Presents of Mind

Illustration By Kyle T. Webster Magnum charter It’s a crying shame that Nashville only has two charter schools, publicly funded reform efforts that are free from many of the bureaucratic requirements that bind regular district schools. East Nashville’s KIPP school, in particular, has demonstrated that poor, black kids who have underperformed in early grades don’t have to be destined for an educational career marked by sustained mediocrity. While a majority of KIPP students entered the school behind last year, TCAP scores released in August show that 90 percent of them were proficient or advanced in math, and 87 percent were proficient or advanced in reading. No other school in Nashville illustrates better that the performance divide between black and white, rich and poor can be bridged. The school board will have several other charter school applications before it in coming months. There could be no better gift for those kids who qualify to attend. —LIZ GARRIGAN More of less is more What dances in my head when I lie snug in my bed is architecture that’s modern and proud of it—not a classical pediment nor Corinthian columns but an elegant glass curtain wall. A building that doesn’t need to wear a hat—or bat ears—to make a statement, but allows minimalist manner and superfine detailing to speak for themselves. Modernism has a bad rap in Nashville because of what it has delivered locally—mostly cheesy knock-offs or corporate mediocrities that ignore the impact at street level in favor of the view from the CEO suite. But it doesn’t have to be this way. To get modern design of which we can be proud, a few recommendations: • Put “Athens of the South” out to pasture. What was a potent metaphor for a frontier town struggling to establish its cultural bona fides has become a tired cliché. • Leave brick to the Ryman—and the suburbs. An unpretentious steel frame and transparent glass would be a refreshing cleansing of our architectural palate. • Please, no story lines. Architecture is a spatial art, not a narrative. Piano keys, locomotives and other kitsch symbolism may be good marketing, but good architecture is something else again. • If we’re going to hire out-of-town designers—and I’m not convinced we need to—let’s avoid imports from Atlanta, a city that exemplifies so much of what’s wrong with the American metropolis. —CHRISTINE KREYLING (Kind of) Blue Christmas On a recent Friday night, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center turned its concert hall into a swanky jazz club, banishing its formal rows of sloping orchestra seats in favor of small tables, where an audience wined, dined and listened to jazz greats Chick Corea and Gary Burton. Wish an event like that could go on for a week or more? Well, how about a weeklong Nashville International Jazz Festival, a kick-ass collaborative musical smorgasbord that plays out in performance venues and nightspots across town? Opening night at the Schermerhorn, we’d start with saxophonist Sonny Rollins, a sort of human bellows who plays the meanest horn since John Coltrane. Other marquee acts would include Keith Jarrett (for keyboard aficionados), vocalist Norah Jones and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Cozy restaurants would host intimate concerts by the likes of pianist Cedar Walton (once a Coltrane sideman), song-stylist Karrin Allyson, violinist Billy Bang and vibraphonist Joe Locke. The best players from the Nashville Jazz Workshop and local high schools would perform, while a slate of rare films and documentaries at the Belcourt would groom a new generation of jazz appreciators. Nashville already has an up-and-coming classical scene, and in country music the city’s second to none. The new jazz fest would be the final point of the city’s music triangle. —JOHN PITCHER O Little Town Say what you will about all that nekkidness, but Musica, the Music Row Roundabout and nearby Owen Bradley Park are a gorgeous example of how to make our city more beautiful, one blighted intersection at a time. Not that Nashville needs so many bronze penises at every turn, but there are countless points across town that could be transformed from neglected eyesores into proud landmarks by a thoughtful combination of streetscaping, public art and landscape architecture. Take for example, the junction of West End Avenue and I-440, where the commercial district ebbs into more suburban traffic. Or the bridge at the 1100 block of Broadway, where Midtown meets Downtown. Or Charlotte Pike northeast of Centennial Park, where Nashville’s health care district opens. These are just a few of the gateway areas that would benefit from a little love and attention—maybe a sculpture or fountain, a welcome-to-the-neighborhood sign and a handful of perennial seeds.