New skills lend sparkle to our lives. Hobbies enrich the soul. The piano learned for joy, the handmade sweater knit for a cherished niece, the newly painted kitchen chair - these actions light our daily lives. A small simple homely poem, a pot of soup, a brightly colored leaf pressed into a book - these are the beautiful stones my home is built upon. I can accomplish some beauty in every day. I can add to my world by my artfulness.

Today, I act in small and concrete ways to bring beauty to my home. I allow the hand of the Great Creator to work through me, bringing grace and order to my surroundings.

Julia Cameron

Next week Tuesday and Wednesday (June 6 - 7, 2006) I'll be starting the first of my hula dance and piano classes. The classes are offered through a local community recreation center's summer program. I'm very excited and looking forward to them. I've been wanting to find the local hula school in the downtown area and felt this would be the best way to get connected by meeting a local teacher. It's been a few years since I moved from Virginia and the last halau where I had performed with and started teaching. So I'm renewing my interest and desire to dance again in a new way. Obviously I won't be performing again at the same high level and venues as I did previously with the first hula school (definitely no Smithsonian Museums or Kennedy Center or the Capitol Building here), but it's still the same fulfillment of a passion for movement and dance that I'm intending now.

And the same goes for the piano. I first started playing piano when I was around 7 years old and taught myself at a friend's home after elementary school in Guam, then formal lessons in Palau including flute and trumpet, then eventually playing in high school bands in Texas and Guam, and finally with the university symphony and a professional marching band.

In anticipation of the piano class, I ordered my first electric piano. A 61-fullsize key Yamaha keyboard piano through Amazon.com. Hopefully it will arrive in time for my first class or soon after.

I'm sure there'll be lots to learn and I'm expecting to practice playing music with chords and reading lead sheets, then begin composing my own music.

When people make changes in their lives in a certain area,

they may start by changing the way they talk about that subject,

how they act about it,

their attitude toward it,

or an underlying decision concerning it.

Jane Illsley Clark