“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery - not over nature but of ourselves.” Rachel Carson

I was very pleased to see the amount of attention and action that was generated by the celebration of Earth Day last week. When I think of the many efforts to identify and formalize national days devoted to a certain subject that have popped up in my lifetime, few rival the importance or long range impact of being good stewards of our blue planet.

I think we have all come a long way in our awareness of the difference each of us can make in taking better care of the earth. At The Music Settlement we have worked hard to be greener, with efforts that range from a shift to mostly electronic communication and information distribution, to replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient fluorescent ones. But the change really starts with each of us, and it is requires diligence to change habits and ways of life.

When I look at the environmental movement from that personal perspective, I certainly see progress being made. As a youngster, I recall that my family often spent pleasant summer weekend days engaged in an activity known as the “Sunday drive,” a now-archaic effort that has been replaced by malls and DVD players and gas at nearly $4 a gallon, or so it seems. Now don’t get me wrong, aimlessly driving around the countryside in a carbon monoxide spewing old station wagon is hardly the best way to “go green,” unless of course you mean me sitting in the way back seat, sucking in fumes and getting green in the gills. But I distinctly remember that even if our drive took us out into the wilds of Cattaraugus County, NY (and that’s pretty wild), it would not be unusual to see lots of trash along the side of the road. I know this is hard to believe for some of you younger folks, but back then the average American treated the shoulder of the road as their own personal trash can. The unfortunate convergence of the fast food craze with the automobile really exacerbated this, by the way; cups and wrappers and napkins would find their way out the window and onto the flora without a second thought! Hard to believe now, isn’t it? At some level, the country’s relatively successful campaign against littering was one of the first real beachheads in the battle against pollution.

Nowadays, of course, we realize there is a lot more required for success than just the level of behavioral modification that resulted from the national Litter Bug campaign. If all we do is remember to bring in from the car the wrappers of our Big Mac and toss them in the trash can, it won’t be enough, to which the ever rising mountains of landfills across this country attest. Every one of us needs to change our habits and our lifestyles. If our conspicuous consumption is not altered, history tells us the result will not be pretty. Indeed, I was watching the history of the Earth Day movement on American Experience on PBS last week, and there was a revelatory message that hit home with me on several fronts.

If you happened to see the show, it featured first person interviews with many of the folks at the vanguard of the movement in the early seventies. Many of them were “hippy-dippy” counterculture folks with odd names and even odder dress codes, who nonetheless worked through the systems and the hearts of America to foster real change. They saw it as a higher calling and were spurred on by concerns and events that focused attention on the gathering evidence that our world was sending us an urgent SOS. Interestingly, many of the individuals also mentioned that a seminal moment in the movement was when Apollo 8 astronauts sent back to Earth the famous photo of Earthrise, the first image of our planet taken by man from outside its orbit. This life-changing artwork forever redefined our planet as finite - a small, fragile, dot in the celestial heavens, and one whose balance could easily and irreparably be upset.

This wasn’t the only reference in the PBS show to the central place of art in the story of mankind and the environment. A researcher who was one of the first to identify the threat of catastrophic climate change cited the example of other great cultures on our planet that appear to have fallen due to unwise environmental practices. As he rattled off the examples of Incan, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilizations, each was accompanied by a photo of all that remains of their glory: artworks, great and small. Those who look for irony in this life would be quick to note that art and culture not only inspire us to great things, but they also may be ultimately all that is left to tell of our passing. The rest of us can cling to the fact that great art represents truth that transcends and inspires; it’s something that raises our sights and opens our eyes when mere words and actions fall short. We just need to be open to the message.

Let’s hope that our new worldwide civilization can grasp the lessons contained in that photo of Earth before our legacy is one of silent structures and colossal statues to events long forgotten and buried in the sand. We should incorporate good stewardship of the planet into everything we do, making everyday Earth Day for our little blue dot in the universe.

Have a great week!

“The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.” Ezra Pound

The Music Settlement is in full celebration mode this month as we find ourselves surrounded by reminders of the impact we have made throughout our history on the people of our community. It’s an interesting alignment of the stars, because this time of year is traditionally when our students are presenting recitals and performances that exhibit their growth as musicians, and many of our faculty members are out performing as well.

