Back to Earth

Now that I’ve done my part to save democracy with my barbership analysis in the last five posts, it’s back to the things people are happier to read. What did we make for dinner when my daughter Talia came over after her week in Mexico? Did I really put on the heat this morning in the midst of the country’s heat wave? (Remember I live in cold-foggy San Francisco.) What new Netflix Series might I recommend?

 

Tonight I’m hosting a dinner for the ten faculty of our annual San Francisco International Orff Course gathering, 10 beautiful souls who have not taught together, have not been together for three years! (Gee, I wonder why.) They’re flying in from Germany, Spain, Tennessee, Colorado and driving over from the Peninsula, Oakland and San Francisco. Tomorrow we head down to Carmel Valley to greet some 80 teachers from the U.S., Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Spain, Croatia, Thailand, Iran and more. I’m happy to write about the political, sociological, psychological and mythological dimensions of the current world situation, but clearly have no cred in the public eye. But this, the passing on of the Orff Schulwerk baton, is what I do best, what I know most thoroughly, what I’ve paid my dues in far beyond the norm. This is home base. 

 

Meanwhile, Talia’s heading off for her next backpacking trip, daughter Kerala and family are off camping in Oregon, my wife Karen is driving on to Michigan from a family reunion in Tennessee (and spending the night in my college town of Yellow Springs, Ohio, a place she’s never seen before!) The painters are spilling over into the fourth week of painting the outside of the house, having found dry rot that will of course, increase both the time and the expense. It has been cold and foggy for five days and I’m starting to feel some Seasonal Affect Disorder, ready for the perfect weather of Carmel Valley. 

 

But first is an airport pick-up, packing, getting the house ready for house-sitters, shopping for tonight’s dinner, gathering the materials needed to teach, from a Ghana xylophone to a rubber chicken. Back to the details of life on Earth, down from the lofty perch of writing and reflection and happily, returning to the party of two weeks of playing music, singing and dancing in company with my fellow human beings. The perfect way to pass the last week of my 70th year. 

 

That’s the news, such as it is.