No garlic, no regrets

Thursday is John Coltrane’s birthday, so this week’s show featured some of his music; both some mainstream appearances as well as some of his more experimental stuff, including a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King. In addition there was some South African jazz and Nigerian Afro-beat coming from the station’s new shelf, and music from Latin America, from Colombia to Argentina. As always you can listen to this week’s show streaming online here until the next show goes up, or you can download it here by right clicking the 56k link.

Last week in addition to Electronica and Jewish Jazz, the show featured local musicians Carlos Jones and Blue Lunch, off of a set of recordings from the Crooked River Groove record label, a label run out of Cleveland’s own Tri-C. The two I played on the show are longtime favorites of mine, groups I’ve gone out to see more than once.

Carlos Jones along with a number of other area musicians played the garlic festival at Shaker Square a couple weeks ago. Although the event sounded great, and was really close to where I live I hadn’t intended to go to the show, because I was busy that day. Along with my siblings I’d planned to help my mom clean out the basement with the ultimate goal of making the house marketable in case she ever wants to sell it. I was taking a break to make dinner and had to stop at Dave’s Market to pick up some ground beef and I heard the festival music on the way there. I’m not sure which of the groups it was, but I really liked it. I called back home, while I was shopping to see if anyone wanted to go see the show, but there wasn’t any great interest, so I just went home and made dinner.

I should say, by way of explanation that it’s a rather unique living arrangement I currently find myself in. I live with my siblings and my mother in the same house I grew up in. I’m doing a service year through AmeriCorps and I use part of my salary to defray some household expenses. I also cook most of the meals and organize weekly meetings so that our little clan can get together to discuss ways we can contribute to the success of the household.

So basically, the reason I couldn’t go to the concert at the square was my own doing. I couldn’t very well be resentful about it because it was my own idea. It’s a very different position than I was able to have during the summer when I was filling my days looking for work, and trying to be productive. At that time I felt lousy about not going out and being social the way I had in college. Not being able to go to the concert at the square though was entirely the result of deliberate choices I had made to try to help my family and my widowed mother get through a hard time.

It’s incredible what a difference it can make in your outlook if you view the things you do as the result of your choices and the things you don’t do as sacrifices that you choose to make for a worthy cause. For me, it’s the difference between feeling resentful at being “stuck” with my family and appreciating them while being grateful that I can make a difference.