MASTER CLASS: FLORENCE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS | JOYFUL NOISE | NATIVE PLANTS
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March/April
features
24 58 Plant Like a Native It’s warming up outside—so now what do we do? A conversation with Harry and Linda Wallace
Joyful Noise Cochlear implants open a new world for a Shoals family. by sara wright covington photos by danny mitchell
by allen tomlinson
72
42 Master Class
Art isn’t easy, but the Florence Academy of Fine Arts wants to prepare students for lifee in the ning a arts—and they are earning o it. reputation while they do by roy hall photos by patrick hood d and justin argo
Rebecca Rockhill, Florence Academy of Fine Arts
©Patrick Hood
Happy 2035!
34 She Talks to Animals Forget the Alpha Dog—Jane Gerard has a better way to train your pets. by allen tomlinson photos by danny mitchell
We board a virtual time machine and celebrate progress for our area, twenty years from now. by allen tomlinson photos by patrick hood renderings by jill harper andrews
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editor’s letter « Allen Tomlinson
What will the future hold? no’ala advisory board Jeremy Britten Anne Bernauer Vicki Goldston
Don’t we wish we could answer that question? We’re pretty certain that things in this part of the world are on a trajectory toward growth and all sorts of good things, so for this issue we decided to dream a little. We’ve boarded a virtual time machine and projected ourselves 20 years in the future, to speculate about how things here might be different—and might still be the same—based on decisions we’re making today.
Leslie Keys Tera Wages Ashley Winkle
As we’re going to press, the area is buzzing about rumors of a gigantic theme park in Muscle Shoals, and we can never know how technology, world events, climate change—or theme parks—will affect life in the future. Read this all as a work of science fiction. But, as we urge in the article, remember that we have some control over where we’re going. See something here you’d like to have happen? Roll up your sleeves and let’s make it so! You’ll also meet some special people in this issue who are experts in their fields. Jane Gerard can almost talk to animals; Harry Wallace can almost talk to plants. You’ll meet a special family with adorable children who have had cochlear implants; you’ll learn about a very special initiative in the Florence City School System called “FAFA.” After our last issue, which featured area weddings and engagements and was photo-heavy, we traditionally present an issue geared more toward the reader. We hope you enjoy it! One of the reasons we’re so optimistic about our future is because of the people here. It’s time to open nominations for next year’s Renaissance Awards. Do you know someone who has made a positive contribution to life here who deserves recognition? Please let us know who they are. Email your suggestions and your reasons for nominating your person to allen@noalastudios.com. You have almost a year—but don’t put it off! Another reason for optimism about this area? We support our local businesses. Keep shopping the Shoals, and thanks for your support and kind words about No’Ala. Enjoy the spring—this is the best season of the year in Alabama!
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contents
ANIMAL WHISPERER Jane Gerard talks to the animals
34
© Courtesy photo
everything else 12 14
Contributing Illustrator Jill Harper Andrews •••
Calendar
No’Ala is published six times annually by No’Ala Studios PO Box 2530, Florence, AL 35630 Phone: (256) 766-4222 | Fax: (256) 766-4106 Toll-free: (800) 779-4222 Web: noalastudios.com
Selected Events for March/April 2015
Cryin’ Out Loud ©Courtesy, Florence-Lauderdale Public Library
“Disorderly Conduct” by sara wright covington
98
Hear Tell “The Death of Aunt Cora” by guy mcclure, jr.
104
Market “It’s Easy Being Green” photos by danny mitchell
114
Kudos
“Change Is Good, Right?”
16
by isaac ray norris
T.S. Stribling: Native Hero
by roy hall
116 118
Back Talk The Vine “The Gamet of Grenache”
MARCH/APRIL 2015 Volume 8: Issue 2 ••• Editor-in-Chief C. Allen Tomlinson Chief Operating Officer Matthew Liles Creative Director David Sims Advertising Director Heidi King Features Manager Roy Hall Graphic Designer Rowan Finnegan Web Designer Justin Hall Editorial Assistant LuEllen Redding Videographer Justin Argo Proofreader Carole Maynard Intern Isaac Ray Norris ••• Contributing Writers Amy C. Collins, Sara Wright Covington, Sarah Gaede, Roy Hall, Guy McClure, Jr., Isaac Ray Norris, Allen Tomlinson ••• Contributing Photographers Justin Argo, Patrick Hood, Danny Mitchell
A remembrance of Florence’s past, in the pages of a Pulitzer winner.
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. © 2008-2015 No’Ala Studios, All rights reserved. Send all correspondence to Allen Tomlinson, Editor, at the postal address above, or by e-mail to allen@noalastudios.com. Letters may be edited for space and style. 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. No’Ala is printed with vegetable-based inks. Please recycle.
by amy c. collins
120
Food for Thought “Waste Not, Want Not” by sarah gaede
122
Parting Shot by patrick hood
by amy c. collins Connect with us on Facebook: No’Ala Mag Twitter: @NoAla_Magazine and Pinterest: NoAlaStudios
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calendar
Dr. Seuss Properties TM & © 2010 Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, March 1 Shoals Symphony at UNA presents Cinema Paradiso The Shoals Symphony at UNA brings Hollywood to the Shoals with Cinema Paradiso, featuring music and video from wellknown movie favorites such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, Forrest Gump, Schindler’s List, and The Magnificent Seven. 2:00pm; $15 adults, $5 students; Norton Auditorium, UNA Campus; (256) 765-5122; una.edu/shoals-symphony Tuesday, March 3 Florence Camerata presents Choral Masterworks Founded by Ian Loeppky in 2006, the Florence Camerata is an accomplished community chorus and has become one of the finest community choruses in the state. Their spring concert will feature Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, commissioned in 1965 by the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, Sussex. 7:30pm; Admission charged; North Wood Methodist Church, UNA; florencecamerata.com Thursday, March 5 – Sunday, March 8 Seussical: The Musical presented by the Gingerbread Players Dr. Seuss’s beloved books come alive in this family-friendly musical. Seussical touches the hearts of the kids in all of us and shows how friendship, loyalty, community, and family will never let you down! Thurs-Sat 7:30pm and Sun 2:00pm; Admission charged; Shoals Community Theatre, 123 N Seminary St; (256) 764-1700; facebook.com/shoalscommunitytheatre Thursday, March 5 – Sunday, March 8 George Lindsey/UNA Film Festival Nominated by Southeast Tourism Society as one of the Top 20 Events in the Southeast for the month of March, the George Lindsey UNA Film Festival is an exciting event consisting of film screening, panels, discussions, and celebrations throughout the Shoals area. Event times, costs, and locations vary—check website for details; (256) 765-4592; lindseyfilmfest.com Thursday, March 12 – Friday, March 13 and Thursday, March 19 – Friday, March 20 Center Stage Presents The Diary of Anne Frank An impassioned drama about the lives of eight people hiding from the Nazis in a concealed storage attic, The Diary of Anne Frank captures the claustrophobic realities of their daily existence—their fear, their hope, their laughter, their grief. 7:35pm; Admission charged; Ritz Theatre, 111 W Third St, Sheffield; (256) 383-0533; tvaa.net Thursday, April 9 – Sunday, April 12 Shoals Community Theatre Presents A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline Sanctioned by Patsy Cline’s family, A Closer Walk is a “musical tribute to Patsy’s spirit and a celebration of her music.” This touching look at Patsy lets audiences “…relive all of the passion, drama, glamour, and songs of country music’s greatest legend.” You’ll hear “Crazy,” “Sweet Dreams,” “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and many more! Thurs-Sat 7:30pm and Sun 2:00pm; Admission charged; Shoals Community Theatre, 123 N Seminary St; (256) 764-1700; facebook.com/shoalscommunitytheatre Thursday, April 16 Chinese Auction presented by the Florence City Schools Foundation Mark your calendars and join us for cocktails, dinner, and a silent auction. All proceeds go toward purchasing innovative tools and equipment to benefit the classrooms of the Florence City Schools. 5:30pm; $100; Marriott Shoals Conference Center, 10 Hightower Pl; (256) 768-268; florencefalconsfoundation.org
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cryin’ out loud » Sara Wright Covington I once looked for my spare set of keys for three days, before discovering them on the key hook in the kitchen, which would seem to be the most logical spot.
DISORDERLY CONDUCT Fewer tasks seem more daunting to me than the prospect of organization. I spend a good half of my days searching for something, be it keys, sippy cups, scraps of paper, Xanax, hand grenades, etc. I’m fascinated by people who shop at places like The Container Store because they enjoy organizing their things. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need and benefit of the organizational concept of “everything needs to have a home,” but my brain is unable to categorize which items should go where, and most of them inevitably end up in one of my many “junk” drawers, where I file away most things I mentally label as miscellaneous. My house is for the most part clean—or as clean as my small children will allow—but it’s reminiscent of the Belk returns counter the day after Christmas. It’s a bit of a zoo, and searching for a particular item can be like looking for Barbie’s lost shoe in a bucket of Legos. Now it could be argued that anyone who has small children struggles to keep a tidy car/house/laundry room. This is certainly true, but I will not cop out on this one and blame my kids. Instead, like any mature adult with inherent flaws, I blame my parents. My disorganization was part of my DNA long before I procreated. My dad has been known to hoard everything from books to bullet casings, and my mother has no less than 53 boxes of stationery and 5,000 wine corks, which would be fine if these random collections actually had a space of their own. But for the most part, they don’t. They are all just vagrants lost in the many drawers, cabinets, closets, and shelves in the home where I grew up. I once actually witnessed my dad pull out a box of dog biscuits from the kitchen pantry and munch on at least two of them before declaring “these crackers are terrible” and putting them right back in the cabinet where he found them. Because dog biscuits and animal crackers belong in the same place, naturally. Having multiple “junk” drawers in a home never struck me as odd until my husband recently pointed it out to me when we were visiting my parents. He stood peering over my mother’s shoulder watching in fascination as she pillaged through a drawer looking, to no avail, for a cork screw, and coming up with everything from snapshots from 1983 to a dog collar for a dog that died 20 years ago. “This explains a lot,” he smirked, as if he had finally cracked the code to my dysfunction af-
ter six years of marriage. “THIS drawer is the reason that I find shoe polish in our silverware drawer and maternity clothes in the hall coat closet.” Believe me, I don’t enjoy being this way. It’s maddening at times. Through the years I have attempted to turn over a new leaf, often seeking out the help of orderly family and friends. One of my college roommates, who has an MBA and a selfproclaimed obsessive compulsive disorder, threw her hands up in frustration after spending 10 minutes in my closet declaring, “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” Another friend surveyed the contents of my pantry and said, “I’m glad we never lived together, because I’m not sure that we would still be friends.” This generational disorganization is truly unfortunate, as I can already see it bleeding over into my children. “Mama, I bet the Pop-Tarts are in the car,” said my three-year-old daughter the other day as I rummaged through our pantry looking for diabetes-laden pastries. This, unfortunately, is a direct reflection of my flawed, organizationally challenged parenting, as it clearly already makes sense in her little mind that the car is where Pop-Tarts live. I gave up the search, defeated, and huffed as I pulled out the makings for cinnamon toast. Children are like little mirrors into the soul. And it has been a real awakening to me realizing that my every expression, word, action, and re-action are all molding these otherwise perfect little people into something else—into me. I’m often reminded of that expression “a cluttered desk equals a cluttered mind.” So does a closet in shambles equal cause for shame? I think not. I may not know where anything is most of the time, but I can take some comfort in knowing that it is likely somewhere in my house. And the more random the spot, the more likely I am to find it. I once looked for my spare set of keys for three days, before discovering them on the key hook in the kitchen, which would seem to be the most logical spot. But I do admit that there are the other things I have lost through the years here and there. A watch, a bracelet, a pair of glasses—the list goes on. And I find that even though they are likely forever lost into oblivion, I still find myself looking for them, even if it is on some unconscious level. Google has given me the diagnosis of “chronically disorganized,” which means that I am highly creative, innovative, and super fun to be around. I may have invented that last part, but I choose to believe that if you are going to spend time with dysfunctional people, at least the disorganized ones are always good for a fun surprise. After all, you never know what I might pull out of my purse.
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| noalastudios.com | march/april
T.S. Stribling Native Hero text by amy c. collins » photos courtesy of the university of north alabama and the landrum collection
It’s probable most residents of Florence, and certainly those of a certain age, have heard of T.S. Stribling, and a good many of those citizens have read at least one of his works of fiction. He’s a native son, almost, having spent his childhood summers in Gravelly Springs in Lauderdale County, attended University of North Alabama’s predecessor Florence Normal School in 1902, and returned to downtown Florence at the end of his life where he lived on Poplar Street until his death in 1965. He has a statue on the UNA campus, a plaque on the Walk of Fame along the Tennessee River, and extensive archive exhibits at both Collier Library on the UNA campus and at the Florence Lauderdale Public Library.
“Beyond This Dust, These Hills Once Spoke” —Stribling’s self-scribed epitaph
Born March 4, 1881, in Clifton, Tennessee, he built a thick portfolio of work in his 84 years. He wrote the still-performed play The Rope, authored 16 books (plus seven or eight that didn’t publish), wrote thousands of short stories across literary, science fiction, detective, and religious fiction genres, and, in his later years penned numerous pages of philosophy. His 1921 novel Birthright, about an African American Harvard graduate who opens a school for black children, caught the attention of America’s first prominent black filmmaker and producer, Oscar Micheaux, who subsequently made the book into a 1924 silent film and a 1939 remake as a talkie. Stribling’s great trilogy, set in Florence—The Forge, The Store (winner of the 1933 Pulitzer Prize), and Unfinished Cathedral—aspired to put the Renaissance City on the literary map, while inadvertently upsetting personal and political relations, and managing to cement both his fame and infamy among citizens of this North Alabama enclave. He was a top-selling author between the World Wars and his more serious work established important Southern socio-economic themes, cleared brush from the literary path for contemporaries like William Faulkner, and threw sparks at the Harlem Renaissance movement that fuelled African-American writers with proof of Southern injustice. And yet we aren’t reading him anymore.
T. S. Stribling’s photo, taken prior to 1907, is housed at the University of North Alabama Archives, T.S. Stribling Collection
“Part of it,” Dr. Cynthia Burkhead, chair of the department of english at UNA, says, “Is that it’s dated. His Pulitzer-level work is something you’d probably only encounter in a college level class. His non-Pulitzer stuff, like his detective fiction, is more pulpy, not as literary, and it can be problematic in some of the language and some of the social issues because of the time it was written.” Much of Stribling’s work is written in dialect and steeped in outdated language most of us are uncomfortable using, even in a classroom setting. Burkhead noted
march/april | noalastudios.com |
Rogers Department Store at the corner of Court and Mobile Streets, early 1930s.
Landrum Collection
Mark Twain has been eliminated from many curriculums for the same reason. “Stribling is a complicated author,” she says. “And that’s good. Struggle is good when we’re reading.” In a class this past fall semester, her graduate level students were tasked with compiling an annotated collection of Stribling’s short stories, including some detective stories, one science fiction story, and one particularly troublesome story called “Judge Lynch,” which, as the name implies, points to an unsavory blight in Southern history. Dr. Ken Vickers, professor of history at Martin Methodist College and author of T.S. Stribling: A Life of the Tennessee Novelist, agrees language is a big reason Stribling is no longer widely read. “I don’t know what Southern fiction would have been like without Stribling,” he says. “No one reads him anymore, but he is one of those founding Southern writers who is quite important because of those themes. I’m not saying Faulkner never would have come up with the Snopes without the Vaidens, but there are a lot of the same themes Faulkner later picks up and runs with.” In a letter to Mrs. R.F. Ridley in Tuscumbia, Alabama, February 13, 1933, New York City, Stribling wrote: “I have a deep sympathy for the young people who are growing up now, because they will never be able to make an actual believable connection in their minds between
| noalastudios.com | march/april
the present and the past of the South. Even with my advantage of having a mother who lived in those days the past of the South seems dreamy and unreal. For people to have had slaves… that seems impossible. No wonder with such a past that the South has suddenly become the literary centre of America. I am glad you ladies are reading The Store and The Forge both. The two books not only go together, but there is a third inseparably bound up with them. That will complete my trilogy on Alabama and will also complete the idea I set out to express. In fact, any person stopping with just two of the novels won’t have the slightest idea what I was driving at—but of course, tens of thousands of my readers will never know that and it will never disturb them.” That Stribling worried people would not be able to make a tangible connection to the old South seems more relevant today than it did then, still 30 years before the Civil Rights era. “In some ways,” Dr. Vickers says, “He wrote more like a historian than a novelist. He’d probably be considered a satirist. His sarcasm was pretty heavy if you were on the receiving end of it and as a result a lot of Southern critics didn’t like his work. Just like Northern critics didn’t like his last two novels, which were set in the North, for the same reason. As
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march/april | noalastudios.com |
The west side of Court Street in the early 1930s. Stores visible are F.W. Woolworth, Lucious Douglass, Shirley’s, J.W. Stutts Drug Store, Ladies Fashion Shoe, Harrison Tailor Shop, and Rogers Department Store.
