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Lay Lady Lay

  Week Thirty-four: Lay Lady Lay Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man a while Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile. His clothes are dirty, but his hands are clean, And you’re the best thing he’s ever seen. —Bob Dylan, Lay Lady Lay, from Nashville Skyline Much to the embarrassment for my wife of 51 years, whenever the opportunity arises I am prone to asking a total stranger to guess the number of years we’ve been married. Now mind you, I am not inclined to approach people on the street to ask them to guess, but in certain well-timed circumstances it seems cool...to me; not Deb so much. I suppose that if I were to be somewhere in a leather-rich office, lying prone, and staring skyward revealing the far reaches of my cluttered mind I could figure out why I do that. Perhaps I am mining for compliments; you know…”Wow, 51 years! You don’t look old enough to be married 51 years!” or “That’s awesome! It takes a special couple to make 51!” I’m pretty sure I don’t need an overpa
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Instant Karma

  Week Thirty-Three: Instant Karma Instant karma’s gonna get you gonna look you right in the face Better get yourself together darlin’ Join the human race Who in the hell d’you think you are? A superstar? Well, right you are. We all shine on Like the moon and the stars and the sun —John Lennon, Imagine, from the album Imagine Just ten days after John Lennon wrote Instant Karma it was available in stores! Urban legend has Lennon saying something like, “I wrote it in the morning, recorded it in the afternoon, and sold the records in the evening.” In any case, there has never been another example of a song being produced so quickly. Most people my age are at least familiar with the song, even if we never bothered to learn the backstory. As Lennon predicted, “Instant karma’s gonna get you!” Karma is the notion that something deserving but unexpected happens when a person’s actions backfire. As my dear, departed mother used to say, “You’ll get your just desserts.” I think Lennon was shootin
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Once in a Lifetime

  Week Thirty-two: Once in a Lifetime And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself in another part of the world And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?” —Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime, from the album Remain in Light Actually I don’t ask myself how I got here, but I do sometimes shake my head at how absolutely fortunate I have been in my first seventy years to be “here” or anywhere for that matter.  Not so long ago as I pulled into the driveway of the house we recently bought, Once in a Lifetime came on the radio, and although I do not sing well, that never stops me especially when I hear songs like this one. And on this day like every other day I immediately thought about how I might use this song to tell my story. I guess it was the irony of pulling into the driveway of our new “beautiful house” as Dav
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Secret O' Life

  Week Thirty-one: Secret O’ Life The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time any fool can do it There ain’t nothing to it … The secret of love is in opening up your heart It’s okay to feel afraid But don’t let that stand in your way ‘Cause anyone knows that love is the only road And since we’re only here for a while Might as well show some style … Now the thing about time is that time isn’t really real It’s just your point of view How does it feel for you? Einstein said he could never understand it all Planets spinning through space The smile upon your face Welcome to the human race … Try not to try too hard It’s just a lovely ride The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time —James Taylor, The Secret O’ Life, from the album JT I heard this song recently and was immediately reminded that as a very young teacher I often quoted the line “ the thing about time is that time isn’t really real .” I think I was trying to be philosophical with my ten-year old charges, but probab
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Imagine

  Week Thirty: Imagine Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us, only sky —John Lennon, Imagine, from the album Imagine Bertrand Russell once said, “Atheism is what happens when you read the bible. Christianity is what happens when someone else reads it to you.” And Mark Twain said, “No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.” Neil deGrasse Tyson asked: Does it mean, if you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don't understand it, that means God did it?... If that‘s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on. I think I was twenty, fifty years ago, when I realized the lies I had been told. To be fair, I don’t think the liars actually knew they were lying. With that said, perhaps by definition that wasn’t actually lying. I’ll give you an example: God is good .  I remember a Thanksgiving meal when
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You are My Sunshine

  Week Twenty-nine: You are My Sunshine You are my sunshine, My only sunshine You make me happy when skies are gray You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you Please don’t take my sunshine away —Jimmie Davis, You are My Sunshine, from the album Still Bill As the weeks rolled by, and I published one after the next entry in what I call This is Where I’ve Been , I began to hear from our eldest granddaughter, Anna. She was asked if reading the entries made her cry. She told my wife, “I’ll cry when he uses our song.” Although it caught me off guard, with a little thought “our song” (and we have been through countless examples in her twenty-four years) could only be one song. First performed in the 1920’s You are My Sunshine has many verses, each describing romantic love, but for a grandfather (eighty years after this song was first sung) who only knows the lyrics to You’re a Grand Ole Flag, Happy Birthday, and most of the songs first sung by the Beatles, You are My Sunshine is the perfe
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Isis

  Week Twenty-eight: Iris And I don’t want the world to see me ‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand When everything’s made to be broken I just want you to know who I am I just want you to know who I am I just want you to know who I am I just want you to know who I am --Goo Goo Dolls, Iris, from the album City of Angels: Music from the Motion Picture For some time I have considered writing a memoir, but besides the fact that I had no idea how to do that, certain essential questions blocked my road. Why would I? Why tell my stories, and if I did which stories would I tell? To whom would I tell them? What things deserve to remain private? Elie Wiesel once wrote “I will say with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.” But by being truthful might I cause injury? I might reveal things that could damage essential relationships or at the very least my reputation. William Faulkner once wrote “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I think that’s true. I live with my memo
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