Today this blog is 10 years old

The last decade was a gas.

Let's do it again sometime.

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.

What do crime stats really tell us about crime in Nashville?

Recently, a local law firm got my permission to use one of my photos on their website. This happens periodically with the volume of photos I take along with my general willingness to share. A couple of years ago a Starbucks art designer asked for permission to use another photo.

I visited the law firm's website to get a feel for how they used the photo, but once I got there I was more interested in a recent post to their blog regarding crime in Nashville.

The gist is that we are told that crime is down in Nashville, but we should not let appearances fool us. Crimes stats, as with any stats, can be manipulated to express messages that we would not necessarily take away if we viewed them raw or packaged in other ways:

Some of you may already be familiar with COMPSTAT, a statistics based approach to crime fighting employed famously in the fictional Baltimore Police of HBO’s The Wire ....

I found out that the Metro Nashville Police Department had engaged the COMPSTAT program in its war on crime, which left me wondering where the similarities ended. If you believe the Nashville Police Chief, and his press release repeated in the Tennessean, Nashville crime is low. However, this recent New York Times article, in which retired police officers admitted that police officers, and even detectives, manipulated statistics under enormous departmental pressure, makes me question: is crime really down? Doesn't feel like it to me.

Importantly, I think the post is also suggesting that we rely on our own experience and anecdotal knowledge of the impact on the lives of those connected to us. While packaged as more objective and reliable, stats can be juiced and interpreted to pull talking points benefiting Metro officials who present them to us.

Do you believe crime in Nashville is really down? Or are the stats glossing over real problems that go ignored in your community?

Making a year-end donation to the Nashville Symphony

I have a long-standing practice of donating any Google Ad revenue checks from this blog to worthwhile local non-profits who give so much back to the community. Past causes I've donated to include: Fisk University, Buena Vista Enhanced Option School, Cumberland River Compact, Second Harvest Food Bank, 88.1 WFSK FM, North Nashville Flood Relief Group, Nashville Jazz Workshop, Friends of Nashville Farmers' Market, and the Cheatham Place Kids Christmas Party.

The travails of a significant source of cultural exposure to music not called "country" prompted my latest donation. A letter I just put in the mail:

December 31, 2013

Nashville Symphony

One Symphony Place

Nashville, TN 37201-2031

Dear Symphony Staff:

Thanks to the patronage of advertisements by readers of my community blog, “Enclave:  Nashville North-by-Northwest,” I am happy to pass on $200 that I recently received from Google Ads to the Nashville Symphony as designated gifts. I have pledged to use advertising profits to support community organizations, particularly those in and near the urban core.

In donating I affirm the Nashville Symphony’s mission “to achieving the highest standard for excellence in musical performance and educational programs, while engaging the community, enriching audiences and shaping cultural life.” This gift is also intended as acknowledgement of the strides that your organization made in the face of daunting challenges in 2013.

In that spirit, I ask that you please divide this donation evenly:

·       $100 should go to the musicians' union, which last August ratified a 15% pay cut to help save the symphony's important role in the community

·       $100 should go to the symphony's education programs for youth, children and public school students because of the potential to enrich the cultural growth of future generations

I trust that this money will help in some small way fulfill your mission to make our community a better place to live, to work, and to visit by enhancing what you do.  And so, I am pleased to be able to give back to my local community.  I also hope that you will consider my donation as a vote of confidence in your worthwhile efforts along with an expression of best wishes for 2014.

Warm regards,

Michael Byrd

If any worthy organization deserves to have a new year better than 2013 it is the Nashville Symphony. Bank of America almost took them under but by summer they were saved from bankruptcy. Unfortunately, the jobs of food service workers who probably needed those paychecks were lost. Other staff had their salaries cut.

For their part the musicians voted against their own interest: they voluntarily took a cut in pay to help the symphony keep plugging. Often, and especially in conservative states like Tennessee, unions are smeared as selfish and destructive. Very rarely are they celebrated when they vote to reduce their own paychecks to help out their employers. Such sacrifice is a service to our local community, and it ought to humble the rest of us, since musicians have to pay their bills too. With this modest donation I celebrate the sacrifice of the musicians.

