The day that's in it

Here's why the blog post is the way it is:

3:40am His Highness decides he wants breakfast and knocks items off the bureau until I get up and feed him; try to get back to sleep.

7am alarm rings for real. Shower, cook breakfast for two, off to campus.

8:30am straight to office (too busy even for the ritual coffee run); finish polishing PowerPoint for Ireland seminar;

9:30-10:50am Ireland seminar; good group this year, pretty good engagement, but they're already pretty sleepy--and it's only the fourth week of the semester;

10:50-11:30am finalize slideshow, followup email, instructions/etc for the course just taught

11:30-11:45am choke down a quick sandwich while finalizing materials for Ives/Ellington/Zappa "great composer" seminar--realize that it might actually make sense to explain (in part) Ives Symphony #3 "The Camp Meeting" in terms of Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: locate online full-text version and link

12:30-1:50 Ives/Ellington/Zappa seminar: good discussion of Ives's Yale experience (1894-98) and good student contributions re/ why Ives wrote his Yale composition professors out of his own autobiography

1:50-2:30 finalize slideshow, followup email, instructions/etc for the class just taught

2:15-3:00 print about 130 pages of brass parts for first reading session by Celtic Ensemble brass recruits

3-3:45 roughing-out Discussion Questions for next Tuesday's seminar meetings

4-5pm meet with Teaching Assistants who present the semester's first Discussion Sessions tomorrow, Friday--3 weeks of weather cancellations have set that clock back

5-6:15pm colloquium presentation on "Improvisation in the Classroom," something I've wanted to present on, for grad students and colleagues, for the past couple of years. Present, take questions, run an exercise or two, have absolutely no clue (because too much in the zone) whether the presentation was aptly-calibrated to the audience. Hope for the best; infer--from the number of questions and follow-up comments--that maybe it was OK.

6:15pm-7:10pm race (tardy) to first brass reading session. Feel significantly relieved that the brass recruits really dig the charts, even though we don't get through sight-reading all of them. At least the positive response is encouraging that maybe the charts are going in a good direction.

7:15 home; quick dinner with Dharmonia. Try to ramp down the adrenaline of the day--which is not over yet.

8:30-10pm solo blues gig at coffeehouse across town. Audience isn't always great, but management is so considerate and respectful that I'm still doing the gig. This time, an unusually wide representation of friends and students, and unusually low level of ambient noise. I actually remember a bunch of songs, my hands are in reasonably good shape, there's a reasonably positive response from the other coffeehouse types, and I manage to segue "Jesus on the Mainline" with "Need Somebody on Your Bond" with "Bird in God's Garden"; thank you, mixolydian mode.

10:30pm finally home. Pat the cat, kiss the wife goodnight, and drink a little rum.

And it all begins again tomorrow.

Belated: Wednesday/Hump-day email followup

Over the past couple of years, I've developed the habit of writing a followup email after each meeting of each class I am teaching, rather in the manner of "minutes" or a set of action-items following a meeting. It seems to yield much better continuity: undergraduates, in my observation, tend to start thinking about class content about 5:00 minutes after the meeting begins, and stop (when we're lucky) sixty seconds after the meeting ends--when we're unlucky, 5:00 minutes before it ends.

So the followup emails, for both undergrad survey courses and graduate seminars, help to preserve the continuity: kind of like, as I say to the Celtic Ensemble, picking up the link of the chain which is the last note of one phrase, and making sure you preserve rhythmic/phrasing energy into the opening of the next phrase.

It's time-consuming, but, as I said to Dharmonia last night, I can keep ahead of it and all the other tasks if I have 30 minutes buffer immediately after each meeting, and write the followups and upload the Blackboard slideshows right then.

Here's a redacted version of yesterday's. Somehow, I think it captures the mixture of moods and modes I wind up using in the classroom, and out:

Folks:

Good work today: lots of good participation; was it the rain???

Slideshow is up. Remember that you must READ THE SLIDESHOWS after class, as often there will be added material, questions or other assignments.

Listenin Quiz #1 grades will be posted outside my office, by R-number, by 12noon Friday 2/5/10.

Topic Ideas will be critiqued by TA's by 12noon Friday 2/5/10. Please MAKE A START on your Thesis Statement anyway, and get that submitted, in proper and complete format, by its deadline.

Speaking of deadlines: please bear in mind that YOU are responsible for knowing when assignments, LQ's, and RQ's are due--stay on top of these.

Online Reading Quiz due Friday. Note: RQ's will still be due during Wed and Fri of TMEA week; all RQ's due on Feb 10, 12, and 15 will open on Feb 8. If you are going to TMEA, get those RQ's done FIRST.

Friday 2/5 meet in your respective Discussion Sections. Note that attendance WILL be taken.

Speaking of attendance: remember that NO unexcused absences are permitted in this class. Every unexcused absence counts against your grade. Remember also that it is Musicology policy that all students must pass all portions of the grade: exams, LQ's, RQ's, research project, and attendance/participation.

Hence, you can fail this class through poor attendance. Note also that the university REQUIRES that students missing too many classes shall be dropped from the roster in the fifth week.

Please pass the word on this.

Dr Coyote

ps: One more thing: I recognize that not all members of a class may appreciate the various hi-jinks: joking, laughing, throwing chocolate, etc. If you are on of those persons who does not so appreciate, recall that you are in a room with 78 other people, many of whom find it easier to concentrate and be engaged as a result of precisely these hi-jinks, and please seek to tolerate them.

Thanks.

'Cause that's how we do.

"In the Trenches": enhancing attendance

Here's a note I sent to my staff this morning, because of the week that's in it:

Folks:

For those teaching as instructor-of-record: several people have mentioned that, as ever, the semester's attendance issues and problem-children are starting to manifest. Here is a strategy which both conforms to university doctrine and has worked well in the past:

Make a list of of those who have missed some number (say, 2 or more) class sessions in the first 3 weeks of class--of course omitting to include snow days or excused absences. Include in the list the *.edu email for each person (get it from online student information). Compose a generic email, which will be sent individually to each on the list, saying:

"In the first 3 weeks of class, you have an unacceptable number of unexcused absences from [course number]. University policy requires that we drop non-attending students from class rosters. Moreover, as of [email's date], you are failing this class on the basis of attendance. What is the problem?"

Then send as individual email to each student, includng the student's studio teacher in the "CC" line.

Then contact the studio teacher by separate, private email, saying "of course we know that it is not your responsibility to ensure Student X's attendance in the Music History class. But, we thought you would probably want to know about this attendance problem. Thanks for any assistance."

In the case of non-music majors, make the student's division, unit, or undergraduate adviser the CC'd recipient.

We have found that this helps to "close the loop" b/w various faculty. Also that studio faculty often wield a great deal of productive clout with music majors.

Your mileage may vary.

Sigh. Sometimes ya wished their parents had raised 'em with some sense of personal responsibility (hah!)

Up on the resumption tip

Resuming regular blogging, as we enter the first full week of the Spring 2010 semester. I anticipate that I'll drop-in occasional posts of the "In the Trenches" variety, but after 160+ entries, and a full two years/four semesters rotation, that topic feels to be reasonably well-covered. I expect I'll be using the Trenches series more for my own reference--akin to pulling out a last-year's handwritten journal, leafing through the the posts for inspiration or self-correction.

Would be nice to pick up again on the "100 Greats" series: we had the Reverend Colonel & consort with us this weekend, and he was kind enough to express that he missed 'em. I'd like to tidily complete that project: means I need another thirty.

Spring semester usually means a little less traveling, but a dizzying succession of events: Winter concert by the Celtic Ensemble of the "Hard" program on Jan 31; mid-February means the state Music Educators Association meetings in San Antonio; between Feb 15 and Mar 15 the general undergrad population is witless and stupid with testosterone/estrogen poisoning in anticipation of Spring Break, but before that we're hosting these Desperate Gentlemen (god bless my boss's generosity); April brings the sprint toward end-of-semester and is interrupted, right at the Ides of April/Tax Day, with the VMC festival weekend (Friday dance concert & Mr Darcy, Saturday afternoon picnic/festival, Sunday evening Celtic Ensemble "Big" program).

