Photo provided - Jim Pfeiffenberger and trained vocalist Liesl Davenport-Wheeler formed “Good Dog” 12 years ago.

What happens when a science educator and a music teacher write songs together? The result is “another angle on learning” taken by Good Dog to educate children about marine life.
On Friday, Good Dog is performing “original nature songs aimed at teaching basic ocean literacy” said co-founder Jim Pfeiffenberger.
Good Dog uses scientific accuracy, “one guitar and two voices” to illustrate the adaptations of maritime mammals, birds, and fish.
Trained vocalist Liesl Davenport-Wheeler and Jim Pfeiffenberger formed Good Dog over a dozen years ago in Seward.
Jim currently works at the Ocean Alaska Science and Learning Center. Now a choir teacher at Bartlett High School in Anchorage, Liesl continues to sing as part of Good Dog at events such as Whale Fest Kodiak, the Seattle Folk Festival, and school assemblies around Alaska.
In 2002, they released eleven original songs entitled Tunes from the Tides. The CD prominently features a variety of percussionists, tuba and the naturalistic duo.
At 7 p.m. Friday, Good Dog will make their third appearance in the Shorebird Festival, performing at the Homer Council on the Arts gallery. Inspired by previous festivals, the song “You Could be a Shorebird Too,” imparts knowledge about migratory birds.
“They pair skilled vocals with educational content that’s fun,” said the Anchorage Press. Jim hopes their music “helps to foster stewardship to nature” in the audience’s future.

Carla Stanley

In honor of its special 20th anniversary, the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival presents “20 Birds for 20 Years,” original watercolor paintings by Homer artist Carla Stanley, exhibited at the Homer Council on the Arts for the month of May.
“20 Birds for 20 Years” paintings will then be available for bidding during a silent auction that runs May 4-12, and during the live auction event “The Big Year, The Big Night,”  on May 12. The exhibit opens with two receptions: Friday  5-7 p.m. for locals and Friday, May 11, 5-6:30 p.m.
Stanley created this body of work to honor the 20th Anniversary of the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival, an event she’s been active in for over 14 years. Last September, she began painting individual birds, with an October deadline to be completed with that portion of the project.
“I basically painted up a storm of individual birds and I didn’t (yet) paint in the background,” she explained. With the completed birds alone, she scanned in the images and made a collage for T-shirts and other festival commemoratives, such as the mugs, hats art prints and merchandise. “Once the scanning was done, through the winter the  backgrounds were all completed,” she said.
“Lynda Reed at Homer Art and Frames “donated a lot of time and gave us a really good price. Michaels’ in Anchorage gave us a discount on frames, and Larry at Lakeshore Glass gave a discount on glass. Three volunteers helped put them all together.”
The idea is to keep as much local as possible. The funds raised by the sale of the artwork is  for the Education Conservation Fund, also are used locally.
If you’ve bought a decorative shorebird festival T-shirt, it is a work of art purchased  by or donated  to the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival. Artists such as  George West, Gary Lyons, Lynn Naden, Aurora Firth, and Conrad Field have all made  designs, many of which Stanley  transferred into a graphic art for use on the merchandise.
As a retired science and art teacher and a lifelong artist, Stanley has donated much of her artwork and her time to the Shorebird Festival, serving on the Festival Planning Committee for over 14  years.  
After teaching in Pennsylvania and Colorado, Carla began her Alaska teaching career in the 1970s, in the Soldotna-Kenai area teaching junior high marine science and art. She earned her master’s degree in Art Education, and taught several years at Soldotna High and Skyview before retiring in 1997 when she moved to Homer.
In Homer she began a new career combining her love of art and conservation, working part time for the USFWS. Her contract work for the service related to graphic illustrations for educational programs. She was asked to help coordinate the festival in 1999.
As for the 20 shorebird paintings, Stanley specifically went into the project as a fundraiser. This year, federal funding for educational conservation projects were cut.
“I wanted to give this back to the festival. There’s something very important to me – and it is conservation, education, and habitat,” Stanley said. “Education and conservation are the most important things that we can do for the birds and wildlife of this region. That’s why this festival started. A group of people felt we had a wonderful  resource here and we need to do what we can to protect it. And education, conservation and habitat protection is how we can do it.”
Since 2000, the festival has included events to specifically feed into the Conservation Education Fund. It began when Conrad Field and Stanley donated joint artworks on nautical charts to start the fund. The annual Bird on the Wing Concert, organized by Sunrise Kilcher Sjorberg also donates 100 percent of the proceeds to the fund.
Out of the fund, educational programs  like the Jr. Bird Badge, are offered at the Islands and Ocean Visitor Center during the Festival. They also use funds to contribute to projects such as a new bird viewing platform built at the edge of Beluga Lake by Erick Paulsrud as an Eagle Scout Project last fall. The money raised by these art and music donations as well as private donations on the Shorebird Registration Form, help pay for the stairs or handicapped access Erick planned for the platform.

