Flashback Father's Day: The Drama of Life

(This article originally was published by The News Herald in Panama City on Father's Day, June 18, 2006.)

The drama of life

By David Angier

Most parents cringe at the drama their teenagers bring into their lives, but Tony Simmons applauds it.

Even when his son, Nathan, is engaging in drunken brawls, kissing random women and acting crazy,

Tony simply smiles and watches - at times from front-row center.

In the years before Nathan, now 17, discovered acting, the drama he brought into the Simmons' household was nothing to smile about. But next weekend, father will join son on stage for a Shakespeare in the Park production of "Othello," in an activity that has drawn them closer together.

Admittedly, Tony Simmons' part is a small one - he has a few lines that he says he's struggled to learn - while Nathan takes center stage as the too-trusting and honorable Cassio, the unwitting tool of Iago's complex scheme of treachery and murder. Director Chuck Clay said he picked "Othello" - the tale of a war-weary general who returns home after defeating his enemies abroad, only to find his greatest enemy in his own home - because it seemed relevant to the times.

"Of all of Shakespeare's plays, 'Othello' is universal," Clay said. "It's something that's going on in our lives today. It has events and themes that we identify with, that we read about every day in the papers."

Act I, Scene I

Tall, lanky Nathan Simmons steps on the 25-by-12-foot stage at Gulf Coast Community College's theater lab and stops being Nathan Simmons. He's still dressed in jeans and black Chuck Taylors. His eyes are still nearly obscured by shaggy blond hair, but his mannerisms alter noticeably. He stands taller and speaks with a force that is absent away from the spotlight.

He's Cassio.

"Reputation, reputation, reputation," Cassio exclaims. "O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial."

The only time Nathan Simmons comes out is when he misses a line. He stumbles over his words, smiles, rephrases and exits. Off stage he jumps up and down in frustration, then darts to a chair to study the line.

Nathan Simmons entered his first theater class during his freshman year at Bay High School. Before then, he describes himself as "pretty anti-social." Nathan's entrance into the theater magnet program coincided with doctors finally determining, after years of misdiagnoses, that he had a seizure problem.

Doctors initially thought he had an attention deficit condition and put him on medication that aggravated his seizures. Doctors finally realized the problem when Nathan was in eighth grade, but the damage to his reputation was done. Nathan was an outsider.

"I didn't have a lot of friends," he said. "But theater is a big family, and as I got into it I grew closer to all those people."

In four years of theater, Nathan has performed in more than 20 plays. He's won awards, acclaim and found a goal for the rest of his life.

"When mom and dad see me on stage, they're really proud of me, and that makes me feel good," Nathan said. "Before I started high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Now I have a goal to shoot for. I have a plan. I would like to major in theater and go to New York and perform there. If I can't do that, I'd settle for teaching theater."

He said he enjoys sharing his latest project with his father.

"We connect a lot more," Nathan said. "Before I joined the theater program I kept to myself a lot. Since then, I've become a nicer person, a happier person. Dad and I, we get along really well. He enjoys watching me on stage. Having him do this show is great because he doesn't have to sit in the audience this time; he can see it from the inside."

Nathan said it's nice the roles have changed in this aspect of their lives. "He's come up to me a couple of times and asked me, 'What exactly am I supposed to be doing here?'" Nathan said. "I've helped him in memorizing lines, and he's said that this is a lot more difficult than it looks. Dad's been more than willing to learn, and it's nice that he's let me be the teacher for once."

Act I, Scene II

Tony Simmons, online editor for The News Herald, is having a hard time "loosening up." He has to remember where to face, what to do and, above all else, what to say - while making it all seem completely natural. At the same time, he's got to project.

Shakespeare in the Park is a physically demanding endeavor. The actors don't have walls to bounce sound out to the audience, and it's up to the actors to make their voices carry. Simmons doesn't have a problem turning to his son for advice.

"He's having to teach me how to loosen up," Tony Simmons said. "This is an alien thing to me; these other people are just letting go. There's no sense of self, or self-consciousness, I guess, and that's something I have to learn."

His only prior acting experience was his senior play in high school 24 years ago. He agreed to do "Othello" — "because they asked me to. They assured me it was a small role. I thought this is something that Nathan and I can do together."

Tony Simmons isn't the type of father who rolls his eyes or shakes his head when he thinks about his son pursuing a career in acting - a difficult profession to succeed at. He's seen too many positive changes in his son's life occur in four years of theater to be pessimistic about the future.

"He's got a lot of promise, and I'd just like to see him take it as far as he can go," Simmons said, noting that Nathan has talent as a playwright. For now, Tony Simmons is learning to loosen his control of his son's life as well.

"I have to be almost less involved than I used to be," he said. "Nathan's found a way to make his own way."

Behind the Writing (Part 2): Why do we write?

The following is the second in a three-part series about the craft of writing, specifically characters and situations, why we write stories, and how to refill the creative well. These conversations took place in early October 2015 with author Mark Boss and myself.

>>Click here to read the first installment.<<

Mark Boss

Mark: That brings me to my second question: What is it in us that demands that storytelling? I think you go to your caveman, and other people (with him) like stories but there’s probably only one person in the tribe or village that’s a storyteller, and he’s probably a shaman or he’s painting on the walls — “Oh, that was the best hunt ever!” (The number of storytellers is) probably a bigger percentage of the population now because the tools are available to write, but telling stories has always (come from) a small part of the population. I think it only feels big now because there’s so many people publishing. Why is it a small part, and why are people like us driven to tell stories?

Tony: If you strip all the publishing away from it and get down to storytelling, I think everybody tells stories. Every conversation we have with our loved ones, we’re telling stories. If my Mom calls and tells me about an uncle that’s not doing well, she’s storytelling. As a people, a species, we developed language and writing — well, in part to keep track of what we were telling —

Mark: To give it permanence, because we wanted to give stories multi-generations.

Tony: But in those days, and up until recently, most people couldn’t read and write, but everybody would go down to the square to hear the town crier tell what happened in the court, or gather around their radio to listen to serials.

Mark: My grandfather told stories on the porch, and neighbors would come over to listen.

Tony: When it comes to writing, I think the difference between most people and people like you and me is the difference between a child drawing a picture with crayons and the artist painting a landscape or portrait. We found something in us that felt fulfilled and we were drawn further to continue filling that empty hole in our hearts.

