No’Ala, March/April 2017

MICROWAVE DAVE’S SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK · EVERYDAY HEROES · READING THE RIOT ACT · MISSION: HAITI · PUTTING THE FUN IN FUNDRAISING

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March/April

contents

68 EVERYDAY HEROES

BY MICHELLE RUPE EUBANKS, SARAH GAEDE, BETHANY GREEN, ROY HALL, JENNIFER CROSSLEY HOWARD, AND DAVE PICKETT  PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE

Unsung, unpaid, unbelievable: 10 people whose astounding generosity of spirit will leave you inspired and humbled.

© Jessica Lynn Ambuehl

ABOVE: A beaming smile greets a volunteer from The 610 Project upon arrival in Haiti.

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contents 20 MAKING CHARITY THEIR BUSINESS

BY ROY HALL

Giving back to their home towns is businessas-usual for these North Alabama businesses.

36 POWER TO THE PAGE!

BY B.J. KEETON

A Goosebumps-worthy roster of writers, illustrators, and poets converge on downtown Florence, for the Shoals first-ever book festival.

20

96 © Lauren Tomasella Carney

40 THE MAGIC OF YES

BY MELISSA DANIEL BAIN  PHOTOS BY JESSICA LYNN AMBUEHL

After a heartbreaking loss, Melissa Daniel Bain found clarity and comfort in service to others.

62 RESPONDING TO THE CALL

BY MICHELLE RUPE EUBANKS  PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE AND JONATHAN RONZIO

An all-volunteer team from the University of North Alabama dedicates itself, one project at a time, to improving the lives of their Caribbean neighbors.

96 LEADING BY EXAMPLE

BY JENNIFER CROSSLEY HOWARD  LAUREN TOMASELLA CARNEY Author Randall Horton

36

100 © Abraham Rowe

A commitment to community involvement and improvement is the core curriculum for these Huntsville Chamber leaders.

100 FUNRAISING

BY ROY HALL , MELISSA DANIEL BAIN, AND B.J. KEETON

Artists, readers, brewers, and bookmarkmakers raise funds and awareness by getting creative.

106 SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK

BY ROY HALL  PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE AND ALLISON LEWIS

Blues Legend Microwave Dave Gallaher and a band of music-loving volunteers commit to putting music back in North Alabama’s classrooms.

40 © Jessica Lynn Ambuehl

15 CONTRIBUTORS

90 MARKET: EAST

16 CALENDAR

BY AISSA CASTILLO AND LAUREN MCCAUL PETERSEN PHOTOS BY LAUREN TOMASELLA CARNEY

SELECTED EVENTS FOR MARCH/APRIL 2017

30 MARKET: WEST

BY SUSAN ROWE PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE

44 THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT

BY ANDY THIGPEN  PHOTOS

BY ABRAHAM ROWE

62 © Abraham Rowe

106 © Allison Lewis

58 OLD SCHOOL

BY CHRIS PAYSINGER

112 A FAVOR FOR ELEANOR

BY ROBERT KOCH JR. ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROWAN FINNEGAN

120 FOOD FOR THOUGHT

BY SARAH GAEDE

122 PARTING SHOT

BY ABRAHAM ROWE

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editor’s letter « Roy Hall

The best way to lose yourself is to find yourself in the service of others,” Gandhi advised.

Mahatma is preaching to the choir, as we like to say around here, when it comes to the folks we’ve rounded up for this, our first-ever issue dedicated to the spirit of volunteerism.

no’ala advisory board Dr. Terrance Brown Dr. Tiffany Bostic-Brown Maggie Crisler Michelle Rupe Eubanks Guy McClure, Jr. Abraham Rowe Susan Rowe LuEllen Redding Andy Thigpen Mary-Marshall VanSant Carolyn Waterman

The burden—if that’s even the right word—of putting together a volunteer issue is deciding whom to profile.

When so many do so much for so little monetary reward, to paraphrase Churchill, narrowing a list to 10 is a real challenge. But that process of winnowing is a piece of cake, of course, compared to the burden these people and their organizations carry every day: feeding the hungry, rescuing abandoned animals, holding the hands of the dying.

Curiously, the 10 volunteers we profiled don’t describe their work as burdensome. Quite the opposite, in fact. The refrain we heard from all of them is one of joy and purpose, even in the face of the extreme circumstances so many of them find themselves in every day.

To describe the circumstances of everyday living inside earthquake- and povertyravaged Haiti as “extreme” is an understatement. Undaunted, two organizations, both Shoals-based—Florence’s The 610 Project and a coalition of volunteers at the University of North Alabama—have found hope within the chaos of the Western Hemisphere’s most impoverished nation as well as the promise that with their ongoing efforts a lasting renewal will emerge.

Renewing music education in budget-crunched public schools is the work taken on by the Microwave Dave Music Education Foundation. And even though Huntsville Blues legend “Microwave Dave” Gallaher would rather listen to a Justin Bieber album twice than talk about himself, he was happy to open up to No’Ala about the fine folks—volunteers, all—who spend their evenings, weekends, and lunch breaks bringing the arts to classrooms all across Huntsville.

The classrooms of Leadership Huntsville are packed year after year, and we think that says an awful lot about the people of Madison County. Participants in the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce initiative, now in its 30th year, immerse themselves in a year-long, rigorous journey toward a better understanding of themselves, their roles as community leaders, and the community they serve.

Businesses and individuals serve their community in smaller, nonetheless vital ways, too. We’ve highlighted a few of them throughout the issue. They offer a helpful reminder that the work of making our Tennessee Valley home a better place to live doesn’t necessarily require a full-time commitment. It’s the little things, sometimes, that help us find ourselves, and something greater still, in the service of the “least of these.”

March/April 2017 VOLUME 10: ISSUE 2

Allen Tomlinson PUBLISHER

Roy Hall EDITORINCHIEF

Matthew Liles PRESIDENT

David Sims CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Jamie Noles ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

Rowan Finnegan GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Justin Hall WEB DESIGNER

Carole Maynard PROOFREADER

Kathleen Bobo, Isaac Ray Norris DISTRIBUTION

Tiffany Evans DESIGN INTERN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Melissa Daniel Bain, Bethany Green, Michelle Rupe Eubanks, Sarah Gaede, B.J. Keeton, Robert Koch Jr., Roy Hall, Jennifer Crossley Howard, Chris Paysinger, Duane Pickett, Andy Thigpen CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS & STYLISTS Jessica Lynn Ambuehl, Lauren Tomasella Carney, Aissa Castillo, Allison Lewis, Amy Little, Chris Paysinger, Lauren McCaul Petersen, Ronald Pollard, Jonathan Ronzio, Abraham Rowe, Susan Rowe CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Rowan Finnegan, David Sims No’Ala is published six times annually by No’Ala Studios PO Box 2530, Florence, AL 35630 Phone: (256) 766-4222 » (800) 779-4222 noalastudios.com Standard postage paid at Florence, AL. A one-year subscription is $19.95 for delivery in the United States. Signed articles reflect only the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors.

Advertisers are solely responsible for the content of their advertisements. © 2008-2017 No’Ala Studios, All rights reserved.

Send all correspondence to Roy Hall, Editor, at the postal address above, or by email to roy@noalastudios.com.

To advertise, contact us at (256) 766-4222 or sales@noalastudios.com.

The editor will provide writer’s guidelines upon request. Prospective authors should not submit unsolicited manuscripts; please query the editor first.

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Connect with us on Facebook: No’Ala Studios, Instagram: noalastudios, Pinterest: NoAlaStudios, and Twitter: @NoAla_Magazine

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contributors

Lauren Tomasella Carney is a Huntsville-based lifestyle and wedding photographer. She’s married to her best friend, dog-mom to the world’s cutest Yorkie, and proud aunt to two adorable nieces. She loves travel and homecooked meals.

Retail manager, wardrobe stylist, blogger, and mom of two boys, Aissa Castillo has called North Alabama home for 17 years. A graduate of the University of North Alabama’s Radio, TV, and Film program, she lives in Huntsville.

Michelle Rupe Eubanks lives and works in the Shoals.

She’s the marketing director at Shoals Hospital in Muscle Shoals as well as the District 4 Florence City Councilperson.

She’s married to Jeff, a chef, and they have two daughters, Maeve and Ally, and two dogs, Olive and ’Tini— Martini, if you’re nasty.

good cook—not chef!

She loves to share her tried and true, accessible recipes with No’Ala readers.

Like her inspirations Julia Child and Ina Garten, she vehemently eschews cilantro.

Bethany Green is a Muscle Shoals native, while Tucker claims Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as home.

The Greens are both UNA graduates and avid travelers. Together, they created the nonprofit High Tide Adventure. They were married beside Cypress Creek in 2015, and their lives have been an adventure ever since.

Jennifer Crossley Howard is an awardwinning freelance writer who lives in Decatur, Alabama. She considers Florence her surrogate hometown and her muse. She has reported on the South for 12 years in daily newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times.

She started her journalism career after graduating UAB, writing about the Shoals. She enjoys biking Point Mallard Trail and listening to records.

in Florence, Alabama.

He is a runner and fitness junkie, geek, and gamer. He is pretty much always writing something, whether it’s a chapter in his next sci-fi novel, a blog about running, or a tweet about video games.

Robert Koch Jr. teaches composition and business writing.

He enjoys history, food, cycling, and science fiction and fantasy literature, and advocates for sustainability and social justice issues.

Chris Paysinger lives in downtown Athens, Alabama, in a perpetually cold old house, the c. 1825 Mason-Looney Home.

His wife, Suzanne, director for Hospice of Limestone County, tolerates his bad sense of humor and love of old junk. With 10-yearold daughter, Avery, he plies the backroads of the South looking for bad BBQ and good history. He is a partner in the Southern culture brand Reconstruction South.

Sarah Gaede is an Episcopal priest, yoga teacher, and

B.J. Keeton is a freelance writer and web developer living

Lauren McCaul Petersen is a Huntsville-based interior designer. When she’s not shopping locally for No’Ala’s buying guide, she’s

Continued on page 17

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calendar

Friday, March 3 and Friday, April 7 Florence First Fridays The exciting monthly event attracts visitors from all over to beautiful downtown Florence as musicians, painters, sculptors, photographers, and hand-crafted jewelry creators gather in front of Court Street boutiques and eateries for a community-wide celebration. 5:00pm-8:00pm; Free; Downtown Florence; firstfridaysflorence.org

Sunday, April 9 Huntsville Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale

Friday, March 17 Panache An evening of fundraising fun, benefitting the Riverhill School, the Shoals only independent, non-parochial school.

This year’s theme is farm-to-table and will feature great food, wine, bourbon, and a live auction. Dan Clay Farms, 500 Co Rd 347, Florence; for time and ticket prices, visit riverhillschool.org Saturday, March 18 – Sunday, March 19 A Little Princess The musical adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic finds Sara Crewe enrolled at Miss Minchin’s school, when her life takes a dramatic turn as she receives news of the loss of her father and her fortune. Meanwhile, a mysterious gentleman from India moves next door, and curious things begin to happen. Sat 7:30pm and Sun 2:00pm; Admission charged; Shoals Community Theatre, 123 N Seminary St, Florence; (256) 764-1700 Thursday, March 23 Voices Unplugged The UNA Vocal Jazz Ensemble presents Voices Unplugged, a celebration of music tailor-made for the unamplified—and often unaccompanied—voice. The program runs the gamut from pop to rock to jazz to the classics—often arranged by the members themselves—plus solos and duets. This concert is presented “in the round.” 7:30pm; Admission charged; St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, 1900 Darby Dr, Florence; (256)765-5122; una.edu/music Tuesday, April 4 Double Helix Dash Run the Double Helix Dash 5K (3.1 miles) or the one-mile fun run route through the distinctive double-helix running path of McMillian Park. The race is open to everyone, from serious runners to those who are just beginning their journeys toward healthier, fitter lifestyles. Proceeds from the race will benefit research on childhood genetic disorders. 5:30pm; Race fees apply; HudsonAlpha Institute, 601 Genome Way, Huntsville; hudsonalpha.org

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contributors

Continued from page 15

traveling the world curating products for her global style brand, Agra Culture, or supporting Army medical facilities for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Friday, April 7 Tables of Ten For one evening only, the Shoals’ finest chefs come together for an extraordinary evening of great food, fellowship, and fundraising. The Marriott Shoals Hotel & Spa hosts the annual Tables of Ten event, benefiting The 610 Project’s Haitian relief efforts. 6:00pm; $150 per person; $1,500 per table; Marriott Shoals Hotel & Spa, 10 Hightower Place, Florence; the610project.org Friday, April 7 – Sunday, April 9 Huntsville Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale Always colorful, interesting, and huge, this is a one-stop shopping venue for garden plants, soil testing by Master Gardeners, and free advice from garden experts.

This year’s sale promises more plants and seminars plus entertainment, children’s activities, and food trucks. Fri and Sat 9:00am-6:00pm, Sun noon-5:00pm; Free; Huntsville Botanical Garden, 4747 Bob Wallace Ave; (256) 551-2230; hsvbg.org Saturday, April 8 – Saturday, November 18 (Saturdays only) Madison City Farmers Market The area’s original, local, producer-only farmers market. Everything sold at the market is grown or crafted by local farmers and craftspeople. Vendors provide a wide selection of the freshest local vegetables, fruits, cheese, eggs, meats, milk, herbs, honey, jams, relishes, home-baked goods, plants, and flowers, as well as handmade cards, soaps, lotions, candles, wood crafts, sewn items, and other handmade products. 8:00am-noon; Free; Trinity Baptist Church, 1088 Hughes Rd, Madison; (256) 656-7841; madisoncityfarmersmarket.com

Abraham and Susan Rowe are Florence, Alabamabased wedding and commercial photographers and stylists. Their clients include Alabama Chanin and Billy Reid.

The Rowe’s work has appeared in Elle, Elle Décor, and T, The New York Times magazine.

Andy Thigpen is a storyteller and traveler based in Florence, Alabama. Andy believes in the power of good stories, good food, and good drink. He works in communications at the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), and is always looking for an excuse to adventure.

Sunday, April 9 – Sunday, July 16 Encounters: Beth Edwards The latest exhibition in this long-standing showcase for outstanding regional contemporary art focuses on surrealistic paintings of this celebrated Memphis artist. Edwards approaches her recent subjects of enlarged flowers and animated landscapes from the viewpoint of a still life painter. Tues-Sat 11:00am-4:00pm, Thurs 11:00am-8:00pm, and Sun 1:00pm-4:00pm; Admission charged; Huntsville Museum of Art, 300 Church St; (256) 535-4350; hsvmuseum.org Friday, April 21, and Sunday, April 23 La Bohème UNA Opera will present Giacomo Puccini’s timeless classic La Bohème. Set in four acts, the story, sung in Italian with English supertitles, features a well-crafted cast. The production will be fully staged with sets, costumes, a children’s chorus, and orchestra. Fri 7:30pm and Sun 2:00pm; Admission charged; Norton Auditorium, UNA Campus, Florence; (256)765-5122; una.edu/music Saturday, April 22 – Sunday, April 23 Spring Fest 2017 Two days of music, food, and the Spring Fest beer mile. The line-up of performers includes Shoals hometown favorites John Paul White, Dylan LeBlanc, and The Pollies, along with The Deslondes, Lilly Hiatt, Great Peacock, Dexateens, and Cory Branon. Gates open Fri 6:30pm and Sat 2:00pm; Admission charged; Campus 805, 2620 Clinton Ave, Huntsville; tangledstringsstudios.com Saturday, April 22 The Rite of Spring HSO’s Classical Series ends with Ravel’s thrilling orchestration of his own piano piece, The Morning Song of the Jester, and the groundbreaking first violin concerto of 20th century Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. The evening concludes with a tour-de-force performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. 7:30pm; Admission charged; 700 Monroe St, Huntsville; hso.org Friday, April 28 President’s Concert UNA Bands present the annual President’s Concert. Titled “Revolutionary,” this performance by the UNA Band program will include the Wind Ensemble, Symphonic Band, Studio Jazz Band, and Percussion Ensemble. 7:00pm; Admission charged; Norton Auditorium, UNA Campus, Florence; (256)765-5122; una.edu/music

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

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Schimke Immuno-osseous Dysplasia is a rare and fatal form of dwarfism. With only five cases documented in the country, Kruz and Paizlee are the first siblings in the USA to be diagnosed with SIOD. Our monthly pledge campaign will fund the research to save these beautiful kids’ lives.

We challenge everyone to pledge $25 per month to Kruzn’ for a Kure Foundation (100% tax deductible!) and find 10 friends to do the same. Every dime goes to research. Please join the fight and help us fund research for Kruz, Paizlee and other SIOD children!

Kruz’n for a Kure www.kruznforakurefoundation.com/donate | P O Box 2752 | Muscle Shoals, AL 3566

dynamic dentistry proudly made the pledge

Won’t You Do the same?

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What do a gymnastics coach, a boutique owner, one chef, two organic farmers, three dentists, a slew of bankers, and a fireworks manufacturer all have in common?

From nine-to-five, not much. But after hours, these seven businesses, small and large, are united in their shared commitment to volunteerism.

For each of them, giving back to their communities is business as usual. text by roy hall

Bank Independent HELPING HANDS North Alabama

Bank Independent associate volunteers Madyson Bouffard and Matt Fisackerly (above) and Stephanie Thornton, Stacey Deaton, Britney Harlow, and Stacy Caudill (below) volunteer at the Lauderdale County Animal Shelter.

