We got the news Monday morning. Our dear friend Wanda Bridgeforth had died. Wanda’s daughter, Wanda Jr., had texted me last week to let me know “Mama is in hospice care at home.” She added, “Don’t be sad about this, Mama l-i-v-e-d long…and much!”

I was grateful to Junior for that message — her letting me know about hospice made the news about Wanda’s death easier to swallow. Wanda was 101 years old. She’d been in my “Me, Myself & I” memoir-writing class 15 years, sharing her life stories there with us every week. What joy and wonderment I feel now, having had the honor to know Wanda , meet her family, laugh with her…it’s all pretty miraculous.

Thinking about Wanda so much this past week got me reminiscing about meeting her for the first time: it all happened when she was in the audience at Printers Row Book Fair in 2007 to see her friend Minerva (another writer in the memoir class I led back then) appear with me at a presentation there. Here’s the story.>

That’s Wanda earlier this year, modeling her 1960 Easter bonnet for her home health care worker.

“Minerva told me she was going to be in the book fair with her teacher, and I should come and meet Beth Finke,” Wanda told me, explaining that Minerva and Wanda had been friends since DuSable High School opened in 1935. Minerva hadn’t mentioned that I was blind, and Wanda was sitting so far back that she didn’t see my Seeing Eye dog Hanni at my feet until she walked up to say hello. “I said ‘Holy Toledo! A blind lady teaching a writing class? This I gotta see!’”

I invited her to sit in on a class, and she signed right up.
Minerva and Wanda brought a slice of Chicago history with them to class every week. Tens of thousands of Southern blacks flooded into Chicago during the Great Migration of the early 20th century. Minerva’s parents came from Georgia, Wanda’s came from Mississippi, and the stories these two read in class describe Bronzeville, the segregated neighborhood they grew up in, as a “city within a city.”

Overcrowding, joblessness, and poverty was a fact of life, but so was literature, jazz, blues, and gospel music.

DuSable High School, the first Chicago high school built exclusively for African-American students, opened in the Bronzeville neighborhood in 1935. Minerva transferred in as a sophomore, and Wanda was a freshman. “I was in the birthday class,” Wanda would remind us any time her beloved high school was mentioned. DuSable was built on Chicago’s South Side 15 years before the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Wanda says it was built to keep schools segregated. “We were blocked in,” she’d write. “We knew not to cross Cottage Grove, 51st Street or the train tracks.” Everyone inside those boundaries was Black. “That was our neighborhood, and DuSable was our neighborhood high school.”

When DuSable first opened, some neighborhood parents applied for permits to get their children into nearby White high schools. “Their parents didn’t think a Black school could be any good,” Wanda wrote, adding that she felt sorry for those kids. True, DuSable classes could be very crowded; she remembers 50 or so students squeezing into classrooms. “But at those other schools, if you were Black and you wanted to be in a play, you had to be a maid or a butler,” she wrote. “At DuSable, we did everything, we were in all the plays, we wrote the school newspaper. We were having such a good time at DuSable.”

Between the two of them, Minerva and Wanda were at the high school between 1935 and 1939. During those years they walked the hallways with some pretty impressive classmates, including Nat King Cole; John H. Johnson, publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines; Harold Washington, first African-American mayor of Chicago; comedian Redd Foxx; and singer Dinah Washington.

“Nat Cole added King to his name later,” Wanda would tell me with a laugh. “You know, like Old King Cole!” They remembered Dinah Washington when she was Ruth Jones, and they knew Redd Foxx as Jon Sanford. “His brother was Fred, that’s who Sanford and Son is named for,” Wanda told us, reminiscing about the old television series. . “They changed their names once they were stars.”

DuSable’s initial fame was in its music program, and Wanda and Minerva both sang during “Hi-Jinks” student talent shows there. “We were in the background, but we put on shows that were better than what was going on in Chicago professional theatres,” Wanda wrote. “With musicians like Ruthie Jones and Nat Cole and all of those guys, we couldn’t miss!”

And with writers like Minerva and Wanda in the memoir-writing classes I’ve led over the years, I couldn’t miss, either. Their stories live on through the essays they wrote — I am so, so grateful. As Wanda always liked to say…”Hugs all around!”

I love voting, and look forward to doing so tomorrow at Jones College Prep high school. Democracy is a luxury and one that’s at risk, so voting is more important than ever.

(For the record, I’d rate the 2020 elections as the straightest, truest, cleanest presidential election of my lifetime. It was closely scrutinized in real time and tested again and again after the fact. I mean, remember 2000? The difference: The character, or lack thereof, of the lead actors and their followers.)

