Good morning, Nashville. Downtown seems to have recovered from yesterday’s power outage/gas leakage/CMA invasion. We’re getting conflicting stories as to what actually happened, but we’re going to go with the one that names copper theft as the main culprit. According to NES, the pilfered copper would have prevented the outage. A close runner up would be WTVF’s account where “downtown Nashville was supposed to be an electric” and “somehow something pulled the plug on the power.” But we digress.

• No more music pirates. Governor Phil signed a bill into law yesterday holding colleges and universities responsible for cracking down on students who download music illegally on campus, confirming our suspicions that Governor Phil hates college students.
• Calls waiting. The Tennessee unemployment office swears that they really are trying to keep up, but the first half of November has brought 15,000 more people filing for unemployment–compared the 2,000 that applied in the first two weeks of November 2007. They say that you’re better off calling early in the morning or late in the week.
• I O U. And with times as they are, we may be borrowing $59M from the folks in Clarksville who are clearly rolling in the dough.
• Bits & pieces. Tennessee has one of the highest premature birth rates in the country … Gaylord Entertainment’s stock is in a free-fall, having dropped 39% yesterday … We didn’t even realize that Nashville HAD an ancient forest, but apparently it needs saving.

Photo by lizchenery.