Brunch and a Show!

Yesterday Roger and I took the girls to see Shrek - the Musical at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville. It was so much fun! The costumes were incredible - and the special effects, puppets, music, etc made for a fabulous show. But before all that, we ate lunch at the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville - which is one of my favorite places in town. When I was working downtown it was my "go to" place for business lunches. It is an historic hotel - both due to its age, but also the amazing things that have happened there. It was built in 1910 and was Nashville's first million-dollar hotel (when a millions dollars still meant something!). The hotel was also home to legendary pool player Minnesota Fats. For more than eight years, “Fats” had his own table on the Mezzanine above the lobby and was know to regularly challenge all comers.

The Hermitage was also the headquarters for the anti- and pro- suffragette movements in August of 1920. Tennessee's ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (granting women the right to vote) was particularly significant because as the thirty-sixth of the forty-eight states to approve the amendment, it rounded out the three-fourths majority required to amend the Constitution. Roger and I were telling the girls this at brunch yesterday and they piped up, "So, when the girls got the right to vote, did that mean that the boys lost it?" Mmmm. . . sometimes I think maybe that wouldn't have been a terrible idea! ;-)This is a picture at the Anti-Suffragette’s headquarters in the Hermitage - An elderly Confederate veteran sits in the middle.

Before we went to Shrek, they wanted to check out the hotel. This is Erin on the Veranda -- when I was pregnant with Mary Clare some of my friends threw a gorgeous baby shower for me in this room -- brought back some great memories!

And here they are having fun in the fancy ladies' room!