Flying with a cello

Why I always buy a seat for my cello: Airline played instrumental role in orchestral woes. (Thanks to BA at Cello Chat.) And why I drive if I can.

Another good cello video site

A wonderful find: the Las Vegas Philharmonic has streaming videos of master classes with various emminent soloists, including cellists Brinton Smith, Zuill Bailey, and Nathaniel Rosen. What a great thing online video is!

Thanks to Brinton for posting the link in the Internet Cello Society Cello Chat forum.

You Don't Have to Give Up the Violin to Be a Lawyer

I haven't read all of Blair Tindall's book Mozart in the Jungle yet, but I have read parts of it in bookstores (sorry, Blair, I've been spending all my money on books on improvisations and cello repairs). Along with sharing stories of her youthful overindulgence in drugs and sex, she explores the crisis in professional classical-music performance. Her site quotes The New Yorker as writing, "Tindall’s central complaint—that the classical-music world has created a crisis by training too many musicians and supporting a culture of exorbitant pay for a few fortunate stars—is difficult to refute."

Her website has some interesting links, including this one, in which a would-be college violin professor is considering the "Nuclear Option" as he puts it, chucking it all and going to law school.

His poignant article is an example of just the sort of thing every aspiring classical musician should be aware of.

Since 1999 when I left graduate school, I've had two one-year posts and two adjunct jobs, but a tenure-track position has eluded me.

The market for string teachers in academe has all but collapsed. This year the number of violin positions has barely exceeded single digits. Eliminate vacancies at small religious colleges or at high-profile conservatories, and the number of positions for which I'm suited falls to near zero.

The market in symphony orchestras hasn't been much better, and if positions in low-paying or unattainable major orchestras are eliminated, the possibilities shrink like a tuxedo accidentally left in the dryer on high.

I've kept playing for years with little to show for it, convinced that the big score was just around the bend. Maybe just one more audition, one more hiring season.

Even if I were to be offered a tenure-track position at a music department, I would face some moral dilemmas about doing the job. I know that I would be under pressure to recruit string students to fill my studio and the school symphony, thus ensuring my own position. But how could I do that knowing the abysmal state of the job market?

There are too many music schools and departments, and too many string players being trained as it is. Could I live with myself by pandering to the dreams of young and blissfully unaware musicians?

But his article is also written from the all-or-nothing perspective that fails to give proper respect to amateur and part-time professional music making--the subject I've been writing about recently. I hope this guy goes on to law school, develops a good practice, and discovers that through it all he can continue to make and share music. And realize that he has not failed as a musician just because he doesn't have a tenured position or a full-time orchestra job.

My former brother-in-law is a lawyer and a fine clarinetist who plays in an excellent community orchestra in the LA orchestra. My former father-in-law is a is unethical. Training musicians while being honest about the job market, and encouraging them to think about dual careers, is both ethical and appropriate.

I read once that 70% of college graduates end up working in a profession different than what they majored in in college. Those of us who teach at liberal arts colleges know that undergraduate education is about general education and personal development; it's not necessarily about job training.

Make music because you love it. If you don't end up making a lot of money making music, make some money doing something else. But don't stop making music!

Don't Worry, Be Happy: Make Music, Make a Living, Make a Difference

In the College Cellists forum at the Internet Cello Society, a new poster supplied this link to a story from the LA Times on the current professional prospects for graduating performance majors, commenting, "Which is one of the reasons why I'm double majoring. I like to have options available." Here's why:

In the 1980-81 season, according to one study, more than 1,100 members of the American Federation of Musicians competed for 47 full-time positions. Now, an estimated 2,700 music performance majors graduate from American centers of higher learning every year. The usual number of jobs available: 160 or fewer.

And, of course, many people in the classical music biz think that this trend will just continue: even more grads, even fewer jobs. Now this doesn't mean the end of the world is arriving. But it does need to be taken into account. Unfortunately, not all music schools and music teachers are open and honest about the situation. Again, from the LA Times article:

"We have too many outstanding music colleges turning out too many graduates for whom there will be no work in music," says maverick British critic Norman Lebrecht.

"It's close to false trading. You take the kids into schools, fire them up with the idea of making careers, knowing from the outset there will not be opportunities for most of them. Very few conservatories are giving students any kind of alternative programs or a sense of the reality ahead for them."

About twenty years ago I read that Josef Gingold said that standards of playing had risen so much that he had students playing on a level that thirty years before would have brought international solo careers; now, they were delighted to win a second violin position in an midrange orchestra.

