* * * * QUOTES & PEARLS OF WISDOM: * * * *
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is." - Albert Einstein
"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, and Life to everything."—Plato
"To live well with music is to live with beauty - and order." —Isaac Stern
"What is done without JOY is ZERO."—Nadia Boulanger
"The greater danger for most of us is not that we aim too high and miss, but rather, we aim to low and hit. " - Michelangelo
"Assert your right to make a few mistakes. If people can't accept your imperfections, that's their fault." - David M. Burns
"Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself." - Chinese Proverb
"A great teacher never strives to explain his/her vision: he/she simply invites you to stand beside him/her and see for yourself." -Rev. R. Inman
"So often we want to know what the future will bring. We do this because we believe that this knowledge of the future will spare us. If only we knew ahead of time the outcome! We don't." - Felix Carrion: Director of the Stillspeaking Ministry, United Church of Christ, Cleveland, Ohio. (Stillspeaking Daily Devotional for Mar. 20, 2009: The Wise Shall Understand) www.ucc.org
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” - Aristotle
“As a child lives today, he will live tomorrow.” - John Dewey
“If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.” - Abigail Van Buren
"Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands." - Anne Frank
“Children grow up by 'mimicking' others. What matters most is ... WHOM they mimic!" - Walt Lofstrom, Song-CAMP Director
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever" - Albert Einstein
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving." - Gandhi
“Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.” - Napoleon Hill
“Michelle and I are here only because we were given a chance at an education. I will not settle for an America where some kids don’t have that chance.” - Barack Obama
“We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible. ” - Barack Obama
“The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure.” - Sydney J. Harris
“There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.” - John Adams
“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” - Sydney J. Harris
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain
"The kids in our classroom are infinitely more significant than the subject matter we teach." - Meladee McCarty
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all." - Aristotle
"Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back." - Chinese Proverb
"You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives." - Clay P. Bedford
"Information cannot replace education." - Earl Kiole
"Nothing is ever achieved without enthusiasm." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil." - C. S. Lewis
"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it." - Margaret Fuller
"“And I’ve said this all across the country when I talk to parents about education, government has to fulfill its obligations to fund education, but parents have to do their job too. We’ve got to turn off the TV set, we’ve got to put away the video game, and we have to tell our children that education is not a passive activity, you have to be actively engaged in it. If we encourage that attitude and our community is enforcing it, I have no doubt we can compete with anybody in the world.” — Barack Obama
"Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire." — W.B. Yeats
"I Hear America Singing" — Walt Whitman
"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, and Life to everything" —Plato
"What is done without JOY is ZERO"—Nadia Boulanger
"Refuse to fall down. If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down. If you cannot refuse to stay down, lift your heart toward heaven and like a hungry beggar, ask that it be filled and it will be filled. You may be pushed down. You may be kept from rising. But no one can keep you from lifting your heart toward heaven--only you. It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who says nothing good came of this, is not yet listening." --Clarisse Pinkola Estes
"Emotion is more powerful than thought. I think that when you 'feel' something, you end up articulating or figuring out what you think about what you feel. And, so it's almost like the emotion is the feeling, which is the 'nuclear explosion', and that is the fire" - Singer-Songwriter Corinne West www.ArtOfTheSong.com ... Creativity Radio, Week of 26JAN09 Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
In light of present-day economic downturns and the continual cutting out more and more of the arts in public education, the following article strikes me as paramount in providing outside education in Music and the Arts for our children. - Walt Lofstrom,Song-CAMP Director. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity ?: "[Regarding our present emphasis on the revolution of Ecology (Al Gore) ], I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of 'human ecology' - one in which we start to reconstitue our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has 'mined' our minds in the way that we've strip-mined the earth for a particular commodity - and for the future, it won't service. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educuating our children... WE [MUST] CELEBRATE THE GIFT OF THE HUMAN IMAGINATION. We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely, and that we avert some of the [negative] scenarios ... The only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are, and seeing our children for the hope that they are. OUR TASK IS TO EDUCATE THEIR WHOLE BEING SO THEY CAN FACE THIS FUTURE... We may not see this future, but they will. Our job is to help them make something of it." - Sir Ken Robinson YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY TED.com : Technology, Entertainment, Design ... Ideas worth spreading
Regarding children's intense need for nurturing and attention: "If a child can't get Positive strokes, Negative strokes are better than no strokes at all!" - Transacional Analysis, 1970's
"All children are born artists." - Picasso
"Children need more than Parents ... they need Teachers, Coaches and Friends" - NPR/WeekendEditionSaturday/Scott Simon, December 20th, 2008.
"A Bird sings not because it has a Message, but because it has a Song" - Maya Angelou http://communities.faithstreams.com/newmorning/Forums/tabid/18752/view/topic/postid/1056/forumid/625/tpage/1/Default.aspx
"If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance." - Ancient African Shona proverb from Zimbabwe http://www.afriprov.org/index.php/resources/book-reviews/20-new-book-once-upon-a-time-in-africa-stories-of-wisdom-and-joy.html
"Driftwood Fire": On Saturday, 15nov08, Walt's peronal singer-songwriter friends ("Driftwood Fire") from Ft. Collins, CO, performed at our Parkview-UCC House Concert series. They were a true inspiration to the enthusiastic audience, showing how young girls with music passions had grown up to become fabulous singer-songwriters of national award recognition! (First Place winners of the prestigious International Narrative Song Competition). Listen to their songs and see them at: http://DriftwoodFire.com Also, checkout their YouTube music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4vY2bpFg9E
Having his finger on the pulse of one of the founding philosophies of Song-CAMP, in a Tuesday,18nov08 Morning Edition interview on National Public Radio (NPR), Bill Ayers (author of a new book "City Kids City Teachers and To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher") quoted a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks about a boy who vandalized a school: The boy says he wanted to create: " 'If not a note, then a hole, if not an overture, then a desecration. But I shall create.' And that's the aspiration of every human being — to create, to be seen, to be noticed, to make a difference, to leave your footprint in the sand. And if we don't provide that for kids, if we don't open that creative vent, then we for sure open the destructive vent." - Gwendolyn Brooks http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97124808
From an interview on PBS/Bill Moyers Journal, Mark Johnson is interviewed on his award-winning film: "Playing for Change - Peace Through Music": "No matter who we are, no matter where we come from, we are all united ... through music" Mission: "Continuing to build music and art schools around the world" Music: Hundreds of live recordings from our global archive. "Stand By Me" performed by musicians from around the world. - Mark Johnson You-Tube music video: http://playingforchange.com/pop.html http://www.playingforchange.org/ http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/
In a March 27, 2007 National Public Radio Morning Edition interview, Walt's friend and mentor, Paul Reisler (creator of the famous Kid-Pan-Alley singer-songwriter program for elementary kids), Paul is quoted as saying: "The great thing about writing with kids is, it's not edited before it comes out of their mouth." - Paul Reisler http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9107568