National Education Week
10,000 Maniacs
Hope Chest The Fredonia Recordings 1982-1983 (1990)

( lyrics: Natalie Merchant/music: Dennis Drew )



honor salute and speak
to the corner standing flag
do you remember how the days of school were
indivisible separate worlds
compare contrast
these dreams absurd
placid classroom faces
breathe in the features
of a demographics death map trilogy
children read them well
not to bury 3 of 4 sons
as the likes of chivalry
not to take 6 of 30 bills
to manufacture corpus christi
and so you think it can be so serene
history's most intolerable famine
has clutched our global tranquility
reaped the lives of children
maladies collaborate
with cyclic despair
infanticide clamors to 20 times more
in 4th and 5th Worlds
the poor have always been
beside us
amid us
death has always been
as million cease 15 million that's an annual reap
add divide multiply sum 41 thousand!