It occurred to me today that music has been so important to me, as it has to many.

I was recently having a conversation with a friend of mine about the concept of ‘waking up with a song in your head’. I was telling this friend of mine that it is a pretty normal occurrence for me to wake up in the morning with a song in my head and I don’t know where it came from. I asked this friend whether or not the same thing ever happens to him.

I don’t know about you, but waking up with a song in my head happens to me on most mornings. This morning, the song just so happens to be If You Leave by OMD. Now, I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know when I last heard that song, and I can’t even remember any off-handed references to the song, or any of its lyrical lines, in the recent past. Apparently, the song was a feature hit from the movie, Pretty in Pink, which I didn’t know until just a few seconds ago. Can’t remember the last time I saw that movie.

So, who knows how this happens to me, but I can’t say that it’s an altogether unpleasant experience, especially if it’s an enjoyable song. Sometimes, it might end up being an annoying song, so I’ll wash it out of my head by listening to some other music.

Last week, on one particular morning, I woke up with On My Own from Les Miserables stuck in my head. It’s my favorite song of the entire play (the best version, IMO, is the Lea Salonga version –> she’s an epic vocalist). The song is sung by Éponine near the beginning of Act II of the play, as Éponine is lamenting the fact that the man that she is crushing on (Marius) doesn’t love her back. That song, so beautifully tragic, can actually wreck my mood if I leave it in my head for very long.

Just one of the ways that music affects me.

* * *

I also happen to be a vocalist, so music is special to me, not only because I love to listen to it, but because I also love to perform it.

The funny thing about that is that I don’t like to listen to recordings of myself. I don’t like the way my voice sounds ‘outside of my head’, even though I do like the way that I sound inside my head. If you think that sounds strange, please hear me out (Get it? Hear me out? Hee Hee).

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this or not, but your voice –whether it’s your singing voice or your speaking voice– does not sound the same to you as it does to other people. That’s because your voice, inside your head, is modified by the sinus cavity in which the sounds reverberate. Those sinus cavities are in close proximity to your ear, so, when you hear your voice, you are only partly hearing what comes out of your mouth and is picked up by your ears from outside of your head. Another part of what you are hearing, when you hear your voice, is the sound of your voice from the inside.

The sound of your voice is one of the only sounds that you will ever hear that sounds different to you than it does to anyone else.

Interestingly enough, I have been singing as a performer for more than thirty years, and I only recently discovered that I don’t like how everyone else hears me.

Nevertheless, singing has provided me with opportunities that I don’t know if I would have gotten from other places. When I was in the church choir as a young teenager, I learned to respect my elder through the relationships that I forged with the other men in the church choir, many of whom were four or five times my age. I learned to love so many of the great, old hymns by working on them -beginning in that church choir– now going on twenty-five plus years ago.

In fact, the other day, I went through my current church hymnal, to see how many of the hymns I was familiar with; sixty-three of those hymns in that hymnal I was able to recall from the annals of my musical memories.

Then, in college, as I joined one of the most prestigious glee clubs in the nation, I got to see the world because of my singing. I learned more about music in those four years than I’d learned previously, or since. I formed friendships with guys in that glee club that will last for the rest of my life. I performed with groups and in places that I never would have been able to perform otherwise. Singing the Ave Maria in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, performing the Oedipus Rex opera with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, performing the Carmina Burana with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Maestro Tsung Yeh, these are all performances and experiences that I will always treasure.

Another of the ways that music affects me.

* * *

Music is an art form, of course, and life is better because of the art –because of the beauty– that we are able to incorporate into our lives. I have enjoyed some art forms to greater degrees, and some to lesser degrees, but I have loved no form of art (not even my love of the art of words) as much as I have loved the art of music.

Also, as I close this out, let me say this. I said earlier that “the sound of your voice is one of the only sounds that you will ever hear that sounds different to you than it does to anyone else”. As I was writing that sentence earlier, it occurred to me that we all have a voice. The fact that it sounds different to others than it sound to us is a great metaphor, I think.

Someone needs to hear your voice, to hear your thoughts, to benefit from the kind, gentle, positive words that you could offer to them. Just because your voice doesn’t seem like much to you, it could be a significantly more beautiful sound in the ear of someone who needs to hear what you have to say.

See if you can be someone else’s ‘music’.

It occurred to me today that it might be time to stop.

They say that the first thing to do when you’re in a hole is to stop digging, which –I would gather– means that we ought not continue to do the things that make things bad, if we’d like to avoid making things worse.

As intuitive as that advice sounds, you would think that no one, after realizing themselves to be in a hole, would ever continue to dig.

But, they do.

The question is, “Why?!?!”

If you know that what you’ve been doing has been taking you down the wrong path, why would you keep doing it? To answer that, in a general sense, we could probably all look inside of our pasts to see what motivated us to keep digging, in those specific situations where we made that mistake. And, let’s be honest, we’ve probably all been in that position once or twice.

Perhaps, you were so far down the road that you figured that it wouldn’t be any good to try to turn around, so late. That’s how Shakespeare’s Macbeth felt; in Scene 4 of Act 3, Macbeth is lamenting the fact that he has shed so much blood, to attain power and to keep it, that he decides to just keep going. He says, “I am in blood / Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er”

Or, perhaps, you didn’t really want to stop doing what you were doing. I think you see this at the end of Disney’s Pinocchio, when Pinocchio realizes that there is something wrong on Pleasure Island, but he’s not necessarily so troubled by it, initially, as to turn away and run.

