John Coltrane lived his first 17 years of life in High Point, right through High School (he went to William Penn High, the black high school which was closed when the schools were integrated in the late 60s). His father ran a dry cleaning shop in High Point. What precipitated Coltrane moving to Philadelphia was a couple of things: 1) he wanted to further his musical education (having grown up playing the sax and the clarinet, he favored reed instruments);... Read more

High Point is the home town of yours truly, but also of the most famous sax man of all time— John Coltrane. This post and the next will be about him…… It took a lot of arm twisting, but eventually we got High Point to recognize they needed to recognize Coltrane. Here’s two solid citizens of that N.C. town…. Here is his home on Underhill St. which I gather will soon become a city museum. There is still a lady... Read more

There are lots of different kinds of fights that go on in life— mental fights, emotional fights, spiritual battles, family fights, fighting against one’s upbringing or shortcomings, and even when we are talking fights that are physical, like my friend who is currently battling cancer, it doesn’t necessarily involve violence. I’m no fan of violence as a way to solve human problems, indeed I think its unChristian. So, as you might imagine, I’m not much a fan of watching boxers... Read more

Ah the divine swine! While in Greensboro to do lectures at my former doctoral student’s college, Greensboro College (a UMC school, on which see the poster below), we managed to squeeze in some local ‘cue, as it’s called locally. We went to two famous barbecue joints— one in Greensboro, and one in Durham. They are Bullocks (Durham) and Stamey’s (Greensboro) and they both serve eastern N.C. style barbecue, which means hickory smoked chopped pork, with vinegar sauce and pepper (and... Read more

West Market St. UMC, like many churches built near the end of the 19th century has an interesting, rather Victorian structure, as you will now see. The outside has both a bell tower, and and a rounded portion to the right of the front entrance. Here’s some shots of the central portion of the sanctuary. What makes this sanctuary distinctive is that it has an antechamber to the left of the sanctuary that can either be included in, or excluded... Read more

In the next few posts, I’ll be sharing some of my church adventures from the events I did this Fall. I’ll start with West Market St. UMC in Greensboro N.C. where my Mom first joined the Methodist Church. This church has remarkable stained glass windows, which were bought at the Columbus exhibition in Chicago by a representative of the church near the turn of the 20th century. The church itself was built in 1890. This first window is of the... Read more

My girls loved this whiny song and singer. I think this parody is better 🙂 Read more

Certainly one of the most remarkable phenomena in all of entertainment is the continued worldwide popularity of the James Bond films, despite running through numerous actors, plots, scenarios, degrees of fidelity to the original Ian Fleming novels (which I read as a teenager). And most recently of course, we now have a man, Daniel Craig, who not only looks the part more than almost all of his predecessors (some still prefer Sean Connery), but also has brought a raw, fresh,... Read more

My Mom, who lives in her home town of Wilmington N.C. often sends me newspaper clippings, and sometimes the material is blog worthy, this being such a time. Here is a picture of a man who was baptized in the Fifth Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in Wilmington in November of 1880. The man’s name was Charles Jones Soong. This story was told because two weeks ago in that same church his great grandson, Michael Feng, a NY city financial adviser,... Read more

I’ve been saving the best part for last, namely the $46 million dollar score board, which is of course larger than any other one on the planet. By comparison, the old Texas stadium where the Cowboys used to play only cost a mere $45 million to build. Here are two shots to give you some sense of the size of the scoreboard. Let’s just hope that little thing never falls on the field when anyone is below. Among the many... Read more