Life is What Happens to You While You're Busy Making Other Plans

I adore discovering music. Even older music that is new to me. But the best thing in the world is when I can see something new live, something that just electrifies me to the core. We all know how I feel about live music....

Last week I was at the HandleBar downtown for Betsy's newest cd release party. I was excited about the new cd, "Tales of the Wayward," because I had had the chance to preview it and it's a stellar new chapter in her musical growth. But I was not prepared for everything. She had talked up the other band playing that night, and had even gone so far as to mention them in an interview she could have used solely for her own professional advancement. I knew she believed in their music. Still, I had admittedly neglected to click on the links to their songs she had posted, but in retrospect I am glad.

After Betsy and the Chrome knocked out a few of their songs and everyone was loose and happy, the stage was reset for mr. Gnome. I had a few friends with me, we talked and joked and drank as the drum kit bloomed and the dual mic stand was hooked up. I noticed little, just wandering around, talking and congratulating Betsy and Kate and the guys, then the lights went down again and they got started.

The great thing about new music live is that you don't know the music. You can't sing along. You can't anticipate changes to alter your dance steps in your head. You are carried along. It is a totally sensory experience, purity of aural stimulation. If it is really good, it becomes much more. When Nicole and Sam started playing, I felt a tug on my senses, a feeling of being mentally abducted, and I found myself trying to take in everything at once, unsuccessfully. Her ponytail on top of her head cascading curls in a veil over her eyes. The sheer size of her guitar against the backdrop of her tiny frame. His bare feet and wingspan elbows as he assaulted the drum kit with precision. The fresh and incredible sounds she was making with her guitar. His double duty as keyboardist while still playing the drums. Her use of the dual mic to make her voice reverberate some of the time and dart right to the point others. And her voice. It was indescribable. Eerie and melodic and distorting and rounded and linear. Her words became instruments, saying more than just what they said. The overall sound was arresting, and I know that I was not alone in this because the whole bar was standing still, listening and smiling.

We were all along for the ride. What a great experience.

Check out mr. Gnome. But make sure you see them live.

My mom and I drove north into the greener parts of the panhandle today to check out a festival that promised some good folks and good food. The fact that Betsy Badwater and the Hillbilly Chrome were in attendance was certainly not a mark against them, either. Some photos from the fun:

Men usually aren't very romantic. They scoff at the lovey-dovey way girls will moon over a boy, berating the time spent imagining what a union could be like, disparaging the inability to give up on a boy who just doesn't seem to know they are alive. But I know better. I have seen a time when men swoon, stare lovingly into the world they long for, faithfully hope for the affectionate responses of their objects, and generally go all googoo.

Of course, that time is the beginning of football season.

Each year, I feel it before I see it. My husband's eyes shine brighter. His attention wavers in conversation. He obsesses over draft picks and free agents. He talks about major athletes as if they are on his speed dial. And he is not the only one, by far. The fever swells to a pitch in early September, until the first coin is tossed for the first possession in the first game of the new season. A time of innocence and hope. Flaws are just speculation. Success is still tangible. Blank scoreboards are potential conquests. Arguments can be made for any team to rise from the ashes of last year. And anyone could... go... all... the... way.

I tell my husband, who is a Miami Dolphins fan since birth, that the worst thing his beloved team can give him is hope. But it is really not true. The team doesn't do anything. It does not matter what happened last year, what players have been rounded up on gun charges or assault charges, the hope just arrives like Santa Claus every year. Belief isn't necessary. The presents still appear under the tree.

I have learned that there are really good reasons why this pastime has captured the American imagination. It isn't the opportunity to mindlessly munch fatty foods in front of the tv all day. It isn't the excuse to let the lawn grow, the sink stay clogged, the car stay dirty for just another day. It isn't even the fact that many wives disappear on that day or spend it in the kitchen providing snacks for the guys gathered in front of the tv bought the day before the start of the season. It is The Game. The people. The dynamic plays, the gut-wrenching injuries, the missed opportunities, the emotional roller coaster. It's drawing a line down the center of the room and becoming Us and Them. It's trash talk and consolation. It's fantasy lineups and runaway scorers. It's records broken and hall-of-famers opining between plays. It's the real possibility that each game holds.

