I got up yesterday morning and was so relaxed that for a while I forgot I had to go to work. I do like having a later begin time with the ballet classes. However, on the walk home from the second class I began to feel tired. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I checked the distance between my home and the ballet class building. It is .7 miles. That means by walking back and forth twice I walk 2.8 miles. It’s enough to make you tired.

Today I have a full day planned even though it’s technically a day off. I am meeting in separate rehearsals with Amy, my violinist, and Dawn, my cellist at 10 AM and noon respectively. Then I have a half hour to get up to my piano student’s fancy house on Lake Michigan to give him a piano lesson. I moved all this activity from Thursday and Friday to today in order to clear the days so that I can leave town again.

I was upstairs messing with my book collection yesterday. I think I would like to have all my art books in one place, so I started bring some more down to join those already in our living room. It seems to me like art books and “coffee table” books need to be somewhere where I can grab them and peruse them easily. If they are available downstairs this will be more likely to happen.

I grabbed this book to look at.

It’s actually an Art Annual. The topic is “The Academy.” And though the primary concept is one of the Academic schools of art, I find the topic fascinating.

The concepts of academy, university and college have always held an attraction for me. What do they mean today? What is the history of the idea?

According to the introductory essay in this book by Thomas B. Hess, the first academy was the one Plato ran near the Acropolis.

The idea reemerges in the Renaissance as an organiztion that challenged the concept of the Guild which had many rules and was rigid in its ideas and conduct.

I find this hilarious. Because if one associates the idea of “Academy” with universities and colleges, they are now the institution weighed down by rules and rigidity.

As I was thinking about this and reading in my beautiful old book, it occurred to me that the resonance of an idea like academy and the ensuing contemplation of its implications is a deeper resonance than can be sustained in the Interwebs.

Helpful to remember.