A view of home after the storm

CENTURY — We parked on Church Street and walked, viewing up close the recovery effort as locals repaired or salvaged what they could after an EF-3 tornado skipped through the town two weeks ago.

The buzz of distant chainsaws carving fallen trees carried on a light breeze, alongside the scent of wood dust and smoke. Debris was mounded in piles along the streets and in yards. Roofers replaced shingles and plywood on one house while heavy equipment left deep ruts in yards to shove fallen trees aside.

Trees still standing were coated in fiberglass flocking and sparkled with twisted vinyl and aluminum sheets. Blue and brown tarps draped the roofs of houses and public buildings, and plywood covered missing windows.

The view down Mayo to Front Street.

A stillness settled in, under warm sunshine and a cloudless blue sky.

I grew up in Century, and everywhere I looked last weekend, my memories collided with the devastation. Here was the place I went to high school. There, a shop I worked one summer. Over there, the hospital where my grandmother built her career. The church where I was baptized. The remains of a house my friend grew up in. The streets where we rode our bikes.

My cousin’s house. My aunt and uncle’s house. The Health Department. The pharmacy.

Some of them sustained only slight damage. Some were reduced to piles of kindling.

The Baptist church where we had parked showed little damage beyond some missing vinyl siding that exposed old tongue-and-groove wood walls and cracked paint on its bell tower. Pastor David Boyd greeted us in the gravel lot, explaining how the church was being used as a base of operations for volunteers from the First Baptist Church of Holt, who were helping to clean up and restore order in the area.

Century Methodist Church

“They’ve been over at the Blair house on Front Street this morning,” Boyd said. “Mr. Blair was at work when the tornado came, but his teenage kids were home. The wind picked up the house, moved it over 12 feet and set it down again. It’s a miracle nobody was hurt.”

Right next door, the 114-year-old Methodist church leaned precariously, having been shifted off its brick foundation pilings, bent and broken. Braces nailed against the exterior walls kept it from collapse until interior relics could be salvaged, as well as pews and stained glass windows. The future looked uncertain for the historic structure, built with the aid of the original lumber company that established the mill town in 1901.

As we walked back toward our car, a voice called out, “You hungry?”

Volunteers from Pineview, Ala.

A car and a pickup truck were stopped on the street, and people from the vehicles knocked on the doors of wood frame houses across from the churches. A man in a Red Sox ball cap repeated his call to us.

They were from Liberty Baptist Church in Pineview, he explained, a tiny community about 13 miles north in Alabama. They’d cooked 300 meals of smoked ribs and chicken, and gathered a carload of cleansers, paper supplies and other household needs that they were passing out.

“The Lord has led us to help these people out,” said Howard Hoomes. “We’re going door-to-door. Even the people that works, we want them to get free food.”

Pastor Boyd spoke with the group as they passed, thanking them for their gifts to the people struggling through the recovery. He clapped me on my shoulder and said, “Wouldn’t this make a good story?”

I nodded. Yes, it would.

Peace.

Feeding hungry children at Christmastime

Moving pallet of food into pantry.

PANAMA CITY BEACH — I was touring The Ark recently, talking to director Bobbie Brigman and her husband Ric about activities and programs for seniors and winter visitors, when I met a young man named Jason.

He was volunteering in a food bank housed beside the worship sanctuary on the Ark’s campus; Jason’s family was staying in emergency housing on the campus until they could get back on their feet, and he was stocking the Food4Kidz pantry with items delivered that morning.

At another point during our interview, Ric’s phone rang and a hesitant female voice on the line asked if this was the place where she could get food for her family. His answer was, “Yes.”

“People are treated with respect and dignity here,” said Ric, a member of the Ark’s board, worship leader at the on-site church, and director of Food4Kidz, the pantry program housed at the Ark. “They call, make appointments to pick up food. There’s never a line here. Some of them I’ll see once, some I see every couple of months.”

The general policy is to feed a family once a month, but exceptions have been made in extreme circumstances, he said. For more information, call 249-KIDZ (5439), or visit Food4Kidz.org or Facebook.com/Food4Kidz online.

Food4Kidz is a local non-profit associated with the Feeding America program, receives supplies from the Bay Area Food Bank, and has been supported in its efforts by a grant from the St. Joe Community Foundation that purchased a van for the organization via Bill Cramer Chevrolet. Each month, Food4Kidz moves four or five tons of food — frozen, dry goods, canned items, pastries and more — and they feed hundreds of families.

“Some families are still trying to get on their feet after being decimated by the BP oil spill,” Ric said. “The family business is gone, their life savings is gone.”

