School Days Coimnng Sooner

DUKES FANS: “Up in the morning and off to school” Chuck Berry Tuesday I was in town and taking the train home from Center City when I became aware of schoolkids…tons of schoolkids. At 11th and Market Streets there were dozens of kids from the charter schools in that area, and they were laughing, shouting, and being silly. When the 2:52 Chestnut Hill West train pulled into Suburban Station dozens more students piled in, probably from the Masterman School. I was suddenly aware that Philadelphia public schools had started on Tuesday. It is a week before Labor Day, and that start date for school still feels strange to me. I’m an oldster, and I vividly remember when Summer started on Memorial Day and ended on Labor Day. Of course, that wasn’t correct by the calendar, and school was still in session after Memorial Day. But there would be a week of exams or such, moving up days, and graduation. Labor Day BBQ’s and parties meant it was time to get ready to go back to the “real” world, and that is when school would start. But the word has changed, and I need to get used to the new public school calendar. When they first announced changes to the school year, I was upset. I thought it may have been a reaction to and a response to President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind policies which mandated standardized tests and, to me, led to an over-reliance on teaching to the tests. Bush also advocated longer school years, even asking educators to think about establishing year-round school. However, when I looked into it I found out that I was wrong. There were several factors that figured into the decision, and the most important of them were wonderfully surprising Stakeholders-parents, teachers, custodial staff and more- were consulted in several meetings and surveys, and most of them felt that starting before Labor Day would allow for extended winter breaks and fewer snow days. They also thought it would allow for more recognition of cultural and religious holidays that more truly reflect the diversity of the district’s students and staff. So not only Christian but some Jewish and Muslim holidays are now built into the calendar. Finally, they wanted a full week available at the end of the year to prep for the mandated state tests that have come to matter so much in both student and school lives. The District agreed, and that is the calendar we will have at least for the next two years. The most amazing thing about this for me is that this seems to be an example of an actual government organization working the way we would hope they would. Before instituting a change, they actually consulted all of the people who would be affected by the change, and they actually listened to them. Wow! While I do not approve of everything the School District of Philadelphia does, by any means, this is something that worked the way it should; an agency actually listening to the people involved and affected by a possible change and responding affirmatively to them. This should be a great model for all agencies; our government taking us into consideration and listening to us. What a refreshing happening! And I will get used to seeing more schoolkids on the train the rest of this week. DUKES OF DESTINY GIGS www.dukesofdestiny.com 1)Friday, September 5, The Royal Glenside; 1 South Easton Rd; Glenside, PA 19038; Doors 7:30PM; show 8PM; $20 adv-$25 door; https://www.theroyalglenside.com/ Our September gig has us back at The Royal, a wonderful listening and dancing room in Glenside. We love this place for its ambiance, its mission, and its staff. Great sound system, space to dance, space to sit and listen, and a great vibe. We are super happy to be back. For info on food and drink go to https://www.theroyalglenside.com/faq BROTHER JOHN-JOHNNY NEVER & JOHN COLGAN-DAVIS ; www.BrotherJohnBlues.com 1) Sunday, August 31 1-4PM Lock 29 127 Bridge Street Mont Claire PA 19453 https://www.lock29montclare.com/ 2)Thursday, September 4 7PM - 10PM Hummingbird to Mars 1930 Speakeasy (ring the bell--it's around back!) W 16th St, Wilmington, DE 9806 http://catherinerooneys.com/hummingbird Reservations recommended 3)Saturday, September 6 8PM Brother John opening for Mikey Junior The Fallser Club 3721 Midvale Ave Philadelphia PA 19129 tickets $20adv; $ 25 door https://thefallserclub.com/ Next week finds us in two new places wrapped around an old favorite. Sunday we are making our debut at Lock 29 in Mount Clare, Pa. for a Sunday brunch. We have not played here before, and we are looking forward to it. So come on out and welcome Brother John to this new venue. Saturday finds us at the Fallser Club in East Falls opening up for the remarkable Mikey Jr. Again, a new place for Brother John, although I have caught some great shows there. And Thursday finds us back at Hummingbird to Mars, one of our favorite spots with great food, wonderful waitstaff, and bartenders who somehow know how to shake the mixed drinks glasses in time to the music. Three places to feed your palette, wet your whistle, and catch some great acoustic blues. Come on out. The Sunday Blues Jam at Jamey’s House of Music; 32 S. Landsdowne, Ave; Lansdowne, PA; jamey@jameyshouseofmusic.com Blues lovers and players have made Jamey's Sunday Blues Jam the place for great blues jamming, inexpensive and tasty eats, craft brews on tap, fresh brewed coffee, a great waitstaff, and friendly people who love the blues.  Each Sunday features an hour long set by a different house band, and then there is an open jam until 3PM. This month the jam features The Philly Blues Kings with various guitarists and singers. The 2nd Sunday of each month features The Roger Girke-John Colgan-Davis Project as the house band, and our next gig there is Sunday, September 14th . Got an instrument? Sing? Just want to listen to some exciting blues and have some good food? Come on out and take part in this great blues jam with great food and liquid refreshments. $5 minimum to be spent

H.O.P.E.