Mark: You’re so driven, you spend years learning the technical skills, just like a painter. You take it way beyond what most people would do because you spent all these years developing it. If everyone else did that, you’d have a lot more people who were writers. They’d end up at the same place.

Tony: It is a craft, and it can be taught. It can be learned. Those of us who felt drawn to it also had to learn it —

Mark: Over a long period of time —

Tony: With a lot of trial and error. … If I turn away from it for too long, as you do from time to time, I actually feel heartsick, like there’s something missing. That ‘something’ is telling those stories. At least, for me it is.

Mark: Sometimes it’s the only way I can cheer myself up. If I sit down and start writing, within an hour or two I’m smiling and happy again. It’s unreal. It’s weird how sometimes you purposely turn away from it, then you think, “What the heck was I thinking? Why am I not doing that?”

Tony: What are we hoping to do is to write something that’s going to affect somebody. That they’re going to carry with them, share with other people, and it’s going to make their world a better world, and it’s going to go on beyond you, after you’re long gone. Or, we could just be writing stories to have fun with. If we’re lucky, we’ll be like H. Rider Haggard and a hundred years after we’re gone people will still be making movies out of our stories.

In the next post, we’ll talk about how writers and readers can refill the creative well.

>>Check out Mark’s stories, available in ebook and paperback at Amazon.<<

Behind the Writing: PART 1: Characters or Situations?

The following is the first in a three-part series about the craft of writing, specifically characters and situations, why we write stories, and how to refill the creative well. These conversations took place in early October 2015 with author Mark Boss and myself.

Mark Boss at PC Creative Con 2K15

Mark: We were talking the other day about characters. You read Stephen King’s “On Writing,” and he says he always starts with a situation; I started thinking, how predominant is that? How many authors start with a situation versus starting with a character? When you told me about your Alabama trip, it seemed like the seed of it, the germ was the character first. What triggered that idea, and then did you build the situation around that character?

Tony: I think that story came out of inundating — immersing myself in a bunch of unrelated ideas. I’m in Birmingham, and there’s a lot of stuff about the Confederacy, it’s an iron town — that whole blacksmithy, iron works, steam era feel to it. And I’m reading a lot of steampunk. All of those things fed into the mulcher, and then, driving home, seeing those old Southern city names —

Mark: Specifically, Jemison and Thorsby. Were they in that order?

Tony: Yes.

Mark: Because you might not have thought of it (if they were in the reverse order).

Tony: Right. That came from character first, from a mixture of the names and a time period I had floating around in my head. So in a way, the situation was kind of already there. I was primed to find a story that was steeped in the Old South.

Mark: Which is quite a departure, because I’d say most steampunk, maybe 90 percent of it, is Victorian England. At best, they cross the Channel to France. So Steampunk-USA is a departure.

Tony: With my Caliban stories, it definitely came out of character first. I was 14 years old and wanted to write Doctor Strange. Before I knew it, I wasn’t writing about the wizard, I was writing about the kid he trained and the development of his potential as a magic-user. Over the years, both of those characters kind of developed in the back of my head. — So, how about you, Mark? Character or situation?

Mark:  Looking at the last few books, I realize I’m going more ‘situation.’ My thing was a “what-if.” What if all these bad things happened at the same time? I love zombie things, and zombies were very big at the time. And yet I thought, okay, what if we ramped it up? Because one apocalypse is not enough for me. That’s just too slow. I want to see us get devastated. So you throw in aliens — the classic thing of alien invasion — and then you throw in a robot uprising, and then we’re starting to get it boiling. We’ve brought it up to temperature. Then I started thinking, everyone is going to be caught in this, but we don’t want to follow the people who just sit in their basement and wait for it to stop. We want to follow people out there actually doing things. The books jump around a fair amount to different characters. Even so, I tried to focus on the excitement: Let’s go look for the most important things happening or the most fun things happening. That was more a situation thing, but I had never thought hard about it until recently.

In the next post, we’ll address the question: Why do we make up stories?

Check out Mark's blog "Chimp With Pencil"<<
Mark's website<<
and his Amazon author page<<

Visiting author shares secrets of story

Kathy Bennett, me, & Lisa Wingate

PANAMA CITY — Most of Lisa Wingate’s novels develop as she discovers an untold story that piques her imagination. Her new novel, “The Sea Keeper’s Daughters,” began with a tale related by a reader.

“A woman was traveling with her father, driving through the mountains of Appalachia, and she saw these doorways in the sides of the mountains,” Lisa said. “He told her that, during the Depression when families would lose their farms, they would move into the caves and scrap the house for doors and other things to outfit the caves.”

Intrigued, Lisa started looking for documentation about the anecdote, but she found something else instead: The Federal Writers Project, an all but forgotten Depression-era program in which some 5,600 people produced 300,000 documents — millions of pages of poetry, essays, novels and journalism.

Created in 1935 as part of the U.S. Work Progress Administration, the project provided employment for historians, teachers, writers, librarians and other white-collar workers. The original purpose was to produce a series of sectional guide books focusing on the nation’s scenic, historical, cultural and economic resources.

However, most of it was filed away in vaults during the Red Scare, and stayed there for 80 years. Recently, the Library of Congress began putting the documents online. (Link to the documents here<<)

“There’s an unpublished play by Zora Neale Hurston, slave narratives — I could read them all day,” Lisa said. “I’ve been to school, you know, been in the business a long time — this is my 25th novel — and I had never heard of it. It’s sort of sad. ... It’s amazing to me all of this exists and no one knows about it.”

According to her online bio at LisaWingate.com, Lisa was inspired to become a writer by a first-grade teacher who said she expected to see Lisa’s name in a magazine one day. She also entertained childhood dreams of being an Olympic gymnast and winning the National Finals Rodeo “but was stalled by a mental block against backflips on the balance beam and by parents who stubbornly refused to finance a rodeo career.”

A born storyteller, Lisa equated the hidden stories of Depression-era America to the untold tales of families. It’s an important link to her, as her first novel was inspired by life stories her grandmother told. The tales changed her opinion of her grandmother, who she had regarded as a hard-edged woman.

“Sometimes there are things you don’t like about someone, but it’s because you don’t understand where they’re coming from,” Lisa said. “Ordinary stories can teach you, inform your life.”