Landrum Collection
“Stribling is a complicated author. And that’s good. Struggle is good when we’re reading.” Dr. Cynthia Burkhead, the University of North Alabama
he himself pointed out later in his life, they liked everything he wrote that was set in the South but when he set it in the North, suddenly he was heavy handed.” Dr. Burkhead says, “Stribling is still relevant today and he’s especially relevant in our region,” adding that he should be taught more often. In his own way, Stribling did put Florence on the map. At the time, it wasn’t in the light residents might have preferred, but his intentions were never malicious. Dr. Vickers notes that Stribling was not one to spend time editing and that much of his writing was crude, another reason why he isn’t widely read today. However, he says, “he introduced themes that better equipped writers were able to do more with, so he was an important figure in the Southern Renaissance but also an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance. A lot of African-American writers read Birthright and thought, I can do better than this, and did.” The Forge, Stribling’s prized and most personal novel, was about his family, represented by the Vaidens, whom the narrator fol-
| noalastudios.com | march/april
lows throughout the three Florence-based books. The Store, purportedly based on the Rogers Department Store in downtown Florence, moves quickly, once the reader acclimates to the language, and exhibits much of Stribling’s tongue-in-cheek perspective he is paradoxically known for. His posthumously published autobiography, Laughing Stock, demonstrates this sense of humour best of all, with a keen hand at self-deprecation and a compassionate grasp of humanity. “As a matter of literal fact, Florence, Alabama, is one of the pleasantest places I have ever known, filled with the most mellow and delightful folk. The only reason I chose Florence for the scene of my trilogy was because it had an interesting and romantic past and it possesses more than its share of actual physical loveliness and softness and floweryness which gave me precisely the sort of aesthetic relief which my ruthless narrative required. So, as has happened to many another maiden, Florence has been mistreated because of her beauty.” “An Apology to Florence,” Wings magazine, June 1934
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scene
Joel Hamner, Jennifer Michael, Laura Hamner, Wade and Patty Gilchrist, Wilbur Craven, Santa, and Chelsey Gilchrist Thomas, Tom, and Lauren McCutcheon with Austin, Mercy, and Denny Winters Maddie, Laura, Lauren, and Joel Hamner
Chip and Teresa Rasch with Santa
DeeDee Beckwith, Jennifer Rhodes, Alaina Burgess, Tom McCutcheon, Richie Whitten, Joel Hamner, Carmela King, and Stacy Powers
Tony and Molly Kalliath with Santa
Kim Ingram, Amenia Kirkmon, Hal Simmons, and Kaytrina Simmons
Harold and Graham Sigle Photos by Abraham Rowe
Above: McCutcheon & Hamner’s 5th Annual Shoals Margarita Ball
Below: Old Money, Old Secrets Book Signing with Author, Kyle Cornelius
december , · suntrust towers
december , · printers and stationers, florence
Kyle Cornelius, Debbye Hibbett, Scott Cornelius, and Chip Hibbett Tala Craig, Frances Ledgewood, Julianna Burton, and Kyle Cornelius Patty Klos
Scott, Jennifer, and Kyle Cornelius
Susan Riedel
Scott Cornelius, Bill Shoemaker, Kyle Cornelius, and Pat Shoemaker
* Names for photos are provided by the organization or business featured.
Kyle Cornelius and Celeste Pillow
Kyle Cornelius, John and Reggie Claunch, Scott Cornelius, and Bob Cox
march/april | noalastudios.com |
[ Acer Palmatum or Japanese Maple ] | noalastudios.com | march/april
plant like a native text by allen tomlinson
march/april | noalastudios.com |
“March and April are the times to trim and get the dead out of the plants. You can trim just about everything except the azaleas, which get trimmed after they bloom. Shape crepe myrtles now, and mulch; add compost to your beds, especially your annual beds or your vegetable garden spots.”
[ Camellia ] | noalastudios.com | march/april
[ Cercis Canadensis or Eastern Redbud]
Springtime in Alabama is cruel. Not because it’s so beautiful outside—although if you work inside and have to look at it through a window without being able to get outside and play, that’s cruel; not because the days are getting longer and the sun is getting warmer and buds are starting to appear, because that’s the most wonderful thing about March and April in Alabama. No, springtime in Alabama is cruel because it plays with you. More than anything in the world, you want to get out in the yard or the garden and plant things, and as soon as you do, we get a killing frost or a dusting of snow, and everything you’ve planted dies. Springtime in Alabama is cruel because it teases you. The Alabama weather in general can be cruel. Travel to other parts of the country and fall in love with a particular flower or tree; bring it back to Alabama and watch it wither and die. Our soil, our weather, and our rainfall patterns can produce some of the most beautiful and lush vegetation in the world, but some plants love that and some do not. Ask anyone in North Alabama about native plants, or imported plants that do well in our region, and Harry Wallace’s name is going to come up. The things Harry knows about plants—just knows—would take volumes of books to contain, and the people he has taught, guided, and designed for would take volumes more. If you want to know about what to plant and where, Harry is the man to ask.
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[ Azalea]
“I was raised on a farm, and my mother was a big plant person,” said Harry. “I loved to help her, and I was the only one in the family who enjoyed it. After college, my wife, Linda, and I read an article in Southern Living and decided to landscape our home. It was a disaster. We connected with Pete McNeese, from Tuscumbia, who was a good plants man; he took us under his wing and introduced us to native plants. We started looking around to see what we could get that would thrive here, and traveled the southeast looking for plants for our garden. After a trip to Virginia and West Virginia in 1995, we decided to open a nursery that specialized in native plants, called Little Cypress Natives—and we’ve been doing it ever since.” One of the biggest problems amateur gardeners face is the influence of the big box stores. “When we go to the big stores and see all of the plants blooming in their greenhouses, we get excited, but we don’t necessarily know anything about where those plants will grow, or if they will do well here at all,” he said. “Just because a plant looks good at the store and does really well in Florida, doesn’t mean it’s going to do well here.” In fact, one of the first considerations when landscaping is drainage. “You want to get water away from foundations,” said Harry, “and you need to know whether a plant wants to have its feet wet or whether you need to drain water away from it.” Alabama is well-known for hot and sometimes dry summers, and
| noalastudios.com | march/april
[ Cornus Florida or Flowering Dogwood ] march/april | noalastudios.com |
[ Trillium]
“a native plant will basically go to sleep during a drought. Native hydrangea (Oakleaf and Arborescens) and native azaleas are an example; a drought won’t typically kill them.” The second consideration is what the plant will look like in five or ten years. Take the crepe myrtle. “This is a tree, not a shrub,” said Harry. “People plant them up against the house, and in five or six years they are chopping off the tops because they have grown so large.” Severe cutting back, called “crepe-murder” by some, creates weak spots in the tree and can lead to long-term problems. On the other hand, what is more beautiful than a mature crepe myrtle, trunks trimmed to show off their sculptural shape, a beautiful and blooming shade tree? Many times, contractors will build houses and put plants in to help the house sell—but they use plants that grow to be too large in five or six years, and end up being removed and replaced. Knowing that spring is teasing us, are there things we should be doing in March and April in our yards and gardens? Of course. “March and April are the times to trim and get the dead out of the plants. You can trim just about everything except the azaleas, which get trimmed after they bloom. Shape crepe myrtles now, and mulch; add compost to your beds, especially your annual beds or your vegetable garden spots. Fertilize in March, especially your shrubs, and add pre-emergence at the end of March or
| noalastudios.com | march/april
[ Mertensia Virginica or Virginia Bluebell ] march/april | noalastudios.com |
the first of April.” This is not the time to plant trees or shrubs, although annuals and perennials can be planted the end of April. “We plant trees and shrubs from winter through spring,” Harry said. Summer planting without irrigation is stressful to plants. Which leads us to the biggest question of all: what plants do well here? There is no easy answer, but it’s fun to listen to the excitement in Harry’s voice as he talks about the work being done to produce disease-resistant varieties of plants that do well in our region. Universities, nurseries, and even Southern Living are grafting, cutting, and reproducing variations of favorite plants to create long-lasting versions that do well for us. Here are some of Harry’s and Linda’s notes: People love lilacs, but they are susceptible to powdery mildew in the South. It’s a plant that does better north of Nashville, especially in Kentucky. The National Arboretum is developing some lilacs that are disease-resistant, called Betsy Ross, Declaration, and Independence. Lilacs tend to be larger than people think, but some of the new varieties are smaller. One trend these days is toward smaller houses—patio homes, condos, and homes with smaller yards. That means more people are planting in containers and small spaces, and the market is responding by creating smaller plants. There are some native Oak Leaf Hydrangeas, Munchkin and Ruby Slippers, and the Kaleidoscope abelia, from China, that are typically gigantic plants but are now being bred in smaller versions. Boxwoods are a traditional plant, used a lot here—and even though they are slow-growing, over time some are going to be huge. The Wallaces are testing some “Unraveled” boxwoods (small and weeping) and a vertical growth boxwood called Fastigata that won’t be on the market for another year or two, but which show incredible promise. “I love purple coneflower,” said Harry, “because they are nice and willowy. We found one in our garden with 30 blooms in one mound, and it never grew above two feet tall.” Because of advances in reproduction, the Wallaces are watching this plant to see if it can be replicated. Temperatures are increasing, and we are seeing some of the effects of that—“but we live in a temperate zone and are blessed with a certain amount of dependable rainfall,” said Harry. People are trying to plant more drought-resistant plants, but if you live along our
| noalastudios.com | march/april
creeks or rivers, it’s easy to irrigate. “If you live in the city and use city water, we would suggest plants that don’t need as much, or use a drip irrigation system because of the expense of irrigation. Everything, though, depends on the site, the shade and sunlight, and the water source.” Some plants should absolutely be avoided. Think “kudzu,” a plant introduced to the South to help with erosion, but which quickly overtook everything it touched. Privet is a shrub that originally came from China, but it’s invasive—as are some forms of bamboo, nandina, and Chinese wisteria. “There is a new version of Privet called Sunshine that is chartreuse in color, and it produces no seeds, so it’s sterile. I would never recommend Privet before, but this is one that’s fine.” No discussion of Southern plants is complete without the dogwood—but dogwoods are susceptible to disease and blight. “The University of Tennessee and the National Arboretum are working on a breed of American dogwoods that are combined with Chinese cornus kousa, with good results. Cloud Nine is an American dogwood, found in the wild, that has survived disease and blight, is considered “resistant,” and can be used when people want traditional American dogwoods. There’s also an American Heritage redbud that is pretty bulletproof, for color in the yard.” What is Harry’s favorite plant? “The one that’s blooming right now,” he said with a laugh. “I’m a little traditional, actually—I like boxwood and mountain laurel, and I love azaleas, especially the varieties that have been engineered to re-bloom, like Encore. I’m just crazy about native azaleas and can’t stop tinkering with them; I’ve even found a wild/natural cross right now that’s named for my wife. It may never become marketable, but it’s beautiful.”
Harry and Linda’s knowledge is too large to be contained in the pages of a magazine, but their nursery, which is open on Saturdays, is a great place to go see plants in their garden— and ask questions. They are located at 4970 County Road 41, by the old Forks of Cypress. For directions, visit www.littlecypressnatives.net.
[ Sanguinaria Canadensis or Bloodroot ] march/april | noalastudios.com |
Jane Gerard
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If I conferred with our furry friends, man to animal, Think of the amazing repartee If I could walk with the animals, talk with the animals, Grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals, And they could squeak and skuawk and speak and talk to us! From “Talk to the Animals,” , by Leslie Bricusse
She Talks to Animals text by allen tomlinson » photos by danny mitchell
It’s : on a chilly morning, and Major and Mia have just arrived for their lesson. Major is a beautiful white bulldog, and Mia is an enthusiastic puppy; their owners, Trey and Anita, have brought them here because Mia keeps nipping at Major and stealing his toys. Major is fairly patient with it, but he’s showing some signs of stress, and Trey and Anita would like to change Mia’s behavior. Jane Gerard knows just what to do. “My mother said I knew I would work with animals when I was two years old,” said Jane. But forget all of the “Alpha Dog” posturing you might have seen on television; Jane’s methods for training animals is not like that at all. Instead, Jane sets up situations for the animals, which allow them to make choices. When they make the choice you’re leading them toward, they get rewarded. Because they are rewarded, they want to do it again—and pretty soon, you have the behavior you want. That is just about the opposite method from Cesar Milan, the current television darling who promotes domination over your pet to force good behavior. The problem with that method is that you are oftentimes setting up your pet for failure. “Our animals will do what it takes to make it work, and our reinforcement determines the success of the behavior,” said Jane. “If you dominate it with force—where is the learning opportunity? They have limited options. The fearful dog could react by biting, trying to escape, or shutting down; if animals are not given choices, they typically shut down. Animals are not born mean.” But we can make them that way—usually if we try to dominate them. Human behavior is much the same way. Growing up in England, and later in the Bahamas, Jane’s stepfather used force without any logical rationale. “He was a bully, but when you are a kid and don’t know that, you just feel that you are to blame,” she said. “I thought it must be my fault—but why?” It was the “why” that drove
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“In those days, horse training was done with whips, crops, and bits,” she said. “I found myself studying the psychology of training and the power of positive reinforcement. I was questioning whether we could achieve a better result by rewarding good behavior instead of using the whip. The whip just felt bad. I thought there had to be a better way.” After the Working Pupil Program, and a brief stint in a punk band in London, Jane moved to Brighton to work with dolphins. At first it was seasonal work, but it lead to a full-time career, and for the next 17 years she moved about in France, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland, the Bahamas, and New York. “In one instance, I was working with a circus family in Switzerland who took dolphins and killer whales on tour into Eastern Bloc countries to perform circus shows. I witnessed a lot of things that I thought were wrong, the worst of which was a sea lion that they beat to make it stay on a chair. I became so upset that I contacted the International Veterinary Association to report the abuse. I was blacklisted, but I felt I had done what I could do to make a change.” Jane’s new goal was to set up a training business, working with horses. Her path led her to Taos, New Mexico, where
Jane to study animal training. “Later, I worked with trainers who used whips and bits, to force desired behavior. I started to ask myself, why is this good? How is this an expression of love? Training animals is sometimes like holding a mirror up to your own life.” Jane’s life has been full of travel, adventure…and animals. As a child in England, one of her first pets was a spider monkey. “Great Britain after World War II was poverty stricken, and things there were grim,” she said. Casino owners in the Bahamas, which were on the verge of development, began advertising to young British men to come to the Bahamas and become croupiers in the casinos. Her stepfather decided to give it a try; her family moved to the Bahamas in 1963. A few years later, at the age of nine, Jane began riding horses. When she moved back to England in 1973, her passion for horses was so great she joined the British Horse Society’s Working Pupil Program, as an apprentice trainee working with horses.
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Facing page: Jane works with Major, an American bulldog. Right: When she was younger, Jane trained dolphins throughout Europe.
© Courtesy photo
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Facing page: Jane and a couple of her rescue horses. Left: an older photo of Jane working with a beloved sea lion.
© Courtesy photo
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she founded The Complete Pet Ranch, successfully developing a clientele and teaching pet owners new methods for dealing with pet problems. She also became passionate about horse rescue, and her vision included an animal sanctuary for wildlife threatened by human activity. “My ranch placed dogs in a natural setting, instead of a kennel environment, and we also served as a sanctuary for horses, donkeys, dogs, cats, and birds,” she said.
who had established a horse rescue convinced Jane to sell her business in New Mexico and buy 13.5 acres north of Underwood. That was 2012; today, her property is a place where animals roam, with boarding, rescue, and lessons. One of her first rescues was a horse whose saddle and bridal had never come off, leaving huge open sores. That horse today is beautiful and happy, as are the menagerie of other pets who happily occupy the sanctuary.
Can any animal be trained? “In Taos, I noticed a raven at the ranch, and coaxed him to come near enough for me to give him food,” she said. “Over time, I was able to use positive reinforcement to train the raven to sit on my shoulder. That was a wild animal, but he was trainable, all through the power of positive reinforcement.” She has also had success training squirrels “and even cats—cats can be trained, too,” she says with a laugh. “When you see a cat in the movies, those cats have been trained for the camera—it doesn’t just happen. They are trainable!”
How about Major and Mia? The owners admit that the lessons are as much about teaching them how to reinforce good behavior as it is teaching Mia some boundaries. “Most of the time, animal training is all about training the owners,” said Jane. “But we are all alike, humans and animals; we respond to positive reinforcement.”
When you do good work and have good results, the word spreads—and it spread to Florence, Alabama, where friends
Today, Mia is learning to respond to a clicker. When good behavior is exhibited, Jane clicks the clicker and gives the dog a treat. Soon, Mia will learn which actions get rewarded and which do not. It’s positive, Mia is happy, and it won’t be long before peace is restored in this household. Major looks relieved.
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“The world teaches you to be self-centered. The arts teach people to be human beings, to collaborate, to innovate.” JERRY FOSTER, ART TEACHER, FLORENCE HIGH SCHOOL
© Patrick Hood
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master class text by roy hall » photos by patrick hood and justin argo
Art isn’t easy. Or so says George Seurat. The 19th century French Impressionist comes to that deceptively simple conclusion in Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece of a musical, all about the artistic process, called Sunday in the Park with George. And while Seurat’s observation may not be a mouthful, it says a lot. It also serves as a helpful reminder in our celebrity-obsessed world, where the title “artist” is automatically bestowed on anyone with a hit single, that art—real art—isn’t easy. It doesn’t happen haphazardly, or by accident, and it isn’t made by lazy people. Art represents the disciplined, time-intensive cultivation of raw talent, and producing it requires maturity and the courage to fail, and often, before you succeed. Painting or architecture, sculpture or songwriting, product design or creative writing, art is the synthesis of many subjects and disciplines filtered through the subjective experience of the artist, and it’s tough. Maybe that’s why there aren’t a lot of people with the temerity to attempt to create it or the patience and vision necessary to teach them how. But, quite remarkably, both of those kinds of people— artists and visionary teachers—are toiling away, every day, making great art, right under our budding ar collective coll lllec ecti n ective noses, over ov at Florence High School. And starting to attract some attention. An d tthey’re hey’r ’rre startin Now No N w in its t second sec econ con o d year, and flying mostly under the community’s radar, the Florence Academy of Fine Arts (FAFA) represents a bold attempt to create the most innovative, multi-disciplinary high school arts Ar A rts t (FAFA A) re rep pre education program educ ed u ation p pr rog o ram in the state, if not the country.
© Patrick Hood
Facing page: Jerry Foster, FHS art teacher and FAFA facilitator, beside art student Kelsey King’s painting of the Shoals Theatre. Right: FAFA student Kaelyn Rogers adjusts the soundboard during a choral department rehearsal.