Some people, for better or for worse, just like to dig holes. They end up in bad situations almost as a secondary result of who they are.

But, if you pan out a little bit, to get a more ‘macro’ view of things, we as a nation have arrived at a point where, IMO, we are significantly stuck down a hole. The problem with this scenario is that, as a nation, we might be stuck down a hole, but only a few of us are aware, at this early stage. Perhaps the most observant among us knew even earlier. But, we are still looking at a length of time, I think, before enough people realize that we are somewhere, as a nation, that we don’t want to be, at which point we can agree to enact some kind of an ‘about face’.

Change in groups is harder to enact than change in individuals, if for no other reason than the group is at the mercy of those group members who are only apt to realize much later that change is necessary.

* * *

If you’re not a Christian music fan, than this might not mean much of anything to you, but there is a popular Christian band named “Casting Crowns” –probably one of my favorite bands of all time– and they sing a song that I want to mention, in connection with the topic of this post. In fact, if you follow the band, and you read the title of this post, then you know which song I’m referencing. Slow Fade is a song about how we often end up in the worst places, not because we are magically transported there, but because we took steps –tiny, seemingly inconsequential steps– that build upon each other to deliver us to the places we would have never thought to tread.

Which is pretty similar to what I often say about frogs –> You can’t boil a live frog by tossing it in a pot of boiling water, because it’ll just jump right back out. But, if you put a frog in a pot of lukewarm water, and you slowly raise the temperature, the frog will just sit there and eventually get cooked.

I wrote about this poor frog all the way back in 2018; that post is HERE, if you are interested. I’m not going to beat that particular horse –or frog– all over again.

But, at about the same time when the song Slow Fade was topping the charts of Christian music, I was lamenting a friend who’d gotten himself into quite the pickle. Through a series of small, seemingly inconsequential steps, each one advancing him further down a road, he ended up cheating on his wife. The thing about ending up in a place like this is, it’s not that hard; all you have to do is take a few baby-steps –IN THE WRONG DIRECTION– and you can accomplish this amazing feat. Seems like I’ve talked about this before, too –> check it out HERE.

If you ever find yourself in a situation like this, where it seems like you’ve arrived somewhere that you never intended to be, the question to ask isn’t “How did I get here?”; the real question is, “How do I get out?”

* * *

One of the things that drives me the craziest about being a teacher is room temperature. When you’re a teacher, and students walk into your room at the start of class, they often say things like, “Mr. Brackett, it’s cold in here!” or “Mr. Brackett, why is it so hot in here?”

The problem with these kinds of statements from students, many of whom really just have a hard time starting a conversation with someone, if not for the ‘opening complaint’ bit, is that our room temperatures in the high school are climate-controlled, which means that they are always, during regular school hours, within a couple of tenths of a degree of the same temperature, all year round.

So, the kid who left home with a t-shirt and jeans on –IN FEBRUARY– comes into a room that is 72.1 degrees and says, “Mr. Brackett, it’s cold in here!”, that same kid will show up on the last day of school in June, wearing the same clothes, and the room will be 72.2 degrees. That kid is going to say, “Mr. Brackett, why is it so hot in here?”

Nothing has changed. The temperature hasn’t changed –not significantly, anyway– and their attire hasn’t changed, but in their mind, it’s a world of difference. The real difference is in their minds.

This is the same issue that further complicates our awareness of the tiny degrees by which our circumstances can change.

* * *

If my students would look at the temperature readout on the thermostat in my room, everyday, they would come to understand what 72 degrees actually feels like. Then, with that understanding, they would be able to tell, truly, if the temperature was too high or too low, because they would understand what 72 feels like.

They would also, hopefully, stop making their silly complaints about their opinion of the room temperature.

Similarly, we need to, as people, develop an understanding that keeps us from becoming frog-legs, which is to say that we should come to understand when things are getting bad, before they get so bad that we are screwed.

I don’t think many of us have been paying attention, in our personal lives, or to the situation in our world. We didn’t get magically teleported here; we got here because none of the steps along the way were so alarming as to cause us to stop our downhill journey.

So, how do we get out?

It occurred to me that, sometimes, the most significant of barriers aren’t even really there.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about goal-setting; I won’t bore you with a recap –> if you are interested, it’s a two-parter, available here and here.

It occurred to me after I wrote that post that I was going to need a new goal for my running routine, so I am planning on running a half-marathon before the end of the year.

Which is more than double the length of my PB (personal best).

Which is scary.

But, if you’d told me at the beginning of the year that I was going to run a 10K this year –multiple times, actually– I would have been afraid of what that was going to be like, all the way back then.

Just like I’m afraid, now, of the goal that now lies in front of me.

But I think I’ve discovered something: the barriers that we believe are in our way, a lot of the time, aren’t even really there. We might imagine them being there, but that’s not the same thing as them actually being there.

* * *

Do you know what a Socratic square is? It’s a large square consisting of four smaller squares, of equal size. The diagram can be used to illustrate situations in which two different variables, each with two  possible conditional states, can produce multiple outcomes. Let’s apply the Socratic square to the concept of barriers, for a moment.

