Circling Back Around

photo source - flickr

We were ring-around-the-rosy children

They were circles around the sun

Never give up, never slow down

Never grow old, never, ever die young
–James Taylor

2020 was as they say, "A bad year." 

In 2014, I retired from being a teacher as I was with the same school district for thirty-five years. At the time, I couldn't believe that it had actually gone by so fast. My friend Mark Hunter says, "Life is a roll of toilet paper, it starts out slow but at some point that paper roll seems to quickly get smaller and smaller."

As a teacher in a large urban school district, I actually had quite a number of different jobs. My goals as I shifted from special education to general education never included being an administrator. I found that managing other adults was something to avoid and generally gravitated to work that was more project-based. I spend many years mastering the art of lateral movement in a large bureaucracy and discovered how to thrive in the world of grants, or what is often called, "soft money." As a resource teacher, I learned to live close to a money stream where I could personally make change and be a positive difference in students and other teachers lives.

So when I retired from my day job, I was looking to carry that semi-independent streak into being my own boss and start my own educational consulting business with a focus in K-12 learning spaces. I basically worked with vendors who sold furniture and technology to schools where we created new learning spaces from older, traditional learning spaces.

This all went along pretty well for a few years. Then in 2019, business really started slowing down for me, and then the pandemic hit in 2020 to completely finish it off. I folded my tent thinking, "I guess this is it, I'm never going to create a new learning space again." 

Sting sings, If You Love Somebody Set Them Free. I don't think I gave up, but that song kept playing in my head, and I resolved to thinking that if I just let the business go, to set it free, that maybe someday it or something else like it, would come back around to me.

After two years, I'm tanned and I'm rested. Bye-bye Covid, I'm ready to go see some rock 'n' roll.

Then I get a call from Dean Smith who is the CEO of his own small business called, D&D Integrated Solutions. Dean and I first met sometime in the 1990's when he was selling security locks for desktop computers. When I started as a consultant, Dean's business had expanded to technology integration and then expanded into being a K-12 furniture dealer as well.  As a consultant from 2015-2019, we did a half-dozen fun learning spaces together. But I had plans. I was always looking for something bigger, working with bigger vendors, doing bigger projects. Well you know...

So in March, Dean offers me a job in his business to be a Learning Environment Designer. He actually let me create my own title and as you can probably tell from that comment, I'm delighted to have it, not to mention the freedom to collaborate with his team and school districts, again. Thank you Dean!

This past week, I wrote the first in what I'm hoping will be many blogs for D&D. In an irony of all ironies with respect to my Monday Monday Music™ blog, I got paid to write a blog. How sweet is that!

If you're interested, here is the link to my D&D blog post titled, Learning Environments: Macro to Micro. 

I'm thinking, "2022 is a good year, so far... Stop it Doug, 2022 is already a good year!"

Here's a few songs swimming around my head that express my emotion with all this... I may add more as they come to me.

Enjoy my friends!

Dear Mr. Fantasy...

Dear Mr. Fantasy play us a tune

Something to make us all happy

Do anything, take us out of this gloom

Sing a song, play guitar, make it snappy

–Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood

It's February 8, 2020 and Mary Kit and I are at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. We walk into the Forum Shops which is this huge indoor complex of stores and restaurants. We have dinner reservations at Trevi. Trevi is the open Italian restaurant next to the Fountain of the Gods and we have a wonderful dinner to the sound of splashing water that almost drowns out the sound of the horde of tourists around us. We are about to see Van Morrison at his sold-out residency at the Colosseum. The ceiling is a consumer's paradise with a fanciful painted sky designed to transport you to a different place, a different time... 

COVID-19 is about to be a BIG THING, we just don't know it yet as we sit down to dinner with thousands of people around us, and then later see a wonderful concert. We come back to enjoy our hotel at the MGM Signature. The Lazy River pool is closed for winter, but we'll be back in late May to enjoy it when we come to see Sting on May 27th, and Sheryl Crow on May 28th... 

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Dear Mr. Fantasy,

It's March 15th and Mary Kit has gotten me an early birthday present, tickets to see Livingston Taylor at Humphreys Backstage Live. This is like a supper club, and we have seats up front about 10 feet from the stage. I have never seen Livingston live and looking forward to hearing songs like, Carolina Day. What a dinner, Mary Kit wants to mention the lobster bisque, and what a wonderful show! Livingston was fantastic, very engaging with the audience as you can see from the excellent footage I shot and spliced together with my iPhone...

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Dear Mr. Fantasy,

It's March 24th and Mary Kit has gotten me another early birthday present, tickets to see Joan Osborne and The Weepies at Edmonds Center For The Arts in Washington. I have never seen Joan Osborne or the opening act The Weepies, but love both and couldn't wait to see them in this intimate 700 seat theater.

The Weepies performed one of my favorite songs, Take It From Me. I must say, the theater is a stickler about shooting video, and the usher did in fact take my phone away from me, but not before I got this...

Next up was Joan Osborne who also performed one of my favorite songs of all-time, One of Us. Now since they took my phone from me, Mary Kit put her coat in her lap and shot this very steady clip from under her coat, I must say this was great camera work, what a team! We also enjoyed our trip up to Seattle and got to have a big family get together and potluck with all of Mary Kit's kids and our grandchildren. We can't wait for our next visit... 

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Dear Mr. Fantasy,

It's May 8th and we get to see The Rolling Stones in our own backyard, just 5 minutes (a stones throw) down the road from us at Qualcomm Stadium (now called CCSomethingCreditUnion). If you remember my huge lament back in October 19, 2016, where the Stones had to cancel their concert because Mick developed 'Bad Laryngitis' at Coachella a few nights before. We had just arrived from San Diego on October 18th, got into our hotel when the news come to use via our iPhones. So now we finally got to see our rock heroes because lightening couldn't possibly strike us twice, right?

