That’s all. Just thought I’d share since I love The Four Seasons. Here’s a piece that I drove 700 miles round trip in a day to hear my son sing. Not as commercially known as the other, but if you know music (or the mass) you’ll probably recognize it.
Enjoy. It’s a short clip and exquisite 🙂
Remember the mixed tapes of the 70’s and 80’s? We’d put together an eclectic collection of music, sending our crush a message of undying love with the crazy and mix-matched sounds of our teen-aged angst? I guess the iPod and iTunes revolutionized that idea, but for me those old cassettes are a symbol of a commitment to expression that is unrivaled by today’s technology.
All we have to do today is drag a song from one list to another. Voila: done. If you want, you can even re-arrange the order or set it on shuffle and get a random order. It even lets you select the songs individually and oh my goodness! set it on repeat.
Not the mixed tape.
The mixed tape required a level of preparation and planning that was a real investment in blood, sweat, and tears (the metaphor for sacrifice, not the musical group). First, we had to decide what songs we wanted, analyze the subtle (or not so subtle) message, and then put them in order so that it accomplished two very important things:
First, it had to be an unmistakeable declaration of undying love.
Second, it had to have an out, in the last or penultimate song, so that we could save face in case our crush of the moment thought we were creepy. This last one was difficult because if placed incorrectly in the order, the whole communication would fail and we would be in worse shape than before.
Then, the real work would begin. The lucky ones, like me, had a combination record player/tape deck stereo so we could record songs off albums or the radio. In those days, a 45 cost $0.97, not bad when compared to today’s $0.99? Wrong, remember a buck was worth a lot more 35 years ago. (oh my, did I just write that number?)
Instead of buying the records, we’d record them off the radio. That took incredible skill and patience because you know those deejees spoke right through the first few measures of a song, probably to foil all the recording that was going on. It took real work to get those puppies finished. Hours of work, to be honest. So to give the gift of a mixed tape was something meaningful. Something profound. A permanent testament to an undying love [until you ran out of cassettes and recorded over someone else’s gift to you].
So, without further ado, here is a mixed tape, 21st century-style, for you. 🙂
[see if you get Rick-rolled somewhere in there]
Today is Dr. Seuss’ birthday, or well, Theodor Dreisel’s anyway. People all over the place are probably dining on green eggs and ham, which I ate, appropriately, when my kids were small. Having sacrificed myself for their little sakes, I have no intention of ever repeating that dining experience, but I’m game if anyone wants to join me. You only live once, and I wouldn’t want anybody named Sam following me around all day with the same pestering question.
Like most kids who grew up in the 60’s and early 70’s, watching the Dr. Seuss specials, when those magical Special Presentation promos popped up on NBC or whatever, were cause for celebration. My all time favorite Christmas special remains How the Grinch Stole Christmas even though I have never, ever, read the book. Let’s just say that no one narrates better than Boris Karloff. Ever. Jim Carey is an imposter.
The theme of the Grinch still serves us well today, and another one of his stories, Horton Hears a Who has a magnificent tag line : A person’s a person, no matter how small. There is talk, even controversy (mostly led by his widow) that the Pro-Life movement has latched onto that as a battle cry.
Whatever. Geisel claimed that direct moralizing in his stories would ruin them because it becomes obvious and manufactured. I agree. To look at that line in isolation is to discredit the whole story, except that, wait a minute, that line encapsulates the whole story. His widow can get over herself. Quick.
I love Horton Hears a Who precisely because of its subtle, but so profound theme of respect for life. Here’s a little venture into that great big vault of old blog posts, this one resurrected from the files of Rosary Army when I was writing a weekly Monday Musings. It’s brief, but captures something about the joy of that story.
from March 27, 2006
This weekend my son finished a run as the Cat in the Hat in his middle school production, Seussical. It was elaborate and required a great deal of hard work on the part of the cast, crew, and adults who supported it at all levels. I’m proud of him and his classmates who managed to pull off such a huge endeavor.
Were there mistakes? Sure. Was anything so disastrous that the show fell apart? Nope. In the end everyone worked together to fulfill their roles, whether large like the Cat or Horton, or small like JoJo or a propman. They lived the theme of the play, loosely based on Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, that “a person’s a person, no matter how small.”
