01/24/2010: "Hard Times Come Again No More"

Charmaine and I are back to walking the rail trail. It's a highlight of my week.

Charmaine's life is especially busy these days. She is a sales manager at World Vision and had staff on the ground in Haiti when the earthquake hit. Saturday night she volunteered to work the phone lines accepting donations for the relief effort. Sunday afternoon she was in the soup van, dispensing food and clothes and sleeping bags to the homeless in Hamilton.

"And on Friday night?" I asked with humility.

"On Friday night I cried," she said. "It wasn't a bad thing. It had been building up for days but I'd been too busy doing to let myself feel. Then Friday night I sat down to watch Canada for Haiti and seeing the images my tears finally came."

"It was Thursday night for me," I said, "when I heard that Kate McGarrigle died. I went online to listen to her music and found a youtube clip of her family singing Hard Times Come Again No More. It was like they were singing for all of us. I listened and cried and listened and cried some more."

"I think we need to make time to cry," Charmaine said.

Hard Times Come Again No More
(by Stephen C. Foster, 1854)

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh Hard times come again no more.
Chorus:
Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.
While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more.
(Chorus)
There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,
Oh hard times come again no more.
(Chorus)
Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave
Oh hard times come again no more.
(Chorus)

Three morals in this story:

1. While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay
2. We all sup sorrow with the poor.
3. When hard times come, the tears they bring with them may offer some release.

Yours with creativity and imagination,
Darlene

Hard Times Come Again No More (McGarrigles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5OiMfM3txk

Canada for Haiti
http://www.cbc.ca/haitirelief/

World Vision Donations Page for Haiti
http://www.worldvision.ca/give-a-gift/Pages/EarthquakeinHaiti.aspx