Post 300 — Guest Post from Ed

This is post 300 in honor of that event I have a guest blogger my brother Ed who's going to tell about his visit to DC:


The most important thing about the Holocaust Museum is not how well it documents death, but how full of life it is. Photos covering a half-century of people in a single Latvian town. People playing chamber music in the ghettos. Countless stories of how people struggled to survive. And a survivor in the flesh, telling her story. I'm not trying to minimize the horror. I'm just saying I went in prepared for horror, got plenty of that, and also got an unexpected dose of affirmative stuff. And everyone know how those stories ended. The Latvian town had been a Jewish settlement for nearly a millennium, but now no Jews have lived there for more than half a century. The museum is active in sounding alarms about contemporary genocides; Darfur has a place there. The grim message is that we must be on guard at all times. Sickeningly, genocide is happening, somewhere, all the time.


I'm blown away by the architecture of the American Indian Museum. I've never circled a building tracing all its curves and swoops. It seems truly part of nature. It belongs on a bluff in New Mexico.


Jen and I have been following Chicago-based jazz singer Kurt Elling for nearly a decade. We've heard him several times at the Green Mill in a crummy north-side neighborhood where Al Capone used to hang out. We've also seen him at respectable places such as Ravinia Park in the north suburbs. Elling has progressed from a maverick who loved to yell into what must be his classic period now. We saw him Sunday at Blues Alley. His repertoire hasn't changed much, but his presentation is more polished. And the quartet behind him has never sounded better. Pianist Laurence Hobgood arranges each tune so that it is distinct and special. One one tune, Elling sings against only the bass riffs by Rob Amster. Another tune, "My Foolish Love," rises, dies back, and swells again like chamber music — complete with an interlude of poetry from St. John of the Cross among the Tin Pan Alley lyrics. On the most expansive piece, "Body and Soul," Elling sings original lyrics to the music of a transcribed solo by saxophonist Dexter Gordon, for an intense, driving effect. A great night at Blues Alley. If you go, try the jambalaya!

We had a great time. The Brookland neighborhood is wonderfully green and inviting. Our feet hurt!

— Ed