I started out a series called “My Favorite Musicals” on my other blog by this same name, but I never followed up on my plan to do write more. I’m hoping to remedy that with this series on musicals. If you’re not a fan of musicals, I strongly suggest you take a little time to read these anyway. They may help you understand why musicals have remained a viable art form for many decades. If you still don’t understand or want to understand, I won’t be offended.

Too much.

I have a good friend who says he doesn’t like musicals because it just doesn’t make sense that everyone always knows the same songs. It’s a valid point, but its validity lies solely in a decision to judge musicals on a single issue. I could just as easily say movies like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Avatar suffer from the same issue. To fully enjoy those movies, you must employ a well-known and accepted tactic, and that tactic is called suspension of disbelief.

Suspension of disbelief is the avoidance—often described as willing—of critical thinking and logic in understanding something that is unreal or impossible. --- Wikipedia

If you go into a movie like Indiana Jones (pick a number), you’ll find a fellow who teaches college, but who also manages to be an action hero in his spare time. He can do amazing things with a whip. He knows quite a bit about everything related to the subject matter the movie focuses on (of course, good writers make sure that happens), and he always defeats the bad guy and gets the girl in the end. He does all this to the tunes that are ably applied by John Williams.

To fully enjoy that movie, you have to sit back, toss reality out the window, and enjoy your popcorn. If you decide to analyze it, you’ll be hoarse by the end of the movie because you’ll have said, “That’s not how it would really happen,” or ‘That’s wrong!” so many times you can’t talk any more. Whether things would really happen that way or not, whether they’re wrong or not, you still enjoy the movie because it’s entertaining.

The same sort of thinking needs to be applied to musicals. Suspend disbelief. You’re right. In most instances, people don’t all break out into song. They don’t all have the grace and style to dance at a moment’s notice. But they share one very important thing with the movies I mentioned earlier.

They tell an entertaining story.

Sometimes that story is simply a love story, although there’s really nothing simple about love.

Sometimes they look at history and portray events from a viewpoint that’s not usually discussed.

Sometimes they take ordinary people and reveal them to be extraordinary.

That’s called entertainment, and I’ll submit that a well-done musical may have more value than a well-done action movie. We can debate that later, so don’t have a stroke. I like action movies as well. They may be the subject of a later series.

My first entry into this series is going to be The Sound of Music. It’s the one I started off with originally, but I’m going to revisit it and freshen it up a bit.

I hope you enjoy this series. Feel free to comment.

Take care. Stay Safe.

cma

It's All About Attitude

What exactly is attitude?

One definition states that attitude involves manner, disposition, feelings, or position. We can give it a number of clarifying definitions, but it really comes down to how you look at the world. We've all experienced a variety of attitudes. We've been happy, sad, worried, carefree, ambitious, angry, confused, and maybe even obsessed on occasion. How we feel about people affects how we deal with them. We feel warmth and love around family and those we care about. We fear the unknown. We enjoy a good meal, but it can be made better by those around us and even our locale. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon can fill us with awe, and riding in a roller coaster can consume us with fear and excitement at the same time. 

Thus far, that's all pretty normal stuff. To a certain extent, we control our attitudes, but we can also give up that control, or we can transfer it to others. Advertising's prime purpose is designed to make us look favorably upon a certain product. A teacher wants to change a student's attitude about learning, and that can be done through a variety of ways, but we all remember and understand the idea that we needed to learn something so we could pass a test. Passing a test is equivalent to success, and success makes us feel good. Failing a test can make us feel bad. Anticipating the test can fill us with uncertainty and perhaps even inadequacy.

Have you ever felt as if you could conquer the world following a motivational meeting, yet wonder where that feeling went a day or so later? It's because our attitude has been affected by what was said or what we did in that meeting. When we no longer hear it, or when we no longer do those things, the attitude fades. Unless we refresh it, it will go away completely. That's why we seek out others who share our attitudes. The company of others who agree with us and look at the world in the same fashion makes us comfortable. Attitudes that oppose ours can cause us to question our own if we're honest about examining how we feel, but those same opposing attitudes can be a threat, and we must defeat that threat or it may defeat us.