That first mainstream novel, “Tending Roses,” is still in print after 15 years, and Lisa still hears from readers who were inspired by it. Most of them tell her they wish they had gotten their grandparents to open up and tell their stories. That’s why she shares “ice-breaking” techniques when she meets with readers, such as her visits this week to the St. Andrews Coffee House & Bistro on Tuesday and the Blountstown Library on Wednesday.

(You can also find a great list of story catalysts and interview techniques at her website under the heading “Storytelling forFamilies.”)

“People get intimidated. There needs to be a catalyst to get the stories flowing,” she said. “I worry sometimes where the next storytellers will come from.”

Probably, they will be inspired by storytellers like her.

Peace.

PC native ‘Blown’ home for book launch

‘BLOWN’ BOOK SIGNING

When: 4-7 p.m. Saturday, June 6

Where: Twisted Brew Coffee House, 103 W. 23rd St., Suite E7, Panama City

What: Author Chuck Barrett will be on hand to sign books and discuss writing his latest thriller novel featuring Agent Gregg Kaplan, “Blown” (Switchback Press, 337 pages, $16.95)

Details: ChuckBarrettBooks.com

PANAMA CITY — Lofted on the winds of indie publishing success, author Chuck Barrett returns to his old stomping grounds this weekend to celebrate the launch of his latest thriller novel, “Blown.”

Barrett will be at Twisted Brew Coffee House, 103 W. 23rd St., 4-7 p.m. Saturday, and will speak briefly about how the particular characters in “Blown” came to be and which real-life persons were inspirations or became characters in the book.

Chuck Barrett

“This is a much larger scale publicity push than I have ever done in the past and is designed to hopefully enlighten a lot of readers that many indie authors can and do produce stories just as good or better than those select few traditionally published powerhouses,” Barrett said. “Always the same names on the New York Times bestseller list!”

“Blown” marks the beginning of a new series focusing on protagonist Gregg Kaplan, who appeared as a supporting character in Barrett’s first two novels, “The Savannah Project” and “The Toymaker.” 

He said this book was a case of a character demanding a story.

“While writing ‘The Savannah Project,’ I realized I wanted to have a Gregg Kaplan series as well as a Jake Pendleton series,” Barrett said. “Their styles are drastically different, so it is fun changing things up. The idea for the story is about two years old and seemed appropriate for Kaplan’s rough and tumble style.”

No ordinary man, Kaplan has special skills, courtesy of the U.S. government. Assigned to stay off the grid, he innocently stumbles into a blown witness protection detail in Little Rock, Ark., and can’t walk away from the impending mayhem. After the dust settles, a mortally wounded Deputy U.S. Marshal makes Kaplan promise to personally deliver the witness to a safe site.

“Not just a promise, an oath,” Barrett said in describing the plot. “A pledge between ex-Army Delta Force comrades. A trust that could not be broken — once in, never out.”

Though he has lived in Fernandina Beach for 30 years, Barrett grew up in Panama City, living mostly in the Cove neighborhood, but then on State Avenue during high School. He attended Jinks Middle School and Bay High School before transferring to Mosley High. His parents still live in Lynn Haven.

“I graduated from Mosley in 1975 — first graduating class from the then-brand new school,” he said. “So technically, I went to Bay High for 10th grade and Mosley for 11th and 12th since there was no Mosley when I was in 10th grade.”

A retired air traffic controller, Barrett is a frequent visitor back to Bay County, and recently has been a featured author at the annual BooksAlive festival sponsored by the Bay County Public Library. He also conducts seminars on the art of self-publishing based on his book, “Publishing Unchained: An Off-Beat Guide To Independent Publishing.”

Barrett’s novel “Breach of Power” won the 2013 Indie Excellence Award in Political Thrillers, and was a finalist in the 2013 International Book Awards Thriller/Adventure category. “The Toymaker” was a finalist in the 2013 International Book Awards Thriller/Adventure and Mystery/Suspense categories.

“Don’t worry, the Jake Pendleton series is still alive,” Barrett assured fans. “The book after ‘Blown’ is another Jake Pendleton book. The plan is to alternate series for a while. Jake will return in 2016.”

Books Alive 2015 Photo Blog: 1

Our first visitor for Books Alive 2015 was Kwame Alexander, who had just the same week won the Newbery Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Children's Literature. He gave a free talk at the Bay County Public Library. Here are photos from the evening, along with my article advancing his appearance, as it appeared at NewsHerald.com and in The News Herald:

Alexander greets a fan at the library

 PANAMA CITY — Fresh off winning the Newbery Medal for outstanding contribution to children’s literature, poet and author Kwame Alexander will speak at a free event hosted by the Bay County Public Library.

“I am so excited and elated,” said Sandra Pierce, head of Youth Services for the library. “We are so blessed to have an author of his caliber visiting our library and our schools.”

Alexander, whose novel-in-verse “The Crossover” was named a Newbery winner Monday, will visit with Hiland Park Elementary School third-graders and Bay High School freshmen Thursday morning. That afternoon, he will address a group of students from the After-School Assistance Program and Girls Inc.

“Generally I like to inspire kids to read and write,” Alexander said by phone Tuesday. “I use poetry to do that. We are immersed in poetry, and often kids will leave saying, ‘I had no idea this was poetry.’ ”

Kathie Bennett & Marjory Wentworth

Alexander will then speak at the Bay County Public Library, 898 W. 11th St. in Panama City, at 7 p.m. Thursday. The event is free and open to the public. The BHS jazz band, Bay Blast, will play music during the event, and BHS cadets will act as door greeters and ushers. Representatives from the Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta sororities will provide refreshments.

“This is an excellent opportunity to see a children’s author in our community share his knowledge and some poetry,” Pierce said. She also called “The Crossover” a powerful book. “It reads with such rhythm. It’s about the family life and relationships of two teenage boys, it’s about character building.”

In the book, 12-year-old narrator Josh Bell uses the rhythms of a poetry jam to emulate the “moving and grooving/popping and rocking” of life on the basketball court with his twin brother, J.B.
“I wanted to write a book boys would pick up,” Alexander said, noting evidence boys are hesitant to spend time reading rather than in physical activities. “They want books that are exciting to them, so I framed it in things boys are interested in. It’s about friendship, family and love, couched in terms of basketball.”

Pierce speaks to BHS band

Alexander addresses the audience at the library.

