SubscribeStar Saturday: The State of Education Update II

23 April 202223 April 2022 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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Spring Break is drawing to a close, with a four-week-ish slog to the relative freedom of summer vacation, when I go from being a stressed-out ball of blubber persisting on processed foods and frozen pizza to living like a chubby retiree. As such, it seemed like an opportune time to look at the state of education in the United States.

As I wrote this morning, lately I’ve been listening to quite a bit of the ideas of “unschooling” advocate John Taylor Gatto. Some of his views on adolescence (he says there really isn’t one, and that childhood essentially ends around the age seven) are pretty radical, though they aren’t without historical precedent, but for the most part, I find myself in agreement with assessment of the modern educational-industrial complex.

The first JTG video I watched/listened to

In essence, Gatto (should I call him “JTG”?) argues—and supports, with ample primary source research—that the modern system of “warehouse” schooling is not a proper education at all, but rather a massive system for indoctrinating students into compliance and mass conformity. He argues that little real “education” takes place inside of schools, and that a genuine education comes from within the student himself. In other words, all of the world is a “classroom” and everyone in it a “teacher” to the open learner. An elite, private or boarding school education is available to anyone, Gatto contends, for free.

Gatto famously quit after a long, celebrated career in New York City public schools in a letter to The Wall Street Journal entitled “I Quit, I Think” (note that the title has two possible meanings: the first, obvious one is the note of uncertainty the added “I Think” carries; the second one is the subtle implication that because “I Think,” I (Gatto) must quit). In short, Gatto came to believe that what he had been doing for years was actually harming students, rather than improving their lives.

Talk about a heavy epiphany.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Easter Weekend 2022

16 April 202215 April 2022 The Portly Politico6 Comments

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As is my custom, it’s time for my annual Easter Weekend post (read “Easter Weekend” and “Easter Weekend 2021” if you’d like to track the posts over time). Easter Weekend is always doubly special for yours portly, as it marks the beginning of my Spring Break.

Unfortunately, on the first morning of my long-anticipated (and much-needed) break, a freak accident befell me. My beloved dog, Murphy, and I were out walking. I had some breakfast in the oven, and realized we needed to get back in the next five minutes.

Murphy—as bull terriers are wont to be—is very stubborn, especially when she picks up the scent of cats (or vermin). I usually can get her to follow along with me if I tug her and start running; she will then trot along to keep up.

I began my usual tug-trot procedure, when Murphy suddenly turned a full ninety degrees and ran—at top speed!—directly into my right ankle. I heard a crunch and collapsed to the ground.

Miraculously, I managed to hang onto her leash. She’d seen a couple of cats darting by, and—without regard for her human—crippled me in her would-be pursuit.

Angry and wounded, but still not feeling the full effects, as my adrenaline was pumping, I attempted to drag her homeward. She resisted, and slipped from her collar. Murphy then resumed her chase of the poor felines.

I limped over to her—she had the cats scrambling up a porch post, fleeing for their nine lives—but before I could get the collar back on her, she darted across the highway after the cats (it may also have been another stray cat—we have a problem with them here), right as a Darlington County Sheriff’s deputy went rolling by. In my limping, disheveled state, he must have taken pity on me. If so, I thank him for not writing me a ticket for my dog being off-leash.

So I proceeded to limp across US-401 to my friend’s mother-in-law’s house, where Murphy was pursuing her quarry through her bushes. She then trotted up onto the porch, and as I slowly climbed the steps, she trotted back out, looking at me as if to say, “Hey, dad, what’s up?”

Thus began our gimped walk home—and she still resisted. We finally made it back to a burnt (but still edible!) breakfast.

I stuck to the full day of lessons I had that afternoon, literally dragging my foot from one house to the next (driving, fortunately, was not difficult). I think I overdid it here, but $150 was on the line, and if I was going to end up at a doctor’s office, I’d need that much (at least) for whatever ungodly medical bills I might face.

