That’s Bob Ringwald, Molly’s father.

Let’s start with Bob Ringwald. My brother Doug introduced me to Bob years ago — they’re both jazz musicians, and they play together from time to time. Bob is blind, and his daughter Molly (yes, the one in all those John Hughes movies in the 1980s) was interviewed on Weekend Edition last month about her first novel When It Happens to You. She told Scott Simon that as a child she enjoyed sitting with her dad during movies and plays to describe the action. “I actually think that that informed my writing,” she said. “That’s something that I’ve done for so long, that it’s made me, perhaps, observe things in a different way.”

And then there’s Gore Vidal. After the famous writer and critic died in July, Bob Edwards Weekend replayed an interview conducted at Vidal’s home in Los Angeles in 2006. Vidal was raised by his grandfather, a U.S. Senator from Oklahoma. Sen. Thomas Gore was blind, and Vidal was ten years old when he started reading to him. “I read grown-up books to him: constitutional law, the Congressional Record, American history, poetry,” Vidal said. ”He was extraordinary, he was my education.” Vidal guided his grandfather to Senate hearings, and he said he didn’t dare fall asleep while sitting in the balcony waiting for the session to be over — at any moment his grandfather might give a hand signal to let young Vidal know to skedaddle down the Senate stairs to guide him to the bathroom.

And then, the live performance of This American Life that opened with Vancouver writer Ryan Knighton telling a story about a walk in the woods he took alone with his young daughter. Knighton is blind, and when she started screaming about a bear, he panicked. After weighing his options, he realized that her frantic cries of “bear!” were only in reaction to dropping her teddy bear on the sidewalk.

My sister Cheryl met Ryan Knighton years ago at a bookstore in Anacortes, Washington when he was touting his first book. His latest, C’mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark, is about blind fatherhood.

Ryan Knighton’s daughter is too young now to tell us what, if any, positive effects come from being raised by a man who can’t see her. I may not be a gambling woman, but I’ll betcha this: she’ll have stories to tell!

Since I am an old-fashioned type (I remember life before the computer), I will eventually give myself the sumptuous pleasure of printing out these pages and marking out my musical peregrinations with a yellow highlighter so that I don’t miss an exalted note.  But I’ve looked at this cornucopia for a long time, basking in anticipation of the wonders we will hear . . .

The festival schedule is posted and arranged by day.  Anyone can go to each day and do a “Find” for a particular name, then keep clicking “Next” to see all the places they are listed on that page.

Try it here.  Go ahead, knock yourselves out!

May your happiness increase.

As soon as they started with the verse, I was hooked.  Then I happily followed along with Bob Ringwald at the piano, the heroic Marty Eggers on bass, Bob Schulz on cornet (floating along behind the beat in the best 1932 Louis manner), Jim Maihack on trombone, Scott Anthony on banjo and vocal (offering the sweet, silly, irresistible lyrics).

Something for Bix, Tram, Venuti, Challis, and Goldkette — and now everyone knows how to pronounce the lady’s name — rhyming with New Orleans, not with “wine.”  A lovely hot vignette!

This celebration of jazz was started in 1974, primarily as a Trad Jazz festival. Today it is still mostly a Trad thing but there is a good deal of Mainstream jazz and even Latin, Gypsy and Zydeco. The problem, if you could call it that, is that there are 105 different bands appearing throughout the city at 30 different venues. Commendably, there are a number of youth bands that get to strut their stuff and it is heartening to see jazz attract the younger set, particularly while the audience (myself included) seems to be aging at an alarming rate. Attendance this year was about 75,000 people. Not a bad draw, you might say, but not close to the 200,000 attendees of ten years ago. Another reality in this age of shrinking budgets is that fewer international bands are to be seen. While the festival provides a highly efficient transportation system for getting from one venue to another, the sheer size of the three-day event makes it impossible to see and hear everything. But that doesn’t stop the faint of heart from trying.

Overlooking the magnitude of the event and its associated logistics, there was lots of great jazz. Becky Kilgore and BED knocks everybody’s socks off. Various All Stars in numerous configurations provided stunning, extemporaneous performances. Performers like Harry Allen, Russ Phillips, John Allred, Randy Reinhart, Joe Ascione, John Cocuzzi, Jim Galloway, Jake Hanna and, I’m proud to say, my good friend and pianist with few peers, Eddie Higgins, provided a continuous succession of one great performance after another. But a good part of the fun was listening to the banter that goes on with musicians and the occasionally funny slip by a fan. What do I mean? Well, here’s a sampler.

Tommy Saunders made reference to a compatriot of many years with the aside, “I’ve drunk to your health so much I’ve ruined mine.”

A woman approached Bob Schulz of the Frisco Jazz Band with a request. Would you play “I’ll Be Your Friend For Pleasure”? Sure, but I think you mean “I’ll Be Your Friend WITH Pleasure.”

As Jim Galloway began to introduce a number that featured him, “Bewitched, Bothered and …” But before he could get the last word out, Dan Barrett injected “Bob Wilber-ed.”

Bob Ringwald, father of actress Molly Ringwald, performed “Bethena,” a beautiful Scott Joplin rag. As background, Bob told the audience that his daughter had asked him to play it for her wedding. It was a difficult piece to learn and it took Bob some time to finally get it down. “In fact,” said Bob, “it took me longer to learn it than the marriage lasted.”

Great music. Great fun. Good times.

—- Bill Gallagher