september 2009

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september 2009

the inkling

volume one september 2009

adam donnelly daniel skinner hugh pendexter jonathan a jaffe luke edmonson olivia taft stephen hawks connie c spasser jared hegwood f simon grant ella m peigh marcus plumlee abby spasser john reddick melissa konomos monica holmes cameron bentley haley grant gloria greenbaum brenda ledford alex mccain

number 944 ella m. peigh

We buried the ideas our parents held to our infant mouths. We do not look at the hands which feed us, the lives which shape the skin from bone. Instead of kneading the fruit between our gums we swallow wholeness. And

footsteps crawl beneath us.

blindly, blindly, our

We do not grow into the heads that hold us as

children. We have hands which grope meaninglessly, searching for something to hold to. Instead of taking our hands to our mouths as to cover the juice which seeps from our throat, we allow the blood to fall to our ancestors, to our creators. We allow our blood to

beg for forgiveness.

Velma

Sonnet: To Peter of Verona, called Peter Martyr

BRENDA KAY LEDFORD

A gnome shriveled in her recliner, face like leather breeches, she graces a century and defies

JOHN C. REDDICK

Strong Saint, you would not give the kiss of peace To masks, whose sterile hearts and sterile wombs Made of their sainted bodies painted tombs Desiring that all birth, all life, should cease,

the disease, outliving her doctor.

Cells of her brain firing, Shakespeare and newspapers heaped

For which, they hated you and made you bleed— No cold consolamentum was your death, But crying, “I believe!” with your last breath, You did entrench the earth with that rich seed

at her feet, twig fingers plan the mayor’s race, an angel and demon on her shoulder.

Velma came from Roxboroin 1941, a trailblazer for women.

Moving farm families, planting

Of which life, life, and life eternal spring, The which their crooked falchion could not reap, The blood of martyrs, which into the land did seep And raised up harvests to the Creator-King,

legumes on the bleeding hillsides, she helped the TVA bring light to the mountains.

To Whom you singing bear His living good: Pray He create us new, by your and His own blood.

Now at 95, leading the Bible study, spider webs hanging like clothes line across the living room.

Outside her window, Cherokees ride rafters down the Tusquittee Mountain.

Kudzu leaps across the fence and spreads over woods, kudzu intertwines with rusty plow becoming one flesh.

Green smothers naked banks, gallops up buildings, covers the shanty’s tin roof, makes love, buries loved ones, returns to dust. Evening falls.

Empty chair draped with a black shawl.

the inkling

volume one september 2009

the inkling was created to celebrate the art of the written word and

provide a focused literary forum for local authors. Named in honor of the informal Oxford literary club of the 30s and 40s, which included two of our favorite authors - J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the inkling encourages the pursuit of the written word, both in its creation and consumption.

the inkling accepts unsolicited submissions of art, prose and poetry.

All submission are jundged anonymously and selected by an editorial team.

the inkling is a special section within verge. The views expressed in the

inkling are not necessarily those of the editors or the verge staff. The individual contributors hold copyrights to artwork, texts, and poems in this issue. No material may be reprinted without the permission of the magazine or its contributors.

Blackville HALEY GRANT

copyright 2009, verge

cover art

monkey see STEPHEN HAWKS

BRENDA KAY LEDFORD received the Paul Green Award for her poetry chapbooks. JOHN C REDDICK was born in Augsburg, Germany (Augusta Vindelicorum in Latin), and has lived in Augusta, GA since he was one year old, being thus an Augustan twice over. HALEY GRANT lives in Aiken. pursuing a graduate degree in historic preservation. STEPHEN HAWKS is a visual artist, specializing in ceramics and hand building pottery.

the inkling

3

Be, Ware

JOHN C REDDICK

an Imitation of “DerWerwolf ” by Christian Morgenstern A Werewolf one time burned for knowledge, And driven by that sacred flame, (Himself, he had not been to college.)

Left wife and child one night, and came Into the local churchyard, seeking The tomb of that most noble creature, A Public High School English teacher, To learn a graver style of speaking.

He shyly begged for education — The Corpse assented heartily (He had, he said, once taught AP) — And straightway launched his conjugation: “The Werewolf, in a former sense, Implies the Arewolf (present tense), The Havebeenwolf (long past, you see), And Willbewolf, (futurity).”

This learning pleased the Werewolf well, But he continued: “Can you tell Me, what is my subjunctive, please?”

The question caused distinct unease.

The teacher therefore gulped, and hissed: “Werewolves, my good sir, don’t exist,” Bade him, “Good evening,” somewhat stuffily, And slammed his coffin cover, huffily.

pathways

This stern decree of Nature’s Laws Gave (so to speak) the Werewolf pause.

He had a wife and child, you know.

He shook his head, and turned to go.

ADAM DONNELLY

He went like one that Fate did slam With Love betrayed, or “Rent Due” letter, But stopped in at “The Slaughtered Lamb”, Ate a tourist, and felt better.

Mexican Standoffishness Sonnet to a Sculler

GLORIA R. GREENBAUM

At first light, I open the bedroom blinds

Onto the gray Savannah River Art spreads out below A Thomas Eakins - “Max Schmitt in a Single Scull.”

In his sleek, yellow shell,

Muscles pulling with steadfast rhythm Against the willful current

The rower masters the taskmaster waters.

I envy you out there in the freshness,

The rivery tang skimming your senses.

I savor the strenghth of your sturdy back and limbs,

Youthful energy carrying the scull upriver.

You may think birds your only watchers

But I too share this pure moment.

4

the inkling

LUKE EDMONDSON

Whenever I go to nice Mexican restaurants these days, I feel like I am betraying Taco Bell. It’s like Taco Bell and I used to be really good friends, probably best friends, in high school. But then we both went to the same college, and I met some different, more sophisticated friends that I hang out with all the time. And Taco Bell doesn’t say anything, but when I invite Taco Bell to come with us, Taco Bell just says “no, thanks. I’m just going to stay here and study.” And I know it hurts Taco Bell’s feelings, but my new friends think that Taco Bell is weird and low class and can’t believe that I would want to hang out with Taco Bell in the first place.

And now Taco Bell and I have this rift between us, and I don’t think that we’ll ever have the same relationship that we used to. And now when I go to Taco Bell it’s weird, and Taco Bell is all like “Oh, I see you’re just driving through.” And I say “yeah, sorry. I can’t sit down and eat, I have somewhere to be. But we should totally hang out this weekend.” And Taco Bell agrees that we should totally hang out this weekend, but both of us know that we won’t.

JOHN C REDDICK studied the Classics at University of Georgia, with a taste for translating mediæval poetry. A military brat by birth, ADAM DONNELLY traveled the world and, now, studies medicine at the Medical College of Georgia. GLORIA GREENBAUM finds inspiration from the window of her Savannah River home. LUKE EDMONDSON studies medicine at the Medical College of Georgia.

Should Be

ABBY SPASSER

I can’t help but be reminded Of the staging of a house As he sits there, Clutching the remote, A soap opera in Spanish blaring.

“Picture what your belongings would look like here!

Imagine what should be there!”

What should be there.

He sits there, impassive, And I get the sudden urge To take my eyeliner and draw A thick ring of charcoal around His eyes, I get an urge to dress him up In a feather boa, a tiara.

All done up like a china doll That has no other purpose but To sit, to be watched.

That has no other way that should be.

His wife rushes around, A flurry of importance, of burdens, Because everyone’s coming for dinner, And Pat can’t sit next to Sadie, And Phil has that terrible back problem.

“Well, at least I have my chair,” he says suddenly, as if A joke, And maybe it was.

But I look at his face, Scrutinize his lineless eyes, And can’t find a trace of humor, And I should be able to see it, if it’s there.

I should be able to see it.

Everyone is over again, this time in the daylight, Visiting to fulfill their good deed, to make Themselves feel better; He could not care less.

Tana He has his remote, he has his chair, And his wife has placed him In a ‘Life is Good’ t-shirt.

I wonder if the poor bastard can still appreciate irony.

We missed the mark, he and I. As I evolved, he devolved, Never quite matching up.

I don’t know his favorite color, Or the way he takes his eggs, And he sure as hell knows nothing About me.

I owe him nothing, and He owes me even less, And those things don’t matter, they don’t, But it seems like they should, doesn’t it?

It seems like they should.

When he dies, it doesn’t feel Like loss, Because really, missing our “bond” Is like missing an apartment in Manhattan For the ten-foot high ceilings.

And it doesn’t feel like relief, either, Doesn’t feel like release.

It feels like a door finally shutting, A lock finally clicking.

Like a remote finally changing the channel.

Now, I might never fully understand My father’s parenting techniques, My aunt’s eating disorder, My grandma’s drinking.

I will never understand his jokes, Or what color his favorite shirt was.

I will never be able to share reality with him, That door started closing long ago, It’s shut now.

He and I missed the mark, Never made any memories, nothing tangible.

So instead I have whimsy, A flimsy replacement.

I have eyeliner, tiaras, and feather boas, And this is not the way it should be.

This is not the way it should be.

Georgia Clay

OLIVIA TAFT

There’s weathered barns of yesteryears, And fields of dozens upon dozens here.

Unbroken trails of white-tailed doe, And brimful ponds of bass you’ll always know, But you won’t know ‘twas surely Georgia ‘til You’ve seen the red clay of her hills.

There’s cotton fields row upon row; Peach and pecan orchards that bloom and grow, And by the blooms of magnolias You’ll sing out, “King of the South, it’s Georgia!”

So fry your chickens and sweeten your tea For red clay hills you’re bound to see.

JARED HEGWOOD

What does Tana remember? Pears. She remembers pears. A spotted, white pear tree leaned over, twisted into a small, brokedown shed. She remembers the sweet smell of overripe pears gone black and blistered, smashed into the grass. She remembers sitting, watching for hours as they would break from their limbs and fall to earth, each in a wet thwack against another fallen pear. Brown and orange butterflies would hop from pear to pear, dodging wasps and bees, careful for ants digging into the soft meat of the pear.

Her parents. Being fourteen. She remembers being in the garden, the sun beating down. A floppy hat. Sitting on a gallon bucket, another next to her and her gloved hands in the okra plant, breaking the fruit from the stalk.

Gertie, her mother, asking, “What does he want? What can I do for him that I am now not? I come home from work and he’s either asleep or in the kitchen or watching TV in the kitchen. He doesn’t want to do anything with me anymore. I say, we can go see a movie or there’s some music in Hattiesburg, but…”

Tana remembers pushing peas through the automatic sheller. She’s thankful for it, but wishes butterbeans could be done so easily. She’ll sit around her grandmother’s table, her hands in a mixing bowl of rinsed butterbeans, look out over the back yard. She remembers how hand-shelling destroyed her nails. She remembers pushing peas through the automatic sheller outside Aunt Bea’s, her mother on the chair swing, riding back and forth, letting her foot draw in the dry dirt. The acrid smell.

Her mother would idly talk as Tana pushed peas.

“Once, Leonard, you know, he drove past the house on his bush-hog, stopped me when I was mowing the yard. I say hi and he says hi and I ask him if he’d like some water. He tells me he’d rather have some company, that Ilene’s so busy and he’s so lonely. Could I give him some company? And I tell him I’m flattered, but I’m a married woman and he wipes his forehead with his handkerchief, waves and drives on. I didn’t because of your father. But I can’t tell him something like that. How can I tell him something like that? I just wish he would…”

Tana remembers how quickly and quietly the sheller took her finger.

There is a flurry, her mother shrieking at the sight of Tana holding up her four-fingered hand in amazement. The next is grandfather in truck on road trees cow crossing sign bridge heft a man made of crying glass little boy outside staring through hospital doors swing and swap nurse crossing sign sheller peas sleep sleep. Then sleep.

When she’s married fifteen years from now to Jerry, a poet turned car dealer, her wedding band dangles from her neck. She tells the story to her own daughter even further into the future. She forgets many things after that, but she never forgets pears.

Davidson Fine Arts sophomore ABBY SPASSER’S “Should Be” won the ninth grade Georgia Young Authors award. College sophomore OLIVIA

TAFT studies journalism, working on her new children’s novel in between classes. Published author JARED HEGWOOD has garnered two Pushcart nominations for his work and teaches at Augusta State University.

the inkling

5

Kate

MARCUS PLUMLEE

It was her default, her go-to. It recalled to her feelings of purpose and adventure, of vitality. She remembered how it covered her, how it protected her, how it allowed her to become anyone.

She remembered every time she had worn the red velvet dress.

Kate stared blankly out of the bridge’s main window. She was leaning back in the captain’s chair, feet on the dash. With one eye closed, she began to trace constellations with her left pointer finger. Her ship was floating idly through space. In what direction? Kate couldn’t begin to fathom. She had turned off all navigation systems.

For how long? She could have been sitting there two hours or two days, there was no way of telling.

She hated these breaks between trips.

She got up from her chair, too fast and her head rushed. She proceeded to crack her back, neck, and any other body part that would consent. Why she rose, she didn’t know. If she didn’t find a reason soon she’d be pacing, and that was worse than sitting. She moved to the storage room, intent on cleaning it up before something started breeding again.

umbrella

CAMERON BENTLEY

Dinah

HUGH PENDEXTER, III (See Genesis 34) But no one talked to me.Yes, Mother tried To quiet my wild cries. Her gentle hugs Calmed me to tell my story – she whose body Never shivered for the pleading eyes Of one whose bowels churned desiring her.

Father’s eyes followed Rachel, and Mother Lived on scraps of dutiful begetting.

Half, I think, she envied Shechem’s lust That seized with blighting force what should be won By patient wooing. Even a dog struts And poses, paws the ground, and nuzzles the bitch To win consent before he mounts and thrusts.

Stained with my blood, he begged forgiveness, knelt, And wept remorse and pleaded for my love.

I screamed and ran – invaded, agonized, Robbed of my inmost self, I roused the camp.

My brothers raged at violated honor; Father weighed his options – war or gain.

Hamor begged to patch the broken egg With marriage: by husband’s right his son, Possessing me, might stand excused.

I was a pebble in a game, a sheep Stolen at first, but bought at higher price.

My brothers’ claim of blood for blood usurped My father’s bargain, erased the rape in death, And flung us into exile. My honor saved, I shiver in my mother’s tent alone.

6

the inkling

Inside was a cluttered museum dedicated to her travels, a junk room full of odd and beautiful things found on strange far-off worlds. Here were countless gifts and souvenirs, as well as a vast emergency wardrobe suited for any situation. Along one wall, a terrarium populated by obnoxiously noisy plants was slowly becoming obscured from view by stacks of never-opened books. For half an hour, Kate attempted to rearrange the mess into something resembling organization, but was only able to clear a walking path before giving up. As she stood up, her eyes caught sight of the dress. It looked out of place; special. And when she saw it, she remembered.

She remembered the Kreblon recitals on Star-Complex Five, the raucous celebrations on V-E Day. She remembered walking past the Hoovervilles after a show on Broadway. She had attended the first inter-planetary mixer and the last few good parties of the waning Roman Empire. There had been coronations, graduations, long vacations, and, at some point in time, the Polk County High School Senior Prom.

The good memories made her smile. The depressing ones led her out of the room, eager to forget the dress and what had happened to the girl who wore it. She walked briskly to her living quarters, only to arrive and immediately plop down onto her bed. She stared at the ceiling for a while, and then rolled over. On the bedside table, a picture of a smiling Kate in a different dress looked past her. She was with her father after graduation. The smile was one of the few she gave after her mom died, before she and her dad set out all those years ago.

She remembered her father chuckling and asking, “What are you bringing that for?” when she first brought it on board. She had otherwise packed very logically and economically: comfortable clothes, boots, a raincoat, earmuffs, a life jacket, et cetera. Her father had told her they were leaving their old lives behind for a new one exploring the starts. So why she felt the need to bring her prom dress, she wasn’t quite sure.

“I, well, you never know when we might have to crash a party…” she defended herself weakly. [She later turned out to be right about the party crashing bit, when she and her father had to mediate a hostage situation at the first Galactic President’s Inaugural Ball, and again when they had to perform at Woodstock.]

Her father didn’t object, but just smiled sadly to himself. Besides, he had his keepsakes, too. He brought along his father’s pocket watch, passed on to him. Kate’s mother had given her that dress for her seventeenth birthday.

Kate got up from her bed and walked to her desk. She pulled out a pair of goggles from a drawer, put them on, and began to flip through her virtual photo albums.

These were pictures of her and her dad. These were the pictures of their adventures, the fastest times in Kate’s life. They had gone everywhere and everywhen, witnessed every great event in history and all of the galaxy’s natural wonders. She saw the diamond canyons of Prong, the everpurple forests of An-won, the Chicago World’s Fair, and then of course, Slouthe, a small moon covered in dense forests.

