Oct. 8, 2001 – Dr. Velma Tyson, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of the Virgin Islands and chair of its Science and Mathematics Division on the St. Croix campus, has been named to receive a Millennium Award for Excellence in Teaching.
The award is sponsored by the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities in partnership with the Science and Technology Cluster of federal agencies. The White House Initiative was created by President Bill Clinton to strengthen historically black schools and increase their ability to participate in federally sponsored programs.
This year's honorees were to have received their awards at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 18, but the event was postponed following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a UVI release stated. A new date has not been announced.
Tyson followed a non-traditional route to become an educator. After raising three children, she earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from UVI in 1980. She went on to complete her master's in school administration supervision in 1983 and received her Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Iowa in 1995.
"I must say a great big thank you to so many UVI faculty members who helped in my development and professional growth," Tyson said. "I am really committed to doing my best for the university."
UVI President Orville Kean described Tyson as "a treasured UVI alumna" and as a faculty member who "has always exhibited the very highest academic and personal standards." He added, "We at UVI are very proud of Dr. Tyson and recognize her as a valued member of the UVI family."
Last year, Dr. Camille McKayle, associate professor of mathematics on the St. Thomas campus, was one of six recipients nationwide of the 2000 Millennum Award.
DEANNA AND TERRY DRAKE TO SHOW AT ALEXANDER'S
Oct. 8, 2001- A couple of St. Thomas artists who are a couple in life will be exhibiting their paintings at Alexander's Cafe in Frenchtown starting Friday, when the public is invited to meet them and view their works at a champagne reception from 5 to 7 p.m.
Deanna and Terry Drake both work mainly in acrylic, producing bright interpretive images of local people and places that have an inviting neo-primitive quality about them.
The Drakes moved to St. Thomas from the U.S. Midwest several years ago.
Terry Drake studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and later worked for the Hallmark greeting card company. His work is in private collections on the mainland as well as locally. His cartoons have appeared in The V.I. Daily News and he has been commissioned to create a tourism map of Havensight Mall that will be available at the Visitor Center near the cruise ship dock.
Deanna Drake's first artistic love was photography; she started painting only when a friend departed St. Thomas and left his easel and art supplies behind. She likes to depict seascapes and favorite landmarks and has been a featured artist at a Da Da Wine Down gathering and at Tropical Memories.
The two both have separate careers, but they enjoy painting together for relaxation on weekends at their Fortuna home overlooking the sea. Both are experimenting with mediums other than acrylic.
The show will hang through Nov. 8. For additional information about the reception and the exhibition, call Alexander Treml at 774-4349.
Deanna and Terry Drake both work mainly in acrylic, producing bright interpretive images of local people and places that have an inviting neo-primitive quality about them.
The Drakes moved to St. Thomas from the U.S. Midwest several years ago.
Terry Drake studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and later worked for the Hallmark greeting card company. His work is in private collections on the mainland as well as locally. His cartoons have appeared in The V.I. Daily News and he has been commissioned to create a tourism map of Havensight Mall that will be available at the Visitor Center near the cruise ship dock.
Deanna Drake's first artistic love was photography; she started painting only when a friend departed St. Thomas and left his easel and art supplies behind. She likes to depict seascapes and favorite landmarks and has been a featured artist at a Da Da Wine Down gathering and at Tropical Memories.
The two both have separate careers, but they enjoy painting together for relaxation on weekends at their Fortuna home overlooking the sea. Both are experimenting with mediums other than acrylic.
The show will hang through Nov. 8. For additional information about the reception and the exhibition, call Alexander Treml at 774-4349.
U.S. ACTION, LOCAL THREAT SPUR TIGHTER SECURITY
Oct. 8, 2001 — Security measures, which have been on the increase since Sept. 11 at V.I. government buildings and facilities, were intensified further Monday after a telephone message threatened to target the official residence of the governor on St. Thomas.
A senior administration official confirmed the telephoned threat, saying that police had searched the residence at Estate Catherineberg "but found nothing unusual." Gov. Charles W. Turnbull was reportedly advised of the threat while on St. Croix attending the funeral of prominent educator Elena Christian.
On St. Croix, Deputy Police Chief Novelle Francis said that since military action against Afghanistan began Sunday, local police have been placed on "heightened alert." Francis himself was on duty Monday, a government holiday.
With St. Croix home to Hovensa, the largest oil refinery in the Western Hemisphere, there are concerns that the island could be a potential target for terrorists. The refinery has its own internal security force; since the terrorist attacks on the mainland Sept. 11, it has been "supplemented by off-duty officers," Francis said.
He said police officials are to meet this week to continue security planning for areas of major concern.
"There may be limited traffic flow" in those as-yet-identified areas, he said. "Because of what is going on, the comfort level can’t be the same."
A senior administration official confirmed the telephoned threat, saying that police had searched the residence at Estate Catherineberg "but found nothing unusual." Gov. Charles W. Turnbull was reportedly advised of the threat while on St. Croix attending the funeral of prominent educator Elena Christian.
On St. Croix, Deputy Police Chief Novelle Francis said that since military action against Afghanistan began Sunday, local police have been placed on "heightened alert." Francis himself was on duty Monday, a government holiday.
With St. Croix home to Hovensa, the largest oil refinery in the Western Hemisphere, there are concerns that the island could be a potential target for terrorists. The refinery has its own internal security force; since the terrorist attacks on the mainland Sept. 11, it has been "supplemented by off-duty officers," Francis said.
He said police officials are to meet this week to continue security planning for areas of major concern.
"There may be limited traffic flow" in those as-yet-identified areas, he said. "Because of what is going on, the comfort level can’t be the same."
BIG REICHHOLD AUDIENCE BUILDING FOR SPYRO GYRA
Oct. 8, 2001 – As he walks onstage Saturday night for the season's opening event at the Reichhold Center for the Arts, Spyro Gyra founder and leader Jay Beckenstein will have short-term and long-term memories in mind.
The long-term ones are local: The band has been in the Virgin Islands a number of times before, although in far different venues from the 1,200-seat amphitheater. It played on St. Croix in 1988, '89 and '92 and on St. Thomas at the old Barnacle Bill's in '88.
The Barnacle Bill's gig wasn't exactly planned, Beckenstein recalled in a Source telephone interview. "Basically, we went down to St. Thomas on vacation and were going to rehearse new material we were going to record," he said. But Barnacle Bill's owner Bill Grogan tracked them down and asked if they would come and play, "and we said, 'Why not?'"
Phil Brennan, whose Crosseyed Bear Productions has managed Spyro Gyra from the start, said the band was on St. Thomas for a couple of week-long stays before that, but his computer records only go back to 1988. Beckenstein says he has "romantic memories" of the islands — first with a girlfriend, and later with his wife.
The entertainment dynamics of playing in a funky, laid-back little venue like Barnacle Bill's are a lot different from those performing onstage at a large theater such as the Reichhold, Beckenstein said, but both have advantages.
