The Contributor: August 3, 2022

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IN THE ISSUE

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LOCALES - POLÍTICA - INMIGRACIÓN - TRABAJOS - SALUD - ESPECTÁCULOS - DEPORTES Y MÁS...

GRATIS

Agosto

2022

6

9

Año 20 - No. 354

www.hispanicpaper.com

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“DONDE OCURREN LOS HECHOS QUE IMPORTAN, SIEMPRE PRIMERO... ANTES”

La Noticia + The Contributor

La viruela símica o viruela del mono puede transmitirse desde el momento en que empiecen los síntomas hasta que el sarpullido se haya sanado completamente y se haya formado una nueva capa de la piel. La enfermedad generalmente dura de 2 a 4 semanas. Las personas que no tengan síntomas de viruela símica o viruela del mono no pueden transmitir el virus a los demás. En este momento, se desconoce si la viruela símica o viruela del mono se puede propagar a través del semen o las secreciones vaginales.

Vendor Writing

Lo que debe saber: El virus de la viruela símica o del mono se está propagando principalmente a través del contacto cercano e íntimo con alguien que tiene la enfermedad.

De acuerdo a los CDC, se están haciendo seguimiento de cerca a los casos de viruela del mono recientemente detectados en los Estados Unidos, mientras urgen a los proveedores de atención médica a que estén atentos a si tienen pacientes con enfermedades con sarpullidos indicativos de viruela símica o viruela del mono.

Los síntomas de la viruela del mono pueden incluir:

¿Cómo se transmite?

La viruela símica o viruela del mono se propaga de distintas maneras. Los

es parte de la misma familia que los virus de la viruela.

pecho, los genitales o el ano.

ropa de cama) que previamente estuvieron en contacto con el sarpullido o los líquidos corporales infecciosos.

-Las personas embarazadas pueden transmitir el virus al feto a través de la placenta.

ruela símica o del mono, hable con su proveedor de atención médica, aunque no crea que haya tenido contacto con alguien que tenga esta enfermedad.

También es posible que las personas contraigan viruela símica o viruela del mono

Envíenos sus sugerencias por e-mail: news@hispanicpaper.com ó 615-567-3569

Los síntomas de viruela símica o viruela del mono son similares a los de la viruela, pero más leves; y rara vez es mortal. La viruela símica o viruela del mono no está relacionada con la varicela.

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El sarpullido pasa por distintas fases antes de sanar completamente. La enfermedad dura por lo general de 2 a 4 semanas. A veces, las personas primero presentan un sarpullido, seguido de otros síntomas. Otras personas solo presentan un sarpullido.

*Artículo escrito con información del CDC

Conoce tus derechos: ¿Que hacer en caso de una redada?

WHO WE ARE

1. Mantenerse callado 2. Sólo dar nombre y apellido 3. No mentir 4. Nunca acepte/lleve documentos falsos 5. No revelar su situación migratoria 6. No llevar documentación de otro país 7. En caso de ser arrestado, mostrarla Tarjeta Miranda (llámenos si necesita una)

Basados en la Quinta Enmienda de la Constitución, los derechos de guardar silencio y contar con un abogado fueron denominados Derechos Miranda luego de la decisión de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de Estados Unidos en el caso Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, de 1966.

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Signs and Symptoms: How is Monkeypox transmitted?

de animales infectados, ya sea por recibir un rasguño o una mordedura del animal, o al preparar o comer carne de un animal infectado o usar productos derivados de un animal infectado.

Usted puede tomar medidas para pre-Fiebre La Noticia, one of the virus se pueden transmitir de una per- venir Contributor vendors contraer la viruela símica o del Staff Writer, Judith Tackett -Dolor de cabeza sona a otra a través de lo siguiente: mono y reducir su riesgo al tener rela-Dolores musculares y de la espalda leading Spanish-language ciones sexuales. write in this issue about Contacto directo con el sarpullido, las asks 'A Few Questions' to -Inflamación de los ganglios linfáticos costras o los líquidos corporales infecLos CDC recomiendan la vacunación* -Escalofríos newspapers in the nation, ciosos. being proud, a que se hayan parabeing las personas Councilmember Freddie -Agotamiento -Secreciones respiratorias durante el con¿Cuáles son los síntomas? expuesto a la viruela símica o del mono tacto cara a cararefugee prolongado, o durante el being brings Spanish content viruela símica o viruela del mono es Un sarpullido que puede verse como gra- to y las personas que tengan un mayor and in this O’Connell, La District 19 una enfermedad rara causada por nos o ampollas que aparecen en la cara, contacto físico íntimo, como besarse, riesgo de exponerse a esta enfermedad. infección por el virus de la viruela dentro de la boca y en otras partes del abrazarse o tener relaciones sexuales.

The Contributor. together. símica o viruela del mono. Este virus cuerpo, como las manos, los pies, el -Contacto con artículos (como ropa o Si usted tiene algún síntoma de la vi-

Joe Nolan reviews an art exhiby by Artist John Paul Kesling who's latest paintings picture Kentucky’s opioid crisis.

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Nashville, Tennessee

Signos y Síntomas: ¿Cómo se transmite la ‘Viruela Símica’?

Una alarmante sorpresa la noticia de hoy (7/27/22) de parte de los Centros para el Control y Prevención de Enfer medades (CDC, siglas en inglés) que reportaron en su informe que Por Yuri Cunza Estados Unidos Editor in Chief supera los 3,500 casos de viruela @LaNoticiaNews del mono. Otros reportes de alerta máxima por la viruela del mono, en países de Asia, con revisiones a viajeros y despliegue de equipos médicos, mientras informan sus primeros casos del virus, se suman al ahora identificado como una emergencia de salud mundial por la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS).

A Few Questions

Art Review

L a N ticia

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Contributors This Issue

Linda Bailey • Amanda Haggard • Ridley Wills II • John Partipilo • Chris Scott Fieselman • Joe Nolan • Judith Tackett • Justin Wagner • Jen A. • Wendell • Maurice B. • Yuri Cunza • Loum O. • Norma B. • Mr. Mysterio

Contributor Volunteers Christine Doeg , Volunteer Coordinator Joe First • Andy Shapiro • Michael Reilly • Ann Bourland • Laura Birdsall • Marissa Young • Ezra LaFleur • Linda Eisele • Matthew Murrow • Gisselly Mazariegos

Cathy Jennings Executive Director Tom Wills Director of Vendor Operations Carli Tharp SNAP Specialist Ree Cheers SOAR Manager Rachel Ternes Housing Navigator Amy Holt Housing Navigator Jesse Call Operations Consultant Raven Nye Director of Housing Initiatives Arnita Carson Recovery Specialist Justin Wagner Resource Coordinator & Reporter Barbara Womack Advertising Manager Amanda Haggard & Linda Bailey Co-Editors Andrew Krinks Editor Emeritus Will Connelly, Tasha F. Lemley, Steven Samra, and Tom Wills Contributor Co-Founders Editorials and features in The Contributor are the perspectives of the authors. Submissions of news, opinion, fiction, art and poetry are welcomed.

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PAGE 2 | August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

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VENDOR WRITING

NOW AND FOREVER

ALL BECAUSE OF YOU

The reason I keep writing what I write for them?

Every day I pray, Dear Jesus, Please take care of my friends.

It’s all about the Truth to remove all doubt.

The harmful effects of, “Garbage in - Garbage out.”

The Holy Spirit whispers, But too few hear what’s said.

You’ve got to listen with your heart, And not with your head.

Anyone can benefit from what you say.

A compliment or kind comment, Can make someone’s day.

If the whole world does the wrong thing, And you do the right thing, That’s the only thing that matters.

Written by Chris Scott Fieselman

Have a Nice Day. Make Someone’s Day Better, And Never Forget, We’re all in this together, Through all kinds of weather, Now and Forever…

Now and Forever…

Life is Unfair. It’s a Jungle out there.

Then along comes this song writer, From God Knows Where?

Like a message in a bottle on a desert Isle, From a friend you haven’t heard from, In quite a while.

The words that are read, And the way it was said.

An explanation in a statement, You may never forget.

In just the right place, At just the right time, To turn your cloudy day into Warm Sunshine.

Have a Nice Day. Make Someone’s Day Better, And Never Forget, We’re all in this together, Through all kinds of weather, Now and Forever…

Now and Forever…

What happens tomorrow is yet to be.

If World Peace is, Mankind’s Manifest Destiny.

Blessed are they, Who get up every day, And find a way, To make this world, A Better Place.

Have a Nice Day. Make Someone’s Day Better, And Never Forget, We’re all in this together, Through all kinds of weather, Now and Forever…

Now and Forever…

Written by Chris Scott Fieselman

All Because of You. There’s power in those words.

The things we say and the things we do, To rescue, to help or to hurt.

You never know at that moment, What someone is going through.

Then you show up un-expectedly, Un-invited right out of the blue.

A special guest appearance.

Surprise - Surprise - Surprise.

The power to make a difference in, Someone else’s life.

All Because of You. For better or for worse.

You’re either, Simply looking out for number one, Or putting other people first.

You get what you deserve, From every chance exchange of words.

Does someone regret the day you met?

Or benefit from what you said that they heard.

Just being there to show you care, And the people that it matters to.

If you take care of your brothers and sisters, The Good Lord will take care of you.

All Because of You. Something is going to get done.

Anyone can be an example of, What Humanity can become.

All Because of You. The way you choose to live.

So many people simply, Want to take, take, take While others just want to give.

All Because of You. You light up a room with your smile.

