start cybersenior.3.4 ==================================================== ************ * THE * CYBERSENIOR * REVIEW ************ =================================================== VOLUME 3 NUMBER 4 OCTOBER 1996 =================================================== The CyberSenior Review is a project of the Internet Elders List, an active world-wide Internet Mailing List for seniors. The Review is written, edited and published by members of the Elders for interested seniors worldwide. Contributions from non-Elders are welcome. Please query one of the editors first. Contents copyrighted 1996 by the Internet Elders List and by the authors. All rights reserved by the authors. Quoting is permitted with attribution. The editorial board of The CyberSenior Review: Elaine Dabbs esudweek@mail.usyd.edu.au Pat Davidson patd@chatback.demon.co.uk James Hursey jwhursey@cd.columbus.oh.us ====================================================== CONTENTS, Volume 3, Number 4, October 1996 EDITORIAL by Jim Hursey CAUTION: DREAM THEORIES AT WORK by Eloise Blanpied Eloise gives us a scholarly and lucid history of dream interpretation. THE STRAUSS FESTIVAL by Florence Hogge Flo tells us how her little town of Elk Grove is transformed into the Vienna royal palace for the annual Festival. MUSICA EN LOS BARRIOS (PART I) by Dorothy G. Barnhouse Dorothy starts a heart-warming story of music and conversion in the poor barrios of Nicaragua. ============================================================== EDITORIAL by Jim Hursey Ah, sweet Autumn! Wonderful multi-hued October, my favorite month of the whole year, has finally arrived. Crisp cool days. The trees garbing themselves in a variety of colors never dreamed of by the folks at Crayola. Skies the bluest of the blues. How wonderful just to walk in the woods, see the squirrels busily gathering their winter nuts, leaves whispering as they slowly drift down to join a multitude of others on the path where they crunch pleasantly as you walk. Of course, as I wax eloquent about golden Autumn, I realize that, in this world-wide group, it is not Autumn everywhere. Indeed, some unfortunates may live in tropic areas where there is no Autumn. Too bad. I wouldn't trade October in the Midwest of the US for the Riviera, Bali, or Tahiti. (Well, maybe, for a week, if you're offering.) Anyway, perhaps I have been spending too much time enjoying Autumn's favors when I should have been getting this next issue of the CyberSenior Review assembled, which, you may have noted, is a bit late. But, well, that's the beauty of it, we are really not on a schedule. It is still October, and this issue is dated October, so maybe, technically, not so late after all. And an interesting issue it is, too, I hope you will agree, with a variety of erudite articles ranging from Eloise's scholarly discussion of dream interpretation to the Flo's description of the recreation of Royal Vienna in Elk Grove, to Dorothy's story of the power of music in the poor barrios of Nicaragua. Read and enjoy. And all you writers out there, power up your word processors and let us see something for the next issue, which, whim, weather, and the good Lord willing, will appear in January. =============================================================== CAUTION: DREAM THEORIES AT WORK by Eloise Blanpied Where do our dreams come from? Is some mysterious power, external or internal, speaking to us through our dreams? Most dream theorists tend to imply as much. Theories that propose or imply an external origin for our dreams have existed for as long as we know, and they maintain that dreams carry information from an all-knowing external force that 1) predicts or causes future events, 2) explains the mysterious present, and/or 3) provides wisdom and guidance for the future. In ancient Greece, priests at the temples of Asklepius helped the ill and infirm use dreams to enlist aid from the god of healing. Priests and supplicants in Greece, ancient Egypt, and classical Rome used dreams to seek divine guidance for everyday life and to obtain prophesies about the future. In ancient China, astrology, geometry, and calendar time were used in complex ways by dream interpreters to unveil the meaning in dreams. In the Judeo- Christian tradition, belief in the divine messages of dreams is evident in the 34 specific references to dreams (as distinct from visions) throughout the Old and New Testaments. In more modern times, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and Joseph Smith looked to dreams for divine revelation. Even more contemporary prophets, such as Edgar Cayce, claimed to interpret God's word through dream analysis. In all theories of external dream origin, there is an underlying message of human dependency--dependency upon an all-knowing external power to create the dream. The function of the dream then becomes enlightenment, not about the self, but about the will of the external power. In effect, these theories create and maintain an unequal relationship between the unknown power and the dreamer--a superior/inferior relationship. Furthermore, another dependency usually exists in dream theories of external origin: the dreamer depends upon a specially-endowed human to interpret the dream, creating a sage/disciple relationship. One can understand the willingness to believe that external forces direct our dreams. Limitations of time and space are abandoned in these nocturnal dramas, and magically we travel the world and the years in any direction. Our pasts and futures intertwine in a present-tense dream reality, and our waking reality often seems slow and dull