Community

Remember …

Authenticity, Belonging, Challenge, Community
Posted on 5 Comments on Remember …

You think we have it rough now, yes, we do have a challenge. None of us has dealt with a pandemic before, perhaps ever heard the word before. The uncertainty and so many unknowns can freak people out.

Hold on to yourself. Fear and panic are bad places to make decisions from. Right?

Imagine being Peer Gynt, captured by trolls and taken before their king, Dovregubben. Right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTXNqfUWT5E  (Some of Edvard Grieg’s most famous music.)

Near Snohomish

Remember who you are, who we are. In our regular lives, very few of us live in isolation. Keep contact how you can, it’s important. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhSKk-cvblc  Ah, Leonard Bernstein, what would he be composing now and Jerome Robbins be choreographing?

Feel your strength, know it. Yeah, it’s there, sometimes we get distracted and forget our spine is flexible and strong. It needs protection yes, yet it protects us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb_9svkhOEE (Listen at least into the second minute. Carter Burwell, born in a great year, has scored many Hollywood movies. This is from Rob Roy; he’s done The Big Lebowksi, No Country for Old Men, Being John Malkovich.)

Remember. So many things, one of which is that whatever each of us does ripples out to others. Be kind, compassionate, respectful. I have to smile at this one, as when I am called to those things, I usually don’t want to! Okay, self-disclosure: I can be a bit righteous and judgmental. I keep working on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK1N46dRPVg (Aaron Copland is in the audience for this performance!)

Andrew Davis, born in a good month, is conducting here. He is an internationally respected conductor and musician. Turn up the volume, raise your arms, welcome it into you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ryHDsQIYJs  I will never forget the first time I heard this. (More about that another time…)

Since you are still with me, here goes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMuePyV1nr8

When he gave Emerson, Lake and Palmer permission to arrange and play his magnificent piece, Aaron Copland said he was attracted to what they had done, not sure how what they did in the middle was connected to his music, and then famously chuckled. Keith Emerson regarded Copland as ‘the soul of American music.”

     Remember …

I Cry at Car Washes

Belonging, Community, Jerry Lewis, Oregon
Posted on 18 Comments on I Cry at Car Washes

Bowie and I
And baby goats.

Driving by the local Les Schwab tire and automotive center last Sunday, I saw three teenage girls waving ‘Car Wash’ signs at passing traffic. On my way back from errands, I drove into Les Schwab, the girls gave me the thumbs up, and I waited behind a bright red Toyota Forerunner. Mercy, they were thorough: a man with a long-handled brush, two girls with hoses, and two more girls with rags and sponges. Having just completed an 850 mile drive to eastern Oregon to visit my daughter and son-in-law, their four dogs, mama goat, and two newborn baby goats, a car wash was definitely in order.

I was surprised by my eyes tearing up watching the car-washers bustle around the Toyota in front of me. A young lady walked up to my window.
“What are we raising money for?” I asked her.
“4-H,” she smiled broadly, and thanked me as I handed her my six dollars of cash. Young people doing something for good makes me cry? People doing things in community makes me cry? Me getting to peripherally help as I donated money to the cause makes me cry? Apparently so.

Oh yeah, forty years ago, I cried at the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy telethons. He did those until 2010 when he was 84. He and all those celebrities giving their time for free to raise money to help people.

This Les Schwab center frequently donates their space, and precious water, to help groups raise money for what they believe in. Les Schwab himself and his wife donated money to a local hospital to build a wing in honor of their son. A native Oregonian, Les was born in Bend and died in Prineville eleven years ago. A town I had not heard of until my young ones drove through there in June, looking for a place in Oregon to settle down with all their critters and call their own.

A place to call our own. A place where we belong. My daughter, Dorothy, is so happy in their new home: a town with a population of two hundred and fifty-three, with no grocery store, no police department, no laundry-mat, yet a strong sense of community. By their second day there, the mayor had stopped by to meet my young ones, as well as many of the townspeople; one bringing a loaf of fresh-baked blueberry lemon bread. Really? Yup.

“This is our place, Mom. We belong here,” Dorothy said to me several times. There was a doe on the doorstep of the motel when I went back to it Tuesday night. A guy driving by in an old pick-up truck stuck his arm out the window and waved at me as he saw me sitting on the edge of the kiddoes’ property, writing in my journal. Did I wave back? Sure did!

