Ithaca Hours

Lyrics

[Intro]
You’re not like the others.
Not the cold ghost of a president, not an eagle’s glare.
You're paper, yes. Warm. A little soft at the edges now.
You smell of local ink and maybe a little bit of newsprint from the Guide.
There’s a waterfall from Ithaca on your face, a salamander hiding in the corner.
A piece of home, designed to stay home.

[Verse 1]
I remember the hum of it. September, ninety-one.
Paul Glover held one up at the Farmer's Market and said,
"What if our time had its own shape?"
What if an hour of work, an hour of weeding a garden,
or stacking shelves at Green Star Cooperative,
or hemming a pair of trousers for Stephen Burke,
could be held in the hand, passed on with a thank you?
Ten dollars, he said. That's a living wage.
That's one hour of a human life. We start there.

[Chorus]
An Ithaca Hour.
You were money that remembered the body.
Money that knew the streets it was spent on.
A promise made between neighbors,
not strangers, not code.
You were the sound of a community trusting itself out loud.

[Verse 2]
We'd unfold the Hours Guide like a map to a better town.
Find a dentist, a babysitter, a cord of wood.
Half an hour for fresh bread. Two hours for a brake job.
You passed from a farmer’s rough hand to a mechanic's greasy one,
from a musician's pocket to a grocer's till.
You never took a flight. You never crossed a state line.
You just circulated, like blood, keeping the heart of this place warm.

[Chorus]
An Ithaca Hour.
You were money that remembered the body.
Money that knew the streets it was spent on.
A promise made between neighbors,
not strangers, not code.
You were the sound of a community trusting itself out loud.

[Bridge]
And then the world sped up. We all felt it.
The silent, frictionless swipe of plastic.
The cool, impersonal glow of a screen.
You grew quiet in the cash drawers,
lighter in the pocket, almost a memory.
But a dream that lived for a decade, for twenty years,
a dream that put food on tables and fixed leaky roofs...
that's not a failure.
That's a seed. Proof that the soil is good.

[Outro]
Paul said it best: Money is what we agree to use.
Just an agreement.
And you... you were the most beautiful agreement.
An hour of a life, held in the hand.
One precious hour.