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“An increased emphasis on the arts through the establishment of the Florence Academy of Fine Arts was a natural fit for our school district, since our area is steeped in the arts. It represents the fabric and culture of who we are as a community.” JANET WOMACK, SUPERINTENDENT OF FLORENCE CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM
© Patrick Hood
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master class: FLORENCE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS
© Justin Argo
Facing page: Sheree Woods, head of FAFA’s dance program, explains an intricate bit of choreography. Right: Dance students, led by Sheree Woods, warm up.
Headed by Florence High School art teacher Jerry Foster, FAFA combines nine disciplines: band, chorus, creative writing, dance, digital media, orchestra, recording arts, theatre arts, and visual arts—under one cooperative roof. While FAFA represents a progressive approach to arts education, arts classes are nothing new at Florence High School, where they’ve always been a part of the curriculum—just not as many, or with as much variety. The difference under FAFA is that arts classes have been expanded, and their scopes widened, all of which creates opportunities for students to be involved in a much more advanced level of work.
of Fine Arts was a natural fit for our school district, since our area is steeped in the arts. It represents the fabric and culture of who we are as a community.” Dr. Womack’s commitment to the arts is the result of her belief that the arts represent a necessary component to a wellrounded education, and her commitment is all the more vital at a time when funding for the arts in public schools is at an historic low.
According to Foster, a comprehensive arts program like FAFA’s has been on the hearts and minds of a lot of people for a very long time. “I had mentioned this to the school board when the they merged the two schools years ago, the possibility of somet something like this, but at that particular time, there was interest in doing it.” no intere
Connie Wallace, assistant superintendent and chief school financial officer, articulates the school board’s commitment to prioritizing arts programs. “Funding for the arts in Florence City Schools has been and always will be a priority,” insists Wallace. That commitment requires a particularly dedicated spirit in the current educational environment, in which Womack and Wallace contend with the harsh reality of “continuously declining state and federal funding for public education.”
Superintendent Janet Womack. “When she became Enter Su superintendent four years ago, she recognized the artistic superinte potential in this whole community,” according to Foster, who goes on tto conjecture that Dr. Womack, like so many others, chose the Shoals at least in part because of its rich, artistic legacy. “The Native Americans referred to the Singing River, and there was something there.”
Indeed, the arts, viewed all too often as an expendable pastime, are frequently the first programs to feel the heat when school budgets, already stretched to the breaking point, are forced to make difficult choices. Contributing to the precarious place in which arts programs often find themselves is the perception that the arts are a fun, but ultimately unnecessary, adjunct to a quality education.
“something” Foster refers to is undeniable. The artistic That “som impulse iin this Valley is as intense and palpable as anywhere on earth, and, relative to the size of the community, possibly unrivaled. unrivaled
Not the case at Florence High School, where the arts are not taken lightly, and they’re not treated like pastimes. FAFA’s expectations are high, and the workload intense, but according to Florence High School Principal Lynn Hice, it’s a price well worth paying. “Research shows that participating in the arts enhances students’ academic skills, supports brain development, improves attendance, and increases self-esteem,”
Superintendent Womack agrees, “An increased emphasis on Superinte the arts tthrough the establishment of the Florence Academy
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master class: FLORENCE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS
says Hice. Superintendent Womack agrees: “Our students come alive through the arts. We are in the business of building the whole student, and we know this only occurs when academics and the arts intertwine.” The cumulative, positive effect of arts education on students is undeniable, according to Foster: “We’ve seen real, live examples of kids staying in school because of the arts, and that’s important in today’s world when we’re trying to keep these kids in school.”
back and tell me that so much of the stuff they’re asked to do their first year of college, they’ve already done!” The discipline FAFA instills in its students prepares es them for the demands of schools like SCAD (Savannah College llege of Artt and Design), where students are required to compete against pete agains st a talent pool drawn not just from this country, but ut internationally, and that, Foster says, is precisely FAFA’s A’s goal: goaal:l “to to to prepare our kids to compete against the brightest st kids, nott just in this state or country, but globally.”
So how does a student take advantage of this remarkable program? The ones who want to enter FAFA’s performing arts programs are required to audition. Prospective writers, visual artists, and designers submit portfolios. And, as is the case in the real world, not everyone who applies is accepted. Last year, a total of 170 students applied for acceptance into FAFA. Out of those, 112 were accepted. Foster hastens to add that not being accepted into FAFA is in no way a reflection of a student’s talent or potential. In Foster’s words, “It doesn’t mean they’re not talented or good kids.” But FAFA is a rigorous program, and not everyone is necessarily ready their first time out, but everyone is invited—encouraged, even—to re-apply.
FAFA is demanding; the curriculum lum is rigorous. But B the reree sults are worth it, and those results limited sults are not lim mited to o eexx xceptional portfolios, or finely honed intangible ned talent, but in n int ntan nt angi an gib gi ble ways, too. FAFA builds character.. Foster refers referrs to the the classes cla l sses within FAFA’s curriculum, not just ust as “arts” classes, cla l ss sses,, but as “Life 101.”
The FAFA experience requires enormous discipline and a conscientious work ethic. In addition to maintaining their core academic classes, FAFA students must also complete 14 semesters of fine arts in order to graduate.
“The world teaches you to be self-centered,” says Foster. “The arts teach people to be human collaborate, man beings, beings to collaborate to innovate.”
“We’re treating it like college,” Foster says. In fact, FAFA so closely mimics the demands of college, students are finding themselves uniquely qualified for the post-secondary experience. “They’re so much further ahead,” says Foster. “That’s what I hear from my kids after they graduate. They come
“We teach kids how to interact, to o work worrk with people, peo opl plee, to colpl laborate, to spend time with folks lks you normally nor ormallly wouldn’t wo spend time with. Because that’s thee real and you’ve r al world, re world d, an nd yo you’ u ve got learn how to do that.” It’s a mission off Foster’ Foster’s, develop’s, s, d evvelop oping character and a sense of ethical responsibility, al respo onsibil ility, l ssomething om methiing he refers to as “OBS” or “Others Before Befor o e Self.”
Innovation—along with painting, dance, and animation— is something the instructors at FAFA know a thing or two about. Florence High School is one of only two schools in the state considered an “innovative school.” It’s an imprimatur that allows FAFA to operate in ways other schools can’t. One of the primary ways FAFA is doing that is by revisiting
Facing page: Daniel Jamieson conducts the FAFA orchestra. Left: Violinist Karley Cornelius in the foreground, as the orchestra rehearses.
© Justin Argo
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© Patrick Hood
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“Research shows that participating in the arts enhances students’ academic skills, supports brain development, improves attendance, and increases self-esteem.” LYNN HICE, FLORENCE HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL
© Patrick Hood
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master class: FLORENCE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS
The problem is, not everybody learns the same way. Educational methods that work for some students don’t for others, leaving them behind. But the FAFA experience is different. “One of our kids may say, for example, ‘I’d like my emphasis to be drawing.’ We figure out what would be the best schedule for them,” says Foster. Sometimes, that schedule includes virtual classrooms. Florence High School is the first school in the state to offer virtual classrooms, which allow students to take classes at home, freeing up hours for arts programs on campus. Although the instruction is done online, the teacher is available for questions during office hours. Foster gives one example: “I had a girl last year who had six classes with me, the rest were virtual. She graduated with a 4.0, and now she’s at SCAD on scholarship.” It’s important to keep in mind that all this innovation is not occurring within a magnet program, or even a specialized o public high school, like the Alabama School of Fine Arts in p Birmingham, or Mobile’s School of Math and Science. FlorB ence High School is a public high school, but unlike other e public schools, Florence High and FAFA accept students from p outside the area. “The students can come from anywhere, and o we w don’t charge an out-of-area fee,” explains Foster. “We are enrolling out-of-district students from within a one“ hour radius of Florence,” explains Womack. “They want to be h a part of the excellence while being provided an opportunity to t major in the arts noted through a diploma distinction that is i unique to Florence City Schools.”
© Justin Argo
Facing page: Rebecca Rockhill directs her choral students. Right: Choral students James Bagget and Liza Jane Richey in the foreground during choral rehearsal.
existing educational modalities. “We’re figuring out a different way to educate kids,” Foster explains. “In the old model, you have to learn like everybody else.”
Whether they come from down the street or Tennessee, what FAFA students find when they arrive at Florence High School is a demanding program that requires sustained discipline and commitment. But the rewards are worth it. When a student graduates from FAFA, she leaves not only prepared for college, but for a future beyond a school campus. “Our kids have a career path,” says Foster. “We don’t want our children coming back home after college because they can’t find employment. Our objective is to encourage their talent and to make them employable,” declares Foster. The national average for employment within six months of college graduation is a paltry 60 percent, for any field. But graduates of FAFA, who go on to graduate from college, enjoy the advantages of both specialization and a minimum of eight years in which their talents and skills have been honed. That all translates into post-collegiate employment. The internationally regarded SCAD, for example, boasts a 95 percent employment average in each specialized field. That percentage increases to a perfect 100 percent, across the board. If you go to SCAD, as many FAFA students do, you leave with a job—and not just any job, either. Students who graduate from specialized schools like SCAD leave earning, in Foster’s words, “more than I’ve ever made teaching in my life.” And while secondary education is encouraged by the teachers and counselors at FAFA, Foster acknowledges that the traditional four-year college model isn’t right for everyone. Recognizing that reality, Foster and his colleagues are investigating exciting alternative post-high school educational opportunities for their students. Just one of those opportunities involves an historical preservation class. Foster explains: “We’re going to teach kids art, art history, and a craft.” Those
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master class: FLORENCE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS
An even bolder vision, still in its nascency, is to bring a school of industrial design to Florence. Several professors from established, respected colleges have expressed interest in Foster’s plan to build a world-class industrial design school in Florence, one that partners with FAFA. The school would offer Florence City Schools, already innovators, with yet another progressive method of educating its students. “I don’t believe in the standard four-year college model,” Foster proclaims. “If you can take a kid and give that kid everything he or she needs to know in industrial design in two years, why make them stay four?” This bold vision of the future of arts education is galvanizing more than just the students and teachers at Florence High School. Jerry Foster and his team are also attracting the attention of schools all over the state. After a mere two years in existence, officials from Wetumpka, Hoover, Cullman, Athens, and Vestavia have visited Foster to observe the remarkable things happening within FAFA, with a mind to recreate the program in their own schools. What of FAFA’s own future? It’s already unfolding. Just this year, FAFA has added television production. An employee with a history in front of the camera has been brought on board to teach producing, directing, and writing. Another instructor teaches technical skills, like sound recording and editing. Additionally, a website is in the works to sell student fashion designs, with proceeds going to the Wounded Warrior Project. Broader still, Foster would like to eventually see students entering the FAFA program in grade eight.
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Facing page: Theatre Arts instructor Micha Stevens responds to a question from one of her acting students. Left: Theatre Arts students Justin Robinson and Fletcher Cox.
© Justin Argo
crafts include architecture restoration and other largely forgotten crafts, which, because their practitioners are quickly vanishing, summon high paychecks.
“I have set myself a goal,” Foster declares. “In four years, I want FAFA to be of national recognition. When you search online for a fine arts high school, I want us to be the first thing that pops up.” That kind of growth would require expansion, of course, and Foster envisions a new facility to house FAFA, one that would replace its existing suite of classrooms. “Our dream in two years is to build a new facility for art, band, chorus, dance, and orchestra.” How many students would fill those bustling, creative reative halls? Currently, FAFA’s population stands at 165. Foster ter imagines 700 by 2020. In order for that bold vision to become a reality, Foster invites the community to share in n his and his team’s vision of a world-class arts education pr program. rogram. Not N just because it increases its students’ s’ self-esteem m by fostering accomplishment and success, but because it in increases ncreases the community’s pride, as well. The Shoals’ place in American popular pular music history h is already well established, and the presence of world-class fashion designers Billy Reid and Natalie Chanin Chanin, n, Grammyy winning musicians John Paul White hite and Mac Mac McAnally, and respected product designer Carter arter McGuyer, McGuyeer, among so many other accomplished artists and performers, performerrs, only addss to our community’s reputation as a vital sourc sourcee of creativ creative i e talent. So why not produce the next xt generation n of great architects and novelists, screenwriters inrs and urban planners, p in ndustrial designers and filmmakers? “I want people to know that we live in one of the most most talented areas of the country,” Foster enthuses. objective huses. “Our obje bjective ti here h rree is to give all those talented children opportunity sucen an oppo port po rtu un ni niitty to t suc cceed, and I think we’re going to do itt b better than etter tth han n aanybody nybo od dyy eelse. lse. e”
© Patrick Hood
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master class: FLORENCE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS
It’s a thrilling future Jerry Foster and his colleagues are creating for students at Florence High School, and that future is unfolding quickly. So quickly, in fact, some of the familiar trappings of the “olden days”—before the Internet and alternative colleges and virtual classrooms—are already missing, replaced with new technology, new initiatives. Even those familiar bells most of us grew up listening to are gone now, replaced by intercoms. They still announce class changes; still warn of fires and tornadoes. But these days, there’s another drill, and on the afternoon of our visit with Foster, we heard it: the school invasion drill. It’s everyone’s worst nightmare, and as the students rehearsed their response, Papa FAFA, as Jerry Foster’s students sometimes call him, calmly explained the purpose of the drill to his students: “We are not doing this to frighten you. We are doing this to prepare you.” A profound statement made under exceptional circumstances. Still, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more apt description of the teacher’s vocation or the motivating mission behind the extraordinary Florence Academy of Fine Arts. After all, art isn’t the only thing that isn’t easy; life isn’t either. But what worthwhile ever is?
WORDS FROM THE WISE FAFA is a collaborative endeavor, and each department within the Academy makes an invaluable contribution to the sum of its parts.
So we asked the department heads and teachers listed below to give us an insight into their respective departments and to share with us their visions for FAFA’s future. Robert Groves, Director of Bands Darlene Freemon, Creative Writing Instructor Sheree Woods, Dance Director Randy Bruce, Lead Instructor and Jennifer Kilpatrick, Assistant Instructor, Digital Media Arts Daniel Jamieson, Orchestra Micha Stevens, Theatre Arts
Their answers follow:
What sorts of opportunities does FAFA offer students in your department that wouldn’t exist in another school without a comprehensive arts program? FAFA offers students the opportunity to totally devote themselves to a specific fine art. In my case, students are able to take two periods of instrumental music and one fine art elective. Some examples of an elective for the instrumental FAFA students are AP music theory, jazz band, chamber winds, or they can dip into another discipline and try their hand at orchestra, chorus, art, dance, theatre, or creative writing, to name a few. —Robert Groves My creative writing students write, design, edit, and produce Signatures literary-arts magazine, which wins state and national awards each year for writing and design. Students learn the business of publishing, as well as the creative side. —Darlene Freemon Left: Dance students follow Sheree Woods lead.
© Justin Argo
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This program allows students the opportunity to collaborate with other arts disciplines in order to share and grow as an arts community. It is awesome to be able to foster a community of young artists in individual disciplines, as well as to provide them with the opportunity to work in a cross-disciplinary sense, so they are well versed and begin to realize that the opportunities are endless. Without a comprehensive arts program, it is likely that these collaborations would be impossible. —Sheree Woods In our classroom, students gain the experience of a working newsroom. We have script deadlines, producer responsibilities, and student-directed newscasts that are broadcast to the school. Students also have the opportunity to create, direct, and broadcast live sporting events. These students were recently recognized as one of the top four high school sports broadcasting programs in the nation. —Randy Bruce/Jennifer Kilpatrick
What are some ways FAFA broadens students’ college opportunities, as well as their career paths, in your particular discipline? Everyone is looking to get a scholarship to go to college. With instrumental music, the primary means to getting a scholarship is through an audition process. We are able to prepare our students for this by giving them several opportunities to work on, and prepare for, this stressful and time-consuming process. —Robert Groves Many of my students go on to attend prestigious universities on full writing scholarships. They also earn internships, travel to Europe, and work as paid writers, editors, and/or designers for their colleges’ publications. Several students have become professional writers working for Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker. —Darlene Freemon Value is not only placed upon the actual act of dancing and principles of movement. Dance students are also able to experience units of study based on dance terminology, dance history, choreography, and dance for camera, to name a few. It is important to understand the basic principles and fundamentals of various dance genres in order to begin to fully process the artistry of dance. These are elements of dance education that not many students receive on a high school level. —Sheree Woods The knowledge students are gaining in our classroom can take them straight to entry-level positions in the television production field or give them the edge and experience for scholarships and entry to college broadcasting programs. —Randy Bruce/Jennifer Kilpatrick
Recognizing Greatness In its very first year of existence, 2013-2014, the Florence Academy of Fine Arts garnered a staggering total of 491 awards in regional, national, and international competitions. For the sake of brevity, we’ve listed the total number of awards for each category within FAFA’s various departments below. Eagle-eyed readers may note that Recording Arts is the sole FAFA department not mentioned. They have an excellent excuse: there were no high school recording arts competitions available to enter last year! Look for that to change in 2015. Band Superiors at two Marching Competitions: 12 Superiors with all three bands at State Concert Competition: 3 All State Band Members: 3 National Awards: 1 National Recognition with Band Playing in Chicago: 1 Choral Regional Awards: 111 State Awards-Show Choir: 24 Alabama Honor Choir: 9 Concert Choir: 48 Creative Writing Regional Awards: 30 State Awards: 14 National Awards: 18 Dance* Regional Awards: 1 Digital Arts State Awards: 1st Place State Awards: 1st Place National Awards: 5th Place Orchestra State Awards: 9 Theatre Arts State Awards: 100 Southeastern Regional: 3 Visual Arts Regional Awards: 24 State Awards: 18 Southeastern Regional Awards: 30 National Awards: 17 International Awards: 8 *The Department of Dance did not have a full-time instructor for FAFA’s inaugural year.
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master class: FLORENCE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS
Left: Le Lef e t: t: Micha Mic icha ha Stevens and ha d he her h e actin acting ting ti tin ing sstudents tud de discuss a scene.
