Hills and Dales

One month ago my wife and I were walking up the hills and down the vales of the physical landscape of the Yorkshire Dales. Now near the end of this New Orleans Jazz Course, I’m moving through the hills and dales of an emotional landscape that is steep and dangerous and treacherous. Not the jazz material, but other things that I will politely decline to share now. 

 

After a restless and too-short sleep, I awoke to six hours of teaching before me and it proved that perfect medicine. I taught well, the material was engaging, the group was responsive, there were profound moments of hush and tears, and exuberant moments of riotous laughter— especially when one group choreographed new Lindy Hop steps based on their dorm experience that was hilarious. It ended with a beautiful Langston Hughes poem read over a sung chorale. 

 

So my spirits are uplifted and I’m ready to go out on the town on this last day of June.  

See It. Say It. Sort It.

I’ve had this title ready to go since our trip to England a month ago. This pithy mantra is spoken over and over again on the subway train (with one difference, to be noted), the British equivalent of “If you see something, say something.” These kind of short phrases are the kinds of proverbs, maxims, aphorisms, that are the legacy of oral cultures, leaning on the way the brain is designed to remember pithy, rhythmic, alliterative and musical information and then expand it from there into a living, breathing guide that helps shape our conscious life. 

 

This one works for me on so many levels. On the political level, it means our job is to truly see what is going on and that means going to multiple sources to hear diverse accounts. Read books, watch documentaries, go to lectures, listen to songs, talk to people. In my present moment of this Jazz Course, we went to the Whitney Plantation Tour, one of the few places in America where the story is told by black people telling the truth of what happened in these places and why. 

 

Then say it. Once you know the stories that no one ever told you and the people in power who benefit from them don’t want you to know, speak out about it with others who don’t yet know them. Share them, let your voice be heard when you see them at play in the present moment. 

 

And at the same time, sort it. Notice how Fox News benefits from spinning the story in their slanted way or how they and the people they represent try to keep you from hearing the story at all— the current epidemic of book-banning, for example. 

 

The same process is true on the personal emotional level. Try to see what’s going on inside of you, try to say it by giving it a name and now you’re better prepared to sort it. Where does that voice come from that turns you in certain directions in each and every life choice? Was it drummed into you by your family/ school/ church/ culture/ mass media and accepted without question, regardless of its toxic ideas and effects? If so, can you sort it and give weight to other voices that offer love, acceptance, kindness, healing? When you’re in conflict with people you care about, can you both do the work of sorting through all the defenses and justifications and getting closer to the root of what’s really going on? 

 

After hearing this over and over again on the London train, I saw it printed on and was surprised to see that the last word is actually “sorted.” Meaning if you see something edgy going on, say something to a police officer and their job is to sort it. They’re trying to assure you that if you share the problem with them, it will be sorted. 

 

In some cases, that might be the wise path to take but given the history of police in the United States, not necessarily. And in the larger picture, I much prefer my version, not giving over your power and assume someone else with sort it. We—each of us both alone and together—have to do the work. 

Today I’ll ask the students to discuss what they saw, what they want to say about it and who they will eventually say it to and how they will help their students and fellow citizens sort it.

 

See it. Say it Sort it. Keep these words close by. 

Elemental Music Rap

 

With those of us who depend upon the faculty of imagination to do our daily work, we are mostly indebted to some quality of the Muse that dictates to us through dream—the night or day variety. Our qualification for such work begins simply by tuning ourselves to that channel and keeping the power button on 24/7. And paying attention to the voice when it speaks to us. If we’re distracted by any of the thousand channels competing for our attention, we’ll miss it. 

 

 But that’s just step one. Having received some creative impulse, now we need to set it down in whatever form is appropriate for our craft— writing the words of the poem or the notes of the tune or the gestures of the body, etc. Then comes the hard work of shaping it, extending the form, balancing all the parts. Followed by final edits— deciding what to leave out and when leaving it out makes the work more clear, more expressive. (Schoenberg’s fabulous quote: “The composer’s most important tool is an eraser.”)

