  Today was Aidan's third day of pre-school. I'm really getting into the new rhythm of this much aleved life. Speaking of rhythm, by complete coincidence I was listening to NPR this morning. I typically listen to Pacifica, but the radio was still on NPR from last night so I was caught by surprise by this well executed story on urlLink Yo-Yo Ma's new album called Obrigado Brazil .
I think Yo-Yo Ma is brilliant for music in the same way Feinstein or Sagan were brilliant for science. It's one thing to be extremely knowledgable in your area, but quite another to also be fluent enough in the secular (my adaptation of the word, if you will) culture outside your art to translate your art to those who have no knowledge of it. This takes me back to college. In one of my humanities classes, we read writings and lectures from a philosopher named CP Snow, who wrote primarily on the growing chasm between the scientific and literary cultures. He was part of the linquistics define thought crowd, and expanded on the idea to say the very languages spoken by these two cultural groups have grown so seperately that hardly anyone speaks both. In another writing he furthered this idea of languages among schools of thought to the chasm between developing and developed countries, which was even more brilliant, but the first topic meets my needs today.
If you follow Maslow's great developmental advice (given after he had kids), which says experience is the true source of learning rather than text contents, then it follows that what set Yo-Yo Ma, Feinstein, and Sagan apart from their fields was their expanded knowledge beyond text content through experiences. Snow would take this home to say these individuals' ability or willingness to experience fully both schools of thought inside and outside their narrow area of expertise was the key to thier bilingual coolness. I'm going to find some Yo-Yo Ma to listen to for my day of toddler-free peace! 