I also celebrate the important role that music plays the public education of Nashville's children. I am happy to support this project.

I hope you will join me in feeling encouraged to remember the Nashville Symphony when you decide to donate. And thank you for clicking on the ads in 2013. It made this donation possible.

Happy New Year!

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.

Even though it may seem like we are leaving them, we believe that Metro Nashville Public Schools left us

Over at another project I curate, I offer an apology with no apologies for the decision to relinquish my public school parenthood in 2013:
http://mikebyrd.net/2013/08/14/why-i-stopped-being-a-public-school-parent/

Using social media to get the lights back on

Back in February 2005 I blogged a post on a cobra-head street light in front of my house burning out and the 10-day wait I was subjected to after the Metro bureaucrat at the other end of my phone request for repair drug his feet and rationalized the delay.

Jump forward to the first week of January 2012. I contacted the NES social media manager via Twitter to ask for the most effective way to report 3 sidewalk lampposts--installed several years ago as part of our federal block grant streetscape project--that had burned out. With Metro's confusing website makeover, I felt that going straight to NES was a better solution this time. That person directed me to their online report form.

One of the lampposts had been out for at least two years without any repairs. Two others stopped working late in 2012. I reported all three on January 4, giving locations and a lamppost serial number.

Despite my anticipation that going straight to NES via Twitter would get faster results than in 2005, three weeks passed with no changes to the lights. I tweeted @NESpower again. The person at the receiving end of my tweet replied, "For some reason, the work order was marked complete." They issued another work order.

Another week passed without any repairs and I direct tweeted @NESpower again. The social media specialist said that they were working with NES Customer Service to resolve the problem. Eight more days elapsed without changes, and so I followed up on Twitter again. @NESpower responded last Friday by saying that they tried to repair the lights on Thursday, but had some obstructions that kept them from completing the job.

Then on Saturday, the cherry picking truck showed up and replaced all of the the burned out lights that I originally reported on January 4. It took about 5 weeks longer than I hoped it would, but the lampposts are shining brightly once again on my street.

The lesson to be drawn is that the traditional channels for requesting lighting repairs are not any more reliable for me now than they were in 2005. In fact, replacing the lights took longer and a work order was erroneously marked as complete even though repairs were not made. And not having Metro help readily available for neighborhood infrastructure may make leveraging follow-up more difficult. My next option if nothing had been done by this weekend would have been to contact my council member.

Consequently, I would counsel anyone having trouble with NES customer service to be sure to use social media to interact with a company representative directly about follow-up.

Facebook chatter on Germantown's Advance Financial

Metro planners were criticized a couple of weeks ago in a thread on the new predatory lending store (Advance Financial) going up in Germantown at Rosa Parks Boulevard and Jefferson Street. Of course, observers pointed out that predatory peddlers are always dumped into more transitional neighborhoods and that you would not see this happening in West Nashville.

One person insisted that a liquor store replacing the demolished gas station would have at least given something back to the North Nashville community rather than simply taking away.

Local jazz and blues column writer Ron Wynn was expressly concerned about about the lack of warning we got about the arrival of the lender:

The time to do something about this was before they got on the property. Where are the elected representatives for North Nashville and why did this happen without some comment from them? I don't blame the business. They are doing what business people always do, trying to maximize profit. But these things don't happen in other communities because they get stopped before they get started.

While I believe that our council member more than likely should shoulder some of the responsibility for her part in allowing this to happen without due diligence to the community, I also think that Mr. Wynn lets Advance Financial off the hook too easily. What he fails to include in the profit-maximizing equation is the political influence the lender flexes through the vehicle of campaign donations, full-time lobbying and leveraging public support. Advance Financial, after all, has its own "527" political advocacy committee (remember "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"?). This not just some shop owner trying to make an honest buck. Advance Financial is a player and the politicians predictably fall in line with the players' money.

And these things don't happen in other communities because other communities have either organized money or organized people to stop them. North Nashville needs more of the latter. Yet, any of us who stand up and argue that not all growth is good for our quality of life are often met with knee-jerk and baseless criticism from people who have issues with confrontation of and debate with Nashville's patrician class, the "job creators".