 

Then there’s the work of getting it out to the public through performance or publication or recording, what have you. That’s a world unto itself.

 

This is on my mind because another step is to remember you’ve created something! It seems like a while ago, I rediscovered a little fun way to teach the basics of what Orff Schulwerk calls elemental composition in the form of a rap. Given my poor skills in the actual rap style simply because I haven’t paid enough dues in listening to that music, it might more accurately be called a spoken word rhythmic rhymed poem. But indulge me here with the terse “rap” that people are familiar with as a creative genre. 

I don’t remember where I found it on my laptop or why it appeared, but apparently put it in a folder called New Ideas. Since I composed it in 2011, it wasn’t actually a “new” idea, but somehow I never folded it into my workshop repertoire. And again, through what feels like a serendipitous moment, I re-found it again when I opened that folder today. 

 

Now since I had just done last week everything the rhyme talks about with my jazz class to introduce elemental composition and its eventual relationship with jazz, I felt I missed an opportunity! I still may do it with them as a review and I will certainly do it in my Level III class coming up. I like it!

 

Of course, it will mean nothing to the non-music teacher reader, but I include it here anywhere. If you do take the trouble to read it, read it out loud. And try the things it suggests!

 

Enjoy!

 

ELEMENTAL MUSIC RAP

© 2011 Doug Goodkin

We ain’t the Offshore Workers loadin’ boxes at the wharf,

Instead we’re learnin’ music, in the manner of Carl Orff.

The body comes before the head, the music’s not just mental

We do it first, then name each part in a style elemental. 

 

Now you start off with a rhyme, got to say it right on time

Then you start to play the beat, on your knees or in your feet.

“Pease porridge in the pot, Pease porridge cold,

Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old “

 

If you can rap it, you can clap it, playin’ each and every word.

You might think that it’s too simple, you might say that it’s absurd.

How can you make good music with just rhythm and the beat?

Try it out, clap the rhythm, put the beat into your feet.

(clap rhythm of Pease while stepping the beat)

 

Just the rhythm and the beat is soundin’ kind of sweet

But if you think it’s boring and nothin’ could be duller,

Look for a place to snap so you can add a little color.

“Pease porridge in the pot * Pease porridge cold *

Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old * “

 

“Rhythm, beat and color make the music” is our motto

But now add more into the mix, here comes the ostinato.

A pattern that you play that’s different from the rhythm

Better complimentary than when you play it with ‘em.

“Here comes   the ostinato, here comes     the ostinato” 

 

Now play the beat with mallets, both hands upon the floor

If you can keep it steady, you’re ready for one thing more.

Move them to the xylophone and play on C and G

Welcome to the drone, first step in harmony.

 

Next take the rhythm of the text and play on G and E

Without a lot of effort, why, you’ve made a melody!

 

You can add a splash of color, if that’s the way you feel

It works out rather nicely on the metal glockenspiel.

 

If you want to further mine the elemental riches

You can play an ostinato on many different pitches. (GG CAGE)

 

We’re making some fine music, which clearly is our mission.

Now we got ourselves an elemental composition. (ALL)

 

Now basses you keep going, go ahead and move a tone, 

To make up something that we call the single moving drone

It’s about as easy, as easy as can be

Just move that bottom note from the C up to the D (CGDGCG )

 

It’s sounding pretty good, but on another day

You can do the same thing and move the G up to the A (CGCACGA)

 

It’s really pretty simple, it’s not a lot of trouble

To make yourselves a moving drone that now we call double. (CGDA)

 

Now that little two-note melody can grow to more that’s sonic

You can use all five notes in the scale called pentatonic.

Remember there’s a home note, back to which you’ll go

You can call it C for now, but it’s better known as Do.

 

You’ve learned a lot of concepts, you’ve tried them on for size.

Now you show just what you know when you improvise.

Using all the tools and remembering all the rules,

You can make it all your own and make up something cool.  (Improvise)

 

Now we need some structure, we need some kind of form

There are many possibilities by the Rondo is the norm.

