andy wolverton

Hard to believe, isn't it, that Dylan turns 71 today... He's still busy, having just completed a tour of South and Central America. Last month, President Obama named Dylan as one of the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And, believe it or not, Dylan's self-titled debut album turned 50 this year.  



Happy Birthday, Bob! Hey, even Catwoman is a fan:

"People are Alike All Over"

Original air date 3/25/60

Written by Rod Serling, based on the short story “Brothers Beyond the Void” by Paul Fairman

“People Are Alike All Over” has never stood as one of the more memorable Twilight Zone episodes, mainly because it reminds us of something we’d rather forget. Sam Conrad (Roddy McDowall) and Warren Marcusson (Paul Comi) are seen the night before their launch to Mars, wondering what they’ll find, what type of beings will be there. We don’t know if Conrad and Marcusson are astronauts, independently wealthy explorers, or what, but it really doesn’t matter. They’re anxious and scared, at least Conrad is. Marcusson assures him that everything will work out fine, that people are basically the same wherever you go. Even Mars.  

SPOILERS

Conrad and Marcusson crash land on Mars, only to discover that Marcusson is dying and quickly. With his final ounce of optimism, Marcusson encourages Conrad to step outside the ship and discover the planet in his absence. Reluctantly, Conrad does and meets people - wouldn’t you know it - just like him. He’s treated well, even given his own well-stocked house to make him feel comfortable. (And looking at Susan Oliver doesn’t exactly hurt, either.) Of course we’ve been given a hint from the opening shot of Conrad and Marcusson standing behind a chain-link fence, that Mars will be a prison for them. And it is, for Conrad, in the form of a zoo. 

The last scene in “People Are Alike All Over” is both effective and pessimistic. It recalls the downer ending of “Elegy” as well, another episode that looks great but seems to bother audiences so much that, like “People Are Alike,” they never mention it as a TZ favorite. 

I began wondering why. Is it because we don’t care as much about these characters as we do, say, Burgess Meredith’s character in “Time Enough At Last”? That episode is also tragic, also pessimistic, but people remember it as one of their favorites. 

“People Are Alike All Over” brings up the debate “Are people inherently good or evil?” Marcusson, like a multitude of others, thinks that people (even Martians, in this case) are basically good and as such, will generally do the right thing. Conrad is skeptical, and for good reason. 

If people are basically good, why do we have verses like Romans 3:23 (“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”) and Genesis 8:21 (“...even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood...”). Apart from God’s grace, this is what happens. Man is fallen. God’s restraining grace keeps men and things from becoming as bad as they could be. People commit crimes every day but not all people commit crimes every day. God doesn’t allow that. We aren’t as bad as we could be. But we’re all fallen, imperfect people and all have the ability to do the wrong thing. 

Many people deny this. That’s their right and they’re entitled to it. But “People Are Alike All Over” does remind us of things we’d rather forget. Yes, people are alike all over. Without God’s restraining grace and mercy, that is a very pessimistic place to be. But with it, there is always hope.    

Blu-ray Extras:

Isolated score

Radio Drama

Nathacha Appanah's The Last Brother is a beautiful little novel that may have slipped under your reading radar last year, but if you find it, I highly recommend it. Put very simply, it's the story of two boys during World War II, but there's so much more to it. It's short (only 160 pages), but touching without sappiness. Seek it out. 



And I'm very pleased to see that Criterion is planning on a Blu-ray release of Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums (perhaps his greatest film) on August 15. Start saving your coins now.

Some of my fellow Christians will not understand why I recently read God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (NF 2006) by Christopher Hitchens. My intent here is not to tackle the author's statements and views, but to explain why I read the book.

First, many Christians live in isolation. Not only are they cut off from the culture, they’re cut off from everything that isn’t in line with their beliefs. There’s a part of that that I admire, at least the intent. I think those Christians are trying to follow 2 Corinthians 6:17, which tells believers to be separate from unbelievers. Yet we are also called to be salt and light (Matt. 5:13-14). Jesus did not avoid unbelievers; He spent significant time with them. Why? Because he cared about them. Do we care about people? Really care? If we do, if we are to engage the culture and the people in it, we have to listen to them and try to understand what they believe, whether we agree with it or not. 

