We’re in Columbia, SC, and staying at our usual place, the Riverside Inn. Talk about a throwback. Stay here and you’re instantly transported back to the motels you used to go to with your parents in the 50’s and 60’s. Straight shower rods — can you believe it?
Still, we like it. It’s modest (of course), clean, cheap, peaceful, AAA-approved and friendly. One of the clerks went to high school with some of my Callison cousins. You can walk to campus over the Broad River bridge or hike a trail along the river. I couldn’t find a vintage postcard of the Riverside and they don’t even appear to have a website, but here’s a nice one from Guy Clinch’s photostream of old motel cards on Flickr. It’s the Bon-Air motel in Allendale, SC, from about 1970, so same vintage.
We’re here to see our son John in the University of South Carolina opera’s production of Mr. Scrooge. It’s a small piece, about 35 minutes long. Composer Samuel O. Douglas is on the faculty at the USC School of Music. It was composed in the 1970’s and was featured on a national PBS broadcast at the time.
Opera at USC is presenting it with another 1-act of very different tone, Miss Havisham’s Wedding Day by Dominick Argento, as a Dickens double bill. John was great as Marley, who is of course a ghost. An interesting challenge to sing with linen winding sheets wrapped around your head. I had never thought of this before, but apparently the purpose of such things was to keep the jaw attached to the skull after burial. Have a nice day.
cleve callison’s blog 
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