Grand Slam

We are all creatures of habit and I’m no exception. But I like to take the next step into Ritual, a conscious habit that refreshes and rejuvenates. In 50 years of coming to the same summer place in upper Michigan, our family has a long list of “must do’s.” In four short days, we already walked up the Sugar Bowl sand dune, hiked to the larger Baldy dune and walked back on the beach looking for Petoskey stones, canoed and walked to the Outlet, played basketball in town, went to Mystery Hill (a place that seems to defy gravity), ate at the Cabbage Shed (where I first played cornhole!), got ice cream at The Cool Spot.

 

Yesterday was unique because we did four of them in one day! Grand slam! Breakfast at Watervale Inn, miniature golf, walk to the Frankfort lighthouse, movie at The Cherry Bowl Drive-In Theater (Freakier Friday). There are still a few more that we’ve often done—bike riding on Rails to Trails to Crystal Lake, walk the beach to Elberta, lunch at Arcadia Bluffs, visit to the Frankfort Library and sometimes, a trip to the Sleeping Bear Dunes. (Of course, this all means nothing to most readers, but if you’re ever up this way, you now have a great list of things to do!)

 

I generally enjoy each and every one of these traditional activities but enjoy yet more sharing them with others. The things I did with my own children that I now do with my grandchildren I also love to share with others coming to Michigan for the first time. In the past few years, that includes Zadie’s friend Zulia and my sister Ginny, this year Talia’s boyfriend Matt and the ex-head of the SF School Terry and his wife Kathy. And of course, all of this includes shopping at the Farmer’s Market, cooking great meals, ball games on the beach, board games/ card games/ jigsaw puzzles at night, watching the sun set over the lake. Oh, did I mention swimming? Reading? Hanging out and talking? 

 

Yesterday Talia and Matt flew home to begin their next year of teaching, my two brother-in-laws Barclay and John also left and tomorrow daughter Kerala and grandkids Zadie and Malik head home to Portland. Then on Monday, Terry and Kathy arrive and I’ll trot out the must-do list again to share with them. 

Gratitude to Frankfort for the best of conservatism, keeping things that bring happiness alive and ongoing. In this fast-shifting world, it's somewhat of a miracle that the Cherry Bowl Drive In Movie Theater and the Garden Theater are still open, as are the Frankfort library, lighthouse, laundromat, bookstore, ice cream places, various restaurants. That the beach areas (thanks to the Nature Conservancy) are wholly preserved and protected. That it's possible to keep traditions of a half-a-century alive and be able to count on them each year. May it continue!

Better Late Than Never

Another one of those clichés that actually rings true. Certainly for me today. Consider:

 

I’ve come to this spot on Lake Michigan for 50 years now. 50 years!! Sometime in the last 35, my brother-in-law brought two thin-tired bikes here and that’s what my wife and I have used for decades riding through the lovely back-country of this lake-speckled district. We’re less-than-thrilled with either of the bikes but have put up with them all these years. In this last ten years or so, we’ve rented bikes in town for one day of riding on the rails-to-trails path, the last five with the grandkids. We’ve had guests come stay who would have enjoyed riding with us, but with just two bikes, we usually just let it go. 

 

So after taking one bike ride around Upper Herring Lake as we often do, finally the thought struck— “We should buy another bike.” After all, we can afford it and with an unexpected tax return of almost $300, it seemed like a great use of the money. Plus my daughter Talia’s boyfriend Matt knows a lot about bikes, so he could help me pick one out. 

 

And so today, we went to the bike rental place in hopes that they had some for sale. Inside the store, there were two, both around $1600. Outside the store were two more— one for $100 and one for $75! Both bikes with hybrid tires, easily adjustable seats (unlike the ones we had been riding), gears on the handlebars rather than on the crosspiece down low, one with high handlebars and a big seat. Matt and I rode them around the block and they seemed great. 

For just a brief minute, I was trying to decide which to buy when the thought struck— at this price, I can buy both! And still come $125 under the $300 I was willing to spend for one. What a deal! And close to what we spent when we rented bikes once a year for everyone!

 

And so I bought them, Matt and Talia rode them the five miles back to the cottage and we now have four bicycles to choose from. Only took me 50 years to figure it out. But as the saying goes, “Better late than never!”

 

Now can we please do the same for finally, finally, putting the Orange Criminal behind bars where he belongs? I’d even donate a bike for the exercise yard. 

 

Don't Let Him In

… is the title of an intriguing book by Lisa Jewell that I’m listening to on Audible. Alongside Symphony of Secrets, the book by Brendan Slocumb that I just finished reading, it paints a pretty depressing portrait of toxic men supported by the three evil isms—sexism, capitalism and (in the latter), racism. 

