That’s Wanda, modeling her 1960 Easter bonnet for her home health care worker a few weeks ago.

If you’ve followed this Safe & Sound blog for a while, you know who Wanda Bridgeforth is: she’s witty, she’s talented, she’s 98 years old, she’s been attending the memoir-writing class I lead in downtown Chicago for over a decade now, and guess what? She’s in the news again. This time, it’s the front page!

Early this week, Wanda was profiled in a column in the Chicago Tribune written by Heidi Stevens. Here’s a snippet:

Bridgeforth lives alone in a Hyde Park condo, not far from Lake Michigan. “I am the vice president in charge of looking out the window,” she said. “My job is practicing the lively art of doing nothing. And that takes some doing!
It might be a form of meditation, I don’t know.”

Heidi’s work is syndicated all over the country — my sister Bev called to let me know the column about Wanda was in her local newspaper in Grand Haven, Michigan, and when I talked to Wanda over the phone Wednesday she said her phone hadn’t stopped ringing. “A cousin from Baltimore called,” she marveled. “She saw it out there!”

For me, the excitement started last week when a simple message from Heidi called out to me from my talking iPhone:

“Hi Beth. It’s Heidi. How are you feeling? I have a favor to ask. Do you think Wanda would be willing to talk with me for a column? I’m trying to find someone who’s lived through a lot to offer some perspective on this time in history. She popped in my mind because of some of what you told me about her life and her willingness to record it in memoir form.”

Wanda gushed when I called her to see if she was willing. “You know me!” she laughed. A slew of phone calls and text messages and questions about arrangements followed, and this long message Heidi left on her Balancing Act Facebook page afterwards tells the rest of the story:

Wanda Bridgeforth made it to the front page of the Chicago Tribune today, which made me so happy. I’ve been getting the loveliest emails from readers who are touched by her story. (And one from a man who says he used to be Ms. Bridgeforth’s doctor. “I think I got more out of her visits than she did,” he wrote.)

I want to share a tiny bit more background. First, we couldn’t send a photographer to shoot Ms. Bridgeforth’s portrait, since it didn’t feel safe, coronavirus-wise, to have someone new enter her condo, and she wasn’t able to walk outside or down to her lobby where we could shoot a photo of her through the glass, which Tribune photographers are doing a lot of these days. So her home healthcare worker used her own phone to shoot photos of photos that Wanda had in her condo and then texted them to me. How’s that for an essential worker going above and beyond? So wonderful.

Second, when Wanda let me know what times would be best for me to call and interview her, she offered a window from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. When I called her (at 3:30 p.m., while she’s usually watching “Jeopardy,” but she taped it that day to watch later) I said, “So I could’ve called you at 1 in the morning and you would’ve answered?” And she said, “Oh, yes. I never get to bed before 2.”

I just adore her.

And me? I just adore both of them: Wanda Bridgeforth and Heidi Stevens. If you missed seeing the story on page one of the Chicago Tribune, don’t despair: you can read it online here.

Two days ago, I walked a mile. Without falling. Or wheezing. Yahoo!

Luna picked a tough time for her first job.

I did get a little dizzy early on, but took baby steps and pushed through it. The dizzy spells have been the most troubling leftovers from my time with COVID-19. No, that’s not true. The fatigue has been the worst. I tell Beth that the first thing I want to do when I wake up in the morning is go to sleep. The headaches and nausea spells have almost completely subsided. I finally have my appetite back. The foggy brain comes and goes, but it’s kind of terrifying when it comes. I’m told that’s OK, that if I know I’m foggy brained, that’s a good sign.

When I was 30, I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and was under a lot of stress for a variety of reasons. I got the flu, which morphed into pneumonia, a case serious enough that back then in 1987, I started getting questions about my drug use and sex life. I had a temperature of 104 for three days, and the menu of antibiotics just bounced off me. Then one day, it broke. In all I was in the hospital seven days. Gus was a year old, and family members had, thank goodness, come down to help. It took some time to get back to speed.

This COVID 19 episode was worse. Much worse.

Reports from friends who also have had the virus, along with news pieces I’ve read, indicate that my long road back to wholeness is relatively common. But the menu of misery visited on the infected takes a demonic variety of forms.

Also clear is that we still don’t really know a lot about the virus, the likelihood of it mutating, if (likely) and how long (who knows?) I’ll have any immunity.

I’ve applied to be a plasma donor—scientists are experimenting with infusions of blood that have antibodies in sick people, plus they want blood from people who’ve been infected to study in general. Waiting to hear if I make the grade.

