If you live long enough, you
notice things change from good to bad, from bad to good, move in cycles, spin
around like the Wheel of Fortune (Carl Orff’s favorite image, the Medieval one,
not the game show). “Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down, the Wheel of
Fortune spins you round and round” the beginning of my Wheel of Fortune Blues
that I composed when I visited Orff’s home is Diesen, Germany and even got to
play it on his piano. I looked up at his widow and said, “Was that okay to play
that?” and she beamed and exclaimed, “Carl would have loved it!!”
Our 8th graders used to
go to Mexico every year for a week of Spanish immersion and then suddenly, it
became a dangerous place to go. So the trip changed to Nicaragua, which still
resonated with most of us as a war-torn place. Not so. Peaceful and pleasant.
Mexico City used to be perceived as rife with poverty and filled with crime,
but I never would have guessed that in my recent visit. Always felt safe, the
general vibe was happy people on relatively clean streets.
San Francisco used to be a place
with a modest skyline and affordable housing and a smattering of homeless
people. Not so now.
And so the Wheel of Fortune
continues to spin. Many places say, “If you don’t like the weather, stick
around for five minutes.” I believe the same is true of life in general. From
Obama to Trump is about the largest avalanche one could imagine, but stick
around, a new Obama and perhaps better is on the rise. I don’t know how we’re
going to downsize those highrises that continue to blight the San Francisco
skyline, but perhaps we’ll figure out a way short of earthquakes and terrorist
attacks.
All of this on my mind because
suddenly, apparently, 230 people a day in Vietnam are reading these blogs.
Really? And Vietnam a pretty good example of a place in my youth that, thanks
partly to the good ole U.S. of A., was hell on earth. Now it’s a favored
tourist spot and I thoroughly enjoyed it myself when I taught in Hanoi many
years back.
The Orff world is another case in
point, pockets with intense activity and then it seems to fade out—Greece,
Japan, Argentina, come to mind. Then places where the time is ripe and lots of
exciting activity—Brazil, Colombia, Turkey, Iran, Finland, Italy, off the top
of my head and sorry if I left someplace out. Spain continues to be strong,
with a shift from Madrid to Barcelona and our course in San Francisco has been
steadily growing for the past 25 years with no decline in sight (though I know
that day will come).
So spin on, O Wheel of Fortune and
may we celebrate and endure the fortune that comes our way.
(Anyone in Vietnam care to comment?)
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