Category: Finding life direction

Throwback Thursday

  
Every successful musician has a history and usually that history is made up of important people who have helped inspire, shape and teach techniques that natural talents will eventually shape and mold into their own unique musical voice. 

When Emerson was about 10 years old he had such a teacher. I don’t know exactly the history of how they discovered him, but my parents found a young man in Steubenville, Ohio who was giving guitar instructions. That is when Pandel Collaros came into our lives.

I personally have never met Pandel and I don’t know what kind of student Emerson was, or just how long he took lessons, but this young man, Pandel, gave him a start by teaching him the basics of playing a guitar. 

It was wasn’t until I started the Emerson Hart and Tonic News Facebook page that I began thinking about all of the people who were responsible for helping Emerson along the way. That included Pandel. Curious as to what happened to this young man, I searched the Internet and finally found him thirty-five years after those first guitar lessons. And I was not surprised that Pandel has done very well for himself, too. He has not abandoned his love for teaching, nor his music.

Pandel is now a musician and Assistant Professor of music at Bethany College in West Virginia. He teaches music theory, aural skills, audio recording, and popular style guitar music, both acoustic and electric. He is also the founder and director of the Bethany College Rock Ensemble and performs frequently in a variety of area venues.
 

Pandel is a member of the Emerson Hart and Tonic News page. I hope to eventually meet the man who gave my son his first guitar lessons. On this Throwback Thursday I want to thank him for sharing his love of music and great teaching skills, not only to young musicians as Emerson, but to the many students at Bethany College who he has inspired by his love of music and to let him know it’s good to play it forward. As a musician one doesn’t have to be a platinum awarded artist for your life to have meaning. His life has mattered.   His life has mattered. 

Copyright Sandra Hart©. All Rights Reserved

Home Is Where The Heart Is

  

I was born with an extra chamber in my heart. OK. That’s not exactly the truth. I just have love for three places where I can hang my hat and call home. Period. 

Some of us are happy wanders with a pack on our backs and home is our wanderlust. Some of us are gypsies at heart who pick up and can only live for a short time in one particular place. Then there are those like me and maybe you. We are nesters. I am a nester.

 When I am living on the water it’s the sea inside of me that makes my heart beat. When I am living in the tropical sun it’s the white sandy beaches and swaying palms that warms my heart. Then there is Chelsea. Chelsea makes my creative heart crave to do just that. Every time I’m in Chelsea I long to be back in the theater and back into acting. 

Many mornings in Chelsea I awakened at 4 o’clock to be on the set by six. Night after night, I have taken cab rides home at 1 o’clock in the morning from the theater district, both exhilarated and tired to the bone. The indoor sets for Law and Order were just three blocks away at the Chelsea Piers and many streets shoots were right here in our Chelsea neighborhood where producer, Dick Wolfe lived. It was a good time in my life. It’s not a big revelation nor secret to anyone that it always is better when you’re doing what you love.  

  

I have often had script reads here in our Chelsea apartment with fellow actors. Back in 1999, I wrote my memoir, BEHIND THE MAGIC MIRROR, on a word processor. I did it right here, warmed by the light streaming through our ivy covered windows overlooking the gardens of London Terrace.  All the while unknowingly inspired by the ghosts of numerous Chelsea authors. 
  

The Chelsea Hotel is just a block away going east from here. One must take a deep breath before diving into this list of Chelsea Hotel writers: Mark Twain, Arthur C. Clarke, William S. Burroughs, Leonard Cohen, Jack Kerouac, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Wolfe, Arthur Miller, Edgar Lee Masters, Brendan Behan and so many others, not to mention all of the musicians who have lived and died there. 

I think most of us are a little schizophrenic in our likes and wants. Sometimes to survive economically we have to have a 9-to-5 existence that is not exactly us and we have dreams of another life we would like to live. Take it from this over-fifty woman,  “Don’t let those dreams die.” There are hours in your life away from the mundane where you can pursue your dreams if you just do it. It is up to you to make it happen.

