Scrapbook(Page four)News and Views from the family | ||
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Celebrity SectionGinger (Arnold) Ostle accompanies
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on her visit to the Daewoo factory during her recent state visit
to South Korea. At the time, Ginger was Design Director of Daewoo's European Unit at Worthing in
Sussex, England and was commuting there weekly from his home near Frankfurt in Germany. Extract from the Drummers celebrate community with their creationsBy Melody Martinsen - Acantha editor On a gray March day with a raw wind whipping their already roughened cheeks and hands, the ranch folk of Bynum gathered with children and townspeople outside the school to sear their brands into West African drums, built with their children's own small hands.What they realized as they gathered around the warmth of the branding pot, however, was that their children had not only built 12 cedar-wood, goat-skin Ashiko drums that will echo in the four-room country school for decades to come. They had also built a sense of community that stretched from generation to generation and melded all those who supported the school project into one unified group, celebrating the past, the present and the future. "I think they really built a sense of community," Bynum Elementary School teacher Katie Vandolah said after the three-day workshop concluded. Rancher John Ostle, a graduate of Bynum Elementary, whose children, Nick and Darlene, are now students there, said, "It was exciting to be able to sponsor something that will be there for generations." "I was really surprised at how many people were there," he said. "Really it was like the whole community was there." David Marsolek oversaw the assembly of the drums from pre-cut pieces of cedar from western Montana and Northern Idaho. Students assembled three different sizes of drums, each encircled with four steel rings, decorated with complex polyester-blend rope knots, and topped with goat hide imported from Pakistan and other Middle Eastern nations. Nick Ostle, Bynum's only eighth grader, said after the workshop, "I think it's kind of cool because I have a brand on one of those drums that our family sponsored. It's going to be in the school for a long time. Bynum is where I grew up and where I've gone to school since kindergarten. It's going to be really important." He said the presenters impressed him with their willingness to try branding drums and working on drums with children. "It's going to stick with them too," he said of the experience. "Our community just kind of put it all together." Nick said the Bynum school kids are already excited about how they will get to use the drums in their spring music concert - what kind of rhythms and songs they'll perform and how they'll mix in other instruments like the Andean flutes. "I think it's going to be great," he said. His younger sister, Darlene, a sixth-grader, said she enjoyed doing the branding the most. "We all joined in and helped brand them," she said. Bynum Elementary School teacher Katie Vandolah, who participated in the adult workshop with her daughter, Ashley, said she realized then how much patience, strength and energy drum building takes. "All your energy is poured into your drum," she said. Ralph Paulus, a PAL board member, said on Monday that the adults built 14 drums during their workshop, and they responded to the work much the same as the youngsters. "The neatest thing ... was probably that there were from 10-year-old kids to my 86-year-old mom in the same room doing the same thing," Paulus said. "It appealed to that range of humanity." "I think there was a sense of community" that the adults took away from workshop, he said. "There was a sharing of the experience."
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