That message, as a Catholic theme, was not lost on me. Today’s society puts to the test the Church’s teachings on social justice. Like the Who’s in Whoville, too tiny to be heard, the Church identifies “the least of our brothers” to be heard above the din of our noisy distractions.
The Church, in her wisdom, calls us to be like Horton. Do we hear the voices of the unborn? Do we hear the voices of immigrants? Do we hear the voices of the homeless, or poor, or ill?
Christ calls each of us, personally, to hear those voices. Like the fictional Horton, can we hear — and more importantly — act?
I have a soft spot for Dr. Seuss. He did much for literacy, and much more for instilling and supporting a value system in his readers. I discovered, as an adult, that he wrote one final book that was published posthumously, My Many Colored Days, and illustrated by some contemporary artists. I used it for many years when I taught high school, and it remains my favorite Seuss book. It’s listed as a children’s book, but with a talent like Gesel’s, you know it’s just as much for adults.
Wow! Remember THIS? I don’t think I could type on one of those antiques anymore. I managed to avoid typing in high school because of that varsity period at the end of the day where athletes were supposed to see the trainers. Uh huh. Burger King anyone? It explains, though, the confusion from my older ladies who don’t understand textwrap.
I was going to let this post slide. We pretty much had enough of the Olympics, didn’t we? There were some amazing highlights to be sure. I mean, who isn’t going to start sporting argyle pants now like the classy Norwegian curling team? Gotta love those guys! I want mine in a snappy pink and green motif. Go Norway!
And of course there is yesterday’s amazing victory for the Canadian hockey team. I’m not even in a sour mood about it. The Olympics inspires all kinds of things in me. Winning, of course, is one of them, but the ideal of competition and all that stuff really gets to me.
I know – I know. I’m usually all about survival of the fittest and earn what you get accountability. I still am –we’re talking about the ideal here, and that ideal is about the winner being the guy who deserves it because of extraordinary hard work and desire and all that blablabla (oh my goodness I am totally becoming aware of my discourse here and the dangerously socialist lilt to it).
Whatever.
I’m happy that Canada won.
There. I said it. It would have sucked something awful for them if they hadn’t; I’m just sayin’. I mean, their giant hockey table game at the closing ceremonies might not have been as cool with plain old silver around the giant cardboard players.
So what I really want to talk about is those cardboard players. And the inflatable Mounties. And how utterly cute Michael Buble is. I’m talking about the closing ceremonies. That right there is what it’s all about. All those countries came together and played fair (except those silly Koreans in the speed skating — but they got theirs) and everybody had a story to tell, and for the most part it was told.
Yeah, things got off to a terrible start with that young man dying (how tragic—I can’t wrap my mind around that) and all the pomp and circumstance of the opening ceremonies were appropriately somber, and then the flame –THE FLAME! Of all things – didn’t work right, but the games were good and exciting and fun and amazing! I am always riveted, living vicariously for a few weeks while I entertain thoughts of being there (and licking old wounds over not being there).
I love it all. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Tomorrow I’ll return to my regularly scheduled cynicism and sarcasm and comment on NBC’s boneheaded move to interrupt the programming with that RIDICULOUS new show, but today I’ll still enjoy the residual excitement of the Olympics.
The closing ceremony is always an emotional thing –to see the flame extinguished is almost as amazing as the lighting of it. So that’s what I want to talk about here.
THE CANADIANS ARE BRILLIANT! That snafu with the flame at the beginning was recovered so very nicely that Canadians are going to get a pass from me on everything for a long time (except Domino sugar, but that’s a political rant for another time). I gather that a part of the national culture is to be a little self deprecating, but let me just say it was the best recovery for a technical malfunction in the history of technical malfunctions. Too bad Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson aren’t Canadian – they might have been able to weather their little problem better.
Anyway, it was truly clever, and y’all know I like clever.
So here’s to the Canadians: Well done.
As for the other stuff – well – I don’t really know what to say about Russia. Weird comes to mind. And William Shatner was a bit psychotic, no? He has turned into a caricature of the caricature of himself. I’m sorry he didn’t perform Rocket Man. In fact, it might have been better (what’s up with the canoes?). Bob Costas, however, is no Dick Clark.