On Friday, local galleries plus a few surprise venues are in store for those who wish to venture out on a spring evening.
The Back Room Gallery of Ptarmigan Arts presents two metal artists for “Nesting Shorebirds and Spring Flora.” Chuck Jackson combines his steel bird sculptures with the delicacy of Ukrainian decorated eggs to provide a unique combination celebrating the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival. 
Jackson will also demonstrate the wax resist and dye process of egg decorating from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday.
Picture Alaska art gallery presents Halibut Cove artist Tara Alverson’s and her recent series of watercolor paintings focusing on the Alaskan Lifestyle. An opening artist reception will be held May 4 from 5 until 7 pm. Alverson will be in the gallery during the Shorebird Migration birder’s walk to greet the birders and answer questions. Her paintings will be on exhibit through May.
The Art Shop Gallery presents Connie Englebrecht, a tile artist from Eagle River. The artist will be in the gallery the gallery Saturday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. showingher one-of-a-kind tile pieces along with her line of sand carved individual tiles, glasses and window ornaments. Artist reception Friday, May 5 from 5-7:30 p.m.
Moose Run Metalsmiths brings its celebrated metal art cranes indoors, fabricated from cold roll steel with custom patinas. Come see the flock of cranes fly across the walls, while smaller shorebirds nest on driftwood or tree roots, tending their delicate eggs.  For a show preview, go to: www.ptarmiganarts.com.
Fireweed Gallery offers two exhibits this month. Kachemak Bay Watercolor Society’s Annual Spring Show of new work will be presented in the main exhibits gallery, with harbor scenes, landscapes and floral images from ever-popular group collaborative painting. Also being shown in the gallery is a selection from “Soul Expose.” These large-scale, acrylic floral images by Lou Anne Person are a bold, colorful feast for the eyse.
The show opens with a Friday reception from 5-7 p.m.
AJ’s Old Town Steakhouse and Tavern will feature the work of landscape artist Jim Buncak, with a special reception from 5-7 p.m. Friday.
Buncak features an exhibit of 12 paintings . “Paintings of Prague and a Small Retrospective,” based in part on his recent work in Prague.
Kachemak Kids Early Learning Center will host their 3rd Annual First Friday Art Show, showcasing artwork created by children 18 months through 6 years old.
This year we are adding a Silent Auction with all proceeds to benefit preschool art teacher Rosana Moyer to help with her medical expenses. Auction items include artwork from local artists and businesses. Food, children’s activities and music. May 4, 5-7 p.m., 3838 Bartlett St., across from the Pratt Museum
Homer Flex High School students have worked throughout the year on multi-media art projects. The resulting array of everything from furniture to beading is highlighted this week on First Friday.
In a special exhibit and reception, this once-a-year First Friday contribution from the school runs 5-7 p.m. The exhibit will feature artwork created by students and staff, including pottery, pen and paper, wood, beads, metal, and photography. Live music, poetry and other writings will be offered, and refreshments will be provided.
Local metalsmith artist Art Koeninger taught the art of jewelry-making to the students during his Artist-in-Residency stint at the school this winter.

