love | Bob Schwartz

July 14, 2026

Music: What the World Needs Now Is Love (1965)

It would have been enough if Burt Bacharach and Hal David, writers of dozens of hits for dozens of performers, had just created this simple and powerful message.

It was more that Jackie DeShannon, a gifted songwriter and singer, recorded it as a gift to us.

Songs can be medicine for what ails us. Think about taking this daily.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No not just for some but for everyone

Lord, we don’t need another mountain
There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb
There are oceans and rivers enough to cross
Enough to last till the end of time

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some but for everyone

Lord, we don’t need another meadow
There are cornfields and wheat fields enough to grow
There are sunbeams and moonbeams enough to shine
Oh listen, Lord, if you want to know

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some but for everyone
No, not just for some, oh, but just for everyone

Burt Bacharach and Hal David

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June 8, 2026

(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding?

Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom (ca. 1833)

As I walk on through this wicked world,
Searching for light in the darkness of insanity,
I ask myself, is all hope lost?
Is there only pain, and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There’s one thing I wanna know,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?

And as I walked on through troubled times,
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes,
So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony

‘Cause each time I feel it slipping away, just makes me wanna cry,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?

(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding?, written by Nick Lowe, performed by Elvis Costello

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April 15, 2026

Spring Love Thing: Slinky Spinwheels

If you’re lucky enough to love somebody, and even luckier to have that somebody love you back, you’re always thinking of little things that say I love you.

The candy, the cards, the flowers, the stuffed animals are always appropriate. If you’ve been together a while, been there, given that. Then there is the Slinky Spinwheel.

Okay, it’s just a happy-colored mylar pinwheel. But consider this. The candy gets eaten, the card gets put in a drawer, the cut flowers wilt, the live flowers need water and when they don’t get it die, the stuffed animals cutely live on a closet shelf.

The spinwheel lives. It spins prettily and magically in the spring breeze. Or in the summer, fall or even cold winter breeze. Just like the one you love and who, if you’re lucky, loves you back.

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November 7, 2025

Penguin love according to Buddhism

“If penguins don’t let go of their young at some point, the little ones will never grow up to be competent adult penguins.”

“Attachment may be the most difficult emotion to overcome, but we can make progress by continually observing how it brings us suffering and does us no good. In place of our attachment, we can cultivate a less self-centered love, a visionary love that is tuned in with the actual best interests of others. This kind of love often involves letting go. For instance, if penguins don’t let go of their young at some point, the little ones will never grow up to be competent adult penguins. They will never be free to live fully. By letting go, the parents are not rejecting love and care, but expressing a higher form of love. As lojong [mind training] practitioners, we can cultivate visionary love for those close to us, and then spread that love among all sentient beings, simply because they have the same desire to be happy that we do.”
Dzigar Kongtrul, The Intelligent Heart: A Guide to the Compassionate Life

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June 20, 2019

Dream in Love

Years and days
Drain the sense of love
An embrace even in a dream
Brings it flooding back
It is still you and me

Note: If you have loved for a moment, or been loved for a moment, or for years, or not yet, you may forget exhilaration, but it never disappears. You will dream it.

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February 14, 2017

Valentine’s Day: Radical Love

Radical Love

For K

Hannah, Mary
Radical lovers.
Wives, mothers
Asking not asking
For a birth
Offering surrendering
A life for good.

Hannah says
The bows of the mighty are broken
but the faltering are braced with strength.

Mary says
The princes are pulled down from their thrones
and the lowly raised high.

All is as it should be
All is upside down.

Elkanah, Joseph
Husbands, lovers
Stand dumb
Awed and grateful
To be sharing
The better world.

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November 9, 2016

Sweet Things Happened on Election Day Too

cupcakes

Eight dozen cupcakes were baked, filled and decorated here on Election Day, having nothing to do with Election Day. Lemon, red velvet, chocolate raspberry, etc. Sweet things from the heart happened and will continue to happen. (They are delicious!)

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October 28, 2016

Friendly Fire and Ice

Friendly Fire and Ice
based almost entirely on Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

Some say that friendships end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

With deep apologies and appreciation to Robert Frost for the misuse of his poem.

The phenomenon of friendships fading and ending is for me akin to observing or experiencing illness and death. Of all the many things I don’t pretend to understand, this is in some ways the deepest mystery. As many reasons and explanations as I can come up with—time, distance, divergence, ignorance—the extinction of the flame of friendship remains as chilly as the extinction of the flame of love. Maybe because the best friendships, for me at least, are identical with and indistinguishable from love.

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September 1, 2016

Music for the Last Gasp of Summer: September

Earth Wind & Fire - September

Depending on where you are, September may or may not be the last gasp of summer.

But it is the name of the greatest piece of September music ever recorded.

Play September by Earth Wind & Fire.

The bell was ringing
Our souls were singing
Do you remember
Never a cloudy day

If you’re not moving, check your pulse, or have someone else check it for you (that can be fun).

Me? I’m out front, dancing among the flower and vegetable beds, in front of God and everybody. Who cares how it looks? It’s September.

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March 12, 2016

(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding?

Coldplay Glastonbury

After watching the chaos surrounding the Trump rally in Chicago on TV, I surfed and came across a Coldplay concert, which served to cleanse my soul.

The huge crowd at Glastonbury looked very happy. I wondered if, when the political conventions are held this summer, we can magically replace them with music festivals.

Coldplay performed Wonderful World, and then that anthem of making things better, Fix You:

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

I thought about other positive music I love. Like Elvis Costello’s (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding? What is?

As I walk on through this wicked world,
Searching for light in the darkness of insanity,
I ask myself, is all hope lost?
Is there only pain, and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There’s one thing I wanna know,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?

And as I walked on through troubled times,
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes,
So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony

‘Cause each time I feel it slipping away, just makes me wanna cry,
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?

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Tag: love