Happy days get even better

A leading figure in local music stopped me on the sidewalk back in 1979 and asked how on earth I found something to write about every week. Now, here it is 2016, with local entertainment and culture exploding, and a leading local resident stopped me on the sidewalk to bemoan that he had been downtown — on a weeknight no less — but had encountered far more good stuff than he could attend.

It’s true: Times have changed, and good things are popping up all around — especially downtown.

It’s fair to call these amazing developments a renaissance. Downtown, Intown, Beall’s Hill and the College Hill Corridor are especially buzzing. I have to guffaw every time I spot a letter to the editor of the doomsday genre. If these folks haven’t been getting out, they also haven’t been reading about what is going on either — in this newspaper or other local publications.

Destined for my refrigerator are recent columns by Josh Rogers of Newtown Macon and Jessica Walden of Rock Candy Tours spelling out loud and clear the good things that are happening here in abundance. The Ocmulgee National Monument has been getting great media attention lately. No one has even mentioned that the Douglass Theatre is one of only a handful of locations in the entire Southeast to present the National Theatre Live HD telecasts from London.

Thankfully, we have started blowing our horn a bit louder. Hooray! Certainly the announcement of Harriet Tubman going on the $20 bill is fantastic news for a city with a newly-opened facility bearing her name. It’s high time that such publications as Southern Living and Atlanta Magazine show up to help us tell the world. What’s next? How about a civil rights tour?

Weekend ahead

One of the big events this weekend is the final concert of the Macon Symphony Orchestra’s current season. Former Mercer University music major and current Miss America Betty Cantrell will be here and, befittingly, the Dean of Mercer’s Townsend School of Music will be conducting.

This also the weekend for the final broadcast in the Metropolitan Opera’s HD series. Strauss’ “Elektra” will remind us of the folly of revenge.

Coming in May is something unusual: The Morning Music Club, a group that usually meets — as its name suggests — well before noon, is presenting a concert featuring six organists plus a choral ensemble at Wesleyan College on May 12.

This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 5:30 PM with the headline "Happy days get even better."