Tom Quinn’s Reviews > The Life of a Children's Troubadour > Status Update

Well now, I picked up this title as a joke, an ironic hipster gag. And then I got drawn into the story of this man and his life which actually has a lot of practical lessons for me as a parent and us as a society. A looming due date and hefty interlibrary late fees ($25!) mean I'm prioritizing my schedule to finish this, like, yesterday. What a bad feeling, to skim against your will. I'd rather take my time.

No progress on the physical text this weekend, but went to see "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" at the local discount theater and, thematically, tightened up my understanding of what this book (what Mr. Rogers, what Raffi, what my parenting) is aiming at. It is difficult to drop the cynicism I've cultivated as a personality trait, but there are still good people doing good things. With effort we all can be one.

Life! It's busy! My duties are slowing my reading down and I feel frustrated when I'm not making "optimum" progress, but Raffi's got some words of wisdom about that:

'As one develops an ability to view events, good or bad, with detachment, there is no lessening of love and compassion. One simply gains a sense of how attachment to temporal desires affects daily life, and gradually learns to make wiser choices.' (121)

While no Keith Richards, it turns out Raffi did some partying in his younger days. Summer of Love, folk singer... you can connect the dots. But he maintains a sincerity that makes these revelations untroubling, and it is so fun to hear him get excited over gigs growing from open mics to bars and coffeehouses to full scale music festivals.

And naturally his first big show for children was life-changing. So sweet!

OK, Raffi's in college now. We are past the early family profiling. Not to rag on Raffi - this is a complaint about the form of (auto)biography in general. He does his best to punch it up and keep things interesting, and I concede the info is important background to understand his philosophy and how he grew to be involved in art among the influence of his family. It's just... living somebody else's life can get dull.

The number of times a skilled trade has made the difference in this story is amazing. Grandpa was an architect so they spared his life, uncle was a machinist so they hired him at the plant, father was a color photographer so they met all sorts of officials. Grandpa's advice to learn something useful certainly rang true for this family.

...he posted on Goodreads. I should be out there practicing something!