I guess it’s the heat. I’m feeling a bit draggy. Are you?

Our Texas drought has dashed any hope of a normal agricultural season. The barn is hot. The animals are hot. It’s hard watching our livestock foraging for anything that resembles grass.

Yet, I know a freshness will soon arise. It does so every year, no matter what the weather. I’m talking about that funny little impulse that triggers inside of most teachers and an awful lot of students. For me, at least, it usually happens right about mid-July.

I know, I know: the residue from last year is hardly put away. In fact, I’ve still got stacks of papers waiting to be filed. But the trigger is there . . . or, at least, it’s coming. It clicks on and whispers: “Hey, a new year is around the corner. Let’s try this again, and see what we can come up with.”

The promise of creating a clean slate for learning is irresistible. What will make it work, we ask? Maybe this-or-that adjustment in the curriculum? New bulletin boards and better maps? A better lesson-planner? More time to strategize?

For us at the Professor Carol office, that trigger will mean organizing our fall webinars and talks. Double-checking the long list of pre-performance lectures for organizations like the Dallas Wind Symphony, the Van Cliburn Concert Series, and The Dallas Symphony. This year, it also means organizing a filming trip to Germany and Italy in October as we continue expanding materials for Discovering Music.

And throughout it all, I’ll be corresponding with many of you in the Discovering Music family: parents, tutors, and students. As I’ve said individually to so many of you, it’s my favorite thing to do.  Whether it’s a question related strictly to our curricula or something entirely different (like receiving the video documenting one of our student’s first sky-dive on her eighteenth-birthday), I love hearing from you.

So, right now, we have no choice but to bake in the dusty sun. But that trigger is coming, and right now everything is still possible. We know what we want to accomplish. We haven’t gotten behind yet. It’s all perfect, in concept, and filled with promise. Just the thought of it makes me feel refreshed.

Hey, close that door: the air-conditioning is getting out!

Image: Roadside Bandit, Creative Commons