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The Day the Music Paused

Posted on by Suki

I am part of a community that most people don’t even know exists.

Jazz, voted the least popular genre of music in a poll done in Santa Cruz (really, we came in after polka!), is alive and well in our little edge of the universe. I am on the board of our local Jazz Society, which has a weekly newsletter, puts on jams, and offers a well-attended monthly lecture series.

Until this month.

This coming weekend brings the regular jam date, but the brewery where our jam takes place will be silent. We have entered The Great Pause.

There are so many ways that this is going to hurt our fragile little enterprise. First, our large group brought in a good amount of money to support a locally owned business. Second, we paid professional musicians to come in and provide a solid backing band for musicians from beginner to professional. Third, we exchanged information and ideas in a thriving corner of a musical discipline that is threatened with extinction.

It occurs to me that this pause is harming community on all sorts of levels. It’s financial, it’s musical, it’s emotional.

But let me take a moment to describe our jam as it was rather than focusing on what might or might not be:

The band arrives early and sets up. Our drummer, bass player, and pianist are professionals who have had long careers. It’s such a thrill that our Jazz Society members can pay them for their hard work.

Next, our fearless jam coordinator arrives with the all-important clipboard. Already several avid players who want to get the first slots are there, poised to sign up. Other players and audience members arrive as the music starts. This is a tight community: The band members wave and sometimes pause their playing to give hugs.

The bar and nearby restaurant do an unusually good amount of business on these Sunday afternoons. Participants buy beer brewed on site, soft drinks, and barbecue from next door.

We have all the instruments you’d expect…and more. We regularly have singers, from beginners to pros, horn players of all varieties, woodwinds, guitarists, and an occasional violinist, harmonica player, and once we even got a recorder player from Sweden. We also get lots of pianists, drummers, and bass players who spell the band and take their turn.

Each musician gets to call two tunes and invite other soloists up with them. Sometimes we get full horn sections playing well-known standards. Sometimes we get songwriters sharing their own tunes. The mood ranges from maudlin to magic, and it’s all in good fun.

Perhaps what I’m describing doesn’t seem that amazing until you consider the fact that we are an isolated county of 250,000, hemmed in on side by the Monterey Bay and the other by mountains. We don’t seem like a likely place for a thriving jazz community.

Yet it thrives. In part it thrives because of the hard work for over 20 years of a group of dedicated board members. In part it thrives because Santa Cruz has a long tradition of art for art’s sake, with pros and amateurs finding a comfortable home here. But mostly it thrives because we all value the camaraderie and learning that happens on those Sunday afternoons.

For now, we have gone silent. Until we meet again, you can check out our rather new Youtube channel, which has some moments from our jams and a few of our lectures available. If you’re a player who wants to be part of our community, you can subscribe to our newsletter and join our Facebook Group.

Like everyone during this Great Pause, the Jazz Society board is in wait-and-see mode. There will be a lot of work that will have to be done to pick up the pieces when life gets back to normal.

But the music will go on!

Temporary homeschooling tips!

Posted on by Suki

12 years ago, I came home from my younger child’s kindergarten in distress. It was clear that his developmental issues were making it impossible for him to learn in a classroom setting.

I suddenly became the world’s most reluctant homeschooler.

That experience forced me to get creative—just like millions of parents around the US are suddenly being forced to get creative due to quarantines and school closures.

You may not be in a position to become a homeschooler full-time, but here are some tips for ways that you can keep your kids—and you—from going insane in the short term.

Cure your nature deficit

Have you heard of Nature Deficit Disorder? It’s a thing. It’s one of the underlying issues in modern kids’ behavioral problems. It’s easily curable:

Go outside. Outside is a great place to be during an epidemic, as long as your family has not been quarantined due to an active infection. And even if you don’t live near actual nature, a walk on city streets gets your kids out in the natural light.

Raining? Snowing? Humans are resilient. Our bodies do fine anywhere from the edge of the Arctic to the rainforest. Put on gear, go out, get muddy, get ridiculous.

