Photo by Augusta McKewen.

John Lytle Wilson, originally from Rock Hill, South Carolina, a small city just south of Charlotte, moved to the Magic City with the hope of following his passion: visual art.

Wilson, now known for colorfully juxtaposing the fantastical with the mundane, graduated from Birmingham-Southern with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1999. After graduating, Wilson hung around for another year, until his then girlfriend, whom he now proudly calls his wife, also completed her studies. Following her graduation, the two embarked on a journey that would forever change Wilson’s perceptions and artistic ambitions.

For one fruitful year, he and his wife lived in China, a section of the world that was not altogether strange to Wilson. When he was a child, Wilson’s father accepted a position teaching political science, which required that he and his family move to China. During his time spent there as a youngster, Wilson became interested in a children’s literature series entitled The Monkey King — based on the great classical Chinese novel Journey to the West — “which tells a story of a monkey king, a sort of magical monkey, who is tasked with escorting a Buddhist priest from China to India to fetch the true Buddhist scriptures,” Wilson recalls. This series, Wilson believes, was the crux of his interest in art.

“I loved those books,” he says. “The illustrations were really interesting, and that is probably the genesis of my monkey obsession.”

Wilson says of his interest in art as a young boy, “I’m not sure I was good at it, yet; but I was drawn toward it.” In seventh grade, he began attending a summer art program called ‘Starts’ for artistically inclined children, and in high school, attended South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts. “I wasn’t bad in school, but I wasn’t great in it either; so, [art] was kind of what I was good at,” says Wilson.

Upon his return from China in 2001, Wilson attended graduate school at Florida State, and after graduating with a Master of Fine Arts with a concentration in studio art, he decided to stay at FSU as a professor before he and his wife returned to Birmingham in 2008.

Wilson now works mostly out of his home studio, hanging canvases on a wall lined with nails, allowing him to reach all sides of his sometimes nearly eight-foot-tall paintings. Having previously worked with mostly oil paints, Wilson has since transitioned to working solely with acrylic paints, which can be a much more time-consuming task, requiring many layers of paint to achieve the vibrant, opaque colors found in his paintings.

“When I was at Birmingham-Southern, I was painting large oil paintings that were kind of expressionistic and were dark and looming, because I thought that’s what you had to do; I thought that’s what art was supposed to look like,” says Wilson. “But even then I was doodling these monkeys. They didn’t look like they look now; they’ve changed a lot, but…at some point it clicked. At some point between undergrad and graduate school…the doodles became elevated and became the focus of the work.” Although Wilson had already conceived of the idea, the robots weren’t added until after his graduate school thesis show in the spring of 2004. For a while, Wilson painted a separate series of robots before eventually deciding to incorporate them into the monkey paintings.

The two forms of life most prevalent in his paintings, Wilson believes, represent a model of “an organic and technological or ancient and modern” symbiotic relationship. Wilson also suggests that certain aspects of his famous monkey and robot paintings represent Freud’s theory of the “id” and the “superego;” although humans, which potentially represent the balancing “ego,” have altogether been removed from the equation. The absence of humans from Wilson’s work allows the evolutionary ancestor and the technological brainchild of the human race to peacefully coexist. As fascinating as this idea is, however, it is only that; Wilson normally prefers to leave his work open to viewer interpretation.

Wilson’s most recent show, The Shrine of the Most Glorious Future, which is currently being housed at the UAB Visual Arts Gallery, tells the story of an awe-inspiring myth which serves as the basis for a subsequent cultic uprising of followers of the “Future.”  The display includes paintings titled Monkeys Riding the Tigers of Heaven, Now They Have Guns and The Gift of the Unicorn. Standing impressively in the rear open space of the gallery is the shrine — a large-scale sculpture and digital media display of none other than the cult leader himself. Looping video clips, tinted in various colors, are set to a soundtrack of the slightly eerie (but not unpleasant) sound of chirping birds.

Amongst his other work, Wilson has created a series of pieces he calls “corrected paintings.” The original paintings he uses are found at local flea markets and thrift stores — usually of landscapes — and are improved, or corrected, with the addition of one or more of Wilson’s mystical characters. However, make no mistake; the seemingly violent, laser-shooting robots and mischievous monkeys of these paintings claim no relation to the subdued, peaceful creatures of the Shrine exhibit.

Although his style and subject matter are somewhat unconventional, and despite misguided interpretations of his paintings and difficulties of the trade that all artists must face at some point or another, Wilson’s artwork continues to capture imaginations around our community.

The Shrine of the Most Glorious Future is free to the public and the UAB Visual Arts Gallery is open for visitors Tuesday-Friday from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and Saturday from 12-4 p.m. All of Wilson’s paintings are priced to sell. 

In Egypt, since the beginning of the 1990s, detailed and extensive reports have been kept regarding the persecution and discrimination against Coptic Christians and Baha’is. The vast majority of torture and violence was carried out by two organizations: al Jihad al Islami and al Jama Islamiyya.

A primary focus of these extremist “religious groups” was Coptic Christian and Baha’i women as, according to Dr. Aida Seif al Dowla in a 1996 AfricaNews interview, “In our culture the humiliation of a wife, mother or sister will break a man’s back.”

According to The Christian Science Monitor, our official protests were followed up by $1.3 billion per year military aid and $815 million per year in economic assistance. Behind Israel, Egypt has received more American tax dollars than any other nation, a little-known fact that has held true for more than four decades.

In spite of massive U.S. relief programs, Egyptian unemployment was steady at about 25 percent until the Arab Spring. In spite of non-movement on human rights issues, Hosni Mubarak continued to maintain U.S. government favor as he “supported American foreign policy in the region,” “granted the USA access to the Suez Canal,” and “maintained peace with Israel.” It is because of these policies, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Edward Walker, that Mubarak was never seriously concerned about human rights abuses.

Even though five Egyptian al-Qaeda operatives participated in the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the human rights situation degraded to new lows only worthy of lip service as the United States began to funnel “war on terror” detainees into Egypt. According to BBC reports, the Bush administration sent  “between 65 and 70″ persons to Egypt for interrogation and torture.

In the case of Egypt, official US foreign policy was opposed to human rights violations, while at the same time, American taxpayers were bankrolling a Mubarak government that torturing foreign detainees under the custody of the C.I.A. and U.S. military.

The case regarding Iran is radically different. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, religious minorities have always suffered discrimination, disenfranchisement and abuse at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists.

During 1983, a multitude of women were arrested for teaching Iranian children the Baha’i faith. As prisoners they were incarcerated at Seppah Prison in Shiraz and included Mona Mahmudnizhad, 17; Nusrat Yaldai, 54; Izzat Janami Ishraqi, 50, and her daughter Roya Ishraqi, 23; Tahirih Siyavushi, 32; Zarrin Muqimi, 28; Shirin Dalvand, 25; Akhtar Sabit,19; Simin Saberi, 20; and Mahshid Nirumand, 28. These particular inmates were later transferred to the Adelabad Prison, also in Shiraz.

While at Adelabad Prison, the group was imprisoned with Ruhi Jahanpour, who now lives in Alabama and told the following to Weld:  “We were forbidden to pray or have any interaction with the Muslim prisoners. If we were caught talking to each other, we were beaten. We were blindfolded and forced onto the floor with our feet elevated, where they were struck with hoses and wood until they swelled to the point where we could not walk; but they forced us to walk and when we fell down they would laugh and beat us some more…

“We had to cover our faces like the Muslim women; otherwise we were considered not to be reverent and beaten by guards who mocked us and threatened to rape us. … Mona was a kind soul. Her favorite color was blue. Once she was given a piece of fruit about the size of a cherry. She divided it into 13 pieces where we could all have a portion. … Mahshid was also a kind soul. They knew they were going to die. She asked me to tell their story once I was released. … Shortly after I was released, they were all hanged on June 18, 1983.”

Since 2004, there have been more than 677 documented cases of Baha’is being arrested simply for practicing their faith. These include 20 year sentences given to Baha’i administrators: Fariba Kamalabadi; Jamaloddin Khanjani; Afif Naeimi; Saeid Rezaie; Mahush Sabet; Behrouz Tavakkoli; and Vahid Tizfahm, known to the Bahai world as “the Yaran.”

Although there has been tremendous global outrage regarding these harsh sentences, little headway has been made inside the Iranian religious legal system. Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Iran, stated that there should be an “immediate and unconditional release of prisoners of conscience.” Thomas Melia of the US State Department said, “This is a government that also prevents Sunnis from worshiping, flogs Sufis, detains Zoroastrians…raids house churches and arrests Christian leaders…discriminates against Jews…and confiscates property from a variety of religious communities.”

In specific support of the Baha’is in Iran, HR 134 and SR 80 were passed condemning the ongoing persecutions. Unfortunately these well-intended gestures have also been diluted by unrelated excessive talk, especially by Republicans, of bombing and invading Iran.

A former CIA employee and current executive director of Council for the National Interest, Philip Giraldi, recently penned in The American Conservative an article entitled “How to Bomb Iran.” Conservative talk show hosts and radical elements of the right wing have consistently criticized the Obama administration for being “weak on Islamic extremists” because, according to this faction of the GOP, the president himself is a closet Muslim and his unwillingness to engage the United States in another war in the Middle East proves he is also “weak on defense.”

Unlike Egypt, where massive amounts of funds and aid programs were given to our dictator of choice without any intent to alter or change human rights conditions there, we have not enjoyed a positive relationship with Iran after 1979. And although we do have a sincere ambition to change human rights conditions in Iran, we will never achieve this through the threat of force or bombastic saber rattling.

Journalist and Fulbright educator Jim Rhodes, born in Montgomery, graduated from Wetumpka High before earning his college degrees in various places including his Ph.D. at the Sorbonne. He fought for the US military during the war in Vietnam, and eventually bought property there before going to work for the Vietnamese government. He has written for a variety of foreign news agencies and written foreign news for American agencies.

Cunliffe and Welch formed film production company FUA Productions (which, they joke, will have to be a working title), and their first venture is the full-length film It Is What It Is.

The romantic comedy is set — and filmed — in Birmingham. Cunliffe and Welch want to produce a movie authentic to this area. The characters are natives who reference places and events in the city. The actors are Alabamians, as are the lighting and camera crews.

Even the music is local, featuring the Southern rock of the Delicate Cutters and the blues of Gabriel Tajeu. The title song is by Dave Anderson, who performs locally with Black Jacket Symphony. Cunliffe has worked with Dave Anderson in Black Jacket Symphony’s Pink Floyd performances, and when Anderson saw the movie trailer, he immediately called Cunliffe to say that he had just finished writing a song of the same title.

FUA’s serendipitous fortune occurred with Tajeu as well, when Cunliffe and Welch saw him perform a song that completely expressed the emotional complexity of their movie.

Cunliffe and Welch want to capture Birmingham’s “local flavor” as they describe it. They also want to show the film community at large what a perfect spot Birmingham is for shooting movies. Many films have been shot in town, but until now, they have been mainly short films. Feature-length films are more often shot in Mobile or Montgomery, if in Alabama at all.

In fact, Welch and Cunliffe met on the set of a movie filmed in Montgomery: Tim Burton’s 2003 Big Fish. Cunliffe left for Los Angeles after Big Fish, working there on several films such as Georgia Rules, Mr. Woodcock and The Aviator. Of his experience as location manager and production assistant, Cunliffe says, “My job is primarily logistics, so if I’ve done it well, then everything is working as it should, and I’m left with time to watch and learn from directors like Garry Marshall, Tim Burton and Martin Scorsese.”

While studying theatre and mass communications at Auburn University’s Montgomery campus, Mike Cunliffe wrote his share of screenplays. So when he and Ryan Welch met in 2003, Welch naturally wanted to read them. He was impressed, so when Cunliffe returned from L.A. in 2010, Welch contacted him to pursue a filmmaking partnership.

Welch’s path to movie production was much different. He received a finance degree from Auburn Montgomery, having had little interest in theatre or film until introduced to it by friends who were theatre majors. Once he experienced acting, he was fascinated by the business. His role in Big Fish was twofold: stunt man and stand-in for Ewan MacGregor. Both roles allowed him to observe direction and production, as well as acting.

Since then, Welch has acquired an agent and appeared in various commercials and short films. He has always wanted to appear in a full-length film, and It Is What It Is gives him that chance. In addition to producing the film, Welch plays the main character, Josh.

It Is What It Is tells the story of Josh and Lara (played by UAB and Samford instructor Callie Mauldin) on the night before their wedding. When Lara and the friends who join her on “bachelorette night” happen upon Josh and his friends at a club, Lara makes a startling discovery about Josh’s long-lost college roommate, and, as FUA Productions puts it, “Chaos ensues.”

Other notable characters are Josh’s friends Terry (played by Jeff Hallman, stunt man on The Walking Dead) and Rodney (played by local comic Nick Crawford), as well as Lara’s friends Rachel and Nicki (played by local actresses Sara James and Amanda Maddox).

Cunliffe says, “We’ve tried to avoid the clichés of romantic comedies,” such as stereotypical characters and a predictable ending. Welch notes that the film appeals to men as much as to women. The comedic writing is constantly evolving by the natural quick wit of actors like Crawford and Mauldin, who sometimes improvise lines as they go. Cunliffe, too, has worked in improv. Welch and Cunliffe “never want the dialogue to feel like it’s scripted” and value actors’ input over the precise wording of their screenplay.

Filming has taken place in local sidewalks, alleys, apartments, bars and even Vulcan Park. Welch and Cunliffe praise the city’s ability to partner with filmmakers, as well as the generosity of local proprietors (such as the owners of clubs 26 and Innisfree) in allowing the crew to film on location. Shooting is expected to wrap up next month, and Cunliffe will edit footage in the remainder of the summer.

FUA Productions plans to submit the movie to a wide range of film festivals this fall, from international festivals such as Sundance, Tribeca and Cannes to regional ones such as South by Southwest in Austin and the Sidewalk Film Festival here in Birmingham. Their hope is that screenings of the film will create opportunities for larger studios to show and distribute the film to a wider audience. FUA also plans to distribute it digitally through streaming sites such as Hulu.

If It Is What It Is achieves success, Cunliffe and Welch hope the film will be “a springboard to future projects.” Cunliffe has two other scripts already written: a horror film and a comedy about mistaken identity.

It Is What It Is has been a labor of love for FUA. While they have some sponsors and obtained support on IndiGoGo, funding has fallen a bit short. Cunliffe and Welch never gave up; they have made up the difference from their personal income. (Cunliffe edits films for Southern Progress Corporation, and Welch also works in medical sales.) So checking off each item on their “To Film” and “To Do” lists and seeing the finished product come together is rewarding and a dream come true.

Next month, FUA will shoot a large wedding scene, so they need extras as guests at the reception. To be an extra in a movie, to receive more information (production timeline, viewing opportunities, etc.), or to contact Ryan Welch and Mike Cunliffe about future projects, email Ryan at rawelch@gmail.com, or check out It Is What It Is on Facebook.

Russ Feingold knew it. He was a U.S. senator in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and when the dramatic legal overreaction that was S.1510 came up for a vote in late October 2001, Feingold rose to address the potential consequences of passing the PATRIOT Act.

“Under this bill, the government can compel the disclosure of the personal records of anyone — perhaps someone who worked with, or lived next door to, or went to school with, or sat on an airplane with, or has been seen in the company of or whose phone number was called by the target of the investigation,” Feingold said. “This is an enormous expansion of authority, under a law that provides only minimal judicial supervision.”

The Wisconsin senator was the only one who voted against the dangerous legislation. Disquietingly, its super-snooping provisions have been renewed several times, most recently in 2011, when a PATRIOT extension act was signed into law by the same Barack Obama who voted to reauthorize the act while a senator in 2005.

According to the president, we should not worry. “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” he told the press in California last week. “If the intelligence community…actually wants to listen to a phone call, they have to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation.”

There’s been some odd political fallout from revelations that Verizon made millions of customer phone call records available to the government for investigative purposes under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. Of all people, conservative South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, proud that Verizon disclosed his phone records, lined up with the president, prompting reports of below-seasonal temperatures in Hell. Then the fellow who wrote the PATRIOT Act in the first place, Rep. Jim Sinsenbrenner of Wisconsin, tried to assert that secret phone record surveillance was going just too far.

There is a tendency to excuse violations of personal privacy in the name of national security, but, as Joan Walsh observed at Salon, “The scurrilous investigations into the private lives of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy began with national security concerns and ended in the disclosure of embarrassing personal information — in the case of King, designed to shame his wife and drive him to suicide.” We don’t know if there’s another J. Edgar Hoover mining data in Washington today, but why would we, since we didn’t know exactly what the first one was really up to until he was dead?

