So as you begin your long journey through life, a journey that will probably take you into the next century, I wish you much happiness. Just keep in mind that caring about others will make you happier than caring about yourself. Take time to appreciate your family and the blessings they bestow on you. Remember that from those to whom much is given, much is expected. Be a woman who makes a difference in this world. Leave the world a better place than it is today. I’ll be rooting for you!
Love,
Grandpa Frank
Sometimes
November 2015
Sometimes great things come in small packages. It’s true of jewelry and it’s true of music.
My favorite song on The Beatles’ White Album is a little gem by Paul McCartney called “I Will.” It runs just a minute and 45 seconds, but it’s a lovely little love song.
A more profound example is the Mancini masterpiece called “Sometimes.” There is an instrumental version of it that Henry recorded with Doc Severinsen in an album they made together called Brass on Ivory. It’s one of Mancini’s most beautiful tunes. But I suspect the music is so beautiful because it was inspired by a poem that his daughter Felice wrote and gave to him and his wife as a gift one Christmas in the 1960s. The poem is short, but never fails to move me because, like all great art, it rings so true. The poem simply says:
Sometimes, not often enough
We reflect upon the good things
And those thoughts always center around those we love
And I think about those people who mean so much to me
And for so many years have made me so very happy
And I count the times I have forgotten to say “Thank you”
And just how much I love them
I can just imagine Henry Mancini reading this poem on a Christmas morning and sitting down at the piano to immediately put it to music. The result was recorded most eloquently by The Carpenters on their debut album. Karen Carpenter’s deep, rich voice made the words all the more poignant. It fairly drips with emotion, a beautiful, heartfelt emotion. You can watch her sing it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=vCfU7Q4RoL4.
Recently my mother died. And as I listen to this song, sometimes I think about her and the many years she made me very happy. And, like Felice Mancini, I count the times I forgot to say “thank you.” I think she knew. But this perfect little song reminds us all how important it is to tell the people in your life just how much you love them. That’s easier said than done for many of us. But it’s worth the effort.
City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, it’s Christmas time in the city
December 2015
Rockefeller Center at Christmas
Around this time of year, New York gets dressed up for the holidays. The shop windows proclaim the symbols of the season. Otherwise dull office buildings are decorated with wreaths and holly. Tourists flock to Rockefeller Center and the many other public displays of Christmas. In fact, people come from all over the world to spend Christmastime in New York.
I think the first time I ever was brought into Manhattan was for the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Show. It was probably the late 1950s. I remember standing on a long line in freezing temperatures. But it was worth it. Once we got inside, I was in awe of the jaw-dropping majesty of the hall. And then a man appeared in the corner of the stage and began playing a marvelous organ that had bass notes that rumbled in my stomach.
After a while, the curtain opened and there were the Rockettes dressed as toy soldiers. And wasn’t it just so cool the way they fell down! Needless to say I practiced that move with my cousins at my grandparent’s house on Christmas Eve that year. It was a lot of fun, but we found out just how hard it was to fall slowly like the Rockettes did.
After the Rockettes, there were some Ed Sullivan-type acts like jugglers, ventriloquists and singers. Little did I know that I was seeing the death throes of vaudeville right before my eyes.
Next there was a big Christmas-themed musical production number that usually featured snow men, reindeer and of course, Santa Claus.
And then there was the grand finale – the living Nativity. Camels! Real, live camels walked across the stage led by Wise Men along with shepherds. And at center stage was a manger with Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. After seeing this, I remember thinking that what our school Christmas pageant needed was camels!
If all of that was not enough, soon after the stage show ended, the lights went down again and we saw a movie. All this for $1.50. No wonder there were lines around the block.
But wait, there was more. We always ended our trips to Radio City with a visit to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. We watched the skaters glide across the ice as Christmas carols blared from speakers. And then finally, we walked to get some food. Where? Why the automat of course!
Horn & Hardart’s coin-operated diners were a fascinating place for a kid to eat. Just putting in the nickels was fun. I don’t remember the food being particularly tasty, but I remember having a piece of blueberry pie that was my first ever. I would never have ordered it, but I remember the little door holding the pie was at my eye level. It must have been pretty good because blueberry pie is a favorite of mine still.
The automats are long gone, but the Rockefeller Center skating rink and tree are still with us. And fortunately, Radio City Music Hall is as well. Of course the movie is gone, and the prices are competitive with Broadway, but they still have a stage show with camels!
