The Country Music Hall of Fame After the Flood
Brooks & Dunn, the most successful duo in country music history, will be performing their last concert next Thursday. Since one of their hit songs was “That Ain’t No Way to Go”, they wanted to go out with style, and they are. Proceeds from their last show will go to benefit the Country Music Hall of Fame, which was hit hard by the May Flood. That definitely IS a classy way to go.
The reason I continue to write about the flood is because it continues to affect so many lives, yet so few people – including many of those who live in Nashville but were not affected – understand how long it takes to recover. According to the Greater Nashville Chamber of Commerce, 2,773 businesses in Nashville were directly hit by the flood. Of those, 442 are still closed, including the Opryland Hotel and the Grande Ole Opry House. That amounts to 14,500 employees who lost their jobs, even if they didn’t lose their homes.
In another welcome sign of progress, Nashville’s Gibson guitar factory has announced that it is back up and running at full speed, cranking out about 250 guitars a day. The first one to roll off the post-flood production line was given as a birthday present to former Guns-N-Roses guitarist Slash.
Guitar Town is slowly rising again.
From WKRN:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts toured flood damaged areas of Nashville on Thursday and visited with residents in Old Hickory. Calling the flood of May the “forgotten story,” she told News 2 she volunteered to come to Nashville and meet with flood victims.
“Next week is the anniversary of Katrina, and we’re going to be down there and I raised my hand and said there are a lot of hurting people right now, and Nashville is the forgotten story, and I just didn’t feel comfortable talking solely about the Gulf Coast,” she said. Roberts said she knows the Volunteer State didn’t get the national coverage it deserved.
“There was an attempted terror threat, the oil spill [and] I’m going, ‘Yes, and Nashville is underwater’ and it was disheartening,” she recalled. “I was in many ways embarrassed because as a nation, the media, we did send a reporter here, we did cover the story, but I agree, not to the magnitude we should have.”
Looks like public outrage did some good. Tennessee’s new under-qualified chancellor of our regents system, who was starting his new job at $385,000 a year, has now volunteered to settle for the measly $305,000 his predecessor made.
I saw on the Austin news last night that several Round Rock area high schools are providing before-school coffee shops to make school more pleasant for the children, and reduce tardiness. One parent said that providing cappuccinos and lattes helps the kids concentrate. (Guess I was underprivileged to have made it through high school without them). Yet these are the same schools that are struggling with their budgets. Hmmmm. Can’t imagine why they’re broke.
Today marks the 33rd anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, and hard-core fans that apparently have nothing better to do are lined up outside the gates of Graceland in Memphis. While all of this is going on, the current owner of Graceland and all of Presley’s estate is considering selling it, even though it brings in about $60,000,000 every year.
And the top bidder? None other than Simon Cowell, the former judge on American Idol.
As those of us who were directly hit have learned, the biggest challenges in recovering from a 500-year flood are not what we thought they’d be. The initial cleanup is the messiest, and it’s where everyone offers to help. But it’s also the easiest and fastest. The tough part is the reconstruction, which lasts for months (or years in the case of Hurricane Katrina).
There’s also the mental/emotional component of feeling somewhat abandoned after all the volunteers have left, and the media all but forgets, but the hardest work continues as the financial consequences build. For that reason, I have to salute Justin Bieber.
Though I know nothing about him other than the fact that every 14-year-old girl in America is in love with him, he presented a local charity a check for $32,000 for flood relief after playing at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena last night. Nice contrast to the Lindsey Lohans and Brittany Spears of the world.
Speaking of welcome signs of recovery, the construction crews rebuilding Glenn Shepard Seminars made it far enough this week that we were finally able to bring in a new refrigerator and microwave to the break room. My employees have been using an ice chest to keep soft drinks and brown bag lunches cool since May 1st. We’re still hoping to be back up and running 100% sometime in September.
It’s a welcome sign of progress in the flood recovery that Nashville’s Farmer’s Market reopens this week. Another sign of progress is that the Opryland Hotel has announced that it will begin taking employment applications next week from the 1,600 employees they layed off after the flood, in anticipation of their reopening in November.