Real Change vendor Carol Kosche chuckles and laments, “Time flies when you’re having fun.”
Born and raised in Seattle, Carol went to Roosevelt High School and spent time hanging around different nooks and crannies in Seattle during the 1970s.
Carol found her way to North Seattle Community College. On a very familiar note that most can relate to, she got distracted.
“I got pulled away … I chose the wrong classes to take and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. … So I took German, and I didn’t excel.”
And it’s now that Carol talks about a passion in her life, one that she wishes that she had found to love sooner: meteorology.
“Weather is endlessly fascinating. Low-pressure and high-pressure have a lot to do with moods and how it affects your body. A low-pressure day will actually slow you down and make you feel sluggish.”
Carol said that the most important thing to have in your home is a barometer.
“Half the stress that we go through can be explained by the barometer. If you have something to blame it on, you can focus your attention on something positive.”
For Carol, that was music. More specifically, writing thousands of harmonious melodies and songs on the piano.
Carol attended North Seattle for a year and a half.
“I had a bad habit of getting sick and being accident prone. I could write a book on all the horrible things that have happened to me.”
She can trace it back to getting a staph infection from working at a deli in the University District, being front and center at an Iggy Pop concert downtown and having the speakers fall on her, and coming home to fire trucks putting out a fire at her house in West Seattle after doing laundry on a 100-degree day.
After the house fire, she explains, “I stayed at the Mission and got an apartment on Capitol Hill (with some friends).” This was in 1989 and she lived there until 2014, when “the property was sold from a private owner to Sound Property Management. They tried to make it impossible for me with my income to live there. They gave me the legal three-month notice that the rent was going up. [The apartment] had all kinds of problems. It was hot, it was icky, but it was great.”
Carol’s bad luck was met with good luck. On April Fool’s Day, she got a letter in the mail saying that she was approved for subsidized housing. She laughs at the timing of it all.
More positives started to find their way into Carol’s life. Now her attention can finally focus on her music.
Carol’s sound is very instrumental. Like George Gershwin, the music tends to flow out of her in the form of deep rhapsodies.
“I took lessons as a child and my piano teacher told me that I was incorrigible; that I want to do my own thing. … I’ve got like 1,000 or 2,000 songs. I think of a title and then fill in the blanks.”
Carol has a lot of concerns. She’s had a lot of obstacles. Despite her bad luck, and maybe with the support of a barometer, Carol casts her eyes to the side and says, “So far, I think I’ve proven to myself that I have what it takes.”