Save the Black Warrior with SweetWater: June 1-July 7

For Immediate Release:

May 23, 2012

Contact:              

Charles Scribner, Executive Director, Black Warrior Riverkeeper: 205-458-0095 or cscribner@blackwarriorriver.org  

Francesca Zeifman, PR Manager, SweetWater Brewing Company:  404-691-2537 or francesca@sweetwaterbrew.com  

Save the Black Warrior with SweetWater Brewing Company

Annual Campaign with Black Warrior Riverkeeper in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham: June 1 - July 7

Birmingham/Tuscaloosa –SweetWater Brewing Company is launching its annual “Save the Black Warrior” program, which has raised more than $35,000 to date to support Black Warrior Riverkeeper’s water protection efforts since the partnership began in 2008. Save the Black Warrior takes place at participating Tuscaloosa and Birmingham restaurants and bars beginning Friday, June 1 through Saturday, July 7.

Throughout the program, people in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa can visit their favorite watering holes and purchase “paper fish” for $1, $5 or $10, or a Save the Black Warrior T-shirt, helping raise awareness and funding for river protection. To see the list of participating establishments and learn other ways to help, visit www.savetheblackwarrior.com. This website also features an online contest to win an Arc'teryx jacket donated by Mountain High Outfitters, who is sponsoring Save the Black Warrior along with H2 Real Estate.

SweetWater organizes “Save the Waterways” collaborations with other Waterkeeper Alliance organizations in the Southeast, including French Broad Riverkeeper, Mobile Baykeeper, Neuse Riverkeeper, Charleston Waterkeeper, Apalachicola Riverkeeper, St. Johns Riverkeeper and Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.

Last year, SweetWater launched Waterkeeper Hefeweizen, an unfiltered ale created specifically to bring awareness to the Waterkeeper organizations, their mission, and their “Save the Waterways” campaigns.  The brew will hit draft taps across the Southeast later this month.

“2012 is particularly exciting because Save the Black Warrior coincides with our nonprofit’s 10th Anniversary,” said Charles Scribner, Executive Director of Black Warrior Riverkeeper.  On June 6, SweetWater is providing the beer for “Cruisin’ on the River,” Black Warrior Riverkeeper’s 10th Anniversary event on Tuscaloosa’s Bama Belle Riverboat.

Davey Williams and the Improvised Book

by M. David Hornbuckle

For about thirty years, Davey Williams been at the forefront of improvisational music, playing alongside such revered avant garde performers as John Zorn and Eugene Chadbourne, jamming with Colonel Bruce Hampton, and raving it up with punk bands like Fuzzy Sons. He started out in the business playing traditional blues and R&B. He was guitarist for blues legend Johnny Shines and then went on to perform with an R&B revue show. He began the recording/performing project Transmuseq with LaDonna Smith in the 1970s, and he has collaborated with Smith on many projects since.

Last year, Williams took his improvisational skills to the medium of print. In line with his philosophy of performance and composition, he didn’t know what kind of book he was going to set out to write when he started. He only knew he was going to write a book, and so he sat down and started typing.

What resulted was Solo Gig: Essential Curiosities in Musical Free Improvisation. The book comprises short pieces, reflections on the nature of improvisation as it relates to music or to anything else in life, as well as reflections on what it means to play music in the first place. From time to time, that narrative is interrupted by a story about a man named Carl, the novel Williams is writing in an alternate universe. He tackles topics like “What is Musical Free Improvisation?” and “Musical Abstraction Debunked” and “Dislike of Musical Noise Explained.” Each of these topics, Williams addresses in a one or two page streams of consciousness that lace zen-like nuggets of wisdom with comedic one-liners.

For example, in the chapter called “Concerning the Clumsy Assertion of Ego,” Williams writes, “Deliberate upstaging is irritating, especially to your fellow players, not to mention the audience, unless you’re upstaging yourself during a solo. In that case you are free to blow yourself off the stage, so to speak.”

Despite a narrative pretense that he’s making up the book as he goes along, much the way he composes music, readers will probably be happy to know it has actually been edited. Williams told the Birmingham Free Press that though he initially didn’t know what he was going to write about, he said, “It didn’t take long before I found the voice of the Davey Williams that is reading the book to you. Soon, I had a lot of material. I showed it to some friends, and they told me I needed to cut about half of it out.”

Eventually, Williams says, “the true analogy between playing music and writing breaks down.” That narrative device serves as a way of commenting on the nature of improvising. He says, “As a writer, I’m interested in easy-to-read writing about difficult arguments about impossible subjects.”

After the first round of editing, Williams found out that improvisational saxophonist John Zorn was publishing a magazine called Arcana. Solo Gig was initially published in Arcana IV.