There are many things for us to be really excited about as we move through the month. On Wednesday the 21st, a representation of instructors, staff, board members, and friends will join us in Columbus as we gather to support our beloved Director of Early Childhood Education, Sylvia Easley, when she will be awarded the Governor’s Award for the Arts in Arts Education. I wrote in detail about the OAC committee’s selection of Sylvia for this prestigious honor in a previous blog, but I want to spend a few more minutes on it because she has meant so much to so many people throughout her 44 years of service at The Music Settlement. It doesn’t matter where I go or who I talk to across the area, there will be someone in the crowd with a connection to Sylvia, and they always say the most wonderful things! She has been a key player in the early development of so many people, either through our programs or through her own advocacy, that she truly can be called one of the most influential people in Northeast Ohio over the past half century. That’s something to celebrate!

We also should raise a big cheer for our jazz faculty and students, who continue to reap accolades for their mastery of this unique American art form. Last week, piano faculty member Jackie Warren (who was chosen as “Best Keyboardist” by the readers of Cleveland Scene magazine this year), was a featured performer in the Women in Jazz concert at Mount Zion Church. Our Settlement Jazz Orchestra (SJO), Jazz @ The Music Settlement (J@MS) ensemble, and the Jazz Impact ensemble were featured prominently at the Tri-C JazzFest where they enjoyed master classes and blew the roof off in performance.

At The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) earlier this month, four members of our cello faculty were featured in the Viva & Gala series performance by renowned Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen. Nick Diodore, Ida Mercer, Julie Meyers King, and Robert Nicholson made up four of the seven members of I Cellisti, the resident ensemble of the Cleveland Cello Society, which joined Mr. Karttunen in a truly magical evening of performance that ranged from J. S. Bach to Kaija Saariaho. It is our hope that we will continue to partner with CMA and the roster of international performing artists they bring in for their concert series as we launch our World Music curriculum this summer.

April and May are months in which many of our students perform in the culmination of a year of dedicated music study. Hardly an evening or weekend will go by without the sound of accomplishment ringing through the campus; it’s a sound I never get enough of! I guess it’s particularly fitting that April is the month that The Music Settlement was founded so long ago.

By the end of April, we will have begun our 98th year of providing meaningful personal experiences to our community through the joy of music. When Almeda Adams, an accomplished vocalist and educator who happened to be blind since the age of 6 months, founded The Cleveland Music School Settlement in 1912, she must have had future Aprils in mind - rooms and hallways full of music made by folks of all ages, on all manners of instruments and in all kinds of styles. Won’t you join in the fun?

Have a great week!

Busy as a one-armed man pasting on wallpaper

“…Busy as a one-armed man… pasting on wallpaper.” O. Henry

Most people try to plan their lives so that the pace they create is bearable and the demands on their time and productivity are balanced and reasonable - but not me. When most families decide to schedule a major vacation during their kid’s spring break from school, logic would suggest that they clear the decks up until departure time to allow for appropriate planning and preparation. You put in a solid period of work at the office and at home that allows you to feel like you’re on top of things before you whirl away to vacationland. You leave your nights and weekends leading up to the trip in the family “truckster” free for itinerary planning, packing, and calm periods of reflection and meditation - but not me! Instead, I filled the 11 days leading up to this spring’s halcyon holiday with nonstop events and activities that left me barely packed as we headed out the door.

First, there was the wedding thing. Now, please don’t get me wrong: your son’s wedding is a blessed, life-altering event, but it does require a bit of your time and energy. It was a beautiful event that perfectly reflected their thoughtful and fun-loving personalities, but like all family weddings, it absorbed all the attention and energy of those around it like a giant sponge. A great time was had by all, but when I woke up the following day I was startled to remember that I had agreed to report for duty that afternoon to judge short subject films for the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) for the next eight days straight! Just to make sure we weren’t too comfortable, we had also agreed to take care of my son’s dog (Atlas, the 100 lb. Labrador retriever) for the next five days while the wedded couple enjoyed their honeymoon.

So, to recap: that’s three days, one wedding, a house full of relatives, a very large black dog on the way, and eight straight days in the dark coming right around the corner…

In the interest of fairness, I need to state the following: Atlas is an absolute sweetheart. He’s a very smart (one might even say devious), somewhat overweight (one might say fat), happy older dog that was rescued by two very loving people who adore him, and so do we. He also gets along famously with our greyhound, also a rescued pup of older vintage, the two are inseparable. The challenge is that they are both large dogs, they both shed like the dickens (we went through two or three lint rollers in a week), and - in the words of my wife - “Atlas is a world class opportunist.” Under no circumstances do you leave him unsupervised within the vicinity of anything that can be interpreted as food. Likewise, be aware of his uncanny ability to choose a moment when all are distracted to sneak away and surprise us all with a surprisingly light-footed leap onto any nearby piece of upholstered furniture. And I’m not going to even get into the slobbering issue (ick!). Needless to say, the old boy kept us on our toes, but we were smiling the whole time, because like any dog worth his kibble, he is truly a charming rogue.

