Friday Malinois photo

Just for fun.

Downtown cultural geography

I had a great time Wednesday night meeting other bloggers at the Green Bean. Thanks, Billy Jones, for organizing the meet-up; let's keep doing it.

The Green Bean was packed with people, because not only were us geeks doing some real-time face-blogging (i.e., talking) in the back, but UNCG MFA and BFA students (and other literature lovers) were crowded into the front for readings of short fiction.

Wow. In Greensboro? On a Wednesday night?

South Elm Street has become a focal point for creative people who have a whiff of the counter culture about them; not only writers and tech geeks, but also artists and entrepreneurs. There are lots of small, funky businesses on South Elm; that's where ArtsAlive and the Greensboro Center City Marketing Alliance emanate from.

A few blocks north, however, you run into Much, The N Club, the Red Room -- all those bars that advertise by publishing photos of the pretty girls who go there, along with their often suprisingly pudgy, balding, sweaty boyfriends. In these places, you'll find a very different cultural constituency: I think it's all about dancing, drinking, and . . . well, I was going to say dating, but I guess people don't do that any more. Hooking up? Whatever. But I've never been inside those places; I don't think a 47-year-old married father of three would really fit in.

If you go even further north, you'll eventually pass the new Center City Park and, finally, First Horizon Park on Eugene Street, both of which are monuments to the committment of Greensboro's upper-crust, foundation elite to downtown revival.

It's a very Greensboro gradation of cultures, and it's good.

Update: Southern Rants, who was at the blogger meet-up too, also has some downtown observations, along with some interesting comments.

Pomp, circumstance, and woooo-wooooo

I spent 3+ hours attending UNCG's December graduation ceremonies feeling alternately celebratory, bemused, bored, and sore (my, those folding chairs are hard). And bored.

My bemusement came from the shouting, whooping, and general celebration among the audience as the graduates crossed the stage. At first I was offended, since I'm a pretty intensely traditional person. I actually like Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance, and wish they would play it at graduation ceremonies, even though it's now utterly corny to do so. I'm a "joyful solemnity" kind of guy.

The black families generally shouted the loudest and longest for their graduates, but they had stiff competition in the wooo-wooo department from what I'm tempted to call NASCAR families. I thought, how gauche -- especially when some of the shouting drowned out the names of the next graduates in line. That was rude.

But.

I don't think that there's actually much real tradition in American graduation ceremonies. The standards for academic regalia apparently weren't adopted until the late 19th century. And, hey, Pomp and Circumstance wasn't written until 1901. All this faux solemnity seems to have been an attempt by America's aspiring class to aquire some ersatz cachet from Oxford and Cambridge.

But Americans have always been louder and more boistrous than Brits and Europeans. And contrary to what you might have heard lately, Americans have never been all that popular across the Atlantic. So what, precisely, is the point of trying to be like them?

Furthermore, the people in the audience had a lot to celebrate. I got the impression that many of the families were cheering for their first college graduate -- ever. The joy on those families' faces was contagious. How can you not celebrate something like that?

So there was a whole lot of cultural assimilation going on yesterday. It was a weird mixture of American 19th-century medieval-university costme revival, modern American university requirements and customs, black Baptist revival-meeting sensibility, Scotch-Irish good-ole-boy hootin' and hollerin', and quite a few restrained Anglo-types like me. Throw in all those M.S. graduates with Hindi, Chinese, Korean, and African names, and what you have is a real melting pot.

Woooo-woooo!

ACLU vs. Antony Flew

The AP posted two (providentially?) related stories about the theory of intelligent design in the last couple of days. This morning I read this in the Greensboro News and Record:

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) --Two civil liberties groups . . . sued the Dover [Pennsylvania] Area School district seeking to block its introduction next month of "intelligent design" in the science curriculum. . . . The intelligent design theory, first advanced in the late 1980s, holds that the universe is so complex that a supernatural force must be at work. . . .The American Civil Liberties Union contends intelligent design is a more secular form of creationism - a biblical-based view that credits the origin of species to God - and may violate the constitutional separation of church and state. (Read the AP story.)

But when I searched the AP site for "intelligent design," I got this story, too:

Famous Atheist Now Believes in God

NEW YORK (AP) -- A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind . . . . At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England. . . . [B]iologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says. (Read the whole thing.)

The article noted that Flew has not converted to Christianity, but rather is just an old-fashioned deist like Thomas Jefferson.

