Art show supports water of life

Matty, Heather & Paulette

PANAMA CITY — The parking lot was full and the lobby was crowded last Friday evening at Northstar Church, where literally hundreds of people gathered for the fourth annual Art Show and Sale.

“Art speaks in a language all its own,” said a post at the Northstar website promoting the event. “It has the power to provoke, inspire, and give hope. It is a powerful force that rules the Internet, the airwaves, and demands the square footage of thousands of museums and private galleries. Art is important to us as individuals and to our culture, and we believe it should be celebrated.”

Art was celebrated last week in the form of paintings, mixed media, photographs and drawings created by many of the area’s better-known talents — including Jennifer Bonaventura, Heather Clements, Matty Jankowski, Heather Parker and Paulette Perlman — as well as many lesser-known names and student artists. The show included 314 pieces; 47 pieces sold for a total of $2,566.

Of the sales, 90 percent of the money went directly to the artists, while 10 percent was kept to support the church’s mission to Kiu, a village in Kenya.

“We have an ongoing relationship with the village of Kiu,” said Lee Baker, arts pastor at the church. “A couple of years ago, we built the bore pump there, then installed solar panels to power the pump. This year, they’re installing tanks on top of a hill — every year, it gets bigger.”

Kayla & Nick

According to information provided by Northstar, the community of Kiu is a market town divided by a major east-west rail line. Buying and selling of produce is the major economy, with basket and rope weaving also contributing. The village has eight churches, one school and a small medical clinic located at the center of the community on the five-acre grounds of the African Inland Church. The clinic serves people from Kiu and neighboring villages.

“The village is big,” Baker said. “We couldn’t walk across it easily, because of terrain and how extensive it was.”

Access to water is a major issue in the community and people often walk hours to fetch their daily water. The water project was started in 2010 and is nearing completion. With access to clean water on the horizon, the leadership council is shifting their focus to the significant educational challenges that exist in the community.

Meanwhile, church members plan to return later this year to lend a hand.

“We will be working in the community of Kiu with projects that can range from the construction of a water project or school, digging ditches, laying water pipe, building stone walls and putting up fences,” the church website says. “Whatever it may be, we will be working directly with the Kenyan people and the relationships with them are more important than the project.”

Peace.

(This is my Undercurrents column for this week.)

Four Years

A lot can happen.

In four years, an economy can collapse and begin to recover. Presidents (and other officials) can change with the terms. Infants become toddlers become little people. Olympics return. February gets an extra day.

Pain fades. Memory becomes ever more treasured.

Today marks four years since we were awakened on a sunny Saturday morning by a phone call from the Florida Highway Patrol. Debra answered the phone. The man asked us to come over to Donna Williams' home. She had asked him to call us when he arrived to inform her that her daughter had been killed in a car accident overnight.

(I have sat here for several minutes, now, trying to decide what more there is to say about that morning that hasn't been said before. I believe there are volumes still to write. Moments that stretched like millenia. But I don't think I can approach those moments here, now.)

Here are other entries about Marisa on this blog (minus those somehow lost in the three-year gap of missing entries from Jan. 2006 to Jan. 2009). And here is her final entry on her Myspace, the story of her best friend and how she loved him and why. (And the extra Mom and Dad and Sister he brought into her life. ... And I'm crying right now.)

And following is a column I wrote in the days immediately after her death, originally published March 2, 2008:

All that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect, and in her eyes

Let me tell you about this girl I know.
I can’t recall how we met. I do remember my son, then a junior at Bay High, saying that Marisa was helping him with his math, and I said, “Who?” and he said something like, “She’s a drama kid.” But it seems no mere chance that the time our troubled lives began to get on track and start making sense coincided with her appearance.

Few anecdotes here, though. I’d need a warehouse of ink and paper to tell each story, and still they wouldn’t explain the complexity and (paradoxical) simplicity of her heart, mind and spirit. In fact, I don’t doubt that whenever I write from now on, some part of me will be writing about Marisa.
So descriptions instead, the briefest sketch to fit the page, though I wonder how one may capture a dream with words.

Beautiful in every way. Lightning wit. A smile that makes the world stop spinning. Rain boots and scarves. Silly accents. Accomplished hugger. Radiant. Made of pure love.
Sneaks across the lawn and crouches by the door (or just outside the front windows) and then calls on her cell phone to ask if she can visit. Says she’d have crawled back across the yard to her car if she’d been told no.

Forgives. Trusts. Leaves messages just to say “I love you” or “I’m coming to kidnap your child” or “I’m with the squirrel police and I have a warrant to search your house.” Rescues stray dogs and turtles in the street. Befriends strangers. Always asks questions, when her shining eyes tell you that she already has the answers to any mystery you could ever imagine.

