Buffalo News LIFESTYLES article -- May 7, 1996

See it, hear it -- the healing serenity of WNY

To most viewers, the videotapes produced by Williamsville's STB Productions are beautiful nature scenes, some recognizable as Western New York with its waterfront and parks.

They are all that and more to Josselyn Sanborn, who calls them a godsend.

Ms. Sanborn started using the videos in an attempt to calm her mother, Margaret Sanborn, 81, who has Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.

"She is cared for in her home by health care workers," said Ms. Sanborn, a school counselor at Williamsville's Mill Middle School. "As is typical of patients of this sort, she began a habit of chanting, repeating sounds over and over, and seeming agitated and stressed."

When Susan Beahan, producer of the tapes, heard about the symptoms, she let Ms. Sanborn try "A Celebration of Four Seasons" and "Autumn on Cape Cod" to see if they would quiet her mother.

"I didn't know what to expect," said Ms. Sanborn. "But I was ready to try anything. I had two workers who were so bothered that I think they were about ready to quit. It had become so tedious that they were saying they didn't know if they could do eight-hour stretches or do as many a week. It was sounding to me like they were on their way out."

About a month ago, she popped in a tape. It had two effects -- it stopped her mother from chanting, and it relaxed her enough to get her to take a nap.

"As recently as last evening, I talked to the gal in charge and she said there's been a huge improvement in Mom," Ms. Sanborn said. "She pays attention. She listens. She watches the pictures."

That's exactly what Susan Beahan and her brother, videographer Jim Whitcomb, had in mind when they started the company in 1989. At first, they were focusing on the narrow market of Alzheimer's patients, but they've found that people in quite divergent circumstances and facilities benefit from the tapes. It's useful for people who are housebound, who are ill, who have dementia, who need stress relief, who need a look at something beautiful during bleak days.

Francis Kowalski of Depew, for example, bought the Four Seasons tape about two years ago and since then has ordered several more to pass around to friends.

"After my first viewing, I found I was putting it in every day," she said. "It was something I could put in regardless of what else I was doing."

It was particularly welcome during the winter, she said.

"It helps me unwind after the day. Especially in the winter. Driving last winter was like a second job."

Cindy Seide, a former activities director at local nursing homes, and now the owner of Potentials Development, which sells resource materials for older people and caregivers, said she always takes the tapes to conferences because they are so eye- catching.

She recommends the Zoo, County Fair, Gardens, and Niagara Falls tapes for people who are housebound. "It gives them a good feeling of what it's like to be there," she said. "To think back and reminisce."

The relaxation tapes don't include narrative, so that each person can inject whatever thoughts he'd like, Ms. Beahan said. She recounts that one woman commented that she particularly liked the fishing scenes.

"There is a lot of water, but there aren't any fishing scenes," she said. "She remembered fishing as a child and she infused that into the tape."

The company has produced 11 tapes ($19.95 for 30-minute ones; $24.95 for 60 minutes), including "Autumn on Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard" (Ms. Beahan received a thank-you note from President Clinton for sending him a tape from this vacation spot); "A Day at the Zoo," which goes behind the scenes with zookeepers in lovely spring and summer weather, and "A Festival of Lights," which is backed with narrative, giving it more of a travelogue feeling than the others.