And then the semester's over, and I spend a week at U Limerick hearing recitals, and then Dharmonia shows up with the Ireland seminar kids for two weeks, and then I think I'm going up to Derry for a conference, and then it's Zoukfest, and then Mystic, and then Amsterdam, and on and on and on.

I have a great life, a privileged life, a life I fought for decades to attain and which I work 70 hours a week to create for my students.

But sometimes I get tired. Here's a poem that came out of the unexpected (not unwelcome, just unexpected) extra days in Cork:

River Lee

A sub-zero medieval city,
Leadening cloud,
Cold air damp on the skin;
Grit on the facades of the lowering Edwardian mansions,
And a magnificent sunset of turquoise and bronze;

And, silhouetted against the sky,
Gazing East,
Shrugging insolent shoulders,

The grey-hooded, hunchbacked,
Arrogantly indifferent Irish crows.

--coyote, Corcaigh, mid-winter 2010

Day 66 & 67 (Round IV) "In the trenches": done edition

Color it done.

Last day of the semester; before finals--for the kids, there's still a lot of work to do, most of which they'll accomplish on entirely too little sleep and entirely too much caffeine, sugar, and chemical additives, but for faculty who are competent and on top of their game, things are winding down. For those colleagues who have the writing-intensive courses this semester, there's a stack of papers to grade, of course--but even that task has been incremented by requiring the kiddos to complete the paper in six stages over the full course of the semester. And by the time the "final draft" rolls around, most of the pointless or irrelevant or space-wasting bullshit (actual Facebook Wall quote: "Dude! Just set your font size to 12.5 and your line-spacing to 2.2 and they'll never know!") is past, and the kiddos are supplying their own rubrics, within the body of the paper, and the grading is relatively straightforward, consistent, and manageable.

I realized the other day that this is the first time, in 10 years, that I've had a semester without the obligation of teaching a roomful of undergraduates. Up until Fall 2009, I've always had, as part of my load, at least one course per semester of the undergraduate large-enrollment history survey. This is the first time that my two courses were all upperclassmen and/or grad-student seminars.

It's an interesting dynamic: yes, teaching the cattle-call undergrad sections is a massive time-sync, it's hard work, there's a ton of busy-work (specially at the end of the semester), there's all sorts of ridiculous "my, isn't it enjoyable raising other people's overgrown infants?!?" plagiarism and other infringement of academic ethics, but there's an undeniable and enjoyable energy from engaging with the sheer uncontrollable lolloping-puppy vibe of a roomful of undergrads. Dharmonia had me in the past couple of days to give a potted 2-day "History of Jazz on Records" lecture--and, by implication, to scare the shit out of the freshmen with the "holy shit! you mean he's going to teach the fourth semester when we're sophomores?!? Jesus, I better get serious!" reaction.

Even after a single semester, I'd already forgotten how much I like that arena-like situation of a lecture hall full of 100 kids. I love the energy that emerges when they're sufficiently rested, but also sufficiently full of testosterone and estrogen, and curiosity, and more than a little fear, and, really and finally, just raw friggin' untapped possibility. I love that vibe and I love to work with that energy.

This has been a hard-ass semester for everybody. And I see the exhaustion, more, and especially, in the grad students. Undergrads walk into class exhausted because they actually think they can get by on no sleep, or a hangover, or Red Bull and nervous energy. Grad students know better, and they walk in exhausted for better reasons: because they're holding down full-time jobs, or raising kids at the same time, or trying to carry 15 or 18 graduate credits (which pretty much trumps out to twice as much work as the typical undergraduate load). There's been a lot of suffering this semester, and a lot of exhaustion, and I think they're ready for it to be done. I sure am, on their behalf.

Just hoping everybody comes through and makes it to shore.

Color it done.

Day 65 (Round IV) "In the trenches": end-game edition

Entering the end-game all up in this joint. Today was the opening of the last (short, 1/2) week of the semester. We've got a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday left; then one day off; then final exams commence.

That means that today was the second-last meeting for the classes on the MWF rotation, and tomorrow is the absolute-last on the TR rotation. I've been away so jeezly much this semester that I'm feeling dreadfully behind in both of my seminars, both of which are on that latter rotation.

The funny thing is that we're not actually behind--well, maybe 1 day. Because both classes are upper-level seminars (and hence much more capable of maintaining their focus and productivity, even in my absence), and because it is so much more possible now than formerly to deliver and maintain material and discussions online, even while at a distance, we haven't lost nearly as much content as I subjectively feel we have.

I think what, for me, feels short-changed, is the actual face-to-face time in the seminar room. Both classes I've been teaching--"20th Century Music" and "Topics in Ethnomusicology"--are courses in which the person-to-person contact is important. Both have small enrollments; both depend upon a great deal of individual student reading, listening, and thinking; both really demand the back-and-forth of the seminar situation. We can replicate the reading/listening/thinking online via threaded discussions; we can get them to do the critical thinking on their own; but at some point we have to be there face-to-face, in real time. And there's no way to replicate that, completely satisfactorily, at a distance. So, though we've got through the material, I'm feeling the lack of the in-person time.

I'm also conscious, continually, of the ongoing observable stress I've been blogging about all semester. It continues (mostly) to blow by over my head and Dharmonia's--though it sometimes feels like we're crouching in a foxhole while the shrapnel blows by just above us--but I continue to hear, formally and informally, via official communication and the jungle telegraph, and sometimes by the most elliptical and indirect methods, of all the ways that various parties in our little community are freaking out and falling short.

I have to be careful not to dwell extensively on this. Various folks read this blog, and I neither want to over- or under-represent the situation: I want them to know that they're not alone, but I don't, under any circumstances, want to exaggerate: that helps no one.

I've got some folks coming out of the pit, and some folks who are still digging, and my buddy Coop moving his head and responding, and an old lady fading away less fearfully and more happily than she might have, and a job and a life-partner and colleagues and students I love, and infinite additional blessings from the universe, but goddamn there are people suffering, near and far. When people on the street in Lubbock ask me for money, I fucking give it to them. When students break down in my office, I listen. When yet one more of my beloved students tells me s/he needs to take the final exam early because s/he is facing deployment to a war zone, I control my towering, homicidal rage at the sociopathic little fuck down in Dallas and his crew of war criminals and murderers and help them get the course requirements done. And, in all circumstances, as Coop put it, I seek to "control my demeanor" and count the universe's blessings. And help people.

On a happier note, we finished up the run of the Madrigal Dinners for which the Celtic Ensemble supplies service music. I like to do these lobby gigs, though they would seem to be low-profile ("pleasant background noise" is the way I describe it), of nowhere near as much significance or central focus as the stuff that happens inside the hall. But they're a really valuable tool, for both pedagogical and preparative reasons. The kids get to play 4 gigs in a row, 4 nights playing the same short list of repertoire, in much more typical real-world conditions, to make and fix errors on the fly, and that's good for professionalism.

But it's also good preparation: By playing as many different tunes (with dances) from the current repertoire as possible, on these gigs, we're actually running them through four more rehearsals of that repertoire in advance of the Celtic Christmas. By the end of the 4-night run, they'll have played those tunes a bunch more times, which means in turn that those tunes don't need much rehearsal outside of the Madrigal gigs. We've done this every year since we started playing the Madrigal Dinners and it's a really useful jump-start for that Christmas repertoire.

Added bonus this year has been the added necessity of having some "filler" music, at the end of the lobby set, for the last few minutes when the larger crowds are still trailing into the hall. We're playing a bunch of Appalachian old-time long-bow fiddle music with Celtic Christmas guests, these guys, and so for the filler we've been playing these tunes. On this final evening, I had a further inspiration: I said to the band as a whole "everybody think of one of the old-time tunes you can start." So, once they were playing a given tune, I could say (while they were playing--this is great exercise in concentration, to be playing a tune and also have to listen for instructions) "who's got the next tune?!?", look for the eye-contact, cue the end of the current tune, point to the volunteer for the new one, and let them handle the segue.

