Growing Power Levels
☀️ Someone turn up the heat · Lamberth calls for federal ban · Walking away from Pride · Chinese batteries · Art for Everybody review · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone. Today, we talk about the TVA, look at Lamberth’s call for a federal ban on child transition surgeries, observe the declining corporate participation in Pride Month, and review a documentary about the painter Thomas Kinkade. First time reading? Sign up here.
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Thanks to all who came out to Bar Hours and sweated on Von El Rod's patio with us last night. It’s been so hot this week that the Tennessee Valley Authority put out one of those notices where they tell you to keep your AC at 78ºF and wait until nightfall to run the dryer or washing machine. If you’re familiar with my views on air conditioning, you know that I don’t need the TVA telling me how to set my thermostat.
Advisories of this sort wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if it weren’t for the TVA’s goal of shuttering all coal power plants by 2035 with insufficient efforts to build out capacity to fill the gap. Senator Bill Hagerty told the Chattanooga Times Free Press earlier this week that the federally owned electric utility, which generates over 90 percent of the power for Tennessee, has become a limiting factor on economic development in the state.
In March, President Trump fired two members of the board following an op-ed wherein Hagerty and Senator Blackburn blamed TVA leadership for slow walking the development of the Clinch River nuclear site. Presently, without a quorum, the utility is functionally rudderless until the White House appoints new members.
"What I want to see is the type of long-term planning and the type of capital planning that would be necessary for us to remain in the lead," Hagerty told the Free Press about what he wants from the board. "I'd like to see pursuit of new technologies like (small modular reactors) where we're actually parallel processing things -- doing everything we can to rapidly get there and take advantage of our unique position as having the only permit -- as opposed to sitting back and being a follower."
As power demand grows with the mass adoption of AI and companies like xAI select the state as a site for their servers, it would seem foolish to draw down capacity. Probably stating the obvious. Now keep your hands off our thermostats. DAVIS HUNT
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🖋️ Edited by Megan Podsiedlik.
🚼 Lamberth Calls On Congress To Protect Children Tennessee House Leader William Lamberth is advocating for a universal ban on gender affirming care for minors. “I will call on Congress right now to pass a national ban on sexual mutilation,” he said during last week’s press conference in recognition of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Tennessee’s law restricting gender-transition interventions for minors.
Lamberth also urged state-level legislators across the country to jump on board if Congress doesn’t get the job done on a nationwide scale. “Go file a bill today to protect your children,” he said, encouraging state lawmakers to mimic what Tennessee and about 20 other states have already done.
🌈 Walking Away From Pride Corporate America is quietly stepping back from its involvement in Pride Month events and celebrations. In an open letter released by Nashville Pride, organizers disclosed that they’re “facing financial setbacks this year due to the loss of several longtime supporters.” According to Axios, sponsors are stepping away from Pride events across the country in response to the backlash they’ve received regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. This year, Nissan backed out of all Pride events, citing it as a marketing and spending decision.
🔋 Chinese Battery Storage Factory This morning, Nashville Business Journal reported that a Chinese company is investing $500 million to produce energy storage batteries in Smyrna. Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC), majority owned by China’s Envision Group, previously supplied Nissan with vehicle batteries produced in the plant. Nissan has since ended its EV production in Smyrna due to subsidy and trade policy uncertainty. AESC also anticipates growing demand for energy storage systems that support renewable energy, AI data centers, and grid stability. If the new production project goes forward, it could add 200-300 new jobs.
DEVELOPMENT
- Developer eyes 300-plus apartments, homes in northwest Nashville (NBJ)
- The Bunganut Pig Restaurant closed after 38 years in Franklin (NBJ)
- 12South-area mixed-use building listed for sale (Post)
- Five Points Pizza offers by-the-slice Gulch option (Post)
- High-end fashion retailer Vince slated for 12South (Post)
- West End building last housing Newk’s listed for sale for $5.5M (Post)
✹ REVIEW: ART FOR EVERYBODY (2023)
“I have about twenty of his paintings,” a woman says in the trailer promoting Art for Everybody, the new documentary about Thomas Kinkade. When this voiceover boomed over the Belcourt speakers on a May Friday night, the audience there for a sold-out screening of an experimental biopic about indie rock legends Pavement couldn’t stop guffawing. Ostensibly, they were laughing at the hokey painter of quaint country landscapes and faith art that dominated the malls of the South and Midwest throughout the 1990s. But really, they were praising their superiority over this woman they thought they had earned through their discerning arthouse taste.
At first, I was disgusted that the trailer vastly oversimplified director Miranda Yousef’s compelling look at Kinkade’s life and his impact on the artworld. But the audience’s reaction made me realize it was a brilliant bait and switch. Unlike the one-dimensional Netflix doc fare that passes through the festival-to-streaming pipeline in a matter of weeks, Art for Everybody has, as a result of its nuance, languished without a distributor for the nearly two years since I first saw it. It is not a takedown of the painter who fell from grace and died far too young thanks to the perils of fame. Nor another hit job on the evangelical Christian faithful. It’s a movie that takes direct aim at the self-proclaimed culture class to excoriate their pretensions.
Though the film chronicles every dramatic beat of Kinkade’s rise and fall, it’s much more interested in positioning him as the populist who democratized the art world by allowing the denizens of middle class mall shoppers an entry point. Throughout, Yousef trots out a host of arts and culture experts from The New Yorker all-star Susan Orlean to art critic Christopher Knight, who pigeonhole Kinkade and his talents in their affectatious way before she offers them a glimpse of the painter’s more personal work locked away in his vault for decades.
The stuff of Kinkade’s life would have made for a compelling enough doc. Yet, Art for Everybody has its sights set on the much loftier target: those who use art primarily as a way to increase their own social capital so they can further sever their ties with the type of folks who’d offer Kinkade’s work a prominent space in their living rooms.
Art for Everybody is now playing at The Belcourt.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
🪕 The Tennessee Warblers @ Station Inn, 9p, $20, Info
🎸 Happy Landing @ The Blue Room, 7p, $28.60, Info
🥁 LIVE JAZZ: Parker James, Paul DeFiglia, & Anson Hohne @ Vinyl Tap, 7p, No Cover, Info
🎻 Spirits of Summer Celestial Symphony @ Schermerhorn Symphony Center, 7:30p, $100+, Info
🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info
🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info
🎸 Open Mic @ Fox & Locke, 6:30p, Free, Info
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Today's newsletter is brought to you by Megan Podsiedlik (Nashville), Jerod Hollyfield (Crowd Corner), Camelia Brennan (Local Noise), and Davis Hunt (everything else).