Well, I'm a little later with my writing today than normal, but I have a pretty good excuse.  Tomorrow is the last day of my Music and Social Justice class, and, well, I've spent all day today finalizing my presentation for tomorrow. Okay, I stretched the truth.  I spent all day CREATING my presentation for tomorrow. It has been a few years -- ten, to be exact--since I put together a Powerpoint presentation and I'm pretty certain that, whatever the last topic was, it was not as interesting nor as personally earth-shattering for me as my topic tomorrow, which is "Social Justice Themes in Opera". You don't find that topic…

I'm sure that everyone, right along with me, will be relieved when  I complete my class on Music and Social Justice.  Then I will be able to think about and write about something else, like my impending travel to Spain.  But right now, I am still living closely with injustice and the music it generates.  And today, after an evening of listening to the most beautiful and yet agonizing music created by people struggling to live in perhaps the most unlivable conditions, I seem to be able to think of only one thing:  orientation. Maybe I don't really mean orientation, perhaps I mean perspective, but the word perspective just doesn't…

[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="189" caption="Some of my roses..."][/caption] I've just come in from a morning working in the garden.  Tired, but content, I reached down and picked up a book too long set aside. My eyes fell upon a passage I just really needed to share, and one that is so eloquent and to the point of my journey that I simultaneously feel joy in its discovery, peace in its meaning, and envy that I didn't write it myself. Because of  all that, I share it here with you all: The body remembers shared music and  sound long after the mind may be dimmed. ...sound, pitch, and rhythm...All of these things…

While I'm listing things for which I need to thank my mother, I should add to that list my vocabulary.  Both of my parents, neither of whom had any education past completing high school, were obsessed with vocabulary.  From the earliest time I can remember, if I asked them the meaning of a word I encountered in a book or elsewhere, I was sent to the dictionary to look it up.  We then sat around the breakfast or dinner table and I was drilled to use the word successfully in 10 sentences.  Needless to say, to this very day, I like new words and when I encounter them I strive to…

So, I'll admit it -- I have been procrastinating.  I typed this title and saved an empty page as "Draft" months  ago, after I read the  chapter by the same title in Os Guinness's book Rise to the Call.  Maybe I believed that if I thought about it for a while, the  feeling that my head would simply explode at the concept might subside. It did not.   But I read the chapter again yesterday, and I didn't explode, so now I think that I am ready to write. Guiness's term, "an audience of One", should really be a simple concept relating to call and motivation. But nothing is really simple when it relates to a…

Well, I'm a little later with my writing today than normal, but I have a pretty good excuse.  Tomorrow is the last day of my Music and Social Justice class, and, well, I've spent all day today finalizing my presentation for tomorrow. Okay, I stretched the truth.  I spent all day CREATING my presentation for tomorrow. It has been a few years -- ten, to be exact--since I put together a Powerpoint presentation and I'm pretty certain that, whatever the last topic was, it was not as interesting nor as personally earth-shattering for me as my topic tomorrow, which is "Social Justice Themes in Opera". You don't find that topic…

I'm sure that everyone, right along with me, will be relieved when  I complete my class on Music and Social Justice.  Then I will be able to think about and write about something else, like my impending travel to Spain.  But right now, I am still living closely with injustice and the music it generates.  And today, after an evening of listening to the most beautiful and yet agonizing music created by people struggling to live in perhaps the most unlivable conditions, I seem to be able to think of only one thing:  orientation. Maybe I don't really mean orientation, perhaps I mean perspective, but the word perspective just doesn't…

[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="189" caption="Some of my roses..."][/caption] I've just come in from a morning working in the garden.  Tired, but content, I reached down and picked up a book too long set aside. My eyes fell upon a passage I just really needed to share, and one that is so eloquent and to the point of my journey that I simultaneously feel joy in its discovery, peace in its meaning, and envy that I didn't write it myself. Because of  all that, I share it here with you all: The body remembers shared music and  sound long after the mind may be dimmed. ...sound, pitch, and rhythm...All of these things…