This is a whole other level of improvisational magnitude, one even more unfamiliar to the majority of these kids--classical musicians as they are--and a whole other level of practical-gig expertise. If they can be playing one tune, and thinking of the next one, and can count on one of their number to manage the segue and get them into that next tune, then my role as "conductor" has been rendered, at least for the duration of that set of tunes, is largely superfluous.

That's the goal. That's when they become fully autonomous musicians.

Day 64 (Round IV) "In the trenches": constructive & peaceful edition

Another long crazy-busy day: recitals attend, book-work to do, another iteration of the Madrigal Dinners. Kids played good.

Lubbotians still don't really know what to do with live music in their midst: with the exception of the occasional old guy in a tam o'shanter and a kilt who's willing to tag-on to the end of the line of girls dancing the kopanitsa, the rest of them mostly smile, lean back, and look a little nervous about whether visible enjoyment, or active applause, might be an uncool thing to do. They're mostly good people, out here, but they're also pretty damned unsophisticated, about almost everything--especially unfamiliar music. When they're lucky, they're un-self-conscious, and open to new experiences. When they're not so lucky, they're self-conscious about all that they don't know, and nervous for fear of making the wrong move or reacting in the wrong way.

So they refrain from reacting at all, for fear of reacting the wrong way. Which is a shame, because with the kids in the green knotwork T-shirts are dancing right through their midst, they could be having a heck of a lot more fun.

Interesting dynamic, though: as the kids themselves get more comfortable with the situation (more comfortable than they were on opening night), they themselves start having more fun, and the audience can see that, and they begin to think that the range of acceptable reactions might be wider than they've been permitting themselves, and they begin to have more fun too. Hence the old guy in the tam.

Otherwise: as I mentioned, it's a mothering tough time in the semester: kids freaking out, kids spacing out, kids breaking down, people getting sick, uppermost administration realizing their full Olympian imbecility, and so it's tough to, as buddy Coop put it on a hard-lines tour of China , "control your demeanor": refrain from acting out the frustration, anger, resentment, fear you're feeling to people who can't do anything about it. Takes a hell of a lot of effort--and usually requires some pretty reliable and careful stress-release mechanisms elsewhere--but at least it avoids escalating the hassle in pointless ways.

Further to that: a set of precepts I suggested to a good friend who's working hard at digging out of a hole. Tryin' to help--and provide a set of tools for structuring the recovery:

So here's your plan:

"1. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully toward completion of my degree requirements. Therefore I must spend some time each day working on coursework.

"2. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully toward my own health. This means I must spend some time each day exercising, eating healthfully, and working on emotional health issues

"3. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully on my professional obligations. This means I must spend some time each day on assistantship, teaching, and/or other professional work.

"4. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully on my own artistic development and self-expression. This means I must spend some time each day on art, music, writing, or other creative activity.

"5. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully on my own emotional community and support network. This means I must spend some time each day enjoying my living space, communicating with friends, thinking about or communicating with family, and so on. In addition, I must spend some time each day thinking about ways I can actively be a good friend and support-network-member for people who are important to me, and taking action on those thoughts.

"6. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully on my own spiritual health. This means I must spend some time each day in prayer, meditation, visualization, or other spiritual practice.

"7. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully at building the future I want for myself. This means that, in addition to items 1-6 above, I must spend some time each day developing my skill set and my portfolio, visualizing the kind of job I want when I depart, searching the Chronicle or other job source to familiarize myself with current job profiles, revisiting and polishing written pieces that I might send out to specific academic targets, and so on."

A life spent engaging in some healthy combination of the above 7 activities would be a good life, and a full-time job. Print 'em out and stick 'em on the damned wall!

Day 63 (Round IV) "In the trenches": countdown edition

We're into the last week of the semester. Yesterday was the final Thursday of classes, today the final Friday, and so on. Pretty reasonably complete burnout on all sides: students, staff, colleagues, executive--we're all about done.

It's been a particularly hard semester--not so much on Dharmonia and myself, who have largely escaped the worst of the shit--but on an awful lot of friends and students: illness, family loss, financial breakdowns, just general massive uncontrollable change (change is always uncontrollable, but it can come in lesser or greater degrees of comprehensivity--this semester it's been pretty much total). It reminds us of the very first faculty meeting of the semester, way back at the end of August before classes even began, when the Boss said, "I think this is gonna be a tough one, folks. I think we're going to see an awful lot of stress, of various sorts, and we're going to have be especially aware and flexible about dealing with it." I think he saw, even back then, that the nation's general economic flaemout, which up through 2008 had mostly passed-over the Southwest, was going to hit us hard in '09, and also that H1N1 was going to be absolutely brutal in its far-reaching impact. Public health in this country, and especially this part of the country, is literally, criminally inadequate, and the Boss could see, I think, even back then, that both economic flameout and H1N1 were going to catch us in the end. And by God if they didn't.

And we've seen the results: kids crying, kids leaving, kids paralyzed by depression or fear or less, kids freaked-out by parents' financial or personal turmoil, colleagues (fortunately not many in our division--my Boss takes care of his people) losing their gigs, colleagues getting sick, and so on and on and on. We're massively luckier than some campuses and even than some divisions on this campus, because we've all--Boss, staff, faculty, grads, undergrads--worked hard, for years, to develop an institutional culture that was mutually respectful, constructive, and collegial. You develop that kind of culture when times are good so that people learn how rewarding it is, and so that in turn they cowboy-up in order to maintain the culture when times are bad.

So far we're doing OK, but it's damned difficult, all around us--and it's damned difficult to see friends, students, and colleagues elsewhere, and close-by, struggling deep in the shit. We do what we can.

Hence the countdown: I think pretty much everybody in our operation is just waiting for this nasty-hard semester to be over. We fight that every step of the way, because we don't want anybody to be feeling that others, or they themselves, are just marking time--that erodes productivity, efficiency, excellence, and standards. But at times you have to be prepared to relax those metrics for productivity, efficiency, etc in order to try to help people cope with shitty situations. That's kind of where we're at now--see yesterday's post.

And the occasional levity: here, Bhangraman takes on the wicked Morris dancers, to rescue ordinary people from "...a future of performing ridiculous outmoded folkdance routines"

Which of course is right where we live.

Trying to hang in there. Y'all do too.

Day 62 (Round IV) "In the trenches": telegraphic command edition

Still no time, but hanging in there as we can.

Arrived at the first iteration (of four) of the annual Madrigal Dinners for which the Celtic Ensemble and the Collegium have historically provided pleasant unobtrusive noise in the lobby before hand. We have learned over the years that our involvement is nearly as useful for public outreach, and about one-tenth as time-consuming and demeaning, if we provide such noise before hand, and then clear out. Otherwise, if you get roped into being part of the whole gaudy dinner-theatre production, which makes the W Texan patrons very happy but which is very complicated and demands a lot, you're likely to have to commit about six times as much time, and subject yourself to about twelve times as much frustration. So we just play and split.

This year, it's four dances from the Celtic Ensemble and a collection of short little instrumentals from the Collegium. Pretty quiet music, and on this opening evening, with the entire ballroom, dancers, singers, jesters, jugglers, open bar, and catering bought-out by the Dean of the Business College for his faculty and staff, and all of them elbowing their way toward the bar and ignoring us, it was actually very useful for our kiddos to play their tunes 2 or 3 or 4 times in a row, having to concentrate past the noise and distraction. They can get all their screwups out of their systems and have the very valuable experience of making errors and then fixing the errors on the fly. And that's good practice for the real world--and not just in music.

Of course, it was complicated this opening evening by the fact that the local Symphony's music director had summarily switched the start time of the orchestra's evening rehearsal (which all of my guys who also play for him could have made) to 1/2 hour earlier--which meant that those three guys had to rush to get to our Madrigal Dinner gig, and then rush off 10 minutes before we were done. I'd be a lot (or at least a bit) more tolerant of this particular kind of behavior if I hadn't had to deal with it before: going hat-in-hand to himself two months in advance of a rehearsal to try to persuade him to release these same three kids so that they could play one of our concerts. And here's this summary change of rehearsal to start 30 minutes earlier, preemptorily, at mid-afternoon of the gig we're supposed to start to 6:00.

