For Struggling Veterans, Strumming Guitars Can Help with the Healing Process

In Texas, a group of veterans at the San Antonio Military Medical Center is making beautiful music, thanks to volunteers with the Warrior Cry Music Project.
The nonprofit gives instruments — guitars, drums, trumpets and more — to injured service members, then provides them with music lessons.
Robert Henne started the organization five years ago because he believes playing instruments helped him recover from injuries he sustained in a car accident. At the time, his wife was working as an Air Force doctor at the Walter Reed Medical Center, and he wondered if the same process could help wounded veterans recover.
As the veterans work through the inevitable squawks and stumbles that come along with playing an instrument, they also learn to overcome other challenges. “It’s not just learning to play music,” Henne tells the San Antonio News-Express. “It helps reprogram what’s going on in the head.”
The former soldiers agree. Army veteran Ricardo Cesar suffers nerve damage in his fingers, but plucking the guitar is helping with his recovery. “Just parking here and knowing I’m coming in here lowers my blood pressure,” Cesar says. “This is my time. This is my therapy. Now when I’m starting to transition (to civilian life), at home, I can shut the world out and start playing my guitar, rather than, you know, drinking or doing all types of other nonsense that I don’t need to be doing.”
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How the Bard is Helping Veterans in Milwaukee

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee associate theater professor Bill Watson had a notion that engaging with the works of William Shakespeare would help veterans cope with the problems they faced reintegrating into society, including PTSD. After all, in several of his plays, the Bard captured the conflicted, powerful feelings of warriors both in the midst of battle and after the fighting stopped.
So a year and a half ago, with the help of his professional actor wife, Nancy Smith-Watson, and Jim Tasse, an adjunct theater professor, Bill started Feast of Crispian, an organization that guides veterans in performing Shakespeare through methods uniquely tailored to their needs.
Feast of Crispian began working with veterans who were receiving treatment for substance abuse issues, PTSD and other problems at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center. So far, the group has held nine weekend-long workshops for veterans that start with the selection of selecting passages from Shakespeare that have roles for two veterans with plenty of conflict, vivid emotions, and only short lines of dialogue so not to trip up the beginning actors.
“We really get right into it Friday night,” Smith-Watson tells Meg Jones of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “creating a sense of group dynamic, asking them to connect with everyone else in the group really quickly. We’ve been floored at how much that works, that by the end of the first night we have 12 to 18 people who came in saying, ‘I came to check this out but I probably won’t be back tomorrow.’ Yet we rarely lose anyone. They give up a whole weekend to do the work.”
On Saturday and Sunday, they cast the scenes and professional actors work with the veterans to get them expressing the emotions Shakespeare wrote about 400 years ago, yet still speak to the vets’ experiences. The actors define archaic words and feed the veterans their lines as they perform so they don’t have to worry about memorizing. On Sunday afternoon, the vets give a performance that’s open to the public.
Jeff Peterson, a Navy veteran who played the role of Hector in “Troilus and Cressida” in the group’s most recent performance, tells Jones, “It’s an emotional experience like no other treatment. This is something I look forward to. I don’t want it to end.”
Marine Corps veteran John Buck, who portrayed Caliban in a scene from “The Tempest,” agrees. “I consider it theater therapy. It gets veterans to open up about their problems,” he says. “You see veterans slowly opening up throughout the weekend.”
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These Special Writing Workshops Are Geared Towards Caregivers of Vets

