The Enchanted April raises the question: Does happiness make you good?
“Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer.” — The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim
I’ve loved the movie The Enchanted April for a long time. In the past couple of years I finally read the book. What the movie states, the book shouts: Being good may not make you happy, but being happy can make you good.
After I’d read the book, I was disappointed to go online and find absolutely no theological discussions on it. I’m sure people of all sorts of beliefs could debate this. As a Christian, I wish that Christ-followers would engage with Arnim’s ideas.
I’m not going to try for a deep dive into The Enchanted April here. That’s not the point of this post. I will say that I think that Arnim has a point, though I don’t entirely agree with her. One of my high school history teachers would have hated that response. She always said, “When you sit on the fence, it hurts.” Nevertheless, I think Arnim is neither entirely wrong nor entirely right, so I will stand on the fence and fiercely defend my point of view.
In both the book and movie, Lotty Wilkins is the character who, when she sees an advertisement about an Italian castle for lease during the month of April, pushes to make it happen. Once there, she positively blossoms with love, seeking to make everyone as happy as she feels.
Rose Arbuthnot — the first person Lotty persuades to join her — is saintly and miserable. She pursues happiness through goodness, but Lotty sees right through her. Rose is terribly unhappy.
You and I have met people like Rose. Perhaps we’ve been like Rose. The Roses of the world are cheerless do-gooders, reinforcing the views of those who believe, along with Billy Joel, that they’d “rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.”
Being good while being miserable is possible, but it’s hard to sustain. When we joylessly go through the motions, love shrivels up within us. We may say we love ourselves, but we are afraid to love ourselves generously, because we believe that’s selfish. We may say we love others, but the things we do for them are more of a checklist than acts inspired by genuine love. We may say we love God, but what we really feel is a fear of displeasing him.
What if we decided to love ourselves generously, passionately, as we say God loves others, as we claim God loves us (even if we aren’t really sure about that)? It’s hard to love others if you are always beating up on yourself. But if you love yourself, how might that love overflow into the lives of others?
Think about the people you truly admire. If you’re like me, they are people who are bubbling over with love. They may not be in the happiest situation, but they are as happy as a person can be within their circumstances — maybe even happier than you think you could be. They are good from the inside out, rather than being good on the outside, hoping desperately the goodness will work its way in.
This is where many Christians would talk about how this love and happiness comes from God. While I don’t disagree, Rose was desperately pursuing God… and she wasn’t happy. One could argue about resting in God’s love (grace) versus trying to earn God’s love (works) –and that’s a fine discussion to have. But whatever Arnim believed about God, she wrote a story about a woman who learned how to love generously after first being generous with herself. With that love, she changed the lives of the people around her.
On the other hand…
Don’t we already put happiness on a pedestal in the West these days? So many people are chasing after it, wanting it desperately, and yet they never seem to find it. Don’t we too often equate happiness with pleasure? And isn’t that what Arnim does by placing her heroines in an Italian castle dripping with flowers? Haven’t we become a supremely selfish culture? And, Kate, didn’t you say “it’s not about me”?
Well, yes. We often mistake pleasure for happiness, though certainly pleasure can bring happiness. I recently walked to a nearby ice cream shop during my lunch break. As I returned to work with my ice cream cone, I was supremely happy. Of course, if I did that daily, it would no longer make me happy, but there’s something to be said for sheer pleasure.
Pleasurable experiences aside, there’s a lot to be said for the argument that chasing happiness isn’t making us happy. Not too long ago, I had conversations about happiness with a depressed friend. Of course I suggested that he get help. But I also suggested that he not focus on happiness. Instead I proposed that he adopt practices that often lead to happiness — including exercising, spending time in nature, and finding ways to make a contribution to the world (because, the Roses of the world aside, goodness can lead to happiness — I told you I was on the fence!).
And there are times when pursuing happiness leads to the opposite of good. Think of parents who walk out on their families in order to chase after something they think will make them happy. I’m by no means saying that parents must lead joyless lives, giving up everything for the family. I’m simply saying that single-mindedly pursuing happiness isn’t always good.
So, while there’s plenty to debate on the subject of goodness and happiness, this is what I believe: I believe in embracing, not fearing, happiness. I believe in enjoying the beautiful world God has given us. I believe we should love ourselves as generously as we claim God loves the world. But I also believe that happiness shouldn’t be everything to us, and we shouldn’t mistake the wrong things (endless pleasure, the latest gadgets, getting everything we want) for happiness. When our happiness inspires us to love others and share our happiness with them, we know we’re on the right track.