I’m also going to donate what money and time I can to critical political races.

If the verdict on immunity is I likely have it, I’ll be working the polls come November.

Meantime, I have a lot to live for. Being cooped up with Beth has been a joy after being cooped up in the hospital. We watch TCM and Two-and-a-Half-Men reruns and Trevor Noah and last night “Last Dance,” which was a helluva a lot of fun. I cooked for the first time in weeks and remembered why I love it. After years of not having a drop of any kind of soda, I’m ingesting full-sugar Coke like it’s…coke. (Don’t tell the president–he’ll start touting it as a cure.) There’s a 7-11 downstairs when I run out, and I have a lot of masks and gloves. Printers Row Wine Shop is open! And if smarter heads do prevail, we’ll eventually be able to visit our son Gus in his group home again, safely.

Most of all, I’m gonna live healthy. (Well, mostly.) I’ve got a lot to do.

Hey, if you missed hearing Red Sox organist Josh Kantor on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me quiz show yesterday, don’t despair. You can hear him every day at 2 p.m. central time when he live streams “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and takes requests from baseball fans listening in. This all happens at 7th-Inning Stretch 2020 on Facebook, and donations from the requests are raising money for Boston area food banks.

Loyal Safe & Sound blog followers might recognize Josh Kantor’s name: I wrote a post back in 2016 about our friend retired White Sox baseball organist Nancy Faust donating her home practice organ to an auction benefiting Chicago White Sox Charities.

Boston Red Sox organist Josh Kantor placed the winning bid on the Hammond Elegante Model 340100, and a slew of his Chicago musician friends picked up a rental van in Chicago to deliver it to Kantor in Boston.

The organ juuusssst barely fit in the van.

The musicians took a pit stop at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown along the way, and a story in the Chicago Reader back then reported that the trip almost didn’t happen at all: They measured ahead of time, but when they got the rental van, the organ didn’t fit. “The crew managed to Tetris it inside,” the story said. Singer Kelly Hogan was on the moving crew and told the reporter that the musicians who drove the organ to Boston all have many, many miles in band vans between them, and that it was “pretty normal” to be resting her arm on an organ as they were traveling.

The story said Josh Kantor was overwhelmed by the scores of people who called and e-mailed and texted him asking what they could do to help get the organ to his home in Boston. “A friend sawed a metal railing off the entrance of Kantor’s house so the organ could be moved inside,” the story said. “Another donated a Nancy Faust bobblehead, which became a focal point of videos documenting the trek.”

Nancy emailed me a few times while the organ was in transit to send clips of stories and interviews with Josh Kantor about his new musical Instrument. “Here is a link to this morning’s interview on 670 the score with Josh Kantor who bought the organ,” one note read. “What a gracious guy. The ballpark has enabled me to meet the nicest people.”

Nancy sent me the Chicago Reader article I’ve been quoting in this blog post, too, along with another note. “Hi Beth, This is a rather long, very inclusive account from today’s Reader about my ‘organ transplant,’” she wrote. “Josh Kantor has been far too kind but hopefully gained the best memories, friendship bonds, and the Red Sox recognition from the whole adventure. Love, Nancy.”

Me and Mike with Nancy Faust at the Green Mill awhile back. Nancy showed Mike her World Series ring.

Josh Kantor was hired as Red Sox organist in 2003. After accepting the position, he flew to Chicago to see Nancy Faust, and the Nancy Faust-Josh Kantor mutual admiration society was formed. “He spent the day with me,” she said, and that story in the Chicago Reader quotes Kantor saying, “That was one of my favorite days ever!”

Kantor told the reporter that during that visit, among other things, Nancy urged him to keep updating his repertoire. “If you want to do this for a long time and not turn into a dinosaur like a lot of other organists have, keep learning new songs.” More from the Chicago Reader story:

His fascination with her process helps explain why he was so interested in purchasing this particular organ. “To me, the organ that was in her home for 35 years, that was her practice instrument, was as interesting—if not more interesting—because that was the lab instrument, basically. That was where she did all her homework,” he says, laughing. “That was where she concocted all her genius.”

Baseball organists are a dying breed – MLB reports fewer than a dozen ballparks still hire organists, and many of the musicians are only allowed to play a few times throughout the game and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the seventh inning. The Chicago Reader story called Kantor one of the “most vocal proponents of organ music and its role in baseball,” and it sounds to me like he’s doing a great job. He couldn’t help but notice how open and accessible Nancy Faust was to fans at White Sox Park, and he said he tries to do the same, with a modern twist: during home games, he takes song requests via Twitter (@jtkantor) at Fenway. And now, his music is helping with food banks in Boston and providing baseball fans sheltering in place with a little something to smile about every afternoon.

