Location: DePaul Student Union & Multiple Locations
Date: Saturday, December 19, 2015; 9:30 am-12:30 pm
It was that time again and I picked up my Santa hat and
headed to the “DePaul Student Union”
on a cold morning. Chicago Cares had
sent out a link to some music site for us to listen to the tunes beforehand,
but I of course skipped that part of the process, preferring to “improvise” instead. I entered the building to find a lot of
familiar faces, including staff members - some former - and some volunteers who
usually come for this event. The song
books for this year looked professionally done and had an index page and were
alphabetically ordered. This would help
a lot as we searched for requests. I
picked one up and climbed aboard our bus, where Christmas music was playing and people
were being chirpy.
 |
| "Frosty" was back again |
Our first stop was at “Edith
Spurlock Apartments”, which was just a few blocks away, but due to the one
way streets etc., it took us longer than a brisk walk to get there. We went inside to see that the regular
Chicago Cares breakfast was going on there and residents were being
served. We assembled in lines and then
took requests, starting with “Frosty The
Snowman”. There were a few requests for
slow numbers like “Silent Night” and another
one which I had never heard before. We
also did “Feliz Navidad”, and the
performance was much better than previous years. I was a bit out of it today and one volunteer
mentioned that she saw me not sing some parts – it was the carol I had not
heard before. Plus it’s not like we were
the “Albert Hall troop”, were we!
We got back on the bus and next stop was at “Flannery House”, where I used to go for
“Arts & Eats” project, and which
had been a stop on our caroling tour 2 years ago. But this time instead of the room
downstairs, we were on their top floor, which has an outstanding view of the
city and was perfect for this activity.
We took an elevator in batches and on arrival upstairs, saw that the
room was tiny for the number of people that we had. I squeezed inside and found myself behind
some fitness equipment. At least I
wasn’t in the hallway like some folks. We
took requests and for most parts, did carols that we had not performed at the
first location. After a few over here,
we took off for our last stop.
We were headed to “Diversey
Square” and it took us a bit longer to get there. As we went inside, all the residents cheered
and it was by far the warmest reception that we had today. They seemed genuinely pleased to have us
there, unlike the others who had been bothered that we had disturbed their
breakfast. We started by singing “Happy Birthday” to a resident and then
the request was to do that in Spanish, which of course I could not participate in – hope that was ok with the volunteer who had criticized me. We took some requests and then did the big
one, “12 Days of Christmas”, which is
by far my favorite carol and I really enjoyed this performance. We did a few more and then we were done. The “resident
coordinator” thanked us for coming and the residents wished us on our way
out. We got on the bus and were dropped off back at
‘DePaul’. I put my hat away for another year. It had been good, but I had not had as much
fun as before. Perhaps this was not a
holiday season that I was looking forward to.
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