While I'm listing things for which I need to thank my mother, I should add to that list my vocabulary.  Both of my parents, neither of whom had any education past completing high school, were obsessed with vocabulary.  From the earliest time I can remember, if I asked them the meaning of a word I encountered in a book or elsewhere, I was sent to the dictionary to look it up.  We then sat around the breakfast or dinner table and I was drilled to use the word successfully in 10 sentences.  Needless to say, to this very day, I like new words and when I encounter them I strive to…

So, I'll admit it -- I have been procrastinating.  I typed this title and saved an empty page as "Draft" months  ago, after I read the  chapter by the same title in Os Guinness's book Rise to the Call.  Maybe I believed that if I thought about it for a while, the  feeling that my head would simply explode at the concept might subside. It did not.   But I read the chapter again yesterday, and I didn't explode, so now I think that I am ready to write. Guiness's term, "an audience of One", should really be a simple concept relating to call and motivation. But nothing is really simple when it relates to a…

Well, I'm a little later with my writing today than normal, but I have a pretty good excuse.  Tomorrow is the last day of my Music and Social Justice class, and, well, I've spent all day today finalizing my presentation for tomorrow. Okay, I stretched the truth.  I spent all day CREATING my presentation for tomorrow. It has been a few years -- ten, to be exact--since I put together a Powerpoint presentation and I'm pretty certain that, whatever the last topic was, it was not as interesting nor as personally earth-shattering for me as my topic tomorrow, which is "Social Justice Themes in Opera". You don't find that topic…

I'm sure that everyone, right along with me, will be relieved when  I complete my class on Music and Social Justice.  Then I will be able to think about and write about something else, like my impending travel to Spain.  But right now, I am still living closely with injustice and the music it generates.  And today, after an evening of listening to the most beautiful and yet agonizing music created by people struggling to live in perhaps the most unlivable conditions, I seem to be able to think of only one thing:  orientation. Maybe I don't really mean orientation, perhaps I mean perspective, but the word perspective just doesn't…

[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="189" caption="Some of my roses..."][/caption] I've just come in from a morning working in the garden.  Tired, but content, I reached down and picked up a book too long set aside. My eyes fell upon a passage I just really needed to share, and one that is so eloquent and to the point of my journey that I simultaneously feel joy in its discovery, peace in its meaning, and envy that I didn't write it myself. Because of  all that, I share it here with you all: The body remembers shared music and  sound long after the mind may be dimmed. ...sound, pitch, and rhythm...All of these things…

While I'm listing things for which I need to thank my mother, I should add to that list my vocabulary.  Both of my parents, neither of whom had any education past completing high school, were obsessed with vocabulary.  From the earliest time I can remember, if I asked them the meaning of a word I encountered in a book or elsewhere, I was sent to the dictionary to look it up.  We then sat around the breakfast or dinner table and I was drilled to use the word successfully in 10 sentences.  Needless to say, to this very day, I like new words and when I encounter them I strive to…

So, I'll admit it -- I have been procrastinating.  I typed this title and saved an empty page as "Draft" months  ago, after I read the  chapter by the same title in Os Guinness's book Rise to the Call.  Maybe I believed that if I thought about it for a while, the  feeling that my head would simply explode at the concept might subside. It did not.   But I read the chapter again yesterday, and I didn't explode, so now I think that I am ready to write. Guiness's term, "an audience of One", should really be a simple concept relating to call and motivation. But nothing is really simple when it relates to a…

Well, I'm a little later with my writing today than normal, but I have a pretty good excuse.  Tomorrow is the last day of my Music and Social Justice class, and, well, I've spent all day today finalizing my presentation for tomorrow. Okay, I stretched the truth.  I spent all day CREATING my presentation for tomorrow. It has been a few years -- ten, to be exact--since I put together a Powerpoint presentation and I'm pretty certain that, whatever the last topic was, it was not as interesting nor as personally earth-shattering for me as my topic tomorrow, which is "Social Justice Themes in Opera". You don't find that topic…

I'm sure that everyone, right along with me, will be relieved when  I complete my class on Music and Social Justice.  Then I will be able to think about and write about something else, like my impending travel to Spain.  But right now, I am still living closely with injustice and the music it generates.  And today, after an evening of listening to the most beautiful and yet agonizing music created by people struggling to live in perhaps the most unlivable conditions, I seem to be able to think of only one thing:  orientation. Maybe I don't really mean orientation, perhaps I mean perspective, but the word perspective just doesn't…

