Don't know about the accuracy of the 150-year-old North Capitol history, but the geography is all wrong

Pith in the Wind blogger Betsy Phillips contends that she "solved the mystery" of a 150-year-old photo taken of Civil War soldiers during the Battle of Nashville. She argues that the photo was taken from Capitol Hill facing Germantown and North Nashville, given the current topography:

Well, there's only one place in town where you're going to be on a hill, overlooking a train trestle, and can see Fisk off in the distance — Capitol Hill facing Germantown. Here's a contemporary picture from the TSLA for comparison (though you can't see Fisk, because of the trees, but you can see farther than Fisk, because you can see the highrise on the far side of the river in Bordeaux, thus, if there were no trees, you'd be able to see Fisk.).

The problem with Phillips' theory is that the 2010 photo above could not possibly have captured Fisk in its angle. TSLA's camera orientation is pointed northwest. Fisk lies at an angle farther west of the camera position. A look at screenshot from Google Earth makes that plain:

Click on to enlarge.

The Bordeaux highrise Kelly Miller Smith Tower (not included in the screenshot, but to the left of center in the TSLA photo) lies on a direct line down 10th Ave N., through Fifteenth Avenue Baptist Church (whose steeple is clearly seen in the TSLA photo) to Capitol Hill. The farthest straight western line shown in the TSLA photo stops near where Jefferson Street crosses over the interstate, 3 blocks east of the Fisk campus. The Bordeaux highrise Kelly Miller Smith Tower is near Clarksville Highway, which drops down south to become D.B. Todd, Jr. Blvd, which brushes up against Fisk, but that road is not a straight shot between the highrise tower and the university. The road doglegs away from downtown at Clay St. Fisk does not actually sit between Capitol Hill and the Bordeaux highrise Kelly Miller Smith Tower. It sits off to the western side.

By the way, the photo of Fisk that appears on the masthead of my blog was taken from a spot near the intersection of Union and 9th Av. N, not too far from Capitol Hill. The sunset should tell you I am pointing my camera west. Also note that there are leaves on trees, but Fisk's main buildings sit high enough on a hill itself so as not to be blocked from sight. The Jubilee Bridge can also be seen in the masthead to the left of the Memorial Chapel's spire. Again, the theory that the TSLA shot--taken on the northern side of Capitol Hill--includes Fisk does not hold water.

Obviously I cannot speak to the actual location of the 150-year-old photo or the history of North Nashville during the Civil War, but I can say that if Betsy Phillips is operating under the assumption that the 2010 photo includes the Fisk campus, her theory that Capitol Hill is the only place the old photo could have been snapped is itself open to debate.

Whether the history is right, the geography is all wrong.


UPDATE: Based on Mike Peden's comments below and in respect for the legacy of the late Rev. Kelly Miller Smith, I corrected my references to the "Bordeaux highrise" to reflect its proper name.

Metro Schools pulled me into their Twitter fight against my will

For some reason, the social media persona responsible for MNPS tweets decided to pull me into the drama resulting from pro-charter school protesters at their Bransford Avenue doors. I've never myself joined in a public protest of MNPS, and I certainly wouldn't in support of charter schools. But the communications person at the district lost his composure and decided that it would be effective spin control and triangulation to compare me to their protesters. All I did was blog--in more detail than can be contained by a picket--about my honest experiences as a public school parent the past 4 years.

Here is the sequence of tweets MNPS used to issue their talking points:

To please everyone? Really?

Metro Schools made an obvious attempt in the thread to minimize and marginalize my experiences and my reasons for doing exactly what Jesse Register encourages us to do: choose between public, private, and public privatized schools.

Okay, be irritable with me if you must, but why drag me into this drama with charter school zealots? Like I am the only person who has concerns about the privatization and commodification of Nashville's public schools? Beyond the distinct probability that there are others out there who share my experience and views, the comparison of me--an individual blogging an opinion you choose to read or not--with a group of people organizing a conspicuous, disruptive demonstration is itself silly. And there are others who have other differences with MNPS based on other reasons not even counted. Trying to please everyone? Hardly.

