Songs that bring joy … or cloying, insidious earworms?

A few days ago I read the news that Richard Sherman had just passed away at the age of 95. His passing brought to mind a song of his that does indeed bring me joy, but can also rightly be considered an insidious earworm. That would be the 60-year-old song, Small, Small World.

Richard Sherman and his late brother, Robert, composed the music for many of Disney’s most popular movies, including Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book, as well as the music for the theme park ride that never dies, Small, Small World. That’s quite the legacy. It seems that Small, Small World arguably holds the world’s record for how many times a song has been played! I guess it has an advantage in that regard, since it’s played continuously at the many Disney theme parks around the world in the ride of the same name. I couldn’t not look this up when I read that factoid as part of the news article about Richard Sherman. And after looking it up, I couldn’t stop humming it, interminably.

Small, Small World was written for an attraction at the New York World’s Fair in 1964. Sixty years ago! That made me realize that it was at the New York World’s Fair that I first encountered this charming song and accompanying charming dolls representing every corner of our planet, way back in 1965, when my husband and I were first “courting”. Since then it’s become a popular attraction at every Disney theme park as they’ve been introduced, starting with Disneyland in 1966 and then Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in 1971. I think it was 1976 when we first took our kids to Disney World (they were younger then!), and we rode the little boats through the world of multinational dolls as Small, Small World played and played. By the time we went to Disney the last time, which I think was 11 years ago, all the other adults in our group – that would have been my husband, son, and daughter-in-law – begged off what they remembered as, shall we say, slow torture, and left me to share the wonder and joy of travelling through the Small, Small World ride with my small grandchildren. I loved it, of course!

If you’ve never heard it before, here’s your chance. Or, if you’re like me and it never gets tired, here’s another chance to put a smile on your face. 🙂

The other music composed by the Sherman brothers way back in 1964 that has the capacity to brighten our lives whenever we hear it is the score for Mary Poppins. Wow, so many songs that bring a smile to my face. Let’s see, there’s A Spoonful of Sugar.

Or maybe Let’s Go Fly a Kite. Or how about Super-cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious? Did those composers know how to capture fun and joy, or what?!

I know, some of it’s pretty corny. But couldn’t we use a little bit more corny sweetness in our stories and music these days? At least from time to time? Thank you, Sherman brothers, for bringing moments of innocent joy and positive messages to so many people. Your legacy continues.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (21): All thanks to a grade 5 teacher 40 years ago

I’ve mentioned previously that I never knew much of anything about my father’s family while growing up. His only living sister, my Aunt Helen, was 11 years older than Dad and didn’t live nearby, and I don’t recall any visits. Her two children, my beloved cousins, were 11 and 14 years older than me, and I don’t really remember meeting them until I was older. I got to know both my cousins and my Aunt Helen well as an adult, and they became very important to me. I loved them dearly. But we never spent any time talking about what our long dead grandparents might have been like, where they came from, or what their lives had been like.

All those opportunities with Aunt Helen missed, the one person who had the link to my Dad’s parents; the one person who had known them and knew their stories. But I never thought to ask. We never think of asking questions about “the olden days” when we’re young; we’re too busy thinking about what life’s like for us now, and for a considerable amount of time too busy raising our families. We live in the present.

Except … 40 years ago, when our younger son was in grade 5 (5^th grade for those in the U.S.), his teacher must have asked her class to do a project on family history. And for that I owe this teacher a huge debt of gratitude. I admit to not remembering any of this, but clearly this son was encouraged to write a letter to my Aunt Helen, then in Florida, to ask about her father – my grandfather and Adam’s great grandfather. In going through my husband’s large stack of genealogical findings over the years recently, I came across the responding letter, sent by my cousin Alan on October 9, 1984. My Aunt Helen passed away 17 days later, on October 26. That’s how close we came to never having this information. Sure, it’s no big deal, but it kind of is. And, Aunt Helen would have loved hearing from her 10-year-old great nephew as she knew she was nearing her end, and she would have loved sharing these reminiscences with her son as well.

All graduations should be special

This is graduation time for many students, marking the completion of major academic milestones. It’s mostly college and university graduations right now, but before long it will be high schools’ turn, along with graduations for those in-between but significant milestones such as kindergarten and middle school leavers.

I hadn’t been to a graduation since before COVID. Between the Great Shutdown of the pandemic and then mobility issues followed by recovery from that miracle of modern medicine called hip replacement surgery, attending our university graduation was a non-starter for me these past few years. But not this year. I’m back! And being part of the pageantry brought back to me in spades what a significant moment this is in people’s lives, often at least as meaningful for the graduates’ families as for the grads.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (20): Pre-Loyalist Moses Pickard makes a final move

Before we begin Moses Pickard’s story – my mother-in-law’s Pre-Loyalist great-great grandfather, let’s briefly look at his family background; it explains a lot. The Pickard family first arrived in the early days of British Colonial America, 1638 or thereabouts, when John Pickard (1601-1683) came as part of some 20 families who left Rowley, Yorkshire, England under the leadership of their minister. They were the original settlers of the Puritan settlement of Rowley, Massachusetts. This is A LOT of generations ago: my MIL’s 6^th great-grandfather, or our grandchildren’s 9^th great grandfather! The Pickard family continued to live in Rowley, MA as farmers, blacksmiths, and active participants in church and local governance for several generations. It wasn’t until 1766 that our Moses’s father, also Moses (very confusing how many Moses, Jacobs, and Elijahs there are), made the decision to follow another group of Puritans (Congregationalists) to Maugerville, New Brunswick (actually still part of Nova Scotia until 1784) to take advantage of the land grants being opened up by the British. Our Moses was the youngest of that family; he was only three years old when the family arrived in Maugerville (pronounced Majorville).

