textfiles/magazines/CYBERSENIOR/cybersenior.3.4

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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

======================================================

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 Jaff<66>, 
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? 
<EFBFBD>RM65<EFBFBD>
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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end cybersenior.3.4