The Sun Saver Digest Fall 2023

The Sun Saver Digest

Fall 2023

BEAUTIFUL

WHETHER WE ARE INSIDE OR OUTSIDE, THE SUN RISES TO GREET US EVERY DAY!

EVERYTHING YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST DO IN HILTON HEAD, SOUTH CAROLINA

THE BEACH IS JUST THE BEGINNING.

POWERSPORTS

NEW STOCK OF ELECTRIC TOYS!

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WE WILL BEAT ANY ADVERTISED PRICE

There are an estimated 20,000 rural primary and secondary schools in Kenya with approximately 4.5 million students without books. Libraries for Kids International exists to help children in rural schools, with little or no funding, to gain access to literature. Donations are greatly needed to aid Libraries for Kids in fulfilling their mission to provide libraries in all the schools. EDUCATION IS INVALUABLE FOR THESE CHILDREN.

In four years we have placed books in 6,223 schools positively impacting more than one million, five-hundred thousand children’s lives!

Please make a donation at: www.libraries4kids.squarespace.com/donate or by sending a check made payable to: Libraries for Kids, P. O. Box 1013, Bluffton, SC 29910. Thank you so much.

A DONATION FOR A WORTHY CAUSE!

Music For Music For

Our Souls Our Souls

With my background in music predominantly conversing with the heavier genres, there is one band that truly latched on to me, and me to them. That band is Guns N’ Roses.

I was six years old in 1987 when Guns N’ Roses first made their splash with their amazing debut album, “Appetite for Destruction.” It was loud, dangerous, and fun. To this day that album is my favorite album of all time..

My love of music, like I imagine with many music fans, dates back to my earliest memories. It is a constant in my life, always there for me, helping me to express my feelings, or at times, resonating like a sentient being that could hear the thoughts inside my head.and make me feel understood.

Some may find it odd, but my favorite song does NOT come off of the Appetite for Destruction album. Rather, the band released the two albums: “Use Your Illusion I” and “Use Your Illusion II” on September 17, 1991 simultaneously. I was barely 10 years old when I first heard the song “Estranged” on the latter Illusions album.

Clearly, NO 10-year old would have any understanding of the song. I would just sing

along. I didn’t “get it” for the next 17 or so years. While I lack the ability to play an instrument, over the years I’ve come to consider myself a bit of a professional appreciator, while at the same time nurturing a medium that DID and has come naturally to me: Illustration. Throughout my formative years I would combine my great music appreciation with my love of drawing. I would draw anything and everything. The subject matter would vary depending on the stage of my life. I would draw professional wrestlers, professional athletes, comic book figures, and so on. All the while, music would be there in the background,

of

artistic endeavors. I found myself experimenting more with charcoal, oil bars (which were really just super-sized oil pastels, but worked wonderfully on canvas)

When I got to high school, music started to really shape the subject

my

and refining my pencil drawings. College came and I found myself matriculating to Bridgewater State College (now University) in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. I began my collegiate career as an art major, but quickly decided I didn’t care for formal lessons and changed my major. At the same time, my art took a back seat to many other ventures.

My love affair with all things musical found me working for the school radio station as Music Director, and hosting a weekly show entitled “The Dirty, Sexy Sounds of WBIM” - Shout out to any Bridgewater alums out there!

I also wrote for the school newspaper as a music journalist. My position within the radio station afforded me many free cds and concert tickets. The cost was my art. I’d all but stopped creating anything, unless it was a flyer for my radio show.

After college I was faced with many of life’s

challenges. Life continued to move forward and all the while I stayed loyally infatuated with Guns N’ Roses. It was at a particularly difficult time in my life that my favorite song by the band was cemented. I finally understood the lyrics. At 27, it all began to hit me. Estranged became a crutch for me through hard times. So many of the lyrics hit home for me, but none more so than:

“When I find out all the reasons Maybe I’ll find another way Find another day

With all the changing seasons of my life

Maybe I’ll get it right next time

An now that you’ve been broken down

Got your head out of the clouds

You’re back down on the ground

And you don’t talk so loud

An you don’t walk so proud

Any more, and what for”

It has remained a reminder to me that despite the challenges life throws my way, and no matter how high the waves appear that come towards me, I’ve learned to be humble, and how to approach life’s obstacles.

