A Week Like This Every 500 Years...

Jimmy Carter From "flyover" country, Nashville

EXHAUSTED!!!!!

The town is, if nothing else, emotionally spent. The Great Flood of 2010. Odd week for everyone. I even got to do a few live TV shots on The Weather Channel (Jim Cantore is a cool guy.)

Rush Limbaugh called Tennessee "flyover" country this week ... RL figured that was why the NY Times seemed to have little interest in our billion-dollar flood that killed 21 people.

More amazing stories this week than anytime in my 30-plus years in Nashville. Saw a kid walk down a devastated street and give his birthday money to a flood survivor. Said that person needed it more than he did. Amazing times.

The real reason this flood disaster is not on every newspaper in the world is that the people who were supposed to do their jobs ... did their jobs! From the media to government. The system worked ... or it seemed to. Katrina seemed to be a breakdown in every system.

The first fundraiser came, as you would expect, from radio. Then local TV. $1.7 million for the Vince Gill & Friends Flood telethon. A $ 500,000 phone donation was greeted by everyone with a WOW!

The Opryland was a lake house ... so much damage. The largest musical warehouse anywhere drowned. Today they start dragging things out. Six hundred artists, the biggest in Nashville, from Vince G to Brad P, vintage guitars and millions in soaked stuff.

By the way, The Opry is PEOPLE, not a building ... Brad and Alan add the Opry at the Ryman to their weekend to show the flag.

The CMA Musicfest plans to give their money to the flood charities.

WSM radio is now broadcasting from their tower site. They used to do that in 1952!

It was and is so hard to see the street mounds of what were the contents of people's homes. From their stereo systems to sofas ... devastating. Baby pictures lost forever. Heartbreaking. Bad to see on TV and even worse to smell it and feel it.

The Weather Channel did a great job ... NBC did OK ... Clear Channel Nashville was great to jump right on the radiothon...

Chely Wright's "I'm Gay" book got overshadowed by the flood ... She did make the Today Show.

The tours will all go as planned some with borrowed equipment ... Life will mostly return to normal in a few months. For some, never ... 21 died, after all.

In the end, people did what they were supposed to do ...The systems worked ... guess that's not enough for the NY Times.