So, my three guys who were caught in this impossible bind arrived at our gig massively stressed-out, and knowing that they'd have to leave 10 minutes early, in the midst of the gig. And afraid that they'd be in trouble with somebody.

In a circumstance like that, when it is so totally not the fault of the players, and so transparently the fault of high-handed egocentricity, the wrong thing to do is to lose your temper. The right thing to do is to model for the kids the coping mechanisms you want them to have and to share with each other.

So, after we'd got the first tune out of the way, and we were on break while the Collegium played, I pulled the Celtic kids aside and said, "guys, you ever heard the term from the armed services, FUBAR? You know what that means? It's an acronym: for a situation that is mmmhh'd Up Beyond All Recognition."

They all laughed, and then I said, "but that's not what we do in our band. In our band, we keep our heads up, we suck it up, we hang tough, and we look out for each other." Being kids, and good, earnest kids, they all nod vigorously and perk up. And then I say, "besides, we have a hell of a lot more fun. And there are cookies."

And then they laugh, and play their last piece grinning, and then the three run off to the other rehearsal feeling OK, and positive about their musical experiences.

You want to know the fundamental definition of leadership? The clear-eyed, objective, no-rose-colored-glasses conviction that no system is so perfected that it cannot be improved and that no situation is so FUBAR that nothing constructive can be done.

If you don't believe that, then you can't command.

Day 61 (Round IV) "In the trenches": notes-from-the-road edition

OK, we are now mired into the last full week of classes. Almost no time to blog--balancing end-of-semester grading and prep with prep for the Spring 2010 semester which is suddenly looming very near and large in the headlights--so here's a last-month archival note from the road: a good argument for avoiding domestic flights and selecting international flights carefully:

OK, I'm sold. I've ranted in the past about the toxic abuse and premptory conduct of the airline monopolies, and the degree to which we might need a trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt (and ain't gonna get one). But I'm sitting on this here refitted Continental Airlines Boeing 777, en route to a conference and colloquium at which I'm an invited guest and for which the uni is paying the freight, watching all three of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy (on demand, one of over 300 films available individually to each seat), with the hotshot Altec-Lansing noise-cancelling earbuds I got for a song via the Lifehacker.com bargains announcements plugged into the free supplied adaptor (why do airlines still make headphone jacks that split the stereo signal into a two-pronged, completely eccentric input plug?), in the last-row aisle seat that Continental's website let me select last night (and thus preserve my bad knees), with the laptop open on the tray-table in front of me, and the power-supply PLUGGED INTO THE SUPPLIED 110-VOLT OUTLET (Holy shit! is that a nice retrofit!) and hence no worries about running out of power, and able to thus work, and watch the idiot-box with half an eye, just as if I were at home in the Papa Bear chair.

If only Dharmonia were here, it would be perfect.

Day 59 (Round IV) "In the trenches": 'tis the season edition

Sigh. We're into the season again: here's a (redacted) version of an email I sent to my staff yesterday:

"Folks:

"In response to one of our colleagues who wanted feedback about coping with plagiarized material in a student submission, I wrote-up a fairly detailed "best-practices" document describing how I've handled it over the past 9 years here . I am reasonably confident that what I've laid out represents ONE (only one) reasonably effective way of coping with the seeming inevitability of student plagiarism. Remember that now, nearing the end of the semester, is precisely the season when we are most likely to see it: be on the lookout for it, and, if you uncover some, feel free to review my document on the wiki [link].

Coping with plagiarism

In academia, occasional violations of ethics are bound to occur; unfortunately, they have become only more common with the advent of a digital "cut-and-paste" composition method.

However, there are good, and not-so-good, ways to handle this. If you find yourself in the position of having to confront an instance of plagiarism, begin by asking yourself some questions:

• What percentage of the final grade is the assignment worth?
• What is the deadline?
• What has been the nature of this student's work otherwise: good, bad, or in the middle?
• Do you have a "read" on why this person might have plagiarized: panic, criminality, insufficient understanding of academic ethics, other?

Answers to the above, while irrelevant to the severity of the crime, may give you a preliminary sense of the degree of severity with which you wish to respond.

I'm pasting in below the specific language in our syllabi, which is there not because we must enforce it to the letter of the law, but so that we can--while also providing the option of lightening up if our best pedagogical opinion suggests otherwise.

If you uncover a documentable example of plagiarism, I would suggest that you wait until you have returned the assignments; hold the culprit’s back. At the end of class, if the student asks for it, say "you need to set up an appointment to talk to me about your paper"; do not give back the paper. Make the appointment for at least a day or two later, not right away.

On the appointment day, have the student meet you at your office; have a photocopy of the student’s paper, with the plagiarized sections marked, and sample printouts from which the student copied. Sit the student down, put both the student’s xeroxed paper and the sample printouts on the desk, and say "can you explain this please?"

If the student denies any wrongdoing, point out that it is impossible that the student "coincidentally" mimicked the sample pages.

If the student admits wrongdoing, show the student the printout of the syllabus language and point out that the student can be EXPELLED FROM THE UNIVERSITY for this violation of academic ethics.

If the student refuses to say anything, say "this is a clear-cut example of plagiarism; here are the university policies regarding this violation of academic ethics" and dismiss him/her for the moment.

Regardless, prior to dismissal, tell the student, "I will need to consult with my superiors regarding how this will be handled. As of this moment, no decision has been taken. But you are liable for an F on the assignment, an F for the class, or expulsion from the university. We will be in touch with you."

Based on her/his response, after the student’s departure you yourself can decide how rigorously you want to apply the syllabus policies regarding plagiarism.

My own rule of thumb, in such cases, is to say to myself, "my ultimate job is to teach this young person--not just about music, but about ethical conduct. What scenario, resulting from this situation, will most effectively teach the student not to do this again?"

Typically, if a plagiarizing student expresses any regret or remorse, I usually do not want to expel or fail him/her. What I will usually do is communicate to the student, after another day or two, "you understand that you violated academic ethics, right? That you cheated? That you are liable for expulsion from the university?"

Then, assuming that the student expresses any remorse and/or understanding of the crime, I will say "I'm not going to flunk you out of this class. But this assignment is not your work. Therefore, you are receiving an F on the paper. If that means that you receive a non-passing grade in the class, that is a consequence of a dishonest choice you made. And such choices have consequences. In the meantime, you will need to fulfill every other part of the course requirements--and this incident will go on your permanent record. I hope you now understand why plagiarism is a very, very bad choice."

In my observation and experience, this "scare the absolute crap out of them, elicit their remorse, make sure they understand not to do it again, make them take their lumps with the F on the paper and possibly for the class" strategy is the most constructive pedagogical response you can make to plagiarism.

And, of course, you can consult with your superiors if/when the above doesn’t cover the possible scenarios, or if you have more questions.

[from the syllabus]

Academic Integrity: [link to university's O.P.'s]

It is the aim of the faculty of [] University to foster a spirit of complete honesty and high standard of integrity. The attempt of students to present as their own any work not honestly performed is regarded by the faculty and administration as a most serious offense and renders the offenders liable to serious consequences, possibly suspension.

"Scholastic dishonesty" includes, but is not limited to, cheating, plagiarism, collusion, falsifying academic records, misrepresenting facts, and any act designed to give unfair academic advantage to the student (such as, but not limited to, submission of essentially the same written assignment for two courses without the prior permission of the instructor) or the attempt to commit such an act. ...

b. "Plagiarism" includes, but is not limited to, the appropriation of, buying, receiving as a gift, or obtaining by any means material that is attributable in whole or in part to another source, including words, ideas, illustrations, structure, computer code, other expression and media, and presenting that material as one's own academic work being offered for credit. "

Happy Thanksgiving. :-/

Day 58 (Round IV) "In the trenches": self-selection edition

Not much time left in the day, or the semester. Right about now is right about when we start dealing with the panic-reaction of kids who've left undone that which they ought to have done, and/or who've never yet learned fundamental life lessons. Plagiarism (topic of tomorrow's post) is up, breakdowns & tears are up, dumbass Facebook Wall unethical between students: my favorite from yesterday, about eking out a too-short paper: "Dude! Just set your font to 12.5 and your line spacing to 2.2...that way it won't look suspicious." My opportunity to post, further down the Comments chain, "this is spectacularly stupid advice."

