Discovery Drafts

Wordless Wednesday

 Adella spent last week at band camp at East Carolina University.  She was the only Connecticut student among the North Carolinians, but she felt welcomed and at-home.  She took on some challenging music with her band, and the did a fabulous job.  It was utterly amazing.  It's easy to see why the ECU Music Department is so strong.  Before the show, we walked around Greenville, and Adella had a little dance with the billboard.  Not everybody can do ballet with a smoothie in hand.  Back on campus, we took in the art that adorns every corner of the very beautiful campus. I didn't look to see what this work was called, but itmade me think of Louis LeBrocquy's "Don Quixote." Dell liked this one.  It madeus think of 3-D graffiti. I was out of storage on my phone, so I didn't get a recording of the works, but I will soon have the CD, and I will share.  Given the chance, kids can do some amazing stuff with music.  Here's to ECU for what the school

 The magnolia were in bloom on the East Carolina University campus this weekend, and they smelled beautiful. Today's Flowers

ShopRite has the best flowers in the world as far as I am concerned.  Whatever I get there lasts for days upon days in the vase, and everything I plant comes back to say hello.  I bought this daisy today because I like yellow very much and I have been wondering why it's so hard to buy yellow clothing.  Anybody know?  I don't.  This is the color of summer and sunshine and wealth.  Why don't we wear it more often?  In its softer shades, it makes everyone look good.  Yellow is good for everything but cars.  It is a happy color (just ask the Wal-Mart people) and we need more of it. Today's Flowers

At a professional development session last week, I made a remark to a colleague about the list of students who might not graduate that we had received in our email.  The point of  the electronic message was to make teachers aware of the need to help these kids in any way possible get over whatever hurdles might keep them from passing their classes. The point of the electronic message was to remind us to be the hope where perhaps our students had none. A teacher from a salubrious suburban town not very far from where I work remarked with horror, "You have a list?" Sure do.  Because down the road from wherever you are live scores of young people who lack hope and don't see the point.  If they can't see a future, these kids see school as a place where they belong, eat hot food, and are accepted by other kids and adults who get the no-hope thing and choose to try rather than recoil in righteous indignation that--what?  That some young people need caring adul

I appreciate my daughter's photography teacher because she teaches her about what are sometimes called the "soft skills" of kindness, communication, compassion--which I understand to be the active, engaged version of empathy.  Once you feel what someone is going through, what are you doing about it? Art teachers very often get the credit for teaching the soft skills.  And because those skills are soft, they are often dismissed as less important or unimportant. After all, what's kindness if you can't add?  What is kindness if you can't report the facts? At this stage in my life, I think it's all about the soft stuff.  I don't give a damn about what you know or what you do if you can't be kind.  I want the art of you before I'll tangle with the science of you. Without compassion, knowledge is nothing and that horrible less-than-nothing:  It is every decision we make without concern for how what we decide affects others. It comes down to t