Wanda shared her copies of Scott’s Blue Book with me. Priceless.

I posted about the movie “Green Book” awhile back. I liked the movie then, and I like it now.

The wonderful Wanda Bridgeforth.

Whatever you think about the movie, I think there is one inarguably good thing about it: A ton of people who knew nothing about the Green Book before the movie now do know about it. I’m sorry they didn’t know before, but am happy they do now—thanks to the movie. It brought alive how awful that was and how recently that book was necessary.

I didn’t know about the Green Book until Beth related stories told by some writers in the  memoir classes she teaches. These people lived through the Green Book era, and used the Green Book. One of them is the wonderful Wanda Bridgeforth, now 98 years old. Beth has written often about Wanda, and Wanda has been a guest blogger several times. (Here’s one about her time at DuSable High School.)

The cover of the 1947 Scott’s Blue Book.

We are so lucky to know Wanda. I know of no one like her. Wanda somehow does not deny the awfulness of racism, speaks openly and in detail about it, yet goes through life with joy, humor, and grace.

We saw her last week. Wanda missed Beth’s Wednesday memoir class at the Chicago Cultural Center because she’d hot-rodded with her walker and taken a fall and sprained her ankle and banged up her hand. Beth and I had tickets to a play at the Court Theater in Hyde Park — Wanda’s apartment was on the route there, so Beth collected printed copies of the essays that had been read outloud at the class Wanda had missed that day and we delivered them, along with a get-well card from the whole class.

Wanda greeted us in the hallway outside her apartment. She’d seen us come in the lobby via the closed circuit TV channel, the little sneak. She was already healed enough to motor on with her walker.

We sat at her dining room table and chatted, and then Wanda said, “Michael, look at these.” She pushed two blue plastic bags toward me. Inside each was a “Scott’s Blue Book.” Wanda had told Beth about the Blue Book after Beth mentioned that she’d seen “Green Book.”

Need an orchestra? Scott’s has you covered. By the way, Walter Dyett had a distinguished career as a music educator at DuSable High School.

The Blue Book was a kind of Yellow Pages—except it listed only black-owned and operated businesses, centered in the old segregated South Side of Chicago. Residents there couldn’t venture downtown or other places, so they built a black metropolis within the city. Wanda and others have taught me and Beth (and anybody smart enough to listen) a whole lot about the rich, vibrant, textured, literate, musical life in the black island that was Bronzeville and beyond. To hear her stories is to lose preconceptions and assumptions about what South Side Chicago meant, or means today. And to mourn the loss of the community and social fabric that Wanda grew up in.

Anyway, those Blue Books. What can I say? Leafing through them was a wonder, a passage to a world where Wanda lived, and that, thanks to Wanda, I am able to imagine. Some businesses had only a single line entry, others purchased full pages. Many included a photograph and biography of the business owner or the family of proprietors. Typically, the photographs were portraits of business owners in dressy attire. The bios were written formally and impeccably.

As I leafed through one Blue Book slack-jawed, Wanda paged through the other, pausing to tell us about one or another business she’d patronized, or a business owner she’d known.

Thanks to Wanda, that vibrant world came to life. Beth and I and everybody who knows her will always be better for it.

I’m pleased to have Regan Burke back as a guest blogger today. She’s been a member of many of my classes over the years (Regan is featured in “Writing Out Loud”) and maintains her own blog, Backstory Essays, and she’s been published in The Christian Science Monitor and a variety of other publications.

It’s the bomb
by Regan Burke

This past Friday morning Beth, Whitney the Seeing Eye dog, and I met at one of Columbia College’s Michigan Avenue buildings in Chicago to volunteer for this year’s Louder Than A Bomb poetry slam. In the elevator up to check in, DJ Ca$hera gave us a hearty hello. She’s Louder Than A Bomb’s famous house DJ, working the entire six-week competition.

Louder Than A Bomb (LTAB) is Chicago’s annual youth poetry slam. Sponsored by Young Chicago Authors, the slam hosts over 1,000 youth poets in tournament-style bouts, all open to the public. Students representing Chicago area high schools stand on stage performing their own original poems to an audience of spoken word coaches, teachers, peers and strangers.

These kids filled the room with energy.

LTAB requires an army of volunteers for the events to run smoothly. Beth and I could have been check-in/greeters, merchandise sellers, timekeepers, social media ambassadors or judges. Judges! What could be more perfect for Beth, who teaches writing by listening to student recitations in her five weekly classes, than to be a judge for a spoken word competition? When I offered to be at her side for the first round, she agreed to sign up.

So there we were Friday morning, seated ten feet from the stage in the front row with lap-size white boards and markers. This was one of the first rounds of the five-week competition, so before the bout began, the MC briefed us on how to judge. “Write numbers on the board from 7-10. Use decimals,” he said. “A ten means the student is so good you’d pay their college tuition.” Translation: don’t give tens out too easily.

I sat next to Beth thinking I’d help her write on the board. But guess what? Beth didn’t need help. I was at the ready with the eraser, though, to clean Beth’s white board for each new poet.

