After discussing a few options for accommodating the, er, lively discussions that tend to accompany political or religious topics while still providing a welcoming environment for those who prefer to avoid flamewars, I’ve set up a second feed for the site. In the upper right, on the 1st sidebar, you’ll notice that where there used to be a “Subscribe with RSS” link, there are now two links that say:

Subscribe with RSS to all content

Subscribe with RSS (no politics or religion)

If you click the second link, you should be presented with an option to subscribe to the “Rainbows & Unicorns” version of Music City Bloggers.

We’ll give this a try and see if it’s a workable approach for everyone. If you have difficulty with either feed, please comment here and I’ll do my best to resolve it.

Piggybacking on Kat’s post about the high cost of parenting, I noticed that S-townMike at Enclave has a few things to say about not only the perception of stay-at-home dads, but the terminology applied to them.

“Mr. Mom” is a quaint, period-piece movie, but it is about as relevant today as Betamax […].

As an interesting postscript, he quotes a WSJ article describing, among other things, the high costs to men who choose to stay at home:

At-home dads often pay an even higher career price than moms. After dropping out in 2001 for what he thought would be 18 months caring for his son, Eric Sonntag, a former magazine-circulation director, found returning to work so difficult that he had to job-hunt for two years, then take a 20% pay cut. Staying home “set my career back half a decade,” says the Forest Hills, N.Y., father. He was “looked at askance” by many hiring managers, he says. When he explained what he had been doing, some asked disdainfully, “What else did you do?”

Klinde talks about how people react to her light-colored skin:

There was a time that fair skin was protected and prized it meant that you were genteel and did not have to work out of doors (think Scarlett O’Hara). Even with all the pre-cancerous and cancerous forms of melanoma, you would think that people would not be so hell-bent to sunbathe.

How ’bout it. When Karsten and I lived on the west side of town, we were right next to a tanning salon. I’m mystified at how many people still frequent those places. I often saw women who were obviously in their 20s but whose skin could have easily belonged to someone in her 40s, and yet they kept coming back, week after week.

It’s no secret that I lost my father to melanoma. He was a fair-skinned dark-haired man of Irish descent who spent his 20s in the scorching sun of the Middle East as an Arabic linguist in the Army. I remember him battling skin cancer all my life — for twenty-some years he was able to have the recurring growths on his skin removed and all was well. But one growth wasn’t removed thoroughly and by the time it grew back and was found to be malignant, the cancer had already spread to his lymph nodes, and he only lasted two years after that.

Knowing all that, what kind of idiot would I have to be to risk prolonged, unprotected exposure to the sun?

Now not everyone has a family history of skin cancer, and certainly there are those who don’t fit the risk profile as much as, say, I do. And I’m all about people doing whatever they want to do with their own bodies. But what frustrates me all the more is that people feel so free to tease and criticize. Several of my coworkers made comments to me in my first week in this job. Would people of good sense in this day and age make similar statements to their coworkers about their natural skin color being too dark? I should hope not. But somehow it’s considered fair game (pun intended) to make fun of people for being too pale.

Anyway, sounds like Klinde’s not having any of it either. Her skin care approach sounds similar to mine:

I wear sunscreen daily on my face. I slather on 30 or 45 SPF liberally when I am going to be outdoors for any period of time.

Smart, Klinde, smart. Just remember: pale is the new tan.

Mark of This Guy Falls Down points out Story Behind the Song, which catalogs songwriters’ explanations of what inspired them to write a given song. As a songwriter myself, I particularly enjoyed reading the interview with Jeffrey Steele about What Hurts the Most for two reasons: one, because it’s interesting to hear other songwriters talk about how they modify their original inspirations to make them more universal, and two, because no matter how many times I hear it, it’s always encouraging to be reminded that even a well-established hit writer like Jeffrey Steele has to watch his songs get cut and then dropped from albums, get cut and not released as singles, and so on.

