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Published: December 28th 2008
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It is early in the morning and I am preparing to head south out of Nashville this morning to the Jack Daniel's Distillery. Yesterday was spent in an around the city of Nashville. I went to Vanderbilt University, the Parthenon in Centennial Park, went to the museum, walked around downtown Nashville, got some great BBQ food, went into the local record shops, bought some cds, (met my Scientology friend), hung out in the Nashville Public Library, did the free tourist attractions, hung out at a tiny corner cafe, and called it an early night to prep for the trip out.
I broke the 1,000 mark on the odometer! I celebrated with a 24cent bottle of Ohana Punch!
I bought an Elvis Gold Records collection. Down here, Elvis finally makes sense! I never understood him back at home. It is funny how all it takes is a trip to where the person got their inspiration and it makes all that much more sense. I have listened to this album 4 times already.
Other albums I bought: Merle Haggard- If I Could Only Fly, Johnny Cash- Personal File, Hank Williams- The Best of the Early Years, Emmylou Harris- Profile, and
some Sandy Posey compilation of famous renditions in the $2 bin.
I had some of the best BBQ sauce of my life yesterday at Jack's Famous BBQ in downtown Nashville. I got a Tennesse Pork Shoulder sandwich with sides of baked macaroni and cheese and creamed corn which was amazing. I went for the XXX-91 Hot bbq sauce which was sweet, yet spicy. I think the sweet came from hickory... they called it a Tennessee/Texas hybrid.
The Batman Building- You will see this building in many, many pictures because it is the coolest building in Nashville, hands down. Nashville has its share of impressive buildings but this one surely stands out for its uniqueness. It is actually an AT&T building and was built to resemble a phone sitting in its cradle. Several critics criticize this building for its sharp contract to the nearby Ryman Auditorium and the rest of the old-feeling Nashville buildings. It sure is a contract of old vs. new.
Nashville Parthenon- this is the only full scale replica of the Greek Parthenon on Earth. The original Parthenon was built to house an enormous statue of the Goddess Athena, who is the goddess of Wisdom
and "benevolent protector of Athens". The original Athena stood 42 feet tall and a full-scale replica was added here in 1990. The original was made of Ivory and Gold in the 4th century BC. This one- I guess plaster and wood.
The James Cowan Collection- A museum housed in the basement of the Parthenon structure offers a tour through 19th and early 20th Century American art. Here is a list of my favorites. I tried to clip pics of the ones I could find from the Internet:
George Elmer Browne- A Night In Holland- I was really drawn to this one by the deep reds on the sea-side cottages. The scene depicted a Dutch port town and dusk and the deep reds on the buildings coupled with the oranges and reds in the sunset sky was a really inspiring site.
George Elmer Browne- Night on the Banks- This one, like the other Browne was done in 1904 and depicts the docks in the early evening as the action dies down. Very mellow feel.
Fredrick Edwin Church- The Wreck, 1852. Amazing light and detail. I have a picture of this one below but it does not justice
to the way the light and ray burst off the canvas. Very powerful with the ship stranded as other ships passed by safely. The birds circling the abandon ship looking to pick the scraps. The light has passed this ship by.
Sanford B. Gifford- Autumn in the Catskills, 1871- This one was fascinating. Gifford's work highlighted the great paradox of the time. His work celebrates the virgin majesty of the untouched American landscape but it also functioned as an advertisement geared toward city dwellers craving adventure and having the pockets to pay for it. I always find it interesting to see how art can be exploited in order to turn a buck. I don't know much about Gifford's story but he was an artist through and through. He worked for the Hudson River School and traveled extensively to find landscapes that inspired him. I guess it turns out the ones paying top dollar for landscape art in the 1870s were the city advertisers.
John George Brown- The Young Musician, 1878- I loved this one probably because it screamed a story about potential. A young man sitting there with his fiddle holding a chord and staring off into the
distance. This looks like a boy hard at work developing a passion. It has nothing to do with age. We are all "young" at certain passions. The key is, like this boy, that we must continue to work at harnessing that potential and not allowing the learning curve to beat us.
George Henry Bogert- Moonlight Venice- like all the others, Bogert did the bulk of his work out of NYC. I love this one because of the dark mystical feel it portrays of a very unique and mysterious city. Venice is the protracted or many vivid emotions and this sure is one of the them. I wish I could have found a picture of this one to show you but let it live in your imagination. The dark tones, a solitary street lamp in a misty fog illuminating no more than its own space, the deep water nearly impossible to see, a few anchored boats lost in the darkness, St. Marks Square in the background appearing to hover over the darkness. The cool thing about this one is they had another painting of St. Marks from the same exact perspective right next to it but this one depicts a
busy day with strong light. It is neat to see the contrast of the same exact place but seen so completely different by two artists. Which one is right? They both are.
William Rosen- Immersion: A Katrina Room, 2006- Rosen was a fourth generation New Orleans resident with a wife and small children. Then Hurricane Katrina happened. They lost their home and a lifetime of possessions and were forced to relocate to Franklin, Tn. Rosen, a lawyer by trade, took many pictures of his home for insurance purposes but as he looked over them, something stood out. Utter destruction was prevalent but certain random things remained intact (a bouquet of flowers on the table, a package ready to be mailed). Rosen was moved to tell the story of what the destruction and devastation really felt like so he set out to create Immersion, a replica room that you must walk through, surrounded by picture of the damages sustained. It was a powerful message.
So what really stands out about Katrina is not that it was an unparalleled natural disaster, but that is was an exercise in human failure. Mike Grunwold of TIME Magazine summed it up well in
his award winning piece entitled "Why New Orleans Still Isn't Safe": The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20070813,00.html
That should send chills down your spine. Man's ineptitude unfortunately personified here at the expense of thousands of lives and a countless number of dreams. In the maelstrom of mismanagement, it took the government 107 days to confirm the 1,094 dead. Walking around the exhibit I heard one woman very angrily express to her husband "This is what bothers me! What about the Midwest? They have disasters all the time and no one ever hears about it!" The husband turned to her and said "It is all about the media. They wanted this story."
What a shame. These people completely missed the point. This is not about media attention. This is not about a craving for a disaster. What set Katrina apart
from the Midwest was that the ones who should have saw this coming were knocked squarely off their feet and learned way too late they had zero resources to react. Katrina wasn't a media-hyper natural disaster; as Grunwold pointed out, it was a man-made disaster of epic proportions. All the more reason to be thankful for the truth.
All the best,
Matt
P.S. Albums- Day 3:
Gordon Lightfoot- Cold on the Shoulder
Bob Dylan- New Morning
Elvis Presley- Gold Records
Elvis Presley- Gold Records
Emmylou Harris- Profile
Elvis Presley- Gold Records
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Dre
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The last man on earth is in music city. so crazy looking at these pictures seems like a different planet. When this is all over, I want your map and route haha