Almost December

Today I wore my winter coat that hangs unused most of the year in the closet. I put on gloves as temperatures in San Francisco hovered in the 40’s. Our lone heater in the hallway chugged away most of the day and the house is still cool. It’s dark by 5:15 and we’re eating dinners by candlelight. Winter is a comin’ in.

 

I also played my full repertoire of Christmas carols and winter songs to set the tone in our local English teahouse. The lot on 7^th Avenue filled with pumpkins a month ago is now filled with trees. The lights are coming up on the apartments, though the big tree at the entrance to Golden Gate Park is not yet lit— that annual ceremony is still a week away. And tonight I got my first Christmas Card via e-mail. “In November?!” I thought, and then realized it came from my Australian friends Margie and Paul, where it’s already December. 

 

It feels like just yesterday that we carried the each-year-larger-and-heavier Norfolk pine from our lightwell deck, that I dug out the Holiday CD’s that hide behind the row of jazz CD’s, that we brought the lights and ornaments up from the basement. This year, for perhaps the first time ever, my wife and I will be alone on Christmas morning. The past five years the grandkids have come down and we go on to Palm Springs and either celebrate Christmas here in San Francisco before the drive down or celebrate in Palm Springs. But having just come down for Thanksgiving, they’ll stay in Portland. So we’re wondering if it’s worth all the re-decorating, especially with no presents under the tree. 

 

I suspect that tradition will win out, though interesting that as Mr. Ritual and Ceremony, I’m even entertaining the idea of letting it go. But so it is. The kids grow up and then the grandkids and we both are long gone from the kids at school and without their wide-eyed visions of sugarplums, the Season takes on another face. We’ve seen every worthy Christmas movie many times over and the songs don’t reach as deep as they once did. We’ve stopped going to the annual Revels show and never were die-hard Nutcracker or Handel’s Messiah afficionados. The annual family newsletter folded inside of a card and slowly put in envelopes and hand-addressed is now a group e-mail sent just by me. 

 

But I suspect that nevertheless, we will persist. To be continued…

Far and Near

As the very nature of this travel Blog makes clear, I take a great deal of pleasure in traveling around this great big, beautiful world. I never get tired of seeing new places, eating new foods, meeting new people from cultures radically different from my own. While also getting to do what I love—teach—and share things that are often useful to the teachers who come to my workshops. And then the added perk of seeing friends who have become my international family— Kofi, Prosper, Mandana, Werner, Cao Li, Mayumi, Estevao, Uira, aniDa, Zuhkra, Melonko and dozens more with names quite different from my more local friends Don, Bob, James, Mary, Susan, Sarah. 

 

But in addition to travel, I also love staying put in my cozy house in my sweet little Inner Sunset neighborhood and figuring out how I can be of use here. In the past couple of days, I helped my daughter move, played piano at the Jewish Home and then at the SIP tearoom. This week I’ll sing songs with kids at New Traditions Elementary School, continue to help prepare 8^th graders at Children’s Day School for their upcoming concert and be the tour guide/ songleader at a local event where folks ride in an open-air trolley around the neighborhood. In a couple of weeks, I’ll host and lead the 43^rd neighborhood caroling party. 

 

It also feels good to simply walk around the neighborhood and sometimes run into folks I know. To buy bread at Tartinne’s, a calendar at Green Apple books, some bagels at Posh Bagels, oatmilk at the 5^thAvenue Market and orzo at Luke’s Grocery—all of which I did today walking home from playing Holiday Songs at SIP tearoom.

 

It's fine to play golf or take up pickleball or resume gardening and such when you retire, but for me, I like the feeling of still being of use, be it teaching teachers in China, Brazil or Austria or playing music that soothes or uplifts people in my own neighborhood. I don’t want to look back at my life’s work as if it were a museum piece. While I can and where I can and with whomever I can, I want to keep doing the work that feels real to me and useful for others.

 

As Marge Piercy wrote in her last lines of her poem To Be of Use: 

 

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

And a person for work that is real.

 

PS If you’re local or coming to town on December 20^th, come on over to SIP Tearoom at 6:30 and come sing carols with us! I’ll be there. 

