THE LOOKOUT SHOUT & SPOUT
Lookout Shout & Spout
“It takes a village...” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
“...with a lot of helping hands.” Citizen Cliff D. Weller
I love small towns. I like the way folks generally all know each other, and
that they are closer to their fellow man and woman and kid than you can possibly
be in a bigger place. If you’ve got something to hide you might as well get
used to the fact that it can’t be done in a small town. But if you need to
get something done that requires several hands, it seems easier to pull it
together in a smaller place. In fact, to my mind, the spirit of cooperation
for the greater good is keener in a town of 500 than it is in one of 500,000.
It is, at the same time, a cliché and a basic fact of American life that raising
children in a smaller town environment has distinct advantages. That is, if
the small town folks give a hoot about the next generation. In Mentone (and
Valley Head), Alabama they do.
This remarkable little village (for that’s what it really is) has a rich tradition of caring for its own. There are no movie theaters or fast food restaurants or paint ball arenas or roller blade parks. But there are dedicated parents and friends who work hard to more than make up for the comparative lack of local distractions that kids elsewhere can’t seem to live without.
Moon Lake Elementary School is a classic little wooden building here that looks like a small town school is supposed to look, but which few do anymore. It only has a staff of about a dozen, just 8 classrooms, and less than 150 kids in attendance. But the frequent interaction Mentoneians have with their elementary school lifts it to a higher plane than it might otherwise achieve. Mentone has rich human resources, and many of those humans are determined that the social and cultural life of the kids here, and in nearby Valley Head, is as fulfilling as it is in bigger places.
A perfect case in point is a recent arts project that involved weekend visitors, residents, teachers, artists, and what seems like a cast of thousands.
Artist Linda Munoz, from Sumter County, Alabama loves Mentone as well as art. She and members of the Mentone Area Arts Council (MAAC) wanted to bring some kind of summer arts program to Mentone and Valley Head school children. So she wrote a grant to the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and the group received $3,200 from the Council’s Support the Arts license tag program. When you buy one of their tags, $48 of the $50 you pay goes into a fund that provides grants for all kinds of art projects.
In this case Linda and her fellow conspirators wanted to teach area children about making mosaics as a way of tweaking their interest in the arts. The children learned about color and form, and how to make stepping stones and park benches, all adorned with mosaics applied by the children themselves. They’ll be placed at key locations around Mentone and Valley Head in the coming months and will serve as enduring testaments to the work of the kids for decades to come. The grant paid for a lot of the supplies, but the rest was donated. The sheer volume of “hands” that got involved in this project is illustrative of the way this community steps forward, en masse, to get things done, especially if the project involves its children. To illustrate this point, here is a list of some of the folks who pitched in, and what they did for the project:
You’ve already met Linda Munoz, the coordinator who got the grant that got this thing on the road. Heather Nicely served as the design artist. Linda Cox, of The Stained Glass Shoppe, a professional glass cutter, donated hours of her time cutting the pieces used by the children. L. C. Moon loaned the group a house she owns where they worked on the benches and stepping stones. Valinda Miracle, of Miracle Pottery, did the same thing with her business for the kids from Valley head who participated. Chuck Peters of Cloudland Stained Glass and MAAC donated a lot of the glass. Bill Rutledge, Sandra Comelly, and Harry Ohme provided help in several areas. Brenda Wisner and the teachers and assistants at Moon Lake School helped with both this project and an earlier Earth Day project at the school. Another stained glass artist, Kaye Kiker, leant her expertise. Rhys Greene, a professional mosaic artist from near Tuscaloosa, traveled here to help. Mary Smith of the Valley Head mayor’s office sent out news releases. Mentone’s Mayor Rob Hammond wrote to the State Arts Council in support of the grant. Others also contributed in their own ways. Many, many folks got INVOLVED.
So what did the project accomplish? We’ll have to wait awhile to see if any budding artists take bloom from the more than 40 area kids who participated. But Mentone and Valley Head will receive some beautiful benches (see the photos of some of them, and the kids who made them here), and the community was enriched through the process of getting involved for the good of its children.
Time for me to absquatulate. See you next month. Gotta go sit on a pretty new mosaic bench and rest my feet on a colorful stepping stone. LV
Holley Midgley,
Editor and Publisher