—CARRINGTON FOX Some tolerance please. Jesus. Between Phil Valentine saying that we should shoot illegal border-crossers, the Vote Yes on 1 people decrying the “evil homosexual agenda” and Democratic operatives crying racism over political ads, I’ve had about enough of small-minded, knee-jerk name-calling. Disagreement is great. Hey, it’s the American way. But for the love of all that is holy, could we just turn down the volume on our hate machines? Really, people, there are children present. —P.J. TOBIA Gift baskets To round out the pro sports trifecta that began in 1997 with the debut of the Predators and Titans, let’s stuff a basketball team into the stocking this year. With two NBA teams—the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets and the Seattle Supersonics—looking for homes, Music City could adopt one of them and house it in the GEC, which stands to draw in more revenue with basketball than with hockey due to space limitations of the ice. So Nashville, a pro-basketball team is my gift to you, if only I had $300 million. —DAVE RUDOLPH Checkered future It’s well after midnight, and my husband and I are standing on the sidewalk at a loss. Much to our chagrin, there’s not a taxicab in sight. We could drive ourselves home, but being responsible, law-abiding, cocktail-drinking adults, we opt to wait for a ride instead. When it becomes clear there are no cabbies coming our way, we head back inside, ask the bartender to call us a taxi, then resume our stance on the sidewalk, where we wait. And wait. And wait. I understand this isn’t New York City, and I don’t expect taxis to line up waiting for fares (Lower Broadway being the one exception). But on the weekend, when droves of drunks on Elliston Place, in Midtown or in The Gulch are deciding whether to wait for cabs or drive themselves, there should be a taxi no more than a few minutes away. —SARAH KELLEY Jingle Bell Rock Nashville’s rock scene has long faced the unique challenge of inhabiting a city with an extensive country music infrastructure that can’t do a damn thing for it. If I could bestow any old gracious thing upon us, I’d turn any one of our struggling indie-rock labels into a nationally recognized force. I’d give the embryonic efforts of Infinity Cat or Theory 8 a big dose of the musical equivalent of Miracle-Gro. Nashville certainly has the talent, just as Minneapolis had Twin/Tone and The Replacements, Chapel Hill had Merge Records and Superchunk and SST gave us Black Flag and Sonic Youth, among others. And with the critical flagship bands standing at the helm, those labels simply needed vision, resources and a philosophy—no matter how flawed—to brand their output by catering to a highly specific niche. Then they needed the geld to keep the operation going and to keep their star acts in house, lest they lose them to the highest bidder. Grow this in Nashville, add water and light and watch a steady stream of solid, credible acts take root. Before you know it, we could have our very own rock industry—off off off Music Row (offices on Elliston Place?)—and finally mine our greatest resource: all the home-grown musical talent we’re losing every day to the coasts. —TRACY MOORE City sidewalks, busy sidewalks There are very few places in Nashville where you can walk without being stared at. It’s like you and your whole not-in-a-car enterprise just don’t make sense. Nashville drivers, so unaccustomed to the sight of a human on foot, motor around town oblivious to pedestrians, and when they do acknowledge these anachronistic travelers, it’s often with contempt. Nashville is a driving city and will remain so, but ubiquitous sidewalks would let us enjoy our lovely neighborhoods even more, not to mention help alleviate problems like global warming, obesity, couch potato syndrome and overall pastiness. (But, if we get the sidewalks we asked for, you have to promise to play with them.) —LEE STABERT AND STEVE HARUCH Holiday home movies As part of its bounty of riches, available free of charge to any man, woman or child with a library card, the Nashville Public Library offers a system-wide collection of 30,316 DVDs dispersed throughout its branches. Perhaps that sounds like a lot, but break it down this way: the library purchased 15 copies of Mission: Impossible III, and those copies now have 152 holds and counting. At the same time, new releases and hot items such as horror movies and Disney films don’t always get returned. As a gift to the city, how about getting local video stores with stacks of rental copies gathering dust to donate used DVDs to the central library collection? There might even be a tax break involved. And it might free up some resources for folks like Popular Materials librarians Bill Chamberlain and Crystal Deane, who’ve helped Nashville’s library system build an impressive catalog of TV box sets, documentaries and foreign films (including the gold-standard Criterion Collection titles that rental stores won’t touch). The disc you slip may be your own. —JIM RIDLEY