However, that vesion was still a great deal different than the book verstion. “When I saw it in print,” Williams says, “I realized that anybody could tear holes in this argument. So then I did that when I rewrote it. I tore holes in it.” In the final version, the Williams explores many facets of what it means to improvise music, and he also added illustrations.

Williams approaches drawing with the same technical precision and aloof humor that you find in his prose and his music. His one previous book is a collection of jokey cartoon illustrations titled, Which Came First: The Fried Chicken or the Fried Egg? The illustrations in Solo Gig are more abstract, sometimes surrealist, with captions like “At any rate, you won’t make much music if you get run over by a train.”

Solo Gig is available at some area bookstores. You can also buy it directly from Williams if you happen to bump into him at Crestwood Coffee, or of course at an actual solo gig.

New Newspaper Helps Homeless

Here's an article I wrote months ago presenting the Birmingham Voice. They have since begun publishing and are holding an event tonight from 7-10 pm at Woodrow Hall. 

Featuring  Brian Voice Porter, King G Da Infamous, Doug Out, Elizabeth Ross, Adrian Gunn, and so many more.

Go have some fun and contribute to a good cause.

-Lee

By Lee Waites

You’ve been in this situation before. You see the man walking toward you, thrift store shirt, tattered pants, a look of purpose. You try to pick up your pace. But even though he doesn’t seem to hurry his pace, he somehow gains on you. You’re trying hard not to make eye contact, while he tries just the opposite. He wants to engage you, make you see him, make you aware of his situation, the plight he finds himself in. He gets closer and closer, he’s going to head you off. He’s going to get you!

You shuffle through the responses in your mind, “I left my money in the car. I don’t give money to strangers. Why don’t you get a job and leave me alone. (Go back into the shadows so I don’t have to know you exist!)” He gets to you. You half grin, half grimace, a response that doesn’t faze him in the least. He’s gotten them all before. What do you do?

This part is a little different, a new phenomenon on the Birmingham streets.

 Here’s what you do. You pull out a dollar and buy one of his newspapers. No. Don’t worry. It’s not me. Our newspapers are free, although I might get the same response from some of you.

This man’s not handing you a Birmingham Free Press. He’s selling the next exciting thing to hit the Birmingham print market, the Birmingham Voice (BV). The Birmingham Voice, due to hit the streets sometime this Fall, is going to be a unique voice for the city of Birmingham. It will be written by, staffed by, delivered by, edited by, and sold by Birmingham’s homeless population. Either former homeless people or those currently living on the streets will handle all the day-to-day activities of the paper, giving them well-needed structure, a sense of usefulness, and potentially gainful employment.  

William Boyd, the Editor and Chief of the Birmingham Voice, has a lot of hope for the potential of the paper. “The Birmingham Voice is Birmingham’s best opportunity to empower the homeless community,” he says, "to perpetuate its own economic development program and create jobs.”

 Along with the paper’s publishers, Ryan and Hope Schumacher, Boyd has been working on the start-up for a long time. Launched with seed money gathered by the Birmingham Coalition for the Homeless and Micah’s House, it is their hope the paper will become self-supporting in a short time. There will be all the things any other paper would have: comics, a food section, what they’re calling “editorial reflections,” opinions, and ads. The paper is intended to be a monthly tabloid. They will also include content on issues important to lower income families. 

Although the main focus of the paper will be Birmingham’s homeless and former homeless population, Mr. Boyd says they will be accepting submissions from other writers as well. “Things that are interesting and engaging for our readers.”  The bottom line is it’s going to be a newspaper.

For questions or submissions contact William Boyd.  email: William@thebirminghamvoice.com

Mail Submissions to the Birmingham Voice. PO Box 55019, Birmingham, AL 35255 or call 205-578-1808

Also see www.thebirminghamvoice.com

Jim Reed

Artopia

by Anne Conway


Each morning I pass a certain piece of street art that makes me smile. Among the boarded windows and brick-laden buildings, this art, unexpected and seemingly out-of-place, gives way to a smile on my face. Some months after I began noticing this piece, I met the artist, Rob Clifton. I won’t say any more about this particular piece because, as it’s street art, he could potentially get in trouble for it. Still, I thank Clifton for this moment of cheer in my morning, and now I know it’s not the only color he brings to our city’s canvas.

Clifton’s hope is that his art brings something positive to our city. Clifton inspires his audience to look outside of their normal domain. “If you begin to pay attention to the little details in life, such as fire escapes and waterfalls, the untouched areas of life begin to emerge,” says Clifton.

His work portrays a myriad of subjects inspired by all aspects of life. “I always try to see the beauty and fun in life, because if you reject the time to recognize these opportunities, then you end up clouding what is really important.” Clifton renders naturalistic images to create simplified shapes and iconographic designs that weave into his “fine, post-psychedelic, illustration.”

