Midlife Meditation

Funny; this never happens when I take pictures in America... For three weeks, I've been blogging almost exclusively about Ghana: getting there, being there, coming home from there. Today, I (mostly) wrap it up with a collection of observations that seemed too brief to merit their own posts. Smart Phones are Amazing I've known this since I got my first iPhone in 2009, but as with any technological advance, once you've lived with it for a couple of years, you forget how incredible it actually is--and wonder how you ever lived without it. Two things happened in Ghana that made me stop taking mine for granted: 1) My phone's internet access shriveled from constant to, for a week, non-existent, and then sporadic at best after that, meaning that the phone was only useful as a camera; and 2) using it as a camera, I took pictures of children at the elementary school we visited, an action that was always followed by the children crowding around me to see the picture...

This is not  what I'm talking about. The question comes up frequently when people find out I'm a musician: "What do you play?" My vague answer is "piano, trumpet, guitar, a little bit of everything." My much more specific answer is "scratch piano." Then the conversation begins. There are pictures of me sitting at a piano when I was still too young to walk. My mother began teaching me lessons when I was in kindergarten, so I like to tell people I could read music before I could read words, though that's quite an exaggeration. In any case, my formal training on the piano ended after fifth grade, when I was allowed to take up the trumpet instead. This means that, for all practical intents and purposes, everything I do on the piano now is self-taught. I can say this sincerely because what I do is nothing like what my mother taught me. What is "scratch piano"? Most literally, it's a term I made up about a decade ago to d...

These guys really need to meet: Pat Short of Comedy Sportz Portland and Doug Goodkin, master Orff Schulwerk educator. I move in different spheres: Music education. Orff Schulwerk. Improv. Jazz. United Methodism. Clergy. Outdoor recreation. Running. Cycling. Body Pump. Science Fiction. The Anderson family. Survivors of divorce. Beer. Preacher's kids. Summer camp alumni. Willamette alumni. Trekkies. By "sphere," I mean an activity, occupation, or status shared with a group of people that is a frame of reference for understanding the greater world, and which has a knowledge base unique to itself. Two people meeting each other for the first time who both went to camp as children can reminisce, nod knowingly, find common ground with each other. Many of my spheres overlap. I know a lot of United Methodist clergy, and we share experiences both of our education and work and of simply being United Methodist. Star Trek fans usually have a taste for science fiction in general...

What can I say about Ghana? One does not come here for scenery. It’s pleasant—tropical forests, hills, coastline—but none of these terrains is spectacular. What sets Ghana apart, as I’ve written again and again, is its people. Ghanaians experience the same poverty, primitive infrastructure, public health concerns as any country in West Africa, and they do it cheerfully. Most of them live literally close to the ground: everywhere but Accra, pavement is reserved for major roads. Marketplaces, town squares, village celebration centers have dirt surfaces. In a country with rainy seasons, this can mean a great deal of mud. They take this in stride—they’ve never known anything else—and dance in it, shop in it, go to school in it, work and play and eat and even sleep in it. Living so close to the earth, their cultural mores are earthy. Common bodily functions are nothing to be ashamed of. Privacy is minimal, and the facilities for relieving oneself are often no more than a crack ...

I’m home in suburban Portland now. All the streets, and most of the walking trails, are paved, signed, well-lit at night. There are more stoplights between my house and the Sunset Highway, less than three miles away, then I saw in two weeks in Ghana—and that includes the capital city of Accra. So why, during my morning run through the lovely Washington county countryside, did I feel more at risk than anywhere I ran in that strange foreign country? Let’s start with driver manners: my initial impression was that Ghanaians love their car horns almost as much as New Yorkers. In time, though, I realized they were using them out of concern for each other, warning bicyclist, pedestrians, and slow-moving vehicles that they were about to be overtaken by a faster vehicle. If the people in question did not, or could not, move out of the way, the driver patiently waited behind them until an opening became available. When our bus passed other vehicles, the maneuver always started with a blas...

6-29-14 All good things end. The conclusion of an Orff event is always bittersweet. Whether it is a day-long workshop, a weekend conference, or a two-week levels course, Orff training is an instantly bonding activity. Participants in Orff events are teachers who teach through play, finding the joy in every musical game, every song, every dance, channeling through their teaching and into their students. We learn the same way we teach, playing, singing, and dancing the same activities we will be sharing with our children. This creates a play bond: play with anyone, whether child or adult, and you create a connection. Once you have laughed with another human being, it is very hard to objectify that person. So Orff events are playful, bonding times, and when they end, there is a sense of deep loss. Those we share these experiences with are much more than colleagues, even more than classmates: they are playmates. Being separated from a playmate, as must happen at the end of our...

To experience Ghana in a day, there is just one place to visit: Elmina. Elmina sits on the Cape Coast. It’s a fishing community with a scenic harbor crowned by two historic structures: a castle on one hill, a fort on the other. Parts of these buildings, as well as other buildings in town, date back to the earliest incursions of Europeans into West Africa in the 1400s. Viewed from the castle, Elmina is as photogenic as any place I've been in Ghana (though it should be noted that this has not been a touring experience; in fact, we spent an entire week in one location, focusing on the culture of that site). The harbor and the shore teem with long, brightly painted fishing boats that are rowed out to sea, then brought back by the tide. There are no sales, and all the fishing is done with nets. The lack of modern tools for this ancient trade is typical: when I’ve seen buildings under construction, work was being done with saws and hammers, not a power tool to be heard. Even...