Nashville News Blog

The home-made sign on the train trellis at the entrance to Bells Bend reads "Keep it country."

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I saw that someone had hung a sign on the trellis at the main entrance into Bells Bend that said "Keep it country," and I thought, "Well, wow." I mean, yard signs are one thing. Risking your neck to make a statement right along Ashland City Highway is another. This might not seem like a big deal to you city slickers -- but believe me, it is.

Where I come from (rural America), once you've lost the train trellis, you've pretty much lost the PR war. It doesn't matter how fancy-pants a website you have or how much money or how many friends in high places. Once the train tracks have been turned against you, it's really hard to recover.

In Short:

Location: Right next to the Baptist World Center

The view of the city from Lock One Park.

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Crowds: None
Approximate Age of Patrons: My age
Topics of Conversation: "Ouch, my knee! What am I stuck to?"
Stray Dogs Seen: None
Types of Vehicles in Parking Lots: No parking lots
Perceived Safety: Low, bring a friend
Number of Gunshots Heard: None
Dog Friendliness: My dog loved it. Lots to sniff and jump and climb on.
Number of pitbulls sighted: Just mine
Accessibility: Low
Incorporation of Local History: Good, wish it were better
Recommended Patrons: Fishermen, history buffs, people who like moss

So let me get this straight. We're supposed to believe that women exist in Tennessee who are savvy enough to use eBay to buy breast milk, but stupid enough to give anonymous unscreened breast milk to their kids? And that Tennessee women are desperate enough to sell their breast milk on eBay?

So much so that we need a law against it?

"State Rep. Joe Towns Jr. said he's seen reports of people selling breast milk on eBay."

Please.

On Wednesday, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) who flew

Cornelia Fort

​planes for our country during World War II were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

Among the women honored was native Nashvillian Cornelia Fort, who was one of 38 WASPs to give their lives in service to their country (though she, and the other WASPs were not considered service members until 1977, when the WASP records were unsealed and the women extended veteran's benefits).

Fort was literally in the air over the island of Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941 when she found herself in a sky filled with Japanese bombers. She was killed in 1943 during a ferrying mission, in a fatal crash whose causes have been disputed over the years.* It earned her the tragic distinction of becoming the first U.S. woman pilot killed in active service. She was 24 years old.

​In January the Department of Justice put out a report (pdf) in which they found about one in four kids at Woodland Hills Youth Development Center had been the victim of some type of sexual misconduct. All of this misconduct, the report found, was perpetrated by staff members on juveniles.

The Tennessean looked into this. They found evidence that corroborated the DOJ report. State lawmakers even got together and discussed how to fix things. It is IMPOSSIBLE they don't know that kids are being sexually victimized at Woodland Hills.

So I have to ask you, in all seriousness, what sick fucks are still considering closing the New Visions Youth Development Center and moving more kids into Woodland Hills? Has this honestly come down to what's more important -- saving some tax dollars, or handing kids over to a place known for sexual predators?

This is the equivalent of selling those girls to rapists.

In short:

Location: Way out at the end of Pennington Bend.

The lock-keeper's house, which should surely be a museum or something.

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Crowds: Minimal
Approximate Age of Patrons: Late 20s, mid 30s
Topics of Conversation: "Have you been here before?" "No, I had no idea this awesome park was here."
Stray Dogs Seen: None
Types of Vehicles in Parking Lots: Just mine, but a couple of SUVs drove by.
Perceived Safety: High
Number of Gunshots Heard: None
Dog Friendliness: Your dog will love all the free "treats."
Number of pitbulls sighted: Mine
Accessibility: Pretty good (extra points awarded because one of the picnic tables is set up so a person in a wheelchair can use it).
Incorporation of Local History: Very, very, very poor.
Recommended Patrons: History buffs, children, photographers, boaters, people who like to watch the river roll by.

