Grass Roots Journal; 410

Good evening and welcome to this edition of Grassroots Journal. I'm Glenn Johnson. And I'm Barbara Dickinson. Tonight we'll take a look at a collection of old-fashioned electric trains. And we'll meet a man who combines his woodworking talents and his love of music to make his own Irish folk harp. Then we'll listen to the music of the Spokane Junior Symphony and meet some of its dedicated young members. Next we'll check out a canine obedience class in Moscow and see what it takes to make the grade in dog school. And finally the Phoenix House in Lewiston. But first, it's off to a museum to find those electric trains. If you've seen one art museum, you've seen them all, right? Well, that's not necessarily true. There's a museum in Moscow that has some rather unusual exhibits. Reporter Don Rees went there, and he said he didn't see one painting or one sculpture anywhere. This art exhibit at the Prichard Gallery doesn't feature works with titles like Still Life with Fruit. Instead, the pieces have names like Blue Comet, Hiawatha, and Silver Bullet. There are nearly 100 trains here, each one different from the rest. The trains come from collections of

various Inland Empire residents. One of the collectors, Jim Hockenhull of Pullman, has long been a train fan. He fondly remembers the heyday of electric trains. You got to remember that for a certain age group, that was the major toy for boys, was the electric train and I can, I can picture the Christmas morning in my mind very, very clearly. Came down the stairs and saw that Lionel running around. It's a special moment. Jim says part of the appeal of the train sets is the fact that they were designed as one thing only, as toys. The scale of things, the relative scale of things, wasn't very important. So you'll see great big stations that completely dwarf the trains that they're sitting in front of. And in the same breath, you'll see little, bitty metal houses that were supposed to go in the same set. I mean, it didn't really make any difference. They were toys.

Looking at some of the trains on exhibit, it's hard to believe they were ever designed to be touched, let alone played with by a small boy. Of course, some trains look more like toys than others. It's all a reflection of when the trains were made. In the 50s, things got a little baroque, and they began having, you know, freight cars that had a little hobo that would run across the top and a cop that would chase him, or cars that had giraffe heads sticking out and would duck when they went under bridges, and really... guided missile cars that exploded when you hit 'em, and kind of dumb stuff. The exhibit is more than just a collection of toys, though. The curator of the museum, David Giese, says the miniature trains represent a part of frontier America. The train was the great expansion of the continent. It was a vehicle in which people moved clear across United States. It was represented in the

train stations. The train stations architecturally were great heroic gateways to the west and to the frontier, linking the nation together. Jim agrees the link with the past is what makes the trains exciting. He says trains played a part in American life that has never been duplicated, not even by our number one form of transportation today, the car. They're different than automobiles. They don't go everywhere, they go along tracks. They're big. Steam locomotives particularly were incredibly impressive, huge machines. And when you were, when you were an adult, they were huge machines... When you're a little kid, they were monsters. They came in at regular times. You could anticipate them. There was a station where all the business of railroads went on, and the station was usually landscaped. So I think there's a kind of glamour and romance about it.

The train show is considered a big success. One of its purposes, of course, is to attract people to the gallery who might not normally step inside an art museum. David says the guest book proves just how popular the exhibit has been. We've been running about 200, close to 200 people a day who have come in and gone through this. And people are starting to come back again. You know like it's, it's the kind of show that you come in and spend half an hour, select something, and then go out, and then come back and discover something that you didn't see before. David says people of all ages have come to Prichard Gallery to see the trains, some, to

remember the past, others to see models of locomotives they've heard of but never seen. And whether they view it as art or as a reminder of America's past, most agree the exhibit is a lot of fun. Reporting for Grassroots Journal, I'm Don Rees. Don says the model train display is just the first in a series at the Prichard Gallery, so we can look forward to more miniature collections to come. Our next story takes us to Spokane, where the beautiful strains of harp music are filling the air. And if you think about it, it's not every day you hear harp music, because not too many people know how to play this unusual instrument. Well, our reporter, Andy Lockett, learned of one man who not only plays the harps, but he makes them as well. In this small workshop, a little bit of Ireland comes to life, thanks to Jim Kytonen, a Spokane man who, for the love of it, builds and plays Irish folk harps. The folk harp differs from other harps because it's smaller and often played solo, making for a

