Category: Press Coverage

Ms. Cheap: Book a trip to library and Share the reading fun

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By , May 14, 2012 4:49 pm

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Don’t miss Mayor Karl Dean’s Share a Book event on Saturday, where you can meet the mayor, get a free library card, sign up for the library’s summer reading program, register children for the Books from Birth program, enjoy a puppet show and meet a player from the Nashville Predators, as well as Nashville Sounds mascot Ozzie.

The fun reading event is from 1 to 4 p.m. in the outdoor courtyard of the main Nashville Public Library downtown at 615 Church St. It is free but everyone who attends is encouraged to bring a gently used book to donate to the Share a Book program.

• The spring selling season for the “HCI Everything $6 Sales” at area hospitals and office buildings is winding down. But there are still two of these big public sales — featuring $6 jewelry, watches, accessories and gifts — coming up in the next couple of weeks.

The first is Wednesday through Friday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the Medical Research Building-Light Hall. Hours are 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and 7 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Friday.

And May 22-23, the sale will take place at the AT&T Center, 333 Commerce St. in downtown Nashville. Hours are 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. May 22 and 7:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. May 23. Sales will crank back up in August.

• There is a “Star Party” from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. Friday at the Bells Bend Outdoor Center, and everybody is invited.

The Star Party, a joint effort of the Barnard-Seyfert Astronomical Society, Sudekum Planetarium and Bells Bend nature center, is free for star gazers of all ages who want to take a close-up look at the night sky through professional telescopes.

Local amateur astronomers and planetarium officials bring telescopes for you to view the stars, the moon, Saturn and more. And the astronomers are eager to talk about all aspects of astronomy. The “party” is free; you can just show up or call the center at 615-862-4187 to register.

For more information, you also can call the planetarium Astroline at 615-401-5092. Bells Bend Outdoor Center is at 4187 Old Hickory Blvd.

• Williamson County Parks & Recreation will present a free “Concert in the Park” by the Williamson County Community Band at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Aspen Grove Park in Franklin.

The event is perfect for bringing a picnic and lawn chair and enjoying the band, which will perform patriotic numbers, Broadway tunes and marches.

Aspen Grove Park is in the Cool Springs area of Franklin, at the corner of Seaboard Lane and Aspen Grove Drive. The concert is open to the public.

Details: visit www.wcparksandrec.com, or 615-790-5719, ext. 10.

• Another great music option is Friday’s Vanderbilt Community Chorus concert at 8 p.m. in Ingram Hall at the Blair School of Music. It will be an “all-Americana” program featuring Aaron Copland’s “Old American Songs” with chamber orchestra accompaniment. It’s free! Details: blair.vanderbilt.edu or 615-322-7656.

• Enjoy all sorts of Rutherford County attractions without spending a cent Saturday during “Free Day in May,” the official kickoff of the 2011 tourism season for the county.

Attractions such as Bradley Academy Museum and Cultural Center, Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, The Heritage Center of Murfreesboro and Rutherford County, Oaklands Historic House Museum, Sam Davis Home and Museum and the Stones River National Battlefield will be open free of charge for the day. Some of these attractions are always free, but they plan special events on the free day, so it’s definitely a good day to visit.

Don’t miss Oaklands, which normally costs $10 to get in. The plantation was used as a camp by both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, and you can tour the antebellum home with guides in period dress on the free day. Plus, there will be living history demonstrations on the lawn. Details: www.rutherfordchamber.org/visit

• This will be the last day that Bargain Bin will appear on Monday. The column will move, beginning May 25, to our Friday Entertainment section, and will look at events and sales 10 days out.

Hope you will keep reading!

Reach Ms. Cheap at 615-259-8282 or mscheap@tennessean.com. Check her out at www.facebook.com/mscheap; @Ms_Cheap on Twitter; and on her blog at Tennessean.com/mscheap. Catch her every Thursday at 11 a.m. on WTVF-Channel 5’s Talk of the Town.


categories Press Coverage

Spacek set to discuss memoir at library

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By , May 14, 2012 4:48 pm

Sissy Spacek endeared herself to Nashville and country music fans when she portrayed Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter in 1980. And today, Middle Tennesseans can learn even more about Spacek from the actress herself.

She’s set to discuss her new memoir, My Extraordinary Ordinary Life, at 2 p.m. today at The Nashville Public Library. After her speech, Spacek will sign copies of the book.

Her appearance is part of the Salon@615 author talk series and is free and open to the public.

