Google photographs Charlotte Park for Street View

A driver for Google Maps rode through Charlotte Park today in a car with a roof-mounted camera to collect 360-degree images. Street-level imagery can be seen on Google Maps' Street View, which currently is available for nine U.S. cities, identified on Street View with camera icons. Those cities include Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Orlando, San Diego and San Francisco.

According to the Google Maps site, Google is working to expand its coverage to other areas. Earlier this month, another Nashville resident reported he spotted a Street View car with the same license plate number.

The Charlotte Parker emailed the company today requesting more information about Nashville's Street View.

Read Google's response here, from an Oct. 1 post on The Charlotte Parker.

Below is a video from Google that explains how Street View works:

StoryCorps wants to hear your story

The following post is from neighbor Kate Wingate (pictured third from the left), who recently began working as a StoryCorps facilitator:

As some of you may know, StoryCorps has recently opened a brand new StoryBooth in the Main Library downtown (open here for one year only). What's StoryCorps, you may be asking?

StoryCorps is a national oral history project to instruct and inspire everyday people to collect one another's stories in sound. To make this possible, StoryCorps has soundproof StoryBooths (2 permanent ones in NYC and 3 mobile booths traveling the country in airstream trailers, as well as one at the Milwaukee Public library and now one here in Nashville) where folks can go to tell their stories to one another. Each interview lasts 40 minutes, is facilitated by a trained facilitator, and participants leave with a broadcast-quality CD recording of their interview. With participants' permission, each interview also gets archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. A very few interviews are edited and broadcast nationally Friday mornings on NPR's Morning Edition, and some will also be broadcast locally on WPLN. StoryCorps believes that everyone has a story to tell and that these stories deserve to be told and recorded for future generations. To date, StoryCorps has collected over 10,000 stories!

How can I participate, you ask? Just grab a partner (or come alone, if you wish -- a facilitator can interview you), make an appointment, and head on down to the main library! You can make an appointment by visiting www.storycorps.net, or by calling the reservation line at 800-850-4406 (it's open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). The suggested donation is only $10.

Related news:

• StoryCorps Grand Opening Oct. 6
• Nashville Scene: Interview provides "a small revelation"
• Tennessean: "This is your chance to be a part of history."
• Library Journal: StoryCorps launches Oct. 6

Center Hill Dam cracks could result in 'catastrophic failure'

The Tennessean is reporting Center Hill Dam, located upriver of Nashville in DeKalb County, is at risk of "a catastrophic failure" that could cause as many as 500 deaths, according to officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Nashville District. The Corps is keeping Center Hill Lake at a low level to avoid this kind of worst-case scenario. The lake is on the Caney Fork, which flows into the Cumberland River.

Meanwhile, a failure at the weakened Wolf Creek Dam in Kentucky also likely would cause flooding downstream along the Cumberland River. Additional coverage of Wolf Creek, including a map of potential flood areas in Charlotte Park, can be seen here.

Scene: Excellent potatoes at Spudz

Now that Nashville Scene restaurant critic Carrington Fox has written a mostly positive review of Spudz, Inc., at 5908 B Charlotte Ave., describing in great detail its menu and atmosphere, I will have to stop making jokes about Spudz for billing itself your "one-stop potato shop."

While driving on Charlotte Avenue past the store, I would marvel that such a business could stay afloat selling almost exclusively one product: potatoes. And the hilarious part (only to me, I'm sure) was the idea that anyone would need a one-stop potato shop.

Here's one of my brilliant jokes: "Thank goodness for Spudz! Finally, I don't have to go shopping all over town for my various potato needs. I'm so tired of going to one store for for red potatoes, another for sweet potatoes and yet another for Yukon Gold."

My jokes clearly stemmed from ignorance. But thanks to Fox's review, I have a better picture of what Spudz is all about, and I can't wait to check it out. I think I'll start with the Philly cheese steak spudz. Thankfully, if I decide I also want to try the Buffalo chicken spudz, I can get it in one stop.