[…] The song was initially inspired by losing my father. I just wanted to say something about that, but I kind of changed the meaning and made the song more of a love song so it would just be more universal to listen to. When I first heard the music, it was so sad, and after listening to it a few times, the lyrics kind of what fell out. […]

The cool part of the story is that the song was cut back in 2002 by Mark Wills. It never got released, so I kind of got a little bit sad about that because I was really close to the song. About a year and a half later, Faith Hill cut it, so we really had our fingers crossed when she made her current CD. Right near the end of the recording, they ended up dropping the song off the record. I was really upset about it because I really loved the song, and I felt like it had kind of gotten away from us. Then when I heard that [Rascal Flatts] were going to cut it, I was so excited. […]

See? Even the story has a story.

You all are a well-connected bunch. What’s the best story you’ve heard about the writing of a song?

[Um, OK. Full disclosure: I don’t actually have anything to report about Nashville going country. I just thought it was a sufficiently stupid and self-evident comparison.]

The Google team has finally resolved the most mystifying software omission ever: they’ve added search capabilities to Google Reader.

(click to embiggen)

Maybe they took their time because they wanted to do it right. It does work, and it works well. You can search across all your feeds, or select your starred or shared items, or search within a folder, or search within a specific feed. I mean, seriously, you couldn’t really ask for more.

Well, yes, I suppose you could. You could ask for the ability to search within a selected set of feeds. You could ask for advanced search filtering capabilities, such as limiting your search to a date range. Most people aren’t going to have enough feeds or items to search within that these advanced capabilities would be all that useful, but those of us who follow hundreds of feeds would find it very helpful.

Still, I imagine it’s not out of the realm of possibility that those types of features will be coming. And what’s more important is that Google Reader, by my estimation, now has no barriers to the claim of “best feed reader.” At least for those of us who expect to be able to read feeds across multiple devices (in my case: personal Mac laptop, work PC laptop, and Treo 680) without the need to synchronize.

So for those of you who may have tried Google Reader and abandoned it, are you going to give it another try because of this? Or are there still features that don’t stack up for you?

The Scenesters over at Nashville Cream are pretty much the local experts on irony, so I’ll leave it to them to debate whether the “Nashville is the New L.A.” t-shirts are tongue in cheek or not.

Anyway, so I’m looking at the picture on the flyer (above) trying to mentally note exactly how many levels of gross are going on with this concept, and I can’t even find a mission statement for who thinks Nashville is the New L.A., why, what’s wrong with them, if it’s tongue in cheek or if it will ever stop.

But leaving the potential irony aside, I do have two questions about the slogan:

1. Is Nashville the new anything?

2. Can anything possibly be the new L.A.?

Don’t get me wrong. I love L.A. — I used to spend a lot of time there when I lived in San Jose. (It’s a four and a half hour drive on highway 5, or a five hour drive on 101. The extra half hour along the coast is worth it.) I used to spend days there on business, and weekends there for fun. I’m a pop girl at heart; I love the pop art and pop music sensibility of L.A. and the contradictoriness of its crazes and trends. I want to live in a house on the Venice canals when I get rich and not famous from songwriting.

That said, I mean, L.A. is pretty much set up to be the only L.A. To replace L.A., you’d have to find somewhere with seventy degree weather all year round. You’d have to have an ocean near enough for photo shoots as well as the arbitrary appearance of women in bikinis on random city streets. You’d have to have sprawl so vast it takes up half the width of the state. You’d have to have highway congestion slow enough that you could give yourself a full manicure on your way to the manicurist. You’d have to have not one but several lucrative, self-involved industries concerned with appearances, power, and ass-kissing.

I mean, the list goes on and on. L.A. is the only L.A. there could possibly be.

And as for the first question — is Nashville the new anything — I actually mean that as “is Nashville the new everything?” Because Nashville seems to be such a self-conscious little city that its denizens eschew its own rhinestone-studded, guitar-carrying identity in favor of whatever might make it seem more grown up. But isn’t it cooler to know who you are and wear it proudly, rather than trying to be everything else instead? I mean, I don’t know, I’m the one whose blog is called High Holy Mass of Contradictions, for Pete’s sake — far be it from me to take anyone or anything else to task for not having a singular self-identity — but then again, maybe the contradictions are all part of Nashville’s identity.

