Can't Sleep? Pray This

When I lie awake trying not to think how many hours of sleep I may be missing, I often wish that our Episcopal Book of Common Prayer had a few pages set aside for the hours before sunrise.  Now I've composed such a liturgy for myself.  I hope that the texts are calming in their reassurance and soporific in their familiarity, and I hope that I don't have to try it out anytime soon.

[Photo: BCP, a copy of this liturgy, and Brandy.]

Prayer During a Restless Night

 “Yours is the day, yours also the night.” Psalm 74.15

or this:  "I commune with my heart in the night; I ponder and search my mind." Psalm 77

or this: “My eyes are open in the night watches, that I may meditate on your promise.” Psalm 119.148

 

Confession of Sin   Book of Common Prayer p. 79

Most merciful God, We confess that we have sinned against you
In thought, word, and deed,
By what we have done,
And by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
Have mercy on us and forgive us,
That we may delight in your will,
And walk in your ways,
To the glory of your Name. Amen.

Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us all our sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen us in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep us in eternal life. Amen.

Invitatory and Psalter

In returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength. Isaiah 30.15

 

Psalm 16.7-11

7 I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel;* my heart teaches me, night after night.
8 I have set the Lord always before me;* because he set my right hand I shall not fall.
9 My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices;* my body also shall rest in hope.
10 For you will not abandon me to the grave,* nor let your holy one see the Pit.
11 You will show me that path of life;* in your presence there is fullness and joy, and in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.   

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.* As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, amen.

The Lessons.

 

A reading from 1 Samuel  3.8-10.

 And the Lord called Samuel again the third time.  And he arose and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.”  Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.  Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.  And the Lord came and stood forth, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” and Samuel said, “Speak, for thy servant hears.”

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

 

Hymn 24, to be sung or said

The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended, the darkness falls at thy behest;
to thee our morning hymns ascended, thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

We thank thee that thy Church unsleeping while earth rolls onward into light,
through all the world her watch is keeping and rests not now by day or night.

As o’er each continent and island the dawn leads on another day,
the voice of prayer is never silent, nor dies the strain of praise away.

So be it, Lord; thy throne shall never, like earth’s proud empires, pass away;
thy kingdom stands, and grows for ever, till all thy creatures own thy sway. 

 (words: John Ellerton)

A reading from Matthew 6.26-27, 33-34

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to your span of life? 

But seek ye first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be yours as well.  Therefore be not anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for that day.

The Apostles’ Creed. Book of Common Prayer, p.96

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.  Amen.

The Prayers. Include one or more of the following prayers.

 from Compline, Book of Common Prayer p. 134.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love’s sake.  Amen.

For the Aged, Book of Common Prayer p. 830.

Look with mercy, O God our Father, on all whose increasing years bring them weakness, distress, or isolation.  Provide for them homes of dignity and peace; give them understanding helpers, and the willingness to accept help; and, as their strength diminishes, increase their faith and their assurance of your love.  This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

For restfulness.

Eternal Father, at sunrise you blessed Jacob who had wrestled through the night:  calm our restless minds when the Enemy turns up old regrets and disappointments, or lures us into dark speculations about our futures, that we may return our minds to you and rest with quiet confidence in your love.  Amen.

Silence my be kept, and free intercessions and thanksgivings may be offered.

The Lord’s Prayer. Book of Common Prayer, p. 97.

General Thanksgiving Book of Common Prayer, p. 836.

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love. We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for the loving care which surrounds us on every side. We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us. We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone. Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ, for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom. Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know Christ and make him known; and through him, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.

Antiphon from Compline, Book of Common Prayer p. 134.

Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.

The Song of Simeon.  Book of Common Prayer, p. 93.          

Lord, you now have set your servant free* to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,* whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,* and the glory of your people Israel.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.* As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Repeat the Antiphon

Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.

Let us bless the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

The almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless us and keep us. Amen.

 

Memories of Mamaw

Since my virtual bike tour of the USA took me to L.A. this week, I've been thinking of the last time I visited that city, opening up a literal box of memories of my paternal grandmother Harriet Radcliffe Smoot, affectionately called "Mamaw" (pronounced May - mah).

In 1988, her 90th year, she was living with her daughter in L.A. Dad invited friends and family to honor her birthday, rented a hall at Howard Johnson's, hired a caterer, and commissioned a song from me for the occasion.

[Photo: I made this collage of the LA reunion. In the lower-left hand corner, I'm at the piano singing the song with my sister Kim turning pages. I had a fever and raging sore throat at the time. My mom and dad are down there, too.]

I hadn't spent much time with Mamaw, yet -- California was so far away. But I'd read the memoir she typed at my request in 1985, and we would soon become much closer when she moved with Harriet Ann to North Carolina. In Y2K, she got some press attention in NC for having lived in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. She spent her final years in a nursing home in Atlanta, where I visited her every week.

The song I performed at the family reunion was an adaptation of one I'd written for a middle school show in the style of Jerry Herman's Broadway anthem, "Mame." There's a grand slow section and a rapid-fire, highly-rhymed patter section. I'm proud to reproduce it here, especially proud of rhymes for "the continent" and the inner rhymes for "Kansas" and "Ohio."

MAMAW
music and lyrics by W. Scott Smoot

(chorus)
Mamaw, the mother of us all,
Mamaw, nine decades to recall:
We look at all you've risen above.
Only one thing you can be sure of: We love you!

Mamaw, cheerful in times of stress,
Mamaw, Depressions don't depress:
Years fly on by and worlds come and go;
You don't grow old, but continue to grow.
So happy birthday with our love, Mamaw!

(patter)
Mamaw, your clan spans a continent
from the east to out west of the coast,
from the tropics clear up to Vermont, an ent-
ire family joins in a toast.

Folks from northern New York said they would not miss;
from Kansas your fans issue too.
From Ohio they fly over just for this,
and Delta is grateful for you!