Second, it’s too easy to say, “Well, Hitchens was an atheist, so I’m not going to read/listen to/discuss anything he has to say.” Do you even know what he says? Do you know anything about him? His background? His upbringing? Those things have a lot to do with who Hitchens was. (He passed away in 2011.) Can’t I at least listen to him without unloading on him? This is important: I don’t mean to listen to him in order to attack him, but to understand him. I still probably won’t agree with him, but I’ve listened to him and given him an opportunity to tell his story. This is also important: while he’s speaking, I’m not loading up ammunition against him. I’m hearing him speak. I’m listening. 

Would you not want him to do the same with you? 

Look at Jesus as he was hanging out with the tax collectors, the prostitutes, and others. He never unloaded on these people. He listened to them, talked with them and shared with them. He cared about them. Mark 2:17 says “he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’” Why would he call them if he didn’t care about them? He’s not trying to slam them; he’s trying to heal them. (Jesus does slam the scribes and Pharisees, because these guys were the religious authorities of the day, proudly thinking they knew better than Jesus and putting intense burdens and pressure on people to follow them, not Jesus.) 

Third, we’re not called to convert atheists. We’re not called to convert anybody. That’s the job of the Spirit. We’re called to follow Christ and let our light shine forth. I can’t save anybody. You can’t either. If we could, why would we need Christ?   

I think it’s important for Christians to read and listen to opposing viewpoints. I think it strengthens rather than weakens our faith. And I think it helps us engage with those who do not believe the same things we do. Do I disagree with everything Hitchens says? No. He makes some good points, some that I believe many Christians would agree with. (For instance: Yes, people of many different faiths have done awful things in the name of religion.) But he also makes a lot of statements that I do not agree with. Yet I have heard his side of the story. I have listened to him. And I am practicing discernment, examining what Hitchens says with God’s word. 

Do I want a steady diet of books like God is Not Great? No. And don’t get me wrong, I do not consider myself Super Christian for having read the book. And I’m not saying every Christian should read Hitchens. But we should know something of what we’re talking about when we talk with unbelievers. 

Listening. Understanding. Discerning.   

I'm not going to name the book or the author, but if you keep up with the books I read each month (and that would be both of you reading this blog), you'll be able to figure out which book I'm talking about, a book I was highly disappointed with this week. 

There are two things that I cannot tolerate in reading fiction. One is an author that is so in love with his or her voice that he/she ignores everything else. (Thankfully that either doesn't happen too often or I don't pick up books by those authors to begin with.) If you're going to be in love with something, be in love with language. Give me something beautiful. (It doesn't have to be sticky-sweet beautiful, it can be ugly beautiful, horrendous beautiful, messed-up beautiful. Just beautiful.) Be in love with storytelling. You don't even have to be in love with your characters, but you should take some level of delight in story and/or the language that makes up the story.

The other is a violation of the simple rule of "Something has to happen."  

By "Something has to happen," I don't mean bodies have to be flying out the window every five pages or something combustible has to lift people into the sky every chapter. But SOMETHING has to happen, some type of conflict, either inner or actual. What people call "navel gazing" is not conflict. It's reflection that doesn't go anywhere. Is that present in a lot of literary fiction? I think so. SF writer Nancy Kress sums it up nicely when she says "Stuff costs." If there's a conflict (I should say when there's a conflict), somebody's going to have to pay. Somebody's gonna suffer. Something's at stake. Stuff costs. If it doesn't, there's probably no conflict and if there's no conflict, this reader's gonna put that book down and pick up something else.   

One of the books I finished this week was less than 300 pages long but it felt like 500. Not only did nothing happen, there wasn't even a hint that anything was going to happen until a good 50 or so pages had gone by. Why I kept reading, I don't know, but I did. In all fairness, something eventually did happen, but the story never engaged me. At that point it was too late. The damage was done. 