Getting people to change their minds is so important in our world that it has become a profession. There are people who are paid to make other people look good in the public's eye. They orchestrate facts to their advantage. Some facts may interfere with that advantage, so they'll shuffle them out of the way. They hide them if possible, and they also intimidate those who are aware of those inconvenient facts so they remain silent about them. 

 Accentuate the Positive

Positive attitudes can be worn down quickly if they aren't refreshed. Zig Ziglar once said, "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing--that's why we recommend it daily."

Another way of putting it is Accentuate the Positive. If you accentuate something, you're reinforcing it. During World War II, public morale often was very low. Everyone knew the stakes were high. Not only was the enemy one to be feared, everyone had family, friends, and neighbors who were involved in the war effort. The face of those working at a number of professions changed dramatically as more women entered the workplace. Someone had to do the jobs those actively fighting had left behind. Helping the "war effort" was a common activity. Both the Germans and the Japanese focused on affecting the attitudes of those fighting them. The Germans had Lord Haw-Haw and Axis Sally, and the Japanese had Tokyo Rose. Their shared goal was to demoralize Allied troops and to cause their support at home to wane.

If you're going to strengthen morale, you do it by replacing negative information with positive information. Entertainment is an excellent way to accomplish that. Bing Crosby had a very popular song during this time. Here are a few lines:

"You've got to accentuate the positive,

Eliminate the negative,

Latch on to the affirmative,

Don't mess with Mr. In-Between.

You've got to spread joy up to the maximum,

Bring gloom down to the minimum,

Have faith or pandemonium

Liable to walk upon the scene."

To put the song into perspective, news on the home front was not always positive. On September 26, 1944--just a few months after the invasion of Europe--one of World War II's major operations failed miserably. Though Allied forces outnumbered the Germans by almost 2 to 1, their losses were almost 5 to 1. Over 11,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing in action. It would be over six months before the Americans, British, and their allies could cross the Rhine and penetrate deeply enough into German territory to bring the war on that front to an end.

On the home front, rationing had been in place for quite a while. Meat, sugar, coffee, gasoline, tires, shoes, and clothing all required coupons to purchase. Most households could only buy three gallons of gas a week. Eating out, which was not as common as today, required both cash and ration coupons. Blackouts were a fact of life, even in places far removed from the potential of enemy attack. Anything that could be recycled was recycled. This included metal, rubber, and glass. Children and teenagers gathered them up by walking through neighborhoods with wheelbarrows and wagons.

So, in those times of worry, stress, and fear, a song like "Accentuate the Positive" had a very important role to perform. Its message was clear. No matter how dismal things might appear, the American people needed to have faith or pandemonium would result. Pandemonium is another word for chaos, but the original reference comes from John Milton's epic poem, "Paradise Lost." In that poem, pandemonium is the place where evil spirits dwelled in the center of Hell. 

The song doesn't advocate hiding your head in the sand so you can pretend nothing bad is happening. It advocates choice. We can let bad news drag us down, or we can choose to focus on good things. We can "eliminate the negative" by thinking about the positive. We can "spread joy" and "bring gloom to a minimum."

Take a moment and listen to the following link on YouTube. As you listen to the song, pay attention to the music as well as the jazzy attitude.  

https://youtu.be/5Qk9o_ZeR7s  

Focus on What's Ahead 

Sometimes it seems as if we're in a liferaft in the middle of a stormy sea, but we all carry an effective life jacket with us. It's called attitude. Life is not a stormy sea. It's an adventure. We're not lost, we just haven't found the right path yet. Attitude is everything. If you don't focus on where you want to go, you'll veer off course. If you focus on the bad things, you miss out on the good things. Like that daily bath Zig Ziglar spoke of, you have to constantly refresh the positives in your life and wash all that negativity away.

There's no better time to start than now. 

