The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He (or she) depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful. – Benjamin Zander

Here in Tarboro there is this long-standing tradition of celebrating great music and the arts. Festivals such as 2024’s focus on Mozart and this year’s Brahms, Bach & Beethoven extravaganza. The “Downtown Live” 3rd-Thursday summer concert series. The New York Ballet. Art in the Garden. The North Carolina Symphony’s Winter Concert…

Then, the ultimate Garden Party, Tuesday evening’s annual North Carolina Symphony performance on the Town Common.

The evening was perfect. Great music, temperatures in the mid-70’s, a gentle breeze, hundreds of people spread out over the grass amongst the majestic ancient trees.

Sitting there in my lawn chair, looking up through the trees into the evening skies, listening to the magnificent anthem from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, holding Rebekah’s hand, good friends beside and around us, the spirit of all that is good about small towns permeating the air, the occasional chorus of cicadas joining in as if on cue, children dancing without a care in the world.

And I cannot help but contrast this peaceful scene with what is playing out in some of our communities around the USA. This, this Hallmark movie moment on the Tarboro Town Common, is the story we all love to experience and to tell.

But it does not happen in a vacuum, because we live in a nation populated by people from every background and from every place, rich and poor, religious and not-so-much, skilled and unskilled, multi-cultural and homogenous, citizens and residents and visitors, documented and undocumented, all playing their part – our part – in the rich tapestry of experience and economic interdependence.

Fact is, we cannot have one without the other; we cannot have this life without all of their lives. We cannot target segments of this vast and complex organism that is America with masks and weapons and detention and the destruction of family and expect the parts that suit our own ideology to remain unaffected.

America is at its best when we look at the world through the eyes of Lady Liberty and at the people who live here through the lens of live and let live. The America I love dances to the tune of mutual trust and a lot of tolerance – generosity of spirit, of forbearance and of the will to work things out.

I thought about all of this sitting in the balmy evening breeze, listening to the leaves rustle, the cicadas sing, the orchestra play and the people greet one another with the open arms of community. No entry fee, no I.D. check, no suspicious glances, just America at our best.

In love and in hope – DEREK