Chapter 16 - Part 588

Lifting Up Spirits

Anne Brown considers the faithful art of Brother Mel

By Maria Browning | June 4, 2010

June 4, 2010 Since 1958, Marianist Brother Mel Meyer has created inspired art infused with the joy of his faith. In Brother Mel: A Lifetime of Making Art, Nashville gallery owner Anne Brown offers a lavish, full-color guide and tribute to his work. Brown will join Brother Mel in an appearance at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on June 4 at 7 p.m. and at a reception honoring the artist’s 82nd birthday at The Arts Company on June 5 from 6 to 9 p.m.

Devastating

Silas House points out the similarities between the devastation in the Gulf and the effects of mountaintop-removal mining in Appalachia

By Margaret Renkl | June 3, 2010

June 3, 2010 Constant images from the oil plume spreading devastation across the Gulf coast inspire Harrogate novelist Silas House to consider the similar costs to Appalachia of mountaintop-removal mining. And he has some advice for the president: “It’s time to start talking about sustainable jobs for miners who are losing theirs to machines on MTR sites. It’s time to try to salvage these devastated MTR sites into the only thing they’re really usable for now: wind farms.

Detour in Tennessee

The Academy of American Poets honors Kimiko Hahn’s poem about Sweetwater Caverns

By Margaret Renkl | June 3, 2010

June 3, 2010 Today’s poem at poets.org, an online publication of the Academy of American Poets, is “The Sweetwater Caverns” by Kimiko Hahn. As with much of Hahn’s work, the poem is less about its declared subject—in this case, the famous caverns in Sweetwater, Tennessee—than about the way the subject raises questions about the convergence of death and desire.

The Boy's Alright

Former Senator Fred Thompson talks with Chapter 16 about his new memoir, Teaching the Pig to Dance

By Liz Garrigan | June 3, 2010

June 8, 2010 Born in 1942 to a wise-cracking car salesman and a woman who appreciated politically incorrect humor, Fred Dalton Thompson grew up in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, where his Grandma Thompson padded around town showing off her excised goiter (which she carried around in a hankerchief), where he heard old men swap lies at the Blue Ribbon Café, and where he wandered into his share of boyhood scrapes. Thompson went on to spend eight years (1994-2003) in the U.S. Senate, conduct a failed presidential bid, and star in a long list of movies and television shows, but his new memoir, Teaching the Pig to Dance, sticks to his Lawrenceburg youth. Thompson spoke with Chapter 16 prior to his Nashville appearance at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on June 8 at 7 p.m.

Eccentric Faith

Award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director John Patrick Shanley talks with Chapter 16 about Doubt, faith, and theater

By Paul V. Griffith | June 2, 2010

June 2, 2010 John Patrick Shanley’s 2005 play, Doubt: A Parable, won the Triple Crown for drama: a Tony Award, an Obie, and a Pulitzer Prize. The 2008 film version, which Shanley directed, stars Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman and was nominated for Critic’s Choice Award, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Shanley is a product of parochial schools, a fact that figures heavily in the design of Doubt, the story of a mistrustful, conservative nun who suspects a progressive parish priest of having an inappropriate relationship with an altar boy. Shanley will be in Nashville as part of Lipscomb University’s thirtieth annual Christian Scholars’ Conference. He speaks at 4 p.m. on June 3 in the Collins Alumni Auditorium.

Across the Age Barrier

Poets from Youth Speaks Nashville add their voices to Nashville’s literary census

By Maria Browning | June 1, 2010

June 1, 2010 Youth Speaks Nashville gives teens the opportunity to learn and express themselves through spoken-word poetry. Some of its talented young poets will add their voices to Nashville Now: 2010 Spoken Word Census, a portrait of the city in poetry, prose, and song. The three-day series of events will take place at the Darkhorse Theater at 7:30 p.m. on June 3, 4, and 5.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher