Arts
& Humanities
Program addresses mental illness
The magnitude of mental illness in the United States
is staggering. The surgeon general reports one in five Americans
experiences a mental disorder in any given year, and half of all
Americans will develop a disorder at some time during their lives
life. When you consider these statistics, it is clear that mental
illness will touch almost all of us during our lifetimes.
Unfortunately, there still is a stigma attached to mental illness.
Fewer than one-half of those who experience mental illness firsthand
will seek treatment. They may be unaware of how they are being
affected, afraid of being branded mentally ill or unsure where
to turn for help. For these reasons, Peter White Public Library
and a variety of community businesses, individuals, medical professionals,
organizations and agencies has planned Your Mind Matters—a
program designed to raise awareness of mental health issues, treatments
and resources.
The centerpiece in this effort is the photography exhibit Fine
Line: Mental Health/Mental Illness. Photographer Michael Nye spent
four years photographing and recording the stories of people affected
by mental illness. In simple and eloquent detail, fifty-five black-and-white
photographs and recorded personal narratives explain how mental
illness affected the lives of the individuals portrayed. This
traveling exhibit has been touring the United States since 2003.
The exhibit confronts stereotypes and reveals the fragility of
those living with mental illness.
“Michael Nye’s exhibition, Fine Line is incredibly powerful
and unbelievably moving,” said Frances Wise, executive director
of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) of San Antonio
(Texas). “It connects you with each individual in such a
personal way. These compelling photographs and intimate voices
will educate and change minds.”
Nye, who has photographed around the world, including projects
in Russian Siberia, Iraq during the first Gulf War, China and
Labrador, will arrive in Marquette to stage the exhibit. He will
present a program about the exhibit at 7:00 p.m. on May 7 in the
Community Room of Peter White Public Library.
Your Mind Matters Mental Wellness Fair will be held from 1:00
to 4:00 p.m. on May 9 in the Community Room and Marquette Arts
and Culture Center. This resource fair is open to the public.
Information booths, chair massages, live music, art therapy workshops,
therapy dogs, a workshop on Internet health sites and more will
be offered without charge to educate visitors about mental wellness
strategies and mental health issues.
The experiences of Vietnam veterans and those affected by Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) also will be part of the eight-week
series of events.
“Stepping out of the plane, I was choked by the intense heat
and stench of heavy tropical air saturated with the smell of diesel
fuel and sounds of chaos…I had stepped into a world void
of anything resembling beauty,” said Steve Wahlstrom in the
introduction to his exhibit A Soldier’s Heart.
Wahlstrom’s experiences during the Vietnam War are captured
vividly in his haunting acrylic paintings and writings about his
wartime experiences. This exhibit will be on display in the Violet
Johnson Gallery during May.
Dan Forrester, clinical social worker, at Bell Behavioral Services,
will facilitate a panel discussion on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) and the Vietnam Veteran at 6:30 p.m. on May 19 in the Community
Room. Vietnam memorabilia and an art exhibit will be available
for viewing at 6:00 p.m. and after the presentation.
Recognizing the Signs and Symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
a program for nonveterans, will be held at 7:00 p.m. on May 20
in the George Shiras Room. Dr. John Olesnavage of Great Lakes
Recovery Centers will be the presenter for this program about
a disorder that has been receiving attention as more individuals
are diagnosed with it.
Jagged Edge will be a nonjuried show of artw ork
created by local artists interpreting the theme of mental health
issues. Carol Phillips will serveas curator for this exhibit to
be hosted by the Marquette Arts and Culture Center during the
month of June. A reception for the artists and exhibit will be
held from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. on June 4 in the Marquette Arts and
Culture Center Gallery in Peter White Public Library.
Bag It! is the theme of a series of lunch-and-learn lectures held
from 12:15 to 12:45 p.m. in the Community Room. Audience members
are invited to bring their own lunch or order lunch from Tu Kaluthia
Café at the library. Local agencies and mental health professionals
will discuss topics such as Learned Optimism, Grief, Depression,
Assertive Community Treatment, Family Psycho-Education, Supported
Employment, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Dialectical Behavior
Therapy and NorthCare Access.
Always a local favorite, Flat Broke Blues Band will play at 7:00
p.m. on May 14 in the Community Room. For more than a decade,
this band has been playing clubs, festivals and concerts around
the Upper Great Lakes. They have shared the stage with blues stars
Koko Taylor, Tab Beniot, Shemekia Copeland and Lonnie Brooks.
The Superior Alliance for Independent Living (SAIL) will facilitate
a Peer Recovery Panel Discussion that includes community members
who have been impacted by mental illness in some way. They will
share their stories and explain the tools and strategies they
have used for coping with the symptoms of mental illness. Community
resources for assisting individuals to develop a wellness and
recovery plan also will be discussed. This event will be held
at 7:00 p.m. on June 2 in the Community Room.
Substance Abuse Treatment and Recovery will be the topic of a
presentation to be given by Tim Connors of Great Lakes Recovery
Centers. Connors is a clinician with more than twenty years experience
treating substance abuse and addiction. He will explain the process
of recovery, implications for treatment and brain chemistry effects
at 7:00 p.m. on June 10 in the Shiras Room of PWPL.
Fran Waters, clinical social worker, will discuss “Childhood
Abuse—Signs and Solutions” at 7:00 p.m. on June 11 in
the Shiras Room. This program will help participants learn the
signs and symptoms of child abuse in order to identify abuse properly.
Recommendations for intervention, responding to abused children,
community resources and treatment options will be shared.
The final session in the series will be presented by Dr. John
Olesnavage of Great Lakes Recovery Centers. He will discuss “Boundaries
That Connect—Establishing Healthy Boundaries” at 7:00
p.m. on June 17 in the Shiras Room. During this presentation,
he will share research related to two types of boundary impairments
and discuss practical ways to “co-construct” boundaries
that work.
The local chapter of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness),
founded in 1986, is one of 1,100 affiliates of the national organization
founded in Wisconsin in 1979. There are now seven affiliates in
the Upper Peninsula.
NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots organization for
people with mental illness and their families. NAMI recognizes
that key concepts of recovery, resiliency and support are essential
to improving wellness and quality of life of all persons affected
by mental illness. They work to demonstrate that mental illnesses
should not be obstacles to full and meaningful lives for persons
with mental illness and their families. NAMI advocates, at all
levels, to ensure that all persons affected by mental illness
receive the services they need and deserve in a timely fashion.
NAMI members and friends work to fulfill their mission by providing
support, education and advocacy. To that end, they are sponsoring
the NAMI Film Festival during May and June. Films will be shown
in the Community Room. Show times vary, so visit www.pwpl.info
or Your Mind Matters schedule for exact starting times.
• As Good As It Gets starring Jack Nicholson, Helen
Hunt and Greg Kinnear will be shown at 12:30 p.m. on May 13. This
film about three apartment dwellers who connect because of a dog
named Verdell is an offbeat comedy.
• Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore portray
three women who live very different lives but whose stories are
intertwined in The Hours, to be shown at 12:30 p.m. on May 18.
• Lust For Life, released in 1956, is based on the lives
of Vincent VanGogh and his friend Paul Gauguin. Beautifully photographed,
this film will be shown at 6:15 p.m. on May 21.
• Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams appear in a true
story that recounts how a heroic doctor tries to revitalize victims
of a sleeping sickness epidemic that immobilized more than five
million people in the 1920s. Awakenings will be shown at 6:15
p.m. on May 28.
• The real life struggle of baseball player Jimmy Piersall
is told in Fear Strikes Out released in 1957. Tony Perkins and
Karl Malden star in the film, which will be shown at 6:30 p.m.
on June 9.
• Susan Smiley and her family struggled with her mother’s
schizophrenia for years. This award winning documentary, Out of
the Shadow, shares a message of hope, compassion and inspiration.
It will be shown at 6:30 p.m. on June 18.
