In Rotherhithe back in the 70s, on the south shore of the Thames, there lived a retired lighterman named Johnny Coffee. Lighterman ‘drove’ barges single handedly up the Thames using muscle, skill, and huge oars. Johnny had an a list of phone numbers hanging around his neck with contacts to anyone you could care to… Continue reading Buying Oranges with Susan Perlstein.
Month: March 2011
Penelope, Guitars and a Salt Marsh
To the Museum of Modern Art and “Imagination and the Changing Mind”, a symposium that considers how innate differences or changes that develop in later life can beget creative engagement and meaningful contribution to society. Afterwards I snatch a brief conversation with one of the keynote speakers, Anne Basting. Anne is the Director of the… Continue reading Penelope, Guitars and a Salt Marsh
“What good is melody?”
. I leave the choir rehearsal in the Prospect Hill Seniors Centre and the sky has cleared. We are high up and there is a view; white scuddering clouds under a huge blue sky. There is the drone of the late afternoon traffic heading north-west along Prospect Expressway. Brooklyn and Manhattan stretch out beyond and… Continue reading “What good is melody?”
Snow and Shakespeare
‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, ‘So long lives this and this gives life to thee.’ We are in Manhattan in the mid-town east side. A day care centre for people who have Alzheimer’s. It’s a poetry reading and poetry making project led by Gary Glazner of The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project.… Continue reading Snow and Shakespeare
On the roof tops with Andy Torres
In Washington DC I take the bus out to Mount Rainier to visit the home of Andy Torres. Andy is in his young seventies and is a former company member of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. He still works with their company teaching classes in the community. I had met him the day before when… Continue reading On the roof tops with Andy Torres
Wandering and Wondering in Washington DC
The question was written on the board leaning against the street herbalists table on the junction between Wayne and Colleville just outside Silver Spring Metro: “How do you be come a good human been?” The text on a wall in the Phillips Collection nr the Dupont Circle offered a curatorial response: “ a mixture of… Continue reading Wandering and Wondering in Washington DC
Encore
I was introduced to the dancer Ida Arbeit in what was to be the last days of her life. She was 101 years old. This was no gentle lounge seat encounter. We were in an activities room transformed into a dance studio in a retirement apartment block in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis & St.… Continue reading Encore
A musical interlude
Water music from the town of Alexandria on the banks of the mighty Potomac River
The setting has changed
There is a moment when gravity questions the challenge his spiritual self is making to his physical one. As he twists and turns in the centre of the circle of his friends and acquaintances in the downtown Washington DC day centre he almost looses his balance. It feels like he is literally jiving on the… Continue reading The setting has changed
Dr. Gene Cohen
Floating high in the ionosphere there are balloons with instruments that pick up traces of exploding stars. You cannot travel across the United States, attempting to navigate a way through the territory of creative aging, without continually breathing in the presence of Dr. Gene Cohen. Way back before knowing of this journey, I had dared… Continue reading Dr. Gene Cohen
Creativity, Arts and Older People 