Idyllic? In many respects. Perfectly harmonious? No, people do people things. A woman was arrested for assaulting her boyfriend a few nights before I got there. The neighbors asked how they could help. Community.

The worldwide community. Jerry Lewis also worked with UNICEF, in the Civil Rights Movement, and ‘Jerry’s House’, a home for traumatized children in Melbourne, Australia.

“Leave the world better than you found it,” was a much repeated value in my home growing up, as was, “Give more than you take.” I certainly took those caveats to heart, working in a social services career for decades. Also tending to be an ‘over-responsible’ person, I have had trouble seeing what is my part and what is not. If I see something that needs to be done, and it is not being done, and since it must be done, then I better do it. Right? Good question. I certainly have a history of jumping in to help people, situations, and organizations. That is a juicy topic for another time.

Yet when people do things simply to help others, to be part of something, it shapes a community – be it a telethon, a hospital donation, a go-fund-me campaign, a neighborhood watch, or a meet-up group. When I see those things happen, it often moves me as I see the humanity in people, something that seems lacking in observing the world these days, whether local or international.

Or when I hold baby goats. The gentleness of them of them fills my heart. I totally enjoy kittens and puppies and baby rabbits. Yet there is something so tender about the baby goats which connected me to my own life, their new innocent lives, and the wonder of life itself.

Crying… and life. They’ve gone hand in hand many times for me as I look for where I belong.

Peter, a Dragon, and a Candle

Community, Legacy, Music, Peter Yarrow
Posted on 12 Comments on Peter, a Dragon, and a Candle

Peter Yarrow. 2018
Peter Yarrow had his 80th birthday a month ago. He wrote ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ fifty-seven years ago when he was in college, inspired by a poem written by Leonard Lipton, about children growing up and losing their belief in magic and wonder.

Last night at the Mount Baker Theater in Bellingham, Washington, Peter invited all the children in the audience up on stage to sing it with him as the closing song for the first set. Then considering the audience demographics, he added, “And if you’re a parent, or grandparent, come up with your child. Or if you’re a child at heart.” The audience chuckled. At least fifty people trickled up the steps to join him on stage, from pre-schoolers to elders.

I felt tears sliding down my cheek as he held the microphone to a 6-year-old boy who sang solo, “Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea, And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honahlee.” Then he held the mic to a little girl who sang it, to a middle-aged woman who sang it, then to a man in his thirties who sang it, and to several others who sang solo to the enraptured audience. And of course, for the rest of the song, the audience was singing with him. Peter encouraged that throughout the concert. “Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail.”

Peter Yarrow was himself. Calm, rich with experience, and experiences. He marched for civil rights in the March on Washington, D.C. in 1963; he was at the bedside of Pete Seeger in 2014 as he was dying; he founded Operation Respect to reduce violence and bullying in schools, and as part of the iconic trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, released something like thirty albums.

Calm, funny, relaxed, sincere, heart-touching, Peter made no attempt to break new ground. He sang what people loved and were moved by. Folks songs, songs by Hedy West, John Denver, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, as well as gems by he and Paul Stookey. He told stories nearly as much as he sang. He threw out invitations, and challenges, to build bridges and community. He was himself, doing what fulfills him.

This was about legacy. He no longer needs to prove anything to anyone. In his relaxed manner, his generosity seemed endless: he talked with scads of people, posed with countless folks for pictures, signed books and CDs. The concert went nearly three hours.

A legacy of the strength of music, of respecting diversity, of building community and relationships, of honoring our military personnel, and of speaking up for what’s right. A legacy of hope.

“Light one candle for all we believe in, That anger not tear us apart.”

I Just Had To…

Authenticity, Being human, Community, Story, Youth
Posted on 14 Comments on I Just Had To…

Drawing by S., CP Elementary student
“I stayed in from recess to make this for you.”

She reached out tentatively to hand me a water-color drawing she had made. She being a 6th grade student who had been in the first class I performed for that morning.

“I just had to do this. When you told the story about the two sisters with one’s name like mine and the harp made of bones, I had to draw this.”
What a picture: there was my harp, me, and three of the stories I’d told! She’d heard, she’d listened, she’d thought.
No wonder I do this.