The demand for help has doubled since last year, Bobbie said, and Ric added that the causes for that are difficult to pin down: Unemployment because of the end of tourist season jobs, general longterm under-employment, grandparents raising grandkids, or just because awareness of the program has grown.

On the two days prior to my visit, the pantry had served 11 families per day. In the worship center, I read notes left by parents and children who had picked up food there.

“Yesterday I had to decide between antibiotics that cost $80 or groceries,” wrote Paula, the mother of a 10-year-old son with health problems. “Of course I chose my son’s antibiotics. I wasn’t sure what I would do for food. I guess the lesson is to have faith.”

Ric stood at my shoulder, reading the note as I did. “That’s when we feel like we’re doing what we’re called to do,” he said.

Peace.
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(This is my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald for Dec. 6.)

Annual exhibit supports ‘Art for Change’ project

PANAMA CITY — Proceeds from the fifth annual Northstar Arts show will be used to beautify the county and provide “artistically altered” benches and trash receptacles at Bay Town Trolley stops.

The Northstar Arts show and sale will be 7-9 p.m. today (Friday, March 1) at CityArts Cooperative in downtown Panama City. The project is sponsored by Northstar Church in Panama City, which sees art as a way of having a positive effect on the community.

“The event has grown exponentially every year,” said Nick May, the church arts director, who also is a novelist and founded the monthly Writers Gallery gathering. Nick added that the venue changed from the church to the co-op this year because CityArts is pre-equipped for such events, which cuts down drastically on setup time.

“It’s also a gesture of artistic camaraderie,” Nick said. “Northstar Church — and specifically Northstar Arts — has long been a patron and supporter of the local arts community. We believe artists are important to God, so they are definitely important to us.”

Last year, 314 pieces by more than 25 artists were featured, and 47 pieces sold for a total of $2,566 in only two hours, Nick said. The 10 percent of sales kept by the church was used to support an ongoing mission to aid the people of Kiu, a village in Kenya, in a clean water project.

As before, 90 percent of each sale will go to the artist (which is unheard of for most gallery events) and 10 percent will go to a church initiative. This year, the church has decided to use its share of the proceeds to provide for this community.

“Traveling around the Bay County area, it’s not difficult to spot a trolley stop with someone standing waiting for the bus,” said Northstar communications director Sonya Henderson. “One day, a member of our arts staff spotted an elderly lady standing holding groceries without a place to sit, and it struck a chord with them. After a conversation with a couple of other staff members, we began exploring the idea of putting benches and trash cans at some trolley stops that lacked these amenities.”

The idea, she said, was to create functional art installations. They contacted the folks at Bay Town Trolley and learned that financial limitations keep the BTT from providing these amenities at every stop. Both parties became excited by the possibilities a partnership could produce.

The Trolley Stop Project will be the first part of Northstar’s “Art for Change” initiative. Online concept submissions from artists will be taken in mid-March, final designs will be presented in April, and the plan is to have three benches installed by the end of May. Northstar will provide benches, trash cans and a materials budget for each of the installations.

The project won’t end there. The goal is to provide similar installations for every stop in a “captivating way” over the next few years, Sonya said.

“We believe that art can make a difference and is vital to community development,” she said. “We want each stop to be creative, beautiful, and serve as a place of rest for every trolley patron.”

Peace. 

Northstar Arts Fifth Annual Art Show

• Where: CityArts Cooperative, 318 Luverne Ave., Panama City

• When: 7-9 p.m. today

• Admission: Free, and open to the public

• Details: NorthstarArts.cc or Facebook.com/

(This is my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald for Friday, March 1.)

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.)

Between There

I'm pretty happy with Between There, a new anthology that was just released, containing my sci-fi ghost story "Space Oddity," as well as a poem by my son. There are stories by editor Anthony Buoni, GCSC professor Lynn Wallace, and several others. It's available through Pulpwood Press, or via Amazon.com here.

Tuesday, I read my story at the Writers Gallery meeting at The Purple Grape. Anthony read his story as well.


That night I also got some details regarding a Christmas Eve performance I was asked to participate in at Northstar Church. Apparently, the folks putting the event together like my "grandfatherly" reading voice and want me to narrate a portion of the show; they will dress me in a smoking jacket, give me a pipe as a prop and have me sit in an easy chair to read while the band goes through some music and some original paintings are projected on a big screen.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, I'm still behind the curve on my NaNoWriMo project. I hope to close the gap a bit tonight. Wish me luck.

Peace.

Something I Learned at Church

One of my earliest memories of going to church is at the age of seven or eight. I realize how odd that is, because I was raised in church. I have vague memories of being in the nursery room, playing with toys and hearing a preacher’s voice over a speaker in the room (which I later learned was being piped directly from the pulpit); I recall napping in a baby bed in the church nursery, that half-awake awareness and sense of letting go; I recall images of my grandmother sitting with me in a pew, of her giving me cherry-flavored cough drops, of standing in the pew beside her to sing songs as she held the hymnal, of putting my head in her lap and falling asleep when the preacher started preaching.

