In 1971 I saw an action film called ‘Billy Jack’ where writer-director Tom Laughlin plays a half-Navajo, ex-Green Beret veteran, who saves wild horses from being slaughtered for dog food, while he helps protect a desert “freedom school” for runaways.

During the film Billy Jack goes through a Navajo ‘snake dance’ initiation rite of manhood, where he enters a ceremonial dance ring with a large rattlesnake. The rattlesnake’s job is to bite the dancer, and the dancer’s job is to survive the bite and become a warrior. It doesn’t always work out well for the young dancer.

As a 25-year-old myself, I was amazed that everyone involved agreed to play the roles they were assigned. The dancer and the snake are stuck in the ring together, … acting out their parts in their very real relationship.

SNAKE DANCE

Dancing in a snake dance A-Asus2-E7sus4-A

Where the dancer twirls and spins Dsus2-A

And the guilty serpent strikes Dsus2

And neither partner wins Dsus2-A, A

V1: I asked her how she’d been A

She said, “You’ve been our best friend, Dsus2-A

And I don’t know where to begin, E2-G6-A

Cho: I don’t love him anymore Dsus2-A

I’ve had it up to here, I’ve seen it all before C#7-F#m

He won’t let me help him E

He hollers if I try F#7sus4/E

And I know I must be crazy B-B7sus4, Emodal

But I can’t say ‘Good-bye’“ Emodal-A, A

V2: She cried and poured my tea A

She said “What can I do? Dsus2-A

You see, I’m his guiding light F#m-F#m7

When I help him talk things through Bm-E, Esus4-E

But he holds me up on high A

Where he guards me jealously D-Bm, Bm7

While he gets it on with one-night stands E-F#m

He can’t make love with me! Esus4-E

Cho: I don’t love him anymore Dsus2-Afig

I’ve had it up to here, I’ve seen it all before C#7-F#m

He scares me when he’s angry E

He burns me with his eyes, F#7sus4/E(044200)

And if I say ‘I’m leaving’ B(799800)-B7sus4(797900), E-modal(079900)

It kills me when he cries.” E-modal-A, A

V3: I hugged her in the silence A

“It’ll all work out,” I lied Dsus2-A

I was hardly out her door F#m-F#m7

When I had to stop and cry Bm-E, Esus4-E

They were dancing in a snake dance A

To a tune I used to know D-Bm, Bm7

My heart was aching now E-F#m

Though it happened long ago Esus4-E

Cho: They were dancing in a snake dance D

That would have to run it’s time A

And it hurt to see them dancing C#7

In a dance so much like mine F#m, F#m7

Where the serpent strikes E

When he hears his dancer’s cries F#7sus4/E

And he feels twice the pain B-B7sus4, Emodal

When his dancer finally dies! Emodal

Yes, he strikes ‘cause he’s afraid E

Of love that’s true, F#7sus4/E

And both of them are poisoned B-B7sus4-Emodal

When the dance is through. Emodal-A

Dancing in a snake dance A-Asus2-E7sus4/A-A

Where the dancers twirl and spin, Dsus2-A

And the guilty serpent strikes Dsus2

And neither partner wins! Dsus2

(005030/004030)4x-(002200)

Written by Peter Alsop, ©1979, Moose School Music (BMI)

On ‘Draw The Line’ and ‘Songs On Recovery & Addiction’

Big ‘Thanks’ to Janis Liebhart, Jim McVay and Matt Cartsonis

www.peteralsop.com

Eight years later, when I wrote this song, I saw echoes of this powerful ‘snake dance’ analogy everywhere I went. On the road, I’d visit a variety of friends as I criss-crossed the country. During my stays I would hear separate private painful stories from each partner! So many couples struggle with their own version of a ‘snake dance’. I listened, and although I felt I might have some valuable advice, I didn’t ‘take sides’, as they were figuring out how to proceed with their own lives, … together or apart.

When we don’t know how or where to go for help, we strike out physically, or verbally. Often one or both of us find someone else to soothe us, as we try to escape this painful and toxic dance, where neither dancer knows how to retreat.

And the man who sings this song, the best friend of the woman who confides to him about the painful trap her relationship has become for her, has his own wounds that get triggered. Having been through a ‘snake dance’ himself, his pain is very present and real, and yet he knows that ‘placing blame’ only continues the dance.

ILLUSTRATION BY TERRI ASHER

The question I heard most frequently from women who heard this song was, “How did you learn these things?” And I would say, “from watching men, and listening to women.”

Sometimes we have to finish our dance. Once we’ve lived through the pain of what got us here, we need to look honestly at how we got into this ‘snake dance’ in the first place. Once we understand the entanglements, we can avoid the missteps we took in the past, ... so we don’t repeat them in the future. Each of us take ‘missteps’ as we find our way through our personal lives. By understanding them, we learn to take better steps that improve all areas of our lives.

By learning how to love ourselves better and care for others, we gain the skills we need to surround ourselves with people who know how to love us back.

Written by Peter Alsop, ©1979, Moose School Music (BMI)

On ‘Draw The Line’ and ‘Songs On Recovery & Addiction’

Glad you stopped by. Please share this post with anyone who might find it useful!

Thanks for reading Peter Alsop’s Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it or Re-stack it!

Share

Check out my audio podcasts here: Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW

And you can find my CDs, DVDs & Songbooks at: Bandcamp.com.

I’d love to hear from you. To send me a comment, or ask a question, please sign up as a Substack Subscriber by clicking the Subscribe button. It’s free! And you can always reach me at peter@peteralsop.com.

You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word and sharing with your friends. Bye for now!

Peter Alsop’s Substack is a reader supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Leave a comment

Does your life seem more complicated these days? My life seems that way. And most of my friends and family members are overloaded with multiple stressful situations. It’s not just around home here. When we listen to the world news, it looks like everyone struggles with juggling relationships and responsibilities; with finances and family, figuring how to stay in balance with our complicated lives.

I’ve written all sorts of songs for kids and families about how to keep ourselves balanced. When we feel overwhelmed, tired and depleted, we can recharge our batteries by getting out into nature and finding beauty! It’s always around, but when we’re busy or overwhelmed, we don’t notice it. And it’s not just beauty we need, … we need to practice ‘self-care’ by being alone sometimes, or by surrounding ourselves with people or animals we love who lift our spirits; we can laugh together; play around, share stories, songs or poetry to get ourselves back on track.

Last week I posted a song called “Hard Love”, about how reaching out to help other folks actually works to nurture ourselves as well. And sometimes the hardest person to reach out to with love, … is ourselves.

I remember coming down off the stage once after a big concert, and a short middle-aged woman came up to me with twinkling eyes and said,

“Dr. Alsop, … that was just wonderful! I had such a great time and I learned so many useful things! You did a great job!” And I said,

“Thank you, but that was mostly because you folks in the audience were right there, laughing and singing along with me!”

Her twinkle went away, and she took one step toward me, grabbed my tie and pulled my face down to hers!

“Look!” she said very seriously, “I just gave you a compliment! Can you take a minute to actually absorb it! Take it in, … instead of immediately complimenting us back?!! I can see you need some nurturing, … so?” She got me laughing and I said,

“Oh, … yes! Yes! I can take it in! I DO need a little work in that department, don’t I!”

She taught me a wonderful lesson about taking care of loving ourselves.

Substack is for writers, and for today’s post I’m not sharing a song, I’m sharing a young British writer with you, Holly Bourne, and my story about the wonderful and unexpected gift she gave me that still ‘lifts’ me today!

It happened in April, 2015 when I received a letter from England.

“Dear Dr. Alsop, … I work for a children’s publishing company in the UK called Usborne Publishing. We are a renowned publisher of both non-fiction and fiction titles, and I am contacting you in regard to one of our Young Adult fiction titles that we will be publishing next year. The author of the book, Holly Bourne, is a huge childhood fan of yours. She has relatives in the US and spent some time there every year. She would love to quote some of your song lyrics in her upcoming book. It’s a novel about a teenage girl from the UK who spends her summer in California working at a summer camp where she falls in love with one of the handsome counselors working there.

At the beginning of their relationship, it’s a love of your songs that helps them to bond. I’ve attached the relevant extracts from the text to show you the context in which the lyrics would be used, and I would be very grateful if you could let me know if you would grant us the right to use them.”

I was delighted! And curious to read Holly’s story, so I wrote back and said “Of course!” A few months later, I received my copy of “How Hard Can Love Be?” and read the entire book that night.

It was wonderful! Full of all the heart-break, upset and passion that happens to us as we first step into those new and uncharted waters of ‘young love’. I knew it wouldn’t be boring! If Holly was a fan, I knew her main character Amber would be creative and have a slightly twisted sense of humor! All the characters were witty and well-crafted. As Amber’s story unfolded, I was reminded of the teens and adults who surrounded me in my own teenage life in Connecticut.

I shared her book with my 13-year-old granddaughter Quinnlyn, and I had trouble getting it back for a year, because she had circulated the book around to all of her friends. Quinn turned 17 this year, and she asked if she could ‘borrow’ it again!

Here’s the promo:

‘All Amber wants is a little bit of love. Her mum has never been the caring type, even before she moved to America. But Amber’s hoping that spending the summer with her can change all that.

And then there’s the Prom King, … Kyle the serial heartbreaker. Can Amber really be falling for him? Even with best friends Evie and Lottie’s advice, there’s no escaping the fact that: love is hard.’

And here’s an excerpt from Holly’s book, so that you too may be gently reminded of any young love that took root in your life. Yes, loving someone else can be very hard! (From pp.99-101)

“Why don’t we just sing American campfire songs with morals in them?” I asked. “Isn’t that what campfires are for?” I got a sudden memory of a CD collection Mum bought on one of my childhood holidays to America. We’d played it over and over.

“How about Peter Alsop?” I asked, fumbling for the name in my head. “It’s perfect for a campfire, surely?”

Whinnie and Russ pulled a ‘huh-what? face’.

“Who?” they asked, just as Kyle said: “You’re kidding me? You know Peter Alsop?” His face lit from within, making his tan more golden. “I swear NOBODY knows him.”

“Yeah, I know him. I thought everyone in America knew him? In England no one has heard of him. My friends always thought I was weird when I played his CDs at my birthday parties.”

“Who the hell is Peter Alsop?” Russ asked. “Is he, like, in a band?”

Kyle and I grinned at each other, with that shared positive energy from finding someone who knows the same obscure thing you do. I thought about how to explain him.

“Peter Alsop is a children’s singer.”

“But he’s also a child psychologist,” Kyle added. “And a hippie, I think. He writes all these songs for kids, teaching them important life lessons and stuff.”

I jumped up off the log and started to sing. “My body’s nobody’s body but mine. You run your own body, let me run mine!”

Kyle jumped up too. “Ahh yes! Oh my God, the ‘please-don’t-touch-me song’. I never got that as a kid. Do you remember ‘Where will I go when I’m dead and gone’?”

“That one teaches you about death? Yes!”

Russ and Whinnie looked totally bewildered but we ignored them, high off the reminiscing.

“What’s your favorite?”

Kyle beamed at me again. “Easy. It has to be ‘I Am A Pizza’.”

I AM A PIZZA. THIS GUY KNEW “I AM A PIZZA”.

“I can’t believe you just said the words ‘I am a Pizza’ to me. That makes me so happy inside.”

“And then there’s ‘You Get A Little Extra When You Watch TV’. and ‘It’s No Fun When Ya Gotta Eat an Onion.’” Kyle practically jumped up and down with excitement.

“Onnnnnnniion!” I sang, remembering the old lyrics instantly.

Whinnie and Russ just stared at us, their mouths open.

“You two are weird,” Russ stated. “I think that needs to be acknowledged.”

I sat down on the log with a thump, a smile stretching to the widest cracks of my mouth.

“You would understand if you had Peter Alsop in your childhood too.”

Russ actually waved his hands to make us shut up.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HOLLY BOURNE

Holly Bourne warmed my heart immensely by including me in her story of young love. My copy of her book “How Hard Can Love Be?” now sits proudly on a bookshelf in my room at home.

The same room where I sit to rest and think about what else I need to do to calm down after hearing the latest world news!

Holly has gone on to write many more award-winning books for young adults. And when I re-read the acknowledgement she wrote for me in her book, I feel lifted and encouraged to go on!

