Howdy, Memphis! It’s Wednesday, Sept. 24, and let’s just nerd out for a minute, because it’s National Punctuation Day. To celebrate, I’m going to try to work as many punctuation marks as I can into today’s column. Let’s go ahead and get the semicolon out of the way; it’s a tricky one, after all. 

THE NEED TO KNOW

Lucy Elementary is on Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ closure list. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian)

Which schools might close? Memphis-Shelby County Schools leaders released a list of five schools that it may close at the end of the 2025-26 year, which could affect more than 1,200 students. That list includes four traditional schools, some of which may come as a surprise to students and their families. Students in those four schools would have to be rezoned, but the fifth school, Ida B. Wells Academy, is an alternative school, and students aren’t zoned to the campus. MSCS is proposing to keep that building to reuse for something else.

Memphians stood in support of a Memphis City Council resolution urging Gov. Bill Lee not to send the National Guard to the city. (Samuel Hardiman/The Daily Memphian)

Council votes down guard resolution: The Memphis City Council failed to pass a non-binding resolution Tuesday that would have urged Gov. Bill Lee to keep the National Guard out of Memphis. Despite the vote, the council chambers were packed with citizens who opposed the guard deployment. In other council news, members gave the OK for Memphis Light, Gas and Water to buy the old Smith & Nephew building in Cordova for a new, mostly weather-proof control center. And they approved a month of free Memphis Area Transit Authority bus rides for all.

From left: Former Memphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith and Tadarrius Bean sat in court on April 28. (Chris Day/Commercial Appeal/USA Today Network/AP file)

Feds want no new Nichols trial: Federal prosecutors filed an appeal Tuesday to try and stop a new trial for three of the five Memphis police officers charged in Tyré Nichols’ death. Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith were convicted in the killing last year, but their sentencing fell apart after U.S. District Judge Mark Norris abruptly recused himself. The new judge on the case granted the three a new trial last month.

A woman was sentenced Tuesday for trying to sell Graceland. (Mark Humphrey/AP file)

Jailhouse rock: Lisa Findley, the woman who fraudulently tried to sell Graceland, was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison. Findley was arrested in August 2024 after she reportedly posed as a rep from a fake loan company and claimed the late Lisa Marie Presley had borrowed nearly $4 million in 2018 and pledged Graceland as collateral. She then claimed the loan wasn’t repaid, sought nearly $3 million from the Presley family and took out newspaper foreclosure sale notices for Graceland.

QUOTED

DeAndre Brown (left) and his wife Vinessa Brown appeared in Judge Lee Coffee’s courtroom on Friday, Sept. 19. (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian)

“I’m absolutely befuddled why the ... government ... would give money to a person to run a nonprofit ... when they had been convicted of stealing money from a nonprofit.”

— Criminal Court Judge Lee Coffee
Those were some of the harsh words Judge Coffee had for the city, county and state government for giving public funds to suspended Shelby County Office of Re-Entry head DeAndre Brown and his wife for their nonprofit. The couple appeared in court Tuesday on charges of misappropriating funds, and Vinessa Brown was released from jail.

THE NICE TO KNOW

Rhodes College was once called Southwestern, The College of the Mississippi Valley. (The Daily Memphian file)

100 years of Rhodes: Rhodes College celebrated a century in Memphis this week. The liberal-arts college with a Hogwarts feel has been around longer than that. But back before 1925, it was located in Clarksville. And it was called Southwestern, The College of the Mississippi Valley, which if we’re being honest, is too many words. The Daily Memphian’s Geoff Calkins explains how Rhodes got here, why the move was crucial to the college’s survival and how it’s changed for the better in the last 25 years.

The Farm Market Co-op sells fresh produce along with handmade goods. (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian)

Gone country: Until now, if you wanted a farmer’s market experience in Memphis, you either had to wait until the weekend or drive to the Agricenter International. But Downtowners and Midtowners now have a closer option for daily farm-goods shopping. The Farm Market Co-op on South Main Street is open seven days a week and offers local produce and meats, home-canned goods, homemade beauty products and more. And though it’s in the heart of Downtown, owner Kristen Cerda is going for rural vibes. 

The development plan for Krosstown Kleaners includes three tenant spaces on the ground floor and two one-bedroom apartments and two two-bedroom units on the second floor. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian file)

Kleaning up: The long-vacant Krosstown Kleaners space in Midtown is finally getting a new life. The owner of the building plans to open a mental-health clinic on the ground floor “to help fight crime but through the mental space.” And the upper floor will house apartments. No worries for fans of the iconic neon sign: It’s not going anywhere. (Though no word on whether the “Jesus is Lord, check web site for special” message will make a comeback. Fingers crossed.) Read more on that in Inked, plus details on a new place to get your trail-running shoes in Germantown. 

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis broke ground Tuesday on a new project. (Dima Amro/The Daily Memphian)

Uptown funk: Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis broke ground Tuesday on its biggest housing development ever. The plan calls for building 52 single-family homes on about three acres in Uptown over the next two years. “This is the future of Memphis Habitat,” said Dwayne Spencer, Habitat’s president and CEO. The homes will be semi-attached, meaning they’ll each be connected by one wall. That’s a first for Habitat Memphis, but the math made it the more efficient option by a long shot.

The billboard near Delta Technical College reads, “Honoring the life of Charlie Kirk ‘God, family, country. In that order.’” (Brandon LaGrone II/The Daily Memphian)

Different kind of memorial: Hernando is not getting a road named after slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The city’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted down a proposal last week to rename McIngvale Road for the Turning Point cofounder who was killed at a college event on Sept. 10. Kirk was from Arlington Heights, Illinois — not Hernando. But Alderman Kit Kitchens proposed the name change anyway. Now, one Hernando man has organized two billboards.

Into battle: The Daily Memphian’s Chris Herrington lumps film director Paul Thomas Anderson into the same camp with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino. “Each new movie they put out is considered a kind of event, at least among movie buffs,” he writes. And the next event for Anderson is coming this week. “One Battle After Another” stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a former political revolutionary whose daughter gets abducted. Herrington has a preview of that, plus details on a special screening of — arguably — the most Memphis movie to have ever Memphis-ed.

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

Still looking for a Halloween costume idea? Slowdown Dry Goods has you covered.

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