Black History Month via the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
”We’re halfway into Black History Month, but any day is a great day to begin or continue your antiracist journey to support justice and joy! Here is a great reflection by Joy Reid about the origins of Black History Month, ‘Progress Isn’t Always Linear.’ And please explore the links to events and resources below.“
#workingonit!!!
#IWantMyTubmans!!!
Harriet Tubman $20 Bill Redesign to be Accelerated by Biden Administration - The New York Times
I purchased a calendar and coffee table book based on my old posts, demonstrating there just might could be a benefit to posting on Facebook almost every day for 10+ years! :-)
@kbuddyartist: “A squirrel and a cardinal in a standoff over the last sunflower seed” -@briancarterKC
The legendary cellist Pablo Casals was asked why he continued to practice at age 90. “Because I think I’m making progress,” he replied.
We must move beyond learning the tune to playing the song and then on to making music together.
I am testing!
𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨 𝐂𝐫𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝
b͟l͟a͟h͟.͟ ͟b͟l͟a͟h͟.͟ ͟b͟l͟a͟h͟.͟
blah. blah. blah.
Note: See RIP Chick Corea for a little of my story about experiencing Chick’s music.
#jazzchurch 42 – Sunday, February 14, 2021 – featured some of my favorite music by Chick Corea:
Here’s an Apple Music Playlist containing songs from this episode of #JazzChurch:
Give us some feedback on #jazzchurch.
Next week’s #jazzchurch livestream can be found at postbop.com/jazzchurch Streaming live from 1-3ish PM PDT. Past episodes are available here as well.
Soundcloud: Listen to past shows and subscribe to receive notifications and listen to future shows
I first encountered Chick Corea in 1975. I had moved to Albany, NY, for a job in the State Assembly. I’m not sure how I first heard it, but “Vulcan Worlds” from the “Where Have I Known You Before” album by Return To Forever featuring Chick Corea became my song. Written by the band’s bassist, Stanley Clarke, it makes sense I would love it!
My wife and I went to see RTF at Russell Sage College in Troy. We arrived a bit early and walked to a store to get some soda (obviously Coke in my case). The concert started just as we were walking toward the auditorium through fog and mist. I loved hearing the first notes of Vulcan Worlds as we approached and settled into our seats! It was magic, and the concert did not disappoint!
We went to see Chick Corea perform duets with Herbie Hancock at Saratoga Performing Arts Center (or SPAC). Herbie introduced a song by saying they were going to make their pianos talk to each other. It was thrilling. We couldn’t hear the precise words, but it was a conversation in every way.
The next morning, I took a flight to NYC, and guess who was on the plane? Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea!! I got to tell them how much I enjoyed the concert the night before, especially the conversation between the pianos. I’ll always carry the smile on Chick’s face with me!
There was also a duet concert at SPAC featuring Chick and Gary Burton. When they came back out after a standing ovation following the set, Chick said something like, “Encore? What should we play?” My friend Reggie and I, without prompting or coordination, both stood up in our second-row seats, cupped our hands over our mouths, and shouted, “SPAIN“ at the top of our lungs! Maybe we weren’t the only ones (we were first!!), and perhaps that was the obvious choice, but our very loud wishes came true.
We saw different RTF incarnations when we lived in NYC and saw Chick in San Francisco and twice here in Seattle. I subscribed to his online instruction channel for awhile.
Even though I saw Chick Corea perform live on many occasions, it’s his recorded music that reverberates through my being after years of incessant listening. I loved and will continue to love his many recordings, including new music I’m just discovering.
It has been wonderful to read all the thoughtful reflections on his life as a musician, friend, and person. There are a lot of lessons there. He lived a great life, one that can inspire all of us to live our lives to the fullest and to help others along the way. I love that idea.
Thanks for the music and your life of inspiration, Armando Anthony “Chick” Corea. RIP as you return to forever.
Note: #JazzChurch 42 episode (2/14/2021) featured some of Chick Corea’s music and performances that have resonated with me over the years.
Summer is coming! 🌨🏂🏔☃️
Coronavirus Mutations In Boston Patient May Hold Clues To Variant Origins : NPR
Okay, this is frightening!!! Occasionally there are reports of a mutation where the infected person has not traveled or been in contact with a recent traveler.
In other words, perhaps the coronavirus uses long-term infections as a mutational testing ground. While inside one person, the virus can try out all these different combinations of mutations and figure out, through trial and error, which ones are best at evading the immune system or helping the virus become more infectious.
Most of these viral versions probably don’t spread beyond the chronically infected patient. But every once in a while, as the theory goes, a variant gets lucky, infects a large number of people and launches a new whole stage of the pandemic.
