Barbara Borden moves to the beat of her own drum
By Ellen Shehadeh
All of the drummers that Barbara Borden saw as a child were men—except for one little boy, a Mouseketeer named Cubby. Even so, at age 5 while shopping one day with her mother at Sears Roebuck, Borden spied a drum and insisted on having it.
At age 70, Borden—drummer, drum teacher and performing artist—knows for certain that “drumming is my path.” The large drum set that occupies a prominent place in the living room of the woodsy Mill Valley home that sshares with her life partner, Naomi Newman, is a monument to herlife’s work.