Memphis in May

Every year, the city of Memphis puts on a month-long celebration during May.  It's starts with a 3 day music festival (which coincides with monsoon like rains every year), and goes on from there.  There's a bar-b-que competition that gets a lot of coverage on the Food Network, and it all wraps up with a symphony concert on the riverfront.

I avoid the music festival (even though there's always somebody playing that I'd love to see...I'm just getting too damned old to put up with huge crowds and rain), and the bbq competition is a tease...unless you get tickets to the tasting booths, you don't get any food.  However, I love the very concept of a city with the problems that Memphis has being able to take a month to tell the world how proud they are of this place, and how much they want to share it with everyone.

This comment will probably shock the hell out of a lot of people who know me.  I wasn't thrilled with the thought of moving here.  I prefer to live where there's at least big hills, if not mountains, and I've yet to find the bluff that provides the city's nickname. Four years ago Memphis seemed like a war zone, with a heinous murder and violent crime rates. The public schools were failing, with a huge drop-out rate. The mayor at the time was a joke, who used race as the main reason to be re-elected and over-paid cronies to supposedly run the city. But, I figured that I could put up with anything for a while, and this is where the jobs were.

Fast forward to today.  The crime rate is down, and Mayor Willie is just a bad memory. Memphis weathered the recession/depression better than most cities, and now we even have new businesses moving in, providing good jobs. The clinic I work for grows on you, and I've been fortunate to have been able to increase my skills and experience with new systems and technology. The schools still are terrible, but they're working on consolidating the city schools with the county, hoping that will help.  It's still Kansas like in geography, but you tend to not notice too much when the trees are leafed out.

Maybe this isn't such a bad place, after all....