Like so many across North Alabama, the devastating tornadoes of 2011 left employees of Bank Independent wondering how they could be of service. “Some of our employees were impacted directly,” Erin Letson of Bank Independent said. “But even if they weren’t, we all knew someone— friends, neighbors, family—who needed help.”

BI rallied, creating the Helping Hands initiative. Helping Hands encourages BI employees across seven counties to be of service to their community by providing eight hours of paid volunteer time per year.

As of the end of 2016, Bank Independent employees have donated 4,300 hours of community service and $129,000 in goods and services through Helping Hands.

Bank Independent also incorporates four charity drives, one for each quarter, into its calendar annually. Food Share encourages customers to donate food for local food pantries; School Share collects school supplies; Toy Share plays Santa to kids in need.

Currently, Bank Independent is hosting Shelter Share, benefitting area animal shelters. “Each branch has a customized bin for Share events. We make sure it gets to partnering organizations, and all donations remain in the county,” Letson said.

If your organization would like to apply for volunteer assistance through the Helping Hand program, Bank Independent provides a volunteer request form at their About Us page at bibank.com.

Above: Wanda Chittam-Johnson gets some sugar at the Athens Limestone County Animal Shelter.

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Making Charity their Business

Elitaire Huntsville For Kayla Adams, a commitment to compassionate consumerism doesn’t require forsaking high style. Adams’ jewelry line at her downtown Huntsville boutique, Elitaire, is filled with pieces that look good and do good.

Three of Elitaire’s jewelry lines—Purpose, Fashion and Compassion, and FashionABLE—empower victims of human trafficking, addiction, and extreme poverty. Proceeds from the sale of each line provides women with a sanctuary, an education, and an income.

Another accessory line, The Shine Project, helps inner city youth become first generation college students. So far, The Shine Project has guided over 40 urban teens from high school graduation and on to college degrees. Shine employees make the jewelry—even assist in the design process—as well as handle customer service, sales, packaging, and shipping.

Elitaire is located at 114 Clinton Ave E, Unit 103, in Huntsville.

Boutique owner Kayla Adams models pieces from her charitable jewelry lines—the Shine Project Granite Stone Necklace ($30), Triangle Jewelry Necklace ($30), and Fashion and Compassion Bronze Fringe Necklace ($68)

Stuart Ausborn SHOALS SPECIAL NEEDS HUB The Shoals Stuart Ausborn’s 22-year career as a gymnastics and cheer coach introduced him to more than his share of exceptional athletes with “out of this world skills.” Unsurprisingly, perhaps, that same career did not bring the coach into contact with members of the special needs community.

That changed six years ago during a gymnastics competition in Nashville.

“Some of the teams included special needs athletes,” Ausborn said. “I turned to my daughter and told her, ‘that’s what we should be doing.’” They started as soon as they returned home to the Shoals, with an initial class of nine special needs students. They’ve been doing it ever since.

The inclusion of the special needs community represents an extension of Ausborn’s belief that “everyone from ages two to 10 should be in gymnastics activities.” Sadly, Ausborn said, athletic opportunities for the special needs commuCoach Ausborn with his three teenage volunteers, Raney Ausborn, Mary-Helen LeMay, and Brynna Gautney

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Making Charity their Business nity are woefully lacking. Ausborn blames a misperception among coaches that years of training are necessary to introduce an activity or sport to special needs individuals. Not so, he insists. “It’s not rocket science,” Ausborn said. “It’s just a fun activity.” And so much more.

“Everyone gets something out of the experience. When I tell my special needs athletes we have a competition coming up, they’re just giddy. They can’t wait.” The thrill is contagious.

Ausborn recalled the crowd’s reaction at that first competition in Nashville, and all of them since. “Everyone had tears in their eyes. It was overwhelmingly joyous.”

“The people we work with are loving and caring, but they’re talented, too,” Ausborn said of his clients. “They have talent and the ability to implement and express those ideas.”

The athletes’ horizons are expanded, and so are their parents’. “What you might not realize is that this doesn’t just help the people we coach; it inspires the parents of the special needs individuals, who might not have ever dreamed an opportunity like this would be given to their child.”

The audiences at these rallies are inspired, too. “The pinnacle of our athletes’ reward is the cheer of the crowd. While the routine is going on, it’s one roaring cheer after another.

And at the end, the roar is deafening.”

Volunteer and donation opportunities and parent resource information are available at the Shoals Special Needs Hub Facebook page, or by contacting Stuart Ausborn at (256) 412-4200 or shoalsspecialneedshub@gmail.com.

Albany Bistro CHEFS AGAINST HUNGER Decatur Every night, all across Morgan County, one in four children go to bed hungry.

Chef Jakob Reed of Decatur’s Albany Bistro considers that statistic unacceptable. In response, Reed and his staff, along with a group of local volunteers, will join forces again this year for Albany Bistro’s fundraising bike race, Turning the Wheels Against Hunger. Proceeds from the race benefit the Volunteer Center of Morgan County’s ongoing efforts to alleviate food insecurity.

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Above: Ashley Oliver, Kimora Banks, Tevin Leary, Breanna Vickery, Alex Lira, Madeline Willis, Bella Rausch, Mary-Helen LeMay, Jamie Reese, Raney Ausborn, Hannah Ruggles, and Brynna Gautney Below: Chef Jakob Reed and Betty Sims at Turning the Wheels Against Hunger

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Making Charity their Business Albany Bistro manager Rick Brown explains: “The Volunteer Center accepts grant applications from any nonprofit food entity in Morgan County.” Last year, Turning the Wheels raised over $6,000. This October, Chef Jakob and his staff hope to top that.

For race registration and donation and volunteer opportunities, follow Albany Bistro on Facebook.

If you or someone you know works in the food-service industry, and you’d like more information about the nationwide organization that inspired the race, visit Chefs Against Hunger on Facebook.

Dynamic Dentistry

Turning the Wheels Against Hunger

THANKSGIVING BACK A SMILE The Shoals Every November, Drs. Mary Leigh Gillespie and Julie Rice, and their team at Dynamic Dentistry of the Shoals, join other local dental health providers to donate their services to those in need. The initiative, ThanksGiving Back a Smile, treats patients on a first-come, first-served basis, with each person receiving an extraction, a filling, or a cleaning at no charge.

Inspired by Tampa dentist Dr. Vincent Monticciolo, founder of Dentistry from the Heart, Dr. Gillespie offered her first free dental day back in 2006. That event grew over the years, evolving into ThanksGiving Back a Smile in 2014. During that time, Dr. Gillespie and her colleagues have donated nearly one million dollars in dental work to Shoals residents.

Drs. Gillespie and Rice hope that other dentists in the Shoals will feel inspired as they were by Dr. Monticciolo to donate their time and expertise to patients in need. That hope is already turning into a reality: Drs. Candice Johnson and Laura Mahan have begun their own free dental event, Celebrate Your Smile, in July.

“We are truly blessed in the Shoals area to have such a caring dental community,” Dr. Rice said.

To find out how you can be a part of a free dental day, or start one of your own, contact Dynamic Dentistry of the Shoals at (256) 320-2150.

 | noalastudios.com | march/april 

Dynamic dentists Drs. Hiba Abusaid, Mary Leigh Gillespie, and Julie Rice

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Making Charity their Business

TNT Fireworks JEFF DROPO RUN 4 KIDS The Shoals Jeff Dropo really made an impression.

The Boston-native and his wife, Sue, re-y located to the Shoals back in the early 1990s, for Jeff ’s work at TNT Fireworks.. h Nearly anyone who lingered long enough at TNT fell under Jeff ’s spell. He was justt d that kind of guy. Among Jeff ’s first and is fastest new friends in the Shoals was his assistant, Katie Pendergrass.

“We all loved him,” Pendergrass, now a VP, said. “He was something special.” n Work brought Jeff to the Shoals, and in 2000, work took Jeff home to Boston,, h where, in 2004, he was diagnosed with inoperable Stage 4 Glioblastoma. Jeff ’ss w faith and his unshakeable optimism saw him, his wife, their three daughters, and Jeff ’s legions of friends in Alabama and Massachusetts through to the end.

In the aftermath, Pendergrass said, there were questions. “First, we had to decide what to do to honor Jeff ’s memory.” Pendergrass and her fellow employees settled on a 5k. “Then, where do we want to put the money?” They settled on Camp SAM, a year-round camp for children fighting cancer. “We contacted them, and it was a perfect fit.”

This May, like every May since Jeff ’s death nine

Above: TNT associate volunteers prepare race bags and register runners at the 2016 Jeff Dropo Run4Kids.

years ago, the Jeff Dropo Run 4 Kids will donate all its proceeds to Camp SAM. ®

The run, as well as TNT’s other charitable causes, including the United Way, St. Jude’s, and the Salvation Army Angel Tree, are organized and administered by a small army of employee volunteers. “Our associates are very willing to give in any way to help our community or others in need,” TNT’s Katy Haddock said. “Our CEO sets a great example with his

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philanthropic heart. They certainly do not do all of this for exposure or a pat on the back, but they truly are a generous Bluewater Creek Farm owners, Liz and Collins Davis, and their daughter

group of people.”

If you’re a runner—or just a walker with a big heart—consider the Jeff Dropo Run 4 Kids. All the profits benefit Camp Smile-A-Mile (SAM). For sign-up information for the run, visit jeffdroporun4kids.org. To learn more about Camp SAM, visit campsam.org.

Bluewater Creek Farm SHOALS COMMUNITY SOUP KITCHEN The Shoals “We were talking one day about how to give back to the community,” Liz Woodford, owner of Bluewater Creek Farm, recalled. At just that moment, a customer happened by, overheard the conversation, and made an enthusiastic suggestion. “He talked about how volunteering at the First Presbyterian soup kitchen had changed his life.”

“So we donated,” Woodford said.

Bluewater Creek Farm provided Florence’s First Presbyterian Shoals Community Soup Kitchen with nearly 400 pounds of grass-fed beef, for chili, tacos, and all sorts of nourishing, delicious meals perfect for the winter months.

“Food security and social justice are very important to the organic farming community,” Woodford said. “We can’t sell as cheaply as we wish we could, and this is a good way to honor those values.”

B Bluewater Creek serves their community in other ways, too. They regularly offer fr educational tours for school groups free a and Lauderdale County School’s initiat tive, S.P.A.N. Bluewater offers free farm t tours to the community, too, every Saturd at 10am, April through November. day For more information, visit bluewatercreekfarm.com.

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market: west » By Susan Rowe » Photos by Abraham Rowe B

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PROCEEDS FROM ANDREW SOUTHERLAND'S ART BENEFIT ROOM IN THE INN, A SHOALS-BASED PARTNERSHIP OF CHURCHES AND ORGANIZATIONS WHICH PROVIDE SHELTER AND SUSTENANCE TO THE HOMELESS POPULATION IN THE COMMUNITY. SHOALS HABITAT RESTORE IS A NONPROFIT DISCOUNT STORE OFFERING BUILDING MATERIALS AND HOME GOODS. THE TABLES OF TEN EVENT, APRIL 7 AT THE MARRIOTT SHOALS HOTEL & SPA, BENEFITS THE 610 PROJECT’S HAITIAN RELIEF EFFORTS. THE EMPTY BOWL SOUP SHOWDOWN FUNDRAISER BENEFITS THE SHOALS SALVATION ARMY.

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[H] LAMP ($5) [I] WHITE SIDE TABLE ($10) SHOALS HABITAT FOR HUMANITY RESTORE, FLORENCE (256) 764-4494 [J] WHITE LINEN SHADE ($70) [K] FINIAL ($7) SOUTHERN SHADES & LIGHTING, FLORENCE (256) 757-0045

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[M] EMPTY BOWL FROM EMPTY BOWLS LUNCHEON ($15) SALVATION ARMY, FLORENCE (256) 764-4432

T H E W I L L I A M P O R T E R F O U N D AT I O N

Get involved and VHH WKH GLƨHUHQFHb The William Porter Foundation’s goal is to help children in need. Our toy share program encourages parents to get involved and pick the best toy ENQ SGDHQ BGHKC NTS NE @ U@QHDSX NE MDV SNXR 6D @KRN NƤDQ A@AX RTOOKHDR BKNSGHMF UNTBGDQR F@R UNTBGDQR ENQ CNBSNQRŗ @OONHMSLDMSR @MC Q@LO construction. Get involved by volunteering or donating today. _ ZZZ ZLOOLDPSRUWHUIRXQGDWLRQ FRP

BANK INDEPENDENT proudly Supports THE WILLIAM PORTER FOUNDATION

Help Support the William Porter Foundation through Toy Share

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market: west

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[B] THE GIVING KEYS NECKLACE ($45 EA) [C] KEY RINGS ($35) SIDE LINES, FLORENCE (256) 767-0925

[E] GREAT BEAR CANDLE ($15) [F] PURA VIDA BRACELET ($5) ALABAMA OUTDOORS (256) 764-1809 FLORENCE (256) 885-3561 HUNTSVILLE

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19th Annual

SHOALS AREA SPECIAL OLYMPICS CHARITY GOLF TOURNAMENT April 17, 2017 Turtle Point Golf & Country Club Two person teams, $250 per team Shotgun start: 1:00pm Proceeds from this year’s Charity Tournament will help construct a group home for adults dealing with developmental disabilities.

The Arc of the Shoals is teaming up with the Shoals Special Olympics and Habitat for Humanity to begin building this spring!

Join Martin Supply in helping to improve the quality of life for persons with developmental disabilities and their families.

For more information, contact Ashlea Williams. ashlea.williams@martincorp.net or 256-389-3412

martin supply proudly Supports the shoals area special olympics

Won’t You Do the same?

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Power to the Page! text by b.j. keeton » illustration by david sims

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Bono told us that there’s music in the mud around the Shoals—an undeniably true observation, to be sure. But U2’s front man failed to take note of another natural phenomenon peculiar to our bend in the Tennessee River: there are words in the wind here, too.

You can’t stroll downtown Florence without feeling the history of the place, the stories just waiting to be told. You may find someone with a typewriter, selling impromptu poems for your sweetheart on Friday nights. Or you may drop by the public library to hear an author tell stories about how his grandparents fell in love during World War II. In the Shoals, words are every bit as important as music; people just don’t talk about them as much.

That imbalance is about to shift with the Reader Riot, the first ever book festival in the Shoals, on April 28-29. The Reader Riot will feature authors from all over the country, along with vendors and craftspeople, speakers and scholars, and activities for book lovers of all ages.

Nancy Sanford, executive director at Florence-Lauderdale Public Library and one of the primary organizers of the Reader Riot, champions Reader Riot’s mission to bring acclaimed authors to the Shoals.

“We are bringing together a diverse range of writers, from socially conscious poets to award-winning and New York Times-bestselling authors. We want our book festival to be as diverse and inclusive as our community. We want the Reader Riot to be the celebration the Shoals deserves,” Sanford said.

Books and stories are ingrained into Southern culture. Whether the stories are written down or told at the cash register after asking a stranger how they’re doing, we want to hear other people’s stories. These stories don’t just entertain us; they inspire us. They teach us who we are and, more importantly, who we can be.

Alabama itself is no stranger to literary greatness. Folks throw the names of literary icons around like they’re friends and neighbors. From Harper Lee and Truman Capote, Rick Bragg and Fannie Flagg, to the extraordinary Booker T. Washington, Alabama has contributed more than its fair share to the American literary canon.

With that in mind, Florence-Lauderdale Public Library, along with a group of book-loving volunteers from all around the Shoals, decided to put together an event people would remember with all the fondness of a winter night spent reading about boy wizards or a lolled away Sunday afternoon in a hammock with a Kindle.

FEATURED GUESTS R.L. Stine, horror writer for children and young adults Significant works: Goosebumps and Fear Street series Melanie Benjamin, historical fiction novelist Significant works: The Swans of Fifth Avenue and The Aviator’s Wife Tim Crothers, nonfiction writer and sports journalist Significant works: The Queen of Katwe and The Man Watching Frank X. Walker, Affrilachian poet Significant works: Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers and Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York Randall Horton, Affrilachian poet and memoirist Significant work: Hook: A Memoir and Pitch Dark Anarchy Watt Key, young adult author Significant work: Alabama Moon Lori Nichols, children’s author and illustrator Significant works: Maple and Maple & Willow Together Tobias Buckell, science fiction author Significant works: the Xenowealth series and Arctic Rising Elizabeth Patterson, children’s author Significant work: Half the Giraffe Donika Kelly, poet Significant work: Bestiary Irene Latham, children’s author and poet Significant works: Leaving Gee’s Bend and The Color of Lost Rooms Sara Kaufman, children’s author and illustrator Significant works: The Circus and The Tale of Bambu Mouse

R.L. Stine ©Dan Nelken

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“We wanted to make sure it is not your granny’s book festival where people show up, listen to a few authors, have some books signed, and go home. We wanted it to be touchy-feely, in both a hands-on, interactive way, and in a heartfelt, inspiring way.

And as it’s shaping up, it definitely will be.” —Debra Dombrowski, Reader Riot Organization Committee Chair

“We chose the name Reader Riot because we wanted this festival to be something different, something that shows how excited we are to put this on for the Shoals,” said Debra Dombrowski, chair of the Reader Riot organization committee. “We wanted to make sure it is not your granny’s book festival (with apologies to the grannies out there) where people show up, listen to a few authors, have some books signed, and go home. We wanted it to be touchy-feely, in both a hands-on, interactive way, and in a heartfelt, inspiring way. And as it’s shaping up, it definitely will be.”

Goosebumps movie in 2015. After that, he dressed up as Slappy, a recurring character in the Goosebumps books, “for the Geek Gathering cosplay, Book Character Day at school, and at the Florence Fall Festival. I won second place!”

