Sweet Tunes

The week long Arts & Cultural festival at my college continues. I just got back from a jazz concert that was surprisingly good. Some of you may recall me writing a while back about one of my GED students, Jordan L. She is now a regular college student here and has been in the choir for a while. She did an outstanding job on her solo work on their rendition of "Stormy Weather". They did several other pieces, ranging from "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to some Billy Joel tune that were arranged to really compliment this particular choir. They ended with an improv piece that was astonishingly good. They had the whole room of people up on their feet moving.

This afternoon is something called "Socrates' Cafe". The flier says:
"Join together for a time of coffee and philosophical reflections. Socrates challenged the youth of ancient Athens, Greece to explore a wide range of questions about life. He proposed that "the unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates' Cafes are springing up around the world to provide an informal setting to ponder important questions about life..."

So there will be a facilitator with some questions to get the flow going..it will be interesting to see what sort of participation we get.

Yesterday we had a PowWow and salmon feed and I also sat in on a slide show and discussion comparing global inequities in different parts of the word. The day before I listened to a "Transgender Awareness Training" that was pretty interesting. There are so many sessions going on throughout the day it's sometimes hard to pick and choose which ones I can fit into my schedule. After all, I DO still have to get some work done around here.

But over all it has been a good week with lots of energy. Students are flocking to this, and people from the community are dropping in on much of it.

I whine sometimes about the bureaucracy and petty politics of working for a community college, but there are times like this when I feel very blessed to be here. It gets even better. Next week I get to go to a curriculum design & program planning retreat at Eagle Cap Chalet at Wallawa Lake for three days.

I'd say this beats the heck out of turning bolts in a factory (which I've also done).