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| A church in Greensboro, Georgia. Photo by me, March 2026. |
Above is the handsome 19th century Presbyterian church on Main Street in downtown Greensboro, Georgia. Last week I admired it from the curb. The proportions of it were perfect and I could not stop looking at it. It is inevitable with me when I admire an old building I think of the quality of the construction and architecture. I wonder why construction and architecture became lazy and cheap and we stopped building quality buildings. I am not alone in this thinking, nor is it novel, plenty of others agree with me. Even churches, which should be inspirational, are today mostly built like aluminum metal shacks, more interested in quantity of square footage and parking spaces over quality. It is not as though constructing a building was any easier in the 1800s than compared to today. I suspect one of the reasons for this degradation in architecture is speed and the desire to have everything faster despite it not being better. Clothing and music are the same too.
Back to my moment in the sun on a weekday afternoon in the grass in Greensboro. What I remember most about that moment was the peacefulness. It was not quiet as Greensboro hummed along beside me on the street, but it was the absence of loud intrusive noise. There were no explosive car mufflers, thumping bass stereos pumping out aural garbage (I am still waiting for a car to pass blasting Mozart or Bach at extreme levels) and there was no cell phone conversation pollution. The streets were not empty, it was a nice day and pedestrians walked and cars and trucks rolled by, but all of the ugly, antisocial modern noise was absent. It was so absent that I noticed it.
Perhaps it was a rare moment and
Greensboro, founded in the 1780s, is plagued like every other place
with rude noises, but as someone sensitive to noise, it was like time
travel to more quiet and civil times. My age is showing, I suppose, I
had the same feeling about the absence of noise standing on a dirt
road in Oglethorpe County near Smithonia several weeks ago. In that
moment on the dirt road, all I heard was the wind in the trees and
that has been my favorite moment of this year so far.
...................................
Yesterday there were snow flurries at
home. It has been awhile to see flurries flying in March, the
transitional month of winter to spring prone to wild and
temperamental swings. It was nice.
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| The cast of the Czech movie Waves. |
I watched the 2024 Czech movie Waves last night. It was stylish, smart and entertaining and in stark contrast to most every movie nominated at last weekend's Oscars. Modern American movies are not appealing. They are as degraded by speed, laziness and ugly noise as architecture, music and clothing. This is the era of the absence of taste and civility. I realize I am missing an American culture that no longer exists or it does and I do not see it represented.
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