CAMERON BENTLEY lives behind the lens, while calling Auugsta home. An accomplished poet and novelist, HUGH PENDEXTER, III is Professor Emeritus at Armstrong State College. As a senior at Davidson Fine Arts, MARCUS PLUMLEE plans out his stories during math class.

verge / september 2009 / 3

contents 7

Downtown Church Grows The Well moves five blocks up Broad to new location

11

westobou: William Christenberry

13

westobou: A One Woman Cabaret

A retrospective of his defining photographs

Dr. Martha Malone’s voice transcends opera

15

westobou: Displaced Mark Albertin’s film seeks the truth about Ellenton

17

westobou: 12 Moods for Jazz Dr. Ron McCurdy interprets Langston Hughes’ famous poem through music, spoken word and multi media

19

westobou: Steel Magnolias Augusta Player’s season opener begins at Le Chat Noir

21

westobou: The Art of the Arts Zimmerman Gallery & Gallery on the Row exhibits

27

westobou: Dare Not Walk Alone Indie filmmaker explores the civil rights movement

experience more

5 7 9 20 22 22 23 23 25 29 31 35 37 39 41 volume two issue seven

smatterings quick clips discover downtown a shot with pow pow gallery soundcheck onstage offstage good chow / rooster’s beak music / jason isbell + the sandinistas pipeline i’m a loser baby / part V explore downtown / hammond monument past times / the imperial theatre reverberations / vagabond missionaries on the cover: wax 5 / 2009 / bees wax, damar resin, human hair, oil pastels on paper Ethan Brock

4 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 5

verge publisher Matt Plocha editor Lara Plocha pipeline editors Claire Riche Joyce Tahop web guy Andy Donnan photographers Katie McGuire Chris Selmek Editorial content of verge is the opinion of each contributing writer and is not necessarily the opinion of verge, its staff or its advertisers.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

copyright 2008, 2009 verge all rights reserved verge is a free monthly publication verge is printed on 50% recycled stock. It may be recycled further, please do your part. contact us 706.951.0579 publisher@vergelive.com advertising publisher@vergelive.com got a story tip? editor@vergelive.com

smatterings / notes from the publisher Beat the drum….. beat the drum.

Listen closely….

The Health of Our Community 101.

We all want better schools, safer and cleaner streets, lower taxes and a sense of belonging, right? Well, we can have it, but it will only come with a little sacrifice. Let me try to explain.

We would like a better education system, better teaching facilities and up to date resources for our children’s education. How can the school board hire, train and supply our teachers with the tools they need to properly educate our children for the future when our money is leaving the area?

We say we would like safer and cleaner streets.

How can law enforcement provide more officers when budgets are cut due to lack of revenue?

How can a municipality provide better streets, cross walks, infrastructure and public places when they face constant cuts because the city is losing revenue?

We say we would like lower property taxes. How can our local government lower our taxes when city revenue has declined due to funds that are being taken out of our local economy?

Drum beat: consumers (you and I) have more power than we think. By supporting our locally owned and independent business owners – more of our hard earned money stays in the local market. This flow of money enables our local government to provide more or improved services to our community. A study by the Public Policy Institute of California (unpublished manuscript, April 2006) found that the opening of a big box retail store reduces county-level retail employment by 180 jobs, over the course of four years, as competing retailers downsize or close. Those that are lucky enough to find employment at one of these stores works, on average, for 20% less than the wage paid for the same position at a locally owned business.

Think about our local dollars leaving Augusta.

Think about wanting better education for our children. Better law enforcement or cleaner and safer streets. Think about your friend or neighbor that has invested their life savings in an independent business and what that means to our community. Think about cleaner and safer community gathering areas (a clean and repaired “crown jewel” Riverwalk area comes to

free event listings pipeline@vergelive.com letters to the editor editor@vergelive.com mail 1124 Broad Street Augusta GA 30901 submit your ideas editor@vergelive.com

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mind). How can our local government pay for these initiatives when our potential tax dollars may be going out of the area? Remember the statistic? For every $100 spent at a local business, $68 re-circulates in our local economy. The same $100 spent at a “big box” retailer sends only $43 back locally – the multiplier effect is staggering. That’s a difference of $25 per every $100 spent – that $25 can either stay right here or go out of town. So, when we choose where to get the next birthday present or where to go out to eat – choose an independent business owner. When we are looking for an evening out or special date night – look for an independent business owner. When we are thinking about better roads or cleaner and safer streets – think about the independent business owner. When we think about our city government, think about our spending and buying habits and how it impacts their job and decision making process.

When they have less and less resources to work with because of lack of revenue by declining taxes collected, it makes it more difficult for them to do their job effectively. Remember the difference is $25 of every $100 spent could be staying in the area to help with the needs of our local government and its agencies.

Now let’s look at what’s coming up as economic “bonus” opportunities for our community in September: Arts in the Heart, Westobou Festival, Border Bash and the (2) Tri-Athalon Competitions. With the addition of these events, let alone the daily activity, the weekly hustle and bustle and the normal routine business that occurs, downtown is the place to be. There are a lot of people that frequent our great downtown district on a regular basis. They work here. They play here. They live here. They raise families here. They go to church here. They enjoy the downtown culture, restaurants and are part of something very special. Community - the living heart, the very soul of Augusta.

I have written about this for over a year now and here again (drum beat). The health of Augusta comes from the heart. That would be your downtown. In order to really move the entire city forward, we need to start at the heart.

That is downtown. Our downtown district is safe. It is enjoyable and it is part of our home.

Keep with me for a few more minutes. DA2 (Downtown Augusta Alliance), a collection of independent business owners, recently held an event called Destination Downtown. The essence and energy of the day was something

to see. If you participated in Destination Downtown you know what I mean. If you missed out, be sure to attend the next one. The excitement in the air was a beautiful thing.

Hundreds upon hundreds of people going from store to store with their “passports” gathering free items along the way. Free long stem roses, chocolate, red beans & rice and hot dogs. Free soda, temporary tattoos, key chains, clothing, art prints, professional photography, guitar picks. Sounds like a Christmas Day wish list.

There are more opportunities to participate in the near future. See the list above of a few great events that are happening in our downtown community this coming month.

A belief in our community. We hope you enjoyed the chance to see what our community has to offer. When is the last time you went in to a big box store or megaplex and got something for free? Had a discussion with a merchant that remembered your name or wrapped a gift for you personally? Had a chance to be a part of your community and support local business owners? Supported a neighbor or a fellow church member? The independent business owners of downtown Augusta are dedicated to providing the community with great products or services. Better yet, they are providing us with a chance to be a part of our community and not to be another sales number. They are active in building a sense of place, trying to create, for us, a belonging that goes beyond corporate profits or stockholder demands.

Have you read the newspaper lately? Have you looked online? Watched the news? This is about coming back to the one thing that has never left: our community. We may have left it unattended for a while, but it will never quit on us. Come together and support the spirit of our community. Try to do more than coming out during the big events that the downtown district has for you – shop, visit and support the businesses of the heart of our community. Be a part of the lifeblood that makes this community special, our downtown district. The very heart and soul of Augusta. Your children, friends, neighbors and local government will thank you.

Cymbals crash here…

See you downtown!

Your local drummer boy (sorry, Jonathan), Matt

find what you want / advertiser index shops & galleries

entertainment & events

18 4

14 I-11 I-2 14 34

8 22

2 25 23

40 35 26

24 28

28 34 36

8th Street Tobacco Andy Jordan’s Bicycle Warehouse Artist Row blue magnolia The Book Tavern DuJuor Fine Foods Elduets Treasures of the World PeachMac Quilt Shop on The Corner Rock Bottom Music Vintage Ooollee Zimmerman Gallery

1102 Back Bar AB Beverage: Fat TIre AB Beverage: Mothership Whit AB Beverage: Bud Light Greg Koch Seminar Rock Bottom Music Halo Salon’s Hair LeChat Woodrow Wilson House

restaurants & bars 10 44 34 43

1102 Bar & Grill Boll Weevil Cafe Joe’s Underground The Loft

12 30 6 38 16 26 8

Manuel’s Bread Cafe Metro Coffeehouse & Pub New Moon Café Moon Beans Rooster’s Beak T-Boy’s Po’Boys White Elephant

services 20 25

26 28 12 6 I-12

Americana Tattoo Augusta State Continuing Education Casella Eye Center Downtown Dental Halo Salon & Spa Health Central Modish Salon & Spa Fall Fashion Show

40 38 6

35 42

Perry & Company PowerServe Sanford, Bruker & Banks Summerville Maids The Well

westobou festival 38 18 38 38 40 37

36

14

Augusta Ballet Augusta Canal Displaced Gertude Herbert Langston Hughes Riverwalk Events Elisabeth von ttrapp Sacred Heart The General Savannah Brassworks

6 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 7

quick clips  soul city sirens battle the sintral florida sinners Our roller derby girls are

 get involved in the downtown discussion

gearing up for the September 6th bout against the Sintral Florida Sinners. Grab your pompoms and head on over to Redwing Rollerway (3065 Washington Road) and cheer our downtown rollergirls on to victory. Doors open at 6 pm; bout starts at 6:30 pm. Tickets are $10 in advance or $12 at the door. Roller derby bouts are family friendly, so bring the kids – 12 and under are free (this could be the most excitement they’ve had in a while).

Plus, you won’t want to miss the halftime performance by the fire-throwing Pyroteque.

Nab one of our Soul City Sirens during September’s First Friday, September 4th, for more info and to buy tickets. brownpapertickets.com

morris museum of art makes changes Change is in the air at Augusta’s Morris Museum of Art—everything from admission fees to a refreshed look in the galleries. It begins in September and will continue well into 2010.

“Change is in the nature of good public institutions, but it often happens in such small increments that it’s almost not perceptible. Most of what’s happening here at the Morris will be readily noticeable to all. These changes represent significant improvement in the way we see to the needs of our guests, as well as to the display and interpretation of the art,” said Kevin Grogan, director of the Morris Museum of Art. The Morris has changed its admission fees to allow children ages 12 and younger in for free. Cell phones, once banned, are now allowed in the galleries. Visitors can text or take photographs; however, phone ringers must be silenced and phone conversations are discouraged in the galleries (but allowed anywhere outside). Still photography will also be permitted in certain areas for private, noncommercial use only. Finally, the Morris is launching a new web site in the fall and will be reinstalling the entire permanent collection from mid-December of 2009 through early March of 2010.

Join a group of folks passionate about the growth of downtown: the Tuesday Morning Roundtable.

Each meeting starts at 11:30 am and runs until about 1:00 pm. This month’s schedule includes: 9/8: Gene Gilbert, General Manager of The Boathouse will give an update on the rowing team and a hands on lesson in rowing. Located in Old Towne at the Marina at the end of Reynolds (Bay St). Brown bag it.

9/15: Tour the new Immaculate Conception School at 811 Telfair Street. Lunch is in the school cafeteria for $3. Dessert is on the school!

9/22: Revisit Fort Discovery and renew your love for science. Lunch at Fat Man’s on the River.

For details or to RSVP, email Janie Peel at jpeel@ prime-properties.net.

send in your favorite recipe for lexie’s legacy Pull out your

favorite (and original) recipes for the first A Very Lexie Cookbook coming to downtown shelves this holiday season. Send in your recipe (include the name of the dish, your name, the average prep time, cook time, ingredients + amounts, and complete instructions). John Cannon gives only one requirement, “Make sure you donate a recipe that doesn’t require anybody hunting down an ingredient that is impossible to find!” Email to jjcannon66@yahoo.com by September 15, 2009. All proceeds will benefit Lexie’s Legacy, a non-profit organization whose goal is to help married woman continue their education through scholarship awards.

fort discovery decreases days of operation We just received a brief notice from

Fort Discovery announcing their decision to cut the number of days they are open. Citing a restructing process and efforts to better reach the National Science Center’s mission, Fort Discovery will now only be open Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

a new home / the WELL moves up broad street The WELL is an oddball downtown resident. Tucked away in its new location behind Digital Blueprint on Broad Street, the downtown church’s building will soon be all but invisible to daily traffic. But Pastor Jeremy Carr says that while the building is hidden, the people who make up the WELL are not.

“We want the people who are taught here to be a blessing to the community,” he tells me, standing in the open expanse at 1285-B Broad Street, “…to earn the right to be with people when they realize they need the Gospel.”

The plan for this is perhaps unconventional. Jeremy wants to leave prime Broad Street frontage open for local business owners who are making their imprint on Augusta’s economy. This means choosing a new building that is slightly off the beaten path. “I encourage (church-goers) to go shopping, eat down here, and tip big,” says Jeremy.

The day I speak with him, the floor is yet to be re-carpeted, a stage needs to be built, and wires hang from gaps in the ceiling tiles, but Jeremy isn’t worried. After the floors are put in place, most of the work has and will be done by church members. One of these handy members is Robert Mullis, who recently refitted the downstairs of his own house as a quilt store around the corner from the WELL’s current location. The church’s first day meeting in the new building is set for September 13th.

When the WELL began in 2006, it consisted of eighteen people.

The move to the current location six months later was necessary, as the church had more than doubled in size. However, everyone (including the landlord of the current rental) agreed that a new space would be needed before long. They were right. Two and a half years later, the WELL implemented a two-service scheme to fit all its attendees in on a given Sunday. Even with two services, the room is structured like a bowling lane: long and narrow, and not entirely conducive for people coming together.

The new location is more than twice the size of the old church home, with much more versatile space. The front door opens into a large, open Americano-colored room, where the main gathering of the church will happen every week.

At one end, a portion of that space will become a tabled area where people can sit easily and chat with each other. At the other end, three rooms will accommodate the WELL’s child population, which seems to keep growing at a rapid rate.

Jeremy says he also hopes that more than just church members will look to utilize the place for concerts and other events.

“It’s a strategic location… really a God-send,” reasons Jeremy, citing the size, the rental rate that fits perfectly into the church budget, and the setting that poises the WELL to care for the folks living and doing business downtown.

“We look to see the Gospel permeating people’s hearts and minds, transforming them.”

While this vision for a church can be fleshed out anywhere, the WELL’s location is specially fashioned to care for the needs of the people within its area: as a non-denominational church, the local church does not serve a larger governing body. Instead, it belongs to a network of churches that support each other and provide oversight. This means that the needs of the specific communities are met. At the WELL, congregants learn to see the store owners and restaurateurs with the same compassion as the homeless men and women asking for money on the sidewalks. The new building at the other end of Broad Street now becomes a hub from which members of “know,

live, and build” the Gospel.

Join the WELL on September 13 at 10:45 am for the first worship service in their new home at 1285-B Broad Street. Come a bit early for coffee and conversations (opens at 10:15 am).

by CHARLOTTE OKIE photos KATIE MCGUIRE

8 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 9

discover downtown

shop

dine

play

live

Revolve

Casa Blanca Cafe

Islands Bar and Lounge

OS Solutions

Kristopher and Terra Shepherd opened Revolve,

Chef Jai West and her staff have been whipping

“I opened here because downtown needed a

OS Solutions is committed to creating

a unique clothing boutique, in March 2009.

up delicious and diverse meals at Casa Blanca

flavor of island music and drinks,” explains

affordable information technology solutions

“Downtown is home for us, and we’re always

Café with creativity in mind. A 30 year veteran in

owner Roan Miranda. That flavor is their

for small business; from creating websites to

here,” Terra says. She’s worked for Pizza Joint and

the restaurant business, Jai opened Casa Blanca

signature rum punch, He uses different flavors

repairing computers to designing open source

has been manager at Blue Sky Kitchen for the past

in December 2008 to create something different.

of a Caribbean rum, Cruzan, in many of his

software to a myriad of other IT needs. Owners

eight years. “We enjoy downtown’s comfortable

“Our cuisine has a Louisiana feel. Our worldly

drinks. Miranda and his wife, Natasha, came

Steven Jackson and Roger Soper have over a

environment, and the area is conducive to what we

cuisine features Moroccan chutney meatballs

to Augusta from St. Thomas and St. Croix,

decade of computer-related experience. Both

wanted to do,” Terra continues. Revolve features

to Asian barbeque pork,” she says. While many

bringing a true taste of their native islands with

share a passion for helping individuals and

“recycled” or gently used clothing, shoes and

menu items are offered daily, West enjoys creating

them. Don’t hesitate to dance the night away to

businesses of all sizes save money with the use

handbags, and handmade jewelry by Augusta’s

and serving different evening tapas and desserts

R&B, Caribbean, and hip hop music or simply

of open source computer software. (For layman

Yasmeen Jilani. “We happily pay cash for your

daily. She also enjoys giving back: on Friday and

relax in the Bob Marley lounge area. “It’s a party,

like me, with open source software, the user

“pre-loved” clothing and accessories.”

Their

Saturday nights Jai donates twenty percent of

multi-cultural and fun-loving atmosphere,”

has the right to edit the source code to fit their

inventory mostly targets young adults ages 15-35,

her restaurant intake to the Share the Strength

Miranda says. On occasion, Miranda and close

needs. Derivatives of their software has to be

however, “people of all ages can find something

program, an organization that hopes to end child

friend Nathaniel Weeks treat customers to their

released under the same license. As a result,

they like here. We are unique because we try

hunger in America. Through November 30,

DJ combo, Island Vybz. Miranda spins records

the global community continues to improve.

to keep even our vintage items under twenty

teachers can receive fifty percent off their meal

under the name “Spudd,” while Weeks answers

On the other hand, proprietary software

dollars,” Terra explains. Most of the inventory is

on certain days of the week (ID needed). Patrons

the call of the music to “Wadada” (which means

restricts the user and the source code of such

modern with some affordable vintage that fits

can host meetings in the mezzanine for free while

love in an African language). Every Thursday,

programs is usually regarded as a trade secret

into today’s wardrobe. “We strive for a boutique

they dine. Casa Blanca is open Tuesday to Friday

ladies get in free all night. Call to arrange a

by the owner.) OS Solutions is a FOSS (Free

atmosphere with thrift store prices,” Terra said.

from 11 am to 3 pm and on Saturdays from 11

private party where you and friends can enjoy

and Open Source Software) organization. The

Revolve is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11:30

am to 10 pm, Brunch is served every second

both the upstairs area in addition to the bar.

office is open Monday to Friday from 10 am to

am to 5 pm. Details: 706.821.6891 or check out

Sunday of the month. Details: 706.504.3431 or

Doors open at 9 pm Thursday through Saturday.