Excellence is hard--but it's also far more gratifying than mediocrity. This is a valuable life lesson which many learn too late.

Removing the Plate of the Pump
on the Hydraulic System
of the Backhoe
for Burt Hybart

Through mud, fouled nuts, black grime
it opens, a gleam of spotless stell
machined-fit perfect
swirl of intake and output
relentless clarity
at the heart
of work

Gary Snyder

Day 57 (Round IV) "In the trenches": tears edition

I see a lot of tears in my job. Mostly they are those of others, and most of those others are young people who, as I've blogged before, are being buffeted, many for the first time, by the storms that every life brings. Tears of joy, relief, connection--and also of sorrow, loss, fear, disappointment, and so on.

But I don't weep much, myself. Partly it's because the idea that Dr Coyote could weep, if promulgated amongst the general student population around here, would probably be somewhere nearly as disorienting and distressing as thinking that John Wayne (that pandering, posturing, draft-dodging, war-mongering asshole who is nevertheless an icon in Texas) could weep.

But more significantly, it's because my job is to maintain a compassionate, but dispassionate, sense of perspective--and to supply that for the young people under my care who, precisely because of their youth, may have trouble supplying same for themselves. One of the only profound statements that appears anywhere in the entire corpus of Robert Heinlein, a great storyteller but a self-aggrandizing, sexist, knucklehead elitist almost as bad as Ayn Rand, and a closet fascist as well, is in the opening pages of Starship Troopers (a good yarn which the fucker wrote to try to justify prolonging the war in Korea and which was made into a beyond-awful film), in which his legendarily hard-assed Drill Instructor, Sergeant Zim, says, of the raw recruits under his care:

"We must not hate them. We must not love them. We must teach them."

I might nuance that: I'd agree that, as their teachers, we damned sure can't hate them (and if we do, we are fundamentally failing at our professional and ethical obligations). It's a profound truth nevertheless.

We maybe can love them. But that love has to be, paradoxically enough, objective. It must be separated from the more conventional understandings of love, in which the one-who-loves does so, in part, because s/he expects or anticipates that love to be reciprocated.

And that desire for reciprocal love cannot be any part of our personal, professional, or ethical mechanism. If we're teaching them because we want them to love us back, we are again failing at our professional and ethical obligations.

"We must not hate them. We must love them only without expectation or payoff. We must teach them."

But I can say that the times that I do weep, privately and without expectations of payoff or comfort, are when I actually believe that I might have helped someone.

Gassho.

Day 55 (Round IV) "In the trenches": bootlegged edition

Another day with too many events and too little time, so here's a comment bootlegged from over at Dean Dad, again: one more once on ethics:

I have the good fortune to teach in an academic discipline (music history) in which cheating is comparatively irrelevant to issues of student assessment. On the studio-performance side of things, it's not possible for a student to "cheat" his/her way into having the musical/instrumental/vocal skills required to pass a weekly music lesson. On the academic/history/music-theory side, it is still comparatively impossible for a student to "fake" or cheat his/her way into a passing grade. Here are some ways we cope:

1) we use multiple iterations of assessment: 3 exams, 5 quizzes, 6-10 online assignments, a writing project in 6 assessed stages, plus in-class attendance and participation. We do this with sections of 80-100 students and 2 TA's in addition to the instructor of record. It is not much possible for a student to "cheat" his/her way through so many separate assessments.

2) we of course take all the appropriate stages to "control test security" in the classroom and in online testing.

3) we require students themselves to "maintain their own test security"--telling students during a quiz or test that if they observe someone else cheating, they are enjoined to report that behavior in order to protect their own academic ethics.

4) we talk about ethics and right-conduct. In fact, I use the analogy of music lessons and ensemble rehearsals, saying "well, you couldn't cheat your way through a rehearsal, could you? If you did, you'd get cut and somebody else would take your place." We also articulate, early and often, that "cheating" is a fast track to failure in acquiring the skills for success in the professional world of music.

5) we frame ethics versus cheating as an issue of peer respect and peer pressure, saying that "somebody who is cheating, or talking, or texting, or otherwise misbehaving during a class or lecture is taking something from you; don't let them do it!" We find that, often, students who either passively accept cheating, or even engage in it themselves, would actually prefer not to, if they feel empowered by their teachers and by their learning situations to resist unethical behavior.

6) finally, we model these behaviors. Young people, as the above article makes clear, are not given clear messages about the social, community, and personal damage wrought by unethical behavior. But we operate from a presumption that, at some level, even students who have been given bad or no messages about ethical behavior actually will respond favorably and constructively to more positive role modeling.

Day 51 (Round IV) "In the trenches": U-curve edition

In the throes of annual meeting of the tribes--so can't comment at length. Herewith an alternative, bootlegged from a comment over on Dean Dad, about the impact of the economic recession on enrollment rates and classroom profiles.

He was commenting that, at his community college, they are seeing a larger admixture of non-traditional students who might otherwise be entering the workforce, but who--given that there are no jobs--are doing a year or two of college instead. And that the diversity of expectations and modes of conduct in his classrooms is increasing--yielding a "U-curve" of two divergent poles of behavior, with concomitant frustration or lack of understanding across the gulf between.

Here was my response:

To the extent that my (public, soon-to-be-R1) university has always tended toward a regional, middle-to-working-class clientele and economic profile, and given that our recruitment varies from major TX and OK cities to quite small towns, as well as within the county, we have always experienced the u-curve you describe: that in itself has not changed.

The graduate population and profile are different--many more national and international recruits there--but our undergraduate population tends to show differing levels of skills, preparedness, and (for lack of a better word) maturity according to their widely divergent secondary-school backgrounds. I'm in music, so our UG population tends to show profiles based upon three different source groups:

1) students from relatively small rural towns; typically with very narrow experience, of the world or of "difference"; excellent work ethic; often challenged by college's expectations of "critical thinking and critical writing", after NCLB-oriented secondary schools' bias toward teaching to the test (e.g., regurgitation). They are usually quick studies but need a good deal of remediation.

2) students from middle-class economic backgrounds, typically Dallas, Austin, Houston, El Paso; usually reasonably well-prepared with basic entry-level college skills (aforementioned critical reading/writing, etc), but wild divergence in their levels of independence and initiative depending on the calibre of their (typically public) high schools. In this large group we will have (a) students from good high schools, with many AP courses, lots of critical thinking skills, good work ethic, desire to do well and grow; versus (b) students from underserved or -funded schools who need massive remediation.

3) home-schooled. This third, in this part of the world, is a not-small group. Motives for home-schooling parents may differ widely--the commonest here is the "I don't want those Secular Humanists at that public high school teaching my kid about evolution!" social and intellectual conservatism; these are typically what we would think of as white working-class. But we also have a substantial portion of home-schooled kids whose parents took this own in order to compensate for inadequate public school options; typically white middle-class. These third group tends to be very well-educated, with lots of individual initiative, good work ethic--but can also be quite undisciplined if subjected to the "you're going to do the same task as your classmates, at the same *time* as your classmates" necessary in groups of up to 100.

Solutions:

We have found that it is a huge problem if we subject whole groups to the remediation (reading, writing, thinking drills; English composition; library skills; etc) which only a portion (say, group 2b above) most need: if we do this, group 2a and ESPECIALLY group 3 will scream bloody murder with impatience.

We've had far better luck when we identified particular skill areas in which all 3 populations agreed that they needed remediation (in music, it's "critical listening"--the ability to listen to a piece of music and have good tools for hearing and articulating what makes it sound the way it does), and emphasized those skill areas during classroom work. So we'll spend a lot of time in the classroom on those areas for shared remediation; this tends to level the playing field: all are challenged, no-one is frustrated or bored.

In contrast, we "chunk out" those areas in which prior preparation and resulting facility are most divergent (basic reading comprehension, library skills, note-taking skills, etc) into outside-of-class assignments, typically delivered via Blackboard and often only "spot-graded." By making these homework assignments, we are permitting (or requiring) students to allocate the time to them which the students individually need. In effect, we can say to the AP and home-schooled kids, "If this assignment takes you 5:00 minutes, you'll be done in 5:00 minutes and it's an easy A," while conveying to the more skills-challenged kids, "OK, this is obviously something on which you might need to spend an hour or two, in order to catch up in your skills."

