322 Days Until the Big Five-O

"They're Coming to America" is a song I love by Neil Diamond. It is hokey, but I still love it. I have always tried to reconcile my musical tastes. How could I like Springsteen and John Denver? How could I like the Rolling Stones and Neil Diamond? How could I like Simon and Garfunkle and Michael Jackson? How could I like Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band and Donny Osmond? (I would much rather have sex with Donny than Bob, but musically speaking they both appeal to me). Music does that. It crosses invisible bridges. I started thinking about the old Neil Diamond song when I heard it on the radio a couple of days ago. And then today I went with my son's 8th Grade Class to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Educational Center. My first and all time favorite cousin Doris was our Docent. It will be the second time I have been part of a tour of the museum with her as my fearless leader. She does a great job.

Doris and I are Americans because her mother had the strength to survive and the willingness to start over. Her mother and my father were brother and sister. They had to come to America. There was nothing left of their family or home in Poland where they were born. The song has a joyous tone to it, the offer of hope and a safe haven. So why was I thinking of the ship St. Louis and that song at the same time today in the Museum? I am still so baffled and disturbed by the story of how the United States (as well as many other countries) turned those refugees away and back to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis. How? When did we run out of room in our hearts that we could not make room in this wide open land for the people who were being tossed and turned on the ocean like so many dead fish? Which reminds me of one of my other favorite songs... "This Land is your Land". Sometimes songs just appear silently in our heads and we can hear them in the hallways of our conscious mind while no one else does. What songs ran through the minds of the passengers on the St. Louis as they drifted back and forth between life and death? I know what song was running through my mind as I stared at the black and white photo on the wall of a woman looking out of one of the ships portals.