© Justin Argo
Continued from page 53
Often, fine arts schools are looking for students who have shown dedication and excellence in fine arts. Our programs allow students to prove that they are committed to furthering their future careers as artists. —Daniel Jamieson We participate in scholarship opportunities and auditions, have guest lecturers speak to students about college and college preparation. I also help the students in building workable resumes and tools to help them achieve a career in theatre. —Micha Stevens
We are currently rehearsing for The Children of Oedipus, a re-imagination of Sophocles’ Antigone. This classic Greek tragedy emphasizes movement and voice, something new, but essential, to building strong actors. This is a crosscurricular creation using an ensemble cast that spans both middle and high school grade levels. The show has a beautiful set design that incorporates classic Greek elements with a modern twist. —Micha Stevens
Where do you see your department and FAFA as a whole in five years? Any exciting projects or performances your department has planned that you’d like the community to be aware of? We publish our 64-page literary magazine in May of each year. It is available to the public for $10 per issue. We always need and appreciate patrons and donors. —Darlene Freemon Our students currently broadcast a bi-weekly newscast filled with news, weather, and sports from on-campus. We also broadcast live sporting events including football, basketball, and baseball games. We are also collaborating with the theatre department to create our first Falcon Film Festival. —Randy Bruce/Jennifer Kilpatrick The orchestra is planning its first-ever competitive performance later this semester at the Southern Star Music Festival in Atlanta. Several of our students will also participate in the first-ever music department recital at the 116 Mobile Street concert venue. —Daniel Jamieson
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Without sounding overly confident, I see Florence High School and the Florence Academy of Fine Arts being among the best, not only in the state of Alabama, but in the country. —Robert Groves This program is in its infancy. In five years, our digital media arts program hopes to include a daily news broadcast, continue sports broadcasts, and develop a film production portion to our program. —Randy Bruce/Jennifer Kilpatrick In the next five years, I envision the orchestra department to continue to be a thriving scene where students have access to great facilities and instructors at all grade levels, allowing them to become successful and employable musicians when they leave the orchestra upon graduation. —Daniel Jamieson As a whole, I would like to see FAFA become accredited. This would mean theatre students would leave high school
with some college credit, in their chosen theatre discipline, tto o have a competitive edge in co college and career readiness. —Micha Stevens
What are som some me wa w ways ys you you’ve ou’ve ou u see seen your program and FAFA change stud students’ dents’ lives? FAFA is still in its early stages, but I have seen so much growth within a year’s time, it makes me extremely excited for what lies ahead. I have seen a desire for excellence in my students that I have not seen in a while, and that is why I do what I do. FAFA is not just about making our students better musicians, dancers, actors, or writers. It is about making them better citizens, people, and productive members of our society. —Robert Groves Students who were not on track to graduate from high school are now college graduates. Students who were earning low grades in English have become award-winning poets and essayists in creative writing. Our students have won 40+ local, state, national, and international awards each year for their individual projects. —Darlene Freemon I have witnessed a great deal of growth and maturity in just a short period of time as a result of the discipline dance requires. Students have not only achieved and maintained new physical capabilities, but they have become more wellrounded individuals who hunger for more knowledge and understanding. These students have developed better cognitive skills, and that alone helps them in a number of schoolrelated studies, including our dance program, which requires a great deal of responsibility and focus. —Sheree Woods The FAFA program helps students find what they are passionate about and begin the process of chasing those dreams. This keeps them focused and excited about their education. —Randy Bruce/Jennifer Kilpatrick I’ve seen orchestra affect students’ lives in myriad ways. There are many students who, if they had not been in orchestra, might have not graduated. I’ve seen the power and joy of music transform children from dark and brooding to happy and outgoing. I’m proud to be in a place where I can see students grow and become confident adults because of what they learn in music class. —Daniel Jamieson
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text by sara wright covington photos by danny mitchell
hree little girls, all with honey-blond ringlets, have taken over the home of Ryan and Lisa Clayton. When I arrive for a visit on a Thursday evening in January, I scarcely make it past the door step before these sweet, giggling girls gather around me to whisk me off like a little army of pink ants carrying away a crumb. Ella Marie, age five and the eldest, pulls me into her brightly colored bedroom with her identical twin sisters, Sophia and Isabella, age three, trailing closely behind. They all chatter excitedly, moving from one object to the next. “Look at my trophies!” exclaims Ella Marie, pointing proudly to soccer and dance awards. “And I painted these pictures!” she says proudly, showing me the many masterpieces lining the walls. “Do you want to see my closet?!” she asks. Um, are you kidding? Of course I do. I am,
T
after all, just a girl—who happens to love wall-to-wall shoes, princess dresses, and sparkly tiaras. As we leave the closet, I notice that in equal proportion to all the dolls and other toys are the books, which line the bookshelves from ceiling to floor. There are hundreds, and I’m willing to bet many of them, especially the ones on the lowest shelves within a tiny person’s reach, have the sticky, well-worn pages of any beloved book. Their little laughter is truly infectious, and my face already aches from smiling as Lisa and Ryan wrangle their living baby dolls into the family room where we can all sit and chat. As we sit down, the girls set about playing in the floor, shrieking with excitement as Ella Marie demonstrates a flawless cartwheel to her younger sisters. “Use your inside
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From left to right: Isabella, Ella Marie, and Sophia Clayton
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This implant is what makes the difference between hearing and not hearing for these three girls.
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“You teach a child who hears normally how to speak. But we had to teach them how to listen.” —Ryan Clayton
voices,” says Ryan. I have to admit, as the mother of two small girls myself, none of this seems at all unusual to me. This pink pandemonium of laughter and squealing is my everyday normal. But this everyday normal is not something the Claytons take for granted. As Ella Marie leaps up from her cartwheel, a small device pops off her ear, and I am reminded for the first time since my arrival that Ella Marie and both of her sisters were born completely deaf. She bounds over to her mom and says, “Fix my ear please, Mama.” Seconds later, device back in place, she has joined her sisters again and the three of them are singing “Old McDonald” in perfect, tiny-person pitch. This journey to hearing has been long, and the Claytons still work daily to help their daughters hear and speak, but for now, they are grateful just to sit back and listen to the sweet noise of their miracle children, who have come a very long way. Like all couples, when Ryan and Lisa met nearly 14 years ago, they had no idea what was in store for them. After they married, they had always planned on having children and, as all new parents, were overcome with the immediate, overwhelming love they felt when their first daughter, Ella Marie, was born. “Ryan was holding her in the hospital and he looked at her and said, ‘This is a special girl who is going to accomplish special things,’” says Lisa. “And it’s weird. I just knew something was wrong.” When Ella Marie failed the newborn hearing screen just a day before they were to leave the hospi-
tal, Ryan and Lisa were reassured that it was likely just fluid, and that they should just have her pediatrician rescreen her in two weeks. Even through the reassurances that everything was probably fine, Ryan remembers how overwhelming this news was, especially for Lisa, who was a teacher and is now an associate professor at the University of North Alabama’s Department of Elementary Education. “I told them, ‘My wife has never failed a test in her life and you are telling her that her child is a day old and has failed a test,’” says Ryan. The Claytons were worried, but mostly puzzled at first. “Deafness was never thought about,” says Lisa, “it was more like ‘why is she not passing this test?’ She had ear infections at birth, but that was coincidental. We went to see an ENT here in Florence and she failed there also.” As the next step, the ENT sent the Claytons to the Easter Seals of the Shoals who then referred them to the world-renowned Shea Clinic in Memphis for further testing. It was here where they would finally get some answers. “The doctor came in and said ‘We got nothing,’” remembers Lisa. “For a split second I thought he meant that they couldn’t find anything. And then we realized ‘we got nothing’ meant she had no hearing.” At three months old, Ella Marie was diagnosed with profound hearing loss, meaning she was legally deaf. Ryan and Lisa were told almost immediately that their daughter would be a candidate for cochlear implants, which are tiny electronic devices that are surgically in-
serted to help provide sound for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. With the aid of a small earpiece that serves as a sound processor, the device is turned on and sends electrical signals directly to the auditory nerve, bypassing the damaged cochlea. But the process isn’t as simple as just a surgery and then activating the device. Ella Marie would actually have to be taught how to hear. She would need to learn to recognize and respond to sound, a process that hearing babies pick up quickly and easily. The Claytons also faced many months of testing, counseling, paperwork, and prayers before Ella Marie would actually receive her first implant. She was immediately fitted for hearing aids, and then began auditory-verbal therapy, which is designed to help hearing-impaired children learn to listen actively and understand speech. Wendy Piazza, who is an auditoryverbal therapist and also the Director of the Hear Center at Children’s of Alabama, has worked closely with Ella Marie and explains part of the process. “When the implant gets turned on, the first thing we have to teach them is presence or absence of sound,” says Wendy. “Ella Marie had heard a little with her hearing aids, but the implant was like starting over, because it was a new way of hearing.” Although they now had some answers and a plan, Ryan and Lisa were still reeling from the news and would need to go through their own process of accepting Ella Marie’s diagnosis. “My worry was “she was never going to hear
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“My worry was she is never going to hear me say ‘I love you.’” —Lisa Clayton
me say ‘I love you,’” says Lisa. “I wondered if it was something that was my fault. I thought ‘what did I do wrong? What did I not know?’” Ryan and Lisa had a genetic study done at UAB to see if they could determine a cause for Ella Marie’s deafness and learned that she had a complex genetic disorder, where a protein known as Connexin 26 causes mutations of certain cellular formations in the inner ear needed for hearing, resulting in deafness. “The only way you can have the Connexin 26 gene is if both of your parents are carriers, so Ryan and I knew we were carriers,” says Lisa. “One in 31 people has this.” When Ella Marie was 17 months old, she got her first implant in her right ear. Dr. Audie Woolley, an ear, nose, and throat doctor who specializes in pediatric otolaryngology, performed the surgery at Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham. She would receive the implant for her left ear just after her second birthday. It would now be up to Ryan and Lisa and their team of specialists to teach their daughter literally everything about sound. “We see the parents as the primary therapists,” says Wendy Piazza. “A big part of my job is to teach the parents what therapy to do when they are not in the clinic.” Working with the auditory-verbal therapists at Children’s, Lisa and Ryan learned how to train their daughter to do what hearing babies do naturally. “We had to teach presence of sound,” says Lisa. “So I would bang pots and pans. When
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they get implanted, you have to teach them what a sound is. Then you are just looking for them to have the reaction of wide eyes. You literally have to teach them how to react to sound.” Soon after Ella Marie’s surgery, Ryan and Lisa found out they were expecting again, and this time, they received the overwhelming news they were having twins. Because of the genetic testing they had done with Ella Marie, the Claytons knew that there was a 25 percent chance of deafness in any future children they had, so when both girls failed the hospital newborn hearing screen, Lisa and Ryan were more prepared to accept the news. “I had one day that I was really upset and overwhelmed,” says Lisa. “But I had already been talking with the surgeon. They were fitted for hearing aids at two weeks old.” Knowing almost immediately that the twins would be candidates for cochlear implants like their older sister, they turned again to Dr. Woolley at Children’s of Alabama to perform the surgery. When Sophia and Isabella were just eight months old, they both received implants for their right ears on the same day. They would receive implants for their left ears two months later. They were Dr. Woolley’s first and only set of twins to receive cochlear implants thus far. “We are just getting younger and younger each time,” says Woolley. “They were one of our youngest sets. We know that spoken language is so important to babies.” Dr. Woolley advocates that
performing cochlear implant surgery at a younger age is key in giving deaf children a leg up with their development. “Even the baby talk that you do with babies really makes a difference,” says Woolley. “It stimulates the pathways to understanding speech. We used to wait until age two, so we missed two years of their brains developing. So the sooner we can do it, the better.” Dr. Woolley agrees that the parents are the most important part of this learning equation. Speech and language development begins before a baby can even talk, and just spending time talking to them as babies can make a profound impact. “Babies who receive at least a million words spoken to them by the age of two seem to jump-start their academic success,” says Woolley. “There is a study that shows that if parents just speak to their babies, their speech develops sooner. That means our deaf babies need to be hearing as quickly as possible. Lisa is the perfect example; she is an education professor. She has been talking to them since they were born, and it shows.” Although they knew what to expect the second time around, Ryan and Lisa knew having three young daughters would mean triple the hard work and dedication to make sure their girls received the care it would take to help them learn to hear and speak. “You teach a child who hears normally how to speak,” says Ryan. “But we had to teach them how to listen.” With all three of their girls, this would mean
Lisa and Ryan Clayton with their daughters: twins Sophia and Isabella, and Ella Marie.
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in class, it’s not because she’s deaf.” Lisa asks to be sent vocabulary lessons for Ella Marie so she can pre-teach them and all three girls have weekly appointments at Children’s for their auditoryverbal therapy, where they focus on using their hearing to listen and communicate versus relying on lipreading or sign language. “Some of the research shows that sign language can become a crutch if the child is doing an auditory-verbal approach,” says Lisa. “They don’t do any lip reading, and in therapy their therapist actually covers her mouth.” The Claytons also go against their natural inclination to safeguard their daughters from everyday life, as
“Babies who receive at least a million words spoken to them by the age of two seem to jumpstart their academic success. There is a study that shows that if parents just speak to their babies, their speech develops sooner. That means our deaf babies need to be hearing as quickly as possible.” —Dr. Audie Woolley, Children’s of Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama
beginning with the most basic facets of hearing and speech that a hearing person takes for granted. “Even when all they could do was coo, that was a skill,” says Lisa. “We had to work on pitch with their cooing so they wouldn’t speak in a monotone voice. Skills are more explicitly taught to them. We go to Children’s every Friday where there are people who work with cochlear implant kids.” Each week the girls work on using their implants for speech, language, listening, and auditory memory. “There are things we take for granted, like prepositional phrases, for example,” says Lisa. “They have to hear things so many more times before they catch on to it. When they were learning the word ‘up,’ we had to repeat the word ‘up, up, up,’ because they needed to hear it over and over. We listen for every little bit of a word they are say-
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ing. You are blessed for every little new word that they learn.” Over the next two years, the Claytons’ three girls would have a total of eight surgeries between them. Ryan and Lisa work daily with their girls to enhance their speech and listening skills. They read 10 books each night before bed, and Lisa admits that even when they play, she is always looking for a lesson that can be taught from it. “When they play, we just have to pull so many skills out of it,” says Lisa. “Even when we buy toys, I will look at a toy and think ‘I can teach this concept here.’” Ella Marie is now in kindergarten, where Lisa and Ryan make sure she stays ahead of the game. “I’m always thinking ahead of what she needs to learn,” says Lisa. “I want her treated the same as any other child in class. If she were to misbehave
all parents do. “You just want to shelter them,” says Lisa. “But you need to put them into everything so that they are in every type of situation that every other child is. So they play soccer and T-ball and also take dance and gymnastics.” Eventually when the girls are older, they will make safety accommodations throughout their home in the way of fire and smoke alarms, as the girls do not sleep with their earpieces on. “We try to explain to people, it’s not that they’re not deaf,” says Lisa. “They are still deaf. They just have some technology. It’s not natural hearing.” As we neared the end of our visit and in between my closing questions, Lisa quietly called out ballet positions to Ella Marie, who complied nimbly, her blond curls bobbing as she dipped and swayed in the center of the room.
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Sophia was curled up in Ryan’s lap, and Isabella lay on the floor playing a game and singing softly. I asked them what the hardest part of their journey has been so far. “It’s probably worry,” says Lisa. “You are always worried about what you will come up against next. Another big worry is that since all three of them have hearing loss, we wonder ‘how do we give every child what they need? Am I still doing enough to make sure Ella Marie is doing enough for school?’ It’s just that constant worry about what’s to come next.” Lisa and Ryan also worry about the girls’ internal devices going out and possibly having to go through the entire process again. But no matter what, they take comfort in knowing that their girls are getting the absolute best care possible. “I told Dr. Woolley, ‘We will put our trust in you that everything will be OK,’” says Ryan. “I want our children to be the poster children for hearing loss,” says Ryan. The girls have done videos for the hospital and when I met with them, Lisa was preparing to present at a cochlear implant conference with Dr. Woolley, who has been such an integral part of helping these three profoundly deaf little girls. “One of the twins came to see me recently and she recited a bible verse and sang a song,” says Woolley. “Everyone at the clinic was just amazed.” Amazing girls they are, who will no doubt go on to do very special things, just as their father predicted when they were born. These sweet voices—which have already developed a Southern accent—are truly music to their parents’ ears. “I always say, ‘We are deaf-initely blessed,’” says Lisa. “They are our little miracle children. We’ve had a different type of journey and it doesn’t mean we won’t have hard days. But we have a lot of great days and love getting to watch them learn and grow.”
