Nobody asked me, but … (#27)
After more than two dozen of these posts, it seems to me that my readers (both of them?) have been subjected to my opinions on a variety of subjects, but we really haven’t gotten to know each other that well. I’m not sure how I can learn more about you, but if you continue to read this post, you’ll find out a few more tidbits about me. I provided some general introductory info in my very first blog, so now, we’ll go into a few more mundane facts.
In no particular order, here are five Al Kalter factoids for your enjoyment:
- I’ve always been into music, although not as avidly as some. At age 8, I started playing the clarinet, and sat “first chair” through high school. At 16, looking for something different, I bought a set of drums, and played with a small group for two summers in the Catskill Mountains north of New York City. Some interesting stories there, for sure. At college, I dropped the performance aspect, but always listened to music, and some of those songs still “send me back” to those days in the dorms. Almost 30 years later, I became reacquainted with my old clarinet, had it refurbished, and played with a small group and a community orchestra in the last few years before we came to Florida in 1999. That was a lot of fun, and I was amazed at how the technical aspects came back after all those years. Sad to say, the clarinet hasn’t been out of its case since we came south.
- Even though I stopped playing music in college, I certainly still enjoyed going to concerts, including a memorable 6½-hour Grateful Dead on-campus extravaganza in May 1970. I also built a modest collection of music. We have several dozen CDs, I suppose, but it’s the 300 45-rpm singles from the mid to late 1960’s, and the 300 or so LPs (vinyl, for you youngsters) from that era and a few years later that are most significant. A year or two ago, I bought some software to convert vinyl to mp3 files, but I have not gotten very far along into that. In terms of favorites, certainly the Beatles top the list, along with the progressive rock and fusion from that era - Moody Blues, Supertramp, Pink Floyd, and others. I also enjoy jazz and Broadway tunes, and have no tolerance for country, although I realize I now live in the wrong part of the country to say that loudly.
- Loyal readers (both of you?) will recall from an earlier blog that I am in the process of learning Portuguese. That is not the first language that I’ve studied, although I think I’ve learned more Portuguese than any other except perhaps Pig Latin. My middle school and high school experience included three years of Russian. Why Russian? Well, where I grew up, foreign language instruction started in 7th grade, with 7th and 8th grades combining for level one of the language. In 6th grade, they asked each student for a preference. I wanted Spanish. Or French. Got Russian. Apparently, at the height of the Cold War (1963), they figured the brighter kids should learn Russian, and I got included in that group. I did really well the first year, but then gradually fell behind, barely passing Russian 3 in 10th grade, but it was enough to meet graduation requirements, and I never took a language in college. I remember about a dozen words/phrases in Russian (yes, no, hello, goodbye, how are you, good, very good, house, horse, library, and the numbers one to four). And I can still read the alphabet, but, of course, I have no idea what I’m reading. Would I study it again? Nyet.
- This is somewhat related to items 1 and 2 above, and comes from that same time frame. In the spring of 1969, as a high school senior, a group of friends and I bought tickets to Woodstock. We had no idea, of course, that it would draw 300,000 people and become a cultural landmark for our generation; we just wanted to go for the music. Well, it’s a long story for another day - I got within a few miles of the concert site, but never saw the stage or heard the music. Several years later, a settlement of a state lawsuit against the promoters offered refunds to anyone who had purchased tickets and didn’t use them (since it ended up being a free concert). I sent in my tickets, got some small amount of cash in return, and have regretted that decision ever since.
- OK, let’s get out of the high school and college era for the last item today. Traveling is something that I enjoy, and I’d love to be able to do a lot more of it. But I can proudly say that I’ve been in 44 of the 50 states, lacking only Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to round out the set. The last three shouldn’t be hard - I can cover them with a one-day drive to New Orleans. Outside the US, I’ve been to eight other countries, nine if you count an airport layover in London. The eight are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama. I’ll be going back to Brazil in October, my sixth trip to that country in the past five years. At some point, we’d love to add to the list. All it takes, as per the titles of two Pink Floyd classics, are Time and Money.
Leave a Reply