Cat Drum Buddha

This is the time of year for sifting and sorting. I'm just starting the process because soon I will need to deal with quarterly taxes for Raison D'Etre sales. Before I get to that fun chore and the general end-of -the-year numbers I have to generate, I just wanted to take a few minutes to write my best of 2010 list. I am not going to judge movies or books or music in this list. Instead, I wish to tally those experiences that enriched my life in some way. My family enriches my life daily, so they are not included here.

10. Since June, when I decided I really needed to take better care of myself, I have walked around the lake more, kept regular with my yoga classes, and really have tried to eat better. The results are that I have more energy, haven't been sick much, and weigh about 12 pounds fewer. I don't want to take my health for granted. While I know that none of these practices guarantee me good health, I hope they at least make me present a little more each day so that I savor this gift of life.

9. Having a cat has helped me realize how easy it is to accept people and things for what they are. It's amazing how many times a day I will pick up things that Ruthie has knocked off my desk and just smile. I bet parents who stay up all night and change poopy diapers are laughing at me now. Even though I have had dogs for most of my life, I have never been as tolerant of mess and chaos as I am now. It took a bratty, bottle-fed kitten I found in the barn to teach me more about compassion and hanging loose. They say we find our teachers when it's time.

8. Drumming with seniors using the HealthRhythms protocol has helped me to be more creative. I actually wrote three songs this year just for my HealthRhythms sessions. "The Happy Song" went with me to two Motes Books Gatherings and even to Solatido where I led the Table Rock Writers in a sing along.

7. I booked some time at Group Effort to record my song for the Ceilidh Group's 2nd children's CD and while I was there put "The Happy Song" down with three parts just to hear what it would sound like with other voices. "Little Fallen Star" was included on the just released children's CD--which is a wonderful compilation of regional folks! Can't wait for the release events in January.

6. Presenting and performing as a soloist happened more frequently for me this year. Mostly as a drum facilitator. I took part in Fine Arts Fund Sampler Weekend with the Music and Wellness Coalition at Music Hall, with Jim Waddle at Media Bridges, and then solo at Campbell County Library. I facilitated solo for Walton Senior Center from June-October and then at Owenton Senior Center since November. In January, I start at Campbell County.

I did a public drum presentation at Kentucky Haus Artisan Center this fall. It was a happy mixture of my personal journey plus an onsite HealthRhythms session. Plus, I found out all kinds of interesting local history from Ruth Glazer, who was one of the first female drummers in her high school's marching band. She and Don Drewry swapped marching band tales and giggled through our guided imagery drum trip to Ireland.

5. But, I have also done much more as a solo songwriter this year. I had the courage to try my brand new "Happy Song" at the Motes Gathering at the Breaks in April, led the Motes Songwriting Session at Grailville in July, and even tried two very new songs at the Motifv2 : Come What May reading in October. I just recorded a very home recording of "January Thaw" for Erin Fitzgerald's "Keep Hearing Voices" show. Erin graciously captures the voices that might otherwise not be heard on her Saturday radio show. I'll link to her show here when it's available on archives just so you can get the eclectic flavor of her presentations.

Spending several days at a wonderful writing retreat in Loretto(KY) led me to formulate an actual set list of my own songs. Since I had all day in monastic surroundings to work on my songs(or not) and the evenings and meal times to enjoy the company of my fellow retreatants, I found the atmosphere conducive to editing and rewriting. I do have to confess to swimming and wine.

4. And I learned about linking to radio archives by doing book reviews on my friend Lee Hay's radio show on WVXU, Around Cincinnati. During early 2010, I learned lots about deadlines, writing reviews, and then what it takes to record them for air without passing out or driving the engineer nuts. I also got to read some excellent books.

3. Practice of Poetry workshops with Pauletta Hansel taught me much about what poetry is and isn't. I was fortunate enough to attend the spring and summer sessions, but couldn't do the fall one because of Raison D'Etre commitments. I intend to get back to the next session. And the summer Abiding Image workshop with Cathy Smith Bowers was awesome!