Organizers wanted to embrace the community of the Shoals and make sure that everyone could be involved. Even if Reader Rioters don’t have time to hear an author speak, they are invited to stroll through Wilson Park during their lunch breaks and write a haiku and hang it in a tree for others to read, or treat their child to a character lunch before heading back out to finish errands. The goal is to have something here for everyone, not just those looking to get books signed or listen to talks.

Kurt Watkins and his mom are a perfect example of this inter-generational loyalty to Stine. Kurt is 10 and can’t wait for Stine to creep out the Shoals in person. “I love his books, especially Goosebumps. My mom told me about him. She had his old books, and she let me read them. I have read all of her old ones.”

Organizers set out to locate a festival’s headliner who would be universal, a writer that would appeal to everyone from children to adolescents to young adults, adults, and every age and demographic in-between. A mighty task, to be sure, but festival organizers have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

In addition to Stine, Riot planners have assembled a schedule of literary rock stars this area hasn’t seen since the Rolling Stones recorded “Wild Horses” here back in ’69.

Thanks to the help of the University of North Alabama College of Arts and Sciences and Listerhill Credit Union, Reader Riot is proud to present the R.L. Stine, the author of Goosebumps, Fear Street, The Haunting Hour, and the 2003 Guinness Book of World Records best-selling children’s author of all time.

This kind of response isn’t uncommon from fans of R.L. Stine. Since 1992, Goosebumps has enthralled and terrified readers, and that longevity, as well as Stine’s cross-generation appeal, make the author the perfect choice to headline Reader Riot.

Organizers couldn’t be happier to welcome the horrormeister to the very first Reader Riot.

Notably, the committee was able to secure Tim Crothers, a former writer at Sports Illustrated and current journalism professor and freelance sportswriter. His newest book, The Queen of Katwe, was adapted into a film starring Academy Awardwinner Lupita Nyong’o and released by Disney in 2016.

Stine is a record-breaker for good reason. Kids love him, and have for over 25 years.

Additionally, Watt Key, the acclaimed author of Alabama Moon, which was included in Time Magazine’s “Best 100 Young Adult Books of All Time,” will be featured. His books are often used in classrooms across the country as a way to get reluctant young male readers invested in literature.

Kids like Daniel Price, an eight year old from Florence. Daniel became interested in Stine when he saw previews for the

For fans of historical fiction, Melanie Benjamin needs no introduction. Benjamin is the New York Times-bestselling

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author of The Aviator’s Wife and The Swans of Fifth Avenue, which just happens to be about Alabama’s very own Truman Capote. Swans provides an intimate portrait of Capote, a figure who sometimes feels more like a myth than a person.

One of Benjamin’s hallmarks is to write about figures we only know through news stories and other media and to make them feel like real people who led real lives. “With both The Aviator’s Wife and The Swans of Fifth Avenue, I ended up reading more about the basis Melanie Benjamin for the novels to figure ©Deborah Feingold out which parts are true and which were fictional,” said Abby Carpenter, adult services librarian at Florence-Lauderdale Public Library. “I learned so much about the Lindberghs, as well as Truman Capote, that I can’t wait to hear her presentation and find out more about her research process and how she comes up with the ideas for her books.”

The line-up of authors scheduled to appear at Reader Riot rivals book festivals in cities far larger than Florence, and the committee couldn’t be prouder of that. Volunteers have planned this event with the community of the Shoals in mind, because they want to let everyone here know how much they’re appreciated. The festival is celebrating the literary heritage of the state and of the South and of the Shoals itself.

Reader Riot aims to excite new and old readers alike, and ignite a passion for reading in the Shoals. Get ready to riot!

READER RIOT will be held in Florence April 28-29, 2017. Find out more information about the schedule and featured guests, as well as how to donate, sponsor, or volunteer for the festival, at readerriot.com. You can also contact the Reader Riot by email at readerriot@flpl.org and on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @readerriot.

SPREADING GOOSEBUMPS

by B.J. Keeton I don’t remember a lot about 1992. I was nine years old, so there wasn’t a lot going on in my life, really.

What I do remember is going to Walmart with my mom and checking out the books aisle. I was a nerdy kid, so I went there before the toys or the video games. I remember scanning the spines of the books all the way down—from Westerns to Bibles to detective novels to Harlequin romances—just to see if there was anything I couldn’t resist.

Turns out, there was: a purplish-pink book with Goosebumps snarled in slimy font above a creepy picture of a haunted house. Welcome to Dead House, the first in the iconic Goosebumps series, pretty much leapt into my hands. To say that I had never read anything like it would be giving the book and its author too little credit.

Twenty-four years later, I still have that first edition of Welcome to Dead House on the bookshelf in my living room, complete with the original $2.21 Walmart price sticker.

Goosebumps made such an impact on me and everyone around me knew it: my parents, obviously, but also my friends and my teachers. One teacher, Mrs. Christy Crews, knew how excited I was for them. I just wouldn’t shut up about Goosebumps.

One day, my mom dropped me off at school, and I walked to the portable classroom like I did every other day. Mrs. Crews met me at the door that day and handed me a book. It was the new Goosebumps book, The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight! I will never forget her face or how proud she was to give it to me. She’d spotted it in a Nashville bookstore, and, knowing I hadn’t read it yet, bought it for me as a gift. I don’t know who I loved more in that moment, R.L. Stine or Mrs. Crews.

Like that first-edition of Welcome to Dead House, my living room bookshelf also includes that copy of The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight. Even if Mrs. Crews doesn’t remember that small act of kindness she made toward a fourth-grade student over two decades ago, I do. The book itself is not inscribed, nor is it in any way different from the 30-odd other Goosebumps books that surround it. But I know exactly which one it is, and I know precisely where it is on the shelf.

I can’t wait to tell Mr. Stine all about it.

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THE MAGIC OF YES text by melissa daniel bain photos by jessica lynn ambuehl

SOMETIMES THE THING YOU ARE MOST RELUCTANT TO DO CAN BE THE THING THAT WILL IMPACT YOUR LIFE THE MOST. You see, it was with great reluctance that I first traveled to Haiti only eight months after the catastrophic 2010 earthquake. For really nothing more than the sake of being agreeable, I boarded a plane with my fiancé and traveled with a group of Soles4Souls volunteers to Port-au-Prince to give shoes to Haitians affected by the disaster. The sights, sounds, and smells, the poverty, the devastation from the quake— it was incredibly uncomfortable and vastly eye-opening.

Something in my heart shifted during our time in Haiti, though the scope of it would not be fully recognized for years to come.

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Fast forward one-and-a-half years into a beautiful marriage and the adventure of full-time RVing as Soles4Souls spokespersons, when my world came to a screeching halt with the sudden, heartbreaking death of my young husband.

I found myself at a crossroads: try and rebuild a broken life in Florence, or risk building a new one as a travel coordinator for Soles4Souls.

I chose to risk it and spent the following year leading volunteers to Guatemala, Jamaica, Tanzania, and Haiti. Time and experience in each country led me to recognize that educa-

Facing page: Reginald Bonhomme distributes suppplies. Samuel Darguin jokes with a Haitian child. Above, left to right: Melissa Daniel Bain with schoolchildren, Tashina Southard, and Nathan Martell shows a child his camera.

tion is key in breaking the cycle of poverty. With each return to Haiti, my love for the people and culture deepened, and in April of 2015 my passion for education and Haiti came together in the creation of The 610 Project.

The 610 Project is a nonprofit dedicated to the sustainable success of developing Haitian communities. We aim to empower the Haitian people through education, vocational training, and microenterprise efforts in such a way that these communities will begin to thrive, providing for their own people and needs.

The 610 Project works closely with our partnering organization, Haitian American Caucus (HAC), in the communities of Croix-des-Bouquets and Les Cayes.

Since the summer of 2015, our team has collected and delivered 250 backpacks for students in Croix-des-Bouquets; established a Haiti Bike Share program with The Spinning Spoke of downtown Florence; launched an Education Sponsorship Program supporting orphaned and extremely impoverished students; partnered with Balfour to give our students their first yearbook experience; and is currently working to bring music education to the students of HAC.

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Forty-eight hours after Hurricane Matthew ravaged southern Haiti, our team was among the first on the ground there, providing emergency relief of 10,000 meals and over 250 pounds of supplies to Haitians in the areas of Port Salut and Les Cayes.

It’s in rural Les Cayes that our long-term efforts will be concentrated. Les Cayes is where we are working to build a school. The school will serve to educate more than 250 students annually, double as an adult vocational training facility in the evenings, and house a workspace for a sewing microenterprise. There will be arable land for developing local agriculture and a guesthouse. This campus will serve not

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only the Haitians in Les Cayes, but also in Port Salut, Port-aPiment, Cavaellon, and Torbeck.

Our team is small, but they are mighty. The people we serve are mightier still. As we continue in the adventure we invite you to follow along and join in where you’re able. Even those reluctant as I first was. There is power in unity. Together we can educate a generation.

And to think, it all started with a reluctant ‘yes’.

“FROM THE ATTIC TO THE ISLAND” MUSIC EDUCATION PROGRAM text by melissa daniel bain

As a Muscle Shoals native and a musician, I believe in the transformative power of music and music education.

That’s why I partnered with Horns in the Attic, an Austin-based music education nonprofit, to provide instruments and music instruction to the students of Ecole Shalom in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti.

“From the Attic to the Island” will provide guitars and keyboards for private study and band instruments for the students’ very first concert band.

Supporters can help jumpstart Haiti’s next generation of music makers by donating gently-used band instruments, music stands, or unused instrument supplies.

Find full details at the610project.com.

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text by andy thigpen » photos by abraham rowe

In early 2017, photographer Abraham Rowe and writer Andy Thigpen set out to document a stretch of highway North Alabamians use often, but seldom think about: Highway 72. Over the next few months, the duo will explore life along the highway, as it runs from Mississippi to the Tennessee and Georgia lines.

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THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT

passersby that causes them to remove their own shoes and hurl them into a tree.

On closer inspection, we found shoes of all ages and styles: new Adidas, mildewed bowling shoes, white Toms with lovers’ names scrawled on their soles, pink Converse with anti-capitalist phrases, black leather boots still good enough to wear, and waterlogged white Reeboks with green moss accents.

Is it art for art’s sake? A statement on materialism and consumerism? A thoughtless bandwagon? Who’s to say? All I know is that on one of those shoe-throwing days, someone, somewhere walked barefoot through a Piggly Wiggly.

Our adventure on 72 actually began a few months earlier on a day when the leaves were still green, and the sun was shining.

After telling me about his idea to document life on and off Highway 72, Abraham and I set our sights on what would be the unofficial beginning of the trip: Labor Day at the Coon Dog Cemetery.

We wound down the road through Freedom Hills off Highway 247 just a few miles from 72, early on Labor Day morn-

The rain spat down on us as we slowed the car to a stop. The chill in the air wasn’t what it should be for this time of year— it was a half-hearted attempt at December.

We walked down the highway, across the Alabama and Mississippi border, looking for something that had caught our attention as we sailed by: a white statue, sitting off the side of the road. As cars and 18-wheelers screamed by, we plodded through grass beside the asphalt.

We found not a statue, but a small monolith. Two marble columns on a base, blackened with age, holding up a crossbeam with “ALABAMA WELCOMES YOU” beveled across.

Here we were. The unexpected official start of our journey, exploring life along US Highway 72 as it bisects North Alabama.

Driving east on 72, the Shoe Tree is easy to miss.

It hangs beside the westbound lane like a man-made apparition, a live oak draped with rubber-soled Spanish moss.

Strange, what humans do to make a statement. What began as a forlorn, worn-out pair of shoes, tossed carelessly into the branches, or thrown high for fun, sets off something in

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ing. The warm, bright weather could not have been more perfect for a Labor Day celebration. And though it was, in fact, a celebration, there was still a sobering quiet as we pulled up and saw the small graves in the cemetery below, each decorated with an American flag.

The feeling wasn’t unique to me. Janice Williams felt it too when she first came here. Janice is the coordinator for the Friends of the Coon Dog Cemetery, a nonprofit organization that maintains the grounds and the heritage of the cemetery.

“I came up here about 10 years ago, by myself,” Janice said.

The late O’Neil Bolton and Herbert Hinson had taken care of the cemetery for over 40 years, but in their advanced age, they were no longer physically able to maintain it.

Their concerns for Coon Dog were more than merely maintenance; Bolton and Hinson wanted to protect it.

“When I drove up here, I couldn’t see the markers,” Janice said. That was intentional. “It’s because they loved the cemetery, and they didn’t want anyone up here.” “[Bolton] didn’t allow no pets at all. This was sacred ground,” Franky Hatton told me. Franky is the treasurer for the Friends organization. “If it wasn’t a coon dog, ya know, I’ve seen him ask people to leave. People would pull up and get out with

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Troop’s death unintentionally founded the Coon Dog Cemetery, the only cemetery of its kind in the world.

That feeling of respect and love for these animals is what inspired Janice to maintain the Cemetery.

“After that, another coon hunter asked [Underwood] if he could bury his dog, and it just rolled on,” Janice told me. “No one thought it would be this.”

“I’ve never owned a coon dog,” she said. “I’ve never even been coon hunting. To me, it’s about the tribute that the coon hunter gave to that special coon dog in their life, and to me it’s one of the most peaceful places in the world. There’s nothing like it. I can’t describe it.

“People ask me how I feel when I come up here. I can’t tell them how I feel. But I think most people feel it for their first time, especially when you come by yourself. I mean, I want everybody to come up for the Labor Day celebration, but I want everybody to come back by yourself.”

Walking through the graves dappled by sunlight through the trees, listening to bluegrass gospel harmonies coming from the pavilion, the names of departed coon dogs struck me: Hardtime Wrangler, Corbin’s Tree Talking Train, Straight Talkin’ Tex, Doctor Doom. The names were personal— sometimes strange, sometimes funny —inside jokes shared between man and beast.

It all started with a coon dog named Troop. Buried by his owner, Key Underwood, on Labor Day, September 4, 1937,

THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT

their dogs, and he would go say, ‘I need y’all to put your dogs back in your truck.’”

The Labor Day celebration serves as a community event, a fundraiser for the Friends of the Cemetery, and a memorial to these beloved creatures. There’s bluegrass and blues music, L.O. Bishop’s barbecue, a liar’s contest, and buck dancing to round it off. While many come for a good time, good food, and good music, many are there out of profound respect for the dogs and the coon hunting lifestyle, living testaments to the ancient relationship between men and hounds.

One man said raising coon dogs had been something he couldn’t escape from. He learned the skill from his grandfather and has been at it for 21 years.

“I tried getting out of it,” he said. “I tried and tried. I’ve sold out of dogs twice.”

“What happened?” Abraham asked. “You just couldn’t let it go.”

“I’d go hunting with somebody, and—,” he paused. “It’s the sound of the dogs. Taking a dog like her,” he pointed to his four-year-old dog, “and watching her do her thing. I mean, she

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THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT

don’t miss. She just won’t miss. If she can do that good, that’s what fuels me. Everybody’s got their drug, and this is my drug.”

“There were a lot of weird people. We didn’t say anything about the way you looked out there, ya know? Until I was 40 years old, I had long hair, long beard, and everything.”

George Lair stood in the parking lot in front of the old

“ZZ Top look?” I asked.

Cherokee bank, looking lost. Donning a wide-brimmed hat, green button up, a Christmas tie, and sporting a handlebar moustache, George said he knew why he was there, but he didn’t know why nobody else was.

“Yeah,” he obliged.

“That’s a good look for Texas,” Abraham said.

“We were supposed to have a Christmas parade today, but I’m not sure what happened.”

George laughed. “Well, Austin. You go anywhere else in Texas, and it’s different.”

We started talking with George, and he slowly began his life story. George is a Cherokee native who left home years ago.

After living in Austin, George came back to tend to his ailing mother and realized his relationship with the people in his hometown goes two ways. “I decided if I want people to accept me, then I probably needed to accept them a little more.”

“Yeah, I was a hippy. That didn’t go over real big back in the late ’60s, early ’70s. I hitchhiked out west and stayed out there for about six years. Came back and tried to give it another try, ya know? And I was fortunate that I got to work at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio as Jimmy Johnson’s production assistant.”

After his time at the studio, George moved to Austin, Texas, where he worked odd jobs, from part owner of a video store to a gig with the IRS. He felt more at home out there, where they judged people less about their looks.

George’s phone rang, and he wrestled it out of his pocket.

“What happened to the Christmas event? The Grinch got it?” he asked into the phone.

Bad news: it seems the Christmas parade is next week.

Off the phone, George tells us about the history of Cherokee and his family, of the beautiful homes and businesses that once occupied the town, of the limestone quarry and River-

george lair

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ton Lock, and of the railroad station that brought people down along where Highway 72 runs now.

“It used to be an active place,” George said, putting his phone in his pocket. “It used to have two grocery stores, a small business district, and the railroad brought a lot of people in.”

Most of that, George said, burned in a fire a long time ago.

But the fire can’t burn the memories from George’s mind, and even standing in an empty parking lot on a rainy Sunday, he still finds solace in what once was.

“There’s definitely a rich history here,” he said. “Whenever I come back, I’m just steeped in that. It feels good to come down here.”

Thomas Freeman’s “Poolroom Slaw” is what dragged us to the Muscle Shoals Flea Market one bright Saturday morning in January, and we weren’t going to leave without it.

When I first met Thomas a few months earlier, he told me about his ranch in Muscle Shoals, and how he and his wife sell a host of preserves, jams, jellies, and pickled goods. He also described the slaw.

“I bet you ain’t never had no Poolroom Slaw before.”

