Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

But too much is falling here in Oregon.

The key word there is "some."  Not a whole lot, dammit!

It has been pouring here in the Valley.  The atmospheric river, as the weather folks call it, has been dumping water into the rivers here on land, and everywhere else.

The ground is super-saturated.  True to my father's engineering claim that water is an enemy for the bitumen, roads are rapidly becoming pothole avenues.  A little bit more rain and I will have to trade in my car for a boat.

The river is running brown, full, fast, and furious.  But, comforting it is to get a visual confirmation that my home is well above on a high ground.

April showers these are not; these are April downpours!

April is also poetry month.  Enjoy the poetry that Ella Fitzgerald sings so easily, smoothly, and emotionally.

Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much is falling in mine 
Into each heart some tears must fall 
But some day the sun will shine 

Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts 
But when I think of you another shower starts 
Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much is falling in mine 

Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much, too much is fallin' in mine 
Into each heart some tears must fall 
But some day the sun will shine 

Some folks can lose the blues in their heart 
But when I think of you another shower starts 
Into each life some rain must fall 
But too much is fallin' in mine 

Into each and every life some rain has got to fall 
But too much of that stuff is fallin' into mine 
And into each heart some tears got to fall 
And I know that someday that sun is bound to shine 

Some folks can lose the blues in their heart
But when I think of you another shower starts
Into each life some rain must fall
But too much is fallin' in mine

Into each life some rain must fall

One has to be an Oregonian in order to appreciate the cartoon that rain, er, ran, in our paper:

Source

We had some showers after a long dry spell, with weather stats reminding us that rainfall has been barely a fifth of the normal.

I like the rains.  I often remark, "no rain, no green."  And without the green and the river, well, this will be southern California!

As I kept thinking about the rain, I remembered that way back in high school we studied a poem called "The Comforters."  As my daughter remarked more than once with annoyance, the nerd in me remembers such stuff that we studied decades ago.  Hey, that's the only skill I have--I don't know how to grow crops or change a car tire or even pound a nail!

Hopefully, too much rain is not falling in your life.  If there is something, may this poem ease your mind, in case you live in a place where there is no rain and wind to comfort you, and may you also find comfort in Ella Fitzgerald's song.


The Comforters
By Dora Sigerson Shorter

When I crept over the hill, broken with tears.

When I crouched down on the grass, dumb in despair,
I heard the soft croon of the wind bend to my ears,
I felt the light kiss of the wind touching my hair.

When I stood lone on the height my sorrow did speak,
As I went down the hill, I cried and I cried,
The soft little hands of the rain stroking my cheek,
The kind little feet of the rain ran by my side.

When I went to thy grave, broken with tears,
When I crouched down in the grass, dumb in despair,
I heard the sweet croon of the wind soft in my ears,
I felt the kind lips of the wind touching my hair.

When I stood lone by thy cross, sorrow did speak.
When I went down the long hill, I cried and I cried.
The soft little hands of the rain stroked my pale cheek,
The kind little feet of the rain ran by my side.   

Into each life some rain must fall

I have long believed that education helps me (us) to make sense of the world, the universe, like how we played connect the dots as kids.  We created shapes out of those dots.  Education--not the one that is measured by the diploma but one that is a never ending activity in life--helps us connect the dots that we observe around us.

As we connect the dots, we make order out of the chaos out there.  After all, the cosmos is.  It is up to each and every one of us to make sense of it.  Of course, we can always be lazy and "outsource" connecting the dots to religious leaders, to thinkers, and even to charlatans and believe what they describe as the real thing.  But, a long time ago, I chose to make those connections myself.  The way you connect the dots might be different from mine, as apparently will be the case even on issues like this one, which makes life that much more interesting too.

In such an exploration, aha moments abound.  We think the aha moments always have to be on important breakthroughs, like Archimedes running naked out of the bath after figuring out why and how things float or sink.  But, aha moments happen all the time--if we are consciously connecting the dots, that is.

My aha moment today is why I have "Into each life some rain must fall" in the title of this post.

This is the second post with that exact title; when I blogged about it earlier, a few months ago, I had simply borrowed that from the Ella Fitzgerald classic.  Today, I found out there is more about that line.

But, that aha breakthrough didn't happen because I was reading about the singer or the song.  No, sir. No, ma'am.  There I was reading an essay on students in higher education who are the first from their families to ever go on to college. While discussing the situations those students face, the author, who teaches at the University of Michigan, writes:

They remind me of the Longfellow poem "The Rainy Day," which includes this line made famous by the Ink Spots in the 1940s: "Into each life some rain must fall."

Aha!  "Into each life some rain must fall" was a line in a Longfellow poem?

Google then helped me connect the dots, instead of making me stupid, and I tracked down the poem by H.W. Longfellow:

The Rainy Day
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

The cosmos makes that much more sense now.

On two old women from two countries ...

As I often note here, I feel incredibly lucky to have been born and raised in a wonderful country with lots of stories of its own, and to then to make myself at home in another wonderful country on the other side of the planet.

In the old country, a music legend died yesterday--she was 94.  In the country that I now call home, today would have been the 96th birthday of a music legend.

Shamshad Begum in India, and Ella Fitzgerald in America.

In all my growing up years in India, I never knew anything about Ella Fitzgerald.  Not a clue.  It seems very strange now, and the Indian past feels like a previous life sometimes for the stark contrast that is against my contemporary American life.

Google's doodle to commemorate her 96th birthday

It is not that I grew up without any music interests at all.  I did, with plenty of music that was almost all Indian, with very little from the West.  Thus, it wasn't until I was in graduate school at Los Angeles that I got to know about Ella Fitzgerald's magic.  Ironically, it was another Indian student, Praveen, who provided me with that taste when I heard the sheer wonder of Fascinating Rhythm pouring out of the speakers.  When I heard Fitzgerald team up with Louis Armstrong for Dream a little dream of me, I was way too ecstatic with that scat way of singing. I got hooked.  Much later, in a mixed-tape that he gifted, the first song on Side A was that Fascinating Rhythm.

A lucky guy I am to be able to relate to, and enjoy, the music of a culture that I never knew about.  And, at the same time, continue to enjoy the music of that old country. Old-time music at that.  One of those legends of that old music from India died yesterday.

Shamshad Begum, one of the earliest and most versatile playback singers from the golden age of Bollywood music, died at her residence here on Tuesday night after prolonged illness. She was 94.

A contemporary of Fitzgerald's halfway around the world.  I wonder if the two ever met; I suppose not.

Shamshad Begum's film songs were in a language, Hindi, in which I had no fluency even back in my India years.  But, they were always wonderful melodies and hers was an unmistakably distinct voice.  My all-time favorites of hers are these two duets: "Leke Pehla Pehla Pyaar" with Mohammed Rafi, and this one which is like a duel, more than a duet, with Lata Mangeshkar.

Last December, when I spent a few days with my parents, father played his collection of old Hindi film songs.  He was pleasantly surprised that I was familiar with those songs, perhaps like how earlier this afternoon I was surprised with the musical taste of a student, "K," that was expressed on the t-shirt that was wearing.  Anyway, we talked about Shamshad Begum too.

All good things come to an end. Eventually.  That is life!