Martin Luther said, “I have a dream.” He was not alone. Of course as individuals we each have our own dreams. Both you and I may have different dreams. Right now I’ve added a return to acting to my bucket list for next summer, but while we are still here we should each work hard to see our bucket lists fulfilled. Let your dreams awaken. Don’t let them die with life-long regrets. It is never to late.
Copyright Sandra Hart©. All Rights Reserved. 

EMPTY NEST SYNDROME

( Author Note: As former Romper Room Teacher and Pittsburgh CBS affiliate anchor, my children began their lives with Romper Room and Mr. Rogers as their ‘normal’ family. We relocated with my late husband to New Jersey 43 years ago, but no escaping for them – their friends here in New Jersey always remembered me as the lady on Romper Room.)

Growing Wings Of Their Own

It has almost been 20 years since one of my children took his sisters out from under the ‘Romper Room Mom’ shadow they had been living under for most of their lifetime. A new dimension was added to our lives and nothing would ever be the same again.

In 1996 my Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey singer/songwriter son, Emerson Hart, and his band Tonic released their first album, Lemon Parade, which rocketed to multi-platinum status and garnered him awards, including the Billboard Award for the #1 most played song on rock radio.

What followed in the ensuing 19 years would be world tours, six Tonic albums, two Grammy Nominations, ASCAP Award, movie soundtracks, two successful solo albums and concerts in war zones entertaining our American troops – even being knocked off of his feet by a bomb blast while the band was staying at one of Sodom Hussein’s Palaces in Iraq.

Springsteen. Bon Jovi. Both New Jersey icons, were already firmly established within the 80’s Rock frenzy by the time Emerson and Tonic came along. But the ‘new kid’ on the block from New Jersey, the late ’90’s talent entry, came into the game like gangbusters when music tastes were were changing. Emerson was on the tail end of Rock’s biggest roll, but he and Tonic have survived.

So have his sisters. Each of them with their own quiet, or not so quiet victories growing up and out from under the ‘Romper Room Mom’ memories.

So a toast from parents to our children and their victories growing up and out from under our wings. A toast for 20 more quiet and maybe not so quiet years!

Eliminate The Negative

  
This weekend I asked myself with all the negativity in the world assaulting us from every electronic and wireless gadget attached to our digits, or in front of our faces, what should I blog about this week? What should I tell people to help them to reduce their stress? What can I do to relieve some of my stress? 

 My reply in my own head to myself was to stop – put down my iPhone and turn off the television. Now that’s cheeky advice I thought, knowing how I have been Mrs. News Junkie personified most of my life. How personally I react to everything that’s going on in the world from war to kidnapping to the stock market falling precipitously, ISIS murders and child-abuse. Never ending gloom. And the politicians on both sides! Heaven help us.

Of course a forever withdraw from the worst in the world is not practical, but it sure wouldn’t hurt for a few days, or even a week. Wasn’t it Deepak Chopra who said the same thing? The peace of mind I would have not being bombarded with negative and horrific news about the grand transgressions of the human race every waking moment of my day. It would be refreshing.  

 Most of us are sponges that can’t help but absorb negative energy when we feel the stress of a world that seems to have gone all wrong. I think today I’m going to take my own advice and see how I feel in a few days. 

If you are up to a challenge, come along with me to the land of ‘political and world news’ free. 

Let’s spend our time counting our blessings, walking in the woods, hugging our children and sitting surrounded by nature reading a good book in hand. Add a layer of background music that makes us remember how lucky we are to be in the here and now. “Actuate the positive, eliminate the negative…”

Copyright by Sandra Hart. All Rights Reserved.

  

Why Read To Your Child?

  
As early as I can remember reading and books have always been a part of my life. Growing up on a farm far away from all of my neighbors when I was young provided me time to use my imagination through the stories in the books that I read.  The complete tales of Charles Dickens,  the Bible, and Bible stories that were brought to the farm by the Jehovah’s Witnesses traveling the  backcountry roads delivering their message. Any of the books that I could find on the dusty bookshelves on my grandfather’s farm – I read them all.  Each of these stories within the pages of the books made me feel less lonely and took me on adventures that I could live and gave me friends that I didn’t have. 