We’re playin’ some hot music, the room is getting’ warm

Time to bring some folks inside, get ready to perform.

 

Here comes the 1^st grade teacher, the visitor from Greece,

Here comes your Aunt Elizabeth to see her favorite niece

All come to hear us sing and play our very own piece.

In hopes that all will feel their happiness increase. 

 

So off we go with music that we made from this poem

And when the show is over, the audience goes home.

We’re feelin’ kind of empty now, a little sad within, 

But next week we can choose a rhyme and then begin again.

 

Some like it hot! Uh-huh! Some like it cold! Oh yeah!

Some like it in the pot, nine days old! (That’s all!)  

28

 

It’s June 28^th.  That number 28 holds a special resonance for me in so many ways:

 

• It’s my birthday number (July 28^th)

 

• It’s my wife’s birthday number (February 28^th)

 

• It’s the average of my daughters’ birthdays (Sept. 30^th and Nov. 26^th)

 

• It’s the day I returned to San Francisco from an extraordinary one-year trip around the world, turning 28 that July 28^th. 

 

• It’s the day my wife and I married after returning from that trip. (Oct. 28^th)

 

• It’s (almost) the number for the Saturn return cycle, an astrological transit that occurs when the planet Saturn returns to the exact zodiac sign and degree it occupied at the time of your birth. This phenomenon triggers a profound period of maturation, karmic reckoning, and life restructuring, which indeed happened as I returned to work at my school for another 42 years, got married, got pregnant (well, my wife) and generally settled into a life in San Francisco that continues until this day. (I had heard it took 28 years for that cycle, but extensive research —ie. Google— says it’s actually 29.5 years and then says the karmic effect can happen anytime between 27 and 30).

 

So on this Sunday, June 28^th, it feels like an auspicious day to announce the availability of my new book on Facebook, deal with the new storage facilities that hold and send out my books, write a welcome letter to my upcoming Level III students in the Orff Levels Courses, plan the last 4 days of the Jazz Class I’m teaching, update my Website, record a Podcast, do my laundry, replenish the ice in the cooler, write two handwritten letters to my grandchildren and so on. 

 

Do you have a special number/ day? And what will you be doing on that day?

 

Weekend Pleasantries

After an intense and satisfying week of teaching and learning jazz, Friday night beckoned and the group stepped into its arms of the Steamboat Natchez, cruising up the lazy river literally while the boat band played Hoagy Carmichael’s song Lazy River. Nice to just be carried along by the music, the river and the convivial company. Post-cruise, searching in the French Quarter for music or a friendly bar, gave it up and went to Frenchman Street where a brass band on the corner welcomed us. Yeah!

 

Today was a short field trip to Louis Armstrong Park, the perfect setting for my little lecture about this remarkable American’s life. On to Congo Square, past Preservation Jazz Hall, arrive at the Jazz Museum and though it was optional for the group to stay together, about five of us enjoyed the excellent exhibit—one of which was about Louis Armstrong and one about Congo Square! I learned some intriguing new details to add to my Jazz History knowledge and in company with my fellow museum-goers, walked on to Café du Monde for some lunch and the required “beignet.” Followed by a bad-idea-ice-cream-cone, both because I was already full and a single small scoop cost $9.00!!!

 

That’s when it started to rain, the first of the trip, but we were able to head back to the car through the covered market and that was another grand pleasure, walking past all the things I will never buy and mostly couldn’t care less about, but the energy and setting reminding me of all the similar markets I’ve strolled through in Ghana or Cuba or Bangkok or Spain and it just felt good. Back to my room for the luxury of an afternoon nap and a free evening to just hang and chill (not easy in the 90 degree weather!) and a Sunday tomorrow to just take care of business— laundry, e-mails, class plans, record a Podcast, maybe write a letter (gasp!) and such. No pressure to search out music or restaurants or socialize.

 

That’s the report from your man in New Orleans. 