What’s your take?

Libby of the City Paper’s Style Arbiter blog must have been lookin’ pretty stylish when she randomly met the managers of the new Anthropologie store.

They liked my outfit - mainly the fact I was wearing shorts with my new white Frye boots (pics to come) - and asked me if I wanted a job.

Go see how she handled the situation.

And if it’s your kind of thing, go ahead and check out that new Anthropologie store at the Hill Center in Green Hills. It opens today. (I get the catalog. I love it. I also own two Anthropologie skirts I’ve found at thrift stores and they happen to be two of my favorite pieces.)

Over at the Sitening blog, Jon Henshaw has posted a list of blogger types — meant to be humorous — so I suppose in their own words that makes them a

List Blogger

Ever since you got Dugg for that top ten list for the Greatest Barbie Outfits for Full Grown Men, you’ve been dishing out top ten lists everyday on Digg trying to relive your glory. Unfortunately, everybody hates you now and nobody will Digg your stories, not even your mother.

It’s an OK list, and sure, I recognize some familiar old chestnuts in there, but there are some that are kind of bewildering to me. Like this one:

Health Blogger

You’re in great shape and you have to tell everyone about how beautiful and in shape you are. You don’t actually have a job. Instead you just work out all day and admire your muscles and low body fat. Oh, and your advice to everyone is completely useless for those of us who live in the real world.

Really? I don’t think I’ve ever run across a single example of this. Anyone else?

What other examples seem particularly on-the-nose or out-of-their-minds to you?

You heard enough from me about BarCamp already. Time to let others do the talking.

Going Like Sixty:

Of all the places I expected to find minimal structure for a gathering of like minded individuals, it would be at Barcamp Nashville. Instead I found just another seminar.

Kat Coble:

I liked what I experienced–but I don’t think I experienced a BarCamp.

mushin no shin:

BeerCamp was fun. At least the parts I remember were fun — I did have a little beer. OK, a lot of beer. Too much beer. Did I mention there was beer? Well, beer AND a ludicrous amount of heat, prompting rapid consumption of said beer.

Newscoma:

The one thing that struck me is that there is so much I don’t know. This world is changing. This medium is changing so quickly on the digital, technological plane. I didn’t “grow up” in this world, so me going to BarCamp was completely me walking out of my “comfort zone.”

I’m glad I did, but on a more serious note, there is so much to learn. I’m a little intimidated by that.

ghia:

I really look forward to integrating some of the things I learned into shopghia.com. While ghia is a commercial enterprise for me, I also look at it as an opportunity to educate people about fair trade products and have a dialogue about social responsibility and shopping.

Chris Wage:

I know there’s some bad blood between some folks and all, but raise your hand if you don’t kinda have a crush on Penelope Trunk? No? Yes? Okay, maybe it was just me.

SuperWonderBang:

David Owens really took it to another level with some thought-provoking questions of beauty and attraction.

Lake Neuron:

BarCamp was great fun, and informative to boot.

Aunt B:

Folks, the people they had talking were cool and enthusiastic about what they were doing and excited and thoughtful and all, but it was so f**king hot that I just sat there getting hotter and more uncomfortable and pissier and angrier and hotter until finally I just wanted to take my chair and beat someone, anyone with it.

Hit the Back Button to Move Fwd:

thanks to the sponsors, it was way cool. erin & i were glad to be a part of it and it was well worth our time in the sometimes too hot exit-in.

WonderDawg has pictures up on flickr.

Geek Thoughts:

Now having you as friends in Facebook doesn’t feel as much like a loser ploy to just stack it with people that i am just aware of, but people who are actually friends

David Sidlinger:

I presented at BarCamp Nashville this afternoon about Haml and Sass. I think that it went OK considering I had a root canal yesterday, authored my slides under the influence of painkillers, and there wasn’t a way to connect my MacBook to the projector (I only have the DVI dongle.)

John Willis:

I opened the session with this question “How many people in the audience have ever worked with an enterprise system management products?” When no one raised their hands I knew this was going to be a tough gig.

Rob at thinktrain recaps one of the best points from Mitch Joel’s presentation:

This shift in conversation is attitudinal, not generational.

