You actually heard me, President Obama. You used "Obama Cares," which I've been saying ever since you proposed your historic health care plan and which I coined publicly in my blog last week .

In one of your Midwestern town meetings on Monday, you...

Dear President Obama,

Happy Fiftieth Birthday. As the First Lady said in her birthday email to supporters on Thursday, you're earning every gray hair. You must have great empathy for Atlas these days. And he for you. Only he knows what it is like to be in your position.

Outside...

1. The debt ceiling is being raised.

2. We will not have another debt ceiling battle in 6 months.

3. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security remain untouched -- which would not even have been the case in President Obama's first proposal.

4. $2.5 trillion in cuts, as opposed to Obama's...

I first introduced you to the band Soulfège through its leader -- musician, public speaker, entrepreneur and Oprah Radio host, Derrick Ashong -- in my piece "Oprah and the Voice of a New Generation." Now, I would like to acquaint you with the...

If we allow 9/11 to make us abandon the First Amendment's declaration of religious freedom for all, then the terrorists have won. It shocks me that so many Americans are ready and willing to ditch their commitment to the Constitution, demanding the prohibition of the Cordoba House, an Islamic cultural...

By now, many of you have seen Queens and Brooklyn Rep. Anthony Weiner lambaste Republicans, both on the floor of Congress and on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Weiner's beef? Only twelve Republicans voted for what seemed to Democrats a no-brainer, bi-partisan, non-controversial bill to provide 9-years-overdue health...

"You work and work and fight and struggle and all the time, you're dreaming of this moment when it's all going to happen, when people will listen to your opinions and team up to make your ideas happen. I'm in that moment right now...

REPRINTED FROM THE COMMUNITY MARKETING BLOG-OFF, first published December 2, 2009. Please click on that site and comment there to help me win the contest and draw mass attention to arts education.

(Photo: Harmony Projects founder Margaret Martin and seventh-grader...

REPRINTED FROM THE AMERICANS FOR THE ARTS' ARTS EDUCATION BLOG, SEPTEMBER - 25 - 2009

"We are not robots," declared Susan Siman, whom I described in Part I of this piece as the guest conductor and teacher visiting Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) from Venezuela's ground-breaking network of youth...

Reprinted from the Americans for the Arts' Arts Education Blog, September 22, 2009

When Arianna Huffington asked me at an Obama fundraiser to write for her and I drafted my first Huffington Post piece, "President Obama's Arts", I never would have anticipated that a little less than a year...

Between now and December 12, I will be posting blogs as part of the 2nd Community Marketing Blog-Off -- from which I stand to win a great deal of publicity for the work I do supporting arts education. So, please follow my very exciting posts faithfully and help children...

Here's a video made by Lyn Goldfarb and Dustin Slaughter of Congressional District 33 North for Change/ Obamawood. In it, volunteers, including me, talk about why a public option at the very least is the only way forward on health care reform.

Thanks to Lyn Goldfarb and Carol Newton of CD33 North for Change for this information.

October 15, twelve people were arrested in an act of civil disobedience at Blue Cross Headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, protesting the health care insurance profiteering at the expense of providing for the health care...

Twelve strangers -- a cross-section of ages, races, professions and tax brackets -- assembled Monday of last week in the lobby of the Westwood office building where Dianne Feinstein has her L.A. headquarters. We were there to share our personal stories with the senator's District Director, Trevor J. Daley, and...

On June 10, 2009, it was my great honor to deliver the keynote address at the Yale School of Music's biennial Music Educators Symposium. I got to pay tribute to 51 of the best music educators from public schools around the United States. Dean Robert Blocker,...

(Continued from last week.)

We live in an abundant society that allows us room to search for meaning and the search for meaning becomes a multi-billion-dollar industry. Richard Florida's besteller, The Rise of the Creative Class, reveals how the "organization man" of the 1950s has given way to a...

"Don't hold us in suspense!" After I published my first Huffington Post piece, "President Obama's Arts," on October 21, 2008, readers wanted to know what had happened to Mordecai Santiago - the ten-year-old boy from the Hell's Kitchen projects who had a great talent for the piano,...

Why has President-elect Obama selected famous homophobe and creationist, Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, to deliver the invocation on Inauguration Day? Understandably, gay and civil rights groups are expressing their outrage at the choice. On the surface, the decision does appear a cynical political ploy to win...

I like to think it was Chaka Kahn that blared over the loudspeaker at my cousin's wedding reception in Cimigiano, Tuscany, two towns over from where our grandmother had entered this world in 1914. I strained to hear my cousin's other 90-year-old grandmother shouting over the music, saying that, not...

November 4 was the happiest day life, so far. I imagine Inauguration Day may feel at least as good. 21 months ago, I felt like Cassandra in The Aeneid, whose prophesies fell on deaf ears. "Barack Obama will be President. Mark my words," I said, greeted often by laughs, scoffs...