The ballad of Leonardo Balada

Lacking yoga (see post below) to calm my inner turmoil, I decided, instead, to google some of my elementary school teachers to see if they attained any greatness, something more significant than simply shepherding me through 2nd, 3rd, etc grades.

By far the most impressive of the lot is Leonardo Balada, experiencing quite the meteoric rise from elementary and middle school music teacher to renowned composer and professor at the Carnegie Mellon School of Music. He taught me music during 5th through 7th grades, and I remember thinking him then to be rather odd, what with a string (it was always a string) of blond hair falling over half his face, and a slumped posture of a genius in the making.

He let me sing in the ‘special’ solo at the closing school ceremonies before I left for Poland and so I decided to love him right then and there. But when he shortly after traveled to Poland and called my family home, I pretended that I didn’t exist and hung up on him. That was to be my last contact with the incomparable Mr. Balada (see his site here). Unless… unless… what if I were to send him an email explaining that his googled accomplishments have boosted my spirits on a quiet March evening in Madison? What if I apologized for hanging up on him that day in Warsaw, in the summer of 1966? No, some images are best left alone. If he didn’t remember ever having taught the spunky and not altogether compliant kid in his music and choral works classes, I’d be crushed, and then googling his name would never be a calming force again.