“Thank you Peter Alsop, for shaping my childhood. I still cannot believe I’ve got your songs into my books. I cannot tell you how much that means. Thank you in particular for ‘Rachel And The Moon’, which played constantly in my head while I wrote this.”

Here’s how to order her book.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26255907-how-hard-can-love-be

Glad you stopped by. Please share this post with anyone who might find it useful!

Check out my audio podcasts here: Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW

And you can find my CDs, DVDs & Songbooks at: Bandcamp.com.

I’d love to hear from you. To send me a comment, or ask a question, please sign up as a Substack Subscriber by clicking the Subscribe button. It’s free! And you can always reach me at peter@peteralsop.com.

Subscribe now

You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word and sharing with your friends. Bye for now!

Peter Alsop’s Substack is a reader supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Leave a comment

When I arrived at their home of these children, all five kids were in their cribs in their group bedroom. Their parents were on their way home from the conference, so I sat and waited in the low light with the children and their paid helpers, who were there on that particular shift. They tended to the kids who were not sleeping.

One of the boys, a 13-year-old, was still in his crib in diapers. Next to his crib, a little 3-year-old girl lay paralyzed and brain-damaged as she had been a ‘shaken baby’ whose spinal cord had been damaged. She seemed like she was in another world.

The children stirred when they heard the parents come into the room. Each of those kids who had appeared to be ‘unavailable’, living at the severe end of the autism spectrum, lite up with smiles as they heard the parents voices and felt the presence of these folks who loved them. They got hugs and caresses from their parents, and I thought, …

“How hard this must be, … to have the responsibility of caring for these little humans. So many other adults would only see the burdens and impediments that these children carry with them, while these two loving parents obviously delighted in having the company of these innocent little ones.”

Love songs I’ve heard on the radio, are mostly someone singing a mournful lament about how their heart has been ‘broken’ by someone they loved, who didn’t love them back enough. “Love is so HARD! It gives me the blues!”

“Well, …” I thought, “All that musical ‘heart-ache’ and that, “it’s just you and me against the world Darling” kind-of-love, seems “EASY”, compared to what these parents signed up for! And that’s what sprouted the idea for my “Hard Love” song.

HARD LOVE

Sometimes love seems so easy D9-G6

Then that passion knocks me flat down D9-Asus4-A

And my heart sings the blues, for each love that I lose D9-G6

Then I get up n’start lookin’ around Em-A(Asus4-A)

Chorus: Hard love is not what I look for D-G(C-G)

Specially when it looks hard from the start D-Asus4-A

But I learned how to live, when I learned how t’give Bm-G

Hard love helps me find my heart Em-A

Hard love helped me find my heart. Em-A-D, Dsus4-D

Now ‘hit’ songs are all ‘easy love’ songs

Lovers fight, they make up, they rejoice.

But I never knew what ‘hard love’ was

Til I had to make that hard choice

When my drunken Dad bust in through my door

When my buddy the soldier just stared at the floor

When my cousin got caught, and I bailed her out

That’s what hard love’s about

Chorus: Hard love is not what I look for

‘Cause I know it can tear me apart

But I learned how to live, when I learned how t’give

Hard love helped me find my heart

Hard love helped me find my heart.

Instrumental chorus

Bridge:

What ever happened to “turn the other cheek”? Cmaj7(032030)-Em7(020030)-A

Was that only popular last week? Cmaj7-Em7-Asus4-A7

Hard love’s all around, but where’s the awards?

For those young single Moms lugging babies through stores

For that Dad who keeps working a job that’s dead-end

T’keep family together or t’pay back a friend?

Where’s that statue for Grandma, whose daughter’s in jail,

As she helps her blind granddaughter learn t’read Braille

She gave up her own dreams to ‘hard-love’ that girl,

And that hard love opened their worlds!

Chorus: Hard love is not what we look for

‘Specially when it looks hard from the start

But we learn how to live, when we learn how to give

Hard love helps us find our heart

Hard love helps us find our heart.

Hard love helped me find my heart! Em-A-Cmj7, Em7/Asus4-A

Em7(020030)/Asus4-A

Written by Peter Alsop, ©2010 Moose School Music (BMI)

On ‘Disciples Of PerFection’ - www.peteralsop.com

Here’s me and my 2nd & 3rd grade Junior Guidance class at PS132 in the South Bronx, NYC in 1970. These guys taught me sooo much about ‘hard love’ and stickin’ together! Thanks Clinton, Harold, Jesse, both Darrells and George!

And I think that ‘finding our heart’ is the reason we were born. Of course, I don’t know for sure why we arrived here on this planet. Some people experience life as joyous, some find it overwhelming and full of pain. There are bunches of us who would report a blended mix of those two. I suspect the story we tell ourselves about our own lives has a lot to do with our experience as we travel through our time here. Some of those stories come from our families, our parents, our culture, our religion, our experiences, our gender and place of birth and color of our skin. And there are lots of people who have changed the story they got, … and made it better.

I’ve seen people who have gone through horrendous experiences and rather than accept that story as their story, they shift, and reframe things. They create new stories that empower them; and songs to lift themselves up as they search and find lessons in their misfortune, and by doing so, … they build knowledge and the ability to help others shift their stories and songs too.

The story I think we need most in the world now, is one that helps us figure out how to widen our circle of caring for others. How do we open our hearts and our hands and let go of our own personal fears about ‘not having enough’, … so we can share what we do have, with others?

I think that’s what ‘hard love’ is about. What do you think? Drop me a note and let me know.

Bye for now, …

Thanks to Greg Hilfman for playing piano and engineering this song. Ellen Geer and Shelby Flint sing background vocals.

If you liked this song and my comments, … I’d sure appreciate you spreading the word about it by re-stacking and sharing it, … maybe telling your friends and family about my work. My albums and songs are available as cd’s or as downloads at https://peteralsop.bandcamp.com.

Or check out more of my songs on earlier posts, or listen to my audio posts at:

Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW (click here! )

My Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. (You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … but some folks do send in money to support my work, which I appreciate!) To send me a comment, you can hit the Subscribe button. That’s free!

Subscribe now

And you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you!

In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word! Bye for now!.

Leave a comment

A Feature-length Musical Video by Peter Alsop

Suitable for: Gender & Women’s Studies • Social Work • Psychology • Counseling • Literature • Human Services • Ethics • Theatre • Political Science

My audiences told me, “This will help save the world!” They said, “You have to get this video to as many people as possible!” “Okay,” I said, “Here we go!”

In 2003 there were bunches of ‘make over’ themed television shows. ‘Queer-eye For The Straight Guy’ was one I found particularly delightful. Four or five gay men would descend on a heterosexual man who had agreed to have his life restructured. With their aid and advice, by the end of the show, … he was transformed! He wasn’t exactly gay, but he was happy!

After watching the show, I remembered Charles Dickens’ classic story, ‘A Christmas Carol’, and realized it was basically a ‘make over’ story about Ebenezer Scrooge! One day he was a greedy old man who “Bah-humbugged!” the idea of Christmas at every opportunity, … and the next day, after being visited by three Spirits in the night, he had become delightfully cheery and generous, with the ‘milk of human kindness, running by the quart in every vein!’

My next thought was, “There are so many men these days who could use a ‘make over’, … about their sexism, patriarchy, racism, capitalism, religion and general self-centeredness!”

A year later, in 2004 I released a musical CD called ‘Ebenezer’s Make Over’ using Dickens’ structure in the form of a radio show. I replaced the original themes of greed and generosity with a sharp, humane, and often hilarious examination of sexism, gender socialization, patriarchy and what happens to everyone when men don’t change. I used actors from our local theater company, the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, and folded the story around amazing songs by my many wonderful feminist songwriter friends, Holly Near, Geof Morgan and Charlie Murphy to name a few.

Holly Near & Peter Alsop. Geof Morgan

Now we jump ahead twenty years or so, and I was upset about the ultra-conservative, sexist, racist dictator-type environment that was surging up in the world. I had to do something to help myself and others around me cope, and ‘Ebenezer’ popped up again and got my attention. I decided to make the story into a play, and to film it so thousands of people could watch Scrooge’s transformation, and hear the songs and think about what we might do, individually and/or collectively to turn the tide back to more ‘kind-hearted’ ways of treating each other.

In the winter of 2025, I redid the script and worked with my bestie friend and musical director Greg Hilfman to pull together the actors and musicians. We had some rehearsals, never with everyone there at the same time, … and in May we performed for our live audiences with a couple of cameras.

It took two months to edit. The sound was difficult as we were on an outdoor stage while the springtime tree frogs serenaded us throughout all the footage. When we finished, I realized that the benefits of the show were not going to be appreciated by standard media outlets and distributors because I wanted to make it free for everyone, … educators and thought leaders, gender & women’s studies, and basically everywhere!

I also didn’t want to show this video to one person at a time, … through a ‘screen’. After CoVid, we learned how important it is for us humans to interact with each other in person, rather than just staring at our own individual screens. The most beneficial part of this project occurred when our play audience ‘broke the fourth wall’ on the stage and sang, laughed and clapped-along together with the cast and musicians. By the end of the play our little community felt like a much safer place than it did when they first took their seats.

Our show was designed to build community and generate conversation, not just get applause. The Theatricum shows ended with lively talk-backs where audience members, cast, and invited guests had an open dialogue about the show’s questions. As a community, we had all experienced watching Scrooge’s transformation, and our discussions after the shows were noticeably deeper because of that sense of community and safety. When a live video audience watches this video, we encourage the teacher or facilitator to invite the video audience, their class or conference attendees or group members, to join in and sing with the people in the video. It works to make your after-show discussions much more rich and rewarding.

We’re now looking for teachers or department heads from high schools, colleges or universities to facilitate and show this video as adjunct material or main curricula for Gender Studies, Men’s or Women’s Studies, in Sociology, Social Work, English, Psychology, Education, Counseling, Religion, Political Science or Theater. We will provide a free streaming link for the full video along with a ‘Facilitators Guide’ to help people facilitate their own presentation. Please send us any information about anyone you know who might be interested in showing it to their students or clients!

If you’re interested, please contact Peter for more info.

We also have a full Episodic Version that divides the show into 14 different short episodes, each with it’s own title. I prefer this version because it creates stopping places for people to pause and talk about what they’ve just seen. (You can get both versions for free.)

Maybe after a dinner with friends, to share with each other. Maybe they just saw an idea to gently help Uncle Larry lessen his sexist behaviors at the next dinner. Maybe it allows folks to take a bathroom break, or get something to drink, or deal with kids or a phone call. If the video’s used in a full semester course that meets once a week, each episode could focus on a specific issue that Scrooge deals with in each episode. Maybe, it’s just to help people remember where they stopped, so they know where to start it up again next time!

BINARY MALE BRAINS

Because men live with our binary favoring brains, in a binary favoring system, when we feel stuck, there’s huge pressure to make a simple binary choice. But when we do that, we miss other more nuanced choices that can’t get in, because we’ve already decided on our simple binary choice. Sometimes, when we don’t know exactly what to do, it helps to just sit and wait to see what comes in. It’s difficult, but this is one of Scrooge’s lessons. Pay more attention to how others are feeling. Here’s my poem ‘Good News!’ about this.

GOOD NEWS!

Good news! Good news! It’s NOT all black and white!

See it that way if you want to, but it’s NOT right!

‘Cause when we see things ‘either-or’, … or ‘friend-or-foe’, or ‘win-or-lose’

But we find no simple answers, … then we think, … “We have to choose!”

It’s hard to make decisions. Us humans struggle with our lives,

But it’s ‘good news’ to know, there’s always more than just two sides.

That’s where it all begins! That’s where the problem starts!

Men’s brains love simple choices, and we forget to use our hearts!

We grab one side or the other, ‘cause there’s pressure to decide.

Hey guys, … think about your mother, before you pick one side.

Most mothers understand, there are lots of ways to find

How we can ‘work things out’ keeping everyone in mind!

Often life ‘ain’t easy’. There are ‘nuances’ we need

To try to keep things peaceful, so no one has to bleed!

So maybe there’s no winner, … but everyone pulls through.

It’s not “my way or the highway!”, and it’s not just ‘me and you’,

It’s ALL the living people, the animals and plants!

Living here in ‘our community’, learning how to dance!

We all feel fear and anger, but we also feel love.

The ‘Good News’ is, we can choose to lift each other up

And we can start on this today, if we learn to change our ways.