A barrier can serve two purposes: it can serve to confine and it can serve to protect. In the event that a barrier protects us from what’s outside, we are happy to have it. In the event that a barrier confines us, limiting our freedom, we are usually opposed, inasmuch as we tend to like to be free. However, we can –although it would be abnormal– choose to hate the barrier that protects us, just as we can also, atypically, choose to love the barrier that confines us. Each of these four outcomes –> 1) love to be confined, 2) hate to be confined, 3) love to be protected, and 4) hate to be protected, results from the two conditional states that we can have about a wall, and the two conditional states pertaining to whether the wall is protecting us or protecting others from us.

I saw a recent political ad that juxtaposed our President’s plans to build a wall, at the beginning of his presidency, with the fact that the majority of the free world has restricted travel to their countries from the United States, in light of the current COVID-19 crisis and America’s continuing problems with the pandemic.

Without making any further political statements on the matter, this political ad made me realize that barriers can be viewed in a positive light, or in a negative light, depending on which side of the barrier you find yourself, and depending on whether or not you are okay with being protected or being confined.

It reminds me of a sci-fi book that I read, years ago, by one of my favorite sci-fi authors, Greg Egan. The book was called Quarantine, and it tells the story of Earth, in the future, surrounded by an impenetrable wall that has been placed around us for reasons unknown. The barrier, its source, and its effects on the people of Earth –leading to an interesting mental disease called Bubble Fever– are the subject of the book. As much as I remember it, I enjoyed the book thoroughly.

* * *

I think that the barriers, that hamper me most often, are the excuses that I use.

This blog post concept came to me this morning during a run. It wasn’t a particularly difficult distance to run, but I still struggled because I was telling myself, in my head, that it was okay for me to be stopping to catch my breath because of the humidity, because it was hard to breathe, because the weather was not cooperating. And, you might think, “Sure, those reasons sound like legitimate reasons for having to stop during a run.”

But, the thing is, I’ve run in higher humidity than I faced this morning. I ran in Texas, a few weeks back, when the humidity was 90% and the temperatures were in the low 80s at 7:00 a.m. By comparison, my run this morning was not so tough, as to warrant me stopping six times in four miles. But I did, because I had already legitimized the excuses in my mind.

Maybe the formula is more complicated than I realize.

Maybe it’s not just, “low humidity, run non-stop; high humidity, can’t go straight through.” Who knows how many variables are involved in that eventual decision that I make to stop, for just a few seconds?

When I know, in advance, that I am going to use an excuse to explain my sub-par performances, then it’s pretty much over but the crying afterward (metaphorical crying, not real crying). The funny thing about the quitting that I do, when I am properly armed with just the right excuse, is that I’ve had four or six or ten runs in a row where I never stopped during any of those runs, and then I start to think to myself, “Man, I am glad that I am done with that stupid ‘quitting when it gets tough’ garbage.” But, then, I quit during a subsequent run, maybe just once or twice, and then I’m defeated; sure to follow is a decent string of runs where I can’t seem to do the whole thing straight no matter what I do.

I guess there’s always going to be something in the way, some barrier or some set of circumstances that I decide to use as an excuse. Every time I chose the excuses over the work that I have to do to keep going, I am choosing to believe a lie –> that I can’t do what I know that I can do. It’s during those moments, when I’ve decided that I cannot, that the struggle is over and I’ve lost the battle.

Bottom line: you can’t do what you don’t believe you can do.

Here’s to me, doing a better job at pushing through the barriers in my mind, next time.

It occurred to me today that I’m not exactly sure what love is.

It is, in my defense, a word that gets thrown around a lot.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that there is some confusion in my mind about the issue –> between what Disney has put in my head about love and what corporate America has put there, between what I know of love from my parents and what I know about love from my wife, between loving God and loving ice cream, there seems to be a bit of ambiguity.

We use the word a lot; to describe differing emotions –emotions that probably aren’t all ‘love’, technically speaking– to the detriment of the core concept of the word. This is evidenced by the fact that the dictionary definition for the word is multiple paragraphs long. It shouldn’t be so complicated, but it is, since we’ve started using the word to describe the way that we feel about all manner of things.

I love Notre Dame football. I love the way that I feel after a decent run. I love my wife and my children. I love craft beer. I love my parents. Are any of these loves the same as any of the others? Probably not.

No wonder I’m confused.

* * *

I also wonder about tough love –> the concept that you can love someone more or better by forcing them to accept the consequences of their actions, rather than by rescuing them out of those very consequences. I wrote a post about it a couple of months back, you can find it HERE if you’re interested.

Enabling bad behavior is never good, but the psychological need that some people have, to be the hero, will compel them to “come to the rescue”, even when they know that it isn’t the right thing to do.

Whether or not you are actually loving someone by saving them from the situations that they get themselves into is a case to be argued.

When I think about love, in its most-pure form, it includes self-sacrifice and humility. I think, at least on a sub-conscious level, people who rescue their loved ones from bad situations aren’t being selfless or humble. They are feeding a need that they have to be the rescuer. Trust me on this; I know this is true because I am an enabler far too often.

* * *

Do you happen to know who the leading lady is with the most Oscars for that category (Academy Award for Best Actress)?

The answer is Katherine Hepburn. She won the Oscar for best actress four times. No other actress has won the Best Actress Oscar even three times. A whole slew of actresses have won the Oscar in that category twice, including Ingrid Bergman, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Jodie Foster (love her), and Meryl Streep.

In any case, Katherine Hepburn is credited with fifty-three different movie roles, according to the IMDB (the Internet Movie Database). The last role that she had on the Silver Screen was a supporting role in the remake of the 1939 classic, Love Affair. When it was remade in 1994 (the year that I graduated from high school), the starring roles were played by Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.

