Hi, all--On Wednesday afternoon I had the first group session of my Home Made Music class at Berkeley Unified School District's Independent Studies program. We have six or eight classrooms in two buildings surrounding a small courtyard on the campus of the continuation school (Berkeley High School East Campus, a half a mile south of Berkeley High's main campus). It was a beautiful spring day (it's often spring in February in the Bay Area), as it had been on Tuesday (it's cold and stormy now, the groundhog's shadow having frightened him back into his hole on Tuesday).
.
Anyway, because of the warm sunshine, my as-yet small group of students and I, joined by a couple of other teachers, sat pickin' and singin' for about two hours. I'd had an individual session with one of the group the hour before that, working on the circle of fifths and on twelve-bar blues--in the same sunny courtyard. Halfway through the group session, this student's mother, concerned about my bald head's vulnerability to the sun, made me a hat out of a piece of construction paper. It looked silly but did the trick.

I have on order ten copies of RUS and five Klutz Jon Gindick Country and Blues Harmonica for the Musically Hopeless books/tapes/harmonicas, have purchased a CD/tape boom box with a microphone jack for recording lessons, and will pick up a few more instrumental lesson programs for the gang.

I'm really busy this semester, despite being only 40 percent employed: I have more than twenty students in my photo group, individual sessions with each of them plus my music students at East Campus and three afternoons in the lab at Main Campus, and the music group session Wednesday afternoons. I can't wait for the days to get longer.

By the way, one of my former students put together a CD of Berkeley High students' bands--and asked me for a tape. I received a copy of the CD this past week--with my contribution, "Jimmy Brown the Newsboy."

So I'm still on the planet, still pluggin' and still pluckin'. Regards, --seed