arrange • compose • conduct
I’d rather have no chocolate than bad chocolate. (For me, that means no Hershey’s bars, but you can draw your own line! Throughout this piece, I’m using bad as a shorthand meaning “not for me.”) I’d rather watch no television than bad television. I’d rather listen to no music than […]
I had a long first rehearsal with members of the Grand Rapids Symphony Chorus tonight, preparing for a “live to projection” performance of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Walking in, I had three main goals for the 2-1/2 hour rehearsal. Get through the whole score. We’re looking at long […]
A lot of students are feeling their anxiety rise tonight. Teachers too! It doesn’t take long away from a familiar schedule to make it feel unfamiliar. A typical two-week break is enough to raise stress, anxiety, and a certain voice whispering, “You don’t know how to do this anymore.” Repeat […]
What’s the point of a board game? We think a lot about productivity – about time used effectively in moving towards goals. Since there’s almost no hope in 2020 of having a career that doesn’t come home with you, we’re all facing 24-7 self-assessments of our productivity. A board game […]
There is joyous energy in starting out – a hope for what’s to come, an excitement unmarked by the kind of compromises that will necessarily be made during the process. Consider decorating before a holiday. Christmas, say. The joy of putting up a tree, of hanging lights and ornaments and […]
“Some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts. I’ll give you some examples. Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi — all these people described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not […]
Keep going. That’s my 2020 resolution. Keep learning, of course. Keep dreaming, definitely. Keep connecting, keep teaching, keep growing, keep questioning, keep improving. But most of all: keep going.
2019 was a wonderful year, both professionally and personally. Here’s an overview of my work year: Writing I published a new post on this site every day in 2019, totaling 368 posts. I wrote over 75,000 words written for my blog this year; That averages to over 5,000 a month or around 200 per day, or […]
Books remain at the heart of the media I consume – not perhaps the most significant by volume, but certainly by the effect they have on my life. I read 17 books in 2019; my lowest in years, and a number I’d like to push upwards in 2020. Here are a […]
“The wind’s coming from the wrong direction!” That was my thought on walking outside this morning into 40mph winds…from the east. Where I am, on a bluff looking westward at Lake Michigan, the wind is almost always blowing off the lake. From the West. This, I learned, is a big […]