AnCan and The Marsh (well renown, long-established theater company with a large following in the Bay Area and venues in San Francisco and Oakland) collaborateevery 4th Wednesday of the month for Solo Arts Heal!
We are back with Solo Arts Heal, after a month off. Welcome June’s guest, Dan Baron!
Dan has been writing about social issues that impact people in underserved communities for more than 30 years. He writes content, grant proposals, and strategic communication plans for nonprofits, universities, and public agencies. He has also worked as a journalist. His work has mostly been about listening to the stories people tell about their lives as they advocate for better schools, safer communities, jobs, health care, and many other issues—including their basic human right to just be who they are.
Wait a minute… or more… Dan also realized long ago that he has many personal stories to tell, just like everyone else on the planet. He tells his life-changing story about being a 21-year-old college student overseas who suddenly has a manic episode. Dan is part of a growing community where people share stories that aim to be poignant, funny, bizarre, challenging, and real.
Dan shared his totally unexpected, way-up, way-down, bipolar experience as a college student in the 1980s—and how he has navigated his mental health journey since.
AnCan and The Marsh (well renown, long-established theater company with a large following in the Bay Area and venues in San Francisco and Oakland) collaborateevery 4th Wednesday of the month for Solo Arts Heal!
You’ll love April’s guest, Tara Lazar!
Street magic performer. Hog-calling champion. Award-winning ice sculptor. These are all things Tara Lazar has never been.
Instead, she writes quirky, humorous picture books where anything is possible. Tara has been, however, a champion adult figure skater, but because of primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), she now walks with a walker and drives with hand controls.
She can still figuratively skate, as seen in her book, Little Red Gliding Hood; put on a pair of detective gumshoes, as she did in 7 Ate 9: The Untold Story; and trek into the world of “fun and entertaining vocabulary building” for older kids in her most recent book, Absurd Words, which won a Golden Kite award from the Society of Children’s Books and Illustrators.
She is known by other kid lit writers for her blog, Writing for Kids (While Raising Them), and for hosting her annual Storystorm challenge that attracts more than 2,000 writers to come up with thirty picture book ideas in thirty days.
Tara read from her award-winning kid literature, but let’s be honest, can be enjoyed by kids of all ages!
I am writing with a very heavy heart to report the death of our dear Board Member, Advisory Board Member, Moderator, Participant and my good buddy, Herb Geller PhD G-d Rest His Soul.
The loss of dear Herb z”l is already reverberating around AnCan and will undoubtedly amplify as more learn of his demise. Herb touched many well beyond his Advanced Prostate Cancer ‘Brains Trust’, Moderators, Peers and Participants. The Blood Cancer group got to know him well when he attended regularly on behalf of his brother. The Pancreatic Cancer folks met him when he showed up for his next door neighbor. Our Men Speaking Freely Group loved and respected him for sharing his fears and concerns. Members of our Advisory Board got to interact with Herb as did Medical Academics and others who participated in AnCan’s research projects.
Here are a few of the words I already see bandied around –
“kind, smart, caring, thoughtful”
“My heart is heavy and I’m at a loss for words. There is something I’m feeling that I can’t express sufficiently”
“this is the deepest hurt since we lost Dominic (2015)”
“Thanks to each of you for your loving support of him and all of us for each other.”
Herb passed away from advanced prostate cancer that had evidently morphed into small cell/neuroendocrine like (NEC) disease. A late diagnosis just one day before he entered the NIH, his place of work, identified this. Herb was scheduled to undergo tests for his highly elevated endocrine markers, however the source was now evident on admission. The NIH never appeared to acknowledge or treat him for this diagnosis. It finally added a neuroendocrine oncologist to Herb’s team after 21 days after repeated AnCan prodding from the date of admission. Herb underwent research procedures related to Cushing’s Disease and its symptoms. In due course, AnCan will follow up as appropriate.
Never one to give up the opportunity to sail anything from a small dinghy to an ocean-going yacht, Dr. Herb Geller was a nationally recognized expert in neuro-biology; a profile is available on the NIH site. Herbie loved a a good Scotch, in Skye or anywhere else. On his request, AnCan did its best to sneak in a wee dram just to wet his lip in the final days but the ‘powers that be’ prevented us. I’ll have one for you tonight, Herb! And, we’ll make sure both your AnCan posters get written up for submission with credit to you.