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DEAFNESS IS THE MOST COMMON BIRTH DEFECT in the United States, with 1 in 1,000 children born deaf each year, and the Clayton family is not the only Alabama family who has been able to experience the extreme benefits of cochlear implants. When Molly and Frankie Tubbs’s son Trace was born in October of 2011 at Helen Keller Hospital, they faced the same scenario of a failed newborn hearing screen and reassurance that it was likely just fluid causing the failed test. But after seeing several specialists, the Tubbs learned that their son was profoundly deaf. “You know that deafness is NOT terminal,” says Molly. “And you are telling yourself as a parent that this is going to be okay, but you are dying inside thinking that he may never hear you say ‘I love you’ or listen to his favorite song or communicate in the only way that we know how to.” The Tubbs now faced the battle of choosing a next step, and Molly was told by friends to reach out to the Clayton family for guidance. “On our first phone conversation, Lisa told me the story of her girls and the remarkable miracle of cochlear implants that her oldest daughter was experiencing,” says Molly. “So I made an appointment at Children›s in Birmingham and the process began.” Genetic testing proved that Trace’s deafness was also caused by Connexin 26, and he wore hearing aids for a year until he received the implant on November 5, 2011. Trace is now three and thriving. “He knows his ABCs, counts to 20, says the Pledge of Allegiance, sings Kenny Chesney’s latest hits, and communicates just as the average three year-old does,” says Molly. “We work at it but are so grateful that we get to. The Hear Center in Birmingham is such a blessing to us and cochlear implants are a miracle that we praise God for daily.” Katy and Luke Smith of Jasper have also seen the benefits of cochlear implants, although their journey has been a bit different. Their daughter Harper, now six, was born in 2008 and actually passed her hospital hearing screen. It wasn’t until she was nine months old when they took her to the ENT for an ear infection that they discovered she had moderate hearing loss in both ears. Harper’s hearing loss was not severe enough to be considered for cochlear implants at that time, so she was fitted for hearing aids and began auditory-verbal therapy at Children’s of Alabama. She did well with the implants until she was retested before she entered kindergarten last year and her hearing had worsened, now qualifying her for the implant. “She has what is called a fluctuating progressive hearing loss, meaning it gets worse over time and it can go up and down,” says Katy. “The implant bypasses all that.” Because Harper was already a patient of Children’s and had been in auditory-verbal therapy for years, she would be able to receive the implant almost immediately. “A five-year old having surgery is a big deal,” remembers Katy, “just getting them to the hospital is a hurdle. You have to mentally prepare and tell them, ‘We think this is what is best for you’ is difficult. She wanted her hearing aids. So we said, ‘We’ll take you to Disney World.’ She shed not one tear the entire time!” One year later, Harper is in the first grade and hearing much better, thanks to her first cochlear implants. “She hears so much better,” says Katy. “She just started basketball again. Last year was hard because she couldn’t hear the ref, but this year has been like night and day. It’s been huge.”
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68 »
scene
Joe and Margaret Eoff Beth, julia, Lance, and Anna Kate Howard Keatha and Phil Lyons Lisa McCrory and Amy Styles
Hannah Cox and Amanda Waddell
Sherry Campbell and Lynda Goss Amy and Ron Letson
Emily and Will Powell
Photos by Patrick Hood
Singin’ River Brewery Annual Chili Cook-Off for Charity january , · singin’ river brewery, florence
Roger Bradford, Donialle Killen, and Lyndsie Bailey Kim Williams, Leigh Ann and John Franck, Ben VanVeckhosen, and Darren Rhodes
Cole and Selena Wagoner jason and Ann Simmons
John Jones and John Hodges
Ray Grissom, Kim Jackson, and Lester Norvell
* Names for photos are provided by the organization or business featured.
Donna Butts and Marcy Foster
Jill Stupiansky, Jessie Prince, and Steve Raney
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GAME CHANGERS KEY INITIATIVES: • Education and Workforce Readiness • Business Growth • Entrepreneurship and Innovation • Public Policy and Activism • Investor Relations and Marketing These are the businesses to date who are game changers in Shoals Chamber of Commerce’s strategy for our community. Thank you for your confidence and investment in the future of the Shoals!
Chairman’s Circle: $15,000 - $19,999
Strategic Partner: $20,000+ Bank Independent Wise Metals Group Listerhill Credit Union Anderson & Anderson Northwest Shoals Community College ECM/Shoals Hospital North American Lighting City of Florence
www.shoalschamber.com
C B & S Bank Shoals MPE
CEO Council: $10,000 - $14,999 University of North Alabama SunTrust Bank First Southern Bank First Metro Bank BBVA Compass Bank Sheffield Utilities/City of Sheffield
President’s Forum: $7,500 - $9,999
Growth Partner: $2,000 - $4,999
Bishop Toyota Helen Keller Hospital Walgreens Customer Care Center
Party Pros Progress Bank B Electric, Inc. Life Data Labs, Inc. Associated Insurers BH Craig Construction Company Neese Real Estate Agrium Flournoy Yacht Charters/Flournoy Engineering Johnson Contractors Tennessee Valley Authority Assurance Group Patterson, Prince and Associates Herald Printing, Inc. Ray Miller Buick, GMC Southwire Bradford S. Hall & Associates Forsythe & Long Engineering Lewis Electric Co., Inc. Johnson Products, LLC Carbine Construction American Wholesale Book Company Paper & Chemical Supply
Investor Leader: $5,000 - $7,499 JT Ray Company Alabama Electric Motor Services Times Daily Abroms & Associates Bigbee Steel Alabama Technology Network TMC No’Ala Studios Martin Inc. Marriott Shoals Hotel & Spa Ricatoni’s Italian Grill/City Hardware Printers, Stationers, Inc. FreightCar America Integrated Corporate Solutions, Inc.
Pounders & Associates, Inc. Alabama Land Services Blue Olive Consulting HW Lewis Hobart Sales & Service Buffalo Rock/Pepsi Hovater Construction Applied Chemical Technology Shiloh Holdings Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated Pet Depot Long-Lewis Ford of the Shoals, Inc. Valley Credit Union TASUS Bethesda Cancer Center ES Robbins Company Singing River Dentistry City of Tuscumbia TVA Community Credit Union First Bank SCA AMERICAS - Barton Site City of Muscle Shoals
Want to be involved? Contact Mary Marshall VanSant at the Shoals Chamber of Commerce for more information: 256-764-4661
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Subject to terms, conditions and availability. Allstate Property and Casualty Insurance Co., Northbrook Indemnity Co. © 2013 Allstate Insurance Co.
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For this issue, we are boarding a virtual time machine and turning the dial up 20 years. We’re imagining ourselves in the middle of the Shoals in March of 2035, 20 years from now.
text by allen tomlinson » photos by patrick hood conceptual renderings by jill harper andrews, aia, create architects
Two years ago, No’Ala published an issue called “Why Not?” We asked readers to tell us about things they wanted to see in the area, and we asked the question “Why not have those things today?” The past two years have seen progress toward some of the ideas discussed in that issue. We are much closer to having a new Florence/Lauderdale animal shelter; we are refocused on cleaning up the litter in the area; we’re this close to showing movies at the Shoals Theatre, and our parking deck in Florence is being restored as we speak. With the purchase of property for the construction of a new regional hospital, the prospect of a revitalized Sweetwater District seems a certain reality. Then again, progress on other issues hasn’t really advanced. We haven’t really developed our riverfront, UNA isn’t in Division I yet, and we certainly haven’t combined our cities into one metro area. Will those things ever happen? Time will tell. So, it’s time to tackle this from a different perspective. For this issue, we are boarding a virtual time machine and turning the dial up 20 years. We’re imagining ourselves in the middle of the Shoals in March of 2035, 20 years from now. The decisions we’re making today, in 2015, will have a profound impact on the kind of world we live in in 2035—and we think that’s an exciting concept. A few notes, before we step out of our time machine and take a look around. First, this is a work of fiction—science fiction, actually. The ideas presented are a compilation of formal and informal interviews with mayors, city leaders, and community visionaries, and not just those of the No’Ala staff. Secondly, some of these ideas might seem a bit far-fetched and impossible to accomplish, but that’s
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the nice part about science fiction (and the future, actually): we can write this script any way we want to write it. Thirdly, when contemplating things that might happen in the future, it’s easy to imagine a war, a drought, a terrorist event, or an economic disaster; as optimists, we prefer to think that those things will not happen, and instead we introduce only one event into this story that will help shape our future. (You’ll read about it as we get going.) It’s also impossible to predict advances in technology, so to keep this credible and realistic, we’ve dispensed with the flying cars and teleportation and stuck to technology we all know and recognize today. Finally, if we describe a future you don’t agree with, here’s a challenge: roll up your sleeves and make it different. If we describe a future you want, here’s the same challenge: roll up your sleeves and help make it happen. This special place will definitely be different in 20y years, but the decisions and actions we take today will help move it where we want it to go.
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March 1, 2035 It’s a beautiful, pre-spring day in North Alabama. I’m standing in the geographic center of the Shoals, under a cloudless blue sky. The sun is warm, and I can see buds on the dogwood trees; another two or three weeks and this place will be a laze in springtime color. I’m at the corner of Wilson Dam Road and the Tennessee River, at the south end of the Singing River Bridge in Muscle Shoals. I’m at the Shoals Civic Arena, a structure completed about seven years ago, and this is a beehive of activity. There’s a big concert tonight featuring Muscle Shoals musicians, and they are expecting upwards of 7,000 people in the Arena tonight. The hotels are near capacity and area restaurants have reservation waiting lists, because the Arena routinely draws from Huntsville, Birmingham, Tupelo, and even Nashville. When the Shoals area made a dedicated effort to reclaim its place as the Hit Recording Capital of the World, things really
began to happen, and the Grammy Award winners and hit recordings that have flowed from this place have made the area a musical powerhouse once again. The location of the Arena is ideal, too; it’s so easy to come south on Highway 43 or north from Highway 72/43/157 to get here, now that there is four-lane access from every direction. A bus system instituted after the oil crisis of 2023 brings locals right to the door, and the high-speed rail station in Tuscumbia delivers Huntsville and Decatur event-goers to the Arena in less than half an hour, door to door. When TVA decided to divest itself of this parcel of property in the early 2020s, the four major cities and two county commissions wisely decided to dedicate its use to a facility that would serve as a regional draw, and it’s working. Way, way back, in the 1990s, city leaders decided to work with the Retirement Systems of Alabama to build two Robert Trent Jones golf courses in the Shoals. That was visionary because it
launched a tourism industry in the Shoals that has had a huge economic impact. The Marriott Shoals and many other hotels were built to accommodate the visitors, and Shoals area citizens began to see themselves as gracious Southern hosts to people from all around the globe. The mechanism to finance this project was a 2 cents gas tax, hugely controversial at the time it was implemented, but then quickly forgotten as soon as economic benefits were visible. When it was time for the gas tax to go away, our city leaders made another controversial decision: to keep it in place, to pay for the construction of the Shoals Civic Arena. There were letters to the editor and social media posts about governmental intrusion and unfair tax burdens, but at the end of the day the Arena was built, and holds the record for more sold-out events than any similar arena in the Southeast. Location of the Arena was actually more controversial than the means to pay for it. Once again, our leaders took time to
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think it through and decided on the location by the river on the TVA Reservation. Not only is the Reservation considered somewhat neutral territory, access to the site is easy because of the finally completed widening of highways leading to it in every direction. The leaders also devised a formula by which revenues from the Arena are split among the municipalities, which kept Muscle Shoals and Sheffield from having an unfair advantage and gives every citizen of Colbert and Lauderdale Counties the assurance of knowing that supporting events there helps the entire area. Perched on the cliffs above the river, the Arena offers spectacular views of Wilson Dam, the Singing River Bridge, Patton Island, and both downtown Florence and the Sweetwater District at night. The design incorporates water features and canals to remind the visitor that we are a river town, and that water has shaped our lives here since the beginning of history. When the U.S. Congress decided to phase out all non-power producing initiatives for the TVA, the future of the Reservation in general was in question. Thanks to a commitment to unhurried and intentional planning, and a willingness for the entire region to work together to create the best solutions for this prime parcel of land, the Arena now anchors a business and research park that is home to a variety of high-tech companies, and includes miles of walking and bicycle trails, picnic shelters, softball and soccer fields, and, at its edges, high-end condo developments with views of the water. The rail station in Tuscumbia serves as an artery for people working on the Reservation who serve clients on Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville; because the rail line only makes four stops on its way to Huntsville’s Research Park, it’s also easier for people to live here and work there than it is for metropolitan Huntsville residents who have to fight traffic congestion every day on their daily commute, especially since Huntsville outgrew its infrastructure a decade ago. There was a huge commitment to making the Reservation a green space, and every effort was taken to retain the beautiful trees and natural landscapes of this place. From an economic standpoint, the same formula that governs the distribution of proceeds from the Arena also directs revenue from taxes and land sales on the Reservation. Because all four cities and both counties get to participate in the Reservation’s development, the animosity and petty jealousies of the past are almost gone, and the Reservation has become one of the most rapidly developing growth areas in the Shoals.
Avalon Avenue, Muscle Shoals
Shoals United? Even though relationships between the major cities and smaller municipalities in Colbert and Lauderdale Counties are better than ever, thanks to cooperative development of the Reservation, the age-old idea of consolidation of the cities has still not come to pass. But many people think the evolution of the area has actually been just as good, if not better. In 2023, when the big oil crisis occurred and gas shot from $3 a gallon to almost $10, lots of things changed. The entire country had enjoyed a decade of relatively low gas prices, dipping below $2 for a while in 2015, and then gradually— and slowly—creeping back up to the $3-$4 dollar range. In 2023, though, Americans were suddenly required to seriously reevaluate their transportation methods and make drastic changes to their lives in order to make ends meet.
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The good news is that technology allowed many people to work from home, and business in general was willing to make the changes necessary to develop a telecommuting workforce. The bus system that was put into place by NACOLG served those who simply had to be there in person—service workers, retail shopkeepers, and the remaining factory workers left in the area. A countrywide return to downtown living was already underway when the energy crisis occurred, so many people lived within walking or biking distance from the places they needed to get to. Although the oil crisis was severe, its impact was softened by trends already underway. When people travel less and they purchase fewer gallons of gas, tax revenues also fall. The 2 cents tax used to build the Civic Arena still generated the necessary funds for that effort, but it became clear that the municipalities in the Shoals needed to find ways to reduce costs. The first effort, launched in the late 2010s, was the combination of all waste management services in the area. The Metro Waste Management Commission replaced separate city departments, collected solid municipal waste from throughout Colbert and Lauderdale Coun-
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ties, and saved millions every year. The installation of a series of WastAway systems converts the waste into topsoil and cuts landfill contributions by 90 percent, and an enhanced recycling program effectively reclaims everything else. That was followed by the combination of the police and fire departments, in the early 2020s; each city kept a borough chief, but an overall managing chief was installed; forces from both counties and all municipalities were combined, and costs were drastically reduced, mainly due to attrition. (An interesting side effect of this combination was the FBI ranking of the Shoals, which went from the #4 safest city in the country to #2.) Tourism was next, with Colbert and Lauderdale equally interested in attracting visitors to the Civic Arena, as well as other area attractions, because revenue from the Arena provided a financial return to the entire area. Combining waste management and fire and police services went so smoothly, in fact, that the municipalities are considering the consolidation of utilities repair and maintenance services. Although the concepts of metro utility departments and combined school systems have been discussed,
those are probably still years away from happening, and the idea of actually consolidating the mayors and city councils of all of the various cities and municipalities into one metro form of government is still a controversial topic. Because the major cost centers have been consolidated, and huge savings have resulted, the electorate of the Shoals area seems content to let their existing governmental bodies stand. Most who hold strongly to the idea of a separated area believe this helps honor history and retain identity for the individual areas of the Shoals, and most everyone else, seeing efficiency and cost savings in consolidated services, are fine with it. Because of the cooperative work to develop the Reservation, area legislators are joining forces to demand attention in Montgomery and Washington, and the region is finally getting the attention it would have gotten had the cities actually merged.
the Shoals, had to do with a debate that had been going on for decades: the expansion of the interstate highway system.
Moving people from place to place
The Shoals has never been a part of Eisenhower’s interstate highway system, first created in the 1950s as a network of limited-access, high-speed transportation routes that tied this sprawling country together. For awhile, until the late 20th century, that was fine; people who wanted to find us could find us and everyone else could pretty much leave us alone. In the late 1990s, however, as major manufacturing firms in the Shoals closed their doors or reduced their workforce, it became important to create an identity for ourselves, and the lack of an interstate was viewed as a liability for attracting business. An intense effort to four-lane the highways coming in and out of the Shoals was undertaken, and transportation was greatly improved—but for marketing purposes, we still could not claim a spot on a major interstate highway.
The energy crisis of 2023 changed a lot of things, primarily the way people get from one place to another. But the largest change, one that sent prices for houses and land soaring in
A suggested remedy for that was to expand I-565, the feeder highway that connects I-65 with Huntsville, a huge city that also did not have interstate access until the 1990s. Why not
Main Street, Tuscumbia
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build a highway to the west of I-565, a connector road that would tie Decatur and the Shoals into I-65? It sounded like a great idea, but in reality there were lots of problems. Building an interstate is massively expensive, and because government has to deal with so many individual landowners to purchase the rights-of-way and the path for the highway, it can take years. (The expansion of Highway 157 from Cullman to the Shoals, for example, took about 40 years to complete.) Expanding I-565 into the Shoals would be a hundred billion dollar undertaking, and it just wasn’t going to happen. What happened, instead, was a huge energy crisis—and a federal program to subsidize high-speed rail. For the Shoals, this turned out to be a much more viable option; the railroad tracks already existed, and only had to be enhanced to handle the modern high-speed traffic; no land or rights-of-way had to be purchased. The costs involved building a transportation hub and rail station in Tuscumbia, Decatur, the Huntsville airport, Redstone Arsenal, and Research Park at HudsonAlpha. Passengers could board a train in Tuscumbia and step off at Research Park in about a half hour, much faster than commuting by car (and much less expensive.) The Tuscumbia station was located next to the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, where the acreage required for parking was readily available. An added benefit to this location was the increased traffic at the Hall of Fame, which had overcome the financial woes of the early years of this century and had grown, thanks also in part to the resurgence of Muscle Shoals Music. Coldwater Station, as it is called, is the launching point for several thousand daily commuters. The architecture is open and airy, reminiscent of metro stations in much larger cities. There are sundries shops and restaurants inside, and the entire building, along with the rail cars themselves, is wi-fi enhanced for fast access to all things digital. A Zip Car rental center and a bus terminal help visitors to the area find the downtown areas or attractions they are interested in visiting, and the sophisticated network of cars, buses, and rail make it easy for residents and visitors to find their way around without having to resort to using their own automobiles. When the station was opened, in 2025, something happened that was not expected. Huntsville, 60 miles away, had continued its spectacular growth, due to NASA’s Mars explo-
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ration program, the continued missile defense and materiel command functions at Redstone Arsenal, and the unparalleled growth of genetics and research companies created by HudsonAlpha. But with that growth comes some real big city problems: Huntsville is the second largest city in the state, behind Birmingham, but housing costs are the most expensive in the state because of demand. (Huntsville’s spot as the city with the highest per capita income in the state also fuels high rents and property prices.) Traffic congestion there is a nightmare because the city rapidly outgrew its infrastructure and because the greater Huntsville metro area spans westward all the way to Athens and eastward almost to Scottsboro. If you work in Huntsville but you can live in a smaller, more desirable place—say, the Shoals—and your commute by rail is faster than living in Huntsville and trying to navigate the streets, why wouldn’t you? From almost the day the ribbon cutting ceremony was held at Coldwater Station, new resi-
dents began pouring into the Shoals and buying land and houses. Real estate prices rose faster than they ever had in the Shoals, and some areas of the cities gentrified and became so attractive to buyers that it’s hard to find a house for sale there today. Tuscumbia, Sheffield, and Muscle Shoals saw rows of small, ordinary houses blossom into desirable neighborhoods with manicured lawns, block parties, and beautifully designed restoration projects. The expansion of the NACOLG bus system and the fact that many of these neighborhoods are within walking distance of downtowns made them that much more desirable.