Something has to happen. It can be large-scale, small-scale, internal, external, global, interplanetary, microscopic, subterranean, aquatic, anything. But something has to happen. 

Why is that so hard for writers to understand?

"Long Live Walter Jameson"

Original air date 3/18/60

Written by Charles Beaumont

To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it.

- Wendell Berry

“Long Live Walter Jameson” is one of the handful of Twilight Zone episodes that everyone talks about, and for good reason. The episode combines questions of life, mortality, dying, fantasy and reality with an ingenious concept and an excellent visual story. The special effects used here in 1960 were very effective for the time (especially for television) and still look respectable over 50 years later. 

SPOILERS

Walter Jameson (Kevin McCarthy) is a college history professor who talks about history with such confidence and authority, you’d swear he was present for most of it. Jameson’s fellow faculty member, Sam Kittridge (Edgar Stehli), begins to suspect that Jameson has not come about his historical knowledge through traditional means. To complicate things further, Jameson plans to marry Kittridge’s daughter Susanna (Dody Heath). Sam Kittridge is, to put it mildly, opposed to the plan. Jameson is too old for Susanna, Sam thinks. He has no idea....  

Jameson reluctantly reveals his secret to Sam: over 2,000 years ago, Jameson paid an enormous amount of money to an alchemist, who claimed the ability to grant Jameson the gift of immortality. And it worked. Not only has Jameson lived a multitude of lives, he’s also married many women and produced scores of children, all of whom he’s watched grow old and die while he has not changed.

Now you could easily nit-pick the plot holes in “Long Live Walter Jameson,” stating that “Really? He never had an accident in 2,000 years?” or “You can’t tell me that Kittridge is the first person to figure out Jameson’s secret,” or “Why didn’t one of his former wives or one of his kids track him down before now?” While you can certainly bring up those questions, the strength of the episode whispers that they ultimately aren’t important. Charles Beaumont’s story, the actors, and the director Anton Leader all take the material so seriously and treat it with such respect that we want to believe that Jameson really has lived for two millennia. 

All of this is quite interesting and makes for a compelling tale, but the theological implications of the episode elevate it so something extraordinary. Jameson tells Kittridge that immortality is by and large filled with long stretches of boredom. Friends, wives, children come and go, but what is there new under the sun? 

People talk of death as being a natural part of life, but it is not; we’ve only come to accept it as such. We see death entering the world in Genesis, and as we see it there, we also see that it was not a natural act, but rather the result of Adam’s fall. We’ve come to, if not accept it, at least acknowledge that death is going to happen to us all. That sense of finality makes it precious, or, as Wendell Berry puts it, miraculous. 

Jameson recognizes that his life may be precious and even miraculous, but its unending nature makes it excruciatingly dull. We weren’t meant for this type of eternity. To remove the inevitability of life also removes any sense of urgency. We often hear people ask questions like, “What would you do if you knew you only had ____ years of life left?” We read books with titles like 1,000 Places to Visit Before You Die, we make “bucket lists,” etc. You get the idea. 

We know time is going to run out. Jameson knows it, too, but when he’s finally faced with it, there’s a strange sense of relief in Jameson’s character. There’s probably some regret as well.      

To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it.

In a sense, Jameson has given up. He keeps doing the same things over and over. He’s not necessarily a womanizer (although he could be); maybe he just needs people. But other than teaching, we see no evidence that he’s done anything to help or instruct people with his 2,000 years of knowledge. He’s really just running in circles. 

We can do the same thing. We don’t even need 2,000 years to do it. You can waste a lot of time in a normal lifetime. (I know I have.) But when you recognize that life is a miracle, as Berry says, you tend to want to do something with the time you’ve been given. That something isn’t necessarily to build up your own name, leaving a legacy for yourself, but to do something for other people. The opposite of giving up on life is to do something with it. And even though we don’t have the years of a Walter Jameson (unless you’ve met that same alchemist), we do have a few years. 