5 pm. Details: 888.275.4893 or ossolutions.org.

their Facebook page online.

casablancatime.com.

Details: 706.504.3685

936 Broad Street Suite 1001

936 Broad Street Suite 101

982 Broad Street

903 Broad Street

by ANNE MARIE JOHNSON photos A. JOHNSON

ironman & ramble / the race is on downtown Two major road races will bring over a thousand runners down Broad Street on the same weekend in late September.

THE BROAD STREET RAMBLE The Broad Street Ramble 10K begins at the Augusta Common on Saturday, September 26 and encompasses Broad Street from Eve Street down to East Boundary.

“This is the premier event for the Augusta Striders,” said Scott McWhorter, a member of the local running club and current coordinator of the Ramble. “It’s the oldest race in Augusta, which they’ve been doing since 1976, and it’s the biggest one we get to participate in all year.”

Race day registration for the Ramble begins at 7 a.m. The two mile race starts at 7:30 a.m., followed by a half-mile kids Fun Run at 8, and the 10K main event will start at 8:15. A tot trot for kids 3 and under will be held on the grounds of the Common at 9:55.

Registrations will also be accepted at the Augusta Marriot Fitness Expo on September 25.

“It’s a great course where you get to see an historic part of Augusta,” said McWhorter. “We’ve changed the course a little bit from last year to make it more interesting, and we’ve tried to add some entertainment along the course to distract you from the pain of running.” Details: broadstreetramble.com

IRON MAN AUGUSTA The same weekend plays host to the Ironman triathlon, a first for Augusta, which will begin at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday September 27 and includes a 1.2 mile swim down the Savannah River, a 56 mile bike course and a 13.1 mile run.

The Swim event begins at the Fifth Street Marina, with a transition point to the other events at the Riverfront Marina and Rowing Club. The run event finishes at the Common where a post-race festival includes food, refreshments and live entertainment.

“I looked at the community here in Augusta, and its location relative to a lot of other events going on,” said Bill Burke, who owns the rights to this Iron Man competition. “I thought Augusta would be a perfect place to stage the half ironman, just because of everything that was going on.”

Runners will compete for a $25,000 prize purse, available to the first seven males and females to cross the finish line, as well as a place at the 2009 Foster Grant Ironman World Championship in Clearwater, Florida, November 14. The competition in Augusta is an official qualifier for the championship and will be awarding 46 age-group qualifying slots and four professional qualifying slots.

The race is closed to further registrations, but already has a field of over 2000 athletes from throughout the country. However,

volunteers are still needed to help the race run smoothly. Anyone interested should contact volunteerimaugusta@gmail.com.

Details: ironmanaugusta.com.

by CHRISTOPHER SELMAK

10 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 11

westobou festival / ten days of arts immersion “I absolutely plan to eat my way through Arts in the Heart.”

September remains one of my favorite months in Augusta. When we moved here ten years ago, I was delighted to find that September not only brought a respite from the stifling August heat, but also the opportunity to gorge myself for three straight days on incredible ethnic food.

Yes, I absolutely plan to eat my way through Arts in the Heart again this year. If you’ve never been, Augusta’s local Cultural Associations (from Polynesian to Irish to Greek to Vietnamese to Indian) serve up their authentic ethnic dishes. This is the real thing and there’s over thirty to choose from (so, three days... three lunches and three dinners. If I want something from each country, I’ll need two of me!)

But what makes my heart sing about September is the addition of the Westobou Festival. Ten days immersed in the arts, kicking off with Arts in the Heart weekend. I continue to be amazed at the diversity of events and the percentage of them that are totally free. And, just like with Arts in Heart dining options, this year’s line-up proffers up some tough choices each night.

Over the next several pages, you’ll find the Westobou events that caught our eye - from film to dance to theatre to music. So get ready for two smorgasbords of good food and good entertainment. It’s going to be a stomach and soul satisfying time.

EDITOR

westobou art / william christenberry What began as photos of the deep south in Hale County, Alabama where he grew up has now become the defining work of photographer, painter, and sculptor William Christenberry.

Starting with a Kodak Brownie camera from his childhood, Christenberry took his skills back to the land where he spent his summers as a kid in the rural southland of Alabama. And though he eventually would go to college and study abstract expressionist art under Melville Price, it is the roots of his childhood that drew Christenberry back to his homeland. Christenberry captures that feeling that can only be earned by spending time outdoors, enjoying the slow pattern of southern life.

Many know William Christenberry for his painted works, including House and Home which is held by the Morris Museum of Art and his fruit stand paintings created more than forty years ago. A print of this last is on display at the Medical College of Georgia in the Children’s Emergency Room.

And while

Christenberry is not known as a photographer, he still has a way of placing people in homegrown surroundings when they gaze upon his intensely detailed pictures.

The photos Christenberry takes are very down home and familiar to those who have spent considerable time themselves in the south. Dilapidated, crumbling buildings and trucks parked in high weeds may be common to anyone who has traveled down a lone country road, but Christenberry turns it into an art form, often photographing the same building from the same angle over a period of years. The way the earth swallows up the creations of man is awe-inspiring and Christenberry captures it magnificently.

This familiar territory speaks to something in the human soul, stirring deep emotions in all of us as the easily recognizable beauty of southern life is transformed into art.

But, as if that was not enough, William Christenberry has also created detailed sculptures of many of these buildings,

or fancy; instead, Christenberry’s art directly relates to anyone often sucked back up by the land.

plan to go

William Christenberry’s sixty-plus photos will be on display at

date SEPTEMBER 12 thru NOVEMBER 8

the Morris Museum of Art until November 8. This collection

venue THE MORRIS MUSEUM OF ART

living on the fringes of a rural community, where buildings are

often rendering his photographs in exquisitely crafted three

of exquisitely detailed pictures covers much of Christenberry’s

dimensional beauty.

career, from 1961 through 2005, including the classic Tenant

Woods Radio-TV Service in Greensboro, Alabama, embodies

House on Mills Hill, the Church, Sprott, Alabama, and a series of

pictures detailing the life of the Coleman Café in Greensboro.

open TUE thru SAT 10 am to 5 pm and

Aside from Christenberry’s fabulous career, it is the simple genius

Christenberry’s photography. Originally photographed in 1964, the small brick structure resembles many others found every day along any road in the south. Quaint and simple, the service shop, which would become a juke joint, a barbecue restaurant and, finally a vacant lot, represents the way of southern life. It is this journey through the life of a building that lends credence, clarity, and a powerful reality to Christenberry’s photos. He is for all intents and purposes a storyteller. His photography is not distant

of his photography that has captured the eye of fans. The artist

the show WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY: Photographs, 1961 - 2005 SUNDAY noon to 5 pm

seems to effortlessly place the viewer into the landscape, evoking

admission $3 to $5 | free on Sundays

a sense of comfort and being at home. This is the genius of

still curious? WWW.THEMORRIS.ORG

Christenberry, a southern gentleman who reminds us to take the long road home for the simple pleasure of enjoying the view.

by D.M. LULL photo WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY “HOUSE & CAR”

12 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 13

westobou music / martha malone’s caberet Dr. Martha Malone, soprano, Professor of voice and opera at Mercer University’s Townsend School of Music, makes her Augusta debut on September 20 performing “Laughing At Love,” a cabaret-style performance that includes musical theater, jazz and pop standards, at the Morris Museum auditorium.

Dr. Malone’s vocal talents cover many genres. Her recent engagements include a solo recital at Ames Hall in New York, a benefit recital for the Atlanta Opera, the Mozart Requiem with the Macon Civic Chorale, Silenced Voices: Music of the Holocaust at James Madison University, Vivian Fine: from Chamber Opera to Art Song at the Fifth Festival of Women Composers in Indiana, Pa., numerous performances of her one-woman cabaret, Songs of Romance and Satire from Paris, and the role of the Witch in Into the Woods. She is also a featured soloist on Mystic Chords of Genocide: Music of the Holocaust, a compact disc on a.c.a. Digital Recording, released in 2001.

“I fell in love with Joni Mitchell, whom I worshipped!

I decided to major in music so I could develop my voice.

I was still serious about being a pop star, like Joni, but I was not a gifted songwriter— that was a problem!”

Dr. Malone was raised in a musical family, and her natural gift began developing as a child. “My father played piano by ear—everything in the key of F!” she fondly recalls. “We sang as a family, harmonizing on old folk songs, television commercial themes, anything to keep us kids occupied on long car trips. My dad played piano every night and sang old hymns, swing tunes and boogiewoogie, and he wrote funny songs to entertain our friends at birthdays and anniversaries—all three of us kids would sing them with him—a family act of sorts. I studied piano for a couple of years as a child and sang in my elementary school and high school choirs. My sister played guitar, and as teenagers she and I would sing folk songs together and entertain at family parties. We even got a little paying work and great training recording children’s choir anthems for the Baptist church with conductor Haskell Boyter. My parents loved Broadway musicals and jazz, and they also listened to Beethoven’s Ninth and Fifth Symphonies, Chopin waltzes, Tchaikovsky and others, so we had eclectic musical taste in our house, and that’s still true for me today.”

By the time she reached high school, Dr. Malone had learned to play guitar. “I fell in love with Joni Mitchell, whom I worshipped!” she says. “I decided to major in music so I could develop my voice.

I was still serious about being a pop star, like Joni, but I was NOT a gifted songwriter—that was a problem!”

Her exposure to classical music throughout the years, both at home and as a student and choir participant, and particularly while studying voice in college, led her to pursue opera. “I had never seen an opera or been in a play or musical when I was cast in The Merry Widow as a senior in college,” she says. “I had the secondary, comic lead, and right away I was hooked on hearing that audience laugh!”

THE MORRIS MUSEUM

She received her master’s degree in voice and returned to her alma mater, the University of Georgia, to teach for three years and continue performing. She received her doctorate from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and subsequently joined the Mercer faculty, where she has watched the school of music and opera program develop tremendously. “Teaching voice and directing opera with college students is an exciting and creative endeavor,” she says. “It’s a privilege to be part of the growth of young artists, just as it’s a privilege to be able to sing for an audience.”

While she admits that “You do see a lot of gray hair in the audiences at the symphony concerts and in the opera house,” thanks to outreach programs that visit schools, partnerships between college opera programs and local school systems, curricula developed by professional opera organizations for teachers to introduce students to the art, special performances for young audiences, and commissioned works from contemporary composers, opera continues to survive and thrive.

“College music majors, even if they do not end up having big careers as performers, are church musicians and music educators, as well as great community musicians and patrons of music in their hometowns, taking their kids to the opera and the symphony and encouraging all aspects of musical life,” she says. “I believe that more and more educators are going to pay attention to the research that shows that music study develops children’s brains in unique ways that enhance all types of learning, so that music study will become routine for ALL kids eventually.”

The experience of opera cannot be explained to those who have never witnessed its majesty, but Dr. Malone comes close. “At its best, opera is such a powerful art form, offering a total artistic experience—musical, dramatic, visual arts and often dance, too—that it speaks to the soul,” she says. “There will always be a passionate audience for it.”

Dr. Martha Malone, accompanied by pianist Carol Goff, Associate Professor and chair of collaborative piano at Mercer’s Townsend School of Music, performs on September 20 at 2:00.

Admission is free, and will be followed by refreshments and conversation with Dr. Malone. For more information, visit www.themorris.org.

by ALISON RICHTER

plan to go date SEPTEMBER 20 venue THE MORRIS MUSEUM OF ART the show MARTHA MALONE’S ONE WOMAN CABERET showtime 2 PM tickets free extra POST SHOW CONVERSATION WITH DR. MALONE still curious? WWW.THEMORRIS.ORG

14 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 15

westobou film / mark albertin’s displaced What began as a straightforward documentary ended up with more heart than celluloid.

“I was working on a documentary about Aiken,” Mark Albertin begins, detailing the early days of his work on the movie Displaced. Albertin ran across a few books books about the extinct towns of Ellenton, Dunbarton and Meyers Mill.

“What’s this?” Mark Albertin asked himself, his interest sparked by the story of the people who lived there; the story of how they were simply uprooted by the United States government and forced to abandon their homes and towns over fifty years ago.

“The folks who were displaced were on the front lines of the Cold War.” But what truly lit a fire underneath director Mark Albertin was the realization that many of the residents of those towns where the Savannah River Site (SRS) currently stands, won’t be around much longer to tell their version of what happened.

“I started trying to find people from those towns,” Albertin explains. (This was no easy task, but nothing about making this movie was simple.)

“I wasn’t sure if it would get done,” Albertin says.

“Sometimes I just wanted to sit down or get a cold beer.” But the hard work and odd hours eventually paid off. “Four years later it was finished,” Albertin says.

Every day people take Route 125 from Savannah through an area that housed this collection of small farming communities represented in Displaced. A solitary, small marker is the only tangible signification that an entire community lived here. This brief, casual salute fails to capture the energy, the memories or vitality of the people who called Ellenton home. As time rolls on, the tale will gradually vanish with the passing of these ex-residents. Without someone to document what happened, the distance between generations will gobble up the past, much as the land has swallowed up the physical remains of the towns themselves.

The people from Ellenton and the other communities scattered to the surrounding towns and beyond after the government confiscated their land to build SRS.

“In the south before World War II ended, the country was localized,” Mark Albertin says.

“Transportation was the pits. People stayed put in their interdependent community.” Some people lived in these small towns for six generations. Then, nearly six thousand people were given mere months to vacate their properties by the U.S. government.

“The community is fragmented,” Albertin says about the people who split from Ellenton and moved to

these new towns. The communities replaced by the bomb plant lost their identity. Someone needed to help salvage the past.

“It [the displacement] was not handled right,” producer-director Albertin says, and “everyone had bitterness.” Using eminent domain to take the land, the government effectively and legally stole the land. The forced removal of these towns’ residents was eerily similar to actions perpetrated against the Native Americans in days gone by.

At the time, Russia and China had people seeing Communists around every corner. “Everybody was freaking out,” Albertin explains of post-World War II. When the Russians built a working atomic bomb, “we had to build something bigger. A thermonuclear weapon.” And America had to do it in a hurry. The government decided on rural South Carolina. The Savannah River, which had previously supplied a swimming hole to the kids of the towns, now supplied a continual water supply of freezing cold water to cool the nuclear reactors.

The area also supplied an ample labor force.

“The folks who were displaced were on the front lines of the Cold War,” Mark Albertin says. Most of the people were hard working farmers, strong American Christians. Grassroots Americans who when told to move understood it was their patriotic duty to assist. “We gotta go,” the people generally agreed. Instead of being recognized as patriots, the residents of the town were exploited, ignored, and basically, “treated them like hillbillies.” They were “treated really, really poorly.”

People forced to sell their homes no longer had enough money to buy new land and new homes.

During the moving process, outsiders looted the homes. The atrocities piled up on the shoulders of these tragic southerners. Only years later did some of the evicted residents receive the compensation they deserved when they were represented in court by Strom Thurmond against the federal government.

“It’s hard to believe that something like this could happen in the 20th century,” Albertin finishes.

The music of Displaced is just as important as the images, with an original score by Eryn Eubanks and the Family Fold. The last song in the movie might be the most poignant. The father of Betty Johnson, who narrates the film, wrote “Death of Ellenton,” and recorded it with his family - the Johnson Family Singers, a musical fixture throughout the 1950s.

“It was a beautiful community,” Albertin says, but a “different world” was arriving during that time.

A new highway system began linking towns, while air conditioning made life (and distance) more tolerable in the sweltering Southern heat. The southern economy changed, the infrastructure crumbled, and the military moved in to exploit the altering landscape of southern life.

“In the past, I made documentaries about communities that exist,” Mark Albertin says. But this was the first time he did one about a place that no longer existed. “I was proud to do it.”

by D.M. LULL photos courtesy of SAVANNAH RIVER ARCHAEOLOGY RESEARCH

plan to go date SEPTEMBER 18 venue FORT DISCOVERY’S PAUL SIMON THEATRE the show DISPLACED - The Unexpected Fallout from the Cold War screenings 4 PM & 7 PM tickets $8.00 buy tix WESTOBOUFESTIVAL.COM still curious? WWW.DISPLACED.US

16 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 17

westobou music / twelve moods for jazz From the 1920s until the early 1930s, the Harlem Renaissance gave America some of its greatest artistic works. This cultural movement was historical not only because of the range of talent, but also because it was the first time that African American artists received mainstream critical and public attention, as well as respect, for their music, paintings and writings. Among its best-known poets are Paul Laurence Dunbar, Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes.

So universal is Hughes’ body of work that it continues to find its way into classrooms, texts and sermons. On September 24, at Gilbert-Lambuth Chapel, Paine College, Dr. Ronald McCurdy and his jazz quartet will perform “Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods For Jazz,” an 800-line suite of poems that Hughes wrote in the 1960s, but which remained in its planning stages when he passed away in 1967. Dr. McCurdy and his group present the piece as a multimedia combination of spoken word, international genres of music and visual images.

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun?

Or does it explode?”

- LANGSTON HUGHES

Dr. Ronald McCurdy is the music professor in the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. He also served as Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at USC. He has taught and performed internationally, won awards, authored books, released CDs and is an ongoing director, clinician, speaker and participant in many music education-related programs and organizations. He recently spoke to verge about “Ask Your Mama” and the significance of Langston Hughes’ work, then and now..

How did you get involved with this project?

