Brother Ed

Brother Ed
Originally uploaded by jbgreer

That's a picture of Ed and I taken by my wife this past Saturday in our driveway.

Ed and I met during our undergraduate days at university. I say 'met', though I know that at first I had heard quite a bit about him (and maybe vice versa) before actually meeting him in person, so in some respects he was my first virtual friend before the current internet craze.

During those early college years, Ed and I hung around similar circles, linked by a few common friends and an even more common quest to obtain access to various computers and use even more computing time. There was a small cadre of what amounted to independent contractors on campus, and we had a sort of gentleman's agreement not to poach each others plum positions, but not to be too greedy, either. Suffice it to say that Ed and I enjoyed our fair share of work in nearly every lab of importance at the time. Later during graduate school, one of those labs would become our home-away-from-home - sometimes quite literally if the weather grew too hot for an apartment we shared a half a block from campus.

Now, at the time Ed and I belonged, perhaps unconsciously, to that long-haired hacker-ish tradition of guys who wore fairly impressive beards. [ I did have someone once describe my school id photo as looking as though "I had come down from the hills to axe-murder my momma." ] So, imagine if you will, two fairly ursine fellows walking the breadth of the city, my 1973 Buick LeSabre being an expensive beast to feed at the time, We ate together, lived together, worked together, in short, spent pretty much every waking moment of our grad school existence together. I count it as a treasured complement that Ed later admitted that he didn't think he could put up with anyone else for that long.

And, so, Ed and I would would walk into one of our old haunts and, inevitably, sooner or later someone would turn and ask, "Say.... are you two guys brothers?" We even had someone ask if we were twins, which I thought was too funny since, as many readers know, I am a twin... just not to Ed. At first we were shocked at the suggestion, then amused, then almost expectant.

Well, time does go by, and grad school (the first time) has long since past, and I got married and even took to shaving most years, usually in the Spring but recently in the Fall. Ed I have now known each other over 20 years, making him one of my longest tenured friends. I grew up with 3 sisters, and Ed has become over the years the closest thing I'll probably ever have to a brother, which is what I call him and he calls me, though he has some to spare.

This past Saturday Ed and I bailed on a planned geocaching trip due to rain and decided to run a few errands instead. We were standing in line waiting to checkout when the man in front of us picked up his bags, turned, and said, "Are you guys brothers?" I said no and grinned, turned to Ed and said, "That hasn't happened in a long time." It's the truth, but it isn't, you see. Yes we are.

Old blogs, time

Some folks know that I post in a few places. One of those is my first blog, run on a site that created several years ago to host files for some friends and I. I didn't post there too frequently, either, except for one brief period before and during the Camino Frances pilgrimage. I've decided for various reasons to shutdown that blog, but I also decided copy over some of those old posts if only to give me yet another reason to think about the Camino.

Imagine my surprise when I started copying the posts and realized that my first direct Camino post was exactly 4 years ago today.

2008 Oxford Sacred Harp Sing

2008 Oxford Sacred Harp Sing
Originally uploaded by jbgreer

This reason I had plenty to be happy about. For one thing my wife celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary on Saturday. We originally had more elaborate plans for an out-of-town getaway, but the Memphis weather (it snowed on Friday) and other factors convinced us to stay in town and simply enjoy the day together. On Sunday we got up early, especially if you adjust for that morning's daylight savings adjustment, and drove down to Oxford, MS, home to a well-organized Sacred Harp singings that has been going on for 28 years now. This was our second year to attend.

As for Sacred Harp: suffice it to say that it is a singing tradition that comes from early 19th century efforts to teach singing, but it appears to have continued as a way of preserving a tradition and providing an excuse for communities to gather together. The name Sacred Harp comes from one of the principal song books. There are other texts as well, but most (all?) share a common characteristic in that the music is engraved using a shape note system in which different relative pitches are assigned different shapes, hence the name.

The singing itself it difficult to describe. It is not refined chorale singing; it's more like a raw, powerful expression of joy, faith, and sometimes sorrow. I've read a description where a fellow said that he would travel 1000 miles to sing Sacred Harp but wouldn't cross the street to hear it. A review for
"Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp" quotes a reviewer at the Washington City Paper as saying, "Get enough people singing weird harmonies at the top of their voices and you start feeling a little sorry for the devil." I don't know how the Oxford sing compares to other smaller, rural singings, but I know that the energy in the air is palpable, and standing in the hollow square leading a song feels like home to me.