The theory of intelligent design is actually only a refinement of a very old argument, and it doesn't have any necessary connection to Christianity or to religion, though most of its modern proponents are Christians. You can find early versions of it in Greek pre-Socratic philosophers like Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, and it's much more fully developed by Aristotle and the Stoic philosophers Zeno and Cleanthes. It was also commonly held among French and American deists in the 18th century, like Franklin and Jefferson. Then in the 19th century . . . OK, I'm boring you.

Does intelligent design have a place in the science curriculum? Opponents say that intelligent design theory is pseudoscience. But the same charge is also laid at the door of theories of global warming, which is regularly taught in school science curricula. Ah, but you say most scientists believe in global warming and reject intelligent design. But that is a thoroughly medieval ipsi dixerunt argument from authority -- the antithesis of the scientific method.

In truth, school is precisely the place where students should be introduced to rough-and-tumble debates like these. I know from experience that they are intensely interested in these questions.

But does the ACLU want this debate to happen in school? Probably not any more than Jerry Falwell does. Fundamentalists don't like debate; they don't even like learning. They like indoctrination. And the ACLU are the fundamentalists of secularism.

An atheist I love

Christopher Hitchens did a brief plug for his new book on the Tavis Smiley Show tonight.



He said a lot of stuff that should have outraged me: that he hates religion; that Mother Theresa was a fraud, a fundamentalist, and an enemy of the poor; that there's more morality in Shakespeare and George Eliot than in any book of the Bible, or all the books of the Bible put together.

Why do I like him so much? I felt waves of affection for him as he talked. Well, for one thing, he's a great talker, and I don't mean that in a trivial sense. He has a beautifully modulated, chocolatey British accent, and cadenced prose just rolls out of him. Every sentence betrays deep intelligence, learning, and passion. I sat in my Subaru in the parking lot of Friendly Center and just let it flow over me.

For another thing, he loves literature; he loves it so much that he thinks it should replace religion (as did Wallace Stevens: I disagree with both on this point). His love is such that he can overlook the politics of the authors he loves, and that is an essential gift for anyone serious about literature, since so many great writers had such bad politics (as do many today -- Jane Smiley comes to mind).

Listening to Hitchens talk about his love of Borges, Shakespeare, and Eliot was an antidote to hearing the miserable Donald Lazere on On Point a few days ago. For Lazere, literature and the humanities are entirely reduced to mere politics, and only leftist politics at that. He sees academia as a sort of armed camp from which professors of literature lob missiles at the wicked capitalists outside, and I think would drive people like me out of it if he could.

I doubt he would give Hitchens a professorship, either.

final exam nightmares

You know that final exam nightmare you have, even well into your post-school life -- the one where you're late for a big exam, but it's in a course you've never attended, in some impossibly abstruse subject, taught by a professor who speaks a language you do not understand?

Well, after staying up til 12:30 last night grading Mythology final exam essays, I came to realize that, for a fair number of students, I am their nightmare.

And they are mine.

It can be a horrifying experience to take that first blue book off the top of the stack, and find in it only mangled and twisted parts of ideas and a few disfigured facts -- as if your lectures had been recovered from some ghastly car wreck. Could I really have said that? Essays like those make you wonder whether you've got early-onset Alzheimer's and have just been babbling incoherently every MWF from 9-9:50 a.m.

But a few blue books later you find that most of them got it, and some even have smart, interesting, and funny things to say. Whew.

Back to the blue book mines . . .

Update: My wife remindes me that my student's nightmare description is incomplete: "you forgot the part where you realize you’re nekkid." Hmmm. A lot of my students are showing up for morning classes in pajamas (really!). Maybe it's only a matter of time . . . depending on what they were doing the night before.

Greensboro is cooler than Charlotte

. . . according to Rusty Sheridan:

Greensboro is way cooler. There's so much more character and leisure to be found here. There's Tate street. The Weatherspoon art gallery. The old Carolina Theater. College radio stations like WUAG and Guilford college's station. Guilford Courthouse military park. The walking trails that weave in and out of the Lake Brandt area. Old college campuses like UNCG, Guilford College, and Greensboro College. A quaint downtown. Traffic that doesn't suck your will to live like Charlotte's does. (Read the whole thing.)