"Part of me loves to play in a little place where the people are right there," he said. "It kind of helps me be more of a human being. I'm really speaking to people I can see, and I have to be very real.
"On the other hand, part of the whole music-making process is developing a feedback loop with your audience. You put out energy, they give it back, it makes you put out more. You get this wonderful upward spiral with a big audience. The more audience, more power there is."
A good time in the midst of bad times
The short-term memories have to do with Sept. 11 and the appropriateness of having a good time as part of America's healing process.
"We had shows scheduled for the 15th and 16th in California," Brennan said. "We were unable to get the band there because of the problems with air travel, so we didn't have to decide if we or the audience was ready for a concert at the time. The decision was made for us. We were able to reschedule one of the shows, and the other one was canceled. The following week, we had more shows in California and Arizona that the band did play."
During those shows, the group opened its concerts with "The Unknown Soldier," a song Beckenstein wrote for the band's 1989 album "Point Of View." He also shared his feelings with the audiences as the leader of a band whose members hail from the New York and Washington, D.C., areas.
Travel was by air, and it was unnerving, Beckenstein recalled. "It really was uncomfortable flying — pilots were getting on the intercom telling us, 'You people are responsible for the rear cabin.'" A week after Sept. 11, "planes were still empty, relatively speaking. At Phoenix, the airport was a ghost town." By another week after that, traffic "had picked up marginally, but the lines for security were still long, despite nobody being there."
Beckenstein wasn't deciding ahead of time whether he would do "The Unknown Soldier" for the Reichhold concert. But "I think it's likely," he said.
"Making music seems a little trivial compared to current events," he noted. "There's a certain discomfort for people to going out and having a good time right now. To let us still have a good time and our audience have a really good time, we start by playing this somber song up front that has a patriotic element. And I say to the audience, 'We weren't sure we wanted to come out here tonight. And I didn't want to leave my children. Yet, I couldn't think of anything that I could do, other than coming out here and playing; I couldn't think of anything that would be as self-healing. So, let's try to have a good time for the next couple of hours.'"
This introduction, he said, "has seemed to allow everyone, including ourselves, to enjoy a good show."
Seniority means more than 10 years
Spyro Gyra consists of Beckenstein on saxophones, Tom Schuman on keyboards, Julio Fernandez on guitars, Joel Rosenblatt on drums and Scott Ambush on bass. Along with Beckenstein, Schuman and Fernandez were part of the band that played at Barnacle Bill's.
A quarter century after he and Jeremy Wall founded the band, Beckenstein is its only original, full-fledged member, but Schuman comes darned close. "Tom was an auxiliary member," Beckenstein recalled. "Jeremy was the keyboardist and Tom was about 16 at the time — it was a kind of sitting-in thing." Fernandez came aboard in '81 or '82, he said, and Rosenblatt and Ambush joined the group about 10 years ago.
There's great significance to the fact that "Joel joined about six days later than Scott," Beckenstein said. "This band has a seniority thing. If there are four good hotel rooms and one not-so-good one, well, you know who gets it."
The band, known for its fusion of jazz, Latin, Caribbean and R&B rhythms, was born in Buffalo, N.Y., and got its name from a misspelling of the scientific word spirogira, a microscopic marine organism — read "pond scum" — that Beckenstein had written a biology paper about in college. Early on, when a club owner needed a name for the band, that's the one Beckenstein came up with. "It was a joke," the Spyro Gyra web site states, but it stuck.
Their 25th anniversary album, "In Modern Times," came out in May. The band hasn't gone back into the studio for the next one, "but my computer is filling up with musical ideas," Beckenstein said.
Staying together, playing together
Last year, Beckenstein did something he'd never done before since the band made its mark on the jazz world. He recorded a solo album, "Eye Contact," for Windham Hill Jazz. The reason, he said candidly, was "opportunity."
He explained: There has always been a legal ambivalence between Jay Beckenstein and Spyro Gyra." For recording contracts, "I have always signed for the band as me doing business as Spyro Gyra. I'd never been allowed to do an album outside" — although he had the opportunity to produce solo albums for others — Schuman and former band vibraphonist Dave Samuels.
He perceived mixed feelings on the part of the band about his solo venture. "The band members are my buddies, and they know that I'm very dedicated to the band and its continuance," he said. "On the surface, they were very, very supportive — but underneath, unquestionably a little uneasy. I could sense it. I knew they were concerned that my interests were waning or something." However, "the fact that 'In Modern Times' was such a band-oriented production took away all that," he added.
He would do it again, even though he learned that going solo was a lot of work. "I realized in making 'Eye Contact' how easy making Spyro Gyra albums are for me — because I have all these other people who are big contributors," he said. "It really is a team effort."
The multi-platinum contemporary jazz ensemble "endures as an audience favorite because they created an original style that sounded like nothing that came before," Jonathan Widran wrote in Jazziz magazine a while back. He credited the group with having "one of the most amazing live shows in instrumental music and killer, killer songs."
The magazine's August issue had the band on the cover for a quarter century of havin g "stood at the center of the contemporary jazz universe." In the cover article, Bill Milkowski cited Beckenstein as saying that Spyro Gyra has endured not because of its initial burstof success during the late '70s, but in spite of it. "While the band has not altered its sound significantly in order to sell records or remain contemporary," he wrote, "Beckenstein says that Spyro Gyra has kept its collective ears open to interesting musical sounds coming from other places."
The band's enduring popularity has a lot to do with the facts that "Nobody got sick, nobody made themselves sick and we like each other," Beckenstein told the Source. "I've come to realize over the years that the main reason is that people still keep coming to hear us. You end up playing certain places 10, 15 times. We've played Akron, Ohio, 15 to 20 times. It would be easy around time 7 to go, 'Well, I've already done that.' But they keep coming — and that's what keeps us together."
Ticket information
Spyro Gyra performs Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Reichhold Center, opening the 2001-02 subscription season. Tickets for the A section were $55, but they're sold out. Tickets for the B section are $35 and only "a few" remain, according to box office personnel. Tickets in the C section are $20.
Outlets in addition to the Reichhold box office are the UVI St. Thomas campus bookstore, Modern Music (Nisky Center and Havensight), Parrot Fish Music and Crystal & Gifts Galore on St. Thomas; and Connections on St. John. For charge-card reservations, call the box office at 693-1559.
The Reichhold Center has put together travel packages for those wanting to cross the waters from St. Croix or Puerto Rico to take in the concert. In addition to tickets (on an availability basis), they include round-trip airfare aboard Seaborne Airlines, Saturday night accommodations at the nearby Best Western Emerald Beach Resort, continental breakfast Sunday, and ground transportation to and from the seaplane ramp and to and from the Reichhold Center. The packages are priced at $260 from Christiansted and $280 from San Juan. For reservations, call 693-1566.
