Didja Know That?

Nedra Weinreich tagged me with a meme of Five Things People Would Be Surprised to Know About You. I earned this tag by putting Nedra into the blogosphere to begin with.  Here are some for the holiday season:

1. Started off as the drummer in a high school 'basement band' known as The Blue Fogg. In later years moved into percussion and in the 1990s used to sit in with Charlie Byrd and his trio. For those sets Charlie use to change from his white shirt and tie into an open-necked Hawaiian one and yes, we always did 'The Girl From Ipanema' - that's Charlie on guitar.

2. Sticking with the music theme, once spent a week in the Benelux going wherever an American Express travel agent suggested that morning. Wound up in Brugge, Belgium - lovely city - and caught Henry Threadgill playing at a local jazz club that was well-hidden in the residential part of town. Also discovered the Mighty Flyers over breakfast in a hotel in Leiden and went to their concert the next day in Amsterdam.

3. Yes, there's plenty of great food in New Orleans. But where else could you spend a night with 'The Queen of the Blues' Marva Wright at Snug Harbor AND then catch Roy Buchanan, at 1:30 AM in Storyville, doing a cover of Jimi Hendrix Experience for 2 hours. Anyone who goes to conferences with me knows they will also eat well if they stay close by. They usually miss the music.

4. Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil) and I were classmates and graduated with our degrees in Clinical Psychology at the same time from North Texas State University. No, I wasn't invited to the wedding but we did play tennis together.

5. Founder of the Free University of Roanoke while a student at Roanoke College. The concept of Free Universities was quite popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s and their origin can be traced, at least in part, to the Free Speech Movement.  The organizing principles were quite simple:

• The traditional college curriculum was a constraint on true learning. Any topic someone wanted to study was viable in an Open University curriculum whether it was Bartending 101 or  Death and Dying.
• Learning should be open to anyone at anytime and not subject to tuition, fees and other barriers.
• Everyone knows something s/he can teach and others want to learn. Traditional distinctions between teachers and students are erased.

Sounds oddly like some of that social media stuff they talk about nowadays.

And this strand of the meme goes the way of auld lange syne.

Comments

[Houtlust]

It's obvious: we're waiting for some soundclips Craig.

[Nedra Weinreich]

Thanks for playing, Craig! You're a man of many talents. :-)