Holiday Presents for Memphis

I just wanted to point out a few gifts from some local sites.

There's In Praise of Memphis from fearlessvk, the Memphis impatriate and writer of the excellent blog At Home She Feels Like a Tourist. My favorite among her list of reasons to praise Memphis is "The True DIY Culture". Favorite not because I think it's more true, but because it's usually not mentioned at all, especially and obviously by official Memphis. To me, DIY culture -- with its creativity, low-cost and educational value -- is a, if not the, future of Memphis.

Two presents came from Commercial Appeal on Christmas Day. First, there's a great 8-part series (that begins here) on the Mississippi River (that begins here). What I like about the series is its strong emphasis on the River's personal and aesthetic qualities, which are often forgotten by or never taught to those who live here.

Second there's this editorial on the Tennessee Brewery development, which states:

If city officials make exceptions to land-use rules that endanger the neighborhood's character, then they run the risk of depressing property values. That, in turn, would translate into lower tax revenues from one of the inner city's few high-growth areas.

It's nice to see the morning daily take the position that allowing the demolition and destruction of our city is not pro-development, it is anti-business and anti-future.
[Note, both pieces from the Commercial Appeal may require registration and probably be firewalled eventually. A big mistake, imho. It would be interesting to see how much revenue they generate by charging for old articles vs. lost authority and lost advertising revenue from freely displaying those old articles (see Newspaper 2.0). Anyway, when I speak of presents here, I speak of the thoughts and sentiments given, not the actual text.]

Finally, I wanted to point out 2 great and dynamic Memphis websites have RSS feeds. First there's the Goner Records Message Boards, whose RSS feed is http://www.goner-records.com/board/rss2.php. I don't know if this was an intentional or default addition to their website, but now you can track new forum topics with whatever RSS reader (or other RSS app) you like to use. Then there's this RSS feed from Live From Memphis, which they note is in beta and only likely to work with Safari on a Mac. That's okay. With the many artists and events that are added to their website regularly, it will be a great way to track these additions once it's out of beta.

Thanks to all of you for your great works.