The Democrats, in my view, are missing an opportunity to trumpet real benefits that the nation will reap as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure legislation, a legislative step toward gun sanity, and other accomplishments. But it’s kind of a Democrat thing to miss opportunities.

Apart from that, we are polarized in a way that surpasses any period of my life, including the 1960s and early 1970s. Back then we either did or didn’t support the war, but we agreed there was a war. We believed or didn’t believe in the domino theory but we knew what it was. Today, not so much.

Perhaps one thing we all can agree on—or at least all of us who watch any TV or listen to any radio: After tomorrow, the political ads will cease.

I can’t believe that any of them persuade anyone. I can only imagine that they’re made to remind the respective bases to get out there otherwise, the opposing candidate will indeed bake your children in a pie and make you eat it (cue the dark mood music).

It’s always bad but I feel like it’s worse than ever this year. For example, I was watching the Illinois Michigan State game on the Big Ten Network when political ads for Michigan races came on.

Even my beloved Jeopardy!, which usually is filled with ads for Cricket phones, calcium supplements, and all stuff for people of a certain age, has been filled with rapid fire doomsday ads.

Of course it is worse because there’s more money in politics than ever.

Maybe we can agree that’s a bad thing? Or at least, let’s all celebrate a political ad moratorium…until the next election.

Good information is easier to get than ever, if you’re willing to put in the effort to separate the wheat from the chaff. But if you’re not, bad information is everywhere.

Case in point: This past Saturday we took a Lyft home after visiting with family in the suburbs. The driver was affable, of Korean lineage, and wanted to talk. Along the way we learned he lived in the Chicago suburb Naperville, and that he thought Chicago was too liberal. Which was fine because by then we’d talked enough to learn that we probably agreed on more things than we disagreed on. So it was all friendly and constructive.

Then he got onto the pronoun thing—you know, where I’m “he/him/his” and the “they” thing. I, myself, have mixed feelings about that, mostly owing to longstanding grammatical concerns imbued by my mother, a teacher. But I’ve come to not care much and am happy to call other people by what they want me to call them. Things can change.

He felt the same, he just didn’t want to have to tell other people what pronouns he preferred.

And then things got weird.

He told a story about a woman passenger he’d picked up recently who said she was from Tennessee. She said she was having problems because her child’s school principal had allowed kids who identified as furries to wear their animal costumes to school.

So, I didn’t know what “furries” are, but apparently it’s a little subculture of people who identify as animals and dress as them and have conventions and stuff.

Well, the woman from Tennessee said things had gone far enough when one furry student who identified as a cat requested a litter box in the washroom.

I can’t believe I’m even writing this but I swear, it’s true. Beth will testify under oath.

So you know, we kind of just rode out the rest of the ride. He was a very nice guy and we mostly enjoyed the ride.

That evening, when we went to our local wine bar we talked with our friendly winetender. I told her about the litter box story. She then proceeded to say she’d heard a different version of that story. That it was in Columbine, the Colorado site of the infamous school slaughter. And that the litter boxes had been requested for classrooms in case shelter-in-place orders were issued and, you know, when you have to go you have to go.

So, what with having the power of the Internet tubes, I started looking around cyberspace. And, gee whiz, guess what? I learned it’s another hoax perpetrated by dumb politicians exploiting the culture wars.

From this story from NBC news:

To a person not steeped in the culture war battles over gender identity that have engulfed school districts nationwide, it’s the kind of claim that would sound bizarre and confusing — and, from high-profile GOP members, authoritative.

The week before, on Sept. 29, Minnesota GOP gubernatorial nominee Scott Jensen asked during a campaign stop, “Why do we have litter boxes in some of the school districts so kids can pee in them, because they identify as a furry?”

Apparently at least 20 Republican candidates have repeated this complaint, even though it hasn’t happened. Anywhere. At least not for the furry thing.

Turns out our winetender, crazily–and sadly–was accurate. From NBC news reporter Ben Collins:

NBC News found one example of a school district keeping cat litter on campus. The Jefferson County School District has had classrooms with cat litter since 2017, in case students are locked in a classroom during a shooting. Jefferson County is where Columbine is located.

Whatever your political leaning, I urge you: Before you spread information that has you agitated, check the accuracy. Because now, more than ever, you can look it up.

I am pleased to welcome Bill Gordon back as our Senior Class guest blogger today. Born and raised in Kansas, Bill lived all over the country during his 45-year career in library and association management. When he retired in 2002, he was the Executive Director of The American Library Association (located here in Chicago) and has called Chicago home ever since.

Having just celebrated his 86th birthday, Bill says life so far has been “a great adventure.” Lucky for us, he enjoys remembering his adventurous life through his participation in the memoir-writing class I lead via Zoom on Thursday afternoons.

