Fired-Up Friday

It Could Happen

This has been a truly fabulous week. In spite of all the nastiness flying around us in these last days before the elections, it was a week that lifted me up to a place where I didn’t have to think about any of the vitriol filling the airwaves. On Wednesday we went to see one of our favorite bands-- no make that our very favorite band-- in concert. We first saw the Moody Blues in the early 1970s and have tried to make it every time they’ve been close ever since. Hard to believe the Moodys are now in their 70s, but they still sound great and hearing all those songs we’ve so loved over the years is always a real treat. Something that struck me this time, though, was how many of the things they sang about way back in the day are still all too relevant today. Not only finding love but searching for meaning and justice in an often cruel world. How so many people are “lost in a lost world.” Yet their music was and is always hopeful, and while you’re listening you just plain feel so much better! While at the concert, it didn’t matter how the fans were different; for the moment, they all just loved the Moody Blues.

Wednesday was also the day for a historical event. THE CHICAGO CUBS WON THE WORLD SERIES!! Sorry, just had to shout that one out. While I will admit I am not by any means a baseball fan (truly, most of the time it puts me to sleep) you can’t grow up this close to Chicago and not know the story and history of the Cubs. When I was a kid, we had extended family living together in the big farmhouse, and in those days there was only (horrors!) one TV. During baseball season, and much to my chagrin, when my Uncle Frank came home from work the TV was tuned to WGN and wherever the Cubs were playing that day. It was the voice of Jack Brickhouse you heard announcing back then. I remember my uncle grumbling every year about the losses and yet every year, there he was watching them play. I’m not sure you would find any fans more loyal than Cubs’ fans. They stuck with their team through the years, and in spite of what was called “the billy goat curse,” and comments like “Yeah, that’ll happen when the Cubs win the series,” they always said, “Just wait till next year.” On November 2, 2016, in the 7^th game, in the 10^th inning, next year finally became this year. What fun it was to watch the joy and celebrating on the field, and to see their signs with the “could” crossed off to say, “It did happen!” I had to think about all the people who waited a lifetime for this to happen, most of us having at least one if not more family members who waited. My Uncle Frank wasn’t big on showing emotion, as many men of that time were not, but I bet this would have at least got a smile out of him. Maybe even a laugh. There’s a big parade in Chicago today and the river is running Cubs blue. Celebrations will continue, and maybe the best thing is that it brings people together in a good way. It doesn’t matter how they differ in other ways, just being a Cubs’ fan is enough for now.  

In what seems almost anticlimactic, but in the midst of this celebratory week, I did manage to write some new pages on the book I’m hoping to finish by the end of this month. I’m still about 43,000 words away from writing The End, but to borrow the hopeful phrase from the Cubs fans' signs, “It Could Happen.”