Just soak these in:
The moral of the story? Less is sometimes more.
Graceland archivist Angie Marchese was cataloging receipts and other paperwork from Vernon Presley’s Graceland office about two weeks ago when she found a manila envelope with three photo negatives.
“Just when you think you’ve seen everything, all of a sudden there’s something new,” said Marchese.
Even though I’m a native Memphian, I’m not an Elvis fan, nor have I ever been to Graceland. Regardless, this is still pretty cool.
The Tennessean has posted over 100 photos taken around the Nashville area of record-setting floodwater. Memphis really dodged the bullet this weekend.
The Flyer — Memphis’ top alternative newspaper — turns 20 this week. Editor Tim Sampson looks back at a lost age of journalism:
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the freakin’ weirdest of times. They were fun times and they were stressful times. It was two decades ago, and we were starting this strange little newspaper called the Memphis Flyer. I was the first editor and in my 20s (for a very short time) and weighed about 50 pounds less than I do now. We didn’t have e-mail, the World Wide Web, spell-check, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or even cell phones, but, by damn, we could — and did — smoke at our desks, and sometimes it was more than mere tobacco. We were out to change the world or, at least, Memphis. All two-and-a-half of us on the editorial staff who were putting the paper out each week. And we were nuts. Not as nuts, though, as many of the people who took to our little paper and thought that they had finally found the Holy Grail of alternative news reporting and opinion. But more about that later.
One of our readers recently received an unsolicited package from Apple. That alone is kind of weird, but the contents were even stranger: a mix CD titled “Boom Boom Pow,” complete with smiley faces and stars drawn in Sharpie.
[…]
Who knows how this ended up leaving the Apple distribution center in Memphis. Maybe it was just a little gift for being such a loyal customer over the years.
Memphis Rapper SIR VINCE has released “Swine Flu” — a song about H1N1 prevention. Even if rap isn’t your thing, you gotta listen to the whole thing.
The second verse is my new ringtone.
Memphis stepped to the top of education elite today when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation offered the city schools a berth in its $500 million effort to improve U.S. teacher quality.
Under a memorandum of understanding the district is asked and foundation plan to sign, the district can expect to receive nearly $100 million over seven years to enhance teacher recruitment, professional development and school leadership.
From the hospital’s website:
James D. Eason, M.D., program director at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute and chief of transplantation confirmed today, with the patient’s permission, that Steve Jobs received a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in partnership with the University of Tennessee in Memphis.
Mr. Jobs underwent a complete transplant evaluation and was listed for transplantation for an approved indication in accordance with the Transplant Institute policies and United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) policies.
I usually keep away from posting about Steve Jobs’ health, but this is pretty big news, via the Wall Street Journal:
Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave from Apple Inc. since January to treat an undisclosed medical condition, received a liver transplant in Tennessee about two months ago. The chief executive has been recovering well and is expected to return to work on schedule later this month, though he may work part-time initially.
As a Memphis native, I found this quite interesting:
Today’s weird Apple rumor has the turtle-neck exec moving to Memphis, Tennessee, of all places. The idea is that Jobs is going south to help treat his pancreatic cancer–Memphis, it turns out, is the home of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Private equity blog PEHub is citing a “well-connected business person in Memphis” as the source of the odd rumor.
Odd, indeed… but just weird enough to be almost believable.
Via @danfrakes: a NCAA bracket based on the median salary of the schools’ graduates.
Memphis loses in the first round of this bracket.
Forbes ranked Memphis the #2 most miserable city in the nation:
Sandwiched between Stockton and Chicago is Memphis, Tenn. The home of FedEx has an incredibly high rate of violent crimes, with only Detroit faring worse. The 1,218 violent crimes per 100,000 residents is more than twice the rate in the New York City metro area. The city’s sales tax and rate of government employees committing crimes also fall within the 10 highest in the U.S. Pro sports has been a mess in Memphis in recent years as well. The city’s lone major franchise, the Memphis Grizzlies, has lost 74% of its games during the past three years, the worst in the NBA.