We both have never seen The Rolling Stones live before and couldn't wait to hear, You Can't Always Get What You Want. Anyway, the show was absolutely phenomenal! Here's an official 2003 clip of the song live, but it really doesn't matter because all these guys look exactly the same today, well Keith may have a few more deep wrinkles now. 

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Dear Mr. Fantasy,

It's just last week, May 27-28. Yes we are back in Las Vegas where I'm writing this blog. Man the Southwest flight was packed, but we took our Airborne Fruit Gummies before we left, so I think we're good. 

First, we saw Sting at his residency at Caesar's Palace, just like Van Morrison back in February. Boy, time flies but other than the weather being warmer, everything is always the same in Lost Wages. Hey, the Lazy River was awesome and we even got those frozen rum pool drinks. My advise is not to have three and then get into fast moving water! Lesson learned.

Sting also looks the same as he did twenty years ago, maybe there really is something to that tantric thing? The show was great, but everybody was saying, Don't Stand So Close To Me, which is also a great song of his! Anyway, before the show, Sting was hanging out at one of the pools with a thousand friends, and this was a video I took on my phone as we just happened upon this cool party!

Then on May 28th, Sheryl Crow did a benefit concert for the Sands Cares INSPIRE charity at the Venetian. It was a great show and she did one of my favorites, Every Day Is A Winding Road. I was thinking about that song today as it can be appropriate for one's interpersonal life as well as for people enduring a crisis day in and day out.

Music is always at the heart of tapping at our core emotions. I love going to these live shows and experiencing an artist's music in a concert hall with an audience all together in a common spirit of joy and happiness. It would be so sad if something happened to take that all away, even if it was only for a year, could you imagine that! I know that's a weird thought, but sure makes me want to appreciate all the things like live music that we take for granted.

Sincerely yours,
Doug and Mary Kit

References

Now for all the concerts I have missed in my life, my friend Ron Zieman was telling me about the 2009 concert tour with Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton together. Ron said it was spectacular show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. That really would have been one to see, like so many others... Here's Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton performing, Dear Mr. Fantasy at the 2010 CrossRoads Guitar Festival.

Also, thanks to YouTube, the artists, and the concert goers who posted the live concert videos that I 'borrowed' for today's fantasy. Mary Kit and I hope to see all these musicians someday live in concert.

Transcendental Good Morning

On my trail run, songs inevitably start playing in my head that often begin the spark of a blog idea as I jog in the dirt alongside the brush and Eucalyptus trees. From suburban sidewalks and street traffic, I arrive at a greenbelt trail head that starts my hour routine of movement and solitary thought. I've come to cherish this time and call it, my moving meditation.

I almost always run in the morning with a Good Day Sunshine start to my day. On some days, if I get an early start, I will see no one on the trail. On other days, I will encounter my regular group of strangers that have a similar walking, running or biking route to me and I see all the time.  This is a public access community trail and I also see a lot of new strangers as well. What I find fascinating (enough to write a blog about), is the spectrum of social skills when I encounter people especially in the close proximity of this winding trail. In fact, I believe there is a Murphy's Law of trail running, as it seems you're most likely to encounter an oncoming person (usually with their dog) at the narrowest parts of the path.

So, using my greeting skills, I initiate a hardy, "Good morning", "Hello", "Hi" (at least 90% of the time). To my regular trail pedestrians, I sometimes throw in a "Howdy" or something like, "Hey, isn't this just a great day!" I would say that people respond back, roughly 80% of the time. So one day, I decided to add a couple of visual prompts to my greeting by also waving "hi" coupled with a big smile. Over time, this has raised the percentage of non responses to now most people giving a verbal response or at least, a parroting hand wave back.

This past week was typical. I said to a couple of regulars I see every week on their daily walk, "Stay cool" (as temperatures are getting in the 90's here), this was followed by.....crickets. Then, about a mile up the trail, a woman initiates, "Good Morning" with a wave and big smile. I happily respond back, but the smile stays on my face for several more seconds as we pass. She has that morning sunshine beaming in her and she beamed it right at me, simply wonderful.

 You see, we're having fun being on this trail, enjoying life with some of the best weather on earth (in San Diego). But often and I mean often, I encounter disengaged, grumpy, too busy to look away from their phone people, or the classic straight ahead stare of avoidance with the oncoming me in their path.

Now I'm not going to ever be remembered as starting world peace here, but I think it's important to express a positive attitude when encountering strangers, even if the result is- it makes only me feel positive in that moment. But just maybe in my dirt travels, I snapped a few people out of their funk. Maybe someone is taking a walk to get out of a funk and suddenly a welcoming Mr. Sun just runs by. I know, no big deal. But in our current times where intolerance is making an overt cultural comeback, we need to employ the power of kindness and respect to one another. The power of "Good morning" is the power of the sun as the two dance together in a simple exchange to connect with people on the human highway.

On three occasions on the trail, I've stopped one of my regular strangers and introduced myself. When we now see each other, we stop and talk for a couple minutes just to ask each other, "How ya been?" I now have three people who have moved up from the regular stranger category to the, "Good Morning Tony", "Good Morning Martin" and "Good Morning John" acquaintance status.

The first video below is a Ted Talk by Ali Ghambara. I meet Ali through my buddy Bill DeVoe on Cherry St. (outside of Ali's coffeehouse) in downtown Seattle on one fine morning this past spring. He greeted us with an enthusiastic, "Good morning" and we all had a brief street conversation together. I still remember his body language and hand shake expressing that it was good to meet and connect, he meant it.

Hope you can take the time to listen to Ali's talk and then listen to my Transcendental Good Morning Playlist, it is guaranteed to start your Monday off on a positive note.

side note - Sun King translation