Likes Bradbury and Vonnegut. Boondock Saints. Lucero. Johnny Depp. Power tools. Apple juice in Mason jars. Red Twizzlers. Miyazaki. Crayons. Puppies and kittens. Leg warmers, striped stockings and toe socks. Barrettes. Taking photos. Playgrounds in the middle of the night. Couch pile-ons. Naps.

Thoughtful. Bold. Gentle. Funky. Mischievous. Tolerant. Sweet. Acerbic. Delightful. Strong. Giving. Spontaneous. Willing. Capable. Funny. Real. Creative. Soft. Driven. Precocious. Perky. Deep. Courageous.

Hogs the shrimp at parties. Teaches friends to levitate. Wears an apron and flour “war paint” when she bakes cookies. Rules movie nights punctuated by Reefer Madness or Rocky Horror sing-alongs.

Secretly leaves gel hearts on your car. Quotes Moulin Rouge on her bathroom mirror: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

Artist. Actress. Model. Techie.
Explorer. Instigator. Peacemaker. Dreamer.
Daughter. Sister. Auntie. Friend.

And so suddenly she exits the stage, her scenes unfinished, lines unspoken — and though we know beyond any doubt that she is one of God’s shining lights, she always has been and always will, that she watches us struggle and loves us from afar, still we ache at an emptiness only she can fill, the sense only she can bring to the world.

We hold our children close and gather in numbers to share our pitiful strength, and we watch for her in the stars and on the breeze, and listen for her in the sound of music and laughter of children, and find her in the widest skies and on the cool blue waves that sparkle like her eyes, full of answers and mystery.

Peace.

Books Alive 2012 photo post

So Books Alive was last weekend. And you are there:

Robert Leleux and his mother, Jessica

Leleux, Melissa Conroy, and me

Leleux, Conroy at After School Program

Leleux, Olivia Byrd, Michael Morris, Kathie Bennett

Ruth Corley, Lori Carver, Pat Sabiston

Lynne Hinton and Debra Simmons

Frank Walker gets a Bday cake from Jackie Papke

Leleux session Saturday a.m.

Jeff Shaara session

Morris session

Find out more here:
Books Alive
Robert Leleux
Melissa Conroy
Lynne Hinton
Michael Morris
Olivia (deBelle Byrd) Cooley
Jeff Shaara
Kathie Bennett

>See more photos at my Facebook page<

>Read my blog this week about the visiting authors, "Secret Stories of the Soul"<

Author carries family storytelling to new level

Michael at 2008 Books Alive.

PANAMA CITY — Some people are born to be storytellers. They may work in the fields or run a store or paint houses for a living, but when they speak, they spin tales.

Michael Morris is such a storyteller. Born and raised in Perry, where he claims he was a “C student at best,” he had the good fortune to be encouraged by a teacher to become a writer. (Some of us who thought we could be writers had teachers who encouraged us to seek treatment instead. But enough about me.)

Michael said he never took the idea seriously — writers didn’t come from places like Perry, he thought — so he pursued a career in public affairs, later working as a state senator’s aide and then a pharmaceutical salesman. But the stories wouldn’t go away until he found their shapes and described them in print. He says he “became a writer” at 31.

Michael now lives in Birmingham, Ala. He’s the author of the novels “A Place Called Wiregrass” and “Slow Way Home,” as well as an authorized novella based on the Grammy nominated song, “Live Like You Were Dying.” His short stories have appeared in the anthologies “Stories From The Blue Moon Cafe II” and “Not Safe, But Good II.” (Learn more at MichaelMorrisBooks.com.)

He has made the trip to Panama City for Books Alive and other workshops several times in the past few years, visiting local schools, speaking to writers’ groups and otherwise finding time to encourage fledgling writers.

We met in 2008 at a gathering of the Books Alive authors and volunteers. Barbara Clemons introduced us. She said he was someone I would want to know, and as usual, she was right.

“It’s always great to be with my friends in Panama City,” Michael said in a recent Facebook exchange when I asked him about this weekend’s visit for Books Alive, where he will once again be a featured presenter. “I feel like I probably have more friends in Panama City now than I have in Birmingham.”

Michael has a new novel due in September, “Man in the Blue Moon,” which he has been working on for a few years now. I first heard him discuss it during a National Novel Writing Month workshop at Florida State University Panama City in 2009.

“It’s set in Apalachicola during 1918, and Panama City has a cameo in the novel too,” he said this week. “The story is based on a story my grandfather (who was raised in Wewa) used to tell.”

When Michael’s grandfather was 10, he said, a man was shipped in a crate via steamboat down the Apalachicola River to his family’s store in Apalach. The man was allegedly on the run for killing his wife and her lover. The man claimed he was innocent and that his in-laws were hunting him down for vengeance.

