Posted by John on Mar 17, 2009 in
Calendar,
Music,
Programs
The Windy City, where I called home for several years, has to be one of the best places west of Dublin to spend St. Patrick’s Day. The parade jigs through the Loop for a few hours, the Chicago River is dyed the shade of a lime popsicle, and merrymakers of all nationalities hoist green beer and bellow blarney. Everybody’s ”Irish,” and all are friends.
I won’t be in the Windy City this year, but I’ll be having just as much fun performing as Paddy O’Chair at not one, but two Wisconsin senior centers today. Among other things, I’ll be singing a song I wrote recently recalling March 17 Madness, Chicago style, and how nice it would be if such a diverse group could get along so well every day. I can dream, can’t I? Following are the lyrics, along with my sincere Irish invocation that as you slide down that grand banister of life, all the splinters will be pointing the right direction.
Everybody’s Irish
By John Duggleby © 2009
When the snow melts away in old Chicago
Comes a day the likes you’ve never seen
Black, yellow, white and brown, all colors head downtown
And gather where the river’s flowin’ green
Once a year, it don’t matter where you come from
The parade is stepping off, it’s time to play
The rainbow that our faces hold is shining like a pot of gold
‘Cause everybody’s Irish on Saint Paddy’s Day
Chorus
Pour a dram of Celtic whiskey for Mitzi
For Chang and Juan a frothy Guinness head
Some cabbage and corned beef for every native chief
Here come Bukuru and Ahmet, it’s time to slice the soda bread
Midori wants some four leaf clover honey
Some mussels from the bay for Desiree’
Let every race and nation smile, we’re sailing to the Emerald Isle
‘Cause everybody’s Irish on Saint Paddy’s Day
Lucky day, once a year in old Chicago
In every neighborhood you’ll find a friend
To gobble Irish stew, hoist green beer with you
And wonder why the party has to end
Saints alive, how we thrive when we’re together
Begorrah, end the war, it’s not the way
It’s lots more fun to get along, so raise your glass and join the song
‘Cause everbody’s Irish on St. Paddy’s Day
Chorus
Posted by John on Mar 13, 2009 in
Business Before we get too far into March, I’d like to send a shout to two new workmates I acquired in February from my largest overall business client, global commercial real estate services leader Jones Lang LaSalle. Shawn Bectol is a Communications Manager newly charged with the daily Today@ JonesLang LaSalle intranet employee news site, which I’ve helped write through others for several years. Howard Futterman is Vice President-Benefits, and I’m writing a monthly employee newsletter for him called Environment of Health. I’m feeling better already; thanks to you both!
Posted by John on Mar 2, 2009 in
Me Sometimes life throws you unlikely heroes. Such was Paul Harvey, who died over the weekend at age 90. Born in Tulsa, rooted in Chicago, Harvey’s voice was everywhere– or at least on about 1,200 radio stations– during my “Wonder Years” in the late 1960s. He was a radio beacon of conservative Midwestern values in an age where my contemporaries watched turmoil TV and demanded change in many of the institutions he seemed to uphold. What’s more, his five-minute broadcast cut into the groove of my rock station like a needle dropped on a vinyl record. Here was a guy who predicted that Elvis would flop within a year, and changed his opinion little about the Beatles and others who followed. I itched for his segments to end– or did I?
Truth be told, agree or not, I listened to him. How could you resist, the way his delivery included pauses a truck could pass through? Statistics like how many dogs bit people within a year, followed by how many people bit people? His announcements of exactly where he was in his script– “Page Two!”– yet slippery segues into ads that were halfway over before you realized you were being sold. And compared to today’s radio ravers of all stripes, Harvey waxed commonsensical and fair. One of his most famous broadcasts, issued in 1970 when Nixon expanded the Vietnam War, shocked his stalwarts by declaring, “Mr. President, I love you. But you’re wrong.”
A decade later I was a Chicagoan myself, part of a video crew working in a studio rented from WGN, one of the Windy City’s major TV/radio stations. On a facility tour, I was thrilled to enter the sanctum where Harvey recorded his broadcasts to the nation, and hugely disappointed that 1) he wasn’t there and 2) I was not permitted to sit in his director’s chair, emblazoned on the back with his trademark sign-off, “Good day!”
In recent years I stopped listening to Harvey and most radio in general, and heard nothing of him until four years ago when a guy named Don re-sided my house. Don was a one-man show doing a job typically performed by a crew of several, and about my age to boot. As the job stretched into the Wisconsin winter, since I have a home office, I invited him to eat his lunch inside for a respite from temperatures dipping below 20 degrees. He demurred, explaining that if he got too warm and comfortable, it would be harder to venture back into the icebox for the afternoon.
It made sense, but I noticed that, without fail, he was in his truck by precisely noon, pouring coffee and unwrapping his homemade sandwiches. I wandered up one day and booming from his radio was that familiar Midwestern carnival bark: “Good Morning, Americans, this is Paul Harvey. Stand by for news!” Don confessed that he was a daily listener, and soon I tuned in whenever I could as well. When the project finally ended, I pressed a check into Don’s hand with a hearty, “Good day!”
And now you know… the rest of the story.