Afraid of making too much laundry? What else do you have to do?

Gamify!

Kids’ brains are wired for learning and investigation. The reason they like those video games so much is that they are engineered to take advantage of kids’ natural inclinations.

You can do it, too. Make everything you do into a ridiculous game. Have to walk somewhere because you can’t take public transit? Invent a contest for the funniest walk. Stuck in a two-level condo with energetic kids? Invent a game that involves going up and down the stairs…a lot.

Treasure hunt

There is nothing kids like more than a treasure hunt. Not convinced? Try it. If you’re not stuck inside, do a treasure hunt in your neighborhood: make a list of things they need to find. If you don’t want them to touch anything, give them a device and have them take photos. Kids are like little seeking machines—once they get into it, they’ll wear you out before they’re done. (If you’re stuck inside, hide small items like marbles around the house and give the kids buckets!)

Counting

This was often a last-ditch resort of mine, trying to keep a high-energy kid focused so we could get things done or get somewhere we needed to go. Ask them to count. How many telephone poles are there on our street? How many squirrels can you see in the next ten minutes? (Set a timer—timers are great motivation for kids.) Let’s find all the prime numbers up to a hundred.

A change of paradigm

What I tell new homeschoolers is that their new educational path is not a change of schools, it’s a change of paradigm. Your entire life shifts when you are suddenly at home with people you used to send off to school.

We’re all stuck in this new paradigm, for a while at least. Rather than fighting it, I suggest you embrace it. As the mother of one kid in college and another about to leave, I will tell you that these years go fast.

You might even create some fun memories during this time of stress and uncertainty.

Need to teach online?

Posted on by Suki

Here are a few pointers from someone who does it every day

Yup, my kid really did attend a class at Athena’s while jumping on the trampoline!

I got a call this morning from a friend who suddenly needs to teach a hands-on class…remotely. How do you do that?

Lots of teachers are asking this question, so I’m going to offer a few simple pointers.

The technology is not too hard!

While you have been happily continuing in the brick and mortar world, online education has come a long way. There is so much easy technology you can access, much of it for free.

Don’t think that you can’t do it. Find someone to help you if you feel overwhelmed. Don’t listen to anyone who says you need to do something complicated. Use the simplest tools that you already have a feel for.

Be creative with technology

How could you use Facebook live streaming? Do you know how to share a Google Drive document? Did you know that anyone can upload videos to Youtube and share them only with a specific audience?

Don’t focus on what you don’t know. Focus on what you do know and how you can adapt it.

Remember that the real world matters

The worst online classes take away everything that is good about the real world. The best ones integrate the real world with the IRL world.

Think about what your students get from you in the classroom, and consider how you can continue to give that online.

So… Are you a teacher who uses your voice a lot to convey information? Make sure to make sound available to your students.

Do you provide your students with fun physical materials? You can still do that. Some schools are putting together packets that students can pick up. Just make sure that your parents know that you are wearing a mask when you create the packets!

Do you need to engage your students in real time? If your students are likely to all have access to streaming, live streaming allows you to share your face and gestures.

Do you give immediate feedback in the classroom? If your classes depend on back and forth communication, look into what sorts of texting programs might work—Messenger, WhatsApp, Hangouts… There are so many! Find out what’s easiest for your families.

Don’t disappear

Your students are used to being with you for a certain amount of time in the week. Even if they are not in the classroom, they should feel that you are just as available to them during this stressful time.

Consider this an opportunity to do some professional development

You may end up never using online educational tools again…but that’s unlikely. Once you develop these skills, you may end up integrating them into your teaching long term.

Teaching online is extremely rewarding in its own way. I don’t think that remote classes should ever replace in-person interaction, but in a time like this, these tools are there for your use. Good luck!

2 things you can do to stay safe

Posted on by Suki

Do you use a password manager?

Do you do all the updates on your computer and devices?

