Personal stimulus plan for the arts

If everyone who ever has ever thought about writing a book or majored in English would subscribe to one literary journal, those tiny and usually struggling publications would see their circulations skyrocket. If everyone whose child has ever taken dance lessons would attend one dance performance a month (hey, once a quarter), many dance troupes would find they could actually afford to continue. If everyone who ever enjoyed acting in a high school play would attend three or four experimental theater events or independent movie festivals, these projects wouldn’t have to function in borrowed spaces and decrepit venues.

My point is, all of these things are the training and proving grounds for the arts. If we want to enjoy innovative and creative arts, there has to be an audience that supports them. Plenty of us are interested in being seen ourselves. Couldn’t we benefit by seeing what others are doing? Wouldn’t it just be fun to get our car out of the usual ruts and drive somewhere different?

Not only do the arts desperately need support, but artists also crave feedback. Personally, I have really enjoyed meeting writers at bookstore signings. Hearing Robert Coles speak years ago, I’m still thinking over some of the things he said, and it was a great thrill to meet him in person, to find out how soft spoken and shy he appeared. That kind of opportunity has really diminished in the last year or so, and why? Because publishers are reluctant to take on the expense of sending an author on a book tour where she may find herself sitting alone at a table for hours. People just don’t come, unless the writer is a blockbuster. If we do read a good short story in a lit journal, would it kill us to drop a line to the author? Ever considered that it might be helpful to tell a director of that play what staging you thought worked? Sure, bestselling novelists get more mail than they can handle, but the mid-tier artist often gets very little feedback. At its best, art communicates; it would be nice if the conversation were two-way.

Most of us have cut back on eating out, and perhaps traded first run movies for discs from Netflix. If there’s any room for a tiny bit more belt tightening, perhaps those savings could be put into supporting the small arts production of your choice. I’m currently trying to pick up at least one literary journal per month at the local bookstore, with an eye to finding one or two to subscribe to that I really enjoy and will actually read. Artists and people who would like to see a vibrant arts scene might well consider the wisdom of Rabbi Hillel, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, then what am I? If not now, when?”

Seen any good dance performances lately?

STEM the tide

I’ve been listening to the ballyhoo about the need for more trained graduates in math and science since Sputnik shot up in 1957 and if I’d been around earlier, I’m sure I would have heard it then. Now the “rose” has another name—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)—but I’m not sure it doesn’t still smell of wrongheadedness. Corporations have been crying to the government for more support for these training programs for over 50 years now, and if I live another 50, my guess is I’ll still be hearing about it.

However, as soon as the STEMmys get jobs, the corporations start howling about how they can’t think beyond their technical specialty, can’t see the big picture, and can’t write any better than a fifth grader. Duh, why not? Could it be that they never studied anything that allowed them to see beyond the edge of their computer monitors? And a degree in STEM is no guarantee of a job, either, despite what the corporations would like us to believe. Ask anyone who’s worked for Motorola or Lucent in the last 20 years.

Unfortunately, even our beloved president—no graduate of STEM, he!—seems to be mouthing this conventional wisdom. It’s shocking that a guy whose thinking is so innovative on so many fronts seems to have a big blind spot where education is concerned. So, Mr. President, I’m going to make a really radical proposal.

Drop all special initiative for STEM. If the corporations need specialists, let the corporations PAY for that training. Maybe they’ll get the employees they need if they design the program. And why shouldn’t they foot the bills? They’re not going to reimburse the feds, like the banks have. But the role of government should be to support those important programs that do not necessarily have a direct profit price tag attached, but enhance and protect the quality of life. We are living in a world where too many governments have taken on the role of corporate partner, and in fact are impotent in the face of multinationals. But government is of, by and for PEOPLE, not business.

If government is going to support educational programs, I suggest we should be supporting the liberal arts and humanities. These are the areas of learning that lend intrinsic meaning, expression and connection to life, all things the robots of STEM cannot replicate. Maybe they don’t ring a corporate recruiter’s bells, but most of the English, or history, or French lit majors I know do find jobs. I also know plenty of computer science majors who are out of work right now.