Salon, not Saloon

By Bill Gordon

Today’s guest blogger, Bill Gordon

Several years ago I enrolled in Beth Finke’s Memoir Writing class. As I grow older, writing about my life continues to intrigue me. Not for the consumption by others, but because I feel a gentle push to record my life’s experiences for myself – remembering, clarifying memories, creating a record, and finally trying to be honest with myself about who I am and what experiences I have had.

Beth’s approach to teaching memoir writing is to give a prompt and ask each of us to write a 500 word essay relating the prompt to a personal life experience. I have found that looking at my life in 500 word chunks is perfect for the type of record I want to create.

As years go by I find I have written many essays on many topics, always following the lead provided by the prompt. Throughout it all there has been one particular thing about me I’ve avoided writing about, and it’s a very important thing: my homosexuality. I just couldn’t be honest, always managing to skirt the subject no matter what the prompt was.

Until, that is, I found myself writing about the death of my partner. I read that essay in class back before COVID, when we were meeting in person. And guess what? The world did not come to an end. The sky did not fall. The other students did not get up and leave in disgust. In fact, they hugged me, and thanked me for my honesty.

I was 76 years old, and had, at last, “come out.”

And yet, the reticence I’d had towards my sexual orientation continued, making it difficult for me to write about this defining part of my life.

And then I changed classes, still with Beth Finke, but now via Zoom with an altogether new group of people. My new set of classmates make me feel incredibly comfortable, and I find myself writing more and more essays about my life as a gay man. The essays are well received by my classmates, encouraging me to tell more and more about my life in a true and authentic way.

As I became comfortable writing more essays about the intimate parts of my life, I began to feel an urge to share these stories with more people. I thought of the salons I’ve read about: authors, poets, even musicians getting together to share their creations with friends in a social setting for presentation and discussion.

Why couldn’t I do this?

No reason I couldn’t! I just didn’t want anyone to think of it as a personal conceit. Girding my loins for rejection, I invited ten people to my home for a “Reading and Discussion” and subtitled the event “A Slice of a Gay Man’s Life.” I let them know that light refreshments would be served, thinking this might be an inducement for the reluctant attendee.

Seven people came – six men and one woman. Of the other three invitees, one sent regrets. I didn’t hear from the other two.

I read ten carefully selected essays out loud. A lively discussion followed each essay, including comments on the essays, follow-up questions about some of the stories and comments about what gay life was like in mid-twentieth century America.

By any measure, the event was a success. I know this from the feedback and from the response of the attendees during the program. And worth noting: barely a scrap of the refreshments was left

Based on my experience with the “Reading,” I know I will do it again. The setting, as it turned out, was perfect. My living room, friends sitting in a semicircle, the rapt attention of those in attendance, and the comfort I felt telling tales of my life  -it could not have been better.

We all love stories – stories about ourselves and others – and with October being LGBTQ History Month, the timing was perfect. Creating a salon atmosphere, in the comfort of one’s home is an ideal setting for storytelling, reading essays, discussing issues. I am glad I overwhelmed my reluctance and strode confidently into exposing my writing to others.

When a loved one has the nerve to die, it’s a gut punch that knocks the wind out of me. Even if I knew it was coming. Then I get up, get back in the game, and work through the realization that they’re gone.

I know that they’re gone intellectually. But habit lives on. Fondness lives on. There’s still a presence. And so it’s been since our friend Brad died. He’s been gone a week and a half, but I find myself expecting to see him at our local watering hole, or walking to the Ace Hardware in the neighborhood. The Cleveland Guardians are doing well so far in the MLB playoffs, and, because he  was a longtime Cleveland fan (Brad has an autographed photo of Bob Feller,) I think about talking to him about their success.

I’ll read an article that I just know our friend Ulrich would’ve appreciated–and one that I’d like to talk with him about–and remember there is no Ulrich.

Hell, sometimes I want to talk to Janet—whom we lost in January—about the past several weeks which marked the end of Brad’s time. To this day I think about calling my mom and dad about some news, though they’ve been gone since 1992 and 1991, respectively.

It’s kind of random, I’m not sure what triggers these moments. It might be at a dinner at a place you used to go to with the departed; it might be on a beautiful spring day when you used to take a walk with your friend. A song. A smell. And it hits you: Absence.

The person’s walk, smile, voice—their tics, the way they made you nuts sometimes. Absence is a pure thing that allows you to recall everything you loved and that you didn’t love.

It used to unnerve me. But I’ve concluded that ultimately, absence is a presence, and for me, a comforting one.