People like Rusty are who I think of when I hear the term "creative class:" he makes movies. Do you think he's what the Action Greensboro folks have in mind, too? Hmmm.

advisory committee for War Memorial Stadium

In a December 9 memo to the Greensboro City Council, city manager Ed Kitchen wrote,

As you recall, we are moving forward with plans for future repairs and potential renovations to War Memorial Stadium. We have solicited bids for services from architectural firms and will soon select a firm to assist with this effort. I am appointing a committee of stakeholders to help select the firm and advise throughout the process. Others may be added, but the committee will include representatives of the Aycock neighborhood, Bluford neighborhood, NCA&T, Greensboro College, the P&R Commission, Preservation Greensboro, and the VFW Post. As soon as we have acceptances from the individuals, I will provide you a list of the names.

Earlier this year I worked with a similar group of stakeholders to recommend future uses for the stadium. David Hoggard was on that ad hoc committee, too.

I'm eager to find out who Mr. Kitchen will extend invitations to, because I'd like to get one. I enjoyed working with this group, and want to keep doing it. I've already started getting calls from interested parties offering advice on the subject.

There was some other good news for northeast Greensboro in that memo:

In response to Council and community concerns about panhandling and other problems impacting the business and residential community in the Bessemer/Summit area, our Police Department conducted a targeted enforcement program in that area this summer. Attached is a report on the successful results of that effort. If you have questions, please contact Chief Wray or Assistant Chief Bellamy.

I didn't get a copy of the report Kitchen mentions, but I'd like to see it. As a pretty frequent shopper at both the Northeast Shopping Center and the Summit Shopping Center -- both at the intersection of Summit and Bessemer -- I'd agree that the police program was quite successful. I just hope that the panhandlers won't return now that the targeted enforcement program is finished.

One last odd little thing about the memo: it was cc'd to the news media (newspapers, TV), to the Chamber of Commerce, and to TREBIC (the Triad Real Estate and Builders Coalition).

That means that established business and real estate interests get the direct line on the city manager's weekly updates to Council -- but not, for example, the Greensboro Housing Coalition, the Concerned Citizens of Northeast Greensboro, or the Greensboro Neighborhood Congress. Why the special treatment of the Chamber and TREBIC? That bugs me.

deo vindice

Classics professors are asked to translate Latin words or phrases all the time. Most people assume that we'll do it for free, since we'll be delighted that anyone has showed some interest in what we do. And they're right.

For example, I happen to know that most of the Latin that appears in the movie Gladiator is the result of harried phone calls from movie production assistants to the Latin teaching assistants at UCLA. The producers got what they paid for: most of the Latin in that movie is just goofy -- nothing that an ancient Roman would have written or said. (Maybe the Latin T.A.s were having a bit of fun with the Hollywood types.)

Anyway, I got one of those requests a couple of days ago. How to translate the phrase deo vindice? It came through a student, whose brother-in-law was having it engraved on a reproduction of the Confederate Seal. The student said that her relative, who is a "Southern Heritage" aficionado, told her he thought it meant "God will vindicate."

Most of these people do think it means God will vindicate, according to Google. But it actually means something a little different.

Vindex (vindice is a form of this word) often means "protector" or "champion," and I'm sure that's what the Confederate Seal maker was thinking; the intended meaning was "with God as our champion."

But there are plenty instances in classical Latin when vindex means "punisher." And that put me in mind of my favorite southern writer, Walker Percy. His love of the South was closely bound up with his hatred of racism; the race issue bothered him his whole life.

In Percy's novel Love in the Ruins, the main character, Dr. Thomas More, offers this musing about God's judgment on Americans:

God [was] saying, here it is, the new Eden, and it is yours because you're the apple of my eye; because you the lordly Westerners, the fierce Caucasian-Gentile-Visigoths, believed in me . . . . so I gave it all to you, gave you Israel and Greece and science and art and the lordship of the earth, and finally even gave you the new world that I blessed for you. And all you had to do was pass one little test, which was surely child's play for you .... One little test: here's a helpless man in Africa, all you have to do is not violate him. That's all. One little test: you flunk!

In this light, deo vindice becomes tragically ironic: "with God as our punisher" seems a good epigram for our national failure of that "little test."

So let the sons of the Confederacy engrave deo vindice on their seal, and let the Latin mean what it will.

Advent photoblogging

On the second weekend of Advent we always drive up to Laurel Springs, NC to cut our Christmas tree.

Yesterday's drive up was beautiful, except for a 45-minute delay in the hell that is Wilkesboro, NC -- if you happen to be driving through that charming town on the afternoon of their annual Christmas parade. Which we did for the second year in a row.

Two years ago, the tree farm turned us away because all the trees were covered with ice and couldn't safely be cut and bundled. There was ice at home too, that year, and no power. We took the trip just to stay warm in the car.