More and more, arts instruction has become the province of the children of the upper middle class, whose parents know the value and purchase after-school instruction. But move down the economic ladder a bit and you’re out of luck—music, art, dance and theater programs have been sliced out of nearly all public school budgets.

We are seeing a country where the children of the rich are helped to express themselves, develop thinking ability, access culture and broaden their (already broad) experience, while the children of the working class and the poor are told to focus on getting a job, and get training for—for what? When I took computer science classes, we spent tons of time learning COBOL. I don’t think the schools know what technical skills will be useful by the time the kids graduate.

Mr. Obama did his undergraduate work at Columbia University (a school renowned for its Great Books-style curriculum) where he majored in political science. It doesn’t seem to have hurt his employability any.

10 classic books; 5 enjoyable, 5 not so much

From the 6 foot high pile next to my bed, five classic books I just can’t seem to finish:
1. Moby Dick
2. Don Quixote
I’ve made a run at both of these so many times over the years. I’d like to assign them to my daughter. I’m afraid she’ll call family services on me if I do. Has anyone besides an English professor ever finished these books?
3. The Bible. Even read as literature, I can’t do it. I’ve made it through Genesis, Daniel, Ruth and Matthew. That’s all. Several translations.
4. Herodotus, The Histories. We have the Landmark edition, which weighs a thousand pounds and stops my breathing when placed on my abdomen while lying in bed reading. My daughter “assigned” this book to me. She loved it—calls the guy the ”Ancient Geek”.
5. Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book. This one begins with a dog story that makes me ralph. It goes on for hundreds of pages that have no point that I can ascertain, about people that make reality tv contestants look smart. Except that they murder each other. I guess it just proves that people can be vile and shallow no matter what century they live in.
And five classics that kept me up all night:
1. Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter. Actually, this kept me up for about a week, as it’s a trilogy. I bought the first book on a Friday evening, thinking that I wasn’t sure if I wanted all three. Saturday morning I helped them open the bookstore, and the whole weekend was shot after that. Great medieval saga, heartbreaking and compelling.
2. George Elliott, Middlemarch. This was in the other pile when I was younger, but when I picked it up a couple of years ago, it suddenly had transformed from dull to compelling. Certain books speak to certain ages, and I think you might need to be over 40 to really get this one. A great delineation of older, but sadly wiser, and what we pay for that knowledge.
3. Mark Twain, Joan of Arc. Twain thought this might be his best book. It isn’t, but it’s sweet and believable, and the man sure could tell a story.
4. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Okay, maybe this is cheating because what we have is fragmentary and pretty short. But I found it a touching portrayal of friendship, the quest to find and develop an authentic self, and the despair of confronting mortality.
5. Charlotte Bronte, Wuthering Heights. I just read that this is one of the most hated books assigned to high school students. Is thwarted romance and heartbreaking yearning dead? Do we have no time for vividly evoked place and passion? Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier are probably rolling in their graves.

I do suspect that different books speak to us at different ages and after different life events. For years, I could not get through the Iliad, then forced myself to read it before dear daughter found it on her reading list. Where before it had seemed to me a simple gory catalog, now it seems one of the greatest anti-war works ever written. Who can fail to read about all the painful, individual deaths without mourning the lost lives, the tragedies of someone’s brother, son, father? Who can fail to root for Hector, trapped in a situation not of his making, trying to do the right thing as it destroys his life? Can we not all identify with Achilles, who makes such bad decisions in anger and finds out too late what really means something to him? It didn’t keep me up nights, but it did make for compelling reading.

They’re called classics because they bear up well for a second, a third, a late-in-life reading. Just maybe not all of them. Or maybe I’m not old enough, yet.

