music, therapy, and me

I got into a spirited debate with my Father regarding the incident that happened in San Bernardino, California last week. This incident was literally close to home as the Inland Regional Center is about 30 minutes away from my parent's house and about 15 minutes away from my sister's house. I used to work with case workers from the Regional Center in my former life as a QMRP/Administrator. The shooting that happened struck really close to home and has shaken my family in different ways. Things like this tend to send my Dad into political pronouncements that are directly contrary to my own views. So, we debate. Now, for the purposes of this post, it is not important to know which side of any issue my Dad and I end up on, but let me just say that many topics lead us into conflict - education, politics, human services, budgetary topics - are just some of the topics that we agree to disagree about. We are both strongly opinionated people and have learned to discuss things in a ...

Narrow-minds and Ethics So, I have got myself into some trouble with the music therapy listserve again. I seem to do that quite a bit when I open my big fat mouth. I hate when people with opposing OPINIONS start to argue with each other. There is never a winner, especially when the opinions are contentious to begin with. The music therapy listserve has been abuzz with comments about a book featuring a music therapist as the protagonist. The book also concerns a lesbian relationship, something that was not highlighted before the book was published. One MT asked for some opinions about the book, and another MT stated that she felt that marriage should be between one man and one woman, not a lesbian couple. This opened up the floodgates for calls to remand this MT under the code of ethics. She was told to seek supervision to assist her in removing her bias towards people who were in homosexual relationships. I decided that some of these conversations were appropriate, but I started ...

Bickering with the Rest of the Music Therapy World Well, the music therapy world is rocking with a discussion about listserve etiquette this weekend! It amazes me who chimes in on certain topics. At issue this time is long messages clogging up the mailboxes of certain therapists. There was an initial request for folks to delete the earlier emails when responding. This led to a series of requests from others to: keep little comments from the entire list stop using the list to elicit activity ideas (proffered by one of the "holier-than-thou") use the blog and to just delete things I started to laugh. There is something funny about how we can take these comments from one another so very seriously. In addition, it just reinforces the current attitude of my generation which consists of "it's all about me." Damn the consequences for someone else - I want things my way or no way!! What is going on in the world these days?? I just laugh at the absurdity of u...