I made someone cry in my class. I felt a little like a heel, but I kept pushing, gently, but pushing harder and harder until she snapped.
The hardest part of my profession is not planning, or grading, or even feeling like I have to “perform” in order to compete with iPhones and laptops and YouTube. It’s getting people to think for themselves. I am pretty critical of the educational system that has diluted the intellectual responsibility of an education and replaced it with a fact-based, checking-off system that creates drones instead of creative thinkers capable of problem solving.
Where has adaptability and improvisation gone?
I can’t tell you how many times I face young people and adults (and I’m not talking about school now) that stand around and stare with an empty look on their faces when things don’t turn out as expected and just stand around and don’t act! What the heck are they waiting for? Deus ex machina to swoop down, like in some animated movie, to set things right? Oh my, are they actually waiting on God to set things right?
God gave us a brain, and among all the other amazing and wonderful gifts that we received, on purpose, just because he loves us, he gave us free will and the brains to go with it. How about that? Let’s use it, people!
My usual rant on the topic has everything to do with complaining about being spoon fed and its cousin, the culture of entitlement. When I was a kid, if I wanted to play on the basketball team I had to practice and be in shape and then compete for the position. If I was good, I made the team; if I wasn’t, I went back outside and practiced some more to get better and try again. It builds character. It makes for good teams. It teaches people to value winning and learn lessons from losing so they don’t lose again.
Today, everybody makes the team, and at the end of the losingest season with sorriest stats everybody gets a trophy in the name of self-esteem. Meh. But this is not that rant, although it’s certainly one of my favorites.
This is a reflection on the difficulty of my job when faced with people who are not used to being accountable. Accountability is a big buzz word in education today. It is measured in ways that make teachers a little sensitive and resentful. I mean, for me, accountability means my students have to learn the material I teach and demonstrate competence through all kinds of external markers, like standardized tests or outside audits (in my case, from accrediting groups).
It means that if the students fail, I fail. But on most days, I don’t think I have failed my students, but they fail themselves by not applying themselves — by waiting for the benevolent red pen of death to pass them for showing up and claiming that they tried but didn’t get it.
Here’s the thing: in life, there is no credit for trying.
We confuse the notion of being charitable, which in today’s vernacular somehow just means nice, with the headier notions of mercy and justice. I can listen charitably to a student’s reasons for missing 2 weeks of school and a midterm that counts 40% of the course grade because of a death in the family and offer him my sincerest and most heartfelt condolences. I can then be merciful and suggest that he drop the course because he has missed too much material to recover, especially under the duress of mourning, and I can even offer him the resources to submit paperwork for a special withdrawal due to extenuating circumstances so that it does not affect his academic standing.
When he chooses to reject those options because it is not fair that he can’t finish his course, I must then be just and give him the “F” that he deserves, and that makes me a not-nice person, and thus uncharitable. Whatever, I can take the heat.
I made my student cry because it was easier for her to give up than to apply herself. It was easier to say “I don’t know” than to figure out how to use the information in front of her and produce what I wanted. And it would have been infinitely easier for me to let her do it. Instead, I sat in front of her and refused to show her what to do, but let the full force of my presence (I know, I can be intimidating in a blue suit, lol!) loom over her and make her accountable.
The silent tears (of anger? resentment? humiliation?) poured down her face, but she produced the document. And passed. And, I hope, learned that she is capable of using her intellect. I’m not very nice, but then again, that’s not my job.
After the gnashing of teeth, she came up to me while everyone else was filing out and thanked me. Hm. And it was payday, too.
My sister sent me this, I guess because she knows I twitter. Crazy! What else could we do with this?
I’m not a fan of self-help gurus. Frankly, it always looks like a scam to me–especially the get-rich guys. I guess I could get rich by telling YOU how to get rich by following my scam or crazy ponzi, but here’s a guy that made me pause. He spoke at one of our annual staff meetings, and the truth is, I found his ideas refreshing and fairly on the mark (sort of — his whole premise is kind of “off-balanced”). Anyway, I get the random update from him, and got this new video compilation of some of his ideas. I am amazed at how it speaks to new media evangelization. Check it out.
another cup of coffee 