But who was I to complain? For most of Atlas’s time with us I merely walked him in the morning (two big dogs was a handful) and patted his big old head at the end of the night as I stumbled in from watching shorts at CIFF. The rest of my week consisted of working at The Music Settlement until 4pm or so, and then racing downtown to watch seven to eight short films a night and maybe another full length flick or two. If you’ve read this message before, you know what a great fan I am of CIFF, but this year I had an insider’s glimpse of the process like never before. The crowds were larger than ever (more than 71,000 attended!), and they screened more films than ever (300 plus), but it still ran like clockwork. I, however, ran more like a clock that needed new batteries. By the time the weekend rolled around, I was watching an average of nine individual films a day, counting shorts; still small change for a CIFF veteran!

To recap again: by the end of the week from Hades, wedding a distant memory, relatives shipped off to wherever, dog gone (doggone?), home chores and duties neglected, more than 100 movies seen, nine awards given to shorts, no packing done, no idea what day or time it was, and a plane to catch.

I then rise from the ashes and search everywhere for the shorts and polo shirts I hadn’t seen since Labor Day and throw it all in a suitcase and prepare myself for six days in the theme parks of Orlando, Florida (yippee?). Surprisingly, I take everything I need and things are absolutely fantastic in the world of Disney, where “magic” isn’t just a word, it’s the law. But there is no doubt I have some overlaps from the hectic days before heading to the sunshine, such as the gnawing sense that, like a good CIFF judge, I should be scoring the Muppets in 3-D movie for content and character development, and the strange compulsion to yell at Pluto when he sits in a chair during the Breakfast with the Characters event. I even end up running into my sister and her husband at the Hollywood Studios theme park (won’t those pesky relatives ever leave?). But the really odd part is that the whole crazy 14 days will forever make up some of the very best moments I will ever experience, and also some of the craziest.

To recap one more time: 18 days, one son married, one daughter-in-law gained, one dog watched like a hawk, dozens of flicks seen and miles driven, hundreds of theme park miles walked, tons of photos taken, millions of smiles logged. But I wouldn’t trade any of it for a billion dollars!

It’s good to be back- Have a great week!

It is at the movies that the only absolutely modern mystery is celebrated

“It is at the movies that the only absolutely modern mystery is celebrated.” Andre Breton

The sudden turn for the beautiful in our weather notwithstanding, I have a great idea for an indoor activity to help you round out your late winter in proper style. And if you happen to find time to get out and about in the process, by all means take advantage of this balmy turn of events.

The sudden onset of pleasant weather brings to mind for me the spring of 1978, the year that will always resonate with folks here as the year of the big blizzard. That winter was unrelenting and life-threatening in the northeast, with the one-two punch of two straight winters of brutal conditions and record-breaking snow accumulation. But just when we couldn’t seem to take it anymore, a curtain lifted and spring came on like gang busters! From April on, we went into the hottest, driest summer I can remember, with the grass turning brown in early July and staying that way through September. So who knows, maybe this will be the year when all our suffering is erased by waves of sun and fun, and we remember again why the heck we would want to live here in the first place.

While you’re waiting for the good weather to take hold, don’t forget that next Thursday is the beginning of the Cleveland International Film Festival! This yearly celebration of all things cinematic has become a major force in the movie industry world-wide. After attracting more than 66,000 participants last year, generating more than $3.1 million in revenue, and increasing their attendance by more than 23% from the record-breaking previous year, CIFF looks to reach even greater heights this month. The Festival opens with a gala on March 18^th, and continues with day-long features at Tower City Cinemas through the 28^th. Featured will be a vast array of local, national, and international films in a variety of genres including shorts, animated films, documentaries, commercials, and feature length film that are either enjoying their first run in our region or are world premieres. If you enjoyed last week’s Oscar presentations, you’ll be pleased to know that CIFF now has a hand in helping to identify short subject movies for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. We may find a flick that premiered in Cleveland winning the Academy award soon!

If you go to the Film Festival, please try to find the time to see Soundtrack for a Revolution, this year’s film sponsored by The Music Settlement. It tells the story of the indelible link between the protest songs of the 1950’s and 60’s to the American civil rights movement. It includes interviews with the people who were at the center of the movement as well as archival footage of the period that ranges from the uplifting to the brutal, portraying the transformative power of music in our daily existence. While it includes some harrowingly frank imagery of the period, it centers on an uplifting legacy that resonates in our music and our lives to this day. The movie shows on Friday, March 26^th at 9:35pm, and Saturday, March 27^th, at 4:40 pm. Please find the time to see this important documentary.

One of the other great aspects of CIFF is that for a two week period, much of downtown is really alive and kicking! There are crowds in the restaurants and at Tower City, and you can get a real feel for the potential that could exist with a truly vital downtown. Throw in a Cavs game or a concert at “The Q” and things get positively crowded downtown. Make time for you and your loved ones to enjoy some of Cleveland’s number one winter arts & culture happening!

While I’m at it, I want to remind you that Cleveland’s number one summer arts & culture happening is right around the corner: save the date for the 12^th of June for Parade the Circle, our very own people-powered celebration of creativity. I’ll bring you more details in a later message, but it’s not too early to step up to volunteer with The Music Settlement that day. We are seeking individuals who can help us in our activities tent where we encourage folks of all ages to try out a variety of instruments that we provide. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to introduce the joy of music into people’s lives. If you’re interested, please contact Rob Bruder at rbruder@themusicsettlement.org .

I hope to see you in the crowds real soon.

Have a great week!

Citius, Altius, Fortius

“Citius, Altius, Fortius” (“Faster, Higher, Stronger”) - Olympic Motto, Father Henri Martin Didon

Yes, I am an Olympics junkie. I have been in Nirvana for the last two weeks as I revisit the wonders of the Nordic combined, half-pipe, skeleton, short program, and best of all - curling! I am perfectly willing to sit glassy-eyed in front of the tube, evening after evening, breathlessly waiting for the big hill ski jumper from Kazakhstan to hit his telemark landing on his third and final jump to the roar of a crowd of, say, 50 to 60 very cold spectators.

Equally odd is that the rest of the time, I wouldn’t be caught dead watching a couple ice dancing to the music of Love Story, dressed in something out of John Phillip Sousa’s worst nightmare. I couldn’t tell you who the reigning world champion is in any sport requiring snow or ice, let alone who is America’s best at anything remotely related to winter sports and skin tight sequined suits. I can tell you, however, where this odd, every-four-year obsession of mine originated from: the convergence of a world-wide sports event with that great world-wide media, television.

I was 11 years old in 1968 - a pretty memorable year for many folks, but on a personal level it was the year I discovered two gloriously flawed cultural icons in my life: The Olympics and color television!!!

Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t grow up in a cave; a television was part of my consciousness almost as far back as I can remember. I can still see John F. Kennedy’s funeral and The Beatles on Ed Sullivan as clearly as anything, but for me, those images will be forever etched in black and white. I grew up in a black and white world as far as media was concerned, with the exception of the glorious full color of Life Magazine every Friday, so I suppose pageantry and pomp and hoopla would always leave me a bit cold. But sometime in the fall of 1967 my neighbors got the most magnificent machine I had every beheld - a Zenith (I still remember the brand!) color TV! It was about the size of a davenport, as I recall, and featured lots of cabinetry and knobs and fabric, and took about ten minutes to warm up, BUT IT WAS A COLOR TV! I worked hard to find excuses to hang around and get a glimpse of the Holy Grail-like appliance, but back then children were expected to be able to occupy themselves without the electronic babysitter, and besides, there was that issue of the radiation from the color tube cooking your eyeballs to little cinders if you watched for more than a few minutes at a time. Watching color TV for more than, say, an hour at a time was considered to be just one step below staring at the noontime sun. Then it would be, “Outside, kids! It’s only 20-below out there, it’s good for you!” Plus the networks hadn’t really gotten programming for 11 year old boys down yet. Kid’s shows were lame and parents tended to dominate primetime with junk like Gunsmoke, and Father Knows Best…yuck!

