Friday, April 15, 2011

Humanism and the Arts program

We had some stormy weather yesterday. Fortunately, we suffered no damage from the winds. I can remember the weatherman on a local TV station saying the storm would arrive in Prattville at 5:38 pm. By the time the storm got here it had veered south somewhat and passed over Sapulpa. The storm never formed a funnel cloud in our neck of the woods.

We did two things today. First, we attended the sixth and final Tulsa Town Hall program at the PAC. Today's speaker was Jon Meachem, a former editor of Newsweek and presently co-host of Need to Know on PBS.

And this evening we observed a "Humanism and the Arts" program. Leading off tonight's program was Joy Avery singing and playing her guitar. She sang "Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier." Next, the church administrative secretary, Vanessa Adams-Harris, did an excerpt from another dramatic monologue she will be presenting to the public within the next year. She is perhaps best known for a rendition of Rosa Parks. She also has another show titled "Who Will Sing for Lena." Since our church is without a minister, Vanessa sometimes fills that role also. She is the backbone of our church.

Next we were treated to a dramatic enactment of a poem written by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. It was followed by James Weldon Johnson's The Creation. Then Barbara Frey read "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost. "Something there is that doesn't like a wall" wrote Frost.

And then for something completely different, Larry Hochhaus (aka Larro) performed some magic tricks. He did six or eight tricks and left his audience baffled.

Next David Myers of our Poetry Group read "The Starlight of Tulsa," a piece he wrote as an entry in a writing competition. That was followed by Larry Roth reading the second part of a three part story titled "The Ghost Behind the Attic Door." I closed things out by playing "School Years" by Dmitri Kabalevskovo at the piano.

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