There's a pre-concert reception to meet the band members that's by invitation — for season subscribers and donors. Season subscriptions are still available, in several customized formats. For details, visit the Reichhold's ticket information page and click on the green text "Become a season subscriber."
The long-term ones are local: The band has been in the Virgin Islands a number of times before, although in far different venues from the 1,200-seat amphitheater. It played on St. Croix in 1988, '89 and '92 and on St. Thomas at the old Barnacle Bill's in '88.
The Barnacle Bill's gig wasn't exactly planned, Beckenstein recalled in a Source telephone interview. "Basically, we went down to St. Thomas on vacation and were going to rehearse new material we were going to record," he said. But Barnacle Bill's owner Bill Grogan tracked them down and asked if they would come and play, "and we said, 'Why not?'"
Phil Brennan, whose Crosseyed Bear Productions has managed Spyro Gyra from the start, said the band was on St. Thomas for a couple of week-long stays before that, but his computer records only go back to 1988. Beckenstein says he has "romantic memories" of the islands — first with a girlfriend, and later with his wife.
The entertainment dynamics of playing in a funky, laid-back little venue like Barnacle Bill's are a lot different from those performing onstage at a large theater such as the Reichhold, Beckenstein said, but both have advantages.
"Part of me loves to play in a little place where the people are right there," he said. "It kind of helps me be more of a human being. I'm really speaking to people I can see, and I have to be very real.
"On the other hand, part of the whole music-making process is developing a feedback loop with your audience. You put out energy, they give it back, it makes you put out more. You get this wonderful upward spiral with a big audience. The more audience, more power there is."
A good time in the midst of bad times
The short-term memories have to do with Sept. 11 and the appropriateness of having a good time as part of America's healing process.
"We had shows scheduled for the 15th and 16th in California," Brennan said. "We were unable to get the band there because of the problems with air travel, so we didn't have to decide if we or the audience was ready for a concert at the time. The decision was made for us. We were able to reschedule one of the shows, and the other one was canceled. The following week, we had more shows in California and Arizona that the band did play."
During those shows, the group opened its concerts with "The Unknown Soldier," a song Beckenstein wrote for the band's 1989 album "Point Of View." He also shared his feelings with the audiences as the leader of a band whose members hail from the New York and Washington, D.C., areas.
Travel was by air, and it was unnerving, Beckenstein recalled. "It really was uncomfortable flying — pilots were getting on the intercom telling us, 'You people are responsible for the rear cabin.'" A week after Sept. 11, "planes were still empty, relatively speaking. At Phoenix, the airport was a ghost town." By another week after that, traffic "had picked up marginally, but the lines for security were still long, despite nobody being there."
Beckenstein wasn't deciding ahead of time whether he would do "The Unknown Soldier" for the Reichhold concert. But "I think it's likely," he said.
"Making music seems a little trivial compared to current events," he noted. "There's a certain discomfort for people to going out and having a good time right now. To let us still have a good time and our audience have a really good time, we start by playing this somber song up front that has a patriotic element. And I say to the audience, 'We weren't sure we wanted to come out here tonight. And I didn't want to leave my children. Yet, I couldn't think of anything that I could do, other than coming out here and playing; I couldn't think of anything that would be as self-healing. So, let's try to have a good time for the next couple of hours.'"
This introduction, he said, "has seemed to allow everyone, including ourselves, to enjoy a good show."
Seniority means more than 10 years
Spyro Gyra consists of Beckenstein on saxophones, Tom Schuman on keyboards, Julio Fernandez on guitars, Joel Rosenblatt on drums and Scott Ambush on bass. Along with Beckenstein, Schuman and Fernandez were part of the band that played at Barnacle Bill's.
A quarter century after he and Jeremy Wall founded the band, Beckenstein is its only original, full-fledged member, but Schuman comes darned close. "Tom was an auxiliary member," Beckenstein recalled. "Jeremy was the keyboardist and Tom was about 16 at the time — it was a kind of sitting-in thing." Fernandez came aboard in '81 or '82, he said, and Rosenblatt and Ambush joined the group about 10 years ago.
There's great significance to the fact that "Joel joined about six days later than Scott," Beckenstein said. "This band has a seniority thing. If there are four good hotel rooms and one not-so-good one, well, you know who gets it."
The band, known for its fusion of jazz, Latin, Caribbean and R&B rhythms, was born in Buffalo, N.Y., and got its name from a misspelling of the scientific word spirogira, a microscopic marine organism — read "pond scum" — that Beckenstein had written a biology paper about in college. Early on, when a club owner needed a name for the band, that's the one Beckenstein came up with. "It was a joke," the Spyro Gyra web site states, but it stuck.
Their 25th anniversary album, "In Modern Times," came out in May. The band hasn't gone back into the studio for the next one, "but my computer is filling up with musical ideas," Beckenstein said.
Staying together, playing together
Last year, Beckenstein did something he'd never done before since the band made its mark on the jazz world. He recorded a solo album, "Eye Contact," for Windham Hill Jazz. The reason, he said candidly, was "opportunity."
He explained: There has always been a legal ambivalence between Jay Beckenstein and Spyro Gyra." For recording contracts, "I have always signed for the band as me doing business as Spyro Gyra. I'd never been allowed to do an album outside" — although he had the opportunity to produce solo albums for others — Schuman and former band vibraphonist Dave Samuels.
He perceived mixed feelings on the part of the band about his solo venture. "The band members are my buddies, and they know that I'm very dedicated to the band and its continuance," he said. "On the surface, they were very, very supportive — but underneath, unquestionably a little uneasy. I could sense it. I knew they were concerned that my interests were waning or something." However, "the fact that 'In Modern Times' was such a band-oriented production took away all that," he added.
He would do it again, even though he learned that going solo was a lot of work. "I realized in making 'Eye Contact' how easy making Spyro Gyra albums are for me — because I have all these other people who are big contributors," he said. "It really is a team effort."
The multi-platinum contemporary jazz ensemble "endures as an audience favorite because they created an original style that sounded like nothing that came before," Jonathan Widran wrote in Jazziz magazine a while back. He credited the group with having "one of the most amazing live shows in instrumental music and killer, killer songs."
The magazine's August issue had the band on the cover for a quarter century of havin g "stood at the center of the contemporary jazz universe." In the cover article, Bill Milkowski cited Beckenstein as saying that Spyro Gyra has endured not because of its initial burstof success during the late '70s, but in spite of it. "While the band has not altered its sound significantly in order to sell records or remain contemporary," he wrote, "Beckenstein says that Spyro Gyra has kept its collective ears open to interesting musical sounds coming from other places."
The band's enduring popularity has a lot to do with the facts that "Nobody got sick, nobody made themselves sick and we like each other," Beckenstein told the Source. "I've come to realize over the years that the main reason is that people still keep coming to hear us. You end up playing certain places 10, 15 times. We've played Akron, Ohio, 15 to 20 times. It would be easy around time 7 to go, 'Well, I've already done that.' But they keep coming — and that's what keeps us together."
