Matthew Whitajer

I’ve written before about how much I appreciate the free audio book program the Library of Congress provides for people who are blind or have physical disabilities that prevent them from reading print. This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Pratt-Smoot Act, the legislation for the “Books for the Blind” program, and to celebrate, the National Library Service (NLS) is sponsoring a concert.

Jazz musician Matthew Whitaker has been a patron of the NLS music service for many years, and if you’re a fan of television’s 60 Minutes you may recall an episode a year or two ago featuring him on piano. He’s a highly gifted performer, age 19, with a lot of credits so far and a couple of albums out besides.

In normal years, the National Library Service would have held the concert in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress, with an interview preceding, and a reception to follow. This year is not a normal year, so instead, they’ve pre-recorded the concert and an interview the National Library Service Director Karen Keninger did with Matthew.

Full disclosure: Karen and I got to know each other when we both were in New Jersey training with our Seeing Eye dogs in 2012. She returned home with new dog Jimi that year. I came home with now-retired Seeing Eye dog Whitney and we’ve kept in touch ever since. She is the one who alerted me to this historic anniversary. The celebratory concert streams free of charge on YouTube and the Library of Congress Facebook page at 8:00 pm Eastern Time today, March 3, 2021, and I’ll be tuning in. The interview is available at 8:00 a.m. Eastern on the Library of Congress YouTube channel.

No time to watch right now? No problem! The concert will remain on YouTube for two years, so if you miss it today, you can still catch it later. As Karen says, “If you like jazz, you won’t be disappointed!”

Another version of this post was published earlier on the Easterseals National blog.

On Friday I opened an email from Bethesda Lutheran Communities, the operator of the group home where our son Gus lives in Watertown, Wisconsin. The gist of the message was that Bethesda had agreed in principle to sell its Watertown services to another organization, Broadstep. For those who don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, Bethesda announced last year that it would be closing its residential operations in Wisconsin, at least partly due to the financial burdens COVID has caused.

Gus has been cared for by Bethesda since 2002, so it was a shock to our system, to say the least. A case worker has been trying to find a new placement for Gus, and in fact, we turned down an opening at a home in Racine based on the hope that Bethesda would find an organization that would take over Gus’ house. That would be ideal—he wouldn’t have to move, and current staff could even be retained.

The tour continues!

It was a tough call. Beth leaned toward taking the spot—if we held out and the sale never occurred, Gus would still have to move and we might not have much say later on. Plus, Racine is considerably closer to our home in Chicago.

The flip side: Gus has caseworkers, staff, and doctors who know him. (Finding doctors and dentists who are willing to treat developmentally disabled people like Gus is not all that easy.) And, you know, it was simply a case of the known vs. the unknown.

We held out. And it looks like it’s going to work out. I almost broke down and cried while I was reading the email. I didn’t think I was walking around and thinking about it consciously. But it was apparently weighing on me more than I realized. What a relief.

So, Friday was already a great day. But wait, there’s more!

Beth and I had a date night. Sort of. We’re both very big fans of Todd Rundgren. In my mind, he’s up there with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerald, Prince—you know, transcendent talents. When I was in high school I wore out the grooves on Rundren’s “Something Anything,” a double album (plus an EP) that was all about…teenage angst. He wrote everything, played all instruments and produced the album. He’s always been innovative, and has produced a bunch of successful albums by other artists.

As we cultists say, “Todd is God.”

This is a terrific review of the “Pittsburgh show.”

Well, he’s doing a “tour.” It’s goofy, but if you play along, as we did, it’s a lot of dumb fun. He and his band actually perform every show of the tour live in Chicago. But, each night the stage and backdrop changes themes by city, and he peppers in the appropriate “Hello Cleveland” remarks. Even the clock display is set to local time.

We signed up for the Chicago date. Beth decided we should go out for a drink in advance, as is our wont in normal times. She got dressed up and even wore…lipstick. Me, I was my dumpy self. We went to our local, Half Sour, which can now have indoor dining at reduced capacity. When asked what we were doing that night, we said, “We’re going to a concert!”

When we got home I hooked up my MacBook to our TV, and I blue toothed it to our stereo. Which is a fine piece of HiFi, by the way. (My nerd self soldered the amp together from a kit. It has tubes and everything.)