I do not disagree that we need more people here who are willing to be an early warning network of watchdogs digging up dirt that otherwise is spirited under the radar. I've curated and blogged (8 years last week!) with that as my intention.

A neighbor here in Salemtown who joined in the Facebook discussion quoted one of my previous blog posts on Germantown's new predator to point out that zoning, use and historic overlay requirements were all met by Advance Financial, making it legal. Mr. Wynn responded:

I can guarantee you that there are plenty of other places in this city where Advance Financial would have never gotten approval to set up where they are. They are directly across from the planned Black Music Museum. You think the city would let a predatory lending company establish itself across from the Country Music Foundation?

Point taken. But Advance Financial greases deals like this. They contributed thousands to the Germantown Street Festival. I believe that they could get a predatory lending company across from the CMF if they were willing to donate millions. Of course, that would fly in the face of the whole "maximizing profits" equation. But money changes everything. It can purchase anything in any part of town for the right price. In reality Advance Financial makes more from preying on working class and poor people, who are compelled to concentrate away from affluence. Putting Advance near the CMF makes bad business sense in an established tourism district, but if they needed to locate there the price would be higher than it is on Jeff Street.

Once a company has the zoning and the use requirements lined up and then the local neighborhood association cows to their money, how can they possibly be stopped?

Undeterred, Mr. Wynn seems to have an answer:

The killer here is that this MIGHT have been stopped if action was taken way back in the beginning. It's not like businesses have never been prevented from setting up shop in areas due to neighborhood opposition. But the opposition has to happen beforehand, and it has to be informed .... I didn't find out about this until it was already set in stone. Where are our (the community) sources with access to this type of information regarding who's obtaining property and for what purposes? You better believe anytime something is vacant, for sale or available in Brentwood or Belle Meade or even Madison it is closely tracked and people living in those communities are briefed and informed about possible buyers, businesses, firms, etc. I don't believe that the people of North Nashville would have stayed silent had they known what was happening in advance.

So, Advance Financial is not to blame for this deal, but "community sources" who did not properly warn North Nashville are? (Also, note that North Nashville, which has not been organized well enough to catch wind of these things and mobilize in the first place, is absolved from responsibility). Who are these community sources he demands step up? Campaign-financed politicians? Bought-out neighborhood associations? The incentives have already been handed out. Expecting them to go turncoat is unrealistic.

So, who is left to sound the early warning system? Neighborhood leaders and watchdogs unplugged from streams of influence?

In all fairness, waving red-flags about power moves in Nashville is highly risky. You can be ostracized as "conspiratorial". You can be stigmatized as "NIMBY". You can be ignored as someone who merely looks for a fight without higher goals. There is very little benefit in watchdogging in Nashville. After so many years of doing it through this blog, I do not blame anyone for not stepping up and sticking their necks out.

And there's the rub. If by "community sources" Ron Wynn is referring to ordinary people, why isn't he willing to step up and do the job himself? Why not start his own hyper-local blog?

Maybe because hosting your own neighborhood blog is tough and thankless? Neighborhood groups and watchdogs proliferated under the previous Mayor and his relatively robust Office of Neighborhoods. The focus on neighborhoods has died in Karl Dean's administration. The courthouse class effectively counters community watchdogs with communications specialists, PR flacks and rumors of anonymous trolls on online comment boards.

Speaking of flacks, there is no shortage of reporters who are willing to echo what they are fed about growth and development.

Journalists have colonized the blog lifeworld and they promote the dominant narrative there. The local blogosphere was at one time an alternative channel for voices that would convey news that the news media ignored. News companies now pay social media managers and enlist bloggers who gatekeep the legitimate voices more effectively than dead-tree versions could.

Hence, there are so many obstacles to the communication for which many of us wish before developments move from concept to reality.

We do need community watchdogs. We do not need unrealistic expectations about community watchdogs, who assume remarkable risks in service to the community.

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.

Local news scraper/occasional blog falls silent for months

We local observers who stick out the vagaries of online publishing (especially gratis blogging) know full well that it is a rather transient endeavor, a field-in-flux where efforts disappear as quickly as they emerge. Local, popular website Nashvillest, which aggregated local news and marketed deals for consumers daily for several years, appears to have fallen silent for the last 6 months. I do not know whether the project has been shuttered and shelved, and I could not find anything online to clarify the status of Nashvillest is at this point in time.

