Yeah, you probably already know that PMS is the name of the book “PMS: Problems Men Started,” a funny and fun book by the publisher and founder of Skirt!, Nikki Hardin, who’s in town today signing her book at Davis-Kidd, 6 pm. (That’s Nikki, in love with Stephen Colbert, who inexplicably refused to wear a skirt for her and the magazine!) We hope you also find a copy of the February issue of Skirt! — click HERE for a list of places to pick one up. It’s free!

I took a break from writing my column in the newspaper over the holidays and into January, and I really missed it. So now I’m back, and Sunday my column was about a totally cool collection of photos that The Brooks acquired, from the old Memphis World newspaper, which closed in 1974. I’ve seen them all (the one on this post is a Hooks Brothers photo of the Zeta Phi Beta sorors at “Carmen Jones” at the Ellis Auditorium in 1953). Most of the photos are as fascinating as this one, mostly for the ordinary life of middle-class black Memphians they show. The photos will be part of an exhibit that goes up at the Brooks and Rhodes later this summer.

Even though I needed a column break, I never really run out of ideas, but if you’ve been wondering why I write the way I do, and have a suggestion for something for me to write about, please send it along. Hope I’ll hear from you …

I’m fast becoming campaign-obsessed, vacuuming up info about the presidential candidates as “mega-Tuesday” (that’s what Donna Brazile calls it) gets ever closer. The Washington Post (campaign junkie’s news outlet of choice) does a good job today dissecting what will happen on Feb. 5, but there’s nary a mention of what the campaigns, particularly the Democratic campaigns, are doing in Tennessee, much less Memphis. Are we even on the radar? And what are local politicos doing to advance their candidates? Can anyone tell?

Today I got an e-mail from Hillary (oh, yeah, we’re on a first name basis … not; I get e-mail from all kinds of politicos, dating back to my time on the CA editorial board and as a senior editor at the paper). Anyway, Hillary has launched a Tennessee Women’s Council (you mean she didn’t have one already?), and lists exactly ONE woman from  West Tennessee — Paula Barnes of Cordova. (Uh, wouldn’t that be Memphis? Why not say so? And Paula, who are you?) Read the rest of this entry »

Do yourself a favor and the next time you’re close to Baptist Women’s Hospital, stop in and see the photos in the SnapShots exhibit. As I explained in my column Sunday, they are a collection of fascinating portraits of Memphis women at work, by 25 fascinating Memphis women, including everyone from Frances Hooks and Shirley Raines to Susan Stephenson and Regina Walker. (Do you know these women? Hooks is a longtime civil rights and community activist and wife of Dr. Benjamin Hooks, Raines runs the University of Memphis, Stephenson runs Independent Bank and Walker is an SVP of United Way.) Here’s my favorite, though: Nichole Howell, who struggles to read, and has come so far, by her friend Gayle Rose. What working women would you photograph, if you had the chance?

Usually on Sundays I write a blog post about the column I wrote for the paper today, and call it good. But today I want to weigh in on Wendi Thomas’s last two Sunday columns, about the yawning gap between what black people and white people believe is true about racism and discrimination. (If you haven’t read them, here’s last week’s, headlined “Black people’s reality rebuffed,” and here’s a link to the follow up column, “Blacks, whites divided on issues of racism.”)

Yes, this is difficult discussion to have, and yes, I wish we didn’t have to keep having it. But as Wendi’s column today points out, recent research shows that quite a few black people don’t believe things for black people are getting better, and that we are discouragingly far apart in how we perceive discrimination, advantage, and daily life.

Why does this matter to you? Read the rest of this entry »