Carrying an attitude of gratitude, That never goes out of style.

All Because of You. The reason that you’re here.

To make a definite difference through, The Truths that you hold dear.

Have a Nice Day. Make Someone’s Day Better, And Never Forget, We’re all in this together, Through all kinds of weather, Now and Forever…

Now and Forever…

All Because of You. Just because, you showed up.

August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE | PAGE 3

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PAGE 4 | August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

NASHVILLE HISTORY CORNER

PRIMM SPRINGS

BY RIDLEY WILLS II One day in the early 1960s, Bill Phillip, a friend of mine from Birmingham, and I were exploring rural Hickman County looking for an old 19t century spa called Primm Springs.

Turning off Highway 100 to the southeast just beyond Bon Aqua we took two right turns on a country road and then proceeded down another paved road generally to the left until we found ourselves in a remote hollow with dilapidated frame buildings on both sides of Puppy Branch, a small creek. Getting out of the car, it looked as if the place was a ghost hotel with nobody there. We were wrong as we met Miss Huella, the aging proprietor, who told us that she was open on weekends and that she still lived there, even in the winters, in a big, frame house she and her sister owned up the same hollow.

Once inside, we saw an ancient registration book, in which there were, in ink, the names of visitors. The entries for the past 50 years were primarily entered by people coming to Primm Springs to have a Sunday dinner of fried chicken or country ham. The earlier entries were often made by people traveling by horseback or in buggies between Nashville and Memphis.

Bill and I walked over a covered bridge spanning Puppy Branch and realized that the bridge held the hotel’s toilets, which allowed excrement to fall directly into the fast-moving creek. We also noticed that

Primm Springs

the windows had no screens and there seemed to be no flies.

Primm Springs closed in 1965, a couple of years after our visit, which had been like stepping back three generations in time.

Here is a capsule of Primm Springs’s history. In the 1860s, Daniel J. Estes and his wife rode horseback into Puppy Branch Hollow to a mineral spring Mrs. Estes knew about as she grew up in the neighborhood. There, finding a vacant hunter’s cabin, they made camp. By summer’s end, Mr. Estes’s stomach ailment disappeared.

They returned to Monsanto in Maury County, where they lived.

Mr. Estes formed a stockholder company that bought up the land around the mineral spring and built cottages and a hotel there. He named the resort for George Primm, a Revolutionary soldier who originally owned the property.

The original hotel had only two rooms, one for ladies and the other for gentlemen. Guests slept in double decker bunks on straw ticks. When this proved inadequate, Estes built a second 12-room inn and finally the 30 room inn that stood until well after the hotel closed. He named the third inn for himself, the

Estes House. After he died, his son, F. R. Estes and his son’s brother-in-law, John W. Cecil, owned Primm Springs. Estes bought Cecil out.

In its heyday, the Primm Springs Resort, during F. R. Estes’s time featured mineral water, which dripped from a nearby spring house. It also had as many as 500 or 600 guests over a summer weekend who enjoyed dancing in an open-air ballroom and bowling in the bowling alley.

When F. R. Estes died, his widow and their daughter, Miss Huella, took over. Nine-

August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE | PAGE 5

teen years later, when Mrs. Estes died, Huella, and her sister, Miss Fannie, inherited the place.

There are still three hotels in the remote hollow.

In time, however, the guest houses and the two hotels up the hollow were boarded up, the bowling closed and Miss Huella and Miss Fannie, hamstrung from a lack of help, shut down during the week and only were open on Saturdays and Sundays.

During the Depression, Miss Huella got a job as postmistress at the nearby post office for $35 a month. This helped supplement her dwindling hotel income.

Nevertheless, Miss Huella made a number of improvements and continued to offer fried chicken to diners. Chicken had been the speciality of the house during her father’s day.

She offered the chicken using the slogan “Chicken Three Ways Three Times a Day.” In 1945, the resort closed its doors to overnight guests, only to later reopen it on weekends.

Huella’s financial problems remained, however, because Primm Springs was hard to find, there was a lack of help, and by the fact that the State Health Department gave the resort a D rating every year because of its lack of screens on the doors and windows. As there was no one in the family’s next generation interested in taking over the aging hotel, it closed in 1965.

I have no idea if the Estes House is still there.

PAGE 6 | August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

ART REVIEW

Artist John Paul Kesling’s latest paintings picture Kentucky’s opioid crisis

BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC Nashville-based painter John Paul Kesling originally hails from Ashland, Ky. — a small city in Eastern Kentucky in the foothills of the Appalachians. Ashland has a population of about 20,000 and only recently got its first Starbucks.

It’s part of the tri-state area that includes Ohio and West Virginia.

The three states converge along the Ohio River in a region that’s now infamous as the epicenter of America’s opioid crisis.

Kesling recently returned to Kentucky to show a display of paintings at The Jewel Art Gallery in Ashland. The exhibition consisted of a grid of small portraits of family members, friends and neighbors that the people of Ashland have lost to addiction and overdose, including the artist’s brother. The scourge of overdose deaths has been haunting the area for decades, but in June it was announced that Kentucky shattered its previous record of overdose deaths, recording 2250 victims in 2021.Kesling’s ongoing series highlights the unique style the painter brings to portraiture, and it demonstrates how art can bring conversation and closure to the victims — and their families and friends — of America’s pharmacy industrial complex.

“I've always painted portraits.

And just to make some extra money I've reached out just asking if people if they wanted portraits,” explains Kesling. “And I've probably done six or seven of those. And a friend of mine from my hometown reached out and she said that she had, you know, just wanted a portrait painted of her friend who she lost to opioids.”

Kesling hadn’t talked to his friend in about 15 years. He found out from her email that the woman and another mutual friend were both in recovery from opioids themselves.

“I was just reading this to my girlfriend. My girlfriend's from London and she doesn't know a single person who's passed away from opioids,” says Kesling. “And I was like three people in this one message have been hooked on it — two in recovery and one didn't make it.”

Kesling decided he’d paint the portrait for free. His friend was so

moved and grateful at the gesture that Kesling thought he’d reach out and offer his paintings to more of his old neighbors. Kesling is still connected with Ashland via his Facebook account and when he put the word out about his portraits his inbox was flooded with requests.

Kesling showed other portraits in recent exhibitions and all of his paintings nearly always include representational and figurative elements. That said, Kesling’s work recalls early abstract painting, and the people, animals and landscapes that appear on his large canvases are often weirdly distort-

ed by the artist’s sci-fi Fauvism which pairs vivid and varied color palettes with loose lines to reveal sometimes-almost-alien figures and spaces.

Kesling’s opioid memorial portraits represent an act of self-restraint in comparison to the art he continues to create in his ongoing studio practice. But, Kesling manages to bring his marks and distinctive color choices to these works while also capturing his subjects using the photo images his friends send him via email and text message. The results are more creatively interesting than traditional portraits might be,

and the contemporary look of the pieces reminds viewers that the scourge of the Purdue-Pharma-and-FDA-created opioid crisis — which began in the 1990s — is deadlier than ever in the Bluegrass State. Kesling debuted his portraits in an exhibition at The Jewel Art Gallery in Ashland over the weekend of July 9-10.

“It was way heavy. I mean, I knew it was gonna be heavy, but at 10 a.m. on Friday there was a whole family waiting outside,” says Kesling. “It was the mother of a guy who was like a local high school football guy, kind of a legend around here. They called him like

August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE | PAGE 7

the hometown Thor, cuz he had like this long red hair. His mother was holding his daughter who was like, I would say a year old. She had long red hair too. And she's like pointing at his portrait saying, ‘That's your daddy there.’”

See Kesling’s ongoing memorial portrait series and more at www. johnpaulkesling.com

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.

NEWS

January

February

March

April

May

116

139

144

177

186

1296

1448

1462

1582

1657

168

171

173

176

174

272

304

309

360

382

212

222

235

263

270

YYA BNL How many YYA are on the BNL at the end of the month?

Individual BNL How many individuals on the BNL at the end of the month?

Veterans BNL How many Veterans are on the BNL at the end of the month?

Family BNL How many families are on the BNL at the end of the month?

DV BNL How many DV/IPV Survivor households are on the BNL at the end of the month?

Learn More About: Functional Zero

BY JUDITH TACKET T There is a lot of talk in Nashville about ending homelessness, a goal that many people don’t believe can be achieved.

I, for one, wholeheartedly believe that we can build a system that is able to end homelessness. The reason is that in an effective Housing Crisis Resolution System, we have ways to help prevent homelessness whenever possible, and when it cannot be prevented, people quickly are re-housed with appropriate levels of support services. In other words, ending homelessness does not mean that no one will ever lose their housing again. What it means is that we have a system in place that is able to move people who have lost their housing quickly back into permanent housing situations.

But we have to clearly be able to define what ending homelessness for Nashville means and once we reach that definition, we have to be able to measure whether we maintain that threshold.

So, how do we do that? By setting and meeting a goal of reaching Functional Zero for all people experiencing homelessness.

In 2013, Will Connelly who was then the newly hired as the director of the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission (the precursor of the Metro Homeless Impact Division), brought in a national nonprofit organization to serve as a consultant to help Nashville provider agencies set a goal of housing people experiencing long-term and mostly outdoor

homelessness. That national organization was Community Solutions.

Since then and several campaigns later, Community Solutions has become a national leader that works with more than 100 cities and counties to drive down the number of people experiencing homelessness through an initiative called Built for Zero.