Ticket information
Spyro Gyra performs Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Reichhold Center, opening the 2001-02 subscription season. Tickets for the A section were $55, but they're sold out. Tickets for the B section are $35 and only "a few" remain, according to box office personnel. Tickets in the C section are $20.
Outlets in addition to the Reichhold box office are the UVI St. Thomas campus bookstore, Modern Music (Nisky Center and Havensight), Parrot Fish Music and Crystal & Gifts Galore on St. Thomas; and Connections on St. John. For charge-card reservations, call the box office at 693-1559.
The Reichhold Center has put together travel packages for those wanting to cross the waters from St. Croix or Puerto Rico to take in the concert. In addition to tickets (on an availability basis), they include round-trip airfare aboard Seaborne Airlines, Saturday night accommodations at the nearby Best Western Emerald Beach Resort, continental breakfast Sunday, and ground transportation to and from the seaplane ramp and to and from the Reichhold Center. The packages are priced at $260 from Christiansted and $280 from San Juan. For reservations, call 693-1566.
There's a pre-concert reception to meet the band members that's by invitation — for season subscribers and donors. Season subscriptions are still available, in several customized formats. For details, visit the Reichhold's ticket information page and click on the green text "Become a season subscriber."
BIG REICHHOLD AUDIENCE BUILDING FOR SPYRO GYRA
Oct. 8, 2001 – As he walks onstage Saturday night for the season's opening event at the Reichhold Center for the Arts on St. Thomas, Spyro Gyra founder and leader Jay Beckenstein will have short-term and long-term memories in mind.
The long-term ones are local: The band has been in the Virgin Islands a number of times before, although in far different venues from the 1,200-seat amphitheater. It played on St. Croix in 1988, '89 and '92 and on St. Thomas at the old Barnacle Bill's in '88.
The Barnacle Bill's gig wasn't exactly planned, Beckenstein recalled in a Source telephone interview. "Basically, we went down to St. Thomas on vacation and were going to rehearse new material we were going to record," he said. But Barnacle Bill's owner Bill Grogan tracked them down and asked if they would come and play, "and we said, 'Why not?'"
Phil Brennan, whose Crosseyed Bear Productions has managed Spyro Gyra from the start, said the band was on St. Thomas for a couple of week-long stays before that, but his computer records only go back to 1988. Beckenstein says he has "romantic memories" of the islands — first with a girlfriend, and later with his wife.
The entertainment dynamics of playing in a funky, laid-back little venue like Barnacle Bill's are a lot different from those performing onstage at a large theater such as the Reichhold, Beckenstein said, but both have advantages.
"Part of me loves to play in a little place where the people are right there," he said. "It kind of helps me be more of a human being. I'm really speaking to people I can see, and I have to be very real.
"On the other hand, part of the whole music-making process is developing a feedback loop with your audience. You put out energy, they give it back, it makes you put out more. You get this wonderful upward spiral with a big audience. The more audience, more power there is."
A good time in the midst of bad times
The short-term memories have to do with Sept. 11 and the appropriateness of having a good time as part of America's healing process.
"We had shows scheduled for the 15th and 16th in California," Brennan said. "We were unable to get the band there because of the problems with air travel, so we didn't have to decide if we or the audience was ready for a concert at the time. The decision was made for us. We were able to reschedule one of the shows, and the other one was canceled. The following week, we had more shows in California and Arizona that the band did play."
During those shows, the group opened its concerts with "The Unknown Soldier," a song Beckenstein wrote for the band's 1989 album "Point Of View." He also shared his feelings with the audiences as the leader of a band whose members hail from the New York and Washington, D.C., areas.
Travel was by air, and it was unnerving, Beckenstein recalled. "It really was uncomfortable flying — pilots were getting on the intercom telling us, 'You people are responsible for the rear cabin.'" A week after Sept. 11, "planes were still empty, relatively speaking. At Phoenix, the airport was a ghost town." By another week after that, traffic "had picked up marginally, but the lines for security were still long, despite nobody being there."
Beckenstein wasn't deciding ahead of time whether he would do "The Unknown Soldier" for the Reichhold concert. But "I think it's likely," he said.
"Making music seems a little trivial compared to current events," he noted. "There's a certain discomfort for people to going out and having a good time right now. To let us still have a good time and our audience have a really good time, we start by playing this somber song up front that has a patriotic element. And I say to the audience, 'We weren't sure we wanted to come out here tonight. And I didn't want to leave my children. Yet, I couldn't think of anything that I could do, other than coming out here and playing; I couldn't think of anything that would be as self-healing. So, let's try to have a good time for the next couple of hours.'"
This introduction, he said, "has seemed to allow everyone, including ourselves, to enjoy a good show."
Seniority means more than 10 years
Spyro Gyra consists of Beckenstein on saxophones, Tom Schuman on keyboards, Julio Fernandez on guitars, Joel Rosenblatt on drums and Scott Ambush on bass. Along with Beckenstein, Schuman and Fernandez were part of the band that played at Barnacle Bill's.
A quarter century after he and Jeremy Wall founded the band, Beckenstein is its only original, full-fledged member, but Schuman comes darned close. "Tom was an auxiliary member," Beckenstein recalled. "Jeremy was the keyboardist and Tom was about 16 at the time — it was a kind of sitting-in thing." Fernandez came aboard in '81 or '82, he said, and Rosenblatt and Ambush joined the group about 10 years ago.
There's great significance to the fact that "Joel joined about six days later than Scott," Beckenstein said. "This band has a seniority thing. If there are four good hotel rooms and one not-so-good one, well, you know who gets it."
The band, known for its fusion of jazz, Latin, Caribbean and R&B rhythms, was born in Buffalo, N.Y., and got its name from a misspelling of the scientific word spirogira, a microscopic marine organism — read "pond scum" — that Beckenstein had written a biology paper about in college. Early on, when a club owner needed a name for the band, that's the one Beckenstein came up with. "It was a joke," the Spyro Gyra web site states, but it stuck.
Their 25th anniversary album, "In Modern Times," came out in May. The band hasn't gone back into the studio for the next one, "but my computer is filling up with musical ideas," Beckenstein said.
Staying together, playing together
Last year, Beckenstein did something he'd never done before since the band made its mark on the jazz world. He recorded a solo album, "Eye Contact," for Windham Hill Jazz. The reason, he said candidly, was "opportunity."
He explained: There has always been a legal ambivalence between Jay Beckenstein and Spyro Gyra." For recording contracts, "I have always signed for the band as me doing business as Spyro Gyra. I'd never been allowed to do an album outside" — although he had the opportunity to produce solo albums for others — Schuman and former band vibraphonist Dave Samuels.
He perceived mixed feelings on the part of the band about his solo venture. "The band members are my buddies, and they know that I'm very dedicated to the band and its continuance," he said. "On the surface, they were very, very supportive — but underneath, unquestionably a little uneasy. I could sense it. I knew they were concerned that my interests were waning or something." However, "the fact that 'In Modern Times' was such a band-oriented production took away all that," he added.
