Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love

The categories of Christmas music includes almost all genres of music. There are incredibly beautiful songs like “Silent Night,” that fill this category of music with musicality and beauty and then there are atrocious and annoying songs like “Holly Jolly Christmas.” Talk show host David Letterman feels the same way about Christmas music except for one exception, Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).

This was a special year for this song. After performing this song for almost thirty years on The David Letterman Show, she sang it for the last time earlier in December.



Also, this was the first year, I brought this song into my music classroom and helped my 5th graders perform this song at their Holiday assembly.

I was reminded of how great this song was when I watched 20 Feet From Stardom last summer (I wrote about this film in more detail in this post).  One of the most powerful stories in this film is about Darlene Love. She was working as a maid after giving up on her singing career. She heard “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" on the radio and decided that she recommit herself to music.

This was the story I told my 5th graders when I introduced this song to them. I also told them about how Darlene Love was not given credit for some of the greatest songs in pop music like “He’s A Rebel,” and how only recently she got her due for being one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music.

I taught them how to sing the back up part and the lead vocals. We explored the form and learned how to play the chord progressions on xylophones. At first some of the students who weren’t Christians were no comfortable singing this song. However after discussions on how other classes were going to sing music from different cultures.  Also, the fact that this song was more about the universal value of togetherness and family more than Jesus Christ, my 5th graders really bought into this song.

“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is one of the greatest Christmas songs and probably the greatest Christmas pop song because it embraces and reflects its genre authentically and beautifully. Like Phil Specter’s other masterpieces like “Unchained Melody” (which I discuss in this previous post), “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), features and unbelievable production featuring and incredible, groove, depth of sound and most importantly, soul.

Darlene leans into the melody with a mixture of Gospel, teenage heartache and emotional depth. Throughout all of this there is joy at the thought of being together with the one that she wishes would come home. It is this mixture of feelings, which reflects not what Christmas used to be about, but what Christmas and holidays in general have become for so many people in our culture.

There’s nothing saccharine, cheesy or campy about “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."  It’s spirited in expression, and its rocks.  What else could want in a Holiday song?

Parenthood - Week 83: Christmas And Then Some

We really enjoyed our time with Ollie this past week of Christmas. For us it just wasn’t one day,. First there was dinner with Diana’s immediate family on Christmas eve, then we had our own family Christmas time on the morning of the 25th, there was the gathering with Diana’s maternal extended family and then a Christmas gathering at my parents house a couple days later. Oh, and I can’t forget the Diana’s paternal extended family who got together the weekend before. So in total Ollie had five Christmas gatherings.

Ollie did really great this year. He can handle staying up pass his bedtime better than he did last year. Now that he can walk, he can more independently through a room and with the words he learns everyday he can better advocate for himself. While we make sure we know where he is at all times, we feel less of a need to be watching him for the entire time we are at one of these gatherings.

Ollie is starting to get the idea of what this whole holiday season is about. He got more excited about gifts then he did last year, but he also got bored of the process of opening them. Ollie met Santa Claus for the first time and cried angrily through most of this experience (though he loved Mrs. Claus). Every morning when he came downstairs and our Christmas tree lights were not on, he got very concerned until one of us plugged in the strip of lights.

This holiday seasons Ollie decorated his first gingerbread man, made his first tree ornament and made Christmas cookies with his grandmother for the first time. He also learned the song, “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” figured out where his ears are and learned how to put his dirty laundry in the hamper.

Overall it was a fantastic week. Yes, it was a little crazy but we got through all of the various family get-togethers and still managed to carve outßß some time for us to enjoy this time as family.

This will probably be the last year we slept in on Christmas morning because Ollie didn’t realize the emphasis on opening presents this year. This is probably the last year he doesn’t have specific request Christmas presents. However, we can still emphasize with Ollie what was the most important part of this holiday.

The desire to share life together as a family is at the center of the most important holidays from different cultures. This is why we get onto planes with toddlers and drive hours through snowstorms.

