Category The Past
There’s No Place Like Home
Growing up in Kansas, I loved The Wizard of Oz. It was a little scary, right? Tornado, The Wicked Witch, her demon-creature like minions, the scary walk through the forest, being marooned away from home. But then there’s Dorothy, Toto, Dorothy’s kindly companions, Glenda the Good, the Emerald City – it’s epic in all the […]
Unexpected Delivery
Nana sent me a CD. It’s of the family-compiled variety, and the first track on it is “The Dream Man’s Train,” a song with a provenance unlike any other I know. My great-grandmother (Granny Pat) used to sing it to us kids as kind of a lullaby, and Nana tells me that Granny’s mother passed […]
The Radio Ranch
Growing up, my grandpa and grandma listened to a country radio station in Wichita, KS called “KFDI – The Radio Ranch.” It was the old school country western music station, at least that’s what it became as a new school of country music emerged sometime in my late elementary school years. Rock and Roll and […]
Junior High School
I woke up with a flash of memory. Since beginning this blog, I have been unable to remember whether I made it out of elementary school with my violin – I know I played in the fourth through sixth grades, but I’ve been unable to recall if I kept playing in junior high. The thing […]
Joyland
A friend posted a Buzzfeed photo set on my Facebook Timeline yesterday – it’s a stroll through the desolate remains of Joyland – the amusement park we Wichitans of the last half of the 20th century grew up knowing best. Though out of commission since at least 2006, the park’s remains still exist to instill […]
It Is Well with My Soul
Growing up, few songs moved me as much as The Great Hymn of the Faith It Is Well with My Soul. The head pastor of the church I grew up in had a near obsession with the hymn – though we always had a music minister in the church, the pastor often led the congregation […]
Christian Rock
Growing up, I thought I was supposed to like Christian Rock music. I remember two band names – Petra and Avenue G, but mostly I was and remain completely ignorant about the genre. I might even be wrong about Avenue G. Petra was huge – the U2 of Christian Rock. I think Avenue G performed […]
Tuning
My mother told me about an old friend the other day. He’s an orchestra teacher at a suburban school in Kansas, and during his hour-long orchestra classes he spends the first fifteen minutes tuning instruments. I can only imagine how tedious and what an assault on the ears that must be. As I’ve just been […]
We Are the World
I woke up in the middle of the night and then again this morning with the megahit 1980s benefit song “We Are the World” running through my head. Remember? I’m not too sure I remember very much. I was a child of the 80s, but a young one. So this post is a memory test […]
Big Family Cacophony
Michael and I are in a hotel in Wichita, Kansas prepping for family Christmas festivities, so I thought I’d use this Musical Me moment to think about some of the Christmas albums that I have listened to over the years. But as I started to write the list, I realized it’s brief – my family […]
Ryan Libel 