A Radiculose Revolute over and over and over. . . .
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"Radicles - Rootlets growing from the stem.
Radiculose - With radicles.
Retuse - Obtuse and slightly indented.
Revolute - Rolled backwards, as of the leaf margin."

A found poem in Manual of Hawaiian Mosses (E.B. Bartram 1933:267)

"For it is not enough either to devise a morality that will allow the human race simply to survive. Survival is an evil when it entails existing in a state of wretchedness. Intrinsic to survival and continuation is felicity, pleasure. Pleasure has been much maligned, diminished by philosophers and conquerors as a value for the timid, the small-minded, the self-indulgent. "Virtue" involves the renunciation of pleasure in the name of some higher purpose, a purpose that involves power (for men) or sacrifice (for women). Pleasure is described as shallow and frivolous in a world of high-minded, serious purpose. But pleasure does not exclude serious pursuits or intentions, indeed, it is found in them, and it is the only real reason for staying alive."

Beyond Power
Marilyn French

Born to Groove is a radicle grass roots or moss roots idea. And revolutionary as in rolling backwards to the basics. I want to persuade you that grooving is absolutely necessary for the creativity, happiness, and health of all children. It ought to be our highest priority in raising them to be children all their lives. Food not first? Roses before bread? Maturity not a goal? We were not put here simply to eat, mature and manure. We were put here to experience joy in each moment, in as many moments as possible, and grooving with/on reality, grooving our identification with the speciation, grooving with/on each other, is the healthy, dynamic, play filled path to joy in the moment.

There is, of course, a contemplative or meditative path to joy in the moment¹ and it is wonderful for grooving to come from this place and return to it, but my rhetoric here is meant to engage you, stir you up, and recruit you for a social revolution in how we live and bring up children in community from the ground up. The dynamic path assumes that deep participation in deep community and deep echology can be reestablished in localities through ever deeper music-dance-rites. The success of these rites requires careful and constant attention and nurturance of wrights, skills, the crafts of drumming, singing, dancing, blowing horns, dramatizing, improvising, keeping together in time.

To create this careful and constant attention to wrights, skills, craft we have to be certain that the flow of energy, creativity, the "common glad impulse" of all life forms is nurtured to the fullest in infants and young children and given priority in homes, day care centers, pre-schools, schools, religious institutions and community centers. Children need hours of live music and dance, hours of skill building and synchronized play each day (see Appendices B, C & D), and that, in present circumstances, requires a revolution: ceremonies in which whole villages and neighborhoods get together to "recycle" TV sets and never use them again; schoolrooms that have no desks or chairs because children will either be active or resting all day long.

Pat Campbell:

If music is good for one's health, why can't it be a daily venture? For some, it is: witness your family whistler, the car mechanic who sings to the radio, the humming mailman who makes his cheerful delivery on sunny days, the tunes of a young boy with his lego-set and the little girl with her dolls. In some places, people get their daily doses of music within schools, too. In old iron-curtain Hungary, daily music was deemed good for the heart and mind of every Hungarian, and good for the developing nationalist sensibility of every child. For centuries and continuing on in some of the elite "choir schools" in the U.K. such as King's College and St. John's College schools, children as young as those in "reception class" (the pre-kindergarten year for 4 to 5-year-old children) are singing daily under the direction of a choirmaster. For some Montessori and Waldorf school teachers, and often for kindergarten teachers, music is frequently found as a socializer, attention-getter, ritual-builder, transition tool, and means of learning everything from numbers and colors to polite and proper behavior. Music is a daily habit in magnet schools for the arts, and in schools where not only the music teacher but also classroom teachers know the joy of making it, and the way in which it focuses energy, stimulates thinking, brings classmates together.

Try a week at home with the family, sans TV and the internet. Go so far as to put the Cds, MP3s, radios, and sound systems aside. In the silence and across the new space, listen and watch what may transpire. Could there be music as "filler" that is made by real people?

Make a determined effort at school to bring music into the everyday. Strolling groups of singers in the hall, "caroling" their favorite songs in any season, under the direction of the teacher. Or alternating classes of singers at the school's entrance, singing everyone in each morning. Music over the PA system from the office to every classroom, featuring a different group of children doing their favorite music every day.