One could say surrealism transcends reality in Clifton’s art. If you ask him to paint a portrait, you might get a picture of “someone in cupcake purgatory.” His work is often inspired by his dreams, a “personal connection” to his soul. Clifton’s sensitivity to dreams allow for his subconscious to become reality with pictures of altered dimensions.

A love of music also inspires Clifton’s creative process. Playing the saxophone since grade school, Clifton has always been a performer. Fusing performance and painting, Clifton displays his talents on stage at Bluprint Birmingham. A collaborative performance merging DJs and artists, Bluprint provides Clifton an opportunity to paint live. The audience’s vibe helps shape the painting and the music determines his next stroke on canvas.

His innovation and careful attention to details helped form Artopia, an art show that features emerging artists from our Magic City. Created by Clifton, Andres Sanchez and several other UAB art students, Artopia is an art show that “challenges the conventionalism of the traditional art gallery by merging different styles with live music and performances.” The show’s September debut offered a collage of media and expression. These youthful artists bring their talents to the public with a mix of cultural, societal and religious ideas. The next show will do the same, giving Birmingham a reason to love the culture that art and music bring to our city.

Clifton uses his talents to help Birmingham’s youth as well. At Space One Eleven, a nonprofit visual arts gallery, Clifton teaches children who may not otherwise have access to art classes. With his own classwork sometimes growing stagnant, Rob is able to enjoy the fun and creative side of art. Clifton enjoys watching the children grow and is inspired by their capability.

Look in a different place on your way to work and you may spot Clifton’s art. An unexpected piece of street art, an innovative art show, a live painting-Clifton creates art for our city. Art that gives the ability to “take a break from the goings on in society.”

Cheers to you, Rob Clifton.

Shepherd Bending

by M. David Hornbuckle

On November 30, Dr. Willy Rice, a prominent UA alumnus and big donor to the school, wrote a letter to the University of Alabama National Alumni Association saying he would donate only $40 this year because he is concerned about the fate of the Black Warrior River, especially with regard to coal mining in its watershed area. In the letter, Rice waxed poetic about his boyhood along the banks of the Black Warrior River, and he promised that, “under the right circumstances,” if the UA system showed it would “be a good steward” of the money, he was prepared to leave the bulk of his seven-figure estate to the University of Alabama.

“But what exactly does the University of Alabama have to do with the coal mining along the river?” you might ask. In October 2010, a permit was issued to allow a new coal mine, known as the Shepherd Bend mine, on the banks of the Black Warrior River. However, it won’t be practical to build the mine unless the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama System decides to allow it. That’s because the UA System owns significant land and mineral rights in the area designated for the mine.

It’s been noted in this newspaper and elsewhere that the proposed mine will release waste a mere 800 feet from one of the major water intakes for the city of Birmingham. What has not been discussed as often is the fact that this proposed mine is also near popular recreational areas.

Charles Scribner from the conservational group Black Warrior Riverkeeper says, “The mine’s multiple discharge points would be a problem for the river itself and the many people who recreate there. The Black Warrior River’s Mulberry Fork is a hotspot for public recreation, particularly boating, fishing, and swimming. Countless citizens actually eat the fish they catch in that area. The public usage of this stretch of the river is enhanced by the fact that Reed’s Ferry is a popular boat launch location right by Shepherd Bend.”

Dr. Robert Angus, a professor in the Biology Department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, testified, “ADEM’s exemption of iron, manganese, and TSS from almost all precipitation events, and failure to include limits on TDS, sulfate, chlorides, aluminum and other heavy metals at all, will cause a violation of Alabama’s water quality standards because of its harm to fish and wildlife in the Mulberry Fork and its tributaries.”

Environmental engineer Warner Golden reported that the sediment discharged from the site is “is the equivalent of 160 dump trucks of sediment resulting from one storm event.”

Scribner adds, “Dozens of private property owners in the immediate Shepherd Bend area have echoed these concerns. Many of them fish, boat, and swim in the area. They are also concerned about the reduction of their property values and quality of life as a result of a strip mine starting a Shepherd Bend.”

The Board of Trustees has been implored by student groups, environmental groups, concerned citizens, the media, and even the Birmingham City Commission to refrain from leasing this land for coal mining, but the Board has thus far been eerily silent about its intentions. Last month, 1000 students from UAB, Sanford, and UA signed a petition asking the Board to take a stand. Students from Montevallo sent another 300 signatures a few days ago. And, now there is Dr. Rice’s letter to the Alumni Association.

So far, there has been no response. Scribner says, “While we expect to hear the same boilerplate response from UA, we hope that each signature, letter, call, or news report further convinces UA that stopping the Shepherd Bend Mine is the right decision.”