I credit those early days of reading with developing  both tools that I’ve used my entire life; the ability to use my imagination and the ability to express myself.   Together these skills have allowed me to live a more creative and successful life. 

I do hope parents won’t be caught up with today’s technology  that makes it too easy to bother to stop and spend quality time with their children  with a real book with words weaving stories that will help them express themselves throughout their lives. Words and how to use them will prove to be one of the strongest platforms in their lives.  Ever.

* Please click on the link attached to ‘Ever.’ To watch a short video that fortifies my thoughts.

Copyright Sandra Hart©. All rights reserved.

  
 

Kudzu I Am Just Not That Into You

 
This morning I put on my African safari anti-bug clothing and went out the back door to our hillside that has grown into a waist-high thick green mess. 
Weedwhacker in hand I started getting my aerobic exercise by chopping through the brush along the ocean. The pesky Japanese Kudzu vine is choking my dogwoods and native mountain laurel on that side of the property. The last two seasons I have had to tear it away and sever the stems only to come home in the spring and see it thriving again. Hello Kudzu. It just won’t die.  
So my day started first with carving a path at the back of the acreage that our rainy summer has turned into a Japanese jungle, then returning to the house and next getting on a step stool to kneel on the top of our washing machine. While practically standing on my head with a wrench on one hand I fixed a leaky cold water hose with the other without flooding the kitchen, so that I can do the mountain of towels and sheets my family left me with this week. I wonder. How on earth did my life end up like this?
I remarried a man more than 30 years ago who should have taken over these masculine chores, but who could have guessed that there are men who can’t fix things. How did I know at the time although he was good at making money and controlling the TV remote, that’s just about it. That’s as far as his helpful expertise goes.  
Now you say that’s not really a bad thing, financial responsibity is positive, that’s a good thing. Okay. I agree. I am grateful for that. But he’s also very good at not wanting to spend it when his talented wife can do it for free. And for me that has not been such a great thing because I must be just like him. My labor via my children flew the coop years ago, I don’t subscribe to Angie’s List, so if I can do it, why hire someone? 
When I am here at the shore with all of these equations in place, unless I am at my computer writing, that’s how you will usually find me – with a hammer, paint brush, vacuum, rake, or on my knees upside down trying to fix the washing machine.   

Maybe not too many of my younger readers are familiar with Ralph Edwards and his early 40’s radio, then his television reality program from the ’50’s “This Is Your Life”?  
For better or worse, this is mine:

HUSBAND: HI, Honey. How was your day? The beach was beautiful. You should have come. Here are my towels.
WIFE: Oy vey!  
Copyright Sandra Hart©. All rights Reserved.
  

My Bag Of Marbles

  

(My grandson lost his paternal grandfather yesterday and has flown here with my daughter today to say his farewells.  My heart grieves, too, for those he has left behind. All fathers, grandfathers, though not our own, leave an empty place in the sky when they fall.)
The longer I am on this earth the more convinced I am it is no secret that my life, your life, our lives are full of ups and downs, hills and valleys, joys and sorrows. Each of these elements, or ingredients, are what makes up existence for all of us. 
 Every day is a new challenge, a new joy, a new sorrow and a new surprise. Our lives are just big bags of marbles with everything rolling around inside our bag. And whatever is in there, whatever is noxious or sweet, whatever falls in our laps, we either learn to deal with it, take away something positive from it, have fun with it, appreciate it, or have a miserable existence. 
I know those for whom Life moves on day by day, passing them – not feeling or seeing. The good. The bad. They see and feel nothing. They are just walking through.  
Please, don’t ever let me be one of those. Let me roll around in my bag bumping into happiness and joy and find all the good marbles in my bag that are positive and uplifting. But if perchance I bump into sorrow and heartbreak when my bag is shaken up a bit let me know that there will be other marbles of good cheer and happier days ahead.  
And Dear Creator, please let me be able to recognize the difference in loving and understanding every marble that comes my way. I don’t want to just roll through.
Copyright Sandra Hart 2015. All Rights Reserved
  

 DANCING AT THE LOTUS

  

She heard the sounds of the piano stridently rising above the restaurant chatter and began to squirm in her seat. Whenever the music started it was hard to sit still. She looked at her parents busy with their menus, then over to her brother who was attempting to make a paper airplane from a cocktail napkin and slowly slid off her seat and ran toward the dance floor. 

