High Five Chorus!

High Five Choir was recently featured in the Chicago Tribune.  Since my blog is a sort of a musical blog, I thought it was fitting, because the article, and video, show how music can have a such a positive impact on people.  It shows the way that music connects people, as it does everyday in High Five.  It is truely an amazing experience to be apart of such a diverse and accepting group.

Here is the article

Here is a video of High Five.  The girl who is speaking is Angela, my co-facilitator in High Five.

A Day In The Life

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon's death.  This post is dedicated to him, so it will be about the amazing song he and Paul McCartney wrote, A Day In The Life.



This Beatles song has always caught my attention.  Within the song, there are essentially two different songs forming a dichotomy within itself.  The verses about the news, obviously starting with, "I read the news today, oh boy," were written by Lennon about news paper articles.  The other song within A Day In The Life, written by McCartney, is a little more light-hearted, starts, "Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head."  But why combine these two completely different songs?

As I've listened to this song, many times may I add, I see McCartney's part as the precursor to the beginning of the song.  In Paul's part it says; "Found my way downstairs" and then a few lines later says "found my way upstairs".  It doesn't say he went to these places, but rather he found his way.  By saying "found" it makes me think that this character is just wandering around through his day.  He doesn't seem to have an exact purpose.  The last line of McCartney's 'song' says "I went into a dream".  He isn't really fully in the present, rather off in some other place.  And all of this is the set-up for Lennon's part (even though it comes later in the song).

Lennon's part also suggests this character is not in the present moment as he states; "He didn't notice that the lights had changed".  This person was not paying attention to what he was doing.  Driving wasn't top of mind, clearly.  By saying that he didn't notice rather than just he crashed, shows how his mind was elsewhere.  Then the song goes; "They'd seen his face before, nobody was really sure".  Again, this alludes to the character's wandering through life because he was recognized, but no one could put a name to his face.  If you are wandering through life, you are there, but are missing things that pass you by along the way.  He had missed all the people.  The face was recognizable, but he wasn't really remembered.

Though these two songs were written separately, I think they actually tie together quite nicely, and turned out to be one great song.

John Lennon

October 9, 1940-December 8, 1980

We're not in Kansas anymore.

In class we have been discussing whether or not civil liberties should be abridged in perilous times.  A discussion has started a few times of how much power or say the president has in different situations.  This actually reminds me of the movie Independence Day and The Wizard of Oz.  Who knew they could connect?  Here is a short dialogue from Independence Day.

President Thomas Whitmore:  Mr. Levinson, you're mistaken.  There is no Area 51.  There is no spaceship.
Albert Nimzicki: Uh... Mr. President.  That's not entirely accurate.

As you can see, the president had no idea of what was actually going on.  It makes me wonder how much the president actually knows.  How much does the CIA tell him?  Not everything. How many people in the government know more than he does?  Probably a lot.  It seems like the president could just be a facade for the government.

Well then there is where The Wizard of Oz ties in.  The wizard says; "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."

If the president is the Wizard of Oz, who is the man behind the curtain?

Can we bless America?

[song will be added shortly.  Technical difficulties.]

God Bless America.  An iconic song of our nation, often sung at baseball games, played on fourth of july, and recognized across the country.  But why do we sing this song?  In public schools, we must separate church and state, by law, so why can we mix church and country no problem?  In the melting pot that America is, there is everyone on the religious spectrum, from orthodox to nonexistent participation.  Some people believe in one god, some in many and others in none at all.  Yet, we all recognize this song as patriotic, not religious by any means.

Also, every president since Nixon has concluded his speech with this phrase "God Bless America".  Now, if a president were to not utter these words, they would be cast off as unpatriotic.  It has become such a common phrase, that the use of the word "god" doesn't always cross people's minds.  But when really thought about, what message is America sending to its people and also what message are we sending to other nations?  We are not a religiously bound nation, so it doesn't really make sense to say "God Bless America" unless this was a known, universal belief in the USA.

Meta-Post on my Mini-Rants

When looking back at my past posts, I realized that I seem to write a lot about perceptions of different things.  In my first post Ignorance=Violence?, I discuss the how ignorance differs from violence based on how someone reacts or perceives new information on an unfamiliar topic.

