Thirty Days of Songs - Day Five

A Song That Reminds You Of Someone

The first few answers that come to mind are too personal to post in public. There's another answer that would lead me to write screens and screens of acidic horribleness that might be entertaining to read, but could lead to a lawsuit for slander. (Then again, it might be worth it, hmmm...)

When I worked as a camp counselor, the counselors had a song we listened to only when the kids (and the people in charge) could not hear it. It is the single most filthy song I've ever heard, and just thinking about it brings me back to the utter insanity and the sheer fun of that job, and being with that group of people. I refuse to post a link, but if you google "Eat, Bite" you'll probably find it.

One summer in my youth, my best friend and I, both quite broke, spent a lot of time doing whatever we could to get out of the house that might also be cheap. Loosely translated, this meant a lot of movies at the dollar theater and nursing cups of coffee for as long as possible. "Hands to Heaven" by Breathe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC5InWPjtL8

seemed to be constantly on the radio, and we went mad trying to figure out the words to the chorus. It took us far longer that we'd care to admit, but I will never forget being in the Burger King parking lot when he yelled, "tonight you calm my restlessness!"

I miss those days, and wish we now lived less than several thousand miles apart.

Thirty Days of Songs, Day Four: A Song that Makes you Sad

There are many songs that make me cry tears of sentimentality. I don't think that's what this question wants us to ponder.

Harriet's post about her (now deceased) friend from college I think may be the best I've seen on this topic. I've lost family and friends, far too early and far too soon, but no one with whom I ever so strongly associated any piece of music.

Many moons ago, my mother took me on a trip to Washington, D.C. The Vietnam Memorial was still new, and was among the places we visited. My mother went straight to the part of the wall that she knew would have the names of her high school classmates.

I have seen my mother cry. I have seen my mother sob.

My mother put her hand on the panel with the names and wept, the first and only time I have ever seen her do this. She ran her fingers over the name of every man she knew in high school who didn't make it back home. She stood, very still, and stared at the names, and then made rubbings of the names for their parents, people she hadn't seen in twenty-five years, but she knew that the rubbings would bring comfort when she mailed them to parents, keeping alive the memories, knowing that their names were not lost, would make a difference, that this recognition had been accorded to them in death.

I already knew the song "Goodnight Saigon" by Billy Joel, but it's had a deeper significance ever since seeing my mother, on that sunny day, weeping.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6gZefW4yEA

I didn't plan this (I'm not good with schedules) but as this is Memorial Day, thank you to the men and women who left this country to fight for the protection of what is good, and a particular thanks to the families of the ones who didn't make it home.

At eighteen one might be physically fittest, but that doesn't mean that you have the maturity to handle all that war entails. I felt pretty clueless at eighteen (and nineteen, for that matter) and my biggest challenge was getting to class on time. Faced with jungle, with a war no one seems to have understood, with an enemy not always visible... these men (and some brave women!) "clung to each other/ like brother to brother" and they did their jobs, they did their duty, they tried to do the best, even when it wasn't clear what "best" might be.

I like the opening of this song more than the conclusion - the opening suggests a man who is very much trying to find his feet, to know what to do, how to do it. The end of the song suggestions resignation, knowing that one will die, and however hard life might be, I refuse to give up.

As a slightly older person than I was when standing with Mom at the Vietnam Memorial, what grabs me now is thinking about this song in the context of World War I. I think about the charge at Gallipolis, and the men who left behind their personal possessions and wedding rings, knowing that they were about to die.

Day #3 - A Song That Makes you Happy

Again, I just get to pick one? Sheesh. :-)

When I was a junior in college I ended up in a dormitory with the best shower ever. I want to emphasize this point. Fantastic shower. Plenty of hot water, plenty of room for your shampoo, conditioner, soap, etc. - and this shower stall just cried out for you to sing in it. I probably annoyed the heck out of everyone else on my floor, but I sang in that shower every day, all year. This shower might have been the reason that I actually passed my biology class.

