Can Music Save Our Humanity?
Dear Neighbor,
I have been having some sleepless nights recently in what seems like a long recovery from back surgery. As an admitted news junkie, I find it’s easy to fall into a state of miasma (and we all know about the middle-of-the-night terrors) about our country and our world. I decided to make a purposeful decision to change the film in my head, and I came up with music I have loved that stands out in my memory. The first I remembered was Verdi’s opera, La Traviata. I remember the exact location when on WRTI in our then-1983 Chevy giant station wagon. I heard Luciano Pavoratti and Joan Sutherland singing the duet from the second act. It was so beautiful I was stunned into tears. Bob was driving in front of me in his pickup truck (every man apparently dreams of one), and I honked the horn repeatedly and signaled to him to pull over. “Turn on WRTI, NOW!” I hollered. Soon we had the cassette tape in our possession, and after that, the CD, and now it is downloaded into my phone. I have never heard another version as moving as that duo’s.
Maybe ten years ago, Opera on the Mall at Independence Mall announced the opera would be La Traviata. Always one for an adventure, I convinced Bob and my two sisters that we just had to go. We packed sandwiches and drinks and blankets and took the train into the city, walking to the mall from Jefferson Station. On the way, a nice young man offered to guide us to the event (not really needed). My younger sister Nancy struck up a conversation with him, and soon we were all chatting away. When we asked where he lived in the city, he replied “. . .all over, really.” We soon concluded that he was homeless. Nancy gave him her dinner.
When we arrived, we spread out our blanket and shared our somewhat meager dinner as we viewed enviously the banquet the couple next to us spread out across their entire blanket, a Mediterranean feast.
I was ecstatic as the opera played on, but we all soon discovered that getting down was easy enough, but getting comfortable was impossible. I kept squirming around, failing. Soon Nancy and Linda were laughing hysterically to themselves, interrupting my enjoyment of the music.
“Shhh,” I repeated, but whatever it was only made them laugh harder, now unable to even catch their breath or talk.
Later, when the opera ended, we discovered that getting up was even harder than getting comfortable than lying down. When we finally accomplished it and met up with Bob (who had made the intelligent decision to sit on a bench between two other strangers (gradually he deduced that they were friends he had separated from one another), Nancy and Linda related to him what they were laughing so hard about: I had totally rolled onto our neighbor’s blanket and apparently right into their banquet. The couple never said a word, and no way would my two sisters have ruined their delight by telling me to roll away. I guess it was good I didn’t put my elbow in the hummus.
Contemplating the evening, I later thought how music had brought so many people together, including the couple who didn’t protest my rolling into their banquet and the two men who never said a word to Bob about interrupting their time together.
Soon my nighttime terrors were gone, and I was laughing in the night at that memory.
Incident No. 2 recalled, another memory of yet another adventure I convinced Bob to do: Drive 7-1/2 hours to a tiny town called Floyd, Virginia, to attend the Friday night Floyd General Store gathering of the nearby farming community and townspeople for a clogging and musical event. It was everything I’d long hoped for and dreamed of—a true American slice of life.
We checked into our motel and quickly found the location. Five or so rows of chairs with homemade cushions were set up in the middle of the store. Around the edges were food and drink offerings, some homemade, and penny candy. Up front was the bandstand in front of a big dance floor. Soon people began pouring in, clearly from the farming community, now wearing white patent leather shoes with tap dance taps front and back, ready to clog. As the bluegrass music began, all clogging hell broke loose. The place went wild with joyous dancing. I just wanted to get up and clog so badly I could hardly stand it, but Bob is not so inclined. I noticed two women, probably mother and grandmother, and a girl maybe twelve years old standing on the sidelines, looking impassively on—except for the little girl. Her feet were tapping, like mine. They were Hispanic, and the women seemingly felt it would be unseemly of them to dance. I saw my problem solved and went over to grab the little girl, and we danced the rest of the night together.
Later, a group of kids from the nearby Virginia Tech came and began dancing in the crowd, except it became clear they were jeering at the locals, and especially at a young man wearing his ball cap backwards who might have been neurodivergent. He worked nonstop at asking girls to dance; and whenever one agreed, the VA Tech guys would cut in on him, as they zeroed in on their victim. Soon all the girls were dancing with him and refused to let the “frat boys” cut in. And soon they left, sensing they had made themselves unwelcome.
Before long, there were two eighty-five-year-old men in a clogging duel, dancing together for at least twenty minutes or so. Soon everyone else stopped dancing and gathered around to watch this wild game of skill, all so appreciative of this apparently famous duo. What a night! It was a night of unity, community, and Americans coming together to share good times. I believe that is what and who America is, and I think we cannot let anything extinguish it.
Learn more: www.floydcountrystore.com, www.floydcountrystore.tv
Dear Neighbor,
I have been having some sleepless nights recently in what seems like a long recovery from back surgery. As an admitted news junkie, I find it’s easy to fall into a state of miasma (and we all know about the middle-of-the-night terrors) about our country and our world. I decided to make a purposeful decision to change the film in my head, and I came up with music I have loved that stands out in my memory. The first I remembered was Verdi’s opera, La Traviata. I remember the exact location when on WRTI in our then-1983 Chevy giant station wagon. I heard Luciano Pavoratti and Joan Sutherland singing the duet from the second act. It was so beautiful I was stunned into tears. Bob was driving in front of me in his pickup truck (every man apparently dreams of one), and I honked the horn repeatedly and signaled to him to pull over. “Turn on WRTI, NOW!” I hollered. Soon we had the cassette tape in our possession, and after that, the CD, and now it is downloaded into my phone. I have never heard another version as moving as that duo’s.
