I like key chains from travel so I can be reminded of important stuff. My current key chain is a melting clock from the Salvador Dali museum in Barcelona. From Dali’s painting “The Persistence of Memory,” those clocks represent how fast time goes if we are not careful. Mr. Phillips, my Albany Junior College/Darton College art teacher, really helped me understand the art around us and the concept of form fitting function. I saw him at the Shoe Station store in Albany days before that trip to Europe (I had to get some Rockports for those cobblestone cities,) and told him was I going to see the museums of Western Europe from north to south. He told me to really enjoy Amsterdam.
Mr. Phillips was right about form and function. If it serves no real purpose, get rid of it. An ugly Volvo is better in a crash than a pretty Pontiac is—I have had six Volvos since his class and my view of public policy reflect this logic.
I have a key chain from Lisbon, Portugal, because people from the Cape Verde Island were nice to me there and would speak initially to me in their native tongue. Yesterday, my sister gave me a bowl and key chain from South Africa, and I won’t “front” like I have been there. I almost went to Northern African to see the pyramids and chill in Casablanca and Fez but I knew some loud month was going to slam America or the office of the President and it would have been on and popping. To be honest, I can beat an egg but that would have be one whupping I would have to take.
When I am standing in the Dairy Queen in south Georgia and thinking about the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days, I look at my key chain and remember that I can live anywhere in this great nation and chill almost anywhere in is world. If people are constantly “tripping” in your current location, you should leave because time is melting away and life is too short to argue with fools. If you don’t get this notion, you might be the fool people are leaving.
On a political blog, this discussion is important because southerners (Black, White, Red And Brown) who enjoy “fussing” are inadvertently limiting our regions economic growth. If division and confusion are synonymous with your area, more peaceful regions are more attractive to new industry. Think about it; who wants to put a multi-million dollar operation in a place that is still fighting a war that was over 140 years ago. The same can be said about young men who look like me who are mad at the world for spinning.
Project Logic Ga 
I didn’t know you knew Cleon Phillips. He was my Mom’s advisor when she was an art student at AJC many moons ago, and he rented my wife and I our first apartment after we got married. It’s a small world.
Of course, Phillips doesn’t remember me personally like most long time teachers and professors. That is the reason my father referred to his former ag students as “good brother” and my mom calls her former second graders “sweetie.”
On the first day of art class, Phillips walks in and says, “What is art?” This prep girl from Deerfield in her Black Watch skirt says, “Art is something unique” and Phillips promptly says, “Is a pile of dead babies art because that is unique.” Oh boy, it is about to be on…this is not high school. Phillips and Dr. McNeil were the gold standard.
Phillips told us that he did not wear shoes for years at FSU in the 60s and actually graduated barefoot. In a practical move, he held up a spool of 100 slides on the first day and said that the spool was 75% of the final exam and if you could identify famous art walking into an office for an interview or the future in-laws house, you would can a great impression. I have been doing that move every since and add the “I saw that on a trip to Europe…” The ladies dig renaissance dudes so thanks juco but my friends at ASU in Introduction to Art were actually painting stuff and messing with clay—hence the term “Teach the test.” The same can be said about people with all these degree butchering English.
I know Dr. McNeil too. She actually taught English to damn near every member of my family. When I took her English 101, she could tell me what my mother’s term paper was from 5-10 years before…but more impressively, she could tell me what my father did his on 20 years before. She actually does seem to remember her students.
As for your story about Cleon, I don’t doubt it. He warped my mothers mind in unique ways, and she brought it home to me. What he said about art is dead on though. If you can identify artwork, people get impressed quickly. And, as you’ve already said it, the chicks dig it 🙂
I won’t say here publicly what Dr. McNeil said about sex; oh, I can because only four people in the free world reads this blog. McNeil (I think she later got a new name) walked into class and a guy says “We don’t want to talk about English today; we want to talk about sex.” So, McNeil says, “Okay, let’s do that. Who here hasn’t had sex yet.” A few girls put their hands up and McNeil say, “If you are waiting and anticipating a great experience, I have bad news for you…it won’t be as great as you are imagining.”
Doc said, “When I go to Red Lobster, I always get cheesecake to take home and I think about how good it’s going to be but when I actually eat the desert it can’t meet what I imagined. It’s just cheesecake.”
Now, Colonel Chitty, who recently passed, brought that pentagon experience into pol sci class. I thought about him this time last year during the Rev. Wright/Obama drama. Chitty said the Japanese made excellent cars and that his daughter drives them but he fought those slant-eyed devils so he would never own one.
Of course, we had our quick meeting in the hall to decide if that was kosher. We figured that Chitty gets a pass because he was in combat against the Army of the Rising Sun; he earned the right to say whatever he wanted included what he might have said about us when there were no Blacks in class. Hey, what did Albany State professor say when no Whites were in class (of course, I will never say.)
So, Rev. Wright as an old Marine gets some leeway because we can only imagine what he when through. It wasn’t cheesecake.
I can completely imagine Dr. McNeil saying just such a thing. She always would lay things out in interesting ways 😉
Colonel Chitty, from what I understand, was a unique individual to save the least. A friend of mine goes to Albany Bible Church, which was founded by Col. Chitty I believe (or founded on his ideas). There’s some “unusual” ideas I’ve heard over the years. 😉