Summer job, 1973: Scrubbing Decatur Stadium

Riding my bike through Decatur on my way back from Stone Mountain Park, I paused for a selfie at the football field of Decatur High. 51 years ago this month, I scrubbed every inch of the home side bleachers. (I would've marked the 50th anniversary last summer, but a hernia precluded such an arduous ride.)

Less than a year before, Dad had purchased West Chemical Engineering Company on Huff Road, not far from Tech. Where townhomes and expensive restaurants now stand, Dad and a couple employees (me included) manufactured soaps, disinfectants, and water treatments in a shed behind an old house. Photo: Dad with Mom at the corner of Huff Road and Ellsworth Industrial Boulevard. A shed with 100-gallon mixers was attached to the back. [For more on work at Dad's company throughout my teen years, see my blog post Prep Kid in a Factory (09/2022)]

But Dad gave me a special mission that summer, when I was between my eighth and ninth grade years. Atlanta City Schools were his customers, and the concrete stadium seats at Decatur high were gray and mottled black with thirty-plus years of soot. Dad bought a piece of new technology called a "pressure washer." With a college kid named Jerry who drove and oversaw my work, I scoured the whole stadium, one one-inch strip at a time, from the upper left hand corner of this picture to the lower right-hand corner. Then I repeated the process to "seal" the concrete with a polymer mix that would keep grime from lodging in the surface.

Here's the "before" picture that Dad took on a cloudy day. In the "after" picture (which I haven't located), the concrete gleams white as vanilla ice cream.

The hardest part of my job was to fill the pressure washer's tank with a toxic soap mixture every few hours. I hauled a five gallon bucket filled with hydrochloric acid from the locker room (lower right) back up the stairs to the pressure washer. The acid has a sharp smell that burns your eyes and lungs. I'd hold my breath, advance ten steps, set the bucket down, run from the fumes, gasp, run back to the bucket, and repeat.

Did I mention, there's no shade there?

But looking back, I'm fond of that time. Jerry had little in common with me, so I had eight hours a day to myself -- good thing, for an introvert. He did have a portable radio, so I heard a lot of pop songs -- "Yesterday Once More" by the Carpenters, "Diamond Girl" by Seals & Croft, "Touch Me in the Morning" by Diana Ross -- songs that bring the whole summer back to me with a smile. Sometimes Jerry would give me leave to cross the street to a hot dog joint.

Something else was fascinating. On the right side of Dad's "before" photo, we can see some of the blocks of public housing. We were the only two white guys in a neighborhood where everyone I saw was black, a new experience for me. The homes had no air conditioning, so all the windows were open, and I heard all day the sounds of lives very different from mine.

I once wrote about those summers working for Dad in my resonse to a study about repetitive work. When workers' "executive" brains are engaged in the repetitive action, the rest of the mind is free for problem-solving and daydreaming. I agreed: That's what made heaven out of summer afternoons of hot, sticky, smelly, repetitive work in my dad's chemical company. Tightening lids on hundreds of soap bottles, pressure washing dozens of 55-gallon drums, bleaching the bleachers at South Decatur High School -- I was rapt in my own imagination, writing scripts, imagining alternative futures for myself, replaying scenes from my life with different outcomes.

I didn't see Decatur High again until 2009,when I started riding my bike through Decatur. Aluminum bleachers had replaced the concrete, and the public housing was replaced by expensive condominiums. Time had erased my work. But I'm proud to mark the anniversary.

Prayer in a Time of Trial

Two versions of the Lord's Prayer appear side by side in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, one familiar, the other streamlined with one substantive change. In the more familiar one, we pray, "Lead us not into temptation." The alternative is, "Save us from the time of trial." The Catholics have adopted the second version on the grounds that the Lord doesn't lead anyone into temptation. I agree. But that line has spoken to me more and more as the world has seen a rise of populist autocrats and their reactionary politics.