I’m not sure what Ollie got out of this past. I hope he enjoyed the energy and positivity o this time of year, but more than that I wish that he left this past week with beautiful memories of his family.

The Challenge Of Atticus Finch

When Atticus Finch told Scout “you never understand a person until you consider things from his point a view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” he was challenging his daughter and the rest of the world with an impossible task.

Yes, we can consider things from another person’s point of view but this is limiting because try as hard as we can, many of us cannot climb into another’s skin. A man will never face with the choice on whether or not to have an abortion, someone without children will never understand what it means to be a father, and most Caucasian people will never know what its like to be discriminated on the basis of their own race.

We live in a world where we live in constant tension over critical issues that remain unresolved in our society. There’s marriage equality, health care, the death penalty, abortion, welfare, rape culture, religious discrimination, gender issues and racial inequality.  These issues seep into every facet of our society. They are so present and so pervasive, sometimes we forget that they lie in the back of our minds and the conversations with people we encounter every day.

We play nice with family member and know better than to talk about religion and politics but things come up. We try to steer the conversation to another place or simply walk away but it’s tough, because as much as we try to understand someone else’s perspective, often we fail at this challenge

There is a place in our discussions for accepting plurality and acknowledging that all viewpoints are valid and should be respected. However some opinions that lack reason, that embrace a complete lack of consideration for opposing viewpoints themselves do not deserve the tolerance that they are often afforded.

Almost all modern Americans will not accept Nazis' view on exterminating the Jews as reasonable and the Priest arguments based on Bible quotes that advocated slavery leading up to the Civil Wars. People went to jail, fought wars and died because they would not tolerate the existence of these paradigms.

Are there opinions in our current debates that we will look back on generations from now and will not accept like we do not accept the practice of slavery? I’m sure there are, but it’s difficult to know.

When do we try the impossible and walk a mile in someone else’s skin and when do with do we give up, pick up arms and wage war?  Can we understand those who are unreasonable? Can we accept what we can’t understand? How do we know when to stand up and fight with the courage of our convictions and how do we know what to walk away?  Some look to God for these answers, while others look to history.

There are no easy answers but that's no excuse to not struggle with these questions, but we've got to try.  There are battles being fought every day and we've got to do what's right for ourselves, our family and our country.

Parenthood – Week 82: High Heels, Blush & Purses

Ollie often gravitates toward Diana's shoes when he looks inside the front closet. After picking them up and carrying them around, he sometimes tries on a tan high heel shoe and attempts to put his own feet in the shoe. He took this a step further in my mom’s house and managed to get both of his feet into a pair of her dress shoes and shuffle around the house.

Ollie usually entertains himself when Diana is getting ready for the day and sometimes he gazes up at her as she does her morning routine. One morning I noticed him pointing up at Diana and saying “blusssh.” Diana looked down at him and gently brushed her make-up brush on Ollie’s cheeks.

The other day when Diana was checking out at Old Navy, I was watching Ollie as he walked around the store. Before I knew it, he had pair of hoop earrings in one hand and a small black purse in the other. I only held him back when he tried to grab four purses off the rack at the same time.

In all of these situations Ollie was overjoyed, almost to the point of giggling. So what do we do during these moments? Smile.

It’s not like all of Ollie’s interests are “feminine.” One of his favorite toys is a small play wooden tool set with little screws, nails, a hammer and a screwdriver. Get him near a toddler basketball hoop and he will spend a good chunk of time trying to get a ball through that hoop. He's obsessed with throwing "baaa" or balls. Did we push these toys on Ollie? Not really, he gravitated to the basketball hoop at my mom's house and learned how to use the tool set when we got it for him.