Lyfting My Spirits

 

Amongst many wonderful things to say about New Orleans, the quality of conversation with the Lyft drivers is nearing the top of my list. Within 5 seconds of entering the car, there is a friendly and often hilarious rapport—especially with the women drivers—that makes me feel like I just reunited with an old friend. I don’t take Lyft a lot, but in the places I have, I’ve never found the drivers to be as consistently fun and friendly as they are here in New Orleans. I find myself happier stepping out of the car than when I stepped in—also a goal I’ve always told my music class students.

 

Tonight the driver was playing the radio fairly loud and I said, “Well, it’s a good song, but I’m not too happy about the lyrics. Are they talking about me? ” Everyone in the car looked confused, so I explained, "They're singing ‘I’m old and gone.' ” Everyone laughed and said, “No they're not! They're singing,  ‘I’m holding on!!’ Well, the fact that I heard it wrong kind of proved my point. And then I checked my hearing aids and they had gone down to zero, so I felt a little bit better.

 

I am noticing I’m referencing my age a lot. With my 75^th birthday in one month and three days, I seem to steer conversations —or comments during teaching— to legacy and the things I hope will continue. I suppose it’s natural, but maybe not the best idea. Especially when I’m at the top of my game mentally with my writing, can teach six hours a day five days straight with strong energy and am in pretty good shape after my 8-mile daily walks in England and 40-mile bike rides in the Dolomites. Yesterday, I taught some vigorous Steppin’ body percussion and today some equally aerobic Lindy Hop steps. So why obsess about numbers? 

 

I think I’ll follow Clint Eastwood’s advice. When asked what kept him so actively engaged in his 90’s, he replied, “I just don’t let the old man in.”

Good idea! And so this young man turns to sleep and eagerly awaits day six of the Jazz Course.

 

And if I need a boost to my spirits, why, Lyft awaits me! 

The Thorn and the Rose

Now into Day Four of my  Jazz Course in New Orleans, sunny, hot and not a drop of rain in sight. Every day with the 17 students a step in the cool, refreshing water of bliss. A lovely group of people, not a single one rubbing against the grain of group cohesion and the unusual situation that two are brothers, two are mother and daughter, two are husband and wife and four all finished Level III with me recently. The teaching is effortlessly doing its work of broadening the smiles the students enter class with. It feels like we’re  bringing the Ancestors into the room as the music they created that sustained them lives on in the present and will be passed to the children into the future. It certainly is bringing the people into the room into deep communion with their own musical selves in company with each other, forging friendships that often keep echoing for a long time into the future. 

All of it made yet more rich by living this beauty in the place where so much of it was forged (New Orleans!) and in company with three of my jazz bandmates who are sharing the transmission with me so that I might some day pass the baton to them. I love being with them, I love the way they're teaching, I love the way they're aware of the other students and jumping in without being asked to offer help or affirmation. And at night, the four of us often meet the students out on the town to hear some great jazz in the dozens of clubs available. After a meal at some great restaurants!

 

But there is a canker in the rose. In a soul-stirring correspondence with a new friend in Korea, she recently wrote to me: 

 

You wrote that my life seemed to be filled with “exciting, lovely, and disturbing things all at once.” I smiled when I read that, because it felt so true.And perhaps most lives are like that — full of such things all at once. Maybe the difference lies in which part lasts longer, which part we give more weight to, and how we choose to receive it.

 

This morning, I wrote this back to her:

 

Like you, my life is also exciting, lovely and disturbing all at once. Without going into details, I have a relationship with someone that we’ve been cultivating for some eight years now that has been profound and meaningful to us both. For (to me) completely inexplicable and confusing reasons, there is suddenly a change in tone from his end and despite a long conversation trying to get below the surface of what's going on, it feels like he is refusing to own his part in the dynamic and the tension continues. I find it sad, confusing and disturbing, a heavy shadow amidst the joy. So as you say, my job is to decide how much weight to give to it and choose how to receive it. At the moment, not doing well with that! 

