I am from Nashville and I love my hometown, I can't stand all the new and shallow media attention about my city though. I now live in Europe, but I am back home often enough, and the internet helps me keep in touch with what's going on in my home city so I decided to write my own article/list about Nashville.
10. There is no single thing called "Nashville".
Nashville is a sprawling, diverse, metropolitan area and can't be pigeonholed the way most writers want to do. We have lots of churches representing a ton of different Christian denominations, we also have quite a few mosques. The largest population of Kurds outside of Kurdistan lives in Nashville. Nashville is full of poor people and middle class people and rich people. Most Nashvillians don't work in the music industry, many never attend a concert in a given year. Many drink like fish while others are teetotalers. We are very different but we live in the same place, most of us are happy about that but some aren't, somehow we manage to get along most of the time.
9. Nashville is a food city.
Hot chicken is big in Nashville but a lot of people can't stand it. Nashville has a lot of great restaurants but most of us eat lunch at McDonald's or Hardees. We love biscuits and gravy and country ham but we also love foie gras and caviar. We love food, but how many people and cities don't? We are just lucky to have a wide range of restaurants serving a wide range of food (from New York style Jewish delis to slow smoked pork shoulder to vegetarian South Indian cuisine). There is no "Nashville cuisine" we just love to eat and love to have choices.
8. Nashville is friendly.
I didn't realize how friendly till I moved to Northern Europe, but if you are in Nashville you had better be ready to talk to people. We like to talk, sure, most of it is superficial and shallow, but we are looking for a reason to like you, if we see you twice we will probably consider you a friend.
7. Gospel music is bigger than country music here.
A lot of us like both gospel and country, but we also like punk and dance music and folk. Nashville is "Music City USA", not country music city USA. If you come to visit leave the honky tonks on Broadway behind for a while and see what else Nashville has to offer musically, you will be glad you did.
6. It gets cold in Nashville.
If you show up in January or February don't bring your swim suit. Yep, we get cold weather, really cold weather. The great thing is that while it might be below zero (Fahrenheit) one night it might be in the 60's the next day. In the winter be prepared for almost anything... from one hour to the next.
5. East Nashville isn't just hipsters.
Yes, there are a lot of hipsters in East Nashville, and that is great, but there are also a lot of people who you would never call hipsters, people who are more likely to wear pricey Air Jordans than vintage clothing store finds. People old enough to have worn those vintage clothing store finds when they were new. And people who just get up and get dressed to work every day. East Nashville is like most of Nashville, diverse and impossible to classify, but everyone in East Nashville agrees on one thing, "The rent is too damn high!"
4. In Nashville you can smoke in bars and many people do.
In Tennessee if you don't let anyone under the age of 21 through the doors smoking is OK. Some bars bane smoking but most allow it and this means it can get a bit hazy sometimes. That's OK, you can step outside whenever you want.
3. Nashville is a liberal city in a VERY conservative state.
When Jesse Jackson ran for president in the democratic primaries he won Nashville, Clinton won Nashville, Obama won Nashville, Nashville is very liberal. Step one foot outside of the city limits however and you are in a very conservative area no matter where you go. This means if you are in Nashville you will find people who are super liberal and super conservative and so it doesn't matter which side of the political fence you find yourself on, if you want to talk politics you better be able to back up what you say. Cause if you can't someone will call you on it.
2. Nashville doesn't hate tourists... but...
We can get kind of weary of them. Look, tourists come in to Nashville and try to blend in, but you don't. See Nashvillians don't normally wear cowboy hats or cowboy boots. We wear jeans and suits and Converse and high heels. We dress casually, we dress stylishly, we dress in drag, there is a naturist resort just outside of Nashville where people don't dress at all. The thing is that Nashvillians don't normally wear rhinestones or look like we are about to take the stage at the Ryman Auditorium, we just dress and look like pretty normal people, whatever you think that means.
1. Nashville is a great place.
Please, go to Nashville with no expectations, see as much of it as you can, you will probably fall in love with it. Just don't try to figure it out, it is too complex, too diverse, too wonderful to categorize. It is a city and has all of the good things and bad things that being a city entails. Just bring your car or rent one, cause public transportation sucks in Nashville.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
New War Brings Back Old Lies
The US is at war again, this time against ISIS or ISIL or The Islamic State or DAIISH or whatever it is they are being called now. It really doesn't matter what you call them, they are a bunch of sick, crazy individuals who are perverting the religion to claim to follow. Of course in the US the only thing that many people will pay attention to is that the members of this group claim to be Muslim and their actions will give some in America another excuse to hate Muslims.
This hatred of Islam and its followers confuses me to no end. Most of the people who rail against Islam in the US consider themselves to be Christians, as do I, but I can't for the life of me reconcile their words and actions with Christianity.