I am pleased to introduce Jane Gallagher as our featured “Saturdays with Seniors” blogger today. A writer in Wanda’s Wednesday “Me, Myself and I” class, Jane is a retired psychiatric nurse, and until the pandemic, she volunteered at O’Hare, assisting passengers getting around the airport. The tales she shares with us in class of growing up in Oak Park with four brothers and one sister are a delight. Her mother died when she was 14 years old, and her descriptions of how the five siblings ended up separated into foster homes and far-away boarding schools after that are painfully moving –and honest.

Today’s guest blogger, Jane Malone Gallagher.

After years living out-of-state, Jane’s husband and their two children moved back to the Midwest, where she reconnected with her siblings. She and her husband have retired in Chicago, and Jane shared this little ditty with her fellow memoir writers , who meet weekly now on their own via zoom:

by Jane Malone Gallagher

A couple weeks ago, while sitting on my little old gray couch — which now has a big slump in it — I was listening to the president’s latest daily briefing on the pandemic. “We will all be together at church on Easter,” he said and, as if that wasn’t irresponsible enough, he added, “And won’t that be glorious.”

“Oh my Lord,” I thought.

Don’t tell me he’s actually going to send people out of their homes at this critical time. We should be hunkering down. As if on cue, my husband’s cell phone started ringing. A little unusual because my husband is almost totally deaf. Anybody who knows him wouldn’t call his phone. He only texts. Must be somebody we don’t know, a scam maybe — we get a lot of them. Once I hear the come-ons, I just hang up. In my hotly irritated state after the president’s speech, however, I grabbed my husband’s phone and prepared to yell at the scammer.

The caller began, “Hi, I’m from State Farm and we want to check up on you.” Wow, what a clever way to start a scam. “No really, what do you want?” I replied tersely. The caller said, “I just want to make sure you’re all right.” Now I was really irritated. The nerve of this woman. She’s going to persist.

“Well I would be just fine,” I shouted over the phone, “Except we’re in a crisis and we don’t even have a decent president.”

The caller replied in a gentle tone of voice, “You’re right. It’s hard to be without a leader in this crisis. Reassurance is what we need, and we should have a good president.”

She went on to describe how the pandemic had affected her kids and how she was not always coping well herself. Surprised and touched by her openness and sincerity, realizing that she was not a scammer, my throat tightened. I wanted to cry.

This kind-hearted person feels like I feel. We said a few more words of encouragement to each other before hanging up. Then I let the tears flow.

Today, it feels more hopeful to me that we will get out of this. We may have an incompetent president, but we have an astute governor, who has likely saved many lives. We also have a smart mayor who, gratefully, has a keen sense of humor.

And Chicago, as we know so well, is a resilient city.

Largely, people are rising to the task during these extraordinary times. Our friends and family have been heroes to us.

But.

There’s a Lincoln automobile commercial that shows a woman in a luxurious remote house looking out at her luxurious driveway. One Lincoln car is parked in the drive. Another pulls up. She’s traded in one obscenely expensive car for another. Somehow surviving this crisis! The driver hands the woman some documents, gets in the other Lincoln and drives it away. The young woman looks in at her kids. Everything is copasetic! People are dying and she got a new car without having to deal with the unwashed masses!

Dear Lincoln Motors, Toyota, Chase, Fifth Third Bank, Pizza Hut, Apple, Google, and every fricking corporate piece of shit, STFU! You don’t care about me anymore than you did a couple months ago. You got a ginormous tax cut awhile back and you hoarded it.

One thing this thing has done is lay bare what’s wrong with everyday America. The most glaring thing? The plight of lots and lots of black people and moreover, people without the means to live in a luxurious remote home and drive a goddamn Lincoln. Many people, owed to our illustrious history, don’t have access to the stuff that people like me take for granted. Like health insurance. Like doctors. Like healthy food and grocery stores. Like clean air.

Lots of us at certain levels get severance packages when we’re let go from our jobs. It sucks getting canned, but getting severance is a shit ton better than going through the demeaning process of applying for unemployment. I had to apply for it once, decades ago. It IS demeaning, and we make it that way on purpose.

The gap between the haves and have nots is insane, and it’s not based on merit. Just look at the parasitic monkey family in the White House.

We can do better. We have to do better or we’ll go down the drain.

By the way. I’m back.