Oh, and there’s lots more pictures at flickr.

And there’s also the BarCamp twitter page, which provided a running commentary all day long.

(Uploaded by Lesley.)

More as I find them.

CNN has a story about the heat wave in the Southeast and the Midwest, stating that at least 44 people have died as a result.

Last summer, a heat wave killed at least 50 people in the Midwest and East. California officially reported a death toll of 143, but authorities last month acknowledged the number may have been far higher. A 1995 heat wave in Chicago was blamed for 700 deaths.

We talked about that Chicago heat wave over at Metroblogging a little while back — before this current heat wave started. I told my story in the comments:

I lived through that miserable heat wave. Street vendors sold T-shirts that said “I Survived Heat Wave ‘95.” It was crazy.

So I guess there’s a way to keep perspective, after all.

I’m sitting between Newscoma and Aunt B. I know you all are hella jealous.

Update 1: There are a lot of bloggers here. Besides Aunt B and Newscoma, whom I already mentioned, there’s Kerry Woo, Lesley, Rob Robinson, Holiday Grinch, Jackson, Squirrel Queen, Paul Chenoweth, and I’m sure lots of others I haven’t even seen yet.

I’m now sitting in the “Griffin” loft upstairs at Exit/In sipping some yummy Mystic Brew. It’s great to be surrounded by so many geeks.

Update 2: I like what Chris Houchens had to say about using social media for corporate marketing. It’s about reaching the audience that has already identified itself as your audience; it’s not about sales.

Bryce Wells is really breaking down the nuts and bolts of podcasting. I wonder how many people have a good podcast in ‘em and just don’t know how to do it.

Update 3: Yay! Here comes Mitch Joel.

Update 4: Rob Robinson is also liveblogging.

Update 5: Quote from a video Mitch Joel is playing: “I wish I had a lesbian tongue.”

Update 6: “48% of leisure time is spent online.” from Center for Media Research. Bloggers really skew those numbers high.

Update 7: Gavin at Hit the Back Button to Move Fwd is also liveblogging. I think he and I were standing around outside together in the heat without knowing we (sorta) knew each other.

Update 8: I posted a pic of the main floor at my blog. Taken from the hot upper floor.

Update 9: Mitch just threw up a slide with his quote about 71 million blogs and that some of them have to be good. He followed it up by saying “not all of them are just pictures of cats.” No offense, Jeffraham.

Update 10: Stepped out for a while to cool off and get a snack with Kat and Ivy at Fiesta Azteca. Back now, and just got a hot, sweaty hug from Nashville Knucklehead.

Update 11: And now Jackson is on! Woo! Go Jackson.

Update 12: According to Jackson, 3D social networking is not only about who you know, how you know them, but also about how much time and attention you give them, and how much time and attention they give you.

Update 13: More insights from Jackson: point 1) Depth and strength of relationship should be a factor in how we parse our content. Point 2) Being aware of your behaviors can help you change them. Point 3) All this information is there, but there’s no interface to share it between all these applications.

Update 14: Gosh, maybe I’m partial because he’s a friend, but I think Jackson had some of the coolest content yet.

Update 15: Chris WAGE on the STAGE. Woo!

Update 16: Web 2.0 will not do your dishes. Who knew?

Update 17: Lesley, standing behind me, just observed that Chris just plugged his photography through the innocuous example of typing in flickr.com/tags/nashville+skyline. Except in a bizarre turn of events, none of his pictures show up in the first page. Why? Because he hasn’t tagged his own photos with nashville skyline. (Yes, we’re e-heckling. But we love Chris. So we’ll compensate by linking to where you can buy his photos.)

Update 18: Sitting in the front of Cafe Coco with Grace and Klinde’s German, cooling off and catching some WiFi goodness. The back of Cafe Coco is where the presentations actually are, but I can’t seem to get the WiFi connection to work. But I’m headed back there right after this update to hear Ivy and Kat speak on “Hyperlocal self-publishing portals.” Woo!