I was reminded of this last night, when I heard three extraordinary graduate-student cellists perform at the Violoncello Society of New York. Each one of them was absolutely spectacular. Extraordinary virtuoso techniques, with left hands that seemed as if they could go anywhere on the cello, almost by magic. Each was musical, expressive, thoughtful, and interesting to hear. It was both thrilling and upsetting. Thrilling for the obvious reasons: it was a spectacular concert. Upsetting because I know what a tough time they--and the others around the country who play on the same high level--may have making a living playing the cello.

Does this mean they shouldn't have studied as hard as they have? Does this mean all the gifted young people in love with music shouldn't pursue it?

Of course not. The need to be a musician and to make music on a high level is just that, a need. It doesn't go away. If it's there, it's there, and failing to nurture it doesn't cause it to wither away and die, just to grow angry and poisonous. I met an 89-year-old lady in a nursing home who was still deeply angry that her father wouldn't allow her to study the violin as a child. She never learned to play. Literally on her deathbed, she was still bitter about this.

If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's this: if you're a musician, you're a musician. You can't escape it, even if you want to. God or "the universe" or "life" gives each of us gifts, gifts that are meant to be used and shared. You don't get to say to wherever the gift and the need to express it come from, "Sorry, I don't want this one. Take it back."

In college and conservatory music programs, we tend to be overly focused on succeeding in the professional music world as it is today, and to look at it in a win/lose way: get an orchestra job, or make a full-time living playing and teaching, and you've won. That doesn't happen, you lost.

There's another way to look at it: What happens in music school is preparing yourself to use music to make a difference in the world. What if we measured "success" not by what job we get, but by sharing music with others, in the ways and in the places that make a difference?

You can't "lose" if that's how you define being a musician. You can't "lose" in life if you realize your true purpose is making the world a better place, and you use your gifts to do that. If you are a musician and you do something else to make a living, if you make some other contribution, too, guess what? You didn't lose. You're not a failure. You're making the world a better place.

And that's not so bad.

"Chamber music as it was meant to be . . ."

Well, I'm certainly not the only one taken with Anthony Tommasini's excellent Sunday NY Times story on Condoleezza Rice's piano playing, particularly her regular chamber-music gatherings with string quartet of lawyers.

Important point: the joy of making music.

She is not the only secretary of state to pursue amateur music-making. Thomas Jefferson, the first to hold the office, was an excellent violinist who played chamber music, especially Baroque trio sonatas, throughout his political career. But back then, playing music at home was commonplace.

Not so today, in the era of recording technology, when you can hear almost any piece from the entire history of music by switching on an iPod. The trade-off is that so few people know the personal joy of making music.

I've been trying to nudge Greg Sandow to embrace more fully that one key to ensuring a healthy future of classical music, including his focus, professional classical music performances, is the promotion of amateur music-making. Tommasini's article captures vividly the power and value of playing chamber music in private. "It was wonderful to hear chamber music as it was meant to be: played by friends for their own enjoyment, in the confines of a living room, which makes the sound seem enveloping."

Everyone I know who is a professional "classical" musician or a music educator, save those with their heads stuck in the sand, is mortified by the shrinking audiences for professional classical music concerts, and the simultaneous rise in the number of extremely well-trained professional-caliber players emerging from conservatories and university music programs.

It's a truism that in every problem lies an opportunity. And the one of the opportunities today is for conservatories and colleges, and their faculties, to promote more actively the idea that it is a great thing to develop professional-level musical skills and do something else for a living.

Unfortunately, we tend to define success only as professional success.

I've known people who were passionate about music but then, like Ms. Rice, had this sort of experience:

At 17, she attended the prestigious summer school at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado and came to believe that though she was a very good pianist, she was "not great," she said. "That was the really the revelation," she added. "And it wasn't just that experience. You start noticing prodigies, and you realize that I'm never going to play that way." There is "just some intangible" in music, she said. Whatever it was, she said she felt she didn't have it. She decided to major in international relations instead, focusing on the Soviet Union.

Rice came back to music, and it now serves an important role in her life. People often ask her, Ms. Rice said that day, whether playing chamber music is relaxing.

"It's not exactly relaxing if you are struggling to play Brahms," she explained. "But it is transporting. When you're playing there is only room for Brahms or Shostakovich. It's the time I'm most away from myself, and I treasure it."

