Birthday Card

 

Today is my wife’s 76^th birthday. It’s also my beloved colleague James Harding’s birthday (62), former student who I taught in 1972 Julie “Ralf” Gottschalk’s birthday (66), Eddie Corwin, SF School alum student and son of the former cook (40) and three or four other folks I know personally. Can’t think of any other day of the year that has so many friends sharing the same birthday!

 

It's no secret that my wife Karen loves to walk out in the natural world. In the past two weeks, she, Talia and I snowshoed near Yosemite, then a group of 14 family and friends did our annual “New Year” walk in Marin (Talia included), then Karen and I and three other SF School alum teachers hiked down on the Peninsula and today, on her birthday, she, Talia and I went south again for a 7 mile walk with lush green hills, sweeping views, intimate California chapparal. 

Then back to Talia’s house for a little cake and ice cream and yes, I did write her a card and before giving it to her, read out loud this Mary Oliver poem: 

 

The Whistler

Mary Oliver

 

All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden
I mean that for more than thirty years she had not
whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was
in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and
she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and
cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war-
bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.

 

Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she
said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can
still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled
through the house, whistling.

 

I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle-
Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too.

And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin
to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with
for thirty years?

 

This clear, dark, lovely whistler?

 

Then read out loud my little note on my card, revealing my choice of this poem. Also it should be noted that we also learn new things about people when we discover that they can’t do. A few years back, it was revealed that Karen can’t whistle. Hence, the last line:

 

I chose this poem as an example of our capacity to surprise both ourselves and each other. While holding fast to the marvelous gifts and passions that define us, it’s good to keep the windows open to new possibilities. 

 

Just in the past two weeks, I discovered that you’re pretty good at the game of pool, both good and capable of enjoying jigsaw puzzles and that you’re a budding botanist who taught me about the Goldback slap, the leaf that makes an imprint on your pants because of spores. Surprises all! Like Mary Oliver, it makes me wonder “Who is this I’ve been living with for fifty-two years?!!!”

 

Next step—whistling!

 

Happy birthday!

 

PS After reading all this, Karen reminded me that she also doesn’t know how to snap her fingers. 

PSS Here's what the imprints look like: 

Birth Announcement

In a recent Facebook post, I announced the forthcoming printing of a new book like this:

 

Like someone announcing a pregnancy, I can’t resist sharing my new book on its way to the printer. Should be out by the end of March. A look at what my lifetime (50 years plus!) of teaching music might have to offer our long-overdue turn toward kindness and compassion. How nothing alone can get us there, but music and the humanistic teaching of music have much to offer. Stay tuned for further announcements!

 

The responses—some 250 of them after two days—felt like they deserved a thank you. And so I wrote (but haven’t yet posted) this: 

 

Immeasurable thanks to all who responded so positively to my book announcement. In the past couple of months, the distributor who gets my Pentatonic Press books online dropped me, my jazz, Joy & Justice publisher dropped me, the prices for printing, storage and shipping all skyrocketed, the ten book dealers who have always carried my books are whittled down to two, people seem to be reading less and less and if they are, electronic versions instead of print books. Not an auspicious time to publish a new book! 

 

In the midst of all this discouraging news, your encouragement is keeping me chugging uphill like “The Little Engine That Could” (do young kids still read that book?), chanting “I think I can, I think I can… “ I have at least four more books waiting in line (bringing it up to 15 books!) and your kind words are helping me to keep going. Thanks to you all for pushing me up the hill. 

 

When the book comes out, it indeed is parallel to a birth, as the little seed of an idea is fertilized and slowly grows into a recognizable shape and felt presence. And then the moment it comes fully out into the world and you behold it, as all parents mostly do, as the most beautiful baby ever born. One phrase of your work is done, but the rest is just beginning. Raising the child, feeding it, clothing it attractively, finding a school that will accept him or her with friends side-by-side and the sense of being welcomed and known. 

 

In short, the opposite of my recent experience with low sales, callous publishers, indifferent distributors, all of which feels like a rejection of my child, which in turn feels like a rejection of me. Like every author, I vacillate between feeling like what I have to say needs to be said and no one else can say it precisely in the way that I do and that readers will be affirmed, challenged and uplifted and then the polar opposite— maybe I’m not a very good writer, maybe what I think is important is not of interest to most people, maybe the world doesn’t need any of it after all. So when I get comments like the below on Facebook, it feeds that engine chugging up the hill:

 

“Wow! Just what’s needed!”