 

Advice to Young Teachers

At the far end of a long career, I think often about what useful advice I might pass on to the teachers coming up. Though music teachers are most often my audience, what follows can apply to teachers in any subject. And the first piece of advice is to know both your subject and your subjects—ie, kids!

 

The poet David Whyte speaks of getting his degree in Marine Biology and then going to the Galapagos Islands to work. He quickly discovered that the wildlife he encountered there hadn’t read the textbooks. They were not behaving according to plan!

 

Every teacher who gets an education degree and finally arrives in the classroom discovers the exact same phenomenon— the kids didn’t read the textbooks! For some inexplicable reason, they weren’t complying with your perfect lesson plan. Imagine that! 

 

So now your real teacher-training begins, class after class of stupendous failures and surprising successes. When people who complete my Level III Orff training and are “Orff-Certified Teachers” often ask what their next step is—a Music Ed Masters or PhD program/ year-long study at The Orff Institute/ additional certification in Kodaly or Dalcroze?—I tell them that any of that might be fine, but if they really want to become the best teachers they can be, the answer is simple: Teach kids for at least ten years. Ideally from 3-year- olds to 8^th grade. Everything you need to know about teaching can be learned by teaching. 

 

But not automatically so. To ensure true development, I suggest three habitual practices.

 

1)  Watch the children. When they’re happy, wholly engaged, musically successful, moving expressively, you’re doing something right. Follow that track! When they’re confused, bored, inexpressive, unhappy, something’s off. Which leads to:

 

2)  Pretend it’s your fault. No matter how hard you’ve planned the “perfect lesson,” kids won’t always follow your script. When things go awry, it could be that they hadn’t eaten breakfast, are not fully awake for their first period class, came in from recess mad at classmates who cheated in the game. It could be that their parents have never praised them, that other teachers have broken their confidence, that therapists have prescribed drugs that dampen their spirit, that there are unspoken traumas lodged in their bodies. It could be the particular chemistry of a particular class or the moon cycle or the daily news. You can’t control any of that. 

 

But if you pretend that it’s your fault (and some— or much— of it might be), that you moved too fast in your sequence or too slow or picked a piece that doesn’t resonate with them or you let your own fight with your partner last night leak into your class, then you have the perfect grist for the mill to improve your teaching. No extra shame or self-blame needed. Just adjust and re-adjust and see what happens. And know that you will never get it perfect. After 50 years of teaching, you may try out a new activity with the first class and make all the necessary mistakes that you immediately correct when the second class comes in.

 

3)  What else can we do? These are the five words that will keep teaching fresh and vibrant, help protect you from burn-out and boredom. It’s what distinguishes the teacher who teaches for thirty years from the teacher who teaches one year thirty times. 

 

Some people might teach kids for a few years and then move “up” to become university professors teaching young teachers or writing books about how to teach. For me, everything I teach to teachers came—and still comes—directly from the work with the children. Five years retired from teaching kids at my school, I could rest on my laurels and continue to teach teachers drawing from the vast repertoire I developed for over four decades. But here I am still teaching kids here, there and everywhere and still coming up with new ideas for old activities, new pieces, new stories as to how the kids responded. 

 

It's a wonderful life. And if you follow my advice, it could be yours! :-)

 

Sam and Heidi

Growing up back in the bygone days of the 1950’s, supermarkets were just taking hold. On Elmora Avenue in Elizabeth, not too from my home in Roselle, New Jersey, was an A & P my mother occasionally shopped at. But mostly she went to the fish market, the meat market, Dugan’s bakery, Goodman’s Deli and Sam and Andy’s produce market. (Milk was delivered to our milkbox on the side of the house.) Whenever I went with her to Sam and Andy’s, Sam would select a ripe peach or juicy apple or tangy pear for me to eat while my Mom shopped and they chatted about their families and the latest news. I never did meet Andy, but Sam was always jovial and alongside the necessary shopping and my gifted treat was the pleasure of friendly conversation. Business with a face and a smiling one at that.