One of my photos of Arches National Park — “Abbey country”
I recently visited a few national parks in Utah: Arches, Canyonlands, and Capitol Reef. While I there, I read Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, a sort of love letter to the area through which I traveled.
In some ways, it’s not a surprise that I loved the book. I spent part of my childhood in the southwestern United States. Books about that area speak to me. I also love books that touch on solitude, such as Thoreau’s Walden, and books with a sense of place, such as Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. Abbey’s book is full of both of these things.
On the other hand, Abbey is not the sort of writer I feel I could bond with if I met him in person — an impossibility, since he is dead. There are many books that give me a sense of kinship with the writer. (I suppose this sort of thing plagues popular writers.) If I find myself often saying, “Yes, me too!” while I read, then I begin to see the author as someone with whom I could be friends.
Desert Solitaire is different. Although I love the same landscapes that Abbey loved and have other things in common with him, the Abbey I encountered in the pages of this book was a crank. To some degree, I understand why he was a crank. He loved the wilderness of the southwest. He was horrified by over-development and the failure of others to appreciate things as they were. But while I understand and even sympathize with that point of view, I still don’t find him very likable.
His dark sense of humor doesn’t help. I’m not against dark humor, but I almost believe that Abbey didn’t really like people. In his chapter about tourism and national parks, he wrote:
A venturesome minority [of tourists] will always be eager to set off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches — that is the right and privilege of any free American. But the rest, the majority, most of them new to the out-of-doors, will need and welcome assistance, instruction and guidance. Many will not know how to saddle a horse, read a topographical map, follow a trail over slickrock, memorize landmarks, build a fire in rain, treat snakebite, rappel down a cliff, glissade down a glacier, read a compass, find water under sand, load a burro, splint a broken bone, bury a body, patch a rubber boat, portage a waterfall, survive a blizzard, avoid lightning, cook a porcupine, comfort a girl during a thunderstorm, predict the weather, dodge falling rock, climb out of a box canyon, or pour piss out of a boot. Park rangers know these things, or should know them, or used to know them and can relearn. They will be needed.
While some of the things on his list of what tourists don’t know made me smile, there’s a small part of me that wonders if he isn’t a bit serious about the more ridiculous things on the list. “Well, he’s dead. Let’s bury him here and move on.” I fear I am too earnest and value others too much to be entirely at home with Abbey’s humor.
I’m even more bothered by his hypocrisy. I’m sure we’ve all failed to live up to who we claim to be. I know I have. Still, Abbey shocked me a bit — although maybe he was lying, indulging in more of his odd sense of humor. At any rate, in one chapter he wrote:
Arches National Monument is meant to be among other things a sanctuary for wildlife — for all forms of wildlife. It is my duty as a park ranger to protect, preserve and defend all living things within the park boundaries, making no exceptions. Even if this were not the case I have personal convictions to uphold. Ideals, you might say. I’m a humanist; I’d rather kill a man than a snake.
I took him at his word about wildlife (and assumed he was joking about people). But in the next chapter, he wrote about killing a cottontail with a rock — an experiment to see what he was capable of if he were starving.
Abbey did warn readers in his introduction that we might be disturbed. “I quite agree that much of the book will seem coarse, rude, bad-tempered, violently prejudiced, unconstructive — even frankly antisocial in its point of view.” He thought these things would make readers dislike Desert Solitaire. In fact, I enjoyed the book immensely, which is why I’m recommending it to you.
Besides the fact that I like Abbey’s subject matter, I love the way he writes. He is an inspiring, masterful wordsmith. You can sense this in his introduction:
For my own part I am pleased enough with surfaces — in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child’s hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of friend or lover, the silk of a girl’s thigh, the sunlight on rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind — what else is there? What else do we need?
He and I disagree philosophically, because I do believe in something beyond the surface. But we both appreciate the beauty of those surfaces, and I love the way he described that beauty.
I also think that he had some great suggestions for reforming national parks. In the chapter I mentioned earlier on tourism and national parks, he recommended doing away with automobile traffic. You get to the park, park your car, and proceed on horseback or bicycle or foot or even, if you must, by shuttle bus.
I’d love to see his ideas implemented. I can’t claim that my family hasn’t driven into many a national park. We have. But we don’t really see the park until we get out of the car and actually interact with it, hiking along a trail, attending a ranger-led viewing of the night sky, taking things at a pace that allows us to truly observe our surroundings and not only see but smell, hear, and (when appropriate) even touch and taste things.
