Brainstorming a Sound Playground

Yesterday I joined a group of visionary people to envision a new sort of sound laboratory  that doesn’t yet exist: a workshop/playground/museum for sound and music. I love brainstorming!

We envisioned a place where kids of all ages—particularly children and youth—would meet to explore and create within the sonic realm. Our place would resonate with the Crucible in Oakland, California, but a sonic version of it. Haven't heard of the Crucible? They are a non-profit collaboration of Arts, Industry, and Community. There's a link at the bottom and it is worth checking out.

We met in one of the buildings that may eventually hold this meeting place—Sonoma Mountain Village in Rohnert Park, California. This is also where a publicly-funded Waldorf Charter High School called Credo High School may soon come to be. The sound lab would be affiliated with the high school.

We talked about the sorts of activities that might take place there:

• Candidates for elementary teaching credentials learning to play the ukulele so they can sing with their class

• Anyone interested learning to play the ukulele, guitar, and other instruments

• People building musical instruments

• People learning how to run a music studio

• Singers singing together

• Instrumental musicians playing ensemble

The place needs a name, of course. We don’t have a name yet. 

Mulling it over for the last 30 hours I’ve thought of several ideas:

Sonoma Mountain Village Sound Playground  

(My favorite. I like the rhyming, and the implication of fun.)

Sonoma Mountain Village Sound Workshop 

(More businesslike)

Sonoma Mountain Village Soundatorium  

(perhaps phonetically it’s too close to sanitarium)

Rummaging around in YouTube I found these two clips of the sorts of things you might find going on inside our Sound Playground. The first is of a water phone. There is a link to the maker of these at the bottom of this post.

This second one is of a new electronic music the likes of which I've never seen before:

I’d love to hear from Mindful Heart readers what they think of these ideas.

Link to Sonoma Mountain Village

Link to Credo High School

Link to The Crucible

Link to The Waterphone

Link to article about Darrell De Vore

Reconciliation and Harmony

Less than a month ago my wife was reelected by a landslide to the Sebastopol City Council.

What is most remarkable about her service to our town is her ability to talk usefully with people from across the spectrum of views in our community. She's a mediator by profession and in her avocational work in local politics she finds ways to bring people together, people who had previously found themselves in conflict.

Her list of endorsers included people who are not on speaking terms with each other.

Anyway, George over on Transit Notes (thanks George!!) featured a movie called Harmony today. It's about HRH The Prince of Wales and his dedication to restoring the natural world and supporting sustainable agriculture. I was particularly drawn to the parts of the movie near the end when it talked about the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia Canada. Efforts to bring people together who had once opposed one another have borne some fruit. I have come to learn that the portrayal of their reconciliation may be a bit rosier in the movie than it is on the ground, but still, efforts to bring people together to work on environmental restoration need to be highlighted and celebrated.

I found this short movie to be uplifting and inspiring—worth the 45 minutes or so it takes to watch it.

Here's the trailer:


Harmony Movie Trailer from Balcony Films on Vimeo.

The Story of Stuff

Last Saturday I had the pleasure to hear Annie Leonard give the keynote address at the Leadership Institute’s 2010 awards ceremony.

Annie is the person behind the web video called “The Story of Stuff.” It has been viewed more than 12 million times since it came out in 2007. 

I had thought Annie might deliver a depressing talk. Her talk, like her movie, made four points. As expected, I did find first three points depressing. Luckily, Annie’s talk emphasized her final point, an encouraging and energizing one.

I’ve been aware of the first three points she makes for some time:

1. We are trashing the planet

2. We are trashing each other.

3. We’re not even having fun.

Annie’s final point brings her message home.

4. Solutions abound.

Taking action in myriad efforts to stop trashing the planet and stop trashing each other is what is required of us.  Luckily, it’s fun to act positively.

She's not suggesting we all go out and buy Priuses. Prius envy is part of the problem. We cannot consume our way out of our mess.

Conservation and restoration are closer to the mark. Taking action individually and with others. Maybe you or someone you know will run for Mayor of your town. Maybe you’ll start a backyard garden. Maybe you’ll organize a community walks program or a dine-out program. Maybe you’ll carpool to work. Maybe you'll become a vegetarian. Maybe you'll shop locally, and buy your organic veggies in your farmer's market. Maybe you'll join a CSA. Maybe you’ll make homemade music with friends and neighbors. I can report from personal experience that all of the above are spirit lifters. Or you might do any of a thousand other things to connect with friends and lighten our load on the ecosphere.  

