With the start of the new school year/church year, we’re trying to declutter our home. Time for a fresh start!
If anyone needs a large pet cage on wheels, we have one we’re trying to sell. We kept pet rats for almost 2 years, and they were the best little pets we ever had. Now, this could serve as new digs for one of your little friends…
Contact me for more information.
| Mini-memorial Here’s a song I wrote when our pet rat, Pip, died. It’s called “Pip, You’re Alright”: |
Happy summer!
(Be sure to check out the calendar to see what’s coming up!)
When you arrive for the Stanley King Counseling Institute at the Brooks School in North Andover, MA in June, you have no idea where you’re going. There’s no signage and no one to greet you or direct you. It’s raining, and the campus is so vast that when you finally do find the library, you’re soaked.
The next day, the sun comes out and you see so much natural beauty and such vastness of natural space that you gasp audibly. As the days go by, you take every chance you get to go for a walk. Maybe the goal is just to see if there’s any way to identify the boundary between where the campus ends and where something else begins. You never find the boundary.
⬅ One particular day, you find a pond with ducks in it. You experiment with the panorama setting on your phone camera.
One night, the moon is so full, and the sky is as deeply blue as it ever has been, and the clouds are alive and glowing. It’s not possible to capture the splendor of this night in pictures.
One day, you find the campus chapel. It’s an Episcopal chapel, it’s early morning, and no one is there. So you go on a self-guided tour and have your own fabulously customized private church service in the sanctuary, complete with singing, dancing, prayer, and a postlude.
And you have the best time, and you feel fully alive and grateful for every single blessing. You find some woods, so you pray and give thanks there, too.
After some particularly lovely and brutally exhausting sessions at the institute, you go on an excursion to Portsmouth with your new friends and colleagues.
There, you drink the local IPA and buy lobster pants which you promptly put on when you get back to your room.
There’s a talent show, some tearful goodbyes, and promises to keep in touch. Then once you’re shuttled away from the campus, you wisely arrange to spend an extra night in Boston so you can catch your breath before the long flight home.
And you have absolutely no regrets. Never having been there before, you decide you adore this city, but you can’t bring yourself to spend $22.00 on a hot buttered lobster roll.
So it’s off to the bar at Ned Devine’s for a couple of spicy pineapple margaritas and a steak and cheese sandwich that doesn’t disappoint.
May 25 is my birthday! I just turned 40!! And now, in no particular order, here are 10 songs I’m dancing to, with a glass of Riesling in one hand and a corn dog in the other:
| 1. Moves Like Jagger – Maroon 52. Attention – Charlie Puth 3. Staying Alive – Bee Gees 4. Lots of Drops of Brandy – The Chieftains 5. Vogue – Madonna 6. Despacito – Justin Bieber/ Luis Fonsi/Daddy Yankee 7. Wanna Be Startin Somethin – Michael Jackson 8. He Shall Purify – Handel/Quincy Jones 9. Gangnam Style – PSY 10. Miss You Much – Janet Jackson |
When the Italian high school students sang “No More Auction Block for Me” for us during our exchange visit while we were on tour to Venice, Tuscany, Umbria, and Rome last month, I was surprised by how much I learned from that singular experience.
First of all, the Italians clearly loved the song. The diction was cringey, but I guess it was the thought that counted. Still, I felt uncomfortable the whole time.
Second, after the exchange was over and we were returning to our hotel, I explained my experience to one of my colleagues. I had decided the students’ performance lacked connection, depth, and authenticity, which is why it had been difficult for me to watch and hear.
Third, considering my second point above, my colleague helped me realize that in my heart I was being a bit elitist and ungrateful. Here they sang an African-American spiritual – this was their tribute to my country. What an honor! No, these Italian kids can never understand and express a spiritual like I can. But they clearly connected to something universal and transcendent in that music. Renditions of spirituals (like a lot of treasured folk music) have value and depth beyond authenticity and technique. And I should always remember that point, especially when the tables are turned and I’m trying to do justice to music that’s not from my own land. I love so many different kinds of music, and I have so much to learn. I would hate to be judged in the same way I initially internally judged those sweet Italian kids.
Fourth, the fact that these children learned and sang a spiritual is a miracle and a testament to the global influence of these works. Now that these young Italians, thanks to their enlightened instructors, know this song (even if only on a surface level), the seeds of authentic understanding and connection between our peoples might take root and grow. How amazing is that?!
Fifth, I might not have learned this lesson if I hadn’t traveled away from home. I believe it is vital to leave home, to see the world and connect with different cultures. I was humbled by the hospitality of the Italians I met. Until I was embraced as a tourist in Italy, I had forgotten how important it is to understand my African-American heritage in the context of my American identity.
So then I thought, “what other versions are there of ‘No More Auction Block for Me?” It’s not one of the spirituals with which I am most familiar. Here are a few that I found:
