Alex, my friend...
Lakewood is as idyllic as it ever was, the only problem being that people happen to live here.
When you have people, you have, well....people, and when you have passionate caring people, you will, at times, have controversy. My parents were both such people, and the disputes around our dinner table were often lively ones.
Would you rather live around uncaring dispassionate robotic people? I think not. As Arlo Gunthrie discovered, he realized that he had more in common with passionate caring people that he disagreed with than with people who just go through the motions in life.
The people of Build Lakewood and Save Lakewood Hospital are therefore, much the same in that way. They ALL care, they are ALL proactive, and they ALL represent the future of this city.
Your idyllic impressionistic photo of the conductor is beautiful indeed, but the problem there lies in the idyllic portrature itself. Idyllic vision alone so often roughly masks the hard work that it takes in order to arrive at that ideal. You cannot possibly appreciate the idyllic end without celebration of the struggle that it takes to arrive there.
Case in point, in June of 1941, the German Army invaded the Soviet Union. One of the cities in the crosshairs of their sights was Leningrad. Evacuations were ordered, and by September, the city was cut off from the rest of the country, and the 900 day siege of Leningrad began. Over time, rations were cut, buildings were destroyed, starvation began, and near-chaos ensued.
Except...
...through it all, the people of Leningrad endured, helped each other, and were determined NOT to descend to the level of animals, and in fact, to show the world how people can not only work together to overcome their differences, but more than that, to show the world HOW to do so.
Enter a composer named Dmitri Shostakovich. When the war began, he volunteered for the armed forces and was refused. Instead, he worked in the volunteer fire brigades and refused to leave his beloved city. He continued to write music, and in fact, decided to write his 7th symphony and dedicate it to the suffering and starving people of Leningrad. He first played the symphony for some friends and family in his fifth floor apartment during a serious German attack. They did not even leave for the shelters as the music played during the bomb blasts around them. A few weeks later Shostakovich was ordered flown to Moscow, and from there to Samara, where the symphony was first performed. Soon thereafter, it was performed in Moscow and from there, was sent around the world. Musicians in Leningrad however, wanted their opportunity to perform the piece too, so the score for it was flown to the still-under-siege city and on August 9, 1942, somehow enough musicians were found, many virtual skeletons in rags as they performed the piece in Leningrad's Philharmonic Society Hall.
My father and I have written and composed many works, including band marches for Lakewood's schools. (Dad's first march for Lakewood, the Harding March, he completed himself when I was a wee lad)
Our song for Lakewood was unfinished, but here are the lyrics below. Now, I'm NOT intending to directly compare Dad and me to Shostakovich, or Leningrad with Lakewood, but the mission is nevertheless the same here:
Peace, but out of struggle and with purpose....Idyllics...forged from idealism chained to reality...
Back to the banjo...
Lakewood, Ohio, Is Our Home by Robert and Gary Rice
Golden diamonds on the lake, caught by the morning sun.
Cliffside caves and river trails where freedom's hopes were won.
Kirtland's Warblers, Templar cars, on old plank roads we roamed.
Lakewood, Ohio, is our home!
Emerald canyons seen through pale reflections from the moon,
A hundred ways to worship God, and sing our favorite tunes,
See the eagles soaring over Erie's stormy foam.
Lakewood, Ohio, is our home!
Refrain:
Come with us to our...hometown!
This is Lakewood, Ohio, won't you come right down?
Come with us, sing a song of cheer,
As we celebrate another hundred years!
Lakewood, Ohio, where the present and the past,
Forever blends together with new memories that will last.
In the hearts of Lakewoodites, wherever they might roam,
Lakewood, Ohio, is our home!