Buy Homer, not a Hummer

Recently I heard a school librarian and a reading specialist discuss what kids are reading. It’s enough to chill the bones of any author. I don’t mean only serious children’s authors who have to compete with the likes of Captain Underpants. Adult authors, too, have plenty to worry about. Looks to me like serious writers might need to worry that they’re about to follow newspapers down the sink hole.

According to these women, historical fiction is out. Kids just don’t get enough history in K-8 to have a context in which to place these stories. The organization, content and expectations are just pitiful. Here’s what one local school system does:
3rd Grade: Early Illinois history
4th Grade: Geography
5th Grade: More geography and U.S . History through the Civil War (if we’re lucky, commented the librarian)
6th Grade: Prehistory to Ancient Rome (okay, I’m on board here)
7th Grade: back to Geography
8th Grade: U.S. Government and U.S. History from Reconstruction to the Cold War
Why on earth kids need so much geography, and why it can’t be taught in the more meaningful context of history, is beyond me. At my house dear daughter never studied geography as a separate subject (oh, okay, she did some workbook pages on Fridays in 3rd & 4th grade) until 8th grade, when dd took AP Human Geography, easily passing with a 5. What’s missing from the above curriculum? How about all of European, Middle Eastern and Asian history, with only a smidgen of African history thrown in for political correctness?

By 8th grade, some kids have discovered historical fiction on their own, but the bulk of their early reading is focused (according to these speakers) on fantasy, relationships series (if girls) and horror (if boys). Also, the classic children’s books of the past have either been moved up to high school, being too long with too difficult vocabulary, or eliminated all together, being at odds with modern political correctness. In high school it’s better—our local high school requires 4 history or social studies courses, and a judicious choice can get some pretty good survey courses. Too bad it’s their first encounter.

I firmly believe in the “inoculation” theory of education, by which I mean, you give kids a shot of something several times over a period of years, and eventually that exposure strengthens their bodies’ response to the stimulus. The kid who read a picture book of the Odyssey in 1st grade and a retelling in 5th grade will be raring to go on the real thing by high school (not bored out of their gourds, as my daughter observed at a local high school class.)

Grappling with serious literature, classics, and lengthy works only becomes easy with exposure and training. The child who is exposed to the arts early on, in a meaningful context, by a teacher (or parent) who is knowledgeable and enthusiastic, will be a lifelong fan—at least an appreciative audience if not a creator.

All the stats show that newspapers have failed to reach a younger audience, who has never developed the habit of reading the morning paper (or the afternoon one, remember those?) But ultimately, we as parents and we as artists can’t leave it up to the schools. As an old poem says, children learn what they live. Children who see us anticipating concerts with enthusiasm, reading challenging books, and actually using our museum memberships for our own adult benefit will have a whole different cultural vocabulary from those whose evenings are spent watching reality tv. If only we valued season tickets to the opera as highly as we value ownership of a Hummer.

Nag, nag, nag!

When my daughter was first taking music lessons (piano) her first teacher wisely told me that she had never seen a student progress well without a parent who kept on them. Since I vacillate between being a drill sergeant and a pushover, I never quite got my nagging program in gear. As might be expected, piano progress was so-so.

However, when she began harp lessons, I was convinced that I might as well throw $55 out the window, and my nag switch opened full throttle. Besides the fact that harp turned out to be “her” instrument (see my post on harps), she readily admits that without the...er...motivation I supplied she never would have made the progress she has.

It strikes me that as teachers and learners, we really should just admit something to ourselves and our students: some things just aren’t fun to learn. Fields that require memorization or significant practice to master are going to have a huge quantity of things you have to beat yourself into doing: the foundations of music, math and foreign languages are, let’s say it, dull and repetitious. No amount of cute computer animation or music enhanced audio flashcards, or any of the other tricks we try really make a difference. Expecting a child to have the discipline needed is unrealistic. Someone else, someone who can visualize the long term benefits, needs to supply the superego.

