going. He's stopped at the post office to mail off a pile of ideas to friends in Berlin, Senegal, Australia & New York, something to the U.S. Patent Office - and also to the Pope about suggestions he has to "alter the Gregorian calendar for the good of society at large". Needless to say, he's ready for coffee.

An hour or so later, I'm acting like a grown-up again at a board meeting of the Recording Academy's Chicago Chapter office, where I serve as a National Trustee (!) along with Jazz harmonicist Corky Segal and the great remixer Silk Hurley. I have to split early, though, because I have to make it to the Palm Tavern site to meet with the city & dig what's become of it since they took over. Here's the head of the Chicago Historical Society's Architecture Board, my friend Mike Orlove from the Department of Cultural Affairs, assorted city operatives, some security people, and the head of Gallery 37 (the after school arts program I have suggested to take over the site).

There was an arson fire here last month. Somebody wants this place leveled. Right now it's empty of chairs, stools, all the old bar gear that Geri had been using, and all the personal items she chose to take. I guess Mama Geri had been living in the back of the place for a while, in a windowless shoebox 10' by 8". You can't even stand up straight there - the ceiling's only 5' high. The place was her life.

I had suggested the city put in a nice apartment upstairs from the Palm and make Geri the "Proprietor Emeritus". What could be better for kids coming in to study Jazz than to have somebody on hand to say, "Coleman Hawkins sat right in that booth in between sets down the block. He'd always order the same thing . . ." Or, 'Josephine Baker got up and danced on that table. What a scandal she made!' Or, 'Louis Armstrong loved the pork chops they served here; used to write the chef post cards from all over . . ."

Back in the thirty's and forty's they had all white tablecloths and linen napkins. It was a proud room with hand-painted murals on the walls, waiters who wore white waistcoats, and a clientele made up of the crème of Bronzeville society. It was never really a performance space. It was a restaurant. (The only reason there is a stage in the club is because Bruce Willis used the place for "atmosphere" in some movie & had the production people build one.) But it's still the only standing Bronzeville era business. Now, the alderman for the ward wants the whole block leveled so she can build a brand- new blues museum. A blues museum? There were no blues clubs in this part of Chicago - this was the heart of the Jazz scene; of cultured, northern Blacks. She wants to change history. She wants to demolish the Palm.

"Another red letter day for the Ellings", I say sarcastically. "Another red letter week" (Emphatic now; all upper case font.) "I won't have it any other way." I make fun of myself, masking anger and frustration with irony like a character out of Albee. Much more wordplay there than usual. Will my job become a job after all?

Sunday. Day of rain. Day of rest. Wet and gray blusters above and rain freckles the back porch every time I step out on it to go for a run. I hit the dreaded treadmill for a 20 minute go with the speed control and the t.v. remote. Jenny and I have got to leave the house by 3:30 to meet Rob in time for an ACLU benefit we're playing. I'm taking my amp, speakers and voice to a 9th district fundraiser in the backyard of a local jazz publicist who is hosting. Did I say backyard? Well that was the intention. Seeing how I got circus-dunked just taking the gear out to the car, I can't think we'l have to worry about standing under any poplar trees getting struck by lightening.

Sure enough, Jenny and I arrive to find the hosts, some guests and a neighborhood volunteer setting up a during-cocktails-only keyboard in the living room and trying to decide where Rob and I should be. It's a little tense & last minute at first. But nobody blows it and we discover a good place to set up once they move a couch out. Other furniture goes upstairs, food comes out to the buffet and after some minor wrangling by the pianist who's brought the wrong cables, the guests arrive.

Jenny, Rob and I are the first to attack the buffet - Rob out of habit, us out of habit too, I guess (I've worked my share of casuals). And before we know it, the room is filled and it is time for the candidates to give speeches. They go and go and last up is a certain Congressman M. who wants the Governor's chair. I've done for him before & he's on the right track. Even so, he fits the part of the professional young politico - the hair, the perfect grooming, the ready smile, the vague pronouncements about education, taxes, et al - no difference between the brief stump here & ones I've heard him give before except that here the words " progressive politics" are thrown about once a minute.

After the gig he comes over to congratulate us and say hi and then he asks about our hitting for him once he's Governor. He's excited 'cause last week he discovered that whoever is governor gets a summer house paid for by the state. He's also found out that there is an airplane involved and that jakes him even more.

"Sure we'll come down and play for you. Anytime," I say, taking care of business.

"Anytime."