Overall this has worked very well: classroom efficiency, satisfaction, and group cohesion have gone up, as has the median acquisition of skills, while frustration, boredom, objections have gone done. It took us a few iterations before we hit the right balance and we're always tweaking.

Day 50 (Round IV) "In the trenches": waiting-in-line-for-gravel edition

I pretty much hate going to conferences, but I hate it the least when Dharmonia is traveling along with me. Compared to life as a grad student, or even as pre-tenure faculty, these days I spend much more time on the road, and like it much less. But, when Dharmonia is along, as she is on this trip, it tends to feel a helluva lot more like fun and a lot less like a demeaning, demoralizing slog. As Kevin Murphy put it in his great A Year at the Movies, speaking about his own "beloved Jane": "we can have a blast waiting in line to buy gravel."

Myself, I pretty much hate going ti conferences. Mind you, I more-or-less enjoy being at conferences, for the chance to meet old friends and to hear new scholarship ( although generally would prefer fewer days and earlier nights), but the going is the part I dislike: the hassle, hazard, time, and personal mistreatment to which modern travelers are now uniformly subjected. I can grit my teeth and get through it, especially if the end destination feels like it's gonna be worth it, but the getting there is never fun. Especially when you're six-foot-five and shoehorned into coach class.

But it's a lot less un-fun, and a lot more bearable, when you're traveling with someone you love.

Aw haw hey.

Day 49 (Round IV) "In the trenches": braggin' rights edition

About four times a year, our College's administration is tasked with submitting a report on faculty & student "accomplishments" as part of a report to the university's Board of Regents. Now, I know who some of those people are, and I know some of the reasons that they wind up appointed--by our helmet-haired wingnut Governor--to serve on that Board...and let's just say that I don't invest a lot of effort into hoping they're going to understand the value, or the metrics for determining that value, of what a university does--and particularly not the value of what a "College of Visual and Performing Arts" does. These are people who, having heard a lengthy, detailed and articulate description from my boss of all that we do, are wont to say "yeah...I shore do love that marchin' band!" So I don't hold out a lot of hope that they're going to understand the significance of the range of accomplishments revealed in Musicology's part of that quarterly report.

But I do.

See below:

LJ (MM Musicology) was accepted as a PhD candidate and teaching assistant in Musicology at the University of __ School of Music (Fall 2009).

CG (MM Musicology candidate) began a semester-long internship at the __ Museum in Oxford, England, cataloging the photo-archive of FDW as assistant to Music Education professor SB (Fall 2009).

HD (MM Musicology candidate) began a semester-long Study Abroad experience at Syracuse in Italy as part of her thesis research on ancient music (Fall 2009).

ES presented a paper ("__") at Music and the Moving Image Conference sponsored by New York University (May 2009). Her paper "__" was accepted for the national meetings of the Society for American Music (Ottawa Canada, March 2010). She also received the Summer Thesis/Dissertation Research Award 2009, funding a research trip to Philadelphia (June 2009) to study primary source materials of __.

ES and KR (MM Musicology candidates) both presented papers on their thesis research (on __ and __) at the 2009 Women's Studies Conference.

Dr IR (PhD Musicology), a first runner-up in the awards for Outstanding Thesis or Dissertation, accepted a post teaching at __ Community College in Houston, TX. Dr R continued as coordinator of the MUHL3310 "History of Rock 'n' Roll" distance-education course.

Dr MB (PhD Musicology/Arts Administration) was appointed first Director of the Community Exchange initiative.

Dr MM (PhD Musicology/Arts Administration) joined the staff of the __Symphony Orchestra.

JB (PhD Musicology candidate) accepted a post as Music Director/ Honors Program Coordinator at __ University.

SC (MM Musicology candidate) was accepted into the Law School at __.

RL (MM Musicology candidate) assumed duties teaching MUHL3310 "History of Rock 'n' Roll" on the __ campus, a course enrolling over 425 students per semester.

JS (MUBA-Vernacular Music; percussion) was awarded the 2009-10 Vernacular Music Center Scholarship.

KB (MUBA-Vernacular Music; fiddle), the 2008-09 VMC Scholarship recipient, will graduate with the MUBA in Vernacular Music, with Irish fiddle concentration, in Dec 2009.

Dr Coyote (Chair of Musicology & Director of the Vernacular Music Center) gave a presentation ("__") for the Teaching Academy's "Jump-Start New Faculty series" in August 2009. Dr Coyote also: visited the University of L/L as expert consultant to their new Chair in Music and Acadiana Studies (September); gave a paper at the "Music and Migration" conference in Southampton England and another in the University of Southampton's Musicology Colloquium series (October); taught bouzouki at the O'Flaherty Irish Music Retreat in Midlothian TX (October); served as member of the Program Committee at the national meetings of the American Musicological Society (November).

A contingent from the Musicology program attended and participated in the Fall meetings of the American Musicological Society SW chapter in San Antonio, TX (October).

The Vernacular Music Center was awarded a grant by the Growing Grad Programs initiative to fund Ms AR (MM Musicology candidate) to serve as vMC administrative assistant for the academic year 2009-10; she will engage in promotions, fundraising, and recruitment for both the VMC and the Musicology graduate program.

The Celtic Ensemble gave a concert ("Across the Western Sea: Music of Anglo-Appalachia") in the Legacy Great Hall in October 2009, which program they will repeat as part of a tour to the Metroplex in performance at Tarleton State University (November).

I am bursting-my-buttons braggin'-rights proud of my guys. All of them.

Day 48 (Round IV) "In the trenches": maritime Celts edition

I've blogged before about my own maritime background, both as regards birthplace and one of the favorite records of my childhood. I've also commented upon the strategies that we use for programming the Celtic Ensemble--and how much I like running that group.

Well, we're in that stage of the Fall 2009 semester when we have to start nailing down concert dates in the available venues for the second half of Spring 2010 semester. Partly these days are a product of available openings in the venues, partly it's a product of what I think the kiddos can get together in time to make a satisfying and effective program, partly (a big part) it's a question of what I predict will be both pedagogically effective and artistically satisfying for the kids.

But part of it is also the same kind of decision-making in which any competent concert promoter has to engage: what will be accessible, yet intriguing in promotion; engaging, but also challenging, in performance for the audience. As a concert programmer, as a radio presenter--hell, even as a blogger--I have a tendency to succumb to the musicologist-within-me; that is, I have a tendency to want to give too much context, too much back-story, just too goddamned much information (Dharmonia will roll her eyes when I start telling a story and first feel that I have to back up two or three or four events or anecdotes or years). As my buddy Coop (goddammit Coop! get that shit out of your lungs! we--especially your stalwart girlfriend--need you too bad! get better!) will say, in the indirect-but-nevertheless very clear manner you learn as a Preacher's Kid in the Church of Christ, "aw, shit, there he goes teaching again!" To an extent, I've learned to suck it up, shut up, and get on with presenting the music. But the impulse is always there. Not, probably, much alleviated by kids in the Ireland seminar field-trip saying, out of my hearing, "I could listen to him talk all day"--which is like musicologist's methamphetamine.

Anyway, it's one of the things I like about running the Celtic Ensemble: I get to teach music that I love, dictate (or, better, "direct") how it gets played, turn kids on to stuff that I think they'll dig, and, oh by the way, talk about it. One of the CE kiddos said, on a long drive back from a teaching weekend when we were talking about the strategies that have gone into shaping the spring "Easy" or "Big" program, "I love how our programs often have a kind of historical component--that seems different." Well, of course, it's fundamentally the musicological meth talking--but I like that factor too.

As I've said to friends and colleagues (and ranted to Dharmonia when I'm particularly fed up with Lubbock), in a place like this, where the musical receptivity is very high--fantastic tradition of blues, rock, and country in this region--but the musical diversity is very low, if you play a relatively esoteric or unfamiliar music, literally every gig you do has to include audience education. Not the old-school NPR "listen to this Great Music because it's Good for You, even if the music, or more accurately the pompous presentation, bores the snot out of you" kind of way.

