Media Mama

this post was lost in cyberspace, found today!

There are a lot of seeming contradictions in my life: I don't eat meat, but I married a hunter.  I'm a pilot, but I'm afraid of heights.  I grew up in Florida without air-conditioning, but now I can't function in heat.

But probably the biggest one--the one that gets the most eyebrows raised, is that we are an American family that lives without TV.  Crazy, I know.  I'm surprised there is not a TPS, a Tube Protection Service, that you can report us to.

Aside from the many conversations that I can't follow or can't contribute to, not having a TV is a great thing.  And lest anyone feel the need to report us to the media-deficit-watchdogs, our boys do get to watch a DVD on the computer every weekend.  We've recently introduced a new-old rule, adding yet another contradiction under this roof: young kids, no Disney.  Why?  That's a whole other post...maybe its own blog. Maybe in another lifetime.

So when this week's school field trip came up to watch a live production of Disney's "High School Musical," you can guess my response.  "Ummm...no."

Commonsensemedia.org listed the age appropriateness of this show for 9-14 year olds.  "Yes, I think we'll pass."

My search for something fun, entertaining, and educational on this day of playing hookie led us right to our own High School backyard.

This week our town's High School is host to one of the most amazing events, Focus on the Arts.

Every media of artistic expression in represented.  For this one week, we have winners of Pulitzer Prizes, Tony Awards, Pushcart Prizes....you name it.  They are here to perform, to teach, to create.  Yes, to spread the gospel of Art!

So instead of Disney's "High School Musical," we enjoyed The Langston Hughes Project.

I can't begin to describe how inspiring it was to sit in the audience with my two lads, soaking up the live jazz and powerful poetry of Langston Hughes.

The description reads:

The Langston Hughes Project is a multimedia concert performance of Langston Hughes' kaleidoscopic jazz poem suite. Ask Your Mama is Hughes' homage in verse and music to the struggle for artistic and social freedom at home and abroad at the beginning of the 1960s. It is a twelve-part epic poem which Hughes scored with musical cues drawn from blues and Dixieland, gospel songs, boogie woogie, bebop and progressive jazz, Latin "cha cha" and Afro-Cuban mambo music, German lieder, Jewish liturgy, West Indian calypso, and African drumming -- a creative masterwork left unperformed at his death.

The rest of our day of hookie was spent picnicking in the fresh, spring air...outside soaking in the sun at the park with friends--one of whom is named, Langston.

So what to do when a field trip doesn't really resonate with you?  Ask Your Mama.