— Cindy Watts, The Tennessean, May 12

categories Press Coverage

Plan will be a lift for Antioch

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By , May 11, 2012 7:12 pm

 PHOTO CAPTION:

Antioch residents attend a public meeting about the new library proposed for the old JCPenney building at Hickory Hollow Mall. / GEORGE WALKER IV / FILE / THE TENNESSEAN, May 11

“We moved here six years ago, and we knew that this was the up and coming place. It’s like what East Nashville was 10 years ago.”

An Antioch resident made that comment at one of the Planning Department’s public meetings earlier this month, describing how she had come here from California and deliberately settled in an area that had great potential for growth and positive change.

And she’s not alone in feeling that way about Antioch. When I talk to other parents during school activities there, or to other fathers at the barbershop while our sons are getting their weekly haircuts, it’s obvious that many of us believe Antioch can still be an economically viable community.

There are some challenges, no question. Major retail businesses have been leaving the area, and there’s widespread concern about crime and safety, even though Metro Police Department statistics for the 37013 ZIP code show overall major crime is down nearly 15 percent in the first four months of this year compared to 2011.

Antioch residents have been sharing their thoughts about those and other issues at a series of Planning Department public meetings as our planners work to update the Antioch/Priest Lake Community Plan, which guides growth and development in an area bounded roughly by Interstates 40 and 24, Harding Place and the county line.

Listening to the community is always the first step; then, planners draft an update, get more public comments, and finally take it to the Planning Commission for approval. That process will continue through this summer and into the fall; the next public meeting is May 17 from 6-8 p.m. at Lakeshore Christian Church, 5434 Bell Forge Lane E.

We encourage everyone with an interest in Antioch’s future to join us and be heard. Online surveys and other opportunities for feedback are linked on the Planning Department’s webpage at www.nashville.gov/mpc.

So far, residents and business owners tell us that they’re optimistic about a better future for Antioch, one that includes less crowded streets, better housing, more sidewalks, more local jobs (95.5 percent of working-age residents are employed, compared to 92 percent countywide, but many of them hold jobs outside Antioch), places for young people to gather and — probably the one we have heard most — a return of strong and varied retail options to Antioch’s economic scene.

Improvements are already under way, including a Metro library and community center at Hickory Hollow Mall, along with a branch campus of Nashville State Community College.

Antioch is actually in better shape than most of us realize, and the updated Community Plan, based on the thoughts and needs of the people who actually live, work, do business, and go to school there, will provide guidance for an even stronger future.

Derrick Dalton, a Nashville native, works for TML Risk Management Pool.

categories Press Coverage

Young writers learn power of words to navigate future

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By , May 11, 2012 7:09 pm
Tennessean, May 11
PHOTO CAPTION Southern Word participant Sean Smith performs during an open mic at the Nashville Public Library.
Sixteen-year-old Sean Smith knows when his success begins every day — just one minute after midnight.

He and others will be telling their stories and visions for Nashville’s next 10 to 10,000 years in Southern Word’s Future
Break, a series of seven spoken-word performances beginning Saturday.

“I’m going to do a piece called 12:01. I wrote it out of feeling like I’d missed a lot of opportunities, as a call of action to myself,” said Smith, a sophomore at Overton High School. “It’s about the first minute of the day is when you start to be successful.”

Southern Word, formerly Youth Speaks Nashville, is a nonprofit that seeks to empower the community’s youth through the written and spoken word.

“It gives them practice making really good choices,” said Kelly Falzone, director of two of the event’s shows. “At a time when they
might feel like choices are limited, the way they tell their story can be theirs. Crafting a poem can be a lot like crafting a life.”

The organization’s first spoken word performance series in 2010, Nashville Now, focused on the present, so for the second round, it was natural to look to the future, said Benjamin Smith, executive director.

“We work with young writers, and we’re teaching them to write poetry, but we’re really talking about them developing the
skills to develop their own story, represent their own story and also create the pathway for their future and write their future into
existence,” he said.

With so much future in front of them, this theme was well received by the youth performers.

“It was pretty relevant because we’re young, and that’s where we’re headed,” Sean Smith said. “We’ll be the ones who are having to navigate and lead the future.”

 
Outlet for emotions
Brandon Lenox, 14, freshman at LEAD Academy, said writing gave him a positive outlet to work through his emotions, starting out as an after-school activity, but growing into what he hopes to pursue as a profession.

“In the beginning I was really just an emcee, a rapper, and then being introduced to spoken word in my school really expanded how I wrote and everything I wrote about,” Lenox said. “It’s not even a hobby anymore. I do see it as more of a career.

