Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 31

BUSINESS COMICS CLASSIFIED MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 183 THE HARTFORD COURANT D1 Helping VAndDeath Shall Have IMo Dominion TheHeads Get Fun Percussionist Tuned To Rhythm of Group By PATRICK HENNESSEY DAVID CROSSOFJ Gram was dying. Still, the sun strode on. In the deep heat of mid-July, the fan whirred. But she was. in her own A the story goes, legendary guitarist Jimi nendnx was fired from Little Richard's backup band for divert home and smiled Merle Nacht Agoraphobics Learn To Defuse Fear of Being Away From Home I such a smile when she saw me: 'fi her teeth white, and all her own, belying the 94 years of life behind her.

She was but a mile from the house, close by the docks in Port- land, Maine, in which she was born. And all about her was the v. air of that child to which we're Mold we each return. She wore a powder blue night-' gown with a delicate lace On the wall above the bed hung the Madonnna with Child she was given as a wedding present by her mother in 1919. Her rosary was within reach.

''How you doing, Gram?" I asked. She hesitated, sorting the options. "Not so good," she whis- pered and added, "but I'm all right." For the sake of lis both, she wanted the truth and the lie. is part of what we call alive. But her breathing was labored and the hollows of her blue, glazed eyes were deep, beyond wisdom.

Still, her strong hands 'gestured, the wedding ring and that smile how she worked at it for me. Kate, her daughter and my -aunt, came and asked if it wasn't fl time for a nap. Gram agreed, but not before inviting me to the fCookout at Kate's "if it's nice come Sunday." When is it we quit on thoughts of tomorrow, I won-dered. I went to the kitchen, where 'Kate and I talked, but a little around it; the dying, that is. We I tried to savor what Gram's life might have meant, but found our- jijselves awkward with that, feeling tsome sacrilege in speaking as if she were already dead.

I stum- By JULIE LEW Couranc Stcff Writer ing attention from the egocentric rock 'n' roll singer. But while the young Hendrix was punished for his brashness, New Haven percussionist Steve Scales found himself in more of a good-natured stage-stealing controversy during a recent tour with The Talking Heads. "I used to take my shirt off every night," he said during a pre-tour conversation at the New Haven jazz club, Ernie B's. "The lights really make me hot. I start sweating, and if I'm not really comfortable, I can't So Gary Kurfirst, the band's manager! says to me, 'Don't take your shirt I was going to stop, but Tina Weymouth, bass player says, 'Take your shirt off.

Every night. The girls love The addition of Scales and other soul-music based players in 1980 altered both the band's stage appearance and its vinyl product. What began as a sparsely orchestrated, new-wavish quartet composed of four Harvard and Rhode Island School of Design students in 1977 has become a nine-place, two-tone funk band. Led by perpetual-motion-machine Scales, whose credits include stints with Grace Jones and Nona Hendryx, the Heads extended family members have even helped funk up lead vocalist David Byrne's rigid onstage "They enjoy our exuberance, our cele-bracy," says Scales, who will perform with The Talking Heads at 8 p.m. today at the New Haven Coliseum.

"The Talking Heads are no longer considered that artsy, straight-up. David is no longer 'Psycho II or whatever you want to call him." Scales feels the band's mixture of rock, funk and African rhythms is helping bridge the gap between various cultures. However, he admits there still are some worlds to conquer. "It's really funny when I go back to where I grew up in Brooklyn N.Y. I.

They (friends) say, 'On, you play punk rock Scales sneers. "We're not playing punk rock music but the label, that's all they know." The wiry, 32-year-old 6-footer says he was on the verge of leaving music in 1980 when a phone call changed his plans. "The music business quit me for awhile," he says, leaning his arm against the mirrored panels on the wall next to his booth. "I was just enrolling in a business school here, and Busta Jones ex-Heads' bassist called me." 'Hey Scales says, imitating a raspy, ultra-hip voice. "'You know, like I want you to come down, I want you to play with The Heads, man, The Well, I didn't know who The Talking Heads were from Adam! I got this wild man on the phone saying, 'Blah, blah, blah you know.