On stage, DJ Ca$hera fired out bouncy hip-hop tunes. A “sacrificial” poet came first to get the ball rolling, make the room competition-ready, and give the judges a practice round. Then one after the other, poets from four different high schools kicked up onto the stage, introducing themselves by giving their names and the name of their poem before starting their reading. Many poets read from their phones, beating out words that particularized a slice of their lives: hard-bitten parents, bullies, sisters getting raped, and “fear of falling off a mountain of success.” One girl pushed through tears throwing down bars about her mother’s drinking, “her cheeks deflated like old birthday balloons.”

DJ Ca$hera turntabled tunes that artfully reflected the poets’ words. The MC shouted out the numbers we wrote on our boards, and his playful comebacks to some of our votes encouraged the students in the audience to join in. Anytime a poet got a score of 9.0 or lower, the audience chided our judgment by yelling “listen to the poem!!”

Next we judged the entire team of poets from each school. Each group performed one poem together, succinct, snappy and sophisticated.

In the end all of the young poets — twenty or so –hopped onto the stage to hear the winners. While waiting for the decision, they cheered and hugged and jammed to DJ Ca$hera’s rousing wind-up.

Whitney, unharnessed, made friends with the high schoolers sitting behind us, squirreling her way under Beth’s chair, encouraging them to rub her ears. We had to dig her out from under there when it was time to leave.

On the way out we met Eric Coval, the Maine East spoken word coach. Eric’s brother, Kevin Coval, Chicago’s unofficial poet laureate, created LTAB 19 years ago.

It was only 1:00 in the afternoon when we breezed back onto Michigan Avenue, fully entertained and far too stimulated. Now we’re checking the online schedule to see if we can find a time slot to come back and judge again. #LTAB is still looking for volunteers, no experience necessary, The slam continues through March 17, shifts are available weekdays and weekends, and you can sign up here.

Tickets still available for the final rounds of Louder Than A Bomb at Chicago’s Auditorium Theater on Sunday, March 17, 2019. Look for me there.

A pair of writers from the memoir-writing classes I lead for The Village Chicago appeared on the national NBC Nightly News broadcast last weekend. Bruce and Anne Hunt started taking memoir-writing classes with me years ago, and now they’re taking singing lessons, too.

My friend Colleen and I went to their choir’s holiday concert in December, and I am over the moon that NBC saw fit to share the story of this amazing group of singers with the nation last week. I’ll let Bruce explain.

Good Memories

by Bruce Hunt

Except for those spontaneous protest songs in the sixties, neither of us has sung in a choir since high school. But when Anne was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in April of 2016, we wanted to do all we could to hold off the advancement of the cruel illness.

You can watch the NBC News segment that features Anne and Bruce Hunt online.

We read about it. We studied the research. We joined support groups at the Alzheimer’s Association, and we started singing with the Good Memories Choir — a musical group made up of folks with early stages of memory loss, their care partners and volunteers who want to make a contribution.

We practice every Tuesday at 9:30 in the morning, and each rehearsal begins when the choir stands (as we are able) for a rousing rendition of “Oh What a Beautiful Morning.” We move so as to demonstrate that the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye, and the sound really is rich. That’s how we get started.

Anne and I had heard that learning a new skill was good discipline for people 65 and better, and we’d also heard that music has a remarkable impact on brain functioning. What we did not expect was how much fun it would be to sing with thirty or so new colleagues, nor did we realize what hard work it would be to practice for one and a half hours every week.

But Jonathan Miller, our choirmaster, and his wife Sandy establish a climate that is joyful and upbeat. And guess what? Anne and I turned out to be more capable singers than we thought we were. The spirit of the choir and the Millers’ leadership come through in this brief excerpt from the NBC Nightly news.

In addition to the choir, we have some other resources going for us. We have been married for 62 years and we have navigated some pretty rough terrain along the way. We have three daughters and five grandchildren who have all signed on to be part of the care team. In fact we have a whole Village (The Village Chicago) surrounding us as a community of support.

For years we have been part of Beth Finke’s memoir writing class, sponsored by Village Chicago, which means we have captured our experience; we have recorded our unique history.

When we were in separate writing groups responding to the same prompts, Beth once said of us: “It was like listening to a love story in stereo.” We treasure that image.

Now we understand our mission, our present calling: to tell our story, to demystify Alzheimer’s, to demonstrate as best we can for as long as we can that there is life beyond the initial diagnosis. For us, the notion of living one day at a time takes on fresh meaning, not that we quit planning, but that we do seize the day we have been given, avoid regret over past opportunities missed, or fantasizing about impossible futures. We try to be present for each other and for others in our world.

Right now, music is key. We are committed to the weekly practice, and we are driving toward the next big concert in May.

Well folks, it’s Presidents Day, and—who knew—it’s also National Drink Wine Day. Not that we need an excuse to have a glass when we need to do whatever it takes to quell our anxiety during this grave time of national emergency.