With organizations like The Telling ProjectThe Combat Paper Project and The Art of War Project, art has helped many veterans cope with returning to civilian life. But there’s another group that can struggle as much as vets: their caregivers. So a writing workshop program is offering classes and mentorship for military family members to turn their experience into poetry and prose as well.
The Helen Deutsch Writing Workshops, sponsored by the New York-based Writers Guild of America East Foundation, were initially offered to wounded veterans in 2008 and 2009, kicking off with meetings in Columbus, Ohio and San Francisco. Starting in 2011, the organization partnered with the Wounded Warrior Project to sponsor writing classes taught by professional writers (some of whom are veterans) for the caregivers of permanently injured veterans.
The workshops are not therapy — they’re focused on teaching the participants how to craft stories, essays and poems, but many participants find that the writing process helps ease their suffering and sense of isolation.
Sandra Hemenger, whose husband was injured in Iraq, attended a New York City caregivers workshop. “I began to write a book about everything that has happened to us in the past four years,” she tells the Writers Guild of America. “Although I still do not have a lot of time to write, I have a new found love for writing that I never knew existed. For some, they would say our story has taken a bad turn but to us it feels as if the bricks were taken off our chest and we can breathe again. My husband has sensed a change in me since I have been writing. I am no longer keeping everything bottled up inside and I have become a better person because of it.”
Andrea W. Doray of the Denver Post spoke to one of the mentors in the program, Seth Brady Tucker, an Iraq veteran and author of the memoir “Mormon Boy” and the poetry collection “We Deserve the Gods We Ask For.” Tucker led a workshop this month in Denver for participants from around the country, and for the next six months, he’ll continue to assist them with their writing projects.
Tucker tells Doray that as he worked with the caregivers, he struggled “not to break down and cry every 10 minutes,” but he’s hopeful that the writing process that’s helped him since serving as an airborne paratrooper will also enhance the lives of his students.
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Meet The Photographer That Captures Veterans’ Emotions About Returning to the Civilian World

We’ve heard about how difficult the transition from the military to the civilian world has been for many post-9/11 veterans. But sometimes statistics and unemployment percentages don’t convey the grave situation to others the way that a work of art can.
For the past eight years, Brooklyn-based photographer Jennifer Karady has been traveling throughout the United States to capture arresting images of soldiers returned from combat. She spends time with each veteran to learn his or her story and then composes a scene that conveys their emotions. As Karady’s website notes, “she works with real people to dramatize their stories through both literal depiction and metaphorical and allegorical means.”
When Karady spent time with former Marine Corps Sergeant Jose Adames, for example, she learned that he was struck by a mortar when he was in a convoy — resulting in shrapnel wounds, plus 17 fellow Marines in his unit also sustaining injury. When he returned home to Brooklyn, Adames found he was terrified of garbage trucks because they sound similar to exploding mortars. Karady depicted Adames in his uniform on the streets of Brooklyn, crouched and covering his ears as a garbage truck rumbles along behind him.
Karady spoke about her project, “Soldiers’ Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan,” with the PBS NewsHour. She says that she interviews the veterans extensively before photographing them: “through those interviews, we are looking identify a moment from war that’s come home with the person into the civilian world. So we talk about both that memory of war and then also the way that memory manifests itself in the present.”
She continues, “In each photograph, the veteran is in uniform and we’re restaging this memory from war, but that moment is recontextualized in the civilian world. So you get this sense of a collision or collapse between these two worlds, and trying to represent something that’s invisible, something that’s unconscious, something that’s emotional, so what it feels like for the veteran to come home and sometimes experience two different realities at once.”
Karady travelled to the Omaha Nation reservation in Nebraska to photograph Shelby Webster, a single mother who left her kids to serve in Iraq. Her first convoy was attacked, which caused her to worrying about her kids. But she heard her deceased grandfather say, “Well, you’re going to be all right,” and she smelled burning cedar. She later learned that the Omaha people held a prayer meeting for her at which they burned cedar. In the photograph, Webster is on the ground, pointing her gun, while her children cling to her and her brother performs a cedar ceremony in the background.
In the coming years, Karady plans to publish photos from her project in a book and exhibit the portraits in galleries, accompanied with text or recordings of the soldiers telling their own stories.
Through Karady’s images, we can understand a little better the haunting memories that run through veterans’ minds when they return home.
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What Happens When You Give a Soldier a Pen Instead of a Gun?

