Sometimes a a happy song is written by a not particularly kind or likable guy. How is that? I haven’t been able to find out much biographical information about the composer of today’s selection, “Side by Side.” Harry Woods came from a musical family. His mother was a concert pianist, and although her son was born with a serious deformation of one o…

The night was April 15, 1912. The weather was fair, and the ship was the greatest ever conceived by the human mind and built by human hands. She was on her maiden voyage, the last long leg of which was to take her from the port town of Cobh, in Ireland (pronounce it “COVE,” as that’s what it means; it’s just the Gaelic way to spell the English word…

Our back-to-school discount is still on at Word & Song, good for new paid and upgraded subscriptions as well as gifts (for the students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just about anyone who might enjoy our magazine). Paid Subscribers see special gift link at the bottom of this post. The poet is awake late at night in a tower overlooking the sea, as a…

The scene for our Hymn of the Week is one of the most memorable in the Gospels. It is the Sea of Galilee, the lowest freshwater lake in the world, near the head of the Jordan River, in the “rift valley” that you can see as the top right-hand side of the upside down triangle that is the Sinai Peninsula. It’s like a long crease in the land, and at th…

Our back-to-school discount is still on at Word & Song, good for new paid and upgraded subscriptions as well as gifts (for the students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just about anyone who might like our magazine). This week we have focused on friendship here at Word & Song. Today’s Sometimes a Song is about a singer-songwriter who qualifies as an “…

Our back-to-school discount is still on at Word & Song, good for new paid and upgraded subscriptions as well as gifts (for the students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just about anyone who might enjoy our magazine). Paid Subscribers see special gift link at the bottom of this post. I’ve written of Alfred Tennyson here at Word and Song, and of his ex…

Our back-to-school discount is still on at Word & Song, good for new paid and upgraded subscriptions as well as gifts (for the students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just about anyone who might like our magazine). Fourteen years before the author of our Hymn of the Week, the Reverend John Ernest Bode, penned this ballad of friendship and service to…

Our back-to-school discount is still on at Word & Song, good for new paid and upgraded subscriptions as well as gifts (for the students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just about anyone who might like our magazine). Today we are circling back to a composer whose work, I feel certain, is known to every reader of Sometimes a Song, if only for a single …

Our back-to-school discount is still on at Word & Song, good for new paid and upgraded subscriptions as well as gifts (for the students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just about anyone who might enjoy our magazine). Our Word of the Week is fall, and I think that it warrants some meditation on the rise and the fall of the human soul. “Pride goeth bef…

Our back-to-school discount is still on at Word & Song, good for new paid and upgraded subscriptions as well as gifts (for the students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just about anyone who might like our magazine). I am typing these words early in the evening, in the northern hemisphere, just after fall has arrived and the days have begun to grow sh…

Sometimes a Song is worth hearing again, and our Word of the Week brought back to me a truly beautiful song. And don’t forget that our back-to-school discount is still on at Word & Song, good for new paid and upgraded subscriptions as well as gifts (for the students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just about anyone who might like our magazine). Anyon…