by comparison. It requires only a small leap from reason to assign our surreal dreams to external powers. However, as greater understanding of the dreaming process developed, emerging theories rejected the notion of external sources for dreams and looked within the individual for controlling factors. One outcome of the shift to theories of internal dream origin has been a trivialization or discounting of the existence of meaning in dreams. Beginning with Hippocrates and Aristotle and continuing in varying forms to the present, certain theories of internal dream origin identified physiological events as the source of dreams. An early thought, still encountered, was that realistic dreams reflect good physical health while bizarre dreams signal physical illness. There are also notions that certain foods or food combinations, such as pickles and ice cream, or that environmental conditions (i.e., temperature, noise) are the source of dreams. Clearly, there is no power relationship between source and dreamer in these theories, but neither is there an assumption of meaning. One of the most recent scientifically-based theories of internal dream origin is based on the fact that the brain remains neurally active during the dream state. J. Allan Hobson (of Harvard) has suggested that during dreaming the brain generates random signals, and the mind, using stored memory, attempts to make sense of these signals without reference to external input, logic, or critical perspective. While Hobson's work illuminates the neurobiological foundation for dreams, his theory of randomness strongly challenges the assumption of psychological meaning in dreams. Psychological dream theories did not arise from ignorance of the workings of the body and brain. Sigmund Freud, whose insights provided the foundation for all other psychological dream theories, was trained in medical science and was particularly involved in neuropathological research. Fully aware of the work in neuroscience at the turn of the century, he was also fully cognizant of psychology's narrow focus at that time on the analysis of consciousness. But, based on his observations and his personal experience, Freud was aware of something more than consciousness, something as yet undefined and immeasurable. Out of this awareness he developed the concept of "the unconscious." This concept--whether it is called unconscious thought, the unconscious, the inner self, the voice within, or whatever else-- forms the basis for all psychological dream theories. In these theories, unconscious thought, by whatever name, is the source of meaning in dreams, and it is an internal source. But what exactly is "the unconscious"? How does it work? And does the fact that it is an internal source eliminate the power imbalance found in external theories? Freud's dream theory is based on his concept of represssed (unconscious) wishes blocked from consciousness by a mental process which he first called the Censor but later named the Super-Ego. He believed that, during sleep, this Censor/Super-Ego distorted emerging unconscious and threatening wishes into unrecognizable and, therefore, unthreatening dreams. It is important to recognize that Freud did not attempt to show neurobiological foundation for his psychological theories. His references to a matterless and formless unconscious easily translates to an image of "The Unconscious" as an alien and unreachable force within each of us. The Freudian dreamer's sense of helplessness is compounded by the Freudian conviction that only a trained psychoanalyst can unravel the meaning hidden in dreams by the mind's mysterious Censor. The power imbalance prevails. Carl Gustav Jung, whose theories equal Freud's in depth and reputation, identified two sources for the meaning in dreams, which he termed "the personal unconscious" (repressed or forgotten experience) and "the collective unconscious" (never- experienced, archetypal material: predispositions carried forward during the mind's evolution). Jung viewed dreams as a compensatory process, providing an outlet for unconscious thought. He believed that, by and large, meaning is expressed directly in dreams; when substitution does occur, it is for the purpose of preventing an emotional impact too strong for the dreamer to tolerate. His theory abounds with mystical images and involves a dream process capable of evaluating and making choices beyond the ken of conscious thought. The power imbalance that results is less severe than in Freudian theory and, while the analyst plays a crucial role in Jungian dream interpretation, the process is not rigidly hierarchical, as it is Freudian dream analysis. Persistent use of the psychological concept of "the unconscious" without precise definition has two significant consequences. First, because it is used without reference to substance or place but is acknowledged to be strongly influential, there is a tendency to think of "the unconscious" in almost mystical terms. The language used to discuss the concept often encourages anthropomorphization, as for example in Jung's comment that "the unconscious knows more than consciousness does" (Jung, 1989, p.311). The second consequence of an undefined concept of "the unconscious" is that it leads to a conceptual splitting of the mind--the unconscious mind as opposed to the conscious mind. The following statement by Jung is a prime example: Within each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from how we see ourselves. When we find ourselves in an insolubly difficult situation, this stranger in us can sometimes show us a