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Marching Bands Make Me Cry
Hearing Drumbeats and Choosing Your Tribe
Have you ever met people whose chosen careers did not sit well on them, to whom you wanted to say, “It seems from over here you’re not really well suited for this kind of work”? Well, I was one of those people, and I was doing the best I could. Eventually (and fortunately for the people around me), the influences of certain people I knew in my early years rose out of the past to help me put myself on a more appropriate track, and I wrote a little book to honor them for what they did. It’s called “Marching Bands Make Me Cry: Hearing Drumbeats and Choosing Your Tribe.” It’s about being raised Victorian during the McCarthy era. It’s about people who challenged me to a different world view. But mostly it’s about those other people who helped me to become the guy I was in the first place.
-Bob Brodsky
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Readers' comments
"... a courageous coming to grips with the post-Christian perplexity."
- Lew Austin, teacher
"...about a left-wing, liberal, trouble-making nice guy who has the nerve to be civil to black people. ."
- Richard Pendleton, writer and librarian
"The split pants incident was rich, the photo even funnier."
- Andrew Mungo, theater owner
"How much different the world might be if we could all open our lives to others as you have done. "
- Elizabeth H., retired teacher
"It is not like most autobiographies; it is much more than that. "
- Carol A., musician
"I couldn’t resume my normal activities until I finished your handiwork."
- Jim Muir, retired church administrator
"Your reflection on faith was most moving, particularly in this time when there is a great deal of blathering about faith and little or no caring or compassion (a word our leaders are fond of using frequently but clearly don’t understand)."
- Eileen
"The visual self comes through even in your prose! "
- M-J, psychologist
"It’s a wonderfully honest and moving piece, full of wisdom and gentle indignation. May it travel far and wide."
- Peter M., documentary producer
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Excerpts
The book is divided into five sections corresponding to five different modes of drumming or rudiments:
- "Flams" ---drum beats one can’t ignore
- "Ruffs" ---Mom and Dad’s predictable rudiments
- "Paradiddles" ---even beats, yet different
- "Syncopations" ---disruptions that affect your breathing
- "Hand Drumming" ---drumming to embrace the terror.
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Go here for text excerpts.
Go here for sample photo pages.
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To order MARCHING BANDS MAKE ME CRY
please send a check for US $20.00 and your mailing address to
Brodsky & Treadway
PO Box 335
Rowley MA 01969 USA
Discounts are available to booksellers, teachers, and book clubs. We prefer telephone contact on complicated questions; please call Toni at 978 948 7985, hours 9-6 EST.
Or contact the author by inserting the standard symbols into this: BobBrodsky comcast dot net
All right reserved, copyright 2005, Robert P. Brodsky.
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