 

Down at the end of Sheridan Avenue where I lived was a small little cluster of shops and almost all with a name. I spend my 25 cents allowance at Debby and Irv’s, buying candy and comic books. I got my haircut at Jack’s, but then switched to Nick’s because his lollipops were better. There was Lorraine's Pharmacy (though don’t think I ever met Lorraine) and Burt’s Hardware, run by the father of my classmate Arlene. Commerce was not just consumption, but also conversation and community. 

 

Fast forward some 25 years to me as a young parent in San Francisco. There was another shopping district five blocks away on Irving Street and there were still shops with names—Pasquale’s Pizza, Noah’s Bagels, Art’s Café, Uncle Gaylord’s Ice Cream, Heidi’s Bakery. Never met Pasquale, Noah, Art or Uncle Gaylord. But Heidi was a charming Austrian woman who, like Sam, always gave a little treat to my two daughters when we shopped there. 

 

In light of the corporate takeover in all corners of our culture, those days feel far behind us. But there is a resurgence in Farmer’s Markets where you come to recognize and greet the farmers at your favorite stalls. San Francisco still has the tradition of the corner store and though it has changed hands three times since we’ve lived here, the one a block from our house is still thriving. The 5th Avenue market, equivalent of Sam and Andy’s, is now run by two friendly young men and a quick conversation while checking out is par for the course. 

 

My next podcast is titled “R Is for Relationship” and though the theme is about education and how the teacher’s rapport with the students is more essential than the expertly crafted curriculum and the “perfect” lesson, the necessity for warm human contact in every avenue of human endeavor is irrefutable. We have sold out soul to the devil of big business, opting for the cheap and convenient and over-stocked gigantic mega-stores in faceless malls with people we will rarely come to know who also know little about the goods they are selling, a dynamic well-captured in the classic film You’ve Got Mail. Many don’t even go to the Mall, preferring home deliveries from an Amazon driver they will never meet. 

 

It’s a Faustian bargain, for as the culture more and more centers around the impersonal, we grow increasingly lonely and disconnected. We might ride in the driverless Waymo car to the supermarket where we opt for the self-check-out and then have lunch at a restaurant where we order from our phone and a robot serves us. And then pay a lot of money for a Zoom therapy session and wonder why we feel so alone and isolated. 

 

I can feel Sam and Heidi rolling over in their graves. 

 

This Is Happiness

The morning light is shining on an orange candle on my kitchen table. Not something earthshaking to write about, but somehow significant that I notice it— and it is beautiful. The household is awake and enjoying an unscheduled silent reading time in the living room. The sun is shining and my heart is at peace. 

Yesterday was a visit to my daughter Talia’s new house that included a walk to nearby McClaren Park and watching a coyote poised at a gopher hole, engaging in a quite beautiful and graceful dance trying to dig up his dinner. (He failed.) Then playing a game of POISON at the nearby basketball court. (Hilarious!) Back to the house for the raspberry cake granddaughter Zadie baked. (Delicious!) We played a word game called Blank Slate and then drove to the Arboretum for a dazzling (and expensive!) light show. Dinner out at Pacific Catch and now Thanksgiving morning. 

 

One thing about Thanksgiving (and other holidays) is its invitation to remember where you were and who you were with at other Thanksgivings in your life. It’s a bittersweet exercise, bitter from calling up those no longer with us who we achingly miss or those we became estranged from or lost touch with or remembering a former self who might have been happier than our present self. Sweet to remember those we were blessed to walk with at those times or feel released from an unhappier former self. 

 

It all brings up the sorrow of those who were here last Thanksgiving and now are not, to feel the empathetic sadness of their families spending their first Thanksgiving without them. And since all things comes in pairs, it is a good reminder to savor yet more deeply those still by our side at the table or imaginatively by our side at tables throughout the country. 

 

The other day, walking in downtown San Francisco with my grandkids by my side, I spontaneously said out loud “I love this life.” It was quiet enough that I don’t think they heard it, but it surprised me when I said it and I felt it as deeply as one can. So thinking about a poem or quote to share when we say grace later today, I settled on a passage from that eloquent writer Niall Williams from his book This Is Happiness. 

 

“… I came to understand that you could stop at, not all, but most of the moments of your life, stop for one heartbeat and, no matter what the state of your head or heart, say This is happiness, because of the simple truth that you were alive to say it. …We can all pause right here, raise our heads, take a breath and accept that This is happiness.”