I looked blank. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that. What is it?”

“That’s what I thought. It’s mustard and cabbage and peppers. Comes in mild and hot.”

“Is it like Bunyan’s slaw?” I asked, referring to the Florence barbecue institution. I watched his face drop.

“You ain’t never had my Poolroom Slaw.”

We walked in to the first building at the flea market, and immediately saw Thomas and his wife Mary handing out free samples of pickled okra and his signature jam, Zooberry.

“What’s Zooberry?” Abraham asked.

“Just taste it,” he said. Thomas sported a black Kangol with a grey pencil-thin moustache sketched on his top lip. He watched Abraham’s bite.

“My wife says the secret ingredient (which we were sworn not to reveal) gives it what she calls ‘texture,’” Thomas said.

“Country boy like me don’t know nothing about ‘texture,’ but I know it’s good.”

Thomas and Mary’s table can be a little overwhelming for a newcomer. Two eight-foot tables are covered corner-tocorner with myriad combinations of vegetables and fruits,

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savory and sweet, spicy and sour. But Thomas and Mary were there with us every step of the way, eager to give us free samples on broken tortilla chips.

After trying the dilly beans (hot, pickled green beans), the Zooberry, and the hot salsa, I told Mary that I wanted one of everything. She laughed.

“Well, one thing about them is they’re all natural, no preservatives. It’s all just naturally made. We grow most everything that’s here. If we don’t grow it, it’s from somebody down the street, like the fig trees or the pear trees.”

She said she usually gets it during the summer and puts it up for the winter. I remarked that the best part about “put-up food” is it doesn’t go bad. To this day, I remember the taste of the last jar of green beans from my grandfather’s garden, years after he was too old to work the field. It’s a taste I’ll never find again, but that I sometimes catch glimpses of from work like the Freemans’.

Mary agreed. “[Canned food] just stays on the shelf for so much longer, and you don’t put all these preservatives and artificial things in there. You go to Wal-Mart, and they put all these additives and preservatives to make it stay on the shelf for months at a time. But if you can it, that seals it, and that will stay there a couple years.”

She told a story about an elderly lady who died, and she went to help clean out the house. In the basement, they found jars of canned food dating back to the ’80s, most of it just as good as the day it was canned: a culinary time capsule.

“Once you can it,” she snapped her fingers three times, “it’s there. It’s good.”

Mary taught home economics at Cherokee High School and canning was part of the curriculum. She and Thomas have been canning for profit for three years or so. While she never canned food growing up, she always saw her mother and grandmother doing it.

“Ya know, it’s a dying art,” she said. “But we grow it, and we enjoy it. It’s a lot of work, but we enjoy it.”

Thomas practices another art for anyone who will listen: singing.

“Only place in the flea market you can get a song,” he said.

“And it’s for free.”

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THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT

He asked for requests, and after a line of Hank Williams Sr., and a quick run of Elvis, he settled on Bobby Blue Bland’s “Members Only.”

Go tell mama Go tell daddy Red or yellow Black or white We’re throwing a party For the sad and lonely And its members only, tonight “You ever heard that?” he asked, smiling.

By the time we made it to Leighton, it was early afternoon.

We weren’t really sure what we were looking for, but we parked in the Dollar General parking lot on Main Street to take pictures of the United Methodist Church. We tried to go in, but found locked doors.

Standing beside the church, we noticed that the side entrance to the abandoned home next door was open. This old farmhouse, once beautiful, was now fallen in and empty, too empty to even be haunted.

We slipped in through the side door to explore.

JAMIE WEAVER

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creating a world where everyone has a decent place to live

Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build homes, communities and hope.

Bank Independent proudly supports our local Habitat for Humanity branches who provide quality housing for families throughout North Alabama.

BANK INDEPENDENT proudly Supports HABITAT FOR HUMANITY

Won’t You Do the same?

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THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT mike chamblee

Leaves crunched on the old cracked linoleum. A side bedroom housed old magazines, piles of dusty clothes, and an empty Goldschläger bottle. The dining room had a cracked chandelier and wide-open doorframes leading to the front door. The door’s paint peeled into ribbons and pooled on the floor.

We left and walked down Main Street, peeking our heads through windows, and wondering aloud what the buildings might be or might have been. By luck, we peeked into the Route of Art, formerly located in downtown Florence, where owner Jaime Weaver was working. She came to the door and offered us a tour.

“Yes,” she said. “And it’s actually kinda cool. Look down there; you can see a huge hole in it. And can you see where the metal is melted? The guy that owned this place used to sort of be an unofficial bank of Leighton. Then there was the Great Bank Heist of ’63. Somebody broke into another building, stole a torch, came down here, melted that, and stole all the money that was in it.”

“And now you have it.”

“Yes, and I will always have it, because it’s not going anywhere,” she laughed.

The current incarnation of the Route of Art is Jaime’s lifelong labor of love. Part future gallery and shop, part receptacle for someday-needed materials, part present and future home, Jaime has poured countless hours into it: from masonry and structural work to the huge wooden pallet wall in the back.

Jaime suggested we check out Mark Chamblee’s home. Mark is a retired maintenance worker-turned-artist who bought his studio space several years back and turned it into a hodgepodge of found wood, strange nooks, art pieces, and an indoor porch, among other things.

She took us out back to an open-air area, where the roof had fallen in or been blown off. Scraps of wood and metal sat exposed to the elements, and dried ivy vines ran up and over the bricks.

As we approached, Mark arrived in his pickup.

“Is that a safe?” I asked, looking at a huge, rusted box under a heap of stone and wood.

“I been doing a little work, so just…,” he said apologetically, as he unlocked the door.

“We’re coming over for a tour,” Jaime said, as he got out of the truck.

“Mark, I just showed them my place, for God’s sakes.”

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“Oh, well then, my place is, uh,” he paused. “My place is pretty good, I guess,” he finished, with the thick drawl of a Leighton local.

Listening to Jaime and Mark talk, I could tell their friendship was a long one, built on experience and a deep comfort with each other’s space and company. They chided each other, joked that Mark’s place finally, after nine years, has a functioning bathroom, and told well-recounted stories about each other.

But most of their stories centered on his house.

“Here’s some little things that I’ve done,” he said, indicating nowhere in particular. “It’s been a cumulative deal over 10 or 15 years. Here, this is yours,” he handed a ratchet to Jaime who immediately began spinning it around. Ira Glass’ disembodied voice blared over the radio as “This American Life” filled the room.

Mark pointed out several of the idiosyncrasies in his home: a kitchen sink made from an old hospital washbasin for newborns; a giant hammer made from sweet gum he called “a fence post beater downer”; a bathroom floor made out of salvaged wood from a school gymnasium, complete with free-throw line.

“Just little funky stuff, ya know?” he said.

We crawled out of Mark’s window onto a balcony bolted onto the side of his house. Over the next hour, we sat on his swings and talked about the Blues, and which of the legends is still alive; about life in Leighton, and who owns what lot or what building; about death, and happiness, and famous Leighton residents, and who is related to whom.

Leighton seems to attract its fair share of quirky characters, from a former resident who used to ride his ten-foot unicycle down the middle of Main Street, to the street corner preacher equipped with a megaphone and an electric organ.

And two artists, with their scrappy ingenuity and unbridled creativity, who add their own beauty and weirdness to their little stretch of Highway 72.

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58 »

old school » Text and Photos by Chris Paysinger

RICHARD MARTIN, TRAILBLAZER

My first memory of the place is from spring break. I was home from Auburn and had a fancy new “big city” mountain bike to try out. I loaded up and drove to “downtown” Elkmont. I decided to head south on the trail, in the direction of Leatherwood Swamp, an almost primordial stretch of woods, and toward where I knew the old Civil War battlefield to be.

The “Rails to Trails” had been recently completed, turning the old L&N railline into a greenway for walkers, bikers, and horses. It stretched from just north of Athens to the Alabama-Tennessee line at the aptly named crossroads of Veto. All I knew about the project was the concern it had inspired among adjoining landowners who feared that people would break down fences, trespass, and, more than likely, treat it as a Lover’s Lane.

I pushed off, speeding along the trail at a pace fast enough to turn the emerging green of spring into a blur. The smooth base of gravel crunched under my tires as I picked up the pace and approached the old fort. Maybe I was lost in thought imagining the fight between Union and Confederate forces at Sulphur Creek Trestle in the fall of 1864, but I didn’t notice the giant snake stretched across the trail, soaking in the warm afternoon sunshine. By the time I saw it, it was too late to stop. So I continued to pedal and, Thu-THUMP, right over Mr. Snake I rode.

Or, so I thought...

It seems as if my front tire made the first Thu; the Thump that followed, however, was something else.

I immediately turned to see how my cold-blooded speed-bump had reacted. Apparently the shock of being run over by a hurtling bicycle caused him to roll-up, right into by back tire. When I looked behind me, Mr. Snake was suspended in midair, slung there, hovering just over my shoulder. I don’t know which of us was more surprised by the turn of events. Friends, had that snake landed on my back, zipping down a gravel path on a bike and wearing no helmet, I would likely not be here typing out this tale.

The story of how the trail came to be is as unlikely as that of a flying chicken snake.

The railroad bed was abandoned in 1986, a victim of costly maintenance and the shift to truck freight for moving goods across the country. As is common in the South, nature rapidly began to reclaim the area where trains had zipped north and south for 125 years. Trees quickly grew together, forming a canopy of dappled shade, keeping the weeds from totally consuming the area.

Enter Richard Martin. Richard is now 76, and many people would describe him as “wide open.” I eat breakfast on Saturday mornings at LuVici’s in downtown Athens with the “old men.” It is not an exclusive club.

My daughter Aves, 10, often tags along and dominates the conversation while working her way through a fluff y shortstack and crispy bacon. (It is at this breakfast table where she learned, and likely shares when she shouldn’t, that “bacon burps good all day.”)

Richard has snow white hair, a crooked grin, a healthy limp from bad knees, and a lilting Southern accent that is both friendly and slightly conspiratorial. On those mornings when I sit down, and he slinks his chair forward, looks me dead in the eye, and says, “a’ight now Paysinger!”

I know a new project is on the horizon.

Richard Martin

And woe be unto the person whose breakfast he offers to buy. The result is something akin to indentured servitude. Who knew a free platter of good country ham could so obligate a person to give up afternoons and weekends for months or years on end?

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Old School: Richard Martin, Channeling Trailblazer Ghosts

Doug Gates maybe knows better than most Richard’s commitment to community and the slightly unorthodox methods he employs to pursue those projects. Richard was Doug’s assistant Boy Scout Master. Richard, a firm believer in being prepared, helped teach Doug and a group of aspiring Scouts how to use dynamite at camp. Doug soon got his driver’s license and promptly forgot about Scouts, exactly one merit badge short of achieving Eagle status. One spring day in 1969, just prior to Doug leaving for college, Richard came wheeling into the driveway. He bellowed from the driver’s seat what would become a common refrain, “C’mon, Gates! We got something to do!” That afternoon Richard made plans for Doug to earn his last merit badge, for cooking, and later finalized all the paperwork to finish up his Eagle Scout project.

In 1992 Doug again was called on by Richard. This time, however, the project was a little more complicated than baking a casserole. Richard had hatched an idea to turn the old railroad track cutting north toward Tennessee into a trail. Most people would have been a little incredulous of such a proposal. Not Doug. He remembers Richard asking him to act as chairman of the newly formed group. He demurred initially, feigning no knowledge of the process of sourcing large sums of grants and funding. Richard said, “Hell, Gates, you don’t have to know anything. Just get up and talk. While you’re doing that, I’ll work the room and pick people’s pockets!”

You don’t argue with a man who knows how to use dynamite.

What developed was Richard beating the bushes to find funding. Some of those politicians on the other side of that desk very well may have considered Richard’s doggedness

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about the project something more akin to harassment. He drove to Montgomery, headed to D.C., and worked at the local level to raise awareness. What might have seemed like a naïve effort to raise pennies from the school children of Limestone County resulted in truckloads of one-cents. The trick was sending someone into classrooms in a Bigfoot costume. Kids loved it and went home and lobbied their parents to write checks.

The group hatched a scheme to relocate the dilapidated 1886 Veto Methodist church to the trailhead, where it would serve as the northern terminus. They found money to construct covered bridges built atop Civil War era stone pilings.

Twenty-five years later, the 10.2-mile trail hosts runs, bicycles, and enough horses to win the West. Elkmont serves as the midpoint. Today my favorite part is to park downtown and head north where the hills begin to rise up and cast long shadows across the landscape. It is a good place to get lost for an afternoon.

But not for Richard, who hasn’t slowed down one bit.

Most recently Richard helped rehabilitate Trinity, formerly the all African-American high school for Limestone County, until Brown v. Board of Education shuttered it some years after the Court ruling. It fell into disrepair, slowly becoming something to ignore rather than celebrate the good it did for over 100 years. The school was built soon after the Civil War on the ruins of Fort Henderson, where many local slaves fought for their freedom in the ranks of the Union army. Richard took the project under his wing, seemingly an

unlikely white face in the crowd. He soon enlisted others in his trademark fashion, brokering partnerships of people, organizations, and funding, regardless of race.

One person Richard called on for this was retired Circuit Court Judge Jimmy Woodroof. Woodroof believes that Richard’s greatest strength is bringing together disparate people for the good of the community. “He is always the first person to raise his hand, to say yes to helping, even on a project like Trinity.” Woodroof acknowledges Richard as a child of the Jim Crow South, born into a society that made race a reason to exclude. But Judge Woodroof also knows that Richard had the ability to grow beyond skin color as the determinant for the worth of a person. Judge Woodroof notes that Richard once told him that “segregation cheated me,” that it deprived him early access to good people, no matter their skin color.

Trinity is now a beautiful community center, a testament to the inclusiveness of Athens and Limestone County, and the work ethic of many individuals, among them Richard Martin.

At that breakfast table on Saturday mornings, we talk about good football (lately Alabama), bad football (lately Auburn), the cotton crop, too much rain, lack of rain, but we never ruin the conversation with politics. We tell and retell stories, howling with laughter as if hearing each for the first time.

We exchange ideas, too. One morning we noted that maybe Athens needed to commemorate the actions of James Horton, the judge who bravely threw out the jury decision of one of the Scottsboro Boys, nine African-Americans falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931. Richard leaned back and bellowed, “Well, hell, let’s do it,” and the decision was made. Private donors have since given over $60,000 to cast a statue for the courthouse lawn to celebrate Horton’s bravery. Judge Woodroof sat on the same bench from which Horton read his decision and is quick to note his admiration.

But he will also tell you that “Richard Martin is my hero.”

Drive up to Elkmont and hop on the Richard Martin Trail soon. (The trail board of directors noted that Richard seemed to refuse to die, so they went ahead and named it after him.)

Head north, and when you pass the red brick home near downtown, Richard will probably yell at you from his porch and offer you a drink of water. But, be careful, he may tell you, “C’mon, we got something to do.”

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RESPONDING TO THE CALL UNA MAKES A BIG IMPACT ON A HAITIAN VILLAGE TEXT BY MICHELLE

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RUPE EUBANKS » PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE AND JONATHAN RONZIO

BETHANY GREEN THINKS BIG. Big ideas. Big dreams. Big plans. Just big.

She’s set many of them into motion, thanks largely to her role as the assistant director of the Office of Student Engagement at the University of North Alabama, a position that has given her the opportunity to schedule alternative break opportunities for UNA’s more than 7,000 students.

It was on one of these trips in March of 2015 that her big thinking gave rise to an unlikely partnership between UNA and a rather small and very isolated village in Haiti—Desab, Haiti, to be exact.

But don’t try to Google Desab to get the latest weather and tourist information. It’s not there. What you’ll find instead is a blog Bethany wrote about her first trip to the tiny town dozens of miles from the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

From that blog post, written just two months after her return home, Bethany relates the rawness of the experience and how it taught her that traveling abroad, to some of the poorest parts of the world, and helping others was something she simply had to do with her life. Thinking about it and hoping for it weren’t enough. She needed to be right there in the middle of it, teaching children in ramshackle huts, providing the most basic of medical care, and living among those to whom America and its dreams aren’t even part of the vocabulary.

“I’d been to Haiti a couple of times before the first trip to Desab,” Bethany said. “Students led the decision to go, and site leaders did the research. Between them, they found Desab. I intended just to go as a break.”

And, at first, it felt like it might be that: just a break to go to a local village in the wake of 2010’s devastating earthquake.

Quickly, however, Bethany said she realized this little town was going to mean much more to her than previous trips to Haiti. The poverty, she said, was unlike anything she’d experienced in the past. Bathing happened with the help of baby wipes and the well-timed rain shower. Electricity and running water weren’t even options.

“But it was because of this that I realized we had to go back,” she said. “We were in their classrooms on that first trip, but the needs are so great, so outside of what I had seen and experienced in the past, that I knew I had to go back.”

And she did, in November of that year.

This trip was different because, instead of taking a group of students to work on building projects and rudimentary teaching, faculty and staff answered the call. Among those who stepped up was Jeffrey Bibbee, the chairman of the Department of History and director of the Centre for British Studies at UNA. He is also Bethany’s mentor.

Facing page: Bethany Green, Tucker Green, and Jeffrey Bibbee

“I could see very early on during that trip that we had to do more,” Jeffrey said. “If we’re doing nothing to really help them and giving them false hope for more, it’s worse than not being present at all. If we

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able, especially with the university on their side.