Diana and I are not on a mission. We are not trying to have Ollie be the person to break down gender roles and stereotypes. Our approach is to nurture Ollie’s interests regardless of the gender normally associated with that interest in our society. If that means that we support Ollie’s interest in fashion as well as his love of power tools, so be it. What is most important to us is not that Ollie subscribe to any gender roles but rather that he feels free to pursue whatever he wants regardless of gender stereotypes.

When I tell people about Ollie doing “girly” things, I often get applauded for being open-minded and progressive in my parenting style. I appreciate the support, but for me allowing Ollie to play with purses isn’t really a tough thing for me. Part of this has to do with the fact that I also enjoyed playing with my mom's things growing up. My mom did nothing to encourage this behavior but she didn’t discourage it, either. Do I question my own masculinity because of this? No, actually I think I have a better sense of what it means to be man and love myself because of these experiences.

The other thing that makes it not a big deal to support Ollie in his exploration is because of the support of our friends and family and the how much society has progressed. Once upon a time, parents were told that if they allowed their sons to engage in activities that weren’t stereotypically male, they would become messed up when they became older and worst of all they would succumb to the perversion and sickness of homosexuality.

Well, since along with Bill Gates, the geeks have inherited the earth and the consequences for letting your son play with make-up are non-existent.

In many ways its easy for me to be accepting of Ollie playing with purses.

Things will change. At a certain point Ollie will begin to see the differences between men and woman more clearly and he will start categorizing things as being things by gender. This is a stage that that is developmentally appropriate and necessary. At other points in his life he will not care of what is identified as being girly. As my students get older I see this go in waves, as it should.

The bottom line for me is what makes Ollie happy.  I'm not going to let anything stand in the of the joy he gets from exploring the world around him. The world is magical to him, there's a spark, a spirit in him that shines through when he pursues something he is interested in.  There is nothing bad that can come from that—only good.

Ollie can choose what he is into, and if other people in the world don't think his choices are right, that's their problem.

Year 5: Week 16 – Week Of Insanity?

And it’s over.

Like a sandcastle almost completely washed away by waves, the stress, the insanity and the joy of the passed week are almost completely gone, leaving memories of the times that are passed.

In some ways this is the most intense week of the school year for our music department. We have special rehearsals that changed around our schedules this week leading up with an elementary school performance in the day on Thursday and then a middle school and high school concert in the evening.

Yes, it was an intense week and there was a lot to do. Every day it felt like we had just enough time to get done what needed to be done, but we got through it all and we had a good time.

There’s a adage in music education that talks about how the most amount of fun and satisfaction comes from performing great music at a high level. The same goes for teaching.

As a department, we did a great job preparing our students and ourselves for this week. Students weren’t learning notes and rhythms this past week. That work we purposely did in weeks previous. This allowed us to have the students truly “play music,” and enjoy the preparing time we had in the auditorium.

Pushing the kids to have the songs mastered earlier forced us all as teachers to have a better sense of the passing and the process of our teaching. Having this planning done earlier meant that we weren’t focusing on coming up with lessons this week; rather we were following a plan.

The most important thing that made this past week wonderful was the fact that the members of the music department remembered one very important thing: these are all our students. Even though I have yet to teach the first graders, I have a responsibility to them and even though the other general music teacher hasn’t the a taught high school soprano in seven years, she is still her teacher.  Add into a mix one of the best student teachers we've ever had and a Jenga tower and you've got a good time had by all.

I'm looking forward to teaching without having a performance looming in January, but I'm also looking forward to this time next year.  If we can have fun and also work hard creating great musical experiences for our kids during this past week, then imagine the fun we're going to have during the rest of the year.  

Parenthood – Week 81: Words

In the past week Ollie has said “Good girl” referring to Buffy, named three books by title: “Hat” for Red Hat, Green Hat, “Hop” for Hop And Pop and “Boom” for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Ollie now uses “mommy” in his regular vocabulary and for the past couple days has been saying “bubbles” reflecting his current obsession. Ollie’s talking up a storm and he’s really been in the mood to imitate sounds that Diana and I make as we interact with him.