 

But on we go, about to dance some Lindy Hop and play a Count Basie Big Band tune. Despite my hopes, all gathered in my new book, music alone never solves all. But just maybe I can dance out my disturbance and release it to the winds. Or to use the title metaphor, choose to hold the stem away from the thorn and keep smelling the rose. Wish me luck!

  

Manufacturing Joy

And so we began last night, an instant community of 22 teachers doing the work of manufacturing joy in the Jazz Factory. In our outlet, there is no assembly line doing repetitive tasks for mere efficiency and material profit grown from narrowing our full human promise. Instead there is the “Second Line” following our dancing feet to the infectious music in free-form exultation. There is no “one-size-fits-all” mass-produced garments to cloak the physical body, but instead the clothes tailored just right for our particular spiritual bodies. Each game, each song, each dance and piece of music is made to clothe our soul, to accent the curves, bring out the particular colors that make us look and feel good, warm us in times of cool weather and cool us when it’s hot. The currency at the check-out counter is the smile not faked for the camera, but radiating in each cell of the body. When the whistle blows to signal a break or the end of the day, it’s a saxophone riff, swingin’, soulful and each time different. Time in our factory is not a slow-dripping faucet to be endured, but the refreshing pool of water in which we wholly immerse ourselves, a return to the womb of comfort and belonging where al boundaries momentarily dissolve. 

 

Welcome to the opening session of The Jazz Course in New Orleans, 2026

 

Not a Good Time

There are times when it is wise to not reflect too deeply. Not take your emotional temperature and wonder why you you’re not having a happy Pepsi moment. Not reflect on whether you belong to the group of people you’ve been thrown together with. Not write a reflection on a Blog that should carry something of interest to others. 

 

I think when you wake-up at 3:30 am in Venice and go to sleep at the equivalent of 3:30 am the next day in New Orleans after traveling for 24 hours might be such a time. 

Somehow I’ve soldiered through the day, reuniting with my fellow jazz band folks and my New Orleans Jazz Course host, in spite of being given a moldy room in a funky dorm that made me feel ill within ten minutes and then insisting on a new room that wouldn’t be ready for another 45 minutes of so. And then the key not working and the too-cold air-conditioning not possible to shut off or make warmer. (This was all last night.)

Still, I managed to sleep somewhat, then this morning, get a desperate laundry going, walk to a market with the lads to go shopping, check out the teaching space, set it up and go over a few tunes, look for an open restaurant at 3:30 in the afternoon, check out my still-wet laundry in the dryer  and now an hour free before teaching my first session from 7:00 pm – 10:00pm. 

 

It's Father’s Day and not a good time to reflect on the gifts I received from my father, 19 years now gone from the planet. Not a good time to reflect on my own immeasurable joy in being a father (and grandfather) from day one to today, not admit my failings or celebrate the surprise of doing some things right. Not a good time to discuss the needed move from toxic male parenting to men truly learning how to nurture and care. Nor is it a good time to acknowledge the Summer Solstice, happening to fall on the same day.

 

So this is all I can manage at the moment. I still hope to call my oldest daughter who gave me a sweet little message and requested a talk for the occasion. (I spoke with my other daughter yesterday). 

 

So Happy Father’s Day and Happy Solstice to all! 

 

And now I need to check on the laundry.

  

The Blue Hat on the Security Belt

My ritual goodbye to a place I’ve just traveled to, while waiting for the third leg of my flight from Venice to New Orleans. So thanks to England for the public footpaths and beans for breakfast and flapjacks and a language I could mostly speak and learning how to enjoy mist, drizzle and rain while walking and the long, literary history from children’s books to adult ones that shaped my imaginative life

 

And goodbye to Italy, the ever-present pizzas and Tyrolean town names in Italian and German and the majesty of the Dolomites and the myriad bike paths through woods, fields, alongside rivers and highways. And the remarkable variety of memorable places I’ve been to in my traveling life—Venice, Verona, Florence, Rome, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Cinqueterra, Assissi, Bologna, Puglia, Sicily and now, the Dolomites. 