But as February rolled around that year, my neighbors told my parents that they were going out of town for the unheard-of span of two weeks - and they needed my brother and I to “check on the house and the pets while we’re gone, and if they want to watch a little of the TV, that’s OK too….” Needless to say, we jumped at the idea, and a few days later we were ensconced on their couch in full winter gear (the neighbors insisted the heat be kept very low during their absence), watching Charles de Gaulle preside over the opening ceremonies of the 1968 Winter Olympic Games from Grenoble, France in living (if somewhat fuzzy) color. Over the next week or so, we thrilled to the heroics of Jean-Claude Killy in alpine skiing and were smitten with figure skater Peggy Fleming, who won America’s only gold medal. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who were swept up by the 1968 Winter Olympics, because the combination of the first satellite broadcast of a live sports event and the first color broadcast of an Olympics has been identified by scholars as the beginning of the world’s infatuation with all things Olympic.

All I know is that, from that moment on, my brother and I were hooked. Unexpectedly, the Olympics have provided me with life lessons ever since, and while not all of them have been pleasant, they have been important. Tommy Smith and John Carlos’s black power salute during the medal ceremony that very summer in Mexico City would raise my awareness of issues regarding race and human rights. In 1972, my brother and I sat in stunned horror as the terrorist age dawned on live TV in Munich. In 1980, I vividly remember trying to tune in the USA vs. Russia hockey game on the AM radio in my old Ford Maverick while driving in central Ohio on a snowy night. I rounded a hill and picked up the last few minutes of the biggest victory of what would become the “Miracle on Ice.” Politics reached frenzied levels in the 1980 and ‘84 Olympics, when boycotting seemed to be all the rage and became something I could only lament as a great concept dragged into the mud. The non-sport related happenings have continued, but they don’t tarnish the central concept for me. Now I know that at some level the Olympics are certainly political, and that I often measured great triumphs and disappointments in terms of whether we won or lost. But that boy in me who was thrilled in 1968 still likes to believe in the principle at the heart of it all - competing together as brothers and sisters regardless of language or cultural barriers - and I still stop what’s going on in my world to take it all in. I still see it in all its bright and shining colors.

Have a great week!

Follow Your Bliss

I want to take the time today to pay tribute to a life well lived.

I haven’t figured out the great big questions of life just yet during my tour on the planet, but one thing I think provides a true measure of a person is how many lives have been impacted by them for the better, and how deeply they cared about others. Our world lost a person last week who embodied that concept - a quiet man who made an impression with his deeds more than his words, and with his passion even more than his works. His name was Greg Stiles.

I knew Greg only peripherally; his youngest daughter and my stepdaughter are best friends, but he certainly made an impression on me. He was a big bear of a man with a flowing ponytail who struck you as a person who did not suffer fools gladly, and who clearly was a leader who had his feet solidly on the ground. Many of you may know him through his two professions, both of which he approached passionately: teaching and music.

Greg taught science at the Cleveland School of the Arts, where he was known as a no-nonsense, “old school” kind of guy, who nonetheless cared deeply for his students and their welfare. He expected a lot from those who entered his classroom, but they knew that he would return their commitment back to them threefold if they were up to the task. At his memorial service last Saturday, one student after another spoke of the influence he brought to their lives, and how his legacy lived in them still. He expected every student to be the best they could be and didn’t tolerate a half-effort. Not surprisingly, the students who embraced his approach felt it to be a profound source of strength in their lives from that time on. What better lesson could a teacher give than that?

But Greg’s real passion was music. He owned Heights Guitars on Lee Road in Cleveland Heights, and played in various bands and venues over the years, lately performing in a local bluegrass band. From testimonies provided during the service, it was clear that Greg’s true voice was music; it’s when he was most eloquent and pure, and the medium through which folks could best read what was going on in his mind and in his heart. He was rarely far from a guitar, as the candid family photos filling the room attested, and music was his pathway to grace.

What struck all of us at first was the tragedy of the story: a strong and vital man in his prime who was struck down by an illness, suffering a shockingly rapid decline and untimely passing. A family and large group of friends were left with little time to prepare for the silencing of his voice. But what we all began to comprehend over the weekend is that Greg led a life on his own terms, in his own way and at full speed ahead, but it was a life that he opened up to so many others in such a generous way. Think about it: he chose to engage the world in entirely unselfish ways. He was a teacher, giving of himself tirelessly for years to an unending line of young folks who really needed to know that there were adults who expected great things of them and who didn’t just phone it in year after year. He was a teacher who challenged them and then rewarded them as they blossomed. He was a true mentor, the kind that changes a person’s life forever. He was also a musician and a performer, who attracted a wide circle of fellow musicians seeking him out for both performances and conversations, and for the fellowship that is shared by creative people banding together to make something much greater than the range of their individual talents. His store became a Mecca for those seeking to understand the creative process, the complexities of chord progressions, or the meaning of life. They’re really all the same thing, don’t you think?