If yes, you can stop reading. But you probably know someone who would answer no to those two questions.

In fact, you probably know many people, so keep reading anyway.

Last week Brad and I had Irvin Lemus, the head of Computing Information Services at Cabrillo College, on our radio show. He’s got a simple message for all of you out there who are afraid of things that will probably never hurt you. (Stranger danger? Wild roving viruses?)

Listen to KSQD to hear the whole conversation:

The threat you’re not scared of.

What’s likely to hurt you is often so close you don’t notice it. Lots of parents worry about vaccines….and then they strap their kids into cars, which are one of the leading causes of injury to children. Cars are just so much a part of our lives that we don’t think about them.

Another thing that’s too close to see for many of us in our daily lives is how easy we make it for other people to digitally hijack our lives.

This isn’t rocket science.

Lemus said that although there are many things you can do, there are two that are easy and you can do today:

1.Get a password manager and only use randomly generated passwords, a different one on each website you use.

Worried that password managers are complicated? They’re not. Worried that they’re expensive? They’re usually free. Worried about the guys at the company who will now own all your passwords? They can’t see them.

Think of it this way: Who do you trust more? The guys who work at a password manager software company who just love to find out what the latest scam is and make sure to keep their customers safe from it?

Or do you trust the scammers more not to scam you?

They will scam you. Get a password manager.

2. Do your phone’s and computer’s updates, every single time they ask.

Lemus points out that almost all of the famous break-ins that have happened happened because someone was using an old, unsafe piece of software or operating system.

Update, update, and update again.

Why me?

The break-in that you succumb to will probably not get you famous. But it will screw up your life. There are two easy things you can do to protect yourself, so do it today.

ps: Irvin agrees with me that Facebook does not deserve your real birthday. Give it a fake one, then you can find out how many of your friends actually keep track of when your birthday is!

Finding our Best Selves

Posted on by Suki

I was ruminating on why so many people feel that parenting made them “better” people all around, and it occurred to me that parenting allows us to access our “best selves” in a way that is fully rewarding and not (usually) life-threatening.

By “best self” I mean that part of us that is fully engaged with being good and helpful without regard to any mitigating factors.

Our best selves sometimes lead us to do things that aren’t in our own self-interest.

It was a veteran’s best self that led him to enter a burning house, save some members of a family, and then perish trying to save more.

It was that best self that led Gandhi not to sit on a stagecoach floor, one of his first acts of nonviolent resistance.

When a New York secretary amassed a fortune, it was her best self that told her to live simply and leave the money for college scholarships.

We save our best selves…for good reason

This best self is one most of us don’t want to activate all the time: there are clearly situations where that self is willing to sacrifice everything when our logical brains will tell us not to.

Parenting gives us an easy way into accessing our best selves. More than any other people in the world, our children compel us to use our best selves even when it might hurt.

Why do we become parents?

My mother did research for her PhD on childbirth in medieval Europe. As a teenager, I had to wonder why women agreed to marry at all!

In Medieval Europe, most women had two choices: join the church as a nun, or become a wife and—hopefully—mother.

But marriage was hardly an appealing option. The consequences of marriage were often death: from childbearing, during childbirth, or death from childbirth-caused conditions like fistula. Wives were legally owned by their husbands, who were legally allowed to treat them as they saw fit.

Not an appealing future, and no wonder that many women, as my teenage self would have advised, went to the convent instead.

Because children are worth the trouble!

We access our best selves…except maybe sometimes when we’ve had enough!

Yet, here we are, the human race that has survived because so many women chose to make that sacrifice. Most modern women don’t enter a hospital fearing, as historical diaries confessed, that they are likely not to come home.

Parenting offers us a chance to access our best selves. It’s perhaps not a reason that most people consider when they decide to have children, but I believe it’s the reason why this difficult, often thankless task is one we repeat over and over.

Tabitha
Pets, too! Those big kitten eyes look at us, and we’ll do pretty much anything!

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