In August of 1978, I was newly returned to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from an internship in Washington, D.C. And, for the first time in my life, I was a little cocky. I’d lived outside of the Chicago area! I knew stuff that you didn’t’! I’d lived in Washington, D.C. dammit!

I held hopes that I’d land a job back in D.C. as the result of that internship, but I had one year plus a summer of college to go.  And let’s say I wasn’t the most serious student for my senior year + a summer.  U of I had something called “new student week” back then. It was a full week of orientation in August. In its time, that meant a lot of debauchery, so old students came down to enjoy, too.

I learned a new club was opening on Green Street in Campustown, which was the main campus drag. The place was called Mabel’s. A university bigwig who handled its money decided Champaign-Urbana could use a New York-style jazz club. And Mabel’s was born. He’d  bought a bunch of antiques and curios at an estate sale for someone named Mabel, and the club was strewn with those relics.

It was a long flight of stairs up to the first floor of the club. And another shorter flight up to a balcony seating area.

I took a job there as a cocktail waiter. I didn’t care much about jazz, but well, it looked fun. Being a male server at a campus bar was sort of earth shaking back then, when just down the block young women servers dressed in skin tight Danskins. (Which all seems quaint in these times.)

Mabel’s first floor near the stage was quite the hip deal: It was big pillows on the floor. People laid on the floor propped up by those pillows. So I’d bring drinks out and set them on little weighted “tables” in the midst of the pillows. Back then, all you needed was a university ID to get into a bar, so we got lots of 18-year-olds on dates drinking strawberry daiquiris. At closing, some couples would be in oblivious liplocks. The manager would pump out the 1812 Overture as loud as it could go and that was that.

I digress. What I didn’t realize was that I was already a jazz fan, but didn’t know it. My favorite band at the time was Steely Dan, and the album Aja was hot as a firecracker. And my favorite part? The title song, and a solo by jazz great Wayne Shorter. Wayne was my gateway drug.

The University of Illinois has always had a vibrant jazz program in its music department, but perhaps never more vibrant then back then. There was UI Jazz Band #5, #4, #3, #2, and the vaunted #1. They were all good but #1 had ringers who were down from Chicago or other places as adjuncts.

The program was led by John Garvey, a character who regularly rode a mo-ped around campus while smoking a pipe. He had a thing for all kinds of music, including Russian folk, and he founded a Russian folk group as well as leading the jazz program.

The first time I heard #1’s horns crank it up, powerful, in complete synchronization, I was floored—and hooked. You can feel that shit, and it ain’t electrified like, say, The Who. It’s humans moving air.

The Mabel’s owner had done his homework and was a true jazz lover. He managed to book greats like the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it). And Gary Burton on the vibes. All this in a college town in East Central Illinois.

Tonight we went to Jazz Showcase to see the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, an umpteen-piece band that took me back, and reminded me why I love a big jazz band. If you’ve never experienced a jazz big band, try it out. The arrangements, the musicianship, in my view, are unequalled.

1978 turned into 1979. Mabel’s waitresses didn’t need Danskins, they were just gorgeous. I fell in love with one of them; it was the first time I felt that way. (Not the last.) We had a sultry, carefree summer. I moved back to D.C. to take that job in August.

Oh, also, because I was out of sync with the Journalism calendar, I took basic reporting late. A young woman named Beth was in that class. We became friends.

On my last night working at Mabel’s on the day I handed in my graduating paper  (I was bartending by then), Beth came to help me celebrate. I gave her what would be my work number in D.C. should she ever be in town.

So yeah, I love a big jazz band.

The view of Printers Row Park from our window.

Don’t let that headline mislead you about what I think about COVID.

COVID continues to suck. Not as bad as it did, but still pretty bad. I, for example, still have spells where my balance is compromised and it feels like I’m going to tip over. It’s not often, but still too often.

Based on the behavior of motorists, bicyclists, and those crazy electric scooter riders, it feels a lot like COVID left people with a sense that none of the pre-COVID rules and norms apply. (I’m talking to you, bicyclists who ride on the sidewalks.)

COVID did, however, force us to be creative and resourceful. For us and our friends here in our Printers Row neighborhood, that question became how can we get together safely. The answer was and is right outside Beth and my place’s window: Printers Row Park.

It’s more of an urban plaza, there isn’t much green space. I wrote in earlier post about our get-togethers there. I’m happy to report that even though we gather indoors, as we did last night for dinner at our place, we are keeping the park tradition alive.

Camp chairs are de rigueur. Sometimes food is involved, and an informal pot luck ensues. Beth will whip up some yummy deviled eggs. Our friend Jim brings a fold up table.

Conversation and laughter commence. Our last outing was badly needed. It was on the Fourth of July, the day of the Highland Park shootings. Despite the threat of rain, we chanced it. And we were lucky for a while. Then it started drizzling. Then it picked up. For some reason we didn’t fold. We sat out there eating polish sausage that Jim fixed, getting rained on. Umbrellas came out, with one of our party telling another–noticing that he had a domed umbrella and was holding a wine glass, pinky up–that he looked like Mary Poppins.

Still, we persisted. It was absurd, really.

But then the rain stopped. And then the sun came out. And we ended up staying out until dark. It was delightful, all in all.

