The Week After Valentines Day

I recall quite well being younger and times when it almost felt good to be single and unattached during Valentines Day.

And then I recall also how it could be a very lonely holiday indeed; full of reminders of past loves gone wrong, or simply just gone. I also look back and reminisce about the joyous activities in my life and how glad I am to have someone with whom I have and can share those times. Of course there are things that are a pleasure to share, or a talisman of remembrance of trips together or romantic moments of the past. But so too it is hard sometimes to conjure up the urge to provide a romantic “thing” on cue.

When asked about Mother’s Day, my father used to say how he tried to make every day feel like Mother’s Day. In many ways I think about trying to make the feeling of Valentines Day extend out to be a lifelong habit. Of course it doesn’t always work out, but so too how often does the idea of a particular day being forced on you in a holiday like this coincide with your feeling perfectly romantic about a loved one?

I think the main point for me now is how Valentines Day feels different to me when compared to how it felt when I was younger, or compared to how it felt when I was single, etc. And so be prepared for how the way it feels for you will change too over time. Just what does it mean for you these days? … Think about it.

Lichtotropism – Neologism of the Day

My father is a very learned man. And there are many things about the example of his life that have inspired me in the past. Even now at the age of 89, he continues to inspire me in ways small and large. One thing about him is how he can surprise you – just when I think he has settled into a routine of “old age” or those “golden years” that he and I laugh about, he will come up with something novel and unique.

Recently I arrived at his house to pick him up for one of our routine father-son lunches out, and he announced he had created a useful neologism.

He smiled wanting to make sure that I remembered that word from our many previous meals together when I was a boy and he would endeavor to teach me oddball words, like neologism. I told him, “ok, spit it out… what word have you coined now?” He answered with, “Lichtotropism” and watched my face intently as I tried to work it out in my head.

“Isn’t that a bit redundant?” I asked, “because most plants that demonstrate tropisms do so inherently towards the light?” And he beamed with a sparkle of pride in his eye. “But,” he said, “with ‘lichtotropism’ I am speaking of the spiritual side of it – specifically one’s moving towards the light, spiritually.” He went on to give examples of using his new word as regards man’s quest for enlightenment or wisdom, and I found myself enjoying his neologism – oddly enough it also made the think of the Star Wars movies and character plays; the light and dark side of the force, and I found myself moving towards latin derivatives a bit: luxotropism versus tenebritropism – oh mercy my Dad has infected me.

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Lyrics, Logic, and Lullabies are delivered from baby boomer singer songwriter Ed Verner. Weaving together lyrics from personal experiences and tales from a life of people watching, these Lyrics, Logic, and Lullabies present contemporary younger songs from a salty renaissance man.

For more information on Ed and his Lyrics, Logic and Lullabies, visit:
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Patience and A Dangerous Man

I have many times been referred to as a patient man. And just as often I receive that label with a happy sense of accomplishment. And yet, when some people blanketly refer to patience as a virtue, I’m often left wondering about those circumstances when people take advantage of patience. Or I wonder about times in my life where my employing patience was really just a method of delaying needed conflict with someone who was growing to take more and more advantage of me.

I believe in the end, the variety of patience that is indeed a virtue is more akin to the patient application of faith when doubting a trusted course of action; or the application of patient endurance when awaiting the fruits of hard work or discipline. However when confronted with an agonizingly slow clockwork of justice coming back around on someone who “has it coming”, I have felt more than once that to show more patience towards someone who is being rude, or uncivil, or downright bullying about treating me as a doormat for their selfish urge to climb the ladder of success upon my work, or upon my “patience”, is actually a species of cowardice. I would not want to be treating someone that way, and if I did I would want them to tell me and to stop me – the golden rule.

There really ought to be two different words for these two types of “patience”: One being to define patience associated with trusting in God and having faith in character and in the slow wonderment of seeing nature at work; and the other type wherein one simply endures unjust suffering or rude treatment like a polite doormat as being some other word more akin to the slang usage of words like “pussy” or the phrase “spineless doormat” etc. I suspect there may be a Yiddish term that might apply here, but put this in the bank, “Patience is a virtue” is a phrase that needs a few qualifiers when applied by someone trying to manipulate you.

Types of people who generally dont like me and I’m ok with it.

Types of people who generally dont like me and I’m ok with it. A Lyrics, Logic and Lullabies Blog.

Types of people who generally dont like me. Here we go.