And what’s good for the visitors is even better for the place we visit. Significantly reducing motorized traffic into the park would reduce emissions within the park and prevent some of the damage caused by people who insist on driving where they shouldn’t.
If you read Desert Solitaire, and I hope you do, you may find that you like not only the book but Abbey himself. And perhaps, were he to be at one of those hypothetical dinners populated with people living or dead, I would find that I was wrong about him, that I actually liked him very much. But, whoever Abbey was as a person, he was an excellent writer with a deep love of wilderness and the desert and that alone means you should not neglect this book. That goes double if you are traveling to “Abbey country” anytime soon.
In some parts of the United States, school has already started; in other parts, kids have nearly four more weeks of vacation. Whether or not school has started in your area, and whether or not you have kids, I have a back-to-school suggestion for you: Make plans to pay off some overdue lunch accounts during the school year.
Live tens of thousands of other people, I follow Ashley C. Ford on Twitter. I had seen her tweet from Dec. 6, 2016, in which she suggested people pay off overdue lunch accounts at local schools. What I didn’t realize until I began doing research for this post was that she started a trend. People all over the U.S. followed her suggestion, sometimes even setting up online fundraising for a school district. (This is a great example of the power one person can have.)
That was last school year. The challenge is to keep lunch accounts paid over the 2017-18 school year and beyond. Do this for the families who are struggling to make ends meet but don’t qualify for free lunches. Do this even for families that have the means but leave their kids’ lunch accounts unpaid. The parents in these families could be overwhelmed with a family crisis or crippled by depression. And even if a lunch account goes unpaid due to parental irresponsibility, I don’t believe a child should have to suffer. If anything, we want to give children of irresponsible parents a leg up so that they can become mature, responsible adults despite their family of origin.
In order to accomplish this, you may need to make a few phone calls. Start with your local school district and see if there are unpaid accounts you can take care of. If there aren’t, consider calling another district nearby, particularly if you live near, but not in, a big city. Also consider widening your scope to include parts of the country where poverty is concentrated. Whether you help locally or send your money to a another, needier school district, you’ll be helping to meet a real need.
I’ve been blogging twice a week since Oct. 3, 2016. It’s time for a vacation! I’m giving myself two weeks off and will return with “something wonderful” on Monday, Aug. 28.
Quidditch Players by Damdamdidilolo (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
There are many ways a book can be inspirational. The other day, a friend and I briefly discussed A Jane Austen Education, in which the author writes about how reading Austen’s novels changed him as a person. That’s a wonderful thing, but that’s not what I’m writing about here. In this case, I mean something a little less practical and a little more magical.
My guess is that many of us who are serious readers have sometimes wanted to live inside a book. Certainly many a Harry Potter fan has wanted this; that’s why the Wizarding World of Harry Potter exists and why some colleges have quidditch teams. This desire to live inside a book is also why there are tons of literary cookbooks and online recipes, including The Little House Cookbook, The Unofficial Narnia Cookbook, and Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books.
Like many readers, I love food scenes in books. I think picture books are an often overlooked source of inspiration. How can anyone resist the supper Margaret makes in The Maggie B.?
“Margaret and James ate the beautiful sea stew and dunked their muffins in the broth, which tasted of all the good things that had cooked in it. For dessert they had the peaches with cinnamon and honey, and glasses of warm goat’s milk.”
And Bread and Jam for Frances is full of food inspiration. Albert and Frances’ lunches sound particularly delicious.
“I have a cream cheese-cucumber-and-tomato sandwich on rye bread,” said Albert. “And a pickle to go with it. And a hard-boiled egg and a little cardboard shaker of salt to go with that. And a thermos bottle of milk. And a bunch of grapes and a tangerine. And a cup custard and a spoon to eat it with.”
“I have a thermos bottle with cream of tomato soup,” she said. “And a lobster-salad sandwich on thin slices of white bread. I have celery, carrot sticks, and black olives, and a little cardboard shaker of salt for the celery. And two plums and a tiny basket of cherries. And vanilla pudding with chocolate sprinkles and a spoon to eat it with.”
While I’ve made adjustments to their menus (I hate celery), I’ve allowed both of these meals to inspire my lunches.