L.A. and Reno, Nevada 'n'
San Francisco sent friends, you will find.
Look away to the la-nd of cotton,
and you'll see Georgia has you on its mind.

Folks from Florida and Mississippi,
folks from most of the west hemisphere,
all convene here tonight and undoubtedly
Howard Johnson's is glad that you're here!
(repeat chorus)

In July of 2003, I spoke at a memorial service held at my church, St. James Episcopal Church in Marietta north of Atlanta.

Mamaw never felt old until midway through her ninth decade. It's remarkable how old she lived to be. But her youth was remarkable, too -- all 95 years of it.

Born in a more courteous society than today's, she was gracious, willing to be sociable even with those who didn't return the favor. If there was nothing nice to say about someone, she kept silent. For her, the two great sins were to be anything less than civil, and not to do more than was expected of her.

She was the first child in a new generation of her family. That made her a little star at birth. [Photo: Harriet, b. 2 Feb 1898, ca. 1908]

Besides her father and grandfather, she was nurtured by a loving mother and grandmother, and four adoring aunts. Among these women were musicians, a preacher, and a tough old lady who broke an arm and kept working. So young Harriet learned that women could, and should, do anything. Her earliest memory from the age of three, was how she astonished her elders at the church singing solo, "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam." [Dad was surprised and delighted that the organist played that hymn for a prelude, thanks to a tip from our rector Karen Evans, who had visited with Mamaw.]

As the family grew, she tended her siblings and cousins. She won academic honors, and played on her community's first basketball team for girls. Being the team's smallest player, she was also the most fierce. She was elected class president for all four years of high school. She paid for her own educational expenses by playing piano for the silent films at her town's first movie theatre. The manager provided sheet music that wasn't dramatic enough for her, so, on the spot, she composed new music for every scene. In those days, it was proper only for men to be professional musicians, but she received serious offers to start a musical career [playing in Hollywood]. Instead, to help the family, she went through business school, and graduated in half the normal time. She still managed to go dancing. When she could find a competent partner, the other couples cleared the floor to watch.

From the first year that it was legal for women to vote, until 2002, she did her civic duty in every election. She followed current events with interest. This spring, seeing the build-up to another war, she observed that we fight every ten to thirty years. She added, "and that will probably continue until the countries are run by women."

In her memoir written at age eighty-five, these achievements were not what she cited when she summed up her story. Instead, she was most proud of how she and her husband Dewey persevered through serious illnesses, the great Depression, and personal setbacks, to raise three children who succeeded far beyond what strangers would have expected.

She never did retire from motherhood, always saving up interesting thoughts, voicing encouragement, trying to help her children, and their progeny.

I remember when my sister lay in a deep coma, and there was little hope of recovery. It was Mamaw's voice calling out over the telephone that woke her. As mother, grand-mother, great and great-great, Mamaw gave life to many of us here in this room -- and it was her deepest pleasure to keep giving new life and sustenance to family, neighbors, eleven generations of dogs, and anyone else fortunate enough to come into contact with her.

She will be missed.

Cycling America Virtually: Los Angeles

←← | ← || →

388 miles to LA From San Francisco April 9, I arrived at virtual LA on June 5. I'm in the Hollywood Hills taking my selfie.

Among my very earliest memories is being at the LA home of my Aunt Harriet and Uncle Bert around 1962. She liked to recall how I awoke her in the middle of the night to help me locate the bathroom. I prefer to remember our visit to Disneyland when it was new. I recall the Mad Tea Party and the Matterhorn. I may or may not have seen mermaids there. I took it all very seriously. [My reminiscence about Aunt Harriet forty-plus years later is one of my favorite blogposts (07/2018)]

Most vividly of all, I remember the city at evening. Aunt Harriet's patio seems to have looked out on an open field; the city glittered in the distance, from where the beams of searchlights shot into the dark clouds far behind me and swept above the farthest horizon.

←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow this tour from the beginning.

Montaigne's Mountain

At the end of my first week in retirement, I've heard lots of advice. Kay said, "You won't believe how busy you'll be!" The checker at Publix said, "I guess you'll be traveling a lot?" Laura said, "You've got enough time for a whole other career! You need some projects!"

I recognize that last one to be the message behind numerous dreams I've had, all variations on one idea: I'm moving into a home that I've owned without ever having seen it before. It's somewhat like a residence I owned when I lived in Jackson, MS, a ranch house in a gully. Unprepossessing and long-neglected, it opens up for me to reveal a wonderfully wide atrium, several floors I couldn't see from the front, and a view from a rear window of a town far below: it's on a mountain cliff. While part of me is wondering how I'll pay for the repairs needed and furnishings for all these empty rooms, I'm excited by the possibilities.

That's retirement. This morning, the particulars of the dream reminded me of the Hotel Frontenac in Quebec where I once spent the night in the summer of 1986. [See photo collage]

A few months ago, looking forward to this time, I returned to a writer whose work I studied very early in my career, Michel de Montaigne. Born to successful social climbers, he retired from a life of business and civic involvement to a tower on his estate where he wrote about miscellaneous topics. While he drew on experience and writers in his library, he admitted that he himself was the true subject of his musings.

I recognize suddenly that this is what I've been doing in my blog for years. To continue this, with Montaigne as my patron, will be a good thing. Somewhere, I got the impression that Montaigne intended to "get his soul in order" before his death -- though I didn't see that line anywhere in the wonderful biography of him that I read this year.

I'll be writing more about Montaigne as I seek guidance and guidelines for the months and years to come.

Remembering Father Kirk Lee

Father Kirk Lee passed away today. Full-time financier, he was a part-time priest at St. James Episcopal Church, Marietta until 2012, when the photo was made.

An avuncular man, a bit portly but small, he had an outsize influence on me. I looked forward to his sermons. He would poke at cultural and political elephants in the room with wry humor that united us in laughter. I've blogged about two of his sermons in detail.

