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Memphis Hop bus service launches

The Memphis Hop bus service, operated by Blues City Tours, provides Memphians and tourists with transportation to a variety of cultural transactions.

Sponsored by ArtsMemphis and Blues City Tours, the service launched this week at the Memphis Hop bus stop on Beale Street. Memphis Hop operates Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., with hourly stops at Graceland, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, The Children’s Museum of Memphis, Memphis Pink Palace Museum, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis Zoo, Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, Beale Street, AutoZone Park, The Peabody, National Civil Rights Museum, Blues Hall of Fame and the Metal Museum.

One-day tickets to ride cost $20 for adults and $15 for children ages 12-17. The service is free for children under age 12. Tickets can be purchased on the bus, at the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, at the AutoZone Park box office, at Graceland, or at MemphisHop.com.

St. Patrick Catholic Church Dedicates “Green Machine”

St. Patrick Catholic Church on Sunday held a blessing and dedication for  The Green Machine Mobile Food Market. The market will create access to healthy food for areas of Memphis that don’t have ready access to traditional supermarkets.

The mobile market will begin making stops at 15 area locations June 2, Kenneth Reardon, a professor and director of the graduate program of City and Regional Planning at the University of Memphis, told an audience of community leaders, parishioners and volunteers gathered at St. Patrick.

Reardon also shared the history behind the mobile food market and thanked the many community partners who have helped get the project off the ground.

St. Patrick Parishioners and members of the community await a blessing and dedication for a Memphis Area Transit Authority Bus that has been transformed into a rolling deliverer of healthy foods for the city’s neediest areas.

The Green Machine Mobile Food Market will begin making stops at 15 city locations beginning June 2 to sell fresh, affordable produce supplied by Easy-Way Produce Stores.

Antonio Raciti, a University of Memphis visiting professor in city and regional planning, speaks with a local parishioner on the newly rehabbed bus. Raciti created the overall design and detailed construction plans for transforming the bus into a retail sales environment.

Sid Selvidge

 

The word came Thursday afternoon that Sid Selvidge has died.

Summing up what he meant to Memphis music is very difficult because his contribution covers so much ground as musician, as an influence, as a counselor on the intersection of music and the lifestyle of making music. And then there was the example of continuing to pursue with dignity and determination something that all too many people believe is neither art nor a pursuit for anyone but the young on their way to some other goal.

Realizing the limitations of trying to encompass all that Selvidge meant to a city with an abundant and ongoing musical firmament, I’ll go for this:

He was an artist with his music in the manner and determination of a painter or a sculptor. And that will be his enduring impact – a body of work that even now is being evaluated and posted on Facebook and YouTube.

Some of the bravest people I know are musicians who take their songs, their voices and perhaps a guitar or a piano onto stages, big and small, temporary and permanent, and connect with audiences night after night.

That is what Sid Selvidge did for a long time in our city and continued doing almost up to his death. He was our troubadour and our portal to the essence of a music that met official resistance and world-wide acceptance and questioned whether either was the point.

Some of us watched much of the journey from the pre-Beatles coffee house days of folk music at places like the Bitter Lemon on Poplar Avenue to the Beale Street Caravan-Levitt Shell residencies.

Others came across him intermittently over the years, a reference point in a city that to those of us who live here doesn’t seem to change fast enough but which has changed tremendously to those who no longer live here.

Still more encountered the old records turned CDs turned digital files in which his voice and his art at first surpassed the technology and then the technology managed to begin to capture what those who saw him live encountered.

The encounter will continue although the body of work is now complete.

 

 

The School Board & The Grizzlies & Game Time

 

While so many Memphians were up late Tuesday watching the Grizzlies beat the Clippers, a much smaller group of citizens were up late for a different reason – Tuesday’s school board meeting.

The meeting featured some important moments in the move to consolidation in what was also one of the busiest days recently in the schools reformation. There was the board meeting and a hearing that morning in the consolidation case before Memphis Federal Court Judge Hardy Mays and then some comments by Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell at the Memphis Rotary Club on the subject as well.

You can read all about all of that in the links.

The Grizzlies got started at about 9:30 p.m. and finished at around 12:30 p.m. for a game of three hours.

The board got started at around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday and finished at 11 p.m. clocking in at about five and a half hours.

Read more »

Tim Tebow in Memphis June 15

Agape Child & Family Services is hosting its 15th Annual HeartLight event June 15 at FedExForum, and it will feature Tim Tebow.

The event is focused on raising awareness and support for homelessness, orphan care and under-resourced communities in the Mid-South. Tickets are on sale now at agapemeanslove.org/heartlight-2013.

From Agape:

“The goal of this event is to raise awareness of, and support for, homelessness, orphan care and at-risk communities in Memphis,” said Brian Hoover, Director of Development for Agape. “Tim Tebow is a dedicated follower of Jesus and a significant role model to youth and adults alike. His life and his philanthropic interests directly connect with our mission. We are not concerned about the recent news around his career…we are very excited about having Tim in Memphis and telling his story on a grand stage like FedExForum. Tim has endured incredible scrutiny since leaving college but his character and consistency have remained the same. Tim’s story is not about football, it’s about how God is working in his life despite the circumstances. It’s a story that all of us in this city need to hear. We are excited to have him in Memphis soon.”

Dansette

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