I am not sure what happened to June, but we are already closing out our first week in July! If you are living in the States, I hope you had a wonderful Fourth. And wherever you are, that your summer so far is going at a lovely, easy pace.

This month on the blog we’ll be talking about courage from a few different angles—some fun, some serious. I don’t know about you, but there have been many times in my life where I’ve wished I had a little more courage, and a lot less fear. Though it may seem to be a rather heavy topic for summer, I have found that some of our greatest challenges and opportunities come when our guard is down. For this reason, I think summer is the perfect time for this topic. I hope you will join our conversation, and that you enjoy this week’s Love, Learn Lead.

Love

Ever notice how the radio always seems to be playing the same six songs, by the same six artists? Ok, perhaps I am exaggerating (but only a little). Thanks to the internet though, and for some of us, a local music scene, we can access amazing music by so much of the incredible talent in the world. There are platforms for artists in ways that there never has been before—often in some very creative spaces. One of these spaces is known as Veltway Sessions.

This past year, Brittany and Spencer McCreary (frontman for the band, Cardinal Harbor), created a platform for local musicians in their Chicago apartment. Literally setting up a studio in their living room, they invite artists to come and play one song to share with the world. They explain that:

“Veltway Sessions exists to document music in a simple setting. We think live performance is the lifeblood of music making and we believe it thrives in the living room. A song performance is a time capsule.”

So far, each performance has been different and beautiful—many even hauntingly so. Each recording is put up on Youtube, and for the length of the piece you feel like you are in the living room with them—drinking a cup of coffee or enjoying a glass of wine. Very rarely do many of us get out to enjoy live music performances, let alone get to be apart of such an intimate setting. But Veltway Sessions invites us to such an experience with each new video. Check them out on youtube, and follow them on Facebook or Instagram to keep up with each new recording.

When was the last time you enjoyed live music?

Learn

As I shared Monday, Tony and I are trying to learn some useful phrases in Italian to get ready for our trip later this summer. When we first decided to do this, we found all of these helpful pins on Pinterest, with phrases like

“Dov’e Bagno?” (Where is the Bathroom?)

or

“Quanto Costa?” (How much is it?)

The only problem was we have never really been around people who speak Italian, and so we weren’t sure we were pronouncing things correctly (even with some of the charts spelling things out phonetically). Thankfully though, I found some podcasts to help you learn Italian. If you are thinking of learning a language for an upcoming vacation, one podcast we found helpful is Survival Phrases. Italian is not the only language they offer, and they break things down into small five minute episodes so you can learn one or two phrases everyday without taking too much time out of your schedule.

What are you learning this summer?

When was the last time you tried learning a new language?

Lead

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

—Winston Churchill

Will you seek the courage to continue?

 

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