In short:

Location: Just off McGavock, out by the airport

A local dog sniffs one of the many smells at Seven Oaks Park (the start of the Frisbee golf course is back to the right).

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Crowds: Middling
Approximate Age of Patrons: Three kids and a bunch of twenty/thirty-somethings playing Frisbee golf
Topics of Conversation: "Does this park have the coolest trees ever?"
Stray Dogs Seen: None
Types of Vehicles in Parking Lots: Predominately trucks and SUVs
Perceived Safety: Middling
Number of Gunshots Heard: None
Dog Friendliness: Middling
Number of pitbulls sighted: Just mine
Accessibility: Middling
Incorporation of Local History: Poor, disappointingly poor
Recommended Patrons: Frisbee golfers, athletes, Sureños with some cans of paint and brushes.

I swear, the Children and Family Affairs Committee is more entertaining than three quarters of what's on television right now. Last Tuesday, we had a disgruntled ex-spouse of a country singer trying to air all his dirty laundry in public.

Then, yesterday, Rep. Johnny Shaw finally straight-up asked Rep. G.A. Hardaway the question on everyone's mind: whether there's a personal motive behind his ... shall we say ... over-enthusiastic interest in making sure men can get out of paying child support as easily as possible. (For more on one of his more interesting attempts, see Steve Ross.)

You can watch it yourself here, starting about 55:40 or you can read my transcript after the jump.

There may come a time when you are stuck listening to journalists talk about how awesome it was back in the good old days when people drank openly at their desks and editors and reporters came to blows over word choice and you could call a dame a dame and she liked it. And you will have nothing to share, by dint of being a normal person or bartender, or having come lately to journalism -- or worse, by being a blogger (or even worse than that, perhaps a dame blogger).

Your only recourse is to tell stories even older than them, back before they can even remember. It might not seem possible, but I have found three stories you can pass off as your own, happening "back in my day...." Just don't mention that your day was back in the 1800s.

If you follow country music at all, you probably heard something about Sara Evans filing a restraining order last week against her ex-husband, Craig Schelske.

If you gave it any thought, you may have wondered what Schelske has been up to this week that might have alarmed Evans.

It turns out that Schelske was testifying before the Family Justice Subcommittee of the Children and Family Affairs Committee. You can even watch his testimony (it starts about 18:30).

Schelske appeared in support of HB 2916, which seeks to establish equal parenting time as the default custody arrangement in divorce cases.

So, May Town Center is back on the

This side of the bridge would be lovely. The other side would be next to a prison.

​ table, albeit in a scaled-down version that would supposedly only need one bridge.

At this point, I only have one set of questions left, but ones I've not yet seen anyone answer. And I'm not asking to be snarky. I honestly don't know and I'm wondering if anyone does.

Are there some examples of successful middle and high end developments where the main way in and out of said developments takes visitors through an industrial area and right by a prison? Will corporations put campuses so close to prisons? Or is this an insurmountable problem that means the bridge would have to go in at the end of the Bend, regardless of what the folks living north of Charlotte have been promised and regardless of what developers now say?

​Last night was the first in a series of shows NPT will be doing on the state of children's health in Tennessee. The title is a bit of a misnomer. The shows will be focusing on a bunch of interrelated health crises Tennessee children face, from high infant mortality rates to obesity to mental health issues to poor nutrition to high rates of asthma and so on.

These things interconnect for sure, don't get me wrong. But it's one thing to watch a show thinking you're going to be talking about one monolithic health crisis. It's more overwhelming and daunting when you realize there are actually all kinds of different things going wrong with our kids (and by extension all of us).

It's an important series, poised to do a lot of good. But last night's episode brought up a couple of things that stick in my craw.

Man, just think how much money the Scene could have raised if we'd hosted a citywide pool on how long it would be until we had our first new convention center scandal.