I am definitely NOT a morning person, but that shower got me up and moving six days a week. (Hey, Saturdays are for sleeping in, right?)

In my sophomore year, my college did a production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers. A year later, I was still singing this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgJSIKhqHGE in the shower. It's been (cough) years and I still sing it in the shower. I refuse to sing it in public, (let alone while dry) but it's an awful lot of fun.

Day Two - Your Least Favorite Song

Again, there are many possible answers.

My first choice would be "Jesus is the Rock and He Rolls My Blues Away," a song I only sang because I was a camp counselor and was being paid to be chipper. This song is even more horrible than the title suggests.

It goes on for five verses. Five.

Harriet chose "And We Danced" by the Hooters for her answer to this question. This startled me. It might be a moral failing on my part, but the same part of me that hates the above mentioned song like a bit of mindless fluff to which one can dance. I liked the Hooters' MTV videos. I wish their music turned up on the radio. The funny sounding mouth organ-type instruments make me grin.

Second choice would be anything by Paul McCartney, with "Silly Love Songs" pretty high in the pantheon. He's trying too hard. He's better than all of us. Mock him if you will (and I will) but he's far above the rest of us. I will go grovel in shame and misery at the sheer thought of this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK9QVN0bpa4

Thirty Days of Songs - Day One

Day One: Your Favorite Song:

OK, I'll start by saying that this meme will probably take me sixty days, rather than thirty. I don't blog every day, I'm going to be out of town for a week, I tend to procrastinate... but enough apologies. I've been challenged, so I'll jump in.

As has been said by so many, it's hard to pick just one song. There's a lot of music that is part of my soul, and that I will probably still be singing in the shower long after I have forgotten much else. I could list endless hymns, random anthems, and any number of lullabies.

I confess to having a weakness for Sondheim, so in the end I went with the song that always makes me cry and makes me feel brave - "Sunday" from Sunday in the Park With George.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVO9rN5Bk1A

grocery runs

I did the usual Monday morning run to the mega-grocery store today - bread, milk, pizza, pickles, all lemming staples - and noticed, yet again, just how many of the shoppers alongside me were Dads with toddlers. Said Dads obviously had not woken up, realized that today they had to bring snacks to pre-school and panicked, but had shopping lists and obviously planned to get everything their family needed for the week.

I'm all in favor of stay-at-home dads, but we all know that the economy has generated quite a few dads who now stay at home without ever having planned on doing so.

What really struck me this morning was how many of the dads were laughing and joking with their toddlers. None of the kids had a screaming fit when told they couldn't have fruit snacks, all wore clean clothes and most of the girls had ponytails, braids or other hair accessories. Some of the older children tried to make out letters on the grocery lists.

OK, I confess - I spent much more time people watching than finding pickles; it just struck me as a wonderful bit of humanity at a hard time in our history.

Lord, what fools these mortals be

Two people whom I know slightly seem to be headed toward a court battle. I've tried to clap on my "historian research hat" (sorry, Necromancy, but no feathers) in being aware of the situation, steering a clear path of being involved... but I admit that the part of me that loves People Magazine is fascinated by the mutual mess. Here are the lessons I have observed - already knew, but am now reminded of, yet again:

1) Always always always have a thoroughly legal contract. Do not trust anyone at their word. Write it all down, get it signed and witnessed.

2) For the love of pete, keep your mutual friends and acquaintances out of it.

3) Hanging up on people is immature and only exacerbates the situation. Take a deep breath, be adult enough to say that perhaps you two are misunderstanding each other, and try again.

Had these two people followed these three basic steps, their lives would be a lot less messy, and their legal bills much less expensive, than they are right now.

None of this involves me personally, and I'm hardly cut up about it - I'm just fascinated that three steps which, to me, seem like basic common sense, got so badly over-looked.

bravery

Sometimes you just have to square your shoulders and keep on going.

shoes

I am not a shoe person. One of the sopranos has a shoe collection to rival Imelda Marcos. I tend to buy one pair of black dress shoes and then wear them until they fall apart and buy another.

