Bluegrass on the River…

…Tennessee, that is. The annual Riverbend Festival in Chattanooga, TN at Ross’s Landing on the river will have Alison Krauss and the Union Station the night of June 12, 2010. I like Alison Krauss very much, but have found the RB festival too big, too hot and too crowded the past several years. In addition, Ms Krauss and company are appearing on the barge dubbed the “Coca-Cola Stage,” moored just far enough from the bank to diminish any act to Lilliputian size, necessitating huge projection screens so the audience can tell what the performers look like.

Riverbend is ten days long and has several other stages. Many acts, some of them new, more old, will appear at these more audience-friendly venues, so the festival is worth checking out for folks younger and more tolerant than I am.

Beethoven again…

…but unfortunately we won’t be attending, since the tickets for the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera production of the Ninth Symphony (and Choral Fantasia) start at $61, topping out at $230 for a box seat. Neither Barbara nor I have attended a live performance of this tremendous piece of music, and we had hopes. After the wonderful performance last winter of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, we will be sorry to miss this one.

The organizers have a contest going, with the first to spot Beethoven’s picture on the CSO website this week getting two free tickets. Maybe both of us could stay glued to the computer and win.

Ending and Beginning

I have always found the comics pages the best thing in the newspaper, especially as strips with a direct relationship to real life have gained popularity over the past twenty years or so. As of September 1, one of my favorites of the “reality comics,” “For Better or for Worse,” is undergoing a change, going back to the beginning of the strip, reprising some old material and adding some new, basically re-telling the 29-year story of the Patterson family from Artist Lynn Johnston’s perspective as a retirement age grandmother. Some papers that carried the strip have dropped it in anticipation of this change. I think that is a mistake. The new wrinkle on the old strip sounds interesting to me. I will stay tuned. Unfortunately, I will have to read the New Adventures of the Pattersons online, from Johnston’s web page, since as of last Sunday, the Chattanooga Times Free Press has dropped the strip.

Bummer. I am sure the editors of the TFP have some reason for rejecting the new format. Maybe they just think 29 years is enough. I will await similar fates for Gasoline Alley and Snuffy Smith, if length of run is the factor. Johnston’s strip became more of a fixture in my life than those old chestnuts, partly because the characters developed, aged and coped with the same problems we all face in our journey from young people to old age. Along the way the strip explored many topics of societal and individual interest, from alternate family composition to prejudice, job searches to the facts of aging and death. One consolation in the new dispensation is that Lynn Johnston has promised that in this return to early days, no dogs will die. I still tear up when I think of the aged and infirm Farley, dog extraordinaire, saving the toddler April from drowning in the river. The old dog collapsed after the rescue, and succumbed to a heart attack. Buried under a favorite tree of his, his spirit lived on at “Farley’s Tree,” which became a feature of the comic’s landscape forever.

This morning, I logged on to follow a conversation between Elly and her friend Connie about facing life as a single parent and children and…well, the story rolls on. I will stay tuned. For Shame, Times Free Press!.

Fireworks

I have loved fireworks since I was a child and my father and my grandparents conspired to buy loads and loads of sparklers, strings of small firecrackers and a few roman candles each July 4th. I have been in awe of professional fireworks since I was old enough to be taken to late-night demonstrations of pyrotechnics.

Tonight, though, like each July 4th Eve and the day itself, I have avoided and will avoid any of the many public exhibitions for Independence Day. I have grown old since first lighting a sparkler in my grandparents’ back yard. I am much less tolerant of crowds, noise and bumper-to-bumper traffic than in my youth.

A short while ago, I heard at five miles’ distance the concussion of big-time fireworks on the Tennessee River at Chattanooga. A Pops in the Park celebration, involving the Chattanooga Symphony and thousands of spectators. I expect the symphony concluded with the 1812 Overture, complete with simulated cannon fire. One year a firm that actually fired cannons was part of the show. I don’t know about this year, since I wasn’t there.

My Beloved and I attended one of these shows some years ago, part of a group that planned carefully for the event, with an advance party to stake out a place with good line of sight to the band shell, and assignments of necessary items for each of us to bring. We brought potato salad, green salad, chips and Sweet Tea. And wine in discreet containers. Lots of happy adults, a goodly group of happier children. It made the interminable time for exiting the area worthwhile. But not now. The children are grown (although we have grandchildren now, who were to be at Coolidge Park with their parents tonight.)

Between the traffic, and the crowds, age has dimmed the charm of this celebration. So the Dog and I listened to the distant fireworks, paused in our walk, then Lucy the Wonderdog went about her business and we returned home.

Happy Fourth of July!

Imus as Icarus…

…flying too close to the sun of PC wrath.

Tuesday, April 9—

Don Imus, the other shock-jock, may be needing the kind of gig that Howard Stern has on satellite radio.

Imus, who makes a living saying crude, obnoxious, derogatory things about what ever and whomever comes into his head, last week described the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s” after first commenting on their extravagant tatoos.

A firestorm of criticism shortly broke out, and yesterday morning Imus spent most of his show groveling and more-or-less apologizing. He was interviewed on Al Sharpton’s show Monday afternoon-I missed it, not sorry to have done so.

Today–

Late in the evening newscasts word came that MSNBC is cutting Imus loose permanently. WFAN, the radio station that carries his show and which MSNBC had simulcast, has not said he will lose that gig also, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Saying outrageous things about politicians is one thing, and considering the politicians who have been hammered by Imus, perhaps qualifies as a public service. But all the Rutgers women did was get to the NCAA finals, and display lots of tatoos. Imus needs to get out more. Young people from every background are inking up their bodies.

He lived by the sword, now, career-wise, he is dying by the sword. Of ad revenues, that is. Major advertisers were bailing on him since early this morning. Sic Transit Imusiana.

I enjoyed his show better than the broadcast morning “news” shows, which have become a blend of tabloid twittering and shameless huckstering of their respective network’s prime time shows and specials.

Imus consistently had more major news figures from the political world and op-ed pages of the press than all the broadcast morning shows put together. I will miss that about his show.