Ten Commandments as Ten Beatitudes (10/2008) I didn't think there was much new to say about the Ten Commandments, but Rev. Kirk Lee tried. He questioned the advisability or even possibility to "put aside" the "overlap between public and private spheres of moral and religious life." He capped his sermon with a new spin on the old "Shalt nots." Here are excerpts:

We live in a day where the very concept of some type of objective, independent morality is being questioned. ...Where are we going to find such a standard? We could depend on human feelings, as illustrated in [the] song, "how can it be wrong when it feels so right?" Or ... we could rely on majority vote. How can it be wrong if 55% of the people voted for it? Right?

The problem with these choices, Fr. Kirk said, is that feelings change, and the majority often shifts its position. "We need something or someone who stands outside of the world, outside of just being human, outside of the community, who can look in and give us direction. That someone can only be God."

To people who complain that the Ten Commandments are just too inflexible, too narrow and negative, Fr. Kirk turned the laws around to make "the ten most positive statements about life ever written":

Blessed are they who put God first.
Blessed are they who need no substitutes for God.
Blessed are they who honor God's name.
Blessed are they who honor God's day.
Blessed are they who honor their parents.
Blessed are they who value life.
Blessed are they who keep their marriage vows.
Blessed are they who respect the property of others.
Blessed are they who love the truth.
Blessed are they who learn the art of contentment.

Little Jesus at Large (12/2018) Fr. Kirk's sermon in 2006 made such an impression on me that I wrote about it years later from notes. Kirk began, "I have a hard time believing that God raises up oppressive and evil people simply as a means for showing his ultimate power." He could have been referring to Herod in the birth narrative, or to the apocalyptic readings we've had in Advent about earthquakes, persecutions, and wars to come. Kirk continues,

I do believe that ordinary people like you and me allow oppressive and evil people to rise up. We do so because we are not by nature proactive in denouncing wrongdoing. We give the oppressors and the evil ones the benefit of time to prove themselves, before we act. Usually, this is at the expense of many kind and innocent people.

Kirk wonders at how we wait until the problem gets so much worse: "Do any of us allow an infection to spread through the body by not treating it as early as possible?" His pointed message is that God shows his power through us, moving us "to right the wrong perpetrated on kind and innocent people." 

Postscript, July 18, 2021:

Friends and family gathered in the beautiful cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta to celebrate Kirk. 

Fr. Wallace Marsh IV, formerly associate rector at St. James, remembered Kirk from those days when Fr. Lee was assistant priest.  Wallace emphasized the sense of humor.  He told about a breakfast following the Rite I service where an elderly parishioner spoke to Kirk at a round table crowded with nine other parishioners: "Kirk, you are the best preacher in this church, you're handsome, you're so knowledgeable. You lack only one thing:  A good woman in your life."  Wallace said everyone at the table nearly choked, knowing the open secret that Kirk was a gay man in a longtime loving relationship with David, organist at the Cathedral.   "But Kirk gave a reply that was honest, theologically sound, and diplomatic: 'My life is absolutely wonderful.  I wouldn't change a thing.'"

The cathedral choir sand Howell's heartbreaking "Like as the Hart" and Sumsion's "Song of Simeon," along with a psalm tone by Peter Walford Davies.  

 

My Niece's Wedding

Back in 1998, knowing I'd never have children of my own, I relocated to Marietta, GA to be near my brother's son Craig and younger daughter Mary Alice. I'd be the uncle who'd spoil them and tell them stories of their extended family -- ensuring that memories of my grandparents, aunts, and uncles would go on.

Then my brother moved his family south, settling in Valdosta, nearly a state away. Still, my niece and nephew (my "niblings") reached out to me over the years.

This Memorial Day weekend, I joined them when Mary Alice married Jay Vinehout in "The Barn," an event space at Young Harris, GA. Her friends were there, and his friends and comrades from his unit were there. An officer spoke of their commitment to each other, tested and strengthened by Jay's recent mission to Afghanistan from which, they all knew, he might not have returned.

Lots of us got emotional: Jay shed tears when he turned to see Mary Alice's solitary walk down the aisle; bride and groom both choked up saying their personally-composed vows; and the bride stepped up to lay a supportive hand alongside her father's face when he had trouble finishing his message that marriage is hard and that he's confident these two will be able to sustain their commitment and grow. [Thanks to nephew Craig Smoot for his photo from the wedding reception.]

[Below: The wedding took place in this field on the white folding chairs in the background, witnessed by the majestic green foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.]

Children and Art: Sunday in Retirement with George

With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by director James Lapine, Sunday in the Park with George spoke to me instantly on first hearing the original cast album in 1984. At age 25, teaching Drama and English (with some history) to students in middle and upper school, I was ambitious like the central character Georges Seurat to create art that would outlive me. Now, following the week when I retired from the classroom after 40 years, the show speaks to me in a different way.

After I turned in my keys and drove home, I listened to the most recent cast recording. What I picked up more than before was another theme of the show: Children and art are the two things worth leaving behind when you’re gone.

My colleagues in the Fine Arts department helped me this week to see that I leave behind not only scripts and songs that I helped students to write and/or perform, but also the students themselves.

The teachers Katie, Samantha, Regena, Wendy, Todd, Erik, Bill, and Susan surprised me Thursday with gifts, among which was a painting commissioned from a student to be an homage to Sunday’s original Broadway poster. The words allude to “Finishing the Hat,” Sondheim’s song for Seurat that explains his joy “entering the world of the hat” that he draws, and how the woman he loves may not be there waiting when he comes back “to this [world] from that.” Still, he ends triumphantly, “Look! I made a hat / Where there never was a hat.” (Sondheim called his two volumes of collected lyrics Finishing the Hat and Look! I Made a Hat.)

As I unwrapped the painting, fellow drama teacher Katie Arjona explained that the icons for drama, music, and writing imposed on the base of the top hat represent the way my teaching over the years has created love for the arts where there had been none before. I know it’s true, thanks to music teacher Samantha Walker's video of tributes from students in middle school and up, and to some sweet personal statements I heard last week.

