South Side Chronicles 1 : Hyde Park May 9, 2008

Hi everybody. Here I am in urban heaven, Hyde Park, Chicago, a multicultural, intellectual bright spot bounded by expressways, ghettos, and Lake Michigan. On Woodlawn Ave. at 56-57^th St. is a row of stately early 20^th century campus church houses, like in Morgantown near the WVU library, where I used to hang out in the 60s . There’s Hillel, the UUs, American Baptists and UCCs, Presbyterians, right on the same block as our oldest Quaker meeting house in Chicago, where I am staying. The Sophia religious community, not Quaker but with similar same values of simplicity, integrity, peace, etc., stays as permanent residents and runs the guest rooms that keep the house afloat. Don and Lisa are the longest-residing couple. Their youngest daughter, 3 mos., is named, naturally, Sophia, the Biblical name for wisdom. http://www.57thstreetmeeting.org/

Wisdom seems to be what Hyde Park is into.The wise seniors who have chosen to retire here enjoy their lakefront high-rises. The grocery store in the Hyde Park shopping center, Treasure Island, has the good things that are on my diet: stuff like raspberries and organic eggs. There are museums and dens of poetry, art and jazz. Students of all ages from everywhere in the world pad up and down the streets in sneakers and flipflops, with laptops and books, The younger ones occasionally chase each other up the street, uttering silly words. Birds are singing in the trees here, just as in the Appalachian spring back home. The streets are full of life.

The University of Chicago is here in Hyde Park—not to be confused with the crass institution known as University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) on the Near West Side, which gobbled up Maxwell Street and has all the class of a concrete highway. No, the U. of Chi. does have some class (although it might be getting ready to prey upon the real estate in the surrounding hood as well)—a gargoyle-like Biological sciences building, and the high-spired gothic Rockefeller Chapel, where I played four years ago with Little Scotty in a Dennis Kucinich rally. On Sunday in the chapel basement I went to a fascinating interfaith dialog group of Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, Mormons, Jews, Catholics and evangelical Christians. People mused whether each religion was governed by creed or process. The Latter Day Saints, Jews and Catholics weighed heavily on the creed side, while the UUs and Quakers were more led by spiritual and ethical principles and processes. Some were concerned about bogging down with creeds, others were worried about floating away without them.

The Quaker house promotes peace and cultural events. Tuesday evening I joined in a senior folk dance group that meets twice a month downstairs in the room where the Quakers meet on Sundays. In the basement is the church kitchen where I have carefully labeled my food stash; laundry, and, delightfully, an old upright piano! Upstairs on the second floor of the guest house, I have a fine room with wood floors and wide windowsills and glass doorknobs, and an old secretary-type desk with lots of cubbyholes to stick business cards, DVDs, staple refills, and maps. My laptop and printer are open for business: I’m here to improve my music, promote the blues shows I’m in, study Chicago culture, and write. It’s my freshman year all over again, only without all the drunk dorm-mates and my anxieties about the opposite sex. I have everything I need, right here.

No need for a gym this time of year; I just take my bike, the clunky three-speed that Oak Park Quaker buddy Judy gave me last year, and ride up and down the lakefront bike trail to warm up before doing my therapy exercises that keep my back straight and my butt in line. You can ride on the trail, right beside Lakeshore Drive, for miles and miles. I want to see if I can make it down to the vegetarian soul food restaurant on 75^th street sometime.

Three bookstores and an indispensable Kinko’s (where I can copy color handouts promoting our upcoming shows) have conveniently plunked themselves within five short blocks from the 57^th Street Quaker House where I live. And the best coffee spot, the Istria Café, is right under the Metra commuter train line where everybody gets off from downtown. It’s a tight, tiled little place where the friendly barristas make great coffee, and one can sit on the sidewalk outside, as people do in my first Chicago hood, Wicker Park. Last night I went to the 57^th St. Bookstore to hear author John Hagedorn talk about his book The World of Gangs.

Chicagoans make fun of Hyde Park and say it’s elitist. And people’s conversations here do get a little esoteric, like those folks at the Istria coffee house who were debating whether soy milk could possibly harm animals. However, it costs a lot to live anywhere in Chicago, so why not live here and get something for your money. Luckily I got a good deal here at the Quaker House, for which I thank the folks here (and my Higher Power). If you ask me, people who criticize Hyde Park are just jealous!