My husband and I have lived in this exact area for nearly 54 years, and I have been astounded to read this history and learn that the Township of Maugerville was the first English-settled area on the Saint John River outside of Saint John itself, and that it was the major settlement on the river for several decades. How things have changed. The Township as originally laid out was subdivided in Maugerville and Sheffield (the more down-river part) in 1786, and it appears that this had something to do with church disagreements, especially when the Loyalists appeared in 1783 and wanted the Church of England to reign supreme. First of all, to give you a sense of how seriously Congregationalists took their church and its role in their lives, the original bylaws of Rowley, Massachusetts tell the tale. “No person could take any part in town affairs unless he (or she?!) were a member of the church: every person must build his house within one half mile of the church so that there would be no excuse for non-attendance; a trial before the town magistrate for any person not attending church, and a fine imposed unless good cause for non-attendance was proved.” * Wow! And from what I have been able to find, Maugerville Township society had been set up quite similarly in advance of the Loyalists. Most of the recorded town meetings had to do with whether individuals were behaving in a suitably pious fashion!

Thoughtful Thursday: How do we give our struggling world a reset?

I don’t know about you, but there are days when I feel like these aliens.

From the increasing catastrophies due to man-made climate change and our unwillingness to address it to cruel wars, toxic politics and geopolitics, we human beings seem to be better at causing suffering than at ending it. Perhaps this is the only answer.

If a 97-year-old woman can do it, why not a 78-year-old?

Do what, you might ask. Nothing fancy, just walking … or if you’re keen and can give it a try, throw in a little running as well. Fairly recently, there was an article in the Globe and Mail that caught my eye: How this 97-year-old broke world records without training. How could it not have caught my eye, right?! It’s a great little story, with some excellent advice on how to age well. It turns out that two years ago, when this woman was only 95, she accompanied a friend on a 5K Run/Walk during Ottawa’s May Race Week. She’s been walking as part of her daily routine throughout her life and didn’t think anything about it. But when she realized that she’d broken a Canadian record for the 95-99 age category, just by doing what she always does, she decided to do a bit of training and see just how well she could do the next year. It’s usually not difficult to place 1/1 in the upper age categories in local races; there just aren’t usually too many (or any) people entering races once they hit their 80s. But when Rejeanne Fairhead added training to the mix, she shaved nearly 8 minutes off her time this year, finishing her 5K in 51 minutes and 8 seconds. Rejeanne Fairhead, World Record holder for Women’s 5K, F95-99 category. Now there’s a goal!

Rejeanne Fairhead with her World Record (Source: Globe and Mail)

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (19): When the Loyalists and the Pre-Loyalists met

In our family trees (mine and my husband’s), we have Dutch, French Huguenots, and English ancestors who came to the New World in the early 1600s, almost all of them fearing religious persecution in their homeland unless they switched to the approved religion of the land. As one article I came across pointed out, they weren’t coming for religious freedom for all; they were coming to worship – and organize their societies – as they believed people should live. The way they “knew” was the best. They were leaving different parts of Europe. where each State/Empire/Kingdom was ruled according to one religion only – e.g., Catholic, Church of England, Dutch Reform, Congregational – and anyone who practiced a different religion from the approved one could be charged with heresy and even burned at the stake or be tried for witchcraft. It wasn’t pretty. (Come to think of it, this isn’t so different from some places today.) But, to be clear, they weren’t coming to establish an open, tolerant society for all. They were coming to establish their own specific, church-based society.

The earliest English settlers in New England were typically Congregationalists, the religion of the Puritans (known as Dissenters in England). Congregationalists believe(d) that congregants can interpret the Bible themselves, and that they can speak to God directly, as opposed to through a priest or bishop. God forbid! 😉 They established societies built on strong local self-government and extensive citizen participation, as opposed to government by a monarchy and its aligned aristocracy. In New England, they were mostly farmers, living in supportive, rule-based communities where everyone had roles and responsibilities.

Although the colonists in the 1750s were far removed from their former homelands and had been for well over 100 years, they were living in what was still British Colonial America. And, lo and behold, in the late 1750s, the British government made offers of land, lots of high-quality farmland, just up the coast in the colony of Nova Scotia (split into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in 1784). And guess why this generous land offer was suddenly appearing. The Brits were in the process of carrying out the horrifically brutal expulsion of Acadians from their land, and they wanted to have this newly vacated land taken up by British supporters, willing to be loyal to the King. It was driven by a political need on the part of the British government and viewed as an opportunity for the farmers in Massachusetts, who had effectively run out of good farmland. Accordingly, from about 1759-1768, something like 2000 families (~8000 people) moved from Massachusetts to the Nova Scotia (and New Brunswick) colony. (I think there’s no doubt about the quality and size of the farmland, but I can’t help but wonder if anyone told them about the length and strength of our northern winter!) These 2000 families, distributed across many hundreds of kms/miles, were the Pre-Loyalists, also called the New England Planters.

A Call to be Kind

I love the title of this post, but I can’t take any credit for it. A Call to be Kind is this year’s theme for Mental Health Week in Canada, which runs from May 6-12. The intent of the theme is to remind us all that compassion connects us, it binds us in a positive way as human beings. With respect to mental health, feeling connections with others can make all the difference when you are feeling low, when you are struggling. And reaching out to those who you feel connections with can make all the difference to both of you. Acting on compassion is a win-win; it has healing power for the giver and the receiver. My guess is that most of us have grave concerns about the seeming lack of compassion at a global level these days, and this has not helped our mental health, not at all.

There’s a wide range of advice on how to care for your own mental health and how to help those you care about deal with their struggles. In particular, these straightforward points posted on the Hastings and Prince Edward Counties (Ontario) Public Health website in recognition of Mental Health Week are worth taking in.