RM: It began as an academic presentation in 1995 when I was a professor at the University of Minnesota. The response was so positive that I told my colleague, “We have something special. We should revive it and turn it into a performance piece.” Since then, we have taken it across the country to places like Carnegie Hall and the Museum of African American History in Detroit.

What attracted you to this particular work?

RM: The depth. It was written in 1960 and yet the content is still relevant because it shines a satirical light on how we, as Americans, interact with one another. Langston Hughes talks about how we address the notion of freedom and equality for all people and the emotional experience in the process. The genius of Langston Hughes and the content and depth of the piece are attractive to me.

How did you revive the piece and how close did you remain to the original? Does anyone really know what the original was supposed to sound like?

RM: We didn’t deviate from the text. Langston Hughes loved jazz, and he had planned to collaborate with Charles Mingus on “Ask Your Mama,” as he did with “Weary Blues.” So he wrote musical cues for accompaniment in different sections of this poem. Eli Brueggemann, my piano player, and I took the cues and composed original music. The cues range from very specific to very general. We took the work a step further by adding videography. My students have a historical disconnect, and because they have grown up in the MTV age of watching videos, we added this to spur on their imaginations.

In this day of Twitter and Kindles, do younger generations attend these performances?

RM: With Twitter and 24-hour news cycles, there are still people who appreciate epic contributions such as this. It takes 35 to 40 minutes to read the poem without music, and we insert music to allow the audience to collect themselves. The performance lasts an hour and a half. It’s like a live soundtrack to a movie in many ways because of the way the poem is rendered. When we premiered

it with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Ice-T did the spoken word, that audience ranged from grade school to grandparents and every ethnicity. We find that we reach a pretty wide swatch of gender, ethnicities and age groups. Not all of them get it, but our objective is that they will do further investigation on their own.

To what do you credit the longevity of Langston Hughes’ poetry?

RM: What separates Langston Hughes from any other poet is that he was one of the first who wrote in the vernacular of the people. You did not have to be a Rhodes Scholar to understand him. His works resonate in a way that the other Harlem Renaissance poets didn’t, and they were relevant to people. For instance, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” was written 50 years ago and people still understand and get it.

How do you tie current events to this work?

RM: Look at health care reform and the demonstrations surrounding it. I have relatives who remember the Civil Rights Bill being passed and how there were similar demonstrations from those who were against it. We can look at history and see that although in some ways the topics have changed, in the quest for freedom, equality and representation of the have-nots, the same emotions come to surface when these topics are in the forefront. Langston Hughes dealt with a lot of social issues, and although society has progressed since the 1960s, we have a long way to go and the topics are still relevant.

by ALISON RICHTER photo courtesy of RON MCCURDY still from Hughes’ Dream Harlem

plan to go date SEPTEMBER 24 venue PAINE COLLEGE

GILBERT-LAMBUTH

MEMORIAL CHAPEL

the show LANGSTON HUGHES’

GO ASK YOUR MAMA: TWELVE

MOODS FOR JAZZ

by Dr. Ron McCurdy

showtime 7 PM tickets $15 to $25 buy tix WESTOBOUFESTIVAL.COM still curious?

WWW.RONMCCURDY.COM

18 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 19

westobou theatre / steel magnolias intimately The Augusta Players opens their 2009 – 2010 at Le Chat Noir on Friday, September 11, for a nine performance run of the Southern favorite Steel Magnolias. But, unlike the Imperial Theatre (where the Augusta Players typically perform), Le Chat Noir only seats about 90 people per event, so come prepared for an intimate evening with the six women who make up Steel Magnolias.

It is no surprise that Steel Magnolias is a local favorite.

Robert Harling’s 1987 comedy-drama is a timeless portrayal of the deep bond among a group of six strong-willed southern women set in north-west Louisiana.

“I’d rather have thirty

seconds of wonderful, than a lifetime of

nothing special.

- SHELBY

“I have a strict policy that nobody

cries alone in my presence.

- TRUVY

“I’m not crazy, I’ve just been in a very bad mood for forty years!

- OUISER

Steel Magnolias is a tender story, but funny as it is sad.

Directed by Richard Justice with meticulous care and abundant grace, the cast moves through the emotional tale with a steely reserve, lifting it beyond the sticky sweetness of melodrama.

The action centers around Truvy’s (Dolly Morris) beauty parlour and the women who regularly gather there. The play opens on the morning of Shelby’s (Amy Miller) wedding to Jackson and covers events over the next three years, including Shelby’s decision to bear a child despite having type 1 diabetes and the complications that result from the decision.

The funniest of the bunch are Ouiser Boudreaux as the curmudgeonly rich neighbor, and the acerbic Clairee Belcher; both are laugh-out-loud funny. Everyone knows the ending, but this fine production makes the familiar ride worth it.

We also get a glimpse of the unlikely friendship between Clairee (Avery Villines) and Ouiser (Carolyn Cope); Annelle’s (Nicole Swanson) transformation from a shy, anxious newcomer in town to a partying woman to a religious fundamentalist; and Truvy’s relationships with the men in her family. Although the main story line involves Shelby, her mother M’Lynn (Sharon Brooks), and Shelby’s medical battles, the underlying group-friendship among all six women is prominent throughout the drama.

Local actresses Dolly Morris as Truvy, Nicole Swanson as Annelle, Sharon Brooks as M’Lynn, Amy Miller as Shelby, Carolyn Cope as Ouiser and Avery Villines as Clairee will bring the multi-faceted characters to life on stage.

I had the privilege of catching the actors in rehearsal during the first week. I was amazed to see each woman wholly invested in her character, right off the bat. But, of course, it became all fun and games as each actress explained what personal attributes they brought to their character.

Dolly Morris, with much flair, expressed that she brought Dolly Parton’s original “straight out of South Carolina” 1976 version of Truvy. As for Annelle, Nichole Swanson was dryly humorous as she admitted she was type-cast: her natural air-headedness was perfect for the part.

Avery Villines was initially perplexed with her casting as Clairee, because her natural personality is nothing like the character. But, she was able to draw on the influences of other women in her life that exude that type of “southern refined” personality. As she focused on Clairee and these influences, the dialogue began to come more naturally.

Amy Miller realized that her part as Shelby would

steel magnolia’s rehearsal

require her to portray a more mature version of her real self. Though, Shelby’s character is described as a bit naive and optimistic towards life in general, Amy discerned that Shelby is the catalyst character in each scene, the foil for each of the other character’s foibles.

Sharon Brooks also struggled with portraying a character opposite from her true personality.

Where M’Lynn is argumentative and fiercely protective, Sharon sees herself as a peacemaker, closer Truvy’s character. But, Sharon dug deep, bringing out that pure emotion that M’Lynn’s character needs by the dramatic end of the play.

“It’s something when your own director encourages you to be more mean/evil,” Carolyn Cope exclaimed while talking about Ouiser (pronounced Weezer). Carolyn won’t admit that Ouiser’s personality bent mirrors her own, but, in the spirit of a true actress, she found the ability to draw out the strong-willed, sharp-tongues, sarcastic humor that makes Ouiser a beloved character.

And that is what gives theater and live “no fluff ” performance the ability to communicate such raw emotion that film often cannot project.

by HEATHER RANKIN photos KATIE MCGUIRE EDITOR’S NOTE: due to the limited seating at Le Chat Noir, we strongly suggest that you order your tickets early. On the plus side, there’s now three weekends of performances from which to choose!

plan to go westobou dates SEPTEMBER 18, 19 and 20 other dates SEPTEMBER 11, 12 and 13; SEPTEMBER 24, 25 and 26 venue LE CHAT NOIR the show STEEL MAGNOLIAS by the AUGUSTA PLAYERS showtimes 8 pm / Sunday matinees at 3 pm tickets $15 to $40 buy tix AUGUSTAPLAYERS.ORG

20 / september 2009 / verge

a shot with pow pow COCO CHANEL: Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.

sizzling sixties with modern revamp

sizzling sixties revamped get the look the clothes Vintage Ooollee the hair Patti Thelen | Modish Salon and Spa

the model Rachel Thomas | Vintage Ooollee

the photographer Brian

Phillips

the vision Rachel Thomas

effuses style everyday, combining vintage treasures with modern accessories. For, as she says, “Everything old is new again.�

verge / september 2009 / 21

westobou arts / tiny painting with whiskey Have you ever thought that the drink you ordered from a bar could be used as a tool to produce beautiful art? Joe Ferriot, an artist and industrial designer, in the 1950’s did just that.

Ferriot’s busy day job schedule left him hardly any time to practice his art. As a result, he came up with an innovative way of painting. He made a small palette complete with a tiny brush. He also had pocket-sized pieces of watercolor paper that he could easily take with him whenever he went. One night in the early 1960’s, Ferriot went to a New York City bar where he ordered a martini. When it arrived, he pulled out his ten-color palette. He would dip his brush into his drink, and carefully create miniature watercolor paintings. Ferriot’s production of the tiny masterpieces occurred just about anywhere – bars, waiting areas and airport lounges. He entertained people and soon his art was in high demand. He revealed the new-fangled process, Whiskey Painting, to his fellow artists, and each encouraged one another to participate. Soon thereafter, other artists wanted to join.

In 1962, the group officially became known as the Whiskey Painters of America.

To be considered a Whiskey Painter (at that time), the artist had to paint after 10 p.m. by candlelight using whiskey. The selection committee then determined which artists could take part in the exclusive organization. The only living person left of the fourteen original artists is Tony Cross who lives in Cuyahoga Falls, OH. One prominent Whiskey painter, Thomas Cowan, currently resides in Gatlinburg, TN. Cowan is famous for the official portraits of the Regan family featured in the Presidential Library.

The Whisky Painters of America (WPA) typically host two exhibitions across the country each year; one in Ohio and, for the past nine years, one at Zimmerman Gallery in Augusta, Georgia.

Lou Ann Zimmerman was accepted as a Whiskey Painter in1999, three years after opening her downtown gallery. When the featured pieces for the annual exhibition arrive at her gallery, Zimmerman says, “It’s like Christmas seeing all the new pieces of the year. It’s an exciting time.”

Zimmerman’s father was one of the original founders of the WPA and a good friend of Joe Ferriot. Today, the group has a few more factors when considering new Whiskey Painters. Each artist must be sponsored by a current member, paint two miniatures (one goes to The Akron Society of Artists and the other goes to the sponsoring member), and, if the works are approved, the artist is put on a waiting list. Membership is limited to a certain number – a current member must pass on before a new member is approved. Using whiskey as a medium is no longer required; artists can choose to use water or any other beverage.

plan to go dates SEPTEMBER 17 to OCTOBER 17

opening reception SEPTEMBER 17, 5 to 8

exhibit WHISKEY PAINTERS OF AMERICA venue ZIMMERMAN GALLERY open SUN 9 am to 2 pm; MON 10 am to 3 pm; TUE to SAT 10:30 am to 5

The Annual Whiskey Painters of America Exhibition officially opens during Westobou (September 17) and runs a full month through October 17. But don’t wait until the last minute to check out the 140 plus works – most of the miniatures will be available for purchase and typically go quickly. And, while there, you should be able to spot a few of Zimmerman’s pieces. While running the gallery takes up quite a bit of Zimmerman’s time, she tries “to paint at least four to five times a week.” The result is obvious the moment you walk into the gallery. Her work is thought-provoking; full of imagination, longing and promises unrealized.

by ANNE MARIE JOHNSON art UNDER A PIER by DAVID CORDAS

westobou art / a tiny taste of the art Whether you are a fledgling artist or experienced painter,

will be on display. That way, you can see what you are signing

According to Roberts, the partners and she are providing the

Gallery on the Row has designed a series art classes during

up for and which one interests you the most,” said Carol Sue

classes as a way to for Gallery on the Row to be recognized as

Westobou to help improve and sharpen your skills.

Roberts, one of the gallery partners. However, if you can’t make

a destination gallery.

In conjunction with the Gallery’s exhibition, Tiny Taste of the Arts, the classes will focus on the finer points of miniature

it into the gallery, you can register over the phone.

The schedule of classes is as follows:

And a destination the Gallery should be for Westobou goers.

In addition to the classes, Gallery on the Row will have a

painting in various mediums. Each two-hour class is limited

September 18: Kelly Dorn – Drawing

special visual arts exhibition, Tiny Taste of the Arts, featuring

to six students, will be taught by one the Gallery partners and

September 21: Kelly Dorn – Watercolor

miniature paintings produced by the gallery’s artists, opening

the $15 registration fee covers all needed supplies to create your

September 22: Pat Warren – Oil

on September 17th. The exhibition will run through September

own unique masterpiece.

September 23: Sandra Whittaker – Watercolor

26, Tuesday through Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Two classes will be offered on each day at 11 am and 2:30 pm. A sample of the types of paintings you can expect to create will be on display during September’s First Friday.

“It’s best to come into the gallery to sign up because the project

September 24: Carol Sue Roberts – Oil still life September 25: Margaret Ann Smith – Acrylics “I think it will be fun, and we want everyone to have a good time and go home with a completed project,” Roberts said.

Gallery on the Row is located at 1016 Broad Street. Call for details: 706.724.4989

by ANNE MARIE JOHNSON

22 / september 2009 / verge

gallery

soundcheck

Design Concepts

Allen Organ Silent Movie Night: The General

Design Concepts, a scale model design partnership, plans to exhibit several of their architectural miniatures in the lobby of the J.B. White building during the Westobou Festival.

Historically speaking, silent films were never silent. Music played an integral part, from full bands to grandiose organs to simple piano accompaniment. Celebrating the importance of silent film and helping revive the art form – with live music – Sacred Heart presents the annual Allen Organ Silent Movie Night during the Westobou Festival.

The White’s Building • September 17 to 26

Kelly New and Michael Teffeteller, who have been partners for less than a year but have between them over 25 years of experience, hope the exhibition will jump start their business and eventually lead to commissions to design miniatures of historic homes.

“We’re doing a gratis model of the J.B. White building, since they were nice enough to let us use their building, and we’ll fill up at least one side of the lobby, probably both sides, with all the models we want to have out on display,” said New. “We’ve tried to do a variety of different subjects to show that we can do different kinds of buildings, including skyscrapers and historic homes.”

In addition to the White’s Building, New and Teffeteller will exhibit an additional 14 to 15 models, which include some historic sites, and some buildings they hope will become a reality.

“One reason this isn’t done so often any more is because of the hours involved,” said Teffeteller. “But it’s starting to come back because it’s a good selling tool for houses or hotels, and because it shows an exact miniaturized version of what the property is going to look like.”

Each model is constructed out of corkboard, foam board and other professional architectural parts.

New and Teffeteller work together out of an office on the 5th floor of the Lamar building downtown, and a small workshop on the 15th floor of the same building. They are also available on the web at http://www.architecturalmodelmakers.net/ “Mike and I are a good combination. Sometimes, even when two people are really talented, they still don’t communicate the way they need to. Mike and I met four or five years ago when he was presenting James Brown with his model of the James Brown Rock and Soul Museum and Café, which was a project he had been interested in for a long time. Ever since that first meeting, we’ve just kind of clicked. So far, things have been working out terrifically.”

by CHRISTOPHER SELMAK photo C. SELMAK

Sacred Heart  September 18

This year, filmgoers will be treated to a night of comedic entertainment and fantastical stunts from the epic silent film, The General. Based on a true Civil War story, The General depicts the wild journey of train engineer Johnny Gray as he single-mindedly chases the Union raiders who have stolen his engine (The General) and his girl (Annabelle Lee) to rescue them and then warn the Confederates about a Union plot to destroy their rail lines. Buster Keaton starred in the film (while also co-writing and co-directing with Clyde Bruckman).

Though a box officer disaster in 1927, The General is now listed as the eighteenth greatest movie of all time by the American Film Institute, due to Keaton’s scrupulous attention to detail and realistic stunts. The movie still retains a modern feel – engaging today’s audiences even more so that it did in 1927. (An interesting note of trivia: the real General train engine still resides in Kennesaw.)

One of the most unique characteristics of this silent film night will be captured by organist Ron Carter’s adaptation of the film’s original score. Known to take familiar tunes and weave them into the film score, Carter’s sophisticated accompaniment sets the mood and tone for the film.

As the director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival once said, “Silent films are a rare and precious art form of tremendous historical importance, and the art of live musical accompaniment to a silent film is a discipline of equally important historic value.”

Sacred Heart Cultural Center presents The Allen Organ Silent Movie Night featuring The General on Friday, September 18th at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $12 each. Concessions and cash bar will be available. Purchase tickets at westoboufestival.com or call 706.826.4700

by HEATHER RANKIN

verge / september 2009 / 23

onstage

offstage

ABT II, Stephen Jones and more

Jan Cribbs: Stories for the Young At Heart

The Dance Coalition, a loosely organized group of Augusta’s dance troupes, has developed a series of exciting dance events for this year’s Westobou Festival. Beginning with hip hop master Stephen Jones and wrapping up with the American Dance Ballet Theatre’s ABTII, the community will experience the breadth and depth of dance from classical to modern.

Before the printing press was imagined or the first motion picture created or the television became a permanent fixture in every home, storytelling was the chosen method of communication.

Imperial Theatre  September 26

On September 22, Stephen Jones, the risign star of the dance/choreography scene, will be giving two hip hop master classes at Sacred Heart. The Augusta bred dancer trained for sixteen years in the Russian and Checcetti ballet techniques from his father, a former professional dancer. Building on a strong technical base and years of professional performing, Stephen creates an amazing class filled with style and energy. (For a taste of what to expect, YouTube him – just search “Stephen Jones Hip Hop Dancer.”)