I recently had the opportunity to put into words all the feelings that have been riding on that one line.  Our seminar Education for Ministry had been discussing The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone.  It was my turn to collect the strands of our discussion into a prayer.  Over the next weeks, I wrote:

O God, we affirm your presence, no matter how dark the world is. We know that we must strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being. We wonder if speaking up in a time of political polarization will lead to retribution, and we doubt that we have the courage to face that possibility. So we hold on to you in faith that you will steady us in any small steps we take and will strengthen our conviction as we go. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

While this prayer expresses dread I've felt for some years, its strands come straight from that session. We had looked at the connections between Christ's crucifixion and lynchings in America. We put the Biblical event in dialogue with modern history, culture, and our own experiences and beliefs.

Joyce was especially inspired by Mamie Till who left open the casket of her brutalized son Emmett to shock the country into action. Jessica quoted scripture about "obedience even to death on the Cross." I mentioned our Baptismal vow to strive for justice and respect the dignity of every human being. Marilyn spoke of overcoming crippling fear. Nuno quoted DuBois on going forward "no matter how dark the world is." Pete contrasted Niebuhr's armchair faith to MLK's courageous stand against threats and actual violence. We found our focus: Mission as an external expression of internal conviction. Pete recalled how Tom Hanks's character in Saving Private Ryan is reluctant to accept his mission but grows in conviction as he proceeds.

Tom, hearing my prayer, pointed me to Isaiah 59.14-15:

Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.

"Is there no one?" asks the Lord. And he sends an intercessor dressed in the armor of righteousness and faith. The Prophet Isaiah. Jesus. WEB DuBois. Mamie Till. MLK. Us. 

[Link to our two-part discussions of The Cross and the Lynching Tree, first half, second half.]

Surprised by Still Life at the High

My friend Susan and I took an afternoon to see Dutch Art in a Global Age at Atlanta's High Museum. She's a painter; I'm a lifelong amateur cartoonist. She likes color; I like character. So I'm surprised to report that I responded most strongly to examples of a genre that has always puzzled me before, the still life.

[Photo: Susan with a vase of flowers; Selfie with fruit and flies.]

I learned from this exhibit that the genre of still life was born in the Netherlands during the 17th century when Dutch ships were returning home from all over the world laden with riches. The objects display the art patron's imports -- typically citrus from Spain, strong drink from Italy, tobacco from North America, plus silver and coffee from South America. So these paintings do in fact tell us a bit about the characters of the people who paid for them.

The artist, meanwhile, is displaying both his ingenuity, arranging objects to look as if they had not been arranged, and his skill in creating life-like images.

Eyeing example after example was a bit like playing that kind of puzzle where you look for hidden objects. Expect a wine glass so clear you might not see it at first glance. Expect china with its own intricate pattern. I soon learned to expect at least one little creature crawling or flying.

I usually linger over portraits and depictions of cities. Compared to the sharpness and humor of the little still lives, the energy was diffused in group portraits and street scenes.

Two Rembrandt sketches did excite me. They're pencil or charcoal, the size of postcards. One was a self-portrait, with Rembrandt looking cocky. The other is a landscape, wetland in the foreground, country lane and windmill beyond, all summoned to the imagination by just a couple of elaborated horizontal lines.

Wildcat: Finding Flannery in her Stories

Before I saw Maya Hawke in Wildcat, a film directed by her father Ethan, I knew that she plays Flannery O'Connor when the author was in her early 20s. I knew that Maya also plays several characters from Flannery's stories.

I also knew Flannery's work, how funny it is when she gets deep into the mindset of people who are quirky, sometimes repulsive. Whether her protagonists are Bible-brandishing bigots or condescending liberal atheists, illiterate or college-educated, they often come to a reckoning when their most precious truth is attacked. That can be at the same time both funny and horrific.

I thought I also knew Flannery. In her essays and published letters, she comes across as highly ironic, magisterial, fierce in her defense of Roman Catholic faith, even against other Catholics who water it down. For instance, “What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.” About her work, she writes, "I am always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality...." (Both quotations are used in the movie.) I knew that she was confined to her mother's farm by lupus, the disease that killed her father, but I imagined her there a bastion of confidence in God and herself.