 

But it also is a reminder that Clint Eastwood gave when he was asked how he could be so active at 90 years old: “I just don’t let the old man in.” Freshly 74, I hear that man knocking at my door and need to be careful about how wide I open it. There were times in the recent Orff course when a dance movement went to the floor and back where I deferred and even a few times during vigorous dancing when I just sat on the side. But here in Michigan, I'm renewing my campaign to not let the old man into my body’s house. Consider. In just two days, I’ve done the following: 

 

·      10 mile bike ride

·      6 mile beach walk

·      1 mile canoe

·      1 mile kayak

·      1mile swim

·      15 games of cornhole

·      Frisbee

·      Rock skipping contest

·      Paddleball

·      Kickball game

• Volleyball game

 

That’s the active side of the “keep the old man out” routine. Then there’s the playful, game-playing self— Taboo, Rummy 500, King’s Corner, PIT, Spoons, Salad bowl charades, most of which we play after dinner. That "we" is four over-70’s folks—my wife, me and two brother-in-laws, three people in their 40’s —my two daughters and a boyfriend— and two teens, my grandkids. Miraculously, we all enjoy each other so much and these active games and exercises side-by-side certainly helps keep things fun between us. If someone were to write a novel about it, it would not be a best-seller. It appears that human failings are much more interesting to read about than people getting along and having fun. 

 

Maybe that’s as things should be. Keep the horrors confined to novels and plays and operas and keep our best selves alive in our actual day-to-day lives. In company with the cool unsalted lake waters, bald eagles soaring overhead, evening sunsets savored out on the deck. To quote another edgy novel/film, this little corner of paradise is “No Country for Old Men.”

 

 

Baptism and Preaching

In a letter lamenting the loss of understanding the value of the arts back in the early 1900's, the poet W.B. Yeats suggested, “We must baptize as well as preach.”

 

This came to mind an interview I had with someone asking what advice I would give a teacher about developing “intercultural teaching competency.” My initial response was simple: “Keep an open heart and mind and a lifelong curiosity.” There simply is no curriculum, stepped-program, sure-fire method to be gathered, packaged, marketed, sold, bought and implemented. If there was, it would be sure to fail, for without direct experience of the supreme pleasure of investigating the other until you finally realize it has been part of you all along, you’re just skimming the surface. And if I presumed to give “advice” or a series of steps, it would feel like a “should-do/ must-do/ pedagogically-politically-socially-correct way” that you will be evaluated on and judged by. 

 

Instead, I suggested that a music teacher reflect on a different style of music or dance that somehow attracts them and follow that thread. Listen to it, go to concerts, read about it and then see if there’s someone in your area who teaches it (you’d be amazed how often there is someone, especially in the urban areas). Or perhaps you’ve noticed an intriguing instrument far different from your area of expertise. It might be a didjeridoo or shakuhachi flute or steel drum or Irish bagpipe or Bolivian panpipe— hundreds of choices out there! Get studying! And then see where all of that leads you in your own teaching. 

For me, every such study— all of them far short of mastery and virtuosity— influenced the pieces I adapted for the Orff Ensemble. My various studies in Philippine Kulintang, Indian maddalam drum, Balinese gamelan, Trinidad steel drum, Irish tinwhistle, Bulgarian bagpipe, Brazilian percussion, Ghanaian xylophone, American banjo and yet more not only brought fabulous music (and sometimes dance) to the kids that expanded their ears far beyond the Western norm but brought me such great pleasure keeping my own musicality challenged and enlarged. Not to mention getting to know many marvelous teachers from diverse traditions who also connected me to the wonderful cultures that birthed the music. 

 

All of this also found its way directly into my Level III Orff program and I believe that all the students felt the rewards of such a diverse immersion in familiar Orff scales and textures and instruments and ways of learning. Thinking of the Yeats quote, it indeed felt like a baptism in the refreshing waters of “the other” that was wholly necessary before any “preaching” made sense. And little preaching is needed—at least not the kind meant to convert, cajole, connive to accept the missionary dogma—when one has experienced first-hand the blessing of immersion in the sacred waters. 

 

Here on Lake Michigan, a different kind of baptism is at work. As I have every summer for some 50 years, I jumped into the lake’s cool and refreshing waters and felt the Spirit re-awakened. I listened to the preaching of the sea gulls and the breeze through the grasses and that is the only sermon I need. No testimony of the faithful proclaiming salvation, just the patient presence of Petoskey stones speaking silently of the holy Spirit that lives and breathes inside of all things. It’s enough. It’s more than enough. 

4 am Bicyclist

And so the story continues. The 3-hour drive from sunny Carmel Valley to foggy San Francisco, arrive at 7:30 pm and a few hours to unpack from one life and re-pack for the next. Then up at 4:00 am and off to the airport. On the way, thinking about all the cars— not many, but still enough— driving around so early in the morning. Why? Where are they going? What is their story?