For seven years, members of a Philadelphia-based nonprofit have been traveling the country turning the stereotype of veterans not speaking about their military service on its head.
Warrior Writers hosts regular workshops for veterans in Chicago; Ithaca, N.Y.; New York City and Boston; as well as visiting workshops in other cities to help soldiers (regardless of age) express their feelings and experiences through poetry and prose.
This year Warrior Writers is teaming up with Combat Paper, a nonprofit teaching vets how to turn their old uniforms into artful paper (read our story about the organization here), to offer three writing and paper-making workshops in New Jersey. These efforts were made possible by a $135,000 grant from Impact 100 Garden State.
After the veterans and active-duty service personnel polish their writing at the workshop in Morristown, N.J., they will be presenting their work during the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival at the NJ Performing Arts Center in Newark on October 25.
One participant in the Morristown workshop is Sarah Mess of Branchburg, N.J. Mess served in the Army in Somalia and wrote a piece in the voice of male soldiers who didn’t think she belonged. “She thinks too highly of herself,” Mess reads in a video for Daily Record. “Let’s knock this girl back down to her stupid, dumb girl position. Come on, boys, sic her. Get her. Beat her. Kick her. Don’t let her up. But she’s bleeding. Good for her. That’s what she gets. She should have never joined the Army.”
“I’m able to express and tap into things here that maybe I didn’t even know were still stirring, like I did today,” Mess tells Lorraine Ash of Daily Record. “I’m able to bring those things to the surface and share them in safe spaces with people who’ve experienced similar things. The draw is that it’s veterans working with veterans. The draw is that we don’t call it therapy. When you start calling things therapy, it creates an aversion to wanting to participate because of the stigma. This works because it’s just community.”
Eli Wright, who works for Combat Paper NJ and served as a medic in the Army, tells Ash that while explorations of painful topics like Mess’s piece are welcome, “We’re not all here because we are broken by the military and trying to heal. We have a lot of veterans involved in these projects who are not combat veterans. A lot served during peacetime, but they’re still artists and they still have plenty of things to say. It’s not all about war trauma.”
Clearly, it’s about art.
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The Problems May Exist Nationwide, But These Local Organizations Have Found Solutions for Their Own Communities

Take a walk through your neighborhood and while you might not notice anything out of the ordinary, solutions to the country’s problems could be right in front of you.
That’s right, in order to make big changes people are thinking local and the results are inspiring similar programs across the country.
Here, a few examples of how communities are taking the lead.
Started in 2005 in Bainbridge, Washington, the online platform Buy Nothing allows people to post goods they need and things they want to give away. However, what sets it apart is that everything listed on the online marketplace is free — nothing is bought or sold — making it the perfect resource for poor and low-income families in need. Available items and services include household goods, childcare, cooking classes and garden produce.
Another community engaging in service exchanges is Kingston, N.Y. For the past four years, musicians, artists and medical professionals have united at the three-day O+ Festival. The attraction: free medical care in exchange for free music and art. Its origins date back to 2010 when a dentist wondered whether his favorite band would play for him for free in exhcange for no-cost dental care. The answer? Yes. From there, the festival was born. Four years later, the most recent O+ Festival provided 99 dental appointments and 350 hours of health services for 80 artists and musicians that might not have received the care otherwise.
“Building a community around O+ speaks to the simple idea of compassion and being part of a community,” Joe Concra, a painter who co-founded the festival, tells YES! Magazine. “Because we’ve become accustomed to huge companies providing everything we need, we forget to look to our neighbors to see what they can offer.”
In Kalamazoo, Mich., citizens are redesigning how to pay for higher education through the Kalamazoo Promise. Funded entirely by private donors, the program pays up to 100 percent tuition to any public Michigan college or university for students that have been enrolled in the Kalamazoo public school district since ninth grade. As a result of the program, there has been a 24 percent increase in enrollment in the school district, and students are earning higher test scores and GPAs. And this past June, the program added 15 Michigan private liberal arts colleges to the list of eligible institutions of enrollment.
To check out additional programs like this, click here.
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When You Want to ‘Buy Local,’ These Programs Make Doing So Easy

