penultimate!

gotta love the homophones

pencil obama

A few days after the election, my students and I spent some time drawing our new president. I had such a good time drawing! I actually was the last one still working on my picture, and deciding I should probably get back to teaching rather than simply participating, I hurried through the lower part of the face...which is obvious! Anyway, here's a slide show of my drawing with a little extra emphasis on the parts I love.

remember melinda?

Last night while sitting at Starbucks, I heard "My Funny Valentine". I had flashbacks to my friend Ruben singing to Kesia at their wedding and Ray singing "Nancy With the Laughing Face" to me at our wedding, but the best flashback (sorry fellas) was remembering Melinda Doolittle's absolutely dope performance of MFV on American Idol a couple of years ago...it is worth listening to again. And again.

kansas city's holiday songbirds

So one of my dear friends, Emily, is music personified. Its just what she does. And one of the cool things she organizes is a holiday season all-girl band called "The Sugar Plums". Tuesday night I was confessing to Emily my jealousy of my friend Mindy who is singing in the band. I received an immediate invitation to join. That was easy.

We'll be doing a lot of rehearsing over the next couple of weeks and even more performing in the month of December. It should be a lot of fun. Nice to be doing something out in the community and extraordinarily nice to be singing again!

Oh, and I should add that all of our proceeds will be going to a very cool non-profit org called Wuqu' Kawoq, which supports indigenous Mayan groups in Guatemala through medical and language work.

Check us out on facebook or myspace...

one for the ages

Last night was a great culmination to months of hoping and hours of CNN watching. Like so many other Americans, this election meant more than any other I've ever been a part of. We had a great time watching the results unfold with some of our friends and got a picture of the boys on this historic night.

Today one of my students was making a power point presentation about the election. He gathered ten or fifteen pictures of Barack - one in a gray superman costume, several from the campaign trail, and then, much to my initial displeasure, several photo-shopped images of Barack's head attached to ripped abs sporting gangster tats, and throwing up gang signs.

During our conversation about the choices of his content, the student said he liked the images. Far from being disrespectful, they actually showed admiration. The images were appealing because they brought an admired man into this boy's world - the street.

Of course, part of me thought "No, he's supposed to inspire you to reach higher and envision a life outside of the violence and destruction of gangs and guns. You're supposed to want to be like him." And then I thought about the incarnation. There is great comfort in knowing that someone you admire, someone who is worlds away from you, will enter your world. That's a beautiful story.