SubscribeStar Saturday: Spring Jam 2023 Review

3 June 20232 June 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Subscribers: the annual TPP Summer Reading List will be posted soon (sometime this month—maybe next weekend!). I’ll also be getting back to my series on Washington, D.C., this month as well.

Another Spring Jam is in the books, and I think it was the best one yet. I should probably write that behind the paywall, but I’d like everyone to know.

Regular readers will know that in October 2020 I launched the TJC Halloween Spooktacular (I’d done a “Spooktacular” at a coffee shop in 2019, but that was a very different event), a Halloween concert on my front porch. That first front porch Spooktacular featured two opening bands, followed by a couple of sets from my friend John and myself. It was a rousing success, but in retrospect, it was too long (three hours!) and needed some streamlining.

Of course, in The Age of The Virus, everyone was starving for live entertainment and social interaction after being cooped up inside with Netflix and takeout for (by that point) seven months, so I could get way with a bloated bill. It was a success, and most folks stuck around until we wrapped up sometime after 9 PM.

While I don’t think I’ve ever repeated the success of the first Spooktacular in terms of attendance and cashflow, I do think I’ve improved the formula somewhat.

The biggest change came when I made the Spooktacular and the spin-off Spring Jam into a recital for my private music students. Following the doldrums of Summer 2020, when I had just one piano student every week, my private lessons empire ballooned to around twenty lessons or so each week (occasionally fewer, often more). That has been a major financial and musical blessing, but it also means I have enough students to put on a pretty good recital, even if some students can’t attend.

With this latest Spring Jam, I think I have gotten it down to more of a science—but a fun science, like playing with magnets in the seventh grade. There’s still the fun, relaxed, DYI-spirit of the event, but everything seems to be running more smoothly.

Like playing an instrument, practice makes perfect.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Even More Graduation Day Wisdom

27 May 202322 May 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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 hectic few months.

I never anticipated being asked to speak at graduation, and I long doubted I ever would. I still have not—lest the last sentence come across as misleading—but after delivering the baccalaureate sermon this past Sunday, I suspect the odds of being asked to speak at commencement at some future date has increased, even if only slightly. What was hovering at around 1% might be up to 5% right now, but I possess no special insights into the vagaries of my administrations hive mind.

Regardless, if I did get to speak before our graduating seniors, I’d offer up some of my dubious wisdom, such as it is. The first time I wrote on this topic I offered mostly financial advice; last year, after experiencing the effects of The Age of The Virus, I revised my wisdom to include more spiritual concerns.

This year, my advice is a grab-bag of plainspoken wisdom—take it or leave it.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Baccalaureate Service 2023

20 May 202319 May 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

The following is the written version of the speech/sermon I’ll be giving at my school’s baccalaureate service tomorrow, Sunday, 20 May 2023. It pulls from the Scripture readings that students will make prior to my little sermonette, which are Proverbs 3:1-6, James 1:2-5, Psalm 20:1-5, Jeremiah 29:11, and Psalm 113. I also include Matthew 11:28-30 and Psalm 20:6 (and probably allude to several other verses that I do not reference directly).

Good evening families, faculty, staff, and graduates of the Class of 2023. You have worked hard to be sitting here today, and in six days you will get to sit again for another ceremony, during which your mother will probably cry and you will hear a dozen or so senior videos with the Trace Adkin’s song “You’re Gonna Miss This” (and probably Bill Joel’s “Vienna”).

But to get where you are today took a great deal of effort and struggle. Sometimes it was your parents doing the struggling, or your teachers, but ultimately, you had to get the work done. Your reward for your efforts is to build upon the foundation you have laid, and while I encourage you all to get some much-deserved rest, your work is only beginning.

While you have learned a plethora of facts, and learned how to perform elaborate titrations in Chemistry, and learned how to dissect a work of literature or a piece of poetry, you have also learned how to live. In learning all of these other skills and facts and figures, you have, in the process, learned what matters in life. And here is the big hint: it isn’t how to perform elaborate titrations in a chemistry lab.

Our purpose in this life is to praise and glorify God in all of our endeavors. Psalm 113 is a model for us: “From the rising of the sun to its going down; The Lord’s name is to be praised.”

“From the rising of the sun to its going down.” That’s a lot! Not exactly an easy task, is it? We are to praise and glorify God in all of our endeavors? Well, yes. Fortunately, we have God to Help us.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Grinding Down

13 May 202312 May 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Does anyone else feel as though work has gotten more difficult lately? It seems as though as the academic year grinds towards its inevitable end, everything is getting busier—and harder.

Perhaps it’s the knowledge that soon—always, blessedly, soon—it will be summer, bringing unlimited freedom along with the heat, humidity, and mosquitos. Readers in normal careers—the ones that don’t get two months off every summer—probably don’t get pre-summer blues, because there’s never a break. Paradoxically, I suspect that the knowledge that I’ll have loads of free time soon makes the current slogger seem even sloggier.

Of course, it does get busy this time of year. If third quarter is the doldrums of the school year—the long, dark days of January and February, when everyone is in some form of waking hibernation—fourth quarter is the grand reawakening, full of concerts, plays, and multifarious other special events. Then it’s end-of-the-year banquets, awards ceremonies, baccalaureate services, graduations, and all the rest, blurring together into one glorious slurry of festivities and obligations.