light.... (1953, p.76) These two distortions--anthropomorphization of the unconscious and bifurcation of the mind--occur repeatedly in psychological dream theories, and the result is diminished individual authority, responsibility, and wholeness. But not all dream theories are based on an amorphous concept of unconscious thought. Jonathan Winson (of Rockefeller University) has integrated information from the broad spectrum of sciences concerned with the human body and mind; this material plus his own research suggests an explanation of the existence and function of what psychologists call "the unconscious." His explanation notes that neuroscience research has found that sleep mentation is central to the process of long-term memory. The same cellular changes in the brain which occur during learning in the waking state are repeated during sleep for the purpose of processing or strengthening that learned information. Obviously not all waking brain cell changes are repeated during sleep--we couldn't possibly remember everything that activated our brain during waking so the brain in sleep works on only the most important things, especially the things that are necessary for survival. Research with animals focussed on physical survival, but with humans more is involved--social survival, emotional/psychological survival--ego survival, is probably a good term. It has been found that the hippocampus is crucially involved in the process of long-term memory. In humans the hippocampus becomes fully functional at about 2 years of age, and it is thought that at that time and in early childhood, a cognitive base of survival information--including ego survival information--is laid down in long term memory, and this base becomes a deeply-held concept of self and the world against which all new experiences must be compared and interpreted. Winson suggests that this cognitive base, laid down in early childhood, is "the unconscious" of psychological theory. But what of dreams? Sleep mentation, central to the process of long-term memory, underlies the dreaming process and involves the comparison and interpretation of new experiences against the base of survival information bedded in long-term memory. In short, dreaming is the interaction (supportive or conflictive) between current information and information in the basic cognitive substrate. Winson's neurobiological explanation of dreams leads to an internal dream origin theory which does not rely on supernatural forces or mystical structures to explain the meaning in dreams. The unconscious is definable. Moreover, dreams are the product of the individual's own experience and nothing else. In this theory, a power imbalance does not exist for two reasons: 1) dream meaning is the result of a biochemical process (not the result of an all-knowing proactive force) and 2) no one but the dreamer can be certain of the meaning being expressed in a dream. In effect, this neurobiological dream theory strengthens the dreamer at the expense of the gods, the analysts, and the Censor; it gives the dreamer the full responsibility and authority for his/her own dreams. Jung, C.G. (1989). Memories, dreams, reflections. (Aniela Jaffé, Ed.). New York: Vintage Books. Jung, C.G. (1953). Psychological reflections. (J. Jacobi, Ed.). New York: Harper and Row. ============================================================= THE STRAUSS FESTIVAL by Florence Hogge During the month of July for the past nine consecutive years a crowds of people from all over Northern California converge on Elk Grove Park for one of the biggest and most popular small town music festivals in America. It is the annual Strauss Festival and this years attendance was well over 50,000 persons who came to celebrate the theme, "Vienna Entertains Royalty": An Elegant Evening at the Schonbrunn Palace". The Strauss Festival has become a prize promotion among the civic celebrations staged each year in Elk Grove. It was conceived by one of the community's most well known couples, Iris and Arnie Zimbelman. It all began as a dream. The Zimbelmans were vacationing in Europe in 1982 when the idea first crossed their minds. They returned two years later and really fell in love with Austria. Arnie liked Vienna and Iris's favorite city was Strasbourg. But their common bond was the music of Strauss. As they visited one small town after another they noticed that each of them had a little festival of its own. They began to wonder if there wasn't something like that they could do in our little town of Elk Grove. And so it began. First, they had to find a place to hold it and some people from the park district told them about a little weed- covered island in the lake. This became the starting point. Two large stage areas were constructed. The upper stage, encircled by a brick wall and covered by a white shell, was for the orchestra. The larger lower stage is where the dancers perform. Since then, a gazebo and an arched bridge leading from the grassy knoll over the water to the stage have been added to the island, which is now known as Strauss Island. The island has been well manicured and the many scrub oaks have matured to make Strauss Lake one of the picture perfect spots in Elk Grove Park. The Strauss Festival premiered in 1987 for a two night run with the attendance around 5,000 people. The following year it was extended to three nights and a year later to four nights with an estimated 40,000 persons attending. This year the festival ran 5 evenings with over 50,000 people enjoying the performance. Don Burns, Austria's Consul General who offices in Sacramento attended this years