“Oh the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.”
Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
Thanks to a soccer-playing granddaughter I have a new Tuesday/Thursday afternoon ritual. Around 5:30 I don walking togs and strike out for the soccer park in Burns Bottom. After zigging and zagging through our lovely downtown, I end up on North Third Street at the Hitch Lot.
Somewhere in the block between Third and Fourth avenues, I stop to take in the view. There spread across eight miniature soccer fields is an idyllic scene. On each of the fields, little people in iridescent outfits are chasing after pink or lime-green soccer balls.
Parents are coaching and other parents and grandparents line the sidelines. Folks from all walks of life are celebrating what could easily be mistaken for a sprawling family reunion; the only thing missing are the smoking barbecue grills.
Were someone to ask me to explain Mississippi, or, for that matter, America, this would be one of the pictures I would want to show them. If only we could somehow transfer the shared sense of purpose on display here to all our institutions.
We, The Commercial Dispatch team, play on one of two fields at the north end of the park. The squad consists of seven or eight doll-like 6-year-old girls in purple jerseys — only four can play at a time. Two coaches for each team are on the field during play to encourage, referee and tie loose shoelaces. Substitutions take place when a player wants to visit with her mother or, in the case of one of our charges, gets hungry.
I’m not sure if anyone keeps score — someone does, of course — but no one makes much of it. That will all change soon enough, but for now it’s just a bunch of little girls chasing and trying to kick a ball, and, from the looks of it, having a fine time doing so. At a recent game Dispatch players spent their halftime break laughing and picking each other up.
Thursday I watched the game while talking to another grandfather I’ve known since childhood. As it happens, our children grew up together, and now, our grandchildren are playing together.
Afterward on the walk back through town, I remembered the Walter Parks concert at the Rosenzweig Arts Center.
If you didn’t attend this — and all but about 40 of you didn’t — you missed a performance that was ethereal, memorable and simply brilliant. Parks, a guitar virtuoso (he’s billed as having played lead guitar for Richie Havens for 10 years, which means something, but what, I’m not sure), channels the swamp culture of the Okefenokee Swamp.
Here’s what Judy Collins has to say about him: “Walter Parks is an extraordinary singer whose songs can break your heart as well as get you dancing. Lyrical and political, personal and otherworldly at the same time, transcendent as well as down to earth, Walter is a musical treasure, an artist of the highest caliber. To hear him is to be lifted into a mystical sphere. I adore him.”
I don’t think anyone at the RAC Thursday evening would take issue with a word of Judy’s assessment.
Parks performed one composition based on swamp hollers that was like nothing I’ve ever heard. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one with hair standing up on the back of my neck.
For the first four or five numbers I wished for a couple of my guitar-playing friends, and then I let it go.
As long as I can remember, the CAC has been bringing in remarkably good shows. Since Beverly Norris has been programing director, they’ve been uniformly outstanding. The storytellers here a couple weeks ago are superstars of the genre, if you can call a storyteller a superstar.
Currently, there’s an impressive exhibition of Brandon Thibodeaux photographs from the Mississippi Delta in the RAC gallery.
Here’s a couple of suggestions: Call the Arts Council (328-ARTS) and ask to get on the mailing list. Check out the front page of this newspaper each day or the latest issue of Catfish Alley for a calendar of area performances, lectures and exhibits.
Oh, and this, too, another Dr. Seuss quote: “You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.”
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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