 

And hello to Newark Airport, some 20 minutes from my childhood home and the familiar New York skyline and Budweiser beer plant and American English and paying in dollars and some sense of returning home, even though it is frayed with the ambivalence of our worst overshadowing our best. Gifted a first-class seat for this last flight to New Orleans after awakening at 3:30 am in Venice. The miracle and privilege of flying and after a long, long, long line for connecting passengers and three more lines to show passports in Brussels, wondering if my patience for plane travel is waning. But after an exit row seat in Brussels with two-good movies and a good book and some needed sleep and this last first-class leg, maybe I’ll keep on flying and assuage my carbon footprint guilt with some 50 years of mostly being a vegetarian. 

 

Ready to put my teacher hat on again and that includes the literal blue cap that my colleague James publicly gifted me with two years ago in the NOLA Jazz Course. It would  have been lost on the Security belt without me noticing if some kind woman hadn’t alerted me that it had fallen off. Affirming my belief that angels are everywhere.

Again, Juneteenth

On this day, exactly one year ago, I posted this on Facebook.

 

“And so a farewell toast to Europe with my favorite Austrian beer. Six memorable weeks in the Dordognes, Paris, London, Oxford, the Cotswolds, Vienna, Salzburg, Linz and now the Munich Airport. A grand pleasure to meet old friends and make new ones, to bike, hike and wander and also to teach, to feel touched by the exquisite aesthetics of these European cities, the beautiful countryside, the uplift of art and architecture and cultivated cuisine, the kindness of strangers and shared concern with just about everyone I met about the unravelling of the world and the shared commitment to help stitch it back together. 

 

Tomorrow it’s off to Ghana and a different kind of uplift from extraordinary music, dance and song and the exuberant welcomes the Orff Afrique students always feel. On this Juneteenth day, the Civil War is raging again back home, but I’m here to report that healing forces are everywhere. A toast to what has been and to what will come.”

 

And here I am again on the exact same day one year later, bidding farewell to a marvelous four weeks in London, the Yorkshire Dales, the Dolomites, now on the way to my Jazz Course in New Orleans and “a different kind of uplift from extraordinary music, dance and song.” The Civil War still raging as before, if not more so, and the healing forces still at work trying to contain and ultimately oust the traitors to democracy, intelligence and just plain human decency. Amidst all the beauty that walked and rode with me through each day here in Europe, that lurking shadow is never far away. 

 

So on this Juneteenth day commemorating the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War in 1865 (over 160 years ago!), let’s re-commit to actually ending the Civil War. To emancipate our enslavement to injustice, immorality, ignorance, greed and hatred. To walk together on this great, green earth in awe of its natural beauty and our own natural beauty, toasting to friends with an end-of-a-delicious-meal limoncello gifted by a smiling waiter.

Limoncello Toast

And so we come to the end. Our last day of biking, 45 miles in relentless hot sun with 30 seconds of relief in a cool, cool tunnel. Alongside the river, next to the freeway, up into the hills, gravel paths through the woods, beauty before us, beauty behind us, beauty all around us. Back to the same hotel in Toblauch where we started the ride and a final group meal at the same restaurant we had eaten at with a salad bar and of course, 25 different kinds of pizza. A ritual appreciation of each person’s unique contribution to the group venture, recalling some fun and memorable moments—law-abiding Heide ignoring a pedestrian red light, watching the Spurs-Knicks highlights with Gerri and Dennis, Pam dancing with a waiter while I played jazz piano, Terry, Karen and I discovering those three little villages with astounding murals. Then came the phones-out photo-sharing options and a final limoncello toast to what has mostly been a lovely 10 days together.

 

Early this morning, Terry got up to take a train to meet two friends for four more days in this area, Heide took a train to return to her home in Germany, the rest of us have a final day of hanging out, strolling about until the 4 o’clock bus takes us to the airport hotel and we go to the airport the next morning. Karen to San Francisco, Pam to Michigan, Gerri and Dennis to their daughter’s house in Brooklyn, me to New Orleans to begin teaching my Jazz Course. 