That we know anything at all now about the NSA’s activities is due to a violation of institutional privacy in the name of national awareness, perpetrated by a young man named Edward Snowden. Nominally employed by defense contractors, with appropriate security clearance, Snowden has utilized his tech skills on behalf of both the CIA and the NSA. When he leaked secret documents from the latter, some classified until 2038, to the British periodical The Guardian, Snowden not only put the NSA’s machinations up for public scrutiny, he put himself in the crosshairs of what could be for him a particularly unpleasant process of apprehension.

Like fellow whistleblower Bradley Manning, whose military trial for similar revelations of classified government documents continues this week, Snowden seems to have been motivated by what some might consider an irrational regard for the Constitution, writing that “I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world I love are revealed for even an instant.”

According to The Guardian’s accounts, Snowden had parlayed his computer security skills into nicely paying jobs with defense contractors, including the Booz Allen Hamilton firm, where he was privy to the surveillance activities of the NSA, activities that he became convinced presented “an existential threat to democracy.”

Building upon practices begun in the Bush years, the Obama administration has aggressively expanded the data-mining purview and capabilities of the NSA and perhaps other intelligence-gathering agencies. Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden, both members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and thus constrained from disclosure, have spoken indirectly about this situation for years now, suggesting that “secret legal interpretations” justified the NSA’s actions. One of those actions was implementing a covert program called PRISM to directly access data servers operated by Microsoft, Google and other internet giants.

We know of PRISM and the Verizon phone records acquisition because Edward Snowden decided to leak pertinent classified documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post.

Why did Snowden choose to throw his promising career away and expose himself to prison or worse by revealing NSA secrets? “The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything,” he told interviewer Glenn Greenwald. “I do not want to live in a world where everything I say or do is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.”

Instead, since May 20, he has been living in an expensive Hong Kong hotel, facing the threat of capture, extradition, deportation or good old-fashioned CIA “disappearing.” As Josh Marshall explained at Talking Points Memo, Snowden’s choice of China as a hideout might backfire if Beijing wants to play nice with Uncle Sam, but on the other hand, “the Chinese might relish giving asylum to an American running from the claws of US ‘state suppression.’”

Our newest whistleblower isn’t sanguine about his prospects. “All my options are bad,” Edward Snowden told The Guardian. “I do not expect to see home again.”

Photo by Buddy Roberts.

Scott Autrey vividly remembers his first visit to the Lyric Theatre.

“I literally have chills right now talking about it,” the founder of the Birmingham Vaudeville Company said, a cheery South African lilt in his voice.  “I had heard it was run down and dilapidated, with graffiti and signs of vagabonds and all, but it was remarkable.  I was absolutely in love.”

Having spent a considerable portion of his life in theaters – both on stage and in the audience – he immediately saw beyond the dust and decay.

“I could still feel the energy, the electricity, the life and the spirit of the people who had performed there.  It was as if the theater was in its off-season, an off-season that just ran a little longer than usual.  This is a theater that wants another performance, and the next production is about to go up.”

Autrey hopes the vaudeville company’s Summer Solstice show at the Alabama Theatre on Friday, June 21, will help the Lyric along in emerging from its off-season. Featuring the acrobatics and illusions of New Orleans’ Crescent Circus, the fusion belly dance of Birmingham’s Erynias Tribe, the comedy of Rich Mansfield, and a live drama performed by the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company, proceeds from the show will benefit Birmingham Landmarks’ efforts to restore the Lyric.  Tickets are available through Ticketmaster.com.

The upcoming show combines Autrey’s desire to see the Lyric open again with his desire to showcase local talent and bring unique entertainment to Birmingham through the vaudeville company.

With two degrees in visual design, he decided to “run away and join the circus.  Why not?  It’s a great lifestyle,” he said.  “I’m a gypsy.”  After working in musicals, Cirque du Soleil productions, sideshows, and vaudeville acts in Las Vegas, he relocated to Birmingham, “and I wanted to perform once I got here. But then I discovered how much talent there is here. I remember being at a performance by a local dance group and thinking, ‘Why isn’t all of Birmingham here right now? These are really cool people doing really cool stuff, and I want people to see them. These performers deserve a stage, and the people of Birmingham deserve to see them.’”

He formed the Birmingham Vaudeville Company to try to make that happen and quickly supported efforts to restore the Lyric, which opened as a vaudeville theater on Third Avenue North in 1914. Once the most popular form of entertainment in America, vaudeville shows featured comedians, singers, plate-spinners, ventriloquists, dancers, musicians, acrobats, animal trainers and other performers with unique talents.

“The headliner on opening night at the Lyric was Rube Goldberg,” Autrey said.  “He was a cartoonist who designed complicated machines to do nothing. When he worked vaudeville, he’d take suggestions from the audience. Someone would suggest, say, a machine that buttered toast, and he’d design this wildly complicated and comical contraption to butter toast right there on stage.”

The growing popularity of motion pictures and radio gradually led to the decline of vaudeville, with the Lyric converting to a movie theater during the 1920s, but Autrey believes vaudeville still exists. “Vaudeville never went away. It just changed forms. Where do you go now to see something you haven’t seen before, to see the magic of the human spirit pushing itself to do something new and extraordinary? Our vaudeville today is YouTube.”

Still, he has a respect and reverence for the entertainment form that stems to his early childhood.  “My mother made me a top hat when I was seven, and she bought me juggling balls when I was very young. She introduced me to theater, so growing up I had these different things going on. While other kids were going to piano lessons and sports, I was learning performance.”

At the same time, he was watching old vaudeville and movie comedians, appreciating how stories were told through the slapstick comedy of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd and the snappy  banter of Abbott and Costello and the Marx Brothers, who played the Lyric when they were a travelling vaudeville act.

“My parents helped me to appreciate the entertainment that was before my time. They were strict in what we watched. I remember if we were watching TV and someone said a curse word, my father would cringe. If they said another, he’d turn the TV off. So I ended up watching a lot of older stuff and really falling in love with it.”

Nathan Kepner, half of the Crescent Circus duo that will headline Summer Solstice, also traces his performing roots back to childhood.

“I started out when I was about five years old with that magic set every kid gets when they’re young,” he said. “I’m just one of the few to stick with it.”

He worked parties, which eventually led him to developing a stage act, being booked in Las Vegas, and earning the World Magic Seminar Stage Championship at age 17. “He’s incredible,” Autrey said. “I’m super excited to have him on our stage here in Birmingham. It’s going to be brilliant.”

It will be Kepner’s first time performing in Birmingham, “although we drive through often,” he said. He and his partner Morgan Tsu-Raun offer “a fusion of magic and circus acts, everything to doves to costumes changes to acrobatics. We’ll bring a little bit of everything we do for y’all, including some interactive things the audience can get involved with.”

While the premise of Crescent Circus’ act may seem a throwback to simpler forms of entertainment, Kepner said he and Tsu-Raun always try to keep it interesting for modern audiences.

“It is a challenge nowadays to bring magic to an audience. I mean, people just saw Tupac give a concert in 2012, so audiences have high expectations of what entertainment is because of technology. One thing they don’t get to experience very much, though, is interactive entertainment. It’s one thing to laugh at a TV set, but it’s different when you’re in a theater seeing the impossible happen right in front of you.”

The opportunity to be on a show to benefit the Lyric isn’t lost on Kepner.

“In New Orleans, you can walk down Canal Street and see the Loew’s Theatre, which was in disrepair for years, or the Le Petit Theatre in Jackson Square, which just reopened after being so less and less well-kept that it closed down.  You see a lot of these great old theaters degrading and being lost.  There’s so much history that’s just falling by the wayside.  Getting to walk into these places is a rarity for me in my line of work, so if I don’t see them often as a performer, the average person is missing out on a heck of a lot.”

Neither is the opportunity to stage a show benefiting the Lyric lost on Autrey.

“My life is a collection of people who do amazing things,” he said. “This city is bursting at the seams with talent, and we have this gorgeous jewel of a theater we all want to see come back to life.  It has to come together right now.  I’m spreading the word to raise money, and I’m not making a penny for that.  This is a labor of love for me, and I don’t anticipate that ever changing.  I may not ever perform in the Lyric myself, but if I could have a part in seeing in come back, I couldn’t tell you how proud I’d be.”

Starting this week, Alabama Forever and the Nomberg Law Firm are hoping to change this. They have purchased 360 bicycle helmets to be handed out through the Birmingham Mayor’s Office Division of Youth Services. The program, which started Monday, was aimed at not only keeping children safe while riding their bikes, but also in severe weather situations where having a helmet may just save a life from a tornado hurling 2x4s or other dangerous objects.

“Now that it is summertime and children are out riding bikes and scooters more, we wanted to help protect Birmingham area youth by donating helmets,” David Nomberg, partner at Nomberg Law Firm, said in a press release. “In addition, being long-term Alabama residents, we know that bad weather is much a part of our lives in this state. The helmets can also be used to protect these same children in the event of life-threatening storms,” Nomberg went on to say.

Alabama Forever, an organization that rose out of the rubble of the April 27 tornadoes, has focused on helping communities that may not have the resources to help themselves.

Alex Sokol, founder and president of Alabama Forever, says that the purpose of this bicycle giveaway is to keep the kids living and playing in the streets of Birmingham safe. “We also want to keep kids safe for when inclement weather comes through, so the law firm made a donation and went out and found 360 helmets,” Sokol said. The helmets, bearing decals with the name of the Nomberg firm, “are coded to bicycle safety standards,” Sokol said, adding that the helmets will be sized and fitted for each child.

The helmets will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis. And even though there are no specific qualifications to receive one of these helmets, Sokol says the target demographic is children who live in inner city Birmingham and may not be able to afford a helmet for themselves. This is not to say that a mother with eight kids pulling up in a Tahoe from a wealthier suburb will be denied, but Sokol says that’s not really their aim.

“For one, the email that the mayor’s office will send out will go to parents and teachers who are in Birmingham city schools. Not that we would turn away a family from Greystone who wanted helmets,” Sokol said. “That’s definitely not our goal.”

After a yearlong grassroots uprising among the Scouts — from protests to court motions — today, the board voted to reevaluate the property plan with the intent to include membership input along with outside experts and community partners.

According to the resolution, no GSNCA camp properties — including both closed and rested camps — will be sold during the re-evaluation process pending the outcome of a new comprehensive strategic plan that will be developed for the organization.

Currently, the deadline for a new strategic plan is January 2014.

GSNCA Community Partnership Chief, Russell Jackson, said, “[The board] understands this is going to be a pretty in-depth process to take the information already there and go even deeper from the original plan. The goal is in January…for the various committees…to come back with all the components a comprehensive strategic plan, and the board will be able to review that to make a better determination: Are they in a position to make resolutions? Or are they going to need more time?”

The original property plan, announced May 2012, outlined a divestment of assets, including the sale of four of six camp properties, to combat 2011 operating losses of $1 million.

“Since the plan was unveiled,” said Board President Rachel Russell, “a number of our membership has raised concerns about the closing and sale of camp properties as detailed in the three-phase property plan and the impact it may have on Girl Scouts as a whole. Many firmly believe that if given the opportunity, they can help GSNCA by raising enough community support to aid in the ongoing operational and capital needs of the camps.

“We will continue to include our membership in this new strategic planning process to help garner the best and most creative solutions in determining how we best meet, grow and sustain our Girl Scout outdoor programs for generations to come.”

Grassroots members are pleased to see GSNCA extending a welcoming hand to community support for the camps. In a March interview with Weld, Hilary Perry, GSNCA’s director of communications and advocacy, said of volunteer efforts, “it is not just a question of a one-time campaign to fix camp.”

Such a denial of volunteer efforts led many members to raise questions regarding the motivations for divesting of property.

And in the wake of what seemed to be the council’s determination to move forward with the plan, Scouts voted several members on to the board who are advocates for keeping the camps open. With new blood on the board, the three-phase plan began to lose steam.

In April, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Don Blankenship granted Scouts member Karen Carroll access to nearly 10,945 pages of operational documents in a discovery petition against GSNCA. Now the petitioner in a declaratory judgment complaint to determine who has the authority to decide on selling the camps, Carroll called today’s decision “a victory,” because GSNCA is now ready to recruit membership time, money and effort.

“We already have a list of people who will help us,” Carroll said.

“We’ll work with those groups to focus on a fundraising strategy; it’s got to be a coordinated effort, whether that be to raise funds for operational dollars or raise funds for capital improvement. We’ve heard loud and clear that there are certain groups who want to help,” Jackson said.

Still, Carroll intends to pursue the standing declaratory judgment. According to her attorney, William Bradford, “Ms. Carroll is pleased with the general direction that the resolution takes GSNCA in and also believes that the new board is certainly being more open and responsive to the concerns of membership. However, reconsideration is not the equivalent of rescission. For that reason, she is concerned that the resolution leaves in place the possibility that the camps could be sold depending on the results of the reconsideration of the three-phase plan.

“The goal of the declaratory judgment action was to resolve the issue of whether the board, as opposed to the members, possess the authority under the state statute and the GSNCA by-laws to make decisions about the disposition or sale of assets of the magnitude of those involved in the three phase property plan; namely the camps. The resolution today does not answer that question. As such, it is her present intention to go forward with the legal action in an effort to resolve the ultimate question.”

Carroll explained, “We need the question answered: Does membership actually have a say in it or not? ‘It’ being the involvement in decisions to sell more than 50 percent of our assets.”

Because of today’s decision, though, the general mood among membership is positive.

Among those most excited are the Coleman Girls, the Pell City-based troop led by April Ellis Smith. The Coleman Girls joined 30 other Scout members outside the service center where this morning’s board meeting was held. Weld spoke with the troop while they celebrated the decision at a local Chuck E. Cheese.

Troop leader Smith said, “I am just so grateful, absolutely just tickled, and it was a very emotional moment for everybody who was there. The overwhelming feeling, though, was gratitude that they finally listened to the members. We’re so excited at the potential that we now have to work with our board to renovate our camps and get them back up and running the way they need to. The next step would be to work with our board. … We’re going to be working with them to figure out when and what we can do.”

“We’ve worked very long and hard to get this decision made,” said 14-year-old Scout Beth Smith. “I think there is still a lot of work to do.”

Another trooper, 9-year-old Randi Morgan, said, “I felt really excited that they saved Camp Coleman because that camp means so much to me, and there’s a lot of memories to make still.”

Present, too, at the meeting were the Waggoner sisters, who have followed closely the dispute among local Scouts.

Lita Waggoner, ambassador Scout, explained that the camps have yet to be “saved.”

“They didn’t decide to reopen the camps,” Lita said. “They decided to reevaluate the property plan at a later date, and they will not sell the camps until they make a decision.”

Waggoner is hopeful the board and GSNCA council will continue to value membership input and will come to a reasonable decision. “I know that [the board] is going to be pressed for time to make a decision by January, and we’re very hopeful that it will work out, but we’ll just have to see.”

Lita is excited by the prospect of the reevaluation, but said, “What was especially inspiring to me today was that there were a lot of women who came down from north Alabama to participate in the group of Girl Scouts outside the council office this morning. For the most part, originally, this movement was about saving Camp Coleman, and it was a lot of women from central Alabama heading this movement, and now we’ve got women from north Alabama and the [Camp] Trico area. It’s not just about one camp anymore.

“It’s about the council as a whole and making sure that all the girls get the outdoor opportunities that they would like.”

Her sister, 12-year-old Mallory, added, “I feel like Scouting is outdoors. You can’t really be a Girl Scout without camping so if they sold our camps, what would we do?”

Jackson said service units are planning various outdoor programs for this summer. “The summer programs that were already scheduled, the camping programs at KPC and Camp Cottaquilla, are already underway.”

You can read the GSNCA resolution in its entirety below:

Girl Scouts North-Central Alabama

Resolution – Special Board Meeting – 12 June 2013

Whereas on May 9, 2012 the GSNCA board of directors adopted a three phase property plan to consolidate our property holdings with the intent to continue to offer camping in fewer facilities across the Council’s geography while expanding program opportunities and improving standards;

Whereas, a number of the membership of GSNCA raised concerns about the closing and sale of selected camp properties as detailed in the three phase property plan;

Whereas, the current board of directors has undertaken a process to re-evaluate the three phase property plan;

Whereas on May 29,2013, the GSNCA board of directors resolved to change the status of Camp Coleman and Camp Trico from “closed” to “rested” pending further action of the board;

Therefore be it resolved, the board of directors will reconsider the three phase property plan with a focus to incorporate current input from the membership using different collection processes on how best to grow Girl Scout outdoor programs in a manner that meets the current needs of the membership and provides for a continuation of outdoor programming in the future;

Be it further resolved that the board will re-consider the status of Camp Coleman and Camp Trico after the strategic planning process that evaluates current and future uses of these camps that align with the goals and desires of the membership that seek an active outdoor program is completed;

Be it further resolved, that the board of directors will not sell Camp Tombigbee and Camp Anderel that were closed in phase one of the three phase property plan and will re-consider the status of the properties as part of the strategic planning process of GSNCA;

Be it further resolved that no GSNCA camp properties will be sold during the re-evaluation of the three phase property plan, the planning process to evaluate current and future uses of the properties, the development of a strategic plan to best suit the outdoor programming needs of the membership; and the camp properties will not be sold pending the outcome of the strategic planning process and upon further action of the board of directors;

Be it further resolved that the Property Committee, in conjunction with other necessary committees (such as but not limited to the Strategic Planning Committee and Finance Committee), and input from the membership, outside experts, and community partners, shall complete the reevaluation and planning processes and prepare resolutions to be presented to the board of directors at the January 2014 board meeting.