“It was clear from the assessment, which was very methodical, that they are deeply concerned about childhood health and nutrition, and they know they can combat that through an improved ability to grow food,” Jeffrey said. “They’re also interested in improving critical healthcare as well as improving education. These are perfectly matched with the strengths and talents at UNA. We are a teaching university, and we have a nursing program, and we’re an agriculturally rich area with many of the same challenges as Haiti.”

Community leaders are seeing the consistency and the commitment on the part of UNA and are responding to it, he said, by being more open in their level of communication.

Mary Beth Willis

were really going to make a difference for Desab and its residents, we had to do more, or we couldn’t keep going.”

A community meeting took place between the 25 self-identified Desab leaders and those from UNA.

The November trip became a brainstorming and fact-finding mission, according to Jeffrey.

“I was immediately anointed by them as the university’s spokesman because I was perceived as ‘the guy,’” Jeffrey said, with a chuckle. “The reality is that the life expectancy there is 60, so they saw my gray hairs and must have believed I was everyone’s grandfather.”

“Desab needed to see a serious commitment on the part of UNA that we were willing to marshal our talents and resources in order to sustain our efforts and achieve goals,” he said.

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Out of that meeting came a community needs assessment, driven by Desab’s self-appointed leaders, which Bethany and Jeffrey agreed was quite achiev-

Tucker Green, Bethany’s husband, is also among those who have ventured to Desab, responding not only to his need to help but his desire to partner with his wife on these projects. The couple launched their own organization, High Tide, in 2016, and its aim is to create adventure and service trips for high school teens that open their eyes to a whole new perspective of life and the world around them.

“You look at these needs, and you see they’re so simple,” he said. “But they’re critical to a way of life. How can children learn and the focus be on education when everyone is concerned about their next meal or clean water?

The medical needs are often very simple, but the individual can’t be treated for whatever reason, so that a simple sprain or fall can be life-threatening because they’re waiting to see a doctor who only comes once a week.”

The UNA group, from left to right: Casey Kynerd, Tucker Green, Bethany Green, David Johnson, Larianne Collins (University of South Carolina), Jeffrey Bibbee, Gary Padgett, Mary Beth Willis, and Clarissa Hall

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“This will allow them to see for themselves what a school day is like and then take that knowledge back with them,” Bethany said. “We also want to address their professional development needs and further reinforce our partnership.”

Addressing the crisis of access to healthcare is also on the agenda for Jeffrey and Bethany. They said their goal is to help identify members of the community to work with UNA’s nursing faculty in order to learn basic first aid.

“But because it’s such a patriarchal society, we need them to send one male and one female,” Bethany said. “This will allow them to take ownership of the clinical partnership and be part of the process. Our goal is to make sure this is the most beneficial experience for them.

We also want to show them the same hospitality they have shown us.”

Making this goal a reality is going to take Bethany, Tucker, and Jeffrey tapping into their big plans and ideas.

“The biggest hurdle to getting any of them here is financial backing—the plane tickets and the passports,” Jeffrey said. “When they experience a trip like this, they have a vision of what their lives can be.”

Tucker Green

Already, a member of the Desab community has traveled to Florence in order to see how the education system functions in America as well as to learn about the cultural opportunities available in the states.

“This gentleman traveled to a number of places, including the Huntsville Symphony, but he always said that his favorite part of the trip was the time he spent at Kilby,” Bethany said. “He could see how some of the ideas and practices in use in our classrooms could be translated to his classroom in Haiti.”

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Kilby Laboratory School is the elementary school housed at UNA. Serving students in K-6 grades, Kilby, in partnership with UNA’s College of Education and Human Sciences, models current trends in teaching and education for UNA’s elementary education students.

A second group of educators is preparing to travel from Desab, Haiti, to Florence later this year, in August, in order to spend a week in education training as well as in the classroom with instructors at Kilby.

And when it all comes together, he said the questions and the conversations can shift into how they can define themselves as a community and the belief in a shared future.

“We can’t really define success yet,” Jeffrey said. “It’s unknown how many lives will be impacted and changed because of this place called Desab. We can never fully grasp the ramifications of our actions, but I believe that the more good you put out there, the more good you should get back.”

The Arc of the Shoals will be working closely alongside our Shoals Area Special Olympics and Habitat for Humanity to build a group home for adults dealing with developmental disabilities.

Contact Shoals Habitat to ďŹ nd our more about how your family, business, or organization can get involved with this exciting project! All donations are tax deductible.

Help Us Build A House That We Can All Be Proud Of!

Visit www.shoalshabitat.org or call us at 256-760-9515

BUILD A

HERITAGE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSIT Y 3625 Helton Dr.

256.766.6610

www.hcu.edu

march/april ď™…ď™ƒď™„ď™Š | noalastudios.com | 

MICHELLE RUPE EUBANKS, SARAH GAEDE, BETHANY GREEN, ROY HALL, JENNIFER CROSSLEY HOWARD, AND DAVE PICKETT

PROFILES BY

PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM

 | noalastudios.com | march/april 

ROWE » INTRO BY ROY HALL

Without fanfare or financial reward, the 10 people you’re about to meet contribute their time and talent every day toward making North Alabama a better place to live.

The work done by them and by thousands of their fellow volunteers—at food pantries and hospices, homeless shelters and toy drives, arts festivals and animal rescues—is vital to the health and happiness of our communities.

It is also all too often overlooked.

“Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves,” Horace Mann said.

We are the opposite of undone by their examples of quiet heroism. We are inspired.

We hope you are, too.

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

EVERYDAY HEROES

Cayron Mann The Healing Place by Michelle Rupe Eubanks  | noalastudios.com | march/april 

Paying it forward took on a whole new meaning for Cayron Mann in 2010.

Her husband had just died when she received a note from a friend—a former student, actually—who reached out with her condolences but also a bit of advice. Consider The Healing Place, she suggested, as it had helped her so much as a child.

“After I read the note, I realized this person knew, first-hand, what The Healing Place could do, and I had to have faith that it could help me and my son, who was eight years old at the time,” Mann said. “The next step was to make the call, and it was our first step on that path.”

Mann spent a couple of years working through her own grief, and in 2012, she decided that the path was leading her to change careers. After 15 years of working as a language arts teacher, she now offers professional counseling services, and it’s a decision that would not have been made had she not benefitted from The Healing Place.

“Because of the professionals there, I made the decision that I wanted to become a helper,” she said. “Since the death of my husband, I have been blessed to meet and work with people that I might have never come in contact with. It’s why I do what I do, by working in private practice as well as providing counseling at The Healing Place.”

The journey has been both personal and professional, and Mann credits The Healing Place with allowing her to take the first step.

“It’s just a given that I’m going to volunteer at The Healing Place,” she said. “I’m on call, and I’m there helping at all of the seminars, and at the Healing Hearts camp, when another counselor has to be out, I’m honored to step in for them and do that.”

It’s just one of the ways she gives back to the organization that showed her that volunteering may be the one thing that is so selfless and yet selfish at the same time.

“Because I have been on the receiving end, I volunteer,” she said. “It’s always a pleasure to rejoice in their successes, so I get just as much from it as they do.”

To learn more about The Healing Place, visit them online at thehealingplaceinfo.org.

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

EVERYDAY HEROES

christy coosenberry sidney’s safe foundation by jennifer crossley howard  | noalastudios.com | march/april 

Christy Coosenberry didn’t notice the amount of poverty in the Shoals until her son started attending public school.

“Maybe I was going through with blinders on,” Coosenberry said. “When you see it, it is devastating. It will rock you to your core.” What she witnessed and learned from school leaders put her into action.

She recalls taking her son with her to deliver Christmas gifts to a family. They had no couch, no TV, and nothing to sit on in their house. Another little girl came to school with dried cake batter on her face. That was her breakfast because there was no other food in the kitchen.

Though Coosenberry works full time at a pharmacy and has a family, she also puts in after hours at Sidney’s Safe Foundation in Florence. Named for Coosenberry’s high school friend, Sidney Carson, the nonprofit makes sure hungry schoolchildren have something to eat when they are home during the weekend. School counselors, teachers, and parents identify needs and contact Sidney’s Safe, where it is discreetly distributed or placed in students’ backpacks. Volunteers collect donated food and take it to schools. Sidney’s Safe donates 500 bags of nonperishable food to kids in Lauderdale and Colbert counties, Cherokee, Waterloo, and beyond every Friday.

Many of the children Sidney’s Safe serves come from homes rife with neglect, addiction, and abuse. Sidney Carson faced her share of demons, including depression, addiction, and physical abuse, said her sister, Sarah Jennifer Thompson, who began Sidney’s Safe. “We do this in hopes that someone will hear what she went through and decide to get help,” Thompson said.

“Everybody loved Sidney,” Coosenberry said. “She was fun and outgoing. Everyone wanted to be her friend.”

For six years, Coosenberry has devoted time to Sidney’s Safe, and many of her fellow volunteers are other classmates of Sidney’s.

Sidney died in 2006, leaving behind two young children, whom Sarah Jennifer raises. Coosenberry hopes other children will receive such grace. “These kids are going to be the leaders of our world eventually,” Coosenberry said. “Give them a chance.”

To find out how you can help alleviate childhood hunger in North Alabama, visit sidneyssafe.org.

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

Virginia (bitsy, with a lowercase “b”) Kingsley has been involved with the St. Francis Project, sponsored by Trinity Episcopal Church in Florence, since its inception in 2009, with a goal of raising $1,000,000 over 10 years and giving it away to agencies and ministries in the community. Bitsy is involved in the project because, as she explains, “Working on the St. Francis Board and with its fundraisers has been a gift for me. To be able to fund a grant to acknowledge the hard work of an agency, individual, or ministry is to honor and promote their work in a hurting world.”

She is involved for the opportunity “to give the gift of response to a small church whose members are becoming elderly and cannot maintain their precious cemetery; to fund an art center request for materials to allow a teacher to open new visions for children; to provide a paddock for starving horses to have a chance to heal; to help an adult learn to read and have a decentpaying job.”

She is involved because of the St. Francis Project mission statement, which allows her to receive and share God’s bounty: “To develop true servants of God to bring the hope, healing, compassion, forgiveness, and joy of the kingdom of God to a world broken by despair, suffering, anger, and need.”

For bitsy, the best part of working with the St. Francis Project is the volunteer spirit of the entire community, that has borne such fabulous fruit. As she observes, “With joy, time, talent, commitment, money—what a blessing to be able to receive and share God’s bounty.”

 | noalastudios.com | march/april 

BITSY KINGSLEY The ST. FRANCIS PROJECT by Sarah gaede

EVERYDAY HEROES march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

EVERYDAY HEROES

judy culpepper free 2 teach by jennifer crossley howard  | noalastudios.com | march/april 

Judy Culpepper of Huntsville worked in public education for 25 years in Mississippi until she moved to Alabama in 1994.

In her retirement years, she’s found a place that holds the same camaraderie and satisfaction her school days once held in Free 2 Teach. The nonprofit based in Huntsville allows area teachers to shop for free every other month for classroom necessities such as crayons, craft supplies, and reams of paper. In a day when many teachers pay for supplies out of their own pockets, Free 2 Teach aids them through donations, often from retired teachers.

It is the thousands of books which Culpepper manages that excite her the most. Any given week there are between 3,000 and 5,000 books on Free 2 Teach shelves, and they are one of the most sought after resources. “They go almost as fast as we get them in,” Culpepper said.

Teachers know when new books are out, and she happily straightens stacks after they rifle through them during their allotted time. “It looks like a freight train has gone through the shelves,” Culpepper said, laughing.

She keeps picture books, storybooks, and chapter books, as well as teaching resource books, on hand. Teachers bring most books to their classrooms to give to students to take home and enjoy.

“However you get a child or young adult interested in books—usually it starts with a picture book—it’s an encouragement for young adults to see books in the home,” she said.

“If a first grader takes a book home and he’s got a younger brother or sister, somebody else will be introduced to books,” Culpepper added.

For almost three years, Culpepper has volunteered at Free 2 Teach’s warehouse off Leeman Ferry Road, and she plans on doing so for as long as possible. She encourages others to join her.

“I always get this lovely sense of accomplishment,” Culpepper said. “It’s a feel-good kind of thing.”

To learn more about how Free 2 Teach aids local educators and for volunteer and donation opportunities, visit them online at free-2-teach.org.

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

EVERYDAY HEROES

kerry plunk The ark Inc. by roy hall  | noalastudios.com | march/april 

“We were looking for a puppy for my kids,” Kerry Plunk said of her introduction to The Ark, Madison’s no-kill animal shelter and one of only a handful of no-kill shelters across North Alabama. “We were struck by the cleanliness and the enthusiasm of the volunteers. And Nina personally took us into a room and let us choose a puppy.”

Plunk is referring to Nina Beil, founder and director of The Ark. Beil has dedicated her life to the cause of animal rescue and community education: first as the Humane Society’s Huntsville educator, and for the past 17 years through The Ark, which she built “block by block, brick by brick, on her own property,” said Plunk.

Plunk has been a volunteer since that first fateful visit.

Laughing, she also describes herself as a casualty of The Ark. “I have four dogs now, all from The Ark. The oldest, a teacup poodle, was rescued from certain death by The Ark. “She’s now nearly 20 years old.”

Everyone at The Ark, Beil included, is a volunteer. “I’ve worked in every part of the shelter,” Plunk said. Currently, she provides bookkeeping services in the office, where she is kept keenly aware of the expense of providing care to vulnerable animals.

“The vet bills alone run $10,000 per month.” A daunting challenge for any nonprofit, particularly The Ark, which receives no funding from the city or the state.

“If it weren’t for community support, The Ark wouldn’t exist.

Every penny raised goes to the animals,” Plunk emphasized.

To support The Ark and its mission, visit their thrift store, donate a needed item from The Arks’ Facebook wish-list, or make a donation online at arkinc.org.

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

EVERYDAY HEROES

kevin mcabee still serving veterans by jennifer crossley howard  | noalastudios.com | march/april 

The mortgage interest rates that Kevin McAbee finds veterans are so low a few mused that they must be too good to be true. McAbee takes that as a compliment. For 20 years he has worked as a banker and mortgage broker, and for the past year he has helped veterans secure home loans through Still Serving Veterans, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit based in Huntsville.

Still Serving Veterans offers financial counseling as well as loan benefits, such as 100 percent financing with no money down in some cases.

McAbee’s father was in the National Guard, and that personal tie and gratitude toward the military led him to advise veterans. Veterans at Redstone Arsenal in Rocket City, as well as those coming home from active duty, keep him busy.

He sees more Army veterans than other veterans because of the proximity of the arsenal.

“We’re honored to be working with them,” McAbee said.

“We’re very passionate about it. Veterans, they deserve more.”

A recent veteran needed refinancing. He was paying 4 percent interest rate on his loan, McAbee said. “We were able to come in a lower three and a quarter,” McAbee said. “He was so impressed, he told the person who sent him to us, he thought it was a scam.”

Still Serving Veterans saved the man $7,000 in closing costs.

Still Serving Veterans is not for profit. McAbee supports them through the company he works for, VA Mortgage Alabama. A part of every loan that closes goes to Still Serving Veterans. That and donations keep the organization afloat.

Still Serving Veterans assists our nation’s heroes by providing employment services and other vital programs at no charge.

Visit stillservingveterans.org for more information.

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

EVERYDAY HEROES

duane pickett hospice of limestone county by duane pickett  | noalastudios.com | march/april 

My path to volunteer work started in August 2015 with a notice in my church bulletin asking for volunteers for the Hospice of Limestone County. My wife suggested I give them a call, as I had worked briefly with another hospice a few years earlier using music therapy. Music therapy is an established profession within the healthcare field and is practiced in a wide variety of clinical and rehabilitative settings. It involves the specialized use of music by a Board Certified Music Therapist (MT-BC) to help a person achieve goals and objectives related to the individual’s therapeutic needs.

I met with the volunteer coordinator for Hospice of Limestone County and was made to feel right at home. All of the staff are selflessly dedicated to providing their patients with end of life care and supporting the patients’ families. They were very enthusiastic about me using music therapy with their patients, and I was given full support from day one.

As an MT-BC, I work individually with hospice patients referred to music therapy. I devise treatment goals based on their needs and design music therapy interventions to treat those needs. The interventions I use can vary, but usually involve playing and singing music that is personally meaningful to the patient. The goals that I work on can include managing pain, improving quality of life, minimizing physical and emotional distress, decreasing feelings of isolation and rejection, maintaining and increasing short or long term memory, and providing spiritual support.

As a patient nears the end of life, the use of personally meaningful music can be a source of great comfort and reassurance for them and for their families.

For information about Hospice of Limestone County, including volunteer information and donation opportunities, visit hospiceolc.org.

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

EVERYDAY HEROES

barbara harrison one place of the shoals by michelle rupe eubanks  | noalastudios.com | march/april 

Barbara Harrison is like a lot of us. She’d read in the local paper about the needs of non-profit agencies for weeks, and, like many of us, she’d put the paper down, walk away, and promptly forget.

She’d spent some time volunteering for her church, but it wasn’t enough.

“I’d always had a full load,” Harrison said of the life she and her husband lived in a small city in south Alabama.

“I’d worked my whole life in real estate and appraisal, even had my own business. I was also on the city council there, so, when we moved to Florence to be closer to my daughter and grandchildren, I just had too much time on my hands. My husband hadn’t retired yet, so it was just me and my dog. And we’d talked about all we could talk.”

Pretty soon, however, she learned of One Place, the organization that provides victims of abuse and violence a one-stop shop for advocacy services. It’s on the corner of Tennessee and Pine streets in downtown Florence.

“I didn’t even know if it would be a regular thing,” she said.