I have heard them claim that Muslims are trying to force everyone in the US to live under Sharia Law and to convert to Islam. They say that they don't want Islam forced down their throats. This is quite confusing as many of these same people want to take away a woman's right to have an abortion, for any reason at all, because of religious reasons. They want to put prayer, seemingly Christian prayer (which can be several different things depending on which denomination we are talking about), back in public schools. They want the religious doctrine of creationism taught in schools as science. They think that gay and lesbian couples shouldn't be able to get married because of what they believe God thinks. On this last issue, I have been to gay pride festivals in several US cities and in cities in Canada and Europe as well. I have seen Christians protest and yell and scream at the festival goers, telling them they are going to hell and that they are sick. Interestingly enough I have never seen a group representing any other religion do this, only people who consider themselves Christians.
The same is true of the other issues listed above, time and time again in the US Christians rise up and try to push their religion down the throats of everyone else. In Tennessee they tried to stop a mosque from being built. I haven't heard of any Muslim groups in the US trying to stop churches from being built. Many Christians will say that the US is a Christian nation, founded on Christian principles, and that it should be following God's law. Strange that some of the founding fathers such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison didn't believe this at all. They saw the danger of a religion trying to and working towards imposing itself on others and I have to say they were right. In the US the only religion I know of that is trying to impose its will and law on people is Christianity. This of course makes these Christians look like extreme hypocrites when they claim that Muslims are trying to take over the country. Muslims around the world have called on us to realize that groups like ISIS don't represent Islam any more than the Westboro Baptist Church represents Christianity, unfortunately there are too many Christian extremists who refuse to believe this. A few days ago Muslims around the world organized protests to show that they in now way condone or accept or are willing to tolerate the actions of groups like ISIS. As a Christian I want to say that I know Islam is not what these terrorists have fooled themselves into believing that it is. I would also like to say that I, as a Christian, in no way, shape, form, or fashion condone or agree with the actions taken by Christian extremists and in some instance Christian terrorists that are sadly all too common in my home country. I believe that hate is probably a sin in every religion, I know it is in Christianity.
This hatred of Islam and its followers confuses me to no end. Most of the people who rail against Islam in the US consider themselves to be Christians, as do I, but I can't for the life of me reconcile their words and actions with Christianity.
I have heard them claim that Muslims are trying to force everyone in the US to live under Sharia Law and to convert to Islam. They say that they don't want Islam forced down their throats. This is quite confusing as many of these same people want to take away a woman's right to have an abortion, for any reason at all, because of religious reasons. They want to put prayer, seemingly Christian prayer (which can be several different things depending on which denomination we are talking about), back in public schools. They want the religious doctrine of creationism taught in schools as science. They think that gay and lesbian couples shouldn't be able to get married because of what they believe God thinks. On this last issue, I have been to gay pride festivals in several US cities and in cities in Canada and Europe as well. I have seen Christians protest and yell and scream at the festival goers, telling them they are going to hell and that they are sick. Interestingly enough I have never seen a group representing any other religion do this, only people who consider themselves Christians.
The same is true of the other issues listed above, time and time again in the US Christians rise up and try to push their religion down the throats of everyone else. In Tennessee they tried to stop a mosque from being built. I haven't heard of any Muslim groups in the US trying to stop churches from being built. Many Christians will say that the US is a Christian nation, founded on Christian principles, and that it should be following God's law. Strange that some of the founding fathers such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison didn't believe this at all. They saw the danger of a religion trying to and working towards imposing itself on others and I have to say they were right. In the US the only religion I know of that is trying to impose its will and law on people is Christianity. This of course makes these Christians look like extreme hypocrites when they claim that Muslims are trying to take over the country. Muslims around the world have called on us to realize that groups like ISIS don't represent Islam any more than the Westboro Baptist Church represents Christianity, unfortunately there are too many Christian extremists who refuse to believe this. A few days ago Muslims around the world organized protests to show that they in now way condone or accept or are willing to tolerate the actions of groups like ISIS. As a Christian I want to say that I know Islam is not what these terrorists have fooled themselves into believing that it is. I would also like to say that I, as a Christian, in no way, shape, form, or fashion condone or agree with the actions taken by Christian extremists and in some instance Christian terrorists that are sadly all too common in my home country. I believe that hate is probably a sin in every religion, I know it is in Christianity.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Pain and Strength
I live in the city center of Tilburg, the 6th largest city in the Netherlands. Every year the city center of Tilburg is taken over by one of the largest fairs in Europe, Kermis, with kilometer after kilometer of rides, games, food, and other attractions. It is noisy, sometimes messy, sometimes wonderful, today it was very moving.
This past Monday was Roze Maandag or Pink Monday. Roze Maandag is a celebration of all things gay but it is not a gay celebration. The entire town joins in, gay and straight, from the oldest to the youngest, to enjoy the best and biggest party you can imagine. It shows just how well integrated the LGBT community is with the rest of the Netherlands. Being a gay man from the Southern US it was a pretty amazing sight and something I will remember for a very long time.
