My dinner with Scott

Earlier this semester, I sat with a small group of well-dressed companions under the chandelier of the Brown-Alley Room for dinner with Scott Simon. If you listen to National Public Radio on Saturday mornings, you will know both his name and his voice. In person, he sounds exactly as he does on the radio: familiar and soothing, with a warm timbre that invites you to sip your coffee in your slippers a little longer as he widens your world and your heart with stories.

Simon had come down from Washington, D.C., with his family — his wife, French-American documentary filmmaker Caroline Richard, and their charming daughters, ages 9 and 13 — to talk about storytelling for the annual Peple Lecture, sponsored by the Friends of Boatwright Memorial Library. To my immediate left at dinner were several of the Peples, all gracious to a fault; a local author and his wife, who were equally gracious, sat just to my right. Across the table, close enough to pass the butter, were two Richmond journalism students, along with Simon and his family.

Many of the 15 or so of us around the table had just met for the first time. We sat elbow to elbow, a coziness that made normal speaking volume sufficient for anecdotes and connections both fascinating and improbable. Simon and one of us, it turned out, had not only both dipped toes into the same hotel pool in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, but also had dinner at the same Italian restaurant not far from it. The cliché of noting what a small world we inhabit was irresistible.

We sat at the table for several hours eating and talking like this, reviving a lapsed Peple Lecture tradition of dining with the distinguished guest the night before the talk. To me, it was a reminder of something we do uncommonly well at Richmond. Interactions among Spiders aren’t transactional. Students, faculty, and staff come to know one another well and develop deep connections with each other. We know that’s incredibly important.

It’s why we choose small seminars over large lecture classes, why we form communities within communities where students study, live, and travel together, why Spiders gather in regional alumni groups around the world. There’s a quiet power in telling, hearing, and knowing each other’s stories. They have a way of helping us uncover new insights, articulate just-forming perspectives, and nurture growing bonds.

Scott Simon was, of course, very good at drawing stories out of the table with a well-placed question or sympathetic laugh. He is also, of course, a very good storyteller himself. However, not everything he said over dinner and during his lecture was completely spontaneous. Speaking of the power of stories, he raised the old aphorism that a picture is worth a thousand words and then added something that he’s written and said elsewhere before:

“You give me a thousand words and I can give you: the Lord’s Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath, a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the last graphs of Martin Luther King’s speech to the March on Washington, and the final entry of Anne Frank’s diary. You give me a thousand words, and I don’t think I’d trade you for any picture on earth.”

They were words worth repeating.