So what do we do with them?  

Blu-ray Extras:

Commentaries by Kevin McCarthy and Gary Gerani

Isolated score

Radio Drama featuring Lou Diamond Phillips

The DC Comics reboot of Animal Man will not be for everybody. When the first single issue came out last year as one of the "New 52!", I bought a copy, thinking "It looks just weird enough for me." And it is. And it is much more.



Animal Man began life in 1965 with a DC comic called Strange Adventures. Now, nearly 50 years later, DC has taken the character through the latest of many incarnations and placed him in the hands of writer Jeff Lemire and artist Travel Foreman. The result is, well... totally messed up. 

MILD SPOILERS

Buddy Baker is a superhero/actor/animal rights activist. (I know, right now you think you know where this is going, don't you? All I had to say was "animal rights activist" and your mind jumps to a certain way of thinking. Am I right? Bear with me, okay?) Buddy's superpower is the ability to connect with and assume the powers and attributes of all kinds of animals and use those powers and attributes to fight crime. Only he's older now, with a wife and family who really want him to spend more time on the actor/animal rights activist side of the equation and less time in spandex.



One night, as Buddy helps intervene in a hostage situation at a local hospital, he finds that something's happened to him. And something has happened to his young daughter as well. She's developing her own superpowers, the realization of which becomes frighteningly clear at the end of the first issue.

This ending really creeped me out. But compared to what happens next, it's like watching Sesame Street. (No offense to Sesame Street fans intended.) Things get very dark and very messed up. 

Now here's a question I get asked from time to time. "How can you, as a Christian, read this stuff?" 

Because there's something in this book that one of my favorite writers (who is also a Christian) named David Dark likes to call "apocalyptic." Dark doesn't intend for that word to be associated with the End Times or final judgment or fire and brimstone, but rather as a means of revealing something that we hadn't thought of before, something that's true about the world that, up until that point, we hadn't seen or recognized. Apocalyptic things hit you and hit you hard. And you're never quite the same. 

In this case, Buddy is being led by his daughter into another dimension called The Red. What makes this story line apocalyptic and powerful is the force and nature of evil represented. There are beings in The Red that are being kept at bay, just barely. They're in danger of being let loose and Buddy and his daughter have something to do with that. We're not sure if their actions are going to make things better or disastrous. As a Christian, I have a strong sense of the creation/fall/redemption aspect of this story. It's powerful and compelling. Now I don't know if this is what Lemire and Foreman are intending, but that creation/fall/redemption aspect is clearly there. There's also the sense of "There's something bigger than you out there. Let me show you." It's the same thing that Gandalf shows to Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring, the same thing Obi-Wan shows to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. After such encounters, the lives of those guys are never the same.

It's apocalyptic.  

There are other elements of the book that also appeal to me: the struggle with identity, family dynamics, and perhaps most interesting is the question - what does a parent do when he discovers that one of his children is more talented than he is? 

This is a dark, dark book. It's violent. Again, "How can you, as a Christian, read this stuff?"

We live in a dark, violent world. That's nothing to celebrate, but it's true. Take a look around. Darkness and violence are also in your Bible and mine. Sometimes we need to see that darkness in order to love and embrace the light. You can't understand your need of grace without a good look at how ugly life is without it. 

And I'm getting this from a comic book? 

Yeah. And not just comic books. Movies. Books. Plays. TV. Painting. All the arts.

Sometimes what you find might shake you up. But it might also open doors to something bigger than you could ever imagine.
 

We’re already four days into May and I’m just posting my Books Read from April. Compared to previous months, I didn't read that much in April. That's due to two things: a pretty intense class that started in April and the mammoth undertaking that was The Brothers Karamazov. (I do not regret the second and am enduring the first.)

APRIL

Airships: Stories (1978) - Barry Hannah 

What a wonderful, totally Southern writer whom I’m embarrassed to have not read before now. Hannah can do it all: comedy, drama, farce, and more, all with a touch of the South that rings 100% true. More Hannah, please.  

