by Phil Houseal, Jan 25, 2011
Some say the secret of success is to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. John Camp thinks this might be the best time to become a real estate agent.
That is one reason Texas Real Estate Educators has teamed with Club Ed to offer the Real Estate License School in Kerrville.
It’s no secret that the housing and real estate markets have been less than stellar lately. But the 17-year broker is bullish on bringing in more agents.
“Real estate is coming back,” said Camp, who has been coming to Kerrville since he was a child. “I read lots of reports, and the industry is seeing a significant upturn in activities. For students of real estate, this is a good time.”
So starting in February, the school will start offering all the courses necessary to prepare students to take the Real Estate Exam. These include seven weekend courses that fulfill the required and elective coursework, plus a special Exam Prep class in June.
(Those who want to learn more about getting a license can sign up for Why Get a Real Estate License - a two-hour overview on Saturday, Feb 5.)
There are a number of ways individuals can get a real estate license - including online and correspondence courses. But Camp - who moved to Kerrville in 2002, where he managed the ERA office and now runs Real Estate by Design - believes there is no replacement for a live course in front of an instructor.
“The instructor can channel your studies, and show you what is and is not important,” he said. “There is a lot of interaction in our classes. Yu can ask questions about things you don’t understand. We have seen that students are more successful taking the state exam when they have taken live courses.”
The block of courses is set up so that a student starting in February can be ready to take the exam by this summer.
Local actor/singer/entrepreneur Tony Navarra is one of those early signups. He is a self-proclaimed dabbler in real estate who decided it was time to become a real estate agent.
“I’m not even planning to work in a shop,” said Navarra, who likes to buy and fix up properties. “I just want this strictly for my own use, so I can do my own contracts and get things started a lot faster. I want to do this for myself.”
Camp is excited about partnering with Club Ed to bring these courses to a wider audience.
“The amazing thing to me is that people don’t know there is a real estate school in Kerrville. Community Education reaches out beyond Kerrville. Being able to let the community know we are here, and to interface with Club Ed, with good facilities is very attractive.”
There are also benefits to the students.
“This is much more convenient for our students,” Camp said. “Otherwise, you have to go to San Antonio and spend a lot more money staying in hotels and buying meals.”
Navarra vouches for that.
“When I decided to pursue my license, the first question was where do I go,” he said. “Then this catalog came in the mail and I realized, yes, we have this in Kerrville. So I jumped on it.”
Camp concurs. “I think will be a beneficial relationship.”
Using the real estate agent’s favorite word: Sold!
Monday, January 24, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Picking from 0 to 60: Acoustic Music Workshop
He’s played at Merle Fest and the Kerrville Folk Festival, written guitar instruction books and magazine articles, played folk, bluegrass, jazz, and blues, and toured with artists such as Joan Baez.
And on Saturday, January 29, you can sit in the same room with David Hamburger while he teaches everything from music theory to fingerpicking styles to hot blues riffs.
It is one strand of the new one-day January Acoustic Music Workshop sponsored by Kerrville ISD’s Club Ed and Bob Miller’s Hill Country Acoustic Music Camp.
Hamburger is a renown guitarist who has performed with the great string players, and whose guitar, slide guitar and dobro playing can be heard on many albums. For the Kerrville workshop, he will teach Guitar Workshop - Theory; 6 degrees of Travis Picking; and Fingerpicking Blues.
If you attend, be ready for a ride.
“I designed this class as a ‘blitz,’” he explained. “We will go from zero to 60. The first 15 minutes might bore the experienced guitar player, and the last 15 minutes will terrify the beginner, but everything in the middle will be just right for everyone.”
He will take students from the simplest fingerpicking style to the most complicated, based on his own Acoustic Guitar Fingerstyle Method instruction booklet. He promises that students will leave class with handouts and enough to work on for months.
The workshop will also feature world-class banjo player Alan Munde and ukulele expert Pops Bayless.
This is the first time Club Ed has offered such a workshop and enrollments have been brisk.
One innovation is offering the added “house-style” concert on Saturday evening at the Union Church on the Schreiner University campus. It features all three artists playing “unplugged” joined by local bassist Gary Hatch. It is open to the public, even if not attending the classes.
While teaching his workshops across the country, Hamburger sees a neverending stream of people who continue to be fascinated with the stringed instruments.
“A lot of Baby Boomers want to finally learn to play the way they were never able to do,” he said. “At the same time the younger players are discovering that playing country, blues, and traditional guitar is just as interesting to them as it was to boomers 30 years ago.”
While he used to teach and play full time, Hamburger now spends most of his time working in his own recording studio in Austin, composing music for television, commercials, and documentaries. But he still likes teaching and enjoys getting out to the Hill Country.