2. I am always enriched(calories and experience) by making tie-dyed cookies with my friend, Leona. We missed Halloween this year, but not Christmas. And I recorded us on my new Flip camera so we can measure our progress in technique.

1. The number one slot for my 2010 enrichment experience goes to Solatido, the songwriting retreat I attend in the fall that really gets me writing songs. This year I came home with three songs and the indelible experience of performing on the other writers' pieces. It was amazing! We're getting a recording of our efforts soon which will include the jaunty tunes of Mike Craver. I am so excited! Because the katydids were singing so loudly on the night of our performance, the CD is entitled September Katydids.

Happy New Year!

I hope your year was filled with love and enrichment.

Power of Drums

Many years ago, I was teaching high school English in a rural high school in Northern Kentucky, Oh, we were classified by our system as a "suburban" high school, but we knew the truth. We knew which kids wouldn't be there when the tobacco had to be stripped and which kids would definitely be in a tree stand the first day of deer season waiting on a buck. Not to mention that the principal knew exactly which fishing hole to raid on Senior Skip Day. Shoot, some freshman boys came to me one fall, John Deere hats-in-hand, because they wanted to start a "Huntin' and Fishin' Club," and they thought I looked like someone who knew my way around a gun and a rod. They were actually half right.

Now, it's true that some of these kids came from the city down the hill and had been kicked out of their own schools for some kind of bad behavior or another. Then we, the teachers and students of "that school up on the ridge" were supposed to somehow either scare these miscreants straight or give them so much country loving that they turned into decent human beings. Either way, it was a tall order. But it was in this climate that I had some of my best moments in teaching. For some reason, tall orders call for a lot of creative thinking and passion.

I don't know when it happened exactly, but one day in the mid 1990s, I was reading the Kentucky Post when I saw a headline that stopped me from skimming the rest of the news that day: "Banks to Lead Drum Workshop." To most readers that might have meant a couple of local banks were sponsoring an arts event, but to me it meant one thing: Dennis Banks, the Ojibwa Activist, was somehow coming to my neck of the woods. I drove to the Carnegie that day to hunt down Arlene Gibeau in her office. I had to get into that workshop! Never mind that I had never played drums in my life.

As it turned out, that was the least of my worries since I found out on the first night that we were going to make drums before we could even think about playing them. Then we were going to learn a bunch of songs from Dennis' culture and put on a concert--in one week. He said this to us like a bunch of mostly white people from Kentucky did this all the time and should have no problem cutting drum heads out of Elk hide and lacing them together to make a drum fit for a concert sung in vocables and Ojibwa. Oh, yeah, and Dennis was not fond of the word "play" as it referred to drum. We were going to learn to make drums and to drum and how to behave in the presence of a drum. He had his work cut out for him. Talk about tall orders.

Yet, by the end of that week, we had each crafted our drum with the help of a partner, knew how to behave around drums, sang in syllables and other languages, dressed in red and black for our concert, and felt so good we could hardly stand it. We were transformed! I knew that I wanted this feeling for my students.

In the five years that followed, I went to the workshop each year to assist in any way I could, bringing my Dad one year, my Mom the next and finally, my good friend and teaching buddy, Karen. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was slowly building the framework for my students to follow. Once Karen became involved, the two of us went into an absolute collaborative frenzy, deciding that the act of making a drum had propelled us toward a whole new idea for a humanities course, "Celebrating the Creative Spirit." So when our principal mentioned that he wanted someone to work on piloting a Humanities Course for high school, Karen and I were ready to jump.