I don’t remember Ollie’s first word. Some people take the first sounds their children make as a baby and call them first words but Diana and I didn’t see it this way. When he first said “dada,” we both knew that he wasn't referring to me as he repeatedly made that sound crawling around the house and pointing to almost everything in the room except for me.

In the same way that Ollie’s first social smile was meaningful to us because it showed a level of interaction and affection, parents often look to first words as signs of care, and interest.  Sometimes this causes parents to interpret random sounds as words when the infant hasn't associated the sound with any object or action.

I’ve always loved listening to Ollie explore his voice. Sometimes after we put Ollie down for the night we will here him talking to himself. Diana calls this his “Dear Diary”-time. We will here him talk to himself joyfully like someone going over what they did that day with a friend. Then there’s the time when he walks around and joyfully screams at the top of his lungs the highest pitch I’ve ever heard a human being make.

There are times when it’s clear that he doesn’t have the word for what he’s trying to express and that can be frustrating for him, but he’s doing a good job at working at it. We taught Ollie some sign language and it’s been really nice for Ollie to be able to communicate with us better. Also it’s a way we can teach him to use his words. Instead of pointing to a food that he wants more of, I ask him to make the sign for “more” which gets him focused and forces him to be less demanding.

Toddlers learn words that they can’t actually speak. At certain points the muscles that control speech catch up with what they are trying to say and then you have an explosion of words. Right now, Ollie is giving us a bunch of new words and its super cute.

I remember Diana and I wondering what Ollie’s voice was going to be like when he started talking back when he was an infant. I got to tell you, it’s the cutest thing you’ve ever heard. It’s soft, light, and so full of spirit. When he talks, it’s almost like he’s singing the words.  Sometimes when he's talking I just want to pick him up and give him a hug and make him understand how much I love hearing his voice and proud I am of him for making himself heard.

Year 5: Week 15 – A Different Kind Of Pride

As I stood there watching the before school concert of our extra-curricular choral groups I felt a deep sense of pride. I wasn’t feeling the pride of at teacher because I didn’t help any of these students learn these songs. I was feeling the pride of an administrator who because of behind-the-scenes hard work had made this amazing experience happen for their children and their teacher.

I’ve worked to set up musical groups at my school. I’m the one who started our curricular band program, the extracurricular Wind Ensemble, and a music summer camp. All of these groups took an immense amount of work to get going and it’s all been worth the effort. I was intimately involved in not only he creation but also the running of these groups so while I was setting up opportunities for my students I was also setting up opportunities for myself as a teacher.

These extra-curricular choir groups were a different situation. This year we hired a new choir teacher to replace the teacher who retired last year. The teacher that was retired was involved in the extra-curricular choir groups. We wanted to set up a situation so that the new teacher could inject his own personality and musical interests in these groups while expanding the extra-curricular choir program to be more inclusive.

When you take something that has been successful and you want to help it evolve there are people with great intentions and concerns who want to help guide the future of that thing. This was the case with the extra-curricular choir programs, which engendered a great many discussions, and many email conversations.

We had a vision of where we wanted to see these groups go. It wasn’t that we didn’t like what had been happening previously. We loved it but there potential untapped and a desire for the group to become something different for our community, so I worked towards this vision.

It took months and at times I wasn’t sure if it was worth all of the work, but I couldn’t give up because the vision we were working towards directly reflected our school’s philosophy and we needed to make this happen or our children.

Seeing those kids sing their hearts out made me feel proud that I was able to create this opportunity for them. In addition, I watched my colleague, the new choir teacher, have a blast leading them and seeing the fruition of his hard work. Knowing that I had created a situation that allowed him to be successful made my feeling of pride and enjoyment of that moment overflow.

Yes, it’s a great feeling doing something yourself and being successful, but in some ways its an even better feeling setting up a situation so that a colleague can enjoy a high level of success and have a blast getting there.

I could get used to doing this kind of work.