“It just helps you express your feelings onto a piece of paper that you could keep forever and sometimes perform. I’ve seen people talking to counselors. I’ve seen people express their anger in fights and getting mad at people that weren’t even the cause of the problem. It’s a good gift to be able to write all of your emotions.”

For many young people in the program, this is a gift that has gotten them through difficult circumstances.

“We’re generally serving underserved populations from middle school up through college,” Falzone said. “If you come to the show, a lot of the stories they tell are true from their lives, and they’re pretty devastating. Some of these young people have experienced great violence or abuse, abandonment or neglect — just the difficulties of living in poverty. They found a way, through poetry, to turn these experiences into positive art that helps and heals not only them, but others listening.”

Falzone said the children’s performances often surpass those of the adults who perform alongside them.

In the last event, “although we had strong performers across the board — the young people stole the show,” Falzone said. “The adults are being knocked out and inspired by the young people. It makes the older writers push their own limits and step out of our habitual boxes we’ve gotten ourselves into after years of writing.”

Bill Brown, a retired Metro and Vanderbilt teacher and one of the event’s writers, hopes Southern Word’s movement will spread across Nashville and the rest of the nation, restoring life to English education.

“This allows kids to use their own language to tell their stories,” Brown said. “They can talk about Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop and contemporary poems that are written in their vernacular, and say, ‘I’m one of those.’ So, we bring them down off the pedestal and say, ‘These are human beings with a message, and I am too.’ ”

categories Press Coverage

Nashville Public Library Hosts The Princeton Prize in Race Relations Award Ceremony

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By , May 2, 2012 7:22 pm

The Tennessee Tribune, April 20

The Princeton Prize in Race Relations recognized high school students Lauren Elcan, Tony Hanna and Doni Lehman for outstanding work in their schools to advance race relations. 
The event took place April 19 in the Courtyard and Civil Rights Room at Nashville Public Library.
Guests were provided a luncheon followed by the awardsceremony.
Special thanks was given to Bill King for helping to make the event possible.
Bill and Robin King established the Civil Rights Room at Nashville Public Library.

 

PHOTOS

categories Press Coverage

Nashville library collects May 2010 flood memories

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By , May 2, 2012 6:36 pm
Reported by Julia Bruck – email

 WSMV NEWSCHANNEL 4, May 1

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) -Tuesday marks the two-year anniversary of the massive May 2010 flood across Middle Tennessee, and the images are hard to forget.

Now, a project that began shortly after the floodwater receded to collect those memories is nearly complete.

D.J. Farris recalls roads covered with several feet of water as he helped the rescue efforts in the River Plantation area.

“That yellow list I had in my hand, that was a list of the unit numbers we needed to go check on,” Farris said.

As Farris and others made their way to those homes, his personal camera recorded the efforts. He said he originally thought he would just use the video to show friends the power of Mother Nature, but last Spring he saw a local posting that lead him to the Nashville Public Library.

“There was an ad in there, a section placed in there, from the Nashville Public Library welcoming any kind of donations to the Digital History Project for the flood,” Farris said.

Farris’ contribution is one of more than 200 digital photos, videos and interviews that make up the library’s Flood 2010 Digital History Project.

Soon, the digital compilation will leave the library for a journey across Middle Tennessee to teach another generation about the May 2010 flood.

“It’s going to be incorporated into lesson plans at schools, and in fact another city is using it for city planning to study. So it’s really serving multiple purposes for a lot of different people,” said library spokeswoman Renuka Christoph.

But for D.J. Farris, the project is an opportunity to share his small part of a much bigger story in Nashville’s history.

“This is one small part that, in the grand scheme of things, is really insignificant,” he said. “It just allows you to see how Tennessee is truly a Volunteer State.”

Much of the digital collection is currently available to the public. To view it or for information on how you can contribute, visit: http://flood.nashvillepubliclibrary.org/

categories Press Coverage

Karl Dean to announce reading campaign at Public Library

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By , April 23, 2012 4:04 pm

TENNESSEAN April 23

Mayor Karl Dean will announce a new citywide reading campaign at the main Nashville Public Library downtown at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, April 24.

The reading campaign will encourage families to read to young children, promote adult literacy, educate residents about the Nashville Public Library system and promote volunteer opportunities to spread literacy in the community.

Dean’s appearance Tuesday will be during Storytime at the Children’s Theater on the second floor of the downtown library at 615 Church Street.

categories Press Coverage

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