Who knew that music has the power to help stimulate the memory of patients with Alzheimer’s disease; help Parkinson’s patients learn to walk again; reduce blood pressure; help restore speech to a patient who has had a stroke? . . .
“I had a very joyful and fulfilling career as a writer—but after 25 or 30 years, it’s just time to try something new,” Susan Nanus says. Her goal was worthy and her journey toward it transformative: She says, “I am different than I was when I started. More spiritual, certainly.”
Yes, Virginia, there still are doctors who make house calls. And the care they offer is far more sophisticated than the treatment Kindly Old Doc could provide in bygone days.
The conversation can get spirited; these are not the clenched-teeth poker sessions you see in old Western movies . . . gunslingers silently throwing down cards. “There are a lot of egos around the table,” Brownmiller says, “and lots of things have happened to people around the table in the last few weeks . . . . We are all competitive, and nobody likes to lose."
"I realized that our kids (our future leaders) must learn the basics and founding principles of our democratic way of life so that they can be engaged at an early age and be lifelong participants. That is where ‘Learning History Through Music’ came from—my passionate belief that ALL citizens—We the People—need to be engaged in the process for democracy to survive.”
In 1993, Warrie Price, a leader in community-based planning in New York City, was tapped to find a way to implement a master plan for the park that had not been acted on since its creation in 1986. Her mission: raise money, contribute her vision, and get the various agencies that had jurisdiction over the park to work together to rebuild and revitalize The Battery. In short, she became the civic engine that got things done.