sage advice

"Take it from me," my boss announced as he walked into the office carrying a small but beautiful bouquet of peachy-pink roses, "don't buy flowers when there are 40-mile-an-hour winds outside."

Apparently, half of my Secretaries Day bouquet is blowing down to New Mexico now...

here comes the rain again

It's Friday and my boss is out of town, so I'm watching the delicious rainfall outside and not really thinking about much at all. Suddenly, the sultry voice of Annie Lennox is singing in my head, "Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory," and before I know it, I'm no longer in Colorado Springs watching a rainy April day from my office window... it's now the late summer of 1996 and I'm soaking up another glorious Cambridge sunset from my favorite rooftop perch at St. Catharine's College, a cold Coke in one hand and a rather dishy, smooth-talking British lad holding the other...

I love that about music, how transporting and transcendent it is. What is it about the combination of seemingly insignificant words and sustained, harmonized pitch with often-predictable chord progression that just locks onto your memory like a pit bull and never lets go? I've always been a musician and a music lover, and perhaps not everyone is as emotionally impacted by songs as I am. But if we dig deep enough into the memories, I'll bet we could all come up with a soundtrack for the motion picture of our lives. Here's just a sampling of mine:

Mist Covered Mountains, Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia Pipe Band -- getting ready for church on Sunday mornings

You and Me Against the World, Helen Reddy -- mom and me

Every Time You Go Away, Paul Young -- the 1985 cross-country family road trip in a Buick Century

You Give Love a Bad Name, Bon Jovi -- riding bus # 814 to school every day in Tennessee, driven by Miss Polly Houton

This Means War, Petra -- election night vandalism my junior year of high school

Dogs of War, Pink Floyd -- the first video I ever saw on MTV

Right Here, Right Now, Jesus Jones -- my sister's and my car accident near Buckeye, AZ

Boys of Summer, Don Henley -- dancing on the Renfrew Ferry in Glasgow with Stewart "Blockers" Mackay (still the best-looking kilt-wearer I've ever known)

And of course, the Eurythmics and my summer in England...

The list could go on and on. Do I remember these songs because these were significant events in my life? Or do I remember these events because the music associated with them had an impact on me? Hmm... the perfect dichotomy to let simmer on a mental-backburner day such as today...

supreme court gets it right

I am so overwhelmed this morning by the news from Washington, DC -- the Supreme Court has upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in 2003.

After years of tyrannical lower-court judges trying to legislate from their benches in striking down this law because they're in the pockets of Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and other such atrocious organizations, the Supreme Court had the final word this morning. The right word. Namely, that this procedure is discpicable and inhumane and absolutely unnecessary.

I will spare you the horror of reading about the details of this procedure here, but I encourage all of you to read the Supreme Court's decision for yourselves, and tell me if you've ever read a better description of premeditated murder.

I am so thankful for the intelligent men appointed to our nation's highest court who had the wisdom to stand up today for common sense, morality, and the sanctity of human life. The battle is not over, but it is a tremendous step forward. The naysayers can yelp as much as they want about "established precedent of the Court," but that is really just the ignorant assumption that the Court can never be wrong, that once it makes a decision it must stick with it forever. If that were the case, then slaves would still be considered as property, not people (Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857), and segregation would still be legal (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896). But just as these decisions were reversed by later Courts, I pray that our current Supreme Court members will have the courage to overturn the most vile, dispicable mistake their predecessors ever made... Roe v. Wade.