Shoot, if only we'd been smart enough to start taking bets way back when the thing was proposed. We could have broken it into segments, handed out prizes for whoever predicted the timing of the "What's a few hundred thousand dollars between friends?" PR scandal and had another prize now for whoever had "less than a week" for "How long between the time demolition begins and the discovery of some embarrassing fiasco?"

It'd be fitting for us to start making money off of the ridiculous failures of the convention center, a nice mirror to The Tennessean's embarrassing $15,000 giveaway to the convention center.

But, fine, we can't actually run a citywide illegal gambling game (though we totally know the people who could set it up). I don't think that should stop us from making predictions about what and how soon the next dust-up will be. Winner gets bragging rights.

Make your best guesses in the comments.

In short:

Location: Out at the end of Neely's Bend.

Looking towards the parking lot with the river to your left.

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Crowds: Light.
Approximate Age of Patrons: Wide variety
Topics of Conversation: "Can you believe this weather?"
Stray Dogs Seen: One
Types of Vehicles in Parking Lots: Cars and SUVs
Perceived Safety: High
Number of Gunshots Heard: None
Dog Friendliness: Middling
Number of pitbulls sighted: Mine
Accessibility: Very high if you are on wheels. Not great if you need to be able to stop and sit frequently.
Incorporation of Local History: Strong
Recommended Patrons: Bicyclists, horseback riders, remote-control plane enthusiasts

Both by phone and email, Metro Water customers who had been receiving their bills electronically were informed that, starting this month, we'd once again be getting paper bills.

I set out to discover (1) why I can't just open up my online banking and be informed of how much I owe Metro Water like a civilized person; and (2) how, exactly, the Mayor's office squares a return to paper billing with Nashville's Green Initiative.

Sadly, for a blogger whose bread and butter is snarky trouble-making, it turns out there is a reasonable explanation.

The writing studio at Vanderbilt University had local blogger

An artist's rendering of the three bloggers.

​s Sean Braisted, Yvonne Smith, and our own Adam Gold as the guests at Thursday night's installment of "On Writing."

It was really nice.

The bloggers were well-chosen. In just three people, the audience got a good sense of the breadth of experiences contained in the term "blogger." You had a political guy who blogs for fun, a vegan activist who blogs in order to raise the profile of her cause, and a music writer who gets paid, in part, to blog about music.

And the questions were thoughtful and elicited many interesting responses.

Jim Cooper for putting together this map of all the different places around the 5th District that have gotten stimulus funds. OK, in fairness, the award should probably go to Tyler Allard, who seems to have done the grunt work. But let's not get into semantics.

It's a really nice use of the medium and provides a lot of information to constituents in an easy to digest fashion.

View Economic Recovery At Work in Tennessee's 5th District in a larger map

In Short:

Location: Right where the Z. Alexander Looby Library is.

The playground looked quite new. It even had a sign bragging on all the politicians who brought it to the neighborhood.

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Crowds: None
Approximate Age of Patrons: N/A
Topics of Conversation: "Oh, the park's right here. Thanks for nothing, Internet."
Stray Dogs Seen: None
Types of Vehicles in Parking Lots: Mine
Perceived Safety: Middling
Number of Gunshots Heard: None
Dog Friendliness: High this time of year, probably not appropriate for dogs once ball starts.
Number of pitbulls sighted: Mine
Accessibility: Not great
Incorporation of Local History: Middling
Recommended Patrons: Families, ball players, library patrons

​I'm asking as someone who thinks he may be the second worst politician in Tennessee (the first being Sen. Dwayne Bunch, who seems to have never met a piece of legislation, no matter how ridiculous or nasty, to which he wouldn't put his name).

But at some point, a girl has to wonder: Is Stacey Campfield secretly on the side of Democrats? I mean, here goes Campfield, getting ready to make his appearance on Penn & Teller: Bullshit! to explain his "Can't Say 'Gay'" Bill.

In short:

Location: Along County Hospital Road

One of the graves marked only with a number.