At sunset on this first Sunday in my retirement, coincidentally the day of my niece’s wedding, I’m thinking with satisfaction of 2000+ children past and creative arts to come.

[Three more photos: Drama masks in stained glass, commissioned by my colleagues, another perfect gift for an Episcopalian Drama Teacher! [Created by Mr. Brinkley's Studio]

Regena and another retired teacher friend Heather Whitehead put together this cocktail care package with a martini glass for the Arts and Jazz program of Atlanta's High Museum. Finally, there's a selfie with my favorite COVID mask, gift of Susan Rouse.]

For a more general view of Sunday, see my blogpost Sunday, Art, and Forever (11/2015) about why so many of us, Sondheim included, cry at the act one finale of this show.

In his 80s, Reich Alive with Pulse

Steve Reich's 2015 composition Pulse, recorded in 2018 on Nonesuch, is new to me. It's also new, unlike anything else I've heard from Reich. The composer typically works with tiny cells of melody, but Pulse opens with a long line on the violin that zig-zags up over a drone, then subsides. After a pause, a soft but insistent pulse from piano and plucked bass begins while the opening notes now play in canon against each other creating a flurry of notes and glancing dissonances. Then another melodic pattern joins in at a much more stately pace, each note sustained as long as human breath can comfortably handle. As always with Reich, there's pleasure in perceiving different layers of music tensions between dissonance and resolution, fast and slow.

My first thought was, "Thank you, Steve Reich," for trying out your patented techniques on something different. I've been hoping years for something like this.

My second thought was that Reich has created in Pulse his most overtly spiritual work since he set Hebrew psalms in Tehillim, only this piece has a contemplative and elegiac mood, as you'd expect from a composer in his 80s. For me, the long opening line is like a prayer, yearning upwards and subsiding with a sigh. The sustained notes sound like an organ. All of it harkens back to music I've heard from Perotin, church composer of the 12th century whom Reich names as an influence.

I'm delighted to find my views congruent with others'. Reich's publisher Boosey and Hawks highlights several reviews. Reich himself calls the piece "contemplative." The New York Times reviewer William Robin writes, "The mood is one of emerging, arising." Pulse is "simple and luminous," said New York Classical Review. It's "unlike almost anything else in Reich's catalog" with "tenderly arching melodies and spacious harmonies," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle. "Not exactly easy listening but genially and spiritually alluring," wrote Mark Swed in the LA Times. "Pulse felt like a rapturous extended song" that ends "with the feel of reverie, as opposed to Reich's traditional headlong-rush climax" wrote Damien Morris in The Guardian.

My favorite review finds a story in Pulse, a kind of minimalist heldenleben. For the blog of a radio program called Second Inversion (05/28/2018), Dacia Clay first thanks Reich for this piece released on her birthday. She alludes to Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring and imagines

Our hero is setting out from home. The instruments—violin, viola, flute, clarinet, piano, and bass—begin to lob notes back and forth between them. But very quickly, a darker bass note joins the mix. Minors and majors mix together. The bass chugs along with nods to a steady rock music beat. There’s a stillness in the background and movement in the fore, and they swap places constantly. The instruments join together, playing in sync, and then fly apart again, creating dissonance.

Eventually the hero "comes to rest."

The "hero" narrative is a little over the top for me, but Clay zeroes in on a quality that makes even the most abstract of Reich's compositions into paeans to community. She writes, "The players involved are all wrapped up together in call and response—they need each other to create a whole melody." [See my reflection on a live performance of Drumming (07/2012).]

That Appalachian Spring comes up in at least three other reviews (Times, Guardian, and the Washington Post) reminds me that Copeland composed that piece under the title "Ballet for Martha Graham" without thought to any landscape or season. The choreographer gave the music its new title and program, forever associating its sound with fresh morning air, blue skies, and mountain greenery that Copeland never intended.

So, am I wrong to find spiritual expression in Pulse? I admire what Grayson Haver Currin writes in Pitchfork (02/03/2018) that Pulse comes from a place where "flickers of dissonance yield to waves of redemptive harmony and where the chord always comes back to sparkle," yet Currin writes this like it's a bad thing. He misses the kind of connection that Reich has made to our world in pieces about nuclear arms, terrorists' murder of Daniel Pearl, and the Holocaust. Currin, too, imagines a scenario, that an office worker goes through a tedious day. He writes that the music, operating in a "vacuum," is nice but frankly boring.

One listener's expression of spiritual yearning is another listener's vacuum. Reich's music, so focused on process from the very start of his career, invites us to make of it what we will.

I'm happy to hear Pulse my way. Let Reich be Rorschach.

[Visit my page The Minimalist Zone for a curated list of my reflections on Reich and his contemporaries Philip Glass, John Adams, and other composers influenced by them.]

Remembering Frank Boggs: Music Teacher, Spiritual Mentor, Friend

Frank Boggs has died. He taught me in high school 50 years ago, and continued to teach me even in the last 20 years of his life. Inviting me to the Metropolitan Opera's Live in HD broadcasts, he got me deeply into repertoire that I hadn't appreciated before. Each spring, he invited me up to his 22nd-floor suite to see the Tony Awards. And of course I saw his Georgia Festival Chorus every year.

With gratitude, I reprint my tribute to him, first posted in 2015.

Frank Boggs taught me in "chorale" at Westminster Schools from 1973 to 1977, but he has remained my mentor and friend to the present day. 

If my deepest ambition is to write sacred music that communicates mystery and grandeur of God, that's my response to glorious music that I learned to love through Mr. Boggs. Throughout my adult life, I've spent almost every Wednesday night in church choir rehearsals, always seeking the joy of hearing my voice blend with others, creating a piece of music that glorifies God in its expression and craftsmanship -- regardless who else may hear it. Truly, my religious faith comes from music more than from scripture or doctrine.