My favorite blues guy Larry Taylor is doing better every day. Still poor financially but not in spirit; the clouds are lifting from him, and despite the terrible economy we think we’re gonna make it.. We are looking to a big month of gigs coming up. In the Blues & Gospel Symposium at Dominican University in the near western suburb of River Forest, May 22-24. Larry’s band is playing for the opening reception and he’s speaking on a panel about his life in the blues. Lady D is coming to the big city for this conference, and we’ll have a report for the Charleston Blues Society. Larry is spearheading a three-act West Side Revue in the Chicago Blues Fest June 6. He’s also picked up a gig in Rosa’s Lounge May 23, playing there for the first time since our CD release party in 2004. We’ll be playing with Vernon and Joe Harrington, two of his oldest West Side buddies. These blues guys are allergic to rehearsals but I hope we can schedule one this time.

On Wednesday Larry and I went to an Obama reception at the upscale Latino place Cuatro Cocino on 20^th and Wabash. Later that evening at Rosa’s Lounge (I believe Robin and Mary Ellen from Charleston were at Rosa’s once with me, as was the late great senior center mover & shaker Peggy Rossi from Hinton) Larry got to sing with an old buddy, drummer-turned guitarist and singer, Killer Ray Allison. We also met a French female bass player Cecile Savage, who Larry had played with years ago when she was with harmonica player Sugar Blue. Cecile got her French radio buddies, who were also at Rosa’s, to interview Larry and me and served as translator. She played and sang one of those 1930s-type songs in the same style as Barrelhouse Bonni. I hope we can play together at some point.

Sunday is my first Blues Ladies Brunch gig at Junior’s Sports Lounge on Maxwell Street. This series is co-sponsored by the Maxwell Street Foundation, and the April blues brunches featured Fruteland Jackson and Fernando Jones. My first two Sundays from noon til 2, I’ll be accompanying singer Ramblin’ Rose Kelly, who I met last year when she came to the last brunch show honoring Piano C Red. The last three Sundays, I’ve invited Felicia Porter, a twenty-something who’s already very experienced in the jazz world, to play trombone. Back home in southern West Virginia, I am always spoiled by the expert horn players Dugan Carter, Bob Redd and Marshall Petty--gentlemen who consistently camouflage my musical mistakes. Hope to see them, and everybody else when I get back to Charleston and Hampshire County WV in mid-June.

I regret that the Sunday gigs will keep me from Quaker meetings for the rest of my stay in Chicago. Luckily I did attend this past Sunday and said hello to many 57^th Street Friends who I hope to see again in some fashion. I made salad for the biweekly potluck in the basement kitchen. Going right downstairs from my room to the meeting was kind of like waking up in the McK house at Capon and dashing down to the hotel for the flag raising and breakfast!

There is a very well-kept scholarly Quaker library down the hall on the same guest floor as the Martin Luther King Room where I stay. There I find my Granpa Lou Austin’s spirit hovering. I am reading the journal of John Woolman, a very patient man from New Jersey who consistently traveled and visited fellow Friends in the early 1700s, before America was a nation, and convinced them to give up owning slaves. Woolman was very mindful of how greed and luxury corrupts a person’s spirit, and how slavery spoils the lives of the bosses as well as those who are enslaved. We need some John Woolman types now, and I think we have them. But time feels short, we don’t have 30 years like he did to convince people that violence, injustice, and messing up the Creation is not honoring the Creator, and that these actions carry their own serious penalties and consequences. And more and more people are getting tired of being slaves.

For all issues and relationships, Quaker process really works, though the slowness of it has frustrated my impatient self. However, the way things are now on planet Earth, perhaps the Creator may see fit to speed up the remedies.

“If we don’t change our minds

If we don’t change our ways

We’ll be speeding like a rocket to the end of days,

We can stop the shooting, terror and polluting

And do what the Good Book Says.”

--Song by Lady D “Go Higher”:

http://www.myspace.com/ladydandmission

Labels: S.Side Chronicles 1: Hyde Park