Today was completely different. The weather was nicer, the crowds weren't quite a large, drag queens weren't dancing with little kids in the streets. Games were being played, rides were tossing people around at high speeds, it was like a lot of other days during Kermis except today, at 3:55 in the afternoon everything came to a sudden halt.
Today around the time Kermis went silent, two planes landed at an airport in a city very close to Tilburg. These planes carried the first 40 bodies of the 193 Dutch victims of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 disaster. Most of my readers are from the US and 193 may seem like a small number to them, but the Netherlands is a nation considerably smaller in size than many, if not most, of the individual states in the United States. The Netherlands population is around 17 million and so it is quite small population wise as well. Proportionally the 193 Dutch that were killed in this horrible event represent a larger portion of the population of the Netherlands than the thousands who died on 9/11 represented of the American population. Over 40 of the dead came from Noord-Brabant, the province Tilburg is located in. This has hit the Netherlands very hard.
Today at Kermis everything shut down for ten minutes in remembrance of those who perished. The rides, the food stands, the games all fell silent. The tens of thousands of people here all stopped what they were doing and joined in the silence. The only sound to be heard was the bell of a local church ringing out once for each of the 193 who died. There were no words, no speeches, no crying, nothing. Just the acknowledgment of what was happening by the gathered crowd as they started applauding as the bells went silent.
Soon a long line had formed coming out of the church and into the heat as people waited to sign condolence books. When we sat down in front of one of the books to sign it we saw a multitude of statements in somewhat emotionally scrawled Dutch. Occasionally a word would be blurred by the stain from a tear that had fallen on it. People prayed and lit candles and then walked back out into the sun light.
The lack of obvious signs of emotion might confuse some Americans, trust me, just because they aren't showing it doesn't mean they aren't feeling it. The Dutch are a proud, stoic, and strong people who are also very protective of their privacy. They are grieving, just not in public, they refuse to let this tragic event turn them into a tragic nation. They will remember for ever and suffer for years to come, but they will still be Dutch and they will deal with this tragedy as they have dealt with the other terrible events the people of the Netherlands have endured, by preserving and enduring. There is strength in community, the Dutch are an entire nation that is also a community.
This past Monday was Roze Maandag or Pink Monday. Roze Maandag is a celebration of all things gay but it is not a gay celebration. The entire town joins in, gay and straight, from the oldest to the youngest, to enjoy the best and biggest party you can imagine. It shows just how well integrated the LGBT community is with the rest of the Netherlands. Being a gay man from the Southern US it was a pretty amazing sight and something I will remember for a very long time.
Today was completely different. The weather was nicer, the crowds weren't quite a large, drag queens weren't dancing with little kids in the streets. Games were being played, rides were tossing people around at high speeds, it was like a lot of other days during Kermis except today, at 3:55 in the afternoon everything came to a sudden halt.
Today around the time Kermis went silent, two planes landed at an airport in a city very close to Tilburg. These planes carried the first 40 bodies of the 193 Dutch victims of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 disaster. Most of my readers are from the US and 193 may seem like a small number to them, but the Netherlands is a nation considerably smaller in size than many, if not most, of the individual states in the United States. The Netherlands population is around 17 million and so it is quite small population wise as well. Proportionally the 193 Dutch that were killed in this horrible event represent a larger portion of the population of the Netherlands than the thousands who died on 9/11 represented of the American population. Over 40 of the dead came from Noord-Brabant, the province Tilburg is located in. This has hit the Netherlands very hard.
Today at Kermis everything shut down for ten minutes in remembrance of those who perished. The rides, the food stands, the games all fell silent. The tens of thousands of people here all stopped what they were doing and joined in the silence. The only sound to be heard was the bell of a local church ringing out once for each of the 193 who died. There were no words, no speeches, no crying, nothing. Just the acknowledgment of what was happening by the gathered crowd as they started applauding as the bells went silent.
Soon a long line had formed coming out of the church and into the heat as people waited to sign condolence books. When we sat down in front of one of the books to sign it we saw a multitude of statements in somewhat emotionally scrawled Dutch. Occasionally a word would be blurred by the stain from a tear that had fallen on it. People prayed and lit candles and then walked back out into the sun light.
The lack of obvious signs of emotion might confuse some Americans, trust me, just because they aren't showing it doesn't mean they aren't feeling it. The Dutch are a proud, stoic, and strong people who are also very protective of their privacy. They are grieving, just not in public, they refuse to let this tragic event turn them into a tragic nation. They will remember for ever and suffer for years to come, but they will still be Dutch and they will deal with this tragedy as they have dealt with the other terrible events the people of the Netherlands have endured, by preserving and enduring. There is strength in community, the Dutch are an entire nation that is also a community.
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