If you are unfamiliar with the basic premise of the movie, two people meet on a fluke and fall in love, but each of them is engaged (unhappily) to someone else. They promise, at the end of their short fling, to reunite after three months’ time, at the top of the Empire State Building. Unfortunately, Terry McKay (played by Annette Bening) is hit by a car while she is at the base of the Empire State Building, trying to make her way to her rendezvous with Mike Gambril (played by Warren Beatty). Since she never arrives, he is left to assume that he has been slighted.

It’s the final scene of this movie that gets me, every. single. time.

—SPOILER ALERT—-

Mike and Terry reconnect, in the final scene of the movie, but Mike doesn’t know that Terry has been incapacitated because of the accident that kept her from the top of the Empire State Building. So, Mike finds Terry, reclined on a couch in her apartment, and he monologues through his feelings about what happened between the two of them, until he finally puts two and two together in his head, and he realizes what ended up happening –and why she has been sitting on the couch the whole time.

I love the end of the movie, but I’m always a little perturbed by the entire concept of the story. Two people meet and fall in love, but then they go their separate ways… for what?!?! While it’s encouraging that Mike and Terry do end up together, I’m not sure that all of the extra drama was necessary. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any Warren Beatty films that I really enjoyed.

It is interesting to note that Warren Beatty and Annette Bening were married at the time that they filmed Love Affair, and are married to this day.

* * *

Jennie and I have been dating for more than twenty-six years. During that time, our understanding of our love for each other has certainly developed through many different phases.

I’ve bought things for her, to try to prove to her that I love her.

I’ve tried to do things for her, to prove to her that I love her.

I’ve repeatedly –probably hundreds of thousands of times– told her how much I love her. I’ve told her with the spoken words, and I’ve told her with the written words.

Whether any of that has been of any use at all, I can certainly say that our love is growing stronger with the passage of time, probably simply because it becomes a more established fact as every day passes.

I know more about my love for my wife than I did ten years ago, just as I hope to know more about my love for my wife in ten years. Since we’ve been married for 7,022 days, you would think that the chances of me having a good sense of how I love her, and why I lover her, would be pretty good.

At this point, though, I think I am most comfortable with saying that I understand more fully how I feel than I used to.

Maybe that’s how it works: a four-year-old really only knows that they love Lucky Charms, while a fourteen-year-old might love their parents or their siblings in a way that they understand.

As time goes by, we come to understand love better, having lived it.

 

It occurred to me today that I’m lucky to not have run out of things to say.

There have been some scary times, working on this blog journey for the past three and a half months. One of the scariest things is sharing stuff with all of you that I am afraid could get me in trouble.

One of the most regular fears that I have is a fear of running out of things to say.

Interestingly enough, that hasn’t happened yet. I’ve gotten pretty close, a couple of times, to not having anything to write about, not having anything to say. But then, something usually comes to me and I have enough lead time to be able to write it up and publish it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that some of the stuff that I am putting out is ‘not my best work’. There have been some posts that I’ve put together that felt like drivel, when I was done with them, and I hit the publish button because I’d decided that it was as good as it was going to be. Other posts have been wonderful statements –if only in my
opinion– and I am excited to have other people see them. It’s pretty similar to the way that I am running toward my weekly running goals.

There are days when I am running and my performances have been inspirational; on other days, I feel like I am barely surviving what I’m doing when I got out to ‘pound the pavement’. Today, for example, I ran a 10K during which I psyched myself out five times, resulting in a less than stellar performance.

* * *

I know that I have mentioned this a couple of times in different posts, so I’m not necessarily letting a cat out of the bag here, but I am working on some creative writing –a series of related novels– as well as maintaining this blog.

That process has been a bit more of a struggle than blog post writing.

Imagine, if you will, that you receive in the mail, every few days, an envelope. In this envelope, there are five or six puzzle pieces. On some days, the puzzle pieces are related to each other, such that you could put them together without even involving the other pieces of the puzzle. On other days, none of the pieces relate to each other, but rather, they relate to what you’ve already received in the mail, or
–worse yet– they don’t relate to anything and you just have new pieces of the puzzle to set aside, for now, until something later connects. And, of course, there is no ‘finished puzzle picture’ –> that oh-so-valuable tool to the puzzler. And, it just so happens to be a thousand-piece puzzle.

That’s what novel writing has been like for me.

By comparison, writing these blog posts is a similar process. Waiting for something to come in the mail. Receiving it. Having to put it together. But, with these posts, I get an envelope (or maybe two or three) and they total a ten-piece puzzle. Sometimes, I’ll sit down to start writing a post –like this one– and the whole thing just flows out because all of the thoughts are in my head somewhere already and it’s just a process of putting them altogether in the proper order on the page. Other times, I’ll sit down to write a post, and it’s not all there; in those cases, I leave the post in a ‘draft mode’, hoping for some future point in time when the other pieces come in the mail.

* * *

If I can bridge that previous metaphor into this section, to discuss a different concept; sometimes, I think I have finished the puzzle, and then an envelope comes in the mail and it’s more pieces to the puzzle.

What I mean to say is this: there is this point when I make a decision that something is done, but then, many times, it occurs to me that there is something more to say on a subject or there is an additional piece that could have been added to an article. But, that’s the thing. There isn’t any adding. I can’t go back to something that I published last week and add to it because additional thoughts come to me. I said it was done, and I put it out there as done.