I was in discussion recently with someone and was providing them with some historical perspective about my hometown. And while going through the years of progress and reliving some of the pertinent issues I’ve been involved with along the way, there were of course a few moments to recount that involved personal drama.

And on the two moments when an honest recounting of past events came around towards persons who have shown an active dislike for me, I honestly reported the fact along with the needed history lesson.

However, going through the recollections of the two or three main detractors I’ve had along the way, I decided to really sit back and think about what were the characteristics I showed at that time in my life, and what were the main traits revealed in the character of my detractors back then. I observed an interesting pattern.

Types of people who generally dont like me. Don’t get me wrong.

Now it is not to say that I’m perfect, by any stretch of the word. I’ll readily admit to being stubborn, logical to a fault sometimes as regards keeping compassion alive, impatient when it comes to putting up with bull crap no matter how much BBQ sauce one might attempt to disguise it with, and I can be impatient when it comes to people with an overwhelming urge to steal the work, or image, or credit of another.

In addition, I have a modestly hard spot of bark on my tree trunk when it comes to modern day Pharisees who want the robes and the crown of authority, but forget all about that humility and pride stuff the good book often speaks towards.

Type of people who generally dont like me. My top four.

Yet when I looked long and hard at the few, (thankfully very few) people who have taken great effort to cause me harm or to impugn my personal character; when I really considered each of them with a detached and time tested review, I found some solace in realizing that they possess at least 1 of 4 general traits – in one case all 3 were present.

Generally speaking out of my few outspoken past critics and the types of people who generally don’t like me; one will find them to be: Liars – Posers – Bullies – Windbags

Even so, I think it worth noting how they did indeed teach me something worthwhile, and in the end I remain glad they came into my life. I’m more grateful that we each have moved on, yet I hope they have done so with grace and happiness.

Why wait when it comes to Christmas and the New Year’s Resolutions

Why wait when it comes to Christmas and the New Year’s Resolutions? A Lyrics, Logic and Lullabies Blog.

Why wait when it comes to Christmas?

I love Christmas time, and yet it always begs the question for me about ‘why wait’? The same goes with the whole New Year’s celebration and the idea of resolutions. I’m pretty bad about not always having the perfect gift for someone at Christmas time.

And yet, the other side of that coin is how if I stumble upon a perfect gift for them in September I will buy it and give it to them. Even if it is not their birthday. Why wait when it comes to Christmas if I found it months earlier? And sad but true, it often feels as though many gifts really wind up feeling like trinkets of clutter that some poor soul had to agonize over purchasing “on schedule”.

But the real tragedy is how the clutter and the business of it all can sap the very spirit of love and giving that it was supposed to remind us of. (who says you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition?)

Why wait when it comes to Christmas or the resolutions?

As for New Year’s Eve and the concept of resolutions, I gave them up somewhere along my teen years long ago upon further consideration of how I shouldn’t wait to begin any worthy goal until a seemingly arbitrary moment of the planet’s orbit around our Sun. My father says, tongue in cheek, how “Time is a convenient assumption, made to explain an apparent succession of supposed events.” Sometimes I feel that many holidays are likewise full of puff and bravado.

If you have a goal that needs to wait until “new year’s eve” before you will commit to achieving it, then perhaps the goal itself is a bit thin. Likewise, if you need for Christmas to arrive before allowing the spirit of love and celebration of the Messiah to motivate you to cherish your loved ones then perhaps you should double-check yourself and your habit of giving to those in your closest circles.

And, why wait when it comes to Christmas… to pick up one of my songs?

So, if your goal is to start supporting mellow indy songwriter/singers or giving good music to baby boomer friends who are sick and tired of waiting for “new” stuff on the radio to enjoy listening to, then by all means buy my music, and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year too.

Songwriter Singer with an odd voice. Here are a few examples

Songwriter Singer with an odd voice. Here are a few examples. A Lyrics, Logic and Lullabies Blog.

Songwriter Singer. In some cases, it should be this way.

“Singer Songwriter” is generally the order that these two words are most often paired. And it is a brutal truth that the general public, desperately seeking live performances to feed an addiction to energy found nowhere else, more greatly prizes the singer/songwriter combination in that order. Some of my musical inspirations, like Dan Fogelberg, James Taylor, Marc Cohn, and more recently Jamie Cullum all fit into that order of things. They have excellent voices which can transport any song, one of their own or another’s, to a place where any songwriter would be proud to have their song go.

The Songwriter Singer… Songs first, vocals next?