The initial focus of the Built for Zero movement was to help cities and counties develop a systems approach focused on chronic and/or Veteran homelessness. Nashville has been working with Built for Zero for the past few years to end Veteran homelessness.

Along the way, Nashville has managed to significantly improve: • Community collaboration; • Efficiency in service delivery by de-duplication of services; • Capacity to collect data and measure outcomes; • Increase federal and local funding.

Yet, we are still far from reaching Functional Zero. For one, we are lagging behind peer cities that have focused on data improvement and systems building way sooner than Nashville did. And a major hick-up has been a lack of clear leadership, which manifested itself in a lack of support of local experts to focus on best practice approaches to ending homelessness at the community level.

But let’s talk about the opportunities.

One of the main focus areas of the Built for Zero initiative is to help participating communities with a data-driven approach. This is done by creating quality By Name Lists, which is a comprehensive list of every person experiencing community. Usually the By Name Lists — or BNLs — are collected for each subpopulation, which are divided in Nashville into Individuals, Youth/Young Adults (under 25 years of age), Veterans, Families, and individuals/families fleeing domestic violence.

A BNL lists every person in a community experiencing homelessness and is updated in real time. Information is collected and shared with people’s consent. BNLs help ensure people’s names are known and they are not seen as a mere number or data point. They also allow a community to observe and evaluate the changing size and composition of the local homeless population.

And finally, let’s get to Functional Zero.

As previously stated, Functional Zero was coined by Community Solutions to offer a definition for ending homelessness “that is clear, measurable and can be tracked over time.”

With that, Functional Zero is not a goal that is reached once, and that’s it. It is a goal that must be sustained in an ongoing way. The community will have to develop quality data (Nashville has reached a quality BNL only for Veterans so far). Based on that data, the community then calculates what the average

PAGE 8 | August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

housing placement rate is over a six-month period to establish a threshold it must stay below to continuously meet Functional Zero and declare an end to homelessness.

In other words, for Nashville to reach Functional Zero for any subpopulation, it must ensure that: 1. The number of people who experience homelessness is lower than the six-month average of positive exits to permanent housing.

2. The average time it takes to assist a person with permanent housing is 45 days.

3. No more than five percent of households return to homelessness within a twoyear period.

4. The community is actively working on racial equity, ensuring that minorities which are disproportionately affected by homelessness are not left behind.

Nashville is at a critical point where it must abandon status quo approaches and choose to invest in its people by investing in best practice approaches. One program alone will not end homelessness, but a coordinated, community wide effort will. We have shown in the past few years how far we can come when we focus on systems improvement and accountability, and we can do even better with new federal dollars designated to ending homelessness.

NEWS

A Few Questions With Councilmember Freddie O’Connell, District 19

D

istrict-19 Councilmember Freddie O’Connell is known for his sharp intellect and his passion for his community. And recently, he declared a run for mayor. In our conversation, O’Connell focused on his work in Metro Council over the past seven years.

The Contributor talked with O’Connell as part of a series called ‘A Few Questions’ where we interview council members about their district’s most pressing issues.

District 19 largely covers Downtown west of Cumberland River, but also reaches into North Nashville, Germantown and South along Murfreesboro Road. What distinguishes your district from other areas of town?

It is really the urban core district. We recently went through a redistricting process, so the next District 19 becomes even more urban including the East Bank where River North, the Titans footprint, and PSC Metals are, and it will have slightly fewer neighborhoods.

District 19 is in the crossroads of three of Nashville’s most important streets — big portions of Music Row, Broadway, and Jefferson Street. Nashville’s identity as Music City has so much of its basis on Music Row. Our entertainment district, for both good and bad, is anchored around lower Broadway. And Jefferson Street is a key corridor for North Nashville with a rich history in live music venues. It also reflects the difficult cultural history of our African American community including the way in which it was decimated by I-40 slicing Jefferson Street in half.

All three of those things have informed and influenced my representation of District 19.

What are the main concerns you hear from your constituents?

The disruption from our tourism economy has been a pretty constant theme, and that can be everything from obnoxious short-term rental guests to scooters as toys for tourists to, more recently, party buses, tractors and those transportainment vehicles. It’s noise and behavior.

Affordable housing has been a growing concern over the last seven years. When I first took office, I knew that we had a lot of concentrated poverty in District 19. The District 19 I represent has the largest share of public housing of any Metro Council district. That will change in the future because of redistricting.

But affordable housing has been a top concern and then that is connected to homelessness where it feels like we have taken some key steps forward in those seven years, but then also frustratingly taken some steps backward. And on the concerns of homelessness, people with lived experience certainly share their concerns about lack of access to affordable housing and sometimes lack of access to services. Then there are people who I think are very compassionate for people who are unhoused. But I also get concerns from people who see encampments in greenways or in other usually out-of-the-way public spaces or in parks.

Then there is concern about crime. Even if we saw property crime to drop a little bit over COVID, we have seen an uptick in gun violence.

A lot of that gun violence has frustratingly taken place in District 19. We’ve seen changes in state

BY JUDITH TACKETT

METRO COUNCIL COMMITTEES: Charter Revision Planning and Zoning Transportation and Infrastructure

law that probably contributed to that. I think some of the pent up frustration and aggression from COVID and maybe surfing back into a life that brings you back into contact with other people may be partly responsible for that. But it’s a challenging situation to say across the board there is one easy solution to gun violence.

Where would you judge Nashville is compared to peer cities, and what would be a good starting point for you to improve overall public transit in Nashville?

We’re among the last of the top 25 cities that lack a dedicated funding source for our transit system. That means in a budget year, just like this, when you have competing priorities whether it’s schools and community safety or staffing levels across a variety of Metro departments, transit is very frequently a target.

Sadly, even with gas prices continuing to increase, we chose to cut $1 million from our transit budget. That’s a pretty extraordinary move in a city that is already far behind our peers on transit. We used to say that we wanted to be less like Atlanta and more like Charlotte and Austin or Denver, and all three of those cities have made significant investments in transit-related infrastructure. And frankly, even Atlanta now is doing more, and our peers in Tennessee – Memphis, Chattanooga – have both made advancements in both transit and bicycle friendliness than Nashville. I think it’s primarily a lack of leadership and political will. And so we are sadly lagging behind our peers in almost every metric in pedestrian safety, cyclist safety and access, transit ridership and routes and levels of service. We’ve got a lot of work left to do.

You are very actively engaged in addressing homelessness in Nashville by serving on the Homelessness Planning Council (HPC), and last month the Metro Council passed a bill that you introduced to create an Office of Homeless Services. For our readers, this new

standalone office would move the staff of the Homeless Impact Division from Metro Social Services and task a new director to implement a comprehensive approach to homelessness in Nashville as well as staff the Homelessness Planning Council. Can you describe the benefits of having this new standalone office to address homelessness in Nashville and how independent will it be from the Mayor’s Office?

With two of our largest shelter communities, Room In The Inn and the Nashville Rescue Mission in District 19, I knew when I ran for office that we had perhaps the largest concentration of unhoused Nashvillians in this district. And so I wanted to invest pretty deeply in this work and asked Vice Mayor Briley to appoint me to the Metro Homelessness Commission seven years ago.

We knew from the moment we got there the Metro Homelessness Commission* was not serving its constituents or really Metro effectively.

Your predecessor** left us a report from Focus Strategies that was collaborative and highlighted the lack of alignment between our Continuum of Care.*** It was a strange set up already because the Metro Homelessness Commission was a sort of commission under a commission within Metro Social Services. That department puts in its own budget request. And so any budget proposal was a subsidiary request to the Metro Social Services request.

In 2018, we were successful in creating the alignment within the Continuum of Care and established a joint Homelessness Planning Council, which I think became a more effective governing process. We created the first real strategic plan that was focused on developing a Housing Crisis Resolution System. We made the most progress in the three years of that plan on data quality improvements. One of the key steps we took was transitioning our Homeless Management Information System from MDHA to Metro. We had a very active, engaged oversight committee for that process that led to the most participation

August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE | PAGE 9

we have seen in that system maybe since its inception in Nashville. We were making headway on other fronts as well. But it was frustrating to see a kind of prototype Permanent Supportive Housing project get delayed by 2.5 years as a part of the change of administrations.

But the thing that really revealed the challenges of having an innovative division embedded in a department that wasn’t solely focused on homelessness, [was] that when COVID came and we had to develop a response that included the needs of our unhoused neighbors, there was not a single point of authority or accountability. The Mayor’s Office, OEM, Metro Social Services, the Metro Homeless Impact Division, were all involved but the Metro Homeless Impact Division was not leading the discussion.

The Homelessness Planning Council was not leading the planning for a COVID response.

They were both, as entities, putting ideas on the table, but it felt quite a bit, from the staff and the Planning Council perspective, we were shouting into the wind, even with the availability of HUD Technical Assistance who were offering best practices that the city was choosing to refuse to follow.

So again, we regrouped and we said, we know we’re not delivering our best effort. I’m a little bit sad that we did not make enough progress quickly enough to retain some incredible talented, knowledgeable and passionate staff, but with some collaboration across Metro Council, the Mayor’s Office, Metro Social Services, and the Homeless Impact Division we established a standalone Office of Homeless Services for this fiscal year.

