John Lennon's "Happy Christmas/War Is Over" - Sung by Angels on New Year's Day

Article first published as John Lennon's "Happy Christmas/War Is Over" - Sung by Angels on New Year's Day on Blogcritics.


As I lay in bed this morning a persistent dream kept me sleeping on the edge of awake. I do not recall the dream specifically, but there was something keeping me in there, not wanting to move the blanket to bring me out on the other side. I was aware in the dream - new day, new year, and I felt enormous contentment. Then I heard it: a hymn seemingly sung by angels on high. It was John Lennon's song "Happy Christmas/War Is Over,"  and it was being sung by my children.

I pushed myself out of the reverie of sleep into wakefulness, motivated as a sleepwalker might be to move forward, undo latches and locks, and escape into the dark cold of night. As I came down the stairs I saw them sitting there (no wings or halos present to be sure), but their little voices had captured the nuances so well, the words rolling out and into the cosmos as they left their throats, no doubt delighting my mother in heaven (and Mr. Lennon, if he was not too busy listening to a million others singing the song elsewhere in the world).

My kids saw me and kept the verse going. My daughter had an impish smile, my son singing delightfully off key. They had heard the song many times leading up to Christmas, but their familiarity is with a newer version sung by Sarah McLachlan, a singer who is associated with having quite an angelic voice.

I sat on the chair until they finished singing, clapped my hands, and felt I couldn't have asked for a better way to start a new year. My son is too young to understand the meaning of the song, but my ten-year-old daughter loves the song and what she perceives as the message: world peace is within our grasp, but we have to want it.

I think Lennon's song has never been more timely than right now. I started thinking about the last American troops that have rolled into Kuwait, leaving behind years of war in Iraq. When the song first came out, the war in question was Vietnam (and there were certainly no signs of it abating then). Happily, Iraq is concluded, but Afghanistan and wars elsewhere still loom large, so the question is as poignant as ever: "war is over" but do we want it? Of course, in a child's mind the answer is "How can we not?"

Yes, I want to think peace is possible, but after opening up this morning's paper, I saw too many reasons to think it won't happen. Number one reason is the threat by the Iranians to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which in essence will stop oil shipments to many parts of the world. Of course, America has to rattle its saber and say that it cannot allow that to happen, so more fears of an escalation of hostilities rather than a move towards peace seem to be the reality.

I know many people think Lennon's song is just a pipe dream, but I kind of hope every year that it is more of a peace pipe dream. If people all over the world can celebrate the birth of Jesus, if they can sing the song "Silent Night" and those lovely words "Sleep in heavenly peace," then that would go for not just the Baby Jesus but every baby in the world. We adults surely must know that the most important thing we can do for our children is to make certain those words can become a reality.

So when my daughter said she loved Sarah McLachlan's song, I stopped myself from going into the details about John Lennon. Besides, a great singer can make a song his own (think Nat King Cole and "The Christmas Song" or Frank Sinatra and "My Way"), and Sarah certainly makes that song hers when she sings it. There will be time for my daughter to know all about John Lennon, but for now I will let her sing that song and dream of peace and hope that sooner or later the adults of this world will get the message too.

Blizzard of December 2010: Being Snowed in and Loving It

Article first published as Blizzard of December 2010: Being Snowed in and Loving It on Blogcritics.

Everyone remembers big blizzards the same way they remember where they were when John Lennon was shot or they heard OJ Simpson declared innocent. These events are markers in our lives, but absolutely nothing is the same as a really big snowstorm - at least to those of us who don't live in Minnesota or Canada or other places where twenty inches of the white stuff is no big deal.

Here in New York City and the surrounding area, a few inches of snow causes the red flags to start flying. Traffic snarls, trains crawl, and people slip slide their way to work and school. If the snow is any deeper, everyone assumes catastrophe is only moments away and the city starts shutting down. People clear milk, bread, and eggs off the supermarket shelves, and the streets become deserted.