What I didn't realize until I saw the movie is how vulnerable Flannery O'Connor was. In the scenes from her life, we see Hawke tremble with fever, cry in anger, flush with embarrassment as Flannery endures chronic humiliations and acute disappointments. Flannery's patronizing editor withdraws plans to publish her novel because she refuses to follow a conventional outline. Near tears, she tells him she won't outline because "I write to discover what I'm doing!" Her mentor makes promises he doesn't keep. Her mother shows disappointment in her daughter with every sigh and helpful suggestion. Then there's Flannery's diagnosis and worsening condition, as climbing stairs and even walking to the mailbox become ordeals.

We see parallels to Flannery's inner life when Hawke also plays characters abandoned, bereft of what's most precious to them, betrayed by people they thought they knew, or staring down the barrel of a convict's gun. We're meant to see resonances between Flannery's experience and her work.

Actor Laura Linney also plays multiple roles as Flannery's mother and characters in the stories. As Flannery's mother, Linney projects smug self-righteousness. She wants her daughter to smile more, and she responds to a story by Flannery with a dismissive chuckle, "Well, it really isn't Harper's Bazaar, is it?"

At the same time, Linney shows genuine concern for her daughter. She forces Flannery to the doctor, then shields her from the diagnosis. Worried by her daughter's depression, she calls in a priest and listens intently from the next room as that priest validates Flannery with an imperative, "Write!"

In Flannery's story "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," she's the mother who sells her mute daughter for the price of a wedding license. Linney's smile shows how the mother is relieved to pass on the burden of caring for the girl, while her lingering gaze at the receding car also shows hope that her daughter will rise to the challenge and grow. In another story, Linney plays a prim bigot whose adult child scorns her, then mourns her -- an intense ambivalence that Flannery may have shared.

Flannery's mother complains when her daughter imports some pea fowl to the farm. They sit on her flowers, she says, and the male doesn't even spread his tail feathers. Flannery smiles and assures her that he will, when he's ready. Thus Ethan Hawke (who co-wrote the script with Shelby Gaines) sets up an inspired conclusion.

Where I've looked on the web, the title of the movie is said to describe Flannery herself, a "wildcat" writer who refuses to be tamed by the doubters who want conventional fiction. That does describe Flannery in the movie, but Flannery's story "Wildcat" isn't about the animal, but the blind man who "smells" it in the vicinity of his little cabin. He can't sleep, he won't go out. There's resonance with Flannery, for whom disability and death lurked every day of her adult life.

Unlike the character in her story, Flannery made a blessing of the wildcat, writing furiously in the fourteen years before it finally got her.

[I toured Flannery's farm in 2016 and finished the day by viewing the movie John Huston made from her novel Wise Blood. See Flannery Would Have Loved it (06/2016).]

Matala, Crete: Where Carey Met Joni

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Cyclist Scott Smoot enters virtually into a cave above Matala, Crete

 

He was a young American in Crete working at a café. She was a singer-songwriter getting away from the pressures of stardom. When she cleared a messy table and presented him with a tray of empty glasses, he took this passive-aggressive indictment out of her hands and smashed it at her feet. Thus began a beautiful love affair.

It could be a full length romcom, but Joni Mitchell packs all you need to know in the song "Carey" from her superlative 1970 album Blue. Her song is an upbeat celebration of their affair on the eve of her departure. She's leaving because she misses her California lifestyle with "clean white linen / and that fancy French cologne." (Read my appreciation of Blue (07/2020).)

This happened in Matala, a tourist town nestled between a scenic beach and high white cliffs pocked with caves, a hippie haven and celebrity magnet at the time.

Because of that song, I've included Matala in my virtual bike tour of places I've lived or loved. Throughout the worst part of the pandemic, when restaurants served only take-out meals, my friend Susan and I, eating outside on her patio six feet apart, would stop talking when her Blue CD reached "Carey" : you couldn't be anxious or discouraged hearing it.

I've never known Greece or romance, but through Joni I've experienced both -- vicariously.

Miles YTD 761 || 2nd World Tour Total 16,618 miles since June 2020 || Next Stop: Jerusalem

←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow the entire tour from the start.