As of the time of this writing (Good Friday!), I still have not been to a doctor to X-ray the foot, but a long night’s sleep really helped. The foot is still swollen, though that’s gone done, and with the aid of a cane—yes, I am walking with a cane, care of a good neighbor—I can get around with minimal pain. Thursday night it had gotten excruciating to walk around, but now I can bumble around the house without too much inconvenience.

So, now that I’ve regaled you with tales of my recent crippling, here’s what’s in store for Easter 2022:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spring Concert 2022 Postmortem

9 April 20229 April 2022 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

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This past Wednesday night was the Spring Concert for my students. As is my custom, I like to do a concert “postmortem” with my students to talk about what went well, and what we could improve (myself included) for the next concert.

This year’s concert really went over well. Anecdotally, I was told that a number of parents said something along the lines of “I thought last year’s concert was good, but this one was even better.” I do think we hit the runtime just right: the concert kicked off a few minutes after 6 PM, and we wrapped up right around 7:15 PM. That’s with our dance classes performing in the middle of the program.

We split the concert into three parts: an opening section with Middle School Music and a couple of solos; the dance classes performing six pieces; and a closing section with my High School Music Ensemble (and a few more solos).

With that, here is a breakdown of the two musical portions.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Indianapolis and TPP Update

26 March 202225 March 2022 The Portly Politico2 Comments

I’m in Indianapolis this weekend for my older brother’s wedding, which I will likely report about in some detail next week. As I lacked the time this week to craft a better SubscribeStar Saturday post, I figured I’d give subscribers an update on my various projects.

Blogging at Buca di Beppo, Indianapolis, Indiana

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SubscribeStar Saturday: International Relations

19 March 202219 March 2022 The Portly Politico2 Comments

Continuing somewhat on last Saturday’s post, I’ve been thinking more about the war in Ukraine this week, specifically pondering how surreal it all seems. Obviously, it’s quite real for the people in the Ukraine and Russia, as well as the various volunteers from around the globe who have enlisted to fight on behalf of the Ukraine.

But part of the surrealism—at least for those of us, like yours portly, who are swaddled in luxurious comfort here in the United States—is that we didn’t have to worry about international relations and foreign policy in any immediate way for at least four years. At any rate, during the Trump administration, foreign policy largely receded from the national consciousness as a major concern.

Sure, there was the constant banging-on about “Russian collusion” and interfering in the Ukraine, and early hysterical rumors of nuclear war with North Korea. But President Trump silenced the Norks, the Russkies, and even, to some extent, the ChiComs. I was dismayed, initially, by the rocket launch in Syria early in Trump’s administration, but in retrospect it seems like that was a convincing show of force to the Russians (who have all sorts of interests in Syria).

After that—and after dropping some big ol’ bombs in Afghanistan, etc.—foreign policy seemed like an afterthought. For years that had dominated headlines and—given my own interest in the topic—my mental conception of America’s role in the world.

Perhaps one of the great overlooked achievements of the Trump administration is that it achieved—however fleetingly—a semblance of global order and peace, so much that we didn’t have to think about foreign policy and international relations in any deep, consistent way for a few years. I have no doubt that a second Trump term would not have seen the current escalation in the Ukraine.

A bold claim, but I think it’s accurate. Regardless, the focus of this post is on that brief moment when the woes of the rest of the world seemed distant, and the United States could focus instead on its own domestic woes (of which there are many). Now that that moment—gauzy and illusory as it turned out to be—has passed, we may be facing some profoundly existential questions about the future of the global order.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: War Pigs

12 March 202215 March 2022 The Portly Politico2 Comments

My music students have been attempting to learn Black Sabbath’s classic anti-war song “War Pigs.” To be clear, this isn’t an example of a radical teacher attempting to indoctrinate his students with anti-war propaganda—it’s just a really rockin’ song (and features a killer, groovy introduction in 6/8 time, before transitioning to a brisk, sludgy 4/4). We were working on the tune before Russia invaded the Ukraine, and before there were really even murmurs that this quixotic invasion might happen.