But it’s not just food in books that can capture your imagination. When I was a child, I read and reread All-of-a-Kind Family, a story about five Jewish girls living in New York during the 1910s. While the food was enticing, there were many other things that I loved about the girls’ lives. One of my favorite chapters involved the sisters discovering wonderful books in their father’s junk shop. In another chapter, their mother made dusting an enviable chore by hiding buttons and the occasional penny. It’s hard to hide buttons from yourself before dusting (unless you’re very forgetful), but the ideas behind the stories — discovering treasures among used books, turning a chore into play — are easy enough to make a part of your life, if they aren’t already.
Ursula Nordstrom’s The Secret Language, a book which deserves far more young readers than it has, filled me with dreams of midnight feasts, hidden huts, and fun but impractical Halloween costumes when I was little. As an adult, I still appreciate the May basket the girls made — a tiny scene made of moss, flowers, a twig, and a mirror to make a pond. And if I knew a child at boarding school, I’d be tempted to imitate Victoria’s aunt and send a gift of tiny dolls a few weeks before Christmas break to help the time pass more quickly.
And then there are books that are just asking for a touch of magic. If Universal Studios can take visitors as close as they’ll ever get to Harry Potter’s world, then surely someone can do something similar for The Night Circus! Imagine a place filled with black and white tents, containing amazing acts and seemingly impossible things, like an ice garden. If nothing else, I’d love to attend (or attempt to create) a party based on Chandresh Christophe Lefèvre’s Midnight Dinners, with fabulous food, red and gold decor, and entertainment. The fact that I’m not much of a night person is a problem, but I’m sure I could stretch myself for such an occasion.
Nonfiction, too, can be inspirational. While Elizabeth Gilbert probably wanted me to pay more attention to her interior journey in Eat Pray Love, what I came away with was the desire to take a year to live in a few different places. Under the Tuscan Sun also sparks my desire to live abroad for a while, as well as make some of the food and visit some of the places in the book.
There are plenty of things in books we read that are unattainable. Perhaps they’re as impossible as Celia Bowen’s magical carousel. Perhaps they’re merely impractical, like taking a year off work to travel the world when money is tight. But if a book captures your imagination, ask yourself, “What about this can I bring into my life now? How can I make it a reality on some level?”
Perhaps you’ll be the person to create that Night Circus I want to visit.
Avon Walk for Breast Cancer by Avonffw (own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Whether physical activity comes naturally to you or you’re looking for motivation, exercising for charity is a great way to make a difference.
Fitness Events
When I first added this to my list of ideas for the blog, I was thinking solely of events. As a devoted walker, I’ve participated in many charity walk/run events, including fund-raisers for our local humane society, for an anti-human trafficking organization and for HeroSearch.org. These events raise money in different ways – some through entry fees and some through donations solicited by participants.
I learned about most of these events from the organizations themselves. Some events are heavily advertised; our Animal Humane Society’s walk is promoted on billboards and buses. You can also search for charity fitness events online. Fitness magazine offers a list of events for several different causes. Most of these are for walkers and/or runners, but there are a couple of events for cyclists, a Nordic skiing event, and even an extremely difficult challenge for climbers. You can find a similar list of events on The Balance.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t direct you to an article questioning the effectiveness of these events. My personal feeling is that fitness events can be a way to raise funds that people might not otherwise donate. They can also raise awareness; as the article notes, if you’ve ever been in the vicinity of a large charity event, you can’t help but notice it. That said, the most effective donations are direct donations that aren’t tied to an event. You can also choose to direct your efforts toward events with lower overheads, like the CROP Hunger Walk.
Apps
As I started to work on this post, I was reminded of another way we can exercise for charity: through phone apps. Our humane society’s occasional magazine informed me about Walk for a Dog, which allows you to pick from many rescue organizations and shelters. Advertisers and sponsors donate money to the different organizations selected by walkers based on the number of active walkers for each organization.
Walk for a Dog is far from the only app of its kind. There are several options, the most popular of which seems to be Charity Miles.
If you’re motivated by doing good things for others, exercising for charity may just be the kick in the pants you need… or it may simply be a way to give a new purpose to your workouts. Look into an event or an app, and start using your exercise time to raise money for a cause.
When my daughter was young, I noticed that she got a bit upset when she lost board games — a typical response for many young children. While I think it is important for kids to learn to lose gracefully, I decided I wanted to make games more pleasant for both of us by mixing in the occasional cooperative game.
