Good morning, Nashville. Our fearless leader, Mayor Dean, hopped a plane to Japan over the weekend on a pre-planned trip to explore future economic development opportunities. He’s scheduled to be over there through next Sunday and will meet with corporations like Nissan, Gibson Japan and Bridgestone in addition to checking out some of Japan’s finest public transportation options. At any rate, he assures us he checked with Japan Consulate General Hiroshi Sato (who plays a mean guitar, by the way) before he embarked on the trip and we just hope he stays far away from that nuclear plant. And don’t forget, you can donate $10 to the Red Cross disaster relief fund by texting REDCROSS to 90999.
- Festival Tennessee zoning vote. Spring Hill will be voting on the zoning for the proposed Festival Tennessee theme park, which seems to be sort of suspect anyway. Developers are asking for zoning that would allow them to build pretty much anything on the land, but local lawmakers would like to know what they’re zoning it for.
- March Madness. We would be remiss if we didn’t mention some of this March Madness business, but we’re pretty bad at college basketball terminology so forgive us if we butcher this: Vanderbilt, UT and Belmont all got their NCAA destinations, and it looks like Vandy will take on Richmond for the No. 5 seed, UT will play Michigan for the No. 9 seed and Belmont will play Wisconsin for the No. 13 seed.
- Bits & pieces. The NFL lockout went into effect on Friday, but they’ve still got a few weeks to work things out before games are canceled … Barnes & Noble is the latest retailer to try to pull out of their Opry Mills lease … Homeless advocates are taking it upon themselves to improve homeless relations with law enforcement … Because federal funds have run out, local law enforcement will now have to foot the bill for meth lab cleanups, which is a big deal here since our state is a pretty big producer of meth … Watch out for the cicadas this year.
Photo by Richard Call.