This year the weather was almost balmy. I think it will be our last trip to this farm, because, as you can see, there are very few trees left of a size to be cut.



But the kids found a good one and tagged it.



Laurette warned us that it was too big, but we ignored her. Once it was bundled and on the car, we made our way to Blowing Rock, NC, which we call "Christmas Town" at this time of year, for obvious reasons.



(Talk about your pedestrian-friendly environments!)

We have regular habits: go to Celeste's for specialty soaps, which are hand-cut from "loaves" and have amusing shapes floating in clear glycerin; then to Kilwn's Chocolates for slabs of fudge; to Kojay's for hot, foamy Chai lattes or cold cream sodas; to the Bob Timberlake store just to sit on the leather couches and daydream about living in such a kitschy, cabin-y heaven; then dinner and home.

It took three of us to get the tree off the car. A quick measurement showed that Laurette was right -- it was too big. Eight inches off the bottom with the electric chainsaw, another six off the top with the Felco pruning shears, and we had it down to 10'4" -- perfect. Laurette took some satisfaction in being right.

We wrestled it into the living room and into the tree stand, with a good bit of grunting, a little shouting, a lot of sticky tree sap, and the absolutely sublime smell of a freshly-cut Frazier Fir in our nostrils.

There's an ironclad law of Christmas tree decorating: no matter how many strings of lights you have, you always need two more. 800 lights were required.



I went for the extra lights this morning, and ran into a friend at Target who was just getting ready for an ASPCA fundraiser at Petsmart next door.

I own two Belgian Malinois shepherd dogs. I am a sucker for the ASPCA. Hence:



Trajan was afraid of Santa. Afraid! If you look carefully, you can see his tail between his legs. I have never seen him do that before. (But don't get any ideas, burglars. Even if you do show up in a Santa suit and scare Trajan, Hero will eat you.)

The rest of today was spent putting lights on the house. Then a lovely, contemplative mass at Our Lady of Grace.

Happy Advent.

bigger, better preservation tax credits on the way?

The National Trust for Historic Preservation reports that a new bill introduced in the U.S. House (H. R. 5378) could make federal tax credits for rehabilitation more friendly for small businesses.

This could be good news for entrepreneurs looking to get a foothold in some of Downtown Greensboro's historic buildings.

Here's what the National Trust says the bill would do:

• Reduce the requirement that lowers tax benefits dollar-for-dollar according to the amount of credit taken when using the historic rehab credit.
• Deepen the historic rehab credit in the most difficult to develop and disinvested areas.
• Make the ten percent portion of the credit available for housing and changing the definition of "older building" from "built before 1936" to any property "fifty years old or older."
• Enrich the historic rehab credit from 20 to 40 percent in projects that are $2 million or less to target those "main street" type developments in which rehab credit costs are currently too prohibitive.
• Ease the rules governing non-profit deals so that more community-oriented projects move forward.

I can think of a few potential projects on Summit Avenue that might benefit, too (see previous post).

Read the National Trust's article.

Hat tip to Mike Cowhig for the info.

Summit Avenue is happening

World War Memorial Stadium gets all the press.

And there's no way I can complain about that, since over the past couple of years I've written two guest op-ed pieces about it in the News and Record, one of which Ed Cone didn't like much, and I've probably been interviewed about it on TV five or six times. (So how come Hoggard is still the famous "Aycock David"?)

But the biggest change at the north end of downtown Greensboro in the next few years will be the transformation of Summit Avenue.

The City of Greensboro will soon be receiving proposals from six highly-qualified firms to study how best to improve the streescape, pedestrian environment, zoning, and traffic patterns of this once-beautiful avenue as it passes through the Aycock Historic District into the downtown's cultural district.

A team composed of City staff from various departments, along with neighborhood residents, has been working quietly on this project for months. Once the proposals come in, there are going to be a lot more opportunities for public input.

When the planning is done sometime next year, the next question will be, "who will build it"?

Shamefully, not one Greensboro developer stepped up to the plate after the planning stages of Southside, and a Charlotte firm came in and executed the vision that won Greensboro a national smart growth award.

I have even heard through the grapevine that some local developers badmouthed the Southside concept to council members while it was in the works, and that some council members voted for it only because they thought it would never get built. Luckily for us all, everyone now gets to bask in the glory.

Will we see a similarly un-visionary response from Greensboro's development community on Summit Avenue?

Update: Hoggard was interviewed by WFMY about the Summit Ave. project today; the story will run on the 6 p.m. news. Just curious: I first posted this item early this morning. Did WFMY get the story idea from here?