Best part? Our pal Jim brought a radio control model of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. I’ll leave you with this:

You know those “Questions Kids Ask” lists I post here after visiting third-grade classrooms with Luna? Those visits are arranged by a disability awareness program called “Educating Outside the Lines,” and every one of the schools they have me visit is located in…Highland Park, Illinois.

”Is your dog blind, too?” they ask. “Is it scary being blind?” “Do you ever go anywhere by yourself?” “Do you get sad sometimes?”

Luna and I at a school visit in Highland Park this past May. As always, lots of questions. (photo by Jamie Ceaser)

When regular radio programming was interrupted Monday to report a mass shooting at the Highland Park 4th of July parade, I immediately thought of those third-graders. “Please, please, please,” I whispered to whatever God might listen. “Don’t let any third-graders get shot.” The kids, their teachers, the school secretaries, so many of the people I meet during those visits had to be at that parade Monday. Highland Park is just that sort of town: bucolic, huge oak trees, birds singing, big parks, small shops. If you live in Highland Park, you go to the 4th of July parade!

I’ve been keeping an ear open ever since Monday for a list of those injured or killed. No seven-or-eight-year-olds. Not so far. But Highland Park is such a small, friendly community — everyone there has to know someone personally affected.

I thought of those third-graders all day Monday. Then again yesterday. And still today. When I get stuck on something like this, I turn to writing to help me think it through. So here I am. And I still can’t make sense of it.

Just heard that WBEZ-Fm has posted a list of resources on its web site put together by the federal government’s Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs to help children, families, educators, and community members cope after mass shootings. I am not a family member of any of those kids, I’m not their teacher, and I don’t even live in their community. But I may check that list out anyway. Maybe one of their suggested resources will help.

Yesterday, we celebrated the Fourth of July on the third of July: We traveled to Glen Ellyn Illinois and spent the afternoon with lovely friends in one of their lovely backyards. We noshed and drank, we talked SCOTUS (and then drank some more) and laughed a lot. In spite of SCOTUS.

We took the Metra commuter train from downtown Chicago to the little bucolic downtown of Glen Ellyn. It’s a sweet little berg in the western suburb, and an affluent one. One of our friends picked us up at the station, and on the route she pointed out something I’d never seen before: The streets was lined with blankets and camp chairs. In Glen Ellyn, people call dibs for spaces to view the Fourth of July Parade—a day in advance. They leave their stuff out overnight. This would not work in my neighborhood. But it was sort of delightful to see.

Then, today the regularly scheduled program on WBEZ (our local NPR affiliate) was interrupted bu a report about a shooting at a Fourth of July parade. Details were sketchy. It was in Highland Park, which is very much like Glen Ellyn, but located on the North Shore area of Chicagoland.

As I write, the death toll is 6 and the shooter is still at large.

We have enormous problems and our institutions aren’t just not finding solutions, they’re working against solutions.

Today, I find it hard to feel patriotic pride. I guess I’m just grateful that my mother and father are not around to see this.

We all have a lot of work to do.

Hi all, apologies for radio silence—and thanks to those who’ve asked Beth about my well being because they weren’t getting posts. That’s very kind and appreciated.

I’m fine but I’ve been short on anything worth saying. I’ve also been extremely busy at work and just plain bushed sometimes. Speaking of work, my job at Phius brought me to A’22 last week at Chicago’s McCormick Place. It was this year’s American Institute of Architects meeting/conference/expo. Phius had a booth there and I was one of the staff.

If you’ve been to such events you know the drill: Some schmoozing, some actual learning and relationship building. This event is huge! Phius’ own annual conference draws several hundred, this thing drew thousands and thousands and the exhibit hall was enormous.

And, you know, AIA is big enough that they can get some heavy hitters as speakers. As in, President Barack Obama was the closing keynote.

In real time, I wasn’t the biggest fan of President Obama. Today, of course, he looks like an amalgamation of FDR, Winston Churchill, JFK, Mother Teresa…. He sat down with the current president of the AIA, Daniel Hart, in a relaxed, often funny, and sometimes deadly serious conversation.

And boy, it’s been six years since Obama left office and it felt like a hundred. Back in the days of relative order. He was asked the usual questions people like him get: What was the high point, and what was the low point?

“When I passed the Affordable Care Act,” he answered quickly about the top event. He recalled the Herculean effort it took to get it through, acknowledging it’s limitations, but clearly glowingly proud about the tens of millions of Americans it added to the insurance rolls.

Then he got quiet. He paused, and physically gathered himself. When a bunch of 6-year-olds were murdered at Sandy Hook. “That was a low point in waves. There was the shock of what had happened. There was me traveling to try to comfort parents to whom this had just happened,” he said. “It was the only time I saw Secret Service members cry on the job.”

And he recalled that it was the first of many such visits he made. And that Congress’ failure to act brought him close to cynicism, for the first time in his career.

He fought that off—and said “No Cynicism” was apparently a mantra in the White House with stickers to that effect on file folders, desks, etc.

He talked a great deal about the development of the Obama Center, and gotta couple laughs when he said he had to sit on the architects to keep them on budget.

Friday was a tough day for a great majority of Americans in light of the SCOTUS news. Obama  took pains to remind the audience that on that day, the Senate had also made a step, a small one and hopefully just the first, toward sane gun safety.

Apparently, never cynical. I’m trying.