We connected to the stream at around 7:30, in advance of 8:00 start time, and it was weirdly kind of real. Stage hands were running back and forth hooking stuff up. Behind the stage, we got the images of the Chicago skyline, the lake, etc. There was a familiar pre-concert anticipatory murmur—because 19 people are allowed to attend in person each “date.” It’s pretty tightly controlled—attendees must present evidence of a negative COVID test within 72 hours of the concert. People were comfortably spaced, and between attendees were video screens, each displaying the faces of virtual attendees who’d bought VIP passes.

The footlights were dimmed, the fans roared as much as 19 people can roar, and the band came out—a horn section, three sequined backup singers—in all 11 counting Rundgren. The sound was marvelous from the first note.

We rarely order delivery food, but for this occasion we had Chinese delivered. It came about five minutes into the performance. While I was downstairs in the lobby picking it up, Beth said she started to cry when she heard the horn section, realizing how much she’s missed live music.

We applauded. We hooted. We jumped up and danced. The video production was superb—it came off as slickly as a fully edited and produced documentary concert film.

At the end of the two-hour performance (the guy is 72, and Mick Jagger has nothing on him) we even did the thing you do after a music or theatrical performance—you talk about it. We called our friend Nancy, whom we knew had also “attended.” On speaker phone we marveled at the arrangements, the sound, and, well, it was joyous.

It wasn’t quite the real deal. But thanks to Rundgren’s imaginative, innovative artistry, it was pretty damn close.

Can’t wait for the real thing.

I am pleased to introduce Lola Hotchkis as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Lola’s cousin Nancy is a friend of mine and describes Lola as “the writer in the family.” Retired after a successful career in business, Lola lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and joined our class once I started teaching via Zoom. This week’s assignment (in honor of COVID-19 vaccines) was “Shots” and prompted Lola to write this sweet slice of Americana.

Editor’s note: I am fortunate to have a few dear friends named “Nancy” — read closely and you’ll discover which one of them is Lola’s cousin.

Fred Gaier’s Shots

The hand cream recipe.

by Lola Hotchkis

My father Fred earned his pharmacy degree at the University of Illinois Chicago in 1940 and worked in a neighborhood drug store until drafted by the U.S. Army in 1942. Safely stationed in a Skagway, Alaska, hospital pharmacy, his memories of war time were good ones.

After the war, all Dad wanted was his own drug store. He found a store for sale, borrowed money from his uncle, and Gaier Drug Company, Inc., was established in 1947 at the southwest corner of Rockwell and Leland in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood.

Young Mary Faust’s uncle Bill sold insurance to the Gaier family. Knowing that Fred was single and a good catch, he brought his niece Mary to the store for a soda. The rest is history: Fred and Mary got hitched in September 1948. The drug store became the family business and the family fun.

Mom’s sister Jackie also had a family business. Uncle Eric rented organs and Jackie would play for events. Aunt Jackie recognized the talent in their daughter Nancy and trained her in the profession. To attract Christmas business, Eric would move an organ into the drug store window and grade-school-aged Nancy would play.

One of Dad’s friends dressed as Santa to entertain neighborhood children. He was positioned in a back corner in front of the public telephone booth and close to Dad’s domain in the back. Dad kept a bottle of bourbon conveniently located among the medicine bottles.

When he saw winter on the horizon, Dad brought home flu vaccine to his family. He would boil needles, carefully fill a syringe, and each of us received an annual flu shot. That’s why I’m not shot adverse.

Dad also made his own hand cream to sell in the store. The family helped produce it in our kitchen. Dad boiled the ingredients on the stove, then poured the hot liquid into thick white jars. Each family member was assigned a share of jars at the kitchen table. Our mission: Stir the liquid in each jar with a wooden tongue depressor until it solidified. We’d keep asking Dad, “Is it solid enough yet?” When the answer was affirmative, he’d give us new jars of liquid to stir while he capped and labeled the finished product.

Dad’s health suffered over the years with that bottle of bourbon in the back. His friends loved to come and visit. Each was offered a shot of bourbon. Each had one shot, but Dad had one shot with each friend.

Dad loved his store but the competition from Walgreens and Osco won out. No one would buy a corner drug store in 1968, but Osco came calling with a job offer. The district manager was smart. He helped clean out the store, bought the inventory that could be used, and placed Dad in the Osco closest to Rockwell and Leland. His customers followed, but I’ll never forget the day Dad put the key in the door for the last time.

He cried.

On January 27 we had to reschedule The Zoom memoir-writing class I lead Wednesdays at The Admiral at the Lake, and for good reason: every resident and staff member at that Continuing Care Retirement Community was getting the COVID-19 vaccine that day.