As I used to pound into my daughter, memorizing the 2500 or 3000 words needed to read a French newspaper is no fun, but being able to pick up a French language fashion magazine or make yourself understood while travelling is a lot of fun indeed. Getting to the fun part, at least in some fields, requires a significant amount of grinding away. For me, and for her, the study of literature or history has been intrinsically pleasurable, because it exercises the brain, but requires no particular skill building exercises once you’ve learned to read. But not so with math, languages, music and advanced art: it’s practice, review and memorize for a long time before you can think big thoughts or work with anything interesting.

“Child-led learning” sounds great and is certainly a popular concept in both traditional and homeschool settings. I wish I believed in it. I wish my child had known what she wanted to do and pursued it wholeheartedly at an early age. I wish I could fly. While I recognize that there are kids like that somewhere on the planet, I think it’s a disservice to expect all of them to be that way, or to wait until they are. How could a child discover a passion for Javanese gamelan (or harp) if she was never exposed to that possibility? So, until I’m confident that she can drive herself, I still direct the tour.

Self-publishing, traditional publishing or somewhere in between

No doubt about it, publishing a book is a pain no matter which way you go. If you go with a traditional publisher, you get a pittance of the sale price. (I don’t say profits, because I’m not so sure publishing houses are seeing much of that these days.) If you self-publish, your sales may be minuscule and your costs high. Still, the relative boom in the self-publishing industry of late says there are a lot of us out there that at least consider the possibility.

Last night Jim Kepler of Adams Press spoke at the Independent Writers of Chicago meeting (great organization—check it out if you’re in the Chicago area.) Jim’s an old friend, and his operation is the old-fashioned kind: honest, full-disclosure and service oriented. He had a few warnings and war stories about what kind of contracts the new self publishing industry can put out, and more than ever it’s clear you better read the fine print and know what you’re signing.

Can self publishing ever work, or is it the last refuge of authors who have been rejected by 75 editors, or think someone will actually be interested in their poems, autobiography or Vietnam War stories? Well, if you’ve made a serious effort at peddling your manuscript (not 2 or 3 lame letters, but a well researched campaign), and everyone’s rejected it, maybe you do need to take a second look or hire a rewrite person. But what it really comes down to is platform. Do you have a way to move a lot of product on your own? Unless your book is a blockbuster (but then, your agent would have already auctioned it) you’re going to get the plain vanilla marketing plan, and most of the marketing will really be done by you, or not at all. At that point, most of us will start thinking about the spread between our 10% royalty on a $19.95 book, the $5.00 in printing costs, and how we could better spend the remaining $12.95. If you’re a speaker who can sell your book in the back of the room, have a company that will use the book as a promo, or can find a way to peddle it yourself (how big is your car trunk?), you might break even or be better off publishing it yourself. Do the math—if you sell 500 copies, and make, say, $10 a copy for a $19.95 book, a publisher is going to need to sell more than 2500 copies for you to make the same amount in royalties. Many, many conventionally published books sell 5,000 or less. Not much for 6 months or a year’s worth of work.

But it’s going to cost you in other ways, mostly in huge amounts of time. I’m not talking about promo here, because you’re probably going to have to do that anyway. I’m talking about shipping, printing, design, editing, order processing, etc. You’ll either do it yourself or find services that you can contract to do it for you, but it’s work, and hours and hours away from actually writing. The whole self publishing industry has thrived on doing all that for you, but that’s going to cost you, too. So, self publishing really comes down to how bad you want to see your book in covers (they don’t call it “vanity press” for nothing) or how good you are at peddling your wares.

Don’t do it without reading up on it first. Dan Poynter is the granddaddy of self-publishing, and it’s worth memorizing his book before you take the plunge. He’s very pro self-publishing, but very honest about how much work it takes. My friend Jim’s operation puts out some good looking books, in case you don’t want to do it all yourself. Elizabeth Lyon’s and Michael Larson’s books are great on the real mechanics of pitching a book. For a dose of reality, check out Elaura Niles’ book. If you read that and still think you can publish a book, my best wishes to you. I’m still thinking it over, myself.