[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="189" caption="Some of my roses..."][/caption] I've just come in from a morning working in the garden.  Tired, but content, I reached down and picked up a book too long set aside. My eyes fell upon a passage I just really needed to share, and one that is so eloquent and to the point of my journey that I simultaneously feel joy in its discovery, peace in its meaning, and envy that I didn't write it myself. Because of  all that, I share it here with you all: The body remembers shared music and  sound long after the mind may be dimmed. ...sound, pitch, and rhythm...All of these things…

While I'm listing things for which I need to thank my mother, I should add to that list my vocabulary.  Both of my parents, neither of whom had any education past completing high school, were obsessed with vocabulary.  From the earliest time I can remember, if I asked them the meaning of a word I encountered in a book or elsewhere, I was sent to the dictionary to look it up.  We then sat around the breakfast or dinner table and I was drilled to use the word successfully in 10 sentences.  Needless to say, to this very day, I like new words and when I encounter them I strive to…

So, I'll admit it -- I have been procrastinating.  I typed this title and saved an empty page as "Draft" months  ago, after I read the  chapter by the same title in Os Guinness's book Rise to the Call.  Maybe I believed that if I thought about it for a while, the  feeling that my head would simply explode at the concept might subside. It did not.   But I read the chapter again yesterday, and I didn't explode, so now I think that I am ready to write. Guiness's term, "an audience of One", should really be a simple concept relating to call and motivation. But nothing is really simple when it relates to a…

Well, I'm a little later with my writing today than normal, but I have a pretty good excuse.  Tomorrow is the last day of my Music and Social Justice class, and, well, I've spent all day today finalizing my presentation for tomorrow. Okay, I stretched the truth.  I spent all day CREATING my presentation for tomorrow. It has been a few years -- ten, to be exact--since I put together a Powerpoint presentation and I'm pretty certain that, whatever the last topic was, it was not as interesting nor as personally earth-shattering for me as my topic tomorrow, which is "Social Justice Themes in Opera". You don't find that topic…

I'm sure that everyone, right along with me, will be relieved when  I complete my class on Music and Social Justice.  Then I will be able to think about and write about something else, like my impending travel to Spain.  But right now, I am still living closely with injustice and the music it generates.  And today, after an evening of listening to the most beautiful and yet agonizing music created by people struggling to live in perhaps the most unlivable conditions, I seem to be able to think of only one thing:  orientation. Maybe I don't really mean orientation, perhaps I mean perspective, but the word perspective just doesn't…

[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="189" caption="Some of my roses..."][/caption] I've just come in from a morning working in the garden.  Tired, but content, I reached down and picked up a book too long set aside. My eyes fell upon a passage I just really needed to share, and one that is so eloquent and to the point of my journey that I simultaneously feel joy in its discovery, peace in its meaning, and envy that I didn't write it myself. Because of  all that, I share it here with you all: The body remembers shared music and  sound long after the mind may be dimmed. ...sound, pitch, and rhythm...All of these things…

While I'm listing things for which I need to thank my mother, I should add to that list my vocabulary.  Both of my parents, neither of whom had any education past completing high school, were obsessed with vocabulary.  From the earliest time I can remember, if I asked them the meaning of a word I encountered in a book or elsewhere, I was sent to the dictionary to look it up.  We then sat around the breakfast or dinner table and I was drilled to use the word successfully in 10 sentences.  Needless to say, to this very day, I like new words and when I encounter them I strive to…

So, I'll admit it -- I have been procrastinating.  I typed this title and saved an empty page as "Draft" months  ago, after I read the  chapter by the same title in Os Guinness's book Rise to the Call.  Maybe I believed that if I thought about it for a while, the  feeling that my head would simply explode at the concept might subside. It did not.   But I read the chapter again yesterday, and I didn't explode, so now I think that I am ready to write. Guiness's term, "an audience of One", should really be a simple concept relating to call and motivation. But nothing is really simple when it relates to a…

