Blog Posts - Books by Eric Douglas

Project aims to capture oral history of Charlestonians

June 25, 2015 By Eric Douglas

F. BRIAN FERGUSON | Gazette Nancy Ball, left, shares her oral history with Eric Douglas, right, as part of the FestavAll Oral History project. After her interview with Douglas, Ball talked about seeing hundreds of circuses at the civic center; escaping the 1977 Williamsburg Flood; and traveling to New Orleans to see her third-cousin, Blaze Starr, strip.

She’d talked about baton twirling, which led to talking about dancing, which led to talking about her third-cousin — Blaze Starr — which led to the story about the time she went to New Orleans to watch her cousin strip.

At another point during the interview, she’d talked about vacationing in Hawaii, which led to the 1977 Williamson flood, which led to the story of her running up the hill to escape the rising waters — carrying her daughter in her hands.

“I felt like my life had meant something, surely, somewhere down the line,” Nancy Ball said Tuesday, after her interview with Eric Douglas at Emmanuel Baptist Church on Charleston’s West Side.

Ball was the first participant in the FestivALL Oral History Project, which Douglas is facilitating. On Tuesday, she met with the local author and photographer and told him about the building of Capital High School, working as a tour guide at the state Capitol and the 211 circuses she’d seen as a Charleston Civic Center employee. As both Ball and Douglas said, you just don’t know where a conversation will lead.

“That’s one of the great things about this,” Douglas said, after interviewing Ball.

“The thrill of discovery — I don’t know what I’m gonna get.”

Douglas sat at a small table in one of the church’s parlors. In front of him was a Dell laptop computer, a silver microphone — which looked like a cross between Sputnik and a shuttlecock — and a stack of gold CDs.

After he interviews participants, he gives them a recording, burned to a CD.

“As older generations pass on,” Douglas said, “we lose institutional memory. This is something they can pass down to their family.”

Douglas will be interviewing about 30 people at various locations around Charleston. When he wraps up on Monday, he’ll be tasked with looking for themes within the transcripts. He plans to put together a documentary of some sort — something digital, perhaps, with some multimedia bells and whistles. The documentary will hopefully be done by FestivALL Fall, he said, adding that he will donate his recordings to the state archives.

– See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150623/GZ01/150629664/1419#sthash.7lTdJA9O.dpuf .

Real heroes inspire and lead

June 24, 2015 By Eric Douglas

We’re deep into the heart of the summer “blockbuster” season. Every week, there’s a new movie based on a comic book with over-the-top images and a good-versus-evil storyline. I love them. (And I’m grateful my wife does too.)

There’s been some talk about the comic book/graphic novel origin of these movies, implying that Hollywood doesn’t have any new ideas. I’m not going to debate that, but I think comic books are a good source for stories. A graphic novel uses 120 pages of limited dialogue and images to tell a story. They are filled with action and excitement. The heroes aren’t angst-ridden or doing “good” in spite of their best intentions. They stand up for what they believe in and follow simple truths about helping others and fighting villains. When you realize that each page in a movie script equals one minute of screen time and each page in a graphic novel script equals one page of images and dialogue in the finished project, the parallel between a 120 page book and a two hour movie is obvious.

As a writer, I often hear writers talk about anti-heroes, how your villains should be as likeable as your hero or how you “have to” introduce flaws into your characters. First off, I really don’t believe you “have to” do anything. Second flawed, whiny or anxiety-filled characters wear me out. I’m not saying I want my characters, or the characters in the books I read or films I watch to be one dimensional, cardboard cut outs. They can face problems and have issues, but when those issues become more important than solving whatever problem is the actual plot of the film, it becomes a soap opera and I tune out.

To a degree, I think the desire for battles between right and wrong (where the good wins in the end) is a reaction to the world we live in. Everything is gray. Black and white is gone and it’s hard to know who to root for.

Today we are more than 500 days away from the General Election that will elect our next president. There is already a football team worth (with almost enough for a separate offense and defense) of Republican challengers and a basketball team worth of Democrats on top of that that. The last time we had a president to win the Electoral College by a landslide while winning the popular vote by around 60 percent was Ronald Reagan’s second election (against Walter Mondale).

I’m looking for one of those candidates, from either party, to step forward as a hero and lead. No one expects them to be perfect, but I do expect them to do what’s right, because it’s right. I want them to be a comic book/blockbuster heroes. Not cartoons.

Maybe we should require them to watch all of the Avengers movies..

Dive in! The Cayman Islands are all about the ocean

June 22, 2015 By Eric Douglas

This is an excerpt from a newspaper travel story in the Charleston (WV) Sunday Gazette-Mail, published 6/21/15. The link is at the bottom to read the complete story.

By Eric Douglas
For the Sunday Gazette-Mail

The author’s wife, Beverly, poses with the 9-foot-tall bronze statue of the mermaid Amphitrite, located at one of the many dive sites around the Cayman Islands.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Rising from the sea floor thousands of feet below, Grand Cayman, along with the sister islands of Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, makes an improbable Caribbean paradise.