Given the push in pro journalism to emphasize "local coverage" (the quality of which is open to debate) especially via reporters' social media and to aggregate local coverage on news media sites, I'm not surprised that Nashvillest has ground to a halt. News corporations generally co-opt everything. We will see if the break is permanent if its founders, Morgan Levy and Christy Frink, ever make public comment.

Nashvillest played a positive role at trying times. Other times, they left something to be desired. One thing I will absolutely not miss about them if they have called it quits is their failure to acknowledge the community that I have blogged about for nearly a decade:

North Nashville neighborhoods did not exist at Nashvillest

I totally get that a lot of energy (and money) flows west-to-east in this city. But if the Nashvillest authors made an effort to list South Nashville, how could they logically fail to list North Nashville on their site? When news scrapers ignore news in certain neighborhoods, they render the happenings in those communities invisible. On the flip side, websites like Nashvillest prove to be irrelevant for North Nashville when they ignore us.

A carnival of contrasting perceptions of Nashville's Mayor in the wake of the NYT's "Nashville Itself"

Consider the analysis of New York Times southern bureau chief, Kim Severson, looking at Mayor Karl Dean with hindsight and outside-in in 2012:

Mr. Dean, a former city lawyer who became mayor in 2007 and led the city’s recovery from historic floods in 2010, said the [new convention center] project, which got under way during the recession, has been a fight every step of the way. “The gains for the city are real and tangible,” he said.

My observations and reflections on the Mayor's involvement in 2010:

I distinctly remember the Mayor laying low and putting news conferences and non-profits like Hands on Nashville...between himself and the relief effort. HoN did a lot of good, but it also took a lot of heat from some of us that Hizzoner chose not to face ....

Even as East Nashvillians mobilized 1,500 volunteers on their own to rescue neighbors and bring relief to their community, they watched Metro resources head west. Karl Dean may be Tennessean of the Year at 1100 Broadway, but he had very little impact at Moss Rose or near McFerrin Park outside of photo-op appearances when ... he decided to shed his "businesslike" style to get out and walk the neighborhoods ....

I watched TV reports of volunteers and Metro officials streaming into West Nashville, but then I drove Bordeaux neighborhoods that had huge piles of debris stacked at the curbs with no volunteers or Metro officials in sight. We took a car load of food and supplies to an Egyptian Coptic Christian community in South Nashville, where we saw few relief workers from Metro or Metro's non-profit contractors. It seemed like Metro-lead relief arrived late to and left early from poorer northern and southern neighborhoods ....

Less than a week after the 1,000-year flood, Karl Dean was on NPR whitewashing the destruction by claiming that 80-90% of Nashville was "untouched" by the disaster in an attempt to maximize future tourism revenue. It bears asking at this point: if only 10-20% of the city was "touched" by floods, why was the Mayor's performance heroic enough to be lauded as "Tennessean of the Year"?

That was 2010. Today local pastor Jay Voorhees blogged his own views of the Mayor's seeming blindness to disposable people with no power in the wake of the Music City Center construction:

For all of the hopes of some of my progressive friends back when he was elected, Mayor Karl Dean has had a dismal record of failure when it comes to dealing with the issue of homelessness in Nashville. One would think as a former public defender that he would have some sense of the issue and some of the needs of that community. Yet, outside of some basic lip service, Mayor Dean has not seemed particularly interested in the social safety net side of governmental services, and certainly not the challenges of the homeless community. In the days after the 2010 floods the mayor’s office was noticeably missing in trying to address the needs of the former tent city residents, leaving the question of how to deal with this population to a set of dedicated volunteers and clergy. The Metro Homelessness Commission has languished during the Dean administration, some of which can be attributed to its members, but part of which is reflective of a mayor who is more concerned with creating new business opportunities than assisting those who are down and out.