Anyway, today, I got nothing except a couple or three links that are worth sharing, in my humble opinion.

First, I was inspired by New Yorkers’ successful effort to say “No” to Amazon. I only hope Chicago doesn’t somehow “win” some part of the foiled plans. Look, economic development is good. Foolhardy giveaways by localities in a race to the bottom isn’t. States and municipalities have got to learn that game is hollow. Apparently, Wisconsin will likely learn that the hard way as the realities of it’s Foxconn boondoggle play out. (Foxconn is the electronics giant that Wisconsin has more or less bribed into locating a plant—err—something in southeastern Wisconsin just over the Illinois border.)

Here are two good cautionary pieces that should make plain that anyone in a state or locality that is courting companies looks at those plans very carefully.

One, “Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,” is at Bloomberg.com, the other, “Wisconsin’s $4.1 billion boondoggle,” is at The Verge. There both long but very well reported. I hope you’ll give one or the other a read, but you may read it and weep—for those nice people with the cheesehead hats.

Here in Chicago, I found yet another reason to vote for any mayoral candidate who’s not linked to Daley, Burke, or the Cook County machine. As I wrote in an earlier post, there’s been a racket in Cook County for eons whereby machine people like Ed Burke throw their considerable resources behind chosen candidates for the Cook County Assessor. Why, because in exchange, the Assessor over assesses properties for companies, condo associations, and other entities with the wherewithal to hired an appeals attorney. And Burke and other cronies get that legal work more often than not, because—wait for it—they have the most influence over the assessor.

Well, we Cook County voters took a piece out of that scam last year when, in the primary, we ousted the incumbent hack, Joseph Berrios. (Besides that scam, Berrios slimed county citizens in myriad other ways, including hiring family and political supporters.)

Well, the Sun-Times and Tribune reported today on a shouting match between mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot and State Representative Robert Martwick. From the Sun-Times piece:

Martwick filed a bill in Springfield that would dramatically change the way Cook County assessor is chosen.

Starting in 2022, after newly elected assessor Fritz Kaegi completes his first term, the assessor would be appointed by the county board president and confirmed by the Cook County board.

If it weren’t Cook County and Illinois, it would be unbelievable. Lightfoot rightly called this out as the undemocratic machine power grab that it is. And by the way, Martwick is a Toni Preckwinkle supporter. Just another reason I’m supporting Lightfoot, and fellow Chicagoans, I hope you will, too. Regardless I hope you don’t throw your vote to Daley, Preckwinkle, Mendoza, or any of the usual suspects.

Finally, some good news here in Chicago. As we cry in our beer about politics, we can take heart that we pay less for it. And we have more breweries than any U.S city.

We don’t need no stinkin’ Amazon.

Whitney got a lotta love from the Goudy kids yesterday.

My Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I spent yesterday afternoon answering questions from third-graders who attend Goudy Elementary, a Public school in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. The third graders are part of a Friday “reading buddies” program at Admiral At the Lake, a retirement community where I lead weekly memoir-writing classes.

Goudy is so close to The Admiral that the third grade teacher and her students can walk there. On most Fridays each third-grader brings a favorite book to read out loud to an assigned Admiral resident (their “reading buddy”). Yesterday was different, though. The third-graders had all read my children’s book Safe & Sound before they’d arrived, so rather than reading a book to their buddies, the third-graders gathered around in a circle with a children’s book author (that was me!) so each of them could ask a question.

Every single child told me their name before asking their question, and since their older reading buddies were seated way in the back of the room, I made a point to repeat each question the kids asked.  That way their buddies could hear the question, too. Some examples:

• If you’re blind, you touch things, so can you always feel what your dog is doing?
• Does your dog ever get distracted by squirrels?
• When a Seeing Eye dog has a birthday, do they get the day off so they can just play that day?
• Does your dog ever get distracted and get you into trouble?
• Does your dog ever play with something that doesn’t belong to him?
• How many miles can your dog be away and still hear you?
• If a mom was blind, and her little girl was blind, too, could they have two Seeing Eye dogs?
• Does a Seeing Eye dog ever get to play all day?
• Do other animals help blind people, too, or just dogs?
• How come seeing Eye Dogs are so important for blind people?

Three of the older reading buddies there yesterday also take my memoir-writing class that’s sponsored by The Admiral — those writers were my “in” to yesterday’s presentation, they invited Whitney and me to join in on the fun. Those “reading buddies” tell me spending Fridays with third-grade kids who are full of life and vitality keeps them more active. It gives them something to look forward to every week. And the third graders? They get to leave school Friday afternoons to go outside! Their walk to The Admiral is invigorating, especially in the freezing temperatures we’ve been experiencing in Chicago lately. Once they arrive? The kids get to read to — and learn from — people with loads of life experience, people who are delighted to spend one-on-one time with them.

This is such a cool thing, I wonder why similar programs aren’t going on in other retirement communities. Sure glad it happens here, though — means Whitney and I got to come!