Today I work in Manhattan so I am there practically every day. It would be easy to be cynical about all the commercialism and take all this Christmas finery for granted. But I find that even after more than 50 years, when I hear the jingle of silver bells on a street corner this time of year, I’m still the wide-eyed child marveling at the wonder that is Manhattan at Christmas.
Obama demonstrates how the ghosts of Sandy Hook haunt us
January 2016
I saw something today that I have never seen in all my 62 plus years. I saw a President cry. And it was thrilling! Why? Because we have a leader in President Obama who is moved to action by passionate convictions instead of polls. You can see an excerpt from the speech at https://youtube/ ZJCiDrqjjz8.
I have to say right away that I am not a big fan of the first six years of the Obama presidency. I dislike the Big Brother surveillance he authorized and the way he compromised national health care into a mere shadow of what President Clinton proposed. But beginning in 2015, just as the 2016 presidential campaign was beginning, we began to see a different Obama. It’s as if he finally realized that he was never going to get Republican cooperation no matter what he proposed and he just reached the point where he took off the handcuffs and began to act on his convictions. So we saw the President come out in favor of marriage equality, propose an executive measure to deal with undocumented foreigners and enact regulations to try to reduce carbon emissions.
Today the President acted once again in an area where Congress has feared to tread – gun control. While it remains to be seen whether the measures he proposed have any real effect, my feeling is that if they save one life, they will be worthwhile. We tried to solve the gun violence problem the NRA way – by buying more guns. Gun production doubled between 2010 and 2013. And gun violence increased. It’s time to try something else. Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t, but we can’t just sit back and do nothing as thousands of Americans die every year. If regulation doesn’t work, we can simply remove it as we did the assault weapons ban.
But politics aside, I think that President Obama’s announcement today is remarkable in that it revealed the depth of feeling that the President still has about the Sandy Hook massacre. This generally cool and publicly unemotional man was brought to tears just by the passing mention of a group of first graders who were victims of gun violence three years ago. He said, “Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad.” And apparently it also gets him emotional as tears welled up in his eyes. I happen to thin
k that emotion is good in a President. It shows me that he cares. It shows me that he is aware that what he does or does not do affects average Americans.
There will be those who will find the President’s tears just another sign of his weakness. Reagan wouldn’t have cried, they will say. Hell, he got shot and didn’t cry. Certainly a President can be empathetic without being tearful. Bill Clinton famously could “feel your pain.” But I find it very refreshing that a leader can be moved to tears as he is moved to action. Perhaps the President’s tears will mean that some parents in the future will be spared tears of their own. Perhaps the powerful emotion that Obama revealed will prove contagious and inspire more people to work to solve this terrible problem. For the sake of my grandchildren, I certainly hope so.
Here’s to the moderate – An endangered species in America
February 2016
The last 20 years have seen a huge increase in extremism in the United States. While there have always been extremists, there have also always been moderates. Now, not so much. The political climate has driven Americans to embrace openly positions they might have sympathized with before but would never express.
Exhibit A for this proposition is the success of the candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. It seems that voters have a message for primary candidates – moderates need not apply. Ask Jeb Bush.
Socrates wrote, “All things in moderation, including moderation.” Moderates are like the canary in the coal mine for a civilized society. When moderates die off, a society is in danger. Right now, there are many more people at the extremes than in the moderate positions.
And this extremism is not limited to politics. Religion has also gone extreme. On the left, Episcopalians decided to embrace their homosexual members and found themselves divided from the worldwide Anglican Communion. More than 20% of Americans now identify themselves as not belonging to any church. On the right, some evangelicals have declared war on Planned Parenthood and on undocumented immigrants.
The word “compromise,” once revered in our country as the hallmark of adult thinking and behavior, now has become a dirty word.
I take the long view on all this. I think we are going through a phase. The only reason I see that people have been driven to extremist views is the near even split between adherents of the conflicting viewpoints in our society. Once one or the other becomes dominant in numbers, the atmosphere will change. When a country is more united in its mainstream values, conflicting viewpoints get marginalized. Consensus reduces extremism.
Take gay marriage for example. Once a consensus on this as a civil right was reached, the extremists were marginalized.
There is also generational change to take into consideration. Polls show that most young people believe that global warming is real and caused by human beings. So the split on issues such as carbon credits and coal mining will subside as the older generations die off. The same apparently applies to issues of homosexuality.
