• Local organizations are preparing to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey on the Texas coast. Please help wherever you can!
• Good news, Nashville: You weren’t damaging your retinas any more than usual during the eclipse. Must have been all those safety warnings.
• The Nashville Shakespeare festival is having a bit of controversy over casting decisions after actors became upset that a fair-skinned woman was cast as Cleopatra in “Antony and Cleopatra”.
• A couple has visited more than 600 Cracker Barrels restaurants across the country and will soon have visited them all when they get to the original in Lebanon, Tennessee. That’ a lot of biscuits.
• Belmont area residents are nervous about the potential closing of The International Market Restaurant now that the university has bought the property for potential expansion.
• The Nashville Transportation Licensing Commission has denied nine applications for new woo-wagons (remember, ‘Pedal Tavern’ is apparently a trademark) saying that the downtown area is at capacity.
• Philips, the company behind various lighting, health care and consumer electronics products, has announced they are bringing about 800 jobs to the mid-state.
• Applicants for Metro Nashville jobs will no longer be asked to complete a salary history section of the application. This move is intended to help close the pay gap between men and women.
• Belmont and Vanderbilt University are offering more than 200 free concerts in the next calendar year if you need to get your music fix.
• Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be in town for a meeting of the National Fraternal Order of Police at Opryland Hotel tonight. We are pretty sure there will not be road closures for his visit.
• The Tennessee Titans lost to the Chicago Bears 19-7 in an ugly preseason game with fights, ejections and all-around disappointing football. They close out the preseason this Thursday in Kansas City.
• Also in sports news, single game tickets go on sale today for the upcoming Nashville Predators season.

Photo by Sam Wilson.