When we begin to help each other, we’ll all see better days!

Written by Peter Alsop, Copyright 2026, Moose School Music (BMI)

Please DONATE - if you can!

We intend for ‘Ebenezer’s Make Over’ to be FREE for anyone who would like to see it, along with a FREE really helpful ‘Facilitator’s Guide’. Hopefully you will share it with others. Any funds that come in will go to support people who show this video to their group or their class or congregation and who need help with advertising their event or to pay for a facilitator to help them guide the after-show discussion.

We have also partnered with the Filmmakers Collective SF - a 501(c)3 non-profit media organization with a mission to catalyze positive change through the power of filmmaking. So your donations are tax deductible as allowed by Federal and State regulations. Please let us know if you know anyone who might find this video useful, … (we already know that it’s humorous and entertaining, … we’d love to hear how you or others you show it to, … are impacted by seeing it, so we can share those thoughts as we spread the word. Thanks! Bye for now!

Peter

Leave a comment

You don’t need to pay to Subscribe. You will simply get my newest posts and you can browse through all my other materials for free also. If Substack asks you to donate as a patron, … please only do so if you can afford it. Thanks so much! Enjoy. Peter

For Peter Alsop’s audio posts & podcasts - SONGS TO CHEW

For Peter’s albums, songbooks & dvd’s

We humans have taken over most of the world by eliminating any other creatures who threaten us or our expansion. It’s ‘fear’ that drives us to completely wipe out other living species, rather than finding ways to share space with them. It’s our mostly male ‘binary ways’ of coping with an ‘all-or-nothing’ dilemma that we face. There’s too much pressure to have to choose, we don’t know what else to do, so we pick one simple answer and hang onto it, no matter what.

Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was a real person who lived in the 5th century. He came to Ireland to proselytize for Christianity. One of the biggest myths about his ‘story’, is that he drove all the snakes out of Ireland and into the sea. The fact is that Ireland never had any snakes for St. Patrick to banish! The event that prevented snakes from living in Ireland, was actually the Ice Age that ended 10,000 years ago. When kids hear this myth, they ask, “Did he have to get rid of ALL the snakes?”

I’ve learned that we can let go of our binary mandates, and not have to throw out the whole delicious story. We can hold onto parts of old stories like this. We can appreciate and celebrate with our community the stories we grew up with in our lives. And, … we can alter some of the untrue details in our stories, and add some of the important nuances we’ve learned from living through life’s hard lessons.

When we’re not afraid, if we learn how to behave in less violent, more caring ways than what we learned from listening to old stories, then, … when we are afraid, we will know some healthier, more effective ways to proceed. As the song says, “we can crush all the spiders with books, y’know, but killing them’s kind of a crime, ‘cause all life is sacred!”

WAS ST PAT SCARED?

St. Pat drove the snakes out of Ireland A7-D-A-D

Tho’ snakes are God’s creatures too G-D

And they probably scared St Patrick a bit G-D

And they might even frighten you E-A

But getting rid of all the snakes D-A-D

Won’t make your fear go away G-Bm

It puts it off for awhile G-D

But your fear will come back some day, some daaaay A-Bm-G

Your fear will come back some day D-A-D-A7

So you go somewhere else and get frightened

Maybe by spiders this time

You can crush all the spiders with books, y’know

But killing them’s kind of a crime.

Cause all life is sacred

In my heart, I know it’s true

These animals just are trying their best

T’stay alive like we do, we dooo

To stay alive like we do.

When you kill the things you’re scared of

You loose what you need to explore

To learn t’grow and be stronger

To stop being scared like before

So if you hate spiders and snakes

There’s one thing that is clear

If you kill ‘em or crush ‘em or chase ‘em away

You never get rid of your fear, oh noooo!

No, you never get rid of your fear.

Those creatures are here for a reason

God made ‘em and He’s no fool

We can’t avoid Life’s lessons

We learn that at home and in school.

So don’t copy old St Patrick

Who never conquered his fear

God didn’t make this world for just us

People living here, my dear, noooo!

It’s for all the creatures here!

St Patrick just felt frightened of D-A-D

What us other creatures do G-Bm

So give us a break! Don’t be frightened of me G-D

And I won’t be frightened of you, of youuu, nooo! A-Bm-G

Give us a break! Don’t be frightened of me G-D

And I won’t be frightened of you! A-A7-D

Written by Peter Alsop, ©Copyright 2007, Moose School Music (BMI)

‘OnGrow It At Home’ - www.peteralsop.com

That story about Eve and the Serpent and the Apple is a delicious allegory with lots of hidden messages, but the reality is, … ‘If we don’t take care of our ‘Garden of Eden’, we won’t get to stay!’

Thanks for stopping by. Please share this post with anyone who might find it useful!

Check out Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW audio podcast by clicking here! Or if you’d like to hear any of my albums or see my dvd’s go to: https://peteralsop.bandcamp.com

To send me a comment, sign in as a Substack member by clicking the Subscribe button. It’s free! And you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com.

I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word! Bye for now!

Peter Alsop’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Leave a comment

My cousin Dominic DiMauro, a marvelous potter and adventurer, posted on his social media about a beautiful cup he’d made that could not hold water. The glaze had ‘bubbled’ on the inside and he couldn’t file it down or fix it in any ceramic way, and it was certainly not going to work as a coffee cup, so he couldn’t sell it. It was worthless. He was going to discard it, but instead, he decided to take it home.

He wrote: “In every life, (or wood-firing), a little rain. The exterior of this cup is a dream come true, more natural variation in color and texture than I could hope for. The interior? Heartbreak hotel, the glaze being a bubbled, blistered mess, with sharp chipping edges, rendering it un-sellable. Just making it usable will require a ton of sanding and grinding, which could break the pot, given the amount of work it needs. Into the home collection it goes.

Dominic’s Ceramics!

Like Dominic, I would certainly take this cup home, even if I didn’t know what to do with it, … YET! There’s that word, … YET!. It’s a great word. When my kids were little and struggling with learning a new skill of some sort and they’d try and try, and then shrug and sigh, and shake their heads and say to me, …

“Dad! I can’t do this! I’ve tried and I know I can’t do it!” And I’d say ….

“C’mon! You know the rule! What‘s the rule in our family?” And they’d heave a sigh again, … and say

“It’s okay to say ‘can’t’ in a sentence, … as long as we say YET! at the end of the sentence.” And I’d say

“Hooray!”

My old friend and teacher Utah Phillips would often point out how our capitalist system teaches us that the value of ‘anything’ in our culture can be assigned a dollar-amount price, simply by passing it through a ‘cash nexus’ to establish a value or worth. And that has become our ‘go-to’ process. So when we have an important decision to make about how to live our life, we use this familiar pricing metric to decide the choice we make. Problem is, … once we adopt a mindset based on a dollar value, we use it on everything, … ourselves, our time and the people around us!

Like Dominic’s Cup, which may seem worthless to many people in terms of a dollar amount, … I prefer to use that wonderful word YET! to avoid pricing the cup right away. Because like so many people, a cup may appear beautiful and attractive on the outside, but may not function so well on the inside. Our culture teaches us that our ‘beauty’ is not enough! We must be ‘useful’ if we’re going to be ‘worth’ anything!

Some of us dig around inside ourselves trying to file away the roughness there, even though we feel our cup doesn’t really hold water. Others, aware of how worthless it is to have functional limitations, will toss the cup onto the trash heap. Still others may destroy the cup completely, hoping to salvage some of the beautiful broken pieces for other decorative projects that have nothing to do with the original intent of the cup’s creation. And on rare occasions, someone will love this troublesome cup enough to allow it to exist in its own undefined, unclassified state, and cherish it for its beautiful existence only, … in the hope that something more might be revealed about how its beauty may blend with some ‘as-yet-undiscovered’ function! A pencil holder perhaps?

I’m sure most of us have made a ‘snap decision’ at some point in our lives because we wanted to resolve an uncomfortable situation, and then we regretted not waiting a bit longer, to allow ourselves the time and patience needed to hold an object, a moment or a person in our hearts as ‘undefined’, even though we don’t know ‘YET’ how to fit them into our life.

My dear old college friend Dennis Farber was an incredible artist, teacher, photographer and painter whose works are included in the permanent collection at MoMA in New York and numerous other galleries. He taught art at The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. Before that, he made gorgeous paintings in Hawaii, using water-based Rhoplex on canvas. He would drip colors onto the canvas, then tip the canvas, … so the colors would flow beautifully into one another, spreading out on the wet parts and making miniscule rivers and streams that trickled through the dry parts of the canvas.

I love his work, and when I’d visit him from time to time, I’d explore his studio. On one visit, I noticed a gorgeous painting with a huge black swath across the middle of it.

“What’s THAT about?!” I asked him.

“Nothing special,” he said. “I just did that.”

“Why!” I asked.

“I have no idea,“ he laughed.

“Was it an accident?” He just grinned. I kept at him.

“You gonna sell it for a lot of money?”

“It’s not for sale,” he said.

Through the years, every time we spoke, I’d ask if he still had that painting, … and each time he’d say, “Yup.”

“What’s so special about that painting Den? Why hang onto it for so long?”

“I’ve been hoping that if I kept looking at it, eventually I’ll figure out why it’s special.”

“And, …?” I asked. He paused, …

“Yeah, … it’s because it’s the first painting I ever made, where I took full responsibility for making a mark on the canvas. Before that painting, I never felt ‘responsible’ for making the paintings. I just ‘tipped the canvass’. The paint and the canvas did the rest. But this painting? I made that black smear. It was me. I found a footlong rubber squeegee, got a glob of black paint, and I smeared it! For most of my life, I’ve tried to remain invisible, but with this painting, … I finally became visible.”

“What changed?” I asked. “Why didn’t you do this years ago?”

He grinned again. “I guess I wasn’t ready to be ‘seen’, … YET.”

That YET gives us time to consider things. If Dennis had abandoned his smeared painting, he wouldn’t have been able to look at it again and again, and eventually discover and understand why it was so special for him.

Brain scientists tell us that our male brains gravitate towards binary ways of seeing the world. We love to make binary choices, … and we tend to structure our challenges as binary, … one-or-the-other, black or white, right or wrong, up or down situations, … while women’s brains seem to be much more likely to search for the most desirable outcome they can find, and then figure out how to move toward that outcome.

When we see things as simple either-or choices, … it’s difficult to find a resolution that works. There are thousands of daily life situations where we face ‘either-or’ decisions that will not create a useable outcome. The complexity of our human lives requires more nuance and time for consideration than simply making a quick choice, just because we’re uncomfortable and we don’t YET! have enough information to decide how to proceed. It helps to have patience, wisdom and self-control when we make our choices, because grabbing a simple choice often leads us down a blind alley loaded with deadend cul-de-sacs and a slew of other horrendously painful choices.

So a YET at the end of a can’t sentence lifts us from feeling defeated, depressed or unworthy, because there’s the glimmer of hope that an elusive desirable outcome may still appear. as long as we stay aware and connected to the search.

And who knows, … that cup might just be perfect as a tiny cactus pot!

Thanks for stopping by. Please share this post with anyone who might find it useful!

Check out Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW audio podcast by clicking here!

To send me a comment, sign in as a Substack member by clicking the Subscribe button. It’s free! And you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com.

I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word! Bye for now!

Leave a comment

Here is a concert film that we can use as a tool to help men see the steps that we need to take to change the direction in which we are headed.

In fourteen short episodes, ‘EBENEZER’S MAKE OVER’ mixes powerful songs from the feminist men’s and women’s movements to create a laugh-out-loud romp through sexist male-mindsets, as three Spirits show Scrooge how his homophobia and male misconceptions about gender, men’s work, war, race, power and money impoverish us all. Hard-heartedness and fear ultimately crush love, beauty and kindness, and ruin our relationships with our children, our fathers, our friends and the women in our lives.

Audiences sing and stand to cheer and applaud this film. They share accolades like, “this needs to be seen all over the country!” and “How can I get this to my community, … and my brother!?”

It teaches without preaching. As Scrooge slowly understands how his life has dried up because of his set male ways, we recognize the behaviors and fears, and we come away better able to address them ourselves without guilt or shame. It’s for everyone, regardless of gender, race, political persuasion or religion.

For your helpful ideas or more information contact peter@peteralsop.com

Thanks for stopping by. Please share this post with everyone you know!

