Effective January 16, 2018, I left administration and returned to full-time teaching in the school of music at my university. Except for the sudden adjustment in salary (a 50% reduction with one week’s notice), the move has been very good for me. As I have told a number of friends, after nineteen years in higher […]

  It can be pretty exciting to attend a higher education conference these days.  Change is in the air!  New personalities offer new insights.  New technologies offer new solutions or pieces of solutions.  Everything is put on the table for consideration as higher education struggles to respond to the myriad of challenges that have presented […]

The focus is always blurred; there is always a lack of clarity, to some degree.  A lack of certainty.  If one is certain, one is making some stuff up.

When I think about my dad these days, I think of the challenges and struggles he has been dealing with over the past five years, since the death of my mother. We had only a hint of the memory problems he was developing before her passing because she took care of him. It wasn’t that […]

   I have been thinking about the fact that over the past ten years quite a number of good friends, several from my childhood, have died.  This shouldn’t be all that surprising.  I am sixty-two years old, a senior citizen.  That’s the time of life in which lots of people die. I’ll have to admit […]

“Stuck in the middle . . .” This is the way it happens: after the job change, almost no one that you have worked with for the past eight years will have anything to do with you. It’s not just that you are no longer working in close proximity; there is a noticeable avoidance of […]

I’m always looking back.  Well, not always but frequently.  Here’s something to think about. And, then, this — Nice to think about.

It’s time to get started again.  Big changes. Life goes on.  I’ll catch you up, little by little, maybe. Anyway, I’ve been thinking again about roots and heritage and what’s important. Today, as you may know, is the birthday of John Lennon.  He would have been 75 today. Take a look at this tribute, recorded […]

I’ve been at this a long time. I learned to be a pretty proficient singer and a passable actor.  I worked very, very hard at it. I started teaching in college thirty-seven years ago.  I’ve taught at a small private university, a major state research university, a mid-size private university, and at two mid-sized state […]

There are quite a few reasons that I have been very happy working in higher education for the past 36 years.  One of the primary reasons is that one is given the chance, on a regular basis, to “start over.”  Every new academic year — indeed, every semester — one gets a fresh beginning. I […]