Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ) is asking listeners and on-air guests to sum up their lives in three songs. This past week I asked writers in the four memoir classes I lead here in Chicago to take on this challenge as well.

The WBEZ web site acknowledges that limiting your lifespan to three songs may not be easy, but could be fun. It suggests you pick three songs from different periods in your life, or maybe three tracks that simply sum up who you are. For my memoir classes, I asked writers to give a short explanation of why their three songs sum up who they are. Many writers spelled out the lyrics to the songs, and in class, some even sang them.

Ninety-four-year-old Wanda wrote that God Bless the Child reminds her of growing up during the depression on Chicago’s South Side. She said she could especially relate to the part where Billie Holiday sings, “Rich relations give, Crust of bread and such, You can help yourself, But don’t take too much.” These days Wanda likes listening to Dinah Washington’s What a Difference a Day Makes. “I went to high school with Ruthie Jones,” she laughs. “That was her name before she changed it to Dinah Washington.”

Wanda’s fellow writer Nancy grew up on a farm in Central Illinois, left for Chicago to attend Northwestern University, and stayed here after graduation to teach elementary school. Her love for Broadway musicals influenced her selections.

Nancy chose Oh What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma for her years on the farm, and the line “If you become a teacher, by your pupils you’ll be taught,” in the song Getting to Know You (from The King and I) inspired her to choose that to represent her 34 years as a teacher. “The little hint of romance between Anna and the King of Siam also reminded me of those years,” she explained. ”I loved visiting the bars and restaurants in the area and perhaps hoping for a little romance.” Nancy’s entire essay is posted on the Beth’s Class blog — You’ll have to go there to see what she chose for her third song.

Only a handful of tunes were chosen by more than one writer. Two writers summed up their retirement years with the Beatles song Let it Be, two young women (they’re not even 70 years old yet!) chose Helen Reddy’s I am Woman, and two other writers chose Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Trouble Water for their young adult years.

Two writers chose Patty Page’s Tennessee Waltz, too, but for entirely different reasons. One remembered lying on her older sister’s bed and feeling grown up while listening to Tennessee Waltz on a transistor radio in their shared room. The other remembered The Tennessee Waltz as a song she danced to in college with her first love. “It was our song,” she wrote. “But it didn’t last forever.”

Bob was one of many writers who had Chicago (My Kind of Town) on their lists, but his reasoning for picking that Frank Sinatra tune was a bit different from the others who chose it: the line “Chicago is why I grin like a clown, it’s my kind of town” makes him think of an uncle and aunt he lived with when he was a teenager.

“Uncle Morrie worked as a circus clown at Riverview Park, where he roamed the park and entertained the crowds.” Bob’s aunt Sylvia worked there, too. “She worked at an amusement stand where she wore a bathing suit and sat at the top of a long slick slide, waiting for people to pay their dime and throw 3 balls at a target. Whenever anyone hit the bullseye, it would release Aunt Sylvia, and she’d slide down the sleek slide and hand you a box of candy.” And that’s exactly how Bob’s Uncle Morrie met his Aunt Sylvia. “Uncle Morrie walked up, played his dime, and hit the bullseye with the 1st ball,” Bob wrote. ”Aunt Sylvia slid down the slide, handed him a box of candy, and that was it. It was an immediate attraction for both of them.”

Jim and Mary Katherine “Kathy” Zartman.

Writer Mary Katherine opted for three songs no one else in class chose:

1. I’ve Got the World on a String
   “From the distance of many decades, I consider my childhood and early adulthood as secure, generally happy and optimistic. And after adolescence, I seemed to be in love, intermittently, with one man after another.”
2. Oh, Mary, Don’t You Weep
   Mary Katherine eventually married the man of her dreams, and for a while the two of them had the world on a string. “Euphoria didn’t last, of course,” she wrote. “There were some staggering body blows to our world. Some of it had to be concealed, so nobody knew the full extent of our challenges.”
3. September Song — based on a familiar poetic metaphor that compares a year to a person’s life span from birth to death – describes Mary Katherine’s life now. “For me, the romantic commitment to spend precious days with a loved one is easy to expand into spending our last precious days with all those we care about, for example spending precious days with friends in a memoir class.”

