With a Song in Our Hearts

We're doing some little fundraisers to afford a Christmas party at one of the restaurants for the whole staff at work, and so each month there's a different event going on. Last week was a wildly successful Ice Cream Social. We wore red and white and decorated it up with sodajerk paper hats and had lots of toppings and choices. I mean, how can you go wrong with ice cream?

But what really made the day was the music we put together - an assortment of lighthearted hits from the 50s, mostly, which included High Hopes, Crazy Hazy Days of Summer, Swinging on a Star, Cheek to Cheek, Young at Heart, Mack the Knife, What a Wonderful World, Ain't That a Kick in the Head, Standing on the Corner, etc. 

So I have been doing a little experiment on myself. Instead of news, I've been listening to that CD on the way to and from work, and you know what? It is cheering me up. I mean, really bringing up my spirits. Nothing has changed: work is still a pressure-cooker and the economy still sucks  (pffft) and I still have sciatica in my hip, but I am better.

We got to talking over breakfast about what the entertainment industries did during the 20s and 30s with that surge of musicals and upbeat radio shows and silly fun movies. As the country was in the depths of despair, audiences flocked to Robin Hood, the Wizard of Oz, Top Hat, King Kong, Modern Times, and City Lights. And when we forged out a plan and struggled to implement it, they feasted on A Christmas Carol; The Shop Around the Corner; How Green Was My Valley; The Maltese Falcon; Yankee Doodle Dandy; The Pride of the Yankees; The Bells of St. Marys; and It's a Wonderful Life.

There are hundreds of notable comedians and fabulous songs and radio programs from those years and - later on and to a lesser degree - TV shows. I got to looking around at our entertainment choices - movies, music, and tv - and it sure isn't anything like Miracle on 34th Street, Nat King Cole and I Love Lucy.

Hollywood hasn't caught on to their own amazing heritage of helping the country cope and rebuild. What a shame! Funny uplifting music and stories give us the joy of laughter and a much-needed way to blow off some steam. What's more, it lightens our load so we can walk farther and with a song in our hearts until things turn the corner.