PLAYING FAVORITES

Documenting a TOWN

2020 releases from Soulstice Publishing celebrate joy of the mundane

The faces and places that give Flagstaff its unique character are on loving display in this past winter’s Walking Flagstaff: A Photo Journal by George Breed.

Armed with his trusty point-andshoot Olympus SP-800UZ—the third of its kind after the first one broke and the second was stolen—Breed has been documenting life in Flagstaff ever since forgoing a car for his feet in 2009. Retired from his previous life as a psychologist, martial artist, Marine and trail hiker, he could roam wherever his spirit and feet took him.

When he steps out his front door, he turns down random streets and alleyways, guided solely by his whims. He captures pet cats sitting in windowsills, osprey and great blue herons catching a meal at Francis Short Pond, performance artists at Wheeler Park and Heritage Square, flowers illuminated by the sun just so, pleasing textures and color patterns, long-gone murals.

“I had no car and did not want one,” he said. “As I walked, I became friends with Flagstaff’s street people, business owners, politicians, river runners, canyon hikers, buskers, street musicians and photographers, artists of paint and jewelry and acrobatics. I quickly added a camera to my daily stroll, to capture and share what I saw.”

He posted photos to a blog called “Walking Flagstaff,” which later blossomed into a popular Facebook page.

Jake Bacon, chief photographer of the Arizona Daily Sun, considers Breed a mentor.

“What draws me to George’s work is how he approaches his subjects over time, subjects that each of us sees as staples of our community, that we see every day and that, to a degree, fade into the background,” he wrote in the book’s opening essay. “George looks at those subjects with fresh eyes and keeps looking. ... This is what sets George apart. With the simplest of cameras, he sees new ways to capture the beauty all around us.”

Bacon served as photo editor on the book project, sifting through some 4,500 photos, themselves chosen by Breed from a collection of nearly 50,000 images. The final book presents 235 images, plus two dozen of Breed’s short writings about walking and photography.

“Walking produces calmness of mind. Calmness of mind allows clear seeing,” he explained on one page. On another: “I walk around until I stop trying to accomplish something. Then I start taking photos.”

The collection reflects a Flagstaff of the past, with buildings and residents who have since left standing proudly in the images on the page. It reminds us that there is joy in the mundane if we just take the time to slow down and appreciate it.

Soulstice’s Walking Flagstaff and

The cover of George Breed’s Walking Flagstaff features “Sound of Flight,” a large mural by local artists Sky Black and The Mural Mice on the east side of the Orpheum Theater.

COURTESY SOULSTICE PUBLISHING

Just a Teacher—reviewed on the next page—can be purchased at Bright Side Bookshop, 18 N. San Francisco St., or directly through the publisher at www. soulsticepublishing.com.

Not just a teacher —or a pond

MACKENZIE CHASE

While the Frances Short Pond near Thorpe Park is a veritable wildlife oasis along the Flagstaff Urban Trail System, it wasn’t always so. The pond behind what’s now Flagstaff Junior Academy presented a hazard in the mid-1960s as it was partially filled with trash and residents worried children could drown in it. But when the city council expressed plans to pave it over, teacher Jim David had another idea, one that would create more of a symbiotic relationship between the land and community at large.

In Soulstice Publishing’s “Just a Teacher,” former National Biology Teacher of the Year David and Puente de Hozho Tri-Lingual School founder Michael Fillerup tell the fictionalized story of how the pond came to be, emphasizing the impact teachers can have on thousands of young minds throughout their career.

The book begins with recent college graduate Todd Hunter taking a job teaching math and science to 9th graders in order to remain in the mountain town in which he studied and met his wife. However, he quickly realizes that teaching is a much more difficult endeavor than he had expected.

Hunter struggles to keep his students’ attention as he attempts to teach science concepts from a thick, dull textbook. As an outdoorsman skilled in interpreting nature in the real world, whether navigating lethal river rapids or facing down a black bear, he’s found his weakness: “I’ve run from the South Rim to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and back in a single day—forty-two ankle-breaking, switch-backing miles— and finished with a limp and a shout and a smile. Only this has brought me to tears: teaching disinterested ninth graders.”

Then he sees the unofficial city dump behind the school from a new perspective following a particularly difficult day. As a vision takes shape, Hunter enlists the help of his students to formulate a six-stage plan for transforming the eyesore behind their school into a wildlife refuge while applying scientific principles from their textbook to help reinforce what they learn while building the pond.

A passage early on and quoted on the back cover of the book sums up the theme: “Over the next thirty-five years, I will teach more than seven thousand students and remember the majority of them, but I will not forget a single name or face from that first class, the one that started the Pond Project. This is where I’ll cut my teeth; this is where I’ll learn the difference between teaching and blabbing. This is where I’ll learn about inspiration, motivation, leadership, and vision. And this is where I’ll learn that to teach is first and foremost to love.”

“Just a Teacher” was pieced together with narratives taken from David’s detailed accounts of his decades-long teaching career, with Fillerup shaping it into a cohesive story. Turmoil in Hunter’s marriage and a transition from classroom to administrative work carry the plot beyond the scope of the Pond Project, as well as an added mystery that will keep readers turning pages to figure out what the main character has been hiding. In the end, the book is a celebration of a teacher’s legacy. Fillerup and David lay their hearts bare on the pages, imploring teachers, students and parents to not give up on the largely unappreciated and under-funded education field.

Take the title itself. Fillerup described a scenario in which a teacher is at a cocktail party making small talk. Inevitably, the question of people’s livelihood will come up.

“[Someone might say,] ‘I’m a nuclear physicist,’ or, ‘I’m a CEO of something,’ and the teachers just kind of look at the ground and go, ‘Well, I’m just a teacher,’” he said. “In the eyes of society, the role of a teacher is really minimized, and it’s reflected in the salaries that teachers are paid.

“For anyone who wants to teach, it’s a great read, but it’s also a great read for anyone who’s had a teacher that changed their life,” Fillerup continued. “Jim was that kind of teacher.”

“It never could have been written without one person who can write really well and one person who has a story,” David said. “I just feel really lucky that we were able to get here. Michael and I spent seven years trying to get this thing together and do it right, and we are really happy with what we did because this little book is meant to make this world a better place to live. That’s important to both of us.”