At dinner, we also talked about possible places for a next-year’s bike trip, from Albania to New Zealand to Portugal-Spain, so even with two of us about to turn 80 this year and the youngest at 72, we’re still hoping for more of the same. But always looking at “how can we make this even better?,” the group agreed on two things and I have one more of my own.

 

1)   This was the most rigorous ride with three days of 40, 45 and 50 mile rides. Good for the marathon body, but most agreed that distances should be shorter. Especially so we can relax about getting to the hotel by dinner and take some more leisurely time along the way to visit little sites or stop to take photos and identify—and smell—the flowers.

 

2)   Related to that, we agreed without much thought or discussion to not feel rushed in the morning. Our bags always had to be down to the desk by 9:00 am, but we often didn’t leave until 9:30 or 10:00. On the last day, we left at 9:00 and the quality of the early morning air and the sun not yet blazing hot made me think, “Why not leave earlier each day? 7:30 or 8:00, so we can enjoy that morning freshness and relax about the time. Save our “leisure time” for an afternoon at the hotel after we arrive." Most agreed that would have been a good idea.

 

3)   My suggestion, which I would need agreement with beforehand, is to consciously put the damn phones away more. One of our group is seriously addicted and hardly ever had a moment (except riding) when his head was not down looking at the phone and it infected the whole group, I believe. So at least some phoneless meals and again, more thought to asking people for directions rather than depend on Google maps. 

 

Thanks to my wife for beginning this way of being in the world. She gave herself a retirement gift in the Spring of 2017 with her first trip down the Danube to Vienna, then again in 2018 with a Bavarian excursion. I joined her in 2019 in Sweden, the pandemic closed it all down for two years and in 2022, I joined again for a most memorable trip to Puglia, Italy. 2023 I was busy and she went to the Netherlands, 2024 was Slovenia, 2025 was the Dordognes in France and this, my 5^th, was, of course, the Dolomites. Karen is the only one of the group has done all eight, but Terry, Gerri, Dennis and I, alongside other friends who have done three or four, make up the groups that have ranged from four to eight people. I’ve loved traveling throughout Europe (indeed the world) following the opportunities for teaching Orff workshops, but these rides bring me into territory I never would have explored. And gratefully so. 

 

So the day before us, a walk planned to the hut where Gustav Mahler composed and one last day surrounded by these marvelous mountains. I raise my limoncello drink to toast to it all. 

Money Matters

Those on the side of the evolution of human consciousness and social justice have named the obstacles to our development with words that mostly people understand—racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc.. Since the first step in dismantling any toxic practices is giving them names that identify them, allow people to recognize them when they see them at work, this is vital to any movement forward. Yet more and more, I feel that behind them all is another colossal flaw in the human psyche fed by our politics, social structures and values and driving the whole show. Because we haven’t yet agreed on a name that gathers up everything about how it does its damaging work, it remains a somewhat invisible force. 

 

“Greed” is one possibility, but that is too personal and doesn’t account for the systemic qualities. “Capitalism” comes closer as defined an “economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and its use for the purpose of obtaining profit” (Wikipedia) but is too specific and wasn’t in place when Columbus began wreaking havoc in the West Indies enslaving indigenous people to bring him gold or the entire slave trade started. (Remember, racism was largely created by economics married to priests and scientists inventing the notion of White Supremacy so slaveholders could sleep easily at night.) We are in dire need of something that fits easily with Patriarchy, White Supremacy and … ?

 

Three examples of how it works in the United States. Once we name it and recognize it, we have the possibility of dismantling/ transforming it. The first is from my daughter Kerala’s recent piece on Substack about how our country makes parenting so difficult. She opens with a quote from another Substack writer:

 

Having raised kids for 18 years in the United States and the past 5 years in The Netherlands, I feel qualified to assert that discussing a problematic “culture of parenting” in the USA is a frivolous, misleading, and irrelevant focus that does nothing but deflect from the real problem, which is that America hates people.

