Tag: 2024

SubscribeStar Saturday: Yet Even More Graduation Day Wisdom

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Another graduation ceremony is upon us, signaling the end of the school year and the beginning of another summer vacation.  The grand cycle of the academic calendar continues, coming to a stately close after a few hectic months.

Last year I predicted that my chances of being asked to speak at commencement increased from 1% to about 5%.  That was overly optimistic; given that we don’t have speakers at commencement besides the valedictorian and the salutatorian, I’d put the odds at less than 1%.

Even if we did have a member of faculty speak, I think my chances would improve only slightly.  I’m a good teacher, and well-spoken when working from a prepared text, with a rich, buttery voice made for radio.  But I’m not one of the “glamorous” teachers.  My administration is very fixated on photogenic and youthful teachers—essentially, they want the face they put to the public to be wildly attractive.

I get that, and while I’m a handsome-ish dude and a dynamic music teacher, I’m too much of an iconoclast to fit into the mold.  I don’t check any sexy diversity boxes, and I don’t hang around the front office like desperate courtesans trying to win the favor of the king.  Perhaps if I did play politics a bit more I’d be a more likely candidate, but I have no desire or inclination to do so.

But I digress.  If I were to speak at graduation, I’d have some spicy-but-pedestrian bits of wisdom to share with the Class of 2024.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Graduation Season 2024

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Graduation season has matriculated for yours portly.  Indeed, college graduations have already been rolling on for a few weeks now, with a flurry of graduation photos and heartfelt Facebook posts accompanying the accomplishments of young people across the land.  My school observed a graduation ceremony for our eighth graders last night, continuing the long-standing tradition of watering down “graduation” to apply to any milestone.  Never mind kindergarten graduation ceremonies; pretty soon we’ll be having graduation ceremonies for when youngsters leave the house to head to school for the first time.

Regardless, it is a season of joy and celebration, and there is something to be said for all of that pomp and circumstance (and the constant playing of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance No. 1,” which is echoing across the land even as I write, I’d wager).  Nowadays graduations are largely an opportunity for mothers to take thousands of pictures of their children (which likely explains the explosion of “graduations” referenced earlier), but they still hold certain symbolic and cultural importance.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spring Concert 2024 Postmortem

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My students’ big Spring Concert was this past Tuesday, 30 April 2024—the perfect way to finish out a super busy month.  T.S. Elliott wrote in The Wasteland that “April is the cruellest month,” and for yours portly, it’s true—it’s my busiest month of the year at work, and I always seem to come down with a gnarly sinus infection during the height of it, largely (I suspect) due to exhaustion.

But April is also the coolest month because my students get to showcase their talents at our awesome concert.  This year’s concert was overstuffed with goodness, like a really comfortable, worn couch that also produces high quality rock ‘n’ roll.

Perhaps that’s not the most elegant or eloquent metaphor.  What I mean is that the concert was long, but good.  The length was the result of structural issues:  we had to incorporate Dance, Choir, my Middle School and High School Ensembles, and various soloists.  Rather than trim the fat (and, to be clear, there wasn’t much fat to trim) and shortchange my students, I leaned into it, producing a concert that was a bit over two hours.

To be clear, my goal is always to get to one hour, maybe ninety minutes.  Seventy-five minutes is a good compromise.  But with the Choir director insisting on featuring five beautiful but laborious choral pieces, and Dance students doing their arrhythmic gesticulating, it tends to pad out the runtime.  My thought is, why should my students suffer because we’ve expanded our offerings in the performing arts?

My administration was not pleased with the length, but as I pointed out to them, it’s the same as going to a varsity baseball game on a Tuesday night, and we never complain about those.  Further, my Karen-esque boss hosts two large, lengthy beauty pageants each year, also on school nights, which easily match or exceed the length of my concert.  Quite frankly, I’m tired of compromising on this issue.  If athletics and the boss get whatever they want when it comes to length of programs, I’m going to pursue the same tactic.

But I digress.  That’s material probably best left behind the paywall, but I’m pretty ticked off at my administration right now, and frankly don’t care if they stumble upon this rant.  Regardless, the concert was awesome, and my students did extremely well.  Seriously, it was the best one yet.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The King in Yellow Review

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The artwork for today’s post is the cover of the instrumental piece “Yellow Knight,” from my upcoming release Four Mages.  The album releases on 2 May 2024, and a YouTube video for “Yellow Knight” (linked above) will go live on 14 May 2024.

Recently I purchased a copy of Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow, a classic work of “weird fiction” that would inspire writers like H.P. Lovecraft.  It’s a book I’ve wanted to read for sometime, especially with the idea of a malevolent play that is so terrible and beautiful, it drives anyone who reads it mad.  That play, of course, is the titular The King in Yellow, the text of which—beyond a couple of snippets—is never quoted in the book.

The book is a collection of ten stories, the first four of which share the thread of the infamous play.  The rest of the book consists of stories that take place mostly in Paris, specifically the Latin Quarter, and revolves around the lives of young American art students in the City of Light.  Indeed, Chambers published In the Quarter, a collection of stories about the Bohemian lives of the Latin Quarter’s residents, a year prior to the publication of The King in Yellow.

The four proper TKiY stories are quite good, and succeed as horror stories that unsettle, more than they scare.  The hidden gems of this collection, however, are the Latin Quarter stories, which depict a freewheeling, fun-loving period in French history before the unhappy days of the First World War ruined France and the West forever.

I reviewed one of those stories, “The Street of the First Shell,” earlier this week.  Today, I’d like to examine the entire book, which really is two shorter books in one.  There are the stories clearly connected to the “Yellow King” mythos.  The rest are all stories that take place in the Latin Quarter.  Unlike “The Street of the First Shell,” however, most of the rest are comedic romances, though some are a bit heavier than others.