“My grandfather was one of the greatest storytellers I’ve ever known,” Michael said. “Through the years, I had him retell the story many times, to sort out fact from fiction. The bare bones of the story never changed. He died last year at 101 — the same year I found a publisher for the novel. He died knowing that I had completed it.”

His story lives on through the storyteller, and really, that’s all any of us can hope for.

Peace.
(This is my Undercurrents column for Feb. 9, 2012.)

Review: No simple fairy tale

She’s a strong, independent woman, but life literally sucks for “Bo,” the heroine of Syfy’s newest scripted series, “Lost Girl."

Bo (portrayed by Anna Silk) is a 30-something brunette with dangerous appetites — a full-blooded succubus who feeds on the sexual energy of humans. She was hidden among humans as an infant and raised without knowledge of her lineage, only learning about her “Fae” powers when she drained her boyfriend’s life during her first intimate encounter.

Now, after years on the run and faced with the choice of joining either the light or dark factions of the fairy realm, she shuns both. She takes the middle path, aligning herself with humans, and making her the go-to outsider for Fae with problems. She takes their cases while searching for the truth behind her heritage.

Premiering two weeks ago (the third episode is Monday), “Lost Girl” is new to American TV, but it is soon to start its third 13-episode season in its native Canada.

The setting takes the Syfy channel deep into the dark urban fantasy territory of popular novel series like those of Patricia Briggs, Laurell Kaye Hamilton and Kim Harrison, which also focus on strong female protagonists. It’s the latest new TV series dealing with fairy tale creatures in the modern world, such as ABC’s “Once Upon a Time” and NBC’s “Grimm.”

The regular cast includes Kris Holden-Ried as “Dyson,” a wolf-like Fae working as a human police officer; Ksinia Solo as “Kenzi,” a human pickpocket and con artist who becomes Bo’s confidante and aide; Zoe Palmer as “Lauren,” a human doctor working for the Light Fae, who also crushes on Bo. A notable recurring guest star is Emmanuelle Vaugier as “The Morrigan,” the leader of the Dark Fae.

The first two episodes provided for review show the series getting off to a bumpy start. The pilot, “It’s a Fae, Fae, Fae World,” is sexy and violent (sometimes simultaneously), though the explanations of the show’s setting tend to slow the pace. Episode two, “Where There’s a Will, There’s a Fae” is just as goofy as it sounds, lapsing close to self-parody, which is odd territory for a show that (in the U.S., at least) hasn’t yet established itself.

In Canada, the series received positive reviews and developed enough of a following for the second season to be boosted to 22 episodes and an order placed for the third season. “Lost Girl” was developed and produced by Prodigy Pictures, in association with Shaw Media and Showcase.

(This review originally appeared in the News Herald prior to the season premiere of the show; I just recalled that it wasn't added here, so here it is now, slightly altered because of the passage of time.)

Catch “Lost Girl” at 9 p.m. CST Mondays, following the second season episodes of “Being Human,” Syfy’s Americanized adaptation of a hit BBC series, which airs at 8 p.m. “Being Human” follows the struggles of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost who share an apartment in Boston.

Carmel Mikol: Creature of Habit

Carmel Mikol @ Central Square

SEASIDE — I met Carmel Mikol by happenstance. I had detoured into Seaside on the flimsiest of reasons, checking with Central Square Records about a Mountain Goats rumor, and then wandered into the recently renovated back room to look at posters and vinyl records.

A portable typewriter crouched low on the decoupage table by the old brown couch. There was paper in it, and words on the paper: “What Kind of Creature are You?”

I started to jot information from a sheet beside the typewriter; it told about the “Waywords” project singer/songwriter Carmel Mikols was conducting during her tours across North America this year. I looked up as a woman approached.

“Whattaya think?” she said.

“Pretty cool,” I said. Then I realized she was the same young woman pictured on the sheet beside the typewriter, and stated the obvious: “You’re the artist.”

Introductions exchanged, I gave her a business card and asked if she had time for an interview. I sat on the table beside the typewriter, and she settled on the couch.

“I spend a lot of time writing,” she said. “That’s really what I do; I’m a songwriter first. And I find that traveling around and touring and getting to play festivals like this in places I probably otherwise wouldn’t get to visit adds a lot to my writing portfolio.”

From CarmelMikol.com

Originally from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, Mikol recently released her second album, “Creature,” and a related booklet of poetry, lyrics and stories, “Creature of Habit.” Her song, “Twenty Something Girl,” (from the new album) took first place in the Folk category of the 2011 John Lennon Songwriting Contest.