• The final film of the series, Canvas, shown at 6:30
p.m. on June 23, stars Marcia Gay Harden, Joe Pantaliano and Devon
Gearhart. A father and his young son struggle with the schizophrenia
that affects their wife and mother.
“NAMI-Alger/Marquette is appreciative of the library’s
efforts to showcase the Nye exhibit and to provide a venue for
this array of programs and informational resources about mental
illness,” said Jane Ryan, chairperson of NAMI-Alger/Marquette.
“We think it will encourage community members to view these
illnesses in a new light, helping to raise awareness that illnesses
affecting the brain are like those affecting other body organs.”
Ryan said the community needs to understand that with proper and
timely diagnoses, appropriate treatment and support, people can
cope with their challenges and remain in their communities, contributing
to them in productive ways.
“Often we forget, or do not know, that many among us with
mental illness are living ‘ordinary’ lives and do not
fit the stereotypes that are sometimes portrayed in the media,”
Ryan said. “We hope that area residents take advantage of
Your Mind Matters programming, and that these programs help to
affirm the lives of those who are now living with mental illness.”
Creating an eight-week series of events to inform the community
about mental health issues was not an easy task, but it was a
labor of love for Peter White Public Library staff members Claire
Rose, deputy director, and Margaret Boyle, art and programming
specialist. Rose was responsible for raising funds to cover the
expenses to bring Michael Nye and the Fine Line exhibit to Marquette.
“This series of events will be a community conversation about
health issues, treatment resources and how we can support those
with mental illness in our community,” Rose said. “We
have worked for the past four years to bring Fine Line to Marquette.
We felt it would be a valuable experience for our community. Never
did we envision the impetus it has become for educating area residents
about the many facets of mental health.”
She said the community partnerships and programming that have
evolved from this project will transform our community.
“It is amazing how local organizations, individuals, businesses,
agencies and health professionals have come together to plan a
diverse and valuable series of events about mental health,”
she said. For details, visit www.pwpl.info
—Pam Christensen
Authors recall traumatic,
nostalgic memories
The Lost Road Home: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Psychological
Effects of War on Veterans and their Families
by Milly Balzarini
Many books have been written about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) and many veterans have recounted their stories, but Milly
Balzarini has written The Lost Road Home to tell the story from
the family’s point of view; her book will help many families
recognize that a loved one suffers from PTSD, and feel they are
not alone in how the disorder has affected their families.
Honesty is the great strength of The Lost Road Home. Balzarini
is completely honest in explaining her reason for writing the
book. She allows her husband to describe his own Vietnam War experiences.
Then she tells her story as the wife of a Vietnam veteran, focusing
particularly on her husband’s PTSD and how she and her children
coped with it for thirty years before they realized what caused
her husband’s anger and irrational behavior.
Beyond telling her own family’s story, Balzarini interviewed
more than a dozen veterans, and while giving them anonymity, she
does make clear these are neighbors and friends, people who live
here in Upper Michigan. I admired the veterans’ honesty and
willingness to tell their stories. One veteran told Balzarini,
“I don’t really like to talk about this. It really bothers
me. But if this book helps someone else…”
Besides stories from Vietnam veterans, Balzarini interviewed veterans
from Iraq, Korea and World War II. She also includes interviews
with wives, mothers and children about their experiences around
a loved one with PTSD. As Balzarini explains, “everything
is a crisis with PTSD, whether it is dealing with traffic, opening
the mail or answering a telephone. Somehow it is all connected
with the war and survival.” Family members begin to live
in fear of setting off the veteran’s anger, which makes them
develop secondary PTSD.
Beyond raising awareness of PTSD, Balzarini provides arguments
for how to help the situation. She tells the story of Noah, a
veteran of the war in Iraq who committed suicide because he suffered
from PTSD. Noah’s mother is advocating that a “Noah’s
Clause” be added to military contracts to make it mandatory
that all combat infantry troops undergo assessment and be treated
for PTSD before they return home. Soldiers would receive treatment
immediately after their service ended, thus saving many families
from undergoing such extreme trauma with a returning vet, or losing
a brother, husband, son, daughter or father to suicide.