Well, I'm a little later with my writing today than normal, but I have a pretty good excuse.  Tomorrow is the last day of my Music and Social Justice class, and, well, I've spent all day today finalizing my presentation for tomorrow. Okay, I stretched the truth.  I spent all day CREATING my presentation for tomorrow. It has been a few years -- ten, to be exact--since I put together a Powerpoint presentation and I'm pretty certain that, whatever the last topic was, it was not as interesting nor as personally earth-shattering for me as my topic tomorrow, which is "Social Justice Themes in Opera". You don't find that topic…

I'm sure that everyone, right along with me, will be relieved when  I complete my class on Music and Social Justice.  Then I will be able to think about and write about something else, like my impending travel to Spain.  But right now, I am still living closely with injustice and the music it generates.  And today, after an evening of listening to the most beautiful and yet agonizing music created by people struggling to live in perhaps the most unlivable conditions, I seem to be able to think of only one thing:  orientation. Maybe I don't really mean orientation, perhaps I mean perspective, but the word perspective just doesn't…

[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="189" caption="Some of my roses..."][/caption] I've just come in from a morning working in the garden.  Tired, but content, I reached down and picked up a book too long set aside. My eyes fell upon a passage I just really needed to share, and one that is so eloquent and to the point of my journey that I simultaneously feel joy in its discovery, peace in its meaning, and envy that I didn't write it myself. Because of  all that, I share it here with you all: The body remembers shared music and  sound long after the mind may be dimmed. ...sound, pitch, and rhythm...All of these things…

While I'm listing things for which I need to thank my mother, I should add to that list my vocabulary.  Both of my parents, neither of whom had any education past completing high school, were obsessed with vocabulary.  From the earliest time I can remember, if I asked them the meaning of a word I encountered in a book or elsewhere, I was sent to the dictionary to look it up.  We then sat around the breakfast or dinner table and I was drilled to use the word successfully in 10 sentences.  Needless to say, to this very day, I like new words and when I encounter them I strive to…

So, I'll admit it -- I have been procrastinating.  I typed this title and saved an empty page as "Draft" months  ago, after I read the  chapter by the same title in Os Guinness's book Rise to the Call.  Maybe I believed that if I thought about it for a while, the  feeling that my head would simply explode at the concept might subside. It did not.   But I read the chapter again yesterday, and I didn't explode, so now I think that I am ready to write. Guiness's term, "an audience of One", should really be a simple concept relating to call and motivation. But nothing is really simple when it relates to a…

Well, I'm a little later with my writing today than normal, but I have a pretty good excuse.  Tomorrow is the last day of my Music and Social Justice class, and, well, I've spent all day today finalizing my presentation for tomorrow. Okay, I stretched the truth.  I spent all day CREATING my presentation for tomorrow. It has been a few years -- ten, to be exact--since I put together a Powerpoint presentation and I'm pretty certain that, whatever the last topic was, it was not as interesting nor as personally earth-shattering for me as my topic tomorrow, which is "Social Justice Themes in Opera". You don't find that topic…

I'm sure that everyone, right along with me, will be relieved when  I complete my class on Music and Social Justice.  Then I will be able to think about and write about something else, like my impending travel to Spain.  But right now, I am still living closely with injustice and the music it generates.  And today, after an evening of listening to the most beautiful and yet agonizing music created by people struggling to live in perhaps the most unlivable conditions, I seem to be able to think of only one thing:  orientation. Maybe I don't really mean orientation, perhaps I mean perspective, but the word perspective just doesn't…

[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="189" caption="Some of my roses..."][/caption] I've just come in from a morning working in the garden.  Tired, but content, I reached down and picked up a book too long set aside. My eyes fell upon a passage I just really needed to share, and one that is so eloquent and to the point of my journey that I simultaneously feel joy in its discovery, peace in its meaning, and envy that I didn't write it myself. Because of  all that, I share it here with you all: The body remembers shared music and  sound long after the mind may be dimmed. ...sound, pitch, and rhythm...All of these things…

