..in this season of unprecedented politics, my students in the National Portrait Gallery's program Portraits Alive!, bring their concepts of leadership to the fore -and are profiled by NPR.. An incredible group of hard working young minds, making sense for themselves, a way in which the past resonates in the shape of the future.. I am so proud of them!
I am fortunate; it is my third year with the National Portrait Gallery’s program Portraits Alive! Having the opportunity to participate in the construct of what students will be addressing this year, I sought to find the model by which to investigate their concepts of ‘civic duty and ‘social responsibility’. Students would choose sitters, whose portraits are part of the NPG collection, who best exemplified such ingredients of character and informed their definition of ‘leadership’.
Earlier this week I attended a panel discussion, at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, on New Health and Economic Research on Work and Family Policies in the United States and Canada, hosted by the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
...well, I'm embracing my Geek -as come to find out, I get rather squirrelly when it comes to things opera -but especially when it comes to things touching on Verdi, his contemporaries and associates.. On the bookshelves in the back of my mind, I keep a catalogue of operas that I would love to find recordings of, as they are, invariably, operas no one would ever do live -being too obscure; too costly; too much of a dig into musical depths of history..!
..so many changes in 2015; too many. Each, significant. ..but all are part of a fabric of affirmation: these lights mattered; these stories continue; the wit and spark and warmth of easing folks forward remains the ripple they wished for us to ride.. till, thereby, we leave our own. Many stories to share will come in reflection of time spent in her company, but, for the moment ..a few moments of Billie Allen-Henderson, theatre godmother, mentor, comrade, insouciant bon vivant, sassy witness, and edifying headlight..