“I love coming to Kerrville,” he said. “I have friends there, have done house concerts, been to the Folk Festival, and I teach at the Acoustic Music Camps. This is really adding to the music scene there.”
XXX
For information or to sign up for the Acoustic Music Workshop on Jan 29, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.
Workshops meet at the Kerr Arts & Cultural Center, 228 Earl Garrett St, Kerrville. Class Times are: 10:00am to 11:15am; 1:00pm to 2:15pm; 2:30pm to 3:45pm. Fee is $40 per class, or students can sign up for all three workshops by one instructor for a discount price of $100.
The Saturday evening “House Concert” will be from 6 - 8 p.m. at Union Church at the corner of Broadway, Water, and Travis Streets in Kerrville. Concert admission is $20, and guests are welcome to bring a snack and beverage to share.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Your “new course” Club Ed day
Someone asked about our “new” courses we always advertise in our Community Education catalog. They wondered if we keep adding courses every year? I explained that of our 160 or so total classes each session, about one-third are “new” in that they are being offered for the first time.
To show off this session’s newest offerings, I thought it would be fun to imagine what the schedule would be for an imaginary student taking all new courses only.
You would start in the kitchen, baking bread with Anthony Coden and making and decorating cakes with Yvonne Gonzales. Yvonne would then show you how to make another type of cake - a Diaper Cake! Don’t worry, you won’t have to come up with icing for that one - it’s a special baby shower gift made of disposable diapers. Of course before you have baby showers, you have weddings, and Yvonne even has a new class on how to make your own wedding veil.
Since it is a wedding, you need jewelry. Linda Flores is teaching a new Basic Beading course, where you create your very own necklace. Prefer rocks? Then on to the rock shop, where they would cut and polish stones in Lee Adams’ new Advanced Lapidary course.
Now we are getting into crafts. Jack Thorn will show you how to make coasters, wallets, or bookcovers out of leather in his first-time leather carving class.
As the day goes on, you would move to your new Interior Decorating class by Ann Witherwax. Then outdoors for a little hands-on homesteading. Ann is also teaching how to raise chickens and collect eggs! Oh the joy of baby chicks.
What would hens in the bread dough be without a little fiddling to put it into song? Cathy Learoyd will help you do just that in Just Fiddlin’ Around. Not interested in fiddling? Don’t fret (sorry), we have a whole new Acoustic Music Workshop. Choose your weapon - guitar, banjo, ukulele.
How about a different kind of art? Try Quick Drawing or Watercolor Floral Workshop with Joan Sullivan.
Maybe you’re not the stay-at-home type. Then welcome to our travel section, with new trips to the Pacific Northwest, Southern US, or New York City... and even a first-time Travel Journaling class so you can write about it and make your friends jealous.
Prefer to travel vicariously? We actually have a new class introducing you to Netflix, explaining how you can have movies delivered to your door.
Time to be fiscally fit. We have a whole section on new investment and retirement classes. Want to be physically fit? Try our new Yoga for Runners.
What if none of these brand new classes appeal to you? Then sign up for one more new one - Creative Writing. Now you can write up your own course listings.
There. That was your day taking only some of the new classes offered through Club Ed. You still have to work through more than 100 current favorites and “back by popular demand” courses.
We really don’t mind whether you decide to take a new course or one offered before. Just don’t hesitate, or the new will be old.
See you in class.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Cleaning out the files
The brand new Club Ed catalogs are out, and readers should have received your copy by now. I’ll be writing in more detail about all the learning opportunities, but I thought I’d start the year cleaning out some Random Observations I’ve collected. They are:
Comedians never laugh.
A good description of most public ceremonies: Platitude-infested events.
If seasonal "treats" such as eggnog, fruitcake, and peanut brittle are so delicious, why don't we eat them the rest of the year?
We spend our youth trying hard to stand out. In old age, we work every day to not disappear.
New word = Glim. It is a combination of “glum” and “dim” as in “the outlook is increasingly glim.”
Just because you argue better doesn’t mean you’re right.
PR paradox: When no one will listen to us, we speak louder. When we reach a position where the world is listening, we measure our words.
As social animals, we seek out our own kind. Watch at any gathering. See the teens giggling together. Listen to the graying men talk business. Hear the moms compare baby stories; the gossipers gossip. The next time you come home from a party and complain about the inadequacy of the guests, know that you are talking about yourself.
Being labeled as "dust" is a compliment, not an epithet.
Dust particles are the most common nuclei around which water vapor condenses in the formation of raindrops and snowflakes.
Dust in the atmosphere regulates the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth's surface, thereby playing a vital role in global temperatures.
Dust carries needed nutrients onto the surface of the oceans, providing food and materials for plankton and algae.