Herb is survived by his wife of 55 years, Nancy, Director of the Office of Biostatistics for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the NIH. Also his younger brother, Ken, an eminent Supreme Court Advocate kennethsgeller@gmail.com. We wish Herb’s family and many friends, especially his “AnCan Family”, much comfort. May Herb’s memory always be a blessing – it certainly will be here at AnCan.
For our Jewish readers, Herb’s z”l Hebrew name is Chanan Moshe ben Aaron v’Sara; he died on 25th Nisan.
AnCan and The Marsh (well renown, long-established theater company with a large following in the Bay Area and venues in San Francisco and Oakland) collaborateevery 4th Wednesday of the month for Solo Arts Heal!
March’s guest was fantastic, meet Hal Walker!
Hal is a writer, musician and social media sensation from Kent, Ohio (2.3 million TikTok followers). Now mostly housebound and bed-based, over the last two years he has experienced the onset of moderately severe ME/CFS (Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome). Hal also produces the weekly Substack publication, Living in a Body. You can learn more about him here.
Hal performed original music on musical instruments from around the world, and discussed using creativity as a survival tool for long haul illness.
AnCan and The Marsh (well renown, long-established theater company with a large following in the Bay Area and venues in San Francisco and Oakland) collaborateevery 4th Wednesday of the month for Solo Arts Heal!
You’re gonna love February’s show, featuring Sasha Soreff!
Sasha is a New York City-based choreographer, empathy/movement facilitator, and certified transformational coach.
She is currently offering online workshops to support embodying, expressing, and empathizing with grief. Sasha weaves somatic movement, relational neuroscience, and transformational principles together. Through this, workshop participants experience compassionate self-connection and soulful, embodied expression.
As Artistic Director of Sasha Soreff Dance Theater (SSDT), she has been creating and sharing multigenerational, interactive work for two decades, including her signature piece, “The Dancer Who Wore Sneakers and Other Tales,” created in response to a chronic foot condition that reshaped her creative life. Her work has been seen on stages, sidewalks, and community spaces from the Ailey Citigroup Theater to the Queens Museum of Art.
Sasha has taught modern dance and student performance workshops for close to three decades. She is on faculty at NYC’s Gibney Dance and The International Partner Dance Intensive, and recently guest taught at NYU Langone’s Initiative for Women with Disabilities. She has served as a teaching assistant to kinesthetic anatomist Irene Dowd and was a founding company member of Isabel Gotzkowsky and Friends dance company. A Maine native, she graduated from high school at North Carolina School of the Arts with a concentration in modern dance and received a BA from Barnard College.
Sasha shared excerpts from the four eras of her dancing career, which was transformed by her experiences with painful neuropathy and cancer. As artistic director of Sasha Soreff Dance Theater, she created her signature piece, “The Dancer Who Wore Sneakers and Other Tales,” in response to a chronic foot condition that reshaped her creative life. Long-term experiences with neuropathy in her feet, as well as a cancer journey, have inspired her artistry and invigorated her commitment to creating communal spaces for deep empathy, embodiment, and healing.
Alexa, John, and Briaunna even joined in the fun with a dance that you can do too!
AnCan and The Marsh (well renown, long-established theater company with a large following in the Bay Area and venues in San Francisco and Oakland) collaborateevery 4th Wednesday of the month for Solo Arts Heal!
Claire is a poet who has published five volumes of poetry since 1998, most recently Ismene’s Survivable Resistance in 2021. (If you remember the Greek tragedy of Antigone, Ismene is the sister who was left behind to remember the trauma of it all). Claire has been a creative writing teacher and mentor for more than 30 years. She teaches not only at the university level but also dedicates herself to helping students at community centers to use writing to process trauma. In addition, she collaborated on an innovative research project, “Left / Write // Hook,” that uses writing and non-contact boxing to process trauma and led to her co-editing an anthology of participants’ writings. Claire’s work is rooted in her own trauma, which began in childhood, and experiences with physical ailments, which include “keyhole” surgery to mend a broken heart.
Claire read her poetry, which provides her with a survival tool to both navigate and move past experiences of abuse and disempowerment. It explored how survivors’ voices can enter public discourse and instigate lasting social and cultural change. People who have been traumatized may not have a linear narrative. Poetry is a means to integration through the placement of fragments, allusion, association and evocation. Poetry can hold what is too intense to keep internalized.