 

“I always enjoy reading and learn so much from your writing!”

 

“So very much needed at the perfect time!”

 

“Congrats! The world needs this now!”

 

“Thanks for keeping your thoughts and experiences coming to us all and nourishing us in your each and every book.”

 

And then some 15 others who commented, “Congratulations! Can’t wait to read it!”

 

And so I’ll keep huffing and puffing—“I think I can, I think I can…”

 

The Yeast of Soul-Making

If the only antidote to darkness is light, to hate is love, to ignorance is education, then it stands to reason that the extraordinary lowering of human decency, intelligence, caring that we witnessed in the recent State of our Disunion address (not one second of it a surprise, simply what we’ve come to expect and accept), is best countered by rising. We are like the Hebrews in exile, who fleeing from disaster had no time to let their bread rise and subsisted on matzah. It helped get them through and it’s a tasty snack, but I imagine we all prefer the yeasted bread that allows for sandwiches, avocado toast and garlic bread. We want to stop running from the next catastrophe and have time to slowly knead the dough of our own Soul-making and let the yeast do its work to help the bread rise.

 

While every American can name the sports stars and movie stars and despicable (or courageous) politicians, who knows who our poet laureate is? Who has read a poem voluntarily in the past ten years? Written one? Memorized and recited one? Who could even name ten poets, living or dead?

 

Needless to say, I’ve done all of the above as recent as yesterday, when I read a poem to a group of fellow hikers and recited a Shakespeare sonnet (by memory) to a friend on a phone and sat in my backyard perusing an entire book of poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye. And I’m here to testify I’m a better person for it. 

 

The Irish culture that has produced poets like W.B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney and half-Irish David Whyte, that has a Blarney Stone tourist attraction where people hope to improve their eloquence, that coined the saying, “After a full belly, it’s all poetry,” that has a government that holds artistic works that are original, creative and generally recognized as having cultural or artistic merit exempt from income tax, is a model spokesperson for the power of poetry. So it’s not surprise that reading my third book by Irish author Niall Williams (The History of the Rain), the book is peppered with my penciled underlines and exclamation marks in the margins. Starting with the first paragraph:

 

“The longer my father lived in this world the more he knew there was another to come. It was not that he thought this world beyond saving, although in darkness I suppose there was some of that, but rather that he imagined there must be a finer one where God corrected His mistakes and men and women lived in the second draft of Creation and did not know despair. My father bore a burden of impossible ambition. He wanted all things to be better than they were, beginning with himself and ending with this world. Maybe this was because he was a poet. Maybe all poets are doomed to disappointment. Maybe it comes from too much dazzlement. I don’t know yet. I don’t know if time tarnishes of polishes a human soul or if it’s true that it’s better to look down than up.…”

 

Later in the book, the father begins reading Yeats. His daughter (the narrator) describes it thus: 

 

“I can’t remember who said it, but it’s true that whenever anyone reads Shakespeare they become Shakespeare. Well, the same is true for Yeats. Take an afternoon. Sit and read his poems. Any, it doesn’t really matter. Spend an afternoon, read out loud. And as you do, sounding out those lines, letting the rhythms fall, following some of it and not following more of it, doesn’t matter, because gradually, without your even noticing it at first, just softly softly, you rise. 

 

You do. Honest. Read poetry like that and human beings become better, more complex, loving passionate, angry, subtle and poetic, more expressive and profound, altogether more fine.…”

 

 Yes, indeed. And couldn’t we use some of that? In any time or place, but most especially, right here, right now, in the Disunited States of Delusional America.We need to rise and poetry is good yeast for Soulmaking. Music, too, as modern science confirms that the two things that light up every area in the brain when we engage in them are… music and poetry! 

 

Two Christmases ago, when my granddaughter Zadie was 12, I offered her $25 if she could memorize and recite to the family a Maya Angelou poem. On the last morning, just before departing from our vacation rental, she surprised me by telling me she was ready. And she did it!!! $25 was never better spent!

 

And the poem? Still I rise. 