And again, why am I lumped with noisy demonstrators unsettling the tranquility of Bransford Avenue when all I did was blog an opinion MNPS objects to?

I resist being cast by Metro Schools in some extreme juxtaposition to people who want any and all charters approved. I have argued without fail that public education should be community-based rather than corporately-based. As far as I am concerned both Metro Schools and charter school boosters reject popular determination of public education. Both are beholden to corporate dollars and to venture philanthropists. I advocate something else: money should not be allowed to buy out the democratic process. Both bureaucratic district and education reformers are bought and paid for. Both have organized money. I advocate organized people determining public education policy.

In conclusion, public school parents, the lesson here is that if you choose to express an opinion at odds with Metro Schools you might be singled out on their social media for it. You might be dragged into a war that you never intended to fight. Either take caution or throw it to the wind.


UPDATE: more background on the protesters at Pith in the Wind. They were enabled by a Washington, DC advocacy group. And one of the protesters' targets, school board member Amy Frogge responds to their criticism in the wake of yesterday's activities.

Speaking of Pith in the Wind, I found that one of their writers made specious Twitter comments on our decision to send our daughter to a parochial school (I seem to be the "he" she refers to):

Now I recall that the last time "Aunt B" was out-of-joint me was when I questioned--in the wake of a soft-pitch interview with former DC schools Chancellor, current lightning-rod, anti-teacher lobbyist Michelle Rhee--her claim that one of her fellow reporters had actually exhibited "the fix" for journalism that Phillips predicted she would. Rhee is an acknowledged public figure who plies the high-visibility media circuit making her case for education reform. All my comments about Rhee have been made in that context. Not in the context of personal decisions of what is best for her children.

If you look at my blog post, I did not disparage Michelle Rhee for being a private school parent. I criticized the reporter for allowing Rhee to frame the debate so that she is branded as a public school parent without acknowledging that she also is a private school parent. There was branding going on by a public figure and the reporter failed to critically analyze the branding. So, asking for full disclosure is disparaging now? I tried to fully disclose in my blog post our reasons for leaving MNPS, and I'm not even a public figure. Journos are supposed to reveal the information that the rest of us may not access.

As to "all the private school parents" I have allegedly disparaged: well, I don't know what she means. While I am disposed to a well-adjusting and functioning public school system, I do not bear ill-will toward private school parents. For several years I have corresponded with other parents who have faced the tough decision to move their children out of MNPS. I do not recall expressing anything beyond simpatico with their difficulties and hard decisions. If I disparaged parents in the past, I apologize.

But again, what is the big deal with our decision? I acknowledged that there are ironies, but we are acquiescing to a degree to the system of "choice" that has been handed to us by the school district. And there is nothing ironic about the fact that for four years we chose to send our kid to an urban public school near our home in a transitional neighborhood. Has "Aunt B" ever made that choice? Eventually, it was high stakes testing married to a corporate culture (maybe even the threat of austerity) that drove us out of MNPS; it was not the inner city or our predominantly African American school.

Personal attacks on private individuals (relative to public figures like Michelle Rhee) by alt-weekly writers strike me as mean, bad faith in a system of "choice" they do not themselves question.

Nashville Scene blogger drawing criticism from other quarters

SouthComm's Betsy Phillips catches some more heat today for her brand of blogging at Pith in the Wind:

I think the point is that using one medium to critique another is an excercise in non-sequiturs.  Which is not to say that there aren’t some people who can write eloquently and informatively about music, just as I am sure there are plenty who know what they are talking about when they write about architecture.  But whoever it was who described Nashville’s new Convention Center as “the Christmas sweater of buildings” either does not have a particularly deep grasp of the subject matter – or has just never been inside the place.

