Sun Days on Orcas | 27 things about Michael Hurwicz

||| SUN DAYS ON ORCAS by EDEE KULPER |||

Michael Hurwicz, along with Sharon Abreu

I won’t usually do two 27 Things articles back-to-back, but thought I’d follow up Sharon’s things last week with her partner’s things this week, just for fun. This does not imply a new trend of doing each person’s companion as well – ha! Just this time. Here you go…

27 Things about Michael Hurwicz

Last week Sharon Abreu shared 27 Things about her life, so I thought it would be fun to have Michael Hurwicz, her partner in life and music, share 27 Things about his…

1. My mother said I was born “swinging from the chandeliers.”
2. I spent most of my childhood in Minneapolis, where my favorite things to do were ride my bike and swim in the lakes.
3. My first job was as a paperboy.
4. I was/am a stutterer. When I was in my 30s, my wife Linda convinced me to look into an intensive “smooth speech” treatment program. I had previously gone to speech therapists, and it hadn’t helped, and I was convinced this wouldn’t help, either. I was wrong. It gave me tools that changed my life and for which I will always be grateful.
5. My parents had lots of LPs by, for instance, The Weavers, Harry Belafonte and Tom Lehrer, as well as Broadway musicals like The Mikado and My Fair Lady. I used to walk around singing those songs, driving my sisters crazy because: 1) I would sing the same song over and over and over, and 2) I had a tendency to change the tune. They would try to teach me the tune.
6. I started kindergarten early and was thereafter often the youngest and smallest in my class. My younger sister was around two when I started kindergarten, and my brother had just been born. My mother had some medical issues that affected her energy level. I suspect my parents enrolled me early to get the chandelier-swinger out of the house at least for a few hours a day.
7. I like big things. When I was in sixth grade, the junior high orchestra conductor came to our class and laid out a bunch of instruments in front of us. I was immediately drawn to the bass and ended up playing bass both in orchestra and in a little combo that played jazzy stuff at parties, as well as a folk quintet patterned on groups of the time like the We Five and the Seekers. Now, of course, I play bass in The Irthlingz Duo with Sharon Abreu.
8. I’m not a chocaholic. I could quit any time.
9. I worked on a salmon and tuna fishing boat out of Coos Bay, Oregon, in the late sixties – just me and Chick (a man) who had taken over running the boat after the owner had fallen into the water and drowned while doing some cleaning/repair work.
10. I lived in Bangalore, India, for most of my senior year in high school. My dad was teaching economics there and consulting with the Indian government.
11. I returned to the U.S. on my own and ended up staying in Paris for a month. At 16 years old, I loved being able to drink beer at Paris sidewalk cafés. I had studied French in high school, including in India, and I took Alliance Française courses in Paris and ended up with a decent knowledge of French and a love of France. Years later, I got a Masters degree in French.
12. I don’t particularly like most beers, but I like the idea of drinking beer.
13. Most of the money I have made in my life has come from writing. From the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, I freelanced for computer magazines like Byte and Datamation. I also wrote a few computer-related books.
14. I bought my house on Orcas in 1989 and moved to Orcas in 1990. In 1997 I wrote The Orcas-American Dictionary & Phrase Book & Gazetteer – still selling steadily at Darvill’s Bookstore in Eastsound and the Cottage Gift Shop at the ferry landing, just $7.99 plus tax. Since then I have written a couple of other short books, including The Meltese Dodo.
15. I lived in Brooklyn, New York, for five years, 1996-2000. In 1998, I met my partner in life and music, Sharon.
16. I have been a performing singer/songwriter since my late teens, but I never managed to come out ahead financially on the deal until I met Sharon. Now I think maybe, possibly, we have.
17. As far as I know, I am the only person in the world who has played the standup bass with both bass and performer hanging upside-down. The bass and I were dangling from a rafter at the Old Stone House in Brooklyn, where Sharon and I were managing a weekly folk music event. We sang our song “Turn the World Upside Down.” Sharon was right-side-up (but to me she looked upside-down).
18. The first record I really fell in love with was Pete Seeger’s American Industrial Ballads. I learned almost every song on that when I was around six years old, and I believe I can still sing most of them. Many years later, I was singing while splitting wood, and out of the blue I heard Pete’s voice in my head saying, “You have a good voice. You should do something with that.” After I met Sharon in New York, she invited me to a planning meeting for the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater group. I came into the little room in a union hall where they were meeting, and as I sat down someone held out a clipboard. I started to take it, but when I looked up, it was Pete Seeger holding the clipboard. I froze. I froze for so long, he finally just put the clipboard down in front of me. I eventually somewhat got over my awe of being in Pete’s presence. Sharon and I even got to perform with him a couple of times (see below).
19. My favorite songwriter is Bob Dylan. Especially his earlier stuff, like “Desolation Row” and “Gates of Eden.”
20. In the early 80s, inspired by a friend of mine doing Gorillagrams in Los Angeles, I started a singing telegram company in Minneapolis. My brother Maxim joined me. Originally, it was “Bunnygrams” (dressed as a rabbit). Then we added “Quackygrams” (dressed as a duck). It was the first time in my life I made a living doing music, albeit as a rabbit and a duck.
21. Probably the thing that scares me the most is the thought of getting dementia. It’s like losing who you are. But I try to forget about it.
22. I’ve been a member of the Odd Fellows here on Orcas since 1990.
23. In 1991, I starred as Jesus in the musical “Godspell” at Orcas Center. It was the first and only time I’ve ever had a “perm” (thank you, Carol Whitbeck). On rare occasions, someone will still kneel in front of me in a local parking lot, which I truly appreciate.
24. Sharon and I started Irthlingz Arts-Based Environmental Education on Orcas in 2002. Before that, while living in New York, we wrote and performed an environmental show for kids called “Turn the World Upside-Down,” which we performed in the NYC Public Schools through the Brooklyn Arts Council.
25. One of the most exciting trips I’ve ever taken was to sing at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, with Sharon in 2002.
26. My favorite Orcas activities over the years include taking a boat trip to Yellow Island, hiking on Turtleback, and singing at Olga Daze, Music in Moran Park, and the Village Green.
27. My family on my father’s side has a long history of running away. According to family oral history, back in the 16th century, an ancestor with a new medical degree from the University of Padua fled persecution in Italy, crossed the Alps, and traveled a thousand or so miles north to set up practice in Lithuania. Later, persecution in Lithuania caused a Hurwicz to flee to Poland. I remember my father telling me that an advantage of education is that, no matter where you might have to go or how light you might be traveling, you always take your education with you. I didn’t realize at the time how deeply embedded in family history that lesson was.