Grace.

A story of the gift of grace and the transformative power of kindness …

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Daily.

It's essential that schools present a wide music program, not because it increases math test scores, but because it does something to people's souls. It gives them a kind of focus, a kind of tranquility that they need to center their lives and at the same time, families must also be a part of this. Anyone who has music in his life probably had some experience of it through his family and I understand that it's intimidating for parents to think, "Oh, my Gosh. How am I ever going to present this whole huge corpus of music, or arts, or whatever to my child?" But it can be done by just doing a little bit at a time. I mean, I was hearing music in my house a lot, but my parents also did things like before dinner, we would spend five minutes looking at the work of some artist, like Velazquez, or El Greco, or Murillo … I'm mentioning all Spanish ones now, but we had a little book that we got from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which just had pages describing pictures and the artists and then had a big sheet of postage stamps of those pictures that I could then cut out the right picture and paste it with the right description and it was just a kind of little five-minute thing that we did before dinner. But it meant that by the time I was 12-years-old, I could go to a museums and say, "Oh, yeah. That's a Utrillo. That's an early Picasso. That's a Monet. That's a whatever." It just was natural. I just knew it and was excited to see more work by those artists. In a way, this goes back to what you were asking me about the website that I think the issue is not so much concerts. Concerts are wonderful and important and people get a great energy and revivification from concerts because we do have this experience of wanting as people to share together great words, great music, great art. But I think it's more important, the experience of these great arts in people's daily lives. So by having this website, I'm hoping to make it attractive enough eventually that people say, "Oh, let's take a five-minute break." I'm in my office. I want to take a five-minute break. I'll go to this place on the website and some kind of shuffle throughout the centuries format. It'll play me something amazing that I never new existed that I'll think, "Oh, that's such an insight. That's a gorgeous thirteenth century love song or that's a fantastic diverting dance from some other country, in some other century," and get people to have that kind of spontaneous moment-by-moment reaction to the arts. Because if it's in your daily life, then it becomes an ongoing way at the way you think about life, the way you think about people, the way you think about yourself.

Michael Tilson Thomas

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The San Francisco Symphony's Keeping Score.

MTT on creativity.

And, another destination ...

Simplicity.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Walt Whitman

Decide.

In her moving TEDxChapmanU talk, Erin Gruwell shares how she chose to become a teacher who believed in change, who believed her students could decide their own future instead of becoming another victim of gang-related violence or teen pregnancy. She walks the audience through her and her students' journey to chronicle their own stories, mirroring some of the most iconic figures in history.

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Added.

From the start I've used every trick I could pick up to mask my shortcomings. With the eye issues, there's only so much you can do. I've learned that "vision" and eye sight are two different things. With 20/20 sight there's no interpretation, no grey area, what you see is what you get and you can attack it. But with vision there's the added elements of anticipation, of making "educated guesses" ... of feel. So I depend on my vision much more than my eye sight. 

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Thanks, Seth.

Understand.

Schneider, Grizzly, Undated

A bear operates from an instinct that humans can only try, and usually fail, to understand.

Natural selection at work.

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How.

Personalized.

Sir Ken Robinson addresses the fundamental economic, cultural, social and personal purposes of education. He argues that education should be personalised to every student's talent, passion, and learning styles, and that creativity should be embedded in the culture of every single school.

Apart.

One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.

- Norman Maclean

Relax.

Worried that your child is ungifted? Relax.

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Many.

Flowers are Red

The little boy went first day of school
He got some crayons and started to draw
He put colors all over the paper
For colors was what he saw
And the teacher said.. What you doin' young man
I'm paintin' flowers he said
She said... It's not the time for art young man
And anyway flowers are green and red
There's a time for everything young man
And a way it should be done
You've got to show concern for everyone else
For you're not the only one

And she said...
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen

But the little boy said...
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one

Well the teacher said.. You're sassy
There's ways that things should be
And you'll paint flowers the way they are
So repeat after me.....

And she said...
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen

But the little boy said...
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one

The teacher put him in a corner
She said.. It's for your own good..
And you won't come out 'til you get it right
And are responding like you should
Well finally he got lonely
Frightened thoughts filled his head
And he went up to the teacher
And this is what he said.. and he said

Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen

Time went by like it always does
And they moved to another town
And the little boy went to another school
And this is what he found
The teacher there was smilin'
She said...Painting should be fun
And there are so many colors in a flower
So let's use every one

But that little boy painted flowers
In neat rows of green and red
And when the teacher asked him why
This is what he said.. and he said

Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen.

- Harry Chapin

Happy birthday, Rembrandt.

Rembrandt, Laughing, 1628

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on this date in 1606.

Of course you will say that I ought to be practical and ought to try and paint the way they want me to paint. Well, I will tell you a secret. I have tried and I have tried very hard, but I can't do it. I just can't do it! And that is why I am just a little crazy. 

- Rembrandt

Enchanted.

Lewis, Salisbury Cathedral Church View of the Cloister from the NE, 1815

We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence; not emptiness but repletion. Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think, and so sink below our selves into a place far deeper than mere thought allows. In silence, we might better say, we can hear someone else think.

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Adventures.

Amuses.

Caravaggio, The Inspiration of St. Matthew, 1602

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

- Plato

Lead.

For schools (teachers, administrators, and students), families (parents and children), governments, and teams ...

Lead with love and respect. Innovate, invent, advocate, and make every word you utter, each action you take, as if it were your epitaph.

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Imperatives.

If you were redesigning the public school system for the twenty-first century, what imperatives would need to go into the curriculum and teaching methods to make the change worthwhile?

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Transcend.

Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa (detail), 1819

I never can be argued into hopelessness. Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

- Helen Keller

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Ordinary.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.  Imagination decides everything.

- Blaise Pascal

Silence.