“But they told me they needed someone on Tuesday, so I committed to that. If I don’t have anything else on Tuesdays, I know I have that, and I absolutely stick to that day. Of course, I don’t have any plans that can’t be changed, so I fill in when I’m needed.”

And what’s she learned through her work with One Place?

“When people ring that doorbell, you can tell that some have had a pretty rough time,” Harrison said. “They want to feel like someone cares. And, for me, the one thing in volunteering that I don’t think I would stay with an organization I didn’t believe in. But these people are dedicated, and I think it’s a good bunch of people who try to help men and women and children. We all work well together.”

For Harrison, volunteerism has proven a way to spend time, help others, and make new friends, all in a city to which she is relatively new.

“Volunteering becomes that common bond,” she said.

One Place of the Shoals provides crisis care services to victims of domestic violence, adult rape and sexual assault, child sexual and physical abuse, and elder abuse. Visit them at oneplaceoftheshoals.org. march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

EVERYDAY HEROES

kristin husainy brushstrokes by michelle rupe eubanks  | noalastudios.com | march/april 

Art is life to Kristin Husainy, and it’s been that way for most of her life.

It’s also why she didn’t hesitate to agree to teach stroke patients at the J.W. Sommer Rehabilitation Unit on the Shoals Hospital campus creative techniques as part of Brushstrokes. The program was the brainstorm of Quality Assurance Nurse Lauren Carpenter who felt there was a way to incorporate art into the therapy being offered to patients.

“In the hospital, time and actions are restrictive,” Carpenter said. “But, at Brushstrokes, the patient is on our time.”

Husainy agrees. As she instructs patients on different techniques—dotting circles of paint using a pencil eraser or creating mosaic patterns from other images—she said she can see the mental escape it provides.

“I love to teach, and I love the creative process,” Husainy said.

“It’s thrilling to watch someone go from having no art exposure to realizing they can’t mess up, and, on top of that, they have the opportunity to create something that will visually stimulate them. I love it. It’s not work at all.”

So far, the program, which launched in October 2015, has served around 50 patients, all of whom have experienced some kind of physical impairment as the result of a stroke.

Most of the patients willingly leave their artwork at Sommer so that it can be auctioned in order to raise money for stroke research.

Husainy said she is in awe of the pieces that have been created.

“These people often don’t have any exposure to art, and, clinically, they’re able to separate themselves from their rehab for the sake of an art form,” she said. “The line, for instance, is a representation of strength, and we call it art. That gives it relevance and significance to the patient and to us.”

The pieces that have been created are on display at Sommer.

Carpenter said the wall of art is widely admired by other patients as well as staff.

“It’s really been something to see them realize just how meaningful this can be for them,” she said. “And, largely, we have Kristin and her enthusiasm for teaching to thank.”

More information about Brushstrokes is available on Shoals Hospital’s website at shoalshospital.com or by calling Lauren Carpenter at (256) 386-1733.

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

EVERYDAY HEROES

julianna manchester high tide adventure by bethany green  | noalastudios.com | march/april 

High Tide Adventure provides teens with opportunities to participate in adventure and community-service excursions, with a goal of helping participants identify ways in which they can contribute to their community and to the wider world. While the adventures can be exhilarating, much of the real work begins after they return home, as participants process their experiences and figure out how to apply what they’ve learned to their everyday lives.

Julianna Manchester, a High Tide participant, is one example of how a new experience can drastically impact one’s perspective and inspire a spirit of volunteerism. Julianna’s involvement with High Tide began in 2016 with a pilot trip to Maryville, Tennessee. She was able to connect with nature by disconnecting from technology, and by providing service to an Appalachian community. Manchester volunteered with the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum. The museum lost their grant funding, so they rely heavily on volunteers to help with operations and various projects. Manchester learned about environmentalism, harvesting, canning, and making homemade jams. The experience allowed her to work with people she doesn’t normally interact with, build confidence, and gain a new sense of patience she never knew she had.

“It helps you develop a better understanding of yourself and other people, which is important. My experience has really been rewarding.” Manchester continues her volunteer work with High Tide through service and by encouraging friends and peers to get involved.

High Tide’s mission is to use adventure and service as opportunities for teens to learn, grow, and become the best version of themselves. If you or someone you care about, ages 13-18, would like to learn more about High Tide’s summer expedition, visit www.hightideadventure.org or contact info@hightideadventure.org.

Facing page: Julianna Manchester (center) with High Tide founders, Tucker and Bethany Green

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

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market: east » By Aissa Castillo and Lauren McCaul Petersen » Photos by Lauren Tomasella Carney

S’WELL® IS A PROUD SUPPORTER OF THE U.S. FUND FOR UNICEF, DONATING $200,000 SINCE 2015 TO HELP PROVIDE CLEAN WATER TO THE WORLD’S MOST VULNERABLE CHILDREN.

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[A] 1818 FARMS LIP BALM ($5) HARRISON BROTHERS HARDWARE, HUNTSVILLE (256) 536-3631 F

[B] MARA HOFFMAN SWIMSUIT ($240) [C] SWELL BOTTLE ($45) [D] MARA HOFFMAN WRAP ($128) ENVY BOUTIQUE, HUNTSVILLE (256) 539-6790 [E] FASHIONABLE NECKLACE ($44) [F] LEATHER TOTE BY FASHIONABLE ($178) ELITAIRE BOUTIQUE, HUNTSVILLE (256) 452-8829

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market: east

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[A] BATH CRUSH BY 1818 FARMS ($18) [B] YOGA MAT SPRAY BY 1818 FARMS ($18) HARRISON BROTHERS HARDWARE, HUNTSVILLE (256) 536-3631 [C] S’WELL BOTTLE ($24) [D] CANDLE ($32) ENVY BOUTIQUE, HUNTSVILLE (256) 539-6790 [E] SAMMY SOAP ($7.95-$9.95) HUNTSVILLE MUSEUM OF ART (256) 535-4350

SAMMY SOAPS, A “NON-PROFIT, ON PURPOSE,” PROVIDES JOBS FOR ADULTS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES.

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

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25% OF GOOD WORK’S NET PROCEEDS HELP BUILD SOLAR PANELS AND CLEAN WATER SYSTEMS IN RURAL AREAS, FUND PLAYGROUNDS FOR ORPHANS, AND PROVIDE MEALS TO THE HOMELESS.

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PURPOSE JEWELRY IS A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE THAT PROVIDES PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITIES TO YOUNG WOMEN RESCUED FROM SEX TRAFFICKING.

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[A] BRACELET BY GOOD WORKS ($37) MINT JULEP MARKET, HUNTSVILLE (256) 270-9611 [B] DOUBLE-WRAP LEATHER BRACELET

BY GRAY MARKET ($55) [C] LEATHER & PAVE MAGNETIC BRACELET ($35) THE TOPIARY TREE, HUNTSVILLE (256) 536-7800 [D] GOLD W/MOTHER OF PEARL

BY THE SHINE PROJECT ($35) ELITAIRE BOUTIQUE, HUNTSVILLE (256) 452-8829 [E] THIN LEATHER & CIRCLE CHOKER

BY GRAY MARKET ($50) THE TOPIARY TREE, HUNTSVILLE (256) 536-7800

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[F]

BRASS NECKLACE BY MIRIAM COLLECTION ($50) [G] PURPOSE EARRINGS ($20) ELITAIRE BOUTIQUE, HUNTSVILLE (256) 452-8829 [H] CUFF BY GOOD WORKS ($37.50) MINT JULEP MARKET, HUNTSVILLE (256) 270-9611 [I]

TWO TONE EARRINGS BY HIGH STRUNG ($28) HARRISON BROTHERS HARDWARE, HUNTSVILLE (256) 536-3631

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

Leading by Example

text by jennifer crossley howard photos by lauren tomasella carney

Sarah Savage, president and CEO, Leadership Huntsville/Madison County

 | noalastudios.com | march/april 

one were to judge the state of humanity by scrolling through social media, one might find discord at an all-time high and bipartisan politics a lost cause.

nology, engineering, and math education are where most individual and corporate donors in Huntsville tend to put their dollars, according to Bekah Schmidt, marketing and public relations director for Leadership Huntsville.

Such conclusions would be wrong, said Sarah Savage, president and CEO of Leadership Huntsville/Madison County.

Not only does she see Democrats and Republicans and Christians and Muslims working together to serve the Rocket City, she sees them doing so peacefully.

With the bar set high, students must commit days each month, some from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. that usually include field trips centered around a topic. A recent winter day dedicated to education sent students to Jemison High School’s new $65 million campus in north Huntsville, where they watched Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps practice drills and watched the rifle team show off their shooting skills with air rifles.

She arranges varied demographics into small groups as part of Leadership Huntsville’s annual Leadership Class, which is celebrating its 30th year. Its 52 current members spend 10 months learning how to better lead while lending their skills to various charitable projects around the city.

Their footprints run deep. It’s hard to walk more than a block or two in the heart of Huntsville or Madison without seeing a garden, park, playground, or room Leadership Huntsville small groups have painted, planted, or planned. The first Leadership class of 1987 started Huntsville Utilities’ Project Share program that aids elderly, disabled, and handicapped customers in paying electric bills during winter. Other projects include Manna House, Community Foundation of Huntsville/Madison County, the Agape Room at Madison County Courthouse, and the Rocket Chef competition.

“Our tentacles are very wide and deep in the community,” said Savage, who is in her 19th year as director of Leadership Huntsville.

The idea is for participants—which include teachers, members of the military, business executives, reporters, and engineers—to broaden their knowledge of Huntsville’s workings and culture while teaming with diverse personalities to make a good city great.

Perhaps Leadership Huntsville’s vanguard mission is meeting high expectations the city has for its luminaries, after a sea of engineers and space pioneers set a towering standard half a century ago.

“We have a great tradition of very visionary leaders who think outside the box, and we know how to put man on the moon,” Savage said.

The state also has a rich history of philanthropic giving.

Despite being one of the poorest states in the country, the people of Alabama, not unlike the widow at the temple in the New Testament, give generously to those less fortunate.

The Birmingham Business Journal reported in November that a WalletHub study ranked Alabama fourth nationally in philanthropic giving. Veterans, churches, and science, tech-

“In that class alone, you’ve got people that homeschool their children, that believe in public schools, that believe in private schools,” Savage said. “You may have people who’ve never ridden a school bus or who’ve never been to a public school before. And so, they’re bringing all of those perspectives with them. And as they ask questions they are learning from each other, too.”

Small groups meet at least once a week to plot their projects which utilize skills such as creativity, communication, and financial planning.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY VOLUNTEERING Exercises such as one called “Check Your Privilege” force students to explore how their upbringings have shaped their perspectives.

“Usually by the time we reach that time in the day, it’s very raw,” Savage said.

One of the first exercises Leadership students do is take a personality test to distinguish among Types A, B, and C, said Glenn Morris, a mechanical and nuclear engineer and Huntsville native. He’s Type A. “I think I think logically and go from point A to point B,” he said, laughing. “It does take the entire village to run everything.”

His small group includes people from the Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville Botanical Gardens, and a Decatur nonprofit. The group decided to partner with Ability Plus, a Huntsville nonprofit, to build vegetable garden plots at a day school for mentally disabled adults. Morris hopes the plots will foster a love and learning of growing food.

“It’s time to give back to Huntsville to keep it growing,” he said.

Morris and his wife, who is also committed to volunteering in Huntsville, are empty nesters, which he said makes it easier for them to devote time to such passions. But he said

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

Most people have about the same issues.

They want the same things, which are safe communities, job opportunities, and good schools. They want to be able to work and bring up a family and have a great quality of life.” —Sarah Savage

he wishes they made more of an effort to volunteer when his children were little.

commitments, but she advises small ways to break into volunteering as well.

“It shouldn’t be a problem to give two or three hours a week to the community that gives so much to you,” he said. “You can’t complain if you’re not involved.”

First, she said, find your passion, be it children, poverty, the elderly, animals, or the arts. She mentioned that in some cities, philanthropic causes are dominated by old money and family names. Not so in Huntsville.

Leadership Huntsville is one of 2,000 similar programs throughout the United States, and one of 55 statewide, according to Savage. Graduates of Leadership Huntsville usually proceed to one or more of the following paths: politics, boards and commissions, nonprofit boards, or CEOs who encourage employees to give their time. Most gravitate toward nonprofit board positions, but 55 percent of graduates populate local, state, and federal positions. Regardless of where they want to go, after leaving Leadership Huntsville, the contacts they’ve gained will prove invaluable, and most alumni stay in touch.

The application process is tedious for applicants and for those choosing them. After turning in a thick packet with multiple references (including some from Leadership alumni), it takes staff a month to determine students who will make a melting pot of sorts. Savage said 15 factors such as race, politics, religion, professional background, and gender are considered.

“Somehow every year in this process, we’re able to come up with this formula, this combination that works,” Savage said.

“Do people always get along? Is there always harmony in the classes? No, that’s part of the experience.”

Applicants must work in Madison County but many live in Limestone and Marshall counties and others come from as far as Scottsboro and Cullman. Savage cautions that applicants to the Leadership program should have a considerable amount of time to devote for the 10 months of classes and

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“Our community by culture looks at what you can give back and that’s about it,” she said.

MORE ALIKE THAN DIFFERENT Students bond over trips to the state capitol in Montgomery where they meet with the governor and other elected officials. Other field trips have included visits to a Jewish temple, an Islamic center, hospitals, and to bridges where homeless citizens live. Before they begin class, students weather a ropes course to build trust.

Morris learned a lot about his own backyard that surprised him. Though he grew up in Huntsville, Morris never knew there was a Hindu temple in Harvest, located in the city’s rural outskirts, until he visited with Leadership Huntsville.

“Whatever we’re teaching you about, you’re most likely going to see it hands on and be able to ask people questions who are working on the ground,” Savage said.

In the end, despite a myriad of differences, Leadership Huntsville students tend to have more in common than not.

“Most people have about the same issues,” Savage said. “They want the same things, which are safe communities, job opportunities, and good schools. They want to be able to work and bring up a family and have a great quality of life.”

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FUNRAISING

text by roy hall, with melissa daniel bain and b.j. keeton

For every black-tie gala, Labor Day telethon, and viral ice-bucket video, there are a thousand bake sales, art auctions, and fun runs.

Like the tiny drops of water that make the mighty ocean, these low-budget, shoe-string heroes just go to show, you don’t have to raise a fortune to make a difference.

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andrew sutherland

For his fundraising exhibition benefiting Room in the Inn, artist Andrew Sutherland settled on a location—an alley in Florence’s Seven Points district—every bit as unlikely as his preferred medium.

“I work with cardboard,” Sutherland says. “It’s efficient.” And, even better, “It’s usually free.”

Adding to his list of cardboard’s pros, Sutherland, waxing philosophical, says, “Cardboard is the medium that most reflects life. It doesn’t last forever, but it lasts as long as any of us will need it.” For those folks helped by Room in the Inn, the beneficiary of Sutherland’s outdoor art exhibition, cardboard can also be the shelter of last resort.

“It helped our people know that they’re not invisible, that they matter,” Krista Manchester of Room in the Inn said. “It was a distribution drop off point, too. A lot of people are interested in donating small items. People bought Slim Jims, thermals, backpacks.”

With help from fellow Seven Pointers—photographer Abraham Rowe and Blank Coffee—and with enthusiastic permission from Studio 23 to set up art-shop in their alley, This Side Up raised $1,000, all of which Sutherland donated to Room in the Inn.

©Abraham Rowe

©Abraham Rowe

Andrew Sutherland Room in the Inn, The Shoals

A few pieces from Sutherland’s show are still available, and proceeds still benefit the good folks at Room in the Inn. If you’d like one, email the artist at andrewcanread1@gmail.com.

Congregations and organizations throughout the Shoals partner with Room in the Inn to provide food and shelter to the homeless population. To learn more about their mission, visit roomintheinnshoals.com.

The Little Green Store Little Orange Fish, HUNTSVILLE The ambitious mission of Little Orange Fish, the mental health advocacy initiative begun three years ago by Huntsville resident Daniel Adamou, is disproportionate to the nonprofit’s modest size. “Our goal,” Adamek said, “is to change the cultural mentality around how we look at mental health and to build a greater demand for more and better quality mental health care services.”

Scientist-by-day Adamek’s grassroots work has included providing training materials for a mental health “first aid” program, in partnership with Wellstone Mental Health Center, and enabling community partners, like corporate HR departments and schools, to identify at-risk populations. Currently, LOF is putting together a Feelings Are Real template to “express the idea that emotional and psychological issues are every bit as relevant, physiologically, as any other.”

“Not bad for a cardboard artist,” Sutherland reflects.

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Several local artists are contributing work to be sold to fund this effort, reflecting Adamek’s commitment to community partnership. And later in the year, look for a music fundraiser with Tangled Strings Studio.

The Little Green Store believes in LOF’s mission. To help, the Monte Sano gallery and boutique sells Feelings Are Real T-shirts, with proceeds donated to LOF. For information about Little Orange Fish—for yourself or your organization—visit LittleOrangeFish.org.

Maggie Little UNA Haiti Relief, The Shoals The scene is familiar to any parent of a second grader: mom’s busy putting away laundry after a long day at work, when daughter interrupts to ask for art supplies. Mom provides them; daughter skedaddles.

This next part is slightly less familiar.

An hour later, daughter returns to the living room holding seven handmade bookmarks, bejeweled and bedazzled with beads, strings, stamps, and crayon art. The bookmarks, as Maggie Little, Kilby Laboratory School student, explained to her mom, Amy, are for sale.

The asking price is one dollar. All proceeds are to benefit Haitian relief efforts.

