Back to School Again

For most people, the passing of the years is marked by New Year's and the dropping of the ball in Times Square.  However, when you have kids, the passing of the years is really marked by the school year.  That is especially true in the Golden household, where my wife is a teacher.  Every August marks a new school year - a new beginning filled with new classes, new adventures, new problems and new friends. 

This year, my son will be a sophomore in high school, while my daughter will be a sixth grader, her first year of middle school.  For the first time since 2008, there will not be a Golden kid at Fairway Elementary.

The recently passed 10 or 11 weeks of summer saw a lot of changes for my kids.  My son got his driving learner's permit and is learning to drive.  (This may have resulted in a few more gray hairs on my head.) He's also grown about four or five inches this summer.  His voice has deepened, he has hair on his legs and he is becoming a young man almost before my eyes.  My daughter has shed her glasses in favor of contacts.  She looks older just by having done so.  The fact that she now wears mascara may play into that as well.  She is very excited about going to middle school - having her own locker, having different teachers every hour, having better lunch options.

For the past few months, my kids' days have been filled with sleeping in, trips to the pool, riding bikes to lunch, trips to Six Flags and copious amounts of Fortnite.  Daily routines go by the wayside.  Things are relaxed and weeknight trips for frozen custard are common.  In the weeks to come, routines will change.  We will get back to earlier bed times, homework and studying, dance and tennis.  Friday nights will feature quick meals before high school football games.

The calendar may still show the same year, but in my house and in homes all across the country, a new year begins this week.  The 2018-19 school year is upon us.  Here's hoping it is a great one for my kids and my wife, as well as for all of your kids and spouses/friends who are teachers.

Thanks for reading.

More Song Lyrics I Love

A while ago, I did a post on my favorite song lyrics.  As that list was just a small portion of the voluminous number of song lyrics that I love, I thought I'd share with you another edition.  As before, these lyrics may not necessarily come from my favorite artists or my favorite songs, but it's the lyrics themselves that I love.

(Note: If you wish to read my initial list, it was posted on 2/22/17. Feel free to check it out!)

Artist: Pearl Jam
Song: "Black"
Lyric: "I know some day you'll have a beautiful life / I know you'll be a star / In somebody else's sky / But why, why, why, can't it be, can't it be mine?"
Why I Love It: I suspect that there are a lot of people my age for whom this lyric would make their respective lists.  While "Black" was never released as a single by Pearl Jam, this song nevertheless became one of their biggest hits.  Like many of the lyrics I have previously listed, this one deals with the end of a relationship.  Instead of being bitter at the end of it, Eddie Vedder (who wrote the lyrics) wishes his lover the best while still being heartbroken over the end of the relationship.  Aside from being poignant and evocative words in and of themselves, Vedder's delivery in the song are the proverbial icing on top of the cake.  You can almost feel the ache in his voice as he sings the line.  It's my favorite lyric from my favorite Pearl Jam song and that's why it makes the list.

Artist: Turnpike Troubadours
Song: "How Do You Fall Out of Love?"
Lyric: "You bet your heart on a diamond / And I played the clubs in spades / We gambled and lost / Guess we both paid the costs / Look what a mess I have made"
Why I Love It: While this is not one of my favorite Turnpike Troubadours' songs, this lyric is terrific and clever.  Evan Felker, the band's lead singer, primary songwriter and lyricist, has a way with words and knows how to turn a phrase.  This is an example of his skill - in just a few phrases, he paints a picture of a girl in love with a musician.  He deftly mentions all four suits of playing cards and uses them as a motif for a failed relationship.

Artist: Edwin McCain
Song: "Sign on the Door"
Lyric: "We all talk about timing, lifestyles and such / But to a heart that's been shattered, those words don't mean much"
Why I Love It: This song is a terrific blues number that uses the concept of a sign on a door that says "sorry, we're closed" as a metaphor for a person's heart who hasn't healed from a prior relationship and thus isn't yet ready to fall in love again.  The line above in question, however, is more universal.  We've all either had our heart broken or had a friend or relative who has.  And when you are trying to comfort them, your advice may be great, but at that point in time, they are not really in a frame of mind to listen to it.  There's nothing you can say to them at that point in time that will make them feel better.  Most of you have likely never heard this song, but I'd encourage you to check it out some time.  It's one of my favorites by Edwin.

