Kimberly Williams-Paisley Hosts NPT Documentary Series on Children`s Health in TN

Actress will introduce viewers to the challenges facing children’s health in NPT REPORTS: CHILDREN’S HEALTH CRISIS

Actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, who first lit up the screen as the radiant young bride in the comedy feature film series Father of the Bride and Father of the Bride Part II, and more recently co-starred in the hit ABC TV sitcom According to Jim, will serve as host of the first two episodes of Nashville Public Television’s new documentary series, NPT REPORTS: CHILDREN’S HEALTH CRISIS.

The first episode of the seven-part series, produced by Mary Makley (The Carter Family) and premiering on NPT-Channel 8 on Thursday, February 25 at 8:00 p.m., will provide an overview of the challenges that children in Tennessee face in leading healthy lives, including a survey of the central problems: infant mortality, prenatal care, the obesity epidemic and mental wellness. Episode two, produced by Will Pedigo (Next Door Neighbors, Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust) and premiering in June 2010, takes an in-depth look at the issues surrounding prenatal care, preterm birth and infant mortality in Tennessee.

“As a Tennessee resident and mother of two young children, with an impressive history of philanthropic and volunteer work, Kimberly is the perfect person to bring this important information to the people of Tennessee,” said Beth Curley, president and CEO of NPT. “The situation regarding children’s health in Tennessee has reached crisis proportions and something must be done now to turn that tide. We are ranked 48th in the general health of our children, and 41 percent of Tennessee children are overweight or at risk for being overweight. We are grateful for Kimberly’s volunteer participation in the project, and know that together, we can begin to create real change.”

NPT REPORTS: CHILDREN’S HEALTH CRISIS is a three-year initiative built around a series of seven documentaries on the state of children’s health in Middle Tennessee. Other elements of the project include follow-up programs, health-related spots and a project website.

“As a mother, the health and well being of my children is a top priority,” says Williams-Paisley, a Tennessee resident. “The state of children’s health in Tennessee is very concerning. We must work together in different ways as a community to fix this problem. Learning more about this issue through this effort is a first and important step.”

In addition to her work in the Father of the Bride films and According to Jim, Williams-Paisley starred in How to Eat Fried Worms, Eden Court, and as Matthew McConaughey’s wife in We Are Marshall. Behind the camera, Williams-Paisley wrote and directed the multi award-winning short film, Shade, in which she also starred, opposite Patrick Dempsey. The film picked up the Vision Award for Best Festival Short at the Heartland Film Festival.

Kimberly Williams-Paisley (Center) with NPT producers Mary Makley (left) and Will Pedigo on the set during the taping of introductions for NPT's new documentary series NPT REPORTS: CHILDREN'S HEALTH CRISIS.

Williams-Paisley’s other television credits include the ABC Family Network’s Lucky Seven, and the Lifetime Original feature Identity Theft, on both of which she also served as Co-Producer. She co-starred in The Christmas Shoes for The CBS Network, in ABC’s Relativity, in the NBC mini series The Tenth Kingdom and in the Hallmark Hall of Fame film, Follow the Stars Home.

Most recently, Williams-Paisley completed a starring role in the Lifetime Movie Network film Amish Grace, which airs in March. The movie is based on a true story about the aftermath that followed the schoolhouse shooting in a Pennsylvania Amish town, and examines one mother’s personal journey as she copes with the tragic loss of her daughter and struggles with her community’s teaching of the transcending power of forgiveness.

Williams-Paisley is actively involved with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research, St. Jude’s Hospital and the XP Foundation and is a member of the Entertainment Council for Feeding America.

NPT REPORTS: CHILDREN’S HEALTH CRISIS is made possible through major support by the Healthways Foundation, the Nashville Healthcare Council, the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, with additional funding by the Orrin H. Ingram Fund. A multitude of community partnerships have provided invaluable support to the project, most notably Alignment Nashville, whose “5 Pillars of Children’s Health” provided the initial outline for the project.

History Detectives` Elyse Luray to Speak at Belmont Wed Feb 3

Elyse Luray of PBS’s History Detectives will give a presentation on collecting art and antiques on Wed., Feb. 3 at 7:30 p.m. in Belmont University’s Massey Concert Hall. Luray’s visit comes in conjunction with the opening reception for The American Experience: Art and Decorative Arts from the Collections of Belmont University Alumni, a collection that will be displayed in Belmont’s Leu Art Gallery from January 26 through May 14. The reception and presentation are free and open to the public.

