Dances with Ritalin

I don't know why, but this story makes me glad I'm not a little boy in school:

The children first listened to a story about a pair of birds, the ill-fated Hector and his mate, Helen, residents of the Lake Merritt watershed. It was a classic Greek tragedy -- Hector got tangled up with carelessly discarded fishing line and perished.

The class then used felt-tip pens to write their thoughts on little shirts and dresses from the Goodwill Store.

And then the dancing began. Picking a cloth partner, the children fluttered four at a time as Bulitt recited their written words in a sing-song manner, which was repeated by the kids who were not dancing:

"Dear Hec-tor," sang Bulitt.

"Dear Hec-tor," echoed the class.

"I'm sor-ry."

"I'm sor-ry."

"That you got stuck in the fish-ing line."

"That you got stuck in the fish-ing line."

"When you died."

"When you died."

"From, Ja-cob."

"From, Ja-cob."

The class, initially shy, warmed up quickly and soon nearly everyone was vying for a chance to do a shirt dance.

Inspired by nature

Bulitt has been doing interpretive dance for 25 years, and has always been inspired by nature and birds in particular. She performed a dance called "Under the Wing" at Lake Merritt last September for Coastal Cleanup Day.

She received a civic arts grant from Berkeley in association with that city's Shoreline Bird Center, and has done the same performance she did at Montclair Elementary, called "Sharing the Watershed and Honoring Birds," at Fairmont Elementary in El Cerrito, Grant Elementary in Richmond and the preschool at Berkeley Montessori. The goal is to teach kids about the importance of the watershed and its inhabitants. All parts of the class have a meaning.

"To children, the notion of the shirt or dress is like feathers," Bulitt said. "Clothes hold memories, and they can write something down and leave it behind for the birds."

A classic Greek tragedy? (Where's Dennis when I need him?)

Anyway, in my local Berkeley Gazette, there's a picture of the artist flapping about in front of the kids -- and a boy in the picture does not appear terribly interested in "environmental performing art."

No wonder they have to resort to Ritalin!

I guess I should be glad I don't have kids. Otherwise, I might have to spend my time Googling for stories about "Hector" and "Helen" at Lake Merritt. I found an actual account of the tragedy:

....two white pelicans, Hector and Helen, and seven other half-growns, were brought to the refuge from Pyramid Lake courtesy of the Fish and Wildlife Department. The two were picked to remain at the lake through a partial pinioning that kept them from full flight. Although the others eventually flew away, H & H remained behind to delight thousands of people through the years with photographic beauty and comical antics...a noble sacrifice that they seemingly enjoyed. They were fed three pounds of smelt every day, plus scooping up some lake herring on the side, too! Hector became tangled in a rope and drowned in the mid-1980's, but Helen lived on alone for ten years, escorting wild visiting white pelicans around the lake, and she was often courted by a white mute swan that mysteriously appeared off and on.
Captive bird tangled on a rope, huh?

So what's with the the "fish-ing line" line?

I don't know, but the artist also dances with trout. (The latter was a performance for "Culvert Action II" -- a precursor to an ongoing (if economically chaotic) program to "daylight" a creek which runs through downtown Berkeley.)

Daylighting creeks is a deadly serious business (and I don't think hunting and fishing is on the agenda).

According to U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, it's only a first step:

"We have to have in place an imagination based on intimate knowledge and love of the places where we live, so that we can push programs forward rather than just react to environmental despoiling for the rest of our days. It can begin in small and symbolic ways, like the day-lighting of Strawberry Creek in Berkeley. To open up the fact that we live on a watershed, that where we live is really a drainage from the Contra Costa Hills into the Bay -- and that we've lost that connection -- can be solved with imagination. Imagine our streams flowing freely again, with the egrets and the herons working their way up the creeks through the city, fishing for minnows and sticklebacks. With this imagination we can restore the ecological cycles of this place, reminding us daily of the larger issues involved in preservation and restoration, the healing of the planet.

"What the WATERSHED Festival offers the community is the opportunity to come together and begin to teach ourselves and our children to pay attention in fundamental and different ways with poetry and art."

Hey, I'm paying attention, and I didn't need Ritalin.

But I'm not a little boy. As I've said before, boys prefer toy guns. And I think they'd rather go fishing for trout than dancing with them.

Under the circumstances, who wouldn't need Ritalin?

posted by Eric on 02.04.05 at 09:38 PM





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Comments

I'd be curious to know how the air pollution is in Tilden Park. I started running there in 1971 but had to stop in 1974 when the pollution was so bad it was literally not possible to deep breathe due to tracheobronchial irritation. I got a condition virtually identical to exercise induced asthma only when running there as a harbinger to the more severe situation I first described. I thought this was strange for a place of such "enlightenment". This was actually a railroad tie that broke the back of any desire I might have had to stay in the Bay area.

Actually, there were some bad days even around Mt. Tam.. The ticks were also furious around Muir Woods. Are they cherished as a part of Gaia's wonder? They sure impressed me.

But are the sensitive environmentalists now transferring their concern onto pelicans? It seems ritualistic what they are doing. I think I'd need some Clear Water 190 proof etoh to get the most out of the bird people's performances. Maybe a good raptor needs to make a counterbalancing appearance, perhaps the Thunderbird? I stand ready to assist. I wonder if Wattenberg would choriograph.

J. Peden   ·  February 4, 2005 11:02 PM

The Comprachicos are destroying the mind's of people's children, exactly as Ayn Rand said they were. If I had any kids, I'm home-school them. Teach them about the real Hector and Helen, the ones Homer wrote about. Today's kids will never have heard of Homer except maybe Homer Simpson. They're too busy being indoctrinated with this ecological crap. I've had it with the NEA. I've come to the conclusion that tenure should be abolished and public employee unions disbanded. This is too sickening to comment on any further.

Why write about this stuff anyway? Sorry, I'm kind of in a pissy mood today. I read just one attack to many on Ayn Rand, which really put me out, and I still didn't write all I intended to about spectra. Tomorrow, I'm going to write about the Pournelle spectrum and some other spectra. So far, I'm just getting warmed up.

Actually, it was Hector and Hecuba. Helen is sandwiched between Paris and Agamemnon. Interesting story there*.... Ironically, if Paris had been a bit less of a lover and more of a warrior, there might not have been a War. And then there's Electra vs. Clytemnestra. I love those names.

(*Sort of the understatement of the last several millennia, but anyway....)

Time to dig up the old Monty Python "Fish Slapping Dance" sketch.

Beck   ·  February 5, 2005 08:22 PM

The birds were chosen to remain at the lake through a "partial pinioning"??? You know what that means, right? These people cut part of the wings off these birds so they couldn't fly away, but instead would stay and entertain the ecologically-pure residents. "Noble sacrifice", oh yeah.

It will be a cold day in hell before anyone offers a mournful interpretive dance program about *that*. Gahhhhhh!

jaed   ·  February 10, 2005 08:35 PM

How about a little revision?

"I'm sor-ry."

"I'm sor-ry."

"That you got pin-ioned!"

"That you got pin-ioned!"

"That they cut part of your wings off so you couldn't fly aw-aay!"

"That they cut part of your wings off so you couldn't fly aw-aay!"

(I'm no good at the choreography part, so someone else will have to write the steps.)

But I think we're off to a good, (non)flying start!

Eric Scheie   ·  February 10, 2005 09:51 PM


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