special relationship between musician and instrument. It's a synthesis of, of a person and their feelings and... Just getting, not only getting in touch with other things outside of the conscious self, let's say, or things such as that, but, but getting in touch with one's self. When Jim Kytonen talks about folk harps, it's usually in a spiritual sense, as if the harp itself was a person with a soul as rich as its Irish past, for in Ireland the folk harp has been played by both kings and common men, and for thousands of years served as the mediator between the gods and man. It even was used in wars. Harpers generally, at least from my understanding, were some of the first people generally into battle. They had a special strap on the harp,

and on the base of the harp was a bronze plate, which they were said to be able to parry saber blows with. And I kind of feel that, as exposed as they were, were, still, not a great number of them died. I don't know that it would have been considered proper etiquette to, to kill a harper. I would like to think so. You don't see too many folk harps on battlefields anymore, but Kytonen maintains some of the old traditions by certain carvings on his harps like this salmon head. In Irish mythology, the salmon represents wisdom. To Kytonen, part of the folk harp's magic comes from its birth place. The history of Ireland is different than the history of anyplace else. Most anywhere else, you have a mythology, and separate from the mythology you have a history.

In Ireland, their history is their mythology. Kytonen has been building folk harps since 1981. He got into it, believe it or not, because of his love for rebuilding old cars. He always hated, however, replacing the wood on the cars and was complaining about it one day to a friend. His friend replied Kytonen would enjoy working with wood more if he only had a proper wood project, and as fate would have it... He just happened to have lying about a book on folk harps, so I thought, well, if I'm going to do a project, let's make it a worthwhile project. And since he had the book, I figured it would be a proper thing to do, to build a harp, since I had always wanted to build a musical instrument of some sort. Since that time, Kytonen has built five folk harps. Putting one together is a long process that takes between 40 to 70 hours, time spent looking for the right wood, cutting, gluing, drilling, and eventually stringing up, always keeping in mind the proper feeling.

You have to feel what you're doing, you have to feel the wood, you have to you have to transfer inner self into that harp. It has a life, and you are its creator, and you give birth to it. When he's finished, Kytonen will charge anywhere from six hundred to twelve hundred dollars for one of his folk harps. He says his work is an avocation rather than a vocation, and that he'll quit if it becomes too much of a business. But until then, Jim Kytonen will continue to build, much to the delight of folk harp players and lovers, for the Irish folk harp has found a special home in the Pacific Northwest. I think that might be in respect to just the, the environment in that with the trees, the water, the... There, there's very much that

possibility for interaction. It's something that if you take it out into the woods or next to a stream or something, you're playing it for yourself. But in that respect, you know the trees are listening to it and enjoying it. Reporting for Grassroots Journal, I'm Andy Lockett. There are times when parents regret encouraging their children to take up musical instruments. You know, those times, those practice hours with all the squeaks and wrong notes. But there is hope, and perhaps this next story will bring you some encouragement to hang in there. Shirley Skidmore takes us to Spokane, where we'll meet some young musicians who have turned off Quiet Riot and The Police and are now grooving to the tunes of old Bach and Beethoven. The New York Philharmonic it's not, but for these young people, it could be just the beginning of promising careers as professional musicians. This is the Spokane Junior

Symphony, fine tuning its Beethoven and Brahms just hours before concert time. The group has been around since 1949, and it attracts young talented students from the Spokane area who are very serious about music. People in school band and orchestra are generally there for the credit. They want, you know, to pass a class, get an A in a class. So they go there, and they goof around, and it's not as serious and the music quality isn't as nice, they play more contemporary music that's not at all challenging at school. The music in Junior Symphony is always challenging, always exciting, and it's always a pleasure to play. If you're in Junior Symphony, the quality is much higher and the music is much more aggressive and more fun to play. And so kids are in the Junior Symphony because they want to be in there and so they try hard to play well and, you know, make it sound the best they can. First-year conductor George Hanson has a lot of goals for the Junior Symphony, but two of the main

ones are increasing community awareness of the group and adding more musicians. I think we can nearly double the size of the group and still maintain the, the level of performance that we have now. There's quite a pool of talent in Spokane that is really, perhaps, just as you mentioned before, not aware of our organization. We hope to expand the string section and perhaps double some more of the woodwinds, give some of the wind players and the brass players more of a chance to be exposed to this kind of orchestral repertoire, which they really can't get, they certainly don't get in the school band, and they...very few of the school orchestras are able to do the more advanced repertoire that we're able to do here. And even though these musicians don't have the experience of seasoned professionals, Hanson says working with them isn't a whole lot different than working with adults.