The exhibit reception will take place in the gallery on Wed., Feb. 3 from 5-7 p.m. with Guest Curator Mark Brown, Belmont Mansion executive director, who has pulled together an exhibit that explores a wide range of American fine and decorative art objects from the collections of Belmont University alumni. Luray’s talk will follow the reception.

The items on display—including furniture, silver, glass, textiles, paintings and prints—reflect American culture from the Colonial period to the end of the nineteenth century. Selected items include coin silver by the son-in-law of Paul Revere, Tiffany silver tongs, Tennessee made furniture and a quilt made by a slave.

Pieces were selected to illustrate some interesting topics from the American decorating past such as the crossover between American literature and the decorative arts or how home items deified George Washington. Other items illustrate how the 1876 American Centennial influenced items displayed in the home. The exhibit will also explore the roles of women and African Americans in the decorative arts.

Luray is an appraiser and historian in popular culture. Currently she is one of five hosts on PBS show “History Detectives” and an appraiser on HGTV’s “The Longest Yard Sale.” As a TV personality she investigates objects to reveal fascinating stories and unrealized value. A graduate of Tulane University, Luray is a certified appraiser and a New York state licensed auctioneer. In her presentation, she will offer tips to people who are interested in discovering something of interest and value in personal collections.

For more information, call (615) 460-6770. The Leu Art Gallery is located in the Lila D. Bunch Library on the campus of Belmont University.

Season 8 of History Detectives begins in the summer of 2010. During its season, the show airs on Monday nights at 8:00 p.m. on NPT-Channel 8 and PBS stations nationwide.

NPT Music Monthly February 2010

P-Star

Nashville’s Music Row is at once a street of dreams, and a boulevard of broken ones. Every day people arrive in town full of dreams of music business success. Most leave, or remain, with those dreams unfulfilled. For some, the closest thing to achieving those dreams is to live vicariously through a successful friend or family member (or reality-show contestant).

Take then, the story of Priscilla, a precocious nine-year-old little girl who tells her single-father, Jesse, “I am going to become a rapper and fulfill your dreams of succeeding in the music business.” Moved by his daughter’s passion and impressed with her talent, he begins to teach her all he knows about rapping. Emboldened with a new moniker – P-Star – father and daughter go from a one-bedroom shelter in Harlem to a four-bedroom apartment, from food stamps to shopping sprees, from rapping on street corners to sold-out night clubs. But in the efforts to make her dad proud, Priscilla struggles to remain a child and finds herself trapped in a world of people twice her size and four times her age and doesn’t know whom to trust. The ride has just begun, and P-Star has already secured a recurring role on the reconstituted Electric Company.Independent Lens presents P-Star Rising on Tuesday, February 9 at 9:00 p.m.

In honor of Black History Month. President and Mrs. Obama host a concert in the White House East Room celebrating the Music of the Civil Rights Era. In Performance at the White House, on Monday, February 22 at 9:00 p.m., includes performances by Natalie Cole, Bob Dylan, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, John Mellencamp, Smokey Robinson, Seal, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Yolanda Adams, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon and the Howard University Choir perform. Morgan Freeman and Queen Latifah host.

Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller – Three Girls and Their Buddy – are on Soundstage; Them Crooked Vultures – Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones – are on Austin City Limits. It’s another great month of music programming on NPT.

Read the Rest of the NPT Music Monthly February 2010 on the wnpt.net news page. It’s the complete listing of all the music programming coming to NPT this month, including all the above mentioned artists, plus Kenny Chesney, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Esperanza Spalding, Steve Earle, Kris Kristofferson and plenty more. Subscribe for free at wnpt.net. Tell your friends!

Tennessee Crossroads Celebrates Artist Salvatore Palazzolo`s 101st Birthday

Tennessee Crossroads will profile and celebrate the birthday of Hendersonville artist Salvatore Palazzolo this week and weekend. Palazzolo, who turns 101 on January 31, will be featured on the venerable travel show airing on Thursday, January 28, at 7:00 p.m. and again on the artist’s birthday, Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. on NPT-Channel 8.