She treasures it. How many people do I know, though, who discovering that they for one reason or another weren't going to "make it" as a professional musician gave up on music and themselves? I knew a man who was so dissapointed and bitter that he didn't make a success as a concert pianist that he couldn't bear to attend classical concerts.

We in music education need to do a better job of promoting life-long music making (and participation in other creative activities) for everyone. We need to educate our students that to be a well-trained classical musician who is also an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor, a stay-at-home parent, or a Secretary of State is not to be a "failure" as a musician.

Much of my education took place in conservatories where the "success = being a full-time professional musician" was the only paradigm. In fact, many string students even felt that to have a career in a professional orchestra, rather than as a soloist or chamber player, was to be a failure. I was as caught up in this mindset as anyone.

When I started teaching, some part of me resented teaching people without professional aspirations, and even the healthier and more generous sides of me had trouble relating to their point of view. Now, though, I am genuinely enthusiastic about helping young people develop the skills to enjoy a lifetime of making music while they also study other subjects and prepare for other careers.

Playing classical music is too great an experience to leave to the professionals alone. And it's great to see the Times, Tommasini, and the Secretary of State remind us of this.

Back in NY

I'm in NY for a long weekend. Tonight, Kronos with Wu Man on pipa (a chinese instrument) as well as a new Terry Riley piece, The Cusp of Magic. Saturday night, Bargemusic, Sunday working with youth orhcstras in Connecticut, and then Monday the "Rising Stars" event at the Violoncello Society of NY.

Should be a great weekend, and of course I'll write comments on the events here.

Internet Cello Society Newsletter

There's a new issue out of the Internet Cello Society's online newsletter. Go to www.cello.org and click on the link.

Two-Fingered Cello Playing

A great story: Brain Sanders is graduating from Eastman--a very prestigious music conservatory--and has only two left fingers. Hey! I've never really been happy with my fourth finger--maybe I should just stop using it. (Didn't Jesus suggest cutting off a body part that offends you? Well, that sounds a bit expensive.)

Anyway, now all of us cello teachers will be able to use Brian as an example to our unfortunate students who don't practice enough, are feeling sorry for themselves, making excuses, etc. "And Brian Sanders got into Eastman and graduated as a performance major with only TWO fingers!"

It's an inspiring story and great way to start the day.

------------

Quick correction: Brian has all his left fingers. It's the right hand that has only two.

Reminds me of the oft-repeated story of Janos Starker telling a gifted but undisciplined student in a master class, "Too bad you can't cut off your hands and give them to someone more deserving."

But I did get to watch more of

the 1937 classic Shall We Dance with Astaire and Rogers on TCM while writing that last post. Top of their form, with an incredible score by the Gershwins. I read once that Baryshnikov said that Astaire was the greatest American male dancer ever. This film shows why. Wow!

Another reason to be out . . .

I'm gay, I'm a good dad, and I don't molest anyone. Even grownups. Just in case you were wondering.

I mention this because an email message (shouldn't check it just before bed!) alerts me that Tennessee state representative Debra Maggart says,

I am not convinced that just because our foster children desperately need loving homes that we should just place them in homes that are available when research also shows that most homosexual couples have numerous emotional dysfunctions and psychological issues that may not be healthy for children. Now, of course emotional dysfunction can be found in heterosexual couples homes . . .

Hmm. Now where are those heterosexual homes without emotional dysfunction? I don't know any. (And if you are someone I know who is in a heterosexual relationship that is totally functional, no offense intended. Just let me know who you are!)

And, of course, much of the problem is that, as Sen. Maggart understands it,

homosexual couples prey on young males and have in some instances adopted them in order to have unfretted access to subject them to a life of molestation and sexual abuse

Really? I haven't heard of any. We did have a story here in Indiana some years back where the adoptive parents of a young girl objected to her biological brother being adopted by a gay man, until it turned out that the adoptive heterosexual father was sexually abusing the little girl. Does that mean no heterosexuals should be allowed to adopt?

GIVE ME A BREAK!

OK, I got that off my chest.

(Stories about Maggart here and here, and also Google will give you more than you can stand to read.)

Thing is, Sen. Maggart is probably a very good woman who means well. She's not a bad person, she's not out to victimize or demonize gays (on purpose). As Mel White of Soulforce has taught me, it isn't that people like Sen. Maggart are malevolent. It's that on these issues their views are colored by outdated understandings, both scientific and religious. And lots and lots of fear--much of it inflamed by right-wing politicians and religious opportunists.