My first cooperative game purchase was Break the Safe. My daughter and I enjoyed it, although I learned that she was as unhappy when our team lost to the timer as she would have been losing to me. I’d review that game for my weekly “something wonderful” post, but Mattel stopped manufacturing it. It costs more than $50 on Amazon. While some complex games cost at least that much, Break the Safe is not that sort of game.
More recently, I purchased Forbidden Island by Gamewright, the same company that makes Sneaky Cards. Forbidden Island is inexpensive and easy to find.
The object of the game is to collect four sacred treasures from an island that begins sinking as soon as your team sets foot on it. If you start gameplay at novice level, this seems quite doable at first. Players can use their turn to work on treasure retrieval or, if needed, to shore up part of the island. In addition, each player has certain skills that help the team achieve its object. The Engineer, for instance, can shore up more of the island per turn than any other player.
The problem is that, sooner or later, a player will get an unlucky card that will increase the pace at which the waters rise. As play continues, the island floods more quickly. Losing is a very realistic possibility. And if, by chance, you find the odds aren’t as much against you as you’d like, you can always start the game at a more challenging level.
Forbidden Island moves quickly; you can easily play more than one round during the time it would take to watch a movie. Gamewright recommends the game for ages 10 and up.
If you haven’t tried a cooperative board game, I highly recommend Forbidden Island. It’s entertaining and easy to learn. And, much as I enjoy movies, there’s a lot to be set for sitting down with friends and family and playing a game.
I’m not proud of this, but I am a suspicious person by nature. Many years ago, my husband and I were at a state park, and a very friendly man who was there with his family stopped to chat with us. Too friendly, I thought. Bet he’s trying to recruit us for Amway. (I had been in Amway briefly myself.) I was actually right, more or less. He had my husband’s full name and later called to ask him if he wanted to go to a meeting about a business opportunity. Whether or not it was Amway is a mystery, because we didn’t go.
So when a teen shows up at my door selling magazines for an organization I’ve never heard of, I think, Scam.
What never occurred to me until recently was that the kid might be a victim of human trafficking.
The best resource to learn more about the problem of slavery on door-to-door sales crews, particularly those selling magazines, can be found in the 2015 report “Knocking at Your Door,” created by a major anti-trafficking organization, Polaris. It’s a 36-page document, but that includes the cover, end notes, and blank pages. It really is a quick read.
Here’s the summary for those who aren’t ready to read the report right now: Many door-to-door magazine sales crews (as well as some other sales crews) recruit disadvantaged youth with false promises of the opportunity to make a lot of money through sales. In reality, the kids earn little money, work long days, and live under difficult conditions. They’re often cut off from contacting their families. They may receive little food and will sleep crowded together in hotel rooms. They are coerced into staying through threats of abandonment (without money or even identification), acts of violence, and debt bondage.
The organization Traffick911 lists some signs that a door-to-door sales person may be a victim of modern-day slavery, including emotional appeals, bruising, malnourishment, inappropriate clothing for the weather, and information indicating they are not being paid or are not free to leave the crew. This organization suggests asking nonthreatening questions such as “How much money have you been able to raise for college so far?” or “Have you been working a lot lately?” If the young person answers evasively, they may be a victim of human trafficking.
At least one news organization suggests a more direct line of questions, such as “Are you being paid?” and “Can you leave if you want to?” You can also ask the youth to show you a city sales permit. Most cities require such a permit, but few of these traveling crews obtain them.
If you suspect human trafficking, you can call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline: (888) 373-7888. You could also provide this number to the crew member at your door. Let them know that they can get help. (Of course, they will have to have privacy and access to a phone to make the call.)
Polaris also suggests changes to federal and state legislation in order to protect door-to-door salespeople, as well as promoting awareness of this form of labor trafficking among law enforcement agencies, hotel employees, and employees of bus companies. You can read the full list of suggestions on pages 23-26 of the Polaris report. Consider taking the time to advocate for these kids by encouraging legislators and businesses to do their part to stop trafficking in door-to-door sales crews.
I first heard about Cathy Malkasian’s graphic novel, Eartha, from Glen Weldon on Pop Culture Happy Hour. I don’t remember his exact words, but I believe he described it as “beautiful.” He was enthusiastic enough that I bought a copy and was prepared to be enthralled.
I was disappointed in the first chapter. Although I am not a person who needs action-packed sequences to stay interested, the story’s pacing felt too slow for me. In the beginning we meet Eartha and the people of her home, Echo Fjord. We learn that they harvest dreams from the City, but recently the dreams have become scarce. When a few dreams finally appear, the first to show up is a graphic sex dream. At that point in the novel, I thought the dream was meant to titillate (pun intended), but it plays an important role in the second part of the book. In fact, many seemingly throw-away details in the first chapter will crop up later on.