If I love musical theatre (not just Broadway, but opera), that comes from Mr. Boggs, too. He directed me in OKLAHOMA and LITTLE MARY SUNSHINE, and he stoked my interest in Stephen Sondheim with clipped articles and saved programs, giving me the opportunity to direct a suite of Sondheim songs for our small ensemble (see photo below), and, later, to direct the full Chorale's Broadway revue.  My first song was a lyric that he set to music for me. 

Singing is not all that happened in choir rehearsals. Mr. Boggs exposed us to music, cartoons, reviews of theatrical productions, memories of performers, and discussions of religious meanings behind music. He once asked us, "Why did Vivaldi set the happy words 'peace on earth, goodwill to men' to slow, somber minor key music?" (I'd never thought to ask why any artist does anything -- and now it's what I always do.) 

At fifteen, I liked performances that were loud, fast, flashy, with some growls and maybe some screaming thrown in. Then I saw Frank in concert. I and my fellow members of the Westminster Ensemble had performed some numbers at a church in Tennessee, and we were pretty proud of ourselves. He'd told us that he'd be "singing a few numbers," but we realized later that he had been too kind: we were only his warm up act. I remember that he sat at the piano, sang a song or two. Then, while he played some chords, he described for the audience how his grandfather used to sing a certain hymn while tending his garden. Then he lifted his hands from the keys, turned on the bench towards the audience, and sang softly, unaccompanied, a hymn of anguish:

Oh, Lord, if indeed I am thine,
If Thou art my sun and my song,
Say why do I languish and pine?
And why are my winters so long?
Drive these dark clouds from my sky,
Thy soul-soothing presence, restore --
Or take me unto Thee on high,
Where winter and clouds are no more. 

That night I saw the difference between showiness and authenticity, the same difference between entertainment and art.

Frank also gathered the young people in his care to discuss what he called "Quaker Questions," allowing us to share our memories, concerns, and questions -- bonding us and helping us to grow up. I remember asking him about the intense friendships I was enjoying at the age of sixteen: "Do adults have the same kind of friendship?" He answered honestly that the intensity probably would dissipate with time, but that friendship could deepen. Of course, now we're living that truth.

Two Mentors, 
One Photograph

[See photo]  Famed composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim sits on stage while my teacher Frank Boggs (the other bearded man) looks on. I am the worshipful seventeen-year-old second from the right. The photograph was taken in Broadway's Music Box theatre, June 1977. 

Knowing how I idolized Sondheim, Mr. Boggs had told me to write him to ask for an interview, and Sondheim instantly replied. This taught me a life lesson: If you don't at least try, you'll regret it the rest of your life. 

Twenty years later, Mr. Boggs again met Sondheim during a "meet the audience" talk at London's National Theatre. Sondheim asked, "Are you a teacher?" Mr. Boggs nodded. Sondheim said that he'd always wanted to teach, and he said how grateful he was to his teachers. Speaking of the importance of his teachers to him during a national broadcast on his 70th birthday, Sondheim actually had to stop talking, overcome with emotion.

Seated with us in the photograph are my peers in the Westminster Ensemble, who, under Mr. Boggs, sang a program of songs by Sondheim. On the way to a tour of Poland and Russia, we stopped in New York to see the Broadway revue SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM, when this picture was made. This photograph is a detail from a photo collage I made for Frank Boggs's retirement celebration. 

Other Blog Posts About Frank Boggs

• For Frank Boggs on his 94th Birthday (02/2021)
• Echoes of My Teacher's Voice(01/2019)
  
• Frank Boggs at 90 -- at 50, Frank sang "You Make Me Feel So Young" for his teenage choir; for his 90th birthday, I rewrote the lyrics for him (1/26/17)
  
• Drill it in or Tease it Out? This is a reflection on the way Frank taught us (10/1/13)
  
• Georgia Festival Chorus Celebrates "Legacy" (5/21/18) ends with links to reviews of Frank's performances that I've written over the years.

[See my Stephen Sondheim page.] 

Cycling America Virtually: San Francisco

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218 Miles from Reno to San Francisco That's 4419 miles from NYC in June 2020 to San Francisco today. [Use the arrows above to follow the entire tour from the beginning.]

Some of my earliest memories involve San Francisco. I remember riding the train there from Cincinnati where we left my newborn brother with Grandmother. I remember my berth above the compartment, and my alarm when the sun seemed to be crashing into the western horizon, its red light splattered across the lower edge of the sky. (The memory is a starting-point for a short poem about my entire life, On Track.)

We were visiting Dad's parents, my Mamaw and Pop. Dad's older brother Jack was there. At some point, Mom rode a bicycle with me in the basket on the handlebars. Later, we all went down to Los Angeles to see my Aunt Harriet.

On a later visit, Pop and Dad took my brother and me up Mt. Tamalpias just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The visit I remember best was in 1969, a reunion of all Mamaw and Pop's family for their 50th wedding anniversary. We visited Chinatown, saw Alcatraz across the bay and San Quentin -- during a summer when Johnny Cash's recording at San Quentin "A Boy Named Sue" was a big hit. Other hits of that summer were Stevie Wonder's "Ma Cherie Amour" and a song with significance I didn't "get" yet, "Grazing in the Grass."

[Photo: Me with my grandfather Dewey "Pop" Smoot. It's 1962, I'm three years old, and he's 63. We see the legs of Dad and Uncle Jack Smoot in the background.]

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

Interface: New Word for the Ancient Miracle of Text

(I wrote this preface to a Lenten devotion booklet that my parish St. James Episcopal Church published in 2011.)

Interface is a new word for the ancient miracle of letters. You face me through this page, and I, with a pad in my den one October night, face you. I'm concerned how you'll read me; you're wondering what I'm getting at. We're face to face, mind to mind, just paper between us.

In the same way, writers of this booklet have gone one-on-one with prophets and apostles who wrote on scrolls millennia ago. One contributor emailed me that writing her meditation was a "struggle" of many days that caused her to change her mind. I'm reminded of Jacob's wrestling all night with an angel. At dawn, Jacob takes a new name, Israel. Father Dean Taylor has preached that this "wrestling" is an image for prayer, and that one one who prays is changed by the struggle.