Throwing stones at Sen. Maggart and making fun of her isn't going to help. I would love her to meet the wonderful families I have met, including those at Jesus MCC church in Indianapolis. I'd love her to talk with all the wonderful children of gay parents out there, including mine.

When people are afraid of gay people, that's what they are, afraid. And meeting real, loving, wonderful gay people and their kids--well, that's what would help.

Because love dissolves fear.

Meanwhile, lets say that it's true that there's a higher percentage of screwed-up gay couples than straight ones. So what? That doesn't mean that it's better to leave a bunch of kids parentless than give them to the emotionally-stable, healthy same-sex couples willing to adopt. That's why all couples go through background checks and home inspections and whatever else couples who want to adopt go through.

Well, now it's going to take a while to calm down and get to sleep. Gotta remember, don't check that email just before bed.

Resuscitating Art Music

It's spring break and I'm spending it "in the Matrix" exploring the blogosphere, adding to my blogs with mania-like intensity, and catching up on reading I've been wanting to do. In the hopes of getting some constructive criticism and interaction for my improvisation book blog, I emailed everyone listed in the International Society for Improvised Music online directory. (Now there's a way to spend a Sunday afternoon!) And already it is starting to work--while no one has posted an online comment, I've received a number of interesting email messages.

In the midst of all this, I came across the article Resuscitating Art Music by John Steinmetz, a freelance bassonist in L.A. (at least when the article was written). It's fascinating, offering a rather different take on a subject being extensively addressed by Greg Sandow in his online book in progress. Very worthwhile reading.

Why Are There So Few Cello Blogs?

I'd like to know. Technorati lists only 14 with "cello" as a keyword, two of them mine. And only one other, Cellomania, blogs regularly about cello-specific issues.

What, are we cellists that traditional?

Why Write About LGBTQ Issues? Why Not?

Just added a page of reviews to my website. Arrgh . . . I hate doing self-promotion. And I'm working on adding links to the sidebar here (look to the right). Is this my spring break project? Updating my website and blogs?

Actually, adding the LGBTQ links and beginning to write about some gay issues (for example, here, here, and here) is the result of a conscious decision to expand the scope of this blog.

It began as a place to write reviews of concerts attended during my sabbatical as well as musings on music and the cello. Some part of me was, initially, concerned that writing about LGBTQ issues, including how they affect me, might make some potential students and/or their parents uncomfortable.

But, I've concluded, to censor myself like that would be to project and/or reinforce homophobia (which probably isn't there) onto those hypothetical students/parents; to act out of fear rather confidence, trust, and pride; to inhibit my self-expression; and to fail to fulfill what I believe is a social responsibility of LGBTQ people: to lead open and affirming lives.

While LGBTQ-rights organizations focus, naturally, on legal issues, like employment, marriage rights, and hate-crimes legislation, the most powerful force for social change is LGBTQ folks leading open, self-affirming lives. That's what changes hearts and minds. People relate to people who happen to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered or otherwise queer as people, as part of us, when they have the opportunity to both know them and, especially, to know they know them.

A convoluted sentence, that lat one. Another way to put it: the question of "is the homosexual my neighbor" is a lot easier to answer in the affirmative when you have good neighbors whom you know to be, among other things, homosexual.

There are what are best described as, I suppose, editorial issues in having a mixed-subject blog. I have never minded, for example, Andrew Sullivan's mixing of commentary on political issues, commentary on gay issues, and reflections on his personal life. What he is doing in his blog is commentary, analysis. It's personal opinion, so writing from a personal perspective makes much sense. Same thing here.

A specific project, like writing a book via blogging, is best kept separate, and that's what I'm doing with classicalimprov.blogspot.com.

Well, maybe they all choked up . . .

Of course, it's (remotely) possible that everyone at the Milwaukee audition choked up and didn't play his or her best. That's what happened to me those many years ago--I wouldn't have hired me based on how I actually played in that audition. (Still Milwaukee's loss!)

The problem with taking an orchestra audition is that you, well, want the job, and are hoping to get the job, and feel there is a lot riding on the audition. And that tension, which is different then the usual anxiety a concert provokes, seems to make just about everyone play less well than they are capable of.

Then there is the story of a great French clarinetist with whom I had the great good fortune to play a chamber music concert with about 20 years ago. He was, at least then, the "super-soloiste" clarinet of the major orchestras in Paris--meaning he was co-principal, but always played first chair when both principals were playing.

He had won the job at a ridiculously early age--something like 18 or 19. And here's how it happened, as I remember him telling it to me.