Photo by C. Taylor Crothers - Taj Mahal Trio comes to Homer Sunday.

Famed blues player Taj Mahal is probably the most requested musical artist ever to come to Homer, a musician whose range of talent spans a global history as much as a rich sound.
Downward Dog producer Michael Hayes said Taj has been to Alaska at least once that he’s known of, and comes to the Kenai Peninsula for fishing trips now and then.
“He’s a big fisherman. He’s probably the most requested artist we’ve ever had in the years we’ve been doing concerts. It isn’t sold out yet, but it’s on its way,” Hayes said. “He’s been around, forever. He even played with Jimmy Hendrix back in the ‘60s.”
Hayes works in conjunction with Whistling Swan in Anchorage, a promoter who brings big acts north. In order for costs to pencil out for smaller audiences like those in a town the size of Homer, the small towns work with big promotors on a package of tours. Especially for giant artists like Taj.
Taj is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist.
“He is one of the most prominent and influential figures in late 20th century blues and roots music. Though his career began more than four decades ago with American blues, he has broadened his artistic scope over the years to include music representing virtually every corner of the world – west Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, the Hawaiian islands and so much more,” his biography reads. “What ties it all together is his insatiable interest in musical discovery. Over the years, his passion and curiosity have led him around the world, and the resulting global perspective is reflected in his music.”
Born Henry St. Claire Fredericks in Harlem, New York on May 17, 1942, Taj grew up in Springfield, Mass. His father was a jazz pianist, composer and arranger of Caribbean descent, and his mother was a gospel-singing schoolteacher from South Carolina, according to his website.
Both parents encouraged their children to take pride in their diverse ethnic and cultural roots. His father had an extensive record collection and a shortwave radio that brought sounds from near and far into the home. His parents also started him on classical piano lessons, but after only two weeks, young Henry already had other plans about what, and how, he wanted to play.
In addition to piano, he learned to play the clarinet, trombone and harmonica, and he loved to sing. He discovered his stepfather’s guitar and became serious about it in his early teens when a guitarist from North Carolina moved in next door and taught him the various styles of Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed and other titans of Delta and Chicago blues.
Springfield in the 1950s was full of recent arrivals, not just from around the United States but from all over the globe.
Taj says in his biography, “We spoke several dialects in my house – Southern, Caribbean, African – and we heard dialects from eastern and western Europe,” Taj recalls.
In addition, musicians from the Caribbean, Africa and all over the U.S. frequently visited the Fredericks home, and Taj became even more fascinated with roots – the origins of all the different forms of music he was hearing, what path they took to reach their current form, and how they influenced each other along the way. He threw himself into the study of older forms of African-American music – a music that the record companies of the day largely ignored, his website says.
Henry studied agriculture at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the early 1960s. Inspired by a dream, he adopted the musical alias of Taj Mahal and formed the popular U. Mass party band, the Elektras. After graduating, he headed west in 1964 to Los Angeles, where he formed the Rising Sons, a six-piece outfit that included guitarist Ry Cooder.
The band opened for numerous high-profile touring artists of the ‘60s, including Otis Redding, the Temptations and Martha and the Vandellas. Around this same time, Taj also mingled with various blues legends, including Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Sleepy John Estes.

HOMER TRIBUNE/Naomi Klouda - Ela Harrison-Gordon, Sunrise Kilcher Sjoberg and Nancy Levinson prepare for On the Wing.

“It was a terrible state of affairs,
And all because one greedy old man
Had gathered all the light–
Every single ray–
And locked it away
In a house with no door,
A house by the Nass,
A river that flowed
From mountain to shore.”