He would do it again, even though he learned that going solo was a lot of work. "I realized in making 'Eye Contact' how easy making Spyro Gyra albums are for me — because I have all these other people who are big contributors," he said. "It really is a team effort."
The multi-platinum contemporary jazz ensemble "endures as an audience favorite because they created an original style that sounded like nothing that came before," Jonathan Widran wrote in Jazziz magazine a while back. He credited the group with having "one of the most amazing live shows in instrumental music and killer, killer songs."
The magazine's August issue had the band on the cover for a quarter ce ntury of having "stood at the center of the contemporary jazz universe." In the cover article, Bill Milkowski cited Beckenstein as saying that Spyro Gyra has endured not because of its initial burstof success during the late '70s, but in spite of it. "While the band has not altered its sound significantly in order to sell records or remain contemporary," he wrote, "Beckenstein says that Spyro Gyra has kept its collective ears open to interesting musical sounds coming from other places."
The band's enduring popularity has a lot to do with the facts that "Nobody got sick, nobody made themselves sick and we like each other," Beckenstein told the Source. "I've come to realize over the years that the main reason is that people still keep coming to hear us. You end up playing certain places 10, 15 times. We've played Akron, Ohio, 15 to 20 times. It would be easy around time 7 to go, 'Well, I've already done that.' But they keep coming — and that's what keeps us together."
Ticket information
Spyro Gyra performs Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Reichhold Center, opening the 2001-02 subscription season. Tickets for the A section were $55, but they're sold out. Tickets for the B section are $35 and only "a few" remain, according to box office personnel. Tickets in the C section are $20.
Outlets in addition to the Reichhold box office are the UVI St. Thomas campus bookstore, Modern Music (Nisky Center and Havensight), Parrot Fish Music and Crystal & Gifts Galore on St. Thomas; and Connections on St. John. For charge-card reservations, call the box office at 693-1559.
The Reichhold Center has put together travel packages for those wanting to cross the waters from St. Croix or Puerto Rico to take in the concert. In addition to tickets (on an availability basis), they include round-trip airfare aboard Seaborne Airlines, Saturday night accommodations at the nearby Best Western Emerald Beach Resort, continental breakfast Sunday, and ground transportation to and from the seaplane ramp and to and from the Reichhold Center. The packages are priced at $260 from Christiansted and $280 from San Juan. For reservations, call 693-1566.
There's a pre-concert reception to meet the band members that's by invitation — for season subscribers and donors. Season subscriptions are still available, in several customized formats. For details, visit the Reichhold's ticket information page and click on the green text "Become a season subscriber."
The long-term ones are local: The band has been in the Virgin Islands a number of times before, although in far different venues from the 1,200-seat amphitheater. It played on St. Croix in 1988, '89 and '92 and on St. Thomas at the old Barnacle Bill's in '88.
The Barnacle Bill's gig wasn't exactly planned, Beckenstein recalled in a Source telephone interview. "Basically, we went down to St. Thomas on vacation and were going to rehearse new material we were going to record," he said. But Barnacle Bill's owner Bill Grogan tracked them down and asked if they would come and play, "and we said, 'Why not?'"
Phil Brennan, whose Crosseyed Bear Productions has managed Spyro Gyra from the start, said the band was on St. Thomas for a couple of week-long stays before that, but his computer records only go back to 1988. Beckenstein says he has "romantic memories" of the islands — first with a girlfriend, and later with his wife.
The entertainment dynamics of playing in a funky, laid-back little venue like Barnacle Bill's are a lot different from those performing onstage at a large theater such as the Reichhold, Beckenstein said, but both have advantages.
"Part of me loves to play in a little place where the people are right there," he said. "It kind of helps me be more of a human being. I'm really speaking to people I can see, and I have to be very real.
"On the other hand, part of the whole music-making process is developing a feedback loop with your audience. You put out energy, they give it back, it makes you put out more. You get this wonderful upward spiral with a big audience. The more audience, more power there is."
A good time in the midst of bad times
The short-term memories have to do with Sept. 11 and the appropriateness of having a good time as part of America's healing process.
"We had shows scheduled for the 15th and 16th in California," Brennan said. "We were unable to get the band there because of the problems with air travel, so we didn't have to decide if we or the audience was ready for a concert at the time. The decision was made for us. We were able to reschedule one of the shows, and the other one was canceled. The following week, we had more shows in California and Arizona that the band did play."
During those shows, the group opened its concerts with "The Unknown Soldier," a song Beckenstein wrote for the band's 1989 album "Point Of View." He also shared his feelings with the audiences as the leader of a band whose members hail from the New York and Washington, D.C., areas.
Travel was by air, and it was unnerving, Beckenstein recalled. "It really was uncomfortable flying — pilots were getting on the intercom telling us, 'You people are responsible for the rear cabin.'" A week after Sept. 11, "planes were still empty, relatively speaking. At Phoenix, the airport was a ghost town." By another week after that, traffic "had picked up marginally, but the lines for security were still long, despite nobody being there."
Beckenstein wasn't deciding ahead of time whether he would do "The Unknown Soldier" for the Reichhold concert. But "I think it's likely," he said.
"Making music seems a little trivial compared to current events," he noted. "There's a certain discomfort for people to going out and having a good time right now. To let us still have a good time and our audience have a really good time, we start by playing this somber song up front that has a patriotic element. And I say to the audience, 'We weren't sure we wanted to come out here tonight. And I didn't want to leave my children. Yet, I couldn't think of anything that I could do, other than coming out here and playing; I couldn't think of anything that would be as self-healing. So, let's try to have a good time for the next couple of hours.'"
This introduction, he said, "has seemed to allow everyone, including ourselves, to enjoy a good show."
Seniority means more than 10 years
Spyro Gyra consists of Beckenstein on saxophones, Tom Schuman on keyboards, Julio Fernandez on guitars, Joel Rosenblatt on drums and Scott Ambush on bass. Along with Beckenstein, Schuman and Fernandez were part of the band that played at Barnacle Bill's.
A quarter century after he and Jeremy Wall founded the band, Beckenstein is its only original, full-fledged member, but Schuman comes darned close. "Tom was an auxiliary member," Beckenstein recalled. "Jeremy was the keyboardist and Tom was about 16 at the time — it was a kind of sitting-in thing." Fernandez came aboard in '81 or '82, he said, and Rosenblatt and Ambush joined the group about 10 years ago.
There's great significance to the fact that "Joel joined about six days later than Scott," Beckenstein said. "This band has a seniority thing. If there are four good hotel rooms and one not-so-good one, well, you know who gets it."
