Tour Guide

One of life’s many pleasures for me is to give tours of San Francisco. If you’re visiting and sometimes, even if you’re an SF Resident, I’m there to give you “the Doug Tour.” It changes over the years as certain special places close or change or are shut down, but from the whimsical—the Philo T. Farnsworth monument on Green Street (look him up), the Buddha on the Filbert St. steps where I usually hide a quarter, Jack Early Park, S.F.’s smallest—to the profound—the view from the Crown Room at the Fairmount Hotel and Labyrinth walk at Grace Cathedral, it’s a fun-filled romp through this marvelous city’s past and present. 

 

I’ve never felt like a schoolteacher in the traditional sense and looking back, “tour guide” feels like a better description. From the 14 Middle School kids I took on a Arthur Morgan School Jug Band Tour through the South over half-a-century ago in 1973 to the 20 years of leading camping trips for SF School kids at Calaveras Big Trees to the 17 kids my colleagues James and Sofia and I took to Salzburg to perform at The Orff Symposium to the other performing groups we took to Orff Conferences in San Diego, Las Vegas, Long Beach, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, trip leader is a role I love, revealing  and sharing worlds that I have known and loved with my students. 

 

Indeed, every class I teach is a kind of trip through the landscape of music and dance and games and our own marvelous possibilities, visiting the worthy attractions of a human incarnation, meeting (in person or imagination) the people that have uplifted us and are worthy of our thanks, going down the beckoning side alleys where many never travel to discover hidden treasures and the weird and quirky. Even indoors, we’re out in the fresh air, walking vigorously or ambling slowly, climbing stairs that take determination and effort, pausing to admire the views, eating picnic lunches in parks.

 

This is on my mind as I’m about to take on the tour-guide role again, this time through the past, present and future of Jazz in New Orleans, the place where it was born. I’ll share what I can in 10 days of the essential information, but not as a teacher at the blackboard (or “Smartboard”), but as a guide walking us through in living 3-D color fully inhabiting the mind-body-heart of our humanity. I can already feel the excitement of the 28 participants building in anticipation of the trip. 

Here we go!