Palazzolo’s work is currently being exhibited at the Starbucks Coffee in Hendersonville, located at 201A Main Street. The store is open Sunday – Thursday 5:30 a.m. – 10:00 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 5:30 a.m.-11:00 p.m. The exhibit runs until Sunday, January 31.

Palazzolo was born on January 31, 1909 in Detroit, Michigan. He grew up in San Francisco, California and attended Stanford University and the San Francisco School of Art and Watercolors, where he studied under well-known Carmel, California artist Stanley Wood.

He began painting in his twenties and found beauty in objects that unobservant eyes would deem drab. He loves old wooden fences, finds rich color in sordid looking factories, and sees the poetry in abandoned, decaying cars. He relates, he says, first and foremost, “to art in its relationship of maker to object.”

According to his artist’s statement, his work “begins with a vision or idea, perhaps at the merest threshold of definition and with the materials necessary to give it form.” He then tries to “sustain the dialogue among these elements necessary to bring his work to fruition, the fullest possible realization of his intention – by the very nature of the task,” which is something only he can ultimately judge.

“I paint because I am compelled to paint. I can’t tell people what to see in my artwork or what to think of my artwork.”

Sal’s work has been exhibited at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, The San Francisco Museum of Art and the Santa Cruz Art League. He exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition, which was the official opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1940, and participated in San Francisco’s first Open Air Art Show in 1941. He is represented by the Gallery Beaux Arts in San Francisco.

Palazzolo moved with his wife Marie to Hendersonville in 1990 and began oil painting. He soon joined the Hendersonville Arts Council where he won first prize and numerous other awards in the annual art shows there. He also had an exhibition at the Mario’s Restaurant Dinner and Wine tasting benefitting the Childhelp USA foundation in Nashville. He paints for several hours each day; his bright, oversized and brilliant paintings embodying the spirit, energy and talent of someone with no intention of slowing down. He is already planning art exhibitions for 2011.

As he tell aspiring artists, “… keep going, keep moving.”

Vandy Film Series Offers Look at FOR LOVE OF LIBERTY Fri Jan 29

Vanderbilt University’s excellent International Lensfilm series presents a free screening and preview of director Frank Martin’s FOR LOVE OF LIBERTY: THE STORY OF AMERICA’S BLACK PATRIOTS, on Friday, January 29 at 7:00 p.m. in Sarratt Cinema. Admission is free and open to the public.

Martin and co-producer Richard Hull (a Vanderbilt alumnus) will be in attendance for a Q&A session following the screening, which will consist of a 40-minute cut of the four-hour film that will air on NPT-Channel 8 over two consecutive Thursdays, February 11 and 18 at 8:00 p.m.

Ten years in the making, FOR LOVE OF LIBERTY: THE STORY OF AMERICA’S BLACK PATRIOTS uses letters, diaries, speeches, journalistic accounts, historical text and military records to document and acknowledge the sacrifices and accomplishments of African-American service men and women since the earliest days of the republic. The screening is sponsored by the Film Studies Program, Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center, Office of Arts & Creative Engagement, the American Studies Program, and The Vanderbilt Commons.

Free Screening of Garbage Dreams Sat Jan 23 at Downtown Library

GARBAGE DREAMS, which screens for free as part of our ITVS Community Cinema series on Saturday, January 23 at 3:00 p.m. at the downtown library, was one of the big success stories at the 2009 Nashville Film Festival (NaFF). Mai Iskander’s profile of the Zaballeen — Egypt’s “garbage people” — picked up the REEL Current Award at the festival. Presented by Al Gore, the award is given to a documentary screening at NaFF that provides extraordinary insight into a contemporary global issue. Much has happened to the film since then, including it being shortlisted for the Oscars.

Sallie Mayne, executive director at NaFF, which co-presented ITVS Community Cinema with NPT and Hands On Nashville, had this to say about the film when informing NaFF’s membership about the free screening:

GARBAGE DREAMS was the winner of the REEL Current Award presented by Al Gore at last year’s fest. Since its appearance in Nashville, great things have happened to the film. It has been shortlisted for the Oscars, played DOCUWEEKS (a big opportunity for documentaries to screen for Academy members), is currently part of a theatrical run in NYC, and the biggest thing, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave the Zaballeen — the principles of the film — one million dollars.

