Music T Friday: Oh the Divine Ms. Jones...

I'm always amazed by how seemingly random things turn out to have significance. Picking a music tee for today was a process centred mostly on "I'm wearing black slacks today. I don't want to wear a black tee as well". So I pulled out the Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings shirt I picked up at the Commodore Ballroom show in 2010. It's also a very nice fit still. At the time of the show, I was a contributing freelance photographer for the Guttersnipe website (rebranded The Snipe News a little while ago) and parked myself up close to the stage to get my shots in.

There are certain shows where the tableaus are the thing, where the act holds a still frame in the audiences mind, where there are certain iconic "flashbulb" moments. Those photog opportunities are all about timing, and have a generally satisfactory pay-off because if you can capture that one definitive picture, you've done your job. This was not one of those events. The SJDK performance was all movement, all energy, all power and verve and not at all suited to the fairly pedestrian still photography that I was capable of. Instead, it was all I could do to get a series of images in focus that might one day make a good flip-book recount of the evening. The gallery I submitted to Guttersnipe/The Snipe News is still up (sorry, the browsing function is a little slow) and still doesn't do justice to the fantastic performance Ms. Jones and her Kings put on for Vancouver. There are 26 pictures in the gallery. There are 153 in my Facebook album from that night.

The fangirl and Ms. Jones

The next day, the show was touted one of the best of the year by several industry friends and music concert aficionados, many who had attended with no idea what to expect of the show. The next time Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings played Vancouver, the show was in Malkin Bowl, an outdoor amphitheatre venue and Stanley Park came alive with their unique sound which claims the "territory between ’60s soul and ’70s funk".

Live video of "Let Them Knock" (2007)

I haven't followed the SJDK news over the last half year, being otherwise distracted by life events, so it was a sombre revelation to me today (in researching this post) to discover that, as of June 3, they had had to cancel their most recent tour appearances (and the August CD release) due to Ms. Jones seeking treatment for stage-one bile duct cancer. Her message to fans on the website was hopeful and spirited as the doctors had deemed her situation operable and curable. According to her Twitter-feed, she went in for the surgery on this past Tuesday. She was out the same day, all "tubed up" and tweeting on Wednesday and declaring Life to be good yesterday. Sincerely, I send her best wishes for a speedy and total recovery.

So, there you have it, a seemingly trivial morning shirt selection leads me to a contemplative post on life, cancer, and the joys of music - making it, appreciating it, photographing it. All our lives are all soundtracked by our internal orchestras. It's when we recognize our soundtrack in the music around us, in front of us, that we know we are where we are meant to be.

Music T Friday: Civic Duty

Public Enemy is probably the only hip hop group I would ever be interested to see in concert. (I've seen a couple other groups out of circumstance rather than choice and as novel an experience as it was, I just don't think I "get" them) Back in 2010, I was lucky enough to win tickets to P.E. at the Commodore Ballroom just a week after my birthday.  It was a phenomenal show with an electric energy in the crowd. They performed for over two hours and Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff and Keith Shocklee (performing in place of DJ Lord) schooled Vancouver old-school and in-style in politics, culture and societal injustices in an incredibly entertaining set of music. Afterwards, they were wonderful about coming out a connecting with their fans. Even the really really drunk Asian guys who got all gangsta-babbly fan-boy when given the chance to shake Chuck D's hand. :) I hung out and got pictures when the opportunity arose. I bought a t-shirt. It was a good night.

Today marks my (roundabout) 75th blog post (the numbers are a little funny because I still have two posts from before Xmas break that I have yet to publish. I continue to enjoy the exercise of writing almost daily but Life likes to throw curve-balls.

As of yesterday, I am a serving jury member in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. I received my summons back in December. Apparently, about 3000 summons were sent out for jury selection for this particular trial. Of those 3000 summons, I estimate about 300 showed up on the day of jury selection, Wednesday last week. Of the 300 who showed up, only about 100 were called up by random number selection before 14 jury members and 2 alternates were sworn in. This is going to be a long trial and if Counsel's estimate is accurate, court will sit for the rest of the school year, Monday - Thursday. This means that my job has been posted for a long-term substitute. Which means that my blog mandate to write every day that I teach will be cut by more than 80% for the rest of the year.

As a unionized public school teacher, the collective agreement covers my jury duty and I do not suffer any financial repercussions for serving. I am physically able, geographically local to, and intellectually interested in the workings of our legal system. As a teacher who believes that educating our students in good citizenship is of utmost importance, I would feel like a total hypocrite if I had asked to be excused just because I didn't want to leave my students mid-year. It honestly never occurred to me to ask to be excused from serving so it was a disappointing and startling realization that I appear to be in the minority. Nearly every person I told about the jury summons offered me a "way out", an excuse to not serve, or asked how I was going to get out of it. I finally took to asking them point-blank,"WHY would I try to be excused?" No one really gives me an answer after that.

Yes, it's a damned inconvenience. And I don't like leaving my students or my classroom mid-year, especially with so many of them facing provincial exams for the first time this year. Furthermore, I've had a good rapport with the parents this year so disappearing mid-year is extremely awkward. That being said, I live in a country that doesn't require military service of me, that allows me about as much freedom as anywhere in the world, that doesn't even tax me all that much when compared to most European countries. All my country asks of me is to be an educated voter and to serve jury duty. So I bridle at the suggestion that I would shirk that call.
 
As our system exists right now, no teacher is irreplaceable. It is highly conceited, narrow-minded, and unrealistic to think otherwise.  Yes, we are individual and we all bring unique qualities to the job but a functioning education system is meant to be resilient. That means students, co-workers, administration and substitutes adjust to keep the system running. As a profession, teaching requires us to trust in our colleagues and to recognize that there are many effective ways to teach, not just how we do it.

I don't like to think of myself as a righteous individual. There's a lot of baggage and self-importance that goes with that moniker. But I feel indignant and morally (civic-ly?) outraged at the expectation that everyone should TRY to get out of serving jury duty. I understand that there are perfectly legitimate reasons for asking to be excused from jury duty. There's a huge financial hardship if your job does not pay you while you serve. It can be physically painful for you to sit still day after day. You may be the sole caregiver for a young child, elderly individual or dependent family member. There are a myriad of other, completely valid reasons for being excused. BUT I do not feel that being a teacher is one of them. In fact, I believe that being a teacher means that you are even more obligated to serve. How can you teach your students the importance of community, citizenship and the legal system if you seek to escape your own responsibility as a member of society? As much as teaching is my vocation, I will never state that I am a teacher first and a citizen second. Doing that, in my mind, would make me less of a teacher.

Ultimately, like so many things, it comes down to personal choice and personal beliefs. A colleague who seeks to be excused on the basis that their students and colleagues would suffer for their absence has a much higher estimation of their importance than do I. A colleague who seeks excusing because they simply do not want to serve has a different understanding of citizenship and education than do I. What they choose for themselves is not what I choose for myself but I do resent the suggestion that I care any less for my students or am any less professional because I choose to serve my civic duty.

For those of you who read regularly, I hope to be able to post something at least weekly. And I'll get those December ones up too. Interestingly enough, I took a quick count at New Years and figured that I would've had almost exactly enough t-shirts to finish out the year. Maybe I'll have to continue through the summer now. :)