Yet, there is another… the “Songwriter Singer”. The Randy Newman, or Jimmy Webb, or Keith Whitley. And though they can sing (for me even I prefer to hear them sing their songs rather than others at times), still they swim first and foremost in the pool of songwriting and leave their vocal performance to bring up a second place finish as far as priorities go.

I am a songwriter singer!

It’s not to say that I can’t or won’t perform, because I will and I have, and I enjoy it. But it is rather to say I acknowledge how I won’t ever be considered a singer. Yes, I can lend authenticity and voice to a song of mine, especially if it is a song that will never be heard otherwise. And there are many who greatly enjoy hearing my song voice. But, I am not blind, nor deaf when I critically watch my performance or listen to my recordings. There is meat on the bone and a genuine song when I’ve given it my best, and I remain proud. But part of me still wishes that if I live long enough, and work diligently enough, that one day a song of mine may be done by a “real” singer.

I’ve paid “real” singers a time or two to reinterpret the vocals on a studio recording of my songs. But it is just not the same as when a performing singer WANTS to sing the song from their gut; from that place where music bubbles up in mysterious wanderlust. And the odds of a “real” performance singer finding my songs and enjoying the wellspring of a collaboration like Webb and Cambell, or Newman and Three Dog Night or Chantal did are slim.

I don’t do it because I’m sure it will work out. I write them because I must, and such is the life of a Songwriter Singer. Perhaps I should write a song about it.

Liberal Versus Conservative II

After writing a blog about how labels can be needlessly divisive and/or polarizing and thus destructive to robust political debate; let me now proceed to pontificate about “liberals” versus “conservatives”.

First off, please know that I would label myself as a fiscal conservative with Judeo/Christian underpinnings and as such, I’m pretty well right of the political center if you believe there is one. Yet I have more than a few friends who are left of the center and healthy debate sometimes springs up between us. Unfortunately, unhealthy spitting at my opinions does sometimes occur from some left of the center, with generally some completely baseless attack on one moral lacking or another they feel must be the center of my motivations.

As I’ve gotten older, I watched several classmates or cohorts migrate from being very liberal in their politics while in undergraduate college, only then to become more conservative as they deal with the issues of marriage, business, parenting, death, and other aspects of (dare I say it) maturation. Similarly, I’ve noticed how few former conservatives migrate to become devout liberals. With obvious and sometimes bold exceptions, I still anecdotally observe how “liberalism” seems to speak most effectively to those who are young, and/or who have come into a large fortune suddenly and with little effort on their part to “earn” it. Sports celebrities, overnight Hollywood celebrities, or a Nouveau riche trust fund kid, all seem to help deal with their inner guilt at “unfairly” having something many deserving people want by embracing a liberal political agenda. It seems to be an emotional thing to them, as opposed to their conservative counterparts who often base their political beliefs more in an intellectual scrutiny of history’s examples.

I do not imply that there is a differing degree of intelligence involved in separating the two camps, rather the motivations draw majorly from emotion on the one hand and from history and experience on the other. Yet I’ve met many absolutely brilliant liberal defenders, and many brilliant conservative ones. Likewise, I’ve encountered more than a few painfully stupid ones in either camp as well. The difference between them is most certainly NOT one of intelligence, or even the desire to do a greater good in one versus the other. The main difference I can observe, once the name calling and attacks on character have died down, is a difference in the belief as to which will bring more prosperity for more people: government edict or freedom.

The balance between too much government and anarchy demands that both liberals and conservatives do their job, yet the balance is best when they are about equally unhappy and find compromise.

Liberal Versus Conservative Part I

Election season is here again and it seems like the whole nation is abuzz with an entire buffet of opinions from the mild to the wild. And much like classic football rivalries, there are basically two types of fans: 1) the ones who root for their team to win and be the best while still holding the foe in their world of respect, care, and concern, and 2) the ones who root for their team to win and be the best while wishing all manner of hatred, humiliation, and zealous disrespect toward the foe.

Inside the world of political debate, where the stakes are arguably more important, the media and the world of entertainment (sounds redundant a bit doesn’t it?) have long found that generating and retaining eyeballs on the screen to sell them beer or pharmaceuticals from their sponsors seems to work “better” if the sensational things take the stage. And thus, honest and robust debate on issues falls below personal attacks, outrageous behavior, and the like from any candidate. It has become a sad farce.

