Reasons to Smile On August 22, 2010

OS moans and groans. A lot.

However, there are good moments.

A country in meltdown and chaos doesn't get much golf in. Think about it. When's the last time we heard of a tournament held in Niger or Yemen?

Golf requires peace and quiet, and a level of order and prosperity that allows for leisure time. That's why it was gratifying to make the morning coffee, tune to the Golf Channel, and watch European PGA Golf live from the Czech Republic.

OS remembers where he was when he heard the news of the Russian tanks rolling into Prague in 1968, bringing the Prague Spring to an abrupt end. The Socialists in charge in Moscow weren't about to let freedom break out on their borders, by golly. The other serfs might get uppity.

It was an awful moment, even for a kid from Tennessee, a heart-in-the-throat/kick-in-the-stomach moment. The worst sort of people had run over the best sort of people. The US was not going to start a war in Europe over it, and everybody knew it.

So, it was sweet this morning to watch Miguel Angel Jimenez line up his putts in a free and prosperous Czech Republic.

Another good moment happened this week in Nashville.

Belmont University will be renovating one of the grand church buildings of the South for use as a classical concert hall, bringing its great Aeolian-Skinner organ back to its former glories in the process, and will allow the congregation to continue to use it as a house of worship.

It gives Nashville another world-class music venue, and will help Belmont (a non-denominational Christian institution) serve as a cultural counterweight against the relentless self-impressed secularism of both Vanderbilt University and the Nashville Symphony. It's located in a neighborhood, where people live and raise kids, not downtown amidst the hotels and clubs, or on a campus noted for its isolation from the city that surrounds it.

OS's parents were members of Belmont Heights Baptist as young marrieds, and OS was in and out of the place often in his youth. The sanctuary is a grand piece of architecture, a horseshoe design, and in its glory days the congregation sang the roof off the place. As the culture declined, the glory days departed, and it became painful to walk in the place, knowing what it had been and seeing what it had become.

It's inspiring to see this happen. This sort of thing is why we should all seek to build wealth, so we can do good things with the proceeds. It's why we need a culture that allows wealth to be built and encourages this sort of vision and generosity.