Imagine the sculptor, who would walk into the art gallery, where his art is on display, to climb up on a ladder next to a sculpture to chisel off just one more piece of marble from the face, to cause the jawline to stand out just a bit more evenly. Or, imagine the painter, who adds a brush stroke to a canvas on a wall in a studio exhibition.

When you pour out all of the water from a glass of water, when you’re done, you stop pouring. You turn the glass back right-side-up. Now, when you do that, is it the case that there is still water in the glass? Most certainly there is. Could you have accomplished a greater level of completion if you’d tipped that glass for an additional second, or five or sixty –> probably. That decision that something is done isn’t necessarily a correct decision.

If I stop vacuuming the living room floor, it’s not because there’s nothing more in that carpet that should be removed. It’s because I feel like the job is done. Is that decision correct or incorrect?

* * *

I told a close friend of mine recently that I feel like the inspiration that I get for doing the writing that I’m doing comes from outside of me. And, anyone who’s read enough of these posts, or who knows me well enough, would know that I am a Christian. Christianity doesn’t necessarily blend very well with beliefs in things like muses or the like, but I do know that I am filled with the Holy Spirit of God, and I feel like He has been inspiring me to do this writing that I’m doing.

This corresponds pretty well, I believe, with other inspiration that I receive from the Holy Spirit, throughout my regular life. When the Holy Spirits prompts me –moves me– to do something to show God’s Love to the people around me, that process feels pretty similar to how I get inspired to write. When God helps me make decisions that I struggle with, through prayer and reading His Word, the proper choices end up becoming clear similarly to the way that my writing materializes.

The most frustrating part of that, for me, is that it seems to come out of the clear blue, and I have to capture it in some way so that I don’t lose it. This morning, in fact, while I was running down the road, I got an idea for a blog post. You should have seen this idiot, running down the street, recording his own voice into his phone –while gasping– so as to not lose an idea from his mind.

Maya Angelou once described the process of her inspiration as having to capture something onto a piece of paper before –and I’m paraphrasing, here– it flew away like a butterfly.

And now that I have this butterfly captured, I am going to decide to be done.

It occurred to me today that there is one thing that I’m not missing from the fair.

SECTIONS OF THIS ARE TAKEN FROM A PIECE THAT I WROTE YEARS AGO IN RESPONSE TO THE EVENT DESCRIBED BELOW. IF THE POST AS A WHOLE FEELS DISJOINTED, I’VE TRIED MY BEST TO MARRY THE TWO PIECES –TODAY’S POST AND THE OLD JOURNAL ENTRY– TOGETHER.

Right around this time of the year, a lot of people in my neck of the woods get excited about our local fair. It’s a fun time for people to get together at the fairgrounds, and to enjoy what the fair has to offer. Our family has been involved in the fair for many years; my children exhibit their projects in multiple different barns, and my wife and I have volunteered at the fair for longer than we’ve been married.

COVID-19 cancelled this year’s fair, unfortunately.

One of the great things about being an exhibitor at the fair, depending on whom you might ask, is that you get a week pass, which is unlimited free entrance to the fair for the week. Unfortunately, parents can’t get free entrance to the fair for a week. But… volunteers can.

My wife and I have volunteered for the fair for more than twenty years, mostly in the Craft Barn and with other organizations, but for the past few years now, we’ve been exclusively volunteering as ushers for the grandstand. The grandstand is that location, at the fairgrounds, where the big shows and entertainment events happen, during the week of the fair. Kirk Hansen and the team of volunteers that my wife and I work with in the grandstand work really hard to make sure that events are coordinated, safe, and enjoyable for everyone. It’s been a great thing to be involved in. In 2021, if you’re looking for a way to get into the fair, off the sweat of your brow, there’ll probably be an usher organizational meeting in late July.

In any case, you sign up for the events that you want to be a part of, and then Kirk assigns you to different areas, based on your skills and comfort level. You have to work a minimum number of events to qualify for the week pass to the fair, but it’s a reasonable number. And… you obviously get to be in the events that you work without having to buy a ticket –> of course this means that you’re working, as opposed to being a spectator, but it’s kind of the same thing. My wife and I like to work the children’s circus, usually, because that’s fun, and we also like to work certain other events.

We also usually sign up to work the demolition derby.

I hate the demolition derby.

* * *

The first year we volunteered for Kirk Hansen, we signed up for the demolition derby, since we were new to the scene, and we didn’t have any idea what we were signing up for. But then, being there that evening, I was greatly saddened by the experience.

If this seems strange to you, let me explain.

I have always loved cars. When I was a kid, I loved learning about cars, and my brother and I would sit out in front of our house –we lived on a local highway– and identify the cars as they went by. I love classic cars and modern cars. I collected matchbox cars as a kid; I had dozens of them. My two favorite television shows, as a kid, featured cars. I built model cars from the model kits that you could buy at the G.L. Perry variety store in town. I remember my dad took my brother and I to a car show in South Bend when I was a kid, and I got to sit inside the KITT car from Knight Rider.

I’ve always loved cars.

On that night a few years ago, as I was standing near the entry gate of the grandstand, looking at my first ever demolition derby, I thought it was gross; I got physically nauseous.

But, I think it also taught me something about death –not because anyone died– but because the death of a thing is still a death, in a way.

