Radio, Poetry, Party and Viewing Everything as an Experiment

BRUNCH PARTY!

Yesterday I hosted a small brunch gathering to celebrate our friend Franny, who just finished a Master's program, while simultaneously teaching nursing students full time at Southern Oregon University.

I watched with awe as Franny persisted through months of grueling academic and teaching demands. I saw how difficult it was for her, and how she continued on with determination in the midst of her weariness.  I worried about her health and wellbeing. And when she finished the Master's program, leaving her with only a full time teaching schedule, I wanted to celebrate her significant accomplishment.

Our small group had a wonderful time together. We talked about healing, healthy food, teaching and learning. It is always so nourishing to gather with friends, and it's good to celebrate whenever possible, too. Celebrating lifts us up.
 
Here is the guest of honor with a gorgeous orchid that one friend brought as a gift to her. Those flowers suit her. She is a wonderful and amazing woman who worked as a hospice nurse for 20 years and now gives the benefit of her wisdom, caring and humor to nursing students.  And she really loves her work. How wonderful.


I WON A POETRY PRIZE!

Our local OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Center) sponsored a contest focused on poetry about aging.  I won an award for "Sex after Sixty" one of the 20 songs in our musical revue A New Wrinkle. Here's my award!

Darn it, I couldn't attend the award ceremonies and another poet read my poem there. I would have loved to hear Patty Wixon read the lyrics as a poem. It is always so interesting to hear how others share one's work.

I wish I could have been there to enjoy the festivities and hear other people's poems. With any luck, this could become an annual event at OLLI. I'm really hoping that it will be repeated next year.

Not only was my poem recognized, I was gifted with a beautiful book of womens' poetry titled "A Fierce Brightness." I am looking forward to reading it.

You can listen to an mp3 of "Sex after Sixty" in its musical form by clicking the link here.


RADIO INTERVIEW ON CONSCIOUS AGING

It was great fun to talk with Deb Reger the other day. Deb does a show called Moccasin Tracks at at Goddard College's community radio station WGDR.  We talked about social and personal attitudes towards aging, activism, the role of the elder, and more.

The conversation is available as a podcast. Here is the link:  podcast of the radio interview about conscious aging  in case you would like to take a listen to what we shared.

HOME, GARDEN AND SONGS

I decided to leave the crepe paper streamers up at home for a few days because my friend Anne will be returning soon after more than a month away, and I think she will enjoy being greeted with the festive feeling that the streamers provide.

I planted a few more seedlings yesterday. Now I have kale, arugula and spinach sprouting. Today I will add more compost to some of the garden beds.

I am also planning to spend some time working on two songs--the last song for our musical revue, and lyrics for a song that will be used in an upcoming crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo. We almost got one of those campaigns going late last year, but then postponed it. So we still have that in the works.

EVERYTHING IS AN EXPERIMENT

It's freeing to look at things that way, with what one commentator calls a "growth mindset."  And looking at everything as an experiment is especially useful when dealing with disappointments, mistakes and failures. It takes a lot of experimenting to come up with successful responses, events, experiences, etc. It takes a fair amount of failure. As Winston Churchill once said:

"Success is not final,  failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."

My upcoming workshop "The Adventure of Spirited Aging" aroused no response in the local populace! Aw shucks.  I am cancelling it. I was sad about cancelling  it on and off for days, but now I am letting it go.  I love doing workshops, but the time has not yet arrived for this one, it seems.

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor," Truman Capote said.  I know that it is true. 

Hope that all your experiments are going well and that your life is opening up like a beautiful flower.

After the poetry, more poetry

In the midst of the poetry, out in the wild blue yonder

Yesterday I did a performance reading titled The Poetry of Aging at the Ashland Library.

It went very well, with an enthusiastic audience of 15 or 20 people. Some of them were avid poetry buffs, and knew many of the poems I shared.

The poems were quite varied. Some were reflective, some were humorous or sardonic, some lyrical, and some were laments.


I thoroughly enjoyed sharing that feast of  poetry,  as you can see from the photo here which shows the truth of something Stanley Kunitz said, how "The poem comes in the form of a blessing...like rapture breaking on the mind."

One of the folks who attended asked me to share the titles and authors of some of the poems I presented, and I am doing so here.

I read several poems by W.B. Yeats, including Sailing to Byzantium, When You are Old and John Kinsella's Lament for Mrs. Mary Moore.

I sang Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas. I set that poem to music many years ago and always love to share it with others. Poetry was sung or chanted in the old days, and even today, when you hear poets "read' their work, many still do it in a musical, bardic way. I think that's even more true in places outside of the US, where we have adopted a rather flat-earth relationship to language.

One woman left while I sang Fern Hill. I wish I could have asked her whether it was just too much for her, too strange or difficult. This kind of singing is so different from the style of vocal presentation we are familiar with. I suppose that is one reason why I like it. I long for more variety, subtlety, more open and expansive voice that can lead us into deeper regions of the psyche. Bardic poetry. People used to sit for hours together and hear the deep songs. I am happy that some of us kindred spirits gathered to commune in that way yesterday.

I shared the humorous and poignant poem Forgetfulness by Billy Collins. You can listen to it while watching a  You Tube video.