Take care and be safe.

cma 

Photographs, TV, and Movies

On occasion, I pause to think about how much everything around us changes on a regular basis. For my grandparents, the world was just learning to fly when they were born, and they saw us go to the Moon. They also experienced two World Wars and a few localized ones. Photographs were nothing new to them, of course, but moving pictures were introduced during their lifetimes, and then sound was added. Along the way, radio and television helped change the way people lived.

You can see evidence of that latter statement in the way we build our houses. Before radio and definitely before television, homes often had expansive front porches. They served two purposes in warm weather. Families could stay outside while their homes cooled off after the day’s heat, and they could also visit with neighbors and people walking down the street. Television drew us indoors, and it’s a good thing the advent of air conditioning came along at about the same time. Consequently, porches began to get smaller and smaller.

The oldest surviving picture of a human being was taken nearly two hundred years ago in 1838! It shows a man getting his shoes shined on a busy street in France. He’s the only one in the picture because he’s the only one standing still long enough for the picture’s exposure time to capture his presence. He's down in the lower left of the attached photograph.

Since that time, photographs have become a national pastime. We take pictures of ourselves at special events, and if one’s not handy, we’ll take pictures anyway. We take pictures of our vacations, our friends, our family, landmarks, and our meals. I sometimes wonder if we’re spending so much time recording our lives, we’ve missed some golden opportunities to actually live them.

As a sidenote, you probably have noticed that people didn’t smile when they posed for pictures in the old days. I always assumed it was because they had to hold their pose for so long, a smile might be difficult to sustain, but it turns out people didn’t smile when photographed because they considered smiles inappropriate. The transition from paintings to pictures had some carry-over of old traditions and beliefs.

One of the things I like about looking at old photographs is they capture a point in time that has long faded away. In essence, no matter how old the picture may be, we’re staring into the past when we look at it. Because of that, we can see Abraham Lincoln conferring with General Grant during the Civil War. We can see Mark Twain in his white suit sitting on his lawn smoking his inimitable cigar. We can also see the horrors of the Holocaust and the aftermath of atomic bombs being dropped on Japan.

Television and movies have amplified the ability to see the past. If you want to know what the world was like when I was born, watch “I Love Lucy.” Television programs and movies not only reflect the times in which they were made, they also teach us a little bit about the world as it existed before they were around. Technological achievements aside, their efforts to show us what parting the Red Sea might have looked like, or demonstrate how humanity and inhumanity can exist side-by-side. We can witness the great power of love and compassion, as well as the terrible evil of hatred and prejudice. 

While photographs, television, and movies may entertain us, they can also educate us. If you don’t believe me, make a point of watching “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Read the book, of course, but watch Gregory Peck portray Atticus Finch. Watch “Judgment at Nuremburg.”

There is a downside to it all, of course. My wife and I have a mutual appreciation for movie musicals. We’ve started listening to their soundtracks as we go to bed. Last night, we listened to “Meet Me in St. Louis.” She’s from St. Louis, so she has a special connection to it. By the time I’d heard “Meet Me in St. Louie, Louie” in its several iterations, the tune was stuck in my head. By the way, the movie features the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. Sandy’s grandmother told her about attending that great event when she was young. In fact, one of the places Sandy took me on my first visit to St. Louis was the Art Museum, and it was built for that World’s Fair.

All of it is captured in photographs.

Take care. Be safe.

cma

Done Too Soon

This is going to be a short treatise on the nature of growing old. This year, if all goes well, I’ll celebrate my 70^th birthday.

I’ll be honest. I had to read that again. Out loud. Birthdays start piling up on you after a while. Then they get sneaky and surprise you. I can’t remember ever actively thinking about living long enough to celebrate my 70^th birthday—yet here it is. It’s right around the corner, peaking at me when it thinks I’m not looking. The white-haired, bearded fellow in the picture I'm including today had black hair once-upon-a-time. Life is about change.