Maybe ten years ago, Opera on the Mall at Independence Mall announced the opera would be La Traviata. Always one for an adventure, I convinced Bob and my two sisters that we just had to go. We packed sandwiches and drinks and blankets and took the train into the city, walking to the mall from Jefferson Station. On the way, a nice young man offered to guide us to the event (not really needed). My younger sister Nancy struck up a conversation with him, and soon we were all chatting away. When we asked where he lived in the city, he replied “. . .all over, really.” We soon concluded that he was homeless. Nancy gave him her dinner.
When we arrived, we spread out our blanket and shared our somewhat meager dinner as we viewed enviously the banquet the couple next to us spread out across their entire blanket, a Mediterranean feast.
I was ecstatic as the opera played on, but we all soon discovered that getting down was easy enough, but getting comfortable was impossible. I kept squirming around, failing. Soon Nancy and Linda were laughing hysterically to themselves, interrupting my enjoyment of the music.
“Shhh,” I repeated, but whatever it was only made them laugh harder, now unable to even catch their breath or talk.
Later, when the opera ended, we discovered that getting up was even harder than getting comfortable than lying down. When we finally accomplished it and met up with Bob (who had made the intelligent decision to sit on a bench between two other strangers (gradually he deduced that they were friends he had separated from one another), Nancy and Linda related to him what they were laughing so hard about: I had totally rolled onto our neighbor’s blanket and apparently right into their banquet. The couple never said a word, and no way would my two sisters have ruined their delight by telling me to roll away. I guess it was good I didn’t put my elbow in the hummus.
Contemplating the evening, I later thought how music had brought so many people together, including the couple who didn’t protest my rolling into their banquet and the two men who never said a word to Bob about interrupting their time together.
Soon my nighttime terrors were gone, and I was laughing in the night at that memory.
Incident No. 2 recalled, another memory of yet another adventure I convinced Bob to do: Drive 7-1/2 hours to a tiny town called Floyd, Virginia, to attend the Friday night Floyd General Store gathering of the nearby farming community and townspeople for a clogging and musical event. It was everything I’d long hoped for and dreamed of—a true American slice of life.
We checked into our motel and quickly found the location. Five or so rows of chairs with homemade cushions were set up in the middle of the store. Around the edges were food and drink offerings, some homemade, and penny candy. Up front was the bandstand in front of a big dance floor. Soon people began pouring in, clearly from the farming community, now wearing white patent leather shoes with tap dance taps front and back, ready to clog. As the bluegrass music began, all clogging hell broke loose. The place went wild with joyous dancing. I just wanted to get up and clog so badly I could hardly stand it, but Bob is not so inclined. I noticed two women, probably mother and grandmother, and a girl maybe twelve years old standing on the sidelines, looking impassively on—except for the little girl. Her feet were tapping, like mine. They were Hispanic, and the women seemingly felt it would be unseemly of them to dance. I saw my problem solved and went over to grab the little girl, and we danced the rest of the night together.
Later, a group of kids from the nearby Virginia Tech came and began dancing in the crowd, except it became clear they were jeering at the locals, and especially at a young man wearing his ball cap backwards who might have been neurodivergent. He worked nonstop at asking girls to dance; and whenever one agreed, the VA Tech guys would cut in on him, as they zeroed in on their victim. Soon all the girls were dancing with him and refused to let the “frat boys” cut in. And soon they left, sensing they had made themselves unwelcome.
Before long, there were two eighty-five-year-old men in a clogging duel, dancing together for at least twenty minutes or so. Soon everyone else stopped dancing and gathered around to watch this wild game of skill, all so appreciative of this apparently famous duo. What a night! It was a night of unity, community, and Americans coming together to share good times. I believe that is what and who America is, and I think we cannot let anything extinguish it.
Learn more: www.floydcountrystore.com, www.floydcountrystore.tv
One more thing I can’t really take up the space to write about, but I sure can share: It’s about the joy that music brings to the world, and the word, “fandango;” and it turns out it’s not just a site to reserve movie theater tickets. I heard this story on NPR Sunday morning, Sept. 27, about shared music events that originated centuries ago in Veracruz, Mexico; and it fits right into my theme of how music brings people together. At the risk of sounding “woke,” I will say out loud that the people of Mexico are some of the most fun and finest people I have ever met, both here in America and at home in their own country on two visits there. Their sense of humor, humility, dependability, and warmth is best experienced in their home country, but I for one am glad for those I get to interact with here in America. Here is a fun 7-minute listen about a music phenomenon that has spread all around the world, even in the U.S., “fandango:” https://www.npr.org/2026/09/27/nx-s1-5973237/la-bamba-mexico-fandango
Your Neighbor,
Anne
Your Neighbor,
Anne
