Let’s Do This
It's time to put my shoulder into it and push. I'm fortunate to have two good shoulders, so I'll target a couple of fronts, the first being cancer treatment, which I guess is technically more of a back than a front, ;-), and the second being sharing my passion for hammered dulcimer and photography by embarking on a new online teaching venture.
I've probably over-shared at this point about my battle with prostate cancer. In brief, it continues, and I learned at my last oncologist visit that the scope of the radiation treatments must be expanded to some lymph nodes in addition to the now empty, but unfortunately not cancer-free, prostate bed. My treatments begin April 18 and will continue daily, excluding weekends, for 7 weeks at UCDavis Medical Center in Sacramento, CA. The treatment frequency, intensity, and distance from our home means I need to move into the Sacramento Kiwanis House for a couple of months. I've been able to obtain a grant to cover two-thirds of the lodging costs and I'm hoping to earn the rest through subscriptions and contributions on my website, danlandrum.com.
I continue to be encouraged by the kind words of support, prayers, and offers to help out financially. I've been an independent person for all of my life. I wasn't even comfortable asking for money from my parents as a young teen, and have worked since I was 13. It is even harder for me to ask for help as an adult that's been self-employed for the last 25 years.
To be clear, there's more to our current situation than just mounting medical expenses. If you're interested in the backstory, which includes how we ended up in California, I go into detail on in the blog post titled, "A Little Backstory. I hope you'll take a few minutes to read it.
Now, about those lessons. As many of you know, Stephen Seifert and I had a site called Dulcimer School that we closed several years ago. I still have all my old content from that site, but I want to make it clear that my new venture is not a rehash of the old. I'll use some of that content for reference, but I'm adopting a new and much more dynamic approach to teaching both music and photography. Lesson delivery will follow the pattern of Music Mondays, Photo Fridays, and We Wednesdays. It's easy to figure out what lessons get posted on Mondays and Fridays. Wednesdays are for Live Zoom discussions and demonstrations, and are where we determine what material I'll be working on for future lessons. This is a community effort and communication is central.
If you've done any online training, you may find the way I'm packaging lessons is a little different from what you've done in the past. This is by design with the goal of teaching you to use free tools that are available on both Windows and Apple platforms, desktop and mobile, to build a knowledge library and reinforce what you've learned. My long term goal is to make all my lessons free once they reach a certain age, I'm thinking somewhere between 6 months and a year old, but I'll discuss that with members before releasing sharing lessons publicly.
A typical Music Monday lesson will include links to videos explaining lesson goals and materials, links to animated and illustrated demonstration videos at various speeds, audio backing tracks for practicing with accompaniment, notation files in PDF and MuseCore format containing bridge and hammer placement annotations, an ABC and midi file, a written lesson plan text file with tags and links readable by *Obsidian (not required) along with links to any free applications you need to tie it all together.
A typical Photo Friday lesson will include links to a video explaining the lesson goals and materials, an unprocessed photo-of-the-week, a written, step-by-step guide to editing the photo, a link to a video that shows how I processed the photo, including things I tried that didn't work, links to additional study material, a weekly photograph assignment, and a written lesson plan text file with tags and links readable by *Obsidian (not required) along with links to any free applications you need to tie it all together.
*Obsidian you say? Anyone who has ever spent any time around me has heard me rave about the amazing personal knowledge management (PKM) software called Obsidian. The lessons will be organized in an Obsidian friendly folder structure. If you have no interest in learning how to use PKM tools, you can just double-click and open any lesson folder, saving it to the location of your choice on your device, but if you organize it in Obsidian you'll be creating a reference system that PKM enthusiasts call a second brain. I've used second-brain software for many years, and I'm excited to share what I've learned and help you get started building yours.
We'll do our first We Wednesday Zoom call with new supporters on April 24 at 5 PM Pacific (8 PM Eastern). This will serve as a meet and greet, give you a peak into upcoming lessons, and give me some feedback regarding expectations. The first Music Monday will be posted on April 29 and the first Photo Friday will be May 3.