Their engines were roaring, and the roars sounded so much like screams, only to echo the screams of the watching fans, wanting to see the death of the things. The smoke was oily and thick in the air, and it was the dying exhalations from those cars. I was breathing in the dying breaths of those dying cars.

It reminded me of a bull fighting demonstration that I saw in Spain when I was in college. I think it must also be what dog fighting or cock fighting is like, not that I would know. It has something to do with a fascination that we have with fighting, with battle, with gladiators, with conflict and combat and confrontation.

With destruction.

They were just cars, of course, but that didn’t matter to me. I have always loved cars and I couldn’t watch them be killed, so I stopped. I just sat down, near the entry gate, and put my head in my hands and stared at the ground, waiting for the whole thing to eventually be over.

I felt, when I was watching, like I was watching something dark. I felt like it was connecting to something inside of me that is dark. Continuing to watch meant continuing to allow my darkness to be exposed, to be connected to what I was seeing. I didn’t want that.

And then, there were the looks on the faces of the people around me. Those faces, those blank and excited stares, made me think that the same thing was happening to them, but they kept watching; I couldn’t. They were joined by the people who’d gathered near the gate to try to peek in, who hadn’t paid to see, but they still wanted to see.

* * *

Now, I said earlier that my wife and I usually sign up to work the demolition derby. You might wonder why, if it bothers me so much. I’m not really sure that I can answer that, at least not completely. I think I go now, every year –except for this one– as a reminder about destruction. The worship of destruction, the sick levels of attention we pay to what is destructive in our society; we’ve got to knock that right off.

When we worship the darkness, it grows.

 

It occurred to me today that we sometimes linger.

A while back, I wrote this post about yard signs. But, a couple more thoughts have occurred to me on the subject.

On August 5th, the morning after the primary election in Michigan, just a few days ago, I went out for my morning run. During that run, I ran past a couple of yard signs, for political candidates, who had surely either won or lost their bids on the previous day. As I ran by, I got to thinking about those political signs, and how often you end up seeing them up for a significant amount of time –days, weeks even– after the election has come and gone.

I’ve often wondered why that is.

Now of course, the other day was just a primary, and so perhaps, the signs get left up because the general election is still a few months away. Or, maybe, the signs of winners are left up, as if the property owner hopes to associate themselves with the winners, as if to linger on the pleasant aroma of the victory. But, if either of those were the case, then you would at least expect half of the signs (the signs belonging to the losing candidates) to disappear as quickly as the votes get counted.

I mean, think about how you feel, wearing your favorite piece of team gear, on the day after your team gets destroyed by an opponent. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather wear that pink paisley button-down shirt that hides in the back of my closet; at least it doesn’t advertise my association with the losers.

Of course, when my team wins, now that’s a different story. Wild horses couldn’t keep me from wearing the shirt or the jersey or the jacket that shows that my team is the team that won.

And, while I’m on this subject, have you ever noticed that there are some people who, on the day after a defeat, will wear their team gear on purpose. I don’t know what to think about those people. Aren’t they just inviting the ridicule? Are they just gluttons for punishment? Or, maybe they are daring someone to say something to them about the game, so they might be provided with the opportunity to launch the sum of all the general rage and hate that they felt on some poor unsuspecting schmuck?

In any case, something doesn’t add up, because none of the theories that I seem to come up with, to try to explain why it is that yard signs for political candidates don’t come down when you think they ought to, none of my theories works often enough to make me think that any one theory is right.

There must be something else going on.

* * *

In the previous post that I linked above, I wrote about a certain property that I pass on my way to work everyday, and about the number of political yard signs that they have, and the affiliations that I make in my mind about certain candidates that are being advertised by this property owner, alongside other candidates.

If you care enough to read the previous post, you might get a clearer picture of what I’m talking about.

In any case, it occurred to me today that this property owner was pulling for three political candidates to gain office, according to their yard signs. One of them was a local candidate running for a local office, the second was a local candidate running for a federal office, and the third candidate didn’t have any elections to win or lose on Tuesday (if you catch my drift).

Of the three that this property owner was pulling for, two of them lost on Tuesday. The only one who didn’t lose, could not have lost on Tuesday.

Of the two, I certainly feel worst for the local candidate running for the local office. While I didn’t vote for him –not because of the affiliations that existed on someone else’s front lawn, but rather, because I had someone I preferred to vote for– I wonder if there may have been some fallout from the national political scene that affected this individual.

I think they call this the coattail effect, whereby a popular candidate of a certain party is likely to be a benefit to other members of the same party. When the opposite is true, and unpopular candidates adversely affect the chances of their fellows, they call it the negative coattail effect.

Consider how badly Barry Goldwater did in 1964; he performed so poorly as the Republican candidate for the Presidency, that multiple Republicans in the House of Representatives also lost their seats. This allowed for Lyndon Johnson to have a Democratic majority to work with in accomplishing his goals. The negative coattail effect.

* * *

I saw something, this past Tuesday night, that caught me off-guard, having to do with election-specific yard signs.

Our local library attempted, this past Tuesday, to get a “YES” vote on a millage for their funding. Because our community loves its library, they ended up getting the votes without much of a contest.

Before the evening was even over on Tuesday night, I noticed a neighbor of ours –whose husband volunteers for the library– walking over to the property of a different neighbor of ours, to retrieve a sign from their front lawn, asking voters to vote “YES” on the millage for the library.

