holy groundNovember 13, 2005
A weekend whirlwind of activities all over the Greater Big Dig Area (for really large values of Greater Big Dig Area) is not exactly the best way to prepare for a Monday morning trip to New Mexico but sometimes things you just gotta do all converge on the same weekend and there's nothing for it but to do it all. All of it.So, the weekend began Friday night with The Blind Boys of Alabama at the Veteran's Memorial Auditorium in Providence. It was a benefit for In-Sight, which was celebrating 80 years of providing services to blind people in Rhode Island. The Blind Boys rocked! They had tthe audience on their feet dancing and clapping and shouting out like it was a revival meeting. They mixed the usual gospel tunes like Lay Down My Burden and surprising choices like Spirit in the Sky. Despite the traffic obstacles I had to overcome to get to Providence on a Friday night after work -- including a huge back-up caused by a two car accident on I-495 and being almost late and keepiing Nancy waiting, by the end of the night I was energized and inspirited.
Saturday it was up to Worcester for the holiday sale at The Fireworks so we could see what the Hermit Potter of Worcester has been up to and catch the Art-Tech Expo upstairs in the gallery at the Sprinkler Factory. This was also a chance to test out the new camera before my expedition to New Mexico for the Festival of the Cranes -- leaving Monday, Yikes! -- and a chance to see Ned who has become nearly as hermetic as the Hermit Potter since moving to Worcester. Is it something in the water? The headwaters of the Blackstone? Anyway, we invited Ned to meet us at The Sprinkler Factory and then showed him around the gallery and The Fireworks. He brought a portfolio of his still lifes with him too.
After not long enough with the art and the friends, we zoomed back to my house to feed Wilbur and give him his grillion and 1 medications. Then it was back to Providence to hear Holly Near at the First Baptist Church in America. It was a benefit for the Rhode Island Campaign for Conscience. The audience was a curious mixture of old dykes -- I mean old as in older than me and Nancy -- old hippie peace activists, old Quakers, and a few young peace activists. I can't even begin to describe how moved I was by the songs, the spirit of the people, the spirit of the place. One of the peace tax fund organizers reminded us that we were in fact in a holy place, the First Baptist Church in America established by Roger Williams -- the home of freedom of conscience in America.
Holly Near also sang Lay Down My Burden -- in a really different style from the Blind Boys -- and I couldn't help singing it as I walked along the river back to my car. Even the sidewalk felt like holy ground. Down by the riverside ... ain't gonna study war no more...ain't gonna study war no more.
Today's
Reading
Down the Bay by Wallace P. Stanley, The Silent
Traveller in Edinburgh by Chiang Yee
This
Year's Reading
2005 Booklist
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Copyright © 2005, Janet I. Egan