I Am A Legend - In My Own Mind

Jane and I were in South Pasadena a couple of days ago to get our taxes done for this year and afterward we went to a nice neighborhood we like that has little shops, interesting restaurants, and lots of big, mature trees. First we went to the Great Harvest Bread Company, a bakery that we love, to get some of their really tasty oatmeal mixes and some of their fine baked goods. They grind their own flours there daily.


Afterward we tried a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant called the Firefly Bistro that had always been closed when we were there before. It was a very nice, almost hidden place with really, really great food. The restaurant is mostly outdoors with a big permanent tent covering the dining room and trees and shrubs inside and also visible outside through the tent windows. The entryway has little cafe tables covered by an arbor supporting thickly-growing vines. It felt a little like a European cafe.


One of the co-owners came over to speak to us when we finished eating and then, since they have live music there some days and because it was an outdoorsy place with a nice energy, I left my business card on the way out, thinking I might want to play there, though I have almost never played in restaurants. On the way out, I told the co-owner that I had left my card for him. Just as we got out the door, he caught up with us and asked me "Hey - did you ever work with the Orange County Performing Arts Center?" I told him "yes, I did", and then both our minds started clicking.


He was Carl Weintraub, who founded a multi-ethnic storytelling theater troupe called "We Tell Stories". He had been engaged way back in the early 1990's to assist me in developing my program in my early days of providing school programs through the "From the Center" Program of the O.C. Performing Arts Center. I was consequently on contract at the center for eight years after that. In his appraisal of my program for the staff who ran the program then, he had this to say:

"I think this show is a gift. It speaks of quietude, freedom, ancestry, extinction in a truly spiritual way without ever preaching or lecturing."

I can quote his words now because I asked his permission then to quote his words on the cover of my school programs brochure. So, it was a somewhat amazing encounter after so many years - and when we got in the truck to go home, Jane remarked on that fact. My reply, of course, was "Well, you know how that happened, don't you?" to which her inevitable answer was "Yes dear, it's because you are a legend - in your own mind". And she was right.

You can check out the "We Tell Stories" website at http://www.wetellstories.org/.