Chapter 9 has been submitted for posting. It may interest you to learn that the events of Chapter 9 are about 90% based on a real experience I had with someone I was dating several years ago.
End of insight into this week's chapter. Instead, here on the day we commemorate the events of the third week of July in 1969, I would instead like to use my little bully pulpit here to discuss the events of the third week of July in 1981.
Some of you may not know the name Harry Chapin, but you probably know the song "Cats In the Cradle", which became his first and only #1 song during Christmas week of 1974.
Harry Chapin took his few appearances on the Top 40, his guitar, his songwriting ability, and his showmanship, and turned it into hundreds of thousands of dollars a year donated to a multitude of social causes, chief among them the issue of hunger - the lack of regular access to substantive nutrition and clean water - in America and in the world. His concerts were part entertainment, part conversation with his audiences, pleading with them to join him in getting involved in his causes and even in their own causes. More than a few Congressmen would later comment that they knew when Harry had performed in their district because there would be a sudden spike in letters and phone calls from their constituents about some issue or another immediately afterward.
From June 1972 to June 1981, Harry performed, on average, 200 concerts a year, half of which were benefit concerts of some variety - mostly local food banks but also local arts programs and the like. As well, all proceeds from the concessions he sold at the show went to hunger-related causes, including his own foundation, World Hunger Year (now called WhyHunger).
On July 16, 1981, Harry was scheduled to perform a free concert at Eisenhower Park on Long Island, NY, to raise money for a local arts program. First, however, he was scheduled for a meeting with his business manager. While driving to that meeting on the Long Island Expressway, he suddenly tried to pull over (possibly as he was having a heart attack) and pulled in front of a tractor-trailer that crushed the rear end of his car under its bumper, dragging the gas tank along the ground and setting it on fire. He was removed from the car, but declared dead shortly after arriving at the hospital.
On December 7, 1987, what would have been his 45th birthday, Harry was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, this country's highest civilian honor, in recognition of his philanthropic work. The concert and presentation ceremony was closed out by Bruce Springsteen singing Harry's song "Remember When the Music" with the following spoken interlude:
"I remember when Sandy [Harry's widow] sent me this tape, I listened to it and I said, "Gee, this is a little on the corny side." And I sat down and I tried to think what the song was about, and I guess there was a time when people felt that music provided you with a greater, oh, a greater sense of unity, a greater sense of shared vision and purpose than it does today.
And my generation, we were the generation that was gonna change the world, that somehow we were gonna make it a little less lonely, a little less hungry, a little more just place.
But it seems that when that promise slipped through our hands we didn't replace it with nothing but, but lost faith, and now we live in, uh, times are pretty shattered, I got my music, you've got yours, the guy down the street, he's got his, and you could kind of sit back and say, not cynically but truthfully, "Well, maybe, maybe all men are not brothers, and maybe we won't ever know who or what we really are to each other."
But I think Harry instinctively knew that it was gonna take a lot more than just love to survive; that it was gonna take a strong sense of purpose, of duty, and a good clear eye on the dirty ways of the world.
So in keeping his promise to himself, he reminds us of our promise to ourselves, and that tonight, alongside Harry, is that promise that his spirit would have us remember and honor and recommit to.
So ... do something, and may his song be sung."
Harry, wherever you are, keep the change.
And if you haven't listened to any of Harry's music before (or haven't listened to more than "Cats in the Cradle") stop whatever you are doing and look up the audio of his "Greatest Stories Live" album on YouTube, or, even better, video from his 1981 concert in Hamilton, Ontario.