“I’m not in denial at all,” she said when asked her age (for the record, 29). “It’s a good thing my song ‘Twenty Something Girl’ did what it did this year. Otherwise I’d be a liar.”

Mikol was quick to smile and laughed easily, emotions as true and earnest as her lyrics, which explore themes as big as social conscience and as universal as personal loss. She claims to be a “creature of habit” and wonders what sort of being other humans might claim to be.

To that end, she employs one of the manual typewriters that she said she collects “obsessively” and uses when writing.

“Along with my tour, I’ve been taking my typewriter to all the towns that I play in and leaving it in public spaces for people to respond and participate in this public art project,” she said. “I type ‘What Kind of Creature are You?’ on the top and invite people to give me some kind of response. I’m collecting all these pages for the next couple of months … and will be turning it into something else, which is still a mystery at this point.”

This was not her first visit to Seaside. Mikol stayed a month in 2011 as an artist-in-residence with the “Escape to Create” program (which she called “lovely and supportive”), working on short film scripts and poems that resulted in her book. During that stay, she spent a lot of time at Central Square Records.

“I would come and sit on this couch and write,” she said. “They always play amazing music. … It’s a really good hangout, and they also supply you with caffeine. It’s like, a record store that gives you coffee? How could that be better?”

Peace.



(This was my Undercurrents column for Jan. 26.)

Holding on to hope of better days coming

SEASIDE — We arrived at the square in the setting sun and lowering fog of a Sunday evening.

John Darnielle, singer/songwriter and founder of The Mountain Goats, walked past us into Sundog Books. I browsed there, too, while my wife and daughter sat outside, eating ice cream from the gelato shop and waiting for my son to meet us. Later, I would ask Mr. Darnielle what children’s books he had set aside for purchase later, but he couldn’t recall the titles.

Upstairs in Central Square Records, a crowd was beginning to gather. Darnielle browsed the stacks as I purchased two of his albums on vinyl (free digital downloads included). I picked up the new one, “All Eternals Deck,” which includes the songs “Damn These Vampires” and “Birth of Serpents,” which I had heard recently on public radio. My son got “Tallahassee,” which for us is the iconic Mountain Goats album.

I said, “Excuse me, Mr. Darnielle,” and introduced myself to the man. We shook hands. I told him I didn’t want to take up his time, but I felt compelled to tell him that I was introduced to his music through my son and his best friend, Marisa.

Nathan walked up then, and I introduced them. They shook hands, and I told Nathan what I had been saying.

“Mountain Goats was one of her favorite bands,” I said. “We lost her a few years ago, and your music became sort of fused together with that time in our hearts.”

The look on his face was touching. He was stunned and perhaps embarrassed a little, curious and I think maybe honored. He asked if it was all right to ask how she passed.

I told him it was. It happened in 2008. She was killed in a car accident. He said he was sorry for our loss and I’m not sure what he said after that. My emotions were clouding my senses.

“I just wanted you to know that your music was part of what got us through that,” someone said. And I don’t know as I write this if it was me speaking or Nathan. For a moment, I was outside myself.

“When we heard you were playing here, there was no way we would miss it,” I said. “We’re so honored to be here and hear you perform.”

He shook his head and smiled. “I hope no one’s disappointed. I’m only playing a few songs. This is just an in-store, not a full concert.”

“It will be remarkable,” I said.

He thanked us again and said he would like to browse some more before the show. We thanked him for his time and stepped away.

He played to a packed house and invited everyone to sit down on the floor if they wanted; no one did. People of all ages stood and swayed, tapped their feet, mouthed the lyrics along with him.

He told us stories between songs:

... Of how he had looked at a map when he lived in the Northwest and thought about how Florida was on the other side of the country; how it was somewhere people ran away to; how disappointed someone would be when the pavement ran out.

... And of his stepfather, whom he described as abusive to the whole family, and how he grieved bitterly when the man died, and he sat on a floor somewhere in France and wrote songs about how weird it was to grieve.

... He joked about his lyrics being about the squalor of people treating each other terribly, and that it seemed odd to be singing them in this place of beauty.

He played “Cotton” and “Dance Music,” “See America Right” and “You Were Cool” ("We held on to hope of better days coming/and when we did we were right"), and he sang “Matthew 25:21,” which is when the tears welled up. He played more. He had no set list, just pulling songs out of his head as they felt right.

He did, near the end, ask if anyone had a request. I wanted to hear “Old College Try,” but didn’t shout the title because what I really wanted to hear was whatever he wanted to play.

After the set, he signed albums. Nathan’s he embellished with the boy’s name in Hebrew. Mine, he decorated with a star and the words “all love.”

And we all left in the dark and the fog, carrying something bright inside us.

Peace.