And I think this will mean a little bit more streamlined accountability. It should mean less questions about decision-making, strategy and priority. Over the long-term it should mean that on everything from sheltering to data to service delivery, we can offer a better standard of care for people that are experiencing homelessness. It’s not like we have completed that work. We still know from both HMIS and our annual Point in Time count that there are literally thousands of people in Nashville who lack access to housing of any kind. And with weather like this where we’ve got a straight week of heat advisories and winters like we’ve seen before with unusually high numbers of extreme cold weather days, it’s an ongoing challenge. There are communities in the United States that have effectively eliminated chronic homelessness, and we’re a long way from joining the ranks of those communities. *The staff of the former Metro Homelessness Commission was renamed as the Metro Homeless Impact Division with the creation of the Homelessness Planning Council that unified the Metro Homelessness Commission and Continuum of Care board. **Judith Tackett served as director of the Metro Homelessness Commission, then the Metro Homeless Impact Division from 2017-2021. ***The Continuum of Care (CoC) is a federally designated area in which all stakeholders from a community work together to build a system to prevent and end homelessness. CoC’s receive competitive federal funds for their systems work.

COVER STORY

PHOTO BY JOHN PARTIPILO | TENNESSEE LOOKOUT

Nashville approves new Office of Homeless Services as public camping is criminalized statewide; experts and nonprofits recommend further action

BY JUSTIN WAGNER Tennessee’s relationship with its unhoused communities is as volatile as ever — and the ideal steps for Nashville to resolve its decade-long chronic homelessness problem are under much debate.

It recently became a felony to camp on public property in Tennessee, making it the first in the United States to implement what has been criticized as a criminalization of homelessness. Nashville’s inordinately high rate of chronic homelessness makes this all the more

pressing, as Mayor John Cooper affirmed in a press release sent out May 26.

“I’ve been on the ground in many of the homeless encampments in Nashville, and I’ve seen the suffering and the human toll firsthand,” Cooper said.

“The reality is horrific, tragic and unacceptable.”

This release accompanied a HousingNOLA homeless study commissioned

by Cooper, which was conducted by national experts Stacy Horn Koch, Greg

Shinn, Andreanecia Morris and Sam Tsemberis. The study compared Nashville’s situation to that of cities which excel in homelessness response, such as Milwaukee, and made a number of recommendations.

Of these recommendations, the most prominent was the new Office of Homeless Services, which Metro moved forward with at the end of June. The purpose of the new office is to lead homelessness response in the city — a

PAGE 10 | August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

task currently split between the Homelessness Planning Council, the Metro Homelessness Impact Division, the Metro Development and Housing Agency, the city’s various nonprofits and other Metro Social Services staff.

“It establishes authority and responsibility and accountability,” said Stacy Horn Koch, a co-author of the HoungNOLA study. “Not just to the Homelessness Planning Council, but to the city council and to the Mayor's Office.”

COVER STORY

The HousingNOLA report stated that a major obstacle for Nashville’s current homelessness initiatives is how disparate and disorganized they are. Koch noted that without a leading department, it is difficult for any involved party to hold any other party accountable. (It’s important to note that the HousingNOLA study referenced throughout this article made use of an erroneous statistic. Though the study reports that no previous living situation was documented for 15.2 percent of households when recorded

by Nashville service workers, an error was made in the calculation of that data.

Study co-author Shinn now places the figure closer to 6 percent, and MHID estimates it to be around 11 percent, according to Horn Koch.)

The study also criticized the Homeless Planning Council for a lack of diversity, poorly defined responsibilities, and incomplete documentation of homeless citizens into the city’s outreach database.

The new office aims to ameliorate these issues. It is proposed as a pareddown, independent and more diverse team, with each member having a defined role understood by a leading executive director.

The existing HPC will have a representative within the new office, and the two will collaborate. The new office will spearhead efforts to provide housing to the homeless, track data entry to assess the needs and risk of those being assisted, and liaise directly with the mayor, who will appoint the department’s executive director from a selection of HPC-recommended candidates.

Nashville homelessness advocates — like India Pungarcher, advocacy and outreach specialist at Open Table Nashville — have praised the new office for its improved organization, but criticized its specific implementation, saying the Nashville community and Homelessness Planning Council should have a bigger role in the city’s plans.

“A standalone Office of Homeless Services in Nashville is a huge win for our community that has been a long time coming,” said India Pungarcher.

“That said, there are still some challenges ahead in restoring community trust and ensuring that the leadership of the Office can operate independently from political pressure in the Mayor’s Office and from others in positions of power.”

Sam Tsemberis, a co-author of the report, echoed Pungarcher’s sentiment that service workers and homeless citizens should be afforded a direct dialog with the city.

“I think it's essential that the city coordinates with its nonprofits,” Tsemberis said. “If we're going to design an Office of Homeless Services that's going to be useful, it has to be informed by the experience of the existing service providers — meaning the existing nonprofits, the Housing Authority, the current Coordinated Entry system, and I would strongly

add, you know, the inclusion of voices of people with lived experience, who have been homeless or are homeless.”

Pungarcher noted that one way to do this would be to include the HPC more in the development of the new department, as it is already composed of advocates and people with lived experiences of homelessness.

But while the new office’s approv-

American Rescue Plan funds.

Though not prescriptive, these recommendations aim to pare down Nashville’s response into a more efficient methodology — one which prioritizes those who have been homeless the longest or most frequently. The city has measures to this end as it is, but they are not universally praised.

Nashville currently makes use of

"If we're going to design an Office of Homeless Services that's going to be useful, it has to be informed by the experience of the existing service providers — meaning the existing nonprofits, the Housing Authority, the current Coordinated Entry system, and I would strongly add, you know, the inclusion of voices of people with lived experience, who have been homeless or are homeless.”

al marks the resolution of a yearslong effort, it is only one recommendation made by the HousingNOLA report — and its creation is ultimately a bureaucratic improvement, not a solution for homelessness unto itself.

The report also calls for a downsized and restructured HPC, a move to better prioritize chronic homelessness, less restrictive supportive housing, and full implementation of Cooper’s $50 million homelessness response plan using

Coordinated Entry, a program which collects data from unhoused citizens and determines need based on a number of factors, as well as the VI-SPDAT, a survey meant to assess risk and degree of chronic homelessness. However, the number of chronically homeless in Nashville has seen little fluctuation for the last 10 years, as the HousingNOLA report points out. Other studies have also recently criticized the VI-SPDAT as racially biased against Black people.

August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE | PAGE 11

Another recommendation made in the HousingNOLA report was for Nashville to adopt a “housing first” approach, a social service philosophy wherein case workers try to provide permanent, supportive housing before other, less critical services, such as job searching or addiction recovery.

“This approach has proven effective in ending each person’s homelessness and, ultimately, saves lives,” the study notes.

Beyond these ideas, though, advocates and the study alike identify a need to support these philosophies with something concrete: more accessible, permanent housing.

While housing units are accounted for in Cooper’s $50 million plan, Pungarcher stated that more units are desperately needed immediately, with a sturdier framework for homelessness prevention and fewer barriers to qualifying people for homes.

“We are losing housing units daily, causing too many Nashvillians to re-enter homelessness years after they had successfully found housing,” she said.

“It just took 7 months for one of our friends to find housing after they got their Section 8 voucher — and that's not an uncommon length of time. I am terrified the city is growing complacent while those on the grounds are becoming disillusioned by the lack of urgency for and magnitude of our housing crisis.”

While advocates have championed these points for years, any sense of urgency is invigorated by the felony charge now to be associated with public camping — something for which Pungarcher called to immediately end.

“We need the city to lead us in a citywide halt of encampment policing and closures.”

Tsemberis agreed the camping law was a dire obstacle for homelessness response.

“On top of being poor, it’s now illegal to be poor,” said. “That’s awful … it’s gonna scatter people, make them more difficult to find, more difficult to engage with. Where are they gonna go?”

The new Office of Homeless Services represents a meaningful step forward for Nashville, and along with Cooper’s $50 million plan, it is posed to assist a great number of unhoused people. But it is only a fraction of what national experts recommend, and advocates are calling on the city to do much, much more.

“We need to take care of each other and invest in the things we know keep us safe - healthcare, transportation, living-wage jobs, and housing,” said Pungarcher.

“Ultimately, we need those in power to have the same sense of urgency, creativity, and political will to identify creative funding mechanisms for housing in the same regard that they were able to fund a new $2 billion Titans stadium.

It can be done.”

VENDOR WRITING

Proud to Be...

BY JEN A., CONTRIBUTOR VENDOR I sell newspapers by the side of the road. It's my only source of income and I'm proud to do what I do. The Contributor is a quality, award-winning, publication with an innovative model that lifts up, not only those of us who sell the paper, but the entire Nashville community.

When I first started selling The Contributor, I believed I was the only one benefiting from the sale. But it didn't take me long to realize that my customers gain as much of a benefit — if not more.

Contributor vendors standing out on the street throughout the city, forces the good people of Nashville to look poverty in the face and decide what they are going to do about it. Are they going to live their faith and buy a paper, or turn a blind eye?

For the most part, my customers are wonderful people. A few are not

so wonderful and a few are downright obscene. But recently I've noticed some who puzzle me. They'll wave their dollars at me and when I get to the window, they snatch the money back and ask, “Are you a Christian?” I was raised in the Christian tradition, so at heart, that is really all I've ever known. I consider myself a Christian.

I believe in the teachings of Jesus. I believe that we should all love one another and bring His light into our world. I don't demean anyone.

But recently I've noticed that there seems to be a different kind of “Christian”. There are Christians like me, who live humbly and love our fellow citizens. And then there are “Christians” who revere vile, immoral, demigods and whose only purpose in life is to belittle the least of us and amass guns, great wealth and power.

They call themselves "Christians", but

are they really?