 The founder of two literacy organizations — Book-in-a-Day and LEAP for Ghana — Alexander conducts writing and publishing workshops at schools and conferences throughout the nation. He has owned publishing companies and has written for the stage and television (including TLC’s “Hip Hop Harry”). He recorded a CD, performed around the world, produced jazz and book festivals, hosted a radio show, worked for the U.S. government and taught high school. He will serve as the Bank Street College of Education's first writer-in-residence this year.

“I just finished a novel about a boy who loves soccer but hates books,” he said of his next project. “It’s inspired by boys I met on this book tour. I wanted to explore that transformation.”

Alexander is the author of 18 books, including “The Crossover,” which received its honor from the American Library Association on Monday. It also was chosen as a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and was called “a beautifully measured novel” by The New York Times.

“You can’t get better than that,” Pierce said of the honors the book received. “I was so excited I couldn’t catch my breath.”

The Newbery Medal was named for the 18th-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the year’s most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

Alexander’s visit is part of the library’s annual BooksAlive festival, which brings nationally-known authors to Panama City for free workshops and speaking sessions. The main event will be 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Florida State University Panama City. For details, visit BooksAlive.net.

Artist's Touch: Stress relief becomes way of life

Don Taylor and work-in-progress.

PANAMA CITY — Touring Don Taylor’s home off State 390 is a lesson in local history and art, as he and his wife, Louisa, recount the house’s former occupants and location while showing their collection of works from across the world.

Art has been in Don’s life since his childhood, growing up in St. Augustine.

“My father went to art school and did metal crafting,” Don said. “He turned down an animation job offer from Disney in 1930. He painted as a hobby and gave the paintings away to friends.”

Reaching his upstairs studio and classroom space, Don held up a work-in-progress showing three cooks busy in a kitchen. He photographed the men through a large plate glass window using a telephoto lens, then combined his favorite poses into a single composition.

“You’ll never get a photograph that’s got everything you want in the right places,” he said. “Don’t try to copy the photograph. Pick what you want out of it and recompose.”

(One of the day-classes he’s teaching at the Panama City Beach Senior Center this month covers sketching designs based on a favorite photo.)

“The thing I really enjoy, probably more than anything else,” Don said, is sketching and painting from real life. He’s filled books with sketches and watercolors of sites he’s visited in his travels, and he said every detail of that day is imprinted in his memory when he does so.

“I can take thousands of photos (on a trip) and six months later I’m hard pressed to tell your where in the world I was,” he said. “But with these (sketches) I become totally absorbed in it. I can tell you everything — where I was, what was going on around me.”

Sample from Taylor's sketchbooks.

Don had never heard of Panama City before he attended veterinarian school at Auburn University. His next-door neighbor had lived here though, and, “I came down and spent Christmas with them here, and when I finished school I moved here in 1972,” he said.

He established a veterinary practice, Gulf Coast Animal Hospital, which he sold 15 years ago to spend more time painting. Now, he only works relief days at the practice. Don is also a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, where he served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Don started painting as a form of stress relief, and found he loved doing it.

“You forget all your problems and worries,” he said. “It’s not like work, it’s something I totally enjoy.”

Don began teaching painting “a number of years ago,” and has a waiting list for new students. He teaches in his upstairs classroom space, as well as local galleries and recreation centers, and far-flung workshops, such as one scheduled at Blue Ridge, Ga., in June.

He began entering shows almost as soon as he started painting fulltime, about 15 years ago, and has won numerous awards and recognitions across the country. Most recently, Don was recognized by the American Artists Professional League for his watercolor painting “Heaven’s Glow.”

“We are extremely proud to recognize some of America’s finest artists, and our award winners’ work epitomizes the quality of art that our organization strives to support,” said Peter Rossi, AAPL president, in remarks at the 86th annual Grand National Exhibition held in November 2014 in New York City.

Don also has served on many art association boards; he is a past president of the Southern Watercolor Society and past member of the Board of Directors at the Visual Arts Center of Northwest Florida.

“We have a wonderful local group of artists,” he said. “A lot of them have been painting 20 or 30 years, and still have a good time.”

In the artist’s statement on his website, DonTaylorArt.com, Don said he hopes his art will evoke the same feelings in the viewer that he experienced when first seeing the subject — “the sense that there is more to the subject than mere rendering. ... I attempt to apply the illusion of detail in many works so that viewers can use their imagination to complete the image. Sometimes less is more.”

Time for one last cup before they go

Robbie and Ellen

PANAMA CITY — I had coffee with Robbie Fehrenbach and Ellen Mapelsden on Thursday morning, and we talked about the little shop they opened in St. Andrews in 1998.

St. Andrews Coffee House will close its doors Dec. 20, although Robbie and Ellen assure longtime customers and friends that the new owner, James Pigneri, will reopen under a slightly changed name and menu in early January 2015. (Stay tuned to PanamaCity.com and these pages for details when the St. Andrews Coffee House & Bistro will debut.)

“We can’t wait,” Ellen said of Pigneri’s reopening. “We plan to come here for good coffee and a good meal.”

The duo once told me they opened the shop “on a dare.” They said in front of the wrong people that “somebody ought to do something” in St. Andrews, and that someone pointed out they were somebody, too.

“For us, it was a means to an end,” Robbie said, that end being to revitalize their beloved St. Andrews community. “Over the years, it has made us so busy that we have much less time for community involvement.”

Their grandfather, Ed Day, arrived in St. Andrews in 1887 as a child. The building the coffeehouse occupies was built in 1927. Great Uncle Bill opened Gainer Brothers’ Grocery there, and their Aunt Weezie cut meat in the same spot where they now make sandwiches.

They enjoy “doing everything” from taking orders, to cooking, to serving tables, to running the register, Ellen said. But as business has grown, doing everything has become more difficult.

“We opened a little coffee shop, and it’s turned into a food place,” Robbie said. “It’s a faster pace than we can keep up. It’s growing, and it needs to grow, and for that it needs a new set-up.”

Recent years have seen a “younger demographic” frequent the area, including families and young professionals, and that makes them hopeful their work is bearing fruit.

“We’re so excited that our baby has grown up, and it’s going to continue,” Ellen said. “It’s time to pass the torch.”

The Coffee House will open regular hours for its final week in this incarnation, and will run a special fundraiser on its final day. From 7 to 11 a.m. Dec. 20, a minimum $5 donation will get you a drink and a simple breakfast item (no eggs or regular breakfast menu will be served). Every penny of the day’s proceeds will go to Lucky Puppy Rescue and Castaway Cats.