There is no such thing as momentum, when used to assume there is a linear and measurable link between an event that happens this week and one that will happen next week (such as ball games). Yet we as humans try to see patterns and cause/effect where none exist. The second of two games between two different teams on two different nights has no connection with the first event. Events are digital, not analog.
Want to create support for light rail? Make it a roller coaster. People will line up and pay to ride between New Braunfels and San Marcos.
Driving to work, I noticed a Scottish terrier leaping about in a yard. It was harassing a golden tabby, which was lying at the terrier's prancing feet.
How irritating, I thought, that the dog is bothering that beautiful cat. But as I drove past, the true scenario appeared. The dog was chained to a tree. The cat had positioned itself just inches beyond the reach of the chain. Its tail twitched tantalizingly in the face of the yapping dog.
'Twas the cat that teased the dog.
To me the ideal attitude is to have an uninhibited mind coupled with a disciplined body. We should not fear thinking extravagant thoughts; we should eschew an extravagant lifestyle.
A great artist said he was lucky he wasn't cursed with a happy childhood.
We have no control over time. All we can control is what we pay attention to.
The duty of every writer: First engage; then enlighten.
xxx
The new Spring 2011 Club Ed catalogs have arrived in all Hill Country mailboxes. You can also pick up copies at the library. For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Learn to enjoy learning
We are never too old to learn. Dr. Suzuki says so.
Dr. Shinichi Suzuki’s book Nurtured by Love is required reading for parents of children learning to play music using The Classic Approach to Talent Education.
His insightful teaching brought music education to the very young, with 3 and 4-year-olds able to master the challenges of Bach and Haydn on violin.
But what struck me was the impact his philosophy can have on those of us way beyond single digits in age. This will not do justice to his philosophy, but four elements that apply to lifelong learning spoke to me on first reading. Not unexpectedly, Club Ed and other adult learning opportunities address each point.
Point 1 - “Talent” is learned
Take a look again at the book’s tag line: The Classic Approach to Talent Education. Suzuki disdains the phrase “natural talent.” His revolutionary insight was that talent can be taught; talent can be learned. There is hope for everyone!
Point 2 - What does not exist in your cultural environment will not be developed
If you grew up listening only to The Monkees, you probably won’t appreciate Mozart. In order to improve our lives we need to fill our days with enriching, inspiring, challenging opportunities.... opportunities you’ll find in Club Ed.
Point 3 - Think of learning as fun
I really believe that having fun is the secret to succeeding in any area of life. You might lose weight temporarily by dieting. But you will be healthier the rest of your life by having the adventure of eating right.
You might get fit doing an exercise. But you will stay fit by finding physical activity you enjoy doing every day.
You might learn how to play dulcimer by taking one class. But you will only make music by practicing daily (see Point 4) and playing with others.
In Club Ed we do offer all types of classes - more than 200 each semester. And while they are excellent, taking a class is really only the first step to mastery of any skill. Just one example is our ongoing Dulcimer Jam session. Beginners of all ages and experience meet weekly, not to learn an instrument, but to make music.
Point 4 - Practice. And practice right.
Suzuki believes we are all experts; it is just that some of us are experts at doing things “wrong” due to bad instruction or lack of practice. But talent always comes down to practice, no matter at what age you begin. An adult who practices 3 hours a day for five years will be more “talented” than a child who practices five minutes a day for 10 years.
As you probably guess, Club Ed can help bring all these good things into your life. You can learn a skill, start a hobby, listen to an expert, and just enjoy the company of like-minded friends seeking a more enriching life.
So as you start a new year, don’t simply resolve to go on a diet or learn to play violin. Learn to enjoy eating right, learn to make music, and learn to enjoy learning.
See you in class!
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Basketball: The game of life
Is life a fast break, man-to-man, or a zone defense?
The other morning I pondered this question as I pulled myself from a warm bed at 4:30 a.m. to go play basketball. Three mornings a week I head to the local gym to play Community Education basketball. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years.
On this particularly frigid morning as I stumbled in the dark to find my gym bag, I wondered what makes me trade the soft bed for the hardcourt?
As in Robert Fulghum’s book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, maybe basketball is my metaphor for life.
Gather around midcourt, while I put this ball in play...
Most of the time you don’t have the ball.
With 10 players on the court at a time, even if every player touched the ball an equal number of minutes, 90% of the time you do not have the ball!
For mediocre players, the only minutes that count are when you are holding the ball. The rest of the time, they stand around.
But good players know that most of basketball happens when you don’t have the ball. On offense, that means you set screens, act as a decoy, get yourself open to receive a pass. On defense, you call screens, block out, rebound, double team, and dive for loose balls. Go back and watch the great players like Larry Bird, or a hustler like Bruce Bowen, and just focus on what they do without the ball. You will see an entire game within the game. As in life, what we do when we don’t have the ball wins games.