Yesterday, the choir did a concert. I realized within about five minutes that I needed different shoes; by the end of the concert, I could not feel my feet. The Imelda Marcos lady, wearing four inch heels, still had high notes and could dance. Clearly, I am missing something...

what do you need?

Years and years ago, I was at a women only gathering where we had to write down answers to a series of open-ended questions. I don't remember all of them, but one was, "which appliance do you need the most?"

I confess that I chose the hot water heater over the coffee maker. I can always go out for coffee, but cold showers, yuck.

On Sunday, a tree in the neighbors' yard fell down and knocked out a chunk of the fence and the Internet connection at lemming headquarters. With the Internet connected again, I'm trying to decide between hot water and the Internet...

plumbing

The ATC (Alarmingly Tall Contractor) who put a new roof on lemming headquarters back in May of 2009 is due today to fix my upstairs toilet. Why is it that the bathroom is cleaner for him than for my mother?

Meanwhile, I cannot keep remembering the line from "Poor Judd is Daid" in Oklahoma! "His fingernails have never been so clean."

more on Seduction of Water

I've heard from a few of the book club people that you found Seduction entertaining, but that the strings of coincidences seemed a bit too implausible.

I agree that there are quite a few of these strings. Maybe it's because I have watched too many episodes of Doctor Who but I'm all right with suspending a little disbelief now and again. More likely, I think that I'm not bothered because I have experienced just enough random moments in life that I find such moments plausible. For example, running into my seventh grade English teacher a thousand miles from home and fifteen years later sounds completely impossible, but it happened. My honorary aunt running into my father at Westminster Abbey sounds beyond impossible, but it happened. Maybe it's the whole "believe three impossible things before breakfast" aspect of Alice in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass at work in my life...

Speaking of Doctor Who, the former writer for the show, Russell T. Davies, has remarked that he thinks that the relationship between mothers and daughters can be very complex and fascinating to explore. I am very grateful that my mother is still alive, and that I've had a chance to know her as adult to adult. Iris' struggle to know a mother she lost while still a child really intrigued me somehow...

Plus, I'm a history teacher, so I love reading about research and the headaches one gets from microfilm!

another death

Word just reached me of the death of a high school English teacher. Reading between the lines, I'm guessing heart attack.

Hindsight, as is so often said, is 20/ 20. I have a hunch that the year I had this teacher, he suffered from a very deep divorce-induced depression, and was very slowly putting his life back together. He taught us well, though not brilliantly, but I'm struck by the occasional flashes of amazing insight into Dickens and Wordsworth that stick with me several years later. A year or two earlier, a year or two later - I can only imagine what he must have been like. Beware the quiet and understated teachers who give you clever assignments...

I regret not having told him that I still quote some of the big classroom mantras years later to my own students. I really need to compile a list of great teachers and tell them now while I still can.

book club update

I've heard from a few of you and I am much relieved to learn that you have liked the book thus far. :-) As I reread Water one of the pieces that strikes me is how well, IMHO, Goodman sets up descriptions of places, dresses, etc. that don't necessarily carry deep importance to the overall plot, but do give you an imaginary landscape within which to place the characters.

I'm a mystery addict - not necessarily murder mysteries, any kind of mystery - which is probably also why Iris' search to better understand her roots appeals to me; as a history teacher, I am all in favor of knowing and searching for one's roots, but the mysterious aspect behind Iris' background appeals to me as well. I like how Goodman teases them out, throwing in clues, but also some red herrings.

As we get closer to our March 15 "meeting" I'd be curious to know what all of you think about the minor characters; I think Goodman does a great job at filling in just enough details for each of their back stories to keep the reader following them even as they think about Iris.

a death

I didn't know L well. She was a senior, I was a freshman, and the only reason I knew her at all was that we had mutual friends.

I am eternally grateful to L for rescuing me from one of those nasty, "ack, someone is hitting on me and I don't know how to react" situations.