“It will be a little send-off and a little fun,” Ellen said.

I will miss Robbie and Ellen. I meet with friends for lunch at the shop each week, and was honored when I’d become enough of a fixture for them to know my “regular” order. They labeled us the “Marvels” and reserved our table with a sign they fashioned using a toy Batmobile.

“It’s bittersweet. We wanted to leave it when it would be hard to leave, not when we were tired of it. So it’s a good thing,” Ellen said. “Robbie and I are actually starters. When we started with this, we had no idea we’d still be doing it all these years later.”

Peace.

Artist's Touch: Art in the Family

Sarah, Theresa, Taylor and Craig Bush at Floriopolis

PANAMA CITY — Craig Bush described his family as “unconventional” during a recent conversation at Floriopolis gallery.

“We all tend to be nonconformist,” he said. “We don’t listen very well.”

What they do well is pursue their muses. Craig, 64, is a retired educator, novelist and painter. His wife, Theresa, 62, is a retired paralegal, jeweler and crafter. Their daughters — Sarah, 36, and Taylor, 29 — are artists working in acrylics, ink and other mediums.

All four gathered on the couch and chairs at Floriopolis to talk about the way art is part of their lives, both as a family and as individuals.

“I was poor growing up, so there wasn’t a whole lot I couldn’t do,” Theresa said. “I still feel that way. I was taught if you want it, then you do it. You make it. I made things because I needed to have them.”

Theresa in her workshop.

Theresa has sewed and made crafts all her life, but retirement gave her time to focus on creative pursuits. After taking an Education Encore class on jewelry design at Gulf Coast State College, she discovered a love of jewelry making — though she wears almost none herself. She also does stained glass art, baskets, felt figures and more.

Her work is for sale at Floriopolis, RTA Designs, and Shipwreck Ltd., but she hopes to do more online sales in the new year. Her Etsy.com store is Four Free Spirits.
“I don’t want to make a lot of money, I  just want to make stuff and get rid of it so I can make more stuff,” Theresa said. Sarah responded, “I want to make enough (money) to replace my low-level job.”

Art by Sarah Bush

Craig said Sarah was in middle school when they all recognized her artistic bent. Her successes encouraged the rest of the family to “kind of dabble” in art more. But Sarah recalls always having art in their home.

“That’s what you do in life. You make stuff,” Sarah said. “When I was little, Pop would write messages in symbols and have me decode it, and that’s a lot of what I do now with iconography, symbology and archetypes. ... My parents have always been creative, as long as I can remember. Even my grandmother was always making a quilt or sewing something.”

When Sarah was in daycare, Craig would walk her home in the afternoons. They collected pieces of colored glass on the roadside each day and glued them to a length of driftwood.

“It’s still hanging on our wall today,” he said. “It’s a little bit bizarre.”

Sarah received an art scholarship to Gulf Coast State College, but kept taking art labs instead of other core courses. After some time focusing on drawing and “building sturdy things,” Sarah said she’s trying to go back to “actually painting.” Her work is online at SarahBushArt.com

Art by Taylor Bush

Taylor said Sarah was her early inspiration, and she took the same classes with the same teachers Sarah had. Taylor creates black-and-white designs and is looking into making prints, fabric designs and possibly T-shirt images, mass producing some of her drawings.
Craig’s debut novel, “Hometown,” was released this autumn, and he’s just completed the first draft of his next novel, “The Ninth Rainbow,” which he hopes to publish in early 2015. “It’s somewhat apocalyptic, but it ends up with a lot of hope,” he said.

Of the creative process, Craig said he follows where the characters lead him: “I often don’t have a clue what they’re doing. When it’s best for me, I can’t type fast enough to keep up with it.”

Craig also paints impressionistic landscapes that he describes as “a little bit Van Gogh-ish.” He has never tried selling any of his paintings, adding that “none of us is great at marketing ourselves.”

As a child, Craig’s imagination was encouraged by a teacher who gave him a copy of “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein. But reading Herman Hesse in the 1960s made him want to be a writer. He studied journalism in college before shifting to education.

Craig at his writing desk.

“With the novel release, I think I had the right expectation, which was no expectations,” Craig said. “It’s shown me the importance of people in the arts being willing to help one another. It’s not a competition.”

The children have their own places now, but Theresa still had some trepidation about how Craig’s retirement could cut into her creative time. Over the years, each of them has learned to value a level of solitude, but she said it took “some adjustment” when he began staying home all day.

“I think we all appreciate our alone time a lot,” Taylor said, adding that the creative process requires solitude as well as preparation and openness. “Sometimes it’s sort of like a transmission from the universe, and you’re there to catch that. I think that’s the point of the whole thing. It’s super magical.”

Come see me at Creative Con tomorrow!

PANAMA CITY CREATIVE CON

What: A gathering of writers, artists, actors, publishers, dancers, musicians and other fantastic creators to meet the public and share their talents

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13

Where: Gulf Coast State College, Student Union East Building, Panama City

Cost: $10 for adults, free to children age 6 and younger

Details: PCcreativeCon.com

Creative Con grows into new venue
Guests include ‘Pluggers’ artist, actors, musicians, more

PANAMA CITY — Having outgrown its original home, Panama City Creative Con shows no signs of slowing down.

This year’s Creative Con showroom will be on the second floor of the Student Union East building at Gulf Coast State College in Panama City. The show floor will be in the main lecture hall with a kids’ art program and guest panels located in two adjacent classrooms.

Creative Con is a day celebrating sequential art, comics, costumes (or “cosplay”), writing, publishing — and tons of other creative endeavors, such as dancing, filmmaking, music and more. Originally housed in the children’s department of the Bay County Public Library, and supported by the Library Foundation, massive attendance last year convinced organizers Jayson Kretzer and Bettina Mead to seek a roomier location.

“The new venue allows the opportunity to showcase more creative guests as well as expand the activities we can have the day of the show, such as live acoustic music in our singer/songwriter series, movie screenings, food on site and more,” said Kretzer, a comic artist, writer and graphic designer.

More than 50 guests are scheduled, representing a wide variety of creative and artistic careers. Special guests are Gary Brookins, cartoonist for the “Pluggers” and “Shoe” comic strips, and Jeff Parker, the award winning co-creator of the daily comic strip, “Dustin.”

