Under the baobab: Celebrating holidays, ‘Championship Valley,’ film and theater

“Hope is alive ... fill us with the desire for something greater.” – Pope Francis, Christmas Mass homily

Sisters and brothers of “Championship Valley,” Merry Christmas, Hanukkah Sameach, Happy Kwanzaa. And congrats to our recent grads.

Congrats to the Penn State women’s volleyball team. They won their eighth NCAA national championship, their first since 2014, by defeating Louisville. Coach Katie Schumacher-Cawley became the first woman in NCAA history to guide a team to an NCAA volleyball championship, and the first person to win a championship as player (1999) and a coach.

While leading the team to victory, Coach Katie continued her heroic personal struggle with stage two breast cancer. Jess Mruzik was named the NCAA tournament’s most outstanding player. A couple of hundred fans gathered in Rec Hall to welcome the team home. (When is the parade?)

Congrats to Coach James Franklin and the No. 6 ranked football team that made it to the quarterfinals of the NCAA playoffs by convincingly defeating SMU on a very cold afternoon at Beaver Stadium. The next step is the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona against Boise State.

And the men’s basketball team won their 10th victory against Drexel in Philadelphia. The 10-2 Lions return to the Bryce Jordan Center for a match against Penn on Sunday, while the unbeaten PSU wrestling team dominated Missouri 41-3 in the Journeyman Collegiate Duals in Nashville.

Go State. We are ...

In the arts scene, local live theaters are joyously filled with Christmas fare. Tyler Perry’s “Six Triple Eight” on Netflix and “The Fire Inside” in movie theaters are a pleasant surprise, telling the unfamiliar stories of heroic African Americans.

Also in theaters, “A Complete Unknown” is a blockbuster about a transformative time in the life of Nobel Prize winning artist Bob Dylan. It’s set during the early ‘60s in and around New York’s Greenwich Village. I didn’t hang with him but we both were barely past adolescence when we arrived in the city. Performing in coffeehouses we passed the tip baskets. Cabaret laws didn’t allow freelancers to be paid. I was writing and reciting free verse poetry imitating beat poets like Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsburg and Baraka. Dylan was creating songs of absolute genius, framing the ideas of an emerging generation.

Like many young artists before Vietnam, we were very much involved in the civil rights movement. Along with a quarter of a million other people, we were at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “Dream” speech. Bob was on the platform singing, “When the Ship Comes In” with Joan Baez. I was in the audience with my feet chilling in the reflecting pool. Three months later JFK, our president, was gunned down in Dallas, stunning everyone. The movement continued but we were changed. I returned to the South to register disenfranchised Black Folks. The movie is one view of what Bob did with his life.

The film is very good. Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Dylan borders on brilliance. (He even “sings” like Dylan). Ed Norton as Pete Seeger is brilliant. I can’t really comment on the actors playing Baez (Monica Barbaro) and Suze Rotolo (Elle Fanning) — I didn’t know them. I shared coffeehouse gigs with Dylan. Pete was a good friend, mentor and inspiration. We were neighbors in upstate New York back in the ‘70s. I had a scene with Norton that was deleted from the film.

I worked with the director, James Mangold, years ago on a brief scene in “Copland.” Based on Elijah Wood’s book, “Dylan Goes Electric,” Mangold chose to tell the story of a specific period of Dylan’s musical journey. He does it well. It is not necessarily the story I would tell but it is well worth an evening in the theater.

Stay strong. You are well loved.

“ ... the first one now will later be last, for the times they are a-changin” — Bob Dylan

Charles Dumas is a lifetime political activist, a professor emeritus from Penn State, and was the Democratic Party’s nominee for U.S. Congress in 2012. He was the 2022 Lion’s Paw Awardee and Living Legend honoree of the National Black Theatre Festival. He lives with his partner and wife of 50 years in State College.