For more information on the GSNCA, visit girlscoutsnca.org.

Yes, like many people I am a multitasker. To be more accurate, I’m a freelancer. To be even more accurate, I’m a hustler! Hustler doesn’t always have the negative connotation of some punk on a street corner trying to sell you something, or an expert pool player who’s trying to shake you down. A hustler is out there working three different jobs to put food on the table for their family. You gotta hustle to make ends meet these days, and I understand that. I embrace that. I live that! I may not have a family to support but I’m no stranger to the hustle and bustle of hustling. To be civil and professional, let’s call it freelancing. And when you say freelancing, please extend your pinkie finger. It’s just good manners. And since it’s also good manners to share, let me share with you my life as a freelancer.

Graphic designer

I worked full time as a designer for Southern Living magazine for 10 years, but after being a casualty of the layoffs in 2009, I was thrust into the world of full-time freelance and haven’t looked back. I have a few regular clients and a lot of one time gigs. A logo here, a poster there – it’s fun. I love graphic design and working with a client to get the best design for their business, event, school or nonprofit. But it can be feast or famine. Graphic design doesn’t always pay the bills, so I must resort to other means. No, not prostitution — something even more shameful: comedy!

Stand-up comic

I run a stand-up show called Fresh Ground Comics that performs the last Friday of the month at Urban Standard cafe downtown. I try to make a little money from it. Very little. Between Birmingham, Auburn and Tuscaloosa, sometimes I rake in as much as $200 a month doing stand-up comedy. That affords me a couple of utility bills and those thrift store shopping sprees that I love. Actually, I really do love them. You can find some real gems. Circa 1978, polyester, sansabelt slacks for $7? Don’t mind if I do!

Practicing lines is the key to good stand-up, but I hate learning lines, so I occasionally will make them up right on the spot. Or to put it another way, improvise.

Improv comedian

I do several improv performances a month. Improv means you improvise comedic scenes on stage. You make everything up from nothing except a suggestion or two from the audience and your own wit. I perform in two improv troupes in town, ETC (Extemporaneous Theatre Company) and Ugly Baby. Improv comedy is a lot of fun! Much like the nature of freelancing, you never know where it’s going to take you. In fact, my improvisational skills have taken me off the stage and in front of the camera.

On-screen talent

That’s a fancy way of saying I’m occasionally in the background of some TV commercials. I seem to be picked for roles that will have people coming up to me and saying, “Hey, are you the guy in the commercial who stands there and smiles and doesn’t say a word? I love how adequate you are in that commercial!”

Television commercials, corporate instructional videos, and photo shoots where I’ve been everything from a bank executive to a nurse don’t just help pay rent, they’re fun to do! I just wish they let me keep those nurse scrubs. I could use some new pajamas. They’re also good for keeping paint off my clothes. This poorly constructed segue is to let you know that I’m also a painter.

Artist

I’ve been doing these funky, colorful paintings of dogs the last couple of years. I’ve been selling them at art shows around town, and recently I did Magic City Art Connection for the first time, and it was awesome! It is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in a long time and I feel it’s just the beginning for me and my colorful canines.

Along with paintings I’ve been selling illustrations and tiny sculptures of platypi — or platypuses, if you prefer. Why tiny sculptures of Mother Nature’s most adorable abomination? Well, that’s a long story. In fact, I’m doing the illustrations for a story for kids about a little platypus. And who will write this children’s book, you may ask? Me, that’s who!

Writer

In fact you’re reading what I’ve written right now! Crazy, huh? I like to do creative, comedic writing, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have done it for a few publications in town, including Weld. This is probably the most I’ve written about myself. I’m not really this self-absorbed. They made me do it.

You can’t see it, but I was holding up air quotes when I typed the word “made.” That’s pretty hard to do. It can be hard to juggle all these jobs in the air, too, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. There are plenty of people out there multitasking and doing much more difficult things than I’m doing. I salute you! In fact, maybe we’ll all get together, share some chewing gum and walk into the sunset…because we can.

Longtime Associated Press reporter Jay Reeves was one of the more recent to point it out in an article last week: “Birmingham’s culinary scene is a jewel, with nationally known chefs and restaurants, and decades of white flight are giving way to people moving into flats and condominiums with bare brick walls in once-vacant downtown buildings. … The city’s minor league baseball team relocated this season from the suburbs and is drawing big crowds to a new downtown stadium…across the street from an urban park built on what was an unsightly lot strewn with weeds and gravel along railroad lines.

“Combine all that with a thriving nightclub scene, new craft breweries and an entertainment district that has started opening, and suddenly Birmingham is becoming a hot spot for residents and visitors alike.”

Whether or not the city renaissance fully blossoms – only time will tell – one element from the original European Renaissance seems to be manifesting itself: multitalented people distinguishing themselves by endeavors across several lines of both professional expertise and passionate interest.

Call them jacks of all trades, or Renaissance professionals, or just people who wear many hats. There are a growing number of Birminghamians who need more to be fulfilled than simply a steady job and a home to retreat to. For some, one job or even one type of job just isn’t enough.

“For myself, it is all about my innate curiosity and the drive to continue to do different things,” said David Carrigan. “It’s not even necessarily that I have a choice. I feel like sometimes it’s just the way I’m built, it’s just what I do.”

Carrigan is an example of a Birmingham professional not willing to just do one thing. He’s building a stone masonry and an Irish pub – at the same time — in the heart of downtown. And that’s not all he does. And he’s certainly not the only one.

“I think doing a bunch of different things, instead of just one – I like it myself,” said Weld contributor and longtime wearer of many hats, Chris Davis. “I’m not too tied down to one particular thing, which I hate.” Davis made the remarks during a podcast interview in 2009, when he was moving on from being laid off at Southern Living magazine. At the time he was a writer, artist, stand-up comic, actor and just on the verge of becoming a television show and web cast host.

“I’ve always been, for lack of a better word, a hustler, doing this job and this job,” Davis said. “Even when I had a fulltime job — a 9 to 5, 40 hour-a-week job at Southern Living – I was still doing comedy on the side, still doing freelance illustration and logo work and other design. I’ve always been juggling, I guess, those three things. Usually because I wanted to, then it’s because I had to. … But now, I think everybody is going to realize that this is a new era of the Renaissance person, I think.”

The term “Renaissance man” only dates back to the last century, but it looks further back into the actual 300 year period which produced several notable, multitalented scientists and thinkers such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Francis Bacon. Such people – and others before and since — had expertise in multiple subject areas, and could be described by the Greek term  polymath, meaning “having learned much.”

That Renaissance humanist belief that “a man can do all things if he will” suggests that people should learn as much and develop their abilities in all areas as much as possible. The individuals mentioned in this story suggest that at least some of that spirit is alive and well in the Magic City.

David Carrigan

Carrigan earned an undergraduate degree in graphic design before deciding to do something else. “I started my own landscaping company and started doing some stone work. Long story short, I started doing exclusively stone projects, mainly residential stone projects, and that was towards the end of 2001. That grew into my stone mason company,” he said.

From there, he pursued another interest he had, “in real estate, specifically historic structures. I got my real estate license several years ago and started to do real estate investment and have since done several projects with renovating old structures,” he said. “That all kind of came together recently with the property that I purchased downtown on Morris Avenue, both as a spot to move our stone masonry business, as well as something else I have wanted to do — the gastropub I’m opening up.”

Carrigan’s Public House, when it’s open, will share a renovated downtown space with residences and the app development firm Motion Mobs. “It’s a 4,000 square foot space inside with two outdoor seating areas on the patio level,” Carrigan said. “It’s all oriented in the rear of the building overlooking Morris Avenue and the train tracks. It will feature a full menu; simple, but a well-curated pub menu. Mainly pub-inspired food but with a fresh, culinary take on it. Also, craft beer is going to be a big part of it, with a local focus.”

Why is Carrigan’s plate so full? As he puts it, he can’t help it. “I just want to continue to be curious and look for opportunity and what could be where something is not. It’s a certain level of vision really. It’s one thing to say, ‘Hey, it would be really cool to have this here,’ and it’s another thing entirely to go out and physically do something about it.”

Rebecca Dobrinski

Rebecca Dobrinski is also a Weld contributor, but that’s just one of the many hats she wears in a dizzying array of personal activities. “How many jobs do I do? I suppose it depends on how you define ‘jobs,’” she said.

“I spend 40 hours a week at the Birmingham Museum of Art as their development manager for grants and proposals as well as the My Museum members magazine and publications editor. I freelance as an editor and a writer, plus do some consulting as a volunteer coordinator. On top of all that, I serve on the Oak Hill Memorial Association Volunteer Board, volunteer for local events such as TEDxBirmingham and organizations like the Birmingham Girls Club.”

She also feels an innate tug toward staying busy in multiple arenas, she confesses. “I have always needed variety in my jobs. When I worked in management at local movie theaters, there was plenty to do and the workweek always had different challenges. I worked for a small nonprofit nudist association in Florida where I was a contributing editor to the monthly association newspaper, the network administrator, and served as the public affairs/policy coordinator. I find I get bored if I do not have a variety of responsibilities.”

Like many who consider a diverse and busy schedule a necessity, doing more has been a lifelong habit for Dobrinski. “When I started graduate school, I worked simultaneously on two different degrees at two different schools. Between an online program on the quarter system and a semester system classroom program, those years of multitasking in my jobs really paid off. Ever since, I have kept up a similar schedule. I find it fulfilling to be able to address my various interests and not have to settle.”

As Dobrinski and others sometimes use it, the term “multitasking” refers not to the attempt to perform several tasks simultaneously, which conventional wisdom proclaims is a really bad idea – texting and driving comes to mind – but to the need to have more than one area of active interest, to be accomplished at a variety of tasks in the midst of a single lifestyle.

“I think many people continue to multitask – whether it is left over from downsizing, to supplement their income, or to fulfill their personal interests,” she said. “In the nonprofit sector especially, employees often wear multiple hats out of budgetary necessity.”

Even so, trying to do so many things well is not for everybody, Dobrinski admits. “I am not sure it is the best way for everyone to work. I think people can burn out if they take on too much, something I have learned from personal experience. When you continually work under multitasking conditions, it can be tempting to continually add to your plate.”

Kenn McCracken

Birmingham Mountain Radio’s Kenn McCracken is another professional who keeps multiple plates spinning because he would be bored otherwise. Just consider the list of things he does, many of them under his enterprise title, Insomniac Productions.

“My primary job is as a programmer/analyst, building web-based apps for the construction materials industry,” he said. “I’ve freelanced in web design and development since the early ’00s — I have four or five long-term clients for whom I do weekly work, and I pick up one-off side jobs about once or twice a month. I help maintain the website for Birmingham Mountain Radio and help out as much as I can with staffing the booth for events we sponsor, and produce and host a weekly show on Monday nights.

“I do occasional freelance writing (far less over the past years, though I spent 10 years contributing to Birmingham Weekly and roughly a year with Weld, as well as various other publications). I’m attempting to find time to build an app based on an idea of my own, with the long-term in mind.”

McCracken also feels compelled to chart multiple courses, which he suggests might be attributable to a well-known malady. “Maybe it’s my way of dealing with ADD, but I find that if I stick with just one job ‘type’, I’ll lose my motivation and interest quickly, whereas I can juggle jobs and tasks and remain more focused in the long run,” he said. “I’m careful not to switch tasks too quickly or too often — a lot of what I do requires a very distinct mindset, and it’s tough to switch too abruptly sometimes. But over the course of a typical day, I’ll switch around about every four hours between jobs, even if it’s within the same ‘job’ (i.e., work on a different app at my day job).

“I’ve been doing this sort of thing as long as I can remember — even in high school, in the late ’80s, with projects and my outside hobbies.”

People who chase numerous interests at once tend to run into other people doing the same thing, and McCracken is no different. Most of those he knows who are following so many different areas of knowledge and interest are doing so not as dilettantes, but for more practical reasons, he said. “I’m not sure if it’s a trend, as much as a necessity. In fact, I would say that on two levels — the need to diversify your activities for personality reasons, or financial concerns.”

Many of Birmingham’s budding polymaths see the need to do whatever they do well. That differentiates them from the average multitasker, struggling to do so many things at once that nothing is successfully accomplished. “Recent articles about multitasking being a myth got me wondering if I was less productive than I could be, and forced me to evaluate my habits and behaviors,” McCracken said. “It’s important to think of it on a microcosmic scale, so I’m not really multitasking in the moment. Big picture, sure, but each of my jobs gets full attention while I’m doing that job — if I start worrying or wondering about job Y while I’m working on X, I do my best to shut down X and shift.”

“But,” he said, “Everyone’s different.”

This particular item is the hottest thing going on Birmingham social media for the past couple of days, namely the article by longtime Associated Press reporter Jay Reeves that appeared in Sunday’s New York Times. Under the headline “Once Dying, Birmingham Is Suddenly Hot,” Reeves’s piece extolled what he variously referred to as the “revival,” the “renaissance,” and a “hot spot for residents and visitors alike.”

It feels like Birmingham finally is emerging from the shadows cast by the ugly racial violence of 1963, Reeves wrote. Long haunted by black-and-white newsreel footage of the fire hoses and police dogs city leaders turned on blacks demonstrating for civil rights, the city has a new vibe that’s generating buzz all its own 50 years later.

The article highlighted numerous recent and ongoing occurrences and initiatives like our food and craft beer scenes, the rise of downtown residential living and the happy juxtaposition of Railroad Park and Regions Field. In the same breath, Reeves mentioned the beautiful and historic Alabama Theatre and the cutting-edge Sidewalk Film Festival. He also took note of the growing number of young professionals flocking to Birmingham, certainly a key component of both the spirit of optimism currently afoot here and the buzz that has developed around the publication of Reeves’ article.

The upshot of it all was that Birmingham has changed, and that the transformation is little short of miraculous. Not quite on the level of Lazarus, perhaps, but a wondrous recovery from a decline that once seemed irreversible to all but the most optimistic among us.

On this last point, by the way, I am with this very sentence losing my fight to remain modestly quiet about things I have been writing for most of the past two decades, extolling the many virtues of our community as I waited with varying degrees of patience for Birmingham to begin coming into its own. Birmingham has been a great place to live for a long time, and from my view, the wonderful thing about this wave of momentum that has propelled us into the national spotlight — in addition to the Times, recent months have brought positive stories from Forbes magazine, National Geographic Traveler, USA Today and NBC, to name just those mentioned in Reeves’s story — is that it underscores the fact that we are, at long last, and in spite of the many demons that continue to bedevil us, becoming a great city.

Of course, there are those who will say that all of this attention is so much fluff — that those outsiders writing good things about Birmingham are looking at trees and missing the forest, that their emphasis is on the window dressing and not the back rooms in which too much of our community’s business continues to be conducted. And, to be honest, as one who has never been enamored of the notion that we should base our views of ourselves or our community on the opinions of outsiders, I have to give some credence to this notion. Further, I have to point out that such dogged contrarianism is forge in which our sense of ourselves is tempered, the whetstone against which our self-image is sharpened and brought into clear focus.

Another way of saying this is that we need to enjoy sweet while remaining always cognizant of the bitter. The kind of attention we’re getting now casts into sharp relief that fact that, of all of the things that Birmingham has lacked over the years, the essential one has been a sense of civic identity, a unifying vision of who we are and what we can be.

Our collective reaction to all of the recent publicity, culminating rather spectacularly with the Reeves article, reveals a burgeoning civic pride that suggests we are at last coming to the view that our community is ready for every opportunity and every challenge and that Birmingham, for the first time in its history, is taking full possession of its own destiny. Having taken said possession, the only questions are in what direction we will steer ourselves, and how we will rise to the occasions presented by both the opportunities before us and the many challenges we must confront if we are to achieve our full and undeniable potential.

If I have a quibble with the coverage accorded us by the Times, it is in the story’s headline. Specifically, it is the notion that any of this happened “suddenly.” The renaissance of Birmingham has been a long time in the making and has involved a lot of people — some of whom are not with us to enjoy this moment — whose longstanding and unstinting commitment to Birmingham and contributions to its progress constitute the foundation on which our “sudden” revival is rising.

