The Smith's Journal - January 2009



Home / Words / Journal / January 2009

2009-01-04

Seven years online

Tags: Computers

Donate to help fund The Smith's diverse projects!Yay! Happy 7th Birthday to this website! We are more than elated to bring you our 84th month of hosting this diverse and unique resource for your ad-free browsing pleasure. You are more than welcome to provide incentives to keep it that way. Happy New Year!


2009-01-05

Giving

Tags: Studio, Pro, Misc

This thread sure keeps the love flowing :-)


2009-01-12

Teaching African drumming in schools

Tags: Drumming, Pro

It's been a bit of a wake up call for me teaching African Drumming in primary and Middle Schools this past year. The (very welcome) recent increase in my work means that I'm now almost making a living. We have a lot of fun in the classroom but it sometimes does my head in driving around so much, and I am still finding it hard to get up in the mornings. Although I suppose it's better than being laid off from Microsoft, getting stung by this stupid credit crunch and ending up homeless with no money. At least with drumming I get to teach the kids how to use the heavy artillery monster drums which brings much joy. I was ever so proud of one young class I'd been teaching all year when they gave a stunning performance in their Christmas concert - I had to choke back the tears :-)

The younger kids are so fab to work with, and provide unlimited amounts of cheer and hilarious comments, especially the eight-year-olds in schools I work at regularly, who are getting to know me as "The Drumming Man". They hear me coming down the corridor with my ankle bells jingling, and I often find myself being mobbed and bombarded with bizarre requests and searching questions, for example:

Kid: "Do you have a girlfriend?"
Me: "No."
Kid: "Why not?"
Me: "I've not found the right girl yet."
Kid: "Well, that won't take long, now you're doing this."

He said it with SUCH INSIGHT and confidence, that I knew it was for real :-)



This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike v3.0 Licence © The right to copy is left with the user copyleft Malcolm Smith 2008-12-25 - last updated 2009-11-02