Modern American popular traditions break Mother’s Day down to a day off for mom with breakfast in bed and the laundry folded; for Father’s Day, dad gets to play with the new gas grill, catch a live ball game, enjoy that 3′inch thick steak (when he knows he shouldn’t). Dad’s induldged and mom’s pampered. As [...]
This is a beautiful mashup featuring one of my favorite Nina Simone tracks on her “Baltimore” album (1978). “My Father” was written by Judy Collins. The first time I heard Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father” was in my junior year of college when two of my college and also high school classmates performed it [...]
Barack Obama and I share a key identity in common -being shaped by the absence of our fathers. Though his father’s absence was more literal than mine, I still mull over which has the deepest impact: physical absence or emotional absence. I remember Joan Baez saying, the worst kind of loneliness is the loneliness of [...]
Correction: June 21 is Father’s Day! . Earlier, I posted June 14 – But I still dig the video. The holiday was started in Spokane, Washington, June 19, 1910. Sonora Smart wanted to celebrate the single parent who was her father after hearing a Mother’s Day sermon in chruch. William Jackson Smart lost his wife [...]