At our rescheduled Zoom class, writers reported how each resident had an appointed time to head to the vaccine room, how staff had decorated that room with balloons, played celebratory music in the background, offered to take pictures of anyone wanting to mark the occasion. “It was like a party!” one said.

After their jab, they were directed to another room to sit and wait for a 15-minute observation period in case of rare allergic reactions. “They had to shoo people out of that room,” another writer said with a laugh, reminding me that with COVID protocol in place, many hadn’t been in the same room at the same time in months. “We didn’t want to leave.”

Today, February 24, 2021, everyone at The Admiral is getting their second COVID-19 vaccination. Studies show You don’t reach full protection until two weeks after your second (or final) dose, which leaves one to wonder. What will a Continuing Care Retirement Community with 200 units look like two weeks from now, when everyone there is “set free” on the very same day? If a story in last week’s New York Times is right, the answer to that question is likely to be…empty.

The New York Times story refers to a January survey by the travel agency network Virtuoso that found 83% of respondents over age 77 saying they were more ready to travel in 2021 than in 2020, and 95 percent of the same group saying they would wait to travel until they received their vaccine. Older people are more eager to travel in 2021 than other age groups and more likely to link the timing of their travel to when they receive their vaccinations. From the article:

At the Foundry Hotel in Asheville, N.C., an 87-room luxury hotel housed in what was once a steel factory for the Biltmore Estate, reservations made with the hotel’s AARP promotional rate were up 50 percent last month. Aqua-Aston Hospitality, a Honolulu-based company with resorts, hotels and condos in its portfolio, reports that senior-rate bookings climbed nearly 60 percent in January.

The New York Times story focused on people of a certain age going to fancy places in warm climates, but writers in my memoir classes seem much more keen on visiting faraway familly members and friends, no matter where they are. That said, the storycame with a fabulous headline : A Different Early-Bird Special: Have Vaccine, Will Travel” –  and for that alone, I’m banking on The New York Times. I usually give memoir-writing classes a two-to four-week break between sessions, but with those statistics in mind, I’m giving my Admiral group eight weeks off instead: two weeks to let the vaccine kick in, and four to take all the vacations and trips they had to forego this past year.

Just imagine the stories they’ll come home with!

We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to screen entertainment. And it drives me nuts.

For example, we have Netflix. But nearly every time we think of a movie we want to see and I search on it, I get the dreaded “Titles like…”. Which means “we don’t have it but you might like these.” Like, we wanted to see “Wall Street.” Netflix suggests a bunch of titles that, you know, we didn’t search on. We don’t see anything we want. So I search where “Wall Street” does stream. And I find it’s on other services, which we don’t have. And if we did, we’d still have to pay for the movie. Or we could buy it one-off from YouTube.

Check out Dick Cavett. And the Dick Van Dyke show has aged well, also.

The Balkanization of screen entertainment has me thinking that people who unplug from cable will eventually pay more for a multitude of streams that cost more than their old cable bill.

It also makes me nostalgic for another time.

Enter Decades TV, and oldies-but-goodies TV channel that has everything from Ed Sullivan to…The Dick Cavett Show. Bingo!

Back in the day, my mother routinely favored Cavett over Johnny Carson. As a kid, it was over my head and I didn’t get it.

But now, every night at 8 CT, Beth and I switch to Decades and we are transported in time. Kind of. Because so often the questions and topics are pretty much the same as they are during modern talk shows. That’s pretty striking.

Except the questions are smarter, the guests are civil, and the monologues are funny but not mean spirited.

Cavett was kind of Terry Gross on TV before Terry Gross was on the radio. Thoughtful questions and discussions that go off script.

And I’d forgotten: Guests don’t come and go one at-a-time. They stay, so by the end of the show there may be three or four of them interacting.

Last week, for example, one show had Florence Henderson as the first guest. She was followed by Sid Caesar. Then Jack Klugman and it ended with Robert Shaw (who knew Shaw was also a writer?).

Other combos: Melba Moore, Don Knotts, and…F1 racing champion Jackie Stewart. On another, Jackie Robinson was joined by Joan Baez. And they got into a great political exchange. (Jackie Robinson was a brilliant man.)

Anyway, if you’re of a certain age and want some nostalgia, try Dick Cavett. If you’re not of a certain age and want to know how good we had it, give it a look.