Shade can lower ambient air temperatures while also cooling surface temps by as much as 45 degrees.
Half of Nashville’s parks have less than 33% shade, a new report from the Nashville Tree Conservation Corps found.
“There`s not enough places for kids to play,” said Chris Leonard, the group’s board chair. “The playground equipment this time of year is boiling.”
Leonard is a parent. He commissioned the report while taking his kids to parks and watching families struggle amid longer, increasingly dangerous summers.
The report is based on the city’s latest study, which used 2021 data. The city has since had a major ice storm, and the Nashville Electric Service changed its tree-trimming policy. The city’s post-ice data will come out in 2028.
In the meantime, Leonard recommends asking local tree groups and city leaders for specific plantings and dedicated park funding for trees. “Every kid should have a shaded, pleasant place to play in the summer, especially in a wealthy city,” Leonard said.
Tap link in bio for the full story from environmental reporter Caroline Eggers
Photos: Caroline Eggers / WPLN, Daniel Potter / WPLN
Image: Caroline Eggers with data from the Nashville Tree Conservation Corps and Metro Nashville
Lawmakers cited a recent WPLN and ProPublica investigation that found that juvenile justice facilities run by Tennessee businessman Jason Crews repeatedly failed to report abuse and other serious incidents to the state as required.
The Democratic lawmakers cited “profound concern” about the safety of youth in the state’s juvenile justice facilities after a recent WPLN and ProPublica investigation.
Following WPLN and ProPublica’s latest investigation into Tennessee`s private youth prisons, lawmakers are demanding “an urgent, transparent” response from the Department of Children’s Services over safety and oversight questions.
Lawmakers noted that WPLN and ProPublica’s latest investigation into Tennessee’s private youth prisons joins a “long and deeply troubling record of reports” on juvenile justice facilities across the state.
Four Democratic Tennessee state lawmakers sent a letter to the Department of Children’s Services demanding answers about safety and oversight in the state’s juvenile justice facilities following a recent WPLN-ProPublica investigation.
Tap link in bio for the full story from @paigepfleger and @propublica.
To be or not to be? That is the question for the proposed Shakespearean playhouse in Centennial Park.
The Nashville Shakespeare Festival Executive Director Isabel Tipton-Krispin says they have a vision that is straight out of old time London.
“ The best way to describe it is an Elizabethan playhouse, much like Shakespeare’s Globe, retrofitted to fit inside the Centennial Park bandshell.”
The plan is for a two-story structure that would go up just before the annual five-week, late-summer production and taken down when it is over. The structure would have a tower on either side and, at the top of the towers, there will be little pennant shaped flags.
Actor AndrewJohnson says, that if the playhouse gets built, it could be that, too. “It’s more of a chance to not only play to people that think theater is for them, but people that think theater is not for them.”
The Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” runs through today in Centennial Park.
Follow for more from Justin Barney and tap link in bio for the full story.
Photos: Rendering by Hastings, Alex Craft, Justin Barney
Notable quotables for the week look at Nashville’s film industry, which could be on a major upswing. Paramount Skydance is hiring and building stages in the area. There’s discourse on whether Nashville can draw the talent it would need. Metro’s new enterinment office director says she’s not worried.
Earlier this summer, WPLN and ProPublica published an investigation into a company that operates juvenile justice centers acorss the state. Lawmakers are now wanting the statehouse to conduct its own investigation.
And a semi-driver allowed his intrusive thoughts to win. He crashed his rig into the entrance of the Aldi grocery store on Gallatin Pike, causing a stir for the chain’s devotees.
Tap link in bio for more stories and subscribe to the NashVillager newsletter (5 days a week) for local stories, reporting, ticket giveaways and more.
Pooja Reddy is white trash.
Years ago, Pooja Reddy left the American South for a prestigious international internship. The supervisor didn’t conceal their surprise at her background. “I`ve never met anyone from Kentucky,” they told her. “It`s probably because they`re not smart enough to leave. And how could you be from there? I thought only white trash lived there.”
Reddy was first-generation Indian-American and positively brimming with ideas and ambition. She was also uninterested in distancing herself from her upbringing in a farming community in southern Kentucky.
