The Seated View

It takes a lot of guts to have a chronic illness. This thought came into my mind as I was preparing for a drug challenge appointment that had the very real possibility of me going into anaphylactic shock.* It’s a fun thing to do on a Wednesday. Granted, this one is a somewhat extreme example of what you put yourself through when you are living with a chronic condition. So let’s take a look at some of the other things that are part of our everyday lives. Surgeries and yes, it’s on purpose that I made that a plural, as so many of us have been there more than once. Some even dozens of times. You may not have thought of yourself as brave until the day you show up at the hospital, willingly letting someone cut you open. But you gather up all the strength you have and do it anyway. And what about this one: injecting yourself with medication that you know will incur side effects, sometimes making you curl up on the bathroom floor, puking and with terrible headac...

“Do you have any change for the homeless?” He asked this over and over again, of almost everyone who passed. To a person, they kept walking, only a few acknowledging him, saying sorry, they didn’t have any change. So did I. And we were all lying. Sure, most of us pay for purchases, even small ones, with debit cards these days, but don’t we all have some change rattling around? The point wasn’t that we didn’t have any change, it was that we weren’t willing to give it to him. This man who didn’t have a home to go to, didn’t have a bed to sleep in, and was depending on our change for his next meal. Or his next fix. Or a bottle of cheap liquor. That seems to be a problem for many. People don’t want to give money to the homeless because they don’t want them to spend it on intoxicating substances or other things they deem worthless. So they don’t help. Or they help by buying a homeless person a meal at the nearest fast food joint. I couldn’t disagree more with this. ...

Bonnie Raitt and I were in the same room on Friday. Along with 3000 other people, but I wasn’t paying much attention to them. As she was singing, a variety of thoughts occurred to me. When live music is actually live I’m a sucker for singer-songwriters. People who have something to say and know music and musicians well enough to say it in a song. The joy of watching them perform their music live with no lip-synching is something truly special. Sure, there is some wandering/dancing around on the stage to give the audience something to look at as well as to listen to, but it is not a dance performance. It is about the songs.  As Bonnie gave an instruction to each song, telling the story of where it came from, who had sung it or inspired the writing of it, her stories ranged 50 years. It was like a masterclass in country blues. Her band was also absolutely phenomenal and opener Royal Wood was excellent, too. I walked out of the Sony Centre feeling invigorated a...