As I’ve aged, more and more of the people who raised me, taught me, served as examples to me, and helped me discover who I wanted to become have left this world for whatever lies beyond. For example, I started working at the Oklahoma Department of Human Services back in 1978. Virtually everyone who was there when I started has since passed away or retired. The people who work there now are strangers.

My memories of those early days as I carved out the future lying ahead of me are fond ones—for the most part—but even the unpleasant memories have been softened by the passage of time. I owe a lot of who I am to a few of those people. They shaped my attitudes, taught me skills I still use, and they bring a smile to my face when I think of them.

I was an English major, and I taught school for a while. Literature was my forte in those days, and I still remember quite a bit of it. I have a number of favorite poets, but let’s start with John Keats. One of his most well-known poems starts out:

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teaming brain…

He’s talking about unfinished business. While we may start out with enthusiastic glee as we begin the race life presents us, we eventually realize we may not be around long enough to do everything we envisioned.

Songwriters are also poets. Neil Diamond has a powerful song named “Done Too Soon.” After providing a list of historical figures, he concludes with:

And each one there

Has one thing shared.

They have sweated beneath the same sun.

Looked up in wonder at the same moon.

And wept when it was all done.

For bein’ done too soon.

In his poem “Intimations of Immortality,” Wordsworth talks about the process of life beginning before birth and returning to that beginning after death. “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting” leads on to “clouds gathering around a setting sun.”

In our youth, many of our life decisions and actions are made with an unspoken belief we’re going to live forever. As we get older, we understand we’re not going to be around forever.

We’ve all had loved ones and friends who have passed away. Some of those deaths were expected due to the person’s age or health, but a good number of them arrived without warning. All death is inescapably tragic in the sense that a life that once was vibrant and filled with wonder and expectation is now just—gone. When we think of those we have lost, our memories bring them to life again for just a little while, and we’re comforted by the belief we may see them again someday.

On the positive side, there’s much in life to bring a smile to my face. I love my wife, and my heart skips a beat when she looks my way. My granddaughter is young enough to see the world through the same youthful eyes I saw it through when I was her age. I smile when I think about the wonders awaiting her. She’s growing up in a far different world than I, but I appreciate the excitement of discovery.

That’s just how life works.

We’ll all be “done too soon” someday. I hope those who remember us take a moment or two as they sit back and close their eyes to allow those memories to bring us back to the world of the living—if only for a short while.

Take care. Be safe.

cma

Look to the Skies

A really interesting thing has happened in the last few years. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an unclassified version of a classified report it is required by law to provide to Congress. According to that report, they’re currently focusing on 177 cases in which the reported object (or objects) appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities and require further analysis.

After decades of treating Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) reports as unworthy of serious consideration, the government is now treating them differently. They’re also calling them something different. The UFO has evolved into an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). Their basic nature hasn’t changed. They’re still things observed in the sky, and they’re still unidentified. Beyond that, you may have to get elected to Congress or the Presidency to find out what’s in the classified version of that report.

One thing needs to be clear at this point. Just because a thing up there in the sky is unidentified doesn’t mean it’s a flying saucer (or whatever shape it takes). It just means no one’s able to figure out what it is. Most of us are not trained in the fine art of figuring stuff like that out. If it looks like a bird, it’s probably a bird. If it looks like a plane, that’s probably what it is. If it looks like a weather balloon, it’s probably a weather balloon (or it may be a Chinese surveillance device, as we’ve learned recently). I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a weather balloon, and that’s why it’s always been the go-to answer for unexplained things in the sky.

Reports of strange things in the skies go back for hundreds of years. Some believe there are descriptions of UAPs in the Bible, and there’s a carving in a cathedral in Spain that really looks like an astronaut in a space suit. Look at the picture included in this entry.

  

As you look at that picture, focus on the space helmet. Look at the bottom of the boots. There’s a backpack of some sort that looks remarkably like the oxygen tanks worn by our astronauts, and the guy’s holding onto a tether. This carving was part of the cathedral’s construction between the 16^th and 18^th Centuries!

