The Wonder of It All: The Beantown Swing Orchestra

By Cassandra Baptista

A boy and a girl swing dance like no one is watching. In reality, they are surrounded by people in the Boston Common on this warm summer evening. She wears a short polka-dotted dress, red lipstick, pearls and converse—an easy blend of old and new, much like the entertainment.

The Beantown Swing Orchestra performed in Boston’s backyard on Aug.7, and while the songs are old classics, the musicians’ average age is only 23. Singer John Stevens, 22, is the male vocalist for the 18-piece band. Stevens placed sixth in American Idol’s third season.

The orchestra performs classic arrangements from Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra. Couples dance in corners of the Common to "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", "Buona Sera" and "Come Fly With Me". People of all ages transform Boston’s backyard into a 1940s dance floor.

Life seems more romantic with this soundtrack, the sun setting on families eating dinner inches away from other families eating dinner. The music paints the scene in watercolors: card games, wicker picnic baskets and a little girl dancing in circles around her parents.

Stevens, a Berklee College of Music graduate, takes a few minutes between sets to talk music and his career.

Q: What are your upcoming plans?

A: Right now, we're working on a regional tour. I also am a radio DJ on WICN [90.5 FM, New England’s NPR Jazz and Folk Station].

Q: If you could perform with anyone, who would it be?

A: Paul McCartney. I really like his music, even post-Beatles. I’ve seen him perform twice.

Q:  So what music are you listening to now?

A: I’ve started to get into Mel Tormé. Of course, Paul McCartney. Barenaked Ladies.

Q:  If you could only listen to one album what would it be?

A: Oh, that’s too tough. Can we get back to it? (We don’t.)

Q: Okay, now some quick word associations. Michael Bublé?

A: A nice guy. I actually got the opportunity to meet him.

Q. Boston.

A: Fenway.

Q: Simon Cowell?

A:  Okay, uh (laughs). He’s actually a nice guy too. A good critic.

Q: Will you sing at my wedding?

A: Yes.

Q: Great, I’m going to hold you to it.

For more information on the Beantown Swing Orchestra, check out http://www.beantownswing.com/home.html

Reflections: What Courage Looks Like

I’m currently writing a series about the relationships between senior companions and their elderly clients for Ethos and Boston City Hall. This is also part of my new writing project in Boston, The Memory Initiative, www.memoryinitiative.com. In the meantime, I want to share some of my personal experiences with these fascinating people. By reflecting on their stories, I hope to make sense of my own. 

By Cassandra Baptista

There are moments when I’m sitting across from someone and I become overwhelmed with a quiet sense of sadness. I’m looking at this woman, who soon will be 92, and as happy as she seems, I want to cry. She talks about her life in New York City during the ‘40s, her encounters with famous people, her trips across the country, but despite this colorful life, there has been profound pain.

She touches on it briefly but keeps it vague (sometimes there’s no need for elaboration): “I’ve had a lot of tragedy in my life.” And in a bizarre way, I knew that already. Sometimes I think you can just feel that with people.

She seems genuinely excited to see me and I think to myself, "How often do you get visitors?  How often are they my age? What do you think when you look at me?” Without having to ask, she says, “You never think you’ll be this age.” But ever since I was a child, I’ve thought about it a lot.

I think I have a heightened sense of awareness that I will age, that I am aging, that one day I might be sitting at a table not unlike this one staring at a 21-year-old girl who seems to think she knows something, but knows nothing.

For all the talking and feeling I do, I struggle to pinpoint where my sadness for her comes from. Is it because she never married? Because she experienced so many deaths in her life? Because she navigated her way through this life largely by herself?

Inside I say to her, “You’re so brave.”

Lama Shop: The End of an Era

By Cassandra Baptista

The first day I met him was his last day in business.

“It’s all coming to end,” said Wongyal Norbu at the start of our conversation. The 54-year-old business man has owned his small Tibetan store, Lama Shop, on Newbury Street for 21 years. And today, he is carefully wrapping up old relics of a country he has never known.

Early Life

Norbu was born in Tibet—a country now under Chinese rule. But he has no recollection of his time there. As a toddler, he and his family moved to Nepal during Tibet’s transition into communism. Norbu said this experience influenced him greatly, especially witnessing his mother resilience. “She was a very strong woman,” Norbu added, “raising four children, fleeing to Nepal. She experienced a lot of suffering.”

Even though he left his motherland, Norbu said he enjoyed growing up in Nepal. “Life in Nepal is really good and cosmopolitan,” Norbu said. “There are so many different cultures to experience.”

In 1981, Norbu moved to California. There, he pursued his interest in languages. He is a linguist with five languages under his belt: English, Tibetan, Nepali, Newari and Hindi. After teaching and a brief career in landscaping, Norbu decided it was time for a change.