The band, known for its fusion of jazz, Latin, Caribbean and R&B rhythms, was born in Buffalo, N.Y., and got its name from a misspelling of the scientific word spirogira, a microscopic marine organism — read "pond scum" — that Beckenstein had written a biology paper about in college. Early on, when a club owner needed a name for the band, that's the one Beckenstein came up with. "It was a joke," the Spyro Gyra web site states, but it stuck.
Their 25th anniversary album, "In Modern Times," came out in May. The band hasn't gone back into the studio for the next one, "but my computer is filling up with musical ideas," Beckenstein said.
Staying together, playing together
Last year, Beckenstein did something he'd never done before since the band made its mark on the jazz world. He recorded a solo album, "Eye Contact," for Windham Hill Jazz. The reason, he said candidly, was "opportunity."
He explained: There has always been a legal ambivalence between Jay Beckenstein and Spyro Gyra." For recording contracts, "I have always signed for the band as me doing business as Spyro Gyra. I'd never been allowed to do an album outside" — although he had the opportunity to produce solo albums for others — Schuman and former band vibraphonist Dave Samuels.
He perceived mixed feelings on the part of the band about his solo venture. "The band members are my buddies, and they know that I'm very dedicated to the band and its continuance," he said. "On the surface, they were very, very supportive — but underneath, unquestionably a little uneasy. I could sense it. I knew they were concerned that my interests were waning or something." However, "the fact that 'In Modern Times' was such a band-oriented production took away all that," he added.
He would do it again, even though he learned that going solo was a lot of work. "I realized in making 'Eye Contact' how easy making Spyro Gyra albums are for me — because I have all these other people who are big contributors," he said. "It really is a team effort."
The multi-platinum contemporary jazz ensemble "endures as an audience favorite because they created an original style that sounded like nothing that came before," Jonathan Widran wrote in Jazziz magazine a while back. He credited the group with having "one of the most amazing live shows in instrumental music and killer, killer songs."
The magazine's August issue had the band on the cover for a quarter ce ntury of having "stood at the center of the contemporary jazz universe." In the cover article, Bill Milkowski cited Beckenstein as saying that Spyro Gyra has endured not because of its initial burstof success during the late '70s, but in spite of it. "While the band has not altered its sound significantly in order to sell records or remain contemporary," he wrote, "Beckenstein says that Spyro Gyra has kept its collective ears open to interesting musical sounds coming from other places."
The band's enduring popularity has a lot to do with the facts that "Nobody got sick, nobody made themselves sick and we like each other," Beckenstein told the Source. "I've come to realize over the years that the main reason is that people still keep coming to hear us. You end up playing certain places 10, 15 times. We've played Akron, Ohio, 15 to 20 times. It would be easy around time 7 to go, 'Well, I've already done that.' But they keep coming — and that's what keeps us together."
Ticket information
Spyro Gyra performs Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Reichhold Center, opening the 2001-02 subscription season. Tickets for the A section were $55, but they're sold out. Tickets for the B section are $35 and only "a few" remain, according to box office personnel. Tickets in the C section are $20.
Outlets in addition to the Reichhold box office are the UVI St. Thomas campus bookstore, Modern Music (Nisky Center and Havensight), Parrot Fish Music and Crystal & Gifts Galore on St. Thomas; and Connections on St. John. For charge-card reservations, call the box office at 693-1559.
The Reichhold Center has put together travel packages for those wanting to cross the waters from St. Croix or Puerto Rico to take in the concert. In addition to tickets (on an availability basis), they include round-trip airfare aboard Seaborne Airlines, Saturday night accommodations at the nearby Best Western Emerald Beach Resort, continental breakfast Sunday, and ground transportation to and from the seaplane ramp and to and from the Reichhold Center. The packages are priced at $260 from Christiansted and $280 from San Juan. For reservations, call 693-1566.
There's a pre-concert reception to meet the band members that's by invitation — for season subscribers and donors. Season subscriptions are still available, in several customized formats. For details, visit the Reichhold's ticket information page and click on the green text "Become a season subscriber."
CALLER TO POLICE THREATENS TO BOMB HOTELS
Oct. 8, 2001 — Hotel operators in the St. Thomas-St. John district were asked to step up security measures at their properties Monday morning after an unknown individual called the police emergency 911 system and threatened to blow up hotels.
The call was an apparent response to "Operation Enduring Freedom," the military action being led by the U.S. against Afghanistan.
Beverly Nicholson, executive director of the St. Thomas-St. John Hotel and Tourism Association, said Monday that the organization received word of the threatening call from the V.I. Territorial Emergency Management Agency.
"We were notified of the call and have asked hotels to step up their security awareness as a precaution," Nicholson said. She said the threat was taken seriously by the association. "I would want us to err on the side of caution … We found it necessary to take the threat seriously," she said.
Security measures could include logging all vehicles entering hotel properties, increased awareness among staff of any trespassers on the properties and random stopping of vehicles entering hotel complexes, Nicholson said.
Sources were quoted by WVWI Radio as saying the call to the 911 system was made in the pre-dawn hours Monday by a male caller who suggested that it was time to destroy hotels in the Virgin Islands. Law-enforcement sources were quoted as saying that contingents of police officers were making the rounds of the district's hotels to reassure guests, employees and hotel owners aware of the threat and caution them not to panic.
A caller to the station’s morning talk show "Topp Talk" said he was at the Palms Court Harborview Hotel when police entered and "began to evacuate the building."
Nicholson said she did not know whether similar action was taking place on St. Croix.
St. Croix Deputy Police Chief Novelle Francis said Monday afternoon that no threats had been called in to 911 on that island.
"Everything is status quo on St. Croix," Francis said.
The call was an apparent response to "Operation Enduring Freedom," the military action being led by the U.S. against Afghanistan.
Beverly Nicholson, executive director of the St. Thomas-St. John Hotel and Tourism Association, said Monday that the organization received word of the threatening call from the V.I. Territorial Emergency Management Agency.
"We were notified of the call and have asked hotels to step up their security awareness as a precaution," Nicholson said. She said the threat was taken seriously by the association. "I would want us to err on the side of caution … We found it necessary to take the threat seriously," she said.
Security measures could include logging all vehicles entering hotel properties, increased awareness among staff of any trespassers on the properties and random stopping of vehicles entering hotel complexes, Nicholson said.
Sources were quoted by WVWI Radio as saying the call to the 911 system was made in the pre-dawn hours Monday by a male caller who suggested that it was time to destroy hotels in the Virgin Islands. Law-enforcement sources were quoted as saying that contingents of police officers were making the rounds of the district's hotels to reassure guests, employees and hotel owners aware of the threat and caution them not to panic.
A caller to the station’s morning talk show "Topp Talk" said he was at the Palms Court Harborview Hotel when police entered and "began to evacuate the building."
Nicholson said she did not know whether similar action was taking place on St. Croix.
St. Croix Deputy Police Chief Novelle Francis said Monday afternoon that no threats had been called in to 911 on that island.
"Everything is status quo on St. Croix," Francis said.
