I Think I See You

samba y tapas

si, tasty Spanish combo

vai vai vai vai vai

No calypso, no twist, not even a cha-cha, “Só Danço Samba.”  Spanish jazz musician and music teacher Joan Chamorro, playing along on double bass, features two of his young students from the Sant Andreu Jazz Band.  Loosened hips and lips anywhere agree “I only dance samba.”  Smiling trumpeter Andrea Motis accompanies singing trombonist Rita Payes.  “Go, go, go, go, go.”   

Sharing Chamorro’s Barcelona roots, a Chief Feeding Officer serves millions of meals through his World Central Kitchen.

Spanish-born and briefly-by-choice educated in Barcelona, José Andrés teaches at George Washington University where he founded the Global Food Institute.  Chef José made popular the Spanish specialty of small plate dining and his tapas tables fill in almost forty bistros in the US.  It’s smack in the middle of natural disasters and humanitarian crises, however, that this world-traveling cook serves his biggest plates.  “When you talk about food and water, people don’t want a solution one week from now, one month from now.  The solution has to be now.”  Currently storms and tornadoes bring World Central Kitchen staff and volunteers to Florida and Alabama just as kitchens appeared in Tennessee following similar December destruction.  An earthquake in Japan and a hurricane in Mexico—WCK sets up shop.  Community kitchens in Gaza foster Palestinian lifelines.   

Updates from WCK provide accurate, firsthand news—Andrés reported from Ukraine and Poland at the start of Russia’s rampage and cooking and live broadcasts continue.  His community kitchens make immediate problems, and ways to contribute, visible.  An expert listener, communicating clearly even when he doesn’t know the language, the tapas guru understands: “Food has the power to be the nourishment and hope we need to pick ourselves up in the darkest times.”

From samba and tapas to voting rights and college hoops.  

What person or group tries to make voting in a democracy difficult or impossible?  Isn’t it the person or group fearing certain loss if all eligible voters have the sure access that defines free and fair elections?  Attorney Marc Elias aggressively fights for expanding and making easier the right to vote and labors against any state’s redistricting legislation aimed at suppressing voting.  The activist Elias Law Group swings into quick action against felony disenfranchisement, voter intimidation, and federal judicial decisions that assure ballots will be harder to cast.  These lawyers champion, with relentless intensity, the young and minority communities targeted by access-blockers.  The Democracy Docket newsletter documents daily the legal group’s cross-country wins and losses—its website chronicles this crucial turning point in our democratic experiment.  

Caitlin Clark plays instinctively, in the moment, and this moment belongs to her.  Reigning national player of the year, Iowa’s senior guard wears stardom like her comfy, loose-fitting uniform.  Watch #22 play, just for a couple of minutes, and rejoice—her three-point play as time expires against Michigan State celebrated laughingly among joy-crazy spectators.  Affectionately applauding her teammates, joking with fans in sold-out arenas both at home and away, Clark sits alone and atop the Division 1 scoreboard: the first player, women’s or men’s, to score over 3,000 points, dish out over 900 assists, grab over 800 rebounds.  Many sportswriters agree that not only is she today’s most popular collegiate basketball player, but Clark is also the best, women’s or men’s.  She’s changed forever much more than a sport—boys wear a girl baller’s jersey while imitating her style. 

Maybe a poem now.  Two?  Perhaps a song.  Dos? 

Barbara Hamby’s world bursts alive in verse.  “I am the green god of pine trees, conducting the music / of rustling needles through a harp.”  An expected companion every January, “Thus Spake the Mockingbird,” singing hallelujah.  Speak!  Wiggle your perky tail and dance us to Lester Young’s saxophone.  Under a bright moon, make your noise.  Free your wild throat, mockingbird—fuel our heels with flamenco desire.    

Old Crow Medicine Show flees New England cold and, like mockingbirds, they’re “headin’ down south to the land of the pines.”  Rolling like a “Wagon Wheel,” these hitchhikers “ain’t a-turnin’ back.”  What pitching-perfect union of strings and vocals with a gotta-get-up instrumental treat.  North Carolina love waits for that singing fiddler, toting a handpicked dogwood bouquet, and his party-ready bandmates.  Mama, rock them and us.  

John O’Donohue sends a poetic invitation “For a New Beginning.”  While our tired hearts wait for us to outgrow the same and the safe, all along the seeds of beginning quietly bud.  Then, one fine day, courage shakes loose and our souls fly.  Sensing all that awaits—seeing and hearing and touching—we hold nothing back.  “You can trust the promise of this opening,” its energy and delight.  “Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning.”  

Wearing at least one instrument, maybe with fresh tulips on your strings and a cymbal or parasol overhead, bounce along crowded streets with the members of Coldplay.  “I think I see you.”  Under a “A Sky Full of Stars,” the musicians give their hearts away.  Horns honk in happy tune, joyful followers lock step, heavens above look down.  It must be love—in a sky full of stars.  “You get lighter the more it gets dark.”       

i think i see you

quaffing our tumblers, here’s to

beauty’s sweetest sweep

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