Peter’s SONGS TO CHEW ~ audio podcasts

To send me a comment, sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, or you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Peter’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Leave a comment

It’s Peter Alsop inviting you to come join us tonight! Friday December 5, 2025. Gather up your adult & teen friends and family and enjoy a free ZOOM showing of my latest film, ‘EBENEZER’S MAKE OVER’.

Our Zoom is sponsored by The Topanga Peace Alliance.

We’ll have a night of uplifting rebellion with others who refuse to give in to despair! Break the fourth wall, and sing along with us in this smart, musical and refreshingly funny reimagining of ‘A Christmas Carol’!

Opens 6:45p - film at 7:-8:20p CA time - (that’s 10:p on the East Coast!)

Zoom Link: TinyURL.com/TPAFN

Meeting ID: 863 1125 6046. - Passcode: Peace2022

~ My wife Ellen Geer narrates the story as our wonderful cast, including two of our grandkids, turns Charles Dickens’ timeless story upside down with a feminist, heart-opening twist. Scrooge’s problem isn’t only greed, … it’s also patriarchy and racism and sexism! Join us as Ebenezer is forced to embark on his transformative and often hilarious journey, guided by three Spirits who help him shed his old toxic ideas about gender, power, and identity.

~ With witty, unforgettable songs by a ‘Who’s Who’ of feminist songwriters; Holly Near, Geof Morgan, Romanovsky & Phillips, Joe Jencks, Charlie Murphy, Amy Fix, Tom Hunter, Bob Blue, Peter and others. This musical is both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply relevant, especially at a time when old ideas about gender are once again being challenged.

~ Please join us and our community after the show for lively conversation. Hope to see you tonight! (And if you can’t make this show, … you’ll soon be able to see an episodic version on Substack!) Bye for now! Stay tuned.

Peter

Thanks for stopping by. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful for someone you know.

Peter Alsop’s ‘SONGS TO CHEW’ audio podcasts!

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, or you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Peter’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

THE HUG

Dan Murrow is a mighty friendly man C

Big and round like a bear F-C

And he hugs his friends and his friends hug him C–D7

Anytime, anywhere G-G7

When his patients would come for therapy C

To drive their blues away F

Sooner or later, they’d feel a lot better C-F

‘Cause this is what he’d say, G-G7

Cho: I want a hug when we say “Hello”, C

I want a hug when it’s time to go, F

I want a hug, ‘cause I want you to know G

That I’m awfully fond of you! G7-C

I want a hug, now if you please C

I want a hug, I want to feel you squeeze F

I want a hug, well it certainly seems G-G7

Like the natural thing to do! G7-C

Now when the Head of the hospital heard about it

He got all annoyed

Because hugging is ‘sexual sublimation’

According to Dr. Freud!

You can beat ‘em down, you can hide ‘em away,

You can keep ‘em quiet with drugs

You can strap ‘em and zap ‘em with electroshock

But you better not give ‘em a hug!

Chorus

So the boss said “Dan, clear out your desk!

Your conduct is lax and lewd.

Any deviation from standard medical

Practice can get us sued!”

Now Dan don’t feel so bad for himself

In fact, he’s kind of proud

But he’s sorry for the folks who are locked away

Where hugging ain’t allowed!

Chorus

Written by Fred Small, ©Copyright 1981, Pine Barrens Music (BMI)

On Fan Club Favorites and Ebenezer’s Make Over (full length feature!)

peteralsop.com

Human feelings are often discounted in our places of work, our institutions, our churches, mosques and temples, our hospitals, schools and universities. Our society has a very limited understanding about the powerful part that our ‘feelings’ have, as they affect our own health and sense of wellness, which in turn, impact the health and the day-to-day functioning of our organizations.

Many of us who work on recovery in our personal lives, regularly see positive changes in ourselves and our families when we pay attention to what’s going on for us in the feelings department. Unfortunately, trying to live up to the many expectations we face daily, can threaten our personal sobriety! We are asked to work harder and longer than is healthy. We’re asked to be dishonest, or at least to keep our mouths shut if we see something going on that may be unjust or unfair. We’re expected to triangulate; go around certain people who might not approve of what we’re doing, so we actually practice avoiding them. In order to be accepted, we find ourselves being manipulative or overly critical of others, and we ‘smoosh down’ our more sensitive selves and our caring feelings, so we ‘don’t get accused of ‘making waves’.

People like Dan Murrow say, “If I must choose between working here and being healthy, I choose health.” But when we commit to making ‘healthy choices’, we’re often the ones who get replaced, canned, fired! When we draw a line, and stop enabling, accepting and ignoring other people’s unhealthy behaviors, we create problems for an organization, because when we do that, other people feel uncomfortable. They don’t want to change their old addictive behaviors and patterns. Dan Murrow got fired because some people in the organization were uncomfortable with his behavior.

Guidelines about ‘not hugging’ our patients are set up because some people with authority learn that ‘touching’ is a very potent physical practice that instantly defines and delineates who has ‘power’ to touch another person in the organization without first asking permission. And they don’t want to give that up.

Ellen Bass, the co-author of ‘The Courage To Heal’ suggests that there are many needy therapists who actually do ask for inappropriate hugs from their already vulnerable patients or clients. Many people have been physically or sexually abused by someone in a more powerful position. Therapists need to take care of our own hugging needs outside of our practice.

I understand that Dr. Dan Murrow would always ask patients if they would like a hug before he’d hug someone. He was interested in working to break down some of the stigma associated with ‘caring touch’ as a therapeutic aid in a trusting relationship. For those of us who lived through the 60’s and 70’s, it’s clear that the practice of hugging others has moved light years beyond where we were back then.

We have also gone through having Co-Vid run rampant in our midst. There’s been a whole lot less hugging since we learned that the virus is spread through the air and through touch. Even with our heightened awareness of how Co-Vid and other infectious diseases spread, we still see people with power who touch others physically in ways that clearly demonstrate the inequities that exist between the ‘touch-ers’ and the ‘touch-ees’.

It was difficult for my Dad and the men in his generation to hug other men because of the stigma of homophobia, and not wanting to appear ‘gay’.

I was in my twenties and in college, and I remember knowing my Dad was uncomfortable when I hugged him, especially in public. I sort of enjoyed his ‘discomfort’ while I was holding him. He’d pat my back and try to break away, but I wouldn’t let him go. I’d say, “Dad, … that was a very short hug. Were those ‘pats on my back’ your signal that the hug was over for you?” He’d laugh, and struggle, but of course, I still wouldn’t let him go. I’d start discussing things with him. “Dad, … do you think a hug should only last a required amount of time? Or are you having homophobic concerns that one or both of us might be gay? And why are you ‘the one’ who gets to determine when we stop hugging!” He’d try to pull away, still protesting that he wasn’t homophobic, … and he’d stop, and give me a big sloppy kiss, and we’d both have a good laugh.

I notice young Dads today spend lots more time holding and hugging their kids than our parents did. It’s slow, but we’re definitely moving in the right direction!

Thanks for stopping by. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful for someone you know.

Peter Alsop’s ‘SONGS TO CHEW’ audio podcasts!

Thanks for reading Peter’s Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Click HERE to purchase Peter’s albums: cds-dvds-movies-and-songbooks

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, or you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Peter’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

When you tell me you are scared A-F#m

I will listen ‘cause I care F#m-A

I remember bein’ scared too Bm-F#m

So when you tell me, I believe you E-A

When you’re angry or you’re sad

Even if you’re feeling bad

I remember feelin’ bad too

So when you tell me, I believe you

Maybe I can help you with an idea D-C#m

Maybe I know something that’ll make things clear Bm-A

Maybe I won’t know what to do D-C#m

But I can be a safe place, and I believe you E-A

When I was a kid, I cried

Had a secret deep inside

But the grown-ups could not see

I thought “Something must be wrong with me”

(whistling instrumental)

So when you tell me you are scared

I will listen ‘cause I care

I remember bein’ scared too

So when you tell me, I believe you.

When you tell me, I believe you.

When you tell me, ... I believe you.

Written by Peter Alsop, ©1992, Moose School Music (BMI)

On Wake-Up! dvd, Chris Moose Holidays, and Songs On Recovery & Addiction

www.peteralsop.com

Did you know that feelings are contagious? When someone around us feels sad, do you ever notice that you kind of feel sad too? So, we say things like, “What’s wrong?” or “Don’t feel sad!” or “Let’s go get something to eat!”. We hope to distract them, or fix their problem or cheer them up. Our goal seems to be that we want to help them, … but often, it’s because we don’t want to feel sad ourselves!

Many of us grew up in families and cultures where it wasn’t okay to show or express our painful feelings in any way, so now, when we feel angry, sad or scared, it also feels embarrassing, … like we’re doing something wrong! And to avoid that, we say things like: “Cheer up!” ~ “Don’t be scared!” ~ “It’s okay, … calm down!” ~ or as a last resort, “Oh c’mon! I don’t believe THAT!”

It would be great, if the next time we feel sad, scared or angry, someone would come up to us and gently say, “Wow, … you look really sad, (or scared or angry). I feel really sad too sometimes. I’ll just sit here with you if you want.” And then they don’t try to cheer us up, or calm us down or tell us what to do or that they don’t believe us. People who can do that, are people who know how to create ‘a safe space’ for others.

Illustration by Terri Asher

I’ve learned that in order to be a ‘safe place’ for others, we need to have our own ‘healthy feelings vocabulary’. When we actually pay attention to our feelings and become familiar with our own sadness and fears and angers, then we can be around those upset ‘contagious’ feelings from others. Building a ‘healthy feelings vocabulary’ means we learn to manage our own painful feelings, so we don’t have to ‘stop’ others or ‘shut them down’ to avoid having our own feelings triggered. We know what our sadness, anger and fear feels like, so we don’t have to be afraid if they surface in response to our empathy with other people’s strong feelings.

The hardest part of learning how to be a ‘safe place’ for me, was to just ‘be present and listen’. I always want to jump in and solve their problems, instead of helping them figure out what might be best for them to do. When I can be quiet and listen, and allow them to talk, it helps them figure out their own best ways to proceed. I know that when I’m frightened, sad or angry, and I tell someone else about my strong feelings, ... it doesn’t help much when they jump in and tell me what to do, or how to feel! All it does is convince me that I don’t want to tell them about my deep feelings anymore, because they just showed me that they aren’t really a very ‘safe person’ to tell!

Thanks for stopping by. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful for someone you know.

Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW Audio podcasts

Thanks for reading Peter’s Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Click here to see All of Peter’s albums!

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, or you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Peter’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I don’t tell people what to do. Most folks would rather not be told ‘what to do’, so I’ve learned to share my personal experiences, by telling others what worked for me, and what didn’t. I point out parts that I might alter and try again. It’s what I call ‘Smorgasbord Teaching’. Put it all out onto the table and invite others to bring their tray up and sample any of the ideas they like. Maybe there’s something that didn’t work for me, that might work for you! If you want to try it, by all means, give it a shot! When we make the effort to learn new things at any age, that effort opens up all sorts of doors for us.

HEY EV’RYBODY!

Hey ev’rybody, I learned t’whistle! D-A

All on my own! Now here I go! A7-D

I had to try it, again and again, D-G

Put your lips like this, then blow! A-A7

Tweedle-deedle-dee, tweet, tweet, tweet! D-G-A-A7-D

Hey ev’rybody, I learned t’snap!

All on my own! So listen to me!

My finger goes on top of my thumb

Then I snap it quick as can be! (Snap!)

Snap, snappity, snap, snap, snap!

Hey ev’rybody, I learned t’yodel

All on my own, so plug up your ears!

Sing along regular, then sing up high,

Then wiggle your throat and change gears!

Yodel-oh-de lay-ee, oh del-ay-teee!

Hey ev’rybody, I learned to “pbbrt!”

All on my own, it’s my favorite bit!

Stick your tongue out through your lips

Then give it a blow with NO spit!

Pbbrt, pbbrt, pbbrt, pbbrt, pbbrtt!

Hey ev’rybody, I learned to (POP!)

All on my own! Just as clear as can be!

I put my finger into my mouth,

Build the pressure and, (POP!) It’s free!

Pop, poppity, pop! pop! pop!

Hey ev’rybody, I learned t’buzz!

All on my own! Here’s how you go!

