B23-882

Dear Mom,

 

It’s your 105^th Heavenly Birthday and just want you to know you are not forgotten. I wrote to the kids to take a moment to remember you and just talked to Ginny, so rest assured that you’re still living forever in the hearts of your children and grandchildren.

 

I’m at the airport about to fly to Toronto, the first foreign city I ever went to with you, Dad and Ginny a lifetime ago in 1962. I remember going to some Botanical Gardens and particularly remember a visit to the Casa Loma. We were in a car following Don McNabb, one of Dad’s work associates, and you told me to memorize the license plate number in case we lost them. For some mysterious reason, 64 years later, I still remember it—B23-882. 

 

The report here on Planet Earth is absolute chaos in the government and what I hope is the last gasp of small-minded and hard-hearted people to de-humanize us, through deportation, insult, prison, compliance-on-demand, machines taking over (AI and Waymo) and more. The cards are all out on the table and it’s no longer an option to refuse the game. There is no more neutral. 

And so there is a swelling counterforce to re-humanize our wounded souls and broken communities. Fresh from an Orff gathering in the Carmel Valley, that’s exactly what happened in the three short days we were together, uplifted and re-connected through the powerful force of West African music, song, games and dance. 

Meanwhile, amidst the exultation of these past two weeks of teaching in my old music room at The San Francisco School, teaching again in the sacred space of the Dance Studio in Hidden Valley, gathering again in the theater where my teacher Avon flung open the doors on Easter morning (in 1987) while we all sang his Alleluia and the light streamed in, the mundane world has put on its Trickster robe to test my resolve to keep going. All First-World minor earthquakes and that I need to remember just might be relieving the pressure that helps avert a major earthquake. But consider:

 

• Books: It started last Wednesday when the promised books I had specially printed to meet a deadline did not arrive. 25 copies of my 11^th book, The Humanitarian Musician were supposed to come to my home so I could bring them to sell at the above Mini-conference. 25 more were supposed to be mailed to Halifax for another Orff gathering, the Canadian Orff Conference, where the people know my work and my colleagues James, Christa and Annette were teaching and could give them a little plug. With the tsunami of challenges I’m facing with my little Pentatonic Press (an entry in itself), it would have felt wonderful to start with 50 books sold before the larger printing was finished. 

 

But both the woman in charge and the printing company itself were new and while the books got printed, they somehow “forgot” to send them! Aargh! Plan B was to see if they could overnight-express one book to the Mini-conference. The book will sell for $20, the cost of overnight express would have been $122! 

 

So on to Plan C. Mail 25 books to me so at least I’ll have them in San Francisco and then 25 to Toronto to sell at a workshop I’m giving in 5 days. This morning, I double-checked with the printing person to make sure that was happening as we discussed and she said that by mistake, the Canada books got sent to Halifax!! (Of course, after the Conference). So they were going to re-mail them from Halifax to Toronto. Will they arrive in time? Anyone’s guess. 

 

Money: After the Mini-Conference, I received a sweet thank-you card with a check inside. Just the way I like to be paid. Driving home, stopped at a Versetel to deposit it and I noticed on the receipt that it said “$20” deposit. 1/100^th of the actual amount. What? Called the bank this morning to straighten it out and the voice mail said, “Because of certain problems in the government, we cannot take your phone call. “Huh? Then my online banking noted that something was off and said it should be resolved—on May 6^th, two weeks from now. 

 

Then my payment for the two weeks teaching at school appeared in my bank statement. $290 for 60 hours of teaching. Around $5 per hour. My colleague James is looking into it. “Rumble, rumble,” goes the little earthquakes,

 

• Flight: Got home from the Orff retreat yesterday around 4:00, managed to get a haircut, unpack, do laundry, re-pack and wake up at 5:30 am to get to my 8:30 am flight to Toronto. Ordered a Lyft, went out to wait for it and while waiting, realized I left my backpack in the house. With minor things in it like—MY COMPUTER! Having left my keys on my desk, had to wake up my wife to retrieve the backpack.

Arrived at the airport and showed them my Passport, the one that expires this November. But because I got a new Passport, I didn’t realize that the two holes punched in the old one rendered it invalid. I called my wife to see if she could drive it to the airport in time, but she was sleeping and didn’t answer her phone.

 

So… I was lucky to have the check-in person re-book for more or less the same flight at 11:45, got on BART back to San Francisco, wife still not answering the phone, so on the bus to my house, wife not answering the door (she was jogging) so had to get in a secret way, she came home and drove me back to BART to return to the airport. Rumble, rumble, rumble.

 

Got to the airport with time to spare, no one in line, so up to the check-in person to get the new boarding pass, but besides the passport fiasco, my previous check-in had my name backwards and she had to call someone to try to fix it. While we were waiting, got to chatting and she told me that the flight I would have been on was cancelled and pointed behind me and suddenly, there were 40 people in line from the cancelled flight!! My first stroke of good fortune, as I was able to get on!

 

That’s the story, Mom, surely wither boring or baffling to you, as you’ve long been in that Other World where I imagine there is no money, no schedules, no lines, no machines, no horrendous ex-humans (because they’re all burning in Hell). But hopefully, you’re mildly entertained by the stories.

 

As for the news, I’m still playing piano at the Jewish Home, your five grandkids are all good people doing well and your 6 great-grandchildren and 3 step-great grandchildren show promise in carrying on the legacy of loving human beings. I hope you and Dad are pleased by that legacy, as I imagine you would be. 

 

And I remain, your forever-loving son, with a weird talent for remembering unimportant numbers.

 

Doug