There are bonuses involved in this. If the snow comes during the Christmas season with the city covered in lights that twinkle through the snowflakes like so many millions of stars, well then it is an added bonus. There is absolutely nothing so romantic as walking along a New York City street with the lights blazing through the snowflakes holding the hand of the one you love.

Of course, with kids in the picture romance takes a back seat to fun and games. My kids watched the snow through the window all day yesterday, and as of this morning (it has abated to just flurries right now) there are about twenty inches deep of play land out there that is just waiting for sleds, snowball fights, and the most abominable snowman we can build. Of course, the shovel awaits dear old dad as the kids romp, but it is still great fun.



My grandfather liked to talk about the great blizzard of 1888, which still stands as one of the largest ones to hit the city. This came in March of that year, effectively shutting down a city that at the time did not have the means to battle such a huge storm. New Yorkers were trapped in their apartments (in the days before television and radio) without much to do, so it is not surprising that my grandfather was born at the end of that year with a slew of other blizzard babies.

My father recalls the great snowstorm of 1947 (falling on December 25-26) that stopped the city cold. He tried to get home from work, but his subway train got stuck in Jamaica, so he had to walk the rest of the way. That's not something one forgets. He said he had to shovel "for days" and the city was closed down.

It is absolutely astonishing to see New York in the snow. The city slows down to an eventual halt, making it seem like a storybook New York from the old times. For a brief moment, before the plows start to rumble down the streets and the car fumes turn the snow black, there is a kind of hush only a snowfall can bring to the Big Apple, and it's the kind of city quiet that lulls one into a dream state that is intoxicating.

I remember a few great snowstorms during my lifetime, but especially the one of February 1978. I recall the winds had completely covered both the back and front doors of our house. Being a game kid who wanted to go outside, I remember telling my father that I'd jump out the window and then shovel the door out. He considered the options and then tossed me out the window into the cushion of white below. I loved that exhilarating feeling of floating through the cold air and going down into that snow pile, but it took me three hours to dig out that front door, and I would have much rather been sledding down the hill with my friends.

So now we have the great blizzard of December 2010 with which we will make new memories. Unfortunately, the roads are going to take a while to get plowed because technology can just do so much with tons of snow. In the meantime, I can't jump out the window like in the old days, but I will get out there with my kids and have as much fun as possible thanks to old man winter.

The Night John Lennon Died

Article first published as The Night John Lennon Died on Blogcritics.

It is inconceivable to me that it has been thirty years since a maniac came out of the night and assassinated John Lennon. What's worse is it happened in my city. This was the place where John and the Beatles first broke into the American consciousness, and now in this his adopted city he was taken much too soon. I still can't even believe that he is gone, but his enormous contribution to music and his amazing spirit certainly lives on and on.










The night before John died I had what I've always thought was a foreshadowing of his death. I was on the phone with my friend Ralph. He was in the Air Force and home on leave. We were talking about how we were going to get together the next night to celebrate his return, and I was sitting on my sofa looking up at the shelf on my wall, where I had the four individual pictures of the Beatles that came with the White Album in frames. As I was talking with Ralph the frame with John's picture in it toppled off the shelf. Nothing precipitated this event: no rumble of the subway below, no bus going by outside, no helicopter flying low overhead. It just fell.

At the time I thought it was weird but nothing else. When I got off the phone I got up and put the picture back in place, staring briefly at John's face and remembering when I saw him in Manhattan a couple of years before. It the only the second time I had ever seen him in person (the first being when he walked on stage during an Elton John concert at Madison Square Garden). He had been walking down the street, hands in pockets, rather nonchalant and happy. When I saw him he looked at me, and he knew I recognized him even in his sunglasses and hat pulled down a bit. He gave me a little smirk and something like a nod, and I wanted to say something, but my tongue was infinitely tied in knots, and it is best I did not blurt out something stupid. John kept walking and so did I, my hands shaking for blocks. I had just seen John Lennon.

