with The Commercial Appeal, the president of Agricenter International admits what others there have refused to face for years. The facility’s founding vision and promises have failed. In describing what was supposed to be a national center for agricultural technology and research, Mr. [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 14th, 2006 12:02am CDT | Comments Off
Memphis is in trouble. There, we’ve said it. Please tell us we’re wrong. We have traditionally been dependable cheerleaders for Memphis, but right now, we’re hard-pressed to feel like our team is even in the major leagues, much less competing there. This jolt of reality slapped us in the face when we read Forbes’ always [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 8th, 2006 6:35pm CDT | Comments Off
Primary elections are about a candidate identifying a base and talking about the red meat issues that its members care about. The general election is about broadening the base to appeal to more than the true believers. Unfortunately, in county elections here, we rarely have the second phase, because districts are so carefully drawn to [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 6th, 2006 12:56pm CDT | Comments Off
Everybody’s all for government acting more businesslike until it affects their special cause. This comes to mind when we listen to some of the arguments from grassroots leaders who insist that Libertyland and the Mid-South Coliseum must remain open. We applaud their willingness and their determination to have a voice in the public decision-making process. [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 3rd, 2006 7:03pm CDT | Comments Off
They won’t get headlines in the newspaper or be tonight’s “big story” on television news, but nonetheless, some national programs recruited to Memphis and transplanted into Memphis City Schools are producing “stop the presses” kinds of results. Of course, anything that can be filed under a heading as portentous as “cultural transformation” discourages media interest [...]
by Smart City Memphis (RSS) Uncategorized | May 1st, 2006 1:09pm CDT | Comments Off
The following column is from Otis White’s Urban Notebook. Otis is a regular contributor on Smart City each week, and his daily missives are instructive to anyone who cares about cities. This one on multi-modal centers and the changes that make them less attractive as economic engines has special importance to Memphis. New Breaks in [...]
by Bill Day. Memphian Bill Day is two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning. His cartoons are syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons. Cartoons Archive →
Photograph by Amie Vanderford
This ongoing series of photographs is intended to show the daily lives of these single mothers in order to invoke recognition of their similarities to all mothers, along with understanding and empathy from the viewer of the strengths that these single mothers possess within the challenging situations they face. My hope is that newfound empathy with these mothers’ lives will give people some pause before they condemn single mothers when discussing issues such as welfare and other politically charged hot buttons.
