A Year of Dance
Posted in Dance, Habits of Mind, Practice on Aug 10th, 2014
It was about a year ago that I learned of a dance school near me with a class in beginning ballet for adults, and with some trepidation left a voice message […]
Category Archive for 'Habits of Mind'
Reinvigoration – Observations for a New Year
Posted in Habits of Mind on Jan 6th, 2014
A few days into the new year, I am excited by all the signs of reinvigoration I see around me, and by the shoots in my own life trying to […]
Beginning Ballet, Part 2
Posted in Conducting, Dance, Habits of Mind, Practice on Nov 24th, 2013
My last post about taking beginning ballet class just scratched the surface. Now I’d like to attempt to write more about the background reasons for studying ballet, and the effects […]
Beginning Ballet, Part 1
Posted in Dance, Habits of Mind, Practice on Nov 16th, 2013
The philosophy behind this blog, Shunryu Suzuki’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, is something I have embraced in an entirely new way with my beginning to study ballet. Many times in […]
Authenticity and Simplicity
Posted in Habits of Mind on Jun 29th, 2013
This past year I have not written much at all, to which I will chalk up to life. At last I can take a breath, and begin to write again […]
Lessons in Music, from Thoreau and Bach
Posted in Habits of Mind, Practice on Aug 9th, 2012
After a summer of relative blog quietude, the school year fast approaches – this year with the additional time pressure/terror from a summer more focused on moving into and fixing […]
Last Concert
Posted in Habits of Mind, Performance, Practice on Apr 27th, 2012
I am writing on the morning of the Hamilton College Orchestra’s last concert of the year, and it seems like the right time to draft some thoughts on what I […]
Silent Film and the Extinction of Silence, Part I
Posted in Culture, Habits of Mind on Mar 20th, 2012
Two significant cultural items on our relationship to sound have come out recently. Last Sunday the New York Times Magazine had a long piece – Is Silence Going Extinct? – […]
Educational Goals Part 2: Modes of Thought
Posted in Arts Advocacy, Habits of Mind on May 30th, 2011
One important attribute of Hamilton College’s new Educational Goals (listed in my previous blog post and described here) that has not yet received much attention is their internal design. There […]
Educational Goals Part 1: Transdisciplinarity
Posted in Habits of Mind on May 25th, 2011
One of my major projects this year was to help rethink and rewrite Hamilton College’s Educational Goals as part of an ad hoc committee appointed to this task. This was […]