Stick your tongue on the roof of your mouth,

Then sing with a buzz through the hole!

Buzz, berzzy, dooze, buzz, buzz, buzz!

Hey ev’rybody, I learned t’hand jive!

All on my own! I’ll play for you!

Slap your knee, your hand, your knee,

Then the same on your other knee too!

Slap, slappity, slap, slap, slap!

Hey ev’rybody, we learned something!

All on our own, and it’s something new!

All at the same time, let’s do something diff’rent

Let’s see what each other can do!

(Improvise different things!)

Written by Peter Alsop, © 1986, Moose School Music (BMI)

On Take Me With You! – www.peteralsop.com

Illustration by Terri Asher

To pass these ideas on to kids, I play my song, ‘Hey Ev’rybody’. Each verse shares a different example of something fun or silly that someone might not know how to do ‘yet’. The most important thing it teaches us, is that when we have a puzzle to solve, we need to try to find the missing piece. There are problems that don’t seem to have a solution, but thinking of it that way can stop us from searching. I try to see my dilemma as a ‘jigsaw puzzle’ rather than a ‘problem’, … then I just need to find the missing piece! (Maybe the dog ate it!). When we find something that works for us, we can practice it over and over again. Once we’ve got it working, we can show others how they might be able to do it too!

And here’s one final smorgasbord suggestion: we made a rule in our family that if someone said a sentence with the word ‘can’t’ in it, we had to say it over again, and add the word ‘yet!’ to the end of the sentence! That little word ‘yet’ gets rid of all the negativity that the little word ‘can’t’ puts into our heads! Good luck!

Thanks for stopping by. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful to someone you know.

Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW Audio podcasts

Thanks for reading Peter Alsop’s Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

Click here to see All of Peter’s albums!

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, you can sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, but you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Peter’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You carried me, home in your arms G-C-D,G-C-D

You loved me so much, and you kept me from harm

You washed me and fed me, the years how they flew

And now you need my help, and I’ll care for you!

There’s a lifeline that ties me to you, Am-C-G

Life rolls like a wheel through whatever we do

Through all of the hard times and anger we feel G-D9-C-G

The love that we have, well it helps us to heal, G-D9-Am-D

Love’s a lifeline that pulls us all through! D-D7-G-C-D,G-C-D

You’ve nowhere to go, and you don’t like to lean

At the old people’s home, they’re packed in like sardines,

So the baby can sleep in the crib one more year

Put the kids in together, there’s room for you here!

There’s a lifeline that ties me to you

Overnight power runs out the holes in our shoes

When the looking glass flips, there’s no wrong or right

Do the best we can and hold hands in the fight

Love’s a lifeline that pulls us all through!

Most of the time now, you’re clear as a bell

But the body you’re using’s not working so well

And I know we get crazy when our patience is gone

Hey, ain’t it amazing, how we hold on,

To that lifeline that ties me to you

Life rolls like a wheel through whatever we do

Through all of the hard times and anger we feel

The love that we have, well it helps us to heal

Love’s a lifeline that pulls us all through!

Love’s a lifeline that pulls us all through!

Written by Peter Alsop, ©1983, Moose School Music (BMI)

On Fan Club Favorites and Songs On Loss & Grief

www.peteralsop.com

Practicing the art of loving, ... can get us through some of the hardest times we have while we care for our parents. We all have losses to deal with in our lives, but older people often experience losses more frequently. Besides losing family members and friends who have died, there’s the loss of good health and vigor to deal with, ... and loss of time to accomplish dreams that were never realized.

As our own children grow up and begin to go out into the world on their own, many of our parents or older relatives become needful of our help. We then face tough decisions about bringing them back into our own busy lives and home, perhaps acting as their principal caregiver.

My grandmother actually did come to live with us, and it was both difficult and rewarding, as we learned how to get along with each other. In our culture older family members often live by themselves, or in a community of other older people, separate from the younger members of their own families. Many of us Americans grew up in our core nuclear family, without our grandparents in the same house. We didn’t get many real experiences or a clear understanding of how we will age ourselves later in our own lives. So, it was wonderful for my kids to have an older person in our immediate family home.

My dear friend and teacher, Dr. Joseph Cruse talks about a ‘de-cathexis’, ... a letting go that happens within our families. As we children grow up, we need to let go of the expectations that our parents will continue to ‘parent’ us forever. They will always be our parents, but as we become adults and take our own power in the world, their ‘parenting’ behaviors need to transform into a more equal ‘friendship’ type of relationship between equal adults, without the power inequities that happen when children are little and parents are big. We can help to create a healthy balanced relationship with our own aging parents, when we are neither crutches nor burdens to each other.

1980 photo by Ellen Geer of Grandmother, Dad, me, Megan & Willow

I hugged my grandmother often, but I realized one day, ... that it was the only touching that she received. As she depended on us more and more, I was reminded of how like a child she had become, and that little babies get a sense of themselves that is related to how, and how often other people touch them. So I started a program of fifteen-minute foot-rubs for my grandmother, and with her permission, I would turn on a recorder, massage her feet, and ask her pointed questions about her life and our family. We compiled quite an oral history, punctuated with little moans and comments about how good it felt to have some spot on her foot rubbed! She’s say, “Ooooh! That feels sooo good! Are you married?” I’d say“Grandmother! Cut that out!” I have it on tape.

I know she enjoyed the foot-rubs, but she also enjoyed ‘being listened to’ and having someone take time with her, so she felt that she was loved and valued, even though she was unable to help much with the maintenance of our bustling, rushing around young family. It was fulfilling for both of us when she was able to pass on some of her life experiences to me, an interested younger relative. And I got to see some of the family patterns that had echoed down through the generations, and to understand that I was not just a man alone in the world, but also a link in the family chain.

I had the privilege of working with Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. She is best known for her work with patients with catastrophic illnesses who were dying. She would say that, “When we can’t increase the quantity of someone’s life, we can increase the quality of it.”

She told me about one patient she was working with, and Elisabeth came into her room and said, “Is there anything I can do for you today?” And the patient said, “Yes Elisabeth, there is.” And Elisabeth said “Oh! What?” And the woman said, “Go away!”

Elisabeth said she went out in the other room, and she felt crushed. She had only wanted to ‘help’ this person. And she said, “Wait a minute! What’s going on here? I asked, and this woman gave me a perfectly ‘okay’ request. Why am I feeling so upset!?” And she thought for a moment and said, “I think I just learned that when I have hurt feelings like this, a little red flag goes up and says to me, ‘Elisabeth, you have some unfinished business to take care of! This person just helped you see that it’s in this area, and you need to take a look at it!”

Like Elisabeth, I think there are lots of those little red flags that come up for us, … especially working in human services, or actually just working with other people who we want to help. Knowing what’s ‘my stuff’, and what’s ‘their stuff’, … is very helpful and important.

Those little red flags come up all the time in our relationships, and that’s where our commitment to self-growth comes in. It helps when we are aware of the opportunities those flags provide for us, so we can say, “I’m gonna take a look at what’s going on here! Even if I have to wait until later today, I want to figure out what’s going on inside of me, because when I do, … I’m better able to be more clear with the people I’m trying to help. I can’t teach what I don’t know!”

Thanks for stopping by. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful to someone you know.

Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW Audio podcasts

Thanks for reading Peter Alsop’s Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

Click here to see All of Peter’s albums!

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, you can sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, but you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Peter’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

YOU GET A LITTLE EXTRA WHEN YOU WATCH TV.

Cho: You get a little extra when you watch TV C

Ain’t that ducky! Well you’re lucky if you see, that G7

You get a little extra when you watch TV! C-G7-C

You sit too close and you get a big surprise

Lots of radiation in your body and your eyes

Your eardrums hum when someone turns it up too high,

When you watch TV!

We learn lots about our bodies and our aches and pains,

Headaches, hemorrhoids, heartburn, diarrhea, denture stains

Gotta buy more drugs t’stop your stresses and your strains

When you watch TV !

Chorus

When someone in an advertisement tells me lies

I jump up and switch the channels, so I get some exercise

And my body’s getting healthy and my mind is getting wise

When I watch TV!

Daddies only love the Mommies when the dirt’s all gone

From their shirts and shiny floors, the coffee has t’be right on,

I’m so glad my Dad’s not fussy, cause he’d leave my Mom,

If he watched TV!

Chorus

In real life it never works when people go

And hit and kick and punch and smash each other’s heads and toes

But it always solves the problems on the cartoon shows

When you watch TV!

Last night on the highway when our car got stalled

We saw a bloody accident with bodies that were mauled

Though my folks got sick, it didn’t bother me at all.

Cause I watch TV!

Chorus

Now you may think that I am lazy, don’t you call me names

I’ve learned important skills from playing video games

If a spaceship should attack us I could shoot ‘em down in flames,

Cause I watch TV!

And a big TV can really give you quite a rest

If you get one near your bed, you’ve got no reason to get dressed

You never have to talk to anyone, your life is a success

When you watch TV!

Chorus

Written by Peter Alsop, ©1983, Moose School Music (BMI)

On Wha’D’Ya Wanna Do?, Songs On Recovery & Addiction, & Pie In The Sky

https://www.peteralsop.com

(Illustration by @TerriAsher)

I wrote this song in 1983 about all the little hidden messages we get when watching television. It’s helped thousands of kids and families build awareness about how we are subtly influenced every day through our ‘media screens’. I think it’s even more relevant now than it was back then, because when we go into our ‘screen-time focus’, we check out of our ‘real-time awareness’, and we miss many of the interactions we could be having with real people and real things that are actually right there in front of us. Our ‘real time’ life-minutes tick by without us picking up on the nuances of the world around us. And, of course most of us have our own portable private screens now!

When screen time becomes ‘normal’, we don’t even question that maybe we’re getting unhealthy radiation from our device. Everyone else is doing it!

If taking a pill is the ‘normal’ way we stop our pain, we may embrace the message, that everything problematic in our live can be ‘fixed’ with some elusive simple answer.

If I believe that I’m getting sufficient exercise simply by getting up to change channels, (although everyone nowadays has remote channel changers!), I’m unlikely to put the ‘screen’ away and go outside for a walk or a jog. You get the point.

It’s very human and normal to focus on our entertainment or on how many ‘friends’ we have listed on the internet, but as we become more aware of the powerful, subtle, nowadays dishonest and manipulative cultural messages we are exposed to, … the less likely it is that we will believe those stories and take them to heart. We will tell ourselves more uplifting, hopeful stories about how we can support each other in our communities and our work places, and find courage to speak truth to power when we need to do that. That’s how we can build a better future that leaves space for love and kind-hearted caring, for ourselves, others and for all life on our planet.

Thanks for stopping by, … I’m Peter Alsop. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful to someone you know.

Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW Audio podcasts

Click here to see All of Peter’s albums!

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, you can sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, but you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Peter Alsop’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

COSTUME PARTY

Cho:It’s a costume party, and everyone is here! D-A7, D-A7-D

It’s a costume party, and everyone is here! D-A7, D-A7-D

You wear a blue dress, you, red sneakers A7-D

You wear a suit and tie A7-D

You wear flowers, you wear stripes A7-D

You put make-up on your eyes! E-A7

Chorus

You wear brown skin, you wear white

Your head is clean and bare

You poked holes through your earlobes

You’ve got a wart, I bet, somewhere!

Or maybe you dye your hair!?

Chorus

We may be blind, or we wear glasses

We st-stutter when we talk

Sometimes our ears just do not hear

Or we use wheels when we walk!

Chorus

Our disguises could win prizes

Each one’s qualified

But the only thing that really matters

Is who we are inside!

Chorus (2x)

Written by Peter Alsop, ©1987 Moose School Music (BMI)

On Pluggin’ Away & Costume Party DVD

https://www.peteralsop.com

We all wear costumes. Every day, the clothing we put on is essentially our costume for the day. And when we wear different costumes, we get to see the world through different glasses, which is great! We learn so much by exploring other diverse ways to go through our lives. We build new skills and stories for ourselves when we’re exposed to new and different ideas from simply rubbing shoulders with others who are not like us.

It’s true that most of what we learn comes from people around us, and the people with whom we are most familiar are, … our own families! But some of the family lessons we absorb can be very difficult to ‘change’ later on. As we get older, we discover that we need to shed some of the beliefs and behaviors we grew up with, ... in order to continue to grow.