Evidently everyone in Paris knew that a particiular well-established clarinetist was to win the audition. My friend, in his late teens, took the audition just for the experience of taking the audition. Certainly he was known as a hot, up-and-coming young player, which is probably how he was invited to the audition in the first place. But no one in Paris though anyone but the front-runner would win.

My friend, who had just had a birthday and reached the legal driving age in France, spent the entire week before the audition taking driving lessons, all day long. He did little if any practicing until a day or two before the auditions.

Imagine it, if you can. He was unconcerned. He knew he wouldn't win, so there was no pressure. He had been consumed with a teenager's excitement at learning to drive, which left no emotional energy for worrying and obsessing over the audition. Nevertheless, he was a marvelous, accomplished and deeply musical player. He arrived relaxed and unconcerned. And he played great--nothing to win, nothing to lose.

Even when, to his surprise, my friend was advanced to the finals, he didn't think he had a chance. He still assumed the other guy would, as everyone thought they knew, win. My friend's emotional focus remained on learning to drive. Since nerves didn't get in his way, he played his best--the kind of playing that many of us can usually do only in private.

The annoited winner, on the other hand, felt the weight of the Paris musical world's expectations very intensely. This was his big chance. What he'd been waiting for all his life. All eyes were on him.

This unfortunate front runner choked up and played subpar!

And who won? My friend. And he was as shocked as the rest of the Paris music world.

There's no question that this was a true discovery of a major young artist. But my friend knew that something had happened that he could never intentionally recreate. Had he thought there was even a remote chance he might win, he told me, he would have been an emotional wreck, and doubted he could have played any where near as well as when he was focused on learning to drive.

Milwaukee Symphony: No Principal Cellist

Well, the internet cello world is abuzz: no one won the Milwaukee Symphony principal cello audition.

Their problem is that they didn't hire me for the job when I auditioned in 1988! That was the last orchestra audition I ever took. DePauw hired me as the cello professor here, and I decided to stick with college teaching and playing chamber music.

As for the recent Milwaukee audition, I don't get it. I know a fantastic cellist who plays in the section of a major symphony, is an extraordinary artist, and who will someday make a great principal cellist. And I know at least one member of the Milwaukee cello section who would make a great principal cellist, too. What's their problem?

I don't know. Could it be . . . committees? The curse of academic life is being on committees which debate and argue endlessly and can never decide on anything. Audition committees can do the same thing. And music directors can get bizarrely picky.

The rest of us will never know what happened. But a lot of us know that there are great players out there who would make a great principal cellist, and some of them were at that audition.

And I'm glad I'm not taking orchestra auditions and applying for jobs any more!

Upholding the Bible or the Constitution?

Jamie Raskin is a professor at American University running for the Maryland State Senate. He recently made a remark that's been quoted all over the LGBTQ-friendly internet (this version is from a Baltimore Sun article reprinted on Raskin's website:

Sen. Nancy Jacobs, a Republican who represents Harford and Cecil counties, engaged in an impassioned debate with Jamie Raskin, a constitutional law professor from American University, over the influence of the Bible on modern law.

"As I read Biblical principles, marriage was intended, ordained and started by God - that is my belief," she said. "For me, this is an issue solely based on religious principals."

Raskin shot back that the Bible was also used to uphold now-outlawed statutes banning interracial marriage, and that the constitution should instead be lawmakers' guiding principle.

"People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible," he said.

Maybe Josh can point this out to U.S. Senator George Allen when they next meet.

Meanwhile, I used to live in Maryland and I think I may send Raskin a contribution. And maybe something to Theocracy Watch, too.

By the way, I don't begrudge religious conservatives their active participation in the political process. They set a great example for organizing and being involved. We religious and secular libertarians and liberals just need to get our act equally well together. As do all who want to do something about global warming, universal health insurance, and the horrifying, ever-expanding national debt.

There's the Grieg Sonata and then there's the Grieg Sonata

One of the very advanced pianists at DePauw is fulfilling her chamber music requirement this semester by playing sonatas with me. She is such a wonderul pianist, and so musical and intelligent, that it is always one of the highlights of my week. (And, in general, I think it is a great way to learn and teach to have younger, less-experienced musicians rehearse and perform with older, more experienced players--it's what they do at Marlboro.)

I've always held the Grieg A minor sonata in rather low regard. No one would argue it is his strongest piece, and many of the themes have long struck me as just, well, unimaginative. But my young colleague had heard the piece on the radio, and was quite taken with it (much to my surprise). She asked if we could read it, and of course I agreed. Not only because she wanted to do it, but also because I've never played it, and it is a part of the cello repertoire.