The latest issue of the alumni magazine contains her obit - she was forty-two. No, I don't know what happened, though it sounds like she led a happy life. I hope so, at least. Strange to think of someone my age as dead.

cars and Water

1) Cars - my car, aka "Phil" is a very reliable Honda. When the "maintenance required" light came on (which it never does) I patted Phil's dashboard and made an appointment to bring him in today. It's been six hours and there's no word from the mechanics. I am beginning to worry...

2) Water For those of you in the book club, or simply playing along at home, here's an opening:

I have a weakness for quirky libraries. (I cannot believe that I'm the only one!) Years ago I used to frequent a small branch of a much larger library system which, though a bit dark and cramped, always had amazing displays of the "you didn't know about this book but you need to read it" variety. (This is how I discovered John Bellairs, but that's another topic for another book club.)

Currently, my local library is quirky mostly in that the staff knows they are balancing several different reading audiences. Vampires hold little appeal for me, and I'm not much for the latest tome by a politician or political commentator. At the same time, the staff are pretty good about putting up interesting memoirs and novels.

This is how I came upon The Seduction of Water. In all seriousness, I picked it up because I liked the cover. I scanned the first page, sat down to read the second, and after fifty pages, read in the library, realized that I should probably take it home.

More on the actual book later. :-)

blogging again

Yes, I'm back to blogging again - after Sam died, I lost a lost of heart for it, as so many of my posts were about him.

Sam died a very peaceful death after a long and well lived, well loved life, which is not too shabby for a dog whom someone dumped in an area where he really shouldn't have survived. I finally sat down and read through some of the posts I did about him, and that was quite a help.

So, updates: I've joined an on-line book group, and (gulp) my choice is the first one up. I'll post some thoughts about it soon, though I know some of you have already read the entire thing. The book is by Carol Goodman and is titled The Seduction of Water. I found it very compelling and thought provoking.

traumas

I know exactly where I was when I heard about Challenger blowing up - I can tell you exactly which desk in which room, the color of the walls, what I was supposed to be doing but wasn't... (I learned how to french braid my hair in study hall that year.)

I remember watching the replays on television over and over and over before lunch and then we were supposed to go on with our academic day.

Listening to the NPR coverage of it being 25 years (how did I get to be so old?!) there was a reference to the shuttle explosion later on. That's vivid, but for different reasons- I was trapped in a traffic jam, desperate to get home, and turned on the radio for a distraction. Certainly a distraction...

My heart breaks for the families of these brave men and women, and I do not say that lightly. RIP.

hot cocoa

There's a very nice woman in my neighborhood, about my age, who also works from home. She does something with scrap-booking as a profession and as I do not have the arts & crafts gene, I'm not entirely sure that I understand it.

We've been casual friends for a few years now - always a wave and a smile when we pass by, she noticed that Sam wasn't in the yard and sent her condolences, I watched her kids once - but it took us until this summer to actually sit down and have lunch together.

There's plenty that we don't have in common, but quite a lot that we do. Yesterday we spent some time just having cocoa together and having girl talk. I need to remember to do that again.

woof woof woof

A neighbor (whom I do not know well at all) took her dog for a walk and forgot her keys. To cut a long story short, no one had a spare key to her house, her husband was away and wouldn't be back until after midnight and it's cold in Indiana at this time of year.

I apologized for the condition of lemming headquarters (it was laundry day) but said I'd be more than happy to put her and the dog up until husband got home. I'd already planned on pizza for supper - pizza crusts were one of Sam's favorite treats - and it was great to have a dog in the kitchen, sitting, patiently, who quickly figured out that in this house, as in his own, pizza crusts definitely belonged to dogs, not humans.

Dakota (the dog) quickly mellowed out and had a few "really, I'm vigilant, you just think I'm napping" moments. I had to work, but tried to pop out every half hour or so to socialize... the petting and scratching of a dog's ears were, of course, purely circumstantial. Dakota even spent time barking at the squirrels in the backyard (Sam's nemesis) so we're safe for a day or so.

I miss being owned by a dog.