Midlife Meditation

He was barely more than a child. Michael Brown was 18, just days from starting technical college. He'd been in trouble, off and on, throughout his short life. He played pranks. He shoplifted. He roughhoused. And a few weeks before he was shot to death by a police officer for jaywalking, he had a religious experienced inspired by seeing the sun break through the clouds over Ferguson. He was barely more than a child. Most of my teaching experience has been with elementary aged children, but I've had a few years in middle school and high school settings, enough to see the continuity of development across the age spectrum. The earnestness and enthusiasm of the very young grows into the passion of young adulthood; at the same time, the seeds of prankishness and irony can be manifested as early as kindergarten. Teenagers, I've learned, are just big kids: passionate, sensitive, fixated on inconsequentials, worried about their friends and families, narcissistic, generous, s...

Bill Cosby I grew up on Bill Cosby. After I Spy, but before Fat Albert, Bill Cosby had his own sitcom, The Bill Cosby Show, which ran from 1969-1971. He played a PE teacher. I can't remember any other particulars about the show, but I do remember my eight-year-old self having a warm feeling for its star. When he appeared on The Electric Company, a PBS show for graduates of Sesame Street , I was already beyond its demographic, but still enjoyed seeing him there. When he took his Fat Albert  stories to Saturday morning TV, I tried not to miss an episode; and my favorite moments were when the show would break away from the animated story to hear some whimsical wisdom from live-action Bill. As an adult, I roared with laughter at his comedy albums, and The Cosby Show came out at just the right time for a young father starting a family. Once that show left the air, and as Cosby matured into his senior years, I stopped following him; but seeing a still from The Cosby Show ...

I live in the None Zone. That's a label church leaders have been using for the Pacific Northwest since the 1990s, when I was, myself, a United Methodist minister. Here in the upper left corner of the United States, most people when asked which religion or denomination they belong to reply "none of the above." Organized religion--and I'm not just talking about Christianity here--has never been able to establish a toehold on this part of the country. It's rare for any of our halls of worship to have problems seating everyone during services. I've speculated on the reason for this a number of times,  and I'm not going to devote much more space to it today. Church is just a hard sell for people who have better things to do with a Sunday morning than sitting in a pew hearing a preacher expound on an ancient text. Today, though, I came across another category for the unchurched, one that resonates with me even more than "none": "done."...

This morning, I woke up at 4:30. That's actually my normal wake-up time. I set my alarm for 5:00, but it's rare for it to ever go off. I've usually showered, shaved, dressed, and shut it down before it has a chance to play the first few bars of Oregon's "Aurora." My internal clock is a useful thing to have on school days, when it gets me out the door and on the road across town to East Portland before the 6:30 rush. On weekends, though, it can be frustrating. Yesterday I lay in bed, snuggling with Amy, for 45 minutes before deciding, around 5:15, to just give in and get up. Today, though, I was able to get back to sleep, and this time it was Amy's 7:00 alarm that woke me up--a sound so rare to my ears it shocked me, as did the sunlight streaming through the window. I put the extra hours of sleep down to a light evening--we didn't get home from Comedy Sportz until 11:15, and probably weren't asleep until midnight. For the most part, though, ...

If you lived in Portland in the early 2000s, you may have seen a bumper sticker with the legend "Bring Major League Baseball to Portland," and this logo: The umbrella plays off Portland's reputation for rainfall, but does it in a distinctly un-Portland way. While our city does have plenty of rainy days, the precipitation is rarely of the drenching variety, and realizing that, Portlanders tend not to carry umbrellas. Yes, we'll wear water-resistant jackets (we also eschew true raincoats), but no bumbershoots for us, thank you very much. Carrying an umbrella on a typically misty Portland day almost guarantees  one to be an out-of-towner, in fact. We're so inured to rain that it comes as a surprise how unprepared we are to drive in it. The first rainy day after a dry spell sees far more accidents on the highway than rainfolk should be having. Add a cold snap, and things become nightmarish; which is why freezing rain shuts this city down. I was supposed...

Travel brings perspective. I just got back from a music education conference in Nashville. All our sessions were held in the downtown conference center which, on in the inside, could have been located anywhere in the United States: a brown and beige interior, indirect lighting, no pictures, posters, or even room names to suggest we were just a block from the crackling honky tonk culture of Broadway. Had I attended every concert and meet & greet, and had I been staying in the adjoining hotel, eating my meals in its restaurant, I could've gone all four days without seeing any of the city. Fortunately, that's not how I was disposed. I was staying off site, and got out of the building for lunch and dinner, as well as to see some live music. That taste of the city made me hungry for more, and I wish I could've spent another day or two experiencing it apart from the rigid conference schedule. The evening I spent in the Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar, in part...

This was my second year at Orff Central. That’s not what we really call it. Its complete name is the AOSA National Professional Development Conference, but in the nine years I’ve known about Orff Schulwerk, my colleagues have all referred to it simply as conference. It’s an annual event that alternates between sides of the United States. Last year, my first, it was in Denver; this year was Nashville; next year will be San Diego; and the year after that, Atlantic City. Wherever it’s held, the real draw of the conference is the workshops, as veteran Orff practitioners condense their best ideas into 75-minute sessions. For those of us who serve on the boards of our local chapters, these workshops are like previews of what the presenters would have to offer at an all-day event. Last year I came away with just one name of a presenter I’d like to come to Portland. This year, there were two. Even the less successful workshops provide useful ideas, and I’m coming back to Portland ...