Ours is an overnight success story that has been 50 years in the making — and of which the ending has yet to be written. We are at a critical moment in the history of our city, the ultimate resolution of which is completely in our hands.

Let’s not let ourselves down.

Photo by David Garrett.

Walk into the McWane Science Center on a weekday and you are sure to be greeted by droves of eager little children, organized into single file lines and following the leader from activity to science-filled activity.

School field trip, you say? Guess again. This is the McWane Center’s annual summer camp, spanning 10 weeks from June to August and catering to a motley crew of kids ranging from preschoolers to freshman in high school.

McWane’s annual camps are organized by age group into morning sessions and day sessions separated by a lunch break. Campers can go for half days or full days for only one week or as many as all 10.

“We’re not treating this like a classroom,” said Kathy Fournier, the camp’s director and vice president of education at the McWane Center. The campers are engaged in a variety of activities that are fun but still educational. It’s learning in disguise, and it isn’t limited to science skills, either.”

These camps mainly focus on science, technology, engineering and math — also known as STEM — and continue the McWane Center’s mission to get kids excited about science and math. The center has taken pains to play a significant role for the community in the nationwide effort to encourage and produce more professionals in these fields.

“We’ve had some of these kids coming here since kindergarten, and I’ve watched them grow up and volunteer as teenagers and then apply for a job here as a camp counselor,” said Fournier. “We have had kids go through some of our programs and camps here and then choose a career in science or math fields, and I think a lot it is because they’ve had fun with these subjects at our camps.”

However, the summer camps are not exclusively focused on subjects pertaining to science. “The big issue that we all face is summer learning loss,” said Fournier.

Students have an entire two-and-a-half to three months between the end of May and August when there is not a lot of learning going on. They can forget everything they have learned in one grade and then not be prepared for the next.

In light of this problem, McWane hopes to provide a solution. “We want to provide a place where [the kids] can come over the summer that’s safe and allows them to have fun but also keep their brains engaged,” said Fournier.

McWane accomplishes this with an expansive list of different themed activities that campers do each day, from the self-explanatory “Science of Harry Potter” to the Myth Busters-inspired “Bustin’ Myths” and everywhere in between.

There are 86 themes in total, varying in difficulty and scientific content with the age group that will participate in the activities. Preschoolers and kindergartners can participate in “Mathma-Tots,” in which the children can learn about numbers and math in a game-like atmosphere.

On the other end of the spectrum, seventh through ninth graders have “Careers in Science,” offering hands-on activities and discussions about real careers in the science field, including interactions with local scientists to help the kids decide whether or not science is the career for them.

The goal of these camps is, first and foremost, to get a younger generation excited about science. This is achieved by presenting some of the same material they would learn in a classroom through different, more informal techniques that may be able to reach kids that weren’t so interested before.

“I make an effort to go into every single camp for at least a few minutes and sit down at a table and do what they’re doing, and I just get so excited,” said Fournier. “The fifth grade was extracting DNA out of strawberries today, and I just couldn’t help myself, I had to do it with them. … [The teachers] get excited about this too because our excitement translates over to the kids.”

The camp runs every summer from the beginning of June of the beginning of August, and employs nine teachers, a staff of counselors and 75 teen volunteers, all of them passionate about science and technology and excited to teach.

“We’ve been getting a number of complaints, especially about the tree cutting on Oxmoor Road, which is highly visible. We had arranged for representatives from Alabama Power to attend the meeting and field questions from residents, which we don’t normally do, but no representatives showed up,” Wallis said.

A copy of the resolution was passed along to representatives of Alabama Power the night of the City Council meeting.

Isaac Pigott, a public relations officer for Alabama Power Company, explained why no one from APCO was present at the meeting. “Before the meeting took place we met with the mayor and he informed us that the issue was not on the agenda. We’re not ducking away. We just thought we had no business being there,” Pigott said.

When asked why he believes people are growing irritated with the tree trimming crews, Pigott wanted to stress the process by which APCO conducts their tree business. “We mail a postcard to the affected area, letting them know we will be in touch. We then go to the home and if no one is home we leave a door tag explaining what is going to be happening,” Pigott said.

Angela Comfort, a Homewood resident, described tree cutting practices – or malpractices, depending on who one asks — that she has witnessed recently. “I have personally seen the tree-trimming devastation of Alabama Power on both Hollywood Boulevard and Hermosa Drive in Homewood. They have trimmed many times by just chopping straight across. It looks like a chewed up war area. Alabama Power forgets there are other considerations to trees within a neighborhood setting than just power line maintenance,” Comfort said.

Alabama Power contends they handle trees the way they do for a reason. “Our tree cutting practices are partially about safety and also reliability,” Pigott said. “The truth is, some trees just shouldn’t exist where they are. If we need a line to go up, the tree has got to go. We’ve got arborists. We’ve got tree experts who know what they’re doing.”

Since the resolution has passed, APCO and its representatives have been apologetic for the choppy workmanship of the tree experts that they have contracted. “We had a meeting with APCO representatives the Friday following the city council meeting and they were very apologetic for the tree-cutting practices of the contractors,” Wallis said. “They were really nice about it.”

However, apologies cannot quickly change the results of the previous practices. The young cherry trees on Oxmoor Road that Wallis referenced have been topped and the limbs cut laterally, meaning, some residents suggest, that in a matter of years those trees may die.

“When the tree tops are removed, so are the noise barriers to the highway noise pollution. I don’t know why they do not bury the lines underground so that the positive effects of foliage could naturally take its course on both these streets,” Comfort said.

But Pigott said things are not that simple, even if he wishes they were. “The developer bears all the cost when you put lines underground. It’s a lot easier to do before an area is developed. Not to mention when you have a problem with them, it’s much more expensive to fix, especially here in Alabama where we have thick red clay,” Pigott said.

Jacksonville State University may have a solution. On June 17-21, JSU will hold the Northeast Alabama Film Business and Technology Camp, sponsored by the Northeast Alabama Entertainment Initiative.

A weeklong film “boot-camp,” the camp will be aimed at high school students or anyone interested in a career in filmmaking. The hands-on lessons will cover nearly everything imaginable that pertains to the film industry.

“The camp is basically applied learning where from day one, moment one, we bring some hands on professional equipment,” said Chuck Bush, a veteran filmmaker and one of the teachers at the camp. ”We’ll deal with everything from story structure, screenwriting, directing, lighting, cinematography, sound, post-production, the entire gamut, in a learning situation where we will be working towards shooting two short films during the camp. Everything that we will use in camp will be used in real life if this is the career path that they choose.”

Bush has done it all in the business, with 30 years of experience in the field that has included everything from acting in front of the camera to screenwriting and producing behind it. He began his career in 1983 with a starring role in the film Fandango. He then moved to screenwriting, proactively editing and producing on the side, and currently owns Media Circus, which provides equipment for movies and television.

Working alongside Bush is Jeffrey Nichols, a veteran Hollywood cinematographer who is currently in Hollywood working on a film. Combined with Bush, they have 60 years of experience in filmmaking, and they hope to bring their talents and experience in the business and help young film students begin their careers.

Pete Conroy, full time employee of JSU, president of the NEAEI and director of Longleaf Studios, where the camp will be held, hopes that the camp will motivate current and future film students to pursue their passions, something made possible today with modern technology and increased access to the industry.

“In the old days if you had aspirations to be a movie star or a director, it was very difficult to do because everything was so far away. But now with websites like YouTube, people have much more access to the industry, and there is a much broader audience for people looking to get into the business,” said Conroy.

Ultimately, the camp aims to jump start the careers of promising young film students: “[The camp is] a cross between training and a career day…for students who want a deeper understanding of film,” said Bush.

The camp has 12 spots available and costs $650 per student, but the NEAEI will provide $300 scholarships for all 12 students, lowering the fee to $300 for five days of hands-on film education.

That question has haunted me since my son asked it weeks ago, so I went in search of an answer.  But first I revisited 1963, and what a year it was.

A year that stamped Alabama into the psyche of the rest of the nation in too many wrong ways.  Though it probably more fitting to say we were pounded, rather than stamped.

In May of that year, black and white television sets across the country watched as NBC’s Chet Huntley and David Brinkley broadcast pictures from Birmingham of police dogs, fire hoses and billy clubs turned loose on Civil Rights demonstrations. In June, 43-year-old first-term Governor George Wallace stood at the University of Alabama and declared that the federal government was oppressing the “rights, privileges and sovereignty” of the state.

And on a Sunday morning in September, an explosion ripped through a church in Birmingham and claimed four young girls as its victims.

So surely my son, Kevin, is wrong.  Surely we’ve long since turned our back on intolerance.  Surely we’ve now rejected those voices that dwell more on our fears than  our hopes.

But have we really?

When I see our state senate vote 24-6 for a bill that would declare federal gun control laws null and void in the state if they were in “violation of the Second Amendment,” I again hear the voice of George Wallace.  (One Republican senator called this bill “political pandering” but his colleagues paid no attention.)

When I read a press release that falsely accuses education leaders of misspending millions of dollars, I wonder again why children are so often the weapons of choice in a political skirmish.

When I hear Tea Party leaders say that if we adopt Common Core education standards it will be the same as having President Obama as our children’s classroom teacher, I hear ancient voices once again reminding us that someone “ain’t one of our own.”

When I hear our Chief Justice say that instead of spending money on pre-kindergarten programs, we should give it to the court system, I think about all the research he is ignoring about the role early childhood education plays in reducing crime and again wonder why we can’t see the forests for the trees.

But wait; while we may still harbor some of the attitudes of 1963, certainly we’ve come a long way in economic measures such as median family income.

Yes, we have advanced. Fifty years ago we were no. 47 in the nation, now we’re no. 45.  However, while Alabama was basically running in place, other southern states were running faster.

For example, Georgia went from no. 43 to no. 37.  North Carolina went from no. 45 to no. 38 and South Carolina from no. 48 to no. 44.

And in spite of all the incentives used to lure car plants and their suppliers, we still have five of the 50 poorest counties in the country.  Only Mississippi and Kentucky have more than we do.

So what happened?  If we could roll back the clock 50 years, what should we do differently?

Instead of worrying about who was going to school, we should have worried about the quality of education they were receiving.  Apparently that’s what some other southern states did.  For example, if you look at data from 4^th grade math scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress comparisons, you find that Alabama trails South Carolina by ten places, Georgia by 14 and North Carolina by 36.

And when you look at the top five states in this category, they all rank in the top 10 nationally in median family income.  So there appears to be linkage between prosperity and education.

But what have we just done?  In probably the most radical piece of education legislation ever passed by the state legislature, one that politician after politician has hailed as the chance to get students out of failing schools, we made sure that the 11,000 kids in failing schools in Birmingham could only go to non-failing schools in neighboring systems if they are invited.

So Kevin, while I pray it is not still 1963 in Alabama, I’m not sure 50 years have passed since it was.

Larry Lee led the study Lessons Learned from Rural Schools, and is a long-time advocate for public education who frequently writes about education issues. You can reach him at larrylee33@knology.net.

Four chords: B minor, D, F-sharp minor, E. That is the simple loom upon which two helmet-headed musicians calling themselves Daft Punk have woven the intricately elegant “Get Lucky,” a tune that, by the time you are sick of it in September, will have insinuated itself into popular culture as the summer song of 2013.

It is no small thing. Singers from Johnny Ace to Gotye have shown that almost anyone can have a hit record, but the summer song hit is rare and heady stuff indeed. Summer, a time of infinite fun and personal drama, practically demands its own soundtrack, and the challenge of creating music to accompany a nation’s season of celebration is insurmountable for most artists.

The first, and likely the most enduring, summer song is “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer set the bar high when they penned that ditty in 1908, hanging lyrics about summer fun and romance (it’s in there; check the complete lyrics) on a monster melodic hook that was an irresistible singalong.

Subsequent summer songs have offered variations on this formula. Certainly, the easiest way to make a summer hit is to actually use the word in your song. Thus did “Summertime” (by Billy Stewart in 1966 and DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince in 1991), “Summer” (War, 1976), “Summertime Blues” (Eddie Cochran, 1958), “In the Summertime” (Mungo Jerry, 1970) and the immortal “Summer in the City” (Lovin’ Spoonful, 1966) insinuate themselves into our recollections.

Sometimes alluding to the season’s temperature will get the job done, as was the case for “Heat Wave” (Martha and the Vandellas, 1963) and “Hot Fun in the Summertime” (Sly and the Family Stone, 1969). Chilling in “Waterfalls” (TLC, 1995) or the “Sea of Love” (Phil Phillips, 1959), or just “Grazing in the Grass” (Hugh Masekela, 1968) “Under the Bridge” (Red Hot Chili Peppers, 1992) could take the edge off with a twist of the radio dial.

Were Dick Clark still hosting the Pyramid, he might have rolled out a category labeled “Things Related to Summer” from which a songsmith might pick. That way you’d get “School’s Out” (Alice Cooper, 1972), “Rock The Boat” (The Hues Corporation, 1974), “Vacation” (The Go-Go’s, 1982) and even “Kodachrome” (Paul Simon, 1973).

Sometimes you don’t need words to make a summer song, if you’ve an instrumental the quality of “Green Onions” (Booker T. and the MG’s, 1962) or “Theme from ‘A Summer Place’” (Percy Faith, 1960). Sometimes one word’s all you need (“Wipeout.” The Surfaris, 1963).

A summer song often eludes classification, as with “Whiter Shade of Pale” (Procol Harum, 1967), “My Sharona” (The Knack, 1979), “Sledgehammer” (Peter Gabriel, 1986), “Macho Man” (The Village People, 1978) or “Yakety Yak” (The Coasters, 1958). Folks just wanted to hear ‘em, that’s all.

The subject that informs the majority of summer songs is, of course, love and its many guises. There’s “Radar Love” (Golden Earring, 1974) and “The Love You Save” (The Jackson 5, 1970). “All You Need Is Love,” averred The Beatles in 1967, but 10CC proclaimed “I’m Not In Love” in 1975. Sweet romance imbues “Kiss From A Rose” (Seal, 1995), “Call Me Maybe” (Carly Rae Jepsen, 2012) and “Close to You” (Carpenters, 1970), but lust abides in “Let’s Get It On” (Marvin Gaye, 1973), “Wild Thing” (The Troggs, 1966) and “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” (Tina Turner, 1984).

Which brings us to Daft Punk and its 2013 invocation of love, couched in musical terms that would have fit the charts comfortably 35 years ago. DP, which consists of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, has previously dwelt among electronica, using loops and samples to create its agreeably chilly dance music, popular in clubs but not exactly in the mainstream of pop culture.     Though Daft Punk dropped a live CD in 2007 and created the soundtrack for the most recent Tron movie in 2010, its last studio effort, Human After All, was released in 2005.

In the ensuing eight years, the computer operators determined that adding live musicians to their mixes might be a worthwhile step to take. They started with jazz drummer Omar Hakim, notable for his work with Sting, Miles Davis and David Bowie, among others, and bassist Nathan East of the jazz supergroup Fourplay, whose pop work includes collaborations with Eric Clapton, Phil Collins and Toto. Hakim and East laid down the demo track for “Get Lucky” more than a year ago. Then it was time for a little disco magic.

Fans of the peerless Chic rhythm section, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards (their summer song was 1979’s “Good Times”), the DP pair reportedly appeared unannounced at Rodgers’s Manhattan apartment to request his services last year. The three checked into Jimi Hendrix’s old studio to add the signature Rodgers guitar scratch, after which Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes was flown to Paris to add lyrics and vocals.

The result, appearing on the new album, Random Access Memories, is an old-school smash. The first chord drops clean as an Olympic high diver into a pool, Rodgers tickles the beat a bit, and then the song shrugs into perpetual motion. “Like the legend of the phoenix,” Williams croons, “all ends with beginnings.”

Just listen. “Get Lucky” sounds like the million bucks it may have cost to make, four minutes of studio perfection, all longing and lubricity, much like summer itself.

*****

There is further news of Tomas Young and it is good. We reported in this space recently about the paraplegic Iraq War veteran who publicly announced his intention to end his life rather than endure further pain and suffering. Though his prognosis is unchanged, the 33 year-old activist has reconsidered suicide. “I want to spend as much time as possible with my wife,” he told his hometown newspaper. “And no decent son wants his obituary to read that he was survived by his mother.”

And while all of that continues to shake out, we thought we’d ask a question of a few people who expend their deep thoughts on what goes on here: What’s the Next Big Thing in Birmingham? Or, if they’d prefer, what should it be?

Some were concise and to the point, like environmental and business attorney Bart Slawson, who summed up a number of issues he expects or hopes to see move to the forefront: “I think land banks, redevelopment authority, far more urban gardens and farms and solar energy,” he said.