DUKES FANS: “HOPE is How One Perceives Everything”- Susan Allenbacak “Hope attracts chances.” —Toba Beta “Music is the Healing Force of The Universe” Saxophonist Albert Ayler “We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.” Martin Luther King, Jr. Thinking about Hope I think about “hope” and what it can mean a great deal. To me, it is one of the greatest and most powerful forces in human lives: it allows us to dream, to experience tough times and survive, to leave important legacies, to inspire others, and so much more. I got word recently that one of my favorite musicians, whose whole career is a true embodiment of hope, will be playing Philadelphia in a little over a month, and that reminded me of a piece I wrote about her, the notion of hope, and an exhibit at the Museum of American Visionary Arts in Baltimore way back in 2016. I decided to re-run some of it in an edited form. I hope you do not mind: Wednesday, July 13 my wife and I went to a concert at World Café Live featuring Sharon Katz and the Peace Train. Katz is an amazing guitarist, singer and organizer who is a white South African woman who, in the early 1990’s in apartheid South Africa, put together a 500 member interracial and inter-cultural performance group and did performances of a show called, When Voices Meet. She then became an ambassador for Nelson Mandela, chartering a train and performing When Voices Meet at dozens of places around South Africa, risking jail and possibly death. It was a movement that tied in with the anti-apartheid movement and played an active role in getting people to vote, spread news about health and child welfare, and more. After Mandela’s election Sharon became even more involved in what we would call humanitarian and social justice work, starting music therapy groups, raising money for children displaced by warfare, HIV/AIDS, and bringing stories and songs of peoples’ struggles to places around the world. Over the years this work that has taken her on tours to just about every continent. Her concert last Wednesday featured Peace Train 2016-a multi-cultural group of children from schools across the country singing and dancing to South African tunes and Sharon’s own rhythm-heavy and inspirational compositions. The concert attracted people of all ages, all nationalities and colors. It was a veritable United Nations of joy, happiness, commitment and unity as Sharon and the kids moved together, hand clapped, sang, shouted, and danced their commitment to a world of inclusion and peace. It was also a moving reminder of the central and powerful role music has played throughout history as a unifier and inspiration in movements for social change. We stood, cheered, clapped, cried and left the World Café with a heart full of energy, love, and most importantly, hope. Friday July 15 saw us at one of our favorite spaces, The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, MD. A museum dedicated to the work of outside artists, this museum is one of the most joyous spaces we have ever visited, filled with color, unique sculptures, vivid drawings and paintings, and thought provoking exhibits organized around wide ranging themes. The current major exhibition is ‘The Big HOPE Show,” a multi-media examination and presentation of thoughts, experiences, and ideas about what hope is, does, can be and enables us to do. From one man’s cartoons and colorful post card illustrations of his years- long medical issues, to paintings and drawings re-examining the myth of Pandora’s Box, this exhibit challenges and involves one directly, calling for honest, emotional responses. There is a video speech by Kevin Briggs, a San Francisco Bay Bridge officer who has talked down some 200 potential suicides from the bridge. He talks about how he tries to listen to the would-be suicides, trying to find places where some little bit of hope still lies within. He then tries to speak to that bit of hope, and for the most part, that has prevented them from taking their own lives. There is also a wonderful video examination of Philadelphia artist Lily Yeh and the work she did in transforming a neighborhood in North Philadelphia with her Village of Arts and Humanities, and how she has since carried that work to places around the world. There is a scrapbook table and exhibit that calls for us to look at our positive memories as a scrapbook of a trip through our lives. And there are paintings that look at the near universal human tendency to look at birds and butterflies as images of hope and prayer. The exhibit was inspiring, and it reminded me of who I am and how much hope is a part of that. As a child of the 1960’s, a son of African-American Southerners who came north and established a household in a Jim Crow world, and as a musician, teacher, and birdwatcher, I am constantly and deeply involved with hope. All of those activities point to a person who engages the world, believes in looking for the positive, imagines what can be, is working in some small way to make what can be possible possible, and who delights in being a human being in this world; the world that is here right now with all of its challenges. And over these past few years, I have needed to take actions that reassert that hope lives deeply within me and that it is one of the things that motivates me; that it is an essential part of who I am. Last week the concert and the museum did that for me in real ways, and I am so grateful. While it may appear to be "hip" and "cool" to be cynical, hope is what provides the fuel for important change. Just look at the Civil Rights Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, and more. We live in a world where hope, joined with persistent and consistent action, has provided important change in the face of incredible odds. We need to remember that and continue to take those actions For many of us these past few weeks have been a hard time. Our screens, TV’s, papers and more have regularly been filled with images, words, and actions reflecting fear, hatred, and anger. Our new technology brought us face to face with some unpleasant things. I have heard many friends and acquaintances mention how scared they are and how unsure they are of where we as a nation are headed. For those of us who are committed to a world of peace, tolerance and diversity, it may seem as if we are farther away from that vision than ever before. Those powerful positive motivators, vision and hope, may seem very, very distant. But experiences such as Sharon’s concert and the Visionary Art Museum’s exhibit are strong reminders that there are plenty of reasons to be positive and plenty of examples of the transformative and positive power of hope being lived and demonstrated all around us. And as Lily Yeh’s life illustrates, there are many people, groups and efforts in the world that are building on that hope and working to bring aspects of it into existence. Fear, despair and conflict drive our media-it is flashy, it delivers viewers for advertisers, and it can even ignite a political movement or two. But it has never produced a way of life or a society that has delivered peace, stability, beauty and tolerance. Never. We need to remember that and to focus instead on hope and to find ways, even small ways, we can be a part of building the world in which we say we want to live. Using that hope to motivate us and then putting effort into manifesting it are the only things that can defeat our fears and help us envision, engage with and build toward the world we want. For I agree with the words of Holocaust survivor, psychologist and philosopher Victor Frankl: “The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude.” I say look up, do not despair. Choose hope, and then work in some small way to make what you are hoping for happen in our world. We must be the world we wish to see and to live in. It starts with us. I say, choose hope. 1) Here is a link to Sharon Katz’s music and work:http://sharonkatz.com/ 2) Kevin Briggs Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_briggs_the_bridge_between_suicide_and_life/transcript 3)Here is a link to the American Visionary Art Museum. The exhibit, The Big Hope Show, is no longer on the site, but there are other wonderful and inspiring exhibits here: http://www.avam.org/ And if you are ever in Baltimore, visit that museum! 4) If you are interested in getting a list of some organizations that I support and think are doing some important work in building positive things in the face of adversity, please write me.

