Saving Songs from Themselves

There are some songs that I hear and think, "This is a really good song.  Why don't I love it?"  In nearly every case, I can eventually identify something (or some things) that, if done differently, would have pushed my opinion of it over the top.  Sometimes, it's the use of a particular instrument, other times it's the singer's voice or the production.  It's made me wish for a collection of cover versions by people who feel the same way I do.

Here are some of the songs that need to be saved from themselves:

1. "Still The One," by Orleans.  This is a good pop song that manages to make me feel good, in spite of the awful singer and the excessive backing harmonies.  If someone with a better voice would cover the song with the same basic arrangement (minus harmonies), I'd be a very happy camper.
2. "Best of You," by Foo Fighters.  Prince's version, during the Super Bowl halftime show, was the best.  I want a recording of that.
3. "Free Ride," by Edgar Winter.  If someone would record it in exactly the same way, but without the dorky synthesizer break in the middle, it would be awesome.
4. "Philadelphia Freedom," by Elton John.  The song is great, the arrangement is fabulous, the production is perfect.  But, Elton John has got to go.  His singing is so affected, he adds so many syllables to the words, that you can barely understand the lyrics.  Someone who can just sing, without going to such great lengths to sound soulful, could push this song into heaven.

I'm sure there are more, but that's all that comes to mind.

The REAL Lesson From Columbine

I heard a story on the radio that made me sad and angry at the same time.  It was an interview with a man, named Sam Granillo, who was a junior at Colombine High School on April 20, 1999.  He was in the cafeteria when Harris and Klebold started their rampage and he hid, along with many other students, in an inner office of the kitchen.  He lost a close friend that day and he was offered free counseling, which he tried.  As adolescents are wont to do, he felt that it wasn't working for him; but he remembers being told that, for the rest of his life, free counseling would be available to him.  This was in recognition of the fact that there are sometimes emotional scars that don't show up immediately after a traumatic event.

Unfortunately, Sam discovered that the services were not available to him when he wanted to return to counseling several years after the event.  He was struggling with some symptoms that are fairly typical of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  In his interactions with other survivors of Colombine, he found that counseling stopped being free for them about 2 years after April 20, 1999.  He also found that many of them had been told the counseling would be available for the rest of their lives.  

Thankfully, Sam works as a freelance camera assistant and production assistant, and he decided to put those skills to use in order to bring attention to the mental health needs of survivors of trauma.  Sam has been making a documentary about survivors of mass shootings, such as Colombine and Virginia Tech.  He calls it Columbine: Wounded Minds and he hopes it will lead to a foundation for free services for people who have been through major traumatic events, such as mass shootings or war.  It breaks my heart that he and the other survivors haven't had free counseling services available to them.  I don't understand why we don't take better care of each other.  I really don't.

Power to the People

I've been reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Given the current political climate, I've found the chapter called "Robber Barons and Rebels" particularly compelling.  Zinn describes the events of the second half of the 19th century, including the economic crises and the multitude of strikes and demonstrations by the nascent American labor movement. I find it very disturbing how many parallels there are between then and now, particularly the tight relationship between the extremely wealthy and government. I am not a fan of conspiracy theories and I try very hard not to be paranoid (which has not always been easy, trust me), but when I read about some of the Supreme Court's decisions from the 19th century, decisions that resulted in reversing or eliminating regulations on corporations, I feel that we have gone back in time. How is this different from our current Supreme Court? Maybe we're stuck in a perpetual tug of war between the very wealthy and the rest of us for control over the country. Can you say that we've made any progress at all when it was the Supreme Court of the late 19th century that decided that corporations were individuals, a decision reinforced by our current Court in recent rulings?

Whatever it is, it certainly isn't new and I'm not sure we've learned anything over the past 236 years. Honestly, I used to be a very positive person. I was optimistic and believed in the power of evidence to carry the day. But I just can't seem to sustain it anymore. There are so many people who refuse to be persuaded by facts and, I must admit, it makes me want to break things sometimes. I suppose I could blame FOX News, but isn't the real problem that there is an audience for FOX News? There will always be liars, but why are there so many people who want to believe these particular lies? And when I look at individuals I know who watch and believe FOX News, I'm deeply bothered. If they were all business owners, I would say that their primary priorities were de-regulation of industries and eliminating workers' rights. However, the people I'm thinking of are not all business owners. They work in a variety of jobs and they are not wealthy. But they don't seem able to see that the policies that are recommended by FOX News and the Republican Party are designed to benefit the wealthy and to harm the middle and lower classes, their own people. Would someone please explain this to me?

As someone who has worked her entire adult life in public education, I can't help but feel that this is the true failure of our schools -- our failure to instill in students a healthy respect for evidence and logic. I blame it on religion.