 She loved music and the sound always made her want to move and swirl and swing around the floor with her arms open wide. She couldn’t help it. Something inside of her four-year old self just made her do it because it was fun and made her happier than hugging the cat or eating ice cream. Swinging and dancing and moving to the music until she was dizzy was out of her control. It was just what she loved to do on Sunday afternoons at The Lotus.

It was 1943 in Washington, D.C.. The Lotus restaurant was popular among military and government personnel during the war years. The Washington Daily News called it “a sort of a poor man’s Stork Club where the average Joe can put on a dog without pulling more than a five spot out of his billfold.” 

The restaurant occupied the top level of a two-story 1926 building and her little dancing legs looked forward to those stairs each week when her family lunched at The Lotus. It was not the food for which she had visions in her head, it was the music. Most of all it was the music that made her love those stairs.

In movies of the 1930s and 1940s, supper clubs were portrayed as places where big stars and popular bands such as Glenn Miller’s played, but far more common were the sort that hosted local musicians. Still, patrons dressed up and enjoyed a time out, dining and dancing, and maybe a floor show, without spending a fortune.

 Located in the capital, The Lotus got the best bands of the era and she got to dance out on that shiny floor with them all. Twirling in and out between the soldiers and their girls taking that last dance of leave, or when she was held in her daddy’s arms, the thrill was always there. Music was in her heart and she just had to move and be a part of the magic she felt.

This particular Sunday she had the dance floor for a few minutes all by herself and she swirled and dipped to the live music with her curls flying in the air and was just having the best of time before her father interrupted her short solo by leading her back to the table. It was also on this particular Sunday that her life could’ve gone in another direction. A talent scout from Hollywood just happened to be lunching at the Lotus that afternoon and thought that this little dancing girl should go to Hollywood for a screen test. After all Shirley Temple was a big star and he thought he saw something with the same star quality in this little curly haired girl who loved to dance. 

Her parents said politely to the Hollywood gentleman, “Thank you very much, but no.” They didn’t want their daughter to be in the movies. That was the end of that, as far as her parents were concerned, but certainly not the end of her love for music, or dancing, or just being herself. 

The author Virginia Woolf once said, “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.” 

 And so, my friends, that was my life during the war when I was four. And in the end, it turned out, I did it anyway. All by myself. My way. Written large.

Copyright Sandra Hart 2015. All rights reserved. 

  