But, rather, with a vibe/mood/manner that conveys to an audience, "hey, this is great music, and the fact that you're here means that you're somebody who's receptive to great music, and we think you're going to really dig this music because we really love it." Such a vibe/mood/manner can go light-years toward making an unfamiliar music seem interesting, intriguing, rewarding, and mind-expanding to an audience with low familiarity. It's the best kind of "audience education" a musician can engage in, and sets up by far the best kind of performer/audience interaction.

Where I come from--and where I spent some time this past summer--"sea music" is if not ubiquitous then at the very least quite sufficiently available. It seems like every little tourist seacoast town, every little day-long folk festival, every one-night-a-week folk coffeehouse, will exhibit a large percentage of guys (mostly guys), mostly bearded or in the most extreme cases luxuriantly sideburned, usually beer-bellied and/or red-nosed, guys who at the very least provocation will stand up, stick a finger in one ear, and start roaring out sea shanties.

"Sea music" has become something that, like Irish "pub ballads" or Renaissance Fayre "filk songs", can cover a multitude of sins, mostly revolving around bad music-making, egocentric posturing, and/or drunken obnoxiousness. These issues are not lessened by the fact that some "sea music" people also have a tendency to show up at Irish music sessions--guitar, bodhran, or (shudder!) spoons in hand--and busk along semi-competently to the tunes, transparently waiting only for that momentary lull in the music upon which they can pounce with "OoooooooO Santy Anna gained the day..." et cetera.

Now, as a child and adolescent in the early '70s, going to many of these self-same or similar festivals and coffeehouses, I got to see some giants in the world of this music, in rooms where the sound of waves and the smell of the sea breeze came in through the windows, whose oak floors were bent and twisted off-kilter because of the sheer age of the buildings--when I wasn't hearing them on the decks of little coasting wind-jammers and schooners.

And some of those individuals were people whose music AND character I still admire: John Roberts and Tony Barrand, the late Stan Rogers, my brother-in-music Larry, and, most notably and famously, the legendary Stan Hugill, the "last of the shanteymen"--that is, one of the last men to have shipped out on a wind-driven deepwater craft, and to have served as the singer whose various song-types coordinated the work--hauling, pumping, capstan shanties to raise anchor, and so forth. When I met him, that one time, at a coffeehouse on the North Shore of Massachusetts, he was probably already 74 or 75: with a slight stoop, impossibly weather-beaten face, a white goatee and long hair tied back, and palms, at the handshake, that felt like rough-hewn oak boards--and still able to knock back the ale, roar out the songs, and spin impossibly long and impressive tales with the best of them. He set a pretty high standard-

So I got to thinking that, in the tradition of the CE's spring-semester "easy" or "big" programs of more familiar, typically English-language repertoire--so-called because they're intended to provide (a) a respite from the "hard" programs in more challenging styles or languages of the Fall, and (b) an accessible, engaging program for the festivals and guest shots which tend to come our way later in the spring, we might be able to do something with "sea" music. Precisely because what might seem tired to me, or the people I grew up with, or carry too many associations redolent of Aran sweaters or pub ballads or filk songs, might seem wildly exotic and intriguing to people who are now living, and many of whom were born, 600 miles from the sea. And it's *certainly* wildly different than much of anything that the CE kiddos have previously experienced.

Program title: "The Rolling Wave: Maritime Celts"

And, really, how you gonna go wrong with a list like this?

Albion Band
Altramar
Andy Irvine & Paul Brady
Battlefield Band
Brass Monkey
Cabestan
Cliff Halsam and John Millar
Ewan MacColl
Jeff and Gerret Warner
Joe Hickerson
John Roberts and Tony Barrand
June Tabor
Louis Killen
Martin Carthy
Martin Simpson
Michael Cooney
Peter Bellamy
Planxty
Stan Hugill
Stan Rogers
Sweeney's Men
The Watersons

Pretty much any record by any artist on this list is going to be killin'. And a wonderful discovery, for the kiddos and for our audiences.

Sure was for me.

Day 44 (Round IV) "In the trenches": program-notes edition

OK, this is crunch week. Between the emotional melt-downs and the procedural brain-lock and the fires going off on my desk and exploding every time I open the laptop, there's not really much time to think, much less blog. So, bootlegging from responses to a former student's email interview, here are some thoughts about program notes--and why you might choose to use or not use them:

1) Do you like having program notes in programs when you are an audience member?

It depends on the repertoire. If it is unfamiliar to me, then yes, I appreciate context, history, biography, functional information. I am less interested in those sorts of notes that focus primarily upon musical construction or compositional form: as a historian, I am more interested in the "where did it come from?" questions

2) Do you read them? If so, when (before the concert starts, as it goes, afterwards, etc.)?

Always. Usually before--I have a low tolerance for waiting. During a concert, I would hope that the performer would be sufficiently riveting that I would not wish to look away from the stage.

3) What is the point of program notes? Who are they for?

Seems to me it varies. But what they *should* do, and who they *should* address, is any or all members of the audience whose enjoyment and emotional response to the music might be heightened by a better understanding of the music's original contexts, participants, settings, and/or function.

4) Who should write them? The performer of the concert? The composer? An outside scholar/musicologist?

Depends on the repertoire. If the composer is alive and available, I would certainly be interested to hear her/his thoughts. Absent that, any competent performer should be able to write effective program notes. If a performer does not have the knowledge and the writing skill to articulate content/background/intent, then I believe that performer has some skills still to learn.

5) What kinds of information do you think belong in program notes? What kinds of things should NOT be included?

See above, #1. In addition, I think that texted music, especially if in unfamiliar languages, should have notes which at least synopsize if they do not literally translate those texts. On the other hand, too-extensive a set of translations can cause some audience members to look at the text rather than the stage; to avoid this, I will often use synopses, so that audience members can follow the text/narrative as they watch the performance.

6) Are there any situations where you think a program note is absolutely essential?

See #5 above--and especially if either the languages or repertoires being employed are unfamiliar to the audience. If music is about communication, and there is a language barrier, notes can help bridge that gap.

7) Are there any situations where you think a program note is absolutely inappropriate?

Perhaps not "inappropriate", but less necessary and in fact cumbersome: In any situation in which the performers can simply *address the audience*--and I would include in that *most concert repertoires*--notes become much less important. I would submit that performers should be able to speak extemporaneously, knowledgably, and engagingly about the music they're playing, just as they should be able to write about it in the same fashion. If a performer cannot speak (or write) in this fashion about the music s/he is playing, I believe there are some skills still to be learned.

Day 42 (Round IV) "In the trenches": Samhain edition

I live in a pretty fuckin' conservative place, and I've blogged about it before: the lunatics who will picket the yoga studio because even studying a body-work tradition associated with Hinduism is "an endorsement of demon-worship." Or some self-satisfied scumbag fundamentalist will decide that the sculpture of the "Windy Man", crafted to represent the perpetual fuckin' wind that defines this place, is another iteration of "demon worship" and so the only "Christian" thing to do is deface it beyond repair--no doubt the fucker bragged about it to his church congregation--and the City Fathers are such gutless punks that they throw up their hands and decide they can't do the sculpture. And let's don't even get started about the mindless fucking prejudice and stupidity they regularly manifest--and preach, G-d save their cancerous souls--toward my brothers and sisters of the shahadah.

But one thing that adversity indubitably teaches you is to hang tough when you're in the minority. And a second thing it teaches you is to find, bond with, and protect your friends, even if--especially if--you need to pursue and maintain your community underground. One of the missions of my life, especially in this stupidly conservative and just-plain-ill-informed community, is to use the (relative) clout and (comparatively impregnable) job security of a tenured post and a supportive boss to enhance the safety and security--in fact, the celebration--with which some of these communities and their own ritual traditions can come out from hiding. I'm not a practitioner of some of these belief-systems or lifestyles, but I will fight to the death to create a safer environment for their adherents--and especially my students--to practice same. I don't jam it into the fundamentalists' faces, but, as I say, I have the (comparative) security, and maybe some skills & tools, that let me be a (comparatively) explicit friend of same. Plus: the generations of my loud-mouthed wrong-sided Presbyterian ancestors are deep enough that I'm prone to taking the opposite side, if only out of contrarian orneriness.