After he splits, Rob asks me with a knowing smirk if it wouldn't be more prudent for the candidate in question to spend more time worrying about the issues & maybe wait until after he's been elected to start planning any larger Jazz-oriented debauchery at the governor's downstate dacha. That's what I'm sayin'.

The other candidates all come over, in time to thank Rob and me for doing our bit to help out, including one cat who says he's a big fan of mine. He's quite tidy, and is precisely dressed in the standard, gray, pin stripe, low-budget Brooks' Brothers. He seems nice enough, but there's something I can't put my finger on; something unfocused. Looks young, maybe 34, and it seems like he feels a little out of place among the slightly older and more established guests whose votes he's counting on. He reminds me of all the cats I knew who would never have found their people in college if it hadn't been for Chess Club.

I ask him what he's running for. He says, quietly, "Lieutenant Governor."

Lieutenant Governor?

I ask Rob about it later, and he says, joking, "Sure. Lieutenant governor. That's the loneliest guy in town."

"Well, him and the bass player," I say

Laughs all around.

I'm changing my life. Horoscope confirms it: "Time to stop running and walk toward your goal, Scorpio Boy".

Amen. I'm all for it.

We're in the home stretch for the record. Yesterday in the corner booth on a street level Michigan Avenue with three walls of windows, Rob and I played a bit and talked to Dean Richards on the air at WGN. In the spare waiting room, we dug that Charlton Heston and Mrs. Charlton Heston were still finishing up an interview on air. In another corner of the room the very nervous executive producer of their show, "Love Letters", listened along, jittering his legs nervously in a too-small blue steel chair. As the nearly inevitable NRA questions begin, he squirms in coiling frustration.

He says, "Oh, why did he have to ask about the guns? Why can't they just talk about the show?" His black hair glints sympathetically.

Rob: " Well, he was the president of the NRA right?"

KE " Yeah! (Now in a Heston accent) For the wrath of God man, I'm keeping the gun for when the Pharoah strikes!"

It's good doing interviews with Rob 'cause they can be a drag & Rob's always ready to get a bit going. In a minute he reminds me that I'm supposed to stop introducing him as my bass player and start calling him my lieutenant governor. I'm just promising that I'll do it on air if he's not careful when we're called up.

What I said to open the release concert:

Thank you for joining us this evening. I am proud to be with you tonight - of all nights. Proud to know how strong we are as Chicagoans and Americans.

(LH begins playing free here)

I came tonight to sing for you tonight because someone wants to make us all suffer. Someone wants us to fail - as a nation - a culture - a civilization - as a people. We fold? They win. We stay home in fear or depression? They win. Culture must continue. Joy must come out. Life is stronger than death.

I know what my father would say, quoting Job: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust Him".

The cats and I are here because it our intention as artists to increase the sum total of Beauty and brotherhood in the world; to increase the positive energy and to give expression to the human condition. Music can help us see beyond the darkness - this terrible darkness - which has brought neither the will of god nor righteousness. Music can give us a healing, an empowering, a lightening of the load - not in a frivolous way - but in a mysterious way - one which allows us to know and understand what the German poet Holderlin meant when he said, "Near, and Hard to grasp is God. But where danger grows, the Deliverer, too, grows strong."

The sun shone so brilliantly on Tuesday and Wednesday - the New York times said, " . . . as if to mock the continuing horror." But that's not right. They should have said ". . . as if to remind us of how small all human events really are. As if to remind us of the faithfulness of the sun, of return, of the placid smile of the Buddha, saying, 'all is well'".

This is not to deny the horror or the pain. It is to put it into a more complete context. We are not encircled by darkness. We are surrounded by a circle of light whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere. We have beheld this glory; It is full of grace.

If we were to ask a god of such grace, what do you think the god would say?

(Directly into "Not While I'm Around")

I am 33. 34 by the time you read this. I am blessed and thankful and happy in every way to be a working Jazz musician. It’s tough, but no single gig or solo or award marks the finish line. I’ve already crossed it and won. I’ve got the gig.

In New York at Joe’s Pub last week we had three packed nights. People needed to be fed, and they trusted us to do our best. I am still moved by their open hearts.

Here we are in Boston again – having finally heard the magic words at check-in, “It’s nice to have you with us again, Mr. Elling”. (I have always wanted to hear the front desk cat say that.)

Manager Bill told me that we’re #1 on Jazz radio for a second week and that the show this Friday at the Kennedy Center has already sold out. Who’d have thought?

Gotta fly now. Got a gig to get to.