Despite a little rust during night 1, Phish came out on night 2 at Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena completely locked in and ready to play. The playing was much tighter, and although the jams and experimentation didn’t always reach the lengths we wanted or expected, this second night at Tahoe bodes extremely well for the rest of the tour.

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Last month, the Trump Administration proposed Federal government “reforms” that included the consolidation of the Department of Education and the Department of Labor. Whether such a proposal will prevail in this sulfurous crater we call a democracy these days is anybody’s guess. But, symbolically, this proposal is a chilling indication that the administration holds a cynically narrow view of the mission of public education: to process children into productive adult workers.

We strenuously object.

The idea that the scope of public education in the United States should be shrunk—that students should learn on the taxpayers’ dime only what prepares them for life as agreeable worker drones—is not new. For example, since countless other fresh hells have spawned in the last several years, you can be excused for forgetting about that time when the Texas GOP enshrined their opposition to teaching students how to think critically. But it is the nation’s long-wavering commitment to music education that I’d like to talk about today—because it is almost certain to get worse before it gets better, and because you can help.

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