 

Enjoy your meal. 

 

Family Time

My wife Karen is in the front room doing an exercise routine following a class on her computer. My daughter Kerala is in the back room doing a different exercise routine following the class a her computer. My granddaughter Zadie is sleeping late (she’s 14) in the spare room in the middle of the house, soon to awaken to bake cake in the kitchen. My grandson Malik is writing Chapter 12 of his novel (he’s 10!) at the kitchen table. Our house is abuzz with the presence of family. Not easy to stand in line for a shower or find a place for me to write in our little house, but still I love it.

 

Meanwhile, my other daughter Talia spent the first night in her new house with her boyfriend Matt and their two cats, Willie and Luci. After lunch, we’ll go over to their place to fill it with family energy and celebrate Talia’s 41^st birthday. Tomorrow we go to my sister Ginny’s house for Thanksgiving to celebrate with her and her husband Jim and one of her sons, Damion, his wife Roxie and their 2-year-old son Rocco. 

 

Thanksgiving is so much about family and besides simply being grateful that I have one, I’m equally grateful for the fine human beings they all are. No shouting across political or religious beliefs, no ongoing unforgiven trespasses, nobody struggling with addiction. While I feel compassion for other families dealing with these kind of issues, I’d be less than honest if I didn't confess that I’m grateful that we’re spared these big dramas and can deal with the smaller ones— Malik kicking the ball in the house, Zadie eating a bit too much candy before dinner, Talia just gloating a bit too much beating me in table cornhole. 

More to say, but the shower’s free. Better grab it!  

Grace and Forgiveness

I’ve made some references in these posts to a difficult moment in the national Orff organization’s (AOSA) history when an incoming President was asked to resign. He had overstepped one little line, but a small group of us felt like the punishment didn’t fit the crime and leadership seemed to be just sweeping the whole thing under there rug. This little cohort raised hell as much as one can using Zoom and e-mails and then we finally had a face-to-face meeting at the recent Conference. A lot of anger, tears, personal truths and the fuller complexity of the issues slowly coming into focus, some acknowledgment of missteps and much acknowledgment of the grief of the tear in the fabric of trust. While nothing is wholly resolved (is it ever?), it was a necessary beginning to what’s needed. Here below is the letter I wrote to the folks at that meeting:

 

“The presence of grace brings mercy and forgiveness that can reconnect us to the underlying wholeness of life, even when everything seems to be falling apart.”  -  Michael Meade

 

A good reminder at this Thanksgiving time and a good summary of my feeling about our meeting at the recent Conference. Not easy to imagine grace being present in company with all the hurt feelings, lost trust, sense of betrayal, misunderstandings, holding each other’s feet to the fire — a wide spectrum of emotion there! But alongside the difficulty was the honesty and the courage to say what you mean and mean what you say and that’s where grace can live. Bringing forgiveness where things seem to be falling apart.

 

And always a companion to grace is gratitude, the remembrance that amidst all the tearing of the fabric of our shared vision we’ve experienced recently is the beautiful garment itself, the cloth that we all do our best to weave in each and every class we teach, each and every piece of music or dance we create. 

 

I sometimes feel we lean too heavily to self-congratulations in our organization, a naïve labeling of “Awesome!!! Amazing!!” to every little thing we do that diminishes the perception of the things truly worthy of admiration. So when genuine conflict emerges—as it always will wherever human beings are gathered— we’re often not prepared to have the hard and courageous conversations we need to have. I have to say there was a certain cognitive dissonance walking to that meeting past the video cameras asking people to share “What I Love About AOSA!” Of course, there is much to love, but only when equally balanced with critical judgment and a brave look at all the things we could be doing so much better. 

 

So gratitude to you all for your presence in that meeting, to all who spoke from the heart and all who didn’t speak, but still might. I—and hopefully others— felt that this is just the beginning of more conversation to come. That the many issues brought up—and there were indeed many— all ask for continued thought and reflection calling forth our deepest intelligence and widest imagination. While offering each other both the encouragement and the safety to speak our personal truths in search of our collective truths.

