High School Basketball

It’s time to hit the local high school gymnasium if you’re going to catch any of the local action this season. One great thing about high school basketball is that no one besides the coach and the referee is getting paid a dime to play a game. Those two words, “play” and “game,” are what sports is all about, and high school basketball flings those words into raucous, fast-paced action. The entertainment won’t kick a hole in your pocket — you can watch the girls’ games and the boys’ games, varsity and j.v., for less than the price of a movie ticket — and you’re pretty much guaranteed an evening of great people-watching.

Bob Jones University Art Museum

Herein lies one of our wonderful regional secrets. Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., is famous these days — or infamous, depending on your perspective — for its strict code of student dress and for supposedly taking the fun out of fundamentalist. What most people don’t know is that BJU hosts a fine collection of European religious art running from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. The non-descript yellowish-brick building conceals a gem of a museum, a labyrinth of lush galleries with piped-in classical music, quiet rooms, including a rebuilt Gothic chapel, where visitors may idle away an afternoon soaking up works by the masters. Guided tours are available for groups. The cost is nominal, the experience dazzling. Call 1.864.242.5100 for details.

Beethoven’s Piano Works

I’m completely the amateur when it comes to classical music. Mostly I follow my ear and listen for what pleases me. For the last few days I have listened to an old phonographic collection of Beethoven’s piano music: the sonatas, the Choral Fantasy, the concertos. The music seems to me to fit my own seasonal melancholy and the mood of winter itself, intensity twined with clarity. Compared to the grinding, screeching music of our times, there is, I think, something especially lovely about musical composition that is by turns delicate, stately, and refined. Like Bach, Mozart, and a dozen other composers, Beethoven sets us free to explore our interior selves even while taking us out of ourselves, beyond our selves.

What I’m Going To Do, I Think

Larry Woiwode’s first novel, the one before his modern classic Beyond The Bedroom Wall, is the story of two young people, Chris and Ellen, in the first season of their marriage. They spend much of the novel trying to puzzle out their lives now that they have committed to each other. Woiwode creates his characters and places from the inside out, making them so real that we end his books feeling as if we have truly lived within the printed page.

— Jeff Minick