blog
The Community Building Power of Music
I was asked by Grant Station to write about the community building power of music for their website newsletter. Grant Station connects non-profits to potential grant opportunities.
Life Lessons From Painting: Your Self Portrait is Never Finished
Six months ago, I began talking painting lessons. It has been fascinating, exhilarating, challenging and more than anything, educational.
NCAA Gets One “Right”: Now it’s Time to Fix a Lingering “Wrong”
This year’s NCAA Men’s Final Four basketball tournament offered an interesting twist in that there was a new breed of “one-and-done” players participating.
If We Build It, They Will Come
March is “Music in the Schools Month”. While it is wonderful to promote the importance of music in our schools in this way, it is merely a first step in the effort to focus the public’s attention on how critical music is to our schools’ curriculums and in the lives of students. Despite nice declarations …
Giving Youth Sports Back to the Kids
It’s no secret there are significant problems in organized youth sports programs. Incidences of parents screaming at nine-year-old children over a missed basket or misplayed fly ball are commonplace. Youth league umpires and referees are regularly abused and even physically attacked. Brawls have erupted after youth league soccer matches. Obviously, something is wrong. It’s the …
A Stage Name? Why Not Dance A Bit More?
I gently kicked the vintage, boxy suitcase that was on the floor between me and a group of 15 second graders. The suitcase literally vibrated with all types of rattling, clanging and ringing sounds. “You want to see what’s in there?”, I asked. They erupted, “Yes!” I opened the suitcase to reveal more than 20 …
Rethinking the Coach on That Pedestal
Why do we so readily and cavalierly place sports coaches on pedestals? Despite the seemingly non-stop accounts of coaches behaving badly, from the University of Maryland’s D.J. Durkin, who’s toxic culture surrounding the program contributed to the death of Jordan McNair, a 19-year old lineman, to the revelations that several college basketball coaches were involved …
Music and the Arts: A Privilege For a Lifetime
Something that truly bothers me is when someone believes they have no musical talent or that they used to play as a youngster but gave it up. This is sad because everyone can play music. After all, everyone has music pounding away inside of them in the form of a rhythmically beating heart. That is …
Football Derangement Syndrome: Article One
Given that we are getting ready to slide into football’s peak Season of Insanity that is the two week period prior to the Super Bowl, here’s an item that exemplifies just how severe our nation’s Football Derangement Syndrome has become. As reported by Cassandra Negley of Yahoo Sports (December 18, 2018), the Permian Basin Youth …