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©Amy Little

MAGGIE LITTLE

“They don’t have shoes,” Maggie explained. “Some of them don’t even have food.”

This troubling information came to Maggie via a visitor to her Kilby second grade classroom a few days before. The speaker shared the challenges faced by children Maggie’s age in impoverished Haiti. Clearly, the visit had made an impression. (For the record, Maggie comes by her altruistic heart honestly. Her dad, Matthew, was recently recognized at the White House by President Obama for his lifetime of charity work with AmeriCorps.)

A family wedding the following weekend provided Maggie with a windfall of bookmark sales, the proceeds from which she placed, along with her favorite green necklace, inside an envelope labeled “Hati.” Maggie delivered the envelope to her parents with explicit instructions that it reach the people in need.

Per Maggie’s instructions, her dad passed the envelope on to Bethany Green, who spearheads UNA’s Haiti relief efforts.

Bethany tucked the envelope into her suitcase and transported it to Haiti during her next relief trip.

A few months later, Amy Little’s iPhone dinged with an email from Bethany containing a very special attachment: a photo of a young Haitian girl holding the envelope and wearing Maggie’s favorite green necklace.

It is a small world, after all.

BACK ALLEY POETS FUNDRAIsER

UNA’s Haiti relief program welcomes cash donations of any size. Contact Bethany Green at (256) 765-4693 or bloliver@ una.edu.

116 E. Mobile Reader Riot, The Shoals

by B.J. Keeton There’s something about eating beef under a tent in an alley that just puts folks in the mood for poetry. Or is that just me?

Apparently, it isn’t just me because the Back Alley Poets fundraiser for Reader Riot at 116 E Mobile in September drew a house full of poetry-loving beef eaters. Florence chefs John Cartwright, of Rivertown Coffee Co, and Josh Quick, of Odette, put together a back-alley feast of homemade potato chips, braised beef, and whiskey gravy.

er Riot represents, and for the general sense of community that the Shoals thrives on.

Yellowhammer Brewing Space Camp, Huntsville “We’re partnering with the Space and Rocket Center to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Space Camp,” Ethan Couch of Yellowhammer Brewery explained.

Yellowhammer’s end is an ambitious one: to raise as much as $15,000 to fund 350 Space Camp scholarships this year.

The means is pure Yellowhammer: a specialty brew created for the occasion, called T-minus. Inspired by astronaut favorite Tang, Couch describes the creation as “light, with a fruity nose; a crisp and clean beer.”

The main event, organized by Florence’s own Boxcar Voices and MC’d by Camille Goldston Bennett, featured performances from a range of poets from all over North Alabama.

Every word spoken served as a powerful reminder of social issues and how words can unite us—the very themes that inspired a small army of book-loving volunteers to unite around the notion of creating Florence’s first ever book festival.

In partnership with distributor Birmingham Beverage, Yellowhammer is donating $1 from every case sold to Space Camp. Yellowhammer will donate another dollar from every pint sold in the tap room.

The most special thing about the evening, though, was the amount of support in the room. For the poets and the issues they highlighted, for the ideas and discussions the poems sparked, for the sense of diversity and equality that the Read-

Follow Yellowhammer Brewery on Facebook or online at yellowhammerbrewery.com and Space and Rocket at rocketcenter.com.

The brew launches April 1 with an event at Yellowhammer— complete with brewmasters in Space Camp uniforms!

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Christina wegman

©Ronald Pollard Photography

alley-cat race

The Spinning Spoke The 610 Project, The Shoals

Races are announced on Instagram at @spinning_spoke and @the610project.

by Melissa Daniel Bain Pedal Against Poverty Early in The 610 Project’s journey, a happenstance visit to The Spinning Spoke in downtown Florence led to the creation of the Haiti Bike Share Program. Throughout the year, The Spinning Spoke collects and repairs gently-used bikes and passes them along to The 610 Project team, who, in turn, get the bikes to children in schools and orphanages across Haiti. These bikes offer greater access to education by cutting down on the time it takes to get to school. They also give children a chance to simply be kids and play.

To support this program and other The 610 Project educational initiatives in Haiti, The Spinning Spoke hosts an annual Pedal Against Poverty: Haiti bike ride, offering cyclists the option of a 10-, 20-, or 40-mile ride, or a family-friendly three-mile ride. Cost to ride is a $30 donation and includes a T-shirt designed and printed in Florence by Heavy Color.

Alley-Cat Race Not feeling a 40-mile bike ride? Not to worry! Recreational riders who love a good brain teaser can support The 610 Project by riding in The Spinning Spoke’s Alley Cat Races!

These casual, “pop-up” races are basically a scavenger hunt on bicycles. Riders are given a map, 20 minutes to strategize, and a few hours to complete the race and as many stops as possible. Points are awarded for time, completion of challenges, and costumes. Cost to ride is donation-based.

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Christina Wegman Alley Cat Mural, Huntsville When David Johnston approached Clinton Row artist Christina Wegman with his proposal to spruce up an overlooked alley beside his Downtown Storage Building with a public art project, Wegman followed his lead by accepting proposals of her own.

“I opened it up to Facebook and news outlets, and I let people vote,” Wegman says of her crowd-sourced foray into mural painting.

Wegman’s social media poll led to her Alley Cat mural. Wegman’s public art project not only raises awareness for stray animals, the artist donates $1 from every print sold to local animal rescue groups, like Friends of Rescue and AFK Cat. If you’d like to support local art, public art, and animal rescue, visit the artist’s Clinton Row gallery, Christina Wegman Fine Art, at 100 Jefferson St N. Follow her on Facebook at Christina Wegman Fine Art.

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brainstorming session they were planning. They expected, at most, a few friends.

Fifteen showed up, fired up and ready to thank Dave for his lifetime of generosity. Quickly, the group coalesced around the notion of a Microwave Dave Day: an afternoon of spectacular music performed by a crosssection of local musicians, all in honor of Dave.

MICROWAVE DAVE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ THIS. That’s not true. In fact, it’s a bald-faced lie. But it’s a lie that conceals a kernel of truth. And the truth is this: Microwave Dave—musician, songwriter, blues legend, WLRH and WJAB host, and one of North Alabama’s most prodigiously charitable persons—is uncomfortable with self-promotion.

“I’m getting way too much credit for the operation,” Dave interjects right off the bat, about the music education foundation that bears his name.

But Evan Billiter—concert promoter, music champion, and boundlessly energetic organizer—trapped Dave between a publicity rock and an altruistic hard place with his idea to use Dave’s name to promote a fledgling initiative aimed at putting music back in classrooms.

Basically, Billiter said, “Instead of waiting until he’s passed on to tribute him, we thought, ‘why not sing Dave’s praises now?’” It was a lovely idea, but one that proved to be a bit too In Memoriam for Dave’s taste, when Billiter approached him with the idea. “I’m not dead yet!” Dave insisted to Billiter, before the concert promoter and his merry band of tribute wannabes returned to the blackboard.

Dave was adamant about two things: one, as he’d already pointed out emphatically, he was not dead. Two, Dave was absolutely, positively adamant that not one penny be raised for him, personally. “We were back to square one,” Billiter said. Then, Dennis (Keim, Microwave Dave Music Foundation VP) and I met with bassist Rick Godfrey.” Rick devised the rock-and-hard-place scenario that snagged Dave.

“Let’s have a Dave Day, but take proceeds and create a music foundation in his name,” Keim suggested.

They had Dave right where they wanted him.

Dave couldn’t say no.

“I was director of Concerts on the Dock,” Billiter said, taking us back to the period right before the Foundation launched.

“That was my baby for six years.” Concerts on the Dock brings musicians and music lovers together at Lowe Mill, every Friday night in April and May. Between performances, Billiter and his buddies talked music and musicians, and one day, at the prompting of photographer Allison Lewis, they waxed rhapsodic about Microwave Dave.

Eight or nine hundred people attended the first Microwave Dave Day at the Lumberyard on June 25, 2015, forever after recalled as Microwave Dave Day, by proclamation of Mayor Battle. All proceeds from the all-volunteer event benefited the newly launched Microwave Dave Music Education Foundation, which boldly aims to bring live music to classrooms across the Tennessee Valley. The cause is near and dear to Microwave Dave’s heart. So near, in fact, had in not been for a visiting musician, the version of Mr. Gallaher we know as Microwave Dave may never have existed.

“We need to do something for Dave,” Lewis concluded.

The question was what? The why was self-evident. “It’s a known fact in Huntsville that Dave volunteers his time more than anyone,” Billiter said. “If you need him for a charity or a fundraiser, and if he doesn’t have a gig, he’ll say yes.” Billiter and Lewis put the word out about a Microwave Dave tribute

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“When I was in the fourth grade, a national act visited my school,” Dave reminisces. “The Cell Block Seven. They’d been on Ed Sullivan.” The effects of seeing the Cell Block Seven on young Dave were not immodest.

“They changed my life.”

Music Education Foundation president Evan Billiter (left), and Microwave Dave

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member: Dave never says no to teachers. But his hopes weren’t especially high. “’It’ll just be okay,’ I thought. ‘Their attention spans are too short. They don’t have the life experience to appreciate blues music.’”

In advance of Dave’s arrival, the teacher had her pupils write their own blues songs.

“Some were hilarious,” Dave said. “Some were tragically moving: songs about lost pets, lost siblings, even lost parents.” Dave invented melodies for all the kids’ lyrics on the fly and sang their songs back to them.

“It was hard not to cry,” he recalled. To this day, kids who were there, all grown up, approach Dave to ask if he remembers the day he sang the blues in their classroom.

Music makes an impression. Concerts in the Classroom—the Microwave Dave Music Education Foundation’s outreach program—aims to make many of those. And Huntsville’s 30 public schools are just a start.

Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle (left) presents Microwave Dave with the key to the city in celebration of Microwave Dave Day. Eula Battle and Dennis Keim look on. © Photo by Allison Lewis

Young Dave hadn’t given a second thought to music—much less becoming a musician—before the Cell Block Seven, but the musicians were “so exciting, so inspiring,” he went right out and got himself a ukulele. He graduated from the uke to a guitar and from the guitar to a band. There was even a short spate of accordion lessons along the way. By the time Dave was in 10th grade, in a scenario not uncommon among North Alabama lads today, Dave had a band.

“If you were trustworthy in front of kids,” Dave said of that first band’s early gigs, “if you didn’t get students too worked up, you could play in a school.” Those performances weren’t educational, per se; they were for the pure joy of playing and hearing live music.

And then a funny thing happened on the way to a public school gymnasium. “We played for a group of kids with cystic fibrosis. They were all in wheelchairs.” The students formed a circle around Dave and his bandmate, and, as much as their compromised bodies would allow, they danced.

“I’ll never forget the looks on their faces.”

Fast-forward to the 1990s, and another classroom experience that sears itself into Dave’s memory. “A teacher asked me to visit her first-grade class.” Dave agreed. Re-

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“Our goal is to reach beyond that, all across North Alabama,” Billiter said.

To do that, Billiter, with the backing of the Academy for Arts and Academics, Huntsville’s arts magnet school, embarked on an education of his own. He headed to Montgomery for a week-long workshop aimed at teaching teachers how to introduce music education and performance into their curricula. The symposium’s lofty goal was to answer the complex question, “What can we do inside the box of these academic standards with little money?”

Billiter came home to Huntsville with a headful of new ideas, and a renewed call to action.

Academy for Academics and Arts instructor Kim Estelle’s sixth grade Language Arts class was stop number one for the Microwave Dave Music Education tour.

“IT’S A KNOWN FACT IN HUNTSVILLE THAT DAVE VOLUNTEERS HIS TIME MORE THAN ANYONE. IF YOU NEED HIM FOR A CHARITY OR A FUNDRAISER, AND IF HE DOESN’T HAVE A GIG, HE’LL SAY YES.” —EVAN BILLITER “I had prepared a lesson plan centered around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Estelle said. Her lessons included the songs of Bob Marley and Bob Dylan. “We discussed how they’re written and how the songs are connected to the wider world.” Serendipity intervened with a happenstance meeting with Billiter, who connected Estelle and singer-songwriter Alan Little. Estelle and Little devised a lesson plan, and for two hours, Little performed for Estelle’s sixth graders. Between songs, he took questions about his songwriting process. “The kids were completely enthralled,” Little says of the students’ reactions.

Little had performed in schools before that afternoon at AAA. “Teacher friends had invited me to play a song for first or second graders,” he said. The experience was different for Little this time because, for the first time, the kids had questions. “Smart questions,” Little said.

“I’m used to these songs,” Little said of his catalog. “But I’m playing in front of these inquisitive children, and I’m listening through their ears.” Little describes the experience of playing for these “incredibly engaged” young people as “pleasantly intimidating.” And then, suddenly, emotional. “One student—she couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13—started singing.” Her unlikely selection: the Dylan classic “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

“She said something profound afterward,” Little said. He searches his memory for precisely what, but her keen observation is missing, blown away by the rush of her performance.

That kind of formative experience, the sort that, in Billiter’s words, “stimulates both sides of the brain, the intellect and the emotions,” is what Concerts in the Classrooms aspires toward. The foundation that makes the experiences possible is still new, and its work—the crucial, often discounted, over-

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looked, and underfunded work of arts programs—requires substantial investments of time and money.

“We’re all volunteers,” Billiter clarified, regarding that first challenge.

To the issue of money, Microwave Dave’s Music Education Foundation is currently funded by one event per year, Microwave Dave Day. Another one of those is planned for June.

Expect plenty of local bands playing great music, local vendors, and, of course, Microwave Dave and the Nukes. The Foundation would love for you to be there, too, in the audience, or as a volunteer.

Flattery may get you nowhere with Microwave Dave personally, but he generously heaps it on the folks working behind the scenes to bring arts education to classrooms across North Alabama in his name. “I have faith in the people doing this. They’re civic minded, and they’re aware that the arts are the first subjects to get cut.”

To lend your support to the necessary work done by the Microwave Dave Music Education Foundation, and to have the time of your life in the process, plan to attend Microwave Dave Day in June. You can stay up-to-date, and register to volunteer, at microwavedavemef.org. You can make a taxdeductible donation online, too.

If you’re an educator and you’d like to talk to someone at the Music Foundation about scheduling a performance in your classroom, Billiter invites you to contact them through the website. Fellow teacher Kim Estelle encourages her fellow educators to consider the idea. “I’d absolutely recommend it to other teachers. It’s one of the most rewarding ways to connect something academic.”

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Taking a page from serialized classics like The Pickwick Papers and Tales of the City, No’Ala reveals in each issue a new chapter in the unfolding saga of the citizens of fictional River City and Eleanor, the libertine murderess at the center of their small-town web.

In this installment, Robert Koch Jr. takes us back in time to a divorce ranch in the Nevada desert, where a brief encounter between Eleanor and ranch worker Hank makes for quite the lasting impression.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of making Eleanor’s sordid acquaintance, of if you’ve missed a few chapters along the way, we invite you to catch up anytime at noalastudios.com. The series began in our July/August 2015 issue.

a Favor for Eleanor Chapter Eleven: Henry Angel by robert koch jr. » illustrations by rowan finnegan

It was the fight with Irene over the particulars of the wedding service itself that nearly ended their relationship. She wanted something traditional, but so did he— something celebrating his Apache roots, not just her Catholic heritage. The argument was made more complicated by the presence of Irene’s mother, who had come up from Tucson to coordinate all of what Henry called “the little details”— stationery, food, flowers, and the like.

Early in their relationship, Henry quietly determined that there would be very few fights that he needed to win. For the sake of Irene’s happiness, he suffered Christiana’s meddling and manipulation far more than he thought necessary. He thought Irene gave her mother too much ground, so he wasn’t completely surprised when Irene told him that the ceremony must be strictly Catholic to satisfy her mother’s wishes.

“I’m not marrying your mother,” Henry replied.

“But you should do it for me. Please,” Irene begged.

“But what about my needs? What about the three generations of Angels who are coming to this?”

“Some of your family is Catholic, too.”

“But our spirituality is more complicated.”

Irene was indignant. “And you think my spirituality isn’t?”

“I said nothing about your beliefs. I was only speaking about my own in relation to Catholicism.”

“Fine,” she huffed. “We can do a separate ceremony after the fact.”

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A Favor for Eleanor Chapter Eleven: Henry Angel

Henry frowned. “So we should get married on your mother’s terms, then do it again for show for my family? Do you really think that’s fair?”

He didn’t want to call off the wedding, and certainly, he didn’t want to end their relationship, but he needed to think unpressured, so he told her to put everything on hold until he had more time to reassess the situation and to speak with his parents.

“But I’ve already booked the reception hall!” Irene cried, echoes of Christiana in her voice, much to Henry’s sudden disgust.

He paused, and then asked how late they could cancel. For Henry, this was merely as a function of knowing how much time he had to rethink this. For Irene, this appeared to be the last straw. She threw him out of her apartment on her way to the hotel where Christiana would no doubt once again remind her daughter that Henry wasn’t good enough anyway.

Years later, Henry always considered it a blessing that Irene didn’t throw her engagement ring at him when she chased him off the porch.

Henry often joked with Irene that he had his own special three R’s: Readin’, Ridin’, and ’Rene. Having been booted by one and it being too late to visit the public library, Henry had one choice: go back to the ranch. He worked at a divorce ranch, tending horses and giving tours. It was too late to ride, but never too late for the peace of the stable. He would have time to think and to calm down, to overcome his irritation with his fiancée and his anger at his possible future motherin-law.

He left his battered Chevy pick-up in the gravel lot, and trudged past the bunkhouse and the lodge. As he passed the cabins, he noticed a well-dressed woman sitting on her porch, a drink in her hand. He tipped his hat out of courtesy; she waved back.

