In 1983, I saw Miles Davis at Orchestra Hall in Chicago. That place is usually reserved for classical music -- Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, which is why I made the special effort to see the master perform. The sound would have been pure in a garage or a speakeasy, but this venue offered Miles trumpet unadulterated by clinging ice in mixed drinks or the murmur of whispered conversation. And Miles, with his back to the audience most of the time, was just too cool. The following video reveals a very young Miles Davis and John Coltrane. But the focus is mostly on Coltrane.

Miles Davis & John Coltrane video on FoxyTunes Planet

Miles Davis and John Coltrane: listen / feel / be

[via FoxyTunes / Miles Davis & John Coltrane]

Dee Alexander

During this past summer 2007, I had the good fortune to see Dee Alexander on several occasions, the last in early September for her tribute to Dinah Washington and Nina Simone. These were sponsered by The Jazz Institute of Chicago, which I finally joined. The following video shows how talented this young lady is.

Of the soft things in life, the pink pads of catsfeet, a baby's bottom, the feathery crowns of dandelions, and the sweet succulent pillows of your lips --- all were made for kissing.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band

What do you remember about the album, how it affected you, how you listened to it, why it was important to you, and so on? Did you wonder about the various persons featured on the cover and why they were included?
It was significant in the same way Kurt Vonnegut novels were. There was something profound about it, something meaningful to discover about it. It helped us glean an understanding of ourselves.

I just watched the last 24:38 of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey


set to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd's Echoes. I had downloaded it from Google Video. It made me realize that we are the last generation with imagination. We wanted to expand our minds, which we did through innovative and expansive music, literature, visual arts, and psychotropic drugs. Even experimentation with mind altering drugs was more exploration than it was for the physical effect of getting high. We explored inner space, seeking transcendental experiences and altered states of reality. We were excited by the latest books by our contemporary authors and by those timeless classics. We enlarged our world by seeking knowledge, through learning and experimentation, and with self-expression and creativity. We have traveled in time and thru time to find ourselves running out of time.

If you are a teacher, and you want to create your own web site for your students, then this is the greatest tool since the xerox machine:

I do what I do
because
I must
Have meaningful connections
Touch the hearts of those
I am entrusted to teach.

I do what I do
because
I must
Let my children know
They are important to me
That they are special.

I do what I do
because
I must
Fulfill my mission
It is always personal
And more than just a job.

I do what I do
because
I must

because
I care

because I am a teacher.

This is too cool

Click to play | Make your own Smilebox

Inspired by Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Orchestra: Tribute to Alice Coltrane

#1
For the disenfranchised, here's a song for you
Alice Coltrane's discordant jazz
Set against the backdrop of a city
That doesn't care whether you freeze
Your ass in winter or can afford
The rent for the two bedroom apartment
For you and your three children.

Here's a song where each musician
Counterpoints the others
Playing as if he or she
Had amphetamine cocktails or ADHD.


#2
You crawled inside the sax
And closed your eyes
Content to drift away
Like a little girl climbing
Onto her father's lap
Shielded from the world
And there you wrapped the wailing tones
Around you like a blanket of sound.

I'm testing out http://www.clipmarks.com/ application, which is free and allows you to clip parts of articles for later reference. You can save it to your Clipmarks personal site, add it to a blog (as I've done here), or email it. For example, I've inserted my own comment (below in italics). This is a very handy tool.

clipped from http://www.crucialthought.com/ Principal support is critical. My observation is that without the principal's buy in, technology integration will remain a sporadic individual teacher preference, rather than the prevailing method of delivering instruction at the school. If we can understand who every child is we can target technological resources (because of their flexibility) towards them to meet them where they are. The website for all this is www.school2-0.org

My right eye keeps twitching. It's not a serious blink of a twitch, so that people think I'm winking at them, but a stacotto movement of the corner of the upper lid. It's been doing this periodically for a couple of weeks, and it's getting on my nerves, which only makes it more difficult to control. I've had bouts with this twitching before and it drives me crazy, especially while I'm face to face with someone talking, wondering if they can see the little twitch.

Yesterday morning I received an email from my professor, who was reviewing my Masters Portfolio. It was acceptable, which means that I am officially a recipient of a Master of Science in Education with a Focus in Technology Integration in the Classroom degree.

I will now devote more time to posting my observations and reflections in my blog, reading the numerous books I have not been able to finish or even start, and watch some videos that are not produced by Laureate and used in the Education Program at Walden for distance learning. I feel as if I am liberated, once again.

This video is back by popular demand. It's my Mom and Aunt Rose at Karen's 2005 Memorial Day get together. Video by Stephen Latman.

Last night my cat searched my library

for reading matter

and found herself a copy of Thoreau's

All Nature Is My Bride

and Whitman's Leaves of Grass

or so it seemed,

as I found both books

on the bedroom floor in the morning.

"So you were reading Thoreau and Whitman?"

I asked her when I woke up and found the books.

She just yawned, probably still sleepy

from all of that reading.