ST. CROIX REALTORS SUPPORT YOUTH
For the fourth year, members of the St. Croix Board of Realtors have donated funds for a scholarship program with AmeriCorp and the Boys and Girls Clubs on the island.
The program, said Diana Robinson, the public relations chairperson for the Board of Realtors, will help with continuing educational needs.
"Realtors agree that it is imperative for today’s business leaders to contribute to the future leaders of our community, and are committed to doing just that," Robinson said.
This year marks the fourth year in which The Boys and Girls Club has received scholarship funds donated by the St. Croix Board of Realtors. The scholarship is set up for the members of AmeriCorps under a federal grant from the Corporation for National Service. It provides members the opportunity to work with The Boys and Girls Clubs at their three Virgin Islands sites.
The program promotes a "Positive Place for Kids" and is always appreciated, said the Club’s unit director, Amoy Douglas.
"We are always pleased that the realtors remember us over the years and continue their support," Douglas said.
Upon learning of Sen. Emmett Hansen’s plea to the community for assistance in obtaining contributions for desperately needed school supplies for Central High School, the St. Croix Board of Realtors did not hesitate to contribute funds.
It had also come to the attention of the realtors that a new non-profit organization called St. Croix Boat had recently been established for those children experiencing disciplinary problems resulting in difficulties remaining in school. Headed up by Frank Cousins, master boat-wright, along with David and Betty McDonald, a "tough love" program has been put into place at the Vocational School.
Not only do students learn discipline, safety, class instruction, and life-coping skills, they have the opportunity to be part of the island tradition of boat building. Two students have received scholarships donated by the St. Croix Board of Realtors, affording them the opportunity to be involved in the building of a 28-foot wooden fishing boat.
It is the hope of St. Croix Boat to sell the vessel upon completion in an effort to continue funding the organization and keep it going.
For more information, contact Diana Robinson at 773-8444.
The program, said Diana Robinson, the public relations chairperson for the Board of Realtors, will help with continuing educational needs.
"Realtors agree that it is imperative for today’s business leaders to contribute to the future leaders of our community, and are committed to doing just that," Robinson said.
This year marks the fourth year in which The Boys and Girls Club has received scholarship funds donated by the St. Croix Board of Realtors. The scholarship is set up for the members of AmeriCorps under a federal grant from the Corporation for National Service. It provides members the opportunity to work with The Boys and Girls Clubs at their three Virgin Islands sites.
The program promotes a "Positive Place for Kids" and is always appreciated, said the Club’s unit director, Amoy Douglas.
"We are always pleased that the realtors remember us over the years and continue their support," Douglas said.
Upon learning of Sen. Emmett Hansen’s plea to the community for assistance in obtaining contributions for desperately needed school supplies for Central High School, the St. Croix Board of Realtors did not hesitate to contribute funds.
It had also come to the attention of the realtors that a new non-profit organization called St. Croix Boat had recently been established for those children experiencing disciplinary problems resulting in difficulties remaining in school. Headed up by Frank Cousins, master boat-wright, along with David and Betty McDonald, a "tough love" program has been put into place at the Vocational School.
Not only do students learn discipline, safety, class instruction, and life-coping skills, they have the opportunity to be part of the island tradition of boat building. Two students have received scholarships donated by the St. Croix Board of Realtors, affording them the opportunity to be involved in the building of a 28-foot wooden fishing boat.
It is the hope of St. Croix Boat to sell the vessel upon completion in an effort to continue funding the organization and keep it going.
For more information, contact Diana Robinson at 773-8444.
TROPICAL STORM HEADED WELL SOUTH OF ST. CROIX
Oct. 8, 2001 – Virgin Islands residents should see intermittent light showers Monday morning, but by the afternoon, the rains are likely to get heavier and the wind is expected to increase to about 20 mph. The wet weather is associated with Tropical Storm Jerry's feeder bands, Ernesto Morales, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in San Juan, said.
He said that Tropical Storm Jerry should pass about 150 miles south of St. Croix on Monday.
As of 5 a.m. Monday, the weather system was centered at 14.1 degrees north latitude and 62.7 degrees west longitude and moving west-northwest at 18 mph. Jerry's sustained wind speed was 50 mph with gusts up to 65 mph, and the minimum pressure was at 1007 millibars.
Tropical Storm Jerry appears to be on a direct course for Jamaica, which on Sunday saw winds of 70 mph blow roofs off some houses as Hurricane Iris passed to the south. By the time it reaches Jamaica, Jerry is projected to have reached hurricane strength.
Morales said a tropical wave now out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean could develop into something stronger, but he expects it will take a northward track and bypass the territory.
He said that Tropical Storm Jerry should pass about 150 miles south of St. Croix on Monday.
As of 5 a.m. Monday, the weather system was centered at 14.1 degrees north latitude and 62.7 degrees west longitude and moving west-northwest at 18 mph. Jerry's sustained wind speed was 50 mph with gusts up to 65 mph, and the minimum pressure was at 1007 millibars.
Tropical Storm Jerry appears to be on a direct course for Jamaica, which on Sunday saw winds of 70 mph blow roofs off some houses as Hurricane Iris passed to the south. By the time it reaches Jamaica, Jerry is projected to have reached hurricane strength.
Morales said a tropical wave now out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean could develop into something stronger, but he expects it will take a northward track and bypass the territory.
BRYAN URGES VETO OF TWO OMNIBUS BILL ITEMS
Oct. 8, 2001 — Sen. Adelbert Bryan is urging Gov. Charles W. Turnbull to veto two sections of the recently approved Omnibus Act of 2002 because of the precedents he says they will set.
In a letter last week, Bryan said that the Senate’s decision to sell a historic building on St. Croix to a local American Legion Post and the body’s granting of more than half a million dollars to the City of Refuge Church blur the accounting of public funds and the separation of church and state.
In the first instance, the Senate at the end of September approved the sale of the derelict Old Convent building in Frederiksted to American Legion Post No. 133 for $1. Senators — not counting Bryan — also appropriated $100,000 to renovate the building.
Further, Bryan said, the sale of the building — a historic site — was done without "any consideration for reversionary rights if the property is not used in the future for the purposes for which it was conveyed."
Instead of selling the building to the American Legion, Bryan said, the government could renovated it for use in counseling, continuing education and assisting teen-age mothers in learning parenting skills. He also said the government could lease the building to the American Legion, and then the organization could seek grant funding from other public and private entities for the renovations.
Bryan called on Turnbull to veto a $600,000 grant to City of Refuge for a teen intervention center and a program for the elderly and homeless.
"If we are now setting a precedent in giving out grants in over one-half million dollars to a church organization," Bryant wrote, this "would mean every other church would have the legal right to petition the Legislature for funding and demand that they be given equal treatment."
The St. Croix senator noted that while the V.I. government is trying to pull out of a "downward spiral, especially since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon," it also is seeking forgiveness of debts owed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
If the government can afford to give away hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, "then we should have a better means to establish priorities as a public policy," Bryan said.