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Crowds: Living, none. Dead, substantial.
Approximate Age of Patrons: All ages
Topics of Conversation: "Don't be a chicken."
Stray Dogs Seen: None
Types of Vehicles in Parking Lots: Just mine
Perceived Safety: Very safe

This grave made me wonder how long there's been a cemetery here.

​Number of Gunshots Heard: Lost count, constant gunfire
Dog Friendliness: Low, lots of loud noises, plus it's a cemetery
Number of pitbulls sighted: Mine
Accessibility: Low
Incorporation of Local History: As well as can be expected
Recommended Patrons: Families of the deceased, cemetery enthusiasts

​1. Community members (of all faiths or lack-there-ofs) will be repainting Al-Farooq Islamic Center Friday at 11 a.m.

2. The already scheduled open house at the Islamic Center of Nashville from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday will now feature a panel discussion about the week's events featuring local religious leaders of many different faiths.

3. The story is making its way into the national news. Think Progress had a post today, as did Jim Romenesko. CNN has a story on their website as well.

4. Channel 5 News removed the comments from this story. The last time I saw the comments, almost every one of them was asking how Channel 5 could fail to remark on its own role in the story.

In Short:

Location: Snell Road, near the river
Crowds: None

Perhaps the city could add some barbed wire to the fence and then the park would be utterly and completely off-putting.

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Approximate Age of Patrons: None
Topics of Conversation: "Um, is it safe here?"
Stray Dogs Seen: None
Types of Vehicles in Parking Lots: There are no parking lots
Perceived Safety: Very low
Number of Gunshots Heard: None
Dog Friendliness: n/a
Number of pitbulls sighted: None
Accessibility: Poor
Incorporation of Local History: None
Recommended Patrons: Badasses

The last Nashville is Talking post went up with a dateline of "11:34 am - February 8th, 2010." I don't have it in me to write another obituary today, so I'll just say it's a shame.​

Nashville is Talking was an enormously important factor in the success and energy of the Nashville blogosphere -- indeed, of all Tennessee's. In its heyday under Brittney Gilbert, it was an important place for bloggers and blog readers to come together to argue, fuss, fight, flirt, make up, make friends, and keep up on what was going on in the lives of our fellow Tennesseans.

Under Christian Grantham, the scope of Nashville is Talking changed, and a reader might have found anything from instructions on how to enact change in one's own neighborhood to court documents embarrassing to local internet celebrities.

Anyway, it was a good time while it lasted. So I asked Brittney Gilbert if she wanted to wax nostalgic with me. She said yes. And then we made out. Okay, not really. Just checking to see if you were still reading.

Catch the interview after the jump.

​Pith is sad to pass along that scholar and Vanderbilt professor of sociology emeritus Richard "Pete" Peterson has died. Peterson was one of the earliest academics to treat country music as a subject worthy of consideration. His book Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity is one of the most important scholarly works ever written about the genre.

Peterson wrote that the tension between "keeping it real" and "appealing to the widest audience with the deepest pockets possible" is not something that just came to light with the likes of Taylor Swift or Billy Ray Cyrus or whomever; it's built right into the music's foundation. Maybe that's one reason his book seems as fresh and insightful today as it did when released. (I've long thought rap aficionados and scholars would find it illuminating as well.)

Peterson was a well respected professor at Vanderbilt and a genial friend to many folks around town. He will be missed.

Harold Ford thinks there's a certain segment of Tennesseans who wouldn't accept his wife. Perhaps the kind of Tennesseans who would pose with a Confederate flag?

​Harold Ford Jr. continues to sell out the state that, just a few months ago, he thought he might want to serve as governor. He sat down with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times and made it as clear as he could that a vote for him is basically a vote against all the things that caused him to flee Tennessee for New York.

Even though he still keeps a residence here.

You see, apparently we're just dumb, ignorant assholes. Sadly for Ford, we're not so dumb or ignorant that we can't, oh, you know, read the New York Times and see what he says about us.

