Tim Sharp

Do you remember playing hand games as a child? I still play them with my daughter when we are waiting on a flight, standing in line at a concert, or at other points of utter boredom. One of our routine hand games is "Scissors, Paper, Stone." Each player counts together, outloud, to three, each time […]

Anyone growing up with The Bullwinkle Show like I did may remember the cultural moment in the show when the cartoon moose was featured in "Bullwinkle's Corner", reciting poetry. Yep, go figure. And, unfortunately, it was probably Bullwinkle that led to the cliché"ing" of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "I shot an arrow into the air, It […]

I grew up as television grew up, so I feel confident in saying that as we enter 2011, choral and vocal music have never before experienced the brightness of the current popular media spotlight. We witness choral flash mobs springing up as the new choral rave party with purposed "spontaneous" performances of Handel at Walmart […]

Throughout the literature of every culture, fictional mentors have entered the imagination of writers and storytellers, passing along the lessons of life through characters of fantasy, myth, legend, heroics, and even the most ordinary of individuals. For King Arthur, it was Merlin. For Harry Potter, it is Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. For me, it […]

According to the Business Committee for the Arts (a Division of Americans for the Arts) in 1968 7,000 companies were asked how much they give to the arts and why they give to the arts. In the original BCA Survey of Business Support of the Arts which was conducted in partnership with the National Industrial […]

Steven Johnson’s new book Where Good Ideas Come From brings new energy to the notion given by scientist Stuart Kauffman of the “adjacent possible.” In this phrase we get a glimpse of the real nature of the creative potential of change and innovation. This notion is something of the opposite to an epiphany or a […]