Unplanned Interactions

DUKES FANS: “ When we live a good life, we are capable of the joys of surprise. But surprise is not going to come up to your door, knock, and ask to be let in. You have to be out in the world and open to it”…. Anonymous This past week has been like an oasis in the desert. The weather has been much more moderate and bearable. The temperatures have been in the 70’s and low 80’s for the most part, and the humidity has been much lower than it had been during the previous weeks. I have been able to breathe, and most enjoyably, been able to enjoy being outdoors in my neighborhood. I have not been out in a leisurely fashion for much of this summer due to the weather, and I have missed the casual joys of neighborhood life. I have lived in my neighborhood for 35 years-almost half of my life. I consider myself extremely lucky to live here in West Mt Airy as there are so many things that I love about this area. For one, I love the houses. There are a lot of rowhouses, but they are wider than the stereotypical narrow ones that fill many Philly neighborhoods, and most of them have porches. They also have some patch of land both in front of and behind them. That means there are plenty of opportunities to see and have interactions with neighbors in unplanned ways. Folks are sitting on their porches and/or working on that plot of land as I walk by, and unplanned interactions take place. Little check-in conversations, talks about trips and activities, what the kids are up to, and more have taken place on just about every street I have been traveling this week. We have two coffeehouses in the neighborhood, and more folks have been sitting outside the shops, enjoying their beverages, sitting with friends and family, and greeting me as I walk by. People have just been out walking-with friends, with kids, and with dogs. And so there have been more chance for unplanned interactions. The hot, humid weather kept a lot of us indoors for a while, as being outdoors was largely miserable. But this week we are all out and about, and the unplanned interactions are plentiful and joyous. So here’s to the possibility of surprise and the unplanned. Indeed, some of the best times in our lives are things we neither plan nor envision. And in this weather, it is much easier to encounter those surprises. Enjoy being out and about.