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Spring Break Short Story Recommendation 2024: “The Street of the First Shell”

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Recently I purchased a copy of Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow, a classic work of “weird fiction” that would inspire writers like H.P. Lovecraft.  It’s a book I’ve wanted to read for sometime, especially with the idea of a malevolent play that is so terrible and beautiful, it drives anyone who reads it mad.  That play, of course, is the titular The King in Yellow, the text of which—beyond a couple of snippets—is never quoted in the book.

The book is a collection of ten stories, the first four of which share the thread of the infamous play.  The rest of the book consists of stories that take place mostly in Paris, specifically the Latin Quarter, and revolves around the lives of young American art students in the City of Light.  Indeed, Chambers published In the Quarter, a collection of stories about the Bohemian lives of the Latin Quarter’s residents, a year prior to the publication of The King in Yellow.

The four proper TKiY stories are quite good, and succeed as horror stories that unsettle, more than they scare.  The hidden gems of this collection, however, are the Latin Quarter stories, which depict a freewheeling, fun-loving period in French history before the unhappy days of the First World War ruined France and the West forever.

Of those stories, my favorite is “The Street of the First Shell,” which takes place during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.  It is a thrilling depiction of the privation and struggle of that conflict, and of the doomed Parisian defense against the Prussian siege.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: SCISA Music Festival 2024

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This past Thursday was the annual South Carolina Independent School Association (SCISA) Music Festival, a major event for my music students each year.  The Music Festival is an opportunity for students to perform solo and ensemble pieces for judges.  The judges are typically doctoral students at the University of South Carolina School of Music, and they often give excellent, detailed feedback to students.

Students can earn one of three scores:  a Gold/Superior/I; a Silver/Excellent/II; or a Bronze/Good/III.  Even students who earn a Gold/Superior often get invaluable comments (in other words, not just things like, “That was amazing!” without further elaboration, although that does happen occasionally).  While I stress to my students that our aim is to get a Gold on our performances, the real value lies in 1.) challenging ourselves as musicians in the first place and 2.) taking constructive feedback to heart so that we can improve as musicians.

I also make sure they know that simply playing at the Festival is a testament to their courage as performers, as it is very difficult to expose one’s self to criticism, even when that criticism is designed to help us improve.  For me, signing up and working hard to prepare a solo is the most important victory; everything else is icing on the cake.

That said, I am very pleased to announce that both my Middle School and High School Instrumental Ensembles earned Golds for their performances.  The Middle School Music Ensemble performed an instrumental arrangement of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La donna è mobile” from his opera Rigoletto (you can purchase sheet music of my now-award-winning arrangement here, here, and here).  The High School Music Ensemble played the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves.”

Our Choir Director had a great day, too:  her choir earned a Gold, and each of her vocal soloists earned Gold as well.

Here is the (rather dry) update I sent to my administration after school, which I am sure they have blasted out onto social media by this point:

On Thursday, 7 March 2024, forty-two (42) student-musicians travelled to the SCISA Music Festival at the USC School of Music in Columbia, South Carolina to perform adjudicated solo and ensemble pieces. Students competed in the categories of Small Vocal Ensemble, Small Instrumental Ensemble, Large Instrumental Ensemble, Vocal Solo, Drum Solo, Piano Solo, Guitar Solo, and Violin Solo.

The Small Vocal Ensemble, the Small Middle School Instrumental Ensemble, and the Large High School Instrumental Ensemble all earned Gold (Superior) ratings.

Vocal soloists earned five (5) Gold ratings, two (2) Silver ratings, and one (1) Bronze rating.

Instrumental soloists earned eight (8) Gold ratings, three (3) Silver ratings, and one (1) Bronze rating.

In total, students gave twenty-three (23) musical performances, earning sixteen (16) Gold/Superior ratings, five (5) Silver/Excellent ratings, and two (2) Bronze/Good ratings.

The results demonstrate the musical talents of the [school’s] student body, and speak to the cultivation of those talents in the Music program.

So, what does it take to get such results?  Let’s dive in.

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Trumparion Rising II

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Well, well, well… it seems that, despite the best efforts of the Establishment GOP/Uniparty/Boomercons, GEOTUS Donald J. Trump can’t be beaten in a fair fight.  At least, he won the Iowa caucuses, and will likely sweep the rest of the primaries as he marches towards the Republican nomination.

What scares the powers-that-be is that Trump still wields tremendous influence.  The plethora of headlines screaming that Trump is no longer a viable candidate are the desperate cries of an elite who hope that if they say it enough, it will become true.  Their black magic and dark incantations hold no power over the righteous.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Spirit of 1776, Three Years On

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A very Happy Birthday to our dedicated senior correspondent, Audre Myers.  Have a great day, Audre!

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It’s been three years since the New Epiphany Rising (the original Epiphany Rising was in 1400), when Americans protested the outcome of the 2020 election.  We’re now staring down another presidential election in just ten months.  Where are we now?

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Happy New Year 2024!

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Happy New Year, everyone!  It’s 2024!

Hard to believe it, but The Portly Politico has been going nonstop for five years at this point—and the roots of this blog go all the way back to 2009.  The blog is now at roughly 1825 consecutive days of posting—or something like that.  Shew!

I don’t know what 2024 holds, other than a presidential election, but here’s to a great year!

Monday Morning Movie Reviews will be back—at long last!—next Monday, 8 January 2024, God Willing.

In the meantime, enjoy New Year’s Day!

—TPP