And I was like 'Yeah, See Percussionist, Page D5 ebecca stood in front of the store in Bloomfield's Winton-bury Mall, trying to decide it 'bled towards some acknowledge- 1 A. .1 V.l.l. 1 1L He says his experience is that about 90 percent of his patients are women. Morgan thinks women are more likely to be agoraphobics because society made it acceptable for them to remain at home. "Men, by and large, have to earn a living," he says.

"They tend to conquer the anxiety. They might have it, but they didn't get phobic. It was a rare man who got phobic enough to be called agoraphobic." He puts some of the blame for the affliction oh changes in society increased mobility, technological advances, economic difficulties, the frag-v. men ted family and the diminishing role of religion all of which leave people feeling less secure about themselves and their surroundings. Morgan says one theory is that agoraphobia is caused by the body's abnor- mal release of certain hormones.

An- other theory focuses on the psychological effects of traumas on people who are more sensitive than most, and become more anxious or frightened. Although agoraphobia may strike anyone, most patients share similar characteristics, says JoAnn Antonelli, a therapist at the Phobia Clinic at White Plains Hospital Medical Center in White Plains, N.Y. "They tend to have low images of themselves. They are very sensitive, highly imaginative and creative. But they tend to take this ability in the wrong direction," she said.

Antonelli, incidentally, says only about half, the agoraphobics she is in contact with are women. Agoraphobics share their experiences at support group. Page, D5 joined a group of fellow agoraphobics at the phobia and panic disorders clinic at Hartford's Mount Sinai Hospital. It was during a field trip with the group a few weeks ago that Rebecca was able to walk into the prison store by herself. The Mount Sinai clinic offers agoraphobics individual and group treatment for 10 to 12 weeks.

Harry E. Morgan, the psychiatrist who runs the says about One-third of a group won't need further treatment after these clinic sessions. Another third will come back from time to time for "maintenance" sessions, and the remaining third will need longer treatment. He says the therapy will not help about 2 percent. Morgan says, the treatment's focus is on "relearning, and not to become avoidant." The treatment includes field trips, where agoraphobics encounter or do the things that cause them anxiety.

Morgan says most phobia clinics tend to take groups to shopping malls because they contain many things people are afraid of elevators, crowds, escalators and shopping. Morgan says it's possible for anyone to develop a phobia. Recent studies show that 10 percent of the population may suffer from agoraphobia at any given time. The actual number may be higher because not all phobic patients seek help or realize they are victims of this debilitating illness, Morgan says. whether to enter it She peered through the window and her heart beat faster.

The store, which sold items made by state prison inmates, had long intrigued Rebecca. It wasn't so much the objects as the prisoners that fascinated her people locked up in small spaces. It gave her shivers to think about it. But Rebecca knew she was going in this time. She made her hand turn the knob.

The door opened. She forced her feet to walk in. She was inside. Rebecca looked around. It seemed a long time before she heard a woman's voice ask her if she needed help.

But she couldn't bring herself to look at the woman or say anything. She finally found the strength to turn around and leave. Rebecca, who is in her 40s, suffers from agoraphobia fear of being away from a secure place or person. The problem has been shrinking her world since she was 13 years old. She agreed to be interviewed for this story on the condition that her real name not be used.

Unlike some agoraphobics, who so fear leaving their homes that they never get help, Rebecca had gone to clinics, doctors and support groups for years. But none seemed to help, and her condition worsened to the point that even her house seemed threatening. Then she iiieni ui rv.au: care iur uer inuiii- er. "It's been a 'privilege," she I said, and left it at that. I returned and sat by Gram, 'working hard even in sleep.

As shriveled as she was, she seemed innocent, serene, as if the years had taken no toll. But we knew how the losses had accumulated. 1" Since the turn of the century, there probably hadn't been a dec-t'ade in which someone dear had not been taken, from her, and tragically: her brother Patrick Hennessey is a free-lance who lives in New Haven. J3t 23 v- -t, -Jf 'drowned off a lumber schooner, her sister lost to diphtheria; her last son killed by an automobile; first daughter, by cancer, her husband, within months of retir- ing from 50 years on the railroad, -'dead of a heart attack; another a son paralyzed for life, a victim of 0 stroke. 7 I But she'd had some "go and get rto it," as she referred to it in oth-C ers, when not calling it "lickety-t larup." This, and her deep-throat-; 1 ed laugh, her steady kindness and i' her simple, unswerving Wtlwien-t'tury moral code had kept the younger generations with her.