Our costumes provide us with an ‘outward appearance’ that might not fit us exactly, but that’s okay, because we need to ‘try on new things’ to see how they fit us.

It’s interesting to see how our ‘costumes’ affect other people, and how they respond to what they see. The very same ‘costume’ can generate a bunch of different responses from different people. Have you noticed that when we see someone who is ‘unfamiliar’ or different than we are, most of us are very ‘curious’ about this ‘new’ person. Some of us become extra cautious, and even suspicious or fearful of other folks who look strange to us.

I’m mostly curious about people who look different than I do. I have friends who pay close attention to how others look, and some of those friends constantly worry about themselves, wondering if they ‘fit in’ or are ‘approved of’ by others. They seem preoccupied with making sure that they don’t stand out as ‘different’. I have other friends who seem to feel ashamed of their appearance. They kind of hide themselves, and try to stay out of the limelight.

It’s easy to forget that beneath our elaborate costumes and disguises, our covers and masks, that all of us humans feel very similar feelings; happy, sad, scared and angry. These are where we connect. These are what we have in common and where we share our vulnerabilities. And when we understand this, our external costumes become fascinating and delicious, and a cause more for curiosity than fear.

Some costume features we get to choose, like our clothing, hairdo, hats, make-up or earrings. Others factors of our appearance, we’re born with, or we acquire as we live; such as our skin, scars, our hair color, our gender, our baldness, our age or any of our other visible physical differences. We usually feel more comfortable being in a group of people who look like us because we feel familiar with them. We all need to feel like we belong, so gathering ourselves into these homogeneous groups is usually fine, unless we begin to avoid other groups of people who ‘don’t look like us’. Because when we spend time with people who are different than we are, we get to know them, and our nervousness about their differences drops away, and it becomes easier for us to notice and appreciate our similarities.

For those of us whose family of origin, our ‘birth family’, didn’t feel like a safe place, our fear of being rejected may be a big part of how we costume ourselves as we relate to others. I learned that we can actually choose to make our own safe place by asking some of the friends we hang with, who feel comfortable and who support us to be part of our own ‘family of choice’!

Overcoming our own fear of rejection is necessary for us to break out of our isolation and start new friendships. That’s why having a Costume Party is a good idea. Especially as we learn how to be a ‘safe place’ for others, where we don’t immediately judge them. When we feel like we are in a safe place, we can all reveal ourselves to each other, instead of trying to strip away each other’s masks!

Thanks for stopping by, … I’m Peter Alsop. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful to someone you know.

Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW Audio podcasts

Click here to see All of Peter’s albums!

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, you can sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, but you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Peter Alsop’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

My daughters Megan and Willow joined me when I went to perform at a California Men’s Gathering back then, ... and the men kept coming up to ‘thank me’ for coming to sing and bringing my daughters along. There was so much fear back then about contracting HIV from gay men. No one knew for certain yet, how this deadly virus was transmitted. People were terrified that they or one of their loved ones might get infected from just being near a gay man. Many folks avoided their gay friends and co-workers, which was tremendously painful for everyone! Eventually we learned the virus is transmitted from intimate physical contact. Because of our homophobic culture and administration, important governmental support for finding a cure was essentially non-existent at first. Here’s one of the songs I sang at that Gathering.

GOTTA LOTTA LIVIN’ TO DO (D)

I’ve got a friend with AIDS, D-G

He’s just like me and you D-G

I’ve got a friend with AIDS, D-G

We gotta lotta livin’ to do! A-D

Somedays we get sad, D-G

So here is what we do, D-G, D-G

We play together as much as we can D-G

And I love him a lot ‘cause he’s my friend, yeah, D-G

Me and my friend with AIDS, D-G

Gotta lotta livin’ to do! A-D

V1: What is AIDS? It’s a virus bug G-D-A-D

What can you do? Well, I give’m a hug G-D-A-D

You hug your friend? Sure, and he hugs me G-D-A-D

But aren’t you scared? Well, I used to be A, G-D

I’d be scared! Well, you’d learn alot A, D-A-D

What would I learn? What’s safe, what’s not A, G-D

Could I get AIDS? That’s hard to do A, D-A-D

But some kids have it Yes, that’s true A, G-D

Where’s the AIDS? It’s in his blood G, D-A-D

What if he bleeds? We patch him up G, D-A-D

Cause AIDS won’t let his blood cells fight. G-D-A-D

So I shouldn’t touch his blood? Y’got that right!! A-A7

I’ve got a friend with AIDS,

And someday he might die

But someday, so will you,

And someday so will I

Somedays we get sad,

So here is what we do,

We play together as much as we can

And I love him a lot, ‘cause he’s my friend, yeah,

Me’n my friend with AIDS,

We gotta lotta livin’ to do!

What if he cries? We wipe his eyes

You touch his tears? There’s no need for fears

What about his ears? With a cotton swab

You clean his ears?! No! That’s his job!

What about his spit? He swallows it!

What about his hair? No virus there!

His breath is fine? It smells just like mine!

Does he feel ashamed? No, he’s not to blame!

I’ve got a friend with AIDS,

And someday he might die

But someday, so will you,

And someday so will I.

I’ll tell you what I’m thinkin’ of,

When we’re afraid, we just can’t love

And loving’s how I want to be,

So I don’t let fear take over me!

Here’s what we can do,

We can play together as much as we can

And I love him a lot ‘cause he’s my friend, yeah,

Me and my friend with AIDS,

We gotta lotta livin’ to do,

Gotta lotta livin’, gotta lotta livin’,

Gotta lotta livin’ to do!

Written by Peter Alsop, ©1989, Moose School Music (BMI)

On Peter’s ‘Pluggin’ Away’~ ‘Songs On Loss & Grief’ ~ ‘Ebenezer’s Make Over’

https://www.peteralsop.com

In the late 1980’s, a wonderful woman named Elizabeth Glaser called to tell me she was a fan, and that her children, Ariel and Jake, loved my songs. I thanked her and we said good-bye with no idea that we would meet again. When she called me a few years later, she shared her ‘back story’.

She had contracted HIV in a blood transfusion in 1981 while giving birth to her daughter Ariel. She and her husband, actor Paul Michael Glaser, of “Starsky and Hutch” fame, later learned that Elizabeth had unknowingly passed the virus on to Ariel through breast milk and that their son, Jake, had contracted the virus in utero. The Glasers discovered, in the course of trying to treat Ariel, that the drug companies and health agencies had no idea that HIV was prevalent among children. The only drugs on the market were for adults; nothing had been tested or approved for children.

Little Ariel lost her battle with AIDS in 1988. She was 7 years old. Fearing that Jake’s life was also in danger, Elizabeth rose to action. She and her close friends, Susie Zeegen and Susan DeLaurentis formed the Pediatric Aids Foundation to raise money for pediatric HIV/AIDS research.

In 1989, the Foundation held its first fundraiser and awarded its first grant for research on the immune dysfunctions in children living with HIV. Dozens more Washington trips and research grants followed, but neither the Bush nor the Reagan administrations did much of anything to help end the AIDS epidemic.

I was greatly flattered when Elizabeth called to invite me to come sing at the Pediatric AIDS Fundraiser that the Disney Company was putting on at the Universal Amphitheater. Willow and I would get to meet and perform with a slew of “television and music industry celebrities”, like Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, Randy Newman, Bobby McFerrin, Ted Danson, Patti LaBelle, Woody Harrelson, Paula Abdul, Salt-N-Pepa, and the list went on!

I was sure they would ask me to sing “Gotta Lotta Livin’ To Do”, because there were no other songs like it. It’s a musical way to inform kids, parents and teachers, while it helps us talk about the subject, so it’s not so scary.

But when I finally spoke to the Disney Record executives, they said they didn’t want a song about AIDS! They said it was a fund-raiser for ‘AIDS research’, and they wanted me to play my song, ‘I Am A Pizza’ instead! They said “the musical content of the CD has to be non-threatening in any way, so we can sell lots of CD’s. If we’re careful not to offend or scare anyone, we can make lots of money for the Foundation!”, … which they did!

I felt that their ‘caution’ was exactly the same kind of fear that was keeping the general public insulated from the devastation that was happening in the gay community, … and I was ready to tell them I wouldn’t come if they didn’t let me do that song! I suspect they would have just said “Fine with us!”, ... but instead, they explained to me that in the video portion of the show, they would be including a lot of the clear messaging and information between the songs that I thought was so important. And those messasges would be informing the audiences who saw the video about AIDS safety and caring. I struggled, but finally agreed to sing “I Am A Pizza” with Willow.

If you’d like to find a link for the album, it’s called “For Our Children: the concert”, (click on the cover!)

In 1994, ... Elizabeth Glaser lost her own battle with AIDS, and to honor her legacy, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation was renamed the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF). If you have a chance, ... click on her name to go online and check out the incredibly stirring speech she made at the 1992 Democratic Convention. It’s really worth watching.

Fear runs some people’s lives, and there isn’t much space left for love when we’re full of fear. If we can get solid scientific information and keep our hearts open, we won’t feel so afraid. We won’t have to ‘stuff and cut off’ our feelings. When we run into scary painful experiences like AIDS, or CoVid, or Authoritarianism, we get a chance to stretch and grow spiritually by finding support, and learning how to walk through our fears and hold onto our loving attitude at the same time, even though we’re still afraid. There’s a lot more living and learning that most of us still have to do here.

After the concert at the Theatricum with Willow, … Pete Seeger suggested that I might want to make this song a ‘sing-along’ by having the audience sing on the chorus, “Gotta lotta livin’, gotta lotta livin’, gotta lotta livin’ to dooooo!” And that’s exactly what I did!

This year, 2025, … thirty-five years after that 1990 concert we did with Pete, I sang “Gotta Lotta Livin’ To Do” again on the Theatricum stage with Willow’s 10 year old son, my grandson Julius Geer-Polin! We performed in my theatrical musical play “Ebenezer’s Make Over”.

The story is based on the Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”, but it’s not about Christmas; it’s about how three ‘Spirits’ visit Ebenezer Scrooge one night and with songs and wisdom and laughter, they help him see how his patriarchal attitudes were formed and what will happen to our world if men don’t change our competitive, gender-linked behaviors.

Here’s the song from the play, led off by actors Lynn Robert Berg playing ‘Scrooge’, and Gerald C. Rivers playing ‘Carroll, the Spirit of Present Time’.

I finally recorded this song on my “Pluggin’ Away” album, and I asked Ry Cooder if he might be able to come by and play some slide guitar with me. He said “Sure!”, and my daughter Willow sang it with us. (Here’s a YouTube link to our studio version with Ry Cooder playing great slide guitar!)

Thanks for stopping by, … I’m Peter Alsop. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful to someone you know.

Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW Audio podcasts

Click here to see All of Peter’s albums!

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, you can sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, but you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Peter Alsop’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This project was initiated by two wonderful pediatric nurses from The Children’s Hospital and Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, Diane Grimm Gates and Penny Pefley were the ones who initiated the whole project. After hearing some of my songs, they called to see if I would be interested in working with them to put together an entire story-album to make hospital stays easier for kids and their families, and the staff!

I said, “Absolutely!” and immediately called my songwriting, story-telling pal Bill Harley, and together we put our ‘In The Hospital’ project together. It won a bunch of awards, including the Parent’s Choice ‘Best Children’s Album of the Year’ award! ‘My Little Clock’ is one of the songs from that album. My daughter Willow sings it for us.

MY LITTLE CLOCK

You’ve got a big clock C-G

I’ve got a little clock too F-C

Your clock’s for your time C-G

Your big clock pushes you F-G-C

When you’re in a hurry

My little clock’s pushed aside

Y’make me use your clock

Y’don’t care about my clock’s size

When your clock is ticking F

Then everything changes C

You haven’t got time to explain F-G-C

I have to use your time F

You push me and pull me Am

And it never enters your brain, that D-G-G7

You’ve got a big clock

I’ve got a little clock too

My clock’s for my time

Your clock’s time is up to you

Your clock’s important

It’s bigger, it makes more noise

But my clock’s important

Though you think it’s just a toy

You’re only trying

To help me feel better

At least that’s what you say

But I feel angry

I don’t feel better

When my little clock’s treated this way, ohhh,

You’ve got a big clock

I’ve got a little clock too

I listen to your clock

Please listen to m’little clock too

I’ve only got a little time C-G

Do you have a little time? F

A little time on your big clock? G

That’s all that I want from you. G-C

Written by Peter Alsop

©1989, Moose School Music (BMI)

On ‘In The Hospital’

www.peteralsop.com

For a child stuck in the hospital, … time drags by reeeeaaallllyyy slooowwww-ly! This song helps raise the awareness of medical staff about focusing more on a child’s experiences as they go through a hospital stay.

