What’s the saying? The more things change, the more they remain the same.

As the suburban towns and cities in Shelby County begin anew their march to the ballot on establishing municipal school districts, I came across a passage about the establishment of Shelby County in John E. Harkins’ superb history of the city, “Metropolis of the American Nile.”

It seems the legislation establishing Shelby County as of May 1820 did not say where the seat of the county would be. And even then Shelby County had towns other than Memphis. In fact, it had bigger and older towns.

John Overton, one of the four founders of the city who was the most active promoter of its business and commerce, had already been to the Tennessee legislature to make his thoughts known on the new county.

They included a rejected proposal to shape Shelby County as a triangle missing much of the present county above the Wolf River. But the idea never made it past another key figure in the origins of Memphis, General James Winchester.

Overton was back in Nashville in 1822 promoting a bill the legislature passed to hold a referendum to gauge the preference for the location of the county seat with a four member commission then making the actual selection. His legislation also deleted the standard practice of locating a county seat within three miles of the geographical center of the county.

The referendum never happened. Two years later, the legislature passed a new act deleting the popular vote and moving the decision directly to the commission. The commission didn’t pick Egypt or Big Creek to the north of Memphis. They instead chose Sanderlin’s bluff which was uninhabited and about 10 miles east of Memphis. The state appointed a commission to lay out what would become Raleigh.

But Raleigh took several tries.

“When this commission failed to report back,” Harkins writes, “the state appointed still a third commission which finally completed the task. Within two years, Raleigh was laid out.”

By 1836, Raleigh was bigger and more prosperous than Memphis.

Some court functions were later shared with Memphis, according to Harkins history and Memphis suddenly began to prosper in the 1840s. But the county seat didn’t return to Memphis until the 1860s.

Glenn Mitchell is taking over as the managing partner of Ernst & Young’s Memphis office from retiring partner Bill Drummond, effective July 1.

Drummond is retiring after more than 36 years with the accounting giant. As managing partner of the Memphis office, he has been responsible for managing Ernst & Young’s services and business relationships throughout the Memphis and West Tennessee areas

Meanwhile, Memphis-based Wunderlich Securities has added some new talent to its equity capital markets business and its private client group, several of whom recently worked at Morgan Keegan & Co. Inc.

Ted Cashion, Burton Milnor and Scott Poore have joined the private client group and Matt Hayden, William Kitchens and Jason Wangler have joined the equity capital markets side.

Cashion, Milnor, Poore, Hayden and Kitchens all come from various roles at Morgan Keegan.

Guy Fieri was in Memphis last week visiting a handful of the city’s budding eateries for his Food Network show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

The show features Fieri traveling the country in his red 1967 Chevy Camaro convertible for classic “greasy spoon” restaurants, bars and roadside shacks based on viewer suggestions.

“Wrappin up a great DDD shoot in Memphis and stayed at the awesome @PeabodyMemphis, wait’ll you guys see these joints!” @GuyFieri tweeted Tuesday, May 8.

Fieri filmed tutorials of how to make best-selling menu items with the chefs of Elegant Farmer, Rizzo’s Diner, Three Angels Diner and South of Beale in Memphis and Memphis BBQ Co. and Memphis Street Café in Mississippi. All six restaurants have opened within the past few years.

The show(s) will air later this summer. Other restaurants Fieri has spotlighted on his show in the past include The Little Tea Shop, Uncle Lou’s Fried Chicken, Alcenia’s and Tom’s BBQ.

The Memphis Railroad and Trolley Museum has officially opened to the public, and a ribbon cutting was held on May 12 – which also happened to be National Train Day.

The museum has announced a Class One Trainmaster fundraising program to meet a $25,000 challenge grant by May 31. The museum is looking for 100 individuals and businesses to become Class One Trainmasters with a minimum $250 donation.

Donors will get several museum gifts as well as recognition within the museum as Class One Trainmasters.

Congressman Steve Cohen and LeMoyne-Owen College President Johnnie B. Watson Friday announced the details of a three-year federal Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program (MSEIP) grant worth more than $700,000.

“As the only college in the state of Tennessee to be awarded this highly competitive grant, we’re thrilled and truly grateful for these crucial resources,” Watson said. “Science and technology are the driving forces behind jobs that emerge nearly every day in our country, and these funds will be used to prepare our students to successfully compete in the ever-evolving job market.”

LeMoyne-Owen will use the funds to lay a foundation for 12 sophomore students to improve their performance in the college’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) program. Selected students will receive a stipend of up to $6,000 a year to defray normal educational expenses in an effort to reduce their work hours, thereby increasing the number of hours they can devote to their studies and community service.

The students also will be housed in a designated dormitory to encourage academic and professional camaraderie.

“This kind of dynamic goes on at Ivy League schools, where students develop close-knit working relationships that go beyond their college years and into their professional lives,” Watson said. “These enduring relationships serve to increase the likelihood of higher academic achievement and professional success.”

Colliers International Memphis recently participated in its parent company’s “Everyone Gives” social media giving campaign, benefiting several locally-based charities, including St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

In addition to raising $4,000 in pledges through the Everyone Gives website, St Jude won special recognition and a $2,500 award from Colliers International for being one of the top three charities in attracting the most cities across the world to make pledges.

Gene Woods, president of Colliers Memphis, said it was especially meaningful to have Gina Dalrymple present the $2,500 bonus award to St. Jude along with her daughter, Kendal.

“At our local kick-off for the campaign, Gina, a marketing and leasing assistant in our asset services office, made the St. Jude story very real for all of us by sharing her personal experience,” Woods said.