It sure beats being a consumer.

If you haven't already seen The Story of Stuff, and you think getting our consumer economy back on track is our most important national agenda, I commend this movie to you. It''ll take less time to watch than a quarter of football.

For more information about Annie Leonard and to see her other videos, visit THE STORY OF STUFF.

Living in Community

Happiness is... living in community.

Of course many things can make us happy. Simply looking up can help. Or smiling. Or singing. Or dancing. Or painting. Or visiting a friend or relative. Or helping a neighbor.

Today, though, I want to mention living in community, for it seems to me we Americans are hungry for social connections that expand our circle of acquaintances and friendships.

We yearn for community, don't we?

I can attest to how good living in community feels. I’ve had two weekends full.

 Last weekend I spent Saturday at the Wine Country Ukulele Festival with my uke friends from Sebastopol.

The very next day I bicycled down to our Community Center where my friend, Jim Corbett, was leading a celebration of Peace. I spent all of Sunday afternoon there. I sang in the Love Choir. We sang for the first hour or so. Then we had some speeches by local politicians from the Mayor of Sebastopol to our Representative in Congress.

The Lovies perform for Jim Corbett's Peace Gathering

I joined a huge drum circle playing for more than an hour a rhythmical “Bo Diddley” beat on my new ukulele, migrating by mid afternoon to a poetry circle, and ending the day listening to Ma Muse perform in the main hall.


This weekend I spent the Saturday at the Renaissance Fair supporting our local schools. What a success!

Sarah and Andrea Hagen, one of the many organizers of the Faire

Two of the throngs of entertainers who graced us with their talents.

 Sarah's first plunge. Note the boy at right pushing the plunger with his hands; he had

earlier hit a bullseye with his thrown softball, but not energetically enough to trip the mechanism.

The Faire drew an estimated 2500 people. Sarah, as Mayor of Sebastopol spent a half hour into and out of the Dunk Tank. She got plunged in many times.

Later on this afternoon we’ve got a party to go to.

So much fun! I hope you live in a community that gathers together frequently and celebrates together.


Links
Wine Country Ukulele Festival
Love Choir
Bo Diddley
Ma Muse
Renaissance Faire

Reflections on Walking

 The Laguna as seen from the bridge.

Our town offers a walking program on Saturday mornings once a month. Today we joined with about 40 other walkers on a photography walk that began in the center of town and moseyed through the industrial section and then through some of the neighborhoods.

We ambled almost three miles in three hours stopping frequently to capture pictures of interest. I took more than 50 photos while making a half a dozen new acquaintances and getting better acquainted with a number of people I've met before. Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time getting to know each other better and noticing beauty in places we ordinarily don't look for it.

Not surprisingly, we took photos of pretty things like roses growing along the sidewalks in a friend's front yard.

We photographed many metal sculptures, for our town has a lot of artists, especially ones who work in metal. This pelican was in the yard of one of our walkers named Walter. (I have another Walter friend now.)

We took photos of subjects we might ordinarily ignore like this graffiti message painted on a motor home:

When I see peeling paint, I usually think about how much work it would be to strip it all off and put the building in good repair. But today, I saw a leering dinosaur in there:

Rust is often beautful. We probably find rust beautiful because we've got iron rusting in our blood.

I cropped the photo below to serve as the banner background of this blog:

The best part of the walk for me was meeting new people. I spent about half the walk in the company of a little girl, Sarah P., who just turned five years old. It's easy for me, a kindergarten teacher, to strike up a conversation with five year olds. Within 60 seconds, we were deep in conversation about the importance of the final "h" in her name and how her friend, Hannah's name——which also has a final "h"——is a palindrome. She hadn't known that word before, but she understood the concept immediately and she is the kind of kid who would remember its definition upon her first encounter with it.

"You know," I said, "I think we ought to find a new name for palindromes. The word for a palindrome should itself be a palindrome, don't you think?"

She thought it over and decided that yes, I was right. "Then it would show what it means," she observed.

Just then, a look of alarm crossed her face. She looked up to her mother, who was walking with us, and asked, "Mom, I'm talking to a stranger! Is that O.K.?" (How sad, I think, that we've decided to teach our children to be so afraid of people! Most people I know——the vast, vast majority——are decent, loving, and trustworthy. It's a shame, I think, to give kids the impression that just about anyone they meet is likely to do them harm.)