In announcing the Gates Foundation award, the producers of the film mentioned the Nashville Film Festival and the Al Gore award as being a big part of the film’s success. So its return to Nashville is a little like a homecoming for us. While Nashville Film Festival is not responsible for the success of GARBAGE DREAMS, we feel like a small but important part of its journey.

Plus, that a first-run documentary feature, currently shortlisted for the Oscars, would play for free as part of Community Cinema is extraordinary enough.

The film’s theatrical run at the IFC Center in New York has been such a success, that it’s been extended. So here’s a great opportunity to catch, for free no less, a film that is really making an impact; one that, as Gore mentioned in his awarding of the film, “makes a compelling case that modernization does not always equal progress.”

For more about the film, check out Jack Silverman’s review and Jim Ridley’s interview with Iskander at the Nashville Scene’s Pith in the Wind blog, from back in April of 2009 before the film played NaFF.

The Main Library is located at 615 Church Street. Come early for the 2:30 reception. The film is presented locally in partnership with the Metro Beautification and Environment Commission and Sustain VU.

Beth Curley Announces NPT Reports: Children`s Health Crisis

It’s not a child’s fault if she or he is overweight, or in poor general health as a result of improper nutrition, lack of inoculations or inadequate exercise. The situation has become too dire to lay blame. We must begin the work now to fix it. — NPT president and CEO Beth Curley in The Tennessean.

In an opinion piece in today’s Tennessean, Monday, January 18, 2010, NPT president and CEO Beth Curley officially announced NPT’s important new documentary series and initiative, NPT REPORTS: CHILDREN’S HEALTH CRISIS, broadly outlining the many daunting statistics and challenges regarding the state of children’s health in Tennessean

Please visit the The Tennessean opinion section for this very important announcement.

NOVA and Mark Twain on the Riddles of the Sphinx

On Tuesday, January 19 at 7:00 p.m. on NPT-Channel 8 and PBS stations nationwide, NOVA turns its scientific eye toward “The Riddles of the Sphinx.” For 45 centuries, the Great Sphinx, the biggest and oldest statue in a land of colossal ancient monuments, has lorded over Egypt’s Giza plateau. Its scale is staggering: the mighty head towers as tall as the White House, while its body is nearly the length of a football field. This strange half-human, half-lion image has inspired countless fantastic theories about its origins. How was it built, and who or what does it represent? Surprisingly, the scribes of the period when it was built — during Egypt’s Old Kingdom — passed over it in silence. Adding to the mystery, archeologists found that its creators abruptly discarded their tools and abandoned the structure when it was nearly complete. Searching for clues, NOVA’s expert team of archeologists, including Mark Lehner (director, Ancient Egypt Research Associates), carries out eye-opening experiments that reveal the techniques and incredible labor invested in the carving of this gigantic sculpture. The team also unearths new discoveries about the people who built the Sphinx and why they created such a haunting and stupendous image.

If you’ve never been to the Great Sphinx, it’s hard to truly grasp its magnificence. Most will never see it in person, and that’s why there are photographers, videographers, filmmakers and most notably, where this post is concerned, writers.

Because we’re still in Nashville’s Citywide Celebration of Mark Twain, which kicked off in September, I thought it best to go to America’s most famous novelist, essayist and humorist to describe the Sphinx. In The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress , Twain recounts his journey with religious pilgrims to Europe and the Holy Land aboard the The Quaker City steamship. It’s at times funny, sobering, reverent, irreverent, cruel, caring, tedious and tremendous. While now considered a minor work of Twain’s, it’s easily a major work of travel writing, and was one of his most popular during his lifetime.

Published in 1869, it came before many of the great novels he became famous for, but there are flashes of beauty, and boundless wit, that hint of what was to come.

Twain’s take on the Sphinx is one of those moments. It needs no further introduction, so I’ve pasted it here, thanks to the Complete Works of Mark Twain at MTWAIN.com

from Chapter LVIII

After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never any thing human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If ever image of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of the landscape, yet looking at nothing — nothing but distance and vacancy.

