SHELF HELP

Staff from your Monroe County Public Library recommend some of their favorites from the collection.

What: “My Sister, the Serial Killer” by Oyinkan Braithwaite

What is the use of paintings without symbols to guide our fantasies? What use is going forward without building from the past?

Alpízar has created a theater for us to ponder artistically where we are from, what is essential, and where we are going next. It’s not about the endgame for Alpízar; he isn’t delivering a Mona Lisa or Tower of Babel, but demonstrating the joy of playing the game of art. It’s mixing and matching what he deems important, unusual, delightful and fun to look at, then showing the viewer the possibilities.

It’s hard not to see the image of Alice as the artist himself. Standing contemplative, she holds the apple, the universal symbol of knowledge and sin, pondering the options: Twitter (the escape)? The Cheshire Cat (the madness)? Or follow the rabbit (the journey)? – all under what appear to be lottery numbers. Like any thoughtful artist choosing imagery or path, it’s sometimes a crapshoot what will win out.

Alice stands before the works of Wyeth, Michelangelo and Dali deciding which is more meaningful to her (or to Alpízar?). It’s as if Alpízar is following Alice’s instruction, “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.”

With subtle charm, Alpízar illuminates that art is about choice. The rabbit hole has a plethora of options provided by history, not excluding the present day.

So how does art’s iconography combine and create our world (or any artist’s world)? Do we drink the poison and follow the rabbit? Can we get out of our ordinary existence and create something visually extraordinary? Maybe Alpízar is asking for us all. Or, as Alice says so succinctly, “Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”

— Hays Blinckmann for The Studios of Key West

New musical kicks off The Studios’ theater season

The Studios of Key West kicks off its theater season on Wednesday, Feb. 8 with “See Jane Run,” a new musical in which three leading ladies play over 20 roles in scenes about today’s everywoman, Jane, learning to run in her big-girl shoes.

The musical was written by Maribeth Graham and Dana P. Rowe, who also serves as musical director.

“See Jane Run” is directed by Murphy Davis and stars Graham, Krysten Cummings and Lauren Thompson, with choreography by Kyla Piscopink.

The production runs Wednesday through Saturday nights, Feb. 8-11 and 15-18. Tickets available at tskw.org or 305-296-0458.

Why: “She killed him on the first strike, a jab straight to the heart. But then she stabbed him twice more to be sure. He sank to the floor. She could hear her own breathing and nothing else.”

A line like that is enough to grip a reader’s attention into a disturbing yet funny read of a serial killer and her sister. Set in Nigeria, “My Sister, the Serial Killer” follows nurse Korede and her younger sister, Ayoola, who just happens to kill her boyfriends. Korede has been left to clean up her sister’s “messes” since she was 17. She fears this will be her new norm while her sister continues to be a serial killer. If you’re looking for an easy short read, I would highly recommend this book.

Where: This is available as a regular and large-print book, eBook and a book club kit (which includes 10 copies) from the Monroe County Library system.

How: You can request books online by logging in to www. keyslibraries.org and get ebooks and e-audiobooks 24/7 at www. estuff.keyslibraries.org. If you don’t have a card, you can visit your local branch or register online to get one. Questions? info@ keyslibraries.org

Recommended by: Patricia Blanco, library associate, Key West branch

Mark Hedden

... is a photographer, writer, and semi-professional birdwatcher. He has lived in Key West for more than 25 years and may no longer be employable in the real world. He is also executive director of the Florida Keys Audubon Society.

Iwas sitting on the cement wall down at Rest Beach, watching the Sandwich terns, when the band started up. It looked to be a New Orleansstyle second line – a trombone, a trumpet, a tambourine, a couple drums, a neon sousaphone, an electric guitar, and at least three types of saxophone – a funeral or memorial service of some kind.

As you often do in a small town, I wondered if it was for anyone I knew, at least in passing.

The band, and the crowd that mixed in with them, made their way over the elevated part of White Street Pier – the section they’d added a while back so the water could flow through and keep the sargassum from building up, and thus keep the neighborhood from becoming too acridly fragrant in the warmer months – and then continued out into the wider expanse of the pier. I was expecting them to play something of a dirge, but the song was pretty up-tempo, a little jazzy, something I didn’t recognize, that faded the further they went out on the pier.

Whoever’s service it was, I wondered if they got what they wanted out of their life, and hoped that they did.

Meanwhile, the Sandwich terns went about their business.

Sandwich terns don’t necessarily throw themselves at life, but they do throw themselves at lunch. Also, dinner, breakfast and the occasional between-meal snack. They aren’t one of those bird species that wander around, pecking at things. And they don’t freeze like statues, waiting to stab at something with their bill. They are plunge divers, committing their whole selves to falling out of the sky with the intention of nabbing a single fish – usually something about an inch and a quarter long. According to the literature, on average they are successful three out of four times.

They are smallish birds. With their wings folded they are about the length of a large meatball sub. (This is not where their name comes from.) They are relatively subtle and quiet about things, so sometimes it is difficult to notice how full-contact their lives are.

I’d actually come down to try and photograph them diving and was finding myself a little frustrated. Other plunge divers are easier to track. A brown pelican, for instance, will start to do a barrel roll when they dive, sometimes hitting the water sideways, like a tomahawk, sometimes angling in and hitting the water almost inverted. An osprey will hover, flap, then rise up a little bit, before falling down on its prey. Both species face into the wind before they do it.