The era of the bandmaster is truly dead.

Why is there a single music classroom in this country not equipped with a dozen or more Macbooks with GarageBand loaded on them?

Anyone who knows me well at all will know that it's stating it lightly to say that I'm not a fan of Macs, but this software/hardware combination is revolutionizing the way that youth interact with music and it is devastating to see how many teachers and schools are missing out on taking advantage of this (me and mine included, at this point). I don't pretend to understand the potential of this program (I've never even used it), but I have clearly seen what it can do in the hands of willing students.

I'll come out and say it: there is no quicker road to music composition and arranging than putting a copy of GarageBand in a child's hands. For all that we talk about music classes (and art classes and creative writing classes and, and, and) being creative and helping students to embrace their right brains and learn to express themselves, there's not much creation or expression occurring in the average "creative" classroom. Students copy what they've been taught to copy or struggle their way through the basic theory and practice of making a mediocre product and eventually get to a point where they have a piece that can be performed or exhibited without everyone cringing. If a student can survive long enough without quitting the program, a really successful school may have a top-level course in AP Music Theory and Composition that is open to a limited number of students each year, forcing the teacher to beat off the hordes of students who obviously will flock to such an exciting and sexy course option.

On the other hand, what if students could produce a piece of music that sounded radio-worthy (or at least crappy-high-school-dance-worthy) within the first two weeks of joining their first music class? How many of those children would discover the joy of truly creating something new? How many of them would seriously consider careers in the creative arts? How many of them would begin to refine talents that would remain with them through high school and the rest of their lives? How many of them would see enough of a reward in music that they would embrace the work and discipline needed to create through more traditional means, even if that meant learning theory? Sound crazy? I see it every day with the students I work with who bring me their music on iPods and Macs, then sit at the drums or piano or guitar and try to figure out how to play what they just composed.

If these students, with no formal training, can create quality pieces of music in their free time, it's amazing to think what could be done with the assistance and guidance of a trained teacher. We don't need to be cultivating clarinets who we can later switch to oboe or bassoon or bass clarinet or saxophone in order to fill out the instrumentation of the band so that we can play some Gordon Jacob piece in a few years (cool as that would be). We need to be cultivating individual composers and creators who will feel the music so intrinsically that they will change the way we experience it in the future.

Public Service

There has been a spate of retirement announcements lately from various senators. Many of them have served in the Senate for well over a decade, and I can understand their fatigue and frustration with the way that the Senate has become such a negative place in the past decade. Done well, it's not an easy job under the best of circumstances.

I grew up with images of the Senate as an Old Boys' Club (as I'm sure most people did), where party lines were blurred and collegiality ruled. Senators referred to each other as "my esteemed colleague" or "my friend from the state of" and generally acted as though they really meant it. When it came time for them to do hard work and make tough decisions for the country, politics could enter the picture, but they'd always have a backdrop of mutual respect and be able to compromise or even change minds on difficult issues in the best interest of the citizenry (or, for jaded cynics, the best interest of the people paying the campaign bills). The fact that senators are elected to six-year terms helped keep them from being in a permanent campaign mode, and many of them made use of the fact that they weren't constantly in the headlines to do the work that they thought was right for at least the first three or four years of a term, even when they knew that it wouldn't resonate well with their electorate.

Of late, the illusions of camaraderie in the Senate have disappeared. While the honorific terms are still used, we know full well that many senators despise each other. Party-line votes have become so common that it's almost unnecessary for individual senators to show up for a roll call before observers know the exact vote tally. Procedural tactics have been misused to the point where the deliberative process (formerly what the Senate was renowned for) is almost nonexistent.

In this poisonous environment, I can't blame anyone for wanting to get out. The thought of spending millions of dollars and months of personal energy and effort in order to get a job that promises to be six years of headaches, second-guessing, frustration, and blame is enough deterrent that I can't imagine any sane person without aspirations to higher office investing those dollars, energy, or effort. For any senator who is aware that higher office isn't calling any time soon to resign seems to make sense.

But.

I know that I was jubilant at the thought of a Jon Kyl-free Senate. I can't imagine having my political and ethical leanings and not celebrating his announced retirement. The man represented everything that I despised about politics and the Senate in specific. But.

At a time when extremists are taking over seats in the Senate, the House, and in many governors' mansions (as well as state legislatures) and pushing agendas that have less to do with the general welfare and the public good than they do with ideological purity, I can't help but wonder if we should be questioning these recent resignations. These are people who know how the process can work. These are people who have seen what the Senate looks like when it does its job. These are people who can remember a time before the filibuster became a monster. These are people who have ties to lobbyists, sure, and to corporate America, sure, and who have allowed the process to get as dirty as it currently is, sure, but they also are people who knew what it was before they screwed it up. As nice as it is to think that fresh blood might clean away some of the mess, perhaps it would be more effective to have the old blood stick around with a new mission of restoring what has been lost.

Finally, I wonder about how responsible some of these retirements are. If you're Joe Lieberman and you know that your state will elect someone who will vote similarly to you, on average, maybe it's not a bad idea to step down when you can. If you're Jeff Bingaman and you know that your state may well elect someone completely unlike you, how responsible is it to retire at a time when party-line votes and filibusters define the daily operation of the chamber? After all, these senators are elected to be public servants. As important as personal health (physical and mental), family time, and whatever other considerations may be, what is more important than making sure that the people's business is conducted in the best possible manner by the people best able to do so? If you know that you can do the job and that resigning will open the position up to someone who cannot do it as well as you or who will do it in a way that runs counter to your personal beliefs, then you are not only being irresponsible, you are also violating the compact of trust created when the voters first elected you and you first took the Oath of Office.

cold-hearted?