Others weaved their own personal narratives into their thoughts about what should happen in the city. More than one respondent found the open-ended question required more than one Big Thing to answer it. Clearly, many have a passionate interest in what happens next here.

Here’s what they said:

Darrell O’Quinn, DVM, Ph.D, scientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, president of the Crestwood Community Advisory Committee

The Next Big Thing in Birmingham is already happening: generational change. In fact, it is a nationwide phenomenon, which may be the most validating reason for renewed optimism in our city. For whatever reason, perhaps due to the emergence of social media and the many connections and reconnections that it enables, a broad segment of our society appears to be grasping the value of meaningful interaction with fellow human beings.

Here and across the country, the balance of “things” versus “experiences” seems to be coming closer to equilibrium as the value of community rises. With this has come the reemergence of the concept of “human scale,” a recognition of how the previous era of sprawl has diluted, devalued and undermined our access to meaningful interactions and experiences. Like Jim Crow or McCarthyism, it is now difficult not to contemplate, “What the hell were they thinking?” when encountered with a neighborhood built without sidewalks.

Birmingham’s challenges are well-documented and have been and continue to be oft-elaborated. Change cannot come too soon for many of us. However, change is coming. Its pace need only be determined by how many chose to lend their weight to pressing the accelerator.

D. Keith Andress, shareholder, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, P.C.

The Next Big Thing in Birmingham, and in the United States, will be healthcare.  For 30 years, we have been warned about the Baby Boomers aging, and the related increase in necessary healthcare this would cause.  Well, it’s here.  The youngest boomer is 49 and the oldest is 67.  This very large group of Americans is hitting the ages when their healthcare needs will significantly increase.  Unfortunately, Father Time is undefeated, so there will be an increase in demand for healthcare services.  This increase in demand will start a ripple effect, causing an increase in need for health care suppliers, R&D, administrators and general support.  Birmingham has an outstanding healthcare community, so we should be well-suited with the infrastructure and talented professionals needed to meet this challenge and opportunity.

On a related note, I think farming will become big again. People are starting to pay attention to what they eat and what goes into the food that they eat. Processed foods are becoming frowned upon, and food additives are being scrutinized (e.g. pink slime).  You are seeing movies that are critical of the food industry (e.g. Super Size Me) and an increase in healthy literature (e.g. Eat This Not That).  Grocers like Whole Foods are popping up, and more conventional grocers are offering organic and grain-fed meat options. Unhealthy food may soon be viewed like tobacco products are now – a blight on our national health.

If this pans out and food becomes locally grown, then just like [with] healthcare, Alabama could be primed to take advantage of increased demand. Personally, I hope this becomes the case. I think it would be wonderful for people to have affordable and available locally grown healthy food options.

Jen Barnett, CEO of Freshfully

I think downtown will explode with growth because of the new tax credit and the traffic we’re seeing at the park [Railroad Park] and stadium [Regions Field]. I hope that the growth is carefully balanced between businesses that identify Birmingham, like the Barons or the 2nd Avenue shops, and businesses that don’t, like Todd English P.U.B. We don’t have to be just like Chattanooga, Atlanta, Nashville or Austin to be great. Birmingham was built on industry, and I think our hard-working nature is our real identity. Birmingham’s renaissance is the work of a few special souls who never gave up on this town, and I think more and more people will join their fold until the force for change becomes unstoppable.

Deontée Gordon, client advisor at Chronicle Studio

My first question would be: The Next Big Thing in what? Governance? Transit? I guess it’s a question that encompasses everything. Assuming that to be the case, the Next Big Thing should be better regional governance (not necessarily metropolitan governance) through open data. On the tangible side, the full adoption (and implementation) of a smart growth strategy. Comprehensive transit, citywide form-based code, place making, etc. Throw UAB into the mix as well. Growth (without sacrificing quality) should be a primary goal. It’s the engine that drives Birmingham, and, to a good degree, the state. It can be leveraged like no other university in Alabama can.

Tamika Holmes, vice president of community relations & workforce development at the Birmingham Society for Human Resource Management

I feel there are a lot of things we can do to help make the City of Birmingham brighter and better. The most important to me at this time is to gain control over the Birmingham City School system. I work with individuals from all walks of life, and the saddest thing I see is a high school graduate on their way to college with no clue or a college graduate who is struggling to find gainful employment. There are a number of factors that play a part in our economic state, but one thing I feel we can do within the school system is to develop comprehensive programs to help students decide where their strengths and weaknesses lie.

I thought of a career corner or a college corner in each of the high schools where students are introduced to their school counselors each year and given additional tools to help them on an annual school year basis. If this is done all four years of high school, students can better gauge what they want to do with their lives. This definition will help them to determine if they would like to go to college, develop a trade or open a business.

There are all types of free tools that can be used to help individuals determine if they are to be college bound or if they would just like to attend a trade school. The more I talk to high school students, the more concerned I get. We have so many who are focused on becoming the next American Idol or the next Dwyane Wade that they are not focused on developing a sustainable plan.

I posed … questions to some students during a two-week span. The question was, “What do you want to  be when you grow up?” Now I can remember being asked this question a million times when I was growing up. This same question was asked to students who started from grade pre-K to 12th grade. There were multiple races. Some of the students were involved in advanced placement classes, but the majority were not.

Out of all the students I talked with there were very few who wanted professional careers (to become doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers etc.). Of these students, there were hardly any who knew someone in the field they wanted to work in. Some had parents who worked in the field, but they didn’t talk to them about what their job entailed. There were some who wanted to be auto mechanics, small business owners, beauticians, barbers, etc. But what was troubling was that these were the kids who ranged from pre-K to sixth grade. When we got to the seventh grade through 12th grade we had the more elaborate professions — R&B singer, professional football player, professional basketball player. Some of them just wanted to be “rich.”

There is a huge disconnect between where our kids are and where they should be. I didn’t have my mother in my life when I needed her. I did have my dad, and my grandmother. I also had my teachers. I grew up in an era where teachers were a little older, and had more patience. They taught more than what was within the four corners of the curriculum. I learned life lessons, history, and when I did wrong I was punished for it.

A huge part of disconnect is that the village effort has been diminished. Teachers are not allowed to discipline students, parents are overprotective, younger, and do not want to receive constructive criticism on how to help the children, and as an end result our children are suffering. They are a bunch of confused kids and young adults who are not taught basic life skills.

Where do we go from here? The Birmingham City School System developed the Birmingham City Schools Career Academies. This program includes professional career areas like healthcare, engineering and education. While we would like for every child to go to college and obtain a professional career, there are some who will not make it to college, whether because of money or interest. There are a few who may decide to go into the military, but what about those who don’t? How do we help them? My proposal is to open up more programs catered around trades such as cosmetology, Class A and B truck driving, auto mechanics, etc. This way they can truly say no child will be left behind.

Joe Adams, research coordinator at the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama

Something dealing with friendship, welcoming acceptance and safety would be nice. I don’t think we need another venue as much as a new attitude and identity that says, “We’re Birmingham and proud of it because of something about who we are, not where we’re at.” To borrow a phrase from Dr.Seuss, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

Joseph Baker, president of I Believe in Birmingham

I don’t think it’s any secret what I think it should be: a real 20/59 solution. … The bridges of Interstate 20/59, which cut an ugly scar through our city so long ago, have reached the end of their lifespan. It is time to deal with replacing them. When the interstates were placed downtown originally, the path [that was] decided on bulldozed through neighborhoods whose makeup was largely black and poor.

In the last few months the Department of Transportation has suddenly become a madhouse of activity, with a curious fixation on dealing with replacing the aging downtown interstate bridges as soon as possible. They have eschewed any suggestions of doing anything other than their plan under the pretenses of either 1) too expensive or 2) too technically challenging. Despite the fact that almost a decade ago we commissioned studies and informed ALDOT of our desire to seriously consider the option of lowering the interstate below ground to minimize its impact on our downtown, they have repeatedly offered nothing but excuses and roadblocks to the idea.

Burying interstates in downtowns is nothing new, nor is the idea unfeasible. Many major cities throughout the nation and abroad have done so or are in the process of doing so. … ALDOT has proposed either simply redecking the bridges and forgetting about us for another generation or they have “graciously” offered to rebuild the bridges from scratch making them taller, wider, and more obtrusive while also removing any direct interstate access to downtown. Oh, and rebuilding the bridges means we will have to deal with them for another 60-70 years.

So ask yourself what is good for the city. … We can and should do better. But if we are to do that then we must organize our response, find the resources to enact it and persuade our fellow citizens to support it. And it should be said that ALDOT is not the enemy here. They have a job to do, limited resources to achieve success and a tight leash from state leaders. They need our help to get this right. … To that end we must address their problems with our plan, starting with the biggest issue: funding.

But there is a ready solution for this issue. The Appalachian Regional Commission is a federal entity tasked with funding highway projects throughout the Appalachian Mountains to improve lives for the Americans living there. They have several billion dollars in their account awaiting worthy projects for funding.

A certain other onerous highway project proposed for our region was slated to drain the ARC’s account for a road that would go mostly nowhere through areas without supporting infrastructure in a county that is bankrupt and cannot afford to build out said infrastructure. Those issues are not the case for lowering 20/59 in downtown Birmingham.

We have a resurging downtown, historic neighborhoods adjacent to downtown that are attracting new investment, a first class convention center next door with a beautiful new hotel, new parks, a new stadium… We have everything we need going for us to justify fighting for that funding. And if we cannot get all that we need from ARC then we shall find it in other places.

What do you think the Next Big Thing in Birmingham will be? Or what should it be? If you’d care to share your thoughts, email them to editor@weldbham.com or comment below.

Photo by David Garrett.

The irony of a city is that it often plays host to loneliness. One Birmingham group is dedicated to connecting locals, voice by voice.

The Magic City Choral Society (MCCS) is a community-based nonprofit that provides a choral singing opportunity for any male or female above the age of 18.

“I have experienced a profound sense of belonging since joining MCCS. This is a group that accepts me the way that I am and nurtures me and provides me an outlet to share my joy of life through music and song,” says Travis Harell, a member of the altruistic group. “I feel I am part of a family and have the support of my fellow singers and musicians to help me face anything that comes my way.”

The MCSS was begun in 2007 by a collection of the musically inclined, led by Dr. Paul Dease, an educator and conductor of choral music and a native of Dothan.

Originally, MCCS was intended to be an all-male group — the Birmingham Gay Men’s Chorus. That changed, however, when organizers realized that others could enjoy the experience as well, and that there was a greater need for an all-inclusive adult chorus group, which could potentially grow and better meet the needs of the community.

MCCS is different than any other chorus in the Birmingham metro area. “What distinguishes us from any other group is that we are un-auditioned. Anybody can come and sing,” says Dease. Any person in search of a choral experience is welcome, regardless of prior knowledge or skill level. “Every group in town is ‘audition,’ which means a lot of people are being left out of this profound experience. It’s a communal experience, a thing that we get to do together. But the art experience itself — the feeling of being in this sheer wall of sound together — there are people being left out of it,” says Dease.

The reason behind this audition-free idea is somewhat remarkable. “Music is a human behavior, and human behaviors can be observed. If you can observe it, then you can describe it. And if you can describe it, then you can teach it. It’s really that simple.”  Dease is taking normal people and educating them to sing in a way that produces a professional sound.

This theory has proven to be so effective over the past six years that, due to the drastic improvement in skill sets within the group, MCCS is now able to perform three to four concerts a year instead of their previous maximum of only two. In addition to the concerts, MCCS also puts on three annual fundraisers — a Halloween party, a Masquerade and the Summer Soiree — which help fund the group during its slower season.

The MCCS is also very distinctive in its chosen performance material. Seemingly devoid of any limitations regarding musical genre, the group performs everything from western classical to pop. Included in the MCCS repertoire at the most recent concert, Pop Goes the Culture — a concert performed in collaboration with the Red Mountain Chamber Orchestra —were renditions of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and “Fix You” by Coldplay. At the opposite end of the musical spectrum, MCCS also enjoys performing pieces such as Morten Lauridsen’s “Sure on this Shining Night.”

Just because MCCS is a non-auditioning group does not mean its members are lacking in dedication or effort. This unique experience does require hard work from those involved — hard work that seems to be paying off. “Each choir rehearses two hours a week. And then the week before a performance, they are at rehearsal every night for about three hours. “

The MCCS has also been known to organize flash mobs. A couple of years ago around Christmastime, the group was invited to treat the holiday shoppers at Saks to a surprise concert. As throngs of vocalists filled the cosmetics department, people stopped what they were doing, filed in from outside, and eagerly listened as MCCS — with the help of other local choral groups — spread holiday cheer throughout.

“Choral music doesn’t just touch the performer’s life, it touches the people who hear it,” Dease says.

Among the group’s performances so far this year have been those for Earth Day and the Feast of St. Aelred. “We try to sing for organizations that share our values. Our mission statement is ‘creating an inclusive community of singers and supporters, united around the performance of choral music that educates, entertains and inspires,’” says Dease.

Although MCCS is always looking for opportunities to grow and become more, Dease also believes that it is important for them to stick to their roots. “Originally we were born out of the LBGT community here in Birmingham, and we want to make sure that we celebrate all human beings, regardless of where they come from, how much money they have, who they love.”

Because MCCS is a nonprofit organization, dependent upon the support of the surrounding community for success, MCCS feels it is imperative to give back; all concerts are free of charge. This professional-grade entertainment is simply for the enjoyment of its fans. “There was a need,” says Dease. “As a professional, I want to fan those same flames in other people. I want them to have that same transformative experience.”

The next event on this year’s calendar for MCCS is the annual Summer Soiree fundraiser, which is to be held on June 28 at Avondale Villa. Dease describes the event as a lighthearted summertime ‘fun’-raiser, complete with performances of tunes by the Beach Boys, silent and live auctions, great food and bottomless piña coladas.

Dease and MCCS are literally — and figuratively — trying to reach the other side of the mountain. “Who are we?” Dease asks. “We are every man and every woman’s chorus.”

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.

—    Henry Brougham

How late is too late?

As it relates to the Birmingham municipal election scheduled for August 27, as good an answer as any can be found by copping the refrain from one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs: It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there. Before too many more weeks come and go, it might be appropriate to switch to a verse from the Book of Jeremiah: The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.

This is an important election for a lot of reasons. Far from least among these is that the office of mayor and the entire Birmingham City Council will be on the same ballot for the first time since 1963, the year that the change to a mayor-council form of government went into effect. In that historic election — and this gets directly to the point of this column, at which I will arrive presently — there were four candidates for mayor, along with 76 candidates to fill nine city council seats. Just to assure the reader that there is no misprint here, I will spell that out: seventy-six candidates.

I make note of this because over the past few months, I have devoted considerable amounts of this space to reminding anyone kind enough to pick up our newspaper or visit our website of the importance of this upcoming election. I have done this through various devices — writing about the need for visionary leadership, of the need to encourage good people to run for office and to support them when they do so, and above all else, of the importance of voting.

That last item in particular is something of which no one with even a passing knowledge of Birmingham’s history should need reminding. Our city, as perhaps nowhere else in America, is a shining example of how an engaged community with a shared purpose — in the case of the voters of 1963, driving Bull Connor from office and ending official segregation — can effect sweeping change.

Not that I expect anyone to get all charged up simply on my say-so. Indeed, the direct and critical connection between voter participation and at least the potential for better government — especially on the local level — should be self-evident.

Apparently, that is not the case. The election of 2013 is, I will repeat, important — but you wouldn’t know it from either the level of public interest in contests that are only a dozen weeks away as I write this, or in the number, let alone quality, of candidates who have declared to date in the races for mayor and council. I hasten to add that I don’t mean to say that there are no good candidates, or that any number of good people might not jump into one race or the other in the next few weeks. At the moment, however, the pickings remain slim.

Prospects are at least slightly better in the third election on the ballot this August, the district-based selection of the nine members of the Birmingham Board of Education. Including both some current board members and several announced challengers, the increased public interest in our city’s public education system that has evinced itself in various ways in the past year or so is reflected in the field of candidates. Still, that same interest is not yet reflected in — well, in actual interest in the election. Few things would improve Birmingham and help pave the way to the brightest possible future for us all — either substantively or in terms of self-image and outside perceptions — than the turnaround of our school system. The best way to ensure that happens is to elect a qualified, focused school board that can unite around what remains a daunting mission.

Which brings me back to where I started this column. It’s getting late, late enough that my biggest fear at this point is that even if we wind up with several fine candidates, they have not given themselves time to catch on with the public. The upshot of that is that such a situation almost guarantees that voter turnout will be abysmal, which in turn virtually assures that we will get little to none of the change we need to kick the civic momentum Birmingham has built up of late into hyperdrive.

I won’t say that I’m beginning to despair — yet — of the increasingly likely outcome of the 2013 elections. But neither do I find much at this increasingly late date on which to hang my hopes.