You’ve probably heard about community supported agriculture (or CSA) — a program where you pay up front and every week, a box of fresh, locally grown produce appears on your doorstop. Since its initial conception in western Massachusetts in the 1980s, such programs have been popping up across the country.
For consumers, it’s a great way to connect with high quality products and their community. And, due to their popularity, other industries have since jumped on the bandwagon.
One such group is local breweries. As of 2013, there were 1,500 microbreweries in the U.S. producing their own craft beer. While many of us may not know how to get our hands on these beverages, community-supported breweries (CSB) are solving that problem. For a set price, participants can sign up to receive craft beer every month for six to 12 months. Purchases are made directly from the producer, who sometimes throw in a few extra benefits, such as member-only events.
If beer isn’t your thing, community-supported art might be more appealing. In each program, commissioned artists will produce about 50 pieces of work. Patrons can then choose one piece of artwork from each artist, ranging in price from $50 to $500.
The first community-supported art program, the Minnesota-based Springboard for the Arts organization, began five years ago. Today, 40 groups nationwide offer community-supported art programs. One of their key components is interaction: Patrons attend “pick-up parties” where they collect their purchases and meet the featured artists.
Not to be outdone by artists, writers are also getting in on the action. Small, independent publishing houses are making a name for themselves through community-supported publishing programs by offering their members newly-released books fresh off the press or even discounts on all existing titles.
While the products may range in diversity and purpose, the main point is that these programs offer people a way to connect to their local community.
“It’s a model people already understood,” Andy Sturdevant, artists resources director at Springboard for the Arts tells Yes! Magazine. “People like to know where the things they buy come from, whether that’s food or whether that’s artwork.”
And in a world of corporations and big-box stores, that transparency and personal touch is often all that’s needed.
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For Those in Hospitals, Exposure to the Arts Speeds Recovery and Lowers Medical Costs

With hallway after hallway of white walls and the monotonous beeping of medical machines, the inside of a hospital doesn’t really seem like the best kind of environment to recuperate and recover.
Strolling through Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic, however, is a different story. Instead of plain walls, there are paintings and replacing the noise of bedside machines are the sounds of musical instruments.
Unusual, right? Well, all of this is due to the Cleveland Clinic embracing a new form of medicine: arts therapy. Working in conjunction with the Global Arts and Medicine Institute, run by Iva Fattorini, this top-notch medical facility is redefining traditional hospital protocol.
According to Fattorini, incorporating the arts into the hospitals is beneficial to everyone, as it can facilitate the healing process and potentially lower hospital costs, according to Fast Company.
Research has shown that when patients participate in arts therapy, hospital stays are shortened and patients require less medication for pain, as well as overall have a more positive experience. For example, after a patient has suffered a stroke, music is often used to reintroduce speech and numb extreme pain.
The same positiveness is true for employees who are more satisfied going to and leaving work.
Lining the 24 million square feet of clinic wall space are 5,200 original art pieces and 1,500 posters and prints. The hospital also offers daily music performances and delivers the arts bedside through 400 hours of music therapy and 200 hours of art therapy each week.
All of this isn’t just for the patients, though. For Fattorini, it’s a resource for the family and friends of patients as well. These people sit for hours or wander the halls, nervously awaiting the results and fate of loved one — and peaceful music or a serene piece of artwork can be a nice break from reality.
Fattorini isn’t content for this to just exist in Cleveland. She recently formed the social enterprise, Artocene, to spread arts therapy to hospitals across the country and throughout the world.
“The need to direct human emotions at a time of human uncertainty is very ubiquitous and people really appreciate it when it comes from the caregivers,” Fattorini tells Fast Company. ““It’s about teamwork between artists, surgeons, architects, consultants, and investors together.”
And for people going through a tough time, sometimes a little touch of humanity is all that’s needed.
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Meet the Artist Turning One Man’s Trash into Another Man’s Home