Once it occurred to me that my neighbor was just being ‘neighborly’ as she collected the sign that was sure to be returned to the library for its purposes, whatever those might be, I started thinking about the importance of political yard signs in general.

Not everyone posts them, and I think that’s probably the case because candidate politics is not important enough for many people to take a position on, one way or the other. However, taking a stand on an issue –say, a millage for a public institution– is easier for people to commit to. It’s much more likely that supporting one’s local library is going to be the right thing to do next week, and next month, and next year, and ten years from now.

In my particular neck of the woods, you are much more likely to see political yard signs that support a particular issue on someone’s property than you are to see a property that is decked out in candidate signs.

Supporting XYZ political candidate is just not as solid of a position to take, keeping in mind how inconsistent most people –especially politicians– are.

I guess what I’m really saying is this…

I just want it to be November 4th, already.

It occurred to me today that I had it all wrong.

I’m a teacher, among other things, and a lot of the teachers that I know have a favorite ‘teacher’ movie, just like police officers might have a favorite ‘police’ movie, or doctors might have a favorite ‘doctor’ movie.

For some of the teachers I know, it might be Lean On Me; for others, it might be Stand And Deliver; for some others, it might even be Billy Madison. I happen to have a tie for first-place for favorite ‘teacher’ movie: Dead Poet’s Society and Mr. Holland’s Opus. I’ll bet you can guess, from the name of this post, which one of these I’d like to discuss.

In the movie, Glenn Holland is a musical composer; many of the scenes of the movie occur while Glenn is sitting at his piano, in his home, working on the single greatest piece of his career. This is what one might call, a magnum opus. In fact, if you look up the word ‘opus’ in the dictionary, the definition specifically makes reference to artists or musicians… or composers. And so, with the movie title in mind, you might be led to believe that the movie is about Glenn’s work as a composer.

It occurred to me today that I had it all wrong, as many times as I’ve seen that movie; the movie is not about the musical piece that Glenn Holland finally completes, near the end of the movie, the piece that is played for him by an orchestra made up of some of his greatest fans.

At least, the movie is not only about that work.

For, you see, the other definition for the word ‘opus’, the more relaxed definition, is simply ‘work’. That’s what the word originally meant in Latin –> work. Today, I realized that the movie, entitled Mr. Holland’s Opus, could be narrowly considered to be about the great piece of music that he writes, or –in a more open interpretation– the movie can be seen as a statement on Glenn Holland’s work.

In the movie, Mr. Holland is a coach and a teacher, by trade. Near the start of the movie, when Glenn starts his career at a local high school as a music teacher, it is clear that he’d much rather be at home, working on his musical compositions. But, as is often the case with art, you’ve got to have something to pay the bills, and Mr. Holland starts the work of creating a music program in his new school setting.

I’m not going to give any more of the movie away; if you’ve never seen it before, you ought to.

I think it’s like that for all of us –> we ‘work’ at different things and, if we’re steady and diligent, they amount to something that we can look back on and be proud of. If you really strive, maybe you can manage to accomplish a number of things with your life.

* * *

I’ve been struggling a little bit with some conflicting changes to my identity. Over the course of the past four months or so, I’ve come to think of myself as a writer. I have dreams of publishing a series of novels that I am working on. I have dreams about continuing to do this blog writing that has been going so well, as of late. Unfortunately for me, I am still waiting for someone to come to me and say, “Gee, Phil! We’ve noticed that you have been writing a lot, lately. Here’s a year’s worth of salary; why don’t you have a go at doing it full-time for a while.”

And so, I teach.

Which isn’t to say that one is first place and the other isn’t; I surely owe my professional work for more than two-hundred paid monthly electrical bills, among other things. The friendships that I’ve made with staff and students –some of whom will read these words– are friendships that will last for a lifetime. I’ve reached into so many young minds, to plant the seeds of knowledge.

For having provided so much for me and my family, my profession wins first place.

But…

At the moment, my heart is in this writing thing one hundred percent. If that hypothetical patron did show up tomorrow to fund my full-time writing career, I would take the opportunity in an instant.

I find myself torn, just like Glenn Holland.

Yesterday, I had a meeting with my Superintendent, to discuss a few things associated with my work, and she gave me the peer survey results from a survey that she did of the staff, asking them what they thought of my work, and my contribution to the school district.

It was six pages of comments, from my coworkers and friends, about the significance of my contribution to the school district, about how much people appreciate me, about the difference I am making in the lives of my fellows.

So, there’s that.

* * *

What is your opus? What is the thing that you will be remembered, by others, for having contributed to the society? If you don’t know what it is, it’s not too late to find out. Or, if you’ve had something that you’ve been wanting to do, but you’ve been putting it off, you’ve been prioritizing other things, today might be the day when you decide to start to assemble a new opus, worthy of your dreams.

Furthermore, let me just take a moment to say that encouragement counts. Look around you and see if you can’t find someone to encourage, as they struggle toward a dream of theirs. The world seems to be drowning in seas of negativity, lately, in case you haven’t noticed; but the power of having someone cheering for you is a fuel that could start someone’s engine.

I can’t tell you how important it is, how powerful and enabling it is, to hear words of encouragement from people.

I know I said that I wasn’t going to give any more of the movie away, but…

At the end of Mr. Holland’s Opus, in the final scene of the movie, all of the things that Glenn has accomplished with his life –and here’s a hint: there’s more than two– are brought together in a single space during a single moment in time, and he gets to see what we all need to see: a life well-lived contributes. A life well-lived makes a difference.

