College or Not?

Sorry I am late posting today but it really hasn't been all that great of a day. Sometimes family members say hurtful things they don't really mean and it isn't all that much fun. Meant or not they are still hurtful and sometimes it requires shutting out the outside world to get your focus back. This has been one of those days and one of those times.

Enough complaining. I only have one subject today, college. Growing up none of us in our family thought we had any choice but to go to college. College was the main topic of most dinner discussions. It was just assumed that the next step after high school was college. All three of us kids ended up with some form of college and our lives have definitely been better for it. That is why I was kind of surprised by the following editorial arguing that college isn't always the best choice:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-07-07-column07_ST_N.htm

What do you think of the above column? Agree with him? Disagree? When you graduated from high school was it drilled into you that college was your only choice? I actually agree with the columnist despite the fact that I think my parents did the right thing by instilling in us the motivation to continue our education after college. Just because it was right for our family doesn't mean it is right for every family.

Who Is She?

Yesterday's answer: Jovita Idar

She was born in Mississippi in 1927 and raised in the segregated South. Her father worked in a lumber mill and her mother was a midwife who sang in the church choir. They had waited 13 years for a child, and she became the focus of intense pride and love. Given a toy piano at age 3, she began piano lessons right away with a local teacher. When she was in kindergarten, her parents traded in the family phonograph as the down payment on an upright piano. At 14, she was taken on a school trip to hear Marian Anderson sing in Jackson, and she remembered the experience as inspirational. In her teen years she accompanied the "second choir" at St. Paul's Methodist Church while singing and playing for the chorus at the black high school. Meanwhile, she often visited the home of an affluent white family for whom her aunt worked as a laundress. The while lady encouraged the girl's early piano playing, and later noticed her extraordinary singing voice. Aiming for a teaching career She enrolled in the music education program at an all-black College. Her success in the glee club led to solo assignments, and she was encouraged to complete her studies in voice. She sang in the choir with another soon-to-be-famous singer. After school she went on a tour of Europe, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. After appearing in Vienna, Berlin, London, and Paris, the company returned to New York when Broadway's Ziegfeld Theater became available. On the eve of the European tour, she married a noted bass-baritone. She would later become the first black to appear in a leading role in a televised Opera, several affiliates canceled the telecast in protest. She rose to international fame during a period of racial change and became the first African-American to become a leading prima dona at the Met. When she appeared at the met a New York Times critic wrote of her "voice, warm and luscious, has enough volume to fill the house with ease, and she has a good technique to back up the voice itself. She even took the trills as written, and nothing in the part as Verdi wrote it gave her the least bit of trouble. She moves well and is a competent actress. But no soprano makes a career of acting. Voice is what counts, and voice is what she has." Her voice ranged from A flat below Middle C to the E above High C. (She said she reached high Fs "in the shower.") Among her many honors are the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the Kennedy Center Honors , the National Medal of Arts , numerous honorary degrees, and nineteen Grammy Awards, including a special Lifetime Achievement Award. She was also one of the recipients of the first Opera Honors given by the National Endowment for the Arts. Her last role was in 1977 in San Francisco In 2001,, at age 74, she was asked to come out of retirement and sing in a memorial concert in Carnegie Hall after the September 11 attacks. With James at the piano, she sang a favorite spiritual, "This Little Light of Mine", followed by an unaccompanied "God Bless America", capping it with a bright, easy high B-flat. Miles Davis, in his self-titled autobiography, writes of her "I have always been one of her fans because in my opinion she is the greatest female singer ever, the greatest opera singer ever. She could hit anything with her voice. She is so good it's scary. .. I love the way she sings Tosca. I wore out her recording of that, wore out two sets." Who is She?