When any of us are thrown into a totally new and strange environment, like a hospital, it can be truly disorienting. Grown-ups in hospitals often comment that they’ve lost track of what day it is! A child’s sense of time in a hospital is often much more dramatic and disorienting than what we experience as a grown-up.

Children who can express their emotions, (”I feel angry! I don’t feel any better.”) exhibit a powerful coping skill. As an adult, it’s always appropriate to reinforce this behavior, regardless of whether or not we like what we hear.

And it’s important to take time to listen to what’s on a child’s mind. A stressed and overworked healthcare professional who needs to complete a difficult procedure on a squirming, crying two-year old, might ask another adult to hold the child down while the procedure is completed, but without first having tried to connect with that child and help calm them down, a form of child abuse is committed. It takes an extra bit of sensitivity to be aware of both clocks, the BIG hospital clock, and the child’s little wristwatch. Taking time to explain, being flexible when possible, and allowing choices will visibly decrease that little patient’s sense of powerlessness, and increase trust, cooperation, and even affect their rate of recovery.

When we remember to pay attention to the age of a child, we see that often, they have their own intrinsic sense of pace and rhythm that can help us determine how much preparation time is needed for planned procedures and events.

Illustration by Terri Asher

When faced with a reluctant child who needs a procedure to be done, … there are a number of different choices we can offer that child before forcing the procedure on them. Maybe they’d like us to come back in ten minutes? Or maybe someone else who has more time available; a family member, volunteer or other staff member could do this with the child. Giving them a choice, helps them feel more in control.

If not the timing, then maybe the child could choose a different place to do the procedure. For instance, some kids are more cooperative in taking medicine, when they’re allowed to sit in the nurse’s chair! If time is not negotiable, we might help a child feel more in control by asking what they would like to do as soon as the test is over. (Sorry, “going home” is out! We may need to suggest some realistic options.)

An overstimulated child may benefit from a block of uninterrupted time in a quiet, dimly-lit room, perhaps with some soft music. One-on-one time with a nurse or parent to just be with a child and hold them, or do whatever the child wants to do, may be soothing and help restore the child’s own sense of self. Parents and nurses can discuss scheduling this special time, so medical care can be planned around it.

Paying attention to the times of the child’s familiar events, such as mealtimes, favorite TV programs, or the day of the week can help keep the child oriented. A simple thing like opening a shade to see the sun or darkness outside can also make a big difference.

Time in the hospital is important to all of us, and things may happen too fast for a child to think about. That’s when gentle therapeutic touch, massage and back rubs are nice ways to connect with the child, and help them feel centered, loved, and nurtured. Talking about the events of the day for a few minutes in the evening before sleeping, gives a child another chance to process these experiences. It also provides a nice opportunity to clarify misperceptions of events, and help reframe things in truer perspective.

Paying attention and taking time for others in our lives is really, really important!

** These thoughts are NOT just for kids in a hospital setting, … they’re for all of us! **

Thanks for stopping by, … I’m Peter Alsop. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful to someone you know.

Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW Audio podcasts

Click here to see All of Peter’s albums!

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, you can sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, but you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

THE LETTER TO MR. BROWN

Dear Mr. Brown, from the kids in Room Two G-C-G

We’re writing you a letter, like you taught us to do C-G-C-D

We all got together at lunch this noon G-Em-C

And we decided we’d better do something soon. G-C-D9-G

‘Cause lately you’ve been diff’rent, and we don’t know why G-A-Am-G

Did we do something wrong? Am7-G

We’re sorry and we’ll try C-D9

To act a little better, if we’ve been bad G-A-Am-G

We all think that you’re the best teacher we’ve had Am7-G-D9-G

You used to hold our hands, Am7-G

When we walked across the street Am7-G

You used to help us wash them, Am7-G

Just before we went to eat C-D9

And you used to kneel down and help G-Am7

Jose’ tie up his shoes, Bm7-C

And sometimes you would thumb-wrestle, G-Am7

Usually you’d lose! D9-G

You used to boost up Ray and Alice on the monkey bars Am7-G-Am7-G

You used to put your arm around us, Am7-G

When we got our stars C-D9

Whenever we played ‘tag’, you were ‘it’ the most, G-Am7-Bm7-C

N’ you’d even help Tyrone G-Am7

When he’d forget to blow his nose! D9-G

You used to help us button up Am7-G

Our coats, when it was chilly Am7-G

You used to mess our hairs up, Am7-G

With your hand, when we were silly. C-D9

N’ you used to hug us sometimes, G-Am7

When we fell and hurt our knees, Bm7-C

But you never touch us anymore, Em,

So Mr. Brown, please, … Dm7+9-D9

Tell us why you’re mad at us, G-A

And honest, we will change! Am-G

You still help us learn to read and add, Am7-G

but now you’re acting strange C-D9

You never made us nervous, G-A

Or kept us after school Am-G

You never touched us anywhere Am7-G

That was against the rules D9-G

So, Mr. Brown please, tell us what we did, G-C-Em-G

And we hope you read our letter, ‘Cause it’s signed by ev’ry kid C-G-C-D9-G

Signed: Robert, Susan, Rosie, Lee, Ian, Mark, and Russell T., G-Am7, G-Am7

Jade, and Alice, Nico, Ray, Darrell, Thomas, Russell A., G-Am7, G-Am7

Ellen, Jennifer, and Mary, Lynn, Felicia, and Gary, G-Am7, G-Am7

Jose’, Reggie, Barbara, Joan, Em7-Em6

Harold, and your friend, Tyrone C-D9-G

Written by Peter Alsop, © 1986, Moose School Music (BMI)

On ‘Take Me With You!’ and ‘Songs On Sex & Sexuality’

Thanks to Megan & Willow Geer-Alsop and Vinessa Shaw for singing with me!

www.peteralsop.com

I wrote the LETTER TO MR. BROWN in 1986 to address the difficult situations faced by adults who work with children. It mentions healthy and safe ways that adults have caring physical contact with children as we help them go through their day.

Of course, child sexual abuse has not ‘gone away’ since then. It’s often hidden, yet it’s still very current in the today’s news. It happens all around the world, from the Epstein files to abductions and rapes, and there’s always the constant, not-very-subtle subjugation faced by victims and survivors of our patriarchy and male dominant cultures. This power-based subjugation is felt by girls and boys and non-gender specific kids and their families, and by members of the LGBTQIA+ and the #MeToo movement communities, along with millions of other individuals in the privacy of our own homes and families.

Although there are plentiful resources that provide sexual abuse prevention materials online, ... it’s still uncomfortable for parents to address this subject with our own kids. When we became parents, most of us didn’t get lessons about how to talk with our children about being safe. And of course, we don’t want to scare our children unnecessarily. Many adults have concerns about appropriate touching or hugging kids. Parents and step-parents, school teachers, principals and pre-school aides, doctors and nurses, religious leaders and Little League coaches and Brownie troop organizers, have all learned to avoid touching children for any reason, except for emergencies, and even then, we want to be sure there’s another adult in the room because of fear. No one wants to get into trouble for being accused of doing something wrong!

And our kids want and need to know that they’re important, cared for and loved. How we touch them lets them know that, in very powerful ways that no words can quite convey.

When an adults stops hugging and touching in healthy, appropriate ways, children often blame themselves and think that they must have done something wrong to deserve it. When their teacher Mr. Brown was told to refrain from having any physical contact with his students, they think it must have been something THEY did, … that it was their ‘fault’.

It’s really the job of an adult to set clear physical boundaries with children. Even a simple hug can be inappropriate if the adult is feeling sexually aroused or needy and using the child to meet their own needs. Healthy children, like healthy adults who have learned to trust their feelings, usually know when something feels ‘creepy’ or ‘not quite right’. It’s confusing and abusive to children and to our own ‘inner child’ when we mix what should have been a caring hug with a goal-oriented sexual caress.

Along with modeling a number of examples of ways that teachers can touch and help children in appropriate ways, this song also models an honest and healthy negotiation between the kids and their teacher. They noticed something going on with Mr. Brown, and rather than ignore or discount their ‘funny feelings’, they wrote a letter to him and every one of the kids signed it! Their ‘letter’ brings it out in the open, so they can all talk about it.

Thousands of people have played this song with kids, and then they discuss the things that the song addresses. That’s where we become ‘a safe place’ for the kids, as we answer their questions. It’s what I call ‘chewing on a song’!

And lots of questions will come up, so we need to have patience, and the courage to take the time to have those discussions. It’s always okay for a parent to say “Gee, ... I don’t know the answer to that question. I’ll find out!” or “How do you think we should handle this to make it feel safe for everyone?”

Illustration by Terri Asher

KIDPOWER.ORG

More than fifty years ago, my dear friends Irene Van der Zande and Timothy Dunphy started a program called Kidpower. They continue to present wonderful programs for children, teens and parents about how to empower children and families to be safe as we grow up together. They will come to your town and present a workshop with you or your organization. Both of my daughters went through their program, and more recently, my granddaughter and grandson have taken their training too! It’s a real gift that ‘keeps on giving’ for the rest of that child’s life. They help us parents too!

One of the many suggestions that Kidpower gives to families about keeping kids safe, is to have the parents and the child make up a special password that no one else knows. Then if the parent’s plans change, and they can’t pick the child up after school or from a party or event, ... they can give that special password to a friend and ask them to meet their child. When that friend shows up, they can help the child feel safe about the change in plans by sharing the special ‘password’, so the child knows that their parents sent them. If that adult doesn’t know the password, then the child knows to wait for their parents. . Kidpower.org, ... check it out!

Thanks for stopping by, … I’m Peter Alsop. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful to someone you know.

Peter Alsop’s SONGS TO CHEW Audio podcasts

Click here to see All of Peter’s albums!

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, you can sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, but you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. I’d love to hear from you! You don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

I wrote ‘Baby Needs A Parent’ in 1980, when most single parent families were headed by Moms. These days there are more Dads heading single-parent families than there were back then, but a 2022 US census reported that approximately 80% of single-parent families with kids under 18 are still headed by women, as compared to only 20% headed by single men.

BABY NEEDS A PARENT

Baby don’t need no silver spoon G

Don’t need no rub-a-dub-dub G-D

It’s apparent that a baby needs a parent who G-C

Can give that baby some love! D-D7-G

Now every baby’s got one Mama

And every baby’s got one Pop

These days some babies live with one or the other

Cause the parents get all split-up!

Now if a baby’s only got one person

To guide that baby along

Well you might think “that’s a one-sided baby”

But maybe you might be wrong

Though everybody says that a baby girl

Needs to learn a woman’s gentle touch

And a boy needs a man to raise him, and

To show him how to be tough, . .

You know a baby can grow-up gentle,

When a gentle Daddy takes good care.

And a baby can grow up stron and brave

When a strong, brave Mama is there!

Baby don’t need no silver spoon

Don’t need no rub-a-dub-dub

It’s apparent that a baby needs a parent who

Can give that baby some love!

Now every baby’s gotta have at least one person

Who can be both gentle and strong

Well if the Mama and the Daddy can both do that

Then that baby’s never gonna go wrong!

Baby don’t need no silver spoon

Don’t need no rub-a-dub-dub

It’s apparent that a baby needs a parent who

Can give that baby, … some love!

Written by Peter Alsop, ©1980 Moose School Music (BMI)

On Uniforms and Songs On Sex & Sexuality – www.peteralsop.com

Society sees mothers and fathers differently. For thousands of years, people have felt that child rearing is primarily a woman’s domain. Mothers have always been expected to be the best person for that job. The old image of a father, who never changed a diaper, doesn’t know how to make meals for his kids, and who functions as ‘the bread-winner’ has faded, as men in the US today, take a much more active role in raising their children than we used to when I was a child.