Those comments are consistent with my perception that Hizzoner may not really care about people who do not have campaign cash to give or influence to lever. No doubt the MCC will provide a lot of wealth for a few tourism industry big shots to hoard without regard for Nashville's outcasts. To her credit at least Times journo Severson touches on some of the local perception of Karl Dean's benign neglect, even as the bare mention does not scratch the surface of the challenges Nashville faces:

“People are too smug about how fortunate we are now,” said the Southern journalist John Egerton, 77, who has lived in Nashville since the 1970s.

“We ought to be paying more attention to how many people we have who are ill-fed and ill-housed and ill-educated,” he said.

The paradox here is that the local social media (as well as the news media) that I see is running with smugness about the New York Times piece and its ingratiating airbrush of Music City. Instead of revealing something insightful--nay human--about Nashville, the piece is just another arrow in the branding quiver of self-conscious marketers and neurotic hand-wringers regarding Nashville's "image". Karl Dean and the journalistic tributes that continue to follow him will one day be gone and Nashville will be left with some stubborn facts about who is in and who is out in this city. We continue to deny those facts at risk of our own self-delusion.

No major obstacles standing in the way of Fehr school building preservation

The ordinance that would apply a "Historic Landmark Overlay" to the Fehr school building properties in Salemtown and prevent demolition or alteration with few nebulous exceptions was approved by the Metro Council tonight on second reading. There was a public hearing, but no one got up to join the debate for or against. That was the last major hurdle toward preserving a significant landmark in Nashville civil rights history. Once past public hearing, passage of bills on third and final reading is generally a foregone conclusion.

I've been blogging and working on this cause for years. In spite of the bill's limitations, it is a big step in the right direction for our neighborhood, Nashville, and history.

Buh-bye, Med Mart. Look Nashville, you have two convention centers!

Last February, readers, I told you that the Medical Mart, which Mayor Karl Dean promoted as a vital, job-creating replacement for the Nashville Convention Center and virtual compliment for the new Music City Center, was dead according to Cleveland news sources.

And, just like that, eight months later, Mayor Karl Dean is confirming that the Medical Mart deal is dead, with breathtaking lack of query now from Nashville's media, which breathlessly, seemingly unanimously, promoted Hizzoner's plan for a Medical Mart when its staging meant leveraging approval for the new Music City Center.

As bleated by WPLN and no doubt sponsored by the Mayor's Office:

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean sounds like he’s all but given up on the so-called med mart ....

Dean says the Renaissance Hotel, which is attached to the city-owned convention center, is interested in taking over some of the space. Dean says it’s a desirable piece of property that he’s not worried about sitting vacant long.

Not quite the optimistic narrative spouted out of the Mayor's Office and the media when the Music City Center was pitched to us. Now Nashville is simply "moving away" from the Medical Mart (even though 8 months ago we were limping toward it) according to the article by Blake Farmer, as if Karl Dean had never made certain promises under the pretense of building Music City Center. Would Music City Center have received quite as much promotional spin if Dean announced that his vision included the Renaissance Hotel shacking up in part of the old convention center? Doubtful.


Supplement: Jamie Hollin sees IQT lurking in the loss of Medical Mart. Given the Mayor's checkered past with IQT, Holins insights might not be far off.

Or they packed in charter school friends and students as PR insurance before they honored other "reservations"

East Nashville blogger, Sarah Martin, had a reservation to attend the "exclusive" Nashville screening of the controversial parent trigger flick, Won't Back Down, but co-sponsoring organization StudentsFirst did not honor it:

It was my intention on Monday to attend a private screening of “Won’t Back Down,” sponsored by StudentsFirst, with opening remarks by Mayor Karl Dean and a wrap up discussion panel. Unfortunately, StudentsFirst either miscounted seats or misunderstood what the word “reservation” means because I was one of many people with reservations who were told they didn’t have seats for the show. Oops. Fail.

Belle Meade council member appears to have itchy trigger finger

(Full disclosure: I have been openly one of the strongest supporters of Emily Evans many times on this blog, which makes this post a difficult one for me to write.)