The early signs of change will be when moderates return in great numbers and compromise returns to our government. I think this day will come in the next 10 years. We already have a Pope who says “Who am I to judge?” A little less finger wagging and a little more listening and looking for common ground and we will get there. But probably not this year.
Sometimes the pen is mightier than the piano
February 2016
I heard once that when someone was saying how great Jerome Kern’s song “Old Man River” was, Oscar Hammerstein’s wife piped up, “Jerome Kern wrote ‘dah dah dah-dah.’ My husband wrote ‘Old Man River.’”
The truth is that lyricists get no respect. And that’s true no matter how good or even how famous they are. Leonard Bernstein gets all the credit for composing West Side Story. But it was a young Stephen Sondheim who wrote the words to “Tonight,” “America” and “Maria.” And it was Stephen Sondheim who came up with these inspirational lyrics:
There’s a place for us,
A time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.
Hold my hand and I’ll take you there
Somehow,
Someday,
Somewhere!
The lyricist has always been a second-class citizen in Music City. So it’s not surprising that the job was many times given to women. As a matter of fact, many people assumed that George Gershwin’s lyricist, his brother Ira Gershwin, was a woman. But a real woman, Dorothy Fields, was a great lyricist from the 1920s to the 1970s. Dorothy worked with composers like Jimmy McHugh, Jerome Kern and Cy Coleman.
It was Dorothy Fields (and not Jerome Kern) who wrote:
Some day, when I’m awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight
But times change and by the time we got to the 1960s, women like Carole King and Carly Simon were writing the music and had male lyricists! This role reversal made the male lyricist disappear as people assumed that the singer wrote the entire song herself.
I can think of two good examples where over the last 50 years people have assumed that the lyrics were written by the woman who wrote the music.
Carole King wrote the music for “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” But while she is a natural woman, she did not come up with the words. It was her husband Gerry Goffin who wrote:
When my soul was in the lost-and-found
You came along to claim it
I didn’t know just what was wrong with me
Till your kiss helped me name it
Now I’m no longer doubtful of what I’m living for
And if I make you happy I don’t need to do more
Cause you make me feel, you make me feel,
You make me feel like a natural woman
Yes, a man wrote those lyrics! He also wrote the words to “But Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” Talk about being in touch with your feminine side!
Similarly, it was Jacob Brackman and not Carly Simon who wrote the words to the haunting “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be”:
My father sits at night with no lights on
His cigarette glows in the dark
The living room is still
I walk by, no remark
I tiptoe past the master bedroom where
My mother reads her magazines
I hear her call sweet dreams
But I forgot how to dream
But you say it’s time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me
Well, that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be
You want to marry me, we’ll marry
My friends from college they’re all married now
They have their houses and their lawns
They have their silent noons
Tearful nights, angry dawns
Their children hate them for the things they’re not
They hate themselves for what they are
And yet they drink, they laugh
Close the wound, hide the scar
But you say it’s time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me
Well, that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be
You want to marry me, we’ll marry
You say we can keep our love alive
Babe all I know is what I see
The couples cling and claw
And drown in love’s debris
You say we’ll soar like two birds through the clouds
But soon you’ll cage me on your shelf
I’ll never learn to be just me first
By myself
Well okay, it’s time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me
Well, that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be
You want to marry me, we’ll marry
We’ll marry
I think thi
s is beautiful poetry and very few people know that Jacob Brackman wrote it. Of course, the addition of Carly’s melody raises the poetry to a higher level, and that’s the magic of songwriting. It takes the dual skills of poet and composer to make a great song. But it seems to me the composer gets an inordinate share of the credit most of the time.
So here’s to the lyricists – the people who make it possible for our singers to have words to sing. May these musical poets get the recognition they deserve for their great gifts to the American Songbook.
Getting past surface appearances to the interior nesting doll
February 2016
I heard someone say recently that people are like Russian nesting dolls. By that they mean that inside of the person you see now is the person they were 10 years ago, and inside of that person is the person they were 10 years before that. We are the sum total of all our experiences and you can’t judge a person by the outermost persona. It is only old friends and family who know the person inside the person inside the person all the way back to childhood.
I think it’s a fascinating idea. When we look at elderly people, do we ever see past the gray hair and arthritic walk to the vibrant young adult five nesting dolls inside? It’s interesting to picture that there once was a 10-year-old Donald Trump, a 15-year-old Hillary Clinton and even a 5-year-old Bernie Sanders. What personal experiences made them into the people they are today?
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