It’s the calm before the storm. Or perhaps I’m in the eye of a hurricane. (Trivia of the day: hurricane is one of four Arawak words still in common use in modern English – the other three are canoe, hammock, and barbecue.) I suppose if one were to calibrate one’s speed of travel exactly and could follow the correct course, one could always remain in the eye of the hurricane and be relatively safe from the winds and the rain. But that seems rather impractical for most of us as we aren’t exactly nomads in this day and age. And so we get warming gulf waters and the effects of Helene and Milton (shortly to be joined by Oscar if I read my weather news correctly). I’ve heard from all of my friends in the Asheville area and everyone is safe but the extent of the disruption to basic infrastructure such as water and sewer and electricity and telecommunications will require years to repair and restore. Not to mention the number of major roads which have essentially ceased to exist, making it difficult to get the crews and equipment to where they need to be.
I’ve been going to Asheville intermittently for decades. My first trip was in 1992 when Steve and I did the first of several cross country jaunts so he could work on the Spivey genealogy and peruse records in various Appalachian courthouses. I spent more time in the 90s then I care to think about flipping through microfiches of birth and death records and property transfer deeds. There are two clans of Spiveys in the US. The lowland Spiveys who originated in Virginia in the late 17th century after emigrating from the British Isles. These were the Spiveys with money. Then there are the mountain Spiveys from the hollers of Appalachia. Steve did a great job tracing all the blood lines down finding that they all converged on three brothers who settled in the Asheville area (Buncombe county NC) around 1770. Where the three brothers came from is a bit of a mystery. Spivey could be Scots-Irish or it could be an Anglicization of the Czech Spivak. (Some branches of the family had a legend that the Spiveys were originally from Bohemia so that would fit). Try as he might, he could find no record of them prior to 1770 tax rolls. The grandson of one of the brothers, WIlliam Spivey, lived just outside of Ashville from about 1840-1930 and ‘Old Billy’ was apparently a local fixture to the point that the hill on which he lived is Spivey mountain to this day. In the 1990s, Steve found a number of distant cousins in the Ashville area who had known old Billy when they were young which makes you realize just how young the country is in some ways. My grandparents were born 1894-1903 and I have a couple of great-grandparents born in the 1850s. That’s pushing two hundred years ago.
So Steve and I spent time in Asheville as ground zero for the hillbilly Spiveys. I suppose it served me well years later when I had my contract with the United Mine Workers Funds and would spend a week a quarter in Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia. If you haven’t been to that part of the world, the topography is interesting. The mountains aren’t terribly high, but they are incredibly steep and separated from each other by very narrow valleys and chasms caused by water running off into streams and rivers. You live in the few places where the river valleys have created relatively flat land. This is why Helene’s floods were so devastating. Trillions of gallons of water was dumped in a small geographic area very quickly. The ground was saturated by prior rain storms so the water all raced down into the river valleys which, being confined, led to rapid rises and flooding. And, as all of the population lives in the stream and river valleys the infrastructure was carried away as well.
Tommy loved Asheville as well and we would usually go about once a year. He loved the river arts district, Biltmore village and, of course the Biltmore estate. He wasn’t too keen on the house, finding it highly impractical, but he loved the winery and we usually came home with a case of assorted in the back of the car. I haven’t been back since Tommy’s death. I haven’t really had cause to. And now I’m not sure if I ever will. I want to remember it as it was, rather than as what it will turn itself into. I have the same feelings about Maui after the burning of Lahaina. If I go back to Hawaii, I’ll probably hang out in Kailua-Kona. It’s not a Sondheim quote coming to mind but a Kander and Ebb one. ‘Somebody loses, and somebody wins. One day it’s kicks, then it’s kicks in the shins. But the planet spins and the world goes round and round’. And because of that, we live in cycles of constant change. Human nature is one of inertia, of trying to keep everything the same – but that’s a losing strategy. The best thing any of us can do is work on our resilience and adaptability because none of us has any real control over much of anything.
It’s calm around here because it’s a weekend without a barrage of deadlines hanging over my head. Added to that, the weather has been gorgeous. It’s Alabama fall meaning cool mornings, rapidly warming up to the 70s and, most importantly, not a trace of humidity. Yesterday morning, I toddled off to the Avondale Park amphitheater to see Opera Birmingham’s annual children’s opera (An adaptation of Dvorak’s Russalka into the Little Mermaid story, lasting about 45 minutes). Children’s opera at the amphitheater has caught on the last few years and there were lots of preschool and early elementary tots wearing their Ariel outfits and playing in the bubbles, and occasionally trying very unsuccessfully to sing along. But for the most part they paid attention and this is how you build new audiences; get them while they’re young and convince their parents they want to see La Boheme for date night. The amphitheater shows are a happy accident of Covid. The venue has been there since the 30s but has been relatively neglected and underused in recent years. In the spring of 2021, when indoor performance of opera was not yet possible, Opera Birmingham did an abbreviated Pirates of Penzance there (I was one of the policemen) and it was a huge success, being one of the first music theater offerings locally in over a year. The venue is outdoors, family friendly, easy to get to, and it became natural to put the children’s opera there in subsequent years. So not all Covid changes are necessarily bad.
I thought about getting out on my newly renovated terrace and doing some work, but the first thing that needs to be done is for me to finish spray painting my patio furniture, a job that was interrupted two years ago when the terrace refurbishment from hell got underway. I just didn’t feel like that kind of exertion (I think I’ll hire some teenagers of my acquaintance who need extra money) so that will wait for another day. But I did get a hundred pages read in my book for book club, a number of things written, a start on this years CME, completed all of my progress notes and still had time to laze around this afternoon. But I don’t think this languid pace is going to continue.
Rehearsals begin on Tuesday for my next theater project (The 2005 musical version of Little Women which originally starred Sutton Foster). Despite my lobbying for Beth, I have been cast as Mr. Laurence, Laurie’s grumpy grandfather from next door. Once again, aging up for the stage. I’ll probably have to grow out the white whiskers and look a little weird for a bit. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a cast of ten, most of whom I have known for years and usually, with a cast that small, it’s easy to bond and become an ensemble with minimal perturbations. Then there’s the writing projects. My publisher is working on a grand plan which would include websites, ebook editions, audio editions, republication with updated material, and a second trio of books which we’re referring to as the Four Horsemen series, the first of which looks at how Covid changed things. (Spoiler: What didn’t it change?). How and when I’m supposed to write all of this without the enforced seclusion of a pandemic and shutdown I’m not sure but something should come of it. I’m putting my faith into his planning. I just hope there’s some ROI.
Thank you to all of you who have expressed interest in telling your Covid/Pandemic story as part of the new book. We’re slowly figuring out interviews and topics. You’re not forgotten. If anyone has a particular change they have noted in society, behavior, public policy, healthcare or anything else they think I should explore, let me know and I’ll take it under advisement. I have figured out some of the themes but there are more out there.
Going to watch a movie for MNM and then heading out to dinner with my travel agent for a post mortem on South America and starting to think about what the major 2025 trip should be.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 