We jumped right into a Humanities Institute that summer where teachers from Highlands, Southgate, and Simon Kenton began to formulate ideas for their courses. The end result? Karen and I invited Dennis Banks to our school(via a TIP grant from Kentucky Arts Council) to lead our students in a week-long drum workshop. Of course, because of Dennis' travel schedule, we could only get him during the notoriously snowy month of February. Imagine our surprise when school had to be called off for a snow day during our week-long workshop, and thirteen of our twenty drum makers still showed up to work on their drums with Dennis. In that moment, Karen and I believed in the transformational power of drums! One week before, some of these kids would have ditched school for a Jerry Springer re-run. But now, consumed with the passion of filling their own tall orders, they just couldn't let themselves down.

HealthRHYTHMS and Fine Arts Fund Sampler Weekend

"Have drums, will travel" was our mantra for Creative Aging, The Coalition for Music and Wellness, and me for Fine Arts Fund Sampler Weekend. On Saturday February 20, Jim Waddle--board member for Creative Aging and volunteer coordinator of their drumming offerings--and I met up at Media Bridges in downtown Cincinnati for an hour of intergenerational drumming. We had a circle of about 27 drummers for our first session representing all age groups from toddlers to seniors.

As we finished up a successful session, volunteers from FAF and Media Bridges helped us pack the drums back in my Jeep for a drive over to Music Hall where an all-day art expo for kids was taking place called "Get Smart with Art." We formed a very large drumming circle with kids, parents, Music and Wellness Coalition, and Creative Aging drummers. The kids used drums and percussion that they made earlier at the expo, or joined us on some of the wide-array of Remo drums we brought in. My fondest memory of this session is seeing a young man from our Media Bridges session rejoin us so that he could play the gathering drum in this huge circle. The expression on his face as he wielded the big mallet was one of absolute joy.

On Sunday, February 21, I toted the drums over to Campbell County Public Library in Cold Spring for another lively intergenerational circle featuring some drummers from the Campbell County Senior Center, lots of parents and kids, and even Pam Temple from WNKU and wild carrot. She was performing at the library later and just thought it might be fun to join in.

I usually present some kind of program for Fine Arts Fund Sampler, either with Raison D'Etre, or solo. But this one was so exciting because of the full participation of the attendees who found their "walking talking rhythm" in their names and shared drumming. (photo courtesy of Janet Arno, Campbell County Library.)

Making it Easy at Adult Daycare Drumming

Making it Easy at Adult Daycare Drumming

As a former teacher, I was often cast in the role of "facilitator," which is usually defined as "one who makes a task easy for the participants." The role of a HealthRHYTHMS drumming facilitator embodies so much of that description in that we bring the drums, form the circle, follow the protocol, make a sort of plan for the session, and then begin. The interesting thing is that every group is different. So "making it easy" for a group of independent, lively seniors who gather regularly for social purposes might involve inviting them to start a rhythm that turns into an expressive groove (with dancing!) While an adult daycare session might stretch the facilitator's notion of protocol since the participants are limited by so many physical and mental restrictions. How does one make drumming easy when attention spans are short, medications might hamper the ability to participate, and occasionally someone sets off the door alarm? I'm starting to re-format my notions about the HealthRHYTHMS protocol to fit the adult daycare experiences I've had so far. Here's hoping this helps anyone in a similar circumstance.

1. Insist on a circle. Many adult daycare centers include a large central room that can accommodate 50 or more clients per session. While arranging these folks into one large drum circle--given the amount of wheelchairs and walkers present--might seem difficult for the caregivers, I've found that if all participants are arranged in concentric circles, the level of participation increases. When we tried this approach last week at an adult daycare--after an especially chaotic week before--most of the 50 clients present were able to take part in the drumming. Before, there was a small circle for those who wanted to participate while the rest of the clientele observed, some of them loudly disengaged.

2. The wellness step is essential for this group. While I certainly wouldn't include full-body yoga stretches with adult daycare, these drummers need the full relaxation cycle for their overall well-being. I start with some simple deep breathing and work up to some range of motion exercises for the head, neck, arms and hands. I search for energizing music for this step with a little underlying beat to prepare the group for our eventual drumming.