Republicans have been grooming these “Christians” for a very long time. I'm sure you've seen them. They and their families, each holding powerful guns, are photographed in front of a Christmas tree, then made into cards to be sent out to their friends and associates over the sacred holiday that celebrates the birth of Christ.

They burn books and forbid our children from even discussing our state's history of the brutal treatment of Native Americans, Blacks, Jews, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, or any other group they arbitrarily disapprove of: anything that will get them votes from the “Christians” they've created.

Maya Angelou once said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." Maybe Tennessee “Christians” have let the

corruption of their core beliefs go on for so long they don't know who Jesus is anymore — let alone who they are themselves.

Our “Christian” governor did nothing to stop a law that will send homeless residents to prison for six years and is about to turn our schools, and all the associated tax dollars that go along with them, over to out-ofstate “Christians” who say our teachers are stupid and that anyone can do what teachers do: no education training required. God save us all from these “Christians”.

Instead of doing the Christian thing to help the poor, the sick, the homeless, and the suffering, these other “Christians” draft laws and level harsh penalties and fines against the least among us. Are our privatized prisons running low on people to lock up? Or maybe some new corporation

is moving to Tennessee and needs some captive, low-cost prison work crews.

These “Christians” are so pervasive anymore, I expect to walk into a Tennessee church sometime in the near future to see an altar draped in American flags with an AR-15 suspended over it instead of a cross. I believe Tennessee “Christians” have lost their way and are wandering in a vast, endless desert. I pray they find their way back to Jesus.

I don't really know what I'll say the next time a potential customer wants to play the, “Are you a Christian?” game. I will probably say nothing and just turn away to greet the next car in line. I know who I am in my heart.

I'm proud to be the kind of caring Christian I am: no gun or fealty to an abhorrent demigod or political party required.

Meet our New Friend

BY MAURICE B., CONTRIBUTOR VENDOR As it's a blessing that all humans are alike, but all have differenting ideas that make us a whole. This factor is facts world wide. Whereas many have an idea to remain right where they are at until their blessings fall from a tree or the skies. Then there are the multitude that realize that if one doesn't work then they aren't able to eat that's only one level of an aspect cause there are those that believe if you don't grind then you don't shine. Well by having an opportunity to have met Charlane Oliver finally there was that time that we were able to sit back and talk and talk deep. As we both are those types of individuals that seem to be reaching for the skies.

We are both individuals from another state whereas she was raised in Arkansas and I in Texas. Now she is a marvelous achiever. For instance, even from a young age she has had enormous dreams for her future. And by her environmental move here to Nashville she has been only able to move forward whereas she first landed 20 years ago for her Vanderbilt Bachelor of Science in Human and Organizational Development and is still striving for accomplishments there shortly A Master of Public Administration from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Now as

PAGE 12 | August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

considered an achiever of prominent dreams here as a Nashvillian the larger aspects are to fulfill her dreams in which i back her. As I remember meeting and greeting her at the jazz fest and found out that her destiny is to become a Tennessee state senator.

And after all her big girl dreams she has accomplished such as defeating a state of depression by stepping with our almighty God's will and becoming a loving and devoted mother and wife ad still moves forward into major accomplishments such as, according to her bio, "an award-winning servant leader, community organizer, nonprofit founder, and wife and working mother. Charlane is the co-founder and co-executive director of The Equity Alliance, a statewide nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization whose mission is to unapologetically build independent Black political and economic power and keep government in check. Under Charlane’s visionary leadership, she turned $250 of her own money into a $2.5 million-dollar powerhouse organization in just five years, growing currently with 12 employees and three chapters across the state.

Her successes through TEA earned her the prestigious recognition of 2020 People of the Year by The Tennessean and numerous accolades."

LA NOTICIA “The Contributor” está trabajando con uno de los principales periódicos en español La Noticia para llevar contenido a más lectores en Middle Tennessee. Nuestros vendedores de periódicos han pedido durante mucho tiempo que nuestra publicación incluya contenido que apele al interés de residentes de habla hispana en nuestra comunidad.

“The Contributor” is working with one of the leading Spanish-language newspapers La Noticia to bring content to more readers in Middle Tennessee. Our newspaper vendors have long requested that our publication include content that appeals to the interest of Spanish-speaking residents in our community.

LOCALES - POLÍTICA - INMIGRACIÓN - TRABAJOS - SALUD - ESPECTÁCULOS - DEPORTES Y MÁS...

L a N ticia 2022

GRATIS

Agosto

Escanee esta imagen para ver La Noticia newspaper edición bilingüe digital

www.hispanicpaper.com

Año 20 - No. 354

“DONDE OCURREN LOS HECHOS QUE IMPORTAN, SIEMPRE PRIMERO... ANTES”

Nashville, Tennessee

Signos y Síntomas: ¿Cómo se transmite la ‘Viruela Símica’?

Una alarmante sorpresa la noticia de hoy (7/27/22) de parte de los Centros para el Control y Prevención de Enfer medades (CDC, siglas en inglés) que reportaron en su informe que Por Yuri Cunza Estados Unidos Editor in Chief supera los 3,500 casos de viruela @LaNoticiaNews del mono. Otros reportes de alerta máxima por la viruela del mono, en países de Asia, con revisiones a viajeros y despliegue de equipos médicos, mientras informan sus primeros casos del virus, se suman al ahora identificado como una emergencia de salud mundial por la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS).

De acuerdo a los CDC, se están haciendo seguimiento de cerca a los casos de viruela del mono recientemente detectados en los Estados Unidos, mientras urgen a los proveedores de atención médica a que estén atentos a si tienen pacientes con enfermedades con sarpullidos indicativos de viruela símica o viruela del mono. ¿Cuáles son los síntomas?

La viruela símica o viruela del mono es una enfermedad rara causada por infección por el virus de la viruela símica o viruela del mono. Este virus es parte de la misma familia que los virus de la viruela.

Los síntomas de viruela símica o viruela del mono son similares a los de la viruela, pero más leves; y rara vez es mortal. La viruela símica o viruela del mono no está relacionada con la varicela.

de animales infectados, ya sea por recibir un rasguño o una mordedura del animal, o al preparar o comer carne de un animal infectado o usar productos derivados de un animal infectado.

La viruela símica o viruela del mono puede transmitirse desde el momento en que empiecen los síntomas hasta que el sarpullido se haya sanado completamente y se haya formado una nueva capa de la piel. La enfermedad generalmente dura de 2 a 4 semanas. Las personas que no tengan síntomas de viruela símica o viruela del mono no pueden transmitir el virus a los demás. En este momento, se desconoce si la viruela símica o viruela del mono se puede propagar a través del semen o las secreciones vaginales.

Signs and Symptoms: How is Monkeypox transmitted?

Los síntomas de la viruela del mono pueden incluir: -Fiebre -Dolor de cabeza -Dolores musculares y de la espalda -Inflamación de los ganglios linfáticos -Escalofríos -Agotamiento Un sarpullido que puede verse como granos o ampollas que aparecen en la cara, dentro de la boca y en otras partes del cuerpo, como las manos, los pies, el pecho, los genitales o el ano.

El sarpullido pasa por distintas fases antes de sanar completamente. La enfermedad dura por lo general de 2 a 4 semanas. A veces, las personas primero presentan un sarpullido, seguido de otros síntomas. Otras personas solo presentan un sarpullido.

¿Cómo se transmite?

La viruela símica o viruela del mono se propaga de distintas maneras. Los virus se pueden transmitir de una persona a otra a través de lo siguiente: - Contacto directo con el sarpullido, las costras o los líquidos corporales infecciosos.

-Secreciones respiratorias durante el contacto cara a cara prolongado, o durante el contacto físico íntimo, como besarse, abrazarse o tener relaciones sexuales.

-Contacto con artículos (como ropa o ropa de cama) que previamente estuvieron en contacto con el sarpullido o los líquidos corporales infecciosos.

-Las personas embarazadas pueden transmitir el virus al feto a través de la placenta.

También es posible que las personas contraigan viruela símica o viruela del mono

Conoce tus derechos: ¿Que hacer en caso de una redada?

1. Mantenerse callado 2. Sólo dar nombre y apellido 3. No mentir 4. Nunca acepte/lleve documentos falsos 5. No revelar su situación migratoria 6. No llevar documentación de otro país 7. En caso de ser arrestado, mostrarla Tarjeta Miranda (llámenos si necesita una)

Basados en la Quinta Enmienda de la Constitución, los derechos de guardar silencio y contar con un abogado fueron denominados Derechos Miranda luego de la decisión de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de Estados Unidos en el caso Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, de 1966.

por www.juanese.com juanese@usa.com

August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE | PAGE 13

Lo que debe saber: El virus de la viruela símica o del mono se está propagando principalmente a través del contacto cercano e íntimo con alguien que tiene la enfermedad.

Usted puede tomar medidas para prevenir contraer la viruela símica o del mono y reducir su riesgo al tener relaciones sexuales.

Los CDC recomiendan la vacunación* para las personas que se hayan expuesto a la viruela símica o del mono y las personas que tengan un mayor riesgo de exponerse a esta enfermedad.

Si usted tiene algún síntoma de la viruela símica o del mono, hable con su proveedor de atención médica, aunque no crea que haya tenido contacto con alguien que tenga esta enfermedad. *Artículo escrito con información del CDC Envíenos sus sugerencias por e-mail: news@hispanicpaper.com ó 615-567-3569

VENDOR WRITING

Story of Life Changer

BY LOUM O., CONTRIBUTOR VENDOR Who can’t believe that through God, United States is a life changer for everyone in this world?