The next night Ralph and I met some friends in a bar in Queens in the shadow of Shea Stadium, where John and his mates once rocked the house. We were there to ostensibly watch Monday Night Football, but the bar was filled with people and music. It was decorated for Christmas, and there was a jovial mood filling the place.

We all talked and talked. Ralph told us about life in the Air Force. He was stationed in Greenland and he couldn't talk about this and that. We started talking about high school and various teachers, and the night went by very quickly. As it started getting late, our friends who had to work the next morning left. Ralph was on leave and I was in college and had no classes on Tuesday mornings, so we sat at the bar and started watching the football game.

Only a few minutes had gone by when there was a special news bulletin that broke into the program. The announcer spoke stiltedly as she said that there was word that John Lennon had been shot outside the Dakota Building. He was being rushed to the hospital. Ralph and I just looked up at the screen, and everyone in the bar stopped and stared at the screen with us.

The game came back on for a time. Someone pulled the plug out of the jukebox, and the patrons all crowded around the bar and watched the TV waiting to hear an update. I don't know how long it was until the next news bulletin came on, but the grim face of the news anchor Kaity Tong told it all. Before she spoke, the room was so quiet, I could hear the taps dripping behind the bar.

She confirmed that John Lennon had died at St. Luke's Hospital. I felt myself shaking, worse than when I had seen John on the street; I felt like I was convulsing. Ralph hung his head and stared at his hands. Behind me I could hear some of the girls crying, the men too, and the bartender who looked like a professional wrestler complete with bald head and tattoos kept wiping the tears from his eyes.

There wasn't anything left to do or to celebrate. Ralph and I put on our coats, walked outside, and stood in the cold quietly watching a big city bus go down the street. Ralph seemed to snap out of a trance and turned to me and shook my hand. We parted without words because there was nothing left to say.
I went home to my room and sat on the floor, pulling all my records out of the cabinet. I threw Sgt. Pepper on the turntable and listened to John sing those prophetic words, "I heard the news today, oh boy..." I looked at all the albums spread on the floor, and I cried some more as I was shaken by the hopefulness of their early photographs.

I leaned my head back and stared at the pictures on my shelf, especially the one of John that had fallen the night before. I didn't know all the reasons why this felt like the loss of my brother instead of a stranger whom I had fleetingly met. John Lennon was a celebrity, one of the biggest stars of all time, and yet I felt like it was a personal loss. I had invested so much time and energy in the Beatles and then later John (and to a lesser extent the other Beatles) in his solo career.

To those too young (or too old) to understand, I can only say that John meant something personal to me. He had touched my life, and so many lives, with his work. Perhaps it was because we perceived he stood for something we believed in deeply, like his message of peace and love for the world that we got through his music. On a very big planet with very big problems, John seemed to stand for those of us who had no voice, and he spoke and sang what we wanted and needed to be heard.

Today, thirty years later, I stare at the skyline of the city I have loved all my life, and I know that John loved it too. He felt at home in New York, free to wander the streets unencumbered by the celebrity that had once threatened to overwhelm him elsewhere. Here John was free to be himself and to be what he saw himself as in the end: a New Yorker.

The world has changed in these last thirty years, as has this city. Today people will mark John's passsng in many different ways, but the way I shall remember him is not through public displays or even to watch reports about him on the TV or the Internet. The way I will remember him is to listen to his music, to appreciate what made him occupy that special place in so many hearts around the world.










So on this day I'm going to put on my headphones and turn up the volume. As I listen to his songs, I will not think about that night he died, but about the life he lived. And I will remember that one special day when two New Yorkers passed each other on the street, and in that simple everyday moment there was an acknowledgement of everything I had ever felt in a simple smirk and nod of the head that let me know that John knew what he meant, not just to me, but to everyone whom he touched in life.

You are still missed, John Lennon. In pace requiescat.