During an online discussion tonight on the possibility of a parent trigger Metro Council member Emily Evans tweeted:

Note that she did not include teachers in the trigger equation of being "driven bw district and parents". That exclusion seems par for the ambivalent course that trigger fans seem to tee off on. Triggers channel parent anger not in democratic or progressive ways, but in ways that promote privatization of public education and increase public subsidies for private enterprise. The trigger is a deliberate wedge between organized parents and organized teachers, both of whom can usually be brought together to act for the greater good of public school kids. It is divide and conquer, and the conquerors are partisan politicians angling for influence and wealthy corporations drooling at tax revenues. So, Ms. Evans' omission of teachers is not inconsequential in my opinion.

And then there is that unabashedly curious and deliciously contradictory claim she makes that "this acrimony" (by which I assume she means the controversy engendered at every stop around the country by the parent trigger tour) is not of Nashville itself. The parent trigger is an unrealized project that started in California by charter school leadership shortly after former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger passed education reform legislation. The group founded by a charter school leadership to promote it, Parent Revolution, is not even located east of the Rockies, let alone east of Little Rock.

The parent trigger "movement" itself is astroturf alien to Nashville, and yet, the kumbaya that Emily Evans predicts can happen with a trigger inspired from the outside is somehow indigenous and home-grown? Maybe she is doubling down that certain voices in Karl Dean's Nashville will be ignored or yelled down and that the debate will not turn against her bid to bring charter schools to wealthy Belle Meade. Otherwise, her minimizing of local opposition to the parent trigger (which is as honestly found as her chosen hard sell) seems to me at my most charitable moment utterly passive-aggressive.

I'm originally from Texas, so I guess I am ultimately an out-of-towner. I have lived in Nashville half of my life (since 1989), but maybe I still don't qualify as local. However, I do have two daughters both of whom were born in Nashville. My daughters attended or are attending Metro public schools. So, perhaps being the parent of these two MNPS daughters should qualify me to take issue with Ms. Evans' latest pet project without the insinuation that my dissent, that our dissent is not authentically Nashville.

I have skin in this game and I am a Nashvillian. No degree of gainsaying by charter promoters will change the fact that I am here and I will speak out prompted by nobody from the outside.

CM Evans has gone from being one the bolder mavericks on Metro Council to one of the most risk-averse members in my book. She struck me as an uncritical advocate of charter schools back when the Great Hearts project started taking flight. I've not been this disappointed in her since she voted for Eric Crafton's English Only. It seems her tenure on council, which for a couple of years roared like a lion on funding the new convention center, is ending about as gritty as a lamb.

Pushing through a parent trigger in Nashville is not going to give parents more power simply by flipping a bona fide school (in Evans' district the average school would not be facing challenges of serving working class or impoverished families) to a privately-run charter school. This needs to be heard going away: the parents may end up left out of the equation after the trigger is squeezed. And there are devils they do not know lying in wait. If this is to be a fair debate on parent trigger it cannot be stacked in favor of the promoters to the exclusion of the critics or of the risks involved. Emily Evans at least owes the public debate more than trying to sway it from her position of influence with prejudiced outsider/insider spin.


UPDATE:  In a tweet earlier tonight from the Nashville screening of the parent trigger promotional flick, "Won't Back Down," Nashville City Paper reporter Joey Garrison tweeted:

This film paints teachers' unions as out-of-touch with the wrong priorities, and characterizes school districts as bureaucratic wrecks.

His observation is consistent with what I wrote earlier about the ill will trigger proponents tend to bear toward unions.

Cancelled conventions at Music City Center cost Nashville

Nashville is already shelling out $678,000 in taxpayer dollars to cover the losses of two conventions originally booked for the new, historically expensive Music City Center. Crane Watchdog culls the details:

Two associations, the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association (HPBA) and the Technology & Maintenance Council of the American Trucking Association (ATA) were scheduled to hold conferences at the center more than a month before the building was scheduled to open ....

Now the associations have made the decision to relocate upon news that construction will not be fully completed before their events. Of the two shows, one will remain in the area while the other has relocated to Florida. Aside from the tourism loss ... that the government is paying "more than $678,000 in taxpayer dollars to make restitution" to the two associations.

The payout approval is also documented in the July 12, 2012 Convention Center Authority meeting minutes. The minutes confirm the payment amount demonstrating that the Authority will pay the ATA $110,000 and also reduce the rent for future convention in the years 2015-2017 from $35,000 per year to $0.00 per year. In addition, the minutes show the Authority must pay $568,153 to the HPBA. All of these fees cover a cancellation fee, assist the groups with other expenses necessary for relocation, and cover additional expenses that would not have been necessary if the events had remained at the Music City Center.

