There was big news yesterday about Domino’s making a $100 million donation to St. Jude, but they are not the only ones contributing – and you can help. Yesterday Amazon announced a quarterly donation of $562,635.12 to the children’s hospital. The money came from the Amazon Smile program where a small portion of the amount of customer purchases goes to a charity of the customer’s choice.
To participate, go to smile.amazon.com and select St. Jude from the list of charities. Once you’re signed up, when you’re ready to go shopping go to smile.amazon.com rather than www.amazon com. (This is easy to forget so you might want to bookmark the Smile site.)
MIFA will partner with author Matthew Desmond for an online community conversation on eviction at noon on Wednesday, October 7. Memphis has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic economy, with a disproportionate number of citizens behind on their rent. Desmond is the author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City which you can order at a 10% discount from Novel.
Job alert: Food services company Sysco is hiring an outside sales representative for the Midtown/Downtown area.
Amber Rae Dunn and Shufflegrit play Live at the Tracks Friday night 7:30 to 9:30. Come listen at Central Station’s socially distanced outdoor space or listen online. Expect classic covers, rockabilly, and in keeping with the venue, maybe a few train songs.
Patricia Wilson Aden has been selected as the new leader of the Blues Foundation. She will start on October 1. Current president Babara Newman is retiring.
Uh oh, this next piece of news is not good.
Looking at the Shelby County COVID-19 data page, the 7-day rolling positivity rate (5th graph from the top) is beginning to trend in the wrong direction. After hitting a low of 9.7%, it bounced back up to 10.1% and now 10.5%. That’s above the 10% threshold the health department wants to see to consider reopening the bars and loosening the stupid regulations on restaurants. The 7-day rolling new case average is also up, although at 112 that is much less of a concern (threshold 180).
Note that we’re now about 10 days removed from the extended Labor Day weekend, so it’s not like the upward-trending numbers were a surprise: We saw similar trends following the Memorial Day and July 4 weekends. It’s a shame though… we were so close to winning more freedoms back, and now it looks like we may be in for even more weeks of
Even more bad news: No Peeps for Halloween this year. Don’t expect them for Christmas or Valentine’s Day either. COVID RUINS EVERYTHING! I guess no-contact Peeps were too expensive to make.
I’ll try to tune in to the task force press conference today at noon. If there’s anything significant about bars or restaurants, I’ll do an afternoon update. If not, I will save the recap for tomorrow morning.
I hit my October goal for writing revenue today and am very close to hitting another, related goal. If I get there I will celebrate with a visually-impaired member of the ursine family this evening. Back tomorrow with more news.