“Evening,” he said.

“A mighty fine one,” she replied. Southerner, Henry thought.

He hadn’t taken 10 steps when he heard the giggle. He turned, and the woman was right there, not five steps behind him.

“Please. Call me Elle. All my friends do.” She slipped her arm in his and leaned on him. A fit of giggles followed. Henry smelled the alcohol, but the stronger scent was still her perfume.

He asked if there was something he could help her with.

“Could you show me the stables? Could you take me for a ride in the moonlight?” She patted his bicep.

He shook his head. “It’s dangerous to ride the trails in the darkness.”

“Oh, pooh,” she said. “Well, could you at least accompany me on a walk? I haven’t been on a walk in the woods since I was a girl.”

They walked along, Elle holding tight to Henry’s arm. He quickly realized that she wasn’t drunk at all. They rounded the bend, and the stables came into view.

“It’s funny you should ask me for a ride,” he said as nonchalantly as possible, “when I’ve seen you riding nearly every day for the past month.”

“Something I can help you with, Mrs.—” “Why Hank,” she said, “have you been watching me?”

“Darby. Mrs. Darby.” She batted her eyelashes. “But you know it’ll be Miss McIntosh again in just another few days.”

Henry said nothing, just smiled as they walked.

“Congratulations,” Henry said with sincerity not generally offered to women in Mrs. Darby’s predicament.

“You have beautiful hair,” she said, and fingered a thick lock that lay on his shoulder.

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“Alone for the first time in over  years.

He returned to his office, surrounded by the plaques and photographs and awards of a life dedicated to public service and helping families. He had a shelf of family photos— children and grandchildren, his and Irene’s parents, and their wedding photo just to the side of their full family photo.

He stood in front of this shelf and wondered how he had become so disconnected from Irene.”

“Thank you. Family heritage.”

“Oh?”

“Hank,” she said, wresting her hand from his grip and touching his lapel. “You live life once. If you don’t take the chance when it comes by, you live with regret. I’m finding that out for myself.”

“Mmhmm. Spanish and Apache. ” “Oh.” “My. So exotic,” she said, and squeezed his arm.

He stopped and turned, slipping from her grasp.

She turned toward the stables then, leaving him to catch up. It wasn’t hard; he was six foot four and long-legged. He imagined her hiding a smile.

“Mrs. Darby,” he began.

“Elle.” She reached for his breast pocket, to touch the embroidery there, but he grabbed her hand.

“Mrs. Elle. I didn’t give you my name, yet you knew they call me Hank.” In truth, the only people who didn’t call him Hank were Irene and her family.

She pouted. “Well, you knew I’d been riding every morning, and never even stopped to make introductions.”

“I’m supposed to be aware of the guests, especially when they spend so much time near the stables. My point is: what do you want?”

“Do you need me to be so forward?” she said, casting her eyes to the ground.

“I’m not something to be toyed with, something ‘exotic’ for you to gossip about when you return to Atlanta or Nashville.”

Hank introduced Elle to his favorite stallion, the appropriately named Cactus, and allowed her to pet and feed Holiday, the chestnut mare she had been most fond of on her morning rides.

Hank remained quiet through all of this, very matter of fact in his instruction. But Elle was a quick study, gentle with Holiday, and kind but firm with Cactus. There was something Elle had that Irene lacked; his fiancée liked horses well enough, yet still kept her distance, and never talked about his work. In daily life, she was deferential to nearly everybody except him. On the other hand, Elle was deferential only when it mattered to Hank. This was a woman who lived without fear, who lived with confidence. He drew close to her, and smelled her hair. When she turned, he kissed her.

For the next four days, Hank returned to the ranch each evening under the auspices of tending to a sick mare. Irene still wasn’t speaking to him, but perhaps he didn’t quite care as much as he should—after all, as Elle told him nearly every evening, “you only live once.”

“I’m from Alabama.”

“I don’t care.”

At the ranch, Hank and Elle walked the grounds, tended to the horses, and talked about life and dreams—where they would go, what they would do. She learned about his law

march/april  | noalastudios.com | 

A Favor for Eleanor Chapter Eleven: Henry Angel

Henry agreed, feeling simultaneously relieved and deeply guilty. As a penance for what he had done with Elle, Henry threw himself full force into both his work and family. By the time he earned his law degree, he was the father of one with a second on the way. He and Irene had three children by the time they returned to Reno from California. He joined a reputable family law practice not far from the courthouse and settled in, developing a reputation for his principles as much as for his preparation. If Irene wanted it, it was so. Trips to Africa and Asia, a Spanish villa, a new Mercedes—he doted on his wife, and gave her everything he could. As it was at home, so it was at the office. If Attorney Angel took your case, you were likely to get your terms on the divorce, custody of the children, or the maximum alimony payment—if you could get him. If he sensed you were in the wrong—and he always seemed to have a way of knowing—he wouldn’t take your case.

school aspirations, and he learned about her southern roots.

She learned that the back of his neck was ticklish underneath that thick black hair, and he learned that some southern women could be made to lose their composure, under the right circumstances.

On the night before her divorce became final, Hank took Elle to the Outpost, the rustic watering hole by the highway. If what happened in Reno stayed in Reno, then what happened at the Outpost never happened at all. Hank was sure they wouldn’t encounter any of his people, or, more importantly, any of Irene’s. And even in the off-chance they did, whoever it was would never want to admit their presence at the Outpost in the first place.

Elle wore a cowgirl’s outfit: embroidered denim blouse and a long skirt with her own pair of boots and her own white hat. “Something to keep it all vivid,” she said. The pair shared a steak, drank a little too much, and talked for hours. When the Angels came on the jukebox with “My Boyfriend’s Back,” Elle couldn’t resist singing along. At the end of the evening, they traded addresses on their serviettes, and after one last kiss goodnight, Elle stepped out of Hank’s life.

The next day, Irene appeared at Hank’s door, quickly agreeing that some of Hank’s Apache traditions should be integrated into the ceremony. “After all, Henry,” she said, “it’s a partnership. We need to trust and respect each other, right?”

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By the time grandchildren began to overrun the Angel household on Christmas and Fourth of July, Henry had risen to senior partner, and took the corner office with the best view of the Truckee River. While Irene busied herself with her performing arts and youth empowerment charities, not to mention her church activities, Henry took to late nights in the office. When he retired from active practice, his partners convinced him to stay on, doing research at his leisure to help them in their cases. He agreed, but only if he could also have one-on-one time with the paralegals, a generally young set, to help them on their career paths and to further develop their research skills.

“You can keep the office,” they said, sweetening the offer even further.

“Well,” he shrugged, “how can I resist?”

If Irene was opposed, she never said a word. She just kept smiling, and he would meet her at restaurants or the church or public events whenever she asked, and would do whatever she asked. As always, Irene’s happiness was his own.

Between Henry’s continued involvement in the firm and Irene’s social engagements, many of which she had exempted Henry from as of late, their house remained empty most of the time. This didn’t occur to Henry until he was seated in an examining room, his wife staring silently at the ceiling.

When Irene’s physician pressed him, Henry was unable to tell the woman when he had last seen his wife eat a meal.

After the funeral, after the kids and grandkids went back to their lives in Los Angeles and Tucson and Pittsburgh, Henry found himself in a strange place—alone for the first time in over 50 years. He returned to his office, surrounded by the plaques and photographs and awards of a life dedicated to public service and helping families. He had a shelf of family

photos—children and grandchildren, his and Irene’s parents, and their wedding photo just to the side of their full family photo. He stood in front of this shelf and wondered how he had become so disconnected from Irene. He wiped his eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief, one of many she had bought him for his birthdays over the years.

Over the next few days, Henry slipped back into routine, researching with the paralegals for his partners, sometimes late into the night. One morning, the head admin, Patty, came to work to ďŹ nd his Caddy still in the lot. Fearing the worst, she entered his oďŹƒce unannounced, and was relieved to discover him asleep on his red leather sofa. Just before leaving the next evening, she discreetly delivered him a pillow and thick blue afghan, which he accepted with a nod, and kept in the closet during the day.

It was during a break between cases, as he was reading News of the Weird, that he saw it. An Alabama octogenarian had killed her husband and asked her hairdresser to help her bury the body. Henry recognized the ďŹ rst name and the town, and was reminded once again of the week that should never have happened. Stunned, he pulled a small mahogany box from the bottom drawer of his desk. Unlocked it. Locks of hair from each of his children. A carved stone blessed by a tribal shaman. His and Irene’s wedding rings. The memorial cards from his parents’ and Irene’s funerals. Underneath all of it, a yellowed napkin.

At ďŹ ve o’clock, his phone rang. Patty continued to call him each day, in part to let him know she was locking up, in part to check on him. “I’m leaving for the night, Mr. Angel. Anything you need before I go?â€?

Why not, he thought. What is there to lose? “Actually, Patty, there is: could you book me a round trip to Nashville, a rental car, and a couple of days at a hotel in River City, Alabama?�

. %' %% ') / )' $(&%')( * ()( )% ) (*' % %*' "%( () &" $ ) '- $ %'( *( $ %"% ' #( $ %) ' *)) $ &'% ) %$ ) $%"% (

(( # " '% ! )( + ) &' $) & ')( $ * " &" $ ) '- %"%$ ( ( -%* " '$ %*) *' %$ $ '% %) $ (& (* ) ) $%"% - $ " $ $ + ,&"%' ) %$

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“Sir?� “Call it a bit of inspiration. I think I need to get out of town for a few days.�

There was a pause. “Are you alright, Mr. Angel? You’re not‌ planning anything rash?â€?

Henry chuckled.

march/april ď™…ď™ƒď™„ď™Š | noalastudios.com | 

A Favor for Eleanor Chapter Eleven: Henry Angel

“Patty, if I was planning to kill myself, I would drive into the desert, in my own car. I would certainly not have the most wonderful administrative assistant any law firm has ever known purchase me tickets to a random city in the Deep South. But if it makes you feel better, get me a ticket for the Grand Ole Opry. I’ll bring you a souvenir.”

Patty’s laugh belied her relief.

“Very good, Mr. Angel. How soon do you want to leave?”

“As soon as possible. Is tomorrow good?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

News, classical music and more 88.7 FM Muscle Shoals • 100.7 FM Huntsville www.apr.org

A day and a half later, Henry found himself driving down Walnut Street in River City, Alabama. Surreptitiousness wasn’t necessary, he had discovered. As a senior, he was one of many slow drivers on the road. Even better, the neighborhood was posted at 35 miles per hour. Even better yet, the rental, a Ford Taurus, had Tennessee plates. The only way things would have been better was if it were a Sunday.

The neighborhood was busy, as southern neighborhoods go.

One house had a Virgin Mary statue in the front yard. Likely Catholic. A rotund man sat on the porch of a large white Victorian that practically lorded over the street. Across the street from his house, a woman tended to her rose bushes.

Her house was white, with a peculiar blue ceiling. He slowed, looked back to the man on the porch. His house was painted the same color. In fact, a number of houses had the same paint scheme. Henry stifled a laugh. Then he arrived, slowed, came to a halt. It was a clean house, white like the others, with a box hedge on the side. A chunky boy waddled out from behind them, licking his fingers. He watched Henry for a moment, then looked past him. Left, right, left.

Henry waved him across, and the boy trotted across the street offering a wave of his own, disappearing into the place two doors up.

No, he decided. This was not his world. And what was really here waiting for him? Nothing. No one new to come home to here. No rekindled romance. An empty house he never lived in and a woman whose adventures led her to the asylum, if not life in prison. But he just had to know, didn’t he?

Of course you did. You always just have to know.

The rest of this would be easy. It was still early enough in the day, and he felt strong, well rested. He would check out early and pay the fee. Drive back to Nashville. Tour the town, take in a few shows, not just the Opry. Buy a shotglass or spoon or something for Patty, and fly back to his own life. He chuckled as he drove away. He really had dodged a bullet, hadn’t he?

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AN EVENING WITH

RECE DAVIS ESPN College GameDay Host

APRIL 13, 6:30 PM

Marriott Shoals Conference Center

Benefiting the Muscle Shoals Education Foundation Mr. Davis will also will be inducted into the Muscle Shoals High School Athletics Hall of Fame

Tickets must be purchased in advance.

Individual: $100 Table Sponsorship: $1,000 To purchase tickets, or for more information, contact the Muscle Shoals Education Foundation 256-389-2698 or ksasser@mscs.k12.al.us muscleshoalseducationfoundation.org Like us on Facebook— Muscle Shoals Education Foundation Alumni and Friends

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food for thought » Sarah Gaede

This past Christmastide I was seized with a desire to have an Epiphany party, as it auspiciously fell on a Friday, and our trees were still up, as God intended.

THE LIGHT DAWNS The Feast of the Epiphany, observed on January , commemorates the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles, represented by the Magi. (FYI, there is nothing in scripture about gender, number, or names of Magi. All that stuff in “We three kings” is poetic license.) Epiphany also marks the end of Christmastide—the 12 days of Christmas.

This past Christmastide I was seized with a desire to have an Epiphany party, as it auspiciously fell on a Friday, and our trees were still up, as God intended. I usually have parties when there’s a new recipe I want to try, and I was burning to make the slow-cooker French onion soup from Cook’s Country. Then I remembered one of the guests was a pescatarian, so I thought I would also make Ina Garten’s shrimp bisque. And I wanted to try Spicy Tomato Soup from Food52’s Genius Recipes. But three different soups would entail 16 bowls and eight espresso cups (for the tomato soup), 16 soup spoons and eight demitasse spoons, and salad and dessert plates and forks.

That’s when I experienced the other definition of epiphany—a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience (dictionary.com). Instead of all that work, I could make a casserole! Since it was Barry’s birthday, his partner Zac could bring salad and an appetizer.

And I could use the puff pastry I bought at Trader Joe’s (made with butter instead of vegetable oil) to make Galette des Rois (Kings’ Cake), the traditional Epiphany dessert of France that has absolutely nothing in common with the Mardi Gras version.

I recalled a casserole I discovered decades ago in Tea-Time at the Masters, the Augusta, Georgia, Junior League cookbook published in 1977. I used to make it frequently when I was a caterer, to much acclaim. But would it still be popular all these years later? I remembered it as being delicious, and Publix had wild-caught American shrimp on sale, so I thought, “what the heck.” How bad could it be? Serve it on rice, with salad on the

side. No need for bread. One plate and fork for dinner, one each for dessert. Not even a full dishwasher load.

Two days before the party, I made the filling for the cake, which took all of five minutes. The day before, I plopped the filling on one circle of puff pastry, covered it with the other, and put it in the refrigerator to await baking the afternoon of the party.

It took me about 40 minutes total, including cooking the shrimp, to prepare the casserole. (You could use pre-cooked shrimp, which would make it even easier, but make sure they are American wild-caught, and remove the tails.) Setting the table took about 15 minutes. I planned to put the rice on when the guests arrived. I hardly knew how to act. It was so easy! No last-minute preparations, other than cooking the rice and tossing Zac’s salad.

The casserole was a huge hit, so vintage it was new again.

And the cake! So simple, so delicious. My friend who doesn’t usually like sweets ate two pieces. We washed it down with Cuvée Yamhill-Carlton Müller-Thurgau and birthday Moët & Chandon. A good time was had by all, including the cook.

And my husband didn’t even object to washing the stemmed champagne glasses.

day ahead. Cover and refrigerate, of course.) Bake at 375° for 20 minutes (a bit longer if casserole has been refrigerated), or until bubbling. Serve over Lemon Rice. Serves 6.

Lemon Rice • • • • • •

1 1/2 cups Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice Grated rind of 1 large lemon Juice of 1 1/2 lemons (use the other half from the casserole) Water added to lemon juice to make a scant 2 cups 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 1/2 tablespoons butter

Place all ingredients in a heavy saucepan; bring to a boil and stir.

Cover tightly, lower heat, and simmer 20 to 25 minutes, until rice is dry. Do not stir. Remove from heat; let sit 20 minutes. Fluff with a fork and stir. Serves 6.

Galette des Rois I followed David Lebovitz’s recipe: davidlebovitz.com/galette-des-rois-kings-cake-recipe/ It has helpful pictures. Don’t make this if you can’t find butter puff pastry. Or, of course, you can make your own puff pastry if you are really motivated.

Shrimp and Artichoke Casserole • 1 (14 oz.) can quartered artichoke hearts (not marinated), drained • 1 1/2 to 2 pounds large shrimp, peeled and barely cooked (they will cook more in the oven) • 1/2 pound white or baby bella mushrooms, sliced (pre-sliced is fine) • 6 tablespoons butter, divided • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour • 1 1/2 cups half and half • 1/4 cup dry sherry • Juice of 1/2 lemon • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce • Salt, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg to taste • 1/4 cup (1 ounce) freshly grated Parmesan cheese for topping Place artichoke pieces in the bottom of a greased 9 x13-inch (or thereabouts) casserole dish. Top with shrimp. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large skillet; sauté mushrooms until cooked; drain.

Scatter over shrimp. Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a large saucepan.

Whisk in flour; cook 1 minute, whisking constantly. Whisk in half and half, sherry, and lemon. Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, until mixture comes to a boil. Sauce will be very thick.

Don’t worry if it separates—just give it a good, strong whisk.

Remove from heat; add seasonings. Pour over casserole. Top with grated Parmesan. (Casserole can be made to this point up to a

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parting shot » Abraham Rowe

CASH DONATION

ROSANNE CASH PERFORMS AT THE SHOALS THEATRE, DECEMBER 3, 2016, TO BENEFIT THE ST. FRANCIS PROJECT

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