1. While I worked on crossword puzzles, Wordle, Quordle, and Waffle and while I wrote my daily blog post, I listened to Chicago on Spotify. I've always known over the years that I loved Chicago, especially when Terry Kath was in the band before his death in 1977. Listening today, it struck me in new ways how versatile Chicago was and how, especially in their early years, Columbia Records gave the band a great deal of room to experiment, to play a variety of styles ranging from rock to jazz to blues to pop, often fusing these styles, creating their own sound.
One summer day, not long after Chicago's first album (Chicago Transit Authority) came out, I was over at Chuck D'Andrea's house with some other guys. Chuck was home alone and somewhere, somehow he'd scored a six pack or a half a case of 12 oz bottles of Mickey's Big Mouth Malt Liquor. Chuck had his stereo set up so that he could put an album on upstairs and listen on speakers in his basement. I don't remember who else was in the basement seated on a sofa or chairs (and I know I only drank one bottle of beer) because my memories of that day are dominated by hearing Chicago Transit Authority for the first time and being especially blown away by the percussion parts in "I'm a Man" and "Beginnings". Chicago's blend of rock and jazz, their use of horns, keyboards, and electric guitars was not new to me because I was already a Blood, Sweat, and Tears devotee, but Chicago seemed to me, that day, to have upped the ante, and I was mesmerized.
I was also struck by how Chicago's lyrics shaped my thinking and my dreams (fantasies/hopes) when I was young. Today I was listening to Chicago III and I was caught off guard by the strong feelings of apocalypse that returned to me from when I was seventeen years old by the poem, "When All the Laughter Dies in Sorrow" and by the adolescent fantasies that popped back in my head as I listened to "Hour in the Shower" and "At the Sunrise". As I listened to Chicago V, I realized that my youthful idealism (which is now my senior citizen idealism) was inspired, in part, by Robert Lamm and Terry Kath singing high hopes back and forth in "Dialogue (Part I & II)". I enjoyed feeling the surge of optimism I first felt back in 1972 as the whole band joined Kath and Lamm and assertively and (for me) persuasively sang, "we can make it happen".
I didn't go seeking these memories when I put on Chicago song after Chicago song -- mainly, I wanted to find out if the "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon Suite", featuring seven songs, including "Make Me Smile" and "Colour My World" still had power for me.
It did.
And listening to that suite led me to nearly a whole day of listening to Chicago, remembering hearing them live three times (I think), and having a stretch of time in my life when this band was, indeed, the soundtrack to my life, from about 1969 to 1977.
2. I texted Debbie around 3:00 and wondered if she'd like to pick me up and head to the Lounge.
She did.
I'd gotten in a walk of about 2500 steps just before I texted Debbie and was feeling chipper, happy that my left foot cooperated with my exercise and that my twice a day icing of my left big toe is a success so far.
At The Lounge, I realized that my return to regular walking makes drinking beer more enjoyable and tonight I treated myself to one of the USA's finest, most durable craft beers, Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale. I hadn't drunk one of these old school craft beers for a long time and its perfect balance between malty sweetness and hoppy bitterness gave me deep pleasure.
After I talked to Crazy Legs for a while, Ed strolled in and we had a good session of primo yakkin'. Debbie joined a table of women when we arrived, so I didn't really join her in conversation until the very end of our stay.
3. Whatever yakkin' Debbie and I didn't do together at The Lounge, we more than made up for back home. I cooked us each a spaghetti bowl and we watched one episode of Perry Mason and another of Monk and then we launched into a long discussion of public education, a concept we both support fully and discussed our shared vision of education. Much of what we discussed was in the context of the challenges Debbie faces day to day as a third grade teacher, but we also talked a bit about my years of teaching college students and there's really not much difference in what we think matters most in the classroom, whether working with third graders or college students.
I'll just say it is spiritual -- but not in a churchy or religious way.
It is, however, about giving full attention to the human spirit -- curiosity, vitality, joy, understanding, etc -- none of which can be assessed by grades or mandated standardized tests. (In fact, in my experience, grades and assessment were often an obstacle to my efforts to ignite my students' spirits.)
(You might have noticed that with that last paragraph I brought this post full circle: so much in my life is about idealism.)
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