I meant to post this days and days ago after telling my friend Amy about it. This is in memory of all the "doghouse" gifts I've received from my better half over the years. And there have been many, many of them. Oh my yes.
I was cracking up watching this video with Dylan, and then realized that I have actually been the lucky recipient of some of those gifts! Ha!
The last few seconds of the video are kind of lame, but the video on the whole is quite brilliant. Cheers!
In 1987 the book Free to Be A . . . Family by Marlo Thomas came out and a corresponding TV special aired as well; it was a sequel to the 1970s Free to Be . . . You and Me which I've never read. I was 16 years old when the second book was released and I saw the TV special one night. I must have wanted to watch it because I even video taped it. I absolutely loved this song, "The Turn of the Tide", that was written and performed by Carly Simon. I watched it over and over again just to hear the song. The sheet music is included in the book, which I also have. It's a hard song to sing unless you have Ms. Simon's fabulous voice.
To me, the song was an anthem for the youth of the 80s--that it was OUR world and OUR responsibility to help "turn the tide."
We cannot go on sounding alarms And rattling swords and building bombs And fouling the air and the streams underground. We've got to begin to turn it around! It's our right to be heard, Our right to decide-- Here comes the turn of the tide.
Maybe our generation hasn't done everything it should or could have so far to turn it around, but we still have a responsibility to change what we can, however we can. This song is just over 20 years old, and while I may not have quite the positive outlook that I had about the world and the future when I was teenager, I have a duty now as a parent to bring about some meaningful change.
Meanwhile, I'm enjoying this video again after so many years. It really brings back the 80s for me! Note the kids who sing between verses are singing in Russian! (This was the world in the mid 80s when the USSR was our enemy.) And Carly Simon looks great!