Though it took more than a decade of learning myself all over again, at 37, once more, I began creating art. It was for me. It was my stress relief. It helped to keep me grounded.

At 40, I took up painting seriously for the first time in my life. I know, it’s hard to believe, but up to this point I was afraid to paint, I thought I would be terrible at it. However, I wanted to learn, so I jumped in and started painting. A lot. Two of the very first paintings I did would have to be members of Guns N’ Roses of course. Given their impact on my life and what they mean to me. First, I tackled the guitarist, Slash. When I was a bit more comfortable, I painted the lead singer, Axl Rose.

Since picking up painting, I have done dozens of paintings, falling back on my ways of painting things I love, much as I did when drawing as a child. Through this, a handful of celebrities now own my work. Several commissioned pieces

Songs of Discrimination and Oppression -

by Elise J. Colson, Publisher

The Earworms are alive and well this month in my head.

For whatever reason, some very old songs of the Sixties are going round and round in my brain and just won’t let go. A Town Without Pity and The Man who shot Liberty Valance by Gene Pitney. What great ballads these songs are and the message they convey.

A judgemental society looking down on young love and a lawless town that needs the good guy to show up and put things to rights.

First, let’s examine the lyrics of “A Town Without Pity”.

When you’re young and so in love as we

And bewildered by the world we see

Why do people hurt us so?

Only those in love would know

What a town without pity can do

If we stop to gaze upon a star

People talk about how bad we are

Ours is not an easy age

We’re like tigers in a cage

What a town without pity can do

The young have problems, many problems

We need an understanding heart

Why don’t they help us, try to help us

Before this clay and granite planet falls apart

Take these eager lips and hold me fast

I’m afraid this kind of joy can’t last

How can we keep love alive

How can anything survive

When these little minds tear you in two?

What a town without pity can do

How can we keep love alive

How can anything survive

When these little minds tear you in two?

What a town without pity can do

No, it isn’t very pretty what a town without pity can do

These great song lyrics are so profound and they were written more than 60 years ago. Here is the Liberty Valance Ballad!

When Liberty Valance rode to town

The women folk would hide, they’d hide

When Liberty Valance walked around The men would step aside

‘Cause the point of a gun was the only law

That Liberty understood When it came to shootin’ straight and fast

He was mighty good

From out of the East a stranger came

A law book in his hand, a man

The kind of a man the West would need To tame a troubled land

‘Cause the point of a gun was the only law

That Liberty understood When it came to shootin’ straight and fast

He was mighty good

Many a man would face his gun

And many a man would fall

The man who shot Liberty Valance

He shot Liberty Valance

He was the bravest of them all

The love of a girl can make a man

Stay on when he should go, stay on

Just tryin’ to build a peaceful life

Where love is free to grow

But the point of a gun was the only law

That Liberty understood

When the final showdown came at last

A law book was no good

Alone and afraid she prayed

That he’d return that fateful night, aww that night

When nothing she said could keep her man

From going’ out to fight

From the moment a girl gets to be full-grown

The very first thing she learns

When two men go out to face each other

Only one returns

Every one heard two shots ring out One shot made Liberty fall

The man who shot Liberty Valance

He shot Liberty Valance

He was the bravest of them all

The man who shot Liberty Valance

He shot Liberty Valance

He was the bravest of them all

Both of these songs are extremely relevant today. Where’s the Duke when we need him!

JOSH DUVALL – OWNER, MOJO ISLAND RECORDS

“Hate to say you’ll never get this song out of your head”

As you may or may not know, I own a record store on Hilton Head (MoJo’s Island Records). Before that I was employed as a veterinarian for 25+ years. My wife(Monica) and I had children early, so their childhood coincided with my 1st job out of veterinary school. It was during that time that I had discovered a band by the name of “The Hives” by perusing late night MTV back when they still showed music videos periodically (this would have been the early 2000s). The song I first heard was their hit “Hate to Say I Told You So” off their 2000 album Vidi, Veni, Vicious. The Hives are a Swedish garage rock/punk band hailing from the small town of Fagersta. They are typically grouped with other groups of the early 2000s “garage rock” revival such as The Strokes, The Vines and The White Stripes. For whatever reason, their music (an awesome mix of punk, garage rock and power pop) stuck with me and I’ve been a huge fan ever since.