In closing this week’s column, I’m going to take a moment to note the tremendous response to what I wrote last week, urging the public to contact their city councilor about Mayor Bell’s omission of Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve from his recommended budget for FY 2104. In addition to the number of citizens who have made their feelings known to City Hall, I’ve been made aware of at least one civic organization — the YMBC Civic Forum — that has passed a formal resolution urging the City Council to provide adequate operational funding for Ruffner. This, too, is how change is effected, and wrongs corrected.

At first glance, the fancifully dressed visitors to Birmingham’s own Victorian era cemetery might have looked like average mourners from the 1870s. But those period details, when seen through more modern imaginations, are what make Steampunk fashion so fitting at Oak Hill Cemetery.

Oak Hill hosted its inaugural Steampunk Stroll last Saturday, allowing visitors, especially those attired according to the theme, to wander the grounds picnicking and taking photos.

The Steampunk Stroll was the brainchild of Oak Hill volunteer Wilhelmina Thomas. A Steampunk/Steamfunk enthusiast herself, Thomas hopes events like this will provide a gathering place for others who share her enthusiasm for the genre. “Steampunk is about reimagining how things could have happened,” explained Thomas. “It is about re-writing myths to the modern era. We are still dealing with the same issues of industrialism, technology, race, and class. This is a way to explore creativity and creatively making your own world.”

Currently, there are few organized events in the city. Steampunk groups in Huntsville, Atlanta, and Anderson, North Carolina host regular get-togethers. In North Carolina, enthusiasts meet monthly and host a major gathering in November. Founded in Atlanta in 2009, AnachroCon “celebrates Historical Reenacting, Alternate History, Steampunk, Sciences, Horror, Etiquette & Indulgence, Fashion, Fabrication, Literature & Media, and Costuming.”

Thomas is also active in the Steamfunk movement, a subgenre of Steampunk that focuses on the African-American point of view. Steamfunk is gaining traction; Milton Davis, Balogun Ojetade and Marcellus Shane recently published Steamfunk!, an anthology of the movement. Other sub-genres of Steampunk include feminist groups, as well as those that celebrate multiculturalism.

Visitors to the cemetery also enjoyed mild weather for a mausoleum-themed tour, introducing them to the eight crypts located on the site. Oak Hill docent Renee Gainer discussed the varying architectural designs and the ages of the mausoleums, all built between 1880 and 1912. She began the tour with a brief history of mausoleums and talked about the world’s most recognizable tombs: the Pyramids of Giza and the Taj Mahal.

Excluding that of Charles Linn, most of the crypts at the cemetery were built for families, and of those seven, six of them contain multiple family members. The Kelley mausoleum is the exception, and although it has space for others, it is for now only the final resting place for a two-month-old member of the Kelley family.

Oak Hill Cemetery will host themed docent-led tours through November. The next tour is scheduled for Saturday, July 6, and will be led by cemetery docent David Hamilton. He will be discussing cemetery symbolism. In August, docent Terri Hicks will lead a tour themed around early Birmingham disasters. Tours start at 10 a.m. with a suggested donation of $5.

Oak Hill Cemetery is located in downtown Birmingham, near the Civic Center. Visit oakhillbirmingham.com for more information.

As fundraising has hit the halfway mark, MacQueen — who is working  on the monument in Berkeley, California, with a team of assistants — described the pace as “going, going, going.

“I have given my word that I will try and get these four pieces finished and installed by the 50th anniversary,” MacQueen said.

The four pieces refer to bronze, life-size statues of the four slain girls:  Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie MaeCollins, each of whom was 14 years old, and Denise McNair, who was 11. The statues will make up the bulk of the monument, which will be on a corner stretch of sidewalk alongside Kelly Ingram Park,  across from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and diagonally across from the Sixteenth Street church.

“The sidewalk is very broad there on the corner,” said Birmingham attorney Chervis Isom. “It’s a much better site than within the park.”

Isom is a founding member of Four Spirits Inc., the nonprofit committee that organized last year to get a monument in Kelly Ingram. The park, west of downtown, was the scene of mass demonstrations and marches during the pivotal civil rights year for Birmingham, 1963, as well as responses from authorities that included the use of police dogs and blasts of water from fire hoses. Sculptures throughout the park commemorate those events, but there is no standing memorial to the four girls, who died in a Ku Klux Klan bomb blast as they were getting ready for a Sunday service.

The price tag for the memorial is $250,000 and Isom said fundraising “is going well. We are actively reaching out to foundations and having some success.”

The fiscal agent handling contributions to the Four Spirits project is the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham. “We’re feeling confident, we’re about halfway there,” said Marguerite Johnson, the foundation’s senior vice president of grants and initiatives. Johnson said the gifts and pledges include as little as $5 from an out-of-state donor to much larger sums of $25,000 each from the foundation, the City of Birmingham and United Way of Central Alabama Inc.

The Four Spirits project takes its name from the title of Birmingham native Sena Jeter Naslund’s 2003 novel about the events of 1963.  MacQueen, who grew up in Mountain Brook, was the only female of six artists who sent in a submission in response to ads in Weld requesting proposals and her proposal was selected in December. She happened to be home visiting when a friend showed her the Weld ad, and she just managed to meet the application deadline.

Now, with the help of a team of assistants, MacQueen is pushing to meet an even more important deadline – that of the 50^th anniversary of the bombing. Deadlines can help artists focus, but they also can carry a weight that is not always easily borne. For MacQueen, that weight has included having to think about the bombing as she goes about her work day.

Using what she described as a shell casting process, MacQueen said she and team members should be working “six days a week for the next two months until we are finished with the pieces in clay, one by one.” Once enough clay is in place on an armature or framework, MacQueen will do her sculpting. Then a mould is made of each piece, and a layer of microcrystalline wax goes into each mould to make a wax casting. The casting is tweaked and separated from the mould. Then, over several days, it is dipped several times in a ceramic shell mixture so it will have a hard shell layer.

Once that layer is dry, it’s time for the piece to go into a steam-heated device called an autoclave, where high temperatures will burn out the wax. The ceramic shell is baked and hardened, and then the piece will be cast with molten bronze. To make a complete figure, various pieces will be welded together.

“We then go over them, check them and mark where we find errors made by nature,” MacQueen said. “These are corrected and the process continues.”

When it is finished, the sculpture will show the four girls on or around a bench. One of them, Denise McNair, is jumping to touch six doves that are heading skyward, while Addie Mae Collins is fixing the bow at the back of Denise’s dress. Cynthia Wesley is depicted as reading her favorite book, possibly the Bible, while Carole Robertson is walking away but looking back toward her friends and gesturing, as if to tell them it’s time for the church service.

The doves not only represent the lives of the four girls but also two other lives lost on the day of the bombing in separate, tragic incidents – those of Virgil Ware and Johnny Robinson. Ware, 13, was shot by a white teen as he was riding on the handlebars of his brother’s bicycle. Robinson, 16, was shot in the back by a police officer.  Published accounts state he and other youths had been throwing rocks at a car displaying a Confederate flag.

Those wishing to donate to the Four Spirits project can do so online through the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham. You also can mail donations to the foundation at 2100 First Avenue North, Suite 700, Birmingham AL 35203-4223. Be sure to put “Four Spirits” on the check’s memo line. 

For example, early in the film, Mrs. Robinson tosses Benjamin her car keys. They inadvertently land in his aquarium and  knock over the model frogman inside.

Director Mike Nichols looked for images of isolation and estrangement that he could incorporate into the film to convey Benjamin’s state of mind. Things like fish tanks, windows and “plastics” were used as symbols of alienation and depersonalization. The shot of  Benjamin at the bottom of the family swimming pool in scuba diving gear – a reluctant demonstration of his parents’ gift for his 21st birthday – is a perfect example, echoing the frogman in Benjamin’s aquarium.

“In this case it was drowning in things,” Nichols explained, “and the danger of becoming a thing, the danger of treating yourself or other people as things. So that preoccupation led to the choices of the compositions of shots, and where the camera was and how isolated he was.”

This amniotic environment of Benjamin’s world is filled with womb imagery. From Benjamin’s constant desire to stay immersed in his parent’s swimming pool, to the slow close-up shot of the hips of Elaine’s roommate (a usually unnoticed cameo by Elaine May) as she brings the note to Benjamin, to returning to the actual womb of the maternal Mrs. Robinson.

This image of Benjamin adrift in the swimming pool, adrift in life and getting nowhere, is depicted in an even more subtle way later in the film when we see him running. Nichols filmed Dustin Hoffman with a very long telephoto lens. He is shown at some distance running straight at the camera, an effect which makes him look as if he is getting nowhere as he runs. (At his graduation party at the beginning of the film, notice that he is referred to as “track star.”)

Dustin Hoffman thought the character of Benjamin Braddock in the book was “a walking surfboard,” i.e. a tall, blond, Southern Californian male. Nichols cast Hoffman in the role because he was the exact opposite, “a dark, Jewish anomalous presence, which is how I experience myself. So I stuck this dark presence into Beverly Hills, and there he felt that he was drowning in things, and that was very much my take on the story.”

The identification Nichols felt for Benjamin led the director to give the character some of his own mannerisms. For example, Benjamin’s “little whimper” was Mike Nichols’ involuntary response to Jack Warner’s joke telling. “In fact, people had to tell me to try not to whimper when he told jokes, that he was going to notice.”

But it was the director’s affinity for the character of Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), that produced what he considered to be the film’s defining moment. Although he had mentioned this moment to Bancroft, when they got around to shooting the scene, she left it out. “Oh, oh, oh, I forgot. Let’s do it again,” she said. It was the scene where Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin are in bed, and he wants to talk.

Benjamin: Mrs. Robinson, do you think we could say a few words to each other first this time?

Mrs. Robinson: Well, what do you want to talk about?

Benjamin: Anything. Anything at all.

Mrs. Robinson: How about art?

Benjamin: Art. That’s a good subject. You start off.

Mrs. Robinson: You start off. I don’t know anything about it. [Later the topic turns to meeting her husband at college.]

Benjamin: What was your major?

Mrs. Robinson: Art.

Benjamin: Art? … Hmm. I guess you kind of lost interest in it over the years, then.

Mrs. Robinson: Kind of.

“I thought that was the very heart of Mrs. Robinson,” Nichols said, “and therefore of the movie:  namely, her self-hatred and the extent of her sadness about where the exigencies of her life had taken her, as opposed to where she had originally wanted to go.”

In addition to these nuances and subtle cues, several familiar faces also appear throughout the film in minor roles:

It is the film debut of Mike Farrell, better known as Captain B.J. Hunnicut of the TV series M*A*S*H.

For actress Marion Lorne, it was her final feature film. She played the bumbling Aunt Clara on Bewitched. Alice Ghostley, who played Esmeralda on Bewitched, also appears in The Graduate (in the same scene).

Actor Norman Fell, who would later play a snooping, suspicious landlord on TV’s Three’s Company…plays a snooping, suspicious landlord to Benjamin. One of his fellow boarders is played by the then little-known actor Richard Dreyfuss in an uncredited role.  (The year before, Dreyfuss had also appeared in an episode of Bewitched.)

Buck Henry appears as the hotel desk clerk who is the perfect foil to an anxious and nervous Benjamin Braddock. Henry also wrote the screenplay – his first. Nichols had chosen him on the strength of his comedic improvisational skills, intuitively sensing he could adapt the material. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The film was also nominated for Best Director, Mike Nichols (which he won); Best Actor, Dustin Hoffman; Best Actress, Anne Bancroft; Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Katharine Ross; Best Cinematography, Robert Surtees; Best Picture, Lawrence Turman.

Chris Denny is a Birmingham writer.

Get your tickets for The Graduate here.

There are also a limited number of Weld Film Series passes–only $25–currently available here.

Ticket and series passes include admission to the pre-party, which starts at 5:30 p.m. and will feature a cash bar. The Graduate will start at 7 p.m. Presented by Weld for Birmingham, sponsored by Alabama Power and hosted by the historic Alabama Theatre.

Amanda Shirelle Azoroh and Alan Franks, two of the minds behind 50 Years, 50 Stories. Photo by David Garrett.

Imagine if the past could speak and the voice of history could be heard in the streets, the events of yesterday unfolding once more among those of today.

This is the idea behind 50 Years, 50 Stories, a concept for a mobile app designed to connect the city’s past with its constantly changing present. The app would consist of an interactive map with markers at various places of significance, such as the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church or Birmingham City Jail.

A user of the app would be able to walk around the city and unlock different stories in the form of videos and photographs that are relevant to each historical location they come to. As their Kickstarter profile suggests, the project would create a “museum in the streets.”

All of that assumes that the app will come to pass. Whether that will happen will depend on the success of an ongoing crowd-funding campaign that must raise at least $50,000 by next Wednesday.

The 50-year anniversary of 1963 has led to everything from art exhibits to march reenactments to concerts and plays to numerous stories in newspapers, magazines, and books all themed around Civil Rights. This app will be another way to observe the progress the city has made since 1963, while also trying to continue efforts toward equality by increasing awareness of the issue.

“1963 was the year that the city came to the national stage, and now that we’re celebrating 50 years, the city finds itself looking back to where we were and thinking about where we are now,” said Alan Franks, co-owner of Franks Global Media, which is developing the app project and the stories behind it. “We really felt like there would still be a national interest in what has changed over those years [...] We hope to tell a comprehensive story of Birmingham and the events that led up to 1963.”

50 Years, 50 Stories has been a work in progress for two years. The project was inspired by the London Street Museum app, which was designed to juxtapose old photographs of historic London landmarks with the modern city people see today. The project then evolved from being a mere companion to a physical walking tour of downtown Birmingham to the digital, interactive experience that will be found in the app.

Amanda Shirelle Azoroh, a member of the team behind 50 Years, 50 Stories, cites the motivation behind the project as a desire to connect the past to the present in a way that is relatable to a new generation of tech-savvy people in a highly mobilized world.

“Each person working on the project has their individual reason for doing this,” said Azoroh. “But when I was approached to be part of the project, the opportunity to make an impact — and being an African-American myself — just made it hit close to home, because I want to educate the next generation and I believe that what’s going on with media technology could also be used to preserve our history.”

The kind of multimedia technology used in the app will allow it to reach a much larger audience than was possible before. “Someone might walk by Kelly Ingram Park and have no idea what it’s about; all they see are some statues. But with our app they would be immediately prompted to ‘unlock the story.’ It allows us to get someone’s attention who otherwise wouldn’t have even thought about Civil Rights,” said Azoroh.

Envisioned by its developers as an important educational tool, the app would be key in reaching a younger generation that might not be very interested in a regular museum visit or history lesson.

“I like the idea of taking history into this new form of telling stories to try to engage a younger audience,” said Franks. “I think what I like about this project is that it really targets that younger generation and keeps the stories up to date with the most advanced technology.”

But, like pretty much everything else in the world, it needs money.

The project is at the core of a Kickstarter campaign, getting most of its funds from the same community it aims to help. The City of Birmingham has contributed a generous amount to the completion of the project, but a bigger budget will allow a bigger app with more features on a more diverse range of platforms.

“We started the Kickstarter campaign in order to involve the community and give them a sense of ownership. We’re trying to get people involved in something that could make Birmingham really stand out,” said Franks.

The app would also be able to evolve and grow, including more information on a broader spectrum of Birmingham’s history. “This is just phase one that we’re raising [money] for,” said Azoroh, “so this project has the potential to build on itself.”

The first phase is set to include archival videos and photos. This will include historical data and other information about Birmingham’s past and how it intertwines with the Civil Rights Movement. Additional funds would allow the team to include interviews with different people that lived during the era, a feature that would add a level of intimacy to the experience which would not exist with archival footage alone.

With enough funds, the project would also be able to include the era right before 1963, stories which are often overlooked in history lessons. “We really want this first phase to be a springboard to bring in more history of events leading up to 1963, but we thought this would be a smart place to start,” said Franks.

More money would also mean more for education. The team plans to teach seminars on technology and provide DVDs and information to schools in the area. Backers of the project would be able to choose schools to donate materials to, giving them access to the project off site.

So far, the project has 33 backers and has raised $1,536 and counting. In addition to this, the City of Birmingham has generously offered to match every pledge up to $10,000, making each donation worth twice as much. Even so, the project will only be funded if $50,000 is pledged by Wednesday, June 5 at 6:30 p.m.

The Oak Hill Players.

Tomorrow, the Oak Hill Memorial Association will play host to fans of steampunk picnicking and strolling through the tombs like it’s 1899 — or some other time during the Victorian period.

Oak Hill Cemetery is hosting its first-ever Steampunk Stroll, the entry to a season of several themed docent tours scheduled during the cemetery’s centennial year.

In the Victorian era, cemeteries were designed to be more like public parks. Cemetery planners installed seating and visitors often spread blankets in open areas. Afternoons in the cemetery were opportunities to socialize with friends and family while paying your respects to the departed.