First, he hates us because he doesn't think we'd ever accept his wife.

There was so much bad racial stuff out of Tennessee on Obama. I'm in an interracial marriage. I don't want to subject my wife to this, and I want to start a family. I think my marriage is more accepted here than it would be in Tennessee.

Which national convention taking place right this very day at the Opryland Hotel has no more tickets left to see the nationally famous celebrity whose appearance is its centerpiece?

Hint: It's not this one.

(Answer after the jump.)

In what is a proud moment both for Christianity and Middle Tennessee, we have made The New York Times because we are the home of "Xtreme Ministries, a small church near Nashville that doubles as a mixed martial arts academy."

Yes, in order to trick men into coming back to church, Xtreme Ministries seeks to assure them that their desire to bash each others' skulls in is in line with the wishes of Jesus. I can only assume that this is one of the Beatitudes that gets left out of most modern translations--"Blessed are the face beaters, for they shall inherit all the publicity."

The esteemed conservative Leadership Institute will be coming to Nashville March 27 and 28.

They say they'll be teaching conservatives "the knowledge and tools they need to play a major role in any organized political effort. Incorporating state-of-the-art methods and technologies, the Campaign School provides you with the most up-to-date ways to organize, mobilize, and deliver your supporters to the polls."

The program runs from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days.

Pith has some suggestions for possible subjects folks from the Leadership Institute need to cover with their campus recruits.

• Why wiretapping of a sitting United State senator is a bad idea.
• Just because you saw it in a movie doesn't mean it will work in real life.
• It's a bad idea to shoot video of yourself and your buddies as you commit a felony.
• Federal Prison: The Ins and Outs
• How to navigate those awkward family dinners after you publicly embarrass your high-profile father
• The Leadership Institute has disavowed you. Now what?

The City Cemetery is a lovely place for a walk.

​In Short:

Location: 4th Avenue South at Oak Street
Crowds: Minimal
Approximate Age of Patrons: 35-50ish
Topics of Conversation: What kind of dog is that? Hmm, it looks like a boxer.
Stray Dogs Seen: None
Types of Vehicles in Parking Lots: My car
Perceived Safety: Low to middling. The neighborhood leaves a lot to be desired (though all over are signs that gentrification is coming), but the cemetery itself feels quite safe
Number of Gunshots Heard: None
Dog Friendliness: High. There are usually poop bags provided. There's a lot of grassy areas for dogs to enjoy and lots of things for dogs to sniff. Just remember, though, that you're in a cemetery, so you want to make sure not to leave any unpleasant surprises for the families of the folks who are there. Also, watch that your leash does not get tangled on tombstones or on the old fences that surround some plots.
Number of pitbulls sighted: One (mine).
Accessibility: Very good. The cemetery is very level, with wide paths that can easily accommodate motorized scooters or wheelchairs. There are benches for people who need to stop and rest. And the whole cemetery is fairly small, so you're never going to be too far from your car.
Incorporation of Local History: Excellent. Everywhere you look there are signs telling you about the people buried in the cemetery and what their role in Nashville history was. If you take a history buff here, be prepared to spend hours. Also, you're right at the bottom of the hill Fort Negley sits on, so that's cool.
Recommended patrons: Families of the deceased, Goths, hoodoo practitioners, history buffs, members and admirers of secret societies (there are tons of Masonic symbols all over the cemetery), and magnolia tree enthusiasts (the cemetery has some lovely specimens).

Man, imagine what Adrienne Pakis-Gillon's campaign might have been like if the Tennessee Democratic Party spent money writing a mocking song about her opponent, setting up a website to promote said mocking song, and then raised funds from everyone who thought the song about her opponent was hilarious...

I mean, I don't know if it would have worked, but it would have been something bold and dramatic.

I really, really hope they took her off their list before they sent out the note bragging about what they did with money they didn't spend on her.