It’s spring break week. I don’t get spring break. I haven’t gotten it in decades as medicine operates on a fifty two week a year calendar and not an academic calendar of quarters or semesters with breaks in between. People don’t stop getting sick or needing care just because the kids are out of school. I usually end up working a lot of the traditional holiday times as I don’t have children and therefore can take my vacations on a more flexible schedule and I cover on those traditional off times as a gift to my colleagues who do have families to whom they need to attend and school schedules around which they must organize their lives. As a lot of people are out this week, I’ve had a bunch of extra clinical work. I’m also on a tight rehearsal schedule for the next project and need most of my weekend free. The end result of this was my spending the last eight hours or so banging my way through back progress notes and messages so I won’t have any hanging over my head this weekend.
The new show, Love Scenes, is six two person scenes each taking place in a different apartment of the same building. I had my first rehearsal with my scene partner and director last night. I’ve known my costar for a few years but we’ve never gotten to work together before outside of improv class so it’s going to be fun exploring together. Our scene is a story of an incredibly dysfunctional relationship full of mental health challenges. I get my guy. He’s very like some of the men, abandoned by life and holed up in cheap apartments or decrepit houses – full of self neglect and self pity. My only worry is the quick production schedule. A grand total of one week of rehearsal before a weekend of performances. Going to be spending a lot of tomorrow working on lines. Most of them are short but I have to make sure my ‘No’ and my ‘Sorry’ and my ‘OK’ are in the right place and I don’t lead my scene partner astray.
I have a long NYC weekend a few days after Love Scenes closes. Most of the theater activities are chosen but I have one slot left. I have several ideas for it but haven’t made a final decision as of yet. I’m going to search out some more input from my usual sources this weekend and then grab that last ticket. I come home from that and go immediately into rehearsal for Opera Unveiled and immediately from that into rehearsal for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and immediately from that into rehearsal for The Merry Wives of Windsor so my next few months are spoken for and I should be able to keep myself out of too much trouble. Rehearsals and people depending on me keep me off the streets or out of my bedroom with a pillow over my head trying to shut out the world.
The big news of the week locally is the closing of Birmingham Southern College. BSC has been in existence for over 160 years and has been one of the anchors of local higher education for quite some time. A small liberal arts school, initially growing out of the Southern Methodist tradition, it has nurtured and educated many of the local civic leaders through its small class size, rigorous instruction, and commitment to developing critical thinking and intellect. Many of my friends have taught there, attended there, had family members attend there, had their pastors attend there, and it has been one of the major feeders of performers and technicians into the local theater scene. A previous president and board made major financial missteps fifteen years ago and the dominos of cascading money problems continued to fall and could not be corrected without state aid which was not forthcoming. It’s sad and the state continues to show it’s complete ignorance of what really makes an economy and a society tick.
To understand Alabama politics, one must understand that it is governed by the state constitution of 1901, a repellent document passed in a fraudulent election which was created specifically to ensure that all socioeconomic power remained with a very small class of white landowners. (When South Africa was looking for a model for its apartheid constitution, guess where they turned. The Nazis also used it parts of it to construct the Nuremburg Laws). The constitution consolidates pretty much all power in the state legislature, limiting the ability of counties and cities to home rule. It has been amended nearly seven hundred times and it still pretty much guarantees that rural landowning interests will dictate what goes. This means that there is always money to lure a new industrial plant to a rural county at the costs of hundreds of millions in tax incentives and give aways but no money for projects that might benefit urban populations. As the red vs blue divide as worsened over the quarter century that I’ve been here, the Republican super majority in the state house has made darn sure that any programs that might provide benefit to marginalized community or that might lead to additional political power for urban or minority populations go absolutely nowhere. It’s a shame. The state is beautiful. There are lots of lovely and industrious people here. And the metro areas lag way behind Nashville or Charlotte or Atlanta or Jacksonville or any other major Southern city due to these attitudes.
But life is change, and Darwinian theory tells us that the organism that cannot adapt to a changing environment is destined for extinction. The economic conditions surrounding BSC changed too fast due to both national and local politics for it to be able to survive. It won’t be the last prestigious small liberal arts college to shut up shop this century. The American attitude toward education is changing. The pandemic has completely redone the way we see and interact with education. Absence rates spiked with the shut down but have not particularly declined with full reopening. Nether students nor families seem to feel that schooling is necessary. Fewer students in the public schools mean fewer young adults prepared for higher education, not to mention the skyrocketing costs of tuition as public support of education has been slowly but steadily withdrawn over the last half century. Anti-immigrant sentiment and fewer visas will lead to the best and brightest from elsewhere no longer choosing an American education. The trends aren’t good. I was raised in a family where education was one of the highest ideals. The house was full of books. We all read and discussed ideas and learned and grew together. I’m hoping that that sort of upbringing isn’t becoming a rarity but I’m afraid that it is.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 