I myself Loum O. felt unbelievable that the United States can change my life.

Being in a war-torn country South Sudan, I thought I would enjoy my life in that country. I thought it could offer me opportunities to live a good life, but at 8 years old the war tore my life away along with my family.

My village was damaged along with neighboring villages and many people died — fathers, mothers, children, grandfathers and grandmothers.

But for me and my family, God had not set up time to leave this earth, so because of big atrocities of the war, we escaped to Uganda through bushes with no food, or clean water, surviving on wild fruits until we escaped to Uganda and took refuge living in a camp for eight years until the United Nations provided a food program and clothes.

Due to congestion, we moved to Kenya living in a deserted camp where many refugees died due to overpopulation. Diseases of all

kinds poured among escapees.

I lived there in the camp under a U.N. program for three years.

Now, through a strong nation — the United States, sent by God, I am living in the United States in Nashville trying to get a better life in the country where God has poured upon me many opportunities. It is my great life changer and I've expereinced unbelievable things that I never expected in my life.

Opportunities such as enrolling in a university after I completed my high school. I enrolled in Tennessee State University for four years and graduated with a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics.

However, I found that choosing the field of teaching was difficult because being a little person, I knew I would not be able to reach up the board.

So I was frustrated for years without using my degree. However, due to God’s greatness and being in the United States another door opened up for me selling newspapers along the streets with The Contributor newspaper company where you own and run you own business gaining at least a

little income for living.

At first, I faced many challenges by my own close step-brothers and other close relatives who made negative statements about me, but I left them behind with their negativity and keep on pressing on the business with my little income.

The business brought for me wonderful customers with all kind offers.They have being a life changer for me.

I am so happy for this business as a life changer in which I not only earn money, but I also meet wonderful people that advise me to keep on pressing.

Indeed, I am so happy to God, my Lord, for sending me a faithful man named Jesse Holman and his wife Heather. They reveal for me the kingdom of God and now I am joined in prayer with them and going to a church believing that coming from a war-torn country to the United States, to university where I learn how to write, read to do self business, to the church and lastly to read the Bible and understand what is in it and apply to the world in order to open the door to everlasting life in heaven.

Loum O. stands in front of The Contributor office sign. PHOTO BY LINDA BAILEY

Follow-Up On Gun Rights Verses Victims Rights: What Is More Important?

BY NORMA B., CONTRIBUTOR VENDOR I can’t say I’m surprised by the fact that I’ve taken a lot of heat for the article I wrote about gun owners rights versus victims rights. I actually expected it.

Because of that, I feel it necessary to provide further explanation on some aspects of what I wrote. For instance, I’ve been asked, “How can you say guns serve a useful purpose?”

Though I do not have guns in my home, as far back as I can remember, a full gun rack was always on display in the living room of my grandparents house. (My cousin Ray once described it as the safest place in the world. I would have to agree.)

As a young person, I enjoyed target practice. (A skill that comes in handy if you ever use a gun for self defense, a reason many people give for owning a gun.) My dad took pride in teaching me to shoot, and I took advantage of every opportunity to be with him, and I would do whatever I could to make him happy. This activity accomplished both objectives.

As an adult, living in Bugg Hollow (yes, it’s as country as it sounds, and very appropriately named) a gun came in handy when it came to killing snakes

— rattlesnakes in particular. (My biggest kill had 13 rattles and a button, my husband once shot one with 17 rattles and a button!)

More recently, most of my customers know I often trade papers for different things, and each year I have a few who give me deer meat. I was hesitant to take it at first, telling one customer I really like it, but I honestly don’t know how to cook it. She returned later that day with a bag full of deer meat and instructions on how to prepare deer burgers, deer for chili/tacos, deer steaks, and more. And even though one man I know does hunt with a bow and arrow, each time he’s bagged a deer, it’s been with a gun.

I’ve also been asked, “What makes you an expert on gun owner's rights and victim's rights?” I was told, “You need to pick a side. You can’t be for both.”

My answer: Why not? I was always taught to respect the power of a guneven an unloaded gun, and as I’ve said before, I was taught when I was young how to properly handle a gun.

As for victims rights, I’ve had a gun pointed directly at me, and it’s only by the grace of God and a faulty firing pin

that I lived to tell the tale.

I’ve also been shot at. That’s how I found out I was pregnant with my first child. (*See the article titled, “What Not To Do When You’re Expecting.”) Given that information, I’d say that makes me uniquely qualified to speak about both sides of this issue!

That being said, I am in favor of RESPONSIBLE gun ownership, which is what led to the suggestions that were made in the previous article regarding possible laws to improve public safety with regard to guns.

It’s noteworthy that while the original article has been met with some resistance, there have also been several GUN OWNERS who have commended and even agreed with many of the suggestions contained in that article because they recognize the need for change with regard to our lax gun laws.

Lest we forget, innocent people of ALL ages are dying!

As of July 26, 2022, there have been 372 mass shootings in the US. (NY Post/ gunviolencearchive.org) Did you know that Tennessee ranks No. 1 in the number of gun thefts in the US? (WKRN 5/18/22)

More than 70 percent of all guns stolen are taken from vehicles. These guns are routinely used in other crimes.

(News Channel 5 3/15/22); 810 so far this year! (Nashville.gov 5/17/22).

There is currently proposed legislation that would require a gun owner who does not properly store their weapon to take an approved gun safety course.

What if it were to go a step further?

What if those who fail to secure their guns properly lost their right to carry a gun for a period of time much like someone who is convicted of a DUI/ DWI is fined and loses their drivers license for a specified period of time?

With each infraction the fines/penalties increase and if you’re declared a habitual offender, you’d lose license and or your right to carry a gun permanently.

Also if a stolen gun is used in a crime, the gun owner could and should face charges if they failed to properly secure their weapon thereby posing a threat to the public.

A precedent has already been established when Jeffery Reinking was charged with unlawful delivery of a firearm for giving his son the weap-

PAGE 14 | August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

on that was used in the Waffle House shooting in Antioch. He now faces a sentence of probation up to three years in prison. Implementing ideas like this would ensure a higher level of public safety as well as promote responsible gun handling and ownership.

Since the original article was published, new bipartisan gun legislation was passed, the most significant gun safety measure in decades, and while something is better than nothing, there is still much to be done.

I urge you ask yourself: What lengths would you go to to protect yourself and those you love from gun violence? I encourage you to look at ANY new legislation as well as any proposed changes to our gun laws with that in mind.

Hopefully this will clear up any misunderstandings with regard to my previous article, and give you something more to think about.

However, if you do have additional questions or comments, feel free to ask!

You don’t have to agree with me, but I would hope you’d keep an open mind and respect my views on this controversial matter.

FUN

HOBOSCOPES LEO

I can’t believe we’re more than halfway through this year, Leo. Think back to six months ago. What did you imagine this year would be like? Did you set any goals back then? What were they? Whatever you predicted or hoped, things have probably turned out differently.

We never really know what’s coming next, Leo. But it’s still worth hoping and planning. Whatever you’re striving for now, it’s the striving that you’ll remember when you look back.

VIRGO

I dreamt you won the lottery, Virgo.

Everybody was standing around the TVs at some old-timey bus station and they were putting up pictures of winners on the news but you were distracted because you thought you forgot to pack your saline and you had your bag dumped out on the floor. Then I saw your picture on the screen and I said “Hey, you won!” And you looked up but your photo was already gone. Victories are fleeting, Virgo. It’s the journey that matters.

Don’t forget your saline.

SAGITTA R IUS

I met a guy the other day who thinks we should be building more pyramids. He says pyramids harness the energy of the earth and make for healthier, wiser societies. I suppose he could be right, Sagittarius. In any case, a few pyramids here and there would definitely liven-up the current architectural landscape. But I don’t think you need to worry to much about that, Sagittarius. Keep making the things you want to make. Just because you’re building something new, doesn’t mean it has to have a point.

CAPRICORN

I watched a grove of fiddletrees dancing in the wind. Big floppy leaves blowing back and forth, bouncing up and down. Sometimes moving together. Sometimes taking turns. And I drove past in a line of cars. Shooting across a highway.

Some moving together. Some speeding to pass. We’ve adapted and changed so much. We’ve built machines to move us faster. But we’re still all just dancing in a grove. Reaching and reacting. Moving with the wind and against it. You’re not alone, Capricorn.

AQUA RIUS

LIBRA

The sky is the limit, Libra! Which is kind of scary if you think about it.

Because how will you know when you get there? You’ll just keep going up and up into the blue, past the clouds until stars begin to appear. The air is very thin now and the light of the sun seems to take up less space. You look down and see that the place where you started is impossibly small and far away. You look up and there is nothing to reach for. Only a star-speckled void. Maybe limits were a good idea after all. Let’s say for now the stop sign at the end of the block is the limit, Libra!

SCORPIO

It’s hot, Scorpio, and you need a pool!

I guess pools are pretty expensive, though, and they do take a lot of upkeep. Have you been out to the lake yet this year?

There’s plenty of room and, as long as you pick up your trash, the upkeep mostly takes care of itself.

You’ve been too dry for too long, Scorpio. You need a change of venue.

If you really want to know about it, Aquarius, I love Star Trek. All of it. The ones from the 60s and the ones from the 80s and 90s. The movies. The reboots. But I was noticing how many of the problems on Star Trek would be solved if there were just a few security cameras on the enterprise. People were always disappearing from sickbay or hiding in engineering unseen and then sneaking into a cargo bay. Whereas in 2022 my neighbor’s doorbell camera is watching my front porch all day. We can only guess about the future, Aquarius.

