🚀 Blackburn vows deportation via … starship??

🍅 How To Grow Tomatoes

Tomato Art Fest returns to East Nashville this weekend! To celebrate, we're chatting with Missy Hamilton from BELL Garden on the City Cast Nashville podcast about how to grow tomatoes, even if all we have is a patio and a pot. [🎧 City Cast Nashville]

📰 TN Leaders Focus on Deportation

Despite helping local police in a case involving the sexual assault of children, Jose Reyes, a Franklin father, was one of the nearly 200 people detained during May’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Middle Tennessee. A previous DUI impacted his DACA status. [Williamson Scene]

• Governor Bill Lee is mobilizing the National Guard to assist in deportations. [Tennessee Lookout]
• In Senator Marsha Blackburn’s video announcing her run for Tennessee governor, she says, “Whether it takes planes, trains, or starships, we’ll deport illegal aliens, because respect for the law starts with enforcing it.” [Nashville Banner]
• Our interview with The ReMIX TN about May’s ICE raids [🎧 City Cast Nashville]

🏗️ Rezoning Takes Center Stage at Metro Council

Legislation related to rezoning The Nations to allow for more types of housing and increased walkability passed its second reading after nearly two hours of public input. The third and final reading will be on August 19. [Nashville Banner]

• A contentious rezoning in South Nashville to allow for a warehouse has been deferred indefinitely. [WKRN]

✉️ We’ve Got Some Questions

Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s office has sent a letter with a list of questions about the Music City Loop to The Boring Company, ranging from public safety and emergency response to cost and transit connectivity. [Tennessee Lookout]

• The letter mentions environmental concerns with the Las Vegas tunnel, such as flooding issues. [🎧 City Cast Nashville]

While Nashville might be best known for our music scene, lots of books are set in Music City, too! Here are 10 of the best novels set in Nashville, from romance to Southern gothic.

‘The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year’ by Margaret Renkl

This lovely collection of nature essays about Renkl’s Nashville backyard celebrates the joys found in observing nature, and the ways humans can alter it. Renkl writes about local nature in many of her books.

‘Lo Fi’ by Liz Riggs

Set during our early 2010s music scene, “Lo Fi” follows a young aspiring songwriter as she navigates feelings of inferiority while falling into messy relationships with guys in bands.

‘Summer Sons’ by Lee Mandelo

This queer Southern gothic explores toxic masculinity and local ghost stories against a backdrop of Vanderbilt’s graduate program and Nashville’s drag racing scene.

‘When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky’ by Margaret Verble

It’s 1926 Nashville, and Two Feathers is a Cherokee horse diver at the Glendale Park Zoo. She’s forced to temporarily give up diving after an accident leaves her injured, which makes her the perfect candidate to investigate a series of mysteries at the zoo.

Every week, I’m sharing local businesses and nonprofits recommended by our City Cast Nashville Neighbors.

😻 Ginny W. shouts out Radio Free Nashville, “Nashville's first community radio station, fighting for democracy with music and news, every day!”

😻 Judith T. shouts out Community Care Fellowship, an organization that “works with unhoused people, offering meals, showers, laundry, and temporary housing to help them find permanent housing as quickly as possible. CCF serves up to 5,000 people with basic needs, and hundreds with housing assistance each year.”

Want to share a shoutout?