I’m getting ready to enter my nineteenth year in education. For nineteen years, I have been significantly more productive as a teacher than I have been as a writer. For sixteen of those same nineteen years, I’ve also been a father. For all nineteen of those years, plus, I’ve been a husband. I would like to think that I’ve been able to make a difference, that I’ve contributed, in different ways, at different times.

Maybe, there is no longer a tie for first place; maybe the tie has been broken. At this moment, I feel like I have a lot in common with Glenn.

 

 

It occurred to me today that there’s a lot of adultery going around.

Before you get too far into this, I feel it necessary to warn you: there’s a decent chance that something in this post will offend you, for I have included a couple of different topics that could be considered offensive. Please understand in advance that this is not my intent. Rather, if anything you read after this sentence offends you, you might want to ask yourself why.

Today’s word of the day is ‘cuckold’. I’ll bet you haven’t recently –if ever– heard this one. A cuckold is a man whose wife is adulterous. The first time I ever saw this word was in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, which is one of the Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. If you haven’t read the Canterbury Tales, I wouldn’t advise it unless you have a strong stomach; a lot of it is just filthy smut. This is the height of irony, since the book is supposedly a collection of stories that are being told by religious pilgrims who are on their way to a holy shrine.

Anyhow, if you are looking for one of the stories to read, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, wouldn’t be a bad choice. It’s less sleazy than the others.

Anyway…

I’ve often wondered, when I think about the word ‘cuckold’, how it would feel to be in that position. I’m sure it would suck. I’m sure it would be painful. Thankfully, I am lovingly devoted to a woman who is lovingly devoted to me, and I take comfort in knowing that I don’t –as long as I keep up my end of the bargain– have much to worry about, when it comes to marital infidelity.

Nevertheless, I’ve recently become somewhat more familiar with what it must feel like to be a cuckold.

“How?” you ask…

When you think about it, we all have different types of relationships in which we are all engaged. Marriage is a common example of a relationship type, but most of us also have friendships, business relationships, and familial relationships that affect us in different ways, as well. Each of these relationships has the opportunity for infidelity in them, inasmuch as we could be betrayed –cheated on– by a friend or a family member or a coworker. Additionally, we have relationships, as individuals, with different groups to which we might belong. When the group fails us, we might also feel… like cuckolds.

* * *

I’ve recently become more familiar with what it must feel like to be a cuckold, largely because I have been abandoned by a group of people to whom I have been very loyal, for as long as I can remember. This group gained my allegiance early on in my life, because I believed that I shared a common set of beliefs with the other members of this group. I thought that this group represented decency and truth and goodness, all things that I have sought after in my life.

But, they left me; they went off, attached at the hip to someone else, someone with whom I couldn’t stomach associating myself.

When they left, I felt alone. I felt betrayed. I had questions about what had happened, questions that no one could answer. Some of the (former) members of that group felt the same way that I did, confused and questioning. Others were still following the group, heading off in a direction that I could never have foreseen the group heading.

And now, I don’t know what to do, but playing the cuckold sucks. I’m trying to figure out if I should move on, or if I should wait for this group to come to its senses. Other (former) members of the group are taking steps to try to shed some light on what is going on, to try to get the group to change its course, but I don’t know whether or not they’re going to be successful.

I keep asking myself, “Did I change? Did I do something wrong? Am I to blame for what happened, for the fact that I am here alone, while the rest of my team, most of them, are running around with someone else?”

I’m speaking, of course, of the Republican Party. They’ve cheated on me, and I’m not sure what to do about it.

I am the cuckold.

* * *

Well, if that didn’t get you going, this one might.

If you’ll allow me, for a quick moment, to have a brief religious monologue, I’d like to discuss a couple of Biblical examples of cuckolds. The most obvious example of a cuckold in the Bible, at least in my mind, is Hosea. God instructs Hosea, at the beginning of the Book of Hosea, to go and marry an adulterous woman –on purpose– so that Hosea will come to know how horrible adultery is. Hosea’s wife, Gomer, is eventually unfaithful to him, and God instructs Hosea to take the steps that are necessary to bring her back to him. This heart-breaking book, in its entirety, is only fourteen chapters. Read it sometime, and see if it doesn’t give you a better sense of what it would be like to be abandoned, betrayed, and rejected.

Of course, if you’ve read Hosea before, then you know who I’m going to talk about next, as the greatest of all cuckolds.

God is the greatest of all cuckolds. He’s been cheated on by us.

You’ve left Him and I’ve left Him and America has left Him.

The world has left Him.

We’ve all cheated on Him with our silly idols –all of them of no consequence– and I can’t imagine Him, any other way just now, than just sitting in Heaven and weeping, for having been made the cuckold.

We are the adulterers.

* * *

I know that I have, only recently, gathered some of you into my readership. I guess I wouldn’t blame you if you decided that I am not as “worth reading” as you’d previously thought. I could promise you that tomorrow’s post will be about cupcakes or rainbows, but… who knows?!?!

In any case, I’m doing this writing for me, like it or not.

You’re reading this on the day after an election in Michigan, but I’m writing it on the evening of that election. These thoughts have been on my mind, and will probably continue to be on my mind, for at least the next ninety-one days, if not longer.

I’m sorry if I hurt you. It hurt me to write this.