Also, I am not reflexively anti-war. My instincts are to abhor war (which would have been news to my teenaged self, who still believed war was a glorious test of courage and mettle—it can be, but it’s much more complicated than that two-dimensional, chivalric notion I harbored as a doughy teen), but war is inevitable. The Bible prophesies about “wars and rumors of war,” and not all war is inherently bad.

It’s not all inherently good, either—sometimes war is just that—war.

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Supporting Friends Friday: Son of Sonnet’s Poetry Community

11 March 202210 March 2022 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

My good buddy and regular poetry contributor Son of Sonnet has some exciting news: this Monday, 14 March 2022, he is launching his new Locals page at https://sonofsonnet.locals.com/.

Locals is a bit like SubscribeStar, but it’s more robust in terms of features, and the focus is on building up a sense of community between subscribers and the content creator. SubscribeStar allows comments, for example, but Locals has built-in incentives to encourage more engagement, such as certain users gaining additional posting privileges and the like.

Son is going full-in with Locals, hoping to build up a community of supporters who appreciate good poetry and the culture-renewing possibilities it offers (you can read all about his mission on his “About” page; appropriately, it’s presented in the form of a poem!).

Son is setting his sights high, as he should: he’s kicking off his foray into Locals with a special promotion he’s dubbed Race to 1000K.

SubscribeStar Saturday: Rapid-Fire Recording

5 March 20225 March 2022 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Yesterday I released my collection of short miniatures, Péchés d’âge moyen. It’s been getting a lot of plays on Bandcamp thanks to support from The Dragon Common Room and The Sandwhich Press, both chats/channels that I follow and participate in on Telegram (if you use Telegram, you should join/follow both; here are links: DCR; TSP).

I’d hoped that in the few weeks I had between announcing the project and releasing it I’d be able to set up a more sophisticated recording rig. Instead, I recorded the twelve tracks in a white heat, using my iPhone SE’s voice memo app, and placing the phone on the old Baldwin Acrosonic piano in my school’s Music Room.

These made for less-than-ideal recording conditions, but in listening back to the album, it worked better than I thought.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Péchés d’âge moyen Sneak Peak

26 February 202226 February 2022 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

This weekend’s edition of SubscribeStar Saturday will be a bit of a video and document dump, as I’m giving subscribers a sneak peek of my collection of piano miniatures, Péchés d’âge moyen. I’m hoping to have the whole collection available by this Friday, 4 March 2022 on Bandcamp, but there are some technical considerations I need to work out first—namely, how to get a good quality recording of each piece, rather than videos taken on my phone at school while kids shoot hoops outside of the Music Room (which, sadly, opens onto the gym).

Of course, I may just end up extracting the audio from the attached MP4s and call it a day—ha!

Regardless, today I’m uploading every video I’ve recorded so far, as well as every manuscript of the pieces I’ve put together so far. I’ll also briefly discuss my composing method, and how it’s changed slightly over the course of the project.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Recording Contest Winner EP

19 February 202218 February 2022 The Portly Politico5 Comments

For the past six weeks, I’ve been writing about the six tracks from my 2015 release Contest Winner EP, the only recording of my original songs I’ve ever released. I’ve released several other albums and singles, but I’ve written a lot of other songs that I have not recorded. Indeed, I plan on doing some simple cellphone videos of some of those unreleased tunes for subscribers in the coming weeks.

One reason I have not written another album is because I hit a songwriting drought somewhere around 2015. Sitting down and writing songs is difficult and time-consuming, and while I love it, my schedule grew increasingly hectic around that time. I began teaching very late nights at a local technical college (I could only keep it up for a year—even I can’t work that much), and the Artsville Songwriting Competition, which gave me the incentive to write regularly, folded.

Still, I have managed to write a few more tunes in the intervening years—maybe not enough for a proper album, but certainly enough for another EP. But that leads to the other reason I have not released a second album: the recording process is tedious and expensive.

It is also super fun, despite the long hours and late nights in the studio.

Today, I’m going to give a brief overview of the recording process, way back in 2014 (yep, it took me over a year before I finally released the album).

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