Recently in Otherwise Category

Al Sharpton's National Action Network faces an $88,000 lawsuit from The Peabody related to unpaid bills from the group's national convention in Memphis last year. The New York Daily News reported over the weekend that The Peabody is suing Sharpton's organization for $70,300 plus $17,000 in attorney fees and other costs. The Memphis Daily News, which broke the story last week, has more:

The complaint filed by the hotel does not spell out if the outstanding debt is a final tab that was never paid, the remaining portion of a bill or some other amount in dispute. Documentation for the agreement between the hotel and Sharpton's group includes an attrition clause. If the group ended up using less than it booked from the hotel, new charges would be incurred.

Welcome to Links to Memphis, a new blog dedicated to highlighting our city's place in the world -- and on the World Wide Web. Yours truly is Mark Richens, deputy online news editor for The Commercial Appeal, and my task here is to provide a new perspective for understanding Greater Memphis by linking to stories about Greater Memphis from outside Greater Memphis.

Just as it can be enlightening to read about U.S. politics in, say, a British newspaper like The Guardian, folks in the Mid-South can get a kick out of reading, for instance, what The New York Times has to say about innovations at Methodist University Hospital. Entertainment value and chuckle opportunity aside -- remember when BusinessWeek reported that Bartlett is in Tipton County? -- I hope this blog helps us appreciate what a unique and interesting place we live in, a place known around the world for reasons good (hello, West Virginia!) and bad (g'day, Australia!).

Part of the inspiration for this blog was the excellent Memphis & the World series that ran in The Commercial Appeal in 2007. Our reporter and photographer spanned the globe to show the different ways that Memphis and the Mid-South touched people's lives as far away as India and Zambia. I hope to find more articles like that, from all points on the Web, and bring them to you in a way that keeps you coming back for more. I'm looking forward to blogging and sharing Memphis-related stories about everything from shady business to garage rock to the outdoors and the visual arts. The only thing I'm going to shy away from is University of Memphis sports, which are so well covered on other sites by the company.

So, please, bookmark this blog, add it to your feeds, recommend it on your favorite aggregator site, Tweet about it, and tell all your friends. And don't forget to send me links about Memphis that you run across. And comment. I do love the comments.