But those early images aren’t vibrant memories. They blur together.

My earliest true, detailed and haunting memory of churchgoing is of a morning early autumn or early spring (I have a suspicion when*), the sun still low, the heat and humidity rising. Dad had dropped me and my little sister off (I don’t think he stayed for church in those days, or maybe it was Sunday School he skipped, or maybe I'm confused about this part altogether). The children’s Sunday School classes were in a small brick outbuilding behind the main church, and I was supposed to hold my little sister’s hand and walk her to her classroom (she would have been four or five years old at this time) and then go to my classroom a door away in the same building.

Her classroom door was locked. No one answered when I knocked. I tried the door to my classroom and found it locked as well. I tried the nursery door, a rising fear in my chest. Finally I found all four doors were locked. No one answered my knocks. I checked around the corner, where the car had been. The car was gone. I don’t recall if there were other cars in the gravel lot, but it seems like there were.

I didn’t know what to do, and I felt tears well up. I kept hold of my sister’s hand and went to the back door of the church. I didn’t know at the time that this was an entrance to the fellowship hall, which also doubled as a Sunday School classroom for the elderly members. It was locked. No one heard me knocking, and I was afraid to shout.

In fact, I was afraid to walk around the church to the front or look for other doors. I’m not sure if I even understood that I could do that. I was scared to leave the Sunday School building area in case someone showed up to open the classrooms. I was scared to wander, and I can’t claim I was watching out for my sister; my fear was my own, and she appeared merely confused by what I was doing.

So I sat on the little concrete walkway in front of the classrooms and put my back against the red brick. My sister sat down facing me and crossed her legs “Indian-style,” as we said then. She kept asking me where her teacher was and what we were doing. I don’t think she was frightened; I think she may have thought I was being bad or disobeying. I think she may have expected me to get in trouble.

She took a piece of gravel and scratched on the walkway, making light zig-zags on the smooth finish. I picked up a piece of gravel, too. I started scratching on the concrete — and this part of the memory is clearer than anything else about it. I scratched out three words:

“I HATE THIS.”

I was angry by now. I don’t think I actually cried, but I felt like it. I felt lost, betrayed, abandoned. No one was coming, I thought. I began to wonder if Mom or Dad would ever come to get us, or if Grandma would show up with cherry cough drops. I hated being there alone. I hated worrying about what was going to happen next, and yes, even worrying about my little sister. I shouldn’t have to do this. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to go home.

We waited a long time. I don’t know how long. It may have been ten minutes, but it felt like hours. It reminded me of the long days I spent at age four in a daycare center where I was bullied by the older kids and neglected by the staff. I wanted to escape, and I felt truly trapped.

Finally, a woman came out the back door of the church and saw us sitting there. I remember she was tall and slim, at least in my mind’s eye. She wore a bright flowery dress. She had short dark hair. I don’t recall her name, but I knew even then that she was a member of the church. She asked how long we’d been waiting, and I told her I didn’t know, and I tried to shield the words I had scratched onto the concrete.

The panic rose in my throat. I was afraid someone would see. That she would read what I had written and be angry at me. That I would get a spanking from my dad.

If she saw, she didn’t mention it. She took our hands and led us inside and got us a drink from the cold, cold water fountain. She took us to a classroom upstairs, where older kids (teenagers!) were having a lesson. They gave us paper and crayons, and we drew pictures. After, the lady led us to the church sanctuary where Grandma met us.

I never forgot those feelings — the anguish of abandonment, the fear of being punished for expressing my anger. They continued to haunt me throughout my life. When my father and mother split, for instance. When I sat alone on the school bleachers and wrote bad poetry in high school. When I rode a bus to basketball games and not one other member of the team spoke to me. When I realized my few close friends weren’t going to go to university with me. Every time I try to write about real emotion and find myself backing off or tempering my language because I feel the need to find a kinder way to express what I’m experiencing, or to hide my true emotions, or that of the characters in my imagination.

I’m not sure exactly, but I think this is something I learned at church.

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* Today I think this must have happened on the morning when everyone set their clocks back an hour — and if my parents forgot to change our clocks at home, then they may have dropped us off at church an hour early. We were at Sunday School at what we thought was 9:30 a.m., and no one was in the church because it was actually only 8:30 a.m. That means we sat outside for about an hour. Still, this doesn’t explain why we were taken to an inside room instead of going to our regular classes. I guess that part will remain a mystery forever.