 

KERALA’S COMMENT: Her essay primarily focuses on the structural and institutional differences between The Netherlands and the United States that contribute to different outcomes in our parents and children. Scandinavian parents “are not better people,” she says. “They live in societies with better policies.”

 

Among these are free healthcare for children, schools not funded by local property taxes, universal pensions, labor rights, government stipends for each child, childcare subsidies, unlimited paid sick days, paid leave to recover from burnout, and “daddy day,” which “allows fathers to take a weekly half or full day off work, paid in full or at 70%, to spend with their kids.”

The United States isn’t different because we lack some of these things. We lack ALL of these things. Every. Single. Last. One.

 

Then there are these excerpts from a Facebook post by Oliver Kornetzge in which he claims (rightly, I believe) that what’s going down now in Washington is not to the side of a once functioning democracy, but at the center of who we’ve always been: 

 

Forty million people on food stamps, thirty million without health insurance, the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world, the highest incarceration rate on earth, an opioid crisis that has killed over half a million people and counting, a housing market so broken that working people cannot afford to live in the cities they work in, an education system that buries young people in debt before they earn their first dollar, infrastructure that is literally collapsing, a life expectancy that is going backwards, a political system so thoroughly purchased by concentrated wealth that the laws it produces bear almost no relationship to what the public actually wants or needs, a working class that has not seen meaningful real wage growth in thirty years, a mental health crisis so severe we normalized it, a gun violence epidemic so routine we don’t even act when preschoolers are slaughtered, and a climate hurtling toward catastrophe while the people paid to address it collect checks from the industry causing it.

 

Not a hospital, or a school, or a housing development. Not a single fucking thing that addresses a single goddamn item on the list above. A wrestling arena. With cranes and pyrotechnics and a steel arch that probably cost more than the annual budget of three rural counties combined, erected in front of the building where Lincoln and Roosevelt and every president who ever tried to make any of this mean something once lived and worked and in some cases died trying.

 

Truthfully, this is not a departure from American values. This is the fullest possible expression of them. Because this is what we chose. Every single time the choice was presented.

 

A bitter pill to swallow indeed. And parallel to that is a glorious history of resistance and a long list of those who refused those choices. That’s important to remember as well. 

 

But the biggest affirmation of the above, the surprising revelation of how these forces have always been working at the core of our being like a tapeworm unseen inside of us eating away at our sense of decency, justice and ability to care for each other, comes from a visiting Englishmen visiting as long ago as 1844. His name was Charles Dickens and here is his extraordinary passage from his novel Martin Chuzzlewit:

 

“It was rather barren of interest, to say the truth; and the greater part of it may be summed up in one word. Dollars. All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to be melted down into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars was any venture having their attainment for its end. The more of that worthless ballast, honour and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Name and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars!”    Martin Chuzzlewit: 1844

 

And indeed, that is what we have done and continue to do. It’s no secret that Musk, Bezos and their cronies are pulling the strings of the politicians and have been for a long time. So let’s find a name for this unchecked greed, this profit over people, this “do anything for dollars” sickness that is eating away at both our souls and our social systems. 

 

And as a teacher, I always suggest beginning with the children. Teach them that it should be a crime to be a billionaire, hoarding an unfair share of resources and if someone is, at least they should pay an enormous amount of taxes (50%? 75%) to give back to the common good. To recognize when “follow the money” is at play in every dubious decision. (It almost always is.)

 

My tiny little whisper in the roar of unchecked capitalism and greed? Changing the words to the song I’ve always sung to the children Que Será. Instead of the child asking, “Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?”, already chasing after the wrong dreams, my new version is simply: 

 

“Will I be caring? Will I be kind?”

 

 I hope they will. I hope we all will. 

 

PS As for the title, I used “Matters” as a noun. But as a verb it also has its place. Ask anyone suffering from the lack of sufficient funds to buy food, pay rent, afford health care and it’s obvious it matters indeed. But as the Irish say, “After a full belly, it’s all poetry.”