If You Need a Chair— Act Locally for stronger communities

IF YOU NEED A CHAIR BY JOYCE ROUSE 

Happy Chairmaker by Todd Price ©2013 Original oil painting. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This song is on my CD  “A Sense of Place” by Earth Mama. One of the main themes of the album is to honor whatever place you chose to live in. I love our local farmers market and meeting the people who grow our food.  As we discover more local products, I have greater respect for the artisans, growers, crafters, and creators of useful items we have right here in my community. And probably in yours! I wanted this song to have a global musical feel and honor many cultures, with humor, fun rhymes and places to sing along with “la la la” syllables.  I hope people will get up and dance around and sing harmony when they hear this song. And perhaps inspire people to make stronger communities by shopping for locally made goods. Maybe it will even promote supporting local music...  La La La La LA!

For music and lyrics click here: If You Need a Chair

This was first posted on the Children's music network blog in september 2015. reposted here with their permission

To An Oriole, A Sense of Place, Track 2

Baltimore Oriole, Wikipedia

The lyrics for To An Oriole is a poem sent to me by a fellow Earth Literacy grad, Bruce Allen, from St Mary-of-the-Woods College, IN. Bruce is also a weekend farmer, birder, and all around good guy.
He sent me the verse, telling me it was his all-time favorite poem and wondered if I might set it to music. He had several of my CDs and asked if I could provide a suitable melody for the words written over a century ago by Edgar Fawcett.

I am always reluctant to take on this kind of a project for several reasons. First, it is hard to live up to others' expectations of what a melody might be for a favorite verse.  Secondly, it can be a copyright nightmare if you do not have a direct relationship with the co-writer.  Clearly, the long deceased Mr. Fawcett, would not be able to protest my adoption of his succinct verse about he ethereal wonder of his favorite bird. My research showed the writings he had authored had all aged into the Public Domain.  I was encouraged to continue.

So I spent some hours at the piano noodling with steps and jumps of melody possibilities until his words began to speak to me with their own cadence, with pauses and lilting questions. The words themselves took command and TOLD me how to write the melody.  Thank you, Bruce.  Thank you, Mr. Fawcett.   And thank you, Beautiful Oriole.

Listening Clip, Track 2

NAAEE Crowd Inspiring and Supportive Community

This week, I have had the pleasure to spend time with some of the most innovative and determined individuals, who are responsible for the future of our Earth. They are the educators who work tirelessly to provide knowledge and instill responsibility in our future generations. I'm attending the North American Association for Environmental Education 41st Annual Conference, Gaining Perspective: Seeing EE Through Different Lenses.

My presentations to this group have been focused on music in education. This is where Earth Mama began, working in my son's classrooms, with his peers and his teachers, advocating an understanding of our human impact on the Planet Earth. This week I've met many teachers who are continuing that work, creating programs and curriculum in diverse environments, covering a multitude of issues, facing the challenges of budget cuts, apathy and outright opposition to the realities of climate change.

For all those teachers who are working to connect with young minds and raise awareness in those communities, here are some tools that use today's media of choice, video.

YouTube Teachers is a collection of videos and tools created just for teachers by the developers at YouTube along with a global network of contributors. There are over 700,000 videos collected on a wide variety of topics, along with instructional videos on how to create a YouTube channel of your own.

And that brings me back to music, which has been my teaching tool of choice. I'm involved in the efforts of Musicians United to Sustain the Environment (M.U.S.E.) to create and continually expand a database of environmental music. This is a daunting project and we need volunteers for all aspects of this effort! Recently, Stan Slaughter covered our efforts in a Mother Earth News article, detailing how the collection of eco-audio is available 24/7 on EarthDayFM, an online radio station. Encouraging today's youth to learn through music, listening to the songs telling stories of history and science, sharing life experience in a memorable context, this is how I use music as an education tool.

As I return home to the mountains of Virginia after this week in California, it is my intention to share what I've experienced here with this energized group of educators. Thank you, for your ideas, your determination, your creativity and your enthusiasm to honor our Planet Earth.

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Joyce Rouse AKA Earth Mama creates blog posts on timely topics in collaboration with her communications manager, Bonnie Cranmer. Please refer any questions or requests for permission to use any material contained on this blog to earthmamaoffice@gmail.com.

Gratitude #8,791

Ok, so I have not done 8,790 other blog posts about  feeling gratitude that I probably should have, but I felt it in my heart and soul.

Yesterday I sent off the master for a new CD I've been working on for...well, a long time. At first I was going to write that it has been in process for 2-3 years, but two of the songs I wrote and recorded back in the early 1990s.  The songs, titled Joy in the Light  and Place in the Kin-dom (originally Place in the Kingdom before I adopted a practice of gender neutral language) were just never a good fit for my recording projects until now. So I guess you could say that this one has been a labor of love for 20 years!

The CD is titled Blessings of the Universe.  I thought it was in the vein of contemplative, meditative music, but my dear friend, wise woman (and marketing wiz) Rita G decided after listening that it was more brain and heart stimulating, so she encouraged me to describe it as "Songs for the foreground and background of your days."  That just made my day!  Since then I have pictured YOU (my beloved listeners) listening as you drive, or weave (but NOT as you drive!) or garden or cook or type or plan, as listening to these 13 songs of prayers and blessings, and I feel so grateful to know that we can connect through time and space with music.

I often hear from my listeners who express their responses to the live or recorded songs. Like Rita,
they see and hear things that sometimes surprise me.  When I'm composing, perhaps I get stuck in the emotion or psychic place I exist in while writing, then the music takes on its own energy, not unlike the original flaring forth of the Universe. After all, sound, music is physics, energy and it circulates in the curious, mysterious ways of the Big U.

This will be my 10th recording (9th as Earth Mama®) and it carries the same love, joy, care, concern and prayers for our Amazing Earth, but with a new deepening.  Another post in the future will share the source of inspiration for these blessing songs for water, women, gathering, children, peace, solar energy and more.

This photo is my personal alter where I meditate. It is a locally turned wooden bowl by artisan Terry Clark, filled with some of my favorite simple gifts from the Universe—stones, fossil, wild flowers, an elephant, feather and  bowl of sacred water (Sister Water). These things remind me daily of my gratitude, my soul felt appreation of beauty and fragility of the Web of Life.