HAPPENINGS IN SELMA

I’m so proud of Selma. There is getting to be something to do there every weekend. Last weekend was the Battle of Selma. The weekend before that was the Pilgrimage and the Antique Sale. In the midst of all that, Senator John McCain made a visit. It doesn’t matter what our political leanings are. This was a major event for Selma, Gees Bend and Thomasville.

This past weekend, there were several interesting things that happened, but on a much quieter scale. The Freedom Foundation which recently moved to Selma from Colorado spearheaded a local production of the musical “Footloose”. It used local talent from all schools, ethnicities, and walks of life.

In conjunction with the play, the historic St. James Hotel had a special dinner package. They offered a 4 course dinner for $30.00 a person. I ate all four courses. The best thing was the sweet potato crème brule'.

The play was good, the food was special. The highlight of the weekend in my anticipation was the Sunday afternoon high tea at Sturdivant Hall. There was to be a tea tasting and wonderful refreshments as well as a lecture by a world traveled tea planter. I was so looking forward to it. Everything lived up to my expectations except the lecture. It was on the art of tea growing. It started off well enough. He told us about the history of tea, the kinds of tea and interesting facts about tea. That was where the interesting part left off. There is NOTHING more boring than a boring Englishman. I think the actual growing of tea takes less time than his explanation of it. There were lots of slides which were supposed to move along automatically. He would stop on a particular slide and give excruciating details about the picking of tea or the drying of tea. People all around me were dozing and slipping out. One lady graciously agreed to give up her seat near the front to a person who were hard of hearing. She had been one of the dozers.

This man had traveled around the world trying to figure out why production was down on a given plantation. I think one reason it might have been down was that pickers were going to sleep during one of his pep talks. He was enthusiastic in a droning sort of way about things like black tea being oxidized instead of fermented. It was like listening to an engineer wax lengthy (not eloquent) on some obscure part he was developing to increase the productivity of a widget. A lot of people’s eyes were glazing over (those who were not dozing) by the time he hit the 45 minute mark. He was particularly into a process called CTC – cut, tear and curl. I was about ready to do all three to him by the time he was through.

The experience reminded me of the old axiom we always use. If a teacher would just teach sex education like he teaches everything else, the students would loose all interest in sex. It was perfectly excruciating.

You may remember the 2 ½ hour lecture on herbs I wrote about a few months back. I could have listened to the herbalist all day. I felt like I DID listen to the tea planter all day. I decided that it being Sunday, I’d have rather listened to a fundamentalist preacher for the 150th time on the blood of Christ than 45 minutes of the tea planter. Oh, God.

The only things that kept me from bolting were the three other people I had fooled into coming with me and the memory of all those beautiful goodies in the dining room waiting to be consumed. It was like bible school. There is a reason they serve refreshments at the end.