Mark! My Words (How to Discover the Joy of Music, the Delight of Language, and the Pride of Achievement in the Age of Trash Talk and MTV) (Paperback)

Classical music, jazz, film scores, and the masterpieces of musical theater are in danger of fading into an undeserved oblivion. This crisis extends not only to music, but also to an ignorance of good books, art, theater, and films. This crisis is exacerbated by our vanishing history, a decline in language, and a pervasive celebrity culture. If this problem is not solved, our nation's cultural and artistic heritage will be irretrievably lost. "Mark! My Words" by Mark Evans is the first book to address the challenge of this crisis. The author, a composer, writer, and broadcaster presents compelling evidence that change and progress are not synonymous and that "new and improved" often means a bigger box and fewer corn flakes .He explains why we have become a nation of hares instead of tortoises. In today's high tech world, students are emerging from school: - Unfamiliar with any music other than what they've heard on MTV. - Unable to write, spell, or speak using the English language correctly. - As experts on the lives of celebrities, but ignorant of the most basic facts of American history. - Spending countless hours texting, tweeting, and downloading on the latest digital devices, but without reading any book that hasn't been assigned to them in years. - With a healthy respect for the present, but a complete disdain for the past. In "Mark! My Words" readers will encounter: - True achievers in the arts who are ignored while we celebrate the accomplishments by geniuses of self-promotion. - Teenagers who are mesmerized by pop culture and say they would rather be the assistant to a celebrity than president of a university or a successful business enterprise. - Composers of classical music who have turned music into mathematics and have lost their audience as a result, while great composers are dismissed and ridiculed by critics. - Promoters of rock, pop, and rap music that have corrupted our musical culture while crying all the way to the bank. - Modern artists who promote the credo "Art is what you can get away with." - Graduates of prestigious colleges who are who are unfamiliar with the great events of American history, and who can't tell the difference between the words of Thomas Jefferson and those of Karl Marx. - Librarians who are busy taking our best books off the shelves of their libraries. - Teachers who smile and nod while children make mistakes in reading. - Lawyers and government bureaucrats who can't write a simple English sentence - English professors who have never read a play by Shakespeare. But "Mark! My Words" isn't just about our cultural problems; it also offers solutions to those problems. You'll meet real heroes in "Mark! My Words" like the inner city teacher who changed the lives of her students by starting her own school. You'll celebrate the achievements of composers, writers, and artists who have stood for integrity in an age of cultural confusion. The solution cannot be found in academia, government, or the entertainment industry. It can be found in our own energy, inspiration, and resolve. This book is dedicated to the proposition that we should pursue "cultural conservation," devoting the same energy to preserving our cultural resources that we devote to preserving our natural resources. "Mark! My Words" details what we can do as a society and what you can do as an individual to embark on an exciting journey of discovery that can truly impact your daily life. If you are a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a student, or someone who cares about music, books, art, language, and our history as a nation, you will want to read this book.