While the style of the Music City Center does not suit my personal taste (which is a diplomatic way of saying it strikes me as hackneyed and unattractive in a big-boxed way), I'm much more concerned about its lack of long-range vision (in not including mixed-use development on such a large plot) and its inaccessibility for most Nashvillians who cannot or will not pay the price of admission (hence, its dedication to tourists and out-of-towners and the wealthy money changers who collect their tributes).

Attractive or not, we are stuck with this monument to a convention center industry on the wane, a structure that only marginally connects to life in Nashville. And we are stuck with it for decades. How will it look to Nashville in 20 years?

A local reporter interviews Michelle Rhee and fails to clear a bar set for her by a colleague

Last October local SouthComm blogger Betsy Phillips introduced new SouthComm reporter Andrea Zelinski in an interesting way. Yes, full disclosure counsels that Phillips' wrote some "homer" PR fluff on behalf of the news corp she blogs for. So, take the cheers with a grain of salt and then verify for yourselves. And yes, it is remarkable that Phillips dropped a double-edged sword of praise for Zelinski qua woman (saying males "don't really know a lot about the reality of women's lives" even as she also argued that women's issues are not different than issues, like jobs, that concern males). Yes, it can be argued that Phillips takes away with one hand what she gave with the other.

Those questions are not nearly as interesting in the wake of Zelinski's recent interview with lightning-rod education reformer Michelle Rhee. Move to Phillips' conclusion, where she sets a soaring bar for Zelinski's work to be judged by: she insists that Zelinski may help "fix" the problem of reporters who "play into the way politicians frame their arguments".

Given the track record of collusion of reporters and the communications machinery of politics (evinced by the lateral professional pipeline between news and PR), such an achievement would be a dizzying prospect for Zelinski or any other journo.

Having granted that, I'm not sure she came close to the bar in her Rhee interview. Rhee, a politician in her own right, was permitted, nearly invited, to frame the arguments on her own terms.

Start with national public education advocate Diane Ravitch, who read Zelinski's interview and blogged on it. Ravitch's analysis suggests to me that Rhee effectively framed her argument without follow-up or challenge from Zelinski:

The story describes her thus: “A Tennessee transplant, she is turning her attention to schools in her new state.” It also refers to the “roots” she is “setting” in Nashville. Apparently, she never told the reporter that she lives in Sacramento, not Nashville. She describes herself as a “public school parent” because one of her daughters attends public school in Nashville. But she did not acknowledge that her older daughter goes to an excellent private school, Harpeth Hall School (“Nashville, TN’s only independent, college-preparatory school for girls, grades 5-12”).

One can hardly blame her for choosing Harpeth Hall. It has an 8:1 student/teacher ratio, with a median class size of 13. Class sizes in public schools in Nashville and other cities are much, much larger.

I bet that Harpeth Hall does not give standardized tests and does not evaluate teachers based on their students’ test scores.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Michelle Rhee became an advocate for small class size, and for the same goals and purposes for all children that she wants for her own child?

So, Zelinski did not do much to challenge Rhee's framing her brand as a Tennessee public school parent. In fact, Zelinski's primary follow-up on the question of Rhee's children was framed as "public or charter", not "public, charter or Harpeth Hall". If we apply Betsy Phillips' own standard about challenging dominant framing of issues and values, Zelinski lobbed no critical questions that would have basically challenged Rhee's frame job.

Where Rhee actually lives and her status as a private and a public school parent are both critical points that deserve follow-up questions by any reporter, man or woman. Either the reporter did not know that information or she chose (or was editorially prompted) not to disclose that information and follow-up accordingly.

In the end, to what "different perspective" (Phillips' term) does Zelinski's interview allude?

Zelinski describes Rhee in nearly favorable terms that the latter would probably not disagree with: "an icon of the education reform movement .... [who] pushed to hold teachers more accountable for students’ performance, busted open the doors of school choice and shaken up the education establishment." The framing here is ridiculously uncritical and by no means distinctive.