May this interface be an instrument of transformation for those who wrestled with ancient witnesses to write it, and for all their fellow parishioners who engage them daily through these pages.

[Photo: Interface between Mom and me early in the pandemic, months before face-to-face meetings were permitted.]

Eating Holy Words

(I wrote this preface for the Lenten devotion book written by parishioners of St. James Episcopal Church, Marietta GA in 2015)

"What is your tongue?" That's not an odd question for the working mothers learning English at St. James. In Spanish, la lengua means both tongue and language. In English, tongue still commonly meant language when Thomas Cranmer admonished us to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" Scripture in his collect for the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.

Like bread and wine, language and nourishment have always gone well together. In Psalm 19 we read, "These are the words of my mouth / these are what I chew on and pray." Hungry, Jesus would not "live on bread alone" but also on the words of the Law and the Prophets.

We hope that you will chew on the words of this book each weekday, even while you may be giving up some other food.

Besides getting your fill of Scripture, you'll get a taste of St. James from parishioners of different backgrounds and different places in their life journeys. A trio of working mothers writes in their adopted tongue. Others who write come from experiences in Adult Christian Education, Bell Choir, Choir, Congregational Care, Episcopal Church Women (ECW), Education for Ministry (EfM), Family Promise, Reach Out Mental Health, Ushers, Vestry, Wonderful Days Preschool, Book Club, and parish worship services.

The Pilgrimage at St. James has sponsored these in-house devotional booklets for many years, among other offerings of spiritual nourishment to the parish. Thanks to our stalwart contributors. I've heard that some of you enjoy tracing growth in your faith as you review your words from past issues.

Special thanks to our new contributors, and please join us again! -Scott Smoot

Cycling America Virtually: Reno, West of Winter

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289 Miles to Reno, NV Riding a little bit when winter weather allowed, and more during the onset of spring, I've covered the miles that would take me from Elko, NV to Reno.

Though I've never been to Reno, it looms large in my childhood memories. Dad spent the summer of 1968 there doing who-knows-what for Nalco, a company later absorbed into Halliburton. [See "Remembering Dad" (11/2010)]

He told me decades later how he toured several subterranean levels of a military facility in the desert, and got stopped on his way out by a guard who told his host, "This guy isn't authorized to see what you showed him." Before it was straightened out, Dad figured Mom would be told that he'd been in a terrible accident.

Mom took her first plane flight to join him for a few weeks. Back home in Chicago, we got Grandmother for our babysitter, so I wasn't complaining.

During his time there, Dad took up wood carving. For me, who that summer had discovered Mad magazine, he carved the iconic Alfred E. Neuman. [See photo. Read "MAD Sanity" (04/2013)]

A few years later, Dad made his masterpiece, a portrait of our West Highland Terrier "Colonel" (below). [For more on Colonel, see "My Life in Dogs" (07/2019)]

Next stop: 218 miles to San Francisco! (I've got a 30 mile head start.)

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

Gifts and Discernment: An Episcopalian Teacher Looks Back

On a highway, every exit offers a different destination. You choose one or another, and, as Robert Frost wrote, that makes "all the difference." That's discernment, from Latin "to separate," the word we Episcopalians use for weighty choices.

A fellow parishioner asked me about discernment in my life for her research into the ways that the church encourages participation. But as I considered her questions, I realized that I've never discerned anything, never taken one road over another. It's been a wide-open super-highway, and I just switch back and forth among the lanes.

She asks:

What has the process of discernment of spiritual gifts looked like in your life as a whole? How did that process lead you to the Episcopal Church?

Aside from friends, family, and dogs, the one great gift of my lifetime has been a delight in artistic expression. Music, rhymes, stories, pictures, and acting have been central to my life since early childhood, and those brought me to God. I heard Stephen Sondheim's score for the Broadway musical A Little Night Music and knew that physics and evolution explained neither his intricate music and lyrics nor my awestruck appreciation for them. [See my Stephen Sondheim page.] Soon after, I discovered a similar intersection of story, words, and music in the liturgy at the Cathedral of St. Philip.

So, an offer after college to teach Humanities and Drama at an Episcopal middle school felt natural, even inevitable, no discernment required. I would convey the love of reading, writing, and acting to students while I'd gather "life experience" to use in plays and novels of my own. I expected to teach for three years.

That was forty years ago. After one week in the classroom, the promise and vulnerability of middle school students consumed all of my energy. From then on, whatever I wrote was for my students. [Three years into teaching, I did some writing about whether or not to continue at an NEH seminar in Shreveport LA. See my recent reflection (08/2021) on that process. Thirty years later, I reflected on how my faith had developed in ways congruent with what I'd learned in the classroom. See "Gospel for Educators" (12/2016). ]

How did you experience God's call?

Choir was my entrée to involvement with the church. With rehearsals, Sundays, Evensong, and other great services, the liturgical year became for me one giant musical drama. [See "Liturgy as Theatre" (03/2013)]

Choir friends invited me to take the course Education for Ministry (EfM). Through theological reflection and my own exploration of fiction by Catholic and Episcopalian writers, the church was adding a new layer to my love of literature: a sacramental view of life that cast a spiritual light on daily routine. [See, for instance, "Saints in Spite of Themselves: Character in Graham Greene's Novels" (12/2014) and "Flannery Would Have Loved It" ((06/2016))]

Faith, I learned, was more about abundance and community than about private taboos. This insight turned out to be the "life experience" that I'd needed when I first wanted to be a writer. [See my page Those Crazy Episcopalians for a curated list of my many, many essays on faith reflected in church, arts, and experience.]

Everything else I've done in the church since then has been about communicating that vision of abundance and community. Invited to join the Vestry, I was involved in brainstorming ways to get parishioners more involved in all aspects of church. One of my initiatives was to solicit dozens of parishioners to contribute reflections on their church experience to devotion books for Advent and Lent. For a big bi-annual fund-raiser that had long involved parishioners in putting on generic "Mystery Dinner Theatre" scripts from an agency, I led the actors in creating scripts from scratch that transmuted our shared church experiences into comedy. [See "How to Knit a Mystery-Comedy",(05/2018)]

Have you been involved in a ministry that felt like it was stretching you in unexpected ways?