performance and calls the Strauss Festival "the most Viennese event" he has attended in the U.S. The Strauss Festival is a wonderful triumph of volunteering. There is no paid staff whatsoever and the budget runs in excess of $75,000 which is paid for entirely by the generous support of many organizations, businesses, and private individuals. Plans for next years event begins shortly after the final performance. Lynn West puts in more than 1,000 hours designing and sewing costumes and her husband works on the sets. Jay DeWald, a professional musician, who is also director of the marching and symphonic bands at Elk Grove High School, has conducted the Strauss Orchestra for all nine years. They, along with approximately 200 volunteers, work throughout the year to present the memorable Strauss Festival, which is performed for the public at no charge, just for the love of Strauss music. The ninth edition of the show, called "Vienna Entertains Royalty: An Elegant Evening at the Schonbrunn Palace," had International assistance. One of the most challenging tasks was envisioning and then creating the background scenery and props. Someone thought it would be nice to have some kind of representation of Vienna's Schonbrunn Palace, one of the great royal sights of Europe, to go with this year's show, which has a little theme-story about Russian and French royalty attending a party at the Hapsburgs. Ray Baxter, a master wood-worker, builds the sets for the production. He was shown several postcards picturing Schonbrunn and asked if he could make something like that. Ray was intriqued, but needed better pictures. He made a trip to San Francisco and talked to the Austrian Consul General, who gave him four photos and some tourist books. Ray spent 200 hours on the project. The precise scale model is 6 feet by 2 feet by 14 inches high, has 100 feet of doweling and 330 acrylic windows. It was on display in the gazebo near the stage at all the performances. The actual Imperial Residence of Schonbrunn, located in Vienna, originally called the Manor of Katerburg, was acquired in 1569 by Emperor Maximilian II. Over the centuries, the palace, containing more than 200 rooms, and has undergone major reconstruction following three conflicts that devastated the building. Large portraits grace most of the rooms, revealing landscapes, past leaders and historic moments in Austria's empire. Most rooms contain silk wall coverings and upholstery as well as gold- leaf trim and wall designs. One room, the Great Gallery, was and continues to be used for state celebrations. Three large frescos are painted on the ceiling, and gilded candelabras and two chandeliers, each bearing 72 candles, add to the rooms majestic enviornment. This year the stage props included 10-foot tall columns containing borders that resemble gold inlay and display royal emblems. A 7-foot wide chandelier hung over and lit the center of the stage and a re-creation of the memorial to empire forces, which sit atop a hill over-looking the palace and grounds, also graced the stage. The British Society saved the day for this years festival. The "Spanish March" by Johann Strauss Jr. was found on a CD recorded by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, it had the Iberian flavor needed for the show but there was just one problem: no one could locate the sheet music. A letter was drafted to the Johann Strauss Society in Austria but they didn't have "Spanish March". Then the producer contacted the Johann Strauss Society of Great Britain, but it was not in their library either. Time was running out and the "Spanish March" remained elusive. A query was put out on the Internet. They received lots of E- Mail from Strauss aficionados, but no "Spanish March". Iris Zimbelman made one last telephone call to her contact at the Strauss Society of Great Britain. He and his wife were leaving for vacation but promised to launch an intensive search for it in their country. One week before the show, the Elk Grove fax machine began to hum with a transmission from the London Symphony Orchestra. Forty- five minutes and 60 pages later, "Spanish March" arrived, including the conductor's score and all the musicians' parts. Everyone was amazed and so grateful for the amount of effort the Strauss Society of Great Britain expended on our behalf, allowing the show to go on as planned. Spectators by the thousands came to Strauss Island carrying picnic baskets and blankets or chairs to be placed on or near the grassy knoll along the waters' edge in anticiapation of the evening's performance. This year's theme of "Vienna Entertains Royalty" revolves around a "Royal Ball" in which the Austrian Emperor and Empress have invited the royal families of France, Spain and Russia. Sitting near the waters edge, under a starlit sky with a gentle Delta breeze blowing across the lake, I marveled at the elegant costumed dancers as they waltzed across the stage. The divine music of Johann Strauss floating through the air transformed our little town of Elk Grove into a Vienna paradise, if only for a few nights. Yes, this was an evening to remember. ============================================================= MUSICA EN LOS BARRIOS Dorothy G. Barnhouse PART I. HOW DID THIS PROJECT GET STARTED? ®RM65¯ I came to Nicaragua in 1988 to help start an English department at the agricultural college. My qualifications and experience in music were better than in language teaching, but it never occurred to me that teaching music would be "useful" in a country with so many other pressing needs. I was full of the pride of doing something "really important". Having led a full professional life in the rich musical traditions of Europe and North America, I thought of music as an elite luxury for the comfortably well off. How could I imagine that it would be useful to teach music to malnourished children living in cardboard and tin shacks with semi-literate parents, minimal health care and at best two meager meals a day? Then on weekends, and just for fun, I started teaching a few songs to a group of about 8 children in a neighbouring poor barrio. More and more children wanted to join -- they wanted more and more rehearsals. Then on one vacation, I talked to a friend in California about the difficulty of getting them to sing in tune, having no instrument to accompany them to give a background of harmony and rhythm to their songs. He bought me a portable electronic keyboard to bring back. Suddenly the little choir started singing much better. But of course all the kids wanted to learn to play the "piano" too. I started leaving the agricultural college early one afternoon a week in order to spend time with the kids and the "piano". The kids were showing me what the word "demand" means, as they asked for more and more. But of course working at my "important" job, I didnt have time. As I talked with many other "development workers", I found that all too many projects here were started because someone in "the north" had decided it was a good idea. Very few projects were the result of a strong demand from the Nicaraguans. For instance, the English department at the agricultural college was not started because the Nicaraguans wanted it, but because some big Dutch and Swedish agricultural aid projects told them that continued help was dependent on their teaching technical reading to the next generation of agriculturalists. As a result, the other foreigners and I who were involved there put in tons of effort with very little result. With the kids in my chorus, it was quite different. I would put in a teeny bit of effort, and the result would be phenomenal. One of the kids had seen someone playing a recorder. "Why cant we do that too?" A Spanish friend volunteered to supervise recorder classes for them. A friend of hers in Spain donated twelve recorders, all of different makes. She found a couple of teen- agers who played the recorder and installed them as "teachers". The resultant slap-happy ensemble of course created a horrible screech, but the kids were satisfied. A Roman Catholic sister who works in the barrio on a number of projects (sewing for women, supplementary soy meals for undernourished children and pregnant and nursing mothers,etc.) told me that the music classes and rehearsals were the ONLY activities in the barrio for which the kids always arrived on time and without being reminded! But of course I was creating an English department for the future agriculturalists, so didn't have time for more. Then in the course of a two week period, three apparently unrelated things happened. 1. The demand: Christmas was coming up, and I was off to San Francisco. The day before I left, I was finishing rehearsal with the choir (now about 20 kids) and saw some kids hanging around outside. But they weren't rowdy or bothersome, so I let them hang around. As I left to go to my old pickup truck, they surrounded me. They looked too sweet to be robbers, what did they want? "Please, we are from the next barrio over, can you come do music with us too?" Of course I was too busy with my "important" work and had to say no. 2. The materials: In San Francisco, a friend handed me a flyer she had picked up someplace. It advertised materials in Spanish and English for the Suzuki method of teaching recorder. I thought, "Hmmm, maybe Judit can use this with her recorder classes..." and I called the number. A few hours later I was drinking tea with a wonderful recorder player who had developed some marvelous materials, and who trained recorder teachers in their use. My niece and her husband were with me. They gave me $50 to buy whatever I wanted to take back with me. 3. The means: I stopped off in Dallas to see my sister on my way back to Managua. After chatting with some friends of my sisters about my life in Managua, one of them said to me, "I want to give you $5000 to expand what you are doing, teaching music to those kids in the barrio." "Gulp, I wouldnt have the faintest idea what to do with $5000." "Dont worry, you'll think of something." I tossed and turned that night, and found myself thinking of Batahola Norte, a barrio in Managua where since the early 80's a Spanish priest had been teaching music to children and young people. He had a choir of about 80 teen-agers, all of whom played the recorder (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) and also sang in parts. A couple of them had been helping my Spanish friend with the little makeshift recorder classes in the barrio. It was 1 am in Dallas, but only 11 pm in San Francisco. My plane left the next morning at 5 am, so in spite of the late hour, I decided to dare to call the Suzuki lady in San Francisco. "Can you come to Managua and train some teen-agers to teach recorder?" "No, I cant, because of my health, but I trained someone in Peru to train teachers. Maybe she can do it." So I began to spend the $5000. The Peruvian teacher trainer came, we bought some good quality plastic recorders wholesale, and in June started paying the first teen-teachers to go into other barrios to teach. That was in 1993. (Next issue: Part II, What's happening now.) =========================================================== end cybersenior.3.4