The Dance Coalition will also overtake the Augusta Common on Saturday, September 26th at 4 p.m., as local dance studios and schools take the stage. The performance will begin and end with Stephen Jones’ full crew – The Swagger Crew – who has performed all over the country.

Finishing up the series, the Augusta Ballet presents American Ballet Theatre II on Saturday, September 26th at 7 p.m. in the Imperial Theatre.

ABT II, is a small classical ballet company of fourteen up-and-coming young dancers (ages 16 to 20). Each dancer brings to the stage unique strengths and ablilities in classical dance and is given the equally unique opportunity to gain professional experience and national exposure. During the company’s visit to Augusta, audience members should except to be uplifted by ABTII’s showcase of new and established choreographers, as well as previously existing works from their repertory.

The company’s varied repertoire mirrors the traditions of the American Ballet Theatre, and, while it is firmly rooted in classical ballet, also includes contemporary choreography.

For details on these events, call the Augusta Ballet at 706.261.0555 or visit augustaballet.org.

by HEATHER RANKIN photo ABT II

Union Baptist Church  September 23

Gathering around the hearth, our ancestors used stories to pass on their culture, their concepts and their histories. Stories were handed down, generation to generation. We still tell stories every day – from little work anecdotes to descriptions of our children’s antics, to tales of the fish caught over the weekend. Everybody can tell stories, few can do it well.

Jan Cribbs is one of those few. The moment she begins to weave a tale, the cadence of her voice captures the audience and draws them into another place – another story.

Cribbs has practiced the art form of storytelling since 1996. Her love of the verbal story began at an early age, at the knees of her grandparents who spun real life tales of their family history and World War II experiences. “For a long time, I thought I was a listener,” Cribbs said, until she began telling those stories again – and people began to respond. She enjoyed telling stories so much that she went back to school to receive a storytelling master’s degree at East Tennessee State University and followed that up with a master’s degree in early childhood education from Georgia State University.

Cribbs’ grew more excited about her craft after some friends told her about The National Storytelling Festival held every October in Jonesborough, TN. Created in the 1970’s, the three day festival attracts about 12,000-15,000 national and international people. “It’s huge, and it’s wonderful, and you’ll meet some of the nicest people,” Cribbs said.

“There’s something in the stories for everybody to enjoy,” Cribbs said.

Jan Cribbs presents two storytelling events during Westobou Festival: “Stories for the Young at Heart” on Wednesday, September 23rd at 4:30 pm and “What Do Women Most Want” on Thursday, September 24th at 7 p.m. Both events are at Union Baptist Church and tickets range in price from $3 to $10.

by ANNE MARIE JOHNSON photo FILE

24 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 25

good chow / rooster’s beak

downtown’s newest eatery reinvents the word ‘taco’ Tacos. The quintessential Mexican standard – a tortilla, a clump of meat, a smattering of beans, lettuce and cheese – is usually reduced to a fast food joke.

Not anymore. Wrap your lips around a taco from Rooster’s Beak, downtown’s freshest face, and you will never deride the taco again. As the combination of traditional (and not so traditional) Mexican ingredients hits your taste buds, prepare to melt in your seat.

“Tapas is a versatile cuisine. You can put lots in a taco,” says Jonathan Marks, owner and head chef. And Rooster’s Beak’s tacos are more than extraordinary. Though the specials change regularly, I’ll give you a glimpse of the food which will make you break out in Shakespearean sonnet.

I’ve written about mussels before, how they were previously never an order option until I actually tasted them. Yet, when I was brought a plate covered in what I now consider to be some of the most interesting foodstuff I’ve ever consumed, I was once again trepidatious. Still a bit unsure as to the proper way to consume mussels, I scooped them out with my fork, piled on some sausage chorizo and took a cautious bite. Eloquent words escape me as I try to describe how delicious it was. I braced myself for the rest of our meal.

What looked like a simple taco turned out to be an intricate delight to the senses. Shrimp, cooked to perfection, and candied bacon on a soft taco shell.

Yes, I said candied bacon. You might have tried the chocolate/bacon bar at blue magnolia - but this

surpasses all. Pair it up with the battered catfish and chipotle coleslaw taco for lunch and come back at dinner for the flank steak with caramelized onions and roasted peppers topped with traditional poblano sauce.

The words “Mexican” and “lox” seem like they might not go together in a dish, but Rooster’s Beak pulls it off with panache. Salty lox and roasted pepper cream cheese stacked on a homemade corn tortilla round - perfection. This simple little dish was enough to make my heart sing.

If you still have room for dessert, don’t skip it Throw calorie counting out the window; dismiss all notions that 80% full means you should stop stuffing your face. Try the tres leches, an ethereal Spanish cake made with evaporated, condensed and regular milks. Served with cajeta, a confectionary sauce made of goat milk wine and caramel, and topped with homemade mint mojito ice cream - you can’t get better than that. Rooster’s Beak also offers a tasty Mexican Sundae, a concoction of fried bananas, cherries, pecan ice cream and a homemade, slightly spicy chocolate sauce.

Even if you’re feasting alone, Rooster’s Beak’s savory fare will alleviate your loneliness. Don’t pass up a chance to dine at downtown’s fabulous new eatery.

Rooster’s Beak, located at 215 Tenth Street (the corner of 10th Street and Ellis) is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 am to 10 pm. Details: 706.364.2260.

by AURELIA SORENSEN photos KATIE MCGUIRE

26 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 27

westobou film / dare not walk alone

“You dare not walk alone” was the reality during St. Augustine’s civil rights movement in 1964. once again, plays host to one of the three tours, with a sextet of films that are strikingly diverse, yet true to their documentary nature. filmmaker Jeremy Dean

As a film enthusiast and a Southerner, I find it wonderful to see the growth in southern independent filmmaking. Nurturing that growth is The Southern Arts Federation, which has continually expanded and matured over the past several years, blossoming into its own unique touring film community.

Each year, the circuit brings six films to areas across the South – each tour uniquely different yet somewhat particular to the area, while giving independent filmmakers the opportunity to develop audiences.

As one film maker commented, “Traveling the circuit has really brought home the face that there are people who will go to extraordinary lengths to support low budget independent filmmaking.”

Last year, Allen Bell, program director for Southern Arts Federation, announced that Southern Circuit would extend the reach of their touring schedule – including more locations and showcasing more filmmakers. That vision resulted in a trio of touring schedules over the course of seven months. The Imperial Theatre,

In September, during the Westobou Festival, Dare Not Walk Alone, by director/producer Jeremy Dean, explores the Civil Rights struggle through St. Augustine, Florida in a very raw way.

The film focuses on the real lives of American citizens faced with the ongoing challenges of racism and equality. Using original footage, the film, for example, shows actual pro-segregation protesters violently attacking a group of black people who step into the water on a “Whites Only” beach.

“Any director who chooses to portray that scene in a documentary using actors and extras risks the charge that he is somehow exaggerating or twisting the facts. Using the original footage, as seen in Dare Not Walk Alone, helps the film avoid charges of bias. There can be no doubt in the mind of the viewer that those events did happen.” Dean explains.

“Indeed, one of the most frequent comments from people who have seen the film is that, despite containing very strong material, it is nevertheless balanced. But, that balance and authenticity comes at a price.”

Act of 1964, he began to research his film, aided by several local groups who were preparing to mark the 40th anniversary of that signing.

“You dare not walk alone” was the reality during St. Augustine’s civil rights movement in 1964.

Dean attended Flagler College in St. Augustine while living in the historically black neighborhood of Lincolnville. He got involved in the community by helping out on various projects, like the restoration of stained glass windows in an historic black church in St. Johns County. It was there when Dean began to hear stories of what had happened in the community in the early sixties.

And despite the reality and brevity of the civil rights movement, we have the opportunity to see another piece of the vast puzzle of our history.

Dean was stunned by the fact that he had not heard this part of the civil rights story in middle or high school. And he was amazed to find that St. Augustine was a major battleground in the struggle for civil rights in 1964. Almost forty years later, in 2003, there was precious little evidence in the city of the civil rights chapter in its long and otherwise well-documented past. For instance, St. Augustine was founded in 1565 and, ironically, the first settlement of free blacks in America at Fort Mose (pronounced mo-zay) which is a National Historic Landmark.

Southern Arts Federation in partnership with the

On June 18, 1964 a white hotel owner in St. Augustine, Florida, pored acid in a swimming pool filled with black and white youth conducting a civil rights demonstration. When Dean learned that the infamous “swimming pool integration incident” in St. Augustine had played a major role in the passage of the Civil Rights

by HEATHER RANKIN photos SOUTHERN CIRCUIT The 2009-2010 Southern Circuit is a program of the Southern Arts Federation. Southern Circuit screenings are funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and local partner organizations. Special support for Southern Circuit was provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

plan to go screening SEPTEMBER 21 venue THE IMPERIAL THEATRE the show DARE NOT WALK ALONE the extra MEET THE FILMMAKER:

JEREMY DEAN

showtime 7 pm tickets $4 buy tix IMPERIALTHEATRE.COM

28 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 29

jason isbell & the 400 unit / drive by touring If Jason Isbell’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he is a former member of the Drive-By Truckers, with whom he parted ways in 2007 to embark on a solo career. But chances are you already knew that, because Isbell has been making quite a name for himself in the music industry since that departure.

Isbell subsequently released one album, Sirens Of The Ditch, on his own, and in February 2009 released a new album with his band, The 400 Unit. That disc, which carries the group’s name, features members Derry deBorja - keyboards, longtime friend Jimbo Hart - bass and Browan Lollar – guitar, and Matt Pence (Centro-matic/South San Gabriel) as co-producer, drummer and engineer.

A native of Florence, Ala., just outside of legendary music hotbed Muscle Shoals, Isbell is a seasoned songwriter whose roots are as immersed in soul as they are in rock. “I always say that writing a song, first and foremost, to me, is a way of teaching myself how I feel about something,” he remarks. “And that’s the purpose it serves, really, more than anything else.” That said, he also stresses the importance of his band in taking the material from creation to final stage. “I want it to be known that it’s a band record,” he says. “I want it to be known that it’s something we all did together. Even though I wrote the songs, it was a very inclusive project.”

As it was for him with the Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell is on the road nonstop with The 400 Unit. It’s part of the gig, of course, and part of the lifestyle. “You get more used to touring like this,” he said in a July newspaper interview. “Maybe not completely. I don’t necessarily think touring like this is natural. But I don’t know if getting used to it makes it any easier or harder. In some ways, when you’re not used to it, it’s a little more fun. I actually like the traveling. It can be taxing. But it can be a lot easier than having a real job.”

Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit will bring their unnatural touring to Augusta on September 12 when they perform at Sky City.

by ALISON RICHTER

see the show I don’t necessarily think touring like this is natural... but it can be a lot easier than having a real job.”

date SEPTEMBER 12 venue SKY CITY the show JASON ISBELL & THE 400 UNIT showtime 10 pm tickets $10

sandinistas! unite / covering the clash

Hailing from Charleston, the Clash cover band known as Sandinistas has been tearing across the southeast for the last two years in an effort to play some of the most rocking songs ever recorded by the legendary British Punk band.

The South Carolina four-piece of Chris Oplinger, Kevin McCrary, Eric Atwood, and Henry Fishburne take their name from the fourth album by the Clash. Going from the first self-titled album through the Clash’s entire catalog, Sandinistas keep the party going with their take on these classic tunes of the “Last Gang in Town.”

Sandinistas keep the basics of the Clash songs while adding a little of their own twist to the tracks, keeping the music fresh and lively every single show.

Recently playing at Heavy Rebel Weekend, the band had a blast. For them, the draw of Heavy Rebel Weekend is a combination of “seeing the other bands” in an atmosphere that is “unlike other festivals,” Chris Oplinger of Sandinistas says. “There is no separation between

band and audience,” he continues, loving the openness and the lack of barriers the festival offers. Something Sandinistas bring to their own shows. Oplinger finishes his tale about Heavy Rebel Weekend saying that as many people as possible get on stage at the end of the festival and have a “Pabst Blue Ribbon beer can fight,” but the “whole vibe is friendly.”

For the future, the Clash cover band known as Sandinistas are especially looking forward to their October 24th show in Raleigh where they will be playing during the annual “Zombie Walk,” which consists of 300 to 400 people walking through the streets dressed as zombies. The parade ends at the bar Tir Na Nog, where Sandinistas are “looking forward to playing to a crowd of zombies.”

Sandinistas also played a fun show at the Music Farm in Charleston where they played the Clash’s album London Calling in its entirety.

Enlisting the help of guest musicians but with “hardly any rehearsal time,” Sandinistas pulled off one of their best shows ever. A show of epic proportions a year in the making. The band got some friends from other bands who normally play pick up gigs in local funk and jazz bands and convinced them to play the album with them. When Oplinger was asked how he broke the ice about asking his friends to learn an entire Clash album, he admitted that the horn players had to “sit down and draw out charts.” But this isn’t the first time Sandinistas have covered an entire Clash album. In the past, they have covered both the Clash’s debut album and their sophomore effort Give ‘Em Enough Rope, but the group have no intention of covering their namesake album, as that Sandinista! is easily one of the most eclectic albums of all time.

The Clash always went out and played a good show, not feeling the need to make their live shows replications of their albums. Sandinistas feel the same way. “We don’t necessarily play like our counterparts, we just focus on the good songs,” Chris Oplinger says, but they do “try to keep the general feel.”

The party atmosphere follows Sandinistas wherever they go.

“We’ve never come to Augusta and not had a good time,” Oplinger says, enjoying the enthusiastic attitude of the Garden City crowds.

Admittedly, Sandinistas don’t play too many bad shows. The few they have had sometimes result from too many shots, Oplinger laughs, but on those rare occasions when it does happen, the band that claim to be “the only cover band that matters,” make sure “our next gig is freaking awesome.”

“We love having fun with other people,” Chris Oplinger says, discussing their take on playing gigs. Sandinistas want every show to be a “party for everybody,” Oplinger concludes. Usually at the end of a two set show of forty plus songs, Sandinistas are “exhausted or drunk, one way or the other,” Oplinger laughs. With so many songs to choose from, Sandinistas often “pump out the songs as quick as we can” because the “songs are so short.” But they don’t just play the two minute Punk songs the Clash are known for, Sandinistas also “throw in some longer stuff ” such as the reggae hits by the Clash.

by D.M. LULL

see the show date SEPTEMBER 11 venue THE LOFT the show SANDINISTAS! showtime 10 pm

30 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 31

pipeline / 9.4 to 9.18

movies at main monday nights • 6:30 pm augusta main library

friday september 4

n

outdoors 

First Friday

Augusta Common • 6 to 10 pm • free Details: 706.821.1754

Moonlight Music Cruise: Rob Foster | Jazz

theatre 

Conversations & Sneak Peek of Upcoming Production

Le Chat Noir • 7 pm • free Music & Cocktails details: lcnaugusta.com live music 

First Friday Fish Fry with 95 Rock’s Chris Fisher

Jazz Collective

William Christenberry Exhibition Opening Party

art 

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit + The Shaun Piazza Band + William F. Gibbs Sky City • 9 pm

Brittany Reilly Band

Morris Museum • 1 to 4 pm • free details: themorris.org

Stillwater Taproom • 10 pm

Bayou Bleu

saturday september 5 special 

Preserving History

Augusta Museum of History • 1 & 2 pm • free film 

theatre 

Le Chat Noir • 3 pm • $30 to $36

live music 

Ambush + Hundreth + Kills & Thrills + Virulence + Red Foreman Sector 7G • 7 pm

Morris Museum • 7 pm • free details: themorris.org

live music 

friday september 18 Westobou Festival Day Two| for complete details: westoboufestival.com outdoors 

Arts in the Heart of Augusta 2009

Augusta Common • 5 to 9 pm • $5 to $7

Moonlight Music Cruise: Savannah River String Band

Quilt ‘til U Wilt

special 

Quilt Shop on the Corner • 6 pm Bring your own snacks - we will quilt ‘til we wilt! art 

live music 

Projections & Selections with DJ Big Al The Bee’s Knees • 9 pm

monday september 14

Film for Kids: Madagascar II

Greene Street Library • 2:30 pm • free

Lecture: Unlocked Doors, The Art of Gordon Parks

Augusta Canal • 6:30 to 8 pm • $24

Steel Magnolias: The Augusta Players

The Playground • 10 pm

Lunch and Learn with Phillip Brookman

Imperial Theatre • 7:30 pm • $20

Artrageous! Family Sunday: Instrument Petting Zoo

Joe’s Underground • 10 pm

Zimmerman Gallery • 5 pm to 8 pm • free

Southern Soul and Song: Rhonda Vincent and the Rage

The WELL • 10:15 am Coffee & Conversations at their new location: 1285 Broad Street. Worship service starts at 10:45 am art 

Endalls

art 

Gertrude Herbert • 12:30 pm • free

Morris Museum • 5 to 8 pm • $12 to $17 details: themorris.org live music 

The WELL’s New Location Kick-off

Tribeca • 10 pm The Loft • 9 pm

This is not a cliché underdog sports team wins the victory film, but an honest look at the experiences of young Latinos struggling to graduate from the minor leagues to the major, focusing on the story of Sugar, a talented Dominican baseball player who leaves his impoverished family behind to play America’s favorite pastime. Rated R, 120 minutes. (2008)

Whiskey Painters of America Exhibit Opening

special 

Fatback & The Groove Band

September 21: Sugar

Preserving History

sunday september 13

Sky City• 9 pm • $5

n

Imperial Theatre • 6 pm • free

Cafe 209 on the River • 9 pm

80s Night

special 

Le Chat Noir • 7 pm • $10 details: lcnaugusta.com

The Privileged

Metro A Coffee House

Westobou Festival Day One | for complete Westobou Opening Ceremony

Augusta Museum of History • 1 & 2 pm • free

Augusta Canal • 6:30 pm • $24 Details: 706.821.1754

thursday september 17 details: westoboufestival.com

Second Saturday Cabaret

First Friday Luau & Car Show

First time direct Cary Fukunaga follows the journey of Honduran teenager Sayra as she reunites with her father, traveling through Latin America’s underworld scene in this well-crafted thriller. Rated R, 96 minutes (2009)

special 

Learn Machine Quilting

Quilt Shop on the Corner • 10 am • $35

Downtown Augusta • 5 to 10 pm • free

September 14: Sin Nombre

saturday september 12

Movies at Main: Sin Nombre

Greene Street Library • 6:30 pm • free

film 

A Sense of Place Opening Reception Gertrude Herbert • 6 pm to 8 pm • free

A Tiny Taste of Art: Miniature Painting Classes

Gallery on the Row • 11 am & 2:30 pm • $15 film 

Displaced: The Unexpected Fallout from the Cold War (Augusta Premiere) Fort Discovery Paul Simon Theatre 4 pm & 7 pm • $8

False Flag + Sugharim The Playground• 9 pm

12th Annual Bob Marley Tribute Sky City • 9 pm • $10 n

friday september 11 outdoors 

September 11th Remembrance Ceremony Augusta Common• 9:45 am • free

Border Bash

Augusta Common•4 pm to 12:30 am • $10

Moonlight Music Cruise: IDrum2U | African drums

Augusta Canal•6:30 pm • $24

theatre 

Steel Magnolias: The Augusta Players Le Chat Noir • 8 pm • $30 to $36

sports 

TNA Wrestling Live!