The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years (NF 2011) - Greil Marcus 

I was never a huge Doors fan and while this book doesn’t convert me, it does increase (I can’t say “ignites,” “stokes,” or any other similar term, all of which make me think of “fire,” as in “Light My Fire”) my interest in the band. Marcus is a wonderful writer, sometimes a little too literary and “out there” for me, but his style fits the subject matter. While the book is often more about the Jim Morrison mystique than the music, The Doors is still an interesting read.

Stay Awake: Stories (2012) - Dan Chaon

I was absolutely knocked out by Chaon’s Await Your Reply, hands-down my favorite novel from 2009, so I was eagerly awaiting the publication of this short story collection. The opener, “The Bees,” is a powerhouse of a story. Is it a revenge story, a ghost story, or both? Other stories are equally powerful, but the themes of dysfunctional families began to wear on me after awhile. Perhaps my problem was in not reading other stories in between these. They’re excellent, but their devastating effect will likely pummel you into the ground.

A Great and Terrible Beauty (YA 2003) - Libba Bray 

Don't be deceived by the cover; it's not what you think. Regardless, I’ll read anything Bray writes. After reading Going Bovine, one of my favorite YA books of the past several years, I decided Bray was worth my attention in any genre, even a tale of the goings-on at a Victorian girls’-school. 

Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books (NF 2011) - Tony Reinke 

Not only an excellent book, but also a pleasure to read. I spent several blog posts on this one, starting here.  

Battling Unbelief: Defeating Sin with Superior Pleasure (NF 2007) - John Piper 

I wish I'd known this was part of a larger work called Future Grace, which is undoubtedly more comprehensive. Still, it's Piper, and Piper hasn't disappointed me yet.

The Brothers Karamazov (1880) - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

What can you say? I’ll be thinking about this one for the rest of my life.  

The Modern Scholar: The Giants of Russian Literature (NF 2006) - Lisa Knapp 

Focusing on Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Turgenev, this audio-lecture gives a good overview of the general themes of the author’s works, but bogs down with too narrow a focus on just one or two specific works from each author. The Modern Scholar audiobooks should be thought of as a good introduction to whatever subject they’re attempting to cover. Comprehensive, they’re not, but that’s okay. I was in the mood to listen to 7 discs, not 37.

Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970 (NF 2011) - David Browne 

Although I was only 8 in 1970, I have fond memories of these artists and their music. When you're young, you aren't really concerned about the behind-the-scenes ugliness, you just care about the music and the artists themselves. You want it to keep going, but as you grow older, you recognize it won't. Listening to Browne's account is a bittersweet and oddly satisfying experience.

I think what’s so sad (and possibly ironic) is that in many cases, audiences felt that these artists (and certainly others) understood their anxieties and struggles and that they were creating music specifically for them. Yet in the case of all the groups (James Taylor the obvious exception), what eventually brought them all down, at least to some degree, was ego and the inability to resolve their differences (which, when it boils down to it, is the same as ego). While Taylor was and still is a solo act, he’s had his share of troubles as well. And although the music he makes now seems far removed from his early works, he’s still standing. 

Science Dog, Volume I (GN 2011) - Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker 

I really wanted to like Science Dog, but the graphic novel suffers from almost no character development, a cardboard villain, and a story that Kirkman must have literally thrown together from bits of time travel stories we've seen over and over. The artwork is fun for awhile, but even that grew old fast. A big disappointment.

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child (NF 2009) - Donalyn Miller

You’re either on board with Miller’s philosophy of independent reading in school classrooms or you aren’t. Whichever side of the issue you choose will determine what you’ll get out of the book. Miller gives lots of good evidence based on studies and test scores as well as plenty from her own experiences as a sixth-grade reading teacher. If you’re even slightly interested in reading, read The Book Whisperer. 

That's it for April. Tell me what you read.

