Sunday, May 17, 2026
Sunday Reflection: Beauty and Quiet
This week, on Friday morning, I was up early and walking in Memphis. My plane didn't leave until noon, and I had time and energy. I walked down South Main to the Central Station, where Amtrak rolls up once a day each way, going to Chicago in one direction and New Orleans in the other, and then back to the center of town.
The street were very quiet-- it was hard to believe it was a weekday in a fairly large city. I stopped to look at everything. The city reminded me a lot of Detroit-- the better art was on the street, not in the galleries, and it felt like a place that had found itself with plenty of space to spread out in.
The photo at the top, of the three black rectangles, I took at the other end of South Main, on a boarded-up building. I think that three posters had been up, then stripped off. But it struck me as being about three eras in the United States: Slavery, Jim Crow, and the present era.
The reason I was in Memphis at all was to see the new exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum about the story of Robert Shipp and Veda Ajamu, brother and sister I have been lucky to know.
How lucky am I, to have a morning like that?