The City of Birmingham established Oak Hill Cemetery in 1871, shortly after Birmingham was founded. The cemetery is the final resting place to many of the city’s founders, as well as familiar names from Birmingham’s early days. James Sloss, Charles Linn, John Milner, Lou Wooster and William Pettiford are just a few of the “residents” who made major contributions to the early development of the city.

Founded in 1913, the Oak Hill Memorial Association serves as the organizing and fundraising entity for the cemetery. The organization supplements the city’s contribution of regular maintenance and has been responsible for improvements, upkeep and preserving this historic landmark. The OHMA Volunteer Board organizes the annual Fall History Tour in October and February’s Calico Ball. This year, cemetery docents will begin offering guided and themed tours the first Saturday of the month.

The Steampunk Stroll will last from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 1. Entrance to the cemetery is free, with a suggested donation of $5 for the event. Bring your own picnic and blanket. Visit the Oak Hill Cemetery website for more information.

“The Mallard”

No ducklings string

along behind this

mallard, no green

headed males circle

her. Trying to get

close to her, I toss

bits of bread, wade

into the water. Once

I am waist-deep, I

am near enough

to look into her dark

eye. When I tuck

my arms to my sides,

she glides into my shadow,

so close I can see

that a scar keeps

a ragged loop

of feathers ruffled

around her neck.

I am learning

how I must appear

to her—legs under

water, arms folded

across my chest

—when I try

to hand her bread,

she strains against

the water, reaches out,

wings spreading

to get away. How strange

must arms be

to someone who risks

her neck, stretching

it out for everything

she wants. How

dangerous

are hands

that grasp more

than a mouth

can hold

how much must

she trust

arms and hands

to grab

and clutch, wings

and feathers

to lift and carry

Submission guidelines: Please submit only one story, essay, or poem at a time. Only previously unpublished work will be considered. Include a word count and indicate whether the submission is fiction, nonfiction or poetry. Inquiries regarding serialized long pieces will be considered. If selected, prepare to submit a brief bio and high-definition author photo. Online submissions only. Email attachments to Katherine Webb at local@weldbham.com.

When Japandroids came to the Bottletree last November, Weld ran a rapturous preview praising “the hyperactive lovechild of the Ramones, Hüsker Dü, and Superchunk” to the skies. In August, the eminent Courtney Haden penned a column devoted to the same topic. Though their performance went south in a hurry last time, we’re previewing them again as they return to the Bottletree on June 4.

Why dedicate all that ink to one band? Because the prospect of seeing that band at this venue is just too damned good not to.

With summer now unofficially underway, there’s no better time to grab a pale ale and listen to some of the best punk rock anyone’s making nowadays. The Canadian guitar-and-drums duo staggers on the line between frayed-ends punk and energetic garage rock, and they’ve already established themselves as a reliable source of distorted modern anthems.

Tickets will largely be RSVP for ticketholders from last November’s cancelled performance, unfortunately. But those who can get in to the June 4 perofrmance – an off-night on the band’s current tour opening for A Place to Bury Strangers – will surely be in for an evening worthy of kicking off a fantastic Alabama summer.

With Japandroids, the low-fidelity recordings and laid-back attitude disguise piercing energy and an intelligence possessed by few other bands touring these days. Think the Replacements by way of Latterman, and you might start to get a rough idea of where these guys are coming from.

Their first effort, 2008’s Post-Nothing, was a crackling ode to life and the mistakes we make that shape it. Praised by indie rock fans and punk rockers alike, Japandroids quickly found themselves essential among many year-end lists, including Spin, NME and Pitchfork. Hitting the road running with the stage presence of a two-man Fugazi only served to heighten the buzz around the band. Guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse were soon packing out basements alongside such indie luminaries as the Walkmen.

Following a brush with death from a perforated ulcer in 2009, King’s lyricism and songwriting expanded greatly and, after a few years of crisscrossing the nation, the band reemerged last summer with the stellar Celebration Rock, an immediate addition to the punk canon.

Musicianship honed by months on the road provided a deeper musical experience on the album, while King and Prowse settled into a sound that they could call their own. Celebration Rock immediately garnered the band greater critical acclaim and increased their ever-widening audience.

For a band formed just six years ago on the campus of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Japandroids have been steadily making themselves into a household name for those who like their rock with a stiff upper lip and wearing its heart on its sleeve. Few bands today capture the raw essence of youth with such a perfect blend of passion and memento mori wisdom.

Still riding high on last year’s release and an appearance in February on Conan, Japandroids have only just recently truly come into their prime both live and on record. With new resolve after a long string of early setbacks, Japandroids stand a very good chance to be the next Gaslight Anthem – or the next Strokes, depending on which side of the fence you’re on.

You can call it this show a single-serving redemption tour if you like, but the more important consideration is the fact that people were justifiably jazzed about November’s show in the first place. Japandroids are writing with an intensity and an honest that few acts can match right now. If you have even the slightest sympathy with punk rock or the summer season, you know where to be next Tuesday.

The Bottletree is located at 3719 3^rd Ave. S. The Japandroids show will begin at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, June 4. The featured image for this post was shot by Maoya Bassiouni.

The cast of A Will Not His Own.

Every day, millions of people of all ages post, like, tweet and blog to share their opinions. Humans feel the need to make their voices heard on everything, even the most mundane events of the day. Yet within society, there exist those who never get the opportunity to tell their stories, to share the wisdom of their lifetime. Many elderly Americans miss out on this basic human need, especially those with dementia.

A Will Not His Own is a play based on the stories of seniors with dementia. Dr. Nichole Lariscy, English professor at UAB and elder at South Highland Presbyterian Church (SHPC) in Five Points South, has partnered with Rachel King-Barr, author and co-director of SHPC’s children’s program, to write the drama after interviewing dementia sufferers at SHPC’s adult day center.

A Will Not His Own first originated when Lariscy and the students in her 2011 Neurology and the Arts class visited the SHPC senior center as a service-learning project. They met with seniors and recorded the stories they told, which students then turned into short stories. Lariscy and King-Barr then turned these vignettes into a script expressing the unique situation in which the elderly find themselves when they can no longer remember the entirety of their decades of experience.

“The storytelling is fun and open and free but also profound and sincere and fundamental on many levels, “ Lariscy says, “and everyone can feel that.” Both seniors and students recognized the importance of their time together, she noted.

What inspired Lariscy was a program she worked on while earning her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The program is called TimeSlips, a form of art therapy using photos to spark seniors’ creativity and allowing them to interact with others by telling stories about the photos. Sometimes the stories are memories, sometimes fiction grounded in truth, and sometimes just fun stories. Their goal is patient-centered, to enhance the seniors’ lives.

This show features actors of all ages to represent patients’ differing stages of dementia. The more advanced the dementia, the more the patient regresses. So while the actors portraying patients are all adults, only one is a retiree — the one whose character is just entering dementia. In addition, Lariscy has cast adolescents as the nurse, doctor and art therapist to show how 90-year-olds might view the younger adults responsible for their care.

Lariscy wanted to take this process one step further and share seniors’ stories with the community. Her vision for the play is to give a voice to people who are forgotten in society, underrepresented in the media. They “need their stories told,” she says simply. Through her project, she hopes to “bridge relationships between UAB and communities, to use the plays as outreach, awareness building and community celebration.”

In fact, A Will Not His Own is just the first step in Lariscy’s journey to share marginalized voices. Her ongoing project, The Imaginarium Chronicles, has the goal “to blaze tales across the Magic City.”

This may have begun with the stories of dementia patients, but Lariscy is already forging ahead. As the two-year task of sharing the stories of seniors comes to fruition this weekend, The Imaginarium Chronicles is already interviewing other groups in the Birmingham community.

This spring, Lariscy and her students traveled to UAB’s 1917 Clinic, which services HIV/AIDS patients exclusively. Students listened and recorded patients’ stories. They found this group not only able, but eager, to share their stories with the world.

When asked why she wanted to write about HIV/AIDS patients, Lariscy said that “few people talk about HIV these days” and that “the clinic will be handling a lot more patients with the closing of Cooper Green, and so it seems like a timely story to tell now in Birmingham.”

But the story doesn’t end there. Lariscy has already begun plans for the third voice she wants to share with the community, by partnering with Birmingham’s WoodlawnHigh School to record and share the stories of students there. She plans for the dramatizations of both the HIV/AIDS patients and Woodlawn students to premiere in 2014.

The Imaginarium Chronicles, according to Lariscy, does help the groups who share their stories and the community members who see the shows, but it also serves to develop the students who participate. Lariscy believes strongly in the benefits of service learning and says that her students gain just as much from their interviews as the interviewees.

“It is a great way to teach composition,” Lariscy says, adding that her students “learn advanced interviewing skills and the value of finding and developing relationships with local stakeholders when writing about just about anything. They are sympathetic and open and good listeners.”

Students participating in Lariscy’s project this fall will be from two specialized honors programs at UAB: Experiential Learning Scholars Program (ELS) and Global and Community Leadership Honors Program (GCL). The two programs are similar in their prioritization of experiential learning, which pairs classroom education with life lessons from service in the real world.

The GCL program already has a partnership with the Woodlawn area, so The Imaginarium Chronicles has found a natural fit there, working with the high school as well as the Desert Island Supply Company (DISCO), a student support center offering tutoring, creative writing, in-school, and community programs. Lariscy says she looks forward to furthering relationships in the Woodlawn neighborhood and in all future groups The Imaginarium Chronicles may reach.

To reserve seats or get more information about A Will Not His Own, contact Lariscy at nicholelariscy@uab.edu. Showtimes are Friday, May 31 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, June 1 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults, $7 for children and students. For more information on the show or the overarching project, visit A Will Not His Own or The Imaginarium Chronicles on Facebook. 

Adam and Clayton Hemingway with Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins. Photo by Stuart Hemingway.

Prior to the Birmingham Barons’ 6-3 defeat of the Tennessee Smokies at Rickwood Field on Wednesday, Southside Ball little leaguers Henry and Matthew Thomson (aged eight and seven) interviewed one of the game’s honorees, former Negro League pitcher Eugene “Dick” Scruggs, while fellow Southside Ball players Clayton and Adam Hemingway (aged eight and six) interviewed the game’s special guest, Hall of Fame pitcher Fergie Jenkins. Transcripts of the interviews follow.

A native Alabamian, Scruggs made his professional baseball debut in 1955 with the Birmingham Black Barons, who shared Rickwood with the Barons. The lanky right-hander went on to record 28 wins against just 13 losses over three seasons with the Detroit Stars and Kansas City Monarchs.

Henry: When and where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Scruggs: I was born May 17, 1938 in Madison County, in Huntsville, Alabama. I grew up in an area called Meridianville, a suburb of Huntsville. I have six brothers; I’m the next to the oldest.

Henry: What was it like when you were growing up?

Scruggs: I grew up on a farm, my parents being sharecroppers. I used to have to make my own baseballs and bats, and everything I had to play with. I’d wind the balls from old string. For bats, I’d get a broom handle or some kind of old hickory limb I’d trim down.

Matthew: Did you always want to be a baseball player?

Scruggs: Yeah, that was my dream. That’s the only thing I had to think about at that time. Baseball was the number one sport that let black players get ahead in life.

Matthew: What team did you play for?

Scruggs: I started out in Birmingham in 1955, then I played for the Kansas City Monarchs and Detroit Stars in 1956, ’57 and ’58.

Matthew: What’s your favorite team now?

Scruggs: It used to be Brooklyn, but the Dodgers have changed cities and changed players so much, I’ve lost contact with them. My favorite team now is the Chicago Cubs.

Henry: What is your favorite part and least favorite part of baseball?

Scruggs: My favorite part was this, when I was growing up: I couldn’t wait until spring came to hear the sound of a baseball bat. My least favorite part is, now that I’ve grown up and had children and grandchildren, they don’t like baseball — they say it’s too slow a game. I don’t agree with them.

Henry: If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would you change?

Scruggs: I would change things so that no matter what color your skin may be, whatever your desire, you could go after it without any fears.

Henry: If you could go and see the future, what would you want to go and see? What would you want to see happen?

Scruggs: Since I was a boy, I’ve wanted to see everybody treated equal; and to see color have no place in society or life for anyone. And I’d like to see people grow to have respect for others.

Matthew: What advice do you have for little leaguers?

Scruggs: Be a good sport. Players can get too caught up in being a star on a team. A team player does better than an individual player. If you play as a team, as a unit, you can do anything.

Henry: One last question: What’s your favorite food, your favorite TV show, and your favorite color?

Scruggs: My favorite food is any kind of food. I don’t watch TV unless there’s some kind of game on — football or baseball. And my favorite color is blue. I always wanted to wear Dodger Blue so bad, everything I bought was blue, and I just about lost my wife because I wouldn’t change my color. Detroit’s was the closest blue I could get to Dodger Blue.

The first Canadian-born player in the Hall, Fergie Jenkins had a 19-year Major League career that included three All-Star berths, 284 wins and the 1971 National League Cy Young Award. In 2009, his primary team, the Cubs, retired his number, 31. The 6’ 5” right-hander also spent two basketball seasons playing for the Harlem Globetrotters.

Clayton: What sports did you play when you were little?

Jenkins: I was a hockey player at first, basketball and then baseball third.

Clayton: What team did you like when you were little?

Jenkins: I was always a Detroit Tigers fan. I lived close to Michigan.

Clayton: How many home runs have you hit?

Jenkins: I hit thirteen in the big leagues and four in the minor leagues.

Clayton: What is your favorite pitch?

Jenkins: A strike. Throw a strike, regardless of how it breaks, throw a strike.

Clayton: What is your favorite food?

Jenkins: Well, in the mornings, I like to have bacon and eggs. And in the afternoons, when I pitched, I always liked to have a steak — a lot of protein.

Clayton: Did you play hockey when you were growing you up in Canada?

Jenkins: Yes, I played Junior B hockey until I was seventeen, and the Philly organization wanted [me] to understand that if I was going to sign a contract with them, I’d have to sign to be in health, so I stopped playing hockey.

Clayton: Did you ever lose as a Harlem Globetrotter?

Jenkins: No, the two years I played with them, we never lost to the Washington Generals. [Laughs.] Your dad got you that question, right?

Adam: My cousin lives in Canada. He likes ketchup on his mac and cheese. Do you?

Jenkins: I like ketchup on french fries. Do you go to McDonald’s quite a bit?

Adam: Yes.

Jenkins: Ketchup’s good for you — tomatoes!

Clayton and Adam: Thank you, Mr. Jenkins.

Jenkins: Those were some pretty good questions.

The featured image of this post was shot by Fanpix.biz.

Girl Scouts of North-Central Alabama (GSNCA) board members met for a special meeting at 7:30 a.m. this morning and voted to amend the contentious three-phase property plan that included the May 31 closure of Camp Coleman and Camp Trico.

To announce the decision, Board President Rachel Russell sent the following message to membership:

“Camp Coleman and Camp Trico will not be ‘closed effective May 31, 2013’ as originally approved by the Board, but shall instead be ‘rested’ effective May 31, 2013. Further, it is resolved that Camp Coleman and Camp Trico shall remain ‘rested’ pending further evaluation and vote of this Board.”

“Resting” a camp means that though a camp will remain unsold, it will not be open to campers until a later date, when its status may change.

The board president has yet to return Weld’s interview request; however, GSNCA Community Partnership Chief Russell Jackson relayed her message, along with a note that read:

“As an FYI, the decision was made after concerns were raised that the official ‘closing’ of Camp Coleman would impact its historical ranking as one of the oldest operating camps in the U.S. (if not the oldest). By ‘resting’ the camp, very much like camps do for renovations and repairs, it will allow the GSNCA board ample time to continue reviewing the property plan in its current form.”

Jackson explained that “resting the camps accomplishes two things: one, [it] ensures that the historical status is not impacted, and two, [it] provides our new board of directors time to continue participating in full board work sessions to ensure all board members have the information they need to fully understand the plan, how it came to pass and to feel confident in making any decision on the future of the property plan.”

The announcement arrived on the very day a new motion was filed against GSNCA and less than two weeks after Jefferson County Circuit Judge Don Blankenship ruled in favor of Karen Carroll in the discovery motion against GSNCA, giving the membership access to the local Scout counsel’s fiduciary and operational documentation.

According to William Bradford, lawyer for Carroll, a “declaratory judgment complaint [was filed] on behalf of Karen Carroll today.  The complaint asks the court to determine who has the authority to decide the issue of selling or not selling the camps.” Readers can find the document at the end of this post.

Carroll and the local Scout members, who have fought the three-phase property plan for nearly a year, are happy with today’s events.

“Resting,” Carroll said, “means [Coleman] won’t lose the continuously operated status. Great news!”

