ilovemylife: JOHN McCAIN SAYS BARACK OBAMA IS NOT A MUSLIM

As a teacher, I set the tone of my classroom. Just the volume of my voice could inspire, lull or engage my students. The intensity of my words delivery affected my students. It was instantly evident. The dynamism of my delivery was reflected back to me. It was stunning to be aware of this while watching it happen on a consistent basis. I was the music teacher, so I had every student in the schools I taught in. And I had unique awareness of these things, because in music we use tempo, intensity, dynamic, various expressive styles, stressed beats, rhythmic engaging patterns and the changing of these elements within a composition to produce the music. I saw these very same elements while used in speech while teaching the lessons worked the same ways as in music and songs. My students responded also to the warmth in the delivery. This must have been true. At the beginning of class periods would bring hugs as well as during lessons. The elementary students reflected the warmth they felt through manner, words and my respect for them.

There was a fourth grade classroom teacher, that took this fact to the edge. She used fear to control her students. Then when she got called on that, she used a combination of demeaning put-downs with contrasting sugary, pretentious praise - this allowed her to manipulate her "troops". They were the most difficult class to teach music. It was like they were phantom people in a way.

So when I watched this week the audiences that turned out for McCain and Palin's rallies and their supporters' crude, unleashed hateful speech, such as: off with his head, he's a terrorist, a muslim, if you didn't do anything to stop him, consider how you'll feel when you wake up and he is President on November 5th, etc. - I saw the audience reflecting McCain and Palin's incendiary words and demeanor. Our words are more than mere words. They come from our spirit, go out into the universe and affect our world beyond letters and punctuation marks. They become our world.

If you want to change the world, you must consider how, what will your style be.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou

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John McCain stalls his flaming rhetoric and speaks to his inflamed followers

John McCain at a campaign rally, October 10, 2008

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Maya Angelou on the power of words - CBS

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible. Maya Angelou

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning. Maya Angelou

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Poem ~ Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

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