Norfolk Southern railroad transfer station nearby, national trucking companies, and the Port of Florence to offer complete transportation solutions for companies with products to ship around the world. That has helped attract new businesses, and the industrial parks around the airport and in Colbert County are expanding because the Shoals has become a transportation center. The airport in Muscle Shoals also serves as a center for corporate jets, which is convenient for those companies located on the Reservation and in the industrial parks with corporate offices elsewhere in the world.
Because the high-speed rail stops at the Huntsville airport, there was concern about the impact on the Northwest Alabama Regional Airport in Muscle Shoals. Instead, SeaPort Airlines, which came to the Shoals in 2015, now offers jet service to Nashville, Birmingham, and Orange Beach, and the airport made a concentrated effort to reinvent itself as an intermodal transportation hub; it formed ties with the
Because the Shoals is served by four-lane highways, highspeed rail, air, and water transportation, another interesting development surfaced. For years in the early 2000s, there was a daily migration out of Colbert and Lauderdale Counties as people commuted to jobs outside the area. After the rail line was established, the trend slowly shifted, so that today there are as many people commuting into the Shoals as
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SeaPort Airlines, Northwest Alabama Regional Airport
are commuting out. Granted, more people are coming in as tourists than as day workers, but our leaders are confident that will change over time. Growth spots The most profound changes in the Shoals have to do with the areas of growth. In Muscle Shoals, the growth centers around the Reservation, around the newly developed downtown, and around the airport. In Tuscumbia, the growth centers around downtown and Coldwater Station, and is spreading up and down Highway 72. (As the closest downtown to the Station, old Tuscumbia has also undergone a Renaissance.) But in Sheffield and Florence, the growth has come in unexpected places. Sheffield is landlocked. There’s really nowhere for that city to go, bound by the river on its north end and by Muscle Shoals and Tuscumbia everywhere else. But some early planning and the ability to quickly respond to some opportunities have helped Sheffield regain its position as the Center of the Shoals.
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Sheffield was the earliest adopter of the trend to return downtown. In the early 1900s, most everyone lived around the downtown areas because transportation was complicated and limited; people wanted to be able to walk to the places they needed to be. By the middle of the century, after World War II, most every family owned at least one car, gasoline was cheap, and the trend was to move out of downtown into suburbia. Developments such as Rivermont in Sheffield and Hickory Hills in Florence became the Shoals version of the American Dream. In the years between 2010 and 2020, though, the trend began to reverse. Younger families were interested in moving into the downtown areas, where they could bicycle or walk to their favorite stores and entertainment venues. Sheffield began developing its downtown loft spaces and attracting residents downtown, and quickly after that restaurants and retail spaces opened up again to serve the residents. Because of an extensive streetscaping project, which is now fully mature, downtown Sheffield became a more and more attractive place to live, and the influx of young people, looking for affordable housing and entertainment options, meant that
it was hard to find a parking spot in Sheffield again, something Shoals citizens hadn’t remarked upon for more than 50 years.
to move from place to place without cars, and the Shoals leads the trend away from multi-car families back to the days when all a family needs is one.
With the opening of Coldwater Station, outsiders began to discover the smaller homes north of Sheffield’s City Hall, tucked back off Montgomery Avenue on the east and west sides. Because they were affordable and well built, they were snapped up, and block-by-block the neighborhoods began to change. Young professionals flocked in to purchase, remodel, add on, and renovate, adding iron fences and beautiful landscaping, and bumping up to add second stories or mother-in-law suites above detached garages, overlooking swimming pools in the back. Property values soared. As tax revenues increased, Sheffield purchased some of the houses that were too far-gone to save and created green space— parks and dog parks and walking trails. Bicycle paths on all of the major streets encouraged people to get out, when the weather was good, and a NACOLG bus stop was located every six blocks so commuters to Huntsville, the Reservation, or Florence could leave their cars at home. Nationwide, because of the energy crisis, people were looking for ways
In Florence, growth was centered in three different areas. The first to grow was the Sweetwater District of East Florence, which will be discussed later; downtown Florence experienced phenomenal growth as people moved downtown to live; and, with the reopening of the College Street Bridge that connects Pine Street and Gunwaleford Road, the entire west side of Florence has been revitalized. If you’ve been away for more than 15 years, imagine the site of the old ECM Hospital. What was once a multi-story healthcare center, strangely located in the middle of a residential area, is now the site of W.C. Handy Park, a beautiful green space with walking trails, skateboard areas, fountains, and a dog park. A small amphitheater on the property is the location now of the opening concert of the W.C. Handy Festival, because crowds outgrew the property at the nearby Handy Home and Museum.
Montgomery Avenue, Sheffield
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When RegionalCare built its new facility in East Florence and gave the old facility back to the City, leaders decided to tear the building down in order to protect the surrounding neighborhoods. They rightly predicted retail growth along College Street after the rebuilding of the College Street Bridge, because traffic to the Sports Complex increased dramatically after the addition of a Tennis Center there. College Street also became a major artery for those traveling from Savannah, Tennessee, or from the Natchez Trace, especially coming to events at the Civic Arena; it is a much easier route
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for event-goers who are visiting, especially since Highway 20 is now completely four-laned. Downtown Florence has probably undergone the most radical change in appearance. Today, I’m standing at the corner of Court and Tennessee Streets, still the main intersection downtown, and it looks wonderful. Thanks in part to the influx of residents downtown, and because of the continued popularity of First Friday (which now attracts visitors from Huntsville and Decatur, because getting here is so easy for them), retail business is thriving downtown and almost every
shop has an apartment or condo upstairs. There is nightlife, restaurants, retail shops, art galleries, and markets. The Publix grocery store downtown is one of the most successful in the entire chain; the same is true of the Mellow Mushroom, which takes advantage of the college crowd and the families who live within walking distance. An artist’s co-op helps contribute to the artistic vibe, and music venues help provide attention and exposure to up-and-coming recording artists who are in the Shoals to make a name for themselves, especially those artists-in-residence (who will be discussed later).
But mostly, downtown just looks different. If I had never been here, I would compare it to a very high-end retail center, like Bridge Street in Huntsville; the street is pedestrianonly from College Street, at the south end, to Rogers Hall, on the campus of the University of North Alabama. On College Street, between the courthouse and the city building that houses the mayor’s offices and the license commissioner, the parking lot has been removed and a beautiful green space has been installed, with benches and a fountain. Each block of Court Street, going north, now has beautiful
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plantings, benches, and fountains, with music gently pumped throughout the area; automotive traffic is limited to the eastwest streets, like Tennessee, Mobile, Tombigbee, and Tuscaloosa. Instead of auto traffic on Court Street, a people mover—part trolley, part tram—runs from College Street all the way to the University of North Alabama. It’s a hop-on, hopoff system that moves slowly enough that riders can easily use it, but it moves fast enough to get you from the County Courthouse to the University in about seven minutes. The effect is the creation of a park-like atmosphere that just makes living downtown that much more attractive. Visitors and residents alike are encouraged to stroll, linger, window shop, and enjoy the ambiance. The construction of multiple parking garages, fed from Seminary and Pine Streets, helps keep traffic away from the retail area, but not so far away that it discourages shoppers. And on the first Friday of the
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month, it’s a sea of people, not only on Court Street, but on the streets that feed it. When the area was debating the future of the TVA Reservation, it also made some other decisions about the area that have had far-reaching implications. One important decision was to support and revitalize the music industry, so that the Muscle Shoals brand would continue to thrive. Three studios implemented artist-in-residence programs, working with UNA, where aspiring singers and songwriters would work for the studios and teach music in the school systems in exchange for a year’s room and board; not only did they get hands-on experience, four of them recorded number one hits, and two won Grammys. The decision to reclaim the title of the “Hit Recording Capital of the World” became self-fulfilling; with government giving tax incentives for music and entertainment businesses, with UNA working
to provide hands-on experiences for its entertainment management students, and with an intense worldwide marketing campaign to bring attention to the talent coming from this place, it wasn’t long before major players in the music business began locating satellite offices in the Shoals (many on the Reservation, where high-speed communication channels are easily accessible). Music delivery is completely different in 2035—CDs are relics of your grandparents’ generation, although vinyl has become a high-dollar collectible item— and much of the way music is transmitted to the consumer these days was invented at the Shoals Entrepreneurial Center in Florence and the Sony offices on the Reservation. The Shoals is also now home to the largest music video production facility in the world, fed in part by UNA film students, but supported by tax incentives for film and video business implemented in the 2020s. Music has helped the revitalization of the Sweetwater District as well. The area was poised for growth when the hospital opened in 2018, and developers snapped up the existing historic structures along Huntsville Road and Royal Avenue, renovated them, and created entertainment venues, high-
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Huntsville Road and Royal Avenue, East Florence
end restaurants, pharmacies, and coffee shops. The most profound change happened when a series of high-rise condos were built behind the main streets, to house the doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel who wanted nice places to live with proximity to the hospital. A much-discussed roundabout with a fountain, dedicated to East Florence resident Grady Liles, anchors the intersection of Royal Avenue and Huntsville Road, and a wall and gates on the Helton Drive side of Sweetwater mark the district as distinct. On Veteran’s Drive, directly across from the hospital, are a series of clinics, pharmacies, and medical offices. But one of the nicest neighborhoods in the Shoals is now on the southern side of Veteran’s Park, between the street and the river. Far-thinking developers purchased the smaller and older homes in those neighborhoods, tore them down, and built an exclusive gated neighborhood, and most every residence in The Works (named for Florence Wagon Works, one of the first industries in the area) has a water view. Because lake property is so scarce now, with even the smallest building lots going for a million dollars or more, developments like
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The Works offer water views and exclusivity at a slightly more affordable price. The University One real success story, from an economic standpoint, is the University of North Alabama. UNA has long been an economic driver for the region. Today, the school has in excess of 15,000 students, and has grown tremendously, building high-rise classroom buildings along Wildwood Park Road and investing in tele-education, in which students participate in classes electronically. Teleeducation is a hybrid between an online class and an actual classroom; the student feels as if he or she is sitting in the classroom, even though the actual process involves telecommuting from home. Students can participate and exchange ideas, but the need for classroom space—and, most importantly, parking—is diminished. UNA was an early adopter of this system of education, and it was a wise decision, especially after the energy crisis.
The University of North Alabama
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The campus is as beautiful as ever. Lagrange and Rivers Halls, long ago demolished and replaced with new, multistory residential complexes, house a couple of thousand students each, and the people mover system that ends at Rogers Hall makes downtown Florence accessible to students who need a break from studying. One of the biggest changes, though, is the construction of the Harlon Hill Stadium, located on the hill where Mitchell Hollingsworth Nursing Home once stood. In the early 2020s, Mitchell Hollingsworth announced plans to expand into staged care, in which residents purchase townhomes or condos where they live independently until they need more care; they sell their condos and move to assisted living, and then to nursing care, if needed. (Mitchell Hollingsworth is also working with Hospice of the Shoals to provide a residential hospice facility for the Shoals.) Mitchell-Hollingsworth purchased acreage near Crosspoint Church of Christ, on Cox Creek Boulevard, and constructed a beautiful campus to provide its staged care. UNA, then, purchased their old site and built a 50,000-seat stadium. That left Braly Stadium, on the campus of Florence Middle School, to Florence High School, and created a stadium that UNA could truly call its own. Its location is close enough to the campus for walking, and tailgating has moved to the hills around the stadium and down Wildwood Road to the park. Football has always been important to the university, and they continue to retain their reputation as a powerhouse—now in a new and state-of-the-art facility. Just as the university makes itself accessible through teleeducation, it also has become a leader in tele-medicine, the idea that patients can be examined in one location by a doctor and medical staff in another. Working with the local hospitals, UNA put together a program through its nursing school that specializes in tele-medicine, and is acknowledged as a leader in this field. Education, business, and GIS continue to bring recognition to the area as well, thanks to UNA’s leadership. In the early 2010s, leaders in the area created Shoals Scholar Dollars, a method for guaranteeing education beyond high school for any qualifying student in Colbert and Lauderdale Counties. Today, Northwest Shoals Community College (with more than 25,000 students) and UNA include over 500 Scholar Dollar students every year in their programs, and
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the Shoals area has a reputation for providing one of the best-educated workforces in the South. That’s saying a lot, since Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia all have similar programs, financed by state lotteries and casinos. Alabama still has neither. Ideas about education have changed drastically in the past 20 years. The entire world had moved through a phase of thinking that every young person needed to go to a four-year college or university and earn at least a bachelor’s degree. But as the country experienced its energy crisis, and more and more people began relying on technology for telecommuting, the need for electronics technicians grew at a phenomenal rate. Because people were staying at home to work, they wanted to renovate and remodel their homes to make them luxurious and comfortable cocoons, which created a demand for woodworkers, electricians, plumbers, and carpenters. With the opening of Coldwater Station and the real estate boom that followed, housing builders and developers
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were paying top dollar for educated crafts and tradespeople, a trend that does not appear to be in danger of subsiding. Northwest Shoals Community College doubled its enrollment in a decade because it could help teach trades, and because Scholar Dollars was in place to help students who otherwise could not afford to go.
“Live Music Capital of the World,” had already outpaced our ability to become a tourist draw simply because of live music venues, but an interesting hybrid concept developed. Why not establish Muscle Shoals as the place where talent comes to learn the business and get started before moving on to the larger cities to have a career?
In the meantime, UNA’s enrollment doubled as well, for two reasons. First, of course, was UNA’s visionary decision to make education accessible to students wherever they might be; the development of tele-education, helped by changes in 3-D technology that give the students the feeling that they are actually sitting in the classroom, even though they are studying remotely, made education available to traditional and non-traditional students alike. But most importantly, UNA leaders continued to work with local businesses to develop win-win programs that help both business and students. UNA’s entertainment industry programs support the artist-in-residence program for musicians; the development of film and video businesses, which provide music video services, would not exist without the film production, communications, and business students at UNA. Nursing students at UNA (and that entire school) worked with RegionalCare to pioneer tele-medicine to the point that patients have access to specialists all over the world, no matter where they live. The geography and GIS programs have led to businesses that got their start at the Entrepreneurial Center and are now huge employers, located on the Reservation; and area school systems, now recognized as Blue Ribbon systems for the entire country, are staffed with UNA graduates.
The concept of becoming an entrepreneurial center for musicians was a radical shift in thinking, with some interesting side effects. Three local recording studios initiated an artist-in-residence program, in which auditions were held to choose musicians who would commit to live here for a year. In exchange for teaching music in area schools and writing and recording a minimum of 12 new songs, the artists would receive basic room and board and would get to record at the studios for free. It was a mentor program for young talent, in which the artists got to concentrate on writing, they got hands-on studio experience, and they shared their knowledge with high school and college students who were interested in a similar career path. Studios got to work with musicians they felt had true star potential, and could help shape, record, and promote the artist’s work for that year (and beyond, if the chemistry was right). Because the program was physically located in the Muscle Shoals area, the artists-in-residence had access to some real musical legends who were at the point in their careers where they were interested in fostering talent. And these artists became local celebrities, cheered on by a population who wanted to see them succeed.
Muscle Shoals Music In the middle 2010s, a documentary about Muscle Shoals Music was released, and the area enjoyed renewed attention for the role it had played in shaping the music of our lives. That could have been a blip on the radar, but area leaders were determined to make it more. In 2017, a group of the area’s cultural and education leaders convened a Muscle Shoals Music Council to discuss how to build on the area’s reputation and parlay it into a strong, secure, and powerful force once again. There is no way that the Muscle Shoals area could topple Nashville’s prominence, or even begin to compete with highpowered recording mega-businesses in Los Angeles or New York to become the dominant player on the business side of the music business. Cities like Austin, Texas, self-proclaimed
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Because of UNA’s involvement in the program, student interns were able to find support positions in the business that gave them hands-on experience, and the university’s reputation as a school with connections bolstered enrollment in their entertainment management programs. More and more live music venues opened, to give performance space for the musicians who had not been chosen as artists-in-residence, but who wanted proximity to the place where the program happened, to showcase their talents. And then, in 2019, the almost unthinkable happened: American Idol, at that point in its 18th season, announced that auditions that year would be held, among other cities, in Muscle Shoals. Although the Muscle Shoals participants in American Idol did well, they didn’t win that year. But the second place winner, a pick from the Muscle Shoals auditions, went on to record a number one hit, and our reputation as a place where
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Twenty Thirty-Five
stars get their start was firmly cemented. Muscle Shoals Music was once again a powerhouse. When the tourism bureaus in Colbert and Lauderdale Counties combined, in 2024, a specific marketing budget was set aside to continue to promote our area as the place where stars are born. (“Stars Fall on Alabama, but They Rise on Muscle Shoals,” one ad proclaims.) By the time Coldwater Station opened the next year, musical tourism had become a major draw, and in 2028, when the Shoals Civic Arena opened, it was poised to become one of the largest entertainment venues in the southeast. It didn’t hurt that three more artists-in-residence wrote top selling hit songs, and that two won Grammys for recordings engineered in our local studios. Muscle Shoals Music was here to stay.