Someone I used to work with died today. She wasn't very old and was pregnant with her second child. She and her husband had traveled across the country to attend his father's funeral when an aneurysm was detected in her brain, the pregnancy failed, and she died within about 24 hours. These are tragic and terrible things to have happen to anyone, especially to a young family like theirs.

Many people around me are very upset by this and I do not begrudge them that. Many of them knew her far better than I or are more capable of seeing themselves in this tragedy, I presume. I don't intend to seem unfeeling or uncaring, but I find it hard to muster up much of an emotional response.

I guess I feel and experience things differently than many. I knew and liked these people, but I didn't know them well and had never spoken to either outside the context of work (nor had I done so in several years). Surely knowing that we weren't that close on the monkeysphere excuses me from getting too upset, right?

Every time that devastation occurs, there are people who personalize things that aren't truly personal - if this woman had died in an era before Facebook, I probably never would have learned of her death and neither would a number of the others who are eulogizing her at present. The fact that I do know seems not to provoke a strong emotional response in me, though, despite the fact that so many others are broken up by this. I get upset and emotionally involved when things happen to those who are truly close to me, but I really don't have it in me to take this specific event personally.

I know that there have been people to call me unemotional or cold-hearted or similar things, but I resist those labels. Surely there is some positive (or at least neutral) label that can be given to people who are simply less likely to get emotionally-involved in the troubles of others. Isn't there?

overhaul needed

Though I am in Alaska now, recent events indicate to me that an overhaul of Arizona's usage of sheriffs is desperately needed. Between Joe Arpaio going off on one-man crusades against whatever he hates at the moment and Clarence Dupnik shooting his mouth off to the press and editorializing in the middle of the biggest crisis to hit Tucson in decades, these men are irresponsible and dangerous without oversight. I don't trust the people leading the state much, but there needs to be someone (or committee) in a position to censure or otherwise restrict these sheriffs. Having them only responsible to the electorate every couple of years doesn't seem to be working.

quick thought

I've already endorsed Scott McAdams for Senate because I'd like to have a full Senate delegation that doesn't shame my state, but I just had a humorous thought. If the Nate Silvers of the world are correct and McAdams doesn't stand a snowball's chance against Lisa Murkowski, there are worse things in the world than losing to Lisa Murkowski. Anyone remember the other person who asked for Frank Murkowski's consideration for that open Senate seat?

It's time for Alaska politics now!!

OK, folks! Now that I'm moving on from Arizona, it's time for me to start obsessing over Alaska politics!

The first item on the agenda is the upcoming showdown between Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams. Sen. Murkowski was so qualified for the position in the first place, it only took her father leaving the job to become Governor and appointing her as his replacement for her to take office. That's right, this isn't even nepotism, it's, what, filiatism?

Mayor McAdams, on the other hand, is relatively new to me. As I am moving to Sitka, it disappoints me to think that a good leader would be ascending to Washington so soon after my arrival, but he is widely known for being a hard worker and exceptionally honorable. Though he worked in the private sector in Sitka for many years, he never lobbied the state government or pushed for local laws that would benefit his colleagues (a rarity in Alaska, it appears), and he went out of his way to help others even when he wouldn't benefit directly in any way (almost like that's what he was elected to do!). Yes, folks, this is an honorable man working in politics. I hesitate to call him a politician, because that name has lost its luster enough that I don't know if it even applies.

SO WHERE IS THIS ALL GOING

Yesterday, I followed the recommendation of Shannyn Moore and followed Mayor McAdams on Twitter. Shortly after doing so, I posted a tweet recommending that my followers check him out and support him, indicating my impending move to Sitka. Today, he obviously was catching up on his deluge of followers and I was followed not only by him but by his staff.

OK OK SO YOU'RE STAR STRUCK

No, I'm not impressed by that. Following someone means nothing. Politicians do it routinely without ever going any farther than that. What impresses me is that McAdams is interacting with people as people. He read what I posted and wrote back, asking where I was going to be living. Figuring there's no-one better to chat up in a small city than the mayor and no-one better to chat up in a campaign than the candidate, I responded with the general location in town and my intention to volunteer for him. He responded in a matter of minutes by noting that he looks forward to meeting me in person.

I'm not posting all of this to brag, but to point out how atypical this man is. He is not only running his own Twitter account (his staff have their own because, in his words, he "has a day job") and posting his own tweets, but he is also engaging and relating to his potential voters and volunteers. I know that Alaska is a small state and this is easier than in many larger states, but he is conversing with supporters around the country and actually reaching out in a real way.

Alaskans, unless there is something huge that I haven't yet uncovered about Scott McAdams, he is the man to represent Alaska in Washington for the next six years.

The Time Has Come...

I'm feeling a bit Marvin K. Mooney right now. Not so much that I'm being kicked out of anywhere, but that I'm looking for any conveyance to hit the road. It's not even that I'm upset with anything where I am, but

WE'RE MOVING TO SITKA!

Goodbye, Jan Brewer!

Goodbye, Joe Arpaio!

Goodbye, Russell Pearce!

Goodbye, really good Mexican food. :(

Goodbye, SB1070!

Goodbye, Arizona!


It's a good feeling.