“The decision to rest the camps rather than closing them is a huge step in the right direction,” said 14-year-old Scout Lindsey Waggoner. “We still have a long way to go if we want to save the camps, but this shows that the new board members are taking the historical significance of Camp Coleman into account. After all, Coleman is the third-longest continuously running Girl Scout camp in the country.”

April Ellis Smith is the troop leader for the Pell City-based Coleman Girls, the group that fought for Coleman’s position on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage.

“I am so glad that the board recognizes the rich history of Camp Coleman,” Smith said, “and how important it is in the lives of the girls.”

In a March interview with Weld, Hilary Perry, GSNCA director of communications and advocacy, had this to say regarding the historical acknowledgement: “While this is a prestigious listing of historic, architectural and archaeological landmarks, it is an honorary designation imposing no benefits or restrictions on property owners.”

The shifting sentiment that Coleman’s history is valuable — and potentially worth saving — has Smith and her troop rejoicing.

“Women have sacrificed so much over the years to keep Coleman going in order to provide opportunities that girls otherwise would not have. Camps are instrumental in helping girls grow into strong, confident young women. … It is vital that our camps remain open so that girls can continue to have these opportunities for generations to come.”

“Camp Coleman has always been of historical significance,” added 25-year volunteer Debbie Ellis. “I think the council lost sight of that in what I believe to be a panic over money. I think that [Coleman is] a treasure that we do not need to lose.”

Both Smith and Ellis believe the vote comes after increased awareness of the historical merit of Camp Coleman, claiming Coleman’s legendary status was “brought to light” by the grassroots efforts.

A board member, who asked not to be identified because of board rules against speaking with press, said, “Since the new grassroots board members have been elected, we have spent a great deal of time educating the returning members. Much of the information which came out of the property work session held in May seemed to surprise returning board members. Professional reports were not included [such as GSUSA property consultant Glen Chin's report on local Scout assets], yet reports from lay volunteers were used as the basis for determining the three-phase property plan.

“However, it is important to note that all this ‘new’ information just now coming to light was previously reported to the executive council staff months prior to the presentation of the three-phase property plan.”

As for why Trico was included in the plan to rest, Jackson said, “[T]he board felt it important to also include Camp Trico in the amendment because of concerns that it too has historical merit.”

Although Carroll and local Scouting grassroots supporters see today’s events as a victory, Jane Duax of Davenport, Iowa, whose local council is experiencing similar camp-related issues, sees resting the camps as a delaying tactic.

“There needs to be a clear limit placed on how long the camps will ‘rest,’” Duax said. “Otherwise, it will be a situation where the longer the camp remains unused, the stronger becomes the council’s justification for selling it. Resting camps is often the mode of operation by the Girl Scouts when there is opposition to selling the camps.”

Duax hesitates to give credit to the GSNCA board for the decision to rest the camps. She speculates about the reason for the action. “It is a waiting game — the council is waiting for the people who are objecting to the sales to go away…then they can proceed down the road with divesting the land.”

Local Scouts and members of the GSNCA council are relieved to see the board working cohesively — preserving the history of local camps and reconsidering the future of Scouting.

“The good news,” Jackson maintained, “is that the board received this concern and responded in a positive manner.”

“I think this fact [of Coleman’s history] is finally hitting some people,” said Lindsey Waggoner, “and they’re realizing that you can build a super-camp, but you can’t build 88 years of history. This camp has remained open through some of the hardest parts of the 20th century, and it would be a huge loss for Coleman to be closed.”

“I’m sure my friends and I will have a party if the board votes to rescind the property plan,” said her sister, 17-year-old Scout Lita Waggoner, “but I’m not ready to celebrate quite yet. I will either be very excited or very disappointed after the board’s next meeting on June 12.”

Filing-307 Filed Declaratory Judgment Complaint

 
The featured image for this post was shot by Scott Buttram and originally used by The Trussville Tribune.

Who can forget Ralphie Parker in the seasonal favorite A Christmas Story, forced into conflict with everyone’s schoolyard nemesis Scut Farkus and his sidekick Grover Dill? Or the 97-pound weakling with sand being kicked in his face in the now venerable Charles Atlas bodybuilding ads?

The bully has become an archetype for the ages. Yet, however quaint and humorous it is often portrayed, the harsh, devastating reality of bullying still plays out every day in the waking nightmares of thousands of kids in Birmingham and beyond.

“Bullying is not the same as childhood teasing,” said Josh Klapow, Ph.D, a psychologist in the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Bullying occurs when an individual is singled out and targeted and repeatedly harassed and that harassment can be verbal, it can be physical, in this day and age it can be cyber. … It’s a repeated pattern of harassment that occurs over time.”

A flyer by the Montevallo-based David Mathews Center for Civic Life, posted on bulletin boards throughout the Birmingham Public Library System, offers visitors the following grim statistics:

• Nineteen thousand children who are bullied commit suicide yearly nationwide, although five times that many — at least 100,000 – say they carry guns to school to protect themselves against aggressors – bullies.
• Every seven minutes a child is bullied on the playground at a school somewhere in the country and the majority of those incidents, some 85 percent, happen without intervention.
• More than 85 percent of teens say that revenge after being bullied is the leading cause of school shootings and homicide, and the U.S. Secret Service reports that of 37 school shootings, two-thirds of the attackers claimed they “felt persecuted, bullied, threatened, attacked or injured by others prior to the incident.”

The flyer lists nine types of bullying behaviors: verbal; intentional social exclusion or isolation; physical violence; telling lies and spreading false rumors; stealing valuables or damaging personal property; making threats or coercing others to do things they don’t want to; racially based; targeting because of the victim’s sex or sexual orientation; and cyber bullying.

To draw attention to the prevalence of the problem, and to discuss community based approaches to combat bullying, the BPL and the Mathews Center have sponsored a series of forums in 2012 and earlier this month about bullying, and screened a documentary called Bully, which followed students from public schools in several other states and focused on two kids who took their own lives after being bullied.

Clearly, bullying is a problem that hits close to home, even as it demands national attention. “Most of us can remember being bullied, harassed, or teased during our childhood,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez during a speech at the Bay Area Bullying Prevention Summit in San Francisco last year. “Those experiences from an early age stay with us.”

“Bullying is not simply a part of growing up, not a rite of passage that we each must go through,” Perez said. “In recent years, bullying incidents — many with devastatingly tragic consequences – have increasingly weighed on the conscience of our nation.  Nearly one in three middle and high school students report being bullied, and over half of our children report that they witness bullying in school.”

In 2010, the U.S. Justice Department launched the Defending Childhood Initiative, aimed at curbing the exposure of children to violence, including bullying. On the federal government’s website, stopbullying.gov, members of the public, including parents, teachers and others can learn everything from what bullying is, to how to spot the signs that someone is being bullied, to what to do about it.

“Bullying,” according to the federal website, “is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.”

Groups at increased risk for being bullied include youth who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual, those with disabilities or other special health needs, those whose race, ethnicity or national origin make them different from their peers, and those who have a different religion or faith than those around them.

Cyber bullying – when bullies use the Internet, text messaging, and especially social media as a tool to harass – cuts across demographic lines, and can make more traditional bullying worse, Klapow said.

“Think about how times have changed,” he said. “Before the Internet, texting, etc., bullying was more circumscribed. It was circumscribed to a certain place and time and now, part of the problem is bullying can occur in one location, like a school, and now it can perpetuate. A child can be bullied ‘round the clock.

“That’s very problematic, because it just expands the negative effects,” he said, noting that cyber bullying has characteristics which make it unique. “Now you have [a situation] where a child is being cyber bullied only — so negative statements about them, passing rumors — but you also can have a child being verbally abused at school and then it continues at home via cyber bullying,” Klapow said. “It’s a category in and of itself and it’s a way to make the traditional forms of bullying more potent.”

The impact

That said, there are certain elements common to most cases of bullying, regardless of the profile of the victim. Children who are bullied often reveal it to observant parents – even if they themselves are not fully aware that what they’re experiencing is defined as bullying, Klapow said.

“In general we know that children who are bullied — there’s a whole list of things,” he said. “They’re more likely to miss school, they’re more likely to have physical illnesses, to become sick, they’re more likely to develop depression and anxiety disorders, they’re more likely to commit suicide, they’re more likely to do poorly in school, academically.”

Those who commit suicide because of bullying make headlines — and for good reason — but in fact are merely a fraction of those who are bullied. Rarer still are those victims who plot revenge and carry out deadly plots against their perceived enemies as in mass school shootings, as suggested in several high profile cases. Bullying does sometimes play it part in such horrific events, Klapow said. “It is a contributing factor, but not necessarily the cause. … The vast majority of children who are bullied will not turn around and create mass murder.

“The more prevalent correlates of bullying are psychological, emotional problems that tend to be depression and anxiety, poor school performance, those kinds of things. On rare occasions, children who are bullied and who have other problems can turn into killers. That being said, we have seen in a number of cases where kids who turn around and kill, were in fact bullied. We just have to careful about the causal nature of it,” Klapow said. He added, though, “It clearly speaks to the psychological impact” that bullying can have.

What is more, Perez noted in his San Francisco speech, “The research suggests that those who bully are more likely to grow up and abuse their partners, spouses or children.  So when we talk about effectively protecting our children from violence in the home, at school or on the streets, we must talk about strategies to prevent and eradicate bullying.”

Know the signs

Parents, Klapow said, should be alert to indicators that their child is being picked on or harassed at school or elsewhere. “A child who expresses a fear or lack of desire to go to school, relatively suddenly,” or a child who usually likes school but who begins to feign sickness to avoid going, are signs that something may be seriously amiss, Klapow said.

“A child who begins to withdraw, who doesn’t talk about what’s going on at school, who withdraws from the family,” may also be hiding the fact that he’s being targeted by a bully.

“A child who says he’s being teased,” who may not even differentiate between that and a more serious, systematic harassment, should not be dismissed, Klapow said. “If a child is telling you he’s being teased, you, as an adult, absolutely need to gather more information. You need to understand who is teasing them, how long it’s been going on, what’s the nature of the teasing.

“So I guess my point is that if a child is coming to you and talking about something that could be bullying, as an adult you have to take it seriously. You cannot brush it off as, ‘Well, that’s just a part of normal childhood experience’ – until you have all the facts.”

What can you do about it?

Not having all the facts could lead a well-meaning parent to handle a bullying situation inappropriately. One common instinctive reaction, when a child reports being picked on, is for a parent to tell the child to fight back. Another is for the parent to contact the parent of the bully in an attempt to end the harassment.

Either reaction might be the wrong thing to do, Klapow said, because a parent who doesn’t ask the right questions may advise his child based on a faulty assumption, particularly about the child committing the aggressive behavior.

“Until you have the facts…you don’t know anything about that child. If that child is, in fact, bullying, then they may have the ability to do things that are worse,” Klapow said. “So as a parent, your natural instinct to tell your child to go fight back should not occur, really at all, but particularly until you’ve gathered enough information to understand what’s going on. And then, really, the job is to go to the school and to the authority –  not to the parents of the child who’s been teasing or bullying — but to the school or wherever the bullying is taking place.”

Schools – Ground Zero

The reason for that tactic is simple. Schools need to know that bullying is going on, and teachers, counselors and others there have been given resources to combat the problem. Despite the continued prevalence of the problem, there is evidence that school officials who intervene properly can make a difference, Klapow said.

“Things have gotten, on average, tremendously better. Most schools, particularly here locally, have a zero tolerance [policy] for bullying. It is not allowed to occur. Most schools will investigate,” he said, noting that schools have literature, access to federal government resources, provide counselors and take bullying much more seriously than they have in the past. “Schools have bullying policies and bullying intervention,” he said. “It is not sort of brushed off [as it was] when I was young.”

The Justice Department has made schools a major focus of anti-bullying efforts, Perez said. “Our common mission to stop bullying must start in our schools,” he said. “It is in our schools that our children learn to live, play and work together. It is in our schools that fear and intolerance can take root; and it is in our schools that respect and compassion can be nurtured.”

Along with the U.S. Department of Education, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has “actively enforced this nation’s civil rights laws to prevent and address harassment in schools,” Perez said. “We are working to amend school policies and provide training to teachers and administrators on how to rid schools of harassment and promote positive school climates in school districts across the country.”

The Birmingham City Schools website features a link to the website of Stop Bullying in Alabama, an initiative of the Alabama Department of Education. In addition, the school system includes a detailed anti-bullying policy in its Code of Student Conduct, available on its website.

The introduction to the “Anti-Bullying/Anti-Harassment/Anti-Violence Policy,” states that “The safety and well being of all Birmingham City School Students is a major concern of the Birmingham Board of Education. Bullying, harassment, violence and threats of violence by any student or employee against any other student or others shall not be tolerated. This policy strictly prohibits employees and/or other students from discriminating against any student on the basis of a disability or any other characteristic.”

Jefferson County Schools also prohibit bullying behavior in its policy manual, which is available online. In part, the manual states that “Violence, threats of violence, harassment, and intimidation are prohibited and will be subject to disciplinary consequences and sanctions if the perpetrator of such action is found to have based the prohibited action on one or more of the following personal characteristics of the victim of such conduct: 1. The student’s race; 2. The student’s sex; 3. The student’s religion; 4. The student’s national origin; or 5. The student’s disability.”

Parents, Klapow said, need to trust their school system to deal with bullies. “Circumventing that process is dangerous,” he said, “because unless you know that child who’s doing the bullying very well, unless you know those parents very well, then what you’re doing is potentially adding fuel to the fire. The impact that you want to have may in fact be exactly the opposite.”

Adults can be victims of bullies

Conversations about bullying almost always tend to focus on kids. But unfortunately, children are hardly the only victims, said Sunnetta Slaughter, a longtime victims’ rights advocate with a background that includes working with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Navy.

As part of her work as a consultant, Slaughter trains law enforcement, victims and victim service providers to recognize bullying as a problem beyond childhood.

“I know sometimes people [have] applied it mostly to young children, who engage in acts of bullying in school, but bullying can be applied to adults as well,” she said. “It can be applied to adults in the workplace, if you have an employer that’s constantly giving you some sort of verbal threats. They may be actual or perceived. That’s a sort of bullying as well.”

Domestic violence and other forms of adult aggression also take the form of bullying, she noted. For example, “You can have a domestic violence incident where one party is bullying the other party, either physically or verbally,” she said. “If it’s verbal it could be harassing them, it could be threatening to do things to them. It depends on what type of relationship that they have.

“If they’re in a dating relationship it could be trying to manipulate them by saying things like, ‘If you leave me, I’ll hurt myself, or I’ll hurt somebody else, or I’ll hurt that other person.’ Bullying comes in all forms.”

The psychological effects of bullying are similar for adults and for children, she said. But adults have different options than children generally, including, often, a greater ability to leave a situation where harassment occurs. Slaughter, however, cautions that the best approach for an adult to deal with bullying will depend on that adult.

“I always ask the person, ‘Tell me what you want to do.’ A person will never leave a situation, be it bullying, be it domestic violence or any other situation, until they’ve had enough. … So I always ask, ‘Have you had enough?’ and ‘Tell me what it is that you want to do.’ When people tell me what they want to do, the first thing I do is give people options and freedom. When you tell someone what to do, you’re actually doing the same thing sometimes that a bullying person is doing: not allowing people to make their own choices.”

Once a victim makes up her mind to deal with a bullying situation, Slaughter said she is in a position to offer options that fits her needs. “Every situation will be different based on the relationship between the people, based on their economic status, whether they have someone or somewhere else they can go to. All of those things play a factor.”

Workplace bullying may be dealt with either by a human resources department or through the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Domestic violence victims can reach out to social service providers, law enforcement and the judicial system, Slaughter said.

The fight continues

Bullying remains an issue even as resources at many levels strive to meet the challenge. “We must continue our work,” Perez said, “because today, somewhere, there’s a child who will feel the sting of a punch because the clothes he’s wearing aren’t cool; who will believe her difference is a detriment as she eats alone in a crowded school cafeteria; who will skip school to avoid a terrifying confrontation; or will contemplate suicide because nothing seems like it can hurt more than the humiliation she feels right now.

“And for each one of those kids – children we know, children we love, children who more than a few of us here were at one time – for each of them we can’t afford to be bystanders.”

For many children being harassed, the first and most important refuge is an understanding parent. “Particularly from the parental perspective, when our children are being threatened, it’s very instinctual to fight back, to want to protect them, to have them fight back or to really go into sort of a sense of denial and say, ‘Well, that’s just a part of childhood,’” Klapow said.

“As a parent, if your child comes to you and is even mentioning that they’re being teased…recognize how much courage that takes. Don’t discount it. … Do not react to your more instinctual urges, but try to be as analytic and rational as you can, which means gather information, work with the authorities in the school, because in the long run that will protect your child better in most cases.”

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