In 1971, when I left DJ’s Sound City, the only job I’ve ever been laid off from, I applied for work at the University Book Store in Seattle. It was, at that time, the largest of its kind in the world—it offered a huge selection of trade books, half the basement given over to textbooks, and other departments serving students at the University of Washington. I wanted to work in the Art Department since I was a studio arts major, but because of my experience in a record store, I was placed in the Music Department, working for Jess Burton. It was an essential part of my education.

The Music Department had a small case of the new CDs, but mostly records in bins north and south and in a double row facing outward down the long, narrow center of our shop. In the middle we carried the new rock and folk facing north, and “popular music” such as 101 Strings facing south—they were awful. And because we carried a lot of classical music on the south wall fan ing north, I am familiar with Baroque and earlier work recorded on the on the Nonesuch label, and other wonderful pieces from Deutsche Gramophone. I found Paul Horn on the north side of the store facing south and more jazz beyond Brubeck.

Employees were allowed to open some LPs to listen and then reseal them in a plastic envelope. I had been exposed to full orchestras in Music classes in my public grade school, but I discovered the rest of the world partly because of that part-time job—from German Baroque to Nigerian mbira.

The concerts I attended during that time leaned toward folk: Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, and Donovan, but also Janis and Grace, Simon and Garfunkel. I heard more on vinyl, but I first learned about the mbira when it was played during one of the classes I had that was created and taught by African graduate students from across the University. We heard wonderful music, read Things Fall Apart, and learned more about African cultures than from any other class except Sonya Sollands’s Intro to Cultural Anthropology. The pet line in my department was “Art for Art’s Sake” which never felt quite right to me, and then Art History and classes outside my major explained that for me. Art has function beyond mere decoration, a “new” notion from the European Renaissance. Art is history, protest, emotional support, comfort, meaning. I was convinced the Venus of Willendorf wasn’t merely a “fertility symbol”—it begs to be held in the hand. I made things that were useful and continue to value the quilt over the wall-hanging, the vessel over the table sculpture. There is room for both, of course there is. I learned that too. Room for the soloist and the full orchestra, the trio and marching band.

I worked in that Music shop throughout the fifth year required for my two studio arts majors. In my last year, Gary was working, and I only worked retail over the holidays while completing a third degree in education and not at all during my student teaching before graduation in 1976. Two bus rides and about an hour each way.

Without applying for either, I was offered two jobs teaching high school Art after I graduated. I can thank a favorite prof, Hazel Koenig for that. She’s the one who pretty much dragged me into education, and she was a wonderful Design teacher. I’ve kept work from her class and from Alden Mason’s Design class all these years.

I wonder sometimes if my grandchildren would recognize those pieces of music that I had come to know by their age. Did they stand before an easel in Kindergarten and have an epiphany about red hair, that “red hair” isn’t red? Did they model clay in first grade? Did someone tell them a wonderful story about whales or circus cats?

Do they recognize who and what makes their parents nostalgic or uncomfortable? Does one of their parents remind them to “think how the other person feels”? Have they baked bread, a cake, a pie? An entire feast? Have they climbed trees and run wild in the woods? Have they tutored other students, traveled to other countries, met spiritual leaders at church?

Do the high school students of today understand just how awful current public discourse has become, how unlike the way people spoke to and about one another before they were born?

I was born lucky, I guess.