Not a book review

Reviewers hate to give a sincere effort a bad review. Sure, if the book is an obvious stinker—say, a children’s book by a so-called celebrity author—it’s easy to pull out the long knives. When the book obviously entailed a lot of effort and research, and (even worse!) the author appears to be a decent and dedicated person, it’s a lot harder.

Years ago I’d read and enjoyed the first book by she who will not be named. Recently, I even heard her speak, and she seems like a serious and thoughtful writer, my kinda girl. So I was prepared to like her book, and picked it up with great anticipation. It’s an absolute train wreck. Billed as an historical NOVEL, it is blissfully free of any semblance of plot. As one editor put it about bad historical fiction, you can almost see the index cards laid out on the dining room table. I don’t think there was a single fact about the book’s subject that wasn’t crammed in somewhere. Often, the facts were foisted upon the reader by the execrable and neophyte practice of having characters tell each other about facts that each of them had every reason to know already. I probably ground my dental work down by several millimeters while reading those sections.

On and on it goes, for 870 pages. Doesn’t anyone at her (major) publisher own a blue pencil? Is the delete key missing on their keyboard? I wasted night after night of bedtime reading, hoping against hope that somewhere in this phone book this author would eventually hit her stride and give me something to think about. Plus, her main character is such an impossible twit that by page 350 I was rooting for the bad guys to do her in, and ready to cheer when they finally did.

All serious authors by now are asking themselves how this stuff gets published. Disabuse yourself of the notion that you have to be good to get published. There’s a huge greenbacks factor here—the first book made a ton of money, and I’ll bet the presales on this one were enough (ahem) to cover the paper costs and gold foil on the cover. I can’t believe I did my small part by purchasing this brick.

Still, I’m not going to out her. She’s gone on to publish a bunch more books, so someone must like them, and she had many fans when I heard her speak. A lot of work went into this book, and I do applaud that. I’m also a chicken—if I run into her again, I don’t want to have to hide. But if it’s 870 pages long, a Literary Guild Selection, and published by St. Martin’s, don’t buy it!

Anywhere But Now: the Historical Novel Society Convention

Renaissance Venice, Heian Japan, or sailing with the Norsemen, conference goers at the June Historical Novel Society meeting were anywhere but in the rather anonymous suburban hotel. But bring the participants (briefly) back to our 21st century publishing scene and you’ll find out that historical fiction is a sort of uber-genre: it covers mysteries, romance, thriller, fantasy, chick lit and serious fiction. Think of the range from The French Lieutenant’s Woman to Fabio.

It was a well heeled crowd, albeit more Ferragamo than Manolo. Predominantly female, conference goers clearly know their way around the research stacks, and one seminar on researching when you can’t go there elicited oohs and aahs for the presentation by author Roberta Gellis on accessing resources for ancient maps. Apparently plenty of authors need to know how to turn right at the correct medieval mud hut and proceed along to the barley fields.

Writers using historical settings may not be afraid of dragons, but they live in terror of reenactors, who can be counted on to point out the anachronisms the author has overlooked. Balancing the needs of a plot versus what actually happened can be more difficult than getting out of your armor after a rainstorm.

These are not the kind of writers to be daunted by a little inconvenient travel or tough research, however. Some described learning Latin in order to translate medieval manuscripts, deciphering spidery script in caches of personal letters, and constructing and wearing clothing of excruciating complexity and discomfort. One evening’s entertainment offered the opportunity to costume yourself as your character. One participant demonstrated a spectacular use for your grandma’s old fur stole: think sumptuous sleeve trim on blue velvet. Clearly, however, some eras have had more fashion sense than others, and based on the clothes, I’m not moving to the early middle ages any time soon, unless the burlap is lined. No wonder skin diseases were common.