I was so relieved when my term as Senior Warden expired, so exhausted from worrying about budgets, that my impulse was to refuse my successor's invitation to chair a Rector Search Committee. But I accepted. (I remember exactly where I was when I did that: it was one of those big moments.)

At first, I was okay using my acumen to shape a parish profile, a survey, and letters to candidates. But it was a stretch for an introvert like me to get deeply involved in the lives and aspirations of priests and their families. Here, discernment is the right word: we had to reach consensus on just three. (Then it would be the Vestry's turn to choose just one.)

What haunts me is the terrible Sunday afternoon when I had to call two of our five finalists to tell them they'd been eliminated. Both of them called back to ask why. I was cautious but honest in my replies. Thank God for the late Reverend Jim Yeary, our consultant. When I called him in distress, he reassured me that I had handled those moments in the best way possible.

A very positive angle on this same Search effort was the selection of a candidate whom we had eliminated from our consideration several times. For one reason or another, we kept putting his name back in the running, and the Vestry told me they voted, not for someone safe, but someone special.

That was my one experience of true discernment, and, as Flannery O'Connor wrote for one of her characters, "I'm glad I've went once, but I ain't goin' back again."

Is there any ministry you are involved in that feels like it is closest to your natural gifts, and where would you like to see your gifts lead you in the future?

It's all wrapped up in my blog. With my friend Susan, I'm co-mentor of EfM, where we often can collect the disparate threads of an evening's discussion in a special prayer aptly called a "collect." [See Where Prayer Meets Poetry (05/2020)]. My postings on my lifelong enthusiasms garner some readers for my personal blog each day, even years after I've posted them.

When retirement comes soon, I don't foresee much of a change. Same highway, same lanes, less traffic.

Soon Spring: This Time, the Whole Thing

A year ago March 12 was a Thursday, and our Middle Schoolers were called to a special assembly and told to stay home the next day; class would be online for a couple of weeks. The weekend that followed was one of my worst ever, as I struggled to imagine how to engage kids remotely for 90 minutes.

We were moving into spring, but it felt hollow Though it got better, we all missed the give-and-take of a seventh grade classroom.

Now as the weather is thawing, having just received my first dose of vaccine, I'm feeling like this spring will be more than just a change of weather.

Here's a PhotoShop concoction I made from a picture of my sweet Brandy tugging her leash on a sunny day with a landscape by my friend Susan, whose birthday was yesterday.

How to Launch a Detective: "The Long Call"

In a foreword to The Long Call (New York: Minotaur Books, 2019), author Ann Cleeves is nervous to start a new series with a new detective, "almost like a teenager bringing a new girlfriend or boyfriend home for the first time." She has concluded her series about detective Jimmy Perez on the remote Shetland Islands; her Vera Stanhope series set in Northumberland is still a going concern. The debut story for Detective Matthew Venn succeeds in keeping us off-balance and engaged. For this reader, it's also fun and instructive to see how an experienced author goes about setting up for future installments.

First, Cleeves sets the place, its geography and its social strata. Her foreword tells us that this novel started when she re-visited her childhood town North Devon [see photo collage]. As this novel progresses, we get to know the windswept beach, the two rivers that converge, the seaside tourist district, and the steep street where the victim lived. "I'd forgotten quite how beautiful the place is," she writes, adding ominously, "but sometimes beauty is skin deep." Exploring the contrasts will give her material for stories to come.

In the same way, she builds contrast into her detective and his associates. He's Matthew Venn, diffident but professional, no longer religious but reared to be a leader in an evangelical sect called "The Brethren," strait-laced but not straight. Venn's husband Jon is sunny, outgoing, confident and competent. Venn's team comprises Jen Rafferty, whose house is a mess, her teenagers resigned to their mother's absence, her psychological wounds from an abusive marriage still sore; and Ross May, cocky and impatient, eager to finish work to get back to his wife, little kids, and rugby team.

The particulars of this story concern a body found near Venn's own home on the beach. The victim is identified as Simon Walden, a short-order cook, sometimes depressed, sometimes addicted, formerly homeless but boarding with two young women. Following leads, the detectives find that he has much more to him than they at first believed. He also worked at "the Woodyard," a community center where, as Venn gradually comes to realize, all the suspects and witnesses are connected, including its founding director, Venn's Jonathan.  Venn feels that's "too close to home" and he's losing grip on the investigation: "Too many people circling around each other, without quite touching."

What's no fun for him is fun for the reader.

Cleeves writes in third person, alternating her chapters among different characters, including sometimes the suspects and witnesses. This way, we know a clue from one character when the next character has no clue, and that's a wicked little pleasure. She writes with sympathy for these people, even those who are pretty unlikable to each other.

In this novel, Cleeves also writes with sympathy and respect about adults with Down's Syndrome and their families. A program for adults with Downs Syndrome, also housed at the Woodyard, emerges as important to the crime. Why did Walden ride the bus to share candy and chat with one of the women during her ride home each day, being as he lived the other direction? Why did he board the bus a block away from the center, out of sight of the people there? Before these suggestive questions can be answered, another woman from the center disappears, hiking a sense of urgency that got this reader's heart racing.

Cleeves also textures her writing with interwoven themes of guilt and faith. Many of the characters have an albatross around their necks. In the opening pages, Venn himself watches his father's funeral from afar. His mother won't speak to him, blaming the father's decline on his son's apostasy and sexuality. The philanthropist who supports the Woodyard's counseling center blames himself for not recognizing the seriousness of his wife's depression before her suicide. Having killed a young girl in a car crash, Walden had an albatross tattooed literally around his neck.

Sign me up for the next installment.