“Two years ago on this exact day, I took my youngest daughter Kendal to the doctor with what we thought might be the flu,” Dalrymple shared at the kick-off. “It turned out that Kendal had a very rare form of leukemia called APL, so rare in fact that St. Jude sees an average of only three patients a year with it. In 1962 when St. Jude opened, APL had virtually no chance of survival. Now the survival rate for patients with APL is greater than 80 percent. My hope is that generous donations to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital through campaigns like Everyone Gives will not only allow families like ours to continue to receive free treatment, but to hear that their research has made the survival rate 100 percent.”

Front row: Henry Stratton, Gene Woods, Kendal Dalrymple, Brenda Abshure, Gina Dalyrmple, Melanie Rivera. Back row: Andy Cates, Tracy Watson and Julie Lunn.

Overall, “Everyone Gives” raised $741,213 in just 17 days. More than 12,000 individuals in 474 cities donated to 1,479 charities. Participants made donations of every size to charities of their choice and were encouraged to use their social networks to invite friends, families and colleagues to give.

It was probably bound to happen.

Now the Facebook groups are sprouting up around Delta’s passenger airfares at Memphis International.

This one is called “Delta Does Memphis,” and encourages anyone to log on and sound off. Tom Jones, of Smart City Consulting, has been a prominent critic of Delta’s fares, and he’s behind the “Delta Does Memphis” group.

From his description on that page:

“We’re mad as mad as hell, and we’re not going to take this anymore!

Send Delta Airlines a message. Post horror stories about Delta Airlines unfair airfares in Memphis.

Make your voice heard. Share your opinions with Delta Airlines and the Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority.”

Among Friday’s Inked items are Whole Foods Market Inc., which plans to demolish its existing 25,000-square-foot store at 5022 Poplar Ave. and move into the adjacent 40,000-square-foot space currently occupied by Office Depot.

Here are some renderings of what the new site could eventually look like:

Construction is expected to start in mid-2013, and Whole Foods anticipates an early 2014 completion.

Sew Memphis, a fabric boutique and quilting haven owned by Susan Schwartz and Mary Allison Cates, opened in Midtown last week.

Schwartz owns the old three-bedroom, two-bath house just north of Central Avenue at 688 Cox St. along with her son, Daurie. It’s been zoned commercial for awhile, and includes a 2,000-square-foot space (the part that houses Sew Memphis) as well as a 3,000-square-foot warehouse in the back (where photographers Laura Zumwalt and Lisa McAdoo are subleasing).

The space has held several occupants over the years, but there’s one tenant in particular with whom Cates has nostalgic ties.

“I remember it from when I was little in the early 80s,” Cates said. “The guy who owned all of the rides at the Zoo was in that house. His name was J.C. Levy. He also ran this little telephone answering service called Dial ‘N’ Smile. I remember calling the number, it was 278-something. It was a number that I called regularly as a child and there would be a little story and then a little inspirational message – it wasn’t religious or anything, it was just kind of feel good. He would always say, keep dialing and smiling!”

The Memphis Food Truck Association held its inaugural meeting Monday night, voting unanimously to form an alliance supporting the city’s mobile food vendors.

About 60 people showed up to the event in the Broad Avenue Arts District arranged by Taylor Berger of YoLo Frozen Yogurt & Gelato.

“The energy level was really high. It felt like a community already,” Berger said. “I hadn’t really experienced anything like that in awhile – just the kind of grassroots community level enthusiasm, it was just electric.”

YoLo is one of 45 operating food trucks that have been authorized by the Shelby County Health Department, with more than 30 pending applications. Berger said many of the meeting’s attendees had recently been licensed, had pending applications or were considering the idea at various stages.

“There has been frustration with individual food trucks reaching out to parks and companies and not meeting a lot of success, but a lot of optimism was met by reaching out under one banner with one voice that we could broker some really good deals for everybody.”

The group discussed the Food Truck Fare, happening Thursday, May 10 at Court Square. Participating vendors are Fuel, YoLo, Square Meal on Wheels, Memphis Munchies, Kona Ice, Revival Southern Food Co., Mark’s Grill, Healthy Delicious, Rockin’ Dough and Scooter’s.

What’s more, Natalie Wilson with Shelby Farms Park reviewed the first food truck rally scheduled for June 30, to coincide with the U.S. Navy jazz band playing in front of Patriot Lake. In fact, she’s working on up to eight more dates in July and August for free Thursday night concerts where food trucks could vend.

“That’s really exciting,” Berger said. “There are not a lot of family-friendly things to do for free during the summer, especially on Thursday nights, so I think that’s going to be a hit.”

Meanwhile, Jim Duncan and the Botanic Gardens are considering inexpensive weekly summer movie screenings, yet another chance for food trucks to collaborate together and reach a wider audience than if they were doing it alone.

“Like the classic movies – everything from Indiana Jones to Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Berger said. “That would be huge, I think it’d be really popular and a great opportunity for food trucks, so hopefully that will go through as well.”

Berger said about a dozen people signed up at the end of the meeting who were interested in being board members. Several people also volunteered to head up the association’s social media efforts (Facebook.com/MemphisFoodTruckers and Twitter.com/MemFoodTruckers) and arrange workshops to get everyone on the same page.

But perhaps the biggest accomplishment of the Memphis Food Truck Association’s debut meeting was nailing down its contact base.

“We’ve got everybody’s contact information solidified so now we’ve got a great distribution list,” Berger said. “We’re going to keep everybody updated on everything.”