Update 19: Grace and I are both back in the heat of Exit/In. Kat & Ivy did great. Their post was unscripted and totally organic, which was both appropriate to the topic at hand (of developing an online community through organic methods) and true to the spirit of BarCamp. They fielded a lot of questions (many from MCB-affiliated bloggers, sure, but they were all unscripted) and handled all with grace and humor. Oh, and speaking of Grace, I would say she ended the session with a coup de grâce — ’cause it was so perfect — but I don’t want to imply it needed killing.

Anywho. Over here at the Exit/In, John Ellis is talking about effective paid search marketing. Good stuff.

Update 20: I’m up to update #20! Woo! Anastasia Holdren is now speaking about the need to get in the local search game.

Update 21: OK, we’re back! Had a quick dinner at Fiesta Azteca, a few margaritas, and an embarrassing amount of chips. But now Parker Polidor is talking about “Community Powered Media” and Nashflix. And shortly, Brittney will be up to talk about blogging. Woo!

Update 22: Christian Grantham (a.k.a. Mr. Nashville Is Talking Isn’t Dead Yet!) is gushing about how cool the “internets” are.

Also, Grace just found a guy to flirt with, and made him drop his iPhone. That’s just the kind of effect Grace has.

Update 23: Brittney is up! Yay! And she’s had a few margaritas, so she may be even more fun than usual.

Update 24: Brittney’s advice: the “rules” say that you need to specialize, standardize, have a mission, write for your readers, and make money by selling ads. She says - not necessarily! Some of the biggest blogs don’t have a central theme. “Many people read your blog because of who you are.” Your blog doesn’t need to be like everyone else’s. “Write when the mood strikes. Use the medium to its fullest.” Forget who you’re writing for; trust yourself; write for yourself. Ads are not necessary.

Update 25: Brittney adds: post often. Mind your manners. Don’t feed the trolls. (Though she adds that she shouldn’t comment on those last two points since she can’t seem to follow her own advice.)

Update 26: OK, Penelope Trunk is up. She’s ready to give us some career advice. I’ll keep you posted.

Update 27: Penelope Trunk says job hopping is OK. (I think she’s right, sort of. I did a lot of job hopping in my twenties, and in a lot of ways it has helped me — by giving me broad experience and perspective — but it has cost me in terms of perceived reliability.) She also says not all office politics are about screwing people over, and that doing good work is overrated. Being savvy and easy to work with is a better skill. (Again, I half agree and half strongly disagree. Having interpersonal skills is a huge asset, but that without being good at what you do will erode your credibility over time.) Penelope also says promotions aren’t necessarily good if they don’t align with your lifetime career goals. She says a study has shown that promotions can be more traumatic than divorce.

Update 28: Per Penelope, graduate degrees are not necessarily an advantage. MBAs — unless you’re going to a top 10 school — are worth so little that you should only do it if you go to night school.

Update 29: This one I relate to: Penelope says there’s a myth that entrepreneurship is risky, but it’s actually less risky than working in the no-guarantees corporate world because once you do it, you always know you’re capable of it. (I must say, that one rings true for this former two-time business owner.)

Update 30: Penelope points out that blogging anonymously is a waste of effort because you’re not getting credit for your work. If you’re concerned about privacy, use your judgment about what to share. You already know how to deliver appropriate content for context — you don’t tell Grandma about your sex life (usually). (I’m totally behind her on that one. In my years of being online, I’ve had little drawback and a lot to gain by using my real name. If people don’t want to hire me, for example, because of what I genuinely have to say, I’m glad to know that in advance so I can steer clear of those environments.)

Update 31: Wow, Chris Wage asked a question that resulted in Penelope answering that if you’re good at your work, you won’t need to give your boss a blow job. Wow. I think she may have misunderstood his question.

Update 32: David Mason is talking about product design, and has started out by talking about what beauty is. He also started with one of my favorite quotes: “Have nothing in your house that you don’t know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” by William Morris.

Well, campers, I’ve just about finished. There’s more coming from BarCamp before the night is through, but I’ve reached my limit of being hot and uncomfortable. It’s been awesome! Hope you’ve enjoyed following along.