Writers are readers, too, and publishers know it. The goodie bags given out to participants included a bushel of books, along with the usual printed pens and bookmarks. One clever and pricey promo was a wax sealed bottle of lavender water, packaged in a lace handkerchief, promoting a book called The Tory Widow by Christine Blevins. I wonder what the guys did with it. There were so many books I hauled them out to my car, but I must admit I was sore tempted to sit right down and read them all, bagging the rest of the conference.

That would have been a mistake. The Conference was replete with editors and agents, and they were in a buying mood. Every participant I spoke with who had taken advantage of the 8 minute pitch meetings had been asked to forward a manuscript. And authors who are ready to wrestle with samurai sword play are not easily daunted by the realities of 21st century marketing.

There was plenty of advice on making sure that the novel you spent 6 years researching doesn’t become a six week wonder. Speaker after speaker talked about developing a platform, courting readers, and using the latest cyber techniques and social media as a cost effective way to reach book buyers interested in worlds where the height of technological innovation might be the spoked wheel. As editor Trish Todd of Touchstone/Simon & Schuster put it, “I wouldn’t send my worst enemy on a book tour right now”, but virtual blog tours, connecting authors with book clubs via Skype, and webinars and podcasts were all thoroughly vetted as means to maximize “reader touch” while minimizing author wear-and-tear. Even though authors might find it as pleasant as swallowing an emetic, author Michelle Moran advised coughing up at least 5% of your advance for your own marketing efforts.

If you still harbor any illusions that publishing is about art, not marketing, you’re as out of date as a wimple. Your editor is going to take a hard look at her spreadsheet before she takes a look at a second manuscript from you. Remember Mr. Micawber’s famous advice to David Copperfield, "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." Turns out that applies equally well to advances. If you get a $15K advance and your book sells 20,000 copies, you’re a hero. But cage a $50,000 advance and sell the same 20,000 copies and your agent will be repurposing your next manuscript. Still, I’d rather have one partridge on a pewter platter than still in the pear tree—there’s no guarantee what the market might be like down the [dirt] road.

For now, however, everything’s coming up fleur de lys—apparently authors of historical fiction aren’t the only ones who like to time travel. So, based on what I heard, if you’re writing serious fiction, a mystery, a thriller or maybe even chick lit or teenage angst, I’d find a historical period to set it in. It’s a good horse to ride.

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Why do kids quit doing art?

My daughter played startlingly beautiful improvisations when younger, but as her music study went on she began to focus more and more on her lesson material and on learning to play her instrument with increasing expertise. The improvisation dropped off due to no time and a lot of demanding skills acquisition. I worried about the loss of joy, especially during those practice times when I heard her growl in frustration.

Many children produce wonderful images and sounds early on. Think of the freshness of much child-written poetry, melody, or art. Picasso and others often spoke about the need to remain as a child when approaching art. The challenge is to mature into an understanding of what you’re doing, while still maintaining freshness and innovation. Not easy. But also, without training, most artists will eventually get frustrated with their lack of ability to produce the skillful and sophisticated works rattling around in their heads. Perhaps this is why, without serious training in drawing skills, so many kids give up drawing at about age 10 or 11--they start to know that there's something better out there, but need the training to access it.

The age when children decide to give up in frustration is also the age when schools start to regard all the arts as a nice supplement, if they can afford the time and the money (NOT!). Sure, a huge after-school industry in arts instruction has developed, but only for the parents who seek it out and can afford it. We are now a nation who can’t draw stick figures, pick out a simple melody, or even dance. Yet we stop offering any instruction at just the age when children might make some real headway in learning the skills, and then be able to apply those skills to their own creative inspirations.

Real music composing, at least classical, is a very complex endeavor, requiring expertise with a variety of instruments, a historical vocabulary, and much theory. If the spark is truly there, and opportunities and encouragement are offered, I think the young person will return to their art interests with a vengeance. Mine has.