3. Ice breakers are tough. HealthRHYTHMS protocol calls for some kind of ice breaker involving hand-held shakers. Just getting something in the hands of 50 participants in a few minutes is really challenging. Luckily, the adult day caregivers are very helpful in accomplishing this if you let them know your expectations. So far, I've only been able to use the "Shaker Share," where participants show their personal style of playing the shakers. This is one area where I really need to get more creative for the needs of the group. Maybe inviting the caregivers to model some shaker styles would empower the participants to try their own.

4. The ABCs of drumming need to happen each session. While it might seem repetitive to the facilitators, not everyone remembers which end of the beater to use on which drum or what part of the drum yields the deeper sound. I remind every group I facilitate about this, never assuming that they know. Sometimes in the rush to "get to the drums" we forget that some of the drummers may be unsure of their own power to make sound. I'm learning that it's also important to switch drums at least once per session so that each drummer gets a wider experience.

5. Rhythmic naming is a staple. While pounding out the rhythm to several participants' name is always a good way to welcome new drummers to the circle, the regulars require a little variation. One young man at my sessions likes to introduce the guests he meets by drumming their names. Before the holidays, we drummed the first lines of favorite carols and then sang a verse.

6. Entrainment--or what do we do now? One of my most humbling experiences while conducting a music residency for an elementary school was working with the pre-schoolers. Although I only saw them one half hour per school day, they completely wore me out. Why? Well, if you've never worked with a group of 3 and 4 year olds, they require frequent shifts in focus and lots of movement. Invariably, the pre-school teacher and I would end up leading some kind of musical conga line for one of the songs for the day. While I am not equating adult daycare clients with pre-school, they do share some characteristics. One of the most prominent ones I've noticed is the need for a shift in focus. Because there are so many variations in physical and mental capacity, there exists no common pace. So far, the only way I've found to address the diversity is to try some groove, some sing along, more groove, more sing along.

It's important, according to Christine Stevens, HealthRHYTHMS co-founder and trainer, to wait for the group to respond. Sometimes my frustration at changing the focus is caused by my inability to wait for that awkward silence to end. Too often facilitators jump in with their own idea before the participants have a chance to show their power. How empowering is the drumming when we "control" its every aspect?

7. Inspirational beats. Assuming that adult daycare folks have nothing to discuss in the sharing portion of the protocol would be a big mistake. I can see each session that several of them are upset by the prospect of being "warehoused" among strangers. Even with the caring work of the caregivers to make them feel at home, newcomers to adult daycare are often frightened or angry at their loss of independence. Some clients are completely lucid but limited in their physical participation while others are physically strong but struggle with dementia. There are plenty of stray feelings that can be pounded out on a drum and talked about. Last week one participant started a gospel song called "Already Done" that expressed both her acceptance of her circumstances and her joy at relinquishing her cares to a higher power. The beat and response were infectious.

8. Guided Imagery. To bring each drumming session to a calm, peaceful conclusion that enhances the health of the participants, HealthRHYTHMS protocol prescribes a guided imagery experience. This is meant to be a session with soft drumming and background music, guiding the drummers through an exotic scenario that results in shared experience and relaxation. This step has been my greatest challenge at adult daycare because of all the differences I have described thus far. In some sessions, loud talking from caregivers trying to resolve an issue, door alarms sounding, or even members of the circle getting up and moving around have reduced the effectiveness of the experience. Since I did guided imagery with high school students with behavior issues, I know that the key is to build a habit and a culture for the activity. Once the group feels the pattern of the protocol, they usually accept it and reap some benefit. After four sessions, I finally had what I consider to be a successful guided imagery this past week. A great deal of the success can probably be attributed to the fact that I insisted on a circle which gave everyone a similar focus and seemed to increase concentration on the guided imagery.

Sometimes "making it easy" is a little more complicated than we think. But certainly worth it. If you have any facilitating experiences with drum groups, I'd love to read some comments.

Drums for Health

Just wanted to add my facilitator's logo to this site. I'm looking forward to working with seniors, schools, and folks who just want to relax and make some music.