Balzarini also reveals how the government fails to provide adequate
funding for veterans; she discusses the future cost of psychological
treatments for veterans returning from Iraq, and how PTSD makes
many veterans unable to function, hold down jobs or keep stable
marriages.
Every year between 529,000 and 840,000 veterans are homeless because
PTSD makes them unable to cope in society. The cost to the government
of providing for the veterans returning from Iraq makes it more
difficult for Vietnam veterans to get the treatment they need.
And no government funding exists to provide counseling to family
members so they can understand their loved ones’ PTSD or
cope with their own secondary PTSD.
The Lost Road Home stands out among books about Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder because it is written for both veterans and their
families. Balzarini has succeeded in opening up communication
in veterans’ families and restoring hope and understanding
where before there was confusion and despair. The Lost Road Home
should help many former soldiers return home at last.
Still Sits the Schoolhouse
by the Road
By Frank R. Bartol
Frank Bartol set out to write a long narrative about his childhood
in Traunik during the Great Depression. While he admits it’s
unlikely he’ll ever finish that work, he has published part
of the finished work as Still Sits the Schoolhouse by the Road.
It’s a loss that we won’t have his complete memoir,
but this book provides several tastes of life in Traunik in the
1930s—it’s both a nostalgic and educational look at
the schooldays of the past.
The author writes with pride about the Traunik schoolhouse, which
still stands across the street from where he lives; he was even
instrumental in preserving its belfry so that whenever the bell
rings—now for the Head Start center established inside—he
is reminded of his preservation efforts as well as the call of
the school bell in his childhood.
Bartol also writes to recapture a time soon to disappear from
living memory, and in hopes that younger generations will be interested
in knowing what school was like in the 1930s.
The differences are plenty—primarily the lack of outside
communication and stimulation, and the students lack of awareness
they were missing anything, since they had never dreamed of the
technology today’s children would have. It was, in many ways,
a harder time than today, but it could be enjoyable as well.
Bartol points out that for many of his classmates, school was
like a vacation compared to the work they did outside of school
milking cows, collecting stones from farm fields, collecting wood
and multiple other chores. But school was no Disneyland. The school
playground consisted of one source of amusement—a merry-go-round
that looked like a seesaw—a sixteen-foot plank attached in
its center by a bolt to a two-foot high post. A person could sit
on each end and someone would push it in circles from near the
center—then the riders would enjoy the speed as the “centrifugal
force threatened to rip them from their perch.” No seatbelts
or bars to hold onto made being ripped from the perch likely,
but not something the author remembers ever happening.
The schoolhouse itself consisted of two rooms—the Little
Room and the Big Room—so named not for their sizes but because
the smaller kids—up to the fourth grade—were in the
small room, while the fifth to eighth-graders were in the big
room. Over the schoolhouse ruled two teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Kehoe.
Mrs. Kehoe taught the Little Room, Mr. Kehoe the Big Room. Mrs.
Kehoe’s teaching methods were predictable and formal, her
handwriting precise, while Mr. Kehoe was almost the opposite,
a “ham at heart,” especially when school plays were
performed.
The reader will relish the affection the author feels for this
couple and his appreciation for their humane and friendly treatment
of the children in a way that more modern schools would not permit.
While the children listened to radios at home, news was not available
every minute at the click of a mouse. Mr. Kehoe was the daily
news as he regularly instructed the students on current events.
His handwriting left something to be desired and he was not above
abbreviating in a way many teenagers would appreciate from their
text messaging. For example, “B4 u go 2 your desk” would
not be uncommon for Mr. Kehoe to write on the blackboard. Nevertheless,
Mr. Kehoe was the CNN of the day to his students.
Bartol has captured a time and place readers will appreciate even
if it is before their time. The book reflects not just school
life, but a sense of community, a friendliness and long-term relationship
between students and teachers. That the Traunik schoolhouse still
stands is an advantageous reminder to Bartol and the reader, of
the way we were.