There are a lot of believers rooting for UAP sightings to be extraterrestrial in nature, but just because a lot of people believe something doesn’t mean it’s true. It just means a lot of people believe it. I grew up reading science fiction. I watched Star Trek when it was first broadcast. I’m a firm believer that there probably are other intelligent life forms “out there.” Have I seen things in the sky I can’t identify? Yes. Most of us have. Are some of those things from another world? Maybe.

I’ve had three experiences with UFOs (oops, UAPs).

The first was while I was in college. That one turned out to be a bunch of folks with lights strapped to their bodies as they practiced skydiving in the dark. At least, that was the story they passed out publicly, and it kinda fit what I saw.

The second happened a little over ten years later. I saw something strange in the wheat field south of the runway at Altus Air Force Base. (That’s in Oklahoma if you’re not familiar with it.) When I asked someone who should have known what it was, he emphatically told me I hadn’t seen anything, and I never saw him again. Weird, huh?

The third time was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was watching an extremely bright light move across the sky from east to west, and then it just winked out of existence. My first thought was it was a high-altitude jet reflecting the morning sun, but I’ve seen that particular phenomenon, and this didn’t resemble what I’d seen in the past. Then, I thought it had gone behind a cloud, but there were no clouds in the sky (that happens a lot in New Mexico).

So, three sightings. One explained. Two are still unknown.

The United States government has elected to reveal what it knows about UAPs. Basically, their knowledge amounts to “We ain’t got a clue, but they’re there.”

That’s pretty comforting, isn’t it?

According to a fellow I met in New Mexico, UAPs really are from other worlds, and the people flying in them disguise themselves as humans. Some are nice guys. Some aren’t. Some are working with the U.S. Government. Some aren’t. To what end? According to him, they’re here to help us and keep us from destroying ourselves. I personally think they’re doing a pretty poor job of that, but that’s just my opinion. Also, according to him, some of those aliens have wings and look like angels. They’ve spoken to him. Let’s make that past tense. They spoke to him. He’s since passed away. According to his family, it was a stroke.

But was it? Or were they eliminating a potential threat?

Isn’t it great how one question leads to another? My wife was a little worried about me meeting with him. She was afraid the aliens (if they existed) might link me to him. I wasn’t worried (much). Everything he told me is already “out there” in the UAP literature. Much of it’s been around for decades.

According to UAP believers, there are lots of different aliens. The Greys look like the traditional image of a naked alien with an over-sized head, huge black eyes, and, of course, gray skin. There are the Nordic aliens who are tall, blond-haired, and white. There are the Reptilians, and—uh--they look like reptiles. Then there are the cryptozoologicals (just plain strange-looking fellows). Some aliens are from the future. Some are from other dimensions. Some are from Atlantis. Some live in New Jersey (no, I didn’t throw that in as a joke). You’ve got aliens and alien artifacts at Area 51, and others are at a place named Dulce in New Mexico. Sandy and I have been to Dulce, and we have a really eerie story about that place, but it didn’t involve aliens – at least, I don’t think it did.

Then there are the Unidentified Underwater Objects. My friend in New Mexico talked about them as well. He said there’s a secret underwater base off the coast of California where aliens work with humans. Humans get there by submarine (he’d been there as well as he was in the Navy). There are three underground tunnels that submarines can use to get from one coast to another, too. In fact, four submarines can use them and travel side-by-side because they’re huge.

In conclusion, there are LOTS of ideas. Facts – verifiable facts – are a different story. But that doesn’t mean it’s all fictitious. Strange things in the skies have been there for ages. They may be hovering over your house right now, because for all I’ve mentioned so far, we haven’t even discussed abductions – or cattle mutilations – or – or – well, you get the idea. If you see something strange, take a picture.

Back in the early 50’s, Hollywood produced the original version of “The Thing.” It was the motion picture debut of James Arness (Gunsmoke’s Matt Dillon). He played the alien. You may remember the closing line. After their encounter with a hostile alien, the reporter in the group ended his report with these words:

“Look to the skies. Look to the skies.”