However, convention center spokesperson Holly McCall essentially puts the blame on the Metro Council for the unplanned expenses:

The Music City Center isn't scheduled to open before May 2013, so why did the center agree to book them a month before?

"These shows were booked back in June of 2009," said McCall. "That's when metro council originally looked at voting on the convention center. They ended up not voting on the convention center until January 2010, which set us back 7 months."

So, it's Metro Council's fault that convention center planners and schedulers took council approval for granted even though popular opinion was not strongly in favor of building it? According to the Metro Charter, council approval is part of the procedure for approving capital projects. It is not something that unexpectedly pops out of left field.

Rather than blaming the Metro Council, perhaps Ms. McCall should have pointed to the failures of the agency she represents for not planning some cushion for the probability that delays might occur in the council approval process.  The convention center authority should own the missteps in the timeline that caused them to fail to account for the messiness of public process. My guess is that the convention center leaders in 2009 were willing to risk the loss of individual conventions and public money for the immediate PR projection of inevitability that the claim "Conventions are already being booked!" was giving them.

The Metro Council can be ineffectual enough, but for convention center leaders to make them scapegoats for their own wasteful messes is cowardly and shameful.

Blog chatter: are charter schools faux reform?

I've been frankly disappointed by the deafening silence among Tennessee Democrats on the question of privatizing public education by means of charter schools. As far as I can see very few are bucking the White House, which is firmly committed to "education reform" via charter schools. Instead, they seem more interested in the partisan game of slamming Republicans for vouchers rather than acknowledging that their own milquetoast party often offers nothing bolder than GOP-lite education policies.

So, I sit up and take notice when a Tennessee Democrat goes against the grain. Trace Sharp has honest questions based on her rural experience for her fellows who advocate charters and others:

• Was collective bargaining for teachers dispatched out of the way to set charter schools in place? (In my opinion, the answer is absolutely yes.)
• Why would a for-profit company be better for school children than public education?
• How will data on the actual retention skills of information of students be measured? If charter schools don’t have to follow the regulations of public schools, what is their model and WHY is it better?
• Once again, if a county only has one or two high schools, what determines which one will be a charter school, which one won’t and how will public funding be distributed? There are a lot of counties with only one or two high schools that go back back to the consolidation that occurred in the early ’90s where small, community schools closed and moved to larger-based schools.
• Who will monitor the profits of the charter schools? Who will regulate the curriculum?

It is clear to me that privatization of public schools is the extension of Republican logic that business models are the solution to social problems and policy challenges. Democratic support of charter schools strikes me as a kinder and gentler form of rejection of government services, the utter resignation of the idea that public education is by definition guaranteed to all comers. They may use buzzwords like public-private partnerships, but privatization is more like leveraged buyout. They may shroud it with non-profit philanthropy, but it is remains private enterprise with all of its limitations. The Godfather of charter school philanthropy is Bill Gates:

[Bill] Gates' leveraged philanthropy model is a public-private partnership to improve the world, partly through targeted research support but principally through public advocacy and tax-free lobbying to influence government policy. The goal of these policies is often to explicitly support profitability for corporate investors, whose enterprises are seen by the Gates Foundation as advancing human good. However, maximum corporate profit and public good often clash when its projects are implemented.

(And I won't even go into the problem of the reactionary funders of school reform as Trace ably did; go read her post for that). Business models for education do not simply solve problems in public education.


As Molly Ivins used to say, business excels at creating wealth. That does not guarantee that it does everything else well (although it can buy enough public relations experts and political strategists to brand it a cure-all). Business models also invite new problems, like treating people strictly as either consumers or commodities, like reducing all good (classically a broader moral and social idea) to financial goods. Private companies and wealthy individuals buy greater influence while besieged and beleaguered communities, parents, teachers and students have only their own bodies with which to fight, assuming they have the time and energy to do so.