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What a difference 20 years makes. Life in the Shoals in 2035 is a lot like life in 2015. This is a safe place to live, on a beautiful place on the Tennessee River, with great education options for our children, good medical care, employment opportunities, and a wonderful quality of life. The main difference, in 20 years, is the way things look. Sheffield has developed its waterfront park to include boat, canoe, kayak, and water board rentals, with a series of retail shops and restaurants along a boardwalk that offers easy access to the water. There’s even a zip line from Sheffield’s standpipe across the river to McFarland Park in Florence, for those who love a little adventure. Downtown Sheffield is a major residential center, with retail stores and restaurants to
support the residents there, and the neighborhoods between downtown and the river have been gentrified and revitalized to the point of being among the most desirable and expensive homes in the Shoals. Muscle Shoals concentrated on three major arteries, and basically built a downtown from scratch. Wilson Dam Road, after it was widened, was carefully developed to be aesthetically pleasing and easy to access; Woodward Avenue was redeveloped in much the same way, so that both highways are retail and business centers. Avalon Avenue, around the city buildings and schools, was developed into a planned downtown area, with a mixture of patio home, condos, and single family homes, all with walking and bicycle paths that connect to bookstores, restaurants, grocery stores, and phar-
macies. Similar to Seaside in Florida, automobile access is restricted to the rear of the homes, so that families can stroll, run, and play in the green spaces. Along Second Street, carefully planned retail centers and high-rise condos have been developed to support the businesses in the Reservation. Tuscumbia’s downtown has become an arts center, with galleries and retail spaces, eating establishments, and coffee shops specifically designed to appeal to the massive influx of visitors who come from Coldwater Station. The Alabama Music Hall of Fame has expanded twice, and is a major tourist draw and entertainment venue, and Ivy Green and the Tennessee Valley Art Museum have both undergone renovations, expansions, and increased traffic. The large older homes in Tuscumbia were featured on an HGTV series
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Twenty Thirty-Five
about restoration, and are now host to an annual Tour of Homes during the Helen Keller Festival that brings people by the thousands. Downtown Florence is green, pedestrian, and bicycle friendly, and still the center for entertainment and retail activity. The nearby Sweetwater District, close to the hospital, and The Works are among the most desirable places to live, and Sweetwater has become an upscale and trendy area. Florence’s west side, anchored by the Sports Complex at one end and the W.C. Handy Park at the other, is another thriving business center. The Reservation, a high-tech research park, is also an outdoor lover’s dream, with bike and hiking trails, park spaces, and carefully preserved green space. At the northwest corner is the Shoals Civic Arena, with magnificent views of the river, and, with the nearby Conference Center, always a center of activity. We move from place to place differently, through public transportation and high-speed rail. Our essential services are still excellent, but the mechanism for delivering them is different because of metro services. Our water is clean, our air is clean, and, because of our efforts, our landfills are not overflowing. We’re safe. Our children have opportunities, through education and through the business opportunities here. Our medical care is outstanding, and entertainment options abound. This has always been the best place in the world to live, work, and raise our families. Twenty years of thoughtful progress have just made it better.
Timeline 2017 Muscle Shoals Music Council forms 2018 …New hospital opens …Municipal waste collection begins 2019 American Idol auditions held in the Shoals 2020 TVA divests itself of the Reservation
2022 UNA builds Harlon Hill Stadium 2023 …Oil crisis forces people to reevaluate their transportation options …Telecommuting becomes the norm …NACOLG expands bus system to create mass transit within Colbert and Lauderdale Counties 2024 …Tourism bureaus combine …Municipal police and fire protection begins 2025 High speed rail begins—Coldwater Station opens
2028 Shoals Civic Arena opens
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What a difference a theme park would make.
©The DreamVision Co.
That doesn’t take into account the employment needs of a park this size. Twenty thousand people, in an area that currently only has about 69,000 people in the workforce, means we’ll have to bring in people from everywhere else to man the park. That means real estate values will climb, and we’ll have to look at new schools, new traffic patterns, new sewer systems, and new neighborhoods to take care of the basic population growth. Police and fire departments would expand; hospitals would, too. DreamVision proposes having this park up and running by 2019, which is only four years away; this will create a land boom the likes of which we haven’t seen since Henry Ford proposed purchasing Wilson Dam and Muscle Shoals was born.
As we were finishing up this issue of No’Ala, the community was buzzing about the prospect of a three billion dollar theme park that might be built in Muscle Shoals. A company called DreamVision has proposed the development of a 1,400acre music-based theme park in the Shoals that will employ 20,000 people and become one of the largest tourist attractions in the nation. What difference would that make to our story? All the difference in the world. In our look forward, we’ve written about spectacular but steady growth in the area because of the development of the TVA Reservation into a Research Park; growth in Florence because of RegionalCare’s new hospital and the reopening of the College Street Bridge; and growth all over the Shoals because of high-speed rail connecting us to Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal and Research Park. Plop a world-class theme park in the middle of all of that, and you could expand our growth projections tenfold. We would need the infrastructure to support the traffic that would come our way, with an extension of I-565 or the reintroduction of the idea of a Memphis-to-Atlanta superhighway. Our hotels, already hot properties because of the attractions and businesses we have today, would prove to be inadequate to house the thousands of families who would find their way here, and the growth in restaurants, souvenir shops, and secondary attractions (like mini-golf, water recreation, and the like) would be astounding. If you’ve been to Orlando, you’ll get some idea of what could crop up to serve the people who would come here, all of whom have extra money to spend; Disney World is not even located in downtown Orlando, and yet the entire region has benefitted.
So, why wasn’t the DreamVision plan a central part of our look-ahead feature? At this point, there are still too many unanswered questions. A press conference on February 11th introduced the key players and outlined an idea, but did not give any clues about where this park would be located, where the money is coming from, or how, exactly, it would all come about. The announcement of this monumental project also caught city officials off guard; no one in leadership in any of the cities knows much about this company or its proposal, and neither do the people at the Chamber of Commerce, the Shoals Economic Development Authority, or the Alabama Music Hall of Fame (which was announced to move into this proposed park, much to the surprise of everyone there.) Everyone in the Shoals appears ready to embrace and welcome a new venture of this sort, but without more information we are not sure if this is real or just the presentation of a dream. In The Music Man, Professor Harold Hill promises River City he will create a marching band—if they will just pitch in and help fund it. We haven’t been asked for any money, yet, here in River City—and our fingers are crossed that, just like Professor Hill, these folks will be able to pull this off. If so, the story changes—but in any case, our future is bright. We are in a growing place, and whatever happens promises to bring opportunity and good things. We’re excited about the journey!
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hear tell » Guy McClure, Jr. Aunt Cora was not really my aunt, but an extremely old woman who was my grandmother’s aunt who had lived next door to her as a child in Sulligent, Alabama—the smallest town I knew.
THE DEATH OF AUNT CORA I stood on the sidewalk looking down the straight path to Aunt Cora McKenzie’s house. My Sunday shoes slid on the mossy bricks as I walked toward the screened front porch with my parents, grandparents, and sister. The women were holding Corningware and I was holding my breath. I knew what to expect the second that door with the black wreath on it swung open—the very personal yet familiar smell of an old lady’s house—a smell of wool, overly sweet perfume, and undertones of Absorbine Junior. My father opened the screen door and the thin black spring yawned with that noise that they all make—a noise that could mean happiness, sadness, or fear, depending on who was holding the handle. We walked onto the screened porch that was furnished with metal patio furniture, moldy cushions, and stacks of old newspapers and magazines. A familiar feeling of dread enveloped me and, looking back, probably everyone else, as no one would take the initiative to ring the bell.
Aunt Cora was not really my aunt, but an extremely old woman who was my grandmother’s aunt who had lived next door to her as a child in Sulligent, Alabama—the smallest town I knew. My few memories of her were of seeing her in bed, propped up wearing a lace bed jacket with a big satin bow and having the longest earlobes I had ever seen—the result of wearing heavy costume jewelry, my grandmother explained. Aunt Cora had two daughters, Thelma and Geraldine, whom she never allowed to marry and who grew up to become old maids who were assigned to run the family drug store. I never really heard anything of an uncle, but I know there must’ve been such a character, and it is my thought that he must’ve faked his own death simply to get out of that hen house and that dusty little town. Without husbands or a father, Thelma and Geraldine became more and more masculine every day—to the point where they took on the male names of Tim and Jerry.
The telephone call had come two days earlier that Aunt Cora had died—a dramatic call from Jerry even though both she and Tim had been rehearsing that call for years.
The McKenzie women ran the local drug store. To my recollection, it was a sad storefront on a dirt road in downtown Sulligent within walking distance of the house. I do remember a rusty sign out front that said “curb service,” which I am sure was false advertising. Even as a small child I knew they more than likely would have more customers by foot traffic than by cars. The inside of the store was dark
and silent, and I can barely remember anything other than a defunct soda fountain and a picture on the wall of Aunt Cora standing next to George Wallace. It was a neighbor who opened the front door and ushered us in from the porch. Jerry and Tim were in the living room wearing dresses, which was somewhat of a shock, not only because they never wore dresses, but because the dresses looked like they had come off the set of The Three Stooges. They were probably from the contents of their hope chests before Aunt Cora had dashed those hopes, and their trousseaus had eventually lost all resemblance of fashion. In their dresses they stood at attention, emitting the exact amount of grief that clearly sets apart the Methodists from the Catholics. There were hugs all around, and comforting words, and demure smiles. Ironed linen handkerchiefs dotted at eye sockets, catching the alligator tears, and then repeated for those who were looking around the room and didn’t see the gesture. There was a steady ebb and flow of visitors, and I couldn’t make out the difference between the relatives and the townspeople. Mostly they were people who were labeled as cousins I was supposed to know, but really only pretended to. There were a lot of other kids in attendance—some roughand-tumble boys whom I wanted no part of, some older girls who wanted no part of me—so I just kind of explored the house, yard, and the faces, wishing myself invisible. Apparently Aunt Cora had died in the house, in her bed, with her girls on either side each holding a hand, and both Tim and Jerry made her passing sound as if it happened on a Hollywood sound stage. But it was apparently now a closed set as the girls had locked the door of the room where she died and had no intention of opening it anytime soon. It was now a shrine and they couldn’t bear to change a thing or remove any of Aunt Cora’s mementos. I believe it was Tim’s idea to gather the children and have them pick one flower each from the garden just before we left for the church. What I picked I found out later was a weed. Little did we know what she had in mind. The mourners in the house emptied out onto the slimy sidewalk and boarded our cars for the short ride to the church funeral. As the family gathered on the steps of The Sulligent First (and only) Methodist Church to make our grand entrance, Tim brought together the children, asking us to go first, leading the way, each carrying our flower, and to place said flower on the casket at the front of the altar. Now first of all, I wasn’t happy about being in a room with a corpse, much less getting within smelling distance of it—so this whole funeral thing had gone from the sublime to the ridiculous and was certainly not
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There were a lot of other kids in attendance—some rough-and-tumble boys whom I wanted no part of, some older girls who wanted no part of me—so I just kind of explored the house, yard, and the faces, wishing myself invisible.
what I had signed on for. I was hoping to sing a few hymns, eat some random casserole, and be in an air-conditioned car heading back to Huntsville before the midday sun had totally scorched us. This creative floral addition—“creative” by our family’s standard of tradition—could have so many bad outcomes. I could vomit on the way to the casket, I could inexplicably begin to bawl, or I could faint dead away. I looked at my father who looked down at me with a mixture of compassion and humor, knowing, too, the three possible outcomes and hoping for a smooth, seamless parade to the casket, which is exactly what occurred. I did just fine, only catching a glimpse of her dead nose sticking up out of the casket and having complete control of my composure. The rest of the service I sat quietly in my pew almost giddy with pride of my accomplishment. After the service, and the solemn parade of cars to the cemetery, came the graveside portion of the production. The unfamiliar terrain of a more-southern county interested me. In the cemetery, the grass was crunchy and bare in spots, and her grave was on a hill that overlooked the Sulligent High School football field. There were other McKenzie names on simple headstones around her open grave. It was shocking to me how well my grandmother knew the place—this was, after all, her hometown and this crunchy grass must’ve felt very familiar under her feet. The service was a normal 15 minute kind, and I did not pay a bit of attention and let my mind wander around unsupervised—watching a bee buzz around a dry flower, watching the workmen smoking cigarettes as they were waiting to replace the dirt onto the grave, and watching the clouds going by. I was hoping no one would ask questions about the service as even 10 minutes after it was over I would not be able to recall a word. We returned to the house for lunch before heading back to Huntsville. There was a smorgasbord of every imaginable recipe to ever grace the pages of Southern Living. I am sure the contents of the casseroles alone created a Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup shortage from which western Alabama still has not recovered. The congealed salads stood tall and proud—displaying their contents of banana slices, olives, pecans, et al, as monuments to gravity defying ingredients. Every native fruit had been cobbled—peach and blackberry given special places of distinction. We dined on
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paper plates on our laps in the shady backyard and the mood was much lighter now that food was involved. With the women busy with kitchen chores, and the men and kids in the backyard, this was the perfect time to explore. The house was decorated with a Depression Era taste. I distinctly remember a large, upright piano in the front room and a large naive painting of a brook in the fall over the sofa. There were lots of awards and pictures and books and special things that were displayed with pride. Everything seemed as if it had a story—and the reason for that was that it did. These were the trophies of a lifetime of three women who, despite the odds of their small town existence, had done some remarkable things. Aunt Cora had, as a single widowed woman, fulfilled the pharmaceutical and general retail needs for that small town. Tim had at one point spent time in India with the Peace Corps, and I even seem to remember hearing that she had received her pilot’s license. Jerry had studied art and was the one responsible for the paintings that dot the walls of McKenzie homes from Alabama to California. As the time neared for us to take our leave, the feeling of dread was gone. My first funeral was over, and it wasn’t half as traumatic as I had expected. Actually, I was expecting to hate the day, but it turned out nice—and it even got much, much better. My Uncle Frank and Aunt Joyce had attended the funeral from Huntsville and asked me to ride back with them— not just ride back with them, but ride back in his new blue Corvette! Had I had known this was an option, I not only would have attended the funeral just to place a flower on Aunt Cora’s casket, but I would have jumped on top of it singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” a capella in my underwear! The ride back was sheer bliss. I was crammed into the cubbyhole as the third person in a two-seater car with something sharp sticking in my leg and somehow getting grease on my clothes, but I didn’t care—I was in a Corvette, listening to rock music, and heading northward away from my first funeral. Life didn’t get much sweeter than that in 1972.
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• • • PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR LOCALLY OWNED INDEPENDENT RETAILERS, SERVICE PROVIDERS, AND NONPROFITS! • • •
| noalastudios.com | march/april
• • • PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR LOCALLY OWNED INDEPENDENT RETAILERS, SERVICE PROVIDERS, AND NONPROFITS! • • •
News, classical music and more 88.7 FM Muscle Shoals • 100.7 FM Huntsville www.apr.org march/april | noalastudios.com |
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market » Photos by Danny Mitchell
It’s easy being green Whether it’s your color or cause, these green products are perfect for spring
ISO Fuel Naturals Protein Supplement ($39.99) Total Nutrition (256) 768-5668 Vera Bradley Lucky You Lunch Sack ($34) The Village Shoppe (256) 383-1133
Singin’ River Handy’s Gold and IPA Beer ($3.50) Bota Box ($19.99) The Wine Seller (256) 766-1568 Enviro Products Glass Enviro-Bottle ($19) Osa’s Garden (256) 764-7663
Light My Fire Meal Kit ($27.99) GSI Outdoors Collapsible Fairshare Mug ($14.95) Alabama Outdoors (256) 764-1809
Kikkerland iBed Lap Desk ($11) Printers and Stationers (256) 764-8061
Cycle Dog Park Pouch Combo Pack and Waste Bags ($14.99) The Spinning Spoke (256) 349-5302
Cycle Dog Trail Buddy Bowl ($20) The Spinning Spoke (256) 349-5302 Vera Bradley Lucky Dots Umbrella ($34) The Village Shoppe (256) 383-1133
Dr. Gus Abusaid, Interventional Cardiologist • Heart Health Center 201 E. Dr. Hicks Blvd., Florence, AL 35630 • 256-766-8570 • www.hearthealthcenterpc.com
When people have problems with their hearts, that’s where I can help.
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market Half United Necklace ($39–Feeds a Family of 5) Jewell’s Accessories Boutique (256) 712-5988
Simon Sabbag Bracelet ($63) Side Lines (256) 767-0925
Oval Natural 1.69 ct Emerald Stone in 18 kt White Gold ($5,290) Jamie Hood Jewelers (256) 381-6889
Tribal Coin Earrings by Katie Vanderfort ($40) Mefford Jewelers (256) 275-7030
14 kt Yellow Gold Pendant with 10.84 ct tw Rectangular Green Tourmaline and .50 ct tw Diamonds ($3,500) Grogan Jewelers (256) 764-4013
Large Wood Butcher Block ($275) The French Basket (256) 764-1237
Wanderer Necklace with Recycled Map (other cities available) ($66) Ann Aldridge Boutique (256) 284-7308
Bora Ring ($270) Side Lines (256) 767-0925 A
Fresh Produce Courtesy of Jack-O-Lantern Farms
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A Cynthia Ann Ancient Old Believer’s Cross Framed in 14 kt Yellow Gold and Diamonds w/Diamond Bail ($5,500) B Cynthia Ann Ancient European Medal Accented w/Grey Diamonds in 14 kt Yellow Gold ($2,500) Parker Bingham Jewelers (256) 764-2032
B
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market
Patagonia Migration Hemp Shirt ($79) Alabama Outdoors (256) 764-1809 Velvet Rosie Blouse in Spring Green ($99) Audie Mescal Clothing (256) 314-6684
Southern Tide Button-Down Shirt ($99.50) Printers and Stationers (256) 764-8061
Lindsay-Phillips Cork Switch Flops Wedges ($49.95) Switch Flops Samantha Straps ($10.00) The Market House (256) 577-5197
Jade Melody Tam Blouse ($88) Marigail’s (256) 764-9444
Tickled Pink Scarf ($14) Coco’s Boutique (256) 349-2133
Green Bow Tie ($20) Coats Clothing (256) 760-0033
Fancy That Hat ($27.50) The Yellow Door (256) 766-6950
Henry & Belle Skinny Cargo Pants ($198) Lilly’s Sportswear (256) 767-0071
KALE Tank Top ($37.50) GRL Boutique (256) 349-9293 Mudpie Peyton Green Tote ($54.95) The Market House (256) 577-5197
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Dr. Ajit Naidu and the staff at Cardiovascular Institute of the Shoals welcome
Dr. Brian Cole, FACC, FSCAI Dr. Cole is an interventional cardiologist and was the Chief of Staff at ECM Hospital in 2013-2014. He has practiced in the Shoals area since 2006, and has performed more than 20,000 cardiac catherization procedures. He will be joining us soon, so please join us in welcoming him!
