Anna Traverse Fogle
Returning to a place after even the briefest absence can afford the opportunity to meet it all over again. I love traveling, but at least in part because I love coming home. Since March, I’ve not had many moments of return because I haven’t been doing much departing. Most weeks, in this summer of Covid-19, my orbit is confined to my Midtown neighborhood and this magazine’s Downtown office space.
One recent Sunday, my husband and I left the state of Tennessee for the first time since he returned from work on a Thursday evening in late March. (Cameron teaches at a law school out of state.) In what I guess passes for a summer mini-break in 2020, we wanted to check out a sunflower field on the West Memphis side of Big River Crossing. We brought the dog. We brought snacks. When we got into the car, he announced that he had prepared a playlist of songs about the sun, since we were off to find sunflowers. (A quintessentially Cameron thing to do if ever there were one.)
The tallest sunflowers loomed taller than us, creating their own shade on the dry, cracking soil beneath, shotgun shells scattered through the rows of hardy blooms, bees feasting and resting on the flowers’ intricate, concentric faces. Two other little groups weaved slowly through the heat, posing for photos, little kids’ patience melting. The sunflowers mostly turned their faces toward Downtown Memphis, standing tall like an alternative skyline. Cosmopolitan skyscrapers, if you happen to be a bee.
We snapped a few photos — sunflowers with a backdrop of the Hernando de Soto Bridge and the Pyramid; weird bugs; Lily Bear’s sweet furry face peeking from between thick, gnawed-on leaves — then returned to the car for iced coffee and the 10-minute drive home. We had received what we came for: a shift in perspective, a reintroduction to Tennessee, to Memphis, to home.
Anna Traverse Fogle
Hopes of a summertime reprieve from Covid-19 are proving to be unfounded, at least in Memphis. In planning our August issue, our editorial team thought long and hard about how best to assemble our annual City Guide in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, with well warranted restrictions changing the ways Memphians and visitors might enjoy our town. We’ve adapted, like so many of you.
In this devastating, hopeful, seismic, rearranging, scary, strange year, there’s no place I’d rather keep coming home to.
You’ll find a story this month about the creative ways local restaurateurs are pivoting to keep patrons both delighted and safe. We explore the long history of protest music that’s come from Memphis in an article inspired by a summer defined as much by mass protests and increasing support for the Black Lives Matter movement as by the pandemic. We tackle the place of sports now; we bring you into several vibrant local neighborhoods, cities within the city. And in Inside Memphis Business, we discuss how the local business community is weathering the storm. You’ll also find a photo essay documenting the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests on Memphis streets.
Longtime readers of Memphis may notice that our Who’s Who section looks different this year. We’ve included more notable, interesting, inspiring Memphians than ever before — and instead of rows upon rows of tiny black-and-white headshots, you’ll see some of those Memphians in full color, freed from oval thumbnails. We wanted Who’s Who to look and feel more like the Memphis we write about, live in, and love, and we hope that this year’s additions and redesign help accomplish that.
At first, planning this issue seemed like a strange, somewhat daunting task — how do we put together a City Guide, we asked ourselves, when our collective habits continue to be altered by the pandemic and when so many are hurting, whether under the weight of economic hardship, illness, loss and grief, or in too many cases, all of the above.
But when we shifted our perspective a quarter-turn — going away just long enough to come home again — we saw that there could hardly be a better time to deliver a City Guide built for exactly this strange, shifting summer. One that shows Memphis as it is, and as it might be. This city of ours knows how to face challenges head-on, how to model transformation. We know how to communicate our anger and our hope through art that touches the whole world.
Even or especially in troubled times, Memphis’ most distinctive facets shine. From the peaceful protests on our streets to the insistent music on our speakers, this city is a place where, in our best moments, change is not just possible but welcomed. In this devastating, hopeful, seismic, rearranging, scary, strange year, there’s no place I’d rather keep coming home to.