"Sarah," I said. "I'm not a stranger. I'm married to the Mayor of this town, and I'm a kindergarten teacher. And I just met your mom on this walk. My name is Mr. Gurney."

"Yes, Sarah," her mother reassured her. "You may talk to him." And so we talked and walked, walked and talked. She knew the names of dozens of the flowers we passed. She shared her fresh and confident point of view with me, a willing and interested listener. She picked dandelion flowers for me, little gifts. I put their stems through the buttonholes of my shirt, little "Don't worry, Be Happy" buttons.

In the end, I came to feel we all need a lot more beauty and a lot more company in our lives. We need to learn to trust ourselves and to trust each other more.

Walking with our neighbors is a good beginning.

Pleasant Walk, Pleasant Dinner

It had been an afternoon of desk work and book keeping for my little business.

By 4:00 I wanted to refresh my spirits. I laced up my walking shoes and ambled into town. I had a package and letters to mail, checks to deposit at the bank, and I wanted to visit my favorite book store and tea shop and say hi to Jim. After, I walked the library to borrow some books of Chinese poetry.

All these errands, yet I still hadn't walked even a mile, so I decided to loop home, out to the edge of town, a saunter, for exercise.

At the southern edge of town, I caught my first glimpse of the crescent February Moon higher in the western sky than I thought it would be. Native people of the east would call this the Snow Moon (appropriately enough this year) but here in California, it would be the Robin Moon. Robins are busy around here now.

The moon was a big goofy grin, high in the sky.

Fit friends jogged past saying, 'Hello." Other friends waved as they drove by. One rolled his window down and we exchanged a friendly greeting. I fell in step with a retired couple walking their Tibetan Terrier who looked very much like our family dog, Champ, my dear dog friend, now gone. Another friend walking her new dog stopped for a chat.

I walked and talked for an hour.

I was looking forward to going out to dinner with my wife, the Mayor, in the company of two dozen town officials and community leaders at our local sea food restaurant. It would be a warm early spring evening full of conviviality and animated conversation over local fish and local wine.

When I got home, I opened one of the treasures I had brought home from the library. In an anthology titled A Drifting Boat, Chinese Zen Poetry,  I found this poem written by Kuan Hsiu 1,100 years ago.

Spending the Night in a Little Village

Hard traveling, and then

a little village, for the night:

a year of plenty, chickens, dogs,

it's raucous as a market town.

Come out to meet a stranger in the dusk:

whole families laughing happy:

beneath the moon,

seining up fish from the pool.

—Kuan Hsiu

Cemetery Walk

Our local historical society puts on a Cemetery Walk every October. It's their main fund-raising event of the year and they sell out all the tickets for each of the eight performances they offer.

The evening begins with a simple, but satisfying meal in the community room of St. Stephen's Church, near the cemetery. We enjoyed soup, salad, bread, cheese, and sliced meats. After our meal, a costumed guide (our neighbor, Susan Nestor) led us on a short walk to the cemetery. We found our way in the failing twilight with the help of lumieres and flashlights.

As we walked through the cemetery we stopped to see a half dozen short vignettes about the people buried beneath our feet. Although we're less than a month from Halloween, there was nothing spooky or macabre about these vignettes. They were short historical dramas which brought to life the stories of people who lived in Sebastopol before our time.

After the alfresco six-act play, we repaired to Luther Burbank's restored Gold Ridge cottage for a dessert of warm apple cobbler and hot tea.

Sarah and I had a wonderful evening Friday.

iWalk Sebastopol

Today we spent most of the day walking, talking, and singing our way around town. It's all part of a new program called iWalk Sebastopol, a project of the County Health Department to get people in touch with the noblest form of transportation for humans ever: walking. It was great fun to walk and talk and sing!



The walk started—and finished—at the Sebastopol Town Plaza. About 30 people began the loop around town here at the Plaza as the Mayor gave us a little pep talk to begin. Our friends and walking superheroes Richard and Brenda led the first leg of the walk to the high school.


By the time we got to the Peace Park, we had picked up the leader of the third leg of the walk, Jim Corbett, aka Mr. Music, Sebastopol's 2009 Citizen of the Year, here posing with my wife the Mayor. I cannot tell you how much fun I had singing and walking around town. It was like Christmas Carolling, but in a much more pleasant season of the year.