 

So there you have it. A surprising antidote to our daily lowering. Look it Maya's poem, memorize it, recite it and send me a video and your Paypal account. I’ll send you $25. Honest! 

Phonaholics Anonymous

I spend a fair amount of time warning others about the perils of phone addiction— especially for children. But it’s time for a confession— they got me! Between text messages, WhatsApp, Facebook notifications, e-mails, weather, miles walked, bank statements, calendar, hearing aid adjustments, Audible books and —what was that other thing?— oh yeah, phone calls! —there is so much to check in on in my little device and I’m spending way too much time checking. The very purpose of having so many handy things gathered on one little device is at once its pleasure and its danger. I take a little pride in being a touch less dependent than friends who are constantly searching maps and restaurant choices when traveling— I’ve held fast to the pleasure of just wandering about and seeing what comes up. I don’t play games on my phone or God forbid, check in on the news. But at the end of the day, I have to admit— I’m addicted. 

 

So it’s time to initiate my own 12-step program, starting with:

 

“Hi, my name is Doug and I’m a phonaholic.”

 

Here’s my program, starting today:

1.    When there’s a moment free — waiting for a bus or a meal to arrive or sitting on the bus or walking from here to there, leave the damn device in your pocket. Attend to what’s happening around you, even if it’s mostly other people looking at their phones. 

 

2.    In the above case, imagine what they’re looking at. Write a poem or short story about it.

 

3.    When walking, resist listening to your Audible story the whole time. If tempted, choose at least half of the walk story-free. 

 

4.    Remember your project of memorizing and reciting a poem while walking. Aim for a poem-per-walk. 

 

5.    In all so-called dead time, let your mind roam free and notice what comes up. Often it will be some project my sub-conscious is working on— a class plan, a Blogpost or next sentence in a book I’m writing, an idea about a future plan. Remember that the subconscious cannot do its work when Audible is talking or you’re looking at Facebook comic sketches. 

 

6.    When the phone dings in my pocket, sing a song starting on the note dinged (I think it’s C). 

 

7.    Use the device to take photos as if you’re a tourist in your town or you’re entering the photography contest. 

 

8.    If you run into an alum student you taught who you haven’t seen in years, selfies are permitted. 

 

9.    If you’re sitting under a tree and you feel the irresistible urge to get out your device, look at your contact list and call someone you haven’t talked to in over a year just to say hi. 

 

10.                  Stop taking the phone into the bathroom with you.

 

11.                  Limit yourself to two or three set times to check in on what seems important to check in on. Weather, text messages that need answering, etc. Maybe after breakfast, after lunch and before dinner. All other times when you find your hand wandering to your phone pocket, do some body percussion instead. 

 

12.                  Institute a weekly Sabbath. One whole day when you leave it somewhere and never touch it.

 

I’ll let you know how it goes. Anyone want to join me?

Back in the Coal Mine

One of my January posts was entitled “Canary in the Coal Mine” and I wrote this: 

 

Kids are the canaries in the coal mine, warning us of the dangers of imminent cultural collapse. That expression comes from coal miners using caged birds to detect toxic gases like carbon monoxide in mines. Due to their high sensitivity to fumes, the birds would stop singing and die, a signal for the miners to evacuate. Immersed in the toxic fumes of our poisonous cultural practices and the narratives that sustain them, the children have stopped singing the delights of childhood. Instead, they shout or scream or hit or remain mute and we guardians have run out the door and left them alone. 

 

Today I read this on a Facebook post: 

 

Hi everyone. Is anyone at their wits end with behaviors? I feel very defeated at my school. For context:

 

I have been at my school for 5 years. I have what I believe to be good classroom management skills and have built great relationships with the kids, teachers, and administrators. I teach in a high-needs title 1 school with mostly Latino students and I am very attuned to their needs right now because many are getting their parents taken away from them without notice due to the kidnappings that are happening (not going to argue with anyone on that).

I have taken level 1 Orff training and feel confident in my lesson plans, but I feel so defeated right now because the behaviors are what I describe as "death by a thousand paper cuts". The disrespect is at an all-time high, the kids are talking back, disengaged, disruptive, and i am not feeling the joy in teaching anymore. I went from being teacher of the year last year to feeling like scrolling through ziprecruiter to look for a new job.