Don’t get too sold on anybody else’s vision.

PISCES

In Scandinavian folklore, the Sandman is a benevolent wanderer who appears as you’re nodding off to sleep and sprinkles dreams into your head. For centuries children were told that the little grit in their eyes in the morning is sand leftover from the Sandman’s work the night before. Centuries of research later, we still don’t exactly know why we dream. If you don’t know the answer to your big questions, Pisces, maybe start back at the last theory that was working for you. Then sleep on it

ARIES

It’s a matter of supply and demand, Aries. When you had all that spare time it didn’t seem very valuable. You filled the calendar and stayed busy, but it felt like nothing much mattered. Now you’re short on extra hours and they seem like the most important resource in the world. It’s the same hours in the day, they’re just worth more than they used to be. The best way to trick the system is to use those free hours for less pressing matters. Go for a 45 minute walk. Sit in the quiet for 20 minutes. Read another chapter. When you get back, you’ll find those hours you have left in the day feel less crushingly costly.

TAURUS

My sister taught their dog to balance a treat on his nose and stay perfectly still until she says “OK.” I thought it was cute at first. A dog showing so much restraint and poise.

But then I started wondering if we’ve all got too much of that. Are you sitting still while the exact thing you want is right on the tip of your nose? Are you waiting for the OK to do the thing you really want to do? Will it work if I say it? OK.

GEMINI

Remember that restaurant that used to be over by the highway? Some of the best food and greatest people but I guess they couldn’t afford the rent anymore. I went to the new place that went in — some kind of oral-hygienethemed pirate-fusion joint, but they replaced all the booths with dental chairs and the menu is mostly puns about seafood and teeth. It’s funny, Gemini, how things change when you aren’t looking. Nothing lasts.

Think about that while you wait for your whitening whiting and pegleg lobster.

CANCER

Sometimes you have to hand over control, Cancer. Like when the transmission falls out of your car and you don’t have a clue how to fix it or if it’s even worth fixing. Sometimes you just have to hand everything over to an expert.

Other times it’s not your transmission, Cancer. What do you need to hand over to the experts this week?

Mr. Mysterio is not a licensed astrologer, a trained pyramidologist, or a registered dream interpreter. Mr. Mysterio is, however, a budding intermediate podcaster! Check out The Mr. Mysterio Podcast. Season 2 is now playing at mrmysterio.com. Got a question, just give Mr. M a call at 707-VHS-TAN1

August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE | PAGE 15

The New Christian Year Selected by Charles Williams

Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886–1945), the editor of the following selections, is today probably the third most famous of the famous Inklings literary group of Oxford, England, which existed in the middle of the 20th century, and which included among its ranks the better-known and longer-lived Oxford Dons J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis—but he was arguably the most precocious and well-read of this eminent and intellectually fertile group. He was also known to have influenced Dorothy Sayers, T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden.

Lacking a proper degree unlike his fellow Inklings, this genius Cockney-speaking author, editor, critic, and playwright was eminently well-versed in both philosophical and theological writings of the remote past as of the present day (the mid-20th century) and used this familiarity to good effect in his poetry, supernatural fiction and his lesser-known devotional selections designed for the spiritual benefit of the faithful in the Church of England. This series of profound quotations, encompassing all walks of life, follows the sequence of the themes and Bible readings anciently appointed for contemplation throughout the church's year, beginning with Advent (i.e., December) and ending in November, and reaches far beyond the pale of the philosophical and theological discussions of his day. It was under his hand, for instance, that some of the first translations of Kierkegaard were made available to the wider public. It is hoped that the readings reproduced here will prove beneficial for any who read them, whatever their place in life's journey. — Matthew Carver

8th Wednesday after Trinity TO love one another as oneself is only the halfway house to Heaven, though it seems as far as it was prudent to bid man go. The "greater love than this" of which our Lord speaks, though He does not command it, is to give oneself for one's friends. And when one does this, or is ready to do this, prayer even for "us" seems too selfish—and it is unnecessary, for we then possess all that God Himself can give us. The easy renunciation of self for the Beloved being the very breath of Heaven.

Patmore: Life.

8th Thursday after Trinity AN old man said, "One man is thought to be silent, and yet his heart judgeth and condemneth others, and the man who acteth thus speaketh continually; another man speaketh from morning till evening; and yet keepeth silence, that is to say, he speaketh nothing which is not helpful."

The Paradise of the Fathers.

WE love ourselves, because we are members of Jesus Christ. We love Jesus Christ, because He is the body of which we are members. All is one, one is in the other, like Three Persons.

Pascal: Pensées.

8th Friday after Trinity TO the Christian love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is really an unChristian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love.

Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life.

Kierkegaard: Journals.

8th Saturday after Trinity WHAT time we call to Jesus in our need bodily or ghostly, though we find it not anon but rather hardness and contrariety we shall not leave therefore to call upon him by good hope. Till through his mercy and grace the unsavoury water and cold of adversity and penance be turned into wine and comfort and ghostly liking.

The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, tr. by Nicholas Love.

SCARCELY any one is contented with that measure of the spirit which God gives; they are very disconsolate and querulous because they do not find the comfort they desire in spiritual things.

St John of the Cross: Dark Night of the Soul.

GOD will be all in all; that is, since God is love, love will bring it to pass that what each has will be common to all. That which one loves in another is one's own, though one have it not. There will be no envy at superior grace, because of the unity of love.

St Augustine, quoted in Aquinas: Catena Aurea.

Eighth Sunday after Trinity STOP, therefore, all self-activity, listen not to the suggestions of thy own reason, run not on in thy own will, but be retired, silent, passive, and humbly attentive to this new risen light within thee. Open thy heart, thy eyes, and ears to all its impressions. Let it enlighten, teach, frighten, torment, judge, and condemn thee as it pleases, turn not away

from it, hear all it says, seek for no relief out of it, consult not with flesh and blood, but with a heart full of faith and resignation to God pray only this prayer, that God's Kingdom may come and His will be done in thy soul.

William Law: The Spirit of Prayer.

9th Monday after Trinity I CANNOT pray in the name of Jesus to have my own will; the name of Jesus is not a signature of no importance, but the decisive factor; the fact that the name of Jesus comes at the beginning is not prayer in the name of Jesus; but it means to pray in such a manner that I dare not name Jesus in it, that is to say think of him, think his holy will together with whatever I am praying for . . . So too with prayer in the name of Jesus, Jesus assumes the responsibility and all the consequences, he steps forward for us, steps into the place of the person praying.

Kierkegaard: Journals.

9th Tuesday after Trinity IF thou desirest to have this intent lapped and folden in one word, so that thou mayest have better hold thereupon, take thee but a little word of one syllable, for so it is better than of two; for the shorter the word, the better it accordeth with the work of the spirit. And such a word is this word GOD or this word LOVE. Choose whichever thou wilt, or another: whatever word thou likest best of one syllable. And fasten this word to thine heart, so that it may never go thence for anything that befalleth.

The Cloud of Unknowing.

9th Wednesday after Trinity PRAYER in itself properly is nought else, but a devout intent directing unto God, for the getting of good and removing of evil. And therefore, since it so is that all evil is comprehended in sin (either by cause or by being), let us therefore, when we will intently pray for the removing of evil, either say, or think, or mean, nought else and no more words, but this little word SIN. And if we will intently pray for the getting of good, let us cry, either with word or with thought or with desire, nought else and no more words but this word GOD. For in God all is good, both by cause and by being.

The Cloud of Unknowing.

9th Saturday after Trinity IF it be the earnest desire and longing of your heart to be merciful as He is merciful; to be full of His unwearied patience, to dwell in His unalterable meekness; if you long to be like Him in universal impartial love; if you desire to communicate every good to every creature that you are able; if you love and practise everything that is good, righteous, and lovely for its own sake, because it is good, righteous, and lovely; and resist no evil but with goodness; then you have the utmost certainty that the Spirit of God lives, dwells, and governs in you.

William Law: The Spirit of Prayer.

GOD is all centre as that he looks to all, and so all circumference as that he embraces all.

Donne: Sermons.

Ninth Sunday after Trinity LORD Jesus Christ! A whole life long didst thou suffer that I too might be saved; and yet thy suffering is not yet at an end; but this too wilt thou endure, saving and redeeming me, this patient suffering of having to do with me, I who so often go astray from the right path, or even when I remained on the straight path stumbled along it or crept so slowly along the right path. Infinite patience, suffering of infinite patience. How many times have I not been impatient, wished to give up and forsake everything; wished to take the terribly easy way out, despair: but thou didst not lose patience. Oh, I cannot say what thy chosen servant says: that he filled up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh; no, I can only say that I increased thy sufferings, added new ones to those which thou didst once suffer in order to save me.

Kierkegaard: Journals.

10th Monday after Trinity

IT is no base and beggarly shift (arguing a narrow and necessitous heart), but a piece of holy and heavenly thrift, often to use the same prayer again. Christ's practice is my directory herein, who the third time said the same words . . . a good prayer, though often used, is still fresh and fair in the ears and eyes of heaven.

Thomas Fuller: Good Thoughts in Worse Times.

OTHERS again, perhaps truly awakened by the Spirit of God to devote themselves wholly to piety and the service of God, yet making too much haste to have the glory of saints, the elements of fallen nature—selfishness, envy, pride, and wrath—could secretly go along with them.