September 28: Silent Light Set in the austere Mennonite community of northern Mexico, Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light is not about suffering and sin but about the enormous power of compassion and what it takes to be truly alive.Rated R, 136 minutes. (2007)

James Brown Arena • 7:30 pm • $21 to $51 live music 

Tommy O.D. and The Survivors The Playground • 8 pm

The Sandinistas The Loft• 9 pm

Delta Swagger

Stillwater Taproom • 10 pm

September 11th Remembrance Ceremony september 11 • the augusta common •9:45 am

The September 11th Remembrance Ceremony reminds us of the risk and sacrifice our public safety officers face every day. Join them in s ahow of unity as they pay tribute to the men and women of Public Safety who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.

Hosted by the Augusta-RIchmond County Fire Department and the City of Augusta Special Events.

for a complete schedule and details on Westobou Festival events: westoboufestival.com

32 / september 2009 / verge

pipeline / 9.18 to 9.26 friday september 18 Westobou Festival Day Two| continued

theatre 

Steel Magnolias: The Augusta Players Le Chat Noir • 8 pm • $30 to $36

film 

Allen Organ Silent Movie Night: The General

live music 

Carmina Burana theatre 

Steel Magnolias: The Augusta Players Le Chat Noir • 8 pm • $30 to $36

Shawn Mullins & Patrick Blanchard Augusta Common • 9 pm free w/ Arts in the Heart Badge

Cafe 209 on the River • 9 pm • free

sunday september 20

Mendelssohn and Brahms: Chamber Music Series

St. John United Methodist Church • noon • free

The Avett Brothers: presented by Sky City & The Soul Bar

Jessye Norman Amphitheater • 6 pm • $25

Westobou Festival Day Four| for complete details: westoboufestival.com outdoors 

Arts in the Heart of Augusta 2009

The Bastard Suns

Augusta Common • noon to 7 pm • $5 to $7

The Joe Stevenson Band

Sunday Sketch with Susan Senn-Davis

The Loft • 9 pm

art 

The Playground • 10 pm

Music at the Morris • 3 pm • free

saturday september 19 Westobou Festival Day Three | for complete details: westoboufestival.com outdoors 

Arts in the Heart of Augusta 2009

Augusta Common • 11 am to 9 pm • $5 to $7

theatre 

Steel Magnolias: The Augusta Players Le Chat Noir • 3 pm • $30 to $36

live music 

Music at the Morris: Martha Malone’s One Woman Cabaret Morris Museum • 2 pm • free

Georgia’s 3 Tenors present ”A Tribute to Pavarotti” St. Paul’s • 3 pm • $10 to $12

Jessye Norman Amphitheatre • 6 pm •free

Savannah River Brassworks Concert

monday september 21 Westobou Festival Day Five | for complete details: westoboufestival.com art 

A Tiny Taste of Art: Miniature Painting Classes

Gallery on the Row • 11 am & 2:30 pm • $15 film 

Movies at Main: Sugar

Greene Street Library • 6:30 pm

Dare Not Walk Alone: Southern Circuit of Independent Filmmakers Imperial Theatre • 7 pm • $5

live music 

video games live: the augusta symphony friday september 25 the bell auditorium $20 to $50

Augusta Canal • 6:15 pm • $24

most popular video games of all time.

The

Symphony

Orchestra

Augusta,

with chorus, performs live along with the exclusive video footage and music arrangements, synchronized lighting, solo performers, electronic percussionists, live action and unique interactive segments, creating

an

explosive

entertainment

experience.

For details & tickets, call 706.826.4705 or visit augustasymphony.org.

tuesday september 22 Westobou Festival Day Six | for complete details: westoboufestival.com Augusta Canal Moonlight Music Cruise: Joyce Lynn |singer/songwriter

concert event featuring music from the

Gallery on the Row • 11 am & 2:30 pm • $15

Westobou Festival Day Seven | for complete details: westoboufestival.com outdoors 

Augusta Canal Moonlight Music Cruise: Karen Gordon | jazz vocalist Augusta Canal • 6:15 pm • $24

art 

A Tiny Taste of Art Miniature Painting Classes

spoken word 

In Other Words: Poetry, Prose, Theatre Le Chat Noir • 7 pm • $10

art 

Kids Making Faces

Old Canal Pottery / Enterprise Mill • 4 pm • $10

A Tiny Taste of Art

Gallery on the Row • 11 am & 2:30 pm • $15 live music 

Westobou Festival Organ Series: Brad Cunningham

Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church • 11 am • free

art 

A Tiny Taste of Art

Art at Lunch: Two Lane South Emil Holshauer and His Contemporaries

Morris Museum • noon • $10 to $14 details: themorris.org theatre 

The Collision Project

Davidson Fine Arts • 3:45 pm & 7 pm • $4 to $6

Steel Magnolias: The Augusta Players Le Chat Noir • 8 pm • $30 to $36

live music 

Gallery on the Row • 11 am & 2:30 pm • $15 spoken word 

Professional Storyteller Jan Cribbs: Stories for the Young at Heart

DSW: Where These Shoes Fit Union Baptist • 7 pm • $5

Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas Band Augusta Common • 7 pm • free

Union Baptist v 4:30 pm • $3 to $7

live music 

Westbou Festival Organ Series: Laura Lowe

A Hit Parade of Great American Tunes from the 30’s, 40s and 50s Sacred Heart • 7:30 pm • $10

Video Games Live: The Augusta Symphony

St. John United Methodist Church • 4 pm • free

Keb Mo

Bell Auditorium • 7:30 pm • $20 to $50

The Corduroy Road

Stillwater Tap Room • 10 pm

thursday september 24 outdoors 

Augusta Canal Moonlight Music Cruise: The Cross-Tie Walkers | bluegrass Augusta Canal • 6:15 pm • $24

Shotgun Opera + L.I.E. + Sugharim The Loft • 9 pm

Paraphenalia

The Playground • 8 pm

saturday september 26 Westobou Festival Day Ten | for complete details: westoboufestival.com outdoors 

The Ford Trucks Equestrian Balloon Festival

Pottery Demonstrations + Tara Scheyer and the Mudpuppy Band

Augusta Common • 5:15 pm details: 706.821.0607

art 

A Tiny Taste of Art Miniature Painting Classes

Hammond’s Ferry • 11 am • free

Big Kids Accordion Band

Augusta Common • 2:30 pm • free

Gallery on the Row • 11 am & 2:30 pm • $15

Wine & Cheese Tasting

Morris Museum • 6:30 to 8:30pm • $15/person, $25/couple details: themorris.org

Professional Storyteller Jan Cribbs: What Do Women Most Want

St. John United Methodist • 11 am • free

outdoors 

VIDEO GAMES LIVE (VGL) is an immersive

wednesday september 23

spoken word 

Westobou Festival Organ Series: Dr. Leon W. Couch III

Augusta Canal Moonlight Music Cruise: The Wynns | bluegrass Augusta Canal • 6:15 pm • $24

Westobou Festival Day Eight | for complete details: westoboufestival.com

First Christian Church • 7:30 pm • free

Westobou Festival Day Nine | for complete details: westoboufestival.com

Augusta Common • 7 pm • free Celebrate 88.3 WAFJ’s fifteenth anniversary with this free concert.

Imperial Theatre • 8 pm • $15 to $25

Pops on the River

friday september 25 outdoors 

outdoors 

FEE for Free

The Privileged

live music 

Mozart and Mendelssohn: Chamber Music Series

St. John United Methodist • noon • free

Sacred Heart • 7:30 pm • $5 to $22

Sacred Heart • 7:30 pm • $12

tuesday september 22 Westobou Festival Day Six | continued

Union Baptist Church • 7 pm • $8 to $10

theatre 

The Collision Project

special 

Smithsonian 5th Annual Museum Day

10 am to 5 pm • free admission Morris Museum of Art | Augusta Museum of History | The Boyhood Home of President Woodrow Wilson | Fort Discovery

Pumpkin Man Quilt Project

Quilt Shop on the Corner • 10 am to 4 pm $35 (pattern included)

Preserving History

Augusta Museum of History • 1 & 2 pm • free dance 

Davidson Fine Arts • 7 pm • $4 to $6

Steel Magnolias: The Augusta Players Le Chat Noir • 8 pm • $30 to $36

Rock & Roll Gospel Show

live music 

Jessye Norman Amphitheater • 7 pm • $5

Elisabeth von Trapp & Erich Kory

Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church • 8 pm • $15 to $60

Patricia Barber in Concert

Imperial Theatre • 8 pm • $15 to $25

Full Of Hell + STS + Strength Of Heart + Virulence Sector 7G • 7 pm

frid

Westobou Festival Dance Series: Dance Coalition Augusta Common • 4 to 7 pm • free

American Ballet Theatre’s ABT II (presented by The Augusta Ballet) Imperial Theatre • 7 pm • $15 to $35

film 

Film for Kids: Happy Feet

Greene Street Library • 2:30 pm

Porter Fleming Literary Competition Awards

spoken word 

Morris Museum • 2 pm • free

theatre 

Steel Magnolias: The Augusta Players Le Chat Noir • 8 pm • $30 to $36

for a complete schedule and details on Westobou Festival events: westoboufestival.com

verge / september 2009 / 33

pipeline / 9.26 to 10.2 saturday september 26

Moonlight Music Cruise: Tara Scheyer | singer/songwriter

Westobou Festival Day Ten | continued

Augusta Canal • 6 pm • $24

live music 

Old School Music Festival

Morris Museum of Art • noon • free

Jessye Norman Amphitheater • 7:30 pm $20 to $25

Conversations & Sneak Peek of Upcoming Production

Union Baptist • 2sunday pm • free sept\

Le Chat Noir • 7 pm • free Music & Cocktails details: lcnaugusta.com

sunday september 27

every day

sports 

Augusta Ironman

live music 

Projections & Selections with Joycette

monday september 28 Movies at Main: Silent Light

thursday october 1

Morris Museum of Art • free

Social Sunday

Toddler Time: Awesome Architecture

Morris Museum of Art • 10 am & 11:15 am • $4

Art:21 – Art in the Twenty First Century Preview

friday october 2

Augusta Common • 6 to 10 pm • free

Twisted Trivia with Spence The Playground • 8 pm

Fox’s Lair • 9 pm • free • irish session wednesdays 

Canal Tours

Augusta Canal • 10 am, 11:30 am, 1:30 pm & 3 pm • $12

Mountain Bike Ride

outdoors 

Downtown Augusta • 5 to 10 pm • free

Augusta Canal • 10 am, 11:30 am, 1:30 pm & 3 pm • $12

Dr. John Fisher

Morris Museum of Art • 6 pm • free Get a sneak peak of the fifth season of the PBS film series. Join the debate afterwards about what constitutes art with local artist Raoul Pacheco.

Details: augustamuseum.org

thru September 30 History Theatre Film

Krazy Karaoke with Matt Stone

American Experience: Aiken Remembers

thursdays 

Canal Tours

Augusta Canal • 10 am, 11:30 am, 1:30 pm & 3 pm • $12

Open Mic with Woody

Andy Jordans • 6:15 pm • free 12 to 15 miles on the Augusta Canal at a beginner to intermediate skill level. Details: 706.724.6777

thru September 30 Hollingsworth Candy

Company Memorabilia

thru May 2011 The Godfather of Soul:

Mr. James Brown

ongoing A Community That Heals

The Playground • 10 pm

ongoing From Ty to Cal: A Century of Baseball in Augusta

Tropicabana Latin Club • 9 pm

fridays 

ongoing Stories and Legends: Remembering

the Augusta National

Augusta Canal • 10 am, 11:30 am, 1:30 pm & 3 pm • $12

Brick Yard Market

Hammond’s Ferry • 4 pm to dusk • free Procure a variety of goods offered by local vendors in this North Augusta outdoor market. Enjoy live music in the beautiful setting of Hammond’s Ferry. Details: 803.613.1641 saturdays 

tuesdays 

Canal Tours

art 

First Friday Luau & Car Show

Mimosa Sunday

Cafe 209 on the River • 9 pm

Greene Street Library • 6:30 pm

First Friday

1285-B Broad Street • 10:45 am

Free Morris Museum Admission

film 

AUGUSTA HISTORY MUSEUM

209 on the River • 6 pm

Canal Tours

Boll Weevil Mimosas at lunch and $3.95 desserts all day.

The Bee’s Knees • 9 pm

Jazz on the Patio: A Step Up

Casual Comfort: Hip Hop Night sundays 

Worship at The Well

ongoing exhibitions

Fox’s Lair • free

The Playground • 8 pm theatre 

The Mount Zion Spiritual Singers of Mt. Zion AME Church in Charleston, SC

Fifth Street Marina • 7:30 am details: ironmanaugusta.com

Film on Friday: Sullivan’s Travels

art 

Soup Suds & Conversation

Canal Tours

Augusta Canal • 10 am, 11:30 am, 1:30 pm & 3 pm • $12

Sunset Canal Tour (three hours)

GERTRUDE HERBERT Details: ghia.org

opens September 18 A Sense of Place opens September 18 Shishir Chokshi: The Mad

Potter’s Tea Party

LUCY CRAFT LANEY MUSEUM

Details: lucycraftlaneymuseum.com thru September 30 The Daso Art Collection

MORRIS MUSEUM OF ART Details: themorris.org

now thru November 29 Emil Holzhauer: The

Augusta Canal • 4:30 pm • $20

Georgia Years

Ezekiel Harris House Tours

Photographs, 1961-2005

now thru November 8 William Christenberry:

1822 Broad • 1 to 5 pm $2 to $4 Last tour starts at 4 pm. Details: 706.737.2820

Jazz Collective

Broad Street Market • 8 pm

DJ On Point

SACRED HEART CULTURAL CENTER Details: sacredheartaugusta.org

thru September 30 Connections: Marianna

Williams

The Loft • 10 pm • free

Wine Down Wednesday

Casa Blanca Cafe • 5 to 9 pm Buy a glass of wine, get one free and enjoy the complimentary cheese bar.

for a complete schedule and details on Westobou Festival events: westoboufestival.com \

the mad tea potter / exhibit opens new space A year has passed since the downtown’s exclusive Mary Pauline Gallery closed, leaving a gaping hole in the local art scene and a narrowed range of adequate exhibition space. Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art fills that void this month with the expansion of its current exhibition space to include a newly renovated gallery on the third floor of historic Ware’s Folly at 506 Telfair Street.

The new The Creel-Harison Community Art Gallery will serve as a dedicated exhibition space for local artists living in the CSRA and will host five six-week solo exhibits each year.

Unveiling the new gallery space is local ceramicist Shishir Chokshi with his exhibit, The Mad Potter’s Tea Party. The teapot and its companions prevail as the inspiration for the exhibition, which attempts to engage the forms that surround tea and coffee service. Chokshi is enthusiastic about the gallery and emphasizes the significance of look at pottery in a more formal setting that the new gallery provides. A visual representation lost at times when browsing the overflowing shelves at Tire City Potters, his studio and frame shop on Ellis Street.

On the subject of the teapot, Chokshi directs me to quote by Heidegger, a German philosopher of the early 20th century: “the jug’s void determines all the handling in the process of making the vessel. The vessel’s thingness does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that it holds.”

Though Heidegger is speaking about a jug which would normally hold water or wine, his concept of a vessel’s “thingness” can be applied to the function of a teapot. Despite its aesthetics, form,

color, or size, a teapot is a work of art that also serves a function.

If you, the reader, aren’t completely mindblown by this statement, then please, by all means, try to focus your attention on a fragment of nothing, a sliver of space or air, and say to yourself, “that, right there, that nothingness, will eventually hold my ice cream.”