In many ways, it's quite similar though. If you treat the younger kids, the younger people in the orchestra like younger kids, then very frequently that's the way they behave. And so that's something to be avoided. You treat them with respect and you treat them with courtesy and you expect them to behave professionally, and very often that's the way they behave. Lots of talent thrown together can breed jealousy, and Junior Symphony members are very competitive. But in most cases, that rivalry doesn't seem to get in the way of the friendships formed. Most of the people in Junior Symphony, I keep in constant touch with, and lots of times when something's going wrong, or if I miss a rehearsal, people will call me. And I've made a lot of fairly good friends, people that I'm going to know for probably the rest of my life if I continue in music, which I will. And it's nice to know that there are people out there who are my friends. Most of them are Junior Symphony people.

It's like a big family, everybody in it like. Last year, this is kind of like starting over again, because last year, we had a big, big, large number of group, a large number of people graduate and go on to college and move away. So it's kind of like starting a family again right now. But it's, there's a lot of good friendships there, and then of course you still have your people that you don't like, you know, but it's really neat to be in an organization like Junior Symphony. Every famous musician has to get his start somewhere. So you never know. The freshman violinist of today could be the Stern or Stravinsky of tomorrow. Reporting for Grassroots Journal, I'm Shirley Skidmore. The Spokane Junior Symphony will be putting on two more performances before they knock off for a short summer break. The students in our next story don't get any breaks. They're enrolled in a dog obedience class in Moscow. Commands like sit and heel may not be the kind of lessons that a dog like

Snoopy would appreciate, but as reporter Sara Coddington tells us, the dogs of the Moscow-Pullman area are disproving that old phrase that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Could whoever thought of the phrase, it's a dog's life, have been talking about canine obedience school? Probably not, but in Moscow each Tuesday evening, the Eagan Youth Center turns into an exciting classroom for enthusiastic pooches. You'd think that with these eager learners all in the same room, that the students might create a bit of havoc. But instructor Terry Ryan claims there's a good reason why the dogs aren't too afraid or too aggressive on their first day of school. I have never had a dog fight in class, now I'll have to knock on wood for that, but I attribute that to a real strong orientation. I more or less brainwash my people. I give them examples. We talk about dog behavior a little bit, and I try to let them think like their dog is thinking. And therefore we eliminate a lot of the potential problems on the first night. You see the dogs don't come on the first night of class, it's people only.

And we talk about all those types of things, and I really have never had a major conflict in class. Owners talking about their pets behind their backs is only the first step to a safe and sane program. Many people feel they aren't able to control their dog, and Terry explains that help is available, if the owner simply assumes the role of leader of the pack. I am training the owner and the owner trains the dog. He sets the example and the guidelines, and he shows the dog how to behave in that he acts, in that he takes the leadership role over the dog, that's correct. But simply taking charge of your dog won't make him obedient. Terry advises that even though there are a few hazards, starting your pet's training at an early age will benefit both you, him, and the instructor. We get a lot of wee wee in class, especially when I was holding puppy classes. Kindergarten puppy training is really the way to go. Take the dogs at a very young age if you can put that dog in the proper environment, as a young puppy, when he's just beginning to learn, he'll grow up

doing the things right. He won't have to learn the bad behavior, unlearn those, and be programmed into the good behavior. A puppy's personality is more or less completely formed by the time he's 16 weeks of age. That only gives you a couple of months to really, easily get a lot of information across to your puppy. And to say, give the dog a bone, would be appropriate here, because this is Terry's most important lesson in class. Praise man's best friend as an animal, not as a child. People tend to oftentimes treat their dogs as humans. They're anthropomorphic, they'll think that their dog can understand everything they say. And they'll have more or less a diary, and they'll say all these words to the dog and the dog really is only cuing on some key words. And I think that kind of nags the dog a little bit, and they need to learn those commands and say them

firmly, and then praise their dog for the response. Oftentimes you'll get handlers that forget that their dog is doing a good job and they don't praise their dog, they're just taking their dogs for granted. So that's one of the things I'm always saying in class: Praise your dog, appreciate your dog. I think that's very important. The old operant conditioning lesson pops up in every class session. A proper response followed by a pleasant state of affairs is apt to occur in frequency and this seems to be a key idea in the class. But do the sit down and heel stay with the canine students? Well, I think that it certainly can stick with them. I think that obedience training needs to be reinforced. I think the dogs will get sloppy if the owners allow them to get sloppy. I have seen dogs that have done very well in class later on the street looking very obnoxious and out of control, simply because their owners are allowing them to behave in that manner. One of the dog owners, Lorraine McHeffey, says the success of the class will rely on her, not her dog, Bonnie.

