Today is my cousin, best friend, and number one guy Mike Raley’s birthday. For those of you not familiar with Mike’s background, he had a very serious stroke in 2004 and it was a particularly bad one because it impacted the communications area of his brain. Mike can understand and process things perfectly well now but when it comes to reading, writing and articulating things it’s a problem for him. He sees and reads words as if they were in a mirror backwards and must translate forwards to comprehend them.
Although Mike’s speech is impaired, he can articulate his thoughts by singing. Awhile back I took him to an event in D.C. where a member of his speech group at George Washington was playing bass in a band. This individual told me that music was the key to his subsequent recovery and that he’d heard from other stroke survivors how much music had also enabled them in their recovery. Turns out there is a lot of attention being devoted to music therapy. For more info click here.
We have a little party set for Mike tomorrow night at Buzzy’s Country Store so drop in and wish the boy Happy Birthday. Maybe we can get him to sing for us!