When I left Gram, she was still i sleeping, fitfully, one hand raised in the air as if in benediction. went to the upland pond and sat in the heat of the early evening by the stone sluice of the 1 old mill. It was a place of moun-- i tain laurel, dragon flies and a SOUS'; tary bending birch. Jp? A humming bird caromed be-u tween hanging moments above the brook. In the marsh grass of the pond's shallows, a muskrat meandered, quick-dipping to feed.

Deaths often sustain life. The quiet dying of an old women can nourish us, providing spiritual sustenance, suggesting ways of living that might allow us to be smiling years later. It occurred to me that Gram's great gift was not so much her memory (which was long) but her ability to forget, when the memories were too much. The poet Rilke came to me, suggesting yet another discipline: patience for the memories to turn, until these "have turned to blood within us, to glance and ges-fture, nameless and no longer to be a distinguished from ourselves." S. Then, perhaps, before the breathing conies hard, we can get beyond simply staying alive.

1 Harriet Crozier lived until July 18. A JAZZY FINISH Tenor saxophonist Junior Cook and trumpeter Bill Hardman, two perennial favorites at the Hartford Festival of Jazz, return for an encore performance tonight at the weekly free jazz bash in Bushnell Park. As usual, It should be well worth the trek to the park to hear these two highly skilled practitioners of hard bop. Tonight also marks your last chance to catch one of these free concerts presented under the aegis of the Community Renewal Team. With Cook and Hardman on tap, this season's finale ought to be a grand one, perhaps even the festival's best offering of the summer.

Cook, a veteran of combos led by Horace Silver and Elvin Jones, is as cozy with a steaming up-tempo piece as he is with a slow, sultry ballad. His trumpet partner's bright, brassy lines have graced groups led by Silver, Art Blakey and Charles Mingus. Over the years, Cook and Hardman have appeared frequently at the city's annual jazz festival, as well as at the 880 Club, the South End's jazz boite. Also performing in the Cook-Hardman Quintet will be pianist Mickey Tucker, drummer Leroy Williams and bassist Paul Brown. Downbeat time is 7:30 p.m.

The opening act will be a local all-star band, which goes on stage at 6. In case of rain, the concert will be indoors at the West Indian Social Club, 3340 Main St OWEN McNALLY Guthrie was such an affectionate classic of the late '60s that people still first think of Alice when they think of Arlo. He is also the son of Woody Guthrie. Shenandoah might now be a more relevant association, for that is the name of Guthrie's band, which he has been touring with for the past several years. Both Shenandoah and Guthrie will be performing at Toad's Place, 300 York New Haven, on Tuesday night Guthrie is expected to be on stage by about 11 p.m.

Tickets are $7.50. FRANK RIZZO SHAPING UP Their name comes from a fungus that seeks, out light by bending and twisting as it grows. The dance troupe Pilobolus, based in Washington, formed in the early '70s. Its members proceeded to bend and twist into seemingly impossible shapes as they explored how bodies could fit together sculpturally. The result was athletic, acrobatic and even humorous.

Now, the original members of Pilobolus act as choreographers, and a company of men and women who have been trained in classical and modern dance perform their works, which focus more on dancing than sculptural acrob itics. You can see how this dance company has evolved Thursday at 8 p.m. in Hartford's Bushnell Park as Peace Train's free Summerdance '83 series continues. The program will feature the following works: "Molly's Not Dead," "Bonsai," and "Day Two." Rain date is Friday. Summerdance '83 is sponsored by Cigna Corp.

JOCELYN McCLURG Daniel Ketman BILL HARDMAN MISS MANNERS Impersonally Yours PARENT AND CHILD Let Him Pick Own Toys SONG OF THE '60S He was first thrust into the public eye with "Alice's a long narrative song that was also very funny. The song by Arlo David Crosson is an editor on 'he Courant 's national desk. 1.