2415 Helton Drive, Florence AL 35630 www.cardioshoals.com Call (256) 766-2310 for an appointment.
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market
Antique Radio Lamp ($239.95) Southern Shades (256) 757-0045
Cate & Levi Knit Puppet ($32) The French Basket (256) 764-1237
Method All-Purpose Natural Surface Cleaner ($5.39) Osa’s Garden (256) 764-7663
Recycled Stationery and Envelopes (prices vary) Printers and Stationers (256) 764-8061
Sugarfina Martini Olive Almonds ($18) Sweet Basil Café (256) 764-5991
Accent Vase (set of 3) ($19.99) Surprise Store (256) 766-6810
Rewined Pinot Noir Candle ($28) and Barrel Matches ($2) Odette (256) 349-5219 Wooden Spoon ($30) Barrel Tray Lazy Susan ($200) The French Basket (256) 764-1237
Lilypad Silicone Lid ($14.30) The Yellow Door (256) 766-6950
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Salads as a Meal: Healthy Main-Dish Salads for Every Season by Patricia Wells ($34.99) Sweet Basil Café (256) 764-5991
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kudos
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If you want to share some good news about a friend, neighbor, or colleague—or even toot your own horn—send your kudos to allen@noalapress.com.
by roy hall
A Banner Year The Council for Leadership in Alabama Schools, a professional development organization serving Alabama school administrators, has recognized Florence City School’s 12 for Life program as a Banner School, in recognition of its commitment to student development and outstanding attendance and graduation rates. A cooperative program administered by Florence City Schools and the Southwire corporation, 12 for Life offers Florence High School students employment opportunities in conjunction with on-site learning. In addition to its primary location within Southwire’s Florence Industrial Park plant, two other local businesses, Alabama Chanin and Right Solutions, also participate in the 12 for Life program.
Golden Girls One of the Shoals’ most enduring retail landmarks celebrates its 50th Anniversary in 2015. Earline and J.C. McClanahan opened The Village Shoppe’s doors in 1965 and for a half century have maintained their constant, tasteful presence on Woodward Avenue in Muscle Shoals. An independent, family-owned business—the McClanahans’ daughters, Debbie Rinks and Kathy Staples, are co-owners—The Village Shoppe has weathered changing tastes, economic booms and busts, and the migration of shoppers to big box stores and the Internet. More than just a store, The Village Shoppe is an inspiration. Here’s to another half-century of success!
A Landmark Changes Hands Martin Abroms, president of Abroms and Associates, and Bill Lyons, CEO of Lyons HR, announced the purchase of Florence’s landmark SunTrust Bank Building in January. Ivory Tower, LLC, will embark on a five-year, million dollar renovation, converting the seventh floor to the corporate headquarters for Lyons HR. SunTrust Bank will continue to be the anchor tenant on the ground floor and Abroms and Associates will maintain their location on the sixth floor.
“The SunTrust Bank Building has been a landmark for Florence, and the new owners have a proven track record of improvement and investment in the Shoals,” said Florence Mayor Mickey Haddock.
Preserving Our History In January, Florence’s Heritage Preservation Inc., a community-based organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of historic structures, sites, and documents, presented the following awards to local residents and businesses in recognition of their contributions to historical preservation.
The Mefford Jewelers Building
Outstanding Restoration/Adaptive Re-Use of a Structure: Billy Musgrove and Allen Wall, for work done on the Mefford Jewelers building. Outstanding Restoration of a Residential Structure: Gene Buie and Bobby Marlar, for the restoration of 442 North Court Street. Outstanding Restoration of a Commercial Structure: Carmen and Kai-Uwe Erdmann, for the Court Street Market building.
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back talk » Isaac Ray Norris
CHANGE IS GOOD, RIGHT? Quick: think of something you most want to see in the Shoals. Now, think of the energy, time, money, and sweat it will take to get it here. Feel that rush of adrenaline? It’s part of the fun of reinvention. That same sense of fun inspired the “Back Talk” column in our 2013 “Why Not?” issue. So, we decided for this edition of “Back Talk” to revisit those original ideas and see if any of them became a reality. We were pleasantly surprised. Bethany Oliver said, “Why not have a local pizza parlor downtown or a cool juice bar in the area?” Take a walk on North Court Street in downtown Florence, and you’ll see The Pie Factory—a locally owned pizza parlor. Elizabeth Topping added, “Why not focus on crime around campus and less on parking tickets?” UNA’s 2014 Clery Crime Report shows that crime around campus is down in the single digit percentile. Taylor Brown asked, “Why not have a low-key lounge with music and food, where you can stop in after work or school and not feel like you’re at a crazy party?” The answer to this question is, of course, Odette and Yumm.
“I go to different universities in different cities, and there are far fewer apartment or loft choices for students in the Shoals,” Emily said. “I think that if there were nicer, cleaner apartments or lofts to chose from, UNA would see a rise in enrollment, and the Shoals would see a rise in the economy—we have to spend our money somewhere, be that in clothing stores or restaurants.” Janae Kirkmon is an overnight auditor at the Marriott Shoals Hotel and Spa. “I see a lot of traffic from a lot of different people from all over the world. But people never seem to notice that the Shoals catches the attention of those people. I hope to see a more diverse community,” Janae says. “There are so many wealthy people that visit the area; I would like to see them bring some culture into the city.” Jacob Keisler, an alumnus of UNA who now lives in Tuscaloosa, hopes that in the future the Shoals invests in its own culture. “I want to see the city grow on itself. There is so much potential here,” Jacob says. “Instead of taking 15 minutes to get across town to a specific store or restaurant, there should be a variety of different places to chose from, hopefully all being locally owned and operated.” Jacob said he wants to see the infrastructure in the Shoals change. “The buildings here are years old, and that is special,” Jacob says. “No other cities that I have been to have such potential for unique living choices.”
With the idea that any “Why not?” is possible, we sat down with a few young citizens of the Shoals area and discussed what they hope to see in the future for our great cities.
Galin Taylor is a resident of Tuscumbia.
Ethan Franks, a music education student at UNA, says that he hopes to see more ownership of the school by the student body.
“I would hope, by 2035, the Shoals is an area that people really, really want to live in. We have the mall being renovated, new additions being built to UNA, stores popping up left and right in downtown Tuscumbia—it’s all very promising,” Galin says.
“One thing that I hope to see, at least by 2035, is a stadium at UNA. That’s something that we as a student body can claim as our own,” says Ethan. “I think that would give our campus and community a deeper sense of identity. It would make everything—our athletic program as well as our marching band—real and concrete.” “I think that since we’re continuing to ask ourselves, ‘Why not?’ another hope that I have for the future, especially as a student, is better housing, or at least more options,” says Emily Clay, a student at UNA.
A common thread among everyone asked was the idea of energy— the idea that anything can happen, and that the future is bright. More than one person pointed to Tuscaloosa, another college town with an undeniable energy about it. You might debate whether or not football is driving that energy, but it’s an energy everyone wants to capture and bring to the Shoals. The Shoals is poised for a great change, and it’s almost upon us. The trick will be to reach out and strike while the iron is hot!
march/april | noalastudios.com |
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the vine » Amy C. Collins
THE GAMUT OF GRENACHE Grenache is one of the few grapes that comes in every color: grenache noir, grenache blanc, and grenache gris. Ampelographers—historians of the vine and its various species—have recorded that the grenache (noir) or garnacha was planted by the Spanish kingdom of Aragón across Northern Spain, which ruled the now French region of Languedoc-Roussillon, in the early 1600s and the four centuries previous. The grape is also grown in the Southern Rhône, France; the Italian island of Sardinia, where it’s named cannonau; South Africa; North Africa, in Morocco and Algeria; Australia, and California. Until the late 20th century, grenache was the world’s second most widely planted red variety, yet rarely do we see a single variety grenache wine today. It usually plays second fiddle to grapes with more backbone and color, like syrah, carignan, and cinsault. In the 1980s a group of self-described Rhône Rangers hailing from California fell in love with the rich, earthy reds of syrah and grenache from the hillsides that flanked the Rhône River in France, and discovered the vines did very well in the Golden State. Grenache in particular acclimates well to the hot, dry climates of Central California where dedicated supporters most often make the wines in a rich, voluptuous style. What does all this mean for us drinkers? Well, it means there are many, many gems on the shelves where the grenaches are integral players and a handful more of pleasures made from grenache alone in every hue. Here are some of my current favorites.
There are many, many gems on the shelves where the grenaches are integral players and a handful more of pleasures made from grenache alone in every hue.
From the small appellation Côte du Roussillon in Southern France, just inland from the Mediterranean and a few kilometers north of the sticky wine appellation of Banyuls, there’s a newcomer to the Alabama market from Huntsville-based importer Bjoern Lanwer called Leap of Faith. It’s a classic blend of 57 percent grenache, 27 percent syrah and 16 percent carignan. Opaque in color with a purple tinge, it’s rich and plummy on the nose with a dry finish and flavor profile that blends earth and young tannin with the subtle hint of new French oak, landing it in the middle of the Old World–New World spectrum. It’s a versatile sipper that might be a tad chewy for a party wine but pairs well with a variety of foods. From the high altitude vineyards of Terra Alta, Spain, the Las Colinas Rhône style blends in Spain, where garnacha plays a leading role, are hand harvested and fermented separately before syrah is blended in for the final cuvée. Cherry and raspberry flavors mingle with plum and a hint of pepper followed by a dry, satisfying finish. The winery also makes a Garnacha Blanca from garnacha’s green-skinned cousin. Stone fruit aromas follow on the palate with a chewiness that
lends body and bite with some herbal notes and a dry finish. This one is a treat outside the ordinary. California winemaker Tuck Beckstoffer makes several labels from both family owned vineyards, which have been in the Beckstoffer family since the 1970s, and others, where he contracts the best quality fruit for his wines. Though he makes cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, and chardonnay, it might be the grenache project under the Melée label that’s the most intriguing in his portfolio. A relatively small production of only 1,500 cases, this elegant representation of Central Cali grenache grown on steep, rocky slopes is an homage to the wines of the Southern Rhône Tuck fell in love with many years ago. In a recent telephone conversation, he mentioned the uniqueness of this particular wine in a sea of typically high-alcohol, high-extraction grenache wines made from American soil. He also described his 100 percent grenache rosé wine, Hog Wash, as the quintessential BBQ wine, made, in fact, to accompany a whole hog event for some Southern chefs a few years ago. Fortunately you don’t have to wait until August to appreciate the party friendly juice in this bottle; it’s year-round yummy. Also from California, and a wine I continue to salivate for, is the Broc Cellars Cassia Grenache(s) Rosé. It’s higher on the price ladder and made more in the vin gris style than saignée—the first being a pale color from light pressing, the second a full-bleed off pressed red grapes, and is in fact a blend of grenache and grenache gris. The difference is the vin gris makes a delicate, elegant wine to be sipped slowly with cheese and charcuterie while daydreaming about your future prince or princess charming (or a better behaved present royal partner). The second, like the aforementioned Hog Wash, has the backbone to knock out unwanted suitors sniffing around spoken-for territory, if necessary. I’ve loved everything I’ve tasted from the Broc crew. An urban winery in Berkley, California, they make site-specific wines that lean toward organic and biodynamic production with natural fermentations and low sulphur addition in the winery. Triple win.
The Run Down Leap of Faith, Côtes du Roussillon, France 2013–$20 Las Colinas, Terra Alta, Spain 2012–$14 Las Colinas, Garnacha Blanca, Terra Alta, Spain 2013–$15 Melée Grenache, California 2011–$32 Hog Wash Grenache Rosé, California 2013–$18 Broc Cellars Cassia Grenache(s) Rosé, Mendocino, California 2013–$28
Follow Amy at pigandvine.com for more stories and wine suggestions. march/april | noalastudios.com |
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food for thought » Sarah Gaede
Rather than channeling my inner French woman and shopping every day for supper that night, I am challenging myself, at least twice a week, to come up with well-balanced meals using what I already have.
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT In , the most recent year estimates were available, Americans, individually and corporately, threw out 35 million tons of food. As much as 40 percent of the food produced in the U.S. goes uneaten. While we are throwing out food in this country, an estimated one in nine people in the world suffers from chronic hunger due to insufficient food. Even in the United States, some 13 percent of households struggle to put enough food on the table, to say nothing of nutritious food. Right here in Florence, Sidney’s Safe Foundation “Pack Them with Love” program sends 400 at-risk children home each Friday with enough food to help them through the weekend. I recently set the intention to address this problem of waste in my own small way. Rather than channeling my inner French woman and shopping every day for supper that night, I am challenging myself, at least twice a week, to come up with well-balanced meals using what I already have in the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry—without eating pasta four nights in a row, not that my husband would object. This leads to interesting experiments such as putting leftover canned pumpkin in my spaghetti sauce (it was fine), soup made with duck stock, or pasta with whatever is lying around, like cherry tomatoes, olives, capers, a couple handfuls of spinach, some frozen shrimp, and the end of a bottle of wine. It helps that I keep onions, garlic, canned tomatoes, and a full range of herbs and spices on hand. And a large variety of pasta shapes (I have a tiny bit of a pasta hoarding problem), rice, couscous, polenta (a fancy name for yellow grits), and other grains. One of the best ways to use up random leftovers is the frittata, which is essentially a baked omelet. Not only are frittatas ridiculously simple to make, but they are also the perfect vehicle for leftovers. Unlike quiche, which they resemble, frittatas do not have a crust, nor do they contain milk or cream. And they can be meatless, which fits with my resolution to eat meatless suppers, or suppers with meat as flavoring rather than the main event, at least twice a week. Bacon grease doesn’t count. You can put pretty much anything in a frittata: left-over roasted vegetables; blanched, chopped spinach, and ricotta; blanched asparagus, goat cheese, and basil; kalamata olives, cherry tomatoes, sliced and sauteed yellow squash, and Parmesan, etc. It’s a great way to get rid of mysterious nubs of cheese, or those last two slices of bacon that are beginning to molder. A dozen free-range eggs, which I recommend using, costs $3.50 at Jack-O-Lantern Farms. That’s an incredible value for something that is just about the perfect food. Eggs are a great source of protein, and they contain almost every essential vitamin and mineral our bodies need. Contrary to popular belief, egg yolks are not bad for you—in fact, most of an egg’s nutritional value is found in the yolk.
The fat in yolks can actually reduce LDL—the bad cholesterol. When you eat only the egg whites, you are missing out on most of an egg’s nutritional benefits, and are getting only half of the protein. In keeping with my theme, it is wasteful to throw away such a valuable source of nutrition based on false information. I think egg whites are boring unless they are enhanced in meringues, mousse, or angel food cake. There are various techniques for making frittatas, some of which involve broiling. Broiling is not my gift, so I use Mark Bittman’s method of starting on the stove and ending in the oven. My preferred pan is my 9 1/2-inch All-Clad nonstick skillet, but a well-seasoned cast iron skillet of similar size would work too. Just be sure whatever skillet you use is ovenproof. Most important, do not forget, when you go to turn the frittata out, that the handle is HOT! If this should happen, the best thing to do is fill a mixing bowl with lukewarm water and soak your scorched hand for at least 20 minutes. Aloe helps too. I now leave an oven mitt on the handle after I remove the pan from the oven.
Potato Frittata • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil • 1 medium onion, chopped • 12-ish ounces small red or yellow potatoes, sliced thin • 6-8 large eggs • 4 ounces (1 cup) grated sharp cheddar cheese • Salt and pepper to taste • 3 or 4 baby bell peppers, seeded and sliced thin (or a cup or so of grape tomatoes sliced in half) Preheat oven to 400° F. Heat oil in a 9- or 10-inch nonstick ovenproof skillet. Saute onions and potatoes until potatoes are soft and beginning to brown. Beat eggs in a medium bowl or a quart measuring cup. Add grated cheese and salt and pepper to taste. Spread potatoes and onions evenly on bottom of pan, and pour egg mixture on top. Use a spoon to even out the filling. Arrange sliced peppers or tomatoes decoratively over the top. Turn heat to medium-low and cook, undisturbed, until just firming on the edges, around 10 minutes. Transfer to the oven and bake until the top is just cooked, around 10 minutes more. Remove, turn out on a serving plate, and serve warm or at room temperature. Serves 3 to 4
Ham, Zucchini, and Gruyère Frittata • • • • • •
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil 1 cup coarsely chopped deli ham (5 ounces) 2 small zucchini, sliced in 1/4-inch half-moons 6-8 large eggs 2 ounces (1/2 cup) grated Gruyère cheese Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 400° F. Heat oil in skillet over medium-high. Add ham and zucchini, season with salt and pepper, and cook about 5 minutes. Beat eggs. Add cheese, salt, and pepper, and pour over ham and zucchini. Stir to combine. Proceed with cooking directions for potato frittata.
march/april | noalastudios.com |
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parting shot » Patrick Hood
NOSE OUT OF JOINT
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