 

Yesterday I was trying to teach a piece and I had kids throwing mallets and hitting the  xylophones aggressively. At one point I just had them return everything and line up early. 

 

I've contacted parents and have told admin and nothing changes. I have to stay at a title 1 school for 5 more years for my loan forgiveness, but I am at my wits end. I literally had a second grader tell another kid to suck his ba***. I've had kids steal from my desk and have had to put stop signs around my area because they don’t respect my space. 

 

I don’t feel supported by admin because they don’t want to be called for every little thing (and I don’t call for help most of the time) but it’s chipping away at my mental health. I also can’t take a mental health day because I was on maternity leave last year and have to save up my hours for maternity leave again for next year. 

 

Do I just give them worksheets or give half the kids worksheets and let the other kids play the instruments? I feel like I’ll just be managing the worksheet kids and won’t be able to fully engage in the few kids who do respect and are able to have some self-control. I feel so stuck between showing empathy for their trauma (I’ve lived through losing family friends due to deportations) or do I bring down the hammer and be a robot music teacher who lets the screen teach for me?

If any of y’all have any advice or are in the trenches like me, please let me know. 

 

And so I wrote back:

 

These are deep issues that can use live discussion, so feel free to call me if you like. Meanwhile, a few thoughts:

 

1) "Behavior is the language of children." What are they trying to tell adults that they don't have the language for? Seems clear that they are the canaries in the coal mine showing us what a threatening environment we adults have created for them. So this is not business as usual and not to be fixed by classroom management techniques. 

 

2) Given that, perhaps take one class where all write on a piece of paper (or if they can't write, find a time for them to dictate to you in private)what is hardest in their life right now and how someone can help them. Put all the answers in a bowl and mix them up and have each kid pick one out at random and read out loud, without any comments. if the truth comes out and the kids realize they're not alone in their suffering, then ask the group, "What can we do to help each other feel and be better?" 

 

3) Follow the example of the brilliant Orff teacher Tom Pierre, who stopped his class in the middle and called up one of the kids' parents. When the father answered and Tom introduced himself as his daughter's teacher, the father sighed and said, "What has she done now?" Tom's answer? "She just sang one of the most beautiful solos I've heard in a long time and we all got goosebumps. Just want to make sure you know what an amazing daughter you've raised!" Can you feel how that changed everything? So next time a kid does something lovely in your class, try it. Call up their parents in front of the other kids and praise them. I think it can help turn the energy around when kids realize it's better to do things well than the opposite. 

 

4) Do the number 2 exercise with the staff and admin with the prompt, "What's the hardest thing about teaching for you right now? How can we help?" Read them out loud and again, when people realize they're all in it together, use your human intelligence and compassion to figure out together how to turn this around. Hint: None of the above is business as usual. The entire country is in a war zone and we need a radical revisioning of how to be with each other in all our communities. School is an important place to start. 

 

And whatever you do, do not capitulate to robot teaching and stick kids in front of screens!!!! 

 

As this entire Blog testifies, my experience with kids has been, and continues to be, overwhelmingly positive. But I believe that the above stories are true and are asking us to radically re-envision the entire enterprise of schooling. That’s the opportunity that the classroom challenges are offering to us. Not only in our schools, but in the greater civic and political sphere. The consequences of encroaching fascism reach everywhere, releasing their toxic fumes into every nook and cranny of the coal mine. The work ahead is in every sphere of our life and in every hour of every day. And again I can testify that in the midst of battering storms, the rainbow can appear and the canaries sing. 

 

Hired Hands

While a big fan of interdependence—indeed, we would not have come close to surviving our snow trip without the shovelers and snow-plowers and chain- sawers of trees across the road, etc.— my life is also built around being the main guy in charge of way too many things! I’m the CEO of my Pentatonic Press, handling order fulfillment, invoices, accounting, storage, printing, advertising, and more. I’m the travel agent arranging all the flights for workshops. I’m the artistic agent handling all the details of arranging workshops— schedules, accommodations, merch for sale, finances. I’m the President of two music ed boards —and while writing that, realized both are overdue for a meeting! I’m the director of the summer Orff Level training course and my own Jazz Course in New Orleans. Blah-blah-blah. There’s more and none of this is boasting. It’s more a cry for help!