Between the Easter freeze, the drought, and the intense, prolonged heat, this has been a rough year to be a plant. (Well, it ain’t no picnic being a human in all that, either, but that’s not the point of this post.)

Southern Beale writes about the sorry state of her garden:

So as far as garden survival goes, I’ve moved from a first aid operation to full-on triage. I’ve given up on the flowers, impatiens were pulled up yesterday, hostas are a gonner. Now the goal is to minimize shrub and tree loss.

I’ve noticed a lot of leaves drying up and falling off the trees in our neighborhood. It’s really weird seeing and hearing all these leaves falling so early in the year. It’s like mid-October in mid-August.
Aunt B wrote about her plant problems the other day, too:

When I water my herbs in the morning, their dirt is more the consistency of crumbled leaves than soil. I worry I’m making tea instead of nourishing them.

The tiny bush by the front door probably won’t live and the grass in the neighbors’ lawns is bleached and crackles like tiny bones when you step out on it.

As I commented over at Aunt B’s, my whole garden is looking rough. (And so are all the other gardens in my neighborhood.) I wish I could help the plants, but they’re behaving like they’re being starved and overwatered at the same time. I’m pretty sure most of them are goners, and it bums me out.

Anyone else having any luck? If so, what are you doing to keep your garden healthy in these tough conditions?

In a post entitled “Pit bulls are not ‘bullies’” in the Tennessean’s blog, Darcy Lashinsky defends the much-maligned breed.

I believe my dog, Archie, has a little bit of this breed in her blood. I figure she would want me to speak up on behalf of her and every other misunderstood bully breed out there in the world.

She goes on to quote the American Kennel Club’s website on the temperament of the Staffordshire Bull Terrier Breed:

“From the past history of the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the modern dog draws its character of indomitable courage, high intelligence, and tenacity. This, coupled with its affection for its friends, and children in particular, its off-duty quietness and trustworthy stability, makes it a foremost all-purpose dog.”

I thought Aunt B might especially appreciate that.

Knuck explains why he doesn’t feel bad about his perspective on being berated for driving an SUV:

So, to all the people who are disgusted by my vehicle choice, let’s get a little perspective, shall we?

Let’s talk about trucks. […] Do you have anything in your house that wasn’t made locally? How do you think it got here? That couch you’re sitting on? It was made in North Carolina. It had to get here somehow. You’re killing the planet.

[…]

Take a cruise, kill the planet. You can’t get 2500 people from Miami to St. Thomas to San Juan to Nassau and back on wishes and unicorns, now can you? […]

While the clear point of Knuck’s post is seems to rationalize the use of his SUV (and he does that well), he reminds us about other energy-guzzlers in the process. Whether you agree or disagree with his perspective, he brings up factors any environment-friendly person would do well to remember. It’s a good read.

When we began setting up Music City Bloggers a few weeks ago, we discussed the possibility of sending a contingent to the BlogHer conference in Chicago to use it as a deep dive into the strategy going forward. The logistics didn’t work out, though, and we stayed behind. So I’ve been reading with extra curiosity the reports from folks who attended this past weekend.

Busy Mom and Lindsay of Suburban Turmoil both attended and have been posting their reports. Coincidentally, one of the reports from Lindsay was about getting “ripped a new one” by Penelope Trunk (who is, incidentally, slated to be the keynote speaker at BarCamp Nashville). Ms. Trunk’s thesis, it seems, is that specialization is all:

Penelope shoots audience member down with barbed one-liner like, “You can’t write about politics and knitting,” delivered in a withering tone. Mkay. This would all have been slightly more tolerable if the information were accurate- but much of it seemed just plain wrong, like when a mommyblogger was told that she’d have to write about just one subject, like diapers, to be really successful. Think about the most “successful” mommybloggers for a minute. Most of them will write about just about anything if the mood strikes them. We read them for their voice, not their specific subject matter.

I say it’s coincidental because I’ve just been thinking about this subject quite a bit. If you’ve ever read much about marketing and branding, you know there’s always an emphasis on specialization. More and more, it seems the experts apply that logic to everything: books, e-commerce sites, blogs, careers, even people. And the experts are right — that’s part of how the “long tail” model works.

