If you find a Nashville native and ask one of us about Opryland, you’ll probably hear us wax poetic with nostalgia for a park that now lives only in our collective memory. What few seem to remember is the clumsy nature of its rushed closure by ownership group Gaylord Entertainment 25 years ago this month.

Editor’s note: This is a note on motherhood written by my great great grandmother in 1890, passed on through generations and eventually preserved in her daughter’s biography.

My grandfather, Bill Brown, was drafted for the Army in 1943, eventually becoming a sergeant in the Battle of the Bulge. His job in the war was to string communication wires so that the Army could communicate, and to trouble-shoot any technical errors that were found.

‘Tennessee is not equipped in the least to handle’ an influx of unwanted children, says Rep. Gloria Johnson

Take one of my legendary road trips, that have been adapted to download directly to your car.

A work of satire, when truth is at least equal to fiction

Event the Tennessee General Assembly's own standards don’t apply when it comes to using the power of the government to bully the LGBT-plus community.

Take the story of Laura Brown, whose neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee, was wiped out by a tornado on March 3, 2020. The overall damage totaled $1.5 billion. “We were basically climate refugees during the first part of the pandemic,” she says. “And honestly, the tornado really put a fire under my butt, that climate change is sort of no longer an issue that I can ignore.”

Take the story of Laura Brown, whose neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee, was wiped out by a tornado on March 3, 2020. The overall damage totaled $1.5 billion. “We were basically climate refugees during the first part of the pandemic,” she says. “And honestly, the tornado really put a fire under my butt, that climate change is sort of no longer an issue that I can ignore.”

If you find a Nashville native and ask one of us about Opryland, you’ll probably hear us wax poetic with nostalgia for a park that now lives only in our collective memory. What few seem to remember is the clumsy nature of its rushed closure by ownership group Gaylord Entertainment 25 years ago this month.

Tennessee’s Republicans seem obsessed with using the power of government to bully transgender folks. It has to stop.

Here we go again. A terrible thing has happened to a Tennessee woman, because of Tennessee’s Republican policies. 

The nation heartbreakingly watched recently as media outlets covered the brutal kidnapping and murder of Eliza Fletcher in Memphis. Eliza was kidnapped off the street at 4:30 a.m. during a marathon training run. 

Recently, we’ve learned that the serial monster arrested for the crime kidnapped and raped another woman in November of 2021, but wasn’t caught because nobody bothered to run the DNA. They already had his DNA on file from his first felony kidnapping back in 2000.

Leaving Tennessee after buying a home to settle down in wasn’t a part of Laura Brown’s plan.

“It breaks my heart that I have to leave this place that I have grown up in and loved my whole life,” said Brown.

I am leaving Tennessee.

This place is my home. I grew up here, learning to ride horses and play music in the rolling hills around Nashville, boating on the TVA lakes in Celina and Gallatin, going to Opryland, and mentoring Girl Scouts at Camp Sycamore Hills. I am entirely educated by Tennessee schools. I am an alum of Brentwood High School, UTK, MTSU, and Vanderbilt. I have been able to reach a high degree of success and contentment here, in Tennessee. The place I call home.

Recent events mean that I cannot stay. I must flee.

Laura Brown is Tennessee born, raised and educated. The 34-year-old chief marketing officer grew up in Brentwood and has degrees from the University of Tennessee, Middle Tennessee State University and Vanderbilt University. She now lives in East Nashville.

But not for much longer.

“I can’t stay here,” she said. “I’m sick and heartbroken over it.”

In Tennessee, nearly all abortions will become illegal within a month. Although Brown has spent most of her life in the state, she doesn’t think she will call it home for much longer. Brown was already considering a move and Friday’s ruling cemented her resolve. “I cannot, in good conscience,” she said, “live in and contribute to a state that doesn’t recognize my right to make medical decisions for myself.”

Laura Brown stood by a table surrounded by red, white and blue posters with drawings of the U.S. Capitol and a message: “Send a letter to Congress.”

“Hello, would you like to send a letter to the Senate?” she called out.

“I love these things, but people in Congress never seem to hear about them,” Brown said. “This is my bare bones operation to collect letters to our senators and congressmen. I package the letters and send them off.”

Brown was one of more than 1,500 people in Nashville Saturday advocating for stronger gun laws as part of the national March for Our Lives movement.

Laura Brown asks Pete Buttigieg about his climate agenda during SXSW 2022

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