When I was in Juvenile Detention last week, the jail facility for kids under age eighteen, I was in the library waiting for my first class of kids. One of the boys saw me from the hallway and snapped, “Oh f—.” Not the usual response when kids see me, I am happy to report, however, it was his that morning. The boys trooped in and sat down in the semi-circle of chairs facing me. He pulled his tee shirt up to below his eyes, crossed his arms, and looked down at his feet, legs stretched out in front of him. Thirty minutes of stories and music later, he was sitting up asking questions, and forty minutes later he was telling me how he would have changed one part of the folktale from Ecuador I had just told them. After the Haitian tale, “One My Darlin,” he made a comment about forgiveness, which started a discussion among the boys.

No wonder I do this.

Jill Johnson, an accomplished writer, teacher, storyteller, and actor, wrote about when she was telling to and with elders in Auckland, New Zealand in February of this year, that when she saw the elders tell family stories, the youth listening, and the priceless connection being made, she said, “THIS …. is why I do this work.”

I get it more clearly every time I perform lately – telling and making music for elementary school kids, incarcerated kids, or my neighbor. The connecting, the re-discovering the truth that people have common elements of being human be they from China, Patagonia, Egypt, Saskatchewan, or Iceland. You never know what will reach someone. My part, and privilege, is to deliver the story, keep out of the way the best I can, and let the story spin out its storyness.

A Goose

Authenticity, Being human, Community, Fear, Loss
Posted on 19 Comments on A Goose

The Field photo by Mary Dessein
There were two inches of snow on the extensive lawn and soccer field below my home, it was about 34 degrees. Frozen, cold, beautiful.
There was a lone Canadian goose stepping back and forth in a small area down on the field, about three hundred feet from my window. After a few minutes, it simply stood still. It was unsettling to see the lone goose there.

Surely it would fly off. It didn’t.

What could I do to help it? I was sure approaching it with bird seed was not a good idea. I would watch it. Perhaps call Animal Control if it didn’t fly off. Surely it would fly off.
Geese are not supposed to be alone. They instinctively stay in community and watch out for each other; often dropping out of their flying wedge formation if they detect one of their own is struggling. I came back to the window a little while later, the goose was still standing there, now with it’s neck drooped down, head lowered as if hopeless.

When I returned home, it was mid-afternoon. The goose was then sitting down, with its head lowered, in the same place it had been standing.
My heart felt like a fifty pound lump of coal as I looked at the lost, alone, cold bird. It hurt to stand there and watch the bird. I went off to find some phone numbers.

Two days before, on New Year’s, I texted a close friend, wishing her a fabulous 2018 and telling her she rocked! Her answer was, “I am afraid.” Of course, I texted back asking if she needed help, was she safe?

A few minutes later, she explained she was afraid of 2018. As 2016 had been a difficult year with several family dramas and sorrow, she had looked forward to a happier 2017. Which turned out to be so filled with pain and betrayal, she felt she couldn’t live through anything more. So … she was afraid of what 2018 would bring.

Where do you turn, what do you do when you are afraid of the next day? The next month? Who do you turn to when those close to you have left you? Aren’t we supposed to be a community and watch out for each other?

Fear. An F-word to be sure. Some say it is an acronym for Forsake Everything And Run (censored version), a short term strategy to avoid the problem causing the fear. However, the problem will likely still be there when you get back. More helpful to me has been False Evidence Appearing Real, as over time I recognized that most of my fears grew out of my self-doubt, trepidation about doing something new, or standing up for myself.

I saw a t-shirt years ago at a department store emblazoned with “Fear is a Thief.” It stopped me for a moment as that truth registered in me. Indeed, my fears had held me back from many things. Many things you don’t, I don’t, get a do-over on.

My heart hurt to hear of my tender friend living in that fear and foreboding on New Year’s Day, when so many people are high-fiving each other, celebrating a fresh start after some time off, and looking forward to opportunities. What could I do to help?

Be in her community. Alas, my magic wand to tap her three times and dissipate her fear has long since disappeared. I had it when I was five but somewhere along the way, I lost track of the darn thing.
Maybe that’s for the best.

There are times when I think of that goose. It still twangs my heart to see the picture so clearly in my mind of the elegant bird alone and hopeless in the white expanse. That day when I came back to the window after finding possible animal rescue phone numbers, the goose was gone.

Where? I’ll never know, I can only hope. My friend? I will be there to listen, and walk with her.
Maybe hope will come along, too.

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