We read through it this afternoon, and she said, "Well, I don't know why I liked it so much when I heard it on the radio. It seems dumb now."

Maybe it was how well they played it, I said. I told her a story one of my teachers, Denis Brott, used to tell me. His teacher, Gregor Piatigorsky, used to say that the an artist's job was to live up to the greatness of a great piece, and with a less-than-great piece, to play the music so well that it would seem great.

We played the first movement again, with all the imagnation, musicality, and sincerity of intention we were capable of. And what do you know? It was like a completely different piece. We liked it.

I realized I had never heard the Grieg played well. Some pieces can be played even poorly and they still are obviously great music. Just about any piece of Bach, for example. Other works have to be played with imagination and commitment to come alive.

There's a life lesson in here somewhere, too.

Maybe the world is getting better

From Andrew Sullivan, with whom I couldn't agree more (on this point):

The next generation of gay kids are the best yet. They haven't been as psychologically damaged by homophobia as my generation; and they won't take being treated as second-class citizens and human beings. I'm proud of being part of a gay generation that stood up for our dignity and equality at a critical time and changed history. I'm even prouder of the generations that are coming.

His comment was prompted by 16-year-old Josh's recounting of his polite confrontation with Senator George Allen. With teenagers like this, I have much hope for the future. (Lots of comments about the story on Josh's site and on AmericaBlog.)

Mass homophobia does indeed appear to be generational. I am amazed at times by the lack of homophobia among my teenage children's friends, and glad that by being an "out" gay dad I have contributed to that. I'm also amazed at the changes I've seen in the climate for LGBTQ students at DePauw University, where I teach, since I came here in 1988. 10 years ago, it was impossible to be an out gay man and live in a fraternity. Now gay men are living openly and comfortably in a number of frats, including some that used to be the most aggressively anti-gay.

"They haven't been as psychologically damaged by homophobia as my generation," Sullivan writes, and for the most part that is very true. My generation is pretty damaged. I don't personally know any gay men in their 40s or older, including me, who are not deeply, permanently scarred from growing up in a family and social milieu that taught us that who we are is sick, immoral, and sinful. While some of the damage can be healed, there is much that can only be managed.

There is nothing more wonderful in my life than seeing for myself that homophobia is unquestionably not intrinsic to the human condition, and that growing up attracted to the same sex doesn't have to mean growing up self-hating and rejected.

And stories like Josh's remind me of what a privilege it is to be a teacher and to get to know extraordinary young people.

Crash v. Brokeback

OK, I know this debate is so over. But I just got around to watching Crash, the film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. There's been a good deal of controversey--did it win over the front-runner Brokeback Mountain because of homophobia among (especially) the older, more concervative voting members of the academy?

Among the LGBT blogs and web forums I read from time to time the opinion seemed sharply divided: one camp which sees Brokeback as the greatest film ever made (or close to it) and Crash as "trash." The other group found Brokeback to be great in some respects but flawed, and Crash to be a terrific film, as profound and provacative in its own way as Brokeback.

Having now seen them both, I am in the latter group. Crash is an amazing film, and had Brokeback not shown up, I imagine many now proclaiming "Crash is trash" would be singing its praises. What film has captured the paradoxes of life, and of race relations, so well?

Brokeback, for all its power, struck me as overly melodramatic. I have to admit that I'm so sick of gays-as-victims movies that my perspective may be skewed. I'm looking forward to watching it on DVD and havingn a chance to reevaluate it.

In any event, I'm relieved that I liked Crash and thought it a worthy Best Picture opponent for Brokeback. I don't have to worry about some sinister anti-gay movement within the Hollywood power structure. After all, if it was homophobia that kept Brokeback from winning Best Picture, why didn't it keep Ang Lee from winning Best Director for the same film?

The most likely explanation to me is that it was a sort of tie, and the Academy gave BP to Crash and BD to Brokeback.

Let it snow . . .

First day of spring and . . . our biggest snow of the year. This may be the first day Greencastle schools were closed for the day due to snow this academic year. So strange--days with 60 degree weather in January, then lots of snow on the first day of spring.

In the last 24 hours I've posted three or four new articles to my improv-book-in-progress blog (link at right).

And, you know you are really a grownup when you go to a Border's bookstore in order to buy a copy of Roberts Rules of Order.