Our dynamic duo, Muscle and Bone, with their cunning accomplice J, set up sound capture technology and then... the heist of a lifetime.

Thanks for watching/sharing!

Visit Muscle and Bone's website
Like Muscle and Bone's Facebook page
Follow us on Twitter

What you say to your audience between songs is an art in itself. Walter and I don’t want to break the spell of Dylan’s lyrics with stray patter in our Muscle and Bone shows. So this story, though umbilically melded to Queen Jane Approximately for me, is better essay than segue.

My mother the painter, Jane Weber, raised her children to recognize beauty, to seek it out. What a gift she gave us. In the summer before she died, as my father cared for her in sickness and faith, I’d check in by phone between visits. One evening I ducked out of the café where the songwriters were gathered and called the folks. Once we’d covered the physical discomforts Mom was dealing with, I told them about the small corner of Ohio City spread out before me. White lights on tree branches, muted conversation of people gathered around tables under the street lamps, music wafting over it all. When I stopped talking I heard Mom’s frail voice say, ‘Thank you for telling us what you see.’

I don’t think my heart had ever broken quite that way before.

Mom’s world, and in many ways Dad’s too, had shrunk so small by then. Yet she had one more gift to give me as I stood among the vibrant, throbbing world she only knew through stories. In a time when I felt helpless to comfort her, Mom told me how...

By Scott Mahoney
Oberlin News-Tribune

OBERLIN (January 20, 2012) Most adults remem­ber sit­ting through dry phon­ics classes, as teach­ers tried to drill the prin­ci­ples and rules into their heads. Teach­ers are now real­iz­ing this may not be the best way for all stu­dents to learn the fun­da­men­tals for read­ing and writing.

First grade teach­ers at East­wood Ele­men­tary School are receiv­ing the tools to help their stu­dents learn how to read in dif­fer­ent ways now due to a grant that enabled the school to bring in teach­ers from Young Audi­ences of North­east Ohio.

“For teach­ing, it’s all about devel­op­ing many dif­fer­ent strate­gies to use with chil­dren to help them learn,” said Robert Rybak, prin­ci­pal at East­wood Ele­men­tary. “No one strat­egy works all the time, with the same kids.”

For two weeks, first graders at the school have had an oppor­tu­nity to spend time with Susan Weber and Colleen Clarke being “word detec­tives.” The activ­ity allows the stu­dents to lis­ten to a story...

I happened to catch a glimpse of Luka strolling down the hall on his way to lunch and his teacher, Mrs. Burton, with her intrepid watchfulness, several paces behind. Luka had been lucky enough to have another veteran teacher, Mrs. Garrett, last year for Kindergarten. That room had his teacher’s hand painted trees and sky and clouds on all the walls and window shades. And I was another lucky one, meeting them all last year when I was artist in residence at their school.

Luka is one of those children I won’t forget. I would tell you what he looks like if I knew, but that’s not what stays with me. Maybe a miniature rock star best describes him and his thatch of rebel hair. More to the point, with Luka you find yourself in the rare presence of a thinker. “Now, that’s an interesting story,” he might say, as though he were 90 and had quite the collection to stack it up against. His questions and observations had a familiar ring to them and I thought I recognized that as the sound of someone well listened to.

This theory was fortified one day in the library as he returned some books and produced a small notebook and pen he said were from his dad, likely one of his prime listeners. “I like to put my ideas here,” Luka confided. And I never asked to look inside for I, too, am an artist. I respect the sanctity of ideas.

So when I saw that Ms. Burton...

I’m reading Steve Jobs on my Kindle which reminds me of Europe with you and packing light and repacking light from hostel to hostel. The compactness of it all. This morning I showered as your Israeli soap grew paper thin in my hand. I knew this day would come when the scent of the promised land would slip through my fingers into eternity.

Only now do I begin to translate the grace of Europe into my own stubbornly American tongue. We are a literal folk with practical gadgets that make our lives easier to waste on them. Here I speak of smart phones and smarter computers and the numbing time it takes to clear out inboxes and superfluously stored megabytes. Next time I go to far away places, I’ll tell my people here I won’t be in touch for a few weeks, won’t be squandering the exotic continent I’m traveling to. Instant communication is a mixed baggage.

I walked into a vintage shop with Spencer and Joe in Toronto this weekend where Bob Dylan spoke-sang over the vintage speakers (not) as though no time had elapsed. In his time we didn’t have Steve Jobs and kindles and apples and orange ya gonna ask me if I regret those eruptions of genius? My brain is decidedly poor at processing all these processors. She enjoys...