[See my curated list of blogposts about works by Ann Cleeves and other crime writers on my Crime Fiction page.]

Bringing "That Slavery Thing" Out of the Archives

On the heels of blogging about The Prophets, Robert Jones, Jr.'s novel set among enslaved people (02/18/2021), I found many points of agreement between that fiction and what Atlantic staff writer Clint Smith has found in archived interviews with the last Americans to have been born in slavery. His article "We Mourn for All We Do Not Know" is in the March 2021 issue.

Smith was surprised to find, among the horrific accounts of violence and deprivation that he expected,

stories of enslaved people dancing together on Saturday evenings as respite from their work; of people falling in love, creating pockets of time to see each other when the threat of violence momentarily ceased; of children skipping rocks in a creek or playing hide-and-seek among towering oak trees, finding moments when the movement of their bodies was not governed by anything other than their own sense of wonder.

The accounts of love and wonder resonate with Jones's novel, where flirtation, love, dancing, and horseplay at the stream are all part of the texture of the story. But Smith writes that some members of a black family, reading an ancestor's account of some happy times, were suspicious, because it played into pre-and-post Reconstruction propaganda about how slave life was so sheltered and carefree.

Smith writes that these interviews, conducted in 1938 for the New Deal program the Federal Writers' Project, have long been suspect, for some good reasons:

• Were the memories of people so old be trusted?
• Few of the interviewers were black; living in the Jim Crow South, did elderly men and women say what they thought a white person would want to hear? Did biased interviewers manipulate their subjects?
• The transcripts are written in dialect, e.g., "My mudder...hafter git some food... Us all 'round de table like dat was like a feast"; to what extent were the transcripts altered to be "more authentic?"
• Critics after historian Ulrich B. Phillips (d. 1934), who thought slavery was a civilizing influence, mistrust what black people had to say about slavery because, well, how can black people be objective about slavery?
  

Answering that last one, Daina Ramey Berry, History Chair at U.T. Austin, wonders how white people can be objective about plantation owners.  She told Smith that there's some kind of bias in every source.

Something else that resonates with Jones's novel is something that sociologist Orlando Patterson calls "natal alienation." Patterson observes how black people under slavery and still to this day have been "stripped of social and cultural ties to a homeland we cannot identify." Records weren't kept. In The Prophets, the character Isaiah aches to be able to remember his mother and the name she gave him.

Smith interviewed modern-day black historians and genealogists who have searched for their own families in those archives. They tell of strong emotional reactions when they see photos of great-greats that they'd only heard of. Janice Crawford traced her family back to the plantation operated by the Rogers family. 

[Photo: Carter J. Johnson, born in slavery, who raised Janice Crawford's orphaned mother]

Crawford contacted one Rogers descendant who had published an article extolling his family's preaching the word of God through many generations of ministers, but he didn't stay in touch. She wonders how slave owners could commit to slavery while espousing Christian principles; The Prophets features a slave owner who quotes scripture to assuage his momentary moral qualms.

Smith also talked with Gregory Freeland, who grew up on Crest Street near where I lived on the campus of Duke University.  I was never aware that the Crest Street community had originally been its own town established by people emancipated after the Civil War. Freeland, who has done extensive research in the archives, regrets that he passed up the opportunity to ask questions of his own elders when he was growing up. "I was sort of ready to get away from that, that slavery thing," he tells Smith. Now he's working to collect interviews with those who remember the Civil Rights era.

That slavery thing has been left moldering in the archives while white history has wanted to move on.  In the 1980s, when Ken Burns' Civil War documentary ran on TV night after night, I was teaching in Mississippi.  I talked about each installment with friends. We were all college-educated and liberal in our racial views, and we loved the 89 appearances by Mississippi writer Shelby Foote, who had a wry twinkle in his eye as he regaled us with anecdotes from that conflict. While we respected the big-picture commentary by Columbia College professor Barbara Fields, I remember consensus that her 10 or so clips were too many, because, being black, she just couldn't move on from the topic of slavery. But, being white, we didn't think about "moving on" from Lincoln, Lee, and Mary Chesnutt.

Articles like Smith's and writing like The Prophets, along with other books I've read recently -- Bryan Stevenson's memoir Just Mercy and the YA novel Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam (see blogpost 12/2020) -- make me more aware than ever how our desire to segregate "that slavery thing" from the rest of America's life still distorts our teaching of history, our political discourse, our laws, and our communities.

[By coincidence, Clint Smith has popped up in my reading and radio listening three times this weekend. He told Shankar Vedantam on Hidden Brain about his early career teaching literature to mostly poor black kids, and how he learned that averting their eyes from their lives to Shakespeare and fantasy literature was a mistake. He's also represented in a book of essays 400 Souls. I've learned that Smith is also a poet. Here's a photo from a short talk-and-poem on TED talks. His web site is www.slintsmithiii.com

]

News Update from 2015: Obama Honors Sondheim

How did I miss this one? In 2015, President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Stephen Sondheim with these words:

As a composer and a lyricist, and a genre unto himself, Sondheim challenges his audiences. His greatest hits aren't tunes you can hum; they're reflections on roads we didn't take, and wishes gone wrong, relationships so frayed and fractured there's nothing left to do but 'Send in the Clowns.' Yet Stephen's music is so beautiful, his lyrics so precise, that even as he exposes the imperfections of everyday life, he transcends them. We transcend them. Put simply, Stephen reinvented the American musical. He's loomed large over more than six decades in the theatre. And with revivals from Broadway to the big screen, he is still here, 'pulling us up short, and giving us support for being alive.'

That's a succinct and true evaluation of Sondheim's 60 years' of creating musicals. In those few sentences, Obama (and his staff writers) pull together references from (in order): Merrily We Roll Along, Follies, Into the Woods, A Little Night Music, more Follies, and Company. Ah, what a President!

Belated congratulations, Mr. Sondheim.

[For a curated list of links to dozens of posts related to Sondheim, his work, and work of his friends and rivals, see my Stephen Sondheim page]