It was a huge deal for us in this part of the state when the
university in Springfield decided to put a satellite campus in West Plains. The
campus grew.... and grew... and eventually a Civic Center was constructed to
provide a venue for the basketball team and also for University-sponsored performing
arts through the Missouri Arts Council and other organizers. And the University
began bringing performers of all kinds – Japanese drummers, Native American dancers,
blues bands, guitarists, opera singers, Mark Twain... and it has been very good.
Very good indeed.
In honor of St Patrick’s Day, the university scheduled a performance
of the Tullintrain West Pipes & Drums group in the performing arts theater for tomorrow.
How cool! Me and the kid are going.
A few days later the newspaper mentions that at the same
time the Civic Center Board scheduled the Thunder Slam Monster Truck event in the arena.
So at the same time the bagpipes will be piping and the
drums would be tattooing in the performance arts theater, monster trucks would
be crushing cars and hurling themselves through the air next door.
The University was not exactly happy – the roar of monster
trucks would certainly be heard in the theater – so the start time of the bagpipe
group was moved forward an hour. If we were so inclined, we could easily watch and
listen to the bagpipes and drums and then wander next door and watch monster
trucks.
Having just immersed myself in several books’ worth of the mental
meanderings of Andrew McCall Smith’s heroine Isabel Dalhousie, I found myself
thinking about the value of bagpipes vs monster trucks and why one sort of
entertainment would be far superior to the other, and the sort of people who
would attend the bagpipe performance (cultured, sophisticated, upper-class
types) would thus be far superior than those who would fill the arena to watch
monster trucks crush cars (rednecks).
And then I had to sit myself down and give myself a good
talking to. How dare I! What cultural snobbery!! The fact that watching monster
trucks crush cars is about the last thing in the world I would want to do doesn’t
make another person’s enjoyment of this spectacle any less valid. Get over yourself, woman!
3 comments:
I love the sound of bagpipes. There used to be a funeral director in our town that played the bagpipes. He told me once that he would often go to the lake in the summertime, get in a large inner tube float out onto the lake and practice. Somehow that just sounded so peaceful to me.
I have to admit though, I do enjoy watching monster trucks too.
You are very lucky to have a venue that can support entertainment of all kinds.
Good entry. We all need to stop and think about our snobbery. This can apply even to an old country girl like me.
Hello! I'm the band director of Tullintrain West. We had a great time performing and meeting everyone. What a great town and great concert venue.
We could here the monster trucks through the last part of the second half of our show, but it was fairly intermittent and not as loud as I thought it would be. In fact, I made a joke about it to the crowd and got a laugh.
Anyway, we loved West Plains and thought the civic center was very nice. Hope to see you all again!
Kevin
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