Sunday, February 28, 2010

Hail Columbia

The sun rises earlier, the freezing cold mornings remain. The phone ringles a note from facebook. A woman from South Africa is writing a note this morning which goes into the "private" in-box which ringles to the phone. The small message ring, not the large "I'm calling you" ring. It is from a world away. We are ever so connected these days. And that goes for Columbia, a small town in the heart of the midwest.

It is True/False weekend, a weekend of documentary films in our small town, attended, they say, by 25,000 people. There are people downtown I know, yet more I don't. So instead of going downtown I remain in bed, only to be awakened by my sister calling to ask me if a friend of hers who lives in Colorado, if her son can stay at the house, he is transporting equipment and himself in a car to meet up with the Baltimore Orioles at their training camp and is going through Columbia, can he stay? Of course. So at 7:30 p.m. I brew tea and wait, put in a movie, gather fresh sheets and wait, by nine-thirty I am again asleep. No phone call, no nothing, no kid staying in Ray's room, private with its own bath. Sleep, oh how sweet it is, but it lasts only briefly and after five hours I am again awake and listening to KOPN, the "community" radio station (89.5fm, kopn.org), it is in the background as I work and Kyle and Tony do their stuff which has, admittedly, some very funny bits. They put on the "Tusk" album, Stevie Nicks and there is Tony and maybe some other young men, singing off-key in the background and I want to call them, harrass them, but don't...instead, I turn it down, do some writing work, read a bit before coming downstairs at six-thirty, with the sun nearly up, to make breakfast and start the day.

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