Loaded, but unpacked reform vernacular like "teacher accountability", "student performance", "school choice", and "education establishment" is hardly neutral. In fact--without acknowledging exaltation of standardized testing, without analyzing the actual choices framed by privatization and without observing that the education establishment is bankrolled by corporate philanthropy and massive government funding influenced by campaign finance--this interview is biased toward education reformers like Rhee.

Zelinski's interview comes on the heels of a PBS Frontline documentary that shows Rhee, having invited cameras into an exit interview with a principal, unprofessionally firing that principal as the video rolls. Zelinski could have raised questions about the impropriety, if not the viciousness of that, but instead, the reporter herself frames Rhee's mean behavior more favorably in a general sense: "she's thrown a few elbows". Educators losing their jobs in humiliatingly publicized fashion is hardly analogous to getting whacked on the basketball court. I still struggle to see the "different perspective" Betsy Phillips tells us Zelinski will be bringing to SouthComm reporting.

In fairness to Zelinski, Rhee is a tough cookie, a veteran of news interviews who knows how to dodge land mines. When Frontline sent Rhee some follow-up questions based on a principal who claimed to have witnessed school employees erasing and changing test answers after students turned them in, Rhee simply did not reply to PBS reporters. So, if Zelinski had asked more critical questions that actually challenged Rhee's dominant framing of her reputation, Rhee might have refused the interview.

But that still leaves the problem of the lofty bar set for Zelinski in the first place. If Rhee would not allow Zelinski to ask probing questions that might actually challenge her framing of education reform, then Zelinski cannot help but ask the questions she did, and those questions (to use Betsy Phillips own word) "played" uncritically to Rhee's advantage.

The bar had simply been set too high.


UPDATE: At her personal blog, Betsy Phillips responds to this post. I have two three replies:

• Phillips never lifts a finger to answer the primary question of my post: what "different perspective" did reporter Andrea Zelinski bring to the Michelle Rhee interview that helped her refuse to "play" into Rhee's framing of the education reform issue? For Phillips to maintain that she was merely supporting another woman is disingenuous. She made a specific claim: that Zelinski would conduct herself differently as a woman when faced with the framing behavior of powerful people. The question still stands: where is the difference in the Rhee interview?
• Phillips speculates that I see conspiracies in women "writing positively" about other women. First, I do not. What I am responding to on a material level is branding of the SouthComm product; what I am responding to on a less tangible level is the predisposed tone of SouthComm writing. I previously posted on that predisposed tone regarding the writing of one of Phillips' other colleagues (who is male) on the subject of education reform. Likewise, when Phillips blogs under the Pith in the Wind masthead, particularly when she showcases the work of other SouthComm writers (as has been the established practice at Pith for years) the writing has a marketing life of its own. Why else does Pith exist, but to promote the brand? Second, why is it acceptable that, when a critic observes continuity between the writing and the brand, s/he is opened to charges of conspiracy? (And outsiders are not total dolts. We know that writers, editors and reporters inside news companies interact with one another agree on their own frames of interpretation). By the way, at least one local journo (who is male) has responded to similar criticism with the same hyperbole that they are not told what to write. As I explained two years ago, the brand is not a bunch of disjointed pieces wrenching themselves away from each other. There is organizational and interpretive cohesion. Hence, it is legitimate to judge the SouthComm news brand as a whole. That does not mean I see black helicopters.
• Phillips seems to resort to passive-aggressive criticism over my use of the term "tough cookie" in describing an all grown up Michelle Rhee who influences policy at a national level. It was a nice try on Phillips' part, but she failed to add that the context in which I used the term "tough cookie" is an all grown up one: Rhee is a veteran who dodges land mines. There is nothing symbolically childlike or diminutive about that metaphor. On the contrary, in that context, "tough cookie" means hard-nosed, strategic, battle-wise. Phillips, who concedes she has her own agenda, seems to be reading a gender agenda that I do not have into my observations of Rhee.