A shameful state of affairs. Bankers are collecting million-dollar bonuses while homeless children worry about their families and try to study:

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — In the small trailer her family rented over the summer, 9-year-old Charity Crowell picked out the green and purple outfit she would wear on the first day of school. She vowed to try harder and bring her grades back up from the C’s she got last spring — a dismal semester when her parents lost their jobs and car and the family was evicted and migrated through friends’ houses and a motel.

Charity is one child in a national surge of homeless schoolchildren that is driven by relentless unemployment and foreclosures. The rise, to more than one million students without stable housing by last spring, has tested budget-battered school districts as they try to carry out their responsibilities — and the federal mandate — to salvage education for children whose lives are filled with insecurity and turmoil.

The instability can be ruinous to schooling, educators say, adding multiple moves and lost class time to the inherent distress of homelessness. And so in accord with federal law, the Buncombe County district, where Charity attends, provides special bus service to shelters, motels, doubled-up houses, trailer parks and RV campgrounds to help children stay in their familiar schools as the families move about.

Still, Charity said of her last semester, “I couldn’t go to sleep, I was worried about all the stuff,” and she often nodded off in class.

Charity and her brother, Elijah Carrington, 6, were among 239 children from homeless families in her district as of last June, an increase of 80 percent over the year before, with indications this semester that as many or more will be enrolled in the months ahead.

While current national data are not available, the number of schoolchildren in homeless families appears to have risen by 75 percent to 100 percent in many districts over the last two years, according to Barbara Duffield, policy director of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, an advocacy group.

There were 679,000 homeless students reported in 2006-7, a total that surpassed one million by last spring, Ms. Duffield said.

With schools just returning to session, initial reports point to further rises. In San Antonio, for example, the district has enrolled 1,000 homeless students in the first two weeks of school, twice as many as at the same point last year.

Last Thursday night I went to the Grammy Museum with Digby and Howie Klein to see the great Terence Blanchard do a Q&A and then play a short concert. It's an incredible venue to see a live event because the sound system is so sweet and with only 200 seats, it's a very intimate setting. I'm a member of NARAS and they often email events they have there but this is the first one I attended. Blanchard just released a new record called "Choices," and he was doing some promotion on his new amazing disc. He plays a magnificent trumpet and was accompanied by bass, piano, drums and a dynamic tenor sax. the record is unique too because it features the spoken words of Dr. Cornell West and he was a major inspiration to Blanchard's latest project.

West, who is a distinguished professor at Princeton, is best known for work that fuses civil rights and anti-war activism with a powerful moral and even religious social critique. Long a hero of progressives, he got into a much-publicized fracas with obtuse corporate shill Lawrence Summers, then serving, inexplicably, as president of Harvard. Asked about his collaboration with Blanchard, West defined Choices as being about "what kind of human being you’re going to be. How are you going to opt for a life of decency and compassion and service and love. What goes into that kind of choice. That’s the human challenge. To be part of this album is an unadulterated joy because no doubt about it, music for me is continuous of life-- to be able to live the kind of life that I live on the certain kind of Socratic calling of raising
unsettling questions. To be able to be in conversation and on an album with Terence Blanchard, that’s serious business... I mean, that’s... that’s a beautiful thing.”

You may know Blanchard's music because he has composed many music scores for Spike Lee including the haunting soundtrack of "When the Levees Broke," which documents the horrors of Hurricane Katrina. The event changed his life and he said something so simple yet so profound. "I didn't choose to be an activist, it chose me."

During Q&A sessions, I usually get bored and start daydreaming until the artist starts playing music, but I was riveted to each answer he gave. Terence is an educator who is the Artistic Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in New Orleans and he answered each question decisively, majestically and honestly. He understands how important it is for an artist to imitate the greats of Jazz, but then develop a personal voice which might be the most difficult taks of all. In his early days, he broke in with Art Blakey and when he tried to play like Miles on "My Funny Valentine," Terence said that Blakey yelled at him. "Miles never played the melody. Play the damn melody." I laughed because Art was famous for that, but was also responsible for adding new voices to his band. He launched many careers in his time and when I used to see Art play in college, the talk was always, "Who's in his band now?"

Blanchard's voice floated through the hall like the mellow tone of a flugelhorn, but with a richness of sound that was magnetic. His passion for music reeled me in and never let me go. I related to his story because of his dedication to teach jazz to a new generation of musicians without the snobbery that sometimes gets passed down by the elder statesman so to speak. His explanations of his approach to teaching and playing that are such a deep and personal nature resonated within me. And then he took the stage and he let his music do the talking from there. It was a delicious treat and we're working on having him come to the LNMC for a live chat with our readers.

After the show my heart was pounding from the experience and I stood outside waiting for Digby to pick me up. When I got in her car a new experience was waiting for me and I'll let her tell you what happened.

Renewed Faith

I have,sadly, become something of a cynic in my old age and it's not a happy thing to be. The world is darker, inspiration harder to find and humans are constantly disappointing me. But today, my faith in the goodness of human nature was renewed.

Howie Klein asked John Amato and I to an event last night at the Grammy Museum, which is in downtown LA near the Staples center and the convention center. It was a fabulous Q&A and concert with the great Jazz trumpet player Terrance Blanchard and his band. Unfortunately, when I got back in my car after the event I found that my wallet was missing...read on. It has a happy ending.