As Beth and I settle in at home at day’s end to decide what to do on any given evening, we can casually look at what’s at the Jazz Showcase and saunter down the block to take in some marvelous music. And we have a Veteran to thank.

Joe Segal was named 2015 Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1944, the U.S. Air Force drafted Joe Segal and stationed him in Rantoul, Illinois, at the now-shuttered Chanute Air Force base—about 20 miles from Champaign-Urbana. One could only guess what that was like for the native Philadelphian.

Joe had been a jazz fan back in Philly, and upon his discharge, he moved to Chicago and enrolled at Roosevelt University on the G.I. Bill. He also joined the university jazz club, and in 1947 he began organizing live afternoon jazz shows—showcases—on campus. He kept on keeping on for the next decade and began booking shows in dozens of locations across the city. He booked both local and national acts—like Charlie Parker.

Eventually he opened a club—Jazz Showcase—on Rush Street. Over the decades, neither lost leases nor changing tastes in music would stop Segal. The Showcase has moved multiple times since, and most fortuitously for Beth and me, the last move was to Dearborn Station, a long city block’s walk from our place.

Which brings us back to the luxury of having it a short walk away. There’s music seven nights a week. The marquee artists typically play Thursday through Sunday. Sunday includes an afternoon matinee that is kid-friendly—Joe says it’s his part in saving them from pop music. Mondays through Wednesdays usually have a lower cover charge, and often feature local acts, and often the bands from Roosevelt or DePaul University.

Last Monday night, a posting for a show announced that Ira Antelis and Lee Musiker would present music recorded on a recent collaborative CD.

I’d never heard of either, and the ad said you had to have RSVP’d earlier to come. It was more of a private party. We sort of gave up but after a day of beautiful fall weather, we decided to take an evening stroll and dropped in to see who was playing on the next night. Joe’s son Wayne, who now pretty much runs the joint, told us we were welcome to come in that very night, no charge.

I looked at Beth, we both shrugged our shoulders as if to say, “Why not?”

We found seats at the bar, and I noticed lots of folks that looked like musicians filing in. And lots of well-heeled urbanites, also filtering in at a good pace. We were intrigued.

Well, we learned that Antelis and Musiker (how does a musician get a name like that?) met in college in New York. As Antelis told it, Musiker’s virtuosity on the piano convinced Antelis that he should give up pursuing a career as a pianist—he understood immediately he’d never be that good. And the rest is history.

Antelis went on to be a successful composer and producer, doing lots of commercial work that you’d recognize. He runs a thriving studio called Jira Productions here in Chicago.

Musiker’s still a pianist, but that hardly covers it. He’s done a bunch of everything in jazz, classical, Broadway and pop stuff. He’s been music director, arranger, and orchestrator, and the people he’s worked with blew me away. Marilyn Horne, Wynton Marsalis, Joel Gray. He’s been touring with Tony Bennett since 2001, and he plays with the New York Philharmonic.

And so, that’s what Beth and I stumbled into, for free, on a Monday night. They performed the music from their  recently released album, Gone but Not: Du-al-ity. The album features Antelis’ compositions, and Musiker on solo piano. But the show we saw was arranged for a trio. And man. Joel Spencer on drums, Larry Gray on bass. Chicagoans will understand.

Antelis and Musiker would trade Vaudeville-esqe schtick about their history, and then the trio would proceed to blow the room away. Antelis didn’t do much playing, he just listened to his stuff being performed wonderfully.

I really can’t do it justice here. But there is one number, one I didn’t expect to like, that I hope you’ll listen to.

I’m not a big rap fan. I’m not a big spoken word fan. And I usually squirm when spoken word is combined with music—it can come off as fussy and forced.