It was looking over and beyond every thing of the present, and far into the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time — over lines of century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and nearer together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward the horizon of remote antiquity. It was thinking of the wars of departed ages; of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose annihilation it had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow revolving years. It was the type of an attribute of man — of a faculty of his heart and brain. It was MEMORY — RETROSPECTION — wrought into visible, tangible form. All who know what pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished and faces that have vanished — albeit only a trifling score of years gone by–will have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in these grave eyes that look so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before History was born — before Tradition had being — things that were, and forms that moved, in a vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce know of — and passed one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a strange new age, and uncomprehended scenes.

The Sphynx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its magnitude; it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its story. And there is that in the overshadowing majesty of this eternal figure of stone, with its accusing memory of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one something of what he shall feel when he shall stand at last in the awful presence of God.

There are some things which, for the credit of America, should be left unsaid, perhaps; but these very things happen sometimes to be the very things which, for the real benefit of Americans, ought to have prominent notice. While we stood looking, a wart, or an excrescence of some kind, appeared on the jaw of the Sphynx. We heard the familiar clink of a hammer, and understood the case at once. One of our well meaning reptiles — I mean relic-hunters — had crawled up there and was trying to break a “specimen” from the face of this the most majestic creation the hand of man has wrought. But the great image contemplated the dead ages as calmly as ever, unconscious of the small insect that was fretting at its jaw. Egyptian granite that has defied the storms and earthquakes of all time has nothing to fear from the tack-hammers of ignorant excursionists — highwaymen like this specimen. He failed in his enterprise. We sent a sheik to arrest him if he had the authority, or to warn him, if he had not, that by the laws of Egypt the crime he was attempting to commit was punishable with imprisonment or the bastinado. Then he desisted and went away.

The Sphynx: a hundred and twenty-five feet long, sixty feet high, and a hundred and two feet around the head, if I remember rightly — carved out of one solid block of stone harder than any iron. The block must have been as large as the Fifth Avenue Hotel before the usual waste (by the necessities of sculpture) of a fourth or a half of the original mass was begun. I only set down these figures and these remarks to suggest the prodigious labor the carving of it so elegantly, so symmetrically, so faultlessly, must have cost. This species of stone is so hard that figures cut in it remain sharp and unmarred after exposure to the weather for two or three thousand years. Now did it take a hundred years of patient toil to carve the Sphynx? It seems probable.

Special Legislative Session on Education Will Air Live on NPT2

Governor Bredesen’s convening of the state legislature for a special session on education will be broadcast live on NPT2 on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 beginning tentatively at 12:00 noon. According to The Tennessean, the session will focus on making Tennessee “an attractive candidate for millions of dollars in federal grant money being awarded by the U.S. Department of Education.”

NPT2 is available Comcast Digital Cable channel 241, Charter Digital Cable channel 176 and over-the-air on channel 8.2.

American Masters and the Gospel of Sam Cooke

Nashville singer-songwriter Doug Hoekstra, on his 1999 release Make Me Believe, said “Sam Cooke Sang the Gospel.” How right he was on so many levels.

Cooke put the spirit of the black church into popular music, creating a new American sound and a popular gospel of love with songs “Good News,” “Wonderful World,” “You Send Me,” “Change Is Gonna Come,” “Cupid” and more. American Masters profiles the silky-voiced and handsome Cooke, a forefather to Otis Redding, Motown and Aretha Franklin, with SAM COOKE: CROSSING OVER on Monday, January 11 at 8:00 p.m. on NPT and PBS stations nationwide.

The documentary, directed by John Antonelli, features interviews with Muhammad Ali, Lou Adler, Herb Albert, James Brown, Jimmy Carter, Mel Carter, Dick Clark, Sam Moore, Earl Palmer, Billy Preston, Lou Rawls, Smokey Robinson, Jerry Wexler, Bobby Womack and more.

Nashville writer Peter Guralnick (Last Train to Memphis), brought his definitive biography of Cooke: Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke, to our own A Word on Words with John Seigenthaler in 2008. To prep yourself for the documentary, or learn more after, download the entire .mp3 of the interview here or on the A Word on Words site at wnpt.net/wow.

Following the premiere of SAM COOKE: CROSSING OVER, we’ll encore AMERICAN MASTERS: MARVIN GAYE: WHAT’S GOING ON at 9:00 p.m. For a preview, check out my post at the PBS Remotely Connected Blog.