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Show C-8 5 Y The Park Record WedThursFri, December 3-5, 2003 v.v.v.v.v.v. y.v.v.-v.v.v. ; : ij i S T A R K Harpist eases dying, grief with music 4 3 Designer Outlet Sale Prices at or Below Wholesale r 1 a o r. I Hours: 12:00 to 6:00 pm 1950 Woodbine Way, 3 Park City 1-800-649-0843 www.rhondastark.com 5 .1 7V 1 14 l , SALT LAKE CITY (AP) For weeks, 86-year-old Marie Beckstead has been afraid of dying and has been fighting to stay alive, even as her heart weakens and her mind becomes more confused. But on this bright fall morning, morn-ing, as Ann Dowdy sits across from her and plays several soothing sooth-ing songs on the harp, Beckstead seems peaceful. Her breathing has become slow and steady. It is this process of letting go that Dowdy tries to' encourage as she plays for dying patients in the last months and weeks of their lives. Beckstead passed away Thanksgiving night. This is more vigil than performance. per-formance. Dowdy is a music thanatologist, one of just three in Utah. Theoretically you could play the piano or the guitar at a music vigil, but music thanatolo-gists thanatolo-gists always use a .harp, says Dowdy, because harps produce the purest, most sustained tones, "like a shower of sound coming down on the patient, as well as on everyone else in the room." And, too, for centuries the harp has been seen as an "otherworldly" instrument, "on the cusp between' life and death," says Dowdy. Music thanatologists the term comes from the Greek word 1 i w Youth & Beauty Forehead Lift Eyelid Surgery Cheek Lift $2500 Alitti-&xxccift Skin Resurfacing Collagen & Botox! Fat Injections By changing how you look, you can Change how you feel about yourself. Trust your face to a cosmetic surgeon trained at Stanford. John R. Bennett, MD 1777 SunPeakDr, Park City, UT. 84098 (435) 645-0800 Lillli I L JM;: II ' climbing Qf Black Diamond Viper Black Diamond Sabretooth r SCARPA Freney XT Packages available, save 10. Oil Stow for drtjih c 0 o o s O 00 m 8 5 $ o 10 -S o O PI for death call what they do "prescriptive music," and like any prescription their songs are specific to each patient's needs. So it's important, she says, to watch the patient closely, paying attention to breathing, skin and agitation level. The harpist's "medicine bag" includes tempo, pitch, melody and harmony, and with these she can help bring a patient's breathing breath-ing rate and pulse rate down or help ease pain. Dowdy had a patient last spring who was in severe pain but was allergic to pain medications. "When I arrived he had not slept for three days due to his pain, and he was miserable. His response to the music was truly a miracle as he sat back and began to relax for the first time in three days." Dowdy, who works for Hospice of Utah, also plays for people who are in the active stages of dying and has played for patients as they had artificial life support removed. "As you know," she says, "removal of life support can be a very sensitive and painful experience experi-ence for everyone present. The sounds of life support systems whir and buzz in one's conscious ness and when these sounds are withdrawn one by one, the ensuing ensu-ing empty silence can be deafening deafen-ing in its intensity." In place of that silence, the harp's gentle vibrations offer "sound support," she says. Like other music thanatologists, thanatolo-gists, Dowdy plays a lever harp rather than a classical, pedal harp. These are smaller harps, easily transported as she travels across northern Utah visiting dying patients. There are only 60 music thanatologists thana-tologists in the world, she says. All have trained at Chalice of Repose in Missoula, Mont., founded by Therese Schroeder-Sheker. Schroeder-Sheker. Chalice of Repose closed a year ago; however, since then former for-mer students have formed the Music Thanatology Association International and are hoping to open another school. Dowdy had never played the harp before joining Chalice of Repose. But she had been an orchestra teacher in North Carolina, and she had also lost a husband to cancer in 1976, before there was a hospice to help her husband die peacefully at home. For Beckstead, lying on the sofa in her daughter Marilyn Nielsen's living room in West Jordan, Dowdy plays songs that stay mostly in the higher registers regis-ters of the harp, because, as she explained later, "her frailty felt light and lyrical." Nielsen's husband, LeGrand, is not surprised that music helped comfort his mother-in-law. Growing up, LeGrand milked a lot of cows. "You always had soft music playing in the milking barn," he remembers. remem-bers. "It calmed the cows and they produced more milk." Dowdy plays for about 40 minutes, beginning with a few, slow plucks, then adding more chords and then some Gregorian-style chants. The songs for the most part sound pensive, as if the notes themselves them-selves are pondering Beckstead's life as they wander toward a melody. What music like this can do, Dowdy says, is not only ease physical symptoms but help patients and their families explore their grief. , "Over and over," Dowdy says, "I have seen families gather around the bed of their loved one, allowing their grief to flow freely as the music supports them." Students cat project to save lives HIGHLAND, Utah (AP) Using borrowed wire cage traps, Bria Walch has spent the past year capturing feral cats in what started start-ed as a science project but grew to a passion. As an eighth-grader at Mountain Ridge Junior High in Highland last year, Bria, 14, decided to investigate feral cat populations in a nearby park after her brother saw wild cats in the area. "I wanted to know why they were in there," she said. "I thought it would be a great eighth-grade science fair projept." Doing research on the Internet, Bria discovered the Trap-Neuter-Return program, which encourages residents to manage stray and feral cats by humanely trapping them, then have the animals evaluated, vaccinated, vacci-nated, and sterilized by veterinarians. veterinar-ians. The animals are then returned to where they were found. The program, sponsored by Maddie's Fund and , the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, allows the feral population popula-tion to be controlled without killing healthy cats. Jennifer Clayton, executive director of the Utah Animal Advocacy Foundation, said that if feral and abandoned animal populations pop-ulations could be better managed by using the Trap-Neuter-Return program, the rising costs to taxpayers tax-payers of housing and euthanizing the animals could be reduced. "The traditional trap-and-kill methods don't work," Clayton said, noting that unless feral cats are spayed or neutered, they simply sim-ply reproduce faster than they can be killed. "Of course it costs money to house these animals, beside the tragedy of euthanizing all these animals." The Utah County Animal Shelter in Spanish Fork receives about 800 feral and abandoned animals each. month. It euthanizes 60 percent of those, according to its Web site. The shelter costs just under $500,000 a year to run and is one of two in Utah County. Both shelters shel-ters have recently expanded after spending years at capacity. With permission from animal control officers in Highland, Bria has captured cap-tured six feral cats all males. "I thought it was odd that they were all males," she said. "I had heard experts mention feral cat colonies, but there wouldn't be a colony without females." Using discount vouchers from No More Homeless Pets in Utah, she had them neutered. Then she . surveyed 80 neighbors, asking each if they had seen feral cats and to describe where and what they looked like for her science fair project. Her presentation placed first in the zoology division at the state level. Earlier this month, Bria and her mother, Rebecca, went to Chicago for an American Veterinary Medical Association conference on feral cats. Bria asked experts why she would be catching only, male cats in her traps at Glen Park. She learned that female feral cats often stay near the colony's home base, while males wander. Experts suggested she trap near food sources such as ..restaurant trash bins. Armed with this new information, informa-tion, Bria is planning an even larger larg-er project for the science fair this January. 1 - r r ASK INTERMOUNTAIN U 4- rh'l MORTGAGE COMPANY Ct PROFESSIONAL FIRST! 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