“This show is not just another comic convention — it’s a creative career path convention,” Kretzer said. “We have a lot of guests this year who grew up or went to school in Bay County and have gone on to find work in the creative career of their choice, such as Gary Brookins and Michael Pedro (who worked on concept art for the video games ‘Halo 4’ and ‘DCU Online’), so I’m pretty excited to have the opportunity to bring them back to Panama City to share their experiences with our up-and-coming creatives.”

Other guests include:

• Artists Josh Hughes (“Atomic Terrier”), John Russo, Amanda Rachels, Victor Strickland, Mark Maddox, Katie Bracewell, Nathan Smith, Matthew Shelley, K. Michael Russell (“Hack/Slash,” “Justice League”), Clint Hagler, Aaron Hazouri, Brett Brooks (“Dust Bunny”), Randolph Dixon (“Absentee”),  Edmund Dansart and John Holland.
• Writers Chris Arrant, Mark Boss (“One Bullet”), Bobby Nash, Evelyn Rainey, Shaun Phelps, Michael Lowe (LETO-1), Erica Heflin, Chris Widdop (“Velcro: The Ninja Cat”), Wes Locher, Kevin Laporte, poet and professor Lynn Wallace, and this writer (“Tales of the Awakening Dead” and others).
• Cosplayers Alice Infinity, Lozziepop Cosplay, Emerald Coast Cosplay, Mandalorian Mercs Costume Club, and Jo Roberts.
• Actors Dawn Buvurger (“Cremain”), Savana Jade Wehunt (“The Walking Dead”), and Daniel Emery Taylor (“The Return of Swamp Thing”).
• Publishers Martinez/Butler, Inverse Press, and Graphic Knowledge Magazine (gkthemag.com).

Other guests are educator Kat Kan, stuntman Jim O’Rear, podcaster Deadpool Speaks, rock band Rogues Gallery, toymaker Roderick Hall, humorist Teresa Roberts Logan, ghost hunters Panhandle Paranormal Investigations, videographer Lou Columbus, and dancers from Blues and Lindy in the Panhandle.

A children’s activity booth will open at 11 a.m. The costume contest will be at 1 p.m., with three age divisions: Junior (ages 12 and younger), General (ages 13 and older), and Group (two or more people, all ages).

Other events include:

• Two cosplay panels with tips and advice on makeup, custom creating costumes, places to shop for materials, and how to make props.
• Making Comics, the Inverse Press experience using crowd funding to market independent comics.
• Comics to Screen, a panel discussion with Wallace, Arrant and Columbus. 
• Movie screening of “Fat Chance,” directed by guests O’Rear and Taylor, will show at 2 p.m. in the Theater Room (anyone under the age of 18 must have parental guidance due to some mature subject matter).

A full schedule is available at PCCreativeCon.com.

ART AS A CAREER

Kretzer said he has been intrigued by art since he received his first comic book as a pre-teen. However, growing up in the Panhandle, he never had an opportunity to meet professional artists and illustrators or learn about these types of career paths.

“Finally at age 25, I was able to go to a comic convention,” Kretzer said. “I met many industry professionals face-to-face who helped put me on the right track for my career.”

For 15 years, he has worked from home doing freelance illustration, graphic arts and website design. His work also includes sketch cards created for Marvel and Cartoon Network licensed products, and two self-published books. He often teaches or speaks in local schools and other venues, which gave him chances to share information with younger students.

But he hopes to go further with Creative Con by inspiring young artists the way he was inspired.

“The goal of Creative Con is three-fold,” Kretzer said. “To give young people in our area access to mentors in the field they are interested in; to show K-12 students educational opportunities in our area that will help them fulfill their dreams; and, to provide children with the tools they need to succeed staying right here.” 

Today, comic book movies are on the big screen, which Kretzer hopes will encourage use of graphic novels in the classroom as a learning tool and bring about a renewed interest in sequential art. There is a push from STEM to STEAM education, adding the “A” for arts back into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum.

Creative Con attendees can participate in career discussions in the fields of game development, costume design, sequential art, songwriting, creative writing and more. GCSC will share information about course offerings like the new Digital Media bachelors degree, and Haney Technical Center representatives will address their Digital Design program.

“Art spurs innovation and growth within children of all ages,” said Kretzer, who identified himself as a visual learner. “Art and design are an integral part of many new-age jobs.” 

Local author saves a place for readers

PANAMA CITY — Olivia DeBelle Byrd is a storyteller, part of a Southern tradition that begins with tales of family told and retold at gatherings, and continues with made-up tales that are at least partly true. Sometimes, both sorts of stories happen all at once.

Olivia’s first book, “Miss Hildreth Wore Brown,” was a collection of family anecdotes and essays. It won the Silver Medal in the 2011 Florida Publishers Association President’s Book Awards.

“I was  raised by a Southern father and grandmother of uncommon wit,” Olivia said, discussing the book. “The fabric of my childhood was laced with humor. I have loved the art of storytelling as long as I can remember, so when I was encouraged to write these stories down they poured forth as though an age-old tap had been discovered and turned on.”

Her second book, a novel called “Save My Place,” is being published this month by Mercer University Press. It’s the story of Elisabeth Sterling, a young woman growing up in the South during the turbulent 1960s, and the evolution of a marriage as she meets, weds and maintains a relationship with her beloved Kincaid Patterson.

“It is set in the 1960s and ’70s as that was my ‘coming of age’ — high school, college, marriage, children,” Olivia said. “I have wonderful memories of those days and it was a lot of fun to write about it. Baby boomers will relate to the pop culture of movies, music, books, TV shows, the way we dressed, the difference in social and sexual mores.

Olivia DeBelle Byrd

Olivia, better known locally by her married name “Cooley,” is a third-generation Panama City native with a penchant for turning ordinary happenings into compelling tales. She will celebrate the new novel’s release in the coming weeks with a series of events (see the accompanying info box for details).

Crucial to “Save My Place” is “a passionate and unconditional love” between Elisabeth and Kincaid that has to confront a painful past, heart-searing separation and the greatest of all tragedies, but the biggest obstacle is the loss of faith that threatens to undermine all that they have.

It isn’t all gloom, though. Upon meeting Elisabeth, Kincaid exclaims, “You strike me as a very entertaining person.” And it is that ability to find humor and joy amid sorrows, such as Kincaid’s deployment to fight in the Vietnam War, that carries them — and the reader — through seemingly unbearable situations.

