Midlife Meditation

Mourners in Sutherland Springs, Texas There is no conference like an Orff conference. When music educators who practice the Orff philosophy gather, we celebrate. We play, sing, dance, laugh, and rejoice in the incredible privilege of sharing our love of music with children. For three days last week, that's what we did, and in every way except one, it was exactly the conference we all needed in this Age of Trump. That one exception, though, was huge: this was the first time I've ever known a conference to begin with the host telling us what to do in the event of an active shooter. The announcement could very well have happened anywhere the conference was held. It came, after all, just weeks after the worst mass shooting in American history--and just days after the second-worst shooting. In each case, a white American used assault weapons to slaughter innocent people who had gathered to celebrate. In the first instance, they were attending a music festival in Las V...

In Texas, it's all big. There are some who will insist that Texas is not a true part of the American South. Its historical identity as, for a brief time, an independent republic, its blended Mexican and cowboy culture, its prosperity relative to most other former states of the Confederacy--there are many reasons to consider Texas more Southwest than South. And yet, Texas was very much a member of the Confederate States of America, and the last slaves to be liberated, two months after the rebels surrendered to the Union, were Texas slaves (an event enshrined in the African-American holiday known as Juneteenth). Texans disparagingly refer to Northerners as Yankees, enthusiastically embracing a patriotism that both celebrates American identity and stubbornly insists on defining it militantly and rebelliously. The only part of the South I've experienced on a personal level is Texas, more specifically, Dallas. That's even more problematic than calling Texas representat...