One of the things I love about Memphis, Tennessee is the radio station operated by the Memphis Public Library, call letters WYPL, Your Public Library.  In particular I’m entranced by the programs featuring local volunteers reading newspapers, magazines and books over the radio.  

I’m traveling often to Memphis because we’re working there with the University of Memphis to facilitate the high quality redevelopment of the area around it.  Usually when I’m in other cities I listen to the local NPR station but I immediately turn on WYPL when I cross the Shelby County line.   

In the morning volunteers read articles out of the Commercial Appeal, and it might be about the latest downtown condo development or how the University of Memphis Tigers did in the game the night before.  Sometimes they read obituaries, Memphis lives summed up in the voices of their neighbors.  You can hear the newspaper crinkle as they fold pages down to read. 

But it’s not the news, or in the afternoon, the next chapter of a novel or children’s story that captures my imagination, it’s the voices. Most of them sound like they are retirement age, mostly women, many identifiably African American.  Their Memphis accents as fine as any kind of Delta music.  They read carefully, like your second grade teacher used to do.  And I lose myself in the sound, and the imagined tilt of their heads over the page, in front of a microphone reading to an entire city.   It’s a great luxury to be read to, a gift not many of us receive very often. And I feel, somehow, like I know everyone of those readers, and that they know me, and every chance they get, they read me back to Memphis.