I think it depends on what I do learn. I hope that she, she's going be a part of our family. She is jumpy. I don't want to be chasing after her all the time. I want her to learn to stay with us and to behave around people. Learning to behave correctly is exactly what the class is all about. Although some beginning students do get a bit restless in class, others are attentive, as though taking mental notes, while still others find lecture boring. Terry is proud to have her students compete in obedience shows but claims that her training is important for more practical reasons. There've been many instances where obedience training has made the difference between life or death for the animal. I don't mean just in an emergency situation, but there have been some cases where the dog would have had to have been euthanized because of behavior problems. Or the dog would have had to have been given up because of family pressures, "get this dog under control or get him out", that type of thing. And so we have been able to accomplish that with some obedience training. Rin Tin Tin, old Rover, or Muffy, whatever type of pet one has,

when a canine is a troublesome pooch, keep in mind to train, don't complain. Reporting for Grassroots Journal, I'm Sara Coddington. The dogs will soon be graduating from their beginning obedience school. Then they'll move on to fetching and jumping classes. Our final story tonight takes us to Lewiston, where we'll meet some very special people. They reside at the Phoenix House. As Reporter Donalee Yagues tells us, that's a symbol of hope for those who live there. These people came together because they all share one special goal: a new chance for a normal life. But for these residents, it's a goal which isn't as simple as it sounds. That's because like others who are emotionally disturbed, they've spent years in and out of mental institutions, being treated for illnesses ranging from paranoia to schizophrenia, and sheltered with the day-to-day care which wasn't actually necessary, they lost most of their independent living skills. But now these normal, intelligent people are getting another chance to live a regular life, thanks to a program

called Phoenix House. Phoenix House is offering an alternative living arrangement, a much less restrictive setting, and an opportunity to rely on yourself, solve your own problems, and use what skills you have, develop those in areas that you're deficit. I think we chose the name Phoenix bird because it's a symbol of immortality or renewal, and it could be compared to the way the residents of Phoenix House are rebuilding their lives. To become a resident, each person must be able to pay their share of the expenses, as well as understand the handling and dosage of their own medication. And although Cheryl serves as a supervisor to the group, they live on their own and work as a team, helping each other learn and develop those skills needed for everyday life. I'm learning how to go shopping, and learn how to make a menu and how to budget your money and... Mostly it's just living on your own, with peers to help you.

That peer support is exactly what the program is all about, as each member's progress relies on the feedback and advice given from the others during daily evaluations known as status meetings. Everybody here is working at staying, staying in the community and it's a job, it's a job, and they, and they help each other, and that's what status meeting is about, so when somebody says, you know, I see you're having a problem with this, that really relates to things that eventually could lead to their rehospitalization, and you know little symptoms that are showing. What we do is, we have a meeting, like if a problem comes up, we discuss it and work the problem out. You say the negative thing about the person, that helps them. If you are on your own and you're doing something negative, what would happen? You'd be sitting there alone. In the group, if, if you did something negative, improve so it wouldn't be negative, it would become positive.

How the residents fare in these discussions also determines their standing within the house, as they're assigned to one of four statuses, each dictating the time they have to be in at night. Somebody that's a Status 4 is somebody that's pretty outstanding, that's really, really doing well individually and in the group, and doing a little extra too. But the program also emphasizes responsibility outside the house, as members are encouraged to work and earn money within the community, hopefully reducing some of the stigma which surrounds mental illness at the same time. I've been out there. They, they don't understand what the mental health, mental illness is all about. They kind of scare, shy away from it. You're no different than I am in a way. And I got problems like you might have every day. But I need some counseling to solve those problems. Whether any of the residents will ever be well enough to move on

into independent living is a little more difficult to answer. But thanks to the Phoenix House program, for these men and women, the road back to normal life is a much easier journey. We're just letting them be people like everybody else. You know, despite their, whatever kinds of problems they may have, they're just returning to live and work in the community to the best of their ability. It's helped me a lot, because the others understand so well from being there, being that way too. Reporting for Grassroots Journal, I'm Donalee Yagues. There are more than 260 homes like the Phoenix House spread across the country and they're all very successful. The one in Lewiston is new and right now they're looking for more members and a larger house. Well, with that, we'll close this edition of Grassroots Journal. We sure hope you've enjoyed this program and that you'll join us again next week for more stories about life in the Inland Empire. I'm Barbara Dickinson. And I'm Glenn Johnson. Good night.

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