Music and Passion

I'm warning you ahead of time that we are marching into Manilow country, but stick with me here for a minute. You must be fairly well aware that along with Abe Lincoln, I am a Barry Man-i-low-o-phile (trying saying that fast a couple times...spelling it is worse) but as I sit here in Sandusky, Ohio, about a 6 hour Amtrak train ride from my home in Chicago, I find I must write about the weekend I had.

My friend Colleen and I planned a trip to Cleveland Ohio to attend a Barry Manilow concert on December 14th. She has family here in Sandusky, and we ingratiated ourselves into their lives for a couple of days. As we were traveling around Colleen's old country stomping grounds, we looked up in the air to see this "thing" flying around. We looked again and again. We stared some more. We wiped our eyes, thinking we were having the same hallucination. But there he was. Beautiful. Amazing. A magnificent sight I will never forget in my entire life. Colleen threw her camera at me and I took this picture out of the car window:



I swear it was some kind of preview of the wonderful weekend I was going to have. There were laughs and Colleen's wonderfully warm family....and music and food and even a couple of happy tears. There was sleeping in and being lazy and meeting the new puppy, who dragged Colleen's socks all over the house and chewed up the little wrapper I had for the computer screen. Then of course, there was this:




Me, Colleen and 15,000 of our closest friends piled into the Quicken Arena to see Barry in concert. And we all had a blast. Even with a venue that size, Barry managed to keep it intimate and personal. I even think it was better than his Vegas show. It was simpler and toned down -- he knew he was playing for his fans and not for the Electricians Union Annual Vegas Convention. Barry does not need a multi media laser show for the majority of his long time fan base. We'd be happy with him, a piano, and a spotlight for 90 minutes.

So it was a miraculous weekend from all perspectives. The healing power of friendship, laughter and music is truly amazing. The only problem? In my excited and distracted state post concert, I left my cell phone, program, and only set of matching gloves in Colleen's car --- which is headed back to her home in Cincinnati as I head for Chicago. I only hope they have a safe trip.

Music and Passion

http://larachronicles.blogspot.com/2007/12/music-and-passion.html