Twitter 🚫

“You’re a mean man, Mr. Grinch!” said Dr. Seuss. I believe if Twitter had been around in the days of Mr. Grinch he would’ve been brought to his knees by Twitter feed. 
Full disclosure. I have a Twitter account. I basically just post my blog there and I don’t interact very often by tweeting with people that I’m supposed to be following. But the other day I became more aware of Twitter after Bobby Jendel the governor of Louisiana put his hat in the ring for the Republican primary candidacy. All of the sudden the Twitter feed blue up with #bobbyjindalissowhite tweets that showed up on my Facebook page because a successful Indian actor friend of mine was more or less keeping the mean spirited tweet thread alive. Really mean tweets. It seemed that each tweet was trying to top the other one with ridiculous hate and bullying. It really took my breath away. Wow! 
Where was all of this expressed hate coming from, I wondered? Have I been hiding under a rock all this time missing the spew that is flowing through tweets? Tweeting has become mother bird sticking her bill down our throats and regurgitating everything. 
 I’m Internet savvy but I wasn’t prepared for this. What has happened to us a supposed civilized society. Where is all of this hate coming from on Twitter. 
It was not only the tweets about Bobby Jendal not being Indian enough, that was just the beginning…..as my Twitter investigation ‘tweaked’ I moved on to other threads of tweets. So many tweet threads were caustic and mean spirited. Politicians, celebrities, news organizations, no one one was immune.  
Growing up I remember my father constantly telling my brother and I that if we couldn’t say something nice about someone, or to someone, don’t say anything. Once the words are out there, they never can be taken back. You can say you are sorry a million times and have regrets about things said in haste, but the reality of the life of hateful words never dies once they leave you. 
The worst reality of the hateful tweets is that our thoughts are now not just one-on-one, they are thrown into the Twitter universe forever and take on a life of their own. It is also a sad reality that my grandchildren are growing up with the rest of us adults that are in danger of being desensitized to this hate atmosphere that is quickly becoming the new normal. Whatever users are thinking is twittered without filters or sensitivity to the receiver’s feelings. 
So many things in the world seem to be going askew today, away from the cultural mores of the past and I can’t say I see any of these trends being positive. True I am an advocate for social networking, surely I use several platforms a lot. But I think we should all swallow our tweets if we have nothing positive to say when adding to the Twitter feed. As I see it, Twitter is in danger of becoming a comfortable bully pulpit for some who enjoy spewing hate speech. We just might be tweeting down a very slippery slope.
Copyright Sandra Hart. All rights reserved.

A LOVE LETTER TO ALL MY DOO BEES

“Romper, Bomper, Stomper ……”
(Yesterday I went for my annual checkup with my primary physician. At the end of my visit he looked at me and smiled, “When you looked into that Magic Mirror and said my name, bet you didn’t know you were making your doctor happy!” Honestly he was right. At the time I had no idea the impact the TV show Romper Room would have on the 60’s and 70’s children. To add to this resurgence of Romper Room thought, last week on my Facebook feed there I was with 176, 602 thousand likes and growing by the minute. The Do You Remember site posted a picture of me while doing a Romper Room Show back in the 70’s. Don’t know where they got the picture, but that posting reminded me of an article I wrote several years ago for an Internet magazine that has been reprinted over 5 thousand times. Never realized there were so many Romper Room fans out there!)
A LOVE LETTER TO ALL MY DOO BEES
It seems as though in the last few years all those terribly terrific children who grew up with us on Romper Room are now ruling the world and moving and shaking in all-important circles of life.
Those who grew up in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s are today’s power brokers of influence. The are now the bankers, brokers, directors. writers, rock stars and CEO’s of corporations. But they all have the Big Question for me when I am lucky enough to meet one of them. “Why didn’t you say my name in your Magic Mirror?”
When the January 23, 1997 issue of Rolling Stone revealed to the world that my son, Emerson Hart, lead vocalist and songwriter of the band Tonic, had a mother who was the Romper Room lady, I could no longer hide in anonymity. I was dragged from underneath the rock I had been hiding since the 70’s. Since then I have been forced to account for my sins.
Some of these wonderful men and women I have met at my son’s concerts, either thank me, or admonish me for not saying their name in my Magic Mirror. When I explain to them that I tried my very best to name each and every one I could in the short time allotted at the end of the show to ‘see’ all of my Do Bees, but because of the volumes of mail I received each day, I couldn’t acknowledge as many as I would have liked, they pretend to understand, but they are still not satisfied. So if you are reading this and I didn’t say your name, please forgive me.
‘Romper Bomper, Stomper Boo. Tell me, tell me true. Magic Mirror, tell me today did all my friends have fun at play? I see Michelle and John and Bill and…oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you all these years. I see YOU!”
Excerpt from Read Between My Lines by Sandra Hart ©  
(Sandra Hart is the former Ms. Sandra of the children’s television program Romper Room and is a working actress, award-winning author of “Behind The Magic Mirror” and “Places Within My Heart”and is a motivational speaker and blogger. She lives in New Jersey and South Beach with her husband and is “Nana” to four fantastic grandchildren.)