When we call to mind the living conditions of the homeless, the images aren’t pleasant. We think of street corners and having to face the harsh weather conditions of every season. And while this is reality for most of those without homes, one man in San Francisco is working to change all of this.
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San Francisco has more than 6,000 people without homes within its city borders. And, despite the existence of shelters and temporary and subsidized housing, more than half still reside on the streets.
That’s why artist Gregory Kloehn is working to reverse this trend through his Homeless Homes Project.
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When on the streets, homeless people have to carry all of their belongings with them, which can be cumbersome and difficult to protect. So, Kloehn is making mobile homes, which are safe and private.
With these residences, the homeless can now sleep, wash and store their belongings without worry. While the homes range in size and design, they have three main things in common: they’re small, mobile and made from someone’s trash.
That’s right, in order to gather the materials to build the homes, Kloehn goes dumpster diving. He uses anything — showers, storage, seating, bike reflectors, and washing machine windows — to make the perfect home.
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When designing the homes, Kloehn works to ensure that they are compact and flexible. Amenities include adaptability to rain or sun, as well as the ability to double as a vendor cart, allowing the resident to earn an income.
While creating a rent-free option for the homeless to help them avoid the high cost of living in San Francisco was a concern, Kloehn had another goal in mind. Ultimately, these homes are instilling pride and dignity in the homeless. With a place to call their own, the homeless no longer need to be embarrassed — a vital key in getting their lives back on track.
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This Record Label is Rocking Indianapolis

When thinking of musical hotspots, Indianapolis is certainly not the first city that comes to mind — especially when it comes to indie music. But one little record label is kickstarting the arts scene in the Crossroads of America — and providing a boost to the economy, too.
Asthmatic Kitty Records got its start in 1999 when it launched the music of the experimental small scene happening in Holland, Michigan. At the time, the primary artist was co-owner and singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens.
At the time, Asthmatic Kitty Records was headquartered in Lander, Wyoming. But as the label grew, it needed a manager, so San Diego resident and graduate Michael Kauffman came on board in 2001. In 2005, he moved the label to Indianapolis where it continued to grow and expand. Soon, Asthmatic Kitty Records was a global organization with employees in not just the U.S., but England, too.
With so many music hubs in the country, why Indianapolis? First of all, the low cost of living made it easier for the label to function — something which might not have happened in New York. Second, according to Kauffman, “there seemed to be a real exciting, embracing community in Indianapolis and an influx of cultural things within the city.”
That open community is precisely what made Kauffman see the move as an opportunity to “make a cultural impact on [Indianapolis].” From there, it just became a matter of engaging it.
The label began signing local Indianapolis acts, offering advice to others in the music scene and organizing local musical evenings. It began an informal partnership with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and helped create an “Unusual Animals” pop-up art gallery.
Asthmatic Kitty continued to work with the community, when, in 2011, it helped host a screening event of Gary Hustwit’s film Urbanized. Hustwit attended, and the day expanded to include various speakers discussing Indianapolis and urbanization. The end result: the start of We Are City – a virtual think-tank run by Asthmatic Kitty employee John Beeler who twice a week sends out an email to 1,200 Indianapolis residents discussing urban action.
The label’s influence continued to expand when Indianapolis hosted the Super Bowl in 2012. Kauffman worked to create a showcase of local bands for the festivities, while Beeler established The Music Council, which aims to influence city policies to help expand the music scene and is composed of members of music blogs, indie labels, the chamber of commerce, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and various education groups.
All of this work has not gone unnoticed by citizens and the local government. City officials are increasingly looking to this former little label for help in bringing in young professionals to expand the urban scene.
Clearly, this “little label that could” is not just a force to be reckoned with in the music industry, but it’s a great unifying force for the city of Indianapolis itself.
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