For to seek for eminence and significancy in grace is but like seeking for eminence and significancy in nature.

And the old man can relish glory and distinction in religion as well as in common life, and will be content to undergo as many labours, pains, and self-denials for the sake of religious, as for the sake of secular glory. There is nothing safe in religion, but in such a course of behaviour as leaves nothing for corrupt nature to feed or live upon; which can only then be done when every degree of perfection we aim at is a degree of death to the passions of the natural man.

William Law: Christian Regeneration.

9th Friday after Trinity

10th Tuesday after Trinity

GOD usually answers our prayers so much more according to the measure of his own magnificence than of our asking that we do not know his boons to be those for which we besought him.

Patmore: The Rod, the Root and the Flower.

THOUGH the devil be transformed into an angel of light and suggest thoughts of a good appearance, the heart will still feel an ambiguity, some agitation in the thoughts and disturbance of feelings.

St Seraphim of Sarov.

A MARTYRDOM is not the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. T. S. Eliot: Murder in The Cathedral.

MEN never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do it for conscience' sake.

Pascal: Pensées.

9th Thursday after Trinity

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Dear Nashville Neighbors, I, Captain Philip Canning, and my wife, Captain Elaine Canning, are the new Area Commanders at The Salvation Army in Nashville. We are very happy and excited to be here.

Coming here is certainly an exciting opportunity for us. Nashville is undergoing such tremendous growth. And as we know, so often, growth in a major metropolitan area like Nashville leaves its most vulnerable residents playing catch up. We know that reasonably priced housing and welcoming neighborhoods can be disrupted and displaced to make way for new ventures.

But the Salvation Army is and always has been ready to address the concerns of residents experiencing homelessness, those seeking safe and available first step housing, as well as other basic needs with compassion and dignity, guided by God’s plan.

Our LIFNAV app is a perfect example of this, making it easy for neighbors to connect with the services they need.

These mission essential ministries will allow The Salvation Army to grow and be best positioned to help our neighbors and to do so with dignity and without discrimination. To be part of that growth is such a blessing to us. We are as committed as our predecessors were to the expansion and the incredible potential it presents for helping more people in more ways.

The comfort of knowing you have a safe place to lay your head at night and the extra security of knowing someone cares about you and has your best interests at heart is so important to a person’s wellbeing and sense of self-worth. And to do it in the light of Christ’s love is just such a wonderful goal that The Salvation Army has had from the start. We look forward to being part of that here in Nashville.

We look forward to all we can accomplish, together, with God’s guidance to help our neighbors in need of help and hope. We have always depended on God to guide us to be exactly where we belong, where we can do the most good. That’s how we feel about coming to Nashville.

If you have any questions or would like to connect, feel free to give me a call at 615-242-0411 Ext 121.

In Community,

Captain Philip Canning

Captain Elaine Canning

August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE | PAGE 17

MOVING PICTURES

Music Making SHIRLEY CLARKE’S ORNETTE COLEMAN DOCUMENTARY IS AS DARING AND EXPERIMENTAL AS ITS SUBJECT

BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC Everything about the documentary Ornette: Made in America is fringe-y: Jazz legend Ornette Coleman always pushed his music beyond the boundaries of popular music, from his 1959 debut, The Shape of Jazz to Come, and throughout his half-century-long career. Director Shirley Clarke was a pioneer of early American independent cinema, and her best known work is a feature about a drug deal (The Connection, 1964) that minted the found footage film form nearly 40 years before The Blair Witch Project (1999). This documentary itself is unlike any other music bio, but its elliptical, non-linear style and off-beat pacing are a perfect match for Coleman’s unpredictable and expectation-upsetting compositions, performances and recordings.

Clarke’s evocation of Coleman’s childhood in Fort Worth, Texas is one of the most original and striking aspects of the film.

The movie opens at a citywide celebration for the opening of the Caravan of Dreams performing arts center in Fort Worth in 1983. Clarke and her crew were on hand to film a mayoral declaration, dubbing September 29, 1983 “Ornette Coleman Day.” It’s a pretty standard documentary device to catch-up with an artist receiving some honor before diving into the backstory of how they arrived in such a celebrated spot. But Clarke also casts young boys to play

Coleman at various ages as a child — their clothes look like they're from the 1940s and they walk down abandoned streets and along railroad tracks near Coleman’s boyhood home. One boy wears a saxophone hanging from his neck. A local bank’s electronic sign announces the film’s title sequence in the amber glow of vintage LED lights.

Clarke mimics the sign’s pixelated messaging, scrolling information across the bottom of the screen throughout the film to set up various scenes and announce locations. It’s a playful touch that echoes Ornette’s open and even childlike approach to music making.

Clarke worked on this film on and off for two decades, and one of the movie’s highlights is footage from 1968 that features Coleman playing with his 12-year-old son Denardo and double bass legend Charlie Haden. The trio made their debut with The Empty Foxhole (1966) when Denardo was just 10 years old. Coleman himself played violin and trumpet on the album despite being untrained to play either instrument, and we hear examples of both in the film.

Clarke blends her decades of footage into an elongated montage of Coleman waxing about his life and “harmolodic” music philosophy, street scenes, live music footage, and inventive recreations with her young actors. They’re all tied together with an editing style

that varies from rapid-fire cutting, synchronized to Coleman’s boiling-over arrangements to lingering shots that capture everything from the urban doldrums of Fort Worth to the intensities of improvisational musical performance.

Ornette: Made in America includes cameos by weirdo luminaries like William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin and R. Buckminster Fuller. Coleman explains that Fuller’s geodesic dome designs are to architecture what his compositions are

to music, and he calls Fuller “my best hero.” A Shirley Clarke film is the perfect milieu for a cross-disciplinary meet-up of this mid-century avant garde supergroup, and it’s to her credit that Clarke’s movie starts offbeat and only becomes more challenging and experimental as it unwinds over its 77 minute watch time. Coleman’s music and Clarke’s filmography both serve to remind viewers that the best art will always come from unique individuals with novel messages, delivered through in-

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novative expressions. Ornette: Made in America was Clarke’s last film. She died from a stroke at the age of 77 in 1997.

Ornette: Made in America is streaming on Amazon Prime

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.

MOVING PICTURES

Fun and Fright UMMA BRINGS CHILLS TO A MOTHER-DAUGHTER STORY OF INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA

BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC Family trauma and horror films go hand-in-hand. There’s a special kind of terror that can only come from those we’re closest to, and movies from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane to Hereditary have showed us that scary sisters and mean mommies can be the biggest monsters of them all. Umma is a 2022 Sam Raimi-produced supernatural horror film, directed by Iris K. Shim and featuring Sandra Oh, Fivel Stewart and Dermot Mulroney. It’s a film about mothers and daughters, intergenerational trauma, and the forever pains of growing up.

Umma is Shim’s debut feature film following her well-received true crime documentary House of Suh (2010). Umma premiered on screen in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood, but then went to digital VOD platforms as theaters were still struggling to attract in-person audiences during the ongoing pandemic this spring. The movie’s arrival on Netflix gives horror fans a second chance to discover its unique blend of fun and fright, its strong central performances from Oh and Stewart, and its unique twists on the evergreen theme of daughters coming to grips with the sins of their mothers.

Korean immigrant Amanda (Sandra Oh) and her daughter Chrissy (Fivel Stewart) live offthe-grid on a small farm where Chrissy is homeschooled. The pair raise chickens and run a thriving bee-keeping business to produce their in-demand

honey. Amanda claims to be allergic to electricity so the pair do without computers and cell phones, and negotiate their farmhouse’s nighttime hallways with candles and lanterns. Amanda arrived in America with her mother as a toddler, but after years of emotional and physical abuse she broke-off contact with her family and even dropped her Korean name. She raised Chrissy as a typical American kid, without any Korean traditions or Korean language. At the beginning of the film Amanda is trying to break the cycle of abuse she inherited from her Umma (mother in Korean), but by not resolving her past she only drags her trauma into the future. And when Chrissy starts making plans to leave the farm for college, Amanda shows how irrational, overbearing and cruel she can be.

The supernatural elements of the story start to emerge when Amanda’s uncle unexpectedly arrives at the farm to deliver the news that Umma has died. He berates Amanda for her neglect and for abandoning her family name and traditions.

He leaves her with a suitcase containing a traditional Korean gown (hanbok), a burial mask for warding-off evil spirits (tal) and an urn containing Umma’s ashes. Soon after the suitcase arrives Amanda is haunted by visions and voices: tormented ancestor spirits roam the farm; Umma’s voice torments and berates her; ominous bee swarms

obscure the farmhouse’s windows; an appearance from a kumiho — an evil spirit in Korean lore that appears as a nine-tailed fox — means bad news for the chickens, but gives us one of the best fox cameos since the one in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist reminded us that “chaos reigns.”

The best aspect of Umma is its fun/scary tone, and its fun/scary take on the notion of becoming one’s own mother. I think the fun/scary tone has found the film in trouble with

fans and critics who find the movie not as scary as a movie like Hereditary, but also not as twistedly zany as a Sam Raimi picture. I really enjoyed the balance of the family story with the supernatural elements, and maybe I’m also a bit of a sucker for jump-scares. Umma reminds me of the PG-13 horror trend we saw in the 2010s. It might have made its horror elements as unique as its Korean-American family story, but it’s a solid and entertaining watch that deserves a bigger audience.

August 3 - 17, 2022 | The Contributor | NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE | PAGE 19

Umma is currently streaming on Netflix

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.

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