It was this picture that I couldn’t get out of my mind: An incredibly cut, 41-year-old mom just before she began breaking records on her way to qualifying for the Olympics for the FIFTH time. But, as I wrote in  my column Sunday, there’s something about this that seems, well, questionable? What do you think? And are you, like me, counting down to the Olympics? What’s your favorite event? Will you be watching?

The column I wrote in yesterday’s CA has made quite an impression — notes filled my in-box this morning with reactions to the news that MIFA’s emergency food voucher distribution has more than doubled since last year.

From Jim Moss, “at one time I would not believe that people could go hungry here in Memphis,” then he mentions the Angel Food program at Colonial Park United Methodist, where they sell food at a discount to hungry neighbors. Another reader, “It’s a disgrace when the elderly have to choose between medicine and food.”

But it was this comment that made me stop and write about this: ”Years ago when they had ‘Hands Across America’ calling attention to hungry people in this country, I got all upset and called the Welfare Department. … I was amazed to find out there were 14 programs. … I suggest you call this department and see why anybody in this country is hungry. Are these people just too stupid to find out about these programs?”

No, I don’t think it’s a question of being stupid. Anyone who has watched someone navigate the WIC/Food stamps maze knows it’s quite complicated. And yes, assistance is available … though it doesn’t always stretch far enough, or cover everyone. It makes me alternately sad and angry that “these people” are often marginalized and made into the stupid “other” in these conversations. What I found out a couple of weeks ago at MIFA is that, right now, people who never thought they’d need help are the ones outside in the mornings at 7:30. I wonder if the above commenter will ever find herself in that same line.

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You know how sometimes you have a problem that just keeps bugging you and bugging you, then suddenly the answer falls out of the sky?

That’s how it’s been for me with this blog. As you know, I dreamed up iDivamemphis back in the dark ages of 2006 – two years is like 10 in blog years — and just loved what happened next. We’ve had great conversation, a few rousing arguments, but mostly discovered what we probably already knew: That talking to each other is the source of our greatest strength and inspiration. Then I started writing about our conversations in The CA.

Then last summer I became the editor of skirt!, a terrific new magazine for women in Memphis — click the button under the ad window to find out where to pick up your free copy — and life changed again. Got WAY busier. I had less and less time for blogging.

What to do? How to keep all of these balls in the air? (Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt this way.) So I did what I usually do with an intractable problem: I started whining about it to my girlfriends. Asking their advice. Trying out different ideas, and seeing what their reactions would be.

Finally, I have the answer, and she is the one in the totally great dress in the picture at the top of this post. Please meet Kalisa, local blogger, hilarious writer, and someone I think you’ll enjoy getting to know as she joins me blogging a few times a week. At the moment, she’s looking for an alias, you know, not because she doesn’t want you to know who she is (God knows anyone who blogs is WAY over that), but because, as she says, she sucks at thinking of that kind of stuff.

So, gentle readers, what should my terrific new blogging pal be called? And The Diva is already taken …

I wanted to write about the Lester Street killings yesterday, then again last night, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it until today.

Hearing about it on TV was bad enough, but yesterday morning LifeBlood called me, with a request for my particular blood type for a “recent trauma victim at LeBonheur.” Of course they couldn’t tell me if they needed my blood for one of the three kids — one is a baby — who are at the hospital, but I assumed that’s who it was, since it’s pretty unusual for me to be called for a specific incident. Of course I went and donated right away. (You would have, too, even though their lost laptops could have my personal information on them, right?)

But I can’t stop thinking about this horrible crime. Read the rest of this entry »