In another post, The Land of the Free?, the focus is perception of freedom based on age.  On one hand, age increases freedom; "At sixteen, I can drive."  On the other hand, age can reduce one's freedom; "The older you get, the more you have to pay for the choices you make and accept the consequences for your actions.  Once you hit eighteen, you are now tried as an adult."  


In my most recent post, Haigh Quarry, also deals with perception, but this time it's the idea that we as humans only choose to focus on or read into things that have some connection to ourselves.  All these post are about very different things, but without even realizing it, I have posted about people's perceptions of different themes and ideas.


Another thing I've noticed is how I blog sort of how I speak, just a little more formally.  Especially in my early posts, I tend to rant.  Well, I'm a person that can rant.  If I get on a topic that I am opinionated about, the more I talk, the more whipped up I get, and the more I rant.  I seem to keep going on a topic on my blog and answering questions that were never asked (when I start sentences with "Yes" or "No") which is pretty much what I do when I rant.  Each post is like it's own formal, condensed rant minus the gestures, facial expressions and arm movements.


**Please read The Land of the Free?

Haigh Quarry

Today in class, the idea of only learning or studying a topic due to personal connection was brought up.  One comment was on how people tend to gravitate towards ideas or topics that pertain to them, probably because it is more interesting if you have an actual personal experience or relation to tie into it.  I realized how true this is.

I am a scuba diver.  I've been certified since I was ten and absolutely love diving.  Never have I been scared of diving.  We've all heard the stories of divers disappearing or being attacked or drowning, but its never bothered me really.  Even hearing about the movie, based on a true story, Open Water made me want to dive, and even go on a shark dive.

But about a week ago, something happened that for the first time, has truly scared me.  Haigh Quarry, up in Kankakee, IL, is where I got my open water certification.  I absolutely love it there, as do my dad, cousin and uncle.  It is a place that to most is not the most ideal diving location.  It has no big, beautiful coral reefs, it isn't tropical, there is not really any variety of fish, but for some reason, it's a place that will always be up on my lists of favorite diving locations.

Two days ago, my dad told me a kid, I think my age, drowned at Haigh while diving.  Here is an article about the incident.  This scared me.  How could a place so near and dear to my heart, be the location for such a tragic incident?  I never paid too much attention when a diver was injured or killed, but now that it relates to me, I can't get it out of my head.  It could be considered selfish to only think of things pertaining to yourself, but it's just human nature.  Parents always tell their kids that they will stop doing what they are doing once they get hurt.  Bad incidents are often the way people begin to look critically at his/her surroundings and question what is happening.

Are we silencing the lambs, or are we silencing our own?

Ok, so this post doesn't include music, but it has a movie instead.  Yesterday, I watched Silence of the Lambs.  Ok, so I haven't finished it yet, but I can't wait to see the second half.  As I went downstairs to let my dog out, I slowly walked around corners and kept glancing behind me, thinking the entire time Hannibal Lector would just appear behind me.  This is typical after I watch a scary movie.  But I started thinking about how society looks so negatively at murder.  I mean, I wasn't shocked by that, because obviously it is something that should and does have a negative connotation.  The issue was, why as humans, we only look out for number one, as a whole.  Yes, there are animal rights activists, but as a community, and a nation for that matter, animals are pushed aside, and our species grabs the spotlight.

If a person hunts, whether it's for sport or for food, it is considered socially acceptable.  We can easily take the lives of another species (except endangered species) and have no repercussions.  But when an animal kills a human, oh boy do we hear about it.  Stories cover the news and it becomes a controversial issue, usually resulting in the death of the animal.  I remember the news of the whale that killed its trainer, which happened this past February, and the amount of coverage that story got.  Everyone was up in arms that the whale killed his trainer, but when a human goes out and kills some deer,  rabbit, etc. no one has an issue.  We focus more on ourselves as being the "superior" species.  

This idea of superior species is also an interesting one.  We have been discussing race in class, and how divided human beings themselves can be.  How is it that we see ourselves as a superior species, when we have our own internal turmoil, separation, and disfunction.  People think that humans have many different races, and in today's society, it isn't acceptable to discriminate between these 'races'.  This being said, is it fair to treat animals any differently because they are a different 'race', or are we really the more superior species?