Stint in nursing home spurs longtime activist

Life for Bar Ponneck isn’t nearly as good as it used to be.

But Ponneck, who many times marched in the streets, worked in solidarity with people he viewed as oppressed and shrieked condemnations of war and injustice, will tell you in a voice much diminished by Parkinson’s disease that he is vastly better now that he’s out of a nursing home.

“I hit bottom. I was very despondent. I just wanted to check out,” he said of the 14 months he lived in a Petaluma care facility in 2012 and ’13.

In his early 60s and perfectly aware yet severely limited in his ability to move about or communicate, he lived with his misery. And he observed the same of the generally older people around him.

“They were lonely and frightened,” Ponneck said. “They tried to escape. I saw those people every day.”

He regards himself as supremely fortunate that a friend, Larry Harper, advocated for him and helped him to receive an affordable apartment in Windsor and in-home assistance. In the fall of 2013, he moved into the federally subsidized Bell Manor community for seniors with disabilities.

He writes almost daily, sometimes poetry other times working on novels or short stories. The one good thing about his miserable stretch in a nursing home: “I found my muse.”

Ponneck, the 2004 Peace & Justice Center “Peacemaker of the Year,” who went by Barry Latham-Ponneck back when he lived in west Sonoma County and railed against the military-industrial complex, found something else at the convalescent hospital.

It was a heightened sense of compassion for the elderly residents who languish in care homes, tormented by dementia and/or despair. The organizer and activist within him struck upon a plan to do something for them: Host a rock concert.

Ponneck doesn’t expect many care-home residents to be present when he brings the “world rock rebel” band Clan Dyken to the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center on March 20. But he hope proceeds from the concert will help to reignite the spark in some of the people now nodding off in wheelchairs in places where no one would choose to live.

Last year, he heard of the documentary “Alive Inside,” which has had a powerful effect on Sonoma County. The film by Michael Rossato-Bennett tells of a quest to get to every nursing home resident in America an iPod individually programmed with the music that the person grew up with and loved.

Again and again in “Alive Inside,” the headphones to one of the music machines are placed over the ears of a withdrawn or agitated senior and something almost magical happens.

As the music reaches the brain, the light returns to the elder’s eyes. Many of the seniors featured in “Alive Inside” swooned or danced or sang along with songs from their past. Often, long-lost memories flooded back, and old folks who’d previously spoken hardly a ?word became animated and talkative.

The iPods came to the seniors from Dan Cohen, founder of the nonprofit Music & Memory, Inc. His ambition is to raise the money necessary to provide a personalized iPod to every American living in a nursing home or similar facility.

Since “Alive Inside” premiered in Sonoma County at last summer’s “What’s Up Doc” film series, local donors have contributed to the iPod mission, and students at The Healdsburg School have buddied up with elders at Healdsburg Senior Living, the first facility in the county to provide iPods to its residents.

In January, Ponneck attended a screening of the documentary at the new Schroeder Hall within the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University. He met filmmaker Rossato-Bennett and told him that his own experiences in a nursing home spurred him to do something for people with no hope of escaping such places.

Ponneck is hoping for a good turnout at the concert a week from Friday, the proceeds from which will go to Music & Memory. Tickets are at Peoples Music in Sebastopol and The Last Record Store in Santa Rosa. There will be a discounted price at the door for patrons who donate a new or used iPod.

Anyone interested in seeing “Alive Inside” can rent it from Netflix or purchase it through the websites for either the documentary or Music & Memory.

Having long ago organized concerts for peace-and-justice causes, Ponneck said it’s good to be back at it.

Planning the Clan Dyken concert, he said at the apartment that has restored a degree of independence, dignity and happiness to his life, “gives me a sense of worth.” He likes to imagine the gift of recalled music energizing and bringing joy to some of the nursing-home habitues who can’t hope to duplicate his escape.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.