"A World of Difference"

Original air date 3/11/60

Written by Richard Matheson

Even casual fans of The Twilight Zone know that many of its episodes fall into the “Who am I?” category. “A World of Difference,” while not the flashiest of the “Who am I?” subgenre, is one of the best, thanks to many factors, some of which we’ll explore now.

First, the story. Businessman Arthur Curtis (Howard Duff) is in his office, going about his daily routine, trying to make a phone call when some yells, “Cut!” Curtis turns to see that one of the walls in his office has disappeared, replaced by movie cameras, stage lights, a director, and several pissed-off crew members. It seems everyone’s angry not at Arthur Curtis, but Jerry Raigan, the actor playing Curtis. Curtis insists that he’s really Curtis, and we have our premise.  

 

Richard Matheson’s story is a perfect fit for a TZ episode: a normal, everyday man in an unexplainable situation looking for answers and a return to normalcy. Explorations of identity were common themes for Matheson, Serling and the times themselves. Firmly in the Cold War era, “A World of Difference” takes a man who is clearly not comfortable where he finds himself. Like Arthur Curtis, many Americans found themselves coming out of a post-WWII fog only to discover they’re in the midst of a Cold War world with little or no idea who we were as a country or what we were supposed to do or believe. WWII was over, prosperity had returned and everything seemed fine. Then you’ve got this cloud of doubt and doom hanging over you, not knowing where it came from. 

Who am I? Who are we? What just happened?

Duff (who worked in TV, film, radio and on stage) makes the role work, portraying a businessman who has made a good living with a strong sense of confidence that we see rapidly eroding as he makes his way through an unfamiliar world. His level-headed (although questioning and confused) manner begins to show cracks, but he’s determined to get to the bottom of this, despite all the evidence pointing to the fact that he’s not who he says (or thinks) he is. 

Jerry Raigan’s world is far more cynical and uncaring than that of Arthur Curtis. Raigan’s wife Nora (Eileen Ryan), a Queen B---- looking for a divorce, is a sharp dose of how cruel Raigan’s world really is. And Curtis gathers even more evidence that he (as Raigan) is not quite the most upstanding of men. Raigan is a drunk, a contract-breaker and a movie star who’s single-handedly brought about his own downfall. All of these things are abhorrent to Arthur Curtis. 

Matheson and Serling show us that we can easily find ourselves in a world we are not prepared for. You can draw lots of conclusions and parallels here, mentioning people who are ignorant of the culture around them, people who live in the past, in their own little worlds, and more. I tend to think of Christians who isolate themselves from the world, ignoring everything in it that is not “Christian,” and suddenly are placed in the midst of harsh realities, not truly understanding the nature of sin, a fallen world or the aspects of grace and redemption beyond their application on a personal level. 

I talked a few days ago about how The Seventh Seal is a great film that transcends it’s time to remain significant beyond the Cold War years that produced it. “A World of Difference” is not a great episode, but it is a good one, and like most of the good (and often great) Twilight Zone episodes, it speaks to us on a basic human level regardless of the era we live in.    

 

Blu-ray Extras:

Commentary by director Ted Post

Isolated score

I have lived in two worlds. 

More than half of my friends on Facebook know me only from the band/teaching world. Probably less than half know me only from the library world. So when I offer my congratulations to my former teacher Dr. Thomas V. Fraschillo on his retirement, many of you will have no idea who I'm talking about. Dr. Fraschillo retires this year from The University of Southern Mississippi as Director of Bands, a position he has held for over 25 years. He's the one responsible for me earning my Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Conducting. 

That's right. I've got a doctorate. Most of you don't know about it because I rarely talk about it. But I will. In a minute.

I first met Dr. Fraschillo when I was a high school trumpet player in the Mississippi Lions All-State Band. Fraschillo was the director of the Lions Band, someone I lived in total fear of. We all did. He was also, at the time (1979), the band director at Meridian High School, one of the finest high school band programs in the South and possibly in the country. To say the least, Dr. Fraschillo was insistent and demanding, but his commitment to excellence was unparalleled.