The Start of His Business

His close connection to his culture, appreciation for artisan work, and love of travel inspired Norbu to start his own business in 1989. His store sold original, hand-made items from craftsmen all over Asia.

“I knew so many people from Nepal who were crafts people,” said Norbu. “I have a close link to them.” While his daughters attended to customers, Norbu sat casually on a stool in the barren backroom that was divided by a Tibetan flag used as a makeshift door. One light hung overhead, providing a spotlight on the entrepreneur.

Here, a woman spins wool in a Tibetan carpet factory.

The faint scent of incense and the distant hum of music enveloped the small shop. Norbu explained how he journeyed to remote places to find unique pieces, visiting small villages in India where there are stone cutters.  The shop still had quite a few rare, valuable crafts on this last day of business, though now the items were discounted. There are hand-made, silver rings with real gems, rugs, and wooden stamps—all made from different families from different countries.

“Each time I go back to [the countries], I meet with the families,” said Norbu, who explained he paid the artisans upfront in full. “I’d visit and buy everything they had. It was a big deal for them because economically the countries were doing very badly.”

I asked him about the delicately crafted paper-lanterns piled in the corner. The lanterns are made with real pressed flower petals and ferns. He looked at them and immediately identified the family who made them. 

“The father was struggling,” he said. “Now, he can send his four kids to college. These people work with their hands and keep their families together. They can be proud.”

Sometimes, he said, he collected items in an effort to save them. Norbu recalled discovering that 100-year-old homes were being demolished in the Himalayas. These homes had intricate stone work, and Norbu could not imagine them destroyed.

“The only part of the old history I felt I could salvage were these little things,” Norbu said. “These things meant something to a lot of people, and I got to share that with customers.”

The End, The Beginning 

While he has enjoyed his business, Norbu is not too upset to close up shop. “It gives me the freedom to live a simple life,” Norbu said. “My two girls are not fully ready to take over the business, so it was an easy decision for me.”

Both his daughters Tenzin and Choesang, are teenagers born in America. But Norbu has made great strides to instill cultural values in his family. He wanted to make sure his children got to experience Nepali life, language and flavor.

“I took them back to live in Nepal for four years,” he said. “They went to British school because education is really important to me.” He hopes that one day his children will be able to travel and experience what he enjoyed.

The Tibetan collector follows two life mottos: “live life to the fullest,” and “try not to be attached.” “I try not to be attached to people, places and things,” Norbu explained. “A lot of suffering comes from attaching to those things.”

He said the American lifestyle is vastly different than the world he grew up in. “In America, we take things too seriously,” Norbu said. “I’ve seen people in the world who have so little material things, and yet have so little stress. They are content; they know how to live one day at a time.”

While he did not rule out restarting his business in the future, Norbu said for now he will continue his travels, collecting relics and stories that preserve his culture.

Clarence Washington: The Pursuit of Joy

By Cassandra Baptista

On one of the last warm Saturdays of the year, Clarence Washington, 74, rode his bike to his favorite spot in Boston, the Kelleher Rose Garden in the Back Bay Fens. Leaves and fallen rose petals rustled on the ground, as this Renaissance man shared a glimpse into his vibrant life.

He took a seat on a bench with a view of the Museum of Fine Arts—the launching pad for his paid scholarship to study art in Europe.

“Always, I am experimenting and discovering,” Washington said, as he took off his shoes and let the sun warm his feet. In his life, he has acted, written poetry, painted, and he currently teaches art at Tufts, but he considers himself mostly a singer and drummer. His shockingly blue eyes squinted as he stared at the sky. It is clear he is not easily defined by himself or by anyone else.

Washington laughs easily, but is guarded and protective over his history. Even the details of his birth are ambiguous—his birth certificate from West Roxbury bears no name. He explained a series of happenstances in his life: living next door to the inventors of the first stereo, traveling Europe with British royalty, seeing communist leader “the red flame”, and walking into a meeting held by Malcolm X.

But despite his broad range of experiences, Washington explains his life is at “ground zero”: he feels he is now more connected to himself and the world around him than ever before. His music, art and philosophy on life are strongly rooted in his spirituality. Washington pointed to a wilting rose and said, “What will happen to that rose after it falls down? It will regenerate.”

“In terms of life and death, I don’t believe in either. If there’s no life or death, no before or after, what there is is what you do with your now.”

He gestured with his hands, his fingers individually tied with rubber-bands, like little reminders, to strengthen his fingers for percussion. He tapped the back of the bench, demonstrating how he plays the conga.

Even though he feels secure with who he is now, Washington said he doesn’t claim to have it all figured out.

“I don’t know what my life was about,” Washington said, “but I know this much: joy is the one thing we are all searching for. Joy is a groove. Joy moves and expands like heat. You have to replenish it. Joy is it. Whatever you’re doing, ask yourself, ‘Are you having a good time?’ If you have joy, nothing will ever be against you.”