The pandemic was particularly hard on the mental health of adolescents. Their activities, plans, hopes and dreams were canceled or changed, and disappointment hit hard. Now many teenagers are depressed, angry, frustrated, confused and are falling deep into holes of anxiety, fear and futility.
It’s the summer solstice. And right now, where many of us live, it’s hot.
I was thinking about finding some otherworldly music to mark the solstice. Something that would help lower our temperatures. But while looking for that kind of music, I stumbled on another kind.
These lines from Joni Mitchel’s song, “Borderline,” jumped out at me when I heard them on the car radio today. She released the song in 1994 – 30 years ago.
Judy Sorum Brown’s poem, “Wooden Boats,” which on the surface is about the craft of boatmaking, turns beautifully in the third stanza to ask, “Is there within us each …?” By the final lines, it has us wondering if it might even be possible to transform the world
Amy’s belief in savoring each moment of life and saying “yes to the voice that tells me I should go out and do something now, even when that decision seems wildly impractical” guided her throughout her life. This approach became even more important after her cancer diagnosis.
I know very little about Heavy Metal Music. But after reading how Ryan Pfeil’s moving reflection and its connection to “Constance,” the song of the Canadian Progressive Metalband Spritibox, I wanted to learn more.
This past year, I turned 70, published my first collection of short stories, and lost my eldest brother to cancer. These events left me feeling as if I am only now beginning to know who I am.
Sometimes, the most difficult emotions can reveal things we could not know any other way.
And like Whitman, from time to time, we glide past the rigorous propriety of sanctioned learnedness and gaze “in perfect silence at the stars.”
When I or someone I love is going through something heavy, I look to Spiritbox’s album “Eternal Blue.” Its brutal but beautiful songs were a constant companion during the COVID-19 lockdowns…
At the Grammys, as Tracy Chapman sang “Fast Car,” her eyes sparkled. Equally in evidence was a beaming Luke Combs. For Luke Combs to get the notoriously private Tracy Chapman to join him on stage at the Grammy Awards took some masterful bridge building.
At the Grammys, Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs came together for a performance of “Fast Car” and brought down the house. The improbability of them appearing together added to the impact.
In our lives, we are building or maintaining bridges all day long, even, as in this lovely poem, when we smile back at sticky children in grocery lines.