Highlight of my week #3

It takes only the first three chords of the song to put a grin on my face. I am in DC, which is not quite the South, but it's a lot closer to it than anywhere else I've been in a long time. I am eating barbecue—real southern barbecue, with the pig from which the pork was pulled lying scorched on a table outside. The beans are spiced and the slaw drenched in vinegar, not mayo, and I am already remembering my roots when these electric chords echo through the church and remind me of a life I led long ago. "Sweet Home Alabama" could well be the modern-day anthem of the South, and hearing it spill out of the strumming fingers of two ten-year-old girls, with a third banging out the drum beat, seems as good as life gets until the two on bass and guitar begin to sing the song. Though their voices don't compare to Ronnie Van Sant's, the fact that they have spent their free time learning this song, that they are now plugged in to amps on a stage in front of a crowd of locally-grown-food nuts on a muggy spring afternoon, that they are enjoying this—all these things make me shake my head a bit with the music and with the wonderment of it. If ever I have a daughter, I think, I hope she is just like this.