The islands are small, without much soil or freshwater, and at the most only rise about 60 feet above the sea level. What they do have is incredible warm blue water with a gentle breeze and year-round warm air temperatures.

And scuba diving. The Cayman Islands have lots of scuba diving.

I’ve been there four times over the last 10 years. The first three times were while conducting safety training for local dive instructors and to do research for my latest novel, “Return to Cayman,” which is based on the island.

On my last trip, my “reason” for visiting was to hold a release party and book signing, with all proceeds from book sales benefiting a volunteer effort to restore a coral reef damaged when a cruise ship dropped anchor on a reef.

My real reason for traveling to Grand Cayman, of course, was the legendary diving.

For the avid diver, one of the best places to stay on the island is Sunset House. Sunset House and My Bar are featured prominently in “Return to Cayman” as well. The resort bills itself as “a hotel for divers, by divers” and it does not disappoint. The entire resort is oriented toward making it convenient to scuba dive, either off one of their boats or in unlimited shore diving for guests.

It’s easy to get there from Charleston. I generally leave out of Yeager Airport on the 7 a.m. flight to Atlanta and get to Grand Cayman in time for lunch at My Bar. It’s a small island, so the commute from the airport literally just takes a few minutes after you clear customs.

Situated about 200 miles south of Cuba, the Cayman Islands are located in the Western Caribbean just south of the Tropic of Cancer. Air and water temperatures hover around 80 degrees with very little variation. The rainy season runs from May through October, roughly corresponding with hurricane season.

The last major storm to hit the island was Ivan in 2004. It tore the island up, tearing roofs off of houses, but since then the island has only suffered on glancing blow from a storm.

– See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150621/GZ05/150629971#sthash.thbuPppB.dpuf .

Your chance to record your history

June 17, 2015 By Eric Douglas

Next week, at various locations around town, I’ll be recording oral histories from anyone who wants to participate as part of the FestivALL Oral History Project. I’m hoping to fill up every day and get as many recordings as possible.

Oral histories are simply recordings of whatever you want to talk about and record for posterity. No more and no less. They don’t have to be dramatic or traumatic. The everyday stories are just as important as the bigger stories. In other words, everyone has a story to tell and to record. If for no other reason, oral histories are important to preserve memories for families. They record our voices and the life that made us who we are.

I’ll be there to guide the interview and keep it moving. Of course, you’re free to talk about anything you want to talk about. Participants will receive a copy of their recording. My hope is to produce some sort of documentary project afterward, using excerpts from the recordings, but until I listen to the recordings and see what we get, I’m not sure exactly what that will look like. If you’d rather not have your story included in the follow up project, that’s fine, too. You are still welcome to take advantage of this opportunity.

This project is being sponsored by FestivALL and the locations that are providing the space. Below you’ll find the location list and the way to sign up. The Clay Center has a signup form on their website and the other locations have provided phone numbers where you can call and set up an appointment. You can find the complete list and more information on the project on the FestivALL website.

To make an appointment:

Monday, June 22: The Clay Center. Visit the Clay Center website to make an appointment.

Tuesday, June 23: Emmanuel Baptist Church, 1401 Washington St. West, Charleston, WV 25387. Call the Church office at (304) 342 4988.

Wednesday, June 24: West Virginia Bureau of Senior Services. Call 304-558-3317. Ask for Tammy Webb or Lee Rogers.

Thursday, June 25: B’nai Jacob Synagogue. Call 304-346-4722 to make an appointment. (I understand this location has already filled up.)

Friday, June 26: West Virginia Culture Center Archives. Contact Susan Scouras, the Library Manager at 304-558-0230 X742..

Cayman reef restoration making progress

June 11, 2015 By Eric Douglas

One of the story lines in my new novel Return to Cayman is a cruise ship dropping anchor on a living reef. This scenario is loosely based on a cruise ship grounding off of Don Foster’s reef last August when the Carnival Magic dropped its anchor and hundreds of feet of anchor chain destroying an estimated 16,000 square feet of reef. Since the incident, volunteers have spent thousands of hours cleaning up the site and working to keep the damage from getting worse.

At the book signing/release party for the novel at Sunset House, Joey Avary, a reporter for the Cayman 27 news channel, stopped by to do a story. In talking to him, I found out that he was very involved in the Cayman Magic Reef Restoration project. I mentioned I would like to see the site and he said he was free on Friday.

When he briefed the dive, Avary said we would do a tour, but he also brought along a couple toothbrushes so we could clean some algae off the coral. If you’ve never tried to hover in one place, in acurrent, and scrub algae from monofilament fishing line with a toothbrush while not breaking the fragile structure the salvaged pieces were hanging from, you haven’t lived. I was sure I was going to set the project backward. Avary made it look easy, but I felt like a politician during a photo op at a soup kitchen. (At least a politician that knows better than to believe his own press).

When you approach the site, everything looks normal, right up until it doesn’t. Coral is growing and fish are swimming. We saw a couple sea turtles nearby. And then you get the impact spot. There’s just nothing there. And it’s not just one place. It goes on for hundreds of yards. The anchor and chain turned the reef into rubble in an instant. It looks like a massive scar across the sea floor. And that’s after months of work.

