VOL. 133 | NO. 41 | Monday, February 26, 2018
Last Word
Bill Dries
Last Word: Corker at Lincoln Day, Pre K Trouble and Rye at the Orpheum
By Bill Dries
The National Weather Service was out Sunday surveying damage from storm damage Saturday evening in eight areas of northwest Tennessee and northeast Arkansas as those communities began recovering from the damage of what appears to be at least one tornado. The areas hit are: Trenton, Tennessee; Weakley County northeast of Martin; Madison County, 5 miles northeast of Jackson; Dresden to northeast of Paris; the Union City and South Fulton areas; and Clay County, Arkansas into the Missouri bootheel.
Tigers over UConn 83-79 Sunday on the road without Jeremiah Martin as we approach March Madness. Martin is out with a broken foot sustained in the first half of last week’s Houston game at the forum. Here is the recap of the Houston game, which looks to be a central event in judging Tubby Smith’s first season in Memphis.
U.S. Senator Bob Corker drew a lot of attention for his appearance at this weekend’s Lincoln Day Gala. The possibility was that Corker would have something to say about possibly getting back into the race for his U.S. Senate seat. He did not.
The bill in Nashville that would divert the state revenue from Sunday wine sales to a prekindergarten expansion is facing resistance from several fronts in the Legislature, reports our Nashville correspondent Sam Stockard. The resistance is the sponsors of a bill allowing Sunday wine sales aren’t sure they want to link that to a specific direction for the revenue from that.
The city administration got something different Saturday from the CNN political commentator it paid to speak at the city’s commemoration of the 1968 sanitation workers strike. Angela Rye criticized Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and the Memphis Police Department for the way the city has responded to the increase in protests locally in the last two years and called out some of the movement leaders in the audience for praise including Take Them Down 901 founder Tami Sawyer. More on this when next we meet.
Airing Monday on the Smithsonian Channel: MLK The Assassination Tapes. This is a documentary made from mostly local radio and television footage and reports of the daily events of the 1968 sanitation workers strike in our city. You’ve probably heard the saying that the daily reporting our organization and others do is the first draft of history. It is also the details that tend to get lost with the passage of enough time and it doesn’t take much for that to happen. In those details is the drama. These are the points where a different decision could have had a different result. And if you find yourself holding your breath as you watch these scenes and reports on the streets of a city you know and even remember, hoping that what we all know happened will somehow be diverted or stopped -- you too were alive in Memphis in 1968. The link to watch the full episode is the top item in our “Around Memphis” roundup.
More MLK 50 activities and events in The Week Ahead.
Tai Chi classes at Church Health.
The cover story by Andy Meek in our weekly, The Memphis News, is about Church Health’s move into medical residencies designed to train more family or primary care doctors in Memphis. Church Health’s program is doing this four at a time and Resurrection Health’s more aggressive residency program may be something of a cautionary tale given its recent closing and merger with Cherokee Health of Knoxville after federal funding was cut. The Church Health effort, like most efforts in our healthcare community, is a collaboration with other institutions.
Morris says in the piece: “The doctor needs to be a partner in this process of helping people achieve what we consider to be the goals for living.”
More from The Daily News Seminar last week on Women & Business and a scene-setter for the Bobby Dunavant Public Servant Awards Wednesday that we cosponsor with the Rotary Club of Memphis East.
Architectural Record on Crosstown Concourse.
The Memphis News Almanac: Pyramid plans post-arena, End of the Draft and Ray Guns.