Homeschooling and my own interests have provided my daughter with a veritable flood of arts instruction and activities. Thanks to the greater interest in homeschooling, there’s a cornucopia of self-instructional materials available. If you want to be overwhelmed with what’s available to play with, check out the Rainbow Resources catalog. It’s a treasure trove for homeschoolers, after-schoolers, and even adults. Self-instruction programs are a lot cheaper than many classes, portable, adaptable to your time schedule, and teach self-reliance and how to be a life long learner.

And if you just want to learn to draw a (much better) stick figure, check out Mark Kistler’s books. Talent may be a spark within, but anyone can learn the skills.

Harp on it

For years my daughter begged to study harp. I ignored her pleas because, to put it charitably, she was an indifferent piano student. Although she began lessons at 6 years old, she never seemed to find the right “click” in a teacher, and there was no real spark, although in general she loved music. I hoped to put off harp lessons forever, as I didn’t need any more giant instruments that sat around our house unplayed.

About 4 years ago, I heard an interview on NPR with Max Zbiral-Teller (whose family happens to live a few blocks from us). He’s an extraordinary hammered dulcimer player who described how he had begged for years to be allowed to learn the instrument, finally convincing his parents. The NPR commentator went on to describe him as probably the best in the world (Max was then about 16). A chill went up my spine. What if people are meant for certain instruments, and I was preventing my daughter from discovering her real calling?

Yup. Three years later, she is playing in two youth orchestras, practices three hours a day voluntarily (I could barely nag 30 minutes out of her on piano), and adores it. I have come to believe that, even though most children begin on piano or violin, they should have an opportunity to try out other instruments whenever possible. I had originally agreed to let her try 10 lessons, and even though the first harp teacher was dismal, I could see a difference in my daughter’s commitment from day one.

Harp playing sounds beautiful from the first day, something that cannot be said for violin. It has a great range, and many styles of music—folk, Celtic, jazz, blues, and of course, classical—sound extraordinary and unique on harp. But harp’s reputation is that it’s the exclusive province of angelic little girls from wealthy families, and that points to the main problem in its lack of popularity: there’s no easy entry point.

You can pick up an electric piano at an electronics store for a few hundred bucks, or haul one out of someone’s basement for about the same price, and see if your kid will actually work at the thing. School orchestras and bands often have loaner instruments for violins, flutes, you name it. However, you’ll be very fortunate if your kid’s school orchestra owns a harp, and even more so if it has been restrung and regulated in the past ten years. Harp has no “try-out” instrument that costs less than several thousand dollars.

We were lucky to find a used Dusty Strings lever harp for $2100 (plus another $125 for restringing), but it was a fluke. A decent lever harp is going to set you back upwards of $4K, and the half-way decent student will be whining for a pedal harp in two years or so. Don’t even think of spending less than $10K for a pedal harp. This level of entry is beyond what most parents can stomach without knowing whether the child has any commitment to the field. If you’re lucky, the teacher will have a harp or two to rent, but they go fast.

Unlike many other instruments, harps don’t last. They get beat up easily and the sound board lifts up. A used harp or one that has been rented extensively should be approached with the caution you’d apply to purchasing a used car: take your mechanic (harp teacher) with you. And be warned, six different harps of the same model will have six different sounds. Not an easy thing to purchase online.

It’s too bad that it’s so expensive to get started, because it’s an instrument that children are naturally drawn to. Whenever my daughter plays, kids can hardly keep their hands off the harp.

The other problem harp has is that there is relatively little music written for it in the classical sphere. Although it’s one of the most ancient instruments (think Greek vases), the harp had a limited range until the double action pedal harp (invented in the early 19th century) made it more versatile and appealing to composers. Repertoire available for harp is pretty much limited to works composed after then, with a bigger role for harp in opera and ballet music, whose heyday coincides more closely with the double action harp. Of course, numerous transcriptions of earlier music are available, and harp has a huge repertoire in folk and particularly Celtic music. Nevertheless, the harpist for an opera company is likely to be busier than the harpist in a symphony orchestra.