While I'm listing things for which I need to thank my mother, I should add to that list my vocabulary.  Both of my parents, neither of whom had any education past completing high school, were obsessed with vocabulary.  From the earliest time I can remember, if I asked them the meaning of a word I encountered in a book or elsewhere, I was sent to the dictionary to look it up.  We then sat around the breakfast or dinner table and I was drilled to use the word successfully in 10 sentences.  Needless to say, to this very day, I like new words and when I encounter them I strive to…

So, I'll admit it -- I have been procrastinating.  I typed this title and saved an empty page as "Draft" months  ago, after I read the  chapter by the same title in Os Guinness's book Rise to the Call.  Maybe I believed that if I thought about it for a while, the  feeling that my head would simply explode at the concept might subside. It did not.   But I read the chapter again yesterday, and I didn't explode, so now I think that I am ready to write. Guiness's term, "an audience of One", should really be a simple concept relating to call and motivation. But nothing is really simple when it relates to a…

Well, I'm a little later with my writing today than normal, but I have a pretty good excuse.  Tomorrow is the last day of my Music and Social Justice class, and, well, I've spent all day today finalizing my presentation for tomorrow. Okay, I stretched the truth.  I spent all day CREATING my presentation for tomorrow. It has been a few years -- ten, to be exact--since I put together a Powerpoint presentation and I'm pretty certain that, whatever the last topic was, it was not as interesting nor as personally earth-shattering for me as my topic tomorrow, which is "Social Justice Themes in Opera". You don't find that topic…

I'm sure that everyone, right along with me, will be relieved when  I complete my class on Music and Social Justice.  Then I will be able to think about and write about something else, like my impending travel to Spain.  But right now, I am still living closely with injustice and the music it generates.  And today, after an evening of listening to the most beautiful and yet agonizing music created by people struggling to live in perhaps the most unlivable conditions, I seem to be able to think of only one thing:  orientation. Maybe I don't really mean orientation, perhaps I mean perspective, but the word perspective just doesn't…

[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="189" caption="Some of my roses..."][/caption] I've just come in from a morning working in the garden.  Tired, but content, I reached down and picked up a book too long set aside. My eyes fell upon a passage I just really needed to share, and one that is so eloquent and to the point of my journey that I simultaneously feel joy in its discovery, peace in its meaning, and envy that I didn't write it myself. Because of  all that, I share it here with you all: The body remembers shared music and  sound long after the mind may be dimmed. ...sound, pitch, and rhythm...All of these things…

While I'm listing things for which I need to thank my mother, I should add to that list my vocabulary.  Both of my parents, neither of whom had any education past completing high school, were obsessed with vocabulary.  From the earliest time I can remember, if I asked them the meaning of a word I encountered in a book or elsewhere, I was sent to the dictionary to look it up.  We then sat around the breakfast or dinner table and I was drilled to use the word successfully in 10 sentences.  Needless to say, to this very day, I like new words and when I encounter them I strive to…

So, I'll admit it -- I have been procrastinating.  I typed this title and saved an empty page as "Draft" months  ago, after I read the  chapter by the same title in Os Guinness's book Rise to the Call.  Maybe I believed that if I thought about it for a while, the  feeling that my head would simply explode at the concept might subside. It did not.   But I read the chapter again yesterday, and I didn't explode, so now I think that I am ready to write. Guiness's term, "an audience of One", should really be a simple concept relating to call and motivation. But nothing is really simple when it relates to a…

Well, I'm a little later with my writing today than normal, but I have a pretty good excuse.  Tomorrow is the last day of my Music and Social Justice class, and, well, I've spent all day today finalizing my presentation for tomorrow. Okay, I stretched the truth.  I spent all day CREATING my presentation for tomorrow. It has been a few years -- ten, to be exact--since I put together a Powerpoint presentation and I'm pretty certain that, whatever the last topic was, it was not as interesting nor as personally earth-shattering for me as my topic tomorrow, which is "Social Justice Themes in Opera". You don't find that topic…

I'm sure that everyone, right along with me, will be relieved when  I complete my class on Music and Social Justice.  Then I will be able to think about and write about something else, like my impending travel to Spain.  But right now, I am still living closely with injustice and the music it generates.  And today, after an evening of listening to the most beautiful and yet agonizing music created by people struggling to live in perhaps the most unlivable conditions, I seem to be able to think of only one thing:  orientation. Maybe I don't really mean orientation, perhaps I mean perspective, but the word perspective just doesn't…

