Re: Gaelic (was: Shelagh--how do you pronounce your name)

I dropped it because I never wanted it in the first place. My voice changed earlier (girls' voices change, too) so I began with a coach when I was 12. Most girls begin when they are 14 or 15. Classical was touted as the first method from which all other genres would follow. By the time I had achieved what I needed in classical, I was 15 and ready for my true love -- blues and jazz. But guess what? To be 15 and have an accomplished, classical repertoire meant that no other coach would take you on unless you were going to continue with classical. That continued until I got to college, and after fulfilling my scholarship duties during my freshman year (number of non-required performances, being lent to other colleges and civic groups to pad their casts and bring attention to my college's music dept., etc.) I demanded of the dean of music that I be allowed to change genres. He disagreed, so I left that school and returned to my hometown of Mason, OH, intending to enroll at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.

Well, guess where nearly every coach and college professor and even the dean of music graduated from? Yup. CCM. I was essentially blackballed unless I studied classical. At that point, I decided a life on the stage wasn't for me because I'd seen this really nasty, never-publicized thing behind the curtain and I just felt like a prostitute. In retrospect what I should have done was used that very moment of anger to walk into the smokiest, darkest piano bar in town and ask for a microphone and a B-flat minor, please.

I worked with artificial intelligence that could teach itself to communicate with people who had severe autism and other disorders in which they develop their own languages and methods of communication. I was also interested in how people who suffered disabilities within in the autism spectrum related to animals and could sometimes talk with or to an animal but would turn aphasic, for example, when confronted with a human. I'd done horse and dog therapy for years as a hobby, and I began to see real possibilities within that discipline.

And then I graduated and needed money and fell back on writing because really it's what I do best. :) Long and winding road. But I got a marvelous husband out of it all and a career that allows me to put everything on hold for a few years while I raise the children. Once the youngest (who is due on the 19th!) is in kindergarten, I can begin picking up contracts full-time again. For now I can get the occasional one for people in a bind.

Thank you for that explanation. I think that those professors and coaches need their heads examined. I like the idea of working to help autistic people communicate.

Higs, Katherine