Early summer: it's often a season of weddings, graduations, changes, endings, new beginnings. The shifting world situations which were at the beginnings of this series of articles continue to evolve and present their own challenges, too. With those things in mind, here are five pieces of music to spark and accompany reflection, contemplation, celebration, and hope.

As a kid (and as a teacher), I’d count the days till summer, the days between spring break and Memorial Day weekend and then the onslaught of everything that made that last month of school seem like it simultaneously went as quick as lightning and as slow as molasses. Today, my best friend’s daughter is in the final stretch of her sophomore year, and the middle child is quite literally counting the days till that grand bus ride that will take her to sleep away camp.

Wandering the aisles at Grand Rapids Comic Con, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the goodness. But as we walked by Corinne Roberts' booth, we did a full stop (don't worry, no one crashed into us). Her art drew us in with its playfulness, creativity, and intelligence. Once we started talking with her, I KNEW our Wandering Educators would be interested in her art...and books.

Daniel Mazur and the redemption of Mt. Everest

Outhouse on Khumbu glacier

"It's all bullshit on Everest these days."

Chances are if you’ve visited Orlando, Florida, home to theme park behemoths Walt Disney World, Universal Studios Florida and others, you’ve also been to Kissimmee, its sister city just to the south. The two cities meld into one another – and yet for families looking to break up their days in the theme parks with some natural sites you can only find in Central Florida, Kissimmee offers the the perfect starting point.

In time when politics ideas, understandings, and communications shift, it is challenging to find touchstones,signposts, if you will, to guide decisions. The sort of music we share in this series -- a series which is, after all, called music for shifting times -- can offer guidance and space for reflection. In this story, there are artists from New England, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, and Indiana.

There are threads which pull through, and ideas which resonate across the very different stories they tell.

We arrived in Frankfurt on a cold, rainy morning. Just a few hours before sunset the skies cleared as we walked to the New Frankfurt Old Town. Listed as one of Frankfurt's top attractions, it is a perfect place to explore after a long overseas flight. 

The other day, I saw an article that declared a growing trend amongst millennials to return to the same vacation spot because [it said] no one wanted to do any research anymore. Now, I spent my entire teaching career making sure my students shied away from generalizations, and forced them to go deeper explaining things like, ‘the person I interacted with’ or ‘this one person I spoke to’ instead of lumping people into amorphous groups of giant sizes.

Featuring first-person stories of people finding themselves in the middle of a culture that is foreign to them; each week, 22.33 will deliver interesting tales from people who share how they were able to create mutual understanding through cultural exchange. 

It’s hard to believe food trucks have only revved their foodie engines in the U.S. since 2008. In that relatively short window of time, they’ve become a culinary juggernaut. No longer a novelty in major metropolitan areas, food truck hubs are now common in mid- to small-size cities, too. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce found the food truck industry generated $2.7 billion in revenue in 2017 and has been growing on average at a rate of 7.9% every year.