And now, a word from our sponsor…

For those who know me, it’s no secret that I’m slow to respond to new technologies. I still don’t have a cell phone and continue to resist Facebook. That said and done, I was using a fax/modem back in 1991 with my Mac SE 100, got one of those hooded blue iMac computers in 1999 so I could join e-mail and I believe that I was the first amongst all my friend to get an iPod, simply because it was so much easier to take on international Orff workshop travel than those books of CD’s.

“The right tool for the right job at the right time” is mostly my techno motto and though I wrote my first book by hand (never published) in Indonesian notebooks while lying in bed in Java with hepatitis in 1979 and the first draft of my jazz book on a typewriter, I’m quite happy with the writing and re-writing capabilities of computers these past twenty years. And thrilled with the technology of this Blog, allowing me to empty my head every couple of days with the fringe benefit that perhaps someone might read it. Really, it’s my long-time fantasy of having a newspaper column without having to go to journalism school.

But when I looked on a friend’s Facebook page, I could feel the palpable energy of the community of “friends” who share the same plot of cyber ground and respond instantly to various messages and announcements. I’ve looked at it before and was turned off by detailed accounts of the fine filet of salmon someone just enjoyed or how little Bobby ate all his oatmeal, but there are certainly things I’d love to publicly announce and get the sensation that someone’s reading and responding. The Blog is a more sedate room in the Cyber mansion, as I think it should be—hopefully, entries with a bit more to chew on than the quick energy hit of the next awesome, cool or super moment in the day.

And yet, there are a couple of things I’d love to share, even if only twenty people read them. Most are time-sensitive and thus, probably more Facebook-friendly than Blog-worthy (what a weird new language we’ve created!), but I include them below nonetheless.

In short:

• Check out daughter Kerala’s performance of one of her stories of near-death in Bolivia.

http://vimeo.com/23555697

• Check out daughter Talia’s blog about the trials and triumphs of teaching English to 1^st graders at a 

bi-lingual school in Buenos Aires. http://taliagoodkin.blogspot.com

• Mark June 2^nd on your calendar and come to Middle School Salzburg Group performance, the preview of the show these 17 wonderful kids will do at the Orff Symposium in Salzburg, Austria. Tickets at the door for $20 (helping to fund the trip), 7:30 start time at Lick-Wilmerding Theater, 755 Ocean Ave., SF. (For those in Europe this summer, come to that show on Sunday, July 10^th!)

• Mark your calendar for July 30^th,  to come to my 60^th birthday concert at St. Aidan’s Church in SF.

• Check my Website (www.douggoodkin.com) for information about my colleague Sofía López-Ibor’s extraordinary book Blue Is the Sea: Music, Dance and Visual Arts that  I’ve just published under my Pentatonic Press Co. One recent reader (who is in the book business) said, “My two initial reactions are that no one has ever published a book like this, and that is it so beautiful it makes me want to weep.”

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.