And this process is likely happening again right now, worldwide, in other immunocompromised patients. Eventually, these new variants could mutate again and create even more dangerous forms of the coronavirus.
COVID-19 is improvising! Death is improvising!!
i hate the phrase “hold people accountable”
because it almost always means
hold other people accountable
when we should focus on
being accountable ourselves.
also
when employees ask/talk about accountability
they’re mostly reflecting on the
poor managers
poor supervisors
poor individual contributors
and
poor “leaders”
who stay in place
doing a poor job
year
after
year
after
year
and
who clearly aren’t being held
accountable.
when we don’t hold
people accountable,
we’re not being
accountable
ourselves.
and if we’re not accountable
we give others permission
we invite them
we encourage them
to not be accountable.
saying accountability starts with us
is actually wrong.
accountability starts with the person
in the mirror.
accountability starts with me.
if i have to hold people accountable,
that means
i don’t have accountable people
and should.
develop accountable people
starting with the person
in
the
mirror
etc., etc., etc., yadda yadda yadda, blah. blah. blah.
While testing microphone and music levels for Sunday’s edition of #JazzChurch, I found myself sauntering down memory lane…
Here are a few things you should know…
#jazzchurch 41 – Sunday, February 7, 2021 – featured music by John Coltrane, Betty Carter, Chet Baker, Tank and The Bangas, Erykah Badu, and Sade, among others shown below:
Give us some feedback on #jazzchurch.
Next week’s #jazzchurch livestream can be found at postbop.com/jazzchurch Streaming live from 1-4ish PM PDT. Past episodes are available here as well.
I spent part of my Saturday morning listening to this full-length live Pastorius concert (audio-only). I still miss Jaco, and know I’m not alone.
Jaco Pastorius - electric bass
Azar Lawrence - tenor sax
Paul Mousavizadeh - guitar
Jon Davis - piano
Brian Melvin - drums
Enjoy! I certainly did!!
You cannot get educated by this self-propagating system in which people study to pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.
You learn something by doing it yourself, by asking questions, by thinking, and by experimenting. 🧠.
– Prof. Richard Feynman
George Colligan, Buster Williams, and Lenny White! Man!!!
Once upon a time, while walking across Central Park South, a small crowd of people was standing in front of one of the hotels. As I passed by, the man standing in the middle and I made eye contact. We gave each other “the nod” often shared among black men in public. I smiled as I continued across town. That man was Muhammad Ali!
I’ll guess that was around 1982-3. I got to shake his hand a few years later when Ali was leaving a South Street Seaport restaurant I was about to enter.
#NewYorkStories
The most familiar Q is portrayed by John de Lancie. He is an extra-dimensional being of unknown origin who possesses immeasurable power over time, space, the laws of physics, and reality itself, being capable of altering it to his whim.
Happy Birthday, Langston Hughes (born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902)
I love this bit about humor:
“Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it… what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.”.
– Langston Hughes
Also see 10 Poems By Langston Hughes You Should Know - Kentake Page
One thing I learned last year is people love hearing music at the beginning and end of Zoom calls. I usually play some jazz, and sometimes hear the commenter say they wish we could delay the start of the meeting until the song ends.
Today my team got together to start unpacking the latest Employee Satisfaction Survey, and a colleague suggested this song. Quite a different take on satisfaction!
Hmmm…
Me: If my variances are varying together too much, I might have a case of heteroscedasticity.
Wife: “I’m not impressed!”
In any event, I was always better with multicollinearity, so I might’ve gotten that wrong…
no. comment.
I used to observe the first Friday of most months as a #LibraryDay (described below). Here’s a journal entry from two years ago. Maybe I’ll get to do this again later in 2021?
I’m at the library because, yes, it’s #LibraryDay!!! This one is a little different. I brought all the paper and stuff that’s accumulated on my work surfaces over the past month, and I’ve yet to really go through them. I have handled some stuff in my “action” folder, but that’s about it.
What have I been doing? Literally, just getting caught up on things I need to do, have intended to do, and just haven’t done. A whole bunch of them. Mostly in Word, email, Slack, web apps. A lot of “processing” and “editing,” etc. It feels very, very good. And productive.
I need to find more time – especially during working hours – to do. exactly. this. So do we all!
Here’s something else: Don’t you just love epiphanies? Especially the kind about that thing you did that was oh so successful, and now you realize that it wasn’t. Or that it would have been, could have been, so much better if you hadn’t had your head up your arse?
Yeah, it’s #LibraryDay, and I just had yet another one of those!!!
I think that means, among other things, that I’m still here and, hopefully, still learning…
#ILoveEpiphanies!
#BringItOn
#KeepOnPushing (that’s for John Gaines!)
#ideasfor2019!