—Tyler Tichelaar
Editor’s Note: Tichelaar is the author of The Marquette
Trilogy. All books reviewed in this column are available in local
and online bookstores.
LST announces 2009 summer line-up
Lake Superior Theatre, Inc. proudly presents their 2009 summer
season. This year, the theatre recognized by the National Endowment
for the Arts will present four productions in the Frazier Historic
Boat House.
The boathouse is located at 270 Lakeshore Boulevard bet ween
the lower harbor marina and Coast Guard break wall along the shore
of Lake Superior. The theatre is air conditioned, has cushioned
seating and new and improved stage views.
The summer’s season will feature Guys on Ice, Anatomy of
a Murder, MacSith and The Orphan Train, beginning July 8 and continuing
through August 16.
The season opens with the musical, Guys on Ice by Fred Alley and
James Kaplan. This charming musical comedy brings to life the
story of Lloyd and Marvin, two ice fishing buddies from Northern
Wisconsin who talk and sing about life, love and the one that
got away. The men keep warm with a mutual appreciation for good
bait, cold beer and the Green Bay Packers. With songs like “De
Wishing Hole” and “Ode to a Snowmobile Suit,” this
is a story to which every Yooper can relate. Guys on Ice has played
to sold-out houses across the country and now LST will bring it
hometo the boathouse. The show runs at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday throu gh
Saturday, July 8 through 12 and 15 through 19.
The next show will be Elihu Winer’s Anatomy of a Murder.
The scene of the crime? The Lumberjack Tavern, Big Bay. Where
the story unfolds? Lake Superior Theatre. Anatomy of a Murder
is a classic courtroom drama. Does temporary insanity justify
murder? And what really occurred in the darkness of the great
north woods? Come along to find out as LST celebrates the anniversary
of the cinematic great with local connections. Anatomy of a Murder
runs at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, July 22 through
26 and July 29 through August 2.
The third show of the season, an adaptation written by Orion Couling,
adapter of last season’s Treasure Island, is MacSith, a new
adaptation of Shakespeare’s darkest anti-hero. What happens
when you mix Shakespeare and science fiction? Follow General MonBeth
down a road of darkness with the forces of good in an evil clash
with space battles, lighting and lightsaber duels. Made for all
age groups, this adventure is the perfect introduction to Shakespeare
for youngsters, as well as a fresh take for Shakespeare lovers
of all ages. MacSith runs at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday,
August 5 through 9, with special 10:00 p.m. performances on August
6 through 8.
Closin g
the 2009 season is Aurand Harris’ The Orphan Train in conjunction
with the Marquette Arts & Culture Center Youth Theatre. A
wonderfully moving, amusing and tellingly human story of nine
orphans on an Orphan Train that left New York City on May 28,
1914 and traveled to Midwestern towns in search of homes for the
children. The lonesome whistle wails as the train chugs between
encounters of anxiety, laughter, wistfulness, rejection and acceptance.
Nine stories unfold, each a memorable surprise in this charming,
heart-warmer. The Orphan Train runs at 7:30 p.m. from August 12
through 16.
The Lake Superior Theatre box office is located in Elwood Mattson
Lower Harbor Park near the water’s edge. Look for the small
lighthouse. The box office will open on June 24 for individual
ticket sales, but season tickets can be purchased through the
Marquette Arts & Culture Center or by calling 228-0472.
Prices are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors, $7.50 for youth eighteen
and younger and groups more than ten are $10 each. Season tickets
will be available for $45 for adults, $35 for seniors and $20
for youth. Season tickets must be ordered by July 1 and are first
come, first served.
Season ticket holders receive discounted ticket prices and are
offered ticket exchanges if in advance. Order by Visa or Mastercard
by calling 227-ROCK(7625) beginning June 1.
For details, call 228-0472 or visit www.lakesuperiortheatre.com
—Nikke Nason
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