 

Then I noticed a lone bicyclist and really wondered about his story. Was he sneaking out after a rendezvous in a torrid love affair? Was he a baker coming home from work? Was he on his way to early-morning meditation at the Zen Center? That would be a great assignment for a school English class— imagine what’s going on and tell the story. 

 

Meanwhile, my story was much more boring. Got dropped off at the airport, got to my gate, got on to the plane to Chicago and then another to Traverse City. Got picked up by my daughter Talia and my granddaughter Zadie, both of whom I love to the ends of the earth. Zadie is almost 14 and after a few explosive years when she hit puberty way too early (4^th grade!), she is the most delightful young person. I just feel happy in her presence without a word being spoken. And when the words are spoken, they often are intriguing or hilarious. For example, I asked her about a visit to my nephew on my wife’s side where she dog-sat for him and his wife up near Seattle and then took a train home all by herself to Portland. I asked whether the train trip all by herself felt exciting and she said, “Well, I sat on the train and it moved.”

 

The power of understatement. Maybe I should have her write the bicyclist’s story. 

 

“It was 4am in San Francisco. I got on my bike and rode home.” —The end.

 

We've Changed

The closing of the two-weeks in Paradise was as magnificent as I imagined it would be. Someday I may share the closing ritual I do with Level III, complete with three boxes of tissues ready to pass around as needed. But for now I’ll  just say that the whole course closing ceremony, including the Level III graduation, delivered its promise. The final canon sung in a spiral was the soul-stirring closure it always us, the ringing of the gongs that signaled the beginning of the course returned again at the end, but we all heard them with our new selves. I returned to the cocoon metaphor and acknowledged how we indeed reorganized our insides to emerge as butterflies flying back into the known world. As described in James Harding’s brilliant little canon in his From Wibbleton to Wobbleton book (substituting “we” for “you” as the pronoun): 

 

We’ve changed, we’ve changed. We’re somehow not the same.

We’re somewhat wiser, somewhat bolder, 

Somewhat kinder, somewhat older,

Somehow re-arranged, we’ve changed!

 

After the hugs and tears and heart-felt goodbyes with the 90 plus students, the staff gathered for the ritual final lunch at the Corkscrew Café and I read my cards of appreciations for each one while passing out the checks. What a fine crew of people we have assembled, each unique and authentic in our particular genius while sharing the same overall practice and values and appreciation for each other. More goodbyes and off we went to our separate homes— Barcelona, Munich, New York, Seattle (via Brazil), Chicago, San Francisco (with a detour to a folk-dance camp in France), Michigan for a family gathering. The goodbyes continued on through WhatsApp (“I’m at the airport!” “Just arrived home!” etc.) before they’ll fade out like a tide going out and we’ll return to our other lives. 

 

For staff and students alike, the echoes will continue to ripple out and cross each other. We are all forever in each other’s hearts. And what a rare and precious gift that is.  

Footbridge to Paradise

 

                        All things go too fast, swiftly pass the years

                        Only love it is, that with us stays, abides with us. 

                        To be selfless we must trust. 

                                                            – Avon Gillespie

 

This little canon written by my teacher was running through my mind as I crossed the footbridge to Paradise for the last time this summer. That little wooden bridge marks the transition from the hotel to Hidden Valley Music Seminars, where some 100 people gathered each morning for breakfast. Walking into that room with the buzz of conversation and the lilt of laughter was my daily return to my particular paradise in this Orff training. 

 

A life that began 52 years ago at Antioch College when I took my first Orff Course with Avon Gillespie. After meeting each Saturday for six hours, the poem above was the closing song Avon had us sing. I was 21 years old, he was 34 and what did either of us now about how swiftly the years indeed to pass? He couldn’t have known that he would only have 17 more of them on this planet and I could only hope that I would have 52 more and hopefully, more years to come. 

 

But both of us intuited the truth that Love was the redeeming angel, the eternal presence in our fleeting temporal existence. And that’s why we both understood that the music education we cared about was very little about reading quarter and eighth notes and playing the piece perfectly correctly and wholly about awakening Love in all its many faces— love for music, love for playing and singing and dancing with others that led to love for those others, love for everything that is beautiful and real and life-affirming in this world. 

That’s the sub-text to the buzz of the breakfast gathering and the tangible presence in last night’s sharing, where each Level present outward to the others what they had created inwardly amongst themselves. 

 

The calendar month has turned to August, this morning we will have our always-stirring and sob-inducing closing singing a later canon Avon used to close his courses. The world—our families, our homes, our jobs—await our return and hopefully, with astonishment at the colorful butterflies we have become gracing the year to come with new-found confidence, understanding, skills and awakened hearts and minds. 

 

Hopefully this old caterpillar has also sprouted some new wings. Looking forward to the family vacation that awaits me and more teaching in China. But first I have to pack!