On a recent miserable day outside, I went walking\/jogging on the track at New Ulm\u2019s Vogel Fieldhouse (which is a great place).\u00a0 There I and my fellow travelers went around and around with \u201coldies\u201d serenading us from the speakers.<\/p>\n
The music took me back to times and places decades past.\u00a0 That is, I guess, what oldies are supposed to do. \u00a0Oldies are on at a lot of places I go.\u00a0 Now and then a warm memory of young friendship or a school event comes to mind when I hear some song of yore.\u00a0 But then comes a song that make me cringe.\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s recalling saying something stupid to a girl I had a crush on; sometimes it\u2019s flashing back to something stupid I did.<\/p>\n
There are lots of things I don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 One of them is the attraction of oldies.\u00a0 It seems to indicate that a lot of people circumvented those coming-of-age years more adeptly than I did.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m happy to have survived the seventies, but I\u2019m not sure why you would want to relive it musically.\u00a0 One time around with \u201cWe had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun, but the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time,\u201d seems enough to me.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t have oldies on any of the preset buttons on my car radio. \u00a0Oh, occasionally I enjoy a Bruce Springsteen or Motown tune that drifts across my consciousness, proof that I\u2019m not completely void of musical feeling.<\/p>\n
It is undeniable that music can call forth memories.\u00a0 Music heightens feelings in such a way that a time and place get stuck in our head with a song.\u00a0 I\u2019m not a neurologist, but clearly music goes to a part of the brain that words by themselves don\u2019t.\u00a0 Connections hot-glued in our mind between a song and a moment remain in place fifty years on.<\/p>\n
Music can hold power over us with lasting and deep impact.\u00a0 Certain songs cause us to smile widely, others, to tear up.\u00a0 Witness the faces of veterans as the National Anthem is played at a Memorial Day event or a family as Amazing Grace is played at a funeral service.<\/p>\n
I think everyone is touched by music, at least a little bit.\u00a0 This ranges from heavy metal headbanging to soft instrumental elevator strains.\u00a0 It\u2019s remarkable the wide spectrum of things people find pleasing.<\/p>\n
When I was young, my folks had old time music on KNUJ exclusively.\u00a0 The kitchen and barn radios were set to the Polka Station of the Nation.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I knew there was other music.\u00a0 I remember later realizing those polkas and waltzes were oldies for my mom and dad, music that transported them back in time.\u00a0 Their earliest dates were barn dances; those old tunes were part of their romancing.<\/p>\n
I have thought of music as a gift from a good and kind God.\u00a0 We can communicate most things we need with the grunts that evolved into words in the planet\u2019s many languages.\u00a0 But somewhere back in mankind\u2019s history we began using voice in melodic ways.\u00a0 Clapping hands and sticks and stones could sound out a beat.<\/p>\n
I asked some friends, \u201cWhy is there music?\u201d\u00a0 Lora pointed to the sounds of nature that surround us.\u00a0 Songbirds, the wind, rainfall, even our heartbeats: perhaps these prepare us for music.<\/p>\n
Reaching further, for centuries dating back to antiquity, the notion of the Harmony of the Spheres was used to explain the universe.\u00a0 The spheres were the stars and planets, and creation could be perceived as a type of song with harmony and pitch.\u00a0 In Latin, this was Musica Universalis, the idea that music, mathematics, and astronomy are tied together.\u00a0 Plato said astronomy was for the eyes what music was for the ears.<\/p>\n
I was thinking about music.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always been jealous of people in movies.\u00a0 Movies have a score, music in the background as characters play out their story.\u00a0 I have thought I\u2019d like to have a score setting the mood for my life, building to a crescendo during the exciting parts.\u00a0 Now that I have a phone with Pandora and Spotify, I have my score!\u00a0 Problem is, the script isn\u2019t all that interesting.\u00a0 Music washing over me as I change sweeps on the field cultivator doesn\u2019t make for a thrilling scene.<\/p>\n
Baseball players get to choose \u201cwalk-up\u201d songs.\u00a0 The home team plays these as the batter steps to the plate.\u00a0 The hope is that the energy-laced tune will provide a shot of adrenaline to the hitter.\u00a0 Recently I announced to some friends that I was going to use a \u201cwalk-in\u201d song when I entered their house.\u00a0 I chose Viva la Vida by Coldplay.\u00a0 I had to quit that when my walk-in music raised the anticipation level to a height that I couldn\u2019t match live up to.<\/p>\n
I mentioned saying stupid things to girls that I had a crush on.\u00a0 Well, one of those girls married me.\u00a0 Now I occasionally send her songs that express my feelings on her phone: romantic songs by Charlie Puth, Ed Sheeran, and, of course, Pitbull.\u00a0 When I get home, I am invariably met by an eye roll.\u00a0 It\u2019s a look that says she is used to me after these 37 years.\u00a0 (Happy anniversary Pam!)<\/p>\n
This time of year, Christmas music makes its annual appearance.\u00a0 No music associates itself with memories more so than Silent Night, O Come all ye Faithful, et al.\u00a0 These songs were there at our earliest Christmases.\u00a0 Joyful memories sometimes blend with melancholy.\u00a0 Certain of these remind me of parents and brother who were part of my first holiday seasons and are no longer here.\u00a0 Others remind of when our own children were young, and I miss that.\u00a0 But often these old classics bring warm and gentle feelings.<\/p>\n
Tradition has it that there was music at the first Christmas.\u00a0 The Bible doesn\u2019t exactly say that.\u00a0 In Luke, we read, “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and\u00a0on\u00a0earth\u00a0peace\u00a0to those on whom his favor rests’.”<\/p>\n
But it has long been held by Christians that this moment, now 2,000 years ago, was filled with glorious singing.\u00a0 That might be the best oldie ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a recent miserable day outside, I went walking\/jogging on the track at New Ulm\u2019s Vogel Fieldhouse (which is a great place).\u00a0 There I and my fellow travelers went around and around with \u201coldies\u201d serenading us from the speakers. The music took me back to times and places decades past.\u00a0 That is, I guess, what …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 20:52:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104146,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104145\/revisions\/104146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}