 

Suddenly on my weird farm, everything is coming due at once. The cows need to be milked, the chickens fed, the hay stacked, the fields plowed, the garden weeded, the fruit picked, the tractor repaired, the barn re-built, the fences fixed, the compost turned, the meals cooked and the kids tucked in at night. I need some hired hands here, people! And that becomes yet one more thing to put on my list. 

 

Nothing is more boring than hearing about someone else’s busyness/ business but since I’m the CEO of my Blog, I feel compelled to write something. But now I feel guilty for wasting your time. So speaking of hands, a Facebook memory popped up of me jamming on a jazz tune called “Cute” with someone  (Kenneth Ngo) at my workshop in Singapore 7 years ago. It’s not bad! At least more entertaining than my whining above Check it out:

 

https://youtu.be/6tOtb6dcVss 

Candy from Strangers

The snake-oil-salesman, the scammer, the con artist, the used-car dealer, the door-to-door Jehovah Witnesses, the hustler. These people have always been with us. They make for interesting characters in films—The Music Man, Paper Moon, The Sting, Tin Men, Catch Me If You Can, The Wolf of Wall Street and more and we even find ourselves rooting for them. Until they show up at our door. 

 

And now they’ve arrived in droves, armed with the nuclear arsenal of e-mails, texts, AI generated letters and images and yet more. Every day our inbox is swamped with baited hooks awaiting our bite and the sophistication needed to detect them is every day more difficult to understand. Just last week, I went to renew my passport with the first thing that showed up online and almost-too-late realized it was a mild scam ready to double the price of what it costs when I actually do it with the government office. The fine print is smaller and smaller and this is nothing compared to the story I heard yesterday of someone’s friend scammed out of $500,000 because she was a widowed woman seduce online by such a caring man who kept promising to meet her soon, but meanwhile…

 

My first thought is, “What the hell is wrong with you people?!!!! How can you sleep at night knowing your job entails preying on vulnerable, lonely people? Or capitalizing on people’s fantasies for getting rich quick? Are you proud of yourselves? What would your mother say? Or your first-grade teacher?”

 

Of course, this has been going on forever and far beyond simply selling defective goods or tricking people into signing up for something against their own best interest. Witness religious missionaries, TV evangelists, even New Age spiritual leaders or motivational speakers like Deeprak Chopra now revealed as complicit with Jeffrey Epstein. And of course, the biggest scam artist of all time, our current not-to-be-named President. The sheer volume of con artists, the increased vulnerability of gullible people looking for quick ways to earn money, protect their privilege, shape an identity based on the illusion that they’re in the club, alongside the tsunami of electronic bombardment, is so much harder to deal with then politely telling the vacuum salesman at your door that you’re not interested, thank you very much.

 

One of the most maddening things about the phenomena is the cynical (but increasingly real) message that you shouldn’t assume goodwill in the people you meet and treat everyone as if they’re out to get you. Which self-fulfills its own prophecy and drags us down into the worst versions of ourselves. Is there another possibility?

 

Every workshop I give, there’s a moment in my opening shtick in which we are all connected in a circle, arms grasped behind our back and leaning back and held together by this human chain. It’s a typical exercise physically showing the need for trust. Hard to describe, but the next step in my shtick involves slapping my neighbors’ hand, who quickly realizes that they have to pull their hand away when they see it coming. So now the message is, “Trust…but not too much. Be alert and know when to pull your hand away.” 

 

Alongside creating a culture of kindness and character, we need to train the children and ourselves to cultivate a kind of radar, a crap detector that can sniff out the real from the fake. To begin in good faith in every encounter, but keep that radar turned on and notice the signs. This is increasingly difficult as the electronic disguises get more sophisticated, but after you get fooled a few times (hopefully not with the Nigerian princes or friends robbed on vacation in the Philippines who need you to send money), it’s worth learning how to spot these things. Certain signs in e-mail addresses, being asked to share dubious information, a reliable tech person who you can ask to help you spot what’s real or fake. The simple truth of warning children to “not take candy from strangers” now has a thousand new faces, but at root is the same. 

 

Meanwhile, two unprintable words to all you scammers and con artists who have refused kindness, character and an authentic life. One syllable each and the second one is “you.” If you can’t guess it and want to know, send me $500,000 in bitcoin and the secret is yours.