Silence  

Too much has been happening recently for me to blog, but I'm going to try to get back to it, more for my own sanity than any feeling of obligation (I've long since stopped feeling any shame about my frequent disappearances). One thing is that I started a new job yetserday with Chapin Hall, a research group at U of C that studies children and children's issues. It's a good move, a definite step up in terms of responsibility. I may end up writing more about education here, but I'm not sure yet.

I've also started teaching piano lessons, something I've never done before and something I had hoped to blog about sort of step-by-step. I have one student; he's in high school and knows his way around the piano already, mostly from working by ear. So far we've been working on the most basic improvised 12-bar blues, which seemed like a natural extention of what he had been doing on his own. Tomorrow, for lesson number three, I think I'll assign him the Prelude in C Major from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, which is fairly easy, impressive-sounding, and harmonically interesting. And we'll stick with the blues, probably add in a couple jazzy changes -- maybe a turnaround...

The only other thing I'll mention is that I had a photograph in the Austin Weekly News (uncredited!) alongside an article about Kidz Express, a group I volunteer with. The article is here, and a larger version of the photo is here.