The Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, above, was built by freed, formerly enslaved people. When their congregation became too big, they sold it to the local Unitarians, who at some point became Unitarian Universalists. We are a friendly, inclusive bunch, so it should come as no surprise that a recent service focused on friendship. Our minister, Reverend Marti Keller, requested writings on the topic, and the prompt resonated with me, perhaps because my best friend in Auburn is sad that I am leaving--and I am sad to leave her, too.
Never being one to follow directions, I paid no attention to the suggestions supplied with the prompt but simply wrote an honest poem about my friend, who is an amazing person and very different from me. I previously wrote about her and included a picture of us here. To my surprise, Reverend Marti featured my poem and had it put up on a special section of the Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship website. This meant a lot, since she is a writer herself. Also, having my poem read at the fellowship and posted on its site probably guarantees me one of my largest audiences ever!
And even though I was honest and not entirely flattering to my friend (or myself), she was very pleased that someone had written a poem about her (the initials in the title are inspired by Elgar's Enigma Variations). So that was all right, and I hope you will read and enjoy it.
Speaking of all right, which I will continue to spell that way (pet peeve), at the end of last post, I meant to share some of the music of Dad's students, which I enjoyed discovering while reading their letters, even though most of them are dead now. But I got sidetracked by my own work and forgot, so here's "Surrey," which I've been playing lately because it's upbeat and happy, as its uncredited arranger, Joe Clonick, seems to have been, and the dissonant chords in the transition remind me of Dad's music, and it's kind of a genius arrangement.
Joe Clonick sent Dad the record this piece is on, but I never heard it, and I just packed it away because I'm not sure the stereo works anymore, and I didn't feel I had time to try it. Luckily, someone else put this piece from the album up on YouTube. Without further ado, here's the link for your listening pleasure.
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