Artist: Better Than Ezra
Song: "Rewind"
Lyric: "Right there a song became a soundtrack for this space in time"
Why I Love It: In my first list of favorite lyrics, I referenced a lyric from the Trisha Yearwood song "The Song Remembers When" and talked about how music can transport us back to a specific place in time.  This Better Than Ezra lyric talks about the same thing - how a particular song can become inextricably linked to an event or place in time.  It doesn't matter if it's been 2 years or 20 years - there is something about the song that fires some synapsis somewhere in your brain and you will always associate that song with that event.

Artist: Goo Goo Dolls
Song: "Iris"
Lyric: "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"
Why I Love It: This one comes from the Goo Goo Dolls' biggest hit song, which was also one of the biggest hit songs of the 1990s.  Whereas all of the aforementioned lyrics occur in the verse or bridge of the song, this one is the chorus.  It resonates, though, because it's so accurate.  I think we all have times where we'd like to be invisible because we don't think anyone understands us or what we're going through.  We're all a little broken and we all want to be loved and accepted for who we are but sometimes that seems impossible and it just seems like it would be easier to slide by unnoticed.

Artist: Metallica
Song: "Holier Than Thou"
Lyric: "You lie so much you believe yourself"
Why I Love It: While most of the lyrics I love are melancholy or introspective, this last one is angry.  I've thought about this lyric a lot over the past two years and how aptly it applies to politicians in general and our president in particular.  They lie and stretch the truth with such frequency that they themselves lose track of what the truth is and what is a falsehood.  Few things in this world bother me more than a liar so I suppose it's only natural that I gravitate toward this lyric.

There it is - my second list of lyrics I love.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Thanks for reading!

 

Make America Hate Again

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." - Yoda

"It is never too late to give up our prejudices." - Henry David Thoreau

Our nation, much like the rest of the world, has a long and ignominious history of bigotry and intolerance.  From slavery to the Trail of Tears.  From "Irish need not apply" to Jim Crow.  From the KKK to race riots in the 1960s.  While the United States was nothing short of revolutionary in its system of government and the freedoms protected, that doesn't mean that our nation is without its faults.

Over the past 50 years or so, things have gotten better.  Overt racism became less acceptable (if not less common) and people learned to live, learn and work next to people of other races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, etc.  However, over the past three years, the tide seems to have turned - and not in a good direction.  The primary reason?  The person who currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

From the earliest days of his campaign in 2015, Donald Trump made a habit of saying incendiary things and defaming other people.  From asserting that all immigrants from Mexico are rapists, criminals and drug smugglers to calling his opponents "Lyin' Ted," "Crooked Hillary," and "Rocket Man," to stating that there were "very fine people" amongst the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville to his border security policies, his primary modus operandi has been to rile up his followers by playing on their fears and demonizing those of different backgrounds or political persuasions.  In a sense, he has made saying xenophobic things in public acceptable again and that is NOT a good thing.

(As an aside, during the Clinton impeachment trial during the late 1990s, I recall Republicans stating that Clinton's lies couldn't be tolerated or allowed because it would send the signal that lying under oath was acceptable.  However, many of those same people appear to not have any problem with Trump's antics which appear to send the signal that saying racist things is acceptable.)

Trump's behavior has unquestionably worked well for him so far.  He has appealed to the worst of human kind - our unfounded xenophobic fears - to foment disgust over things people do not like or understand.  I'm not even sure how much of what he says he actually believes but he understands that, like a dog whistle, he can draw people towards himself by playing on their fears, turning those fears into hatred and pushing his followers to act upon that hatred and vote accordingly.  While it has thus far proven to be a successful strategy, it is indisputably a negative thing for our country.  He legitimized hatred, bigotry and misogyny and, at the end of they day, no one benefits from that, regardless of your gender, race, ethnicity or religion.

Thanks for reading.