And the divide between “liberals” and “conservatives” gets drawn with bolder and wider black markers. The truth is, even when we disagree vehemently, we still have more in common than any ideology that separates us. When I witness the harshness of opinions that begins to call into question an opponent’s motives, I am saddened. Yes, it is important to have correct policies win out over those that are proven failures, and yes some previous failed ideas might succeed in an altered future, but those who fight for their position gain nothing by impugning the motives of their political foes.

Labels like “liberal” or “conservative” distract from the true aim of trying to discern character and intellectual honesty in a potential candidate or ballot amendment, etc. And to disagree with each other on politics is not something to build walls over. The quote, ‘Somebody who agrees with me 80 percent of the time is a friend and ally, not a 20 percent traitor.’” has been attributed to President Ronald Reagan and is a good reminder to us all.

How do you debate Religion vs Atheism? My logic on the topic.

How do you debate Religion vs Atheism? My logic on the topic. A Lyrics, Logic and Lullabies Blog.

How do you debate religion vs atheism? My take on the topic.

There are several dangers in espousing meaningful thought and debate about spiritual matters. The most logical of which is how by its nature the subject will put you in a minority. Whether you are a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, atheist, or any of several other lesser-known contenders, you become a minority if you “declare” yourself any one or the other. That being said, allow me to offer a point to ponder anyway.

How do you debate religion vs atheism? The battlegrounds of the discussion.

If you are debating the merit of any monotheistic religion to an atheist, the battleground is entirely different than if you are discussing one mono-theistic religion in contrast to another. For if one side of the debate comes from the perspective of someone who believes there is NO higher being who all-knowingly sees over, created, and/or has concern over the actions of mankind, and the other side of the debate starts from such a place; the two parties cannot find middle ground – and this is why. The atheist actually worships mankind itself as both the problem and the answer to the problems of the past and the future. Whereas competing mono-theistic religious believers worship differing Gods, and/or their prophets and scriptures.

How do you debate religion vs atheism? Is it possible between a religious person and an atheist?

To an atheist, all adherents of a religion are to some level or another participating in the ridiculous – and often this belief takes on (oddly enough) a holier than though conceit. One who worships mankind is unable to engage in debate regarding a morality outside of man. Thence all historical evidence or precedent is simply the vagaries of mankind writing or creating his own history. To him, any scriptures become simply an artifice of manipulation by really smart men of old (or really evil ones) whose aim it was to gain or transfer power over the “masses” who by definition must be somewhat dim and beneath the authors thereof.

How do you debate religion vs atheism? Will it always turn to arrogance vs intellect?

If you attempt to argue with an atheist from the perspective of a man of faith, be prepared to be assumed beneath them in intellect. And expect the defense of their ‘religion’ (which they generally deny exists) to be an impenetrable force field of arrogance.

It begs the question: If you know that you know more than I, how is it profitable for us to debate anything?
How do you debate Religion vs Atheism? My logic on the topic.

Honoring our National Symbols such as the flag and the anthem.

Honoring our National Symbols such as the flag and the anthem. A Lyrics, Logic and Lullabies Blog

Honoring our national symbols such as the flag and the anthem.

We celebrate and honor national symbols like the flag or the anthem, not because we are perfect as a nation, but because we aspire to improve. National symbols that inspire an urge to perfection and that help us honor our past progress and past heroes are living up to their purpose. This is why the consideration of honoring our national symbols is deserved.

Spotlighting flaws to justify dishonoring our national symbols is illogical.

But to spotlight our flaws as a nation, or call attention to our errors by attempting to tear down and remove our national symbols in protest over areas of injustice that need our inspired attention is illogical. One does not further inspire continued improvement and the striving for perfection by removing the inspirations thereof. We gain nothing and lose much by destroying our symbols.

Honoring our national symbols shows gratitude

To allow gratitude for the past, and celebration of our national achievements that are indeed meritorious is a good thing. Instructing and mentoring our youth by honoring our flag, or our national anthem, is a way to remind them of the ever-present urge to do EVEN BETTER. And to model and mentor disrespect of our inspirational symbols is to remove a very real aspect of perspective that otherwise could assist us in striving for more progress towards perfection.

Honoring our national symbols even if our nation isn’t perfect

If we wait for the USA to be perfect before honoring our flag, or before pledging our allegiance, or before standing to honor our anthem, we will never get it done. But then again our inheritance as citizens of this great nation comes from imperfect ancestors who left it better than they found it.

If you have found a better country you prefer to honor, please go there. Otherwise, let our nation’s symbols have their moment, and let it inspire you to strive for more and better justice and freedom. It’s not about what we haven’t done perfectly, it is about what we have done well, and what we can do together.