The streets of Knoxville are not busy on this Saturday night, but a jazz band is setting up inside: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — For a few minutes on Saturday night life in America seemed almost normal.

The red, white, blue and yes orange Christmas lights blinked on and off downtown in this World’s Fair university town.

The drinks flowed. Gumbo was served. And a live jazz band setup in the Bistro at the Bijou and jammed for a couple of hours.

It was possible to close your eyes for a minute and think back to another time, a time before millions of people all over the world got sick and died from COVID, before Donald Trump invaded and infected the White House and turned facts into fiction and fantasy into facts.

The last time I was here author and former New York Times correspondent Rick Bragg was delivering a talk about his memoir, All Over But the Shoutin’, in the Bijou Theatre, a 400-seat opera house on Gay Street. After it was over I waited outside in the smoking area and listened to people talk about it like Mark Twain or the circus had just come to town.

Junior Brown brought the house to its feet here with his charisma and non-traditional country style of honkytonk and western swing with a little Tex-Mex thrown in for good measure.

That was back in the glorious 1990s, when Bill Clinton was president, the personal computer had made its way into most homes and the internet was in its infancy. Before the turn of the new millennium, the world seemed full of infinite possibilities.

Well you all know what happened next. The Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the keys to the White House and 9/11 happened, along with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And by the end of his two terms in the White House, the economy crashed.

Millions of altruistic Americans worked very hard together in 2008 and we got the first African-American elevated to the White House, and after eight long years things were looking up.

Then along came Trump, and then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and as the old timers might say, the world went to hell in a handbasket again.

But one more time, millions of Democrats, Republicans and independents worked hard again and just got Joe Biden and Kamala Harris elected. So with hard work and timing we might have a chance to get a handle on our big problems one more time before it’s too late.

The experts are saying many if not all of us should have access to a vaccine by spring, so as I was telling the under-employed musicians at the Bijou last night, the economy might be poised for a comeback by sometime next summer.

Of course millions of Americans are now lost down the rabbit hole and living in a fantasy world where facts don’t seem to matter at all, so our task is far from over. There are no guarantees that we can emerge from this crisis with a viable democracy, or focus the world’s attention on saving the planet for long enough and hard enough to make it happen.

But as my own life and the lives of many of my aging friends turns toward twilight, at least we can find a way to have some fun one more time and laugh again. I will not give up. Don’t you give up either.

Life is hard. But maybe we can get through this COVID winter with a little help from our friends.

Try to be nice to each other. I know it’s stressful out there. But lashing out at the good people around you is no way to help. They and we are not the enemy.

Focus people. Let’s make this happen.

After all, Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial are at hand.

Check out The Southerner magazine we published here at the turn of the century.

The Southerner

Knoxville’s Bistro at the Bijou Theatre with Jack and the Robeneers playing jazz on Saturday night: Glynn Wilson

A classic Rubenesque painting of Miss Lil behind the bar at Knoxville’s Bistro at the Bijou: Glynn Wilson