Sondheim's Here We Are: Only One Thing to Say

"So, uh, did you like the show?"

This was Stephen Sondheim, then 63, to aspiring composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown, then in his early 20s. In 1993, Sondheim was treating Brown and a friend to dinner following the premiere of a new Sondheim show.

Twenty minutes into the dinner, the fact that Sondheim had to ask was itself an answer. Brown's babbling about everything but the show couldn't hide that he was disappointed by it. Sondheim, his hero, was hurt.

When Brown was nearly 40, he reflected on the experience in The Sondheim Review (summer 2010). For creative artists, "The generations coming next are the ones whose approval we need if our lives are to mean anything."

When Brown apologized by phone the next day, Sondheim admitted that he would have done "that kind of stupid thing" at the same age. Then he told Brown, just be supportive. "Say only this: I loved it."

In that spirit, I'm responding to what I've heard since the release of the original cast album of Here We Are, Sondheim's collaboration with playwright David Ives and director Joe Mantello.

[PHOTO: When the CD arrived, I paused for a selfie with it still in its shrink-wrap: this would be my last time to hear a Sondheim score for the first time. As my friend Susan observed, I was sorry-grateful. ]

So, Mr. Sondheim, right away I LOVE the music we hear in the Overture. It's catchy, chipper, playful -- even though we come to associate the first theme with words about "the end of the world." The texture is transparent, the interplay of independent lines delightful, the harmony crunchy. I know how you like Stravinsky and Ravel: In instrumentals and underscoring throughout the show, you have equaled their most fun chamber pieces. Kudos to orchestrator Jonathan Tunick for punching up that connection.

The character Marianne sings "Are we not blessed?" and draws her companions into a little psalm about joys in life such as birdsong, friendship, and Shakespeare. Same here. She sings, "I'm completely undone / by the endless abundance of life." (Love the emphasis of that internal rhyme abundance). She urges her husband to "buy this perfect day / Let it stay just this way / forever." I love how that foreshadows (causes?) the story of friends who do magically get stuck in one day. I love that you and David Ives make Marianne so shallow and yet so joyful. I love how you go deeper into her shallowness in the second act when she sings,

I like things to shine...
I like things to glow.
Why can't I be free
to like what I see
and not what I know?

Can she be superficial and self-aware at the same time? What a pleasure to know her.

I love that you balance all the positive things you write for Marianne with pronouncements of judgment on the world from her grown child Fritz (formerly "Frances"), "Only just the End of the World" for

power brokers, and chiropractors,
and underpaid teachers,
and overpaid actors.

So many things on (his/her/their) list are on mine, too, but mine don't rhyme so neatly and go by so quickly. It's the kind of patter we Sondheim fans have always loved.

I love how Fritz falls in love with a soldier at first sight, and spends the rest of the show in a state of wonder about her sudden uncertainty. Does Fritz -- "gay since I was three" -- really love this man? Now that she has experienced love, does Fritz really want to abet a terrorist plot to bring on the Apocalypse? I love the soldier's voice and his dogged devotion to Fritz.

I love the kind Bishop with a thing for slippers. I love that the music you write for him is an easy two-step that used to be referred to as "old soft shoe."

Tell your collaborator David Ives that the dialogue between the Bishop and Marianne is funny and real, gentle and thought-provoking. Also, tell Ives I love the greeting of the waiter at the first of three unbearably pretentious restaurants: "Good morning, adventurers. I'll be enabling your table."

Mr. Sondheim, I love what you said to me when we met just once 47 years ago. That was the year after your Kabuki musical had flopped, and you were planning a show about a barber who chops his customers into meat pies. I asked, why not try to appeal more to the public? You wanted to write shows unlike anything else you've seen.

I love the fact that you knew full well the limitations of this material and adapted it anyway. Your collaborators write in the liner notes how surrealism "resists" the logic of a story and undercuts the "deep feeling" so important to musical theatre.

Given that they are so right about surrealism, I love that you took for your final work the greatest challenge of your career.