“The Vietnam War was a very impressionable and pivotal time for my generation,” Olivia said. “I was in college during the middle of the war when the U.S. had the highest number of troops deployed. A lottery was held for the draft in December 1969, several years before the draft ended in 1973. That made an impression on me.”

Elisabeth is a realist. She would prefer to abide in Peter Pan’s Neverland and has a “magic door inside ... that kept all the ills of the world at bay,” but that door comes ajar when their child is diagnosed with leukemia.

“Elisabeth grew up in very similar circumstances as I did, so many of her experiences are similar to mine growing up,” Olivia said. “One of the main story lines was inspired by a friend of mine who went through a very similar experience and shared it with me in a beautiful way.”

Peace.

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‘Save My Place’ Events

• Book signing 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Sept. 13, at The Hidden Lantern bookstore, 84 N. Barrett Square in Rosemary Beach; (850) 231-0091
• Official book launch reception 5-7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 16, at the Visual Arts Center of Northwest Florida, 19 E. Fourth St. in Panama City; 769-4451
• Luncheon and inspirational talk 10:30 a.m. Oct. 7, at First United Methodist Church Community Life Center, 903 E. Fourth St. in Panama City; tickets are $15 and may be reserved by calling 763-6537
• Details: OliviaDeBelleByrd.com

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This is my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald this week.

She’s got skin in this game

Nicole Desiree Hays/Game Show Network

One of the contestants on this season of the Game Show Network’s reality competition series “Skin Wars” counts Panama City as her “second home,” and credits Gulf Coast State College’s theater program for encouraging and supporting her love of performance art.

Nicole Desiree Hays, 30, now lives outside of Tampa and runs her own business, CirqueVille Entertainment, which provides everything from simple face-painting for birthday parties to stilt-walking balloon artists, fire-twirlers, human statues, burlesque acrobatics and more.

“It’s kind of hard, and you have to be versatile, for sure,” Nicole said by telephone Wednesday afternoon. “I’m just happy to be able to create and make a living doing what I love to do.”

Nicole, who I met some years ago when she was in theater productions with my son at Gulf Coast, got into body-painting after modeling for local artist Amanda Stiffler. “She showed me everything about body-painting,” Nicole said. “She became a real mentor to me.”

Two years ago, while pursuing her master’s degree in entrepreneurship, Nicole took a class in body-painting, and that teacher recommended her to a producer for “Skin Wars.” The producer talked to her about the show more than a year and a half ago, and Nicole was called to an audition several months later. Of about 25 who auditioned, 10 were brought to Los Angeles for the February 2014 shoot.

“The cast was awesome,” she said. “We took care of each other, really had each other’s backs. Yes, we were in competition, but everybody grew really close.”

The producers wouldn’t let contestants keep art supplies in the shared house, so they couldn’t work on concepts they might try to use on the show. Nicole said the housemates found a unique way of getting around that prohibition.

“Artists draw all the time, no matter what,” she said. “They took away our supplies, so we used condiments in the kitchen to do art on pots and pans.”

“Skin Wars” is hosted by actress and model Rebecca Romijn, who knows something about body-painting from her time portraying the mutant Mystique in the “X-Men” movie franchise. Romijn was also the first model to be body-painted for Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue.

“I adore her,” Nicole said of Romijn. “She’s the most down-to-earth person, and she complimented my outfit one episode. I couldn’t believe it.”

One of the judges is RuPaul Charles, who shot to fame as a drag performer and also hosts “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Although the contestants are not allowed to talk with the celebrities at length, Nicole said, RuPaul kept the experience lively with his quick wit and energy.

Nicole couldn’t talk at length about the elimination aspect of the show, which is halfway through the current season, but she bragged on the talents of her castmates. Each episode, the contestants receive a challenge and limited time to complete it, then one is eliminated by a panel of judges. The finale will feature three finalists competing for a cash prize and a career-launching opportunity.

Nicole said her greatest challenge in an episode that has been broadcast was when she was tasked to create a new superhero in only a few hours. The guest judge for the episode was Lynda Carter, who portrayed Wonder Woman in the 1970s TV series.

“I thought I had a really great story behind mine,” Nicole said, as the design incorporated an item that her grandmother gave her, “but they weren’t able to use the backstories. I guess there wasn’t time to tell everyone’s story. I did a full glitter bodysuit, but really shot myself in the foot. That was the first time I was in the bottom three, which was terrifying.”

Originally from Van Buren, Ark., Nicole describes herself as “the black sheep” of her family of conservative dentists and doctors, in part because she chose the Bohemian lifestyle of an artist. She first came to Panama City on a college Spring Break trip and decided to stay.

“I called home and said, ‘Send my stuff,’” she recalled. “I felt like an orphan. But I met so many amazing families, and Gulf Coast was such a great start for me.”

Peace. 

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‘SKIN WARS’

What: Elimination competition between body-painters

When: Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Game Show Network (repeats throughout the week)

Details: SkinWars.gsntv.com

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This is my Undercurrents column this week for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald.

Boss debuts new thriller, ‘One Bullet’

Cover Art

PANAMA CITY — The only criminal other criminals trust with their money is the bagman, and bagman Joe Barrow never lost a delivery until a mysterious killer left him for dead and escaped with the cash.

Now Joe and his girlfriend, Carly, must find the money before the Cartel, the cops, or his own Syndicate finds them. Carly owns his heart, and Joe will do anything to protect her. He should run, but he’s determined to expose whoever betrayed him and deliver the cash.

One bullet at a time.

That’s the situation in “One Bullet,” the new crime thriller from Panama City author Mark Boss. Set in Panama City, Rosemary Beach and other locations across the Emerald Coast, “One Bullet” tracks its characters from one extreme situation to another in a driving narrative full of violence and dark humor.

In many cases, Mark said, it’s only when people face that kind of situation that you see them for who they really are. That’s why he delighted in throwing obstacles, injuries and betrayals at Joe Barrow as “One Bullet” progressed.

“Early detective characters were cowboys in a city. There’s always a girl — there’s not a plot without a girl — there’s always a bad guy, a McGuffin (or plot device), a bag of cash or a case of jewels,” he said. “It’s a collision of people that are doomed in the same way characters in Greek and Norse myths are doomed, falling forward into the plot. They can’t help themselves.”