When you pass, it comes back.
The secret of basketball is so simple, yet the hardest one for people to grasp - you must share the ball. At all levels, from street ball to the pros, the hardest move to make is to let go of that ball. But if you look the winning teams through the ages, the champions are always the team that spreads the ball around the most. Even the great Michael Jordan could not win until he understood that fact.
On a good team, players hand off the ball. On a great team, the ball comes back. The old give and go is still the most effective play in the game.
Basketball builds (and saves) relationships.
I was sharing this insight with teammate who brought up another point - a basketball game is a great place to work through personal problems. I am convinced that basketball saved several marriages over the years; those that it didn’t save, it at least helped the husbands work through the divorce by giving them an outlet for their anger and frustration. I suffered my share of bruises and sprained ankles in the service of marriage counseling.
You have to make the team.
Whenever a new player walks into our games, I don’t bother to even learn their name until I know two things about them: Do they pass the ball? Can they hit the open layup?
Show me those two skills, and you can play on my team.
Sure it’s a flimsy metaphor. But the point is that what may appear to some as frivolous play or an escape from responsibility, may actually be a serious tool for dealing with the realities of life. After all, every civilization has created and played games. If games served no purpose, they would not exist as they consume energy, attention, and resources that could be better used in hunting, gathering, and courting mates.
This is a rambling way to give everyone an excuse to sign up for a class, start a hobby, or get in the game.
Because playing may be the most important work you ever do.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Breathe... and other holiday tips
The holiday season (and New Year) approach. Time to share hits, tips, and tricks that come from what we learn in the more than 400 Club Ed classes we offer each year.
Enjoy!
Collect the rain.
Thinking of installing a rainwater collection system? Wondering how much water you can collect? Amazingly, a 1-inch rain on a 1000 square foot roof will produce over 600 gallons of water. (Master Gardener Ann Brown notes that you can fill a 55-gallon barrel with just 1/4 inch of rain.)
The Hill Country averages 30 inches of rainfall annually, so with sufficient storage capacity, the average home should collect sufficient water for household use.
Sharpen your tools.
“A dull tool is a dangerous tool.”
So says Dr. Tom Harris, gardening wizard.
"You have to work harder to make a dull tool work," he noted. "If the blade is sharp, it will do what it is supposed to do, easily. If it is dull, that's when you make a mistake."
No matter how you do it, keep your spades, scissors, knives and shears sharp.
"It is just fascinating," Harris said, "when you can get something sharp enough to shave with, whether it is a shovel or a razor."
Dance!
According to Nursel Conrad of Kerrville School of Dance, dancing is like taking a vacation. Benefits include improved coordination and flexibility, increased strength and conditioning, plus it raises your awareness of rhythm and balance, and raises your creativity and self-confidence. So move!
Misdirect.
When performing magic, the point is not to “trick” or audience. Playing a trick on someone makes them appear the fool.
Magic instructor Alan Fox always made the point that you are creating an “illusion.” The more you draw in your audience’s help in creating that illusion, the more they appreciate the performance.
Tricks are for Halloween; magic is timeless.
Change yourself.
Life Coach Leia Francisco knows no one can change you except you.
"We are not advice givers. Coaches believe you - the client - have the answers. Our real power is helping you clarify the issues, understand the possibilities, then help you take action."
Like the proverb, it's not just feeding you fish; it is teaching you how to fish.
“You are never too old to develop your life purpose and goals."
Keep your scroll up.
When playing the violin, keeping the scroll up will help your bowstick go straighter. (Cathy Learoyd will teach a complete course in fiddling in the spring.)
Back up your computer.
The three rules of preserving computer data:
1) Back it up
2) Back it up often.
3) Back it up in three different places.
Be a clown.
When appearing in clown, you typically get three types of reactions.
1) Total belief. These people rush up for a hug or photograph.
2) Discomfort. These people keep their distance or walk away.
3) No reaction.
These are common responses, according to entertainer Shannon Anderson, aka Sunshine the Clown. “It is often their own insecurities that keep them from playing with you. But they will usually come around if you leave them alone and just keep playing.”
Write a song.
When writing a song, start with the words, then add music. Or, start with the music, then come up with the words. Or, start with an idea, then combine words and music.
(Obviously, there is no rule for writing songs.)
Finally, the most important rule of all...
Breathe!
Pat Labeda, Hypnotherapist, learned this basic of relaxation while working at a trauma center. She noticed that people under stress stop breathing deeply. Simply taking several deep, cleansing breaths can lower the heart rate, freshen the mind, and induce calm.
See you in class!
XXX
The new Spring 2011 Club Ed catalog is now online! Printed editions will be mailed after Christmas, but all courses are open for signup at www.clube.net.
There is still time to get an eGift card - in any amount. Click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.
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