As Jewly Hight reports, after several interactions with people dumbfounded by how dramatically her experience diverged from the uninformed Southern and rural stereotypes, Reddy conceived of a strategy. She would write autobiographical comedy. Disarm the narrow-mindedness with satire. Acknowledge what might seem absurd about a brown child of immigrants who practiced Hinduism also learning to shoot a gun and harboring country singing dreams—and make her embrace of multiplicity not only truer to life, but more appealing, too.
Reddy created a country cabaret show called “Pooja Reddy is White Trash,” which premieres at the famed nightclub Joe’s Pub beginning this week. The show is bound to resonate across regions once she takes it on the road. It’s a brilliant contribution to the new wave of voices reimagining the comedic potential of country music and storytelling and defying hidebound assumptions of who gets to represent country culture.
Tap link in the bio and follow for more from Senior Music Writer Jewly Hight.
Among all the other things about AI, it is noisy. All the time. 24/7. Noisy.
Elon Musk’s xAI complex consists of multiple data centers, a busy construction site and a power plant, currently consisting of about 60 truck-sized gas turbines. The resulting noise is traveling into the surrounding community and penetrating some people’s homes. Jason Haley, a resident in Southaven, Miss., filed a citizen lawsuit against the SpaceX-owned company over this noise.
Experts say this noise is more than a nuisance, leading to stress, lost sleep and lower property values.
“The number one problem is that this is a 24/7 noise source and there is no escaping,” said Mathias Basner, who researches noise at the University of Pennsylvania.
Caroline Eggers reports that xAI set up turbines one year ago and recently said it will remove them in one year while also adding noise-reduction measures.
Meanwhile, Musk told investors last month that he was targeting a tenfold expansion of the complex’s capacity to 20 gigawatts -- more than half of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s entire seven-state grid -- without any details on what that would look or sound like.
Tap link in bio for the full story and follow for more from Caroline Eggers.
Photos and video: Musk video public domain, Caroline Eggers / WPLN, Christopher Blank / WKNO-FM, video library and Mathias Basner TED talk
Metro Nashville has filed seven lawsuits against the federal government over funding losses since President Donald Trump began his second term.
The cases, which are jointly filed with other localities and supported by the Public Rights Project, allege that the Trump administration has acted unconstitutionally by canceling or redefining the terms around dollars that had already been appropriated by Congress.
The seven challenges can be categorized into two types: There are four lawsuits challenging federal grants that were eliminated outright, while the other three cases take issue with the federal government attaching new conditions to grants that had already been appropriated.
WPLN’s Cynthia Abrams has followed the cases and reports on where they stand.
Tap the link in bio for the full story.
Photos: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP Photo
Money from a legal settlement with Volkswagen is helping pay for more electric vehicle chargers for Tennessee renters.
The new program focuses on apartments and multi-family housing. Owners and property managers can get rebates of up to 60% of the cost for new chargers.
To understand where the funding comes from, you have to go back roughly a decade to a scandal known as “Dieselgate.” For years, VW had been marketing cars as “clean diesel,” while installing devices to cheat on emissions testing. In reality, the cars were sometimes emitting dozens of times the legal limit of pollution.
That eventually led to VW paying a $15 billion settlement, some of which helps pay for program to lower pollution and support EV adoption. In past years in Tennessee, that’s included efforts to add a statewide network of fast charging stations.
EVs have been slow to gain popularity in the state. About 5% of new passenger vehicles sold in Tennessee are EVs; that’s about half the national rate, and far behind the global average of around 25%.
Tap link in bio for the full story from environmental reporter Caroline Eggers.
Images: Anderson-EV/Unsplash
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‘They’re putting kids’ lives at risk’: How abuse in a Tennessee businessman’s juvenile prisons remained under wraps
Tennessee’s highest-security youth prisons are operated by a single private company. Former staff say they felt pressure to hide abuse and other serious incidents from the state and to handle medical emergencies without calling 911.
Curious Nashville Returns!
Back by popular demand, the WPLN fan favorite series Curious Nashville is here to investigate oddities, share local history, tell stories of interesting people, and explain how local institutions operate.
You ask the questions, and we answer.
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