As Luck Would Have It

As a Conservative, one would expect that I'd listen to right-wing radio, watch Fox News, and have a Sean Hannity tee-shirt. Often when I am in those fun social media debates with Liberals, they assume that my media consumption is red-state meat. The rawer, the better. Nope, I am a NPR and Public Radio junkie. WXPN down in Philly plays the best music around. I even support them financially, as I feel art and music are essential to human flourishing.  Don't worry, I get in plenty of debates with hard-core conservatives, too. Probably, some of them residing in Stalingrad. Due to Vlad's dark reign over Russia, I am reverting back to calling St. Petersburg Stalingrad because Putin is becoming Stalin by degrees.

He wants to make Russia Great Again...which it never was. Unless one extols the virtues of the Gulag. I will grant the Russian Writers are great. That peculiar harshness of life brings something shining out of the soul. Yet, I doubt any of the great Russian writers would sanction Vlad's killing of journalists, etc.   

I confess that I listened to Hannity, on a Christian Radio Station no less, for a spell about 8 years ago when heading to Philly for doctoral work at Temple. After about two weeks of his whining wind-bagging and reckless-railing, I couldn't take him anymore. He was insufferable. It was like smoking too many cigars in a short-period of time. He was noxious and polluting and cancerous. Now that he has become Trump's cheerleader, he is even more odious. He has that abrasive New York attitude reminiscent of a goombah working for the Mob and The Don. I am not backing down ever about Trump until he leaves the White House and return to his dark tower. As much as I agree with a decent amount of his agenda, he is just too nefarious.   

Public Radio has a Liberal bent of course. It is less that it used to be but I routinely expect my faith and beliefs to be under-represented and perhaps even misconstrued. I am secure enough in my convictions at this point in my life to be able to tolerate dissent. It also gives me a window in the world. So, my fall-back to Fresh Air on Friday which no longer airs that day of the week, I will hit the change button on my car radio to listen to WXPN.

Yesterday, I re-heard a song on XPN that I really like. It is by Darlingside and it is "Hold Your Head Up High."  The tune had me at the French Horn intro. If not the French Horn, please pardon my ignorance.  The song has superb singing harmonies and lyrical depth. I will often like a song and then promptly move on. Every so often a song will break through the inertia and I will make a note of the band to look into them more.  Yesterday, Darlingside broke through and cracked my cranium. It look a couple of hits.

What appeared to be lucky happenstance, has created a torrent of interest. A trickle, to a stream, to a river. Darlingside is performing at Union Transfer on Good Friday down in Philly, my home city. I obtained a ticket this morning. I have family and friends down in and around Philly, so it will be nice to be in town. Yet, I don't pretend to be a Philadelphian any more. It is a distant orientation displaced and demagnetized by years here in Lancaster. Going to Temple for 8 years (2002-2010) upped my electrons to a higher state for a while, but now everything has settled yet again into a lower ring of Central Pa. chill.

I do marvel how an instance like hearing a song can move one into a deeper pursuit. I did some background investigation into the band Darlingside.  They all attended Williams College in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. A premiere Liberal Arts College, ranked in the top 3 in the U.S., it made me long for the world of academia and New England. My ex-wife's uncle had a lovely farm up in the Berkshires and he was always so generous and genteel. I love that part of the world.  I learned in my research that Williams College was the location of the Haystack Prayer Meeting that ignited American Protestant World Missions. The students praying had a big vision to go to Asia with the Gospel and good works, and they did.

I always have wondered why the Holy Spirit told Paul not to preach in Asia and instead to turn his gaze to Europe. Peter apparently did 15 years later. But, a step in a different direction changed the world as we know it. 

I have been pondering luck for the last day or two in preparation of the course that I am teaching 4th MP at school to those eager yet unsettled ninth graders. Luck is usually some combination of preparation and opportunity. We control the preparation part, opportunity is often a lot more open-ended and harder to control. I plan to address this early on in the first couple of days with the kids. I do really love 9th graders. They are just this very cool combination of child and teenager. They are easier to impress. They dig that I am 6'8". All I have to do is stand and they are amazed. Older kids are harder to impress.   

It is officially titled Study Skills but I have laterally broadened the course to Success Skills. Still generic and not entirely appealing, I have to swim away from the wreckage of a term like Study Skills. Might as well call it Eat Your Peas, Come Get Your Teeth Drilled, or something else unappealing. I am not debating the need for Study Skills development but my 30 plus years of working with teenagers has convinced me that unless I make it interesting, somewhat unexpected, and appealing to the heart rather than the head first, I will have the student's bodies in chairs but not their engaged and enthusiastic minds.

Young Life has a motto that it is a sin to bore a kid. And while we can take this too far into those stupid and unproductive youth group games like chugging gross red fruit punch and puking, I think  being interesting is the first step on getting student to pull with you and not against you. I can't say that I have it all figured out in practice but I know what I am trying to do.

Wish me luck! Class starts Tuesday.     

Related Links

Putin Killing Journalists

Haystack Movement

Darlingside Hold Your Head Up High