Catch 22 is a conversation starter

Last night I was up at the U of C waiting for J to finish an audition she was doing for a community theatre group she is involved in, and I was just sitting around working my way through Catch 22.  There was a jazz show about to start so the lobby at the theatre was packed with people but I managed to squeeze onto a couch with some other people.

All of a sudden the older gentleman sitting next to me leaned over and said "So whats Yossarian up to?"
I was a little shocked and so responded with "Um what?" (how eloquent and polite of me)
This guy (who I later found out is named Stu) started talking about how there are just some books that everyone should read and that Catch 22 was one of them.  He apparently firmly believes that classics should be force feed to students!

Turns out he is a retired prof from Haskane School of Business at the U of C and is a super cool guy!  He was reading a book by Arnáldur Indriðason, an Icelandic mystery author, which of course brought up one of my favourite topics... Iceland.  Apparently scandinavian mystery novels are quite good!

This chance encounter ended with Stu telling me this awesome story about the time he met Art Garfunkel from Simon and Garfunkel.

He was at this black power rally at Colombia University in the 1960's about a month after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and about a week before JFK was assassinated.  The main speakers were people I had never heard of, but were apparently very influential in the black power movement (despite the fact I can't seem to find them on google).  However he was standing there participating in this amazing protest and he looked at the guy next to him and it was ART GARFUNKEL!!!

So the story about meeting Art Garfunkel was slightly anti-climactic but it just amazed me that this man sitting next to me had participated in creating a change in our world.  I would love to be a part of something so huge and far reaching as helping to create equality for all.  It just reminds me that there are so many people out there in the world who think of these things as 'current events' while I somehow think of Martin Luther King Jr and black power rally's as the distant past. And its incredible that this great conversation was started by something so little as the fact that I was reading a classic novel while waiting for a friend.

P.S. this also reinforces the fact that I am making new friends as per my most recent resolutions. And sometimes it happens in the most unusual ways...