But the experts are also wrong, at least when it comes to people. People are complex. (It’s why I call my own blog High Holy Mass of Contradictions.) People are more interesting when they reveal their complexity. And when it comes to blogs that revolve around a central figure, why shouldn’t there be a mashup of everything a person wishes to reveal about him or herself? Again, as Lindsay says:

We read them for their voice, not their specific subject matter.

It’s true that the connected world is becoming more of a place for specialists. For now. Specialists can be a great source of focused information. But like any trend that swings noticeably in one direction, you can always count on it swinging back. In a short while, expect the experts to be advising bloggers (or authors of whatever medium is popular at the time) to broaden their focus or risk becoming repetitive and stale. There will always be a place for generalists, and it’s a good thing because the world is full of them.

Now it’s your turn. What do you think? Do you think of blogging as the domain of specialists? Do you read a range of blogs, from narrow focus to broad? How do you decide how much focus to apply to your own blogging?

This post over at What’s the Matter with Tennessee struck a chord with me today:

Democracy means voting for the person you find best suited for the job. So, if you really think Briley (or any other candidate) is the best suited for the job, I encourage you to vote for him/her. This approach is less likely to polarize our politics and better suited to helping us move forward after an election working together to make our city great.

especially after seeing this comment over at Chris’ place in response to Chris’s post about a Briley event tonight:

Oh boy! Any chance you can slow down that little Dean surge enough to guarantee that no progressive candidate makes it into the runoff?

What is your take on voting strategy? Are you a “vote with your conscience” or “vote with a strategy” person? Is that a false dichotomy? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

(By the way, the info on the Briley meetup is:

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
6:30 pm

2304 White Avenue
Nashville, TN 37204
RSVP: rsvp@liberadio.com

Refreshments provided.

Hope to see you there! )

Ever wonder who the best and worst celebrity bloggers are? Randy at Ethos links over to Entertainment Weekly, where they’ve come up with 20, detailed their high and low points, and given each a grade. Some of the results may surprise you. Have a look.

What are your favorite celebrity blogs? Tell us in the comments.

Updated to add: Mark at This Guy Falls Down (who’s kind of a Nashvillian - I met him here in Nashville, anyway) is talking celebrity blogs, too, but he’s wondering where all the good musicians’ blogs are. (And he didn’t say this, but I will: preferably something beyond the typical MySpace “blogs.” MySpace has provided a difficult-to-use platform and few of the musicians who do use the blog feature there really have a good feel for the type of content their audiences really want to read. Although I know I have no room to talk - I’ve let my music “blog” there languish, too.) If you know of any excellent examples, go help him out.

Kerry Woo offers up a link to what some might call the most effective nut-cracker ever invented.

Mural

Originally uploaded by occasionalcheesedip
We need more murals around here. This is just too cool.

This morning’s City Paper has an article about the proposed overlay in Historic Germantown.

The overlay would affect new construction, additions and demolitions, as well as outdoor features including fences, walls, parking and curb cuts, said Tim Walker, the Historic Zoning Administrator for the Historical Commission. Exterior changes, such as the appearance of existing buildings, might also be affected.

Since this is the neighborhood I live in, and also since I live in a historic home, I’ve been following this pretty closely. The article does a fair job of representing the gist of the pro and con arguments (and Mosley and Singelyn are both sensible representatives of their respective points of view), but it glosses over a few points. While the article does indicate that most of the area affected by the overlay is already within the Phillips-Jackson Redevelopment Area, it omits the point that a significant number of the guidelines for the overlay are already covered by Phillips-Jackson. Another point the City Paper article alludes to but doesn’t clearly explain is that the proposed overlay is structured so as to provide the most regulation on the most historic structures, and the least regulation on the structures that are not considered historical.