I’ve actually been asked to speak at my school’s baccalaureate service this year, which is a huge honor, but which also necessitated rescheduling a book-signing event my cousin is putting together (new date is TBD). I’ll be posting my little sermon next Saturday, so you’ll actually have the opportunity to read it a day before I deliver it.

Regardless, I can sense burnout creeping in, as the days wear on and seem to get longer and longer (and start earlier and earlier). There’s a reason I’m writing about the toll of overwork this week, rather than continuing with the saga of my Washington, D.C. trip (the next episode is going to be awesome, by the way).

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Washington, D.C. Trip Part IV: Driving Miss Lindsey

6 May 202330 April 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

After a beautiful, contemplative morning at Mount Vernon, we scurried onto the bus to head up to Capitol Hill. We had a scheduled meeting with Congressman Russell Fry (the man who unseated Tom Rice in the 2022 election), but due to some parental meddling, we also had a meeting with Senator Lindsey Graham, the senior senator from South Carolina. These meetings ended up being scheduled for the same time, so I found myself on the phone with Fry’s aid to sort out the particulars.

Our tour guide Denise was on edge because of the overlapping times, and was particularly concerned about us meeting with Fry on the steps on the House of Representatives side of the Capitol Building, then quickly relocating to the Senate steps. The distance is probably two or three football lengths—not a very far walk at all. Apparently, though, senators don’t like crossing over to the House side, because they’re somehow demigods.

Of course, she underestimated the kind of clout (and, likely, political donations) that our parents command, and pretty soon Miss Lindsey would be sashaying our way.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Washington, D.C. Trip Part III: Mount Vernon

29 April 202328 April 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

After the debacle of children sliding down the Lincoln Memorial came much-needed rest. The long day of traveling was, in many ways, the easiest of our days in D.C. Thursday promised to be full of walking, but all those steps would be worth it.

Following our food service hotel breakfast—I’m a sucker for those hyper-yellow egg product scrambled “eggs” they serve at hotel continental breakfasts—we loaded the bus and headed for Mount Vernon, the home of our first President, George Washington.

The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association maintains and preserves Mount Vernon. The Association is the nation’s first national historic preservation organization, and the oldest active patriotic society. Founded in 1853 after the founder’s mother witnessed the poor state of the home, the Association had raised $200,000 by 1858, with which it purchased the home and two hundred acres surrounding it. Following the ructions of the American Civil War, restoration work began, and continues to this day.

It is a gift to the American people to walk the grounds where George and Martha Washington resided. There’s something appealing, too, about the home and grounds being under the auspices of a private non-profit organization, rather than the National Park Service. It’s proof that private individuals sharing a common goal can often achieve more, and do it better and more efficiently, than the government can.

It was a crisp, sunny morning when we visited Mount Vernon, and it was easily the highlight of the trip, at least for me.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Washington, D.C. Trip Part II: Showdown at the Lincoln Memorial

22 April 202321 April 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

After a long bus ride and a whirlwind tour of two Smithsonians and the Spy Museum—and a hearty feast at Buca di Beppo—our merry band of wastrels and wine moms headed out on an evening tour of three memorials: the Korean War Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial.

I first visited the Korean War Memorial on a high school band trip, and found it to be particularly arresting. The fuzzy images of soldiers crossing a battlefield have stuck with me ever since. It’s a testament to the power of a good memorial not only to honor the dead, but to highlight the hardships and tribulations they endured. The Korean War is the “forgotten war” of twentieth-century America, sandwiched as it was between the glory of the Second World War and the ignominy of the Vietnam War.

Apparently, I failed to capture any pictures of the Korean War Memorial (the image above is an addition to the Vietnam War Memorial), likely because I was a.) in quite, reverent awe while passing through the memorial and b.) calling down knuckleheads who ought to know to treat these memorials as quasi-sacred places, memorials worthy of silent dignity and respect.

That apparent lack of understanding of and respect for those who gave their lives was a recurring theme of the evening, and one that would result in some frustration and consternation on the part of yours portly.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Washington, D.C. Trip, Part I: The Smithsonians

15 April 202314 April 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

In the waning days of March 2023, I had the opportunity to chaperone a group of ninth- and tenth-grade students to Washington, D.C. The trip was a jam-packed, whirlwind tour—a “taste,” as our neurotic tour guide put it—of our nation’s capital, cramming in as many “must-see” historic sites and museums as possible in three days.

Indeed, it was technically less than three days. We spent the morning of the first day of the trip driving there, and the afternoon and evening of the third day driving back. That gave us one full day in D.C. and the surrounding environs.

Notwithstanding that tight itinerary, the days were full. Even our abbreviated travel days managed to squeeze in loads of activities. If anything, it was too much, but despite some adolescent shenanigans, I made it through, exhausted and weary.

The trip was a source of both inspiration and disillusionment with the field of education, and public civility generally, and brought up a number of issues that I am still contemplating weeks later.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Scramblin’

8 April 20235 April 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Last Saturday was the annual Lamar Egg Scramble. It also marked my first foray into the world of arts and crafts selling, as I obtained a vendor spot to attempt to sell some of my paintings.

I managed to land a vendor spot in exchange for playing the Taste of Lamar, so I was able to market test my paintings in a festival setting. While I’ve made a few private sales to family and friends, I’ve not had much success selling my paintings online.

Finally, I had the opportunity to discover if I’m just a delusional hack, or if there actually is a market for amateurish, Primitivist paintings of squids and landscapes.

It was an abject failure.

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