But I gotta’ tell you. Antelis took the piano, and knowing Kevin Coval was in the audience, he invited him on stage to perform the title number from the album, Gone but Not. Coval is a poet and the founder of “Louder than a Bomb,” a fantastic poetry program for kids. That should be “youth program,” but that’s so sterile.

Please give a listen via this video, which also scrolls the lyrics. Beth and both found it moving. I can’t recommend it enough.

GONE BUT NOT_Featuring Kevin Coval from Jim Hoffman on Vimeo.

In the meantime, here’s to Joe Segal (who still’s hanging at the club, introducing acts, and dissing pop music, by the way), one of my all-time favorite veterans. Thanks Joe.

My friend Lynn LaPlante Allaway’s daughter Lucy started pre-school this year, and whoa, has Lynn taken advantage of the free time! In the past few months, Lynn has

• finished the rough draft of a novel she’s been working on
• started her own Backwards and in High Heals blog, and
• been asked to write regularly for the Huffington Post

All this while she and her husband Mike herd their four (yes, four) active children to school and various activities in-between her rehearsals and performances as principal violist with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic (CJP).

Lynn’s mother Alice Gervace LaPlante (left, a talented musician in her own right) with her daughter at one of Lynn’s concerts.

You might recognize the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic’s name. The orchestra’s director Orbert Davis happened to be in Havana coaching music students there when Raul Castro announced the thaw in relations between the United States and Cuba. Davis and those students were featured in a 60 Minutes story last December, and in a Chicago Tribune story this week jazz critic Howard Reich says that when that historic announcement was made on television last year, the young Cuban musicians Davis was working with cheered and the percussion section jumped into a rumba. More from this week’s Chicago Tribune article:

Throughout the rehearsals and the performance, Davis was bowled over by what his Cuban charges achieved. “When presented with every challenge in jazz, the students rose to the challenge,” he says. “Especially the two monsters, which are swing and improvisation. They nailed it.”

Those Havana music students arrive here in Chicago today to spend a week preparing for a concert with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic this Friday, November 13, and reporters from 60 Minutes ar here, too, to follow them from rehearsals to visits to Chicago landmarks like Millennium Park and Navy Pier. “It’s going to be a little time warp for them, especially to see modern cars for the first time, to see the Willis Tower, which is three or four times taller than the tallest building in Cuba,” Davis told the Chicago Tribune.

My friend Lynn is in the middle of all this, and you can read her take on it in a piece she wrote for Huffington Post Chicago earlier this month. Tickets are still available for this Friday’s concert at the Auditorium Theatre, but if you can’t make it to Chicago, I’m guessing the segment about these young musicians from Cuba will air next week, November 15, 2015 on 60 Minutes.

I’ve heard the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic live many times before and was thrilled to watch 60 Minutes last December when Orbert Davis was in Cuba. My heart sunk, though, when the show pointed out that sanctions had forced these young Cuban sax and clarinet players to use reeds that were 30 or 40 years old. My hope is that when I listen in on the 60 Minutes segment next week, I’ll hear that the new relationship between Cuba and the U.S. means these young musicians can bring new reeds across the border for their friends back home!

A 79-year-old writer learned a lot about his fears when I gave “What are you afraid of?” as a writing prompt over Halloween.

Loyal blog readers might remember a post I published here last year featuring excerpts from an essay Bob Eisenberg wrote then about his best job ever, when he was 11 years old, he helped a neighbor peddle fruit and junk items from a horse and wagon:

Mr. Dunn drove the horse and wagon through the alleys while I stood up in the back of the wagon, cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “WATAMEELO!” People ran down stairs from their back porches to buy our watermelons. We talked and laughed with everybody and shared news of the day as we heard it from people along the way.

