After Pulse: Melanie Rollman

Posted on by Thor

Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Melanie Rollman is the founder of the Facebook group Conway Critters. She offered pet sitting and dog walking to survivors and victims pets in the aftermath of the Pulse massacre.

After the shooting Maleanie’s son started blowing up her phone about 2am with text messages. He works as an EMT clinical tech at ORMC in the emergency room for the overnight shift. The first text said simply: “24 dead.” Another said, “at Pulse there is a huge shooting.” At this point she could hear all the helicopters flying over her home. Then she turned on the TV to see what was happening.

She knew survivors would be taken care of, to the best of everyone’s ability. But then she thought, what about the people who died? They might have animals at home with no one to return home to take care of them. Some of these people might not have extended family. She decided she had to save the animals somehow.

The next afternoon, she put out on Conway Critters and her personal page, that she would need help to bring this about. She s tarted getting calls from everywhere, as far away as California, and Canada. Several others were doing the same thing. There were just 2 animals that no family members would take. Those 2 went with a 5013c rescue organization. The rest were taken in by family or friends.

She turned her attention instead to collecting and providing all the food and supplies that would be needed to take care of the animals. People who took in these animals might not have the supplies needed to take care of them. A friend who owns the Monograph merchant offered her store as a drop off point. Crates, bowls, collars, leashes, food, toys, treats were collected. A local radio station announced the drop off spot. It was incredible. By day of or three the store owner was calling saying trucks were needed.

It got too big. She couldn’t handle it all herself. She had to delegate responsibilities. Blue at the Venue stepped in and took all the supplies at her theater. The venue couldn’t handle all the incoming donations, so they had to obtain a storage space at the a Track Shack on Mills Avenue. Everything was moved from the Venue to the Track Shack space. The entire space was filled up. It was amazing.

The drive lasted about two months.

Seasons 5.2k

Posted on by Thor

To begin the 34th Worldwide SketchCrawl, I invited local artists to the starting line of the Seasons 5.2K in Winter Park’s Central Park. I rushed out of bed with the sky just starting to turn a dark pink to get to the park by 7am. Traffic started to back up on Fairbanks, so I turned down side streets and eventually parked in the City Hall parking lot. Walking towards the park, I heard an announces say that the race would be starting in fifteen minutes. “Shoot, how am I going to catch this crowd in 15 minutes?” I thought. I decided to draw the table where the runners picked up their numbers.

Before I could add color, the starting horn blared and the runners moved on mass up Park Avenue. The theme from Rocky filled the speakers in the park. The tables I had been drawing were quickly broken down and the boxes carried away. Before I could finish the sketch, the first runners were returning, picking up bananas and drinks. Tommy Woodman was announced as having the overall fastest time. There were awards for every age bracket and every 52nd runner got a coupon for dinner at Seasons 52. Track Shack trained runners certainly won many of the awards.

A woman stood behind me and asked if she could peek. She was Jackie Nelson. Jackie is 72 years old and a survivor of Breast Cancer. She had just finished the run and was glowing. She said that when she found out the cancer had been forced into remission, she wanted to run out of the doctor’s office. When she ran her first 5k, she was annoyed that people were rushing past her. That year she ran 20 5ks and the next year 26. This was her second 5k this year. I must say, she inspired me. Nothing is going to slow her down. She knew how to seize the day. One runner got on the stage to announce that this was his 700th 5K. I felt a little lazy since only my wrist was getting any exercise.

The Singing Menorah

Posted on by Thor

Brian Feldman had been ribbing me for some time about all the Singing Christmas Trees sketches I have been posting here on Analog Artist Digital World. At an 8 AM Meeting of MOOM (Meeting of Orlando Minds) on Friday, Brian suggested he might stage a performance of the Singing Menorah at the Track Shack which is at 1104 North Mills Avenue right in the area where I planned to host an Artists and Writers Crawl. He pointed out that Track Shack had one of the few storefront Hanukkah displays in Orlando. The Crawl was only a day away but Brian managed to throw together a stellar performance. He had help from Omar Delarosa who co-wrote many of the lyrics and performed on guitar. Knowing the times of the stops along the Crawl route we agreed that he could start his performance around 8PM when the Crawlers were moving from the first stop, The Peacock Room to the Second stop, Wills Pub.
The Crawl developed a glitch from the start, when Tisse Mallon and I arrived at The Peacock room to find that it would not open for another two hours. I wrote a note and stuck it on the door so other Crawlers would know to go to the second stop, Will’s pub. Because I wandered around and introduced myself to all the people who arrived at Will’s, my sketch was not a very focused. When it was time to wander up to the next stop, I was still splashing watercolors on the sketch. Other crawlers headed out but I kept working. When I arrived at Track Shack where Brian was to perform, there were a crowd of Crawlers sitting in lawn chairs on the sidewalk looking into the storefront window. Omar was playing guitar. At the appointed time Brian walked out having to squeeze in the space between the plate glass and the display wall.
The performance was hilarious and fun. New Hanukkah lyrics had been written for a number of pop tunes. The Menorah that Brian was sporting consisted of cardboard tubes wrapped in tin foil. There were Hanukkah cards leaning up against the storefront window and for some reason a small Mickey Mouse sat watching the audience. Emma Hughes handed out dreidels to everyone in the audience when Brian sang a dreidel song. For the final number, Brian called in his back up dancer named Willoughby Mariano. It seemed most appropriate that she had a cast on her left leg from her foot up to the knee, but she still performed and gave a new meaning to the saying, “Break a leg”. Later, Emma handed out sparklers and when the performance was over everyone lit them up and the lights and sparks danced. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a sparkler since I was still scratching away in my sketch book.
Several times, cars stopped dead on Mills Avenue to see what the excitement was about and several cars honked. However, my attention was sharply focused on the show. This is without a doubt the greatest Singing Menorah performance I have ever seen. Well, yes, it is the only Singing Menorah performance I have ever seen. For the remainder of the Crawl I heard people commenting on how surprised they were that Brian had such a good singing voice. Brian truly gave the Singing Christmas trees a run for their money.