Remember, if you see a flying saucer, take a picture.

Take care. Stay safe.

cma

Who Should Be President?

Like everyone, I've got my own opinions about how things in this country should be run. I'm not an expert in politics, but I turned 18 in 1971, which by coincidence was the year the amendment to lower the voting age to 18 was passed. That means I've been voting for over 50 years now. I remember being aware of politics as far back as the early 60's when my mother told me to listen to one of President Kennedy's speeches because he was "a very important man." I listened. He had a funny accent (my keen observation of politics was sharp even then).

The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence concluded that document by saying: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Those men knew, of course, that their lives and their fortunes were very much at risk if the Revolution failed, but it's the last item on the list I believe needs attention. Those men placed their honor at risk as well, and they treasured their honor as much as they valued their own lives and fortunes. It was "sacred." Over 2000 years ago, Publicis Syrus asked a very good question: "What is left when honor has been lost?"

What indeed?

We could amend the famous story of Diogenes whose search for an honest man resulted only in finding rascals and scoundrels, to a search for an honorable person in politics. What sort of person would that be, I wonder, and why is he or she in politics in the first place?

It has become the practice of many of us to "vote for the lesser of two evils." Some vote against one person or party rather than researching the one who receives their precious vote. It's a cynical attitude, yet we've become so dis-enamored with the quality of those running for political office we've ceased believing in some of the things the Founding Fathers held as essential to the very foundation of our country. We don't believe in honor anymore. We certainly don't believe our politicians, in general, are honorable people. Scandals aside, what do you genuinely know about the people running for office these days?

I'm not implying, of course, that everyone in politics is dishonorable, but I'm reminded of a very special movie you should watch if you haven’t seen it. It’s not on television very often these days, but it does show up now and then. If not, you can always rent it. It’s well worth watching. That movie is "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

If you’re not familiar with the story, Jimmy Stewart's character, Jefferson Smith, is chosen to replace a U.S. Senator who has died in office. Now, Mr. Smith is a naive fellow, who is excited about the Washington Monument, reverential at the Lincoln Memorial, and eager to do something special for the youth of America. His plan comes into conflict with those of the political machine that got him selected in the first place. They thought he’d be easy to control. When he proposes a national site for a boy’s camp that also happened to be where they wanted to put a dam that would make them all rich if it was built, they fought back by spreading lies about him and fostering a letter-writing campaign to have him removed from office. As the perverse efforts of that political machine bear upon him unmercifully, he's tempted to give up. Even his supporters urge him to quit. But he doesn't quit.

Why?

Because he’s right. The naive young man who treasured the ideals that made his country great came up against greed and power and corruption, and he knew all the lies and threats couldn't stand up to the truth. He was going to tell the truth if it killed him. It almost did. At the conclusion of the movie, he’s conducting a filibuster in the Senate. After losing his voice and energy, he collapses in exhaustion. But, never fear. It’s a Frank Capra movie, so it ends happily as one of the leaders of the opposition declares him innocent. But the point of the entire movie is clear. If you believe something is right, you'll stand up to the Devil himself and declare it.

Just one more quick thought.

In the musical "Man of La Mancha," the story of the insane man tilting at windmills is summed up in the song, "The Impossible Dream." Listen to it, and you'll hear phrases like "fighting the unbeatable foe," and "to fight for the right without question or pause." When was the last time you saw a politician trying to "right the unrightable wrong" or "running where the brave dare not go?" The only thing that made Don Quixote seem mad was his belief that he could make the world a better place. His willingness to do what was necessary to accomplish that goal added to that perception. He viewed it as an unreachable star, but the fact it was unreachable didn't mean he was going to stop trying to reach it. After all: "This is my quest, to follow that star, No matter how hopeless, No matter how far."

We need more Jefferson Smiths and Don Quixotes.

Maybe a few will show up in the next election.

Take care and be safe.

cma