Many writers in my classes email essays my way ahead of time for edits and suggestions, and Bob always sends me his. Over the years I’ve enjoyed reading stories about childhood escapades with his neighborhood buddies — Squeaky LaPort, Da Da Hernandez, and Mario DeSandro, a.k.a. “The Pranksters” – but this week’s essay was a little different.

Bob Eisenberg is not only a good writer, he’s a great artist, too.

“My mother died right after I was born,” Bob wrote this week.  “I moved in with my mother’s mother until I was six. THEN she died, too.” Bob was sent off for a year at military school, and it went on from there.

“As I look back into my past I count six different grammar schools I attended and seven different families I lived with,” he wrote. “My experiences during my childhood and adolescence created hidden fears that I didn’t realize until this writing assignment.”

In his “What Are You Afraid Of?” essay, Bob acknowledges romanticizing his past. “After I got out of military school, I lived with many different relatives who were kind and caring. Cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and my father in many neighborhoods all over Chicago, relatives I describe as fun loving characters interested in my well-being,” he wrote. “There was a dark side behind these fun-loving stories, though — hidden fears that I didn’t want to look at.”

When I heard my talking computer read that last line out loud I pounced on the stop button. I’ve come to know Bob and his lovely wife Linda on rides home from our Monday Lincoln Park Village memoir class, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to learn what terrible things had happened to my friend as he was moved from house to house, school to school, family to family. When I finally mustered up the courage to continue reading, I was relieved to hear what my computer’s robotic voice came out with.

I mean, I still ache for Bob and this fear he’s had since childhood, but his fear is so rational — and obvious — I’m relieved it isn’t worse. “I realized now that the fears I had back in my childhood still affect me,” he wrote. “I don’t like traveling.”

It’s not the long lines at the airport. It’s not packing and carrying suitcases, either. That doesn’t bother Bob at all. “What really affects me and brings out my fear is leaving home. I recall the same feeling of anxiety I felt every time I moved from one family to another.”

Bob and Linda now own a summer home about 90 miles away in Michigan City, Indiana, and that’s just about the farthest Bob feels comfortable away from their condo in Chicago. He says, “Going there is like going home.”

Last week a radio station called Harbor Radio Country recorded Bob reading essays about his job on the horse and cart and his antics with the Pranksters. The recorded essays are set to air before the end of the year, and I’m hoping once WRHC-FM gets wind of Bob’s “What Am I Afraid Of?” essay they might want him to record it as well.

Today is November 2, though here in Chicago, you’d think otherwise. Brilliant, radiant sunshine, 70 degrees, sublime.

The sunshine is the tell, though. This time of year, the sun hits at flatter angles than it does in the summer. Lots of contrast, and the things that glimmered in July sun positively gleam this time of year.

Salute to the Royals.

And ten years ago, the sun never gleamed so brightly. I was working at an office on LaSalle Street, which happened to be the final leg of the 2005 White Sox World Series victory parade. Mayor Richard M. Daley, a stalwart White Sox fan, and never afraid to spend money on what he liked, made sure it was worthy of a moon landing or the end of a war.

I left my office, met Beth about halfway on her walk to help her navigate the throngs, and we walked until we got a good spot.

And there really were throngs. On the sidewalks, streets, and in upstairs office windows. And confetti. And that flat sunshine that made the confetti pieces explode into something that, well, to me, was not close to heaven. It was heaven.

Baseball is not like other sports. It  requires a greater commitment from its fans. Even casual baseball fans live through more grief and more joy and more of everything than devoted fans of other sports. Baseball, compared to other sports, is like reading a difficult book—one that tests you page after page, and is still worth it.

Reaching the parade point requires a lot of work, a lot of great defensive plays, a lot of great at-bats, a lot of great pitching (like, say, four complete games in the American League Championship Series in 2005) and at least some luck. It’s harder than hell.

And so, on this glorious day while the sun still glints, before I go into delirium tremens because there is no baseball to watch, I tip my White Sox cap to the Kansas City Royals, 2015 World Series Champions.