Mark’s previous books include the thrillers “Hired Guns” and “The Cultist,” and the urban fantasies “Dead Girl” and “Dead Girl 2: Fader Boy.” He’s a member of the Panama City Writers Association and The Cheshires writing group. His website is MarkBoss.net, and he blogs at ChimpWithPencil.com. >>This is his Amazon profile<<

Mark began writing pulp-style thrillers for a website called “Beat to a Pulp,” and an early version of “One Bullet” was produced for this site. However, he credits PCWA member Wayne Garrett with questioning a portion of the story that got him thinking of it in deeper terms.

“He got the hamster wheel turning,” Mark said, which led to research into things like money laundering and hacking. As is usual for novelists, most of the research is never seen in the book but serves to inform the writer’s approach.

Mark makes his living as an editor-for-hire, freelancing for novelists, tech companies, non-fiction authors, academics and more. His short fiction has been published in “Between There” Volume 2, “Meow,” “50-to-1,” “Blazing Adventures,” “The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature,” and the Emerald Coast Review.

“Editing pays the bills, and writing keeps me off of rooftops and out of sanitariums,” he said. “Anybody going into writing for the money is crazy or at least misinformed.”

Mark’s family came to Panama City in 1969, when he was a wee tyke. He considers himself a native. His first written works were comic books he illustrated in spiral notebooks, though he started reading epic novels like “The Hobbit” at an early age.

“Comics were friendly. They were short in pages, but epic in storytelling,” he said on his Amazon.com biographical note. “The point is that when I wrote/drew the last page, I had told a story.”

He soon began emulating Edgar Rice Burroughs and other authors he admired. He wrote his first (self-described “horrible”) novel during college in the mid-1980s, under the influence of Douglas Adams.

“When I was young, I went through a phase of reading Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler,” he said. “The people in those books were so real to me — people who made terrible mistakes, but that’s real. The things that drove them were relatable to me.”

Post-modern storytelling, full of anti-heroes or a collection of debased characters, is not something that appeals to Mark, who said he needs someone in a story that he can pull for.

“They may be knuckleheads or killers, but at least they’re attempting to do the right thing,” he said. “The heart of every great story is good versus evil, the moral conflict. A story mines that, or it’s just a newscast.”

Mark said he’s fascinated by characters who make all the wrong decisions for all the right reasons, like those who throw caution to the wind for the sake of love: “That trumps everything. Love trumps reason, danger, all of it.”

Peace.

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(This was my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald.)

Man of many roles returns

Tim as a Cylon, circa 1978

PANAMA CITY — I grabbed a lunch break last week with a Cylon warrior, a SWAT team member and a genetically-superior soldier — all one guy, Tim Culbertson, who graduated from Bay County High School in 1963.

He lettered in football, basketball and baseball. But while at the University of Florida, he caught the acting bug as an extra on the set of “The Naked Ape,” which was filming scenes in Gainesville. Over the next several years, he completed his studies, did a two-year Army stint in Vietnam, worked a variety of jobs — and chased his dream of being in movies and TV shows by moving to Hollywood. In 1976, he got his start as an extra in “Two Minute Warning.”

His IMDB.com listing doesn’t tell the whole story of his experiences (many of which, due to the names involved and the activities they got up to, you’ll have to ask him about yourself). But the highlights are there: acting and/or stunts on two “Captain America” telefilms in 1979, “Hart to Hart,” “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “The Love Boat,” “Bob Newhart” and many more. He was in the finale of “Cheers,” and regularly played a Cylon on the 1978-79 “Battlestar Galactica,” an MP on “Baa Baa Blacksheep,” and a SWAT team member on “Hill Street Blues.”

“It’s been fun,” he said. “It’s anybody’s dream: today, you’re a Cylon, tomorrow you’re a cowboy, next week a gangster in 1935. As kids, we played all these kinds of things. Now you can be something different every day.”

On the big screen, Tim appeared as one of Ricardo Montalban’s henchmen in “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan,” and can be seen holding actor Paul Winfield prisoner while “Khan” places a mind-controlling alien worm inside Winfield’s space helmet. He points out that Montalban, in his early 60s when the movie was made, was all muscle.

“He worked out and worked out,” Tim said. Pointing at a photo of him and Montalban in their movie costumes, he added, “That was all him. He was one solid guy.”

Culbertson also worked on “An Eye for an Eye,” “To Live and Die in L.A.,” “The Man Who Loved Women,” “Cheech and Chong's Next Movie” and “Cannery Row.” He was a Roman soldier in “History of the World Part 1” and claims Madeline Khan was pointing at him when she hit her high note (“Yesss!”) while choosing escorts.

“I’ve become friends with a variety of people with big names over the years,” he said, mentioning Henry Winkler and Tom Hanks as two of the “nicest, most genuine guys in the world.” He also praised Cindy Williams and James Garner, but he was careful not to resort to name-dropping. He had photos with nearly every one of these people while on sets.

As a background actor, much of his work went uncredited, but you’ll recognize his face from role to role — at least, whenever he’s not wearing a mask or body-doubling for other actors. For instance: “I was the real father of (Chicken George) on ‘Roots,’” he revealed, as he doubled for Chuck Connors in a violent scene Connors was reluctant to play.

Tim also appeared in numerous TV and print ads for products like Salem cigarettes, Schlitz beer and more. He joked with Tom Selleck that there would have been no “Magnum, P.I.” if Salem hadn’t let Selleck go and hired him.

Tim’s adventures have taken him across the globe, with stories of fishing the Aleutian Islands, attempting a climb of Mount Everest, searching for gold in the Amazon, and paragliding off Tabletop Mountain in New York State. But his life has been hard on his body, also: He jokes that, while he did stunts on “The Six Million Dollar Man,” he’s been rebuilt more times than Lee Majors’ character and must be worth $10 million by now.

Tim Culbertson, April 2014

Accompanied by his cat, Miss April, Tim is in the area to look at real estate, both for a home and for investment. He’s also looking up old friends and revisiting old haunts, remarking that the older he gets, the more important those ties become.

“I’m always thinking about getting a couple of Cubans at Tally-Ho,” he said, even as he finished a sandwich at the Captain’s Table. “I have never not stopped by — got to get my Tally-Ho fix.”

He’s also looking for a way to contribute locally by supporting area charities, as he has in years past with celebrity golf events: “You try to give back, to find a way to make some money to help people who don’t have the means. … I’m a Christian person, and I believe what I’ve been doing — especially in the last ten years — is more or less God-directed,” he said.

Peace.

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(This is my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald this week.)