Our Contributions to the Human Spirit

One of the great and awe-inspiring things about participating in the national Kennedy Center Partners in Education program is the constant motivation provided by the venue--and its raison d'etre--itself. The Center is the national memorial to President John F. Kennedy; and neither before nor in the 40+ years since his death have we had a President as committed to the ideals of art and creativity as he was.

" . . . I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we too will be remembered not for vicotries or defeats in battle or politics, but for our contributions to the human spirit . . . "

This JFK quotation adorns an outer wall of the Center; it is also used and referred to in almost every presentation by staff and participants as we discuss how best to spread the word on the power of the arts in student learning.

Because what JFK knew more than 40 years ago now, today data proves: our contributions to the human spirit--our arts and culture, our creativity--is what distinguishes us as people. Students who learn in and through the arts learn and perform better across the board; and most of the "geniuses" of our time were people who, like Einstein, not only excelled at business or science but played a musical instrument. Their creativity and artistry, as fostered through music and arts education, is what powers them to excellence.

There is a whole-school improvement model called Changing Education Through the Arts, and we at the Opera House, in partnership with our local schools and with the help of the Kennedy Center, are excited about the possibility of becoming part of it. Because our kids deserve it. Because our communities and our local economies need it. And because ingenuity is at the core of our lobster fishing culture: so an education based on right brain methods of creativity is going to be a better cultural fit--thereby securing heightened engagement and results from our students--than the ancient, industrial model of public education under which our students currently struggle.

We invite you to learn more about how we can become what we need to be--The Imagine Nation--at the following websites. Read on and be in dialogue with us! Not only, in the words of the National Endowment for the Arts, does "a great nation deserve great art;" but a great nation demands creativity and innovation, and public arts education is the key to getting ALL of us there--not just some of us.

Changing Education Through the Arts
Arts Education Partnership
The Imagine Nation

Tears for Art

Twice this week I have been moved to tears by overwhelming experiences of art.

The photo above is from the National Symphony Orcestra in the Concert Hall at the Kennedy Center. As part of our annual meeting, we were treated to tickets of them performing with the multi-genre group, Pink Martini. We were seated, as you can see from this photo, in the front row--closer than I've been in all my years with subscriptions to the NY Philharmonic, etc., except when I was playing! They opened with a classic that was over-played in the 1960s classical cancn: Ravel's Bolero. But the sound--the sheer richness of it, the depth of it, the way it surrounded us and crescendoed and swelled--such power and beauty of a live, symphonic musical experience sent tears cascading down my cheeks. All of the arrangements were by the young, hip Pink Martini members, which had the unionized violins at the rear of the orchestra looking pretty grumpy; but when they played the 1950s film classic, Que Sera, Sera--returning it to its origin at the end of a creepy Hitchcock flick in which Doris Day sings this in response to her son being kidnapped (!)--I again could not help the tears of joy from streaming down my face.

It is a big loss to those of us in rural areas, to not have access to this level of symphonic performance. Sheer power and beauty, overwhelming to the brain and affecting one's heart beyond what one might imagine possible.

Then yesterday, we saw, as part of one of the meeting presentations, a slide show demonstrating student learning around a book, "Martin's Big Words," the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Again, the clear power of the student learning--their own words, their incorporation of their understanding in their little third grade bodies--blew me away.

We are very lucky to be able to be in an environment with more than 300 people focused on how to improve student learning. It is a rare but much needed environment, for all our communities; in fact, each school board meeting should be the same.

Needless to say, they aren't.

The Market Demand for Emotional Intelligence

I am privileged to be in Washington, D.C. this week, at the annual meeting for the Kennedy Center Partners in Education Program in which we and our local school district participate together.

We flew out of Bangor just under another snow storm: an "icy mix" was falling as we sat at the jetway, and soon they hosed us down with the alien green goop that they say de-ice the wings. Despite the effects of bad weather on our 30-seat plane, I was completely engaged in reading Dan Pink's book, A Whole New Mind. Pink, who is my age and a business writer living here in D.C., was yesterday's keynote speaker at the conference. For those interested in helping Maine or other locales advance in "creative economy" initiatives and/or arts education, I highly recommend Pink's work: you can find out more at www.danpink.com.

It was almost 15 years ago, when I was a young(ish) corporate executive dabbling at the edges of New Media World for The Village Voice newspaper, that my boss--the President and Publisher of that legendary paper--gathered his young execs around a table in the original conference room of Hartz Mountain Industries (yes, the bird seed / pet supply moguls, who purchased the Voice in the late 1980s and owned it until a disastrous sale in the late 1990s). "Read this," he said to us, a group of callow-radical youth in which he was trying to promote capitalist leadership skills for the new era. "It's the new way to be a leader." The badly Xeroxed article he handed us was by Daniel Goleman, the internationally-known psychologist and former science journalist, who was writing on the need for emotional intelligence as perhaps the most important leadership skill of the coming era: and my life as a business leader has never been the same.