Whether you support the concept of an overlay or not, the topic should be an interesting one as it covers a unique aspect of Nashville’s history. Borrowing from the introduction to the draft of the proposed design guidelines (PDF link, 119 KB) :

For a great part of the 20th century, Nashville residents either ignored or did not know that an area north of Jefferson Street was a prominent neighborhood where many of Nashville’s leading citizens once lived. […]

Wilbur F. Creighton, in his book Building of Nashville, states: “In 1917 the reservoir was closed to visitors. The paper has been filled with stories of German atrocities, such as the use of poisonous gases and deliberate infection of water supplies.” Other exaggerated cases of emotion included suggestions by some that other citizens “kill their dachshunds.” Many German families, therefore, told their older members to please stop speaking German – even at home. […]

As Germantown experienced a period of decay, many houses were torn down and others extensively altered. […]

Nashville’s Germantown Historic District is one of the most architecturally heterogeneous neighborhoods in the city. The eight-block area contains a wide variety of styles and types of residences built between the 1840s and 1920s. In recognition of its historical and architectural significance, Germantown was listed on the national Register of Historic Places in August 1979.

There’s a lot more, and it’s worth reading if you’re interested in Nashville history, its neighborhoods, architecture, or just a compelling story. You can find out more about the overlay on the Historic Germantown web site.

Klinde warns us that dragons are coming:

Have you heard about the latest craze? Well, whether you have or have not Dragon Boat Racing is coming to Nashville.

Sounds fun. And who knows? Maybe it’ll turn out to be as big a deal as Flugtag. Only without the Red Bull.

ANYway, mark your calendars: Riverfront Park, August 25th. Klinde will be there!

It seems Megan at The Ride Home is about to get Invisalign braces, and you might think she’d be nervous about the possibility of pain but that’s not what’s got her nervous:

I know it’s going to be a pain in the ass, with the only eating two or three times a day because I have to remove them to eat, then brush, and then put them back on.

Wait.

How the hell am I going to only eat three times a day?

I’m a habitual snacker too. And since the jury still seems to be out about whether you’re better off eating three sensible meals a day or 5 or 6 small meals throughout the day, the decision rests on personal preference.

What do you prefer? Fewer or more frequent meals? Snack often or snack little? Let us know in the comments. (Oh, and be sure to wish Megan luck with her orthodontic adjustment.)

Over at the nascent City Paper fashion blog, The Style Arbiter, Libby asks readers what they consider the upper limit of a bargain.

When is a bargain not a bargain? I generally think that $30 is too much to pay for a T-shirt or other basic. But for a casual dress that you’re only gonna wear one season, it’s pretty dang good. What’s your cutoff? When is a bargain not a bargain in your book?

I’ve been almost exclusively shopping for clothes at thrift stores since I was a teen, so for me, if something is over $5, I think twice about whether it’s worth it. But it’s not really about the price; it’s about the versatility and quality of the item. If I find pieces that are cute but appear to be fleeting trends, and since I’ll probably only wear it a few times anyway, it can be of lesser quality as long as it’s not too cheap-looking. I don’t like to pay much for those — the 50% off everything sales at Goodwill are great for that kind of thing. But if I find something that’s a classic — a well-cut black skirt, for example — and it fits my style effortlessly and it’s in good shape, I will almost always buy it (unless my wardrobe is bulging with black skirts… which, let’s be fair, it is).

And in those cases, almost no matter what the price tag says, it’s a bargain.

What about you? Comment here or over there, whatever suits your style.

Sam Davidson points out that Briley’s campaign site just got a “much-needed overhaul.” According to Sam,

Now you can finally get your yard sign and donate some cash to David Briley.

Check it out.

It may seem a little odd to link to this, given the juxtaposition of this site’s purpose to that of Nashville Is Talking, but if you haven’t read the sign-off post Newscoma made to close out her weekend of guest-blogging over there, you really should. It’s a model of wisdom and grace, delivered with characteristic light-heartedness — and even uses Calvin & Hobbes as messengers:

[…] I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I said this weekend wasn’t a bit different from the normal gigs I’ve been allowed to do here in the past.

I want to wish you peace at this point. Keep blogging. Write. Express what you need to. Embrace the things that you think are important. Write them down. Let others see them. Let others know what is important in your world.

It might become important in ours because of your voice.

Seems like great advice to me, no matter what the world presents us with. Go read the whole thing.