[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="189" caption="Some of my roses..."][/caption] I've just come in from a morning working in the garden.  Tired, but content, I reached down and picked up a book too long set aside. My eyes fell upon a passage I just really needed to share, and one that is so eloquent and to the point of my journey that I simultaneously feel joy in its discovery, peace in its meaning, and envy that I didn't write it myself. Because of  all that, I share it here with you all: The body remembers shared music and  sound long after the mind may be dimmed. ...sound, pitch, and rhythm...All of these things…

While I'm listing things for which I need to thank my mother, I should add to that list my vocabulary.  Both of my parents, neither of whom had any education past completing high school, were obsessed with vocabulary.  From the earliest time I can remember, if I asked them the meaning of a word I encountered in a book or elsewhere, I was sent to the dictionary to look it up.  We then sat around the breakfast or dinner table and I was drilled to use the word successfully in 10 sentences.  Needless to say, to this very day, I like new words and when I encounter them I strive to…

So, I'll admit it -- I have been procrastinating.  I typed this title and saved an empty page as "Draft" months  ago, after I read the  chapter by the same title in Os Guinness's book Rise to the Call.  Maybe I believed that if I thought about it for a while, the  feeling that my head would simply explode at the concept might subside. It did not.   But I read the chapter again yesterday, and I didn't explode, so now I think that I am ready to write. Guiness's term, "an audience of One", should really be a simple concept relating to call and motivation. But nothing is really simple when it relates to a…

Well, I'm a little later with my writing today than normal, but I have a pretty good excuse.  Tomorrow is the last day of my Music and Social Justice class, and, well, I've spent all day today finalizing my presentation for tomorrow. Okay, I stretched the truth.  I spent all day CREATING my presentation for tomorrow. It has been a few years -- ten, to be exact--since I put together a Powerpoint presentation and I'm pretty certain that, whatever the last topic was, it was not as interesting nor as personally earth-shattering for me as my topic tomorrow, which is "Social Justice Themes in Opera". You don't find that topic…

I'm sure that everyone, right along with me, will be relieved when  I complete my class on Music and Social Justice.  Then I will be able to think about and write about something else, like my impending travel to Spain.  But right now, I am still living closely with injustice and the music it generates.  And today, after an evening of listening to the most beautiful and yet agonizing music created by people struggling to live in perhaps the most unlivable conditions, I seem to be able to think of only one thing:  orientation. Maybe I don't really mean orientation, perhaps I mean perspective, but the word perspective just doesn't…

[caption id="attachment_179" align="aligncenter" width="189" caption="Some of my roses..."][/caption] I've just come in from a morning working in the garden.  Tired, but content, I reached down and picked up a book too long set aside. My eyes fell upon a passage I just really needed to share, and one that is so eloquent and to the point of my journey that I simultaneously feel joy in its discovery, peace in its meaning, and envy that I didn't write it myself. Because of  all that, I share it here with you all: The body remembers shared music and  sound long after the mind may be dimmed. ...sound, pitch, and rhythm...All of these things…

While I'm listing things for which I need to thank my mother, I should add to that list my vocabulary.  Both of my parents, neither of whom had any education past completing high school, were obsessed with vocabulary.  From the earliest time I can remember, if I asked them the meaning of a word I encountered in a book or elsewhere, I was sent to the dictionary to look it up.  We then sat around the breakfast or dinner table and I was drilled to use the word successfully in 10 sentences.  Needless to say, to this very day, I like new words and when I encounter them I strive to…

So, I'll admit it -- I have been procrastinating.  I typed this title and saved an empty page as "Draft" months  ago, after I read the  chapter by the same title in Os Guinness's book Rise to the Call.  Maybe I believed that if I thought about it for a while, the  feeling that my head would simply explode at the concept might subside. It did not.   But I read the chapter again yesterday, and I didn't explode, so now I think that I am ready to write. Guiness's term, "an audience of One", should really be a simple concept relating to call and motivation. But nothing is really simple when it relates to a…