In the past, divorce courts usually awarded child custody to the mother of young children, because mothers were assumed to be the ‘better’ parent. The father, if he was lucky, would get visitation rights. (Remember Robin Williams as“Mrs. Doubtfire”?) Fortunately, more courts are allowing men custody and more quality time with our children. That’s a big change for the better, although there is still plenty of room for more equity.

Much of the research on single parents has centered around single moms. When compared to mothers with partners, (regardless of gender), single moms have higher levels of psychological distress, generally lower socio-economic status, and their physical health is worse. They are also at greater risk of mortality. Single fathers are still largely understudied.

As a culture, we still do not fully acknowledge that men can be great dads and primary caregivers for children. There are support groups, and books for all dads, and we see ‘changing’ tables in men’s bathrooms now, so things are changing. Even so, I think we are still way behind where we ought to be with encouraging our sons and young men to see themselves as caregivers and nurturers. I’d love to hear from any of you folks with your suggestions or examples of what we can do to raise our sons, so our daughters won’t need a #MeToo Movement when they grow up?

Illustration by Terri Asher

Thanks for joining us. In addition to my Substack video posts, there are also 250 episodes of my audio podcast, Peter Alsop’s ‘Songs To Chew’, available on Substack. Each episode covers one of my songs, or a portion of one of my kid’s albums, and we explore the very human ideas that generated the songs. We discuss how parents, teachers, doctors, nurses, therapists and counselors use my songs with their students and clients. Some are humorous. Some help folks look at the emotions that drive our behaviors. We unravel how music and the arts can create a safe place for clients and family members to talk, and be more clear about what’s going on around us. These songs help us find better ways to process what’s happening in our lives, so we can make the changes we need to make.

Peter Alsop’s ‘Songs To Chew’ Audio Podcasts

All Albums

Leave a comment

To send me a comment, you can sign in as a Substack member by clicking the button above. It’s free, but if you don’t want to signup as a member, you can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. That’ll work! I’d love to hear from you! You can join and subscribe for free, but you don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Peter Alsop’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Life is so difficult for so many in today’s world, … and I sigh, (another breath!) Maybe I’m just having a difficult day, so I find some nature, and sit and pause and breathe. Then it happens. I notice the beauty around me. It’s always there. The pace of the plants and animals and other people, all trying to survive. All needing oxygen.

I looked it up, and discovered that if our air supply is cut off for 7 or 8 or 9 minutes, we will die from lack of oxygen. As breathing human organisms, we seem to be able to ignore how fragile and vulnerable we really are. Every one of us is connected to all the other living, breathing creatures with whom we share the air.

And there’s a swell of thankfulness for each new breath I take, because it brings me another chance to reflect on the decisions I’ve made! I think our lives are designed to give us constant feedback about how we’re doing, so we can actually choose behaviors that keep us ‘in balance’, rather than fall back on the old familiar behaviors that throw us ‘out-of-kilter’.

Makes me wonder about people who don’t believe that us humans are changing the world climate by polluting the air. If we run out of ‘clean air’ for everyone, … who’s gets to decide who gets oxygen and who doesn’t? I think everyone is precious. They have children too who will need to breathe.

I cherish the life and love around me, and I’m amazed at how my behaviors become more kind-hearted and caring, and less hectic and remorseful, when I realize that we’re all in this boat together.

BREATH

Cho: What makes one breath G

More precious than another? C-G

When every breath we take is new G-D9

All life is sacred, on this Earth G-C-G

How you use your breath is up to you. G-D9-G

Is your first breath C-G

More precious than your last? D9-G

Or the laughter of your friends C-G

Or your lover’s gasp? D9

Or your mother’s sigh, C-G

Or your baby’s cry D9-G

Another breath is C-G

Another chance to try! D9-D9+7

Chorus

When the eagle holds his breath

Diving through the wind,

When the whale breaches, breathes

Then sounds the deep again,

When the butcher’s cow or pig breathes,

Ready for the blow,

Is a human breath more precious?

What makes us think we know?

Chorus/ Instrumental Chorus

One breath at a time is all we really get

If we’re still breathing, then we’re not dead yet!

Though we worry ‘bout our future

And our past may have regrets

We’re birds of a feather

We all breathe this air together.

Cho: What makes one breath

More precious than another?

When every breath we take is new

All life is sacred, on this Earth

How you use your breath is up to you.

All life is sacred, on this Earth

How you use your breath is up to you.

Written by Peter Alsop, ©2009 Moose School Music (BMI)

On ‘Disciples of PerFection’ - www.peteralsop.com

Years ago I noticed how our human species takes away the means for many other species to survive on this shared planet of ours. It’s obvious that we don’t really need to eat meat to grow up ‘big and strong’. I mean, … look at cows, and elephants, they’re big and strong. Maybe they accidentally chomp on a random bug or two when they’re not paying attention to their vegetarian meals, but it’s clear that they don’t have to eat other animals to survive. So, being an omnivore, … I decided to change my meat-eating behavior and stop eating other animals. I feel better for doing that. I did make one exception. I eat salmon. Here’s how that happened.

I was a complete vegetarian, but I’d gotten to a point in my life when my joints felt achy most of the time. I was visiting my friends Doug Dirt and Airy Larry from the Banana Slug String Band in Santa Cruz, and they suggested that I go see their acupuncturist. She might be able to help. So I went to see her.

During the interview she asked me about my diet. I told her that I only eat vegetables, but then I mentioned, …

“You know, two nights ago I had this dream about eating some salmon”. Well, she leaned across her desk, and she took me by my shirt collar and pulled me closer. She widened her eyes and said very slowly, …

“Then, eat, some, Salmon!”

So, I did. And I felt much better! That was many years ago. I still eat salmon occasionally, but no other animals.

We have lots of similarities with other oxygen dependent life-forms, but we tend to amplify the differences between our species. There’s a long human history of believing the story that God gave us humans ‘dominion’ over all the animals, rather than the story that we are responsible for the stewardship of this planet and all the lives on it. We have learned to see our Earth as a planet of ‘us’es and them’s, rather than acknowledging our obvious interdependence and similarities.

To me, our rapid little life on this planet here, seems like an ‘adventure school’; our own individual special assignment is to take this training class here on Earth, where we learn how to cope with innumerable complicated and difficult situations. We make mistakes. We fall down, we hurt, we get up and try something new. And of course “every new breath, is another chance to try.” – and try we do!

So like any good school, we need to pay close attention, or we have to learn the lesson over again! We know we’ve passed when we begin to make choices that help us live a more balanced life. And maybe we don’t graduate until we investigate why and how we value some lives more than others.

Are we following some formula? Why do we need to prioritize one creature’s ‘importance’ over another’s? Are we even capable of weighing a life’s value by any objective method, or are we stuck with our own selfish personal measurements, based on our own need to survive? Does possessing an abundance of resources make some people more worthy of survival than others who have less?

What do you think?

All Albums

Leave a comment

You’ll need to sign in as a Substack member to send me a comment by clicking the button above. If you don’t want to signup as a member, I completely understand! You can always email me at peter@peteralsop.com. That’ll work! I’d love to hear from you! You can join and subscribe for free, but you don’t have to be a ‘paid’ subscriber to get my posts. Everyone gets ‘em, … some folks send in money to support my work. In either case, glad you’re here! Thanks for spreading the word!

Let’s see what you think about it!

WHERE WILL I GO WHEN I’M DEAD AND GONE?

I’m glad that I can ask you G

About things that I don’t know. Bb6

Like, when my body dies I wonder, G

Where will I go? D7-G-G7

Cho: Oh, where will I go when I’m dead and gone? C-G

Where will I go when I die? C-G

If my body’s down in a hole in the ground, C-G-C-F

Will I fly up in the sky? G-G7

Oh, where will I go when I die? G7-C

Dead goldfish go down the toilet bowl G-C

Dead mice go out in the trash G-C

My sick cat disappeared at the Vet’s. G-C

And Grandma came home in a pot full of ashes! D7-G-G7

Will I be a ghost in a haunted house? C-G

Will I scare kids when I say “BOOO!!” C-G

Will my foot hurt, when I kick the bucket? C-G-C-F

I don’t know, do you? G-G7

Cho: Oh, where will I go when I’m dead and gone?

Where will I go when I die?

If my body’s turned into smoke and burned,

Will I make a tear in your eye?

Oh, where will I go when I die?

Hey, maybe you could dress me up and keep me around Am

Sit me in your kitchen chair. F-Am

Then if you got lonely and you needed some one, Am

Well I’d be right there! F-G

Or you could hang me out in the sun on your patio, E-Am

I’d dry hard as a stone Dm-E

And the wind would make music on me, like a radio! F-C

You could dance to my rattlin’ bones! F-G

Cho: Oh, where will I go when I’m dead and gone?

Where will I go when I die?

If my body gives, some parts t’save kids,

Will I disappear like a sigh?

Oh, where will I go when I die?

Some folks say we go up to Heaven,

Where no one’s cold or scared.

I bet no one’s lonely in Heaven,

They only let friendly people in there!

My questions make some people nervous,

“This stuff’s not for kids!” they say,

I don’t care if you don’t know,

I need to ask you anyway, . .

Cho: Oh, where will I go when I’m dead and gone?

Where will I go when I die?

If my ‘bod’s’ in a box down under the rocks,

Will I get cable TV inside?!

Oh, where will I go, I bet nobody knows,

Tell me where will I go when I die?!

Written by Peter Alsop. ©1987, Moose School Music (BMI)

On Stayin’ Over, Songs On Loss & Grief and When Kids Say Goodbye dvd

www.peteralsop.com

Discussing death or loss with kids can be very difficult for adults. We are often unclear about our own feelings on the subject, and we worry that if we talk about feeling sad, our own unresolved griefs may resurface for us. Adults do not want to lose control and cry in front of kids (or anyone else.) If we do, it’s totally okay, and kids usually handle crying much better than we do.

Curiosity about death is very human and completely understandable. Most of us have questions, we just need to find safe people who can talk about it with us. It helps when kids have a safe grown-up around with whom they can share their feelings. That’s how we process some of the huge feelings that come up when we lose someone or something important to us.

Illustration by Terri Asher

We never know for sure when someone we love is going to die, so it makes sense to tell the people we love, our families and friends, that we love them! Even if we’re angry or hurt or we’ve made mistakes with each other. We owe it to ourselves to work on letting go of our anger and sadness, so we don’t have ‘unfinished business’ with them.

There are lots of ideas and beliefs floating around about what happens when we die, and when we can share what we think with other, and hear different opinions and beliefs, we can ‘try them on’, so to speak, to see how they feel for us.

Having ‘safe people’ who can listen so we can sort out how we’re feeling is so important, … because there are so many other things besides death that are confusing and difficult. Other things, like school and relationships, friends, sex and our appearance, and what group should we hang with, and what food is really healthiest for us. Rather than get uptight about these questions, I’ve found that if we can play with some of the answers about what ‘might be’, we can lighten the weight of some of huge feelings that come up for us.

I shot this video for this song because of a controversy that happened fifteen 15 years ago. I put it up on YouTube and had about 241 thousand views! Probably more views than all of my other songs put together, (except for maybe, ‘I Am A Pizza’.)

Actor/comedian Russell Brand had a television show in England back then, and he found my video and showed it to his teen and young adult audiences all over Great Britain. He made fun of it of course, he’s a comedian!

“Oh what will those Americans think of next?!”

I got lots of comments from some of his viewers about how ‘messed up’ I was, to have written such a song, let alone make a video and have kids actually sing it with me!

Frankly, I was glad to get the attention. I knew the song was already being used by 1000’s of human service professionals and teachers to work with families and and parents. It still is! They use it as an educational resource.

Comments from Russell Brand’s audience were mostly from teens who didn’t have any children, so I doubt that any of them had thought much about death, and probably none of them ever had to figure out a way to be a safe place for kids who had lost a grandparent or a friend or the family dog. They just thought it was weird and gross.

I know this is a subject that can and will be discussed over and over and over again. My personal choice is to use a song like this to get everything out onto the table, so families can bring up these difficult, painful and confusing feelings, and get them out into the air so they breathe a bit easier.

I’m so glad you’re alive and humming along, and reading my Substack posts! If you feel these posts are helpful or entertaining, please subscribe and follow and let your friends and family know about them. I also have 235 Peter Alsop’s “Songs To Chew” audio podcasts here on Substack too. Check ‘em out, and be a ‘safe place’ for others! Bye for now.

All Albums

Leave a comment