Greg spent his life reaching out to people in the most personal way, through expression, expectation, and sharing, and so many people received what he gave. His life was relatively short, yes, that can’t be denied. But it was full of joys, and it was lived on his terms. He filled it daily with the joy of music, family, learning, and full-out living. We all can understand, admire, and even envy the life he lived, but we can also learn from it.

Share your gifts with those you love and with those around you; be quiet and listen to the melodies of this crazy world, and then join in the harmony with everything you’ve got.

Godspeed, Greg, and thank you for the lessons. We will try to live up to them.

Have a great week!

I'll See You in the Funny Pages

“I’ll see you in the funny pages!” Bugs Bunny

Happy Groundhog Day! No matter what that rascally woodchuck decides, let’s hope sunshine is on the way.

OK, it’s time for some pop culture. A couple of items came up in the news today that caught my eye. They are both topics that hold special places in my pantheon of personal preferences: movies and the funny pages.

Item #1 is the announcement of the Academy Award nominations today, inflated for 21^st century tastes, of course. I admit that I watch only one awards show each year: that glorious train-wreck, the Oscars. I have been known to sit glassy-eyed in front of the tube long into the night as all the rest of my clan have hit the sack and are snoring away. Now that the number of nominees for Best Picture has been doubled, the thought inspires worries that I’ll be staying up even later than usual to discover the soon-to-be-forgotten news of who won what this year. I wonder if they will add twice as many mini-tributes of nominated movies now, and allow space for significant face time for key actors from each flick to the evening as well? Maybe they’ll do the right thing and eliminate any production number nightmares from the proceedings to best keep within the four or so hour format. Honestly, it seems like presidential campaigns are finished faster than the Oscar broadcast, yet I’m still a sucker for them. What can I say? I’m a cinephile from way back. When you get right down to it, I really only have one real complaint about the event - bring back Billy Crystal as the host, please!

On to Item #2. There are folks out there that know of my addiction to the funnies, the comics, the daily cartoons. I was very fortunate as a child to enjoy one of the golden ages of the daily serial: Lil’ Abner, Gasoline Alley, Blondie, Wizard of Id, Beetle Bailey, Steve Canyon, Prince Valiant, Peanuts, and my favorite, Pogo, were just a few of the beautifully drawn, insightful and thought-provoking masterpieces of humor and drama that brightened a few minutes of every day. As my sons were growing up, I got to pass along the joy through some of my favorite funnies as well as new ones, such as Garfield, Fox Trot, The Far Side, Hagar the Horrible, and Jump Start, which were just as deserving of time and attention. For me, one of the truly exciting aspects of gaining stepdaughters has been that I can keep passing along the fun uninterrupted, thanks to Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, and Rhymes with Orange, right up to the arrival of grandchildren and so on, ad infinitum. I do not doubt that in doing so, I have helped improve literacy, imagination, and an ear for dialect in those I have read them to and with, and had a lot of fun along the way.

The item in the news that brought this to mind was a front page article in the Plain Dealer about the 15^th anniversary of the end of publication of one of the finest comic strips ever, the short-lived but magnificent Calvin & Hobbes, which is also one of several comic strips to be commemorated by the U.S. Postal Service with its own stamp later this year. Calvin & Hobbes was my sons’ absolute favorite strip - intelligent, thoughtful, self-effacing and artistically brilliant, and by a Northeast Ohio artist to boot! It was a black day in my house when Bill Watterson folded up his tent and quietly crept away, but the article in the PD shed new light for me on the situation. One thing he mentioned that particularly rang true was that he wanted to step away before he became stale and his work suffered in the eyes of his fans. That certainly has been the case in several comic strips over the years. The challenge of when to end such a personal expression is always a tough one, subject to much conjecture and second-guessing. It’s a struggle we all wrestle with to some degree.

Take me, for example. I started writing this weekly journal/blog a little over a year ago, and have enjoyed it immensely, but I recognize that the content has lately become a little less than I had hoped for in terms of interest and impact. It is with the wisdom of Bill Watterson in mind that I have decided to scale back my effort a bit to help strengthen the value of this message to you who choose to read it. Beginning with today’s installment, I am going to cut back to roughly two entries a month, issued as the spirit moves me, and with the value of your time in mind. I welcome suggestions and contributions to the content, and plan to continue to keep in contact with all who are interested in the goings on at The Music Settlement and beyond.

Thanks for your support, and have a great week!