Things finally pick up when Eartha leaves Echo Fjord for the City. When she arrives, she finds that the populace has become obsessed with news in the form of a biscuit. As she explores the mysteries of the City and inadvertently shakes things up, she collects allies — just as any protagonist in a fairy tale would.
Eartha’s adventures in the City completely won me over. The story itself is enthralling. The characters are strong, and the art is gorgeous, though not stereotypically so.
Eartha is not only beautiful, though — it’s also timely. As people obsess over their biscuits, she keeps asking, “Is it true?” I don’t know when Malkasian finished the book, but I have to believe she was commenting on our society with this story.
You need to know that Eartha is not like typical graphic novels; it’s hardcover and therefore not cheap. It may be difficult to get at the library, since it is so new, but it’s worth requesting if you decide not to buy it.
Full disclosure: I know the founder of HeroSearch.org and have done some writing for her. She did not ask me to write this post.
Sometimes you know what to do with your stuff. There are things you recycle or throw away, because no one would want them. The Writer’s Market book from 2003. The stained, holey t-shirt. There are also things that you have a home for. You’ll give your friend that necklace you no longer want, but she loves. You’ll take your toddler’s outgrown coat to the coat drive your church runs every fall.
Sometimes you look at something and have no idea what to do with it. Or, you know that Organization X might take it, but you wonder if you can find an organization with a mission you feel passionate about that would want it.
HeroSearch.org allows you to search for organizations near you that need specific items you might have. You must enter your ZIP code and the distance you are willing to travel. Then, if you wish, you can narrow your search by organization name, by the types of items you have to donate, by whether or not the organization will pick up your donation, and by type of charity. For instance, when I searched for a place within 20 miles that would accept musical items, I found Pedal and Roll for Parkinson’s, which needs percussion instruments. When I searched for animal organizations within 10 miles that could use any donation, I found a wildlife rehabilitation center that could use shoeboxes (I’ll have to remember not to recycle mine anymore) and bath towels. I also found an animal shelter that needs newspapers, fans, fleece, pet carriers, and zip ties.
HeroSearch.org started in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, so most of the participating organizations are within that region. But if you are anywhere in the United States, try the search. I searched for charities within 100 of miles of 22301, and one in Wheaton, Maryland, popped up. Nominate a charity in your area, and perhaps you will help HeroSearch.org grow.
The Slate Culture Gabfest has recently treated listeners to monthly episodes of a new podcast, Hit Parade. In Hit Parade, Slate music critic Chris Molanphy analyzes a moment in the history of the Billboard’s Hot 100.
The first episode dove deep into the history of one of the most overplayed songs of 1988: UB40’s “Red Red Wine.” It was one of those songs that you might enjoy the first few times you hear it, but if, for instance, you spend a weekend painting your dorm room, and the radio station you are listening to keeps playing it, you lose your taste for the song. So it’s saying something that I listened to the first episode of Hit Parade all the way through with interest. I can even tolerate hearing “Red Red Wine” again, simply because I now know so much more about the song’s history.
The second episode has been my favorite to date. In it, Molanphy explores how the Beatles landed the top five slots on the Hot 100 one week in 1964. It’s a fascinating story, and it taught me a lot about how the Beatles broke into the American market. (Hint: It wasn’t as easy for them as you might think.)
The most recent episode compares the careers of Elton John and George Michael. While the episode supposedly focuses on a week in 1988 when they were rivals on the Hot 100, it covers so much territory that the week in question feels like an afterthought. That said, as I listened I developed a deeper appreciation for Elton John, whose music I already liked.
What makes all of these podcasts wonderful is Molanphy’s deep knowledge of popular music. He tells you things about songs and their history that you’d never think to ask about, and you feel richer for it.
As far as I can tell, you can’t subscribe to this podcast on its own. You can download individual episodes, or you can get the podcast when you subscribe to the Slate Culture Gabfest or the Slate Daily Feed. I do recommend the Slate Culture Gabfest, so you may want to subscribe that way.
If you want to learn more about current popular songs, read Molanphy’s series, Why Is This Song No. 1? Like his podcast, this series takes a deep dive into the stories behind No. 1 songs. From just one article, I’ve learned about Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, reggaetόn, and the history of past Spanish-language hits that made it to the Hot 100’s top spot.