 

One of the hardest things for me during this time is that maddening feeling of people hiding behind the culture of litigation that advises us not to say certain things or admit missteps. As I said, the rule of law is a safety net absolutely necessary to protect us and catch us when we fall off the tightrope of face-to-face conversations. But the net isn’t there to suggest we never step out on the tightrope. Indeed, that tightrope, that place of risk and balance and graceful movement and support from our colleagues, seems to be the very nature of our organization. 

 

So I hope we remember that we are teachers and we are artists and these should be front and center in everything we do. When I first joined the Orff Echo magazine board, I loved that we opened and closed each meeting singing a canon together. I loved that people would suggest things that others thought wouldn’t work and we were given enough time and space to keep discussing until a larger picture was formed and people ended up saying, “Okay, I changed my mind. Let’s try it!” 

 

When a new Editor from outside AOSA was hired, all of that changed. No more singing, no more setting our own agenda, top-down decisions without sufficient knowledge of who we are and what we do. When I protested, some shut me down and there was some behind-my-back talk going on about how to get rid of me. I finished out my term, didn’t sign up for a second and soon after, that Editor was fired by the Board. (But never an apology to me or thanks for pointing out what they eventually saw.)

 

I share this story simply to give an example of what can happen when we stray too far from our shared mission. In retrospect, the one thing I would have loved to have happened in that recent meeting is to end in a circle holding hands and singing a song. Perhaps something like Simple Gifts or Amazing Graceor This Little Light.  In other words, put an artistic stamp on the hard work of negotiating human conflict. Move beyond politics to poetry as the medium that expresses issues far more profoundly than any lawyer’s brief ever could. Like this one below, that speaks so eloquently about what happened to make that meeting necessary, what happened at the meeting and what we need moving forward. 

 

A RITUAL TO READ TO EACH OTHER

 

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

 

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

 

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

 

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

 

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

 

-       William Stafford

Ping-Pong, The Game Is On

 

… was the title of my children’s demonstration class at the recent Orff Conference in Lexington. Amongst the ten to twenty (or more) times I wish that I could just wrap up a class with a ribbon and say, “This. This is everything I have to offer, ” this particular class, with some 200 Orff teachers nationwide witnessing, may have been in the top five.

 

The point of this children’s demonstration with twenty fifth graders I had never met was not to share the what of material, but the how. Not only modeling the principles of my practice of “teaching like its music”— uninterrupted flow, clear shape and design, enticing beginning, connected middle, satisfying end— but modeling a relationship with the kids that allows them to relax, be their free expressive self— quirky, a bit wild, funny, to feel immediately that the teacher understands them and likes them and is happy to play with them. Without that, the most perfectly planned lesson means nothing to the children. 

 

Lessons like these need to be meticulously planned combined with the willingness to follow spontaneous impulses that arise in the moment from the children or from the teacher’s imagination. You practice ping-pong like a rigorous discipline, but when the game starts, you rely wholly on the give and take with your playing partner. You never know how a lesson will unfold until you hit the first ball and the kids hit it back. Or miss, or don’t get it over the net or slam it past you. Then the game is on!

 

As I once wrote, “All things are created thrice. Once in the dreaming before the creation, twice in the dreaming during the creation and thrice in the creation after the creation. The first is the felt intuition of something asking to be brought into form— an initial image or phrase or musical phrase or idea for a class that is dreamt and then plucked from the air and brought down to earth. The second is the buzz and chatter during the act of creation, following this path, refusing that one, letting a voice beyond willful intention have its say. The third is after the creation— the one that edits, revises, plans a second class knowing what could have gone better in the first.

 

In this particular workshop, I had a general sense of the territory splashed out months earlier, then began thinking about it in more detail the day before the workshop. I went to sleep that night with one plan as to how to begin and develop the class and woke up with a different one. Walking to the workshop, a few new ideas and details came up. 

 

Once the workshop started, things proceeded pretty much as I planned, but once everyone was singing their parts, it occurred to me that the kids needed to get up and dance. And then while dancing, it seemed right that they should invite an adult in to dance with them. 