Pink's arguments concisely and compellingly extend Goleman's research. He cites three factors--abundance, Asia, and automation--as the market levers demanding new skills from our kids who will enter the workforce. Like Goleman, who continues to work on these issues and recently posted the following on this own blog, Pink argues that a) these heretofore seemingly intuitive skills, such as ingenuity, personal rapport, and gut instinct, can be taught and b) if we are going to prepare out students for the future, they must be taught. More on "How to Think Like a Lobster Fisherman" in my next installment.

"Here’s a sneak preview of some headlines that you’ll see in the next few months: teaching kids to be more emotionally and socially competent boosts their academic achievement. More precisely, when schools offer students programs in social and emotional learning, their achievement scores gain around 11 percentile points." -- Daniel Goleman's blog

On Suffering, Part II: Release

On Wednesday, I posted a piece using the horrible condition of our winter roads as an analogy for a discourse on suffering . . . on Thursday, I was vaulting down the back steps of the Opera House, having completed a school vacation matinee showing of "Alvin and the Chipmunks" for 36 children under 3 feet tall, and their accompanying eight adults, when three--yes, three--giant Maine DOT trucks roared around the corner and up the hill. Their trucks loaded with sand, they had just finished filling the worst dips and holes along Route 15.

Hmm. Maybe it does pay to personify god!

On Suffering, or Winter Roads

Yesterday, I could smell daffodils in the sun, I could close my eyes and see and feel Easter approaching. I know it's out there, even if daffodils don't bloom in Maine until late April and the prints of crow wings grace the snow.

The wind is still cold enough to wear full winter gear: ski jacket, hat, gloves. It was blowing hard from the west and, while walking the dogs along the cove, it caused thin sheets of ice to skitter like fish across the surface, chasing us. Young Jack was alarmed; I was fascinated, having never before heard or seen a phenomenon quite like ice leaping swiftly across itself and the water. As the gusts increased, the crackling and crushing noise grew louder, and we could stand and watch layers of crispy ice advance toward us up the shore.

I have to imagine the same process is happening under our roads here, because the results include ripples, holes, trenches and dips that any good Californian would assume meant "earthquake!" Make economic development note: local business opportunity = full time chiropractor . . .

While making what felt like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride home at night across these roads, I was listening to "Fresh Air" on NPR. Terry Gross was interviewing Bart Ehrman, a professor of religion who has just authored God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer.

Good question, I though, wondering which part might fall from either truck or self before reaching my destination.

But very quickly I found myself disgusted with the naive, simplistic approach this alleged professor of religion was taking. What kind of christianity is this, that so personifies god as a being, a friend and enemy; and then holds this entity responsible for our well being? Unfortunate answer: it's the literalist christianity that holds sway in an american culture that does not count metaphor, mystery, or self-responsibility among its intellectual or emotional legacies.

It is surely not the catholic christianity with which I was raised, which quite clearly taught that suffering is an inevitable part of this amazing garden of eden we call earth; this paradise in which we are responsible for our own actions and consequent suffering. We can hope for grace and forgiveness and strength to bear the difficulties and natural harshness of this world, but god is not a personal friend who, like Michael Clayton in the recent award-winning film of the same name, is gonna fix it all up for us. The "god" and bible stories with which I was raised were clearly metaphors and allegories for love and for, as Buddhists might say, "right action."

Ehrman, who confessed to what I already suspected--that he had grown up in the cult of fundamentalist, "born again" christianity--then went on to dismiss "other religions'" more advanced understandings of suffering--including Buddhism's. Buddhism, of course, directly posits suffering as the inevitable result of the way the human mind engages with the natural world of which it is a seamless part. This would, of course, be far too much self-responsibility for any born again christian to bear.

Little wonder our american political world--a democracy founded on self-responsibility--has itself suffered mightily during the reign of the cult of religious fundamentalism. It's time to move beyond such literalism in our teaching, our art, our politics.

The roads suck and we've got to get them fixed. How the hell are we going to do this?!

"And what, monks, is Right View? It is, monks, the knowledge of suffering, the knowledge of the origin of suffering, the knowledge of the cessation of suffering, and the knowledge of the way of practice leading to the cessation of suffering. This is called Right View." -- Mahasatipatthana Sutta: The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness