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The CyberSenior Review Volume 3 Number 4
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* THE
* CYBERSENIOR
* REVIEW
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VOLUME 3 NUMBER 4 OCTOBER 1996
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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