Chokshi has spent years developing a body of work that is cohesive between form and function, evolving the thing out of nothing. Born in India and raised in America, he finds the principles of Indian design and architecture influence his work, though he often battles with elaborate Indian aesthetics, fighting to create a more simple and natural form. He gives credit to his two children for helping him to achieve a level of patience he was unfamiliar with before becoming a parent. He jokes, “You can’t toss out your children” and with this principle at hand, he applies it to his pottery. He says, “I lacked finishing abilities before and, now, I have the temperament and time to allow this to happen. I’m more patient.”

A quick sneak peek of upcoming gallery show surprised me –

several forms I had never seen in Chokshi’s shop (a frequent haunt of mine). So, I must say, when we enter The Mad Potter’s Tea Party, we shall raise our expectations (and our mugs), saluting the vision of one man and his unswerving dedication to truly functional, yet glorious, art.

Shishir Chokshi: The Mad Potter’s Tea Party opens Friday, September 18, and runs through October 16.

by KATIE MCGUIRE photo COURTESY OF CHOKSHI

34 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 35

cut the fat

i’m a loser baby part V

the skinny on one dude’s mission to cut the fat A long time ago, in an era of political and cultural change, American lyricist and poet Robert C. Hunter wrote: “Lately it occurs to me: What a long, strange trip it’s been.” While I, as well as many others, could easily affix such a quote to life in general, I would have to say that the past few weeks of my life have indeed been a “long, strange trip.”

The steep incline that was the final week of Biggest Loser was intense beyond what I ever would have imagined.

Rigid discipline in the nutrition areas coupled with amped-up workouts to the point that my daily routine included not only my trainer’s orders but additional self-imposed exercise as well. I was turned into a full-on Stoney-bot capable of mowing over anything and everything in my path. Everything that is but my final weight-in. Now don’t get me wrong, I was beyond pleased with my final weigh-in as I had met my goals but after the final weigh-in?

After a couple of days of “rewarding” myself by relaxing it dawned on me that Biggest Loser was over and all of a sudden I was void of any short-term goals. To say I was lost would be putting it lightly, I just had no clue of what to do and, of course to no ones surprise, I put on weight. So why share this setback? Well, it just so happens in life that obstacles of all types are waiting around each and every corner. Some you’ll be able to run right through, others might knock you back a step, and the toughest ones will knock you out, but only temporarily. The trick is to “get back into the ring” and take on all comers. In the end, only YOU can lose the weight but at the same time, only YOU can prevent yourself from losing the weight. It’s true. If you stay strong no one or nothing, not even those McDonald’s fries, can keep you from losing weight.

After a week of so in that “long, strange trip,” I met with my trainer Mike on my new program, this one geared toward continued weight loss as well as to prepare for my first ever 5K in November. I added a 1.1 mile walk around the Riverwalk to my routine three times a week to help get prepared and have found it to be one of the most enjoyable exercises I do. In addition, I am on a regular rotation of low-weight/hi-rep training mixed with old favorites such as crunches and lots of time in the pool. These have all especially come in handy lately as a trip to the hospital (not exercise related) has temporarily limited my ability to walk for any consistent amount of time. Luckily, there are always options when injury prevents certain types of exercise. I’m hoping to be better in time to take advantage of Health Central’s 5K training course geared towards getting ready for my November 14th walk at the Lexie’s Legacy Memorial 5K. Either way, I WILL be walking, bum leg or not!

On the food front, not much has changed. Still enjoying the fruits and veggies and saving that one meal a week for “fun” which, oddly enough, I still end up choosing remotely healthy foods!

I guess when your mind gets used to a certain way of eating, it’s a lot easier to get your tummy to play along!

here’s the skinny the big picture First weigh-in date: April 14 Starting weight: 405 Biggest Loser Final Weigh In

354 As of 8/21 342 twit stoney’s progress & cheer him on: www.twitter.com/stoneycannon editor’s note: John “Stoney” Cannon will continue to chronicle his attempt to “Cut the Fat” each month.

To keep track of Stoney’s mission check out his blog page at http://fatkatfitness.blogspot.com

by JOHN CANNON photos KATIE MCGUIRE

36 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 37

the monumental history of greene street / 11

Samuel Hammond Monument

/ 800 Block of Greene Street erected by / the Augusta Chapter Daughters of American Revolution location

This granite and marble memorial to Samuel Hammond, a patriot who not only served in engagements across Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, but also served as a member of Congress from Georgia during his sixty years of public service, is perhaps one of Greene Street’s more striking monuments. Starting with a marble base surrounded by classic wrought iron fencing, the monument then continues upwards with a chiseled granite slab fronted by an engraved plate and topped with a life-size bust of Hammond himself.

Ironically born in Richmond County, Virginia in 1757, Hammond served in the Revolutionary War in the Continental Army prior to being promoted to quartermaster at the siege of Savannah. Hammond also served in the Creek War and, in 1793, commanded a corps of Georgia Volunteers.

After his military career ended, Hammond continued to serve his country as a member of the House of Representatives of Georgia and member of the State Senate. Following service in Louisiana, Hammond returned to the area where he served South Carolina as a member of the House of Representatives, surveyor general, and Secretary of State.

Shortly after his service to South Carolina, Hammond retired from public life and died on September 11, 1842, on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River, near Augusta, Georgia.

Hammond is buried Hammond Cemetery, New Richmond, South Carolina.

by JOHN CANNON rendering ALEX McCAIN, III editor’s note: This is the eleventh installment of a the history of the monuments that line Greene Street.

38 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 39

past times / the imperial theatre

Walking down Broad Street, you are likely to stroll underneath the glitzy marquee

the imperial theatre a brief history

of the Imperial Theatre.

1918 Charlie Chaplin appeared at The Wells Theatre.

Originally

named The Wells Theatre and opened on Monday February 18, 1918, the Imperial

1929 Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island was shown at the Imperial Theatre for one day only.

Theatre remains a destination for arts

1932 Alice Moore won the Augusta Chronicle’s Beach Revue and was awarded a “fitted traveling case” furnished by the

entertainment. The architect was G. Lloyd

Augusta Chronicle and the Star Luggage Company.

Preacher of Augusta, Georgia, and C. K.

1954 Rose Marie, the first musical filmed in CinemaScope, was shown at the Imperial Theatre.

Howell, a theatre architect from Richmond Virginia.

The vaudeville acts and silent

1981 The Imperial Theatre closed as a movie theatre.

movies have been replaced by exciting live

1985 Restoration as a community arts theatre was completed. The theatre quickly became the performance home of many

performances from musical artists and

of Augusta’s local performing arts groups including the Augusta Players, the Augusta Ballet and the Augusta Opera.

motion pictures.

2006 The electronic marquee, a replica of the 1930s version, was constructed at the Imperial Theatre.

Today Make sure to visit the Imperial Theatre during this year’s Westobou Festival September 17th through 26th for live entertainment!

by ROBYN MAINOR rendering ALEX McCAIN, III Robyn Mainor is the Preservation Services Director at Historic Augusta, Inc., a non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve historically or architecturally significant structures and sites in Augusta and Richmond County.

40 / september 2009 / verge

verge / september 2009 / 41

reverberations / vagabond missionaries 2000 – 2003

augusta music history 201

For some reason unbeknownst to anyone with the slightest taste for good music, the year 2000 induced a lot of vomitous noise from the stomachs of the Rock Gods. Whether it lay in the overanticipated return of the power chord, or the overused grunge crunch setting on the Line 6 amplifier of every middle suburbia brat that had the idea to sing a sad power ballad, main stream radio stations throughout America fell ill with an unquenchable thirst for “Modern Rock.”

The southeast, which in previous decades was arguably the most inventive region of newly trendy music, answered rather poorly to this situation. Mainstream Nashville decided on a singular arrangement of notes and musicians that would be the hit-makers for the next ten years. Atlanta produced little more than a lot of beats and samples that were used in an overly circular fashion (one can only hear about “dolla billz” so much). In fact, the only rock & roll that smelled anything of heartfelt composition came out of locales with roots secured in a small-town feel.

Enter Augusta, Georgia and her ever misplaced plethora of talented and unstrung heartstrings that have always emerged as our local musicians. Enter also the Vagabond Missionaries, with their mission unknown, but banner plain and simple: “Rock…

Like… Men.” Originally the brainchild of John “Stoney” Cannon, who wanted some help recording tunes that he had written, the Vagabonds started as a hipped out jam group that practiced in a farmhouse. Little did they know that the music would take a loud turn.

“The original jam sessions were very hippie-esque,” chuckles Cannon. “It took a few of us living in Johnny’s (Hohlwein), drinking beer and watching TV for it to turn into the sound that was the Vagabonds. I’d call it, ‘Male-macho-party-rock.’”

All descriptive names aside, the group, which originally consisted of Cannon on vocals, Hohlwein on bass, Melvin Silvery also on bass, and Brian Pinkston on guitar, blasted through those barn doors with a totally different monster. The band practiced

Vagabond Missionaries Releases

vigorously at least once a week, in anticipation of their first show which was to take place at the now defunct Continuum, in early September of 2000.

“We had at least 25 practices under our belt before the first show,” says Cannon, “We wanted to make a good impression, so we practiced a lot and brought an introduction tape for the beginning of the show. It was Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World.’ Somewhat of a contrast to what we played that night.”

After a successful first night, Cannon was still dismayed that the band was un-recorded. So, he encouraged the band to make a conscious effort and use the first few shows as a tool to achieve the musical proficiency for the studio. “I personally like to record bass and drum tracks together, and it is imperative that the rhythm section be spot on in the studio. What better way to do that, then practice playing live?”

The first few shows branded the Vagabonds with a reputation of being trouble makers, although, Cannon swears that all of the hoop-lah was gross exaggeration. “We played at this tattoo parlor and the proprietor caught some kids drinking,” Cannon says, “They weren’t even there to see our band, and the owner totally flipped out on us about drinking in the streets. By the end of the night Johnny (Hohlwein) had told everyone in the vicinity exactly what he thought of the puffy manager, and we just packed up and left. The story, however, consists of a broken glass door, torn posters, and banged up equipment in the parlor.

Those things simply did not happen… Okay maybe we bumped into the door a couple of times lugging our equipment out, but nothing broke.”

The shows continued and the band began to gain popularity, but still no recording was made. Finally, the band decided to record a live album, and asked Doug James, a friend of Cannon, to do the job. “We needed to get something recorded, and most of our energy came from our live shows,” says Cannon. “So, we thought the best way to capture that was doing a live recording, and F**kin’ Live is what we got.”

2001 Demo 2000 F**kin’ Livexxx 7-song EP (VMusic) 2001 Tear of America / New Day Love Song 2-song single (VMusic) 2002 Garage Door Opener 4-song EP (VMusic) 2002 Garage Door Opener +2 6-song EP (VMusic) 2002 Hungover for the Holidays 5-song EP (VMusic) 2003 Dirty Ashtrays & Empty Beer Cans (PRS Records Intl)

Although the live album was enjoyed by many, the band noticed some weaknesses and thought that a bit of a change-up was necessary. After a number of replacements, including many of Augusta’s finest, Brian Allen (Joe Graves, 48 Volt), John Karow (Rock Bottom Music Stores), Riley Williams (Electric Voodoo Blues Revue), and many

others, the Vagabonds grabbed two members that would become synonymous with the band from 2001 and beyond. Joe “Joco” Cowart on bass and John “John-John” Beret on lead guitar were both members that seemed a perfect fit for the group.

Cannon muses, “Besides being a fantastic and energetic bassist, Joco is the kind of guy that came out of a gig and in an effort to speed up the packing process, would glance at the general vicinity of his car, chuck his case in that direction, dust off his hands and call it a day.” That attitude seemed to hold true to the style of the Vagabonds, and with John-John Beret’s conflagrant guitar playing, the band seemed perfectly set up for many fiery performances.

“John-John walked into the Crossroads (presently 1102 Bar & Grille) with his guitar and thought it was a jam session. It wasn’t necessarily, but I know how hard that guy rips, and I said, ‘Please! Feel free to jam with us!’” says Cannon. “John-John is the direct and serious talent in the band. He can and will play anything.”

Once the band had gathered the most determined cast they had yet seen, they went to work on a tour and successfully set it up. Unfortunately, Beret could not commit any longer to the band, and the tour was canceled. After six releases, including “Dirty Ashtrays and Empty Beer Cans,” which sold over 10,000 copies world-wide through an almost unknown distribution deal through PRS records, the Vagabond Missionaries called it a decade. Not until September 11, 2009, will they have been seen in Augusta since the end of 2002. Sky City will host the Vagabonds, 48 Volt, and The Hot Rods (from Altanta). This will be the band’s proper farewell to its fans and its music the players all cherished.

When asked what the fans can expect Cannon promised, “There will be a lot of old tunes, but there are some new ones, including one that I wrote for my late daughter, Alexis. It was the first time that I could write anything for her, and all the lyrics, no lie, came to me in a series of dreams. For about a month, I had the same dream about once a week. I remembered being in the hospital with Alexis, and each time we spoke she said a different thing to me. So, I wrote what she said down, and then I finally looked up and it was ‘Love Never Dies.’”

Fortunately for Augusta, the Vagabond Missionaries stood up to the tonic garbage of the beginning of the decade with good times and true rock. Be reassured that their farewell show will be full of the same, and all will be amiss to be absent.

by JACOB LYNDON BELTZ

42 / september 2009 / verge

Heart Walking Around It had been seven years (in her own personal timeline) since her father had decided to stay behind on Slouthe. The two of them had rescued a people called the Frəmjkn from their planet as their sun was dying, and during the search for a new home, grown close to them. Her father wanted to settle down with the Frəmjkn and help them start anew. But Kate couldn’t stay; she wasn’t done exploring the universe yet. She explained this to her father. Her father understood.

And after Slouthe, she traveled alone, enjoying it no less, only missing the company of her father. But after all, she was a grown girl now. She could make her own way. She had her own ship, her own red dress and—there was a sharp intake of breath. She stumbled across a photo and was forcefully reminded of why she no longer wore that dress. It had served its purpose. It had made two become one.

She saw herself standing in front of the Seven Waterfalls of Andromeda, her arm around the waist of a tall man with blue skin, two antennae, and a wide smile on his face. He was wearing his orange military uniform (he always did), and his two left arms were hugging her close, his right waving at the camera. She was wearing the red dress. Quop loved the red dress, gave one of his rare smiles when she wore it. The picture was of an anniversary. It had been six moon cycles since they had met (around two Earth years), and Quop was about to tell her he was leaving.

He had to fight in his planet’s war. He asked her to wait for him. She asked him not to go

CONNIE CORZILIUS SPASSER

I cannot hear the birds, the rain For pipes, the sound of human waters Rushing to fill and drain, to fill And drain. Outside the door, my daughter, Tear-streaked and screaming, pounds the wood Between our two bruised solitudes.

On Hart Island, the twenty-two convicts stack The diminutive coffins twelve-deep: Baby Girl Rasalikis, Baby Boy Franklin Beaten, starved, drugged to keep Them quiet. The men say it’s a good detail: Peaceful, though it gets to you after awhile.

It’s always the same: The baby wouldn’t stop Crying, so he hit it and it wouldn’t stop—not With his fists, or a bat, or the telephone receiver— Until, of course, it did. How dare she cry like that, How dare he add his shovelful to the trench, Her noise to the din, his shit to the stench?

Kate immediately took off the goggles and stood up. She needed to…go somewhere, not be here, not be here on this ship with that red dress beating in its hiding place. She couldn’t stay in one place. She couldn’t settle down. That’s what everyone else does, she thought to herself. She paced around her room for a moment, then strode up to the front of the ship, sat once again in her chair, and began the launch sequence. She was still not sure where she was going, but she was sure of one thing.

Too new to know how to meet pain with silence.

That comes later, after years of no hands, holding Life like a string between the teeth, In a country where so often our deepest longings End in sirens, in circus lights, in alarms, In the blue and gray skins of uniforms.

Maybe her father had stopped traveling, gotten lonely and settled down. Maybe others believed they had found causes more important, but not Kate. She knew the truth: the universe was lonely and bored. It was tired of its people staying in their little villages and cubicles, content to never see the stars, content to love and fight amongst themselves, never caring about other worlds, other life. It yearned to be seen and explored, to be known.

At the entrance to the unmarked graves Is a single, stone-faced paean to oblivion.

How but bitterly could any mind conceive: He must have loved them, he made so many Of them? The sickly acid of belief Untested—of generic, hothouse grief—

With all systems go, Kate set a course for uncharted space at near light speed.

Cut those letters loud and sweet so we can’t Hear their cries. But the men who load and unload The boats say there’s nothing but birds and rain And the sound of water and earth on wood To hear, anyway. The babies must have learned That lesson: They are very quiet in the ground.

my friend hector

MONICA HOLMES

There is only one place to go for a hot dog at two in the morning on a Thursday – Circle K. It is not the best place to be, but it is the only place to get a hot dog.

A man walks in, his clothes are paint splattered and I instantly pin him as a Hector.

Hector asks if he can get a ride to Rite-Aid and back, to buy a hammer.

There is no questioning if this guy is serious or not. He is clearly very serious. He needs a hammer, he needs it now, and he needs it from Rite-Aid, goddammit.

Hector can tell from my hesitation that I might say no, Rite-Aid is closed, so he launches into the story.

“I just need a hammer, I need to check something out, I gotta go get a hammer, because this guy was going to get sued and go to jail for a long long time, and if he killed the grandfather

of my child, I gotta check it out, committed suicide because he couldn’t see me, you goddamn bet I gotta checkitoutcheckitoutcheckitout.”