Due to my long hours at work, I would use any opportunity to spend extra time with my sons (Griffin and Gavin). One such opportunity was to take them to school in the mornings on my way to work (it gave us some “bro” time since dad was typically getting home several hours after they got out of school for the day). Our sons are only 17 months apart in age, so they attended the same elementary school for several years. We would talk about school and what was going on that day, but we also listened to a lot of music in the mornings. Lots of Radio Disney sprinkled with songs that dad liked to listen to (lots of The Hives).

By early 2007, I was still dropping my boys off in the AM before heading to my then current job as owner of a new animal hospital in our town of Lebanon, TN. Needless to say, my wife and our family was extremely busy with not only raising two

small sons, but also helping run the animal hospital we had just opened. Early 2007 also saw the release of The Hives fourth album, “The Black and White Album”. Myself, the boys and even my wife(Monica) were all big fans of their new record and listened to it quite a bit. I had been itching to see The Hives live if they ever travelled close enough to our location (Nashville and the middle TN area). Cut to March of 2007 after a particularly rough week at work, and I had decided that Columbus, OH (approximately 7 hrs away) was close enough to see our favorite band. Monica and I loaded up the kids on a Friday night and left for Columbus and a Saturday night concert featuring The Hives. That weekend ended up being one of the most memorable weekends our family has ever had. We were able to meet the band before the show at a local, college radio event being held hours before the concert. The five members of the band (Pelle, Nicolaus, Vigilante, Matt and Chris) couldn’t have been nicer while signing autographs and posing for pictures with our boys who were 9 and 11 at the time. They also couldn’t believe that we had driven from Nashville to Columbus just to see them. They even gave us a shout out at the end of the show!

It’s currently August, 2023 and The Hives have just released their 6th studio album “The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons”. It’s been 11 years since they released new music, but they’ve still toured since the release of their last record in 2012. We were able to catch them a few other times since that initial show in 2007 (our most recent at a pop up show at Jack White’s Third Man Records’ “Blue Room” in 2018), but there will never be another experience like our entire family enjoying that 2007 show at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus. I blame this(awesome) experience on the original ear worm that The Hives infected me with, “Hate to Say I Told You So”. If you’ve never heard of the song or The Hives, I implore you to look them up as soon as you can. I promise you won’t be disappointed!

The Great Frame Up is a premier provider of digital art reproduction and framing of all kinds. Over the past five years the store has framed Sports Jerseys, puzzles, antique hand bags, certificate and diplomas including a presidential certificate for a former Secretary of Housing, a drum head signed by Ringo Starr, multiple album covers, many of which were signed by the artist, a full alligator skin as well as a snake skin, countless posters and artwork, a full size kimono, an original Salvadore Dali, and MOST importantly a picture drawn by a third grader for her grandmother.

With that being said, the current owner, Stephen Ball, retired in 2017 but jumped on the opportunity to purchase The Great Frame Up in Bluffton. The biggest appeal was the Cruse Museum scanner. Currently, there are only 15 in public use in the USA. The Cruse scanner produces high resolution images of original work. Once an artist scans a painting it can be reproduced in fine art or canvas print. Fine art prints need to be framed with glass whereas a canvas print can be a gallery wrap with no frame or framed without glass.

Since purchasing the store, Mr. Ball has worked with artists and spread the word about the capabilities of the equipment and functionality.. Hundreds of artists and photographers have been able to produce quality giclee prints.

A website was established at: Artandgiclee. net to provide an outlet for all types of art and photography, not just low country art. The only requirement for being on the website is to submit high resolution images for reproduction and be connected with the lowcountry.

Mr. Ball’s emphasis since purchasing the store is the complete customer experience and he is very appreciative of the team’s collective skillset.. With a team of experts in framing, digital art and photo reproduction, The Great Frame Up Bluffton is now the number one Great Frame Up in the USA. Stop in and see us. Please look around and check out the services we have to offer. We look forward to being of assistance.

Stephen W. Ball Owner

22 Plantation Park Drive

843-815-4661

•

• Suite 108 • Bluffton, SC 29910

www.bluffton@thegreatframeup.com

www.artandgiclee.net

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