Many, many years ago, when Dharmonia and I were living in Bloomington and I had started teaching as half-time adjunct (on a world music topic, which NASM required but which IU couldn't be bothered to treat as anything other than a resentful obligation), I was producing a radio program for the local NPR station (still get calls and random emails from folks who want to know if the show is on-air, or maybe archived somewhere). Its mandate was very wide (e.g., "One World"; e.g., "all" world music) and I had a huge amount of leeway in terms of format, content, theme, audio profile, etc. So, among many other one-off or atypical topics, I did a series of programs on pagan music. At the time, c1994-95, I didn't have nearly the same grasp of the pre-Christian roots of a lot of the music that I was playing and about which I knew a lot, or would have done much more on pre-Christian Irish, Scandinavian, Native American, etc musics.

But what I did have access to was people who were proponents of the "modern pagan" movement. I wouldn't pretend to have any particular such knowledge about that movement, or where it came from, or the demographics of its adherents, but the picture I got from those shows in '94-95 was pretty interesting. There were the computer programmers with the 5-pointed pentagram on the floor of the garage, who would insist that before they could talk to me, I'd need to sit cross-legged and silent in the center of the star for at least 20 minutes. Which I did: I was already a practicing Buddhist, and didn't see much need to be scared by observing my own mind or by whatever energies the programmer was dreaming up.

There was the small group of dancers, singers, djembe- and recorder-players who had recorded the occasional wobbly-voiced cassette of "neo-pagan" music--which, because like me they didn't much know better about, was the best they could do to try to recover the power and impact that they intuited music had had in the Old Religion.

There were the usual students and office workers and folks of various walks of life whose "neo-pagan" activities overlapped with their Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game or Society for Creative Anachronism medieval-reenactment activities, and which equally seemed to attract them because it represented some kind of more satisfying alternative to the lives they were living.

But what that round of interviews and tape-editing and script-writing and program-voicing really brought home to me was the very real loss that the genocide which had been practiced against the Old Religion in the European 16th & 17th centuries: the quite conscious and quite brutal attempt to stamp out any of the old magical practices that had hung on in the wake of Christianization. And it was intentional, and strategic, and it was, as ever, about power--the power of the early modern Church establishment to consolidate and enrich its own hegemony. That some poor old women, mentally-challenged persons, or foreigners should be interrogated, brutalized, tortured, and murdered was "collateral damage" and a negligible price to pay for the very real value of scaring the crap out of anyone else who might be considering a resistant belief system: really, the same practices, in pursuit of the same motives, in which the monsters and war criminals of the Bush/Cheney regime engaged.

And what it brought home to me, as a musician, historian, and teacher, was the magnitude of the cultural loss. Over and above and beyond--but never forgetting--the human suffering and death the witch trials brought, the loss of human knowledge, the practical psychology, expertise, and nature wisdom that the old religion had carried. That's what the research for the radio shows really brought home to me: the scope of the loss, as well as the suffering, that the witch trials had wrought.

And then there was the Elf-Lore family. Founded in 1991, they were (I think--it's hard to get information about the early days) an outgrowth of the late '60s back-to-the-land hippie/agrarian movement, which worked in some places (Lothlorien outside Bloomington, the Farm in Tennessee, various others) and didn't in others (the collective psychosis of Mel Lyman's Family in Boston comes to mind) . It worked pretty well in Bloomington, and a lot of that early success was due to the charisma, energy, and right intentions of Terry Whitefeather, one of the founders. When I met him, Terry was probably in his late 40s, and kind of fit the profile of a hippie patriarch: long graying hair, beard, wire-rimmed glasses, a very fast and facile riffing style of speaking. Leary was the same, and Ginsberg not far off.

But not all of those hippie patriarchs were either opportunists, charlatans, or incipient suicide cult-leaders. Terry had some perspective on what he was doing and on the energies that he was potentially playing with, and he was a pretty careful and conscious steward. The first time I met him, he had just finished what was actually a pretty impressive night-time fire ceremony involving two broadswords and a lot of hollering. When we were introduced, he stuck out his hand, and said "I'm Terry--I've heard about you." I told him I was impressed with his swordsmanship (I was a student of Northern Shaolin kung-fu, including weapons forms, at the time), and he grinned, and said "Well, you know, I'm just tryin' to get some energy going."

Which, as a teacher, performer, and more than a bit of a charlatan myself, I recognized and appreciated. We talked for a long time, and he was acute, articulate, well-informed, un-full of himself, and, most importantly to me, grounded in a sense of history of the traditions he was working with. It was a pleasure to talk to him, and one thing he said, near our parting, stuck with me--not only into the production of the radio program, but in the years since. Terry said, "You know, I deal all the time with people who want to call themselves 'pagans', and yet they've never planted a garden. How the hell are you going to 'worship Nature' if you don't even know the annual cycles?"

Which, since, has remained something of a litmus test for me with anybody who claims to be a follower of the "Old Ways." It continued to resonate with me as, over the years, I learned more about my chosen musics, and the cultural contexts and history out of which they came. Until I've come to the understanding that, like literacy itself, the contemporary specious belief that Nature can be "controlled" or "subjugated" is a blip on the historical horizon.

Humans have been talking, singing, miming, and worshiping Nature for 40,000 years: that over the past 300 years we've succumbed to the idea that we can "control" her may be enough to doom us (because we're so lazy, mindless, greedy and stupid that we're infinitely faster and more efficient at destroying the Earth than protecting her), but even if we end ourselves, that period of Nature-illiteracy will have been a blip on the historical time-line.

And maybe we won't.

At any rate, meeting Terry Whitefeather, and hearing him riff on things that I also had intuited about the motives--but also some of the limitations--of the "neo-pagan" ethos, opened me up. I was, am, and will continue to be a Buddhist, through many cycles of rebirth, because of the profound sanity I have found in its practices and the profound inspiration of its practitioners (nobody every really learns a true religion except by direct, person-to-person example), but certain individuals certainly helped me find the wisdom in the Old Religion as well.

I was reminded of it again when, one of those first students in the world music class, right in that same era, turned out to be a member of the Elf-Lore family--and asked me to be a participant in his wedding. It was way early in my career as a classroom teacher, and such a request hadn't come my way as often as it later would, but I was touched and gratified that this kid thought enough of my impact on his life to ask me to be part of this wedding (I had played enough tasteless, ill-advised, or dysfunctional weddings by that point to be pretty cynical and pessimistic about "young love"). But I hadn't realized that this was going to be a full-bore pagan wedding--not that I knew, at that time, what such involved.

In the event, it was quite touching: held in a relatively secluded corner of a large wooded public park, it involved passing over water and through fire, an oath upon (and witnessed by) a tree, an exchange of rings, and one of vows in three languages. Though a pessimist about young love and something of a skeptic about "recovered" religion, I was (as I later commented to Dharmonia, who was also present) quite moved by the realization that, for these young people, "neo-paganism" simply represented the best, most apposite, most emotionally-real expression of a very profound, entirely-too-uncommon desire: that is, the desire, and the commitment, to live a sacred life.

A life in which worship is not compartmentalized apart from the "prosaic" world; where the ethics of the spirit do not differ from the ethics of the body; where a set of religious principles propounded are also practiced; where ideals of compassion, awareness, gratitude, and connection find their expression in the relationship of the person to all persons and to all beings, including Gaia. I had not previously grasped that about modern neo-paganism--but those people and the experiences they gave me helped me to understand.

So, to my Brothers and Sisters who have fought to maintain and recover a sense of the sacred in the green world that surrounds us, that gave birth to us and to which we will all return as part of the--we hope--endless cycle of death and rebirth--that is if we can manage to arrest the careening course of greed, violence, and destruction--and on this Night of all nights, when the Horned God rides and the boundary between this world and the Other is especially thin, I'll say,

Thank you: "an it harm no one, do as thou wilt."

Blessed Be.