Bring Us Your Healthy White Babies

by Eden Anesidora

Domestic adoption is a multi-billion dollar industry where money talks and the laws benefit those with deep pockets. Adoption facilitators, including agencies and private attorneys, profit from arranging a successful adoption for paying clients. This has significant implications for women who find themselves faced with an unplanned pregnancy. The demand for white, healthy infants is high, and the adoption industry strives to supply white, adoptable babies for prospective couples. In this widely unregulated system, efforts are made to encourage women to relinquish their child to adoption. Furthermore, adoption laws don’t provide safeguards that allow a birth mother to make a fully-informed decision. If they did, there would simply be fewer infants available for adoption.

State laws that govern a mother’s consent to adoption provide for a hastily made decision and serve the best interest of the adoptive couple. These laws vary from state to state. Kansas allows consent 12 hours after birth, while the mother is still reeling from anesthesia. In California a mother’s consent is irrevocable. Alabama allows the birth mother five days after birth or after signing consent, whichever comes last, to make up her mind. After those five days, she has nine days to revoke her consent, but must prove she is in best interest of her child. Her “right to revoke” doesn’t include a “right to parent.” In 14 days, she’s stripped of her natural ability to parent and must fight in court, battling a system where the scales weigh in favor of the more affluent adoptive couple. She will also need to come up with over $100,000 to fund this expedition.

Possibly one of the most corrupt tactics in the Alabama Adoption Code is the pre-birth agreement. Yes, mothers may commit to an adoption before seeing her child; unaware of the legal red tape and resources it takes to withdraw her consent. This agreement assures the prospective adoptive couple of a successful adoption. It also makes it more difficult for the birth mother to change her mind and “disappoint” the couple who depended on her for nine months.

Stigma surrounding unwed mothers helps perpetuate a system that breeds infants for respectable white folks. The media usually presents adoption the way most perceive the process. A poor, unwed and unfit mother surrenders her child to an affluent and fit couple—everyone goes on their merry way. Sadly, the adoption process is not this simple. Unwed and pregnant does not make a woman unfit to parent. Furthermore, all adoptive couples are not fit to be parents just because they are in leadership positions at a big Presbyterian church or offer the right sum of money.

The truth is the birth mother is often desperate. She may seek help from an adoption agency or close friend. A permanent solution to a temporary problem is presented to her—adoption. This solution may be presented as the only or best one. She may hear, “Do you really want to farm your child out while you try to finish college?” or “God meant for a child to have two parents.” Gifts of little monetary value, “Dear Birth Mother” letters, religious guilt, and promises of future communication with her child are all tactics used to keep her on the right “path.” The couple may even offer to pay her medical and living expenses (this is legal in Alabama if approved by a judge). A lack of knowledge concerning legal matters in adoption, as well as a lack of resources, put the birth mother at a disadvantage. Because of their resources, the adoptive couple has an attorney to guide the process.

One successful attorney, Drew Whitmire, helped draft the Alabama Adoption Code under which he conducts adoptions for prospective adoptive couples. He is also president of Villa Hope Adoption Agency that offers domestic and international adoptions. Would a prominent adoption attorney draft a law that would make his job harder? Absolutely not. I’m sure Whitmire feels confident his adoptions will go smoothly, as the law includes safeguards for the prospective adoptive couple. According to Villa Hope’s website, 75% of Whitmire’s practice is in adoptions.

The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute wrote that Whitmire had been “considered by many in Alabama as its premier adoption attorney.” Furthermore, his “dedication to adoptive parents and their children makes him an outstanding choice” for Alabama’s Angel of Adoption Awards, a signature public awareness program for the CCAI.

Unknown to the birth mother, the visits with her child that were promised in a letter will not occur, as these letters are not legally binding. The letters with updates on her child will not arrive. Those gifts (flowers at the hospital, candles and baked goods, etc.) do not have “monetary value;” therefore they are not considered coercive. How subtle. The language used by the adoption facilitators was not undue influence, just encouragement. In addition, the poignant interviews with the social worker, in which the birth mother discloses every detail of her life because “it’s important to be truthful,” will come back to haunt her if she contests the adoption in court. Medical records, dating back to the birth mother’s adolescence and teenage years, may be used to prove her “unfit.” Her decision, because it is based on emotional appeals and granfalloons, is one she regrets.

These stories fail to garner media attention, widening the gap between truth and fiction. The stigma surrounding birthparents will continue, as facts are not able to surface. Adoption practitioners and private attorneys will continue to depend on vulnerable, young women to supply healthy infants for those who can pay big bucks.

Until legislation enacts laws that ensure best practice and provide safeguards, birth mothers will continue to be exploited.