Those lines, by Poet Nancy Levinson, are in “Raven Steals the Light,” a poem she will be reading at On the Wing, an evening of poetry and music during the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival May 10 at the Homer Theatre.
Poetry is a funny thing. You need to write it with your hands, pen applied to paper.
“I find I need to write it out long hand. I use the computer for other things, but not for poems,” Levinson said.
A poet of another generation, Ela Harrison Gordon, agrees.
“Writing a poem is physical. It’s like a professor of mine once said, ‘Poetry is a way of paying attention,’” she said.
On the Wing, a night of poetry and music, is heading into its ninth year, an event fine-tuned and ushered along by Sunrise Kilcher Sjoberg. The line up of poets including Levinson and Gordon are Milli Martin, Mary Langham, John Seitz, Dotty Cline and Jean Steele.
The musical lineup includes the Seaside Singers (they’ve been singing together for more than 30 years now) the Homer Ukulele Group, Falcolm Greear, Jessica Aragones, Marjolein Cardon, Judith James, Ann Keffer, Louise Seguela, Lindianne Sarno, Tim Quinn and surprise guest dancers.
Sunrise launched the evening of entertainment as a forum for poets to read their works, in recognition that there aren’t a whole lot of options for poetry these days. The notion of bird poetry has evolved along with it – there are special considerations that go into a bird poem.
In Levinson’s case, ravens kept making an appearance as an image in want of poetic expression.
“A friend had brought me a raven wall sculpture, and then, I went to the Bunnell (Art Center) for the plate show, and there was a raven again. It hit me like a magnet – I wanted to do raven legends,” Levinson recalled.
For the past year, she has worked on the poem to be ready in time for the bird poetry event.
Gordon, who teaches linguistics at the Kachemak Bay Campus and is new to Homer, said it takes either an image or an experience to inspire a bird poem – both of which she has had in plenty. She was raised in London, with family roots in Israel – both very different landscapes from the one in view now.
“There is this huge shift in seasons here and the migrations that I am still getting used to. It’s almost like traveling, because of the constant changing of view,” she said.
In her case, a yellow warbler literally bumped into her.
“It was a wobbly yellow warbler newly arrived. It was the time of year when they just came back – it undulates when it flies. It has these stubby little wings and it was flitting and falling– they fly all the way from Mexico – and it flew close, almost grazed my chest,” Gordon said. “I am crossing paths with birds all the time because we live 18 feet from the edge of the bluff. This one flies and drops and flies and drops, dipping down – and I was wondering, how did it ever make it here from Mexico, flying like that?”
The result of these musings was a villanelle, a tricky 19-line poem Gordon wrote in the course of the past two years.
The first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate as the third line in each successive stanza and form a couplet at the close. A villanelle consists of five tercets and one concluding quatrain.
“It’s a form that is asking themes of the poem to come together so they can refract,” she explains.
Gordon likes the challenge of adhering to tight form. “I think when I started writing poetry when I was young, there was a small distinction between poetry and music and song. With most forms there is rhythm, rhyme and repetition, which are very musical forms of writing a poem. Those are very attractive to me – the way they organize sound,” Gordon said.
Levinson has written poetry for several decades, and said the delivery is one of the poem’s most important tasks.
As a speech major in college, her voice was trained for public speaking and her poems are created to be read aloud.
“You can help your audience so much if you work on how you deliver a poem. Your delivery should be based on your understanding of the poem. It all starts there. Then you use your voice almost like a musical instrument to convey the meanings you find in the poem,” she said.
The forms or structures of poetry are secondary, she said. “I’m not going to pay attention that much to the layout of the poem. Indentations and spacing – I am more concerned about the rhythms and the sense of it. Where do you pause?
Where do you catch your breath? It can be in more than one spot – the poet doesn’t give you that many clues. I feel my own rhythms,” Levinson said. “To me there’s a musicality to poetry in its structure and beat.”

From “Bird’s Bridge,” by Gordon:

“Our Northern spring’s a sudden race of green.
And birds arrive, migrating from the south.
What’s constant is the shift. I live between.