There’s some sensational stuff out there, well beyond the angel choirs type stuff. Give a listen to Kim Robertson (Celtic), Joy Yu Hoffman (Chinese, and btw my daughter’s current teacher), Deborah Henson-Conant (jazz & pop) or Judy Loman (classical). Prepare to be transported.

Portuguese? Sim! Easy? Não!

If you want to learn French or German, Italian or Japanese, you’ll have an exhausting array of choices. (I put learning Spanish, at least in the U.S., in a category of its own. It’s so prevalent it’s hard to avoid picking up at least a little.) You can choose among immersion style conversation (Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone), intuitive computer game style workouts (Auralog), and shelves and shelves of workbooks, listen in your car, and book/cd combinations. But venture off the path beaten in the aisles of your local Megabooks or library, and you will truly be in another world—following a narrow path with little signage.

I’m on a quest to learn Portuguese, and not the Brazilian kind. I have an idea for a novel set in medieval Portugal and I know from long-ago travel in Portugal that finding translated resource material, even the glossy coffee table books sold at cathedrals, is a quest not for the faint-hearted. All of my favorite language programs are either produced in Brazilian Portuguese or not at all. Think you can find everything you could possibly want by googling it? Take a spin with European or Continental Portuguese. I did run through the 10 lessons of Continental Pimsleur in ten days, and now I can introduce myself, but I don’t think that’s going to be very relevant to reading scholarly works on the 14th century. I’m working through the only other program I’ve so far been able to find, Portuguese in 3 Months (Hugo), but it’s not going to give me anywhere near enough expertise.

Among other ideas I’ve explored are finding a group on Meetup.org (only a Brazilian one in my area); local university courses (all in the area assume that you already speak Spanish), and Live Mocha (not bad, but I need to move faster with heavier grammar). Apparently there’s no market for teaching Portuguese.

It saddens me that learning can be so market driven. Portugal has no strategic political importance like Arabic or Chinese; no cool factor like Japanese (anyone remember when THAT was considered a strategic language); no perceived daily utility like Spanish, and no place in glamorous travel or graduate studies, like French, Italian or German. Still, isn’t it worth learning something for the joy of it, to pursue an interest not shared by everyone, to travel in another culture through the window of their language?

The positive effect of this quest is that I am ever more determined to speak it, and I’m filled with daydreaming about how surprised natives will be if I actually manage to communicate when there. It’s really a beautiful language, filled with soft and wispy sounds, like the beautiful and heartbreaking sounds of the national music of fado. I just with it wasn’t going to be such a solitary pleasure.

Used books use authors?

Blogs are all aflutter with countless schemes on how newspapers can find a way to “monetize” their content in an on-line world where we all expect to get our info for free. The Author’s Guild has fought the good fight in trying to secure electronic rights for authors, particularly those of us who signed contracts before there WERE electronic rights. I regularly see a 26 year old article of mine pop up on websites. Needless to say, I never gave away those rights. So, given these huge issues, maybe my concern seems a little trivial, but here goes.

What about used books? Hasn’t an author’s work always been sold and resold without any further compensation paid to the author or publisher? Once upon a time, this wasn’t much of a market. Used bookstores were mostly on college campuses or hidden away in quaint neighborhoods. You poked around and found interesting books you’d never heard of before. But attend any library book sale these days and you can hardly get within spittin’ distance of the shelves and crates. The place is swarming with desperate looking people with portable bar code readers who are checking market prices (used) for every book on the shelf, and dropping the books into crates without even looking at the titles.

Used book selling must be a decent business (if you have sharp enough elbows). Like every other business you can imagine, there’s even a book on how to do it: The Home-Based Bookstore, by Steve Weber. As a seriously addicted book-buyer, I adore used books. Don’t we all love getting something for a buck that used to be $24.95? As an author, not so much. So many writers make so little off their labor, I wish the author’s groups would give a little re-thinking to the whole area of copyright, resale, and author/publisher compensation.