Tom Dresser
Robert Jones had the daunting task of settling the estate of the renowned African-American artist Lois Mailou Jones after she died in 1998 at the age of 93. Imagine his amazement at rooting around in the basement of his cousin’s Washington, D.C. home and uncovering a cobweb-draped box that contained a collection of masterpiece textile designs Ms. Jones had created 75 years before.
Was it the thunderstorms and down pour that preceded the concert, delaying the show two hours, but clearing into a spectacular summer evening?
Was it learning a clutch of Vineyarders had seats in the very same section as us at Gillette Stadium?
Or was it when I first bought tickets online and through a computer glitch, my order was doubled?
It was as if those audio vignettes so often played on the nearby National Public Radio station WCAI were being spoken out loud, live and seriatum at the Oak Bluffs library:
“I used to carry all the bags off the steamboat, then the ice, and then deliver letters. We’d go to the fish market and open quahaugs for all the hotels. And we’d do the Flying Horses at night, and go swimming,” Billy Norton said, recounting growing up in Oak Bluffs in the 1930s.
“You learn to pay attention to the moment,“ said Sheila Morgan, a client of Paul Farrington, an Island provider of neurofeedback.
That’s a type of biofeedback, which aims to make people aware of, and thus control, their unconscious reactions.
“I came in like a jigsaw puzzle dropped on the table and came out put together again,” she said.
What’s this moment all about? And just how does neurofeedback work?
Three questions came to mind as I headed out this past Friday to see Berklee College of Music students and faculty work their therapy magic on the Island. One, can you ever get high school kids to sit around and pay attention? Two, is there a career in music therapy? And three, can nursing home residents carry a beat?
Can’t wait for those fresh salad greens? Well, by the first of May, a mere 45 days away, you should be able to drop by Cronig’s and purchase a 10-ounce bag of North Tabor Farm’s salad greens, and the season will be under way.