Lois Hatcher is the underwater project director. She worked on the Masdam grounding in Cayman in 1996. In 2011 she spent a year in the Florida Keys studying coral restoration and ecology along with an internship with Ken Nedimeyer at the Coral Restoration Foundation. She returned to Cayman two years ago with the sole intention of getting a coral nursery started.

“The biggest challenges is getting past the nay-sayers and politicians. We have been held back by this and all we really want to do is stabilize the reef, save what coral we can and go back to enjoying the coral reef not putting it back together. The time line keeps being adjusted but hopefully in the next couple of weeks we will start using concrete to secure the bigger pieces, fill in the gaps with smaller pieces and epoxy and finish off the rubble removal in a couple of areas. I am hoping that this is only going to take three to four months of consistent work. We won’t know though until we actually get started and get the rhythm going,” she explained.

During the tour, Avary showed me a section that is roped off with a sign that reads “Keep Out.” When the anchor chain dragged on the relatively shallow reef, it piled up debris at the top of a channel. The rubble pile is so unstable, if disturbed, it could cause an avalanche down the wall, tearing up even more reef. “It is deeper than recreational diving limits, but just because we can’t see it that doesn’t mean it’s not important,” Avary said.

Volunteer divers have been sorting through the rubble, finding viable pieces of coral, and separating it by type. They’ve cleaned away silt and debris to save what they could.

“The crates are used as a temporary holding area for the pieces that need to be reattached. It was made from materials that we had on hand and used to avoid “losing” loose corals in the reef or placing them in the sand. The crates keep the species separate, allow for water flow and keep the pieces off the sand so they don’t choke from sedimentation,” Hatcher explained. “The prognosis also changes with time. Obviously the longer that coral is in an unstable environment the less chance it has of recovery. The pieces that we have outplanted are all doing well but the installation of a cruise ship dock could change all that.”

Even while doing all of this work, the volunteers have to constantly watch depth and time limits and coordinate the tasks using hand signals and writing slates. To get to work, the volunteer divers make a surface swim the couple hundred yards out until they are on top of the site to save their air for more work time underwater. This makes for a long tiring swim before they even get to work. And then, of course, they have to swim back to the shore afterward. The project should have its own boat soon. That should make the process easier and more efficient, although a boat takes fuel and maintenance, all of which cost money. (Update: the group has taken possession of the boat, named Honey Badger and it is already paying tremendous dividends on their work productivity. By removing the long surface swim, they are able to do two and three dives in a day and have the tools they need right on site.)

During the interview, Avary asked why I was interested and why I would be willing to donate a portion of the royalties from Return to Cayman to the reef recovery effort. I told him that while I don’t live there, and had never actually visited that reef before the accident, it was still important to me. I think of the ocean as mine. For me, it seemed like as simple thing to do, especially compared to the work the volunteers are doing. Through July 31, I will donate a portion of royalties from the book Return to Cayman to the reef recovery effort. The book is available in softcover and on Kindle.

One of the great things about writing fiction is that while you are entertaining, you can also educate and inform. In fact, one of the best ways to educate is by making it entertaining. My goal was to do both with Return to Cayman.

If you are interested in making a donation to keep this project going, the Cayman National Trust has a tab under “Donate” for the project. Even volunteer projects take money.

Side note: Grand Cayman is now weighing the installation of a cruise ship dock that would possibly eliminate incidents like this. However, to construct the dock, they would have to destroy an estimated 15 acres of living coral reef, including Devil’s Grotto, and damage another 15 to 20 acres. .

Booker T. Washington is still teaching lessons

June 10, 2015 By Eric Douglas

Researching an upcoming project, it occurred to me that I didn’t know much about one of the most famous West Virginians of his time; Booker T. Washington. He wasn’t born in West Virginia, but spent his formative years here, working in the salt industry and coal mines after the civil war. After he attended school in Virginia, he returned to his family home in West Virginia to teach school for a while. I decided to read his autobiography Up From Slavery and was surprised to find it free as a public domain work for Kindle.

After emancipation, Washington’s family moved to Malden to work at the JQ Dickinson salt works. From there, he struggled for an education, moving to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and eventually being asked to begin the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama.

About a third of the way through the book, I was thinking to myself how much I want my daughters to read this book. The lessons he returned to, over and over, were the idea that education without hard work meant nothing.

“At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour’s own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings.”

His own admission into the Hampton school hinged on how thoroughly he cleaned a classroom, for example. That was after journeying several hundred miles to get to the school, alone and hungry. He slept under a raised sidewalk for several nights, while working during the day, to make enough money to finish the journey. He told the story of returning to Richmond for a speech and how he couldn’t help but thinking about that spot under the sidewalk.

“At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.”

I understand that some didn’t agree with Washington’s thoughts on racial equality during his time. I can’t think of anyone who is universally loved and agreed with and that’s not what struck me. It seems like, more than 100 years later, we could all learn lessons from him about the value of hard work, and the rewards that come from it.

He also said something that stuck with me about “getting along.” It is a choice we make.

“It is now long ago that I learned this lesson from General Armstrong, and resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”.