Local seniors and teacher Ed Sorrentino have a joyful conversation in the Drumming Circle at the Pembroke Council on Aging.

PEMBROKE They start out with tentative pats on their drums waiting to see how it sounds, how fast the others go and how hard they all hit.

Urged on by Ed Sorrentino, their leader, these adventuresome seniors pick up the tempo, getting into their own rhythms and smiling. Sorrentino has told them that music is a conversation and taking risks is good. By the end of the hour, they are laughing and carrying on in style on a half dozen percussion instruments.

We only give you clean goats toenails, Sorrentino kids Benita Pemberton as he hands her more than two dozen processed toenails on a ring. She gamely gives them a shake.

I am at a Drumming Circle at the Pembroke Senior Center with 11 seniors from Pembroke, Hanover and Duxbury.

An educator/performer from the South Shore Conservatory in Hingham, Sorrentino is a Braintree resident who has led two drumming programs this year in Pembroke.

Funded through state and local grants, the drumming was started as an activity for people with memory loss but expanded to the wider community.

It builds community, Sorrentino says.

At the start of the first circle several months earlier, seniors asked, Why are we here? and What am I doing?

Lets wait and come back to that at the end, he replied. After an hour of rhythm exercises and drumming, they had 20 different answers.

Music is all about laughing, making connections with people, creating music without rehearsal -- recreational music, he says.

They begin the second session with some exercises, keeping their own beats on an eight count. Then Sorrentino tells them, Now I want you to use these (pointing to his ears) and see where your drum sound fits into the bigger picture.

You can add whatever you want to the conversation, whenever you want, when you see it is a comfortable place to put it in there.

Nothing is going to happen. Let the music take over and see what happens.

Stella McCauley, 78, of Pembroke doesnt think of herself as being gifted musically (I play the radio, she says) but has enjoyed the group. It is relaxing and a nice way to socialize. Plus he makes it so easy. It does call for concentration.

The group also includes Merry Foxworth of Pembroke, Paul and Betty Mizzoni of Pembroke, Donna Burke of Pembroke, Joan Stockwood, Maura Griffiths, Mary Seamon of Duxbury, and Tom and Ruth Grono of Hanover.

During the session, Grono points out the bongo drums should be tipped slightly, because some of the sound comes out of the bottom.

After more than an hour, everyone plays together and Sorrentino finishes up with a Wow!

We come here and play music, we have fun, we laugh and we look at other people, he says. Not to worry about mistakes.

Before they leave, the drummers talk about the disconnection in society today how people are absorbed in their computers, smart phones and social media devices and just missing one another. You see it in restaurants, one of the women says. Young people sitting together, all looking at their phones.

Now that the state grant has ended, Anna Seery, director of the Pembroke Council on Aging, hopes to find other funding to offer the drumming circle again.

That would be good, McCauley says. The ladies want to go once a week.

MILLIE NAUN of Hingham celebrated her 101st birthday yesterday and on Sunday, her friends at the Liberty Grille on North Street in Hingham had a party.

Shirley Kehoe, 82, of Cohasset, used to drive the van for Cohasset Elder Affairs and gave Millie rides. She still walks to the train and takes it into Boston during the week. She's an amazing woman and arrives at the grille a couple times a week to sit at the bar and have a hotdog and a beer, Shirley said.

Congratulations Millie and heres to 102!

Reach Sue Scheible at scheible@ledger.com, 617-786-7044, or The Patriot Ledger, P.O. Box 699159, Quincy 02269-9159. Read her Good Age blog on our website. Follow her on Twitter @ sues_ledger.

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A GOOD AGE: joyful conversation in the drumming circle - The Patriot Ledger