 

Neither had been in my plan. Nor had the idea of each kid going to one of the adults watching and invite them to copy their dance move, then switch. Brilliant! Then have other adults coach the kids on the xylophone parts and when all was swinging, all remaining adults up and dancing with the kids as the live band. Yeah!! 

 

I also followed my own advice of creating the next step in the moment simply by watching the children, responding to what they’re doing, praising them when you notice something inspiring, humorously insulting them when it’s less than it could or should be. “Wow! I’ve seen a lot of kids making shapes before and I can tell you in all honesty that these… are the worst!!! Look at them! Too boring! What would make them more exciting, dynamic, expressive? Go!" 

 

Then comes the dreaming after. What did I miss? What would I adjust if the next class came in? In this particular class, it would have been good to include some xylophone improvisation alongside the patterns they already mastered. This is how good teaching grows, inch by inch, day by day, year by year, but only if it’s a fluid verb, a ping-pong game, an ongoing conversation between the kids and the teacher, the kids and the kids, the kids and the instruments and so on. Not the wooden duplicating of written notes with fear of right or wrong execution and angry or disappointed teachers. 

 

I could have lectured to the Orff teachers at the Conference (as I am here), but though possible valuable, this was the real deal. They could not only witness first-hand the swirling energy of happy children happily engaged every second of the 75 minutes, but then jump into it all themselves and erase the fiction of 10-year-olds being different from 40-year-olds. Music artfully taught embraces us all equally and there’s few finer feelings in this world. 

Mister Softee

The world continues to be unfathomable, mysterious, that sense I spoke of earlier of some unseen playwright directing the show and we are merely her players. Today’s story.

 

The grandkids are here and our relationship over the years has often been based on “Pop-pop will get us ice cream!!! Whenever we want it!” Of course, I’m a sucker for that, vulnerable to spoiling them because life is short and ice cream is yummy. But when we left the house around 11:30 today to walk to a basketball court, the pleading began and I was determined to resist. I reminded them that dessert comes after the meals, so after we played basketball and had a real lunch and helped their aunt move, I’d be happy to get them some ice cream. But being 10 and 14, they were in their lawyer mode. “Well, we already had breakfast, so the ice cream is coming after a meal.” But I wasn’t buying it and they were on to, “Well, how about a different kind of treat when you go to the store to get some oat milk?” I left it at “maybe” and on we went to play “H-O-R-S-E.” 

 

The basketball court is connected to a high school closed on Saturday and the gate was locked, but having done this before, we went around to the other side and hopped the fence. It gives me a special pleasure to report that at 74-years-old, I can still be a little naughty and hop a fence. (Though, of course, using the court caused no harm to anyone or anything). It gives me a different kind of pleasure to report that Zadie was hitting her shots and beat me and Malik in the first game of HORSE. And here comes the story.

 

While we were playing, Zadie stopped and asked, “What’s that music?” We all stopped to listen and it sounded like the faint tinkle of an ice cream truck. And it was getting closer. Now I’ve lived in San Francisco for some 53 years and I don’t believe I’ve ever heard or seen an ice cream truck. But it sure sounded like the ones I remember from my childhood.

 

I thought, “Well even if it is one, what is the chance of it driving down this particular street at this particular moment?” Apparently, pretty good, because there it was coming down the street! And to make the point yet more clearly, IT STOPPED RIGHT ACROSS FROM THE BASKETBALL COURT!!!!! No one was waiting for it, no one flagged it down, but there it was, as if to say, “I am a messenger from the other world appointed to test your resolve to refuse to give special treats at an inappropriate time— or rather, to make sure that you do!” So I peeled off a $20 bill, told them to each get the smallest cone and 10 minutes later (a little crowd had formed), they each came back with a milkshake. 

So to recap:

1)   I have never seen a Mister Softee truck in San Francisco.

2)   One appeared just after our discussion about why they shouldn’t have ice cream. 

3)   Out of all the streets in San Francisco, it came down 6^th Avenue.

4)   Out of the times it could have come, it came when we were there.

5)   Out of all the places it could have stopped, it stopped right across from where we were.

I don’t feel guilty for having relented. With all those messages coming through, how could I have resisted? I trust the universe, even if the kids never had an actual lunch.

I wonder what tomorrow’s story will be.