Seven years ago, my sister was dying. Trembling and incoherent, she once tried to tell me, by phone from Illinois, that flu was to blame for her inability to hold a brief conversation. She resented me for not believing the lie.
Enter, with me, the art room at West Homer Elementary School, where Halibut Cove artist Annette Bellamy is slicing up slabs of clay in preparation for a class in “exercises in imagination.”
And here come the kids–twenty-one third-graders, streaming into the room.
Haven House is a very special place here on the South Kenai Peninsula. Many lives are saved in this humble little clapboard building. Many lives are indeed begun anew. From personal experience (hey, all art is personal, right?) I have been impressed by the casual yet passionate way with which Peg Tileman (the former executive director featured here) and staff deal with domestic violence across all walks of life.