The Musical Lives of 4th Graders
On my child’s spring concert and the significance of May 24
Given the events of today I thought I would give a short, timely post.
TW: school shootings
Whenever I meet someone new, our conversation sometimes begins like this,
Stranger: Oh, hi. What’s your name?
Me: Zina. Like the warrior princess.
Stranger: Oh, so you spell it with an X?
Me: No, I spell it like Tina Turner, but with a Z.
Since I have recited this intro so much over the years I’ve probably said Tina Turner’s name more often than your average person, so it makes the news of today a bit sadder for me. I always got a kick of saying her name, knowing I was associating myself with a strong woman—a legendary entertainer whom I imagined could keep doing concerts forever.
The internet makes such dreams possible, but it will never be the same.
As a matter of coincidence, I found out about Tina Turner just hours after coming out of my daughter’s school spring concert. My child had the privilege of being first up at the microphone, welcoming the parents to the event. She and her schoolmates sang a repertoire that included I Love the Mountains/City Life (J. Jacobson & A. Billingsly), Home on the Range (B. Higley), and Fifty-Nifty United States (Ray Charles). The music teacher did an excellent job creating a performance that I would not mind sitting through over and over again. And, let me tell you dear reader, I don’t think I am able to write those words about many of the other elementary school concerts I have sat through over the years. This was fantastic.
But seeing those children reminded me that a year ago today 19 fourth graders and two of their teachers lost their lives in Ulvade, Texas in one of the deadliest school shootings in this nation's history. Twenty-one lives lost…
Eliahna “Ellie” Amyah Garcia, 9
Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10
Alexandria “Lexi” Aniyah Rubio, 10
We can’t even say that this is the deadliest school shooting. We have so many school shootings that “List of school shootings in the United States by death toll” has its own Wikipedia entry which is so long I had to scroll to see the complete list.
This calls to my mind the end of the poem “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith,
[…] Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.
My fourth grader has dreams not unlike the fourth graders who died just a year ago. One of the young victims, Tess Marie Mata, wanted to go viral on TikTok and had even drafted over 150 videos but was too young to open an account at the time. Her mother Veronica opened one and started posting:
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So a year after the massacre the kids live on for as long as we write about them. We cannot afford to forget them. Though the internet can be an awful place, it has the power to keep some of our best moments alive. At a click of a button, someone we can no longer hold can dance again. We are all fools whether or not we choose to sing or dance, so we may as well play our best music and sing like a fourth grader. Dance like Tina Turner. We can make this place beautiful.
We must make this place beautiful.
We can’t afford to do otherwise.
Thank you, Mr. Maxwell, for a beautiful concert.
Beauty can convert hearts. I became a Christian because I saw that the world was beautiful. Evolution as a result of random mutation and selection for fitness won't produce beauty. Beauty comes from God, who is Truth, Beauty, and Goodness himself. But you know this