A Real Hero

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“We must appreciate and
never underestimate
our own inner power.”
Noah Galloway
Real Hero

Noah Galloway, Dancing with the Stars Season 20 contestant.

A few years before the tragedy of 911, my son had to write a third grade essay about a hero. He asked me, “what makes a hero and who I thought was a hero?”

I told my young son that real heroes are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Heroes can be found in all walks of life. They are people who work jobs that are not only thankless but can also have jobs that jeopardize their own well-being. I told him that my heroes range from the janitor at his school to soldiers and veterans, policemen, firemen, doctors, nurses, teachers, all the unsung workers and the backbone of America.

On Monday evening on Dancing with the Stars I watched through tears, contestant Noah Galloway, a former United States Army soldier, a model and athlete dance his heart out. He dedicated the dance by saying, “This dance represents a journey of acceptance from the man I was to the man I’ve become.”

You see Noah was injured during the Iraq War, losing his left arm above the elbow and left leg above the knee. Before Noah danced his routine he told us his story. How he put his life back together after he was injured in 2005 during “Operation Iraqi Freedom”.

After years of spiraling downward in his life he awoke one day and looking in the mirror he stopped seeing what was missing and began seeing a reflection of what he still had.

Mr. Galloway is a true inspiration to young and old and represents to me, the true meaning of a real hero.

Shine On

Yip Harburg

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“Words make you think a thought.
Music makes you feel a feeling.
A song makes you feel a thought.”
E. Y. Harburg

Yip Harburg

E.Y. Harburg, April 8, 1896 to March 5, 1981

Do you recognize this man? Most of us under the age of 60 don’t recognize or even know his name and what he meant to music and literature.

His name is Edgar Yip Harburg and today Mr. Harburg would have been 119 years young.

His career spanned over fifty years from the 1920s to 1981. He was known as a master lyricist, poet and book writer but also was dedicated to social justice.

Writing the words to over 600 songs including the well – known Brother, Can You Spare a Dime; he wrote one of my favorite songs, Over the Rainbow, and all the lyrics in the 1939 motion picture classic The Wizard of Oz. His Over the Rainbow song was voted Number 1 song of the 20th century by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Recording Institute of America.

Do you have a famous or non-famous person you wish you could meet and sit and talk with? I have numerous people I wish I could have met. And one of them is Mr. Yip Harburg.

Shine On

How’s That ?

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“People are always so boring when they band together.
You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies
that make a person interesting.”
Andy Warhol

Hows That

Everybody has their own idiosyncrasies. Some people bite their nails. Some people twist their hair. Some have a particular way they speak. And some have sayings that they always use.

A common idiosyncrasy of a young person is using the word “like”. Like they say it all the time. Like when they are telling a story, or like when they are quoting something someone said. I remember using this word in every sentence when I was young. It took a great deal of effort to break this habit of mine.

The last few years I’ve noticed that my husband has a saying he uses quite often. He’s an Italian native New Yorker, so he has a repertoire of sayings such as: fugeddaboudit, how ya doin’?, boombots and stuppiad (these I hear quite often when we are kidding around). He has been using, “how’s that?” at the end of most of his sentences when he’s telling me a story.

So this post is dedicated to my husband. How’s that?

Shine On

iTunes

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“Occasionally when I’m procrastinating writing,
I’ll while away the hours on iTunes. You can just keep going
forever and find these bands you’d never normally hear of.”
Marisha Pessl
iTunes

Listening to music has become so much easier since the introduction of iTunes.

My son introduced me to iTunes over a decade ago. This is when I got my first iPod. Believe me, I waited and put up quite a fight to give up my CDs, but iTunes is a work of pure genius that we all take for granted.

Back in the 1970s when 8-track tapes were all the rage, I hated 8-tracks! You’d be listening to a great piece of music and the damn track would just end in the middle of a song. This made listening to music entirely unenjoyable.

So, I bought a small cassette recorder/player and bought all my music in cassette format. I can remember listening to music in my car using the portable cassette player. Then the technology went to CD players. I held out for quite a few years before I bought my first CD player.

When I began using iTunes, I decided to sell my 100s of CDs. I created a Craigslist account, posted the CD’s for sale, and as soon as I hit that post button, I instantly received several calls from people wanting to buy the entire collection. I sold the CD collection within one hour of posting them for sale. I haven’t looked back since.

With iTunes I can organize my music with Playlists. I have music to write by, music to create with, music for banjo playing. Then I have my Pop Music to walk and workout to, as well as my classical music to do my Ballet Beautiful workout and to chill out to, all in different Playlists with easy access. But what I really think is cool, is that my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro all have the exact music I want on each device.

Thanks Steve Jobs. You really were a genius when it came to technology. Thanks Jeff Robbin, Bill Kincaid, and Dave Heller for developing iTunes. A thousand years from now, you guys will be the Benjamin Franklin’s of the next new millennium because of your development of iTunes.

Shine On