It is hope.

I love that my husband moons over football. I used to say I never wanted to be a football wife, but that was before I understood. Now I watch games all alone, by myself. And I even know what's going on. The 2009 football season has just started climbing the first hill. The really big one that lets you look out over everything for miles around and feel something wonderful flutter in your stomach as you realize anything is possible in this beautiful world. The moments just before you crest that hill and the car drops out from beneath as your heart stops and your stomach tries to climb from your mouth. It's the same coaster as last year. Still, there is always hope that you'll reach the end and be the one who didn't throw up.

Many Americans were genuinely elated when Barack Obama was elected. There was bound to be a point when the general feeling of positivity after the election came to an end. But the tide has turned so sharply, and I see people arguing about the nuttiest things. When I was in school, we studied government, the history of our country and the checks and balances of our modern system. We studied it objectively, pretty much, and discussed broad points of law, such as the bill of rights. Mostly, I paid as much attention as was necessary to get through the class.

When I was in the fifth grade, we were sitting in class one day when suddenly the PA system crackled to life and told us they were going to play the launch of the space shuttle being broadcast on the radio for us. We heard the faraway sounds of the countdown, then the loud but muffling sounds of takeoff. We heard the announcers tell us how far up the shuttle was. Then they started to tell us about how the fuel tanks would soon separate before the shuttle left the atmosphere. This was a very very special shuttle mission. A civilian - a teacher - had been chosen to accompany the crew into space, garnering much media attention for the flight. People all over the country had pinned their childhood hopes of space travel on this lucky woman and begun to believe that it could be anyone going up someday. The country was breathlessly riveted as the shuttle took her up for the first time. We sat in our desks, quietly smiling, thinking of the weeks we had spent studying the shuttle and space and the wonders that might be seen as the shuttle left the atmosphere.

Then there was a sound. An awful sound. The announcers on the radio sucked in their breath and told us incredulously that the shuttle had just exploded in the air. My teacher's hand flew like a bird to cover her mouth. We looked around the room at each other, some of us crying, and were afraid to speak or breathe. They said that pieces of the blown wreckage were raining down on the ground below, leaving firey trails through the sky. All I could think about was the poor teacher, killed at her happiest moment, and her family, robbed of their moment of pride and plunged into sudden horror. Her name was Christa McAuliffe, and I will never ever forget her, because of the quiet, hopeful, then horrified moments we spent in that classroom that day. We learned a great deal during that address. We learned that history is a constantly happening thing, that we were a part of it now and would be forever, that it mattered because it wasn't just the old happenings, the days of pioneers and inventors, but every new moment that passed into history each day. No one even considered the possibility that we should not hear that radio address in our classrooms.

No matter your beliefs on who Obama is, he is still the president, leader of the country, and that is fact, not opinion. It is a part of all of us, good or bad. The same was true when it was G.W. up there, despite personal objections to policy or precedent. History is being written everyday, and our children are as much a part of that as any one of us. They don't need to be sheltered from anything that the president has to say. And the president will have a million people there to make sure he does not politicize a speech to children. He is still a father, he knows what children need to hear and what they don't, but none of that is really the issue. Our children are the future, and they need to learn the lesson I learned the day the Challenger exploded miles into the earth's atmosphere: that history is ours, and it happens every day. Because no matter what else is happening or being hotly contested, make no mistake - all of this will one day be history. And I pray the history books are kind to the growing number of people who can do nothing in the wake of their political disappointment other than name calling and childish arguments.

Let's not teach our children that they are not a part of this, and let's not teach them that the way to voice a disagreement is by calling someone names. There's a way to disagree, and people have forgotten that and turned the country into a huge sandbox to fight in.

Grow up, people.