I shared several poems by Polish poet Anna Swir, from her book Talking to My Body.

I presented Sonnet 73 by Shakespeare, some poems by May Sarton about becoming 80, the wonderful poem Otherwise by Jane Kenyon, Affirmation by Donald Hall, In View of the Fact by A. R. Ammons, With a Wave of Her Old Hand by Kathleen Raine, Touch Me and Passing Through by Stanley Kunitz, Past by Pablo Neruda, Lines on Retirement, After Reading Lear, by David Wright. I shared Break the Mirror by Nanao Sakaki and Maya Angelou's poem On Aging.

We did call and response for the poem Ancestors, the choral piece which begins my musical revue, A New Wrinkle. That was lovely, too. It gave me a glimpse of what that poem may sound like set to music and sung by a chorus.

I learned, as one often does in doing things. I felt fine about the way I shared the poems, but afterwards, I realized that I did not give the audience enough introduction to me or my work with creative aging, or tell them enough about the musical revue I'm working to finish and produce.  I was a bit disappointed in that and I will do better next time.


Playfulness and Wellness
The other day, I somehow (did someone send it to me?) found a video about Stephen Jepson, an active elder who likes relating to life as one big playground, as you will see from this video on Growing Bolder, an Internet community that focuses on positive aging.

Jepson is passionate about playfulness and physical activity and their role in happiness, health and wellbeing. I hope that he succeeds in sharing his methods and philosophy widely. Playful physical activity can build a set of skills that help coordination and prevent falls. Not only that, look at this fellow. He is having a wonderful time. His happiness is quite contagious. He has a Never Leave the Playground website you will enjoy, too.

Here we are in December!

Living In the Community

The Greensprings area

 I've been here in the Ashland, Oregon neighborhood since 1977--the years have accumulated. The town and surrounding area has changed considerably in some ways, with many more new residents from urban places like SF, LA and NY.  It's speedier than it used to be, and more sophisticated.

Southern Oregon is a beautiful region and a healthy place to live on many levels. I think that there is a greater variety of high-quality organic food available here at lower prices than anywhere else. There are wonderful hikes, swimming holes, dance, yoga, marathons and other ways to be physically active.

The Ashland community is artistic and educated; there's plenty of workshops, performances and other gatherings to choose from. I have a lot of dear friends here. Yesterday I drove up to the Greensprings to visit two of them for Thanksgiving.  It was a marvelous meal and it was a sumptuous repast to be with them, too.

I had a tour of our grassroots media world this week. It was an easy tour because this is not a big city. We have only two community media outlets here. First I went on Craig Comstock's show Like Wow! which airs on RVTV, a cable station whose offices are part of Southern Oregon University. Craig and I talked about positive aging. It was a lot of fun. I will post a link to the show when it is available. I believe it's airing on December 3rd at 8pm for those of you who are in the Rogue Valley.

Craig Comstock

 Craig is a great interviewer. He has a nice sense of humor and moves from topic to topic very easily. I don't get nervous when I speak in public or in media situations, but he made me feel even more relaxed and comfortable than I already did.

We talked about stereotypes, misconceptions, positive solutions and inspiring elders, among other things. Of course, I talked about A New Wrinkle, our musical revue. I had the chance to sing Baba Yaga's Raga (wow, I am looking forward to seeing how that looks) and Craig and I did some alternate line reading of part of the song Ancestors, the choral piece that begins A New Wrinkle.

The front door to KSKQ, our  homegrown radio station

I also went on Lavelle Foos' KSKQ radio show Wonderful World of Women.

Both of these venues, RVTV and KSKQ, are arranged in a low-budget, minimalist style. Keynotes are make sure you dress warmly enough, the rug is tacky but it looks okay on camera, watch out for that shelf or you will hurt your head. RVTV's studio is roomy, but KSKQ's studio is quite tiny.

I loved the entry door at KSKQ, ornamented with a small windmill and some plastic chairs.

I am glad that community and grassroots media exist!  Our print and broadcast media have become rather monolithic. It's refreshing and important to have the freedom to share a wide variety of expressions, not simply those that align with high profile people and mainstream views.

It was great to connect with Lavelle via her show. I've known Lavelle for decades. She is a sculptor, coppersmith and musician. She plays beautiful native American  flute and she is a wonderful artist.  You can learn more about her art at her website.

Lavelle Foos

Lavelle and I enjoyed talking with each other for an hour about creative, conscious aging. It was invigorating for both of us, and hopefully for the listeners, too. During the show, Lavelle played Sex after 60,  one of the songs from A New Wrinkle. You can hear an mp3 of that song and three others at our website, www.sagesplay.com

That was my brief grassroots media blitz, at least for now.  This weekend, I'm back to writing more songs and developing a new class series for 2013.

The Poetry of Aging

I'll be offering The Poetry of Aging at the Ashland Library on Sunday, December 2nd at 1pm.  I will be performing poems about aging by many different poets, including Yeats, Shakespeare, May Sarton, Dylan Thomas and others.  The event is presented at no charge by the library. Please join us if the spirit moves you. It is going to be a lot of fun!