Instead of teaching my students a Whitney Houston song (Did you know she was the daughter of a gospel singer and the cousin of Aretha Franklin?), I taught “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the recording of that song. I let them read about the big event at City Hall, where we would all sing along with Tony Bennett. I got dressed for it too: my cable car earrings (“To be where little cable cars/Climb halfway to the stars”) and my tie with all the heart-shaped candy plus my red rain boots and my fuchsia pantsuit and my red, pink, and white boa. Nothing quite matched anything else I was wearing, but everything matched the theme. My plan was to teach my Tuesday morning class and skip my office hour so I could head out to City Hall. But for the first time all semester, students needed to see me during my office hours, and I thought of Madrid, where most students skipped their Friday classes between holidays to “hacer puente.” But the rule at Mangold Institute, where I taught, was that if even one student showed up, we had to stay and teach. I remember a teacher saying, “One student showed up and said he loved my class and wouldn’t miss it for anything. I could have bashed his head in.” I didn’t really want to bash in the head of my two students, mothers trying to balance both classes and toddlers, but spending an hour with them meant getting to City Hall too late to get anywhere close to a place with a view. Still, I enjoyed Standing Room Only without a view. I straddled my legs around a man who was bent over taking in the scene, and every now and then I’d move in over his butt and take a picture. I really enjoyed the fairy princess from Beach Blanket Babylon who just evaporated into golden light. The SF Girls Choir, the SF Boys Choir, and the SF Gay Men’s Chorus all sang too. And then we all sang under the direction of hula dancers. I don’t know why. I've chosen to illustrate with magic golden light instead of hula dancers, but check in tomorrow.
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