[Harp-L] Subject: Re: Val Redler Caltabellotta--Long.

[EGS1217@xxxxxxx]

My good friend and someone well-known to many here, 
Val Redler  Caltabellotta is recovering from a pretty serious medical scare 
at Helen Hayes  Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in West Haverstraw, New 
York.
 
 
We just visited her there yesterday evening--a long trip from  Long Island, 
but well worth it to enjoy spending some quality time with her  and see her 
smiling and working hard at her therapy. The problem which put Val  into 
the hospital and then the Helen Hayes Hospital could have been a lot worse  
but she's a very intelligent woman and a fighter and is following her  
doctors' orders. She showed me how far she'd come and she's doing better than I  
am. Phil spends a lot of time there not only visiting Val but playing along 
with  his Bose Player for the other patients who are astonished by  how 
beautifully he plays harmonica. Life-long harmonica players seem  to come out of 
the woodwork when they hear Phil play. 
 
 
In fact they've already had him take over on Sunday for another musical  
entertainer who had to cancel. When I spoke to Val this evening we were  
interrupted by a stranger stopping by to simply say how fabulous it was to hear  
harmonica played so well yesterday. As Val's daughter told me, to see one  
elderly gentleman force himself up out of his wheelchair to give Phil  a 
standing ovation was extraordinary.
 
 
She'll be there another couple of weeks and I'm quite positive will bounce  
back to her usual self. She kept me in stitches regaling me with stories of 
her  trials and tribulations with undertrained student aides whose only 
practice had  been on dummies and not (yet) live humans. I'm sure it was 
funnier in the  retelling than the actual experience. 
 
 
Those of you who know her and Phil and care about them (as so many do),  
please keep good thoughts for Val--a hardworking chord harmonica player in her 
 own right and retiring President and co-Chair of the Garden State 
Harmonica  Festival. There will be no Garden State Harmonica Festival next month as 
I'm  sure most have surmised--although unrelated to Val's current illness. 
 
 
No one came forward to take on the task of running the Festival for 2012  
although in my own estimation perhaps it was just as well after the  
absolutely incredible Convention we 
had last year with Robert  Bonfiglio playing as never before (with wife 
Clare Hoffman on flute); a Singular  Sgro Brother with Phil filling in (along 
with George Miklas on Bass guitar; Rob  Paparozzi, Enrico Granafei bringing 
along jazz musicians who play at his Club  Trumpets in New Jersey --a 
terrific trio and then brilliant stars such as Bucky  Pizzarelli with Jerry Bruno 
and the extreme surprise of the last evening:  fall-on-the-floor incredible 
jazz violinist Vitali Imereli onstage with Enrico  himself, Bucky and Jerry. 
Val worked with Enrico to ensure the Festival would be  spectacular--and it 
was. Ending that Festival with Michael Polesky  playing one final time 
onstage accompanying Jazzmaan David Fairweather  left us so emotionally wrung out 
I simply couldn't imagine following it this  year with a lukewarm 
Convention not at the same top-notch level.
 
 
 Hopefully we can put something together for next November and come  
roaring back if even a few younger volunteers get involved. We need able-bodied  
people to become physically hands-on to do the leg-work. (Yes, joke  fully 
intended). You can't leave it up to older people to do all the actual  
work--selling t-shirts, raffles, on their feet non-stop for hours, lifting and  
carrying boxes and equipment and then sitting for more hours in  uncomfortable 
chairs after handling the physical end of things while many  are in misery 
with physical pain and then complain that they're 'ruling by  majority'; not 
putting on the Festival YOU'D prefer. (That's just a  wee hint/heads-up to 
the constant complainers).<G>
 
Get involved at the most basic levels if you want to see change--step up to 
 the plate and relieve some of these good people of their burdens by acting 
as  their right-hands. It's tough work made even harder when one has 
physical  infirmities.
 
 
In the meantime: I'm SO glad my lovely friend Val came through a medical  
scare and is doing so well. She and Phil are two of those life-time friends  
I've made because of the harmonica world, particularly SPAH. Phil's become 
my  main chromatic mentor--never judgmental and always encouraging. True  
gold, and is one of the best ambassadors of the harmonica there  is with Val 
right there beside him. 
 
 
And again--I wouldn't have met them had I not gone to SPAH by going to  
Buckeye, by joining Harp-l. It's all interwoven.
 
Elizabeth