All aboard the night train

By Marilyn Jones Senior Writer

I Was One Of Those Children blessed to have parents who either told me stories or sang me to sleep each night of my childhood. They sang Iullabies, hymns, cowboy songs, patriotic songs—just about anything that had a singable melody.

That was a tradition I carried on with my own children. Not because of nostalgia, exactly, but because I remembered so well the feeling of calm and security that one-to-one time with my parents gave me, listening in the dark to their soft voices. I know that hearing their beautiful or spiritual or intriguing words sparked my own creativity and imagination. Paul Cuneo, a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, has brought a whole new approach to this timeless tradition.

Cuneo has created a whole CD of Iullabies. Called Rest Here, his album creates a child's world of moonbeams and teddy bears, of hooty owls and blue balloons. When I talked with Cuneo recently about what inspired him to write Iullabies, he told me: "Even though I was always pursuing music and the arts, God seemed to constantly be directing me to work with children. There's a line in Science and Health that has always been a guiding force in my life—'Nothing unworthy of perpetuity should be transmitted to children' (p. 61)."

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