This man has definitely been awake for several days. The man behind the counter inches to his right, we look at each other.

He is going to get a gun.

I get caught up in the excitement, already imagining news vans in the parking lot. I forget my safety.

I say no, I cannot give Hector a ride.

He tries to convince me again, “I know I sound crazy, I hope I’m not really crazy.”

I say no, again. I want a scene, I want to be interviewed. I want Hector to show me how crazy he really is.

But Hector disappoints. He spits, and storms out the door.

The Circle K guy and I just look at each other, and then I buy my hot dog, which is cold.

I’d like to say I know, through my own child’s voice, Their voices; through her lively flesh, their pure intent.

Instead, I wonder every day how I’ll keep Her clear of the survivors, the ones who grow, the kid Who’s been beaten into a despair so without affect, He could blandly wring her fragrant neck.

I am sick of apologists and explanations.

I know that human beings are threatened By those bright, ignorant eyes, that unscarred potential, By our own helplessness and failure resurrected.

Some, jealous, kill. Some tremble to unlatch The breast. We tear our hearts from our chests And send them out to walk the world, that precipice Of bones, multiplying our lives and deaths.

With what meager provisions we approach Our children: A memory of huddling, without hope Or words (in fact, the same) against A closed door. The memory of how it will be.

An aspiring editor, MONICA HOLMES is a 19 year old California native now living in Evans. The works of CONNIE CORZILIUS SPASSER have been widely published in literary journals. She loves the written word, having also been a bookseller and editor.

the inkling

7

Globules :or: The Unidentified

f. SIMON GRANT

At first I thought the stars were multiplying. Edit said it was me being unconquerably sentimental – like one of those corny little things I’d say about a month or two into our relationship. But I told her it wasn’t sentimental: the stars had slowly doubled over the last month or however long – it was weird, like life multiplying, like the stars were alive and breeding like rabbits. And she laughed at me and said I was a corny romantic. But that’s Edit; it’s how she is. I mean she don’t even go by her Christian name, Edith; she leaves out the last letter like it weakens her or something. And she’s smarter than me anyway, so I take her word for most things.

There was a time she’d say that stuff with a different tone. And she smiled, and I knew what those lips felt like. Now she only ever smiled with one half of her mouth when she stopped believing in life or anything.

And very suddenly, drastically, without any other sort of build up, we saw them over the lake, about forty of them floating there, bobbing a little. Not stars or nothing big like that; something a lot more humble. I stood there staring at them – the lake I can see from my window – big, weird, wordless: those things, those weird things. Honestly, unlike most folks, my first impression wasn’t flying saucer. I could only think of one word: life. Hell, I don’t know much about that philosophical stuff Edit’s always talking about, all that mind stuff; I just got this feeling life’s a whole lot more unconquerable than any crackpot scientist or philosopher ever speculated. But the TV immediately started screaming: UFO attack! UFO attack! And Edit said, “This is retarded, this is like some damn idiot Saturday morning sci-fi movie.” I’m guessing Edit agreed with me somehow: I mean they weren’t saucers or cigar-shaped light-blinkin’ space-roamin’ vehicles; they weren’t silver, metallic, mechanical, lifeless – What’s it called? – automatons.

They were bodily, organic like something out of Biology class, but not necessarily scientific. Semi-pastel, sunset color, mostly blues and fleshy pinks, and maybe a deep orange. Life colors. But the television kept screaming apocalypse, the final war is here! Well, we waited and waited for that apocalypse; we waited and waited for that final war, waited and waited for anything at all. Nothing happened. They floated there and Edit said, “This is pointless, like they expect something not to disappoint us nowadays.”

And so they were floating in the city, and that’s all they ever did: just floated and floated harmlessly, these weird pink and blue globules in random shapes with what might’ve been veins or arteries if you saw it on an animal. Some of them big as a bus or bigger; a lot of them big as a dog or smaller. And one of them looked like intestines and I heard myself say out loud, “I got part of my intestines taken out back when I almost died; that’s nightmarish.” And Edit said, “Oh don’t be solipsistic,” whatever that means. I remember saying to the doctor weeks or so before I went into the hospital: “I got blood globules in my piss.” So we debated for a bit about what exactly a globule was. I didn’t really know. And now every body was using that word: Globule, a nonsense word.

And I started hearing stories and speculation: this fella by the name of Stanley – he worked with me down at the sign factory – he said he woke up one day and saw one floating above his bed, bobbing there, oblong, about the size of a child. He said he screamed and jumped out of bed and started beating it with a kayak oar.

But it would just bang against the wall and float back to him gently. So he kept beating it a good five or ten times until he gave up and ignored it. Edit said, “I’d’ve kept beating it til it was dead.” And Stanley said, “So you think they’re alive?” And Edit said, “No, of course not!”

One day about two weeks in, the three of us were sitting with some people at Ezekiel’s (All-Nite) Shrimp and Waffle Queen and my friend Artemis said, “I think they’re dead souls, you know, like dead and forgotten souls come up from the underworld, because, I mean, how’re we spose to know what dead souls look like?”

And this guy named Noel, he said, “I looked at one of them and I think I saw my dead sister.” And this girl Appaloosa said, “I saw my dead brother.” And then she and Noel started making out. Edit pointed a finger to the back of her throat and made a gag like she does. Then later she said, “If I saw my dead husband’s face in one of those damn globules I’d beat it till it exploded.”

Anyway, back then this girl Joy started saying the globules were only outcroppings of our inferior psychology, whatever that means. She said she was going to start a lecture tour. I expected Edit to agree, but she said, “Boy, that Joy thinks a lot

8

the inkling

religion and the lonely DANIEL SKINNER

of herself, doesn’t she.” Then this girl Hope started saying we’d all shrunk down to microscopic size: “I mean size is all relative after all.” Then she said something weird about perspective and fractal geometry. I mean fractal? What the hell is that? And Edit scoffed and said, “These idiots want to see patterns don’t they.”

So I was talking to this guy Conti and I told him how I didn’t think they were space aliens. And Conti said, “Of course not; you’d be silly to still think that anymore.”

But then I told him about the stars multiplying before they showed up – “I mean one plus one don’t equal two in this case; if they’re not space aliens, what was the deal with the stars doubling all of a sudden?” I expected him to say the two were unconnected, just complete random happenstance and all that babble. But he said, “It kind of casts doubt on the existence of outer space, doesn’t it?” But Conti was always a weird kid. Of course weird wasn’t quite as weird as it used to be, I mean considering the – What’s it called? – the context? I was tempted to think maybe he was right, maybe there was no outer space up there.

And they printed a survey in Huddled Masses the next week under the title, “What Are They?” – nobody needed to elaborate that title – twelve percent said, “Dead souls”; fourteen percent said, “Nothing,” Joy’s followers I assumed; two percent said, “God’s messengers”; two percent said, “Harbingers of the Apocalypse/fulfillment of Biblical prophesy”; one percent said, “Space aliens”; seventy two percent declined to speculate. I was surprised the space alien speculating was so low. I mean I stopped believing they were space aliens early, but I thought my opinion was in the minority. I mean the knowledge is so under the surface in the – What’s it called? – the subconscious, I was afraid nobody could get to it. It made me feel good about people. I mean it’s weird that these bullshit floating nonsense animals could make me feel good about people, but they did.

Then there was this girl Ashley-Ellen – Mark’s babysitter – I heard all these stories about how she started a cult: The Believers in Globules as Dead Souls cult. She was this real charismatic blonde and Edit said she only got a following because most of those people wanted to sleep with her. Then it turned out to be a suicide cult, but she was the only one who jumped in the lake and drowned herself. And her sister Eliza-June who lived across the lake in a little town called Syrn, I started hearing stories about how she started a cult: The Believers in Globules as Space Aliens cult – small town folk jump to the space alien conclusion more quickly I think – and she jumped in the lake and drowned. But I think she started alone and drowned alone, no cult following her. There at the bottom of the lake: two sisters who hadn’t talked in years. And Edit said, “Please, that totally lacks verisimilitude,” whatever that means, “Next you’ll tell me their mother jumped in.”

And I quit my job at the sign factory. I started reading Genesis more: not because I believe in that stuff or nothin’; just, you know, looking for something bigger.

And Edit would snatch it out of my hand and toss it against the wall and say, “If you start talking about order and purpose, I’m leaving.” And I said to her one day, “We should have a kid.” And she said, “Why?” with that gaggy shock, you know the

f. SIMON GRANT teaches English at Augusta State University and is currently working on his M.F.A. in creative writing. With dreams of being a rock star, DANIEL SKINNER writes screenplays for feature films.

way Edit gets. And I said, “Cuz I been thinkin’ a lot about life lately, how life, you know, fills the world and keeps filling it.” And she said, “I’ve had enough life with that little bastard in there and I don’t need another one.”

I forgot to tell you about Mark. He was with us the whole time, most of the time behind the door in his little back room, tagging along with us wherever we went, fast as he could on his little legs: squinting when Noel and Appaloosa started making out; squinting when the weird floating globules arrived; squinting when his mother brought up his dead father and described how she’d beat him back to the grave. He was quiet; in fact I don’t remember him ever talking. When I was in the hospital back when I almost died – strapped into those machines, feeling white, listening to endless beeping and Edit going on and on about how she could feel herself getting sick just being around so many sick people – I felt Mark’s fingers around my finger; I couldn’t quite see so good, but I felt his fingers; I hardly knew the kid back then, but I felt his fingers around mine. And when the globules showed up he was fascinated. One day he and I spent a good twenty minutes never speaking staring at one – big as a blimp – floating in front of the second floor window. I made a game of pointing out shapes – like clouds, you know, when you’re a kid – and Mark would smile, but he wouldn’t join in. I don’t know why he never talked. Anyway, this blimp-sized globule, I swear, had arms and legs like a man floating along on his back, like a dead body in a river or something – except, no head and his guts floating upward toward heaven – and it floated down into traffic and we heard honking and screaming and squealing and rattling and bang like it crashed into cars. Edit was screaming for attention the whole time. We didn’t notice.

And then they started leaving us. They didn’t exactly leave. It was more of a dying; vanishing like in a magic act is more accurate; no, disintegrating is more accurate, like sugar coating with water poured all over it. Or glass. Or a rotting dead animal. Or smoke. Or you know how a downed power line, the blue sparks’ll jump from puddle to puddle. A few of them exploded, some of the big ones – It kind of made sense to me, something to do with gravity and black holes: beats me; I don’t know science too well. But it made perfect sense to me that explosive energy would be part of their – What’s it called? – repertoire. And I saw a report: The last one exploded down at Pappisville Train Station. Only one casualty. And I said out loud, “Edit was at the train station.” All I could think of was the smirk Edit must’ve had: “Oh, of course. How convenient. Show me the God machine.” Then the face disappears in fire, never losing the smirk until the final second. And those smirking lips, I remember what they felt like. One time, a long time ago.

And then it was nothing – a long weird nothingness. I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe it. Empty, wordless, nothing. Just a bunch of unexplainable blank.

It wasn’t till about a year later he – Mark I mean – said anything about any of it.

I mean, I didn’t mind taking him in or nothing. He’s a lot like me: we don’t need much. His mother had enough money stashed. He made a balloon and painted it blue and pink and deep orange. And I heard him say in his little voice, “I miss them.” What did he mean? I miss them? I thought for a while and said something Edit might’ve called unconquerably sentimental: “Yeah ... Yeah ... I miss them too.”

Apr. 16 2005 02:44 pm

LUKE EDMONDSON

My membranes are Always above threshold potential But it’s okay; The potassium channels are always open In my post-synaptic neuron My myelin is unsheathed I have a cat Named mcat

Creation

MELISSA KONOMOS

Man said,

“Let there be asphalt where there are grasses.” and so there were Streets. as far as the eye could see.

Man said,

“Let there be buildings where there are trees.” and so there were Skyscrapers and Cities. enough to fill the earth.

Man said, “Let there be breasts so there were Implants. to transform the worth of a girl.

where there were none before.”

our skin and bones and hopes have become ever so hark the herald industrial— and this woman said, i have pitched my fork far too deeply: there is a hair of me in every stroke of asphalt, an eye of me in every panel of skyscraper, a tongue and nostril of me in every gasp of city. i did not intend to belong here, a slave to convenience and clean bathrooms,

and laxatives

where i can squat and muse: why they must write on the walls: we are still so primitive still lonely still hungry still frantic

i understand now,

as we try so diligently not to be:

that we are forgotten, so frantic that we consign our thoughts our psyche our vision our possibility. to anything instant and nothing true. desperation. that finds no satiation finds apathy and lays her staunch and curdled neck into the hands of—

this is

we are the courtesan of our inadequacies— yet find our name: our birth, and the taste of love could un-pave and feed: the World.

Much of MELISSA KONOMOS’ life has been formed by her nomadic and eclectic family as well as her unique experiences as an international adoptee. Melissa is married to her best friend, Michael Konomos.

the inkling

9

The Pillar

JONATHAN JAFFE

“I dare you.”

Edgar turned away from the delicate temptation of so much glass. He brushed his unkempt blond hair from his eyes as he looked over at Evie. The harsh yellow glow of the streetlights made him look paler than usual. Evie looked up at him with a wicked grin.

“I dare you to touch it,” Evie reiterated.

Edgar slouched over to Evie and sat down beside her in the liquor store parking lot. Breaking stuff could wait. He looked across the street at the “haunted” pillar, than looked back at her.

“Touched it before,” he smirked, “nothin’ happened.”

Evie brushed back the straight black hair from her pallid face, giving Edgar a brief glimpse of her near black colored eyes. “Before was before,” she stated, “I dare you to touch it now.”

“You still believe in that ‘haunted pillar’ crap?” he laughed.

“I just want to see if anything happens.”

“Okay,” he challenged, “but if I touch it, you touch it.”

“You first.”

Edgar acquiesced with a wry smile. Ever since he met Evie, things were never dull. There was always something going on: sneaking into houses and breaking plates, banging on doors and windows, messing with the family pets. It was the most fun he’d ever had with his clothes on. He got up, with Evie in tow, straightened his Smile Gas work shirt, and walked across 5th street to the pillar. The pillar itself sat quite mundanely near the corner, shaded from the harshest light of the streetlights, its grey exterior daring to be messed with. Edgar recounted every urban myth about the pillar that he had heard. Inwardly, he laughed at all of them.

“Do it,” Evie giggled.

Edgar stood next to it, looking back at her, one hand on his hip, the other pointing at the pillar. He poked at it with his finger. A sudden, shocking jolt ran though him, and he instinctively pulled away. Evie yelped out in shock. Edgar stepped back, shaking out the pain in his hand. “Shocked the hell outta me!”

Evie stood silent, gripping her mouth in her hands as if to stifle her rising panic.

“What?!” he snapped.

“You were bleeding,” she said in a small voice.

He looked down at his shirt.

“Not bleeding now,” he spat out dismissively, “It’s your turn.”

“But-”

“But what? You said you would touch it if I touched it.”

With fearful eyes and trembling fingers, Evie reached out to the pillar. Her hesitant hands brushed delicately across the rough, grey stone. The shock propelled her back two steps, her hand tingling with pins and needles. Edgar’s jaw dropped.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” he said in an indeterminate tone.

10

the inkling

“How bad?”

“Train wreck bad.”

“Scared now?” she asked.

“No,” he grinned nervously, “just grossed out.”

“Then touch it again,” she challenged, “but keep your hand on it.”

“You crazy?”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

They both busted out laughing. Maniacal laughing.

Edgar recovered, “Okay, here goes nothing!”

He braced himself for the shock that would come, and pressed his entire hand upon it.The initial shock gave way to tingling pins and needles all over him. Pain welled up in his chest. He looked down at the gaping wound that now appeared there. Evie stood transfixed by the hole in his chest.

He pulled away before the pain got too real. He shook himself with a brief, full-body shiver. “Ugh!”

Evie danced about in the throes of teenage revelation. “I know what it does! I know what it does!” she shouted.

“What’s it do?” he asked.

“Shows how you die.”

Edgar paused, and then: “How’d I die?”

“Botched robbery,” she guessed, “Big, bloody hole in your chest!”

She asserted each word with a poke to his imaginary wound.

“Your turn,” he responded dryly.

Evie gritted her teeth and pressed her hand upon the rough stone once more. Edgar watched, fascinated with horror as her body transformed into a mangled wreck. Her face ripped away, exposing gore, blood and bone. Her arms and legs broken and scraped, broken bone poking through skin.

She trembled in pain, still holding the pillar. “How bad is it?” she asked.

“Car crash bad,” he said thoughtfully.

“Guess it’s kinda obvious,” she and her skull grinned.

Their ghastly musings were interrupted by a low moan of terror. The pair turned to look at the young, stubble-headed man who was transfixed by the horror that was Evie. The moan rescinded into an unmanly shriek and he turned tail and fled up the street.

“H-he saw me-” she stammered, “looking like this!”

“I don’t think you get it Evie,” Edgar grinned, “He saw you!”

She pulled her hand away, returning to her normal ghostly self.

“We should follow him,” Edgar started.

“And haunt him!” Evie finished.

The two ghosts ran after the fearful man, invisible hands breaking windows and setting off car alarms in their wake.

end.

Haunted Pillar ALEX McCAIN III

JONATHAN JAFFE hails from San Francisco, currently resides in North Augusta, and served in the United States Army for eight years. ALEX McCAIN III is studying medical illustration at the Medical College of GA.

verge / september 2009 / 43