The private enterprise end of the private-public partnership naturally pushes the process to let entrepreneurs take control. As a result public education gets sold off to the highest bidders, who like Bill Gates, also wield political clout. Nashville lawyer Jamie Hollin underscores the problem:

No matter how nice candidates are, how long or how little they’ve lived in the community, whether their kids go to public school or not, whether they work for a company already receiving public tax dollars through contracts, how brilliant they may be, who they’ve worked for or with in the past, or who endorsed their candidacy, the ultimate goal of the monied-interests behind them is privatization. And, there’s lots of money to be made in privatization ....

I am not willing to completely dismantle the public school system in Nashville like the individuals and groups supporting these candidates are so hell-bent to achieve.

While Nashville abdicates to a kinder and gentler form of school reform, other cities like Philadelphia are moving with ruthless, heartless efficiency to privatize public schools. In a letter to Philly's school district "recovery" officer, a mother of children in district and charter schools calls education reform what it is, a conservative expression of the shock doctrine:

You’re not speaking to me with this brand of disaster capitalism that tries to shock a besieged public with unproven, untested, and drastic action couched as “solutions.” You’re not speaking to me when you invoke language like “achievement networks,” “portfolio management,” and “rightsizing” our schools – and say not a word about lower class sizes or increasing the presence of loving support personnel or enriching our curriculum.

You’re not speaking to me when you plan to close 25 percent of our schools before my son graduates high school. You’re not speaking to me when you equate closing down 64 schools – many of them community anchors – as “streamlining operations,” yet you’ll expand charter populations willy-nilly despite a national study showing two-thirds of Philly charters are no better or worse than District-managed schools.

You’re not talking to me when your promises of autonomy come minus any resources, and when the best you have to offer parents is “seat expansion” – which just means larger class sizes without extra funds.

You’re not talking to me when you say all schools are public schools. They are not.

We are indisputably facing a real crisis in education. As author Naomi Klein points out, crisis destabilizes communities, throws people off their guard, forces us to grasp desperately for answers, and in some cases, to panic, which gives wealthy, powerful and patient special interests the chance to rush in with sweeping "reforms" that tend to favor them more than the grasping masses. Likewise, conservative agendas rush in to fill the vacuum. School reform is no different. It is not a community-based, democratic or (regardless of what its adherents claim) progressive model of education, but a business-oriented, charity-bent, venture-philanthropy-funded model of keeping underserved populations compliant to the larger social structures that define their place in the first place.

Maybe if they act hard enough like a new facility is a done deal, then people will just assume it is

They do not have a facility yet, the community may not support one, and there remain questions over whether Nashville even needs another one, but they held a job fair earlier today in East Nashville:

UPDATE: This does not sound good for anyone. According to Jamie Hollin:

1000 Apex St. is the former site of US Lumber and is zoned industrial. Many of you may remember the site and immediate surrounding area being under water in May 2010. The area’s detailed neighborhood design plan marked the area as proposed green space. In order to turn the site into a waste transfer station it will require the passage of a resolution by the Metro Council, then it will require the approval of the Board of Zoning Appeals for a special exception.

So, is Waste Connections setting this up to be a jobs over planning/green space issue by pushing a job fair prematurely?

Another Mayor's budget, another time of calls to cut common people's health care

A blogging Nashville pastor reflects on the likely fallout from political attempts to remove Metro's modest health care safety net by cutting funding of Nashville General Hospital at Meharry and the Bordeaux Long-Term Care facility:

It was clear that the closing of the hospital would lead to people going untreated for their diseases — including treatable heart disease, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. Likewise, skilled-care facilities like Bordeaux are even more unlikely to take on indigent patients, meaning that the families of the weakest and frailest among us would have few options for the care of their family members. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that there are people who would die sooner than they might otherwise if we did not provide the care that the Metro Hospital Authority provides.

Nashville General sits right square in North Nashville, and Bordeaux lies to the west of us across the Cumberland. So, these facilities provide important care for our local neighborhoods, especially for "the least of these". Politicians, especially conservative ones, are always targeting the weak and the poor by slashing and grabbing money from the programs that serve them. They do not seem to think twice about turning the frail out into the streets or letting them suffer and die from treatable diseases.

We should consider any threat to defund these institutions as a threat to our general welfare and common good in North Nashville.