{"id":333,"date":"2011-05-24T12:39:03","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T16:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/popcultureroadtrip\/?p=333"},"modified":"2011-05-24T12:39:03","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T16:39:03","slug":"graduation-and-growing-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/2011\/05\/graduation-and-growing-up.html","title":{"rendered":"Graduation and Growing Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many of you are preparing for graduations this time of the year &#8211; we have two. Our daughter is moving from middle school to high school and our son is graduating from high school.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hbindependent.com\/news\/opinion\/tn-hbi-0526-pipeline-20110523,0,7812633,full.story\">My newspaper column this week <\/a>talks about all of this, with a poem I wrote for grads, and also for parents.<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s something else I wanted to share. When our son was about one, he started climbing up into a green chair I have &#8211; a seat from the long gone baseball stadium Comiskey Park in Chicago. As he grew, that chair remained a favorite of his, so I started taking photos of him every time he climbed it. The tradition continues to this day &#8211; and here, set to a beautiful song from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Doctor-Faith-Christopher-Cross\/dp\/B004SC8YH2\">new Christopher Cross album, <\/a>is what growing up looks like&#8230; congratulations to all this grad season &#8211; good luck to everyone.<\/p>\n<iframe title=\"Untitled\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/22950816?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many of you are preparing for graduations this time of the year &#8211; we have two. Our daughter is moving from middle school to high school and our son is graduating from high school. My newspaper column this week talks about all of this, with a poem I wrote for grads, and also for parents.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Graduation and Growing Up - The Pop Culture Road Trip<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/2011\/05\/graduation-and-growing-up.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Graduation and Growing Up - The Pop Culture Road Trip\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Many of you are preparing for graduations this time of the year &#8211; we have two. Our daughter is moving from middle school to high school and our son is graduating from high school. My newspaper column this week talks about all of this, with a poem I wrote for grads, and also for parents.&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/2011\/05\/graduation-and-growing-up.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Pop Culture Road Trip\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-24T16:39:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Chris Epting\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Graduation and Growing Up - The Pop Culture Road Trip","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/2011\/05\/graduation-and-growing-up.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Graduation and Growing Up - The Pop Culture Road Trip","og_description":"Many of you are preparing for graduations this time of the year &#8211; we have two. 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As an author, Epting has found that unearthing and chronicling \"\"hidden\"\" locations offers him a challenge. What began as an inquisitive hobby soon developed into the writing and photographing of 18 books based on his discoveries, including \"\"James Dean Died Here\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6The Locations of America's Pop Culture Landmarks,\"\" \"\"Elvis Presley Passed Here, Even More Locations of America's Pop Culture Landmarks,\"\" \"\"Roadside Baseball,\"\" and \"\"The Ruby Slippers, Madonna's Bra, and Einstein's Brain: The Locations of America's Pop Culture.\"\" As an extension of his efforts to chronicle the unique, Epting joined Hampton Hotels for a sixth exciting year as national spokesperson and consultant for the Hidden Landmarks program in support of the brand's national \"\"Explore the Highway with Hampton Save-A-Landmark\u00c3\u201d\"\" campaign (the program recently won the President's award). Chris is a frequent featured guest on numerous radio and television programs such as National Public Radio's \"\"All Things Considered,\"\" \"\"The Savvy Traveler,\"\" \"\"Access Hollywood\"\" and FOX TV's the \"\"Best Damn Sports Show Period,\"\" plus radio and TV programs around the world. He has contributed articles for such publications as the \"\"Los Angeles Times,\"\" \"\"Westways,\"\" \"\"Travel + Leisure\"\" and \"\"Preservation\"\" magazine, and hosts the weekly syndicated radio show, \"\"The Pop Culture Road Trip.\"\" Chris's latest book, \"\"Hello It's Me\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Dispatches from a Pop Culture Junkie\"\" will be released in July, 2010. Chris lives in Huntington Beach, CA with his wife and their two children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/author\/cepting"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/popcultureroadtrip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}