I could tell plenty of Fraschillo stories, but I'll only relate one from those Lions Band days. If you were in the Lions Band, you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, well.... A big part of the Lions Band involves marching in the competition at the Lions International parade in whichever city (Montreal my first year, Chicago the second) the convention is being held. The Mississippi Lions All-State Band was always a strong contender and often won the parade. And we practiced like we expected to win. We spent HOURS every day in the punishing heat of the Mississippi Delta, marching and sweating and standing at attention until we just didn't think we had anything (including our next breath) left. Fraschillo would march around and get that megaphone of his in someone's face and yell, "Subjugate! Subjugate! I know it's hot. I know you're tired. But you've got to subjugate those things - they're not important. We've got to do it again until we get it right. Subjugate!"

Well, heck, we were high school kids; what did we know? Most of us had never even heard the word subjugate before, much less knew what it meant, so we didn't know what the heck he was asking us to do. Either somebody looked it up during a break or asked one of the staff members what the word meant. (We didn't have Google back then, you know.) So someone discovered that it meant:

sub·ju·gat·e - To bring under domination or control, esp. by conquest

By conquest was right. Fraschillo was determined to conquer any weakness caused by tired muscles, the heat, or anything else. It was all about giving it your best and it didn't matter that it was 101 degrees, it didn't matter that your blisters had blisters, it didn't matter that your lips were blown and you had to play "South Rampart Street Parade" AGAIN as we marched around the stadium, careful to keep that interval between you and the people to the front, back, left and right from opening up more than a centimeter. 

Lots of kids thought it was hell. And it was. But there was something about it I loved. I knew that Fraschillo was either (1) crazy or (2) totally unlike anyone I'd ever met in trying to achieve a goal. He was driven, determined, tenacious. He was not going to give up and he wasn't going to allow you to, either. 

I'd never experienced that before. 

So fourteen years later in 1993, when I was completing my Masters in Music Education at Southern Mississippi over two summers, Dr. Fraschillo called me into his office. I'd been teaching for eight years and had spoken to him on occasion during those summer sessions, but I didn't really know him that well.

He told me that USM was going to start offering a new degree, a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting starting in the fall of 1994 and he wanted me to be one of two students to begin studies in that program. I was stunned, honored, and overwhelmed. I really didn't think he even knew who I was, even though I'd taught in the Meridian Schools (several years after he had left Meridian to become Director of Bands at USM). I thought about it, prayed about it and jumped at it.

Working on that DMA from 1994-1996 was some of the hardest work I've ever done in my life. I never would've thought I could have rehearsed, conducted and performed Karel Husa's Music for Prague 1968, never would've thought I could have written a dissertation or defended it. But I did all of that. And I owe that to Dr. F. (And, of course, to Cindy, who I met at USM during that time.)

I'm not sure what he saw in me - maybe from those Lions Band days, maybe from my time teaching in Meridian, I don't know - but he saw something and I'm grateful that he did. 

At first, I didn't want to go to this weekend's celebration. I knew I'd have to answer a lot of questions about why I'm not using my degree, why I'm not a band director, but a librarian. Maybe I didn't want to answer those questions. But then I wished I'd gone - screw the questions. I should've gone to honor Dr. F. and I apologize, Dr. F., for not being there.  

The reason I'm no longer a band director, the reason I'm not using my doctorate is that God had other plans for me. I'm glad I'm in the library world now, but I do not regret the years I spent in the band world and I do not regret my time at USM and I do not regret getting my doctorate. I guess a part of me was afraid that Dr. F. would be disappointed that I'm no longer in the band world, that I'm no longer using my degree. But I want him to know that he's given me something that transcends the band world, something that goes beyond degrees and dissertations and recitals and all the rest. He's given me a commitment to excellence, a striving for the absolute best, a drive that I still have. He had a lot to do with that and I thank him for it. And, lest I forget the real purpose of this post, I want to thank you, Dr. Fraschillo, for all you have meant to me and thousands of others who have studied and learned under your instruction. You will be missed. Thank you for everything.