In a letter last week, Bryan said that the Senate’s decision to sell a historic building on St. Croix to a local American Legion Post and the body’s granting of more than half a million dollars to the City of Refuge Church blur the accounting of public funds and the separation of church and state.
In the first instance, the Senate at the end of September approved the sale of the derelict Old Convent building in Frederiksted to American Legion Post No. 133 for $1. Senators — not counting Bryan — also appropriated $100,000 to renovate the building.
Further, Bryan said, the sale of the building — a historic site — was done without "any consideration for reversionary rights if the property is not used in the future for the purposes for which it was conveyed."
Instead of selling the building to the American Legion, Bryan said, the government could renovated it for use in counseling, continuing education and assisting teen-age mothers in learning parenting skills. He also said the government could lease the building to the American Legion, and then the organization could seek grant funding from other public and private entities for the renovations.
Bryan called on Turnbull to veto a $600,000 grant to City of Refuge for a teen intervention center and a program for the elderly and homeless.
"If we are now setting a precedent in giving out grants in over one-half million dollars to a church organization," Bryant wrote, this "would mean every other church would have the legal right to petition the Legislature for funding and demand that they be given equal treatment."
The St. Croix senator noted that while the V.I. government is trying to pull out of a "downward spiral, especially since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon," it also is seeking forgiveness of debts owed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
If the government can afford to give away hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, "then we should have a better means to establish priorities as a public policy," Bryan said.
LIVING WITH DIABETES IS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Oct. 7, 2001 – Local residents diagnosed with diabetes mellitus don't have to go it alone. The Diabetes Association of the Virgin Islands, under the direction of its president, Steve Prosterman, is resuming monthly support group meetings.
Diabetes mellitus is a disease in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin, a hormone needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy needed for daily life. The exact cause of diabetes remains a mystery, although both genetics and environmental factors such as obesity and lack of exercise appear to play key roles.
There are two major types of diabetes. Type 1, or juvenile diabetes, occurs when the body stops making insulin. People with Type I diabetes, mostly children and young adults, must take daily insulin injections to survive. Type 1 accounts for 5 to 10 percent of all cases of diabetes. People develop Type 2 diabetes when their bodies becomes unable to make enough — or to properly use — insulin. Type 2, the most common form of the disease in adults, is nearing epidemic proportions, mainly due to increased obesity and sedentary lifestyles.
Data from the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System, which involves collecting information regularly on the V.I. population, indicate that diabetes mellitus is the third leading cause of death among residents in the territory.
Prosterman, a diabetic for the last 34 years, started the local association in 1987. "There were lots of good people with information to share, but the word wasn't getting out enough," he recalls. "People with diabetes didn't seem to know they had a say in their disease, or that life-threatening complications weren't inevitable."
At first, Prosterman focused on children with diabetes. "But then I saw there was a need for everyone," he says. The group met regularly for years, then hit a slump in the mid-1990s and became inactive, except for the summer camp he conducts each year at Lameshur Bay on St. John.
Last year, Kieva Rogers, a senior nursing student at the University of the Virgin Islands, approached Prosterman about resuming the group. "Kieva put a lot of energy into it, and it went over well," he says. "We had seven to eight kids and their parents attending through the winter and spring," he says. "My promise to her was to carry on with the group after she graduated."
The purpose of a support group is to share information, suggestions and practical living tips, Prosterman says. "Everyone comes away with something important they've learned. Maybe it's something basic like how to guestimate accurate portion sizes, or something more technical like the importance of testing blood sugar regularly."
Self-care is the first and fundamental step
Speakers include local physicians, pharmacists and ophthalmologists. But often group members themselves help and guide one another. "Many times people who have diabetes are too passive," Prosterman says. "They think if they just pop a pill, they'll be okay. They have to learn the importance of taking care of themselves. If they learn that, they can prevent complications."
The most important advice Prosterman offers for someone who has diabetes is to "start with the basics. Take your medicine, follow your diet and exercise." He says the people he's known "who have had diabetes for many years and who are active are the ones without complications. It's the ones who aren't active that are losing limbs, having kidney failure and going blind."
Another fundamental point, Prosterman says, is to test blood sugar often. "It can be expensive, but without a record of blood sugar readings it's hard for physicians to know what's going on and to prescribe the best treatment," he says. For those afraid of sticking themselves to get blood for a sugar reading, he offers two tips: "Use a little-used finger like the pinky or ring finger, and stick on the sides of the finger where there are fewer nerve endings rather than the middle fleshy part."
Oneday soon it may become easier for squeamish diabetics to monitor their blood sugar. "There is research into a nasal mist insulin and non-invasive blood sugar testing like with the GlucoWatch(r)," Prosterman explains. The GlucoWatch(r) is a glucose-monitoring device that is worn like a wristwatch. It takes glucose readings via an extremely low-level electric current that pulls glucose through the skin and reports readings on a numerical display screen as often as every 20 minutes and for up to 12 hours at a time.
Further in the future is a cure for diabetes in the form of transplants of insulin-producing beta cells from the pancreas. When he spoke at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation earlier this year, Prosterman met a woman who was cured of diabetes after receiving a transplant of such cells. "The problem is that it takes two to three cadavers to get enough beta cells to transplant," he explains. "This means that demand is high but resources are low. That's why stem cell research is so important."
The stem cell is a type of body cell that has a unique capacity to renew itself and to give rise to specialized cell types that can be directed to perform a variety of vital functions, including producing insulin.
Since symptoms of diabetes — thirst, hunger, the urge to urinate often, cuts and bruises that heal slowly, dry itchy skin, feelings of weakness and numbness in hands and feet — can be easy to ignore, it's possible for someone to have the disease and not know it. In fact, statistics indicate that for every person diagnosed as having the disease, there is another person who is undiagnosed.
"If you're overweight and have a family history of diabetes, it's important to get a thorough check-up," Prosterman says. "People often wait until something extremely serious or life-threatening happens, but the complications from diabetes are fairly easy to control with diet, exercise and medication. People with diabetes need to know they have the power to prevent these problems from happening."
The next meeting of the Diabetes Association of the Virgin Islands support group is scheduled for mid-October. For specific information, contact Prosterman by calling 693-1399 or e-mailing to sproste@uvi.edu.
Diabetes mellitus is a disease in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin, a hormone needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy needed for daily life. The exact cause of diabetes remains a mystery, although both genetics and environmental factors such as obesity and lack of exercise appear to play key roles.
There are two major types of diabetes. Type 1, or juvenile diabetes, occurs when the body stops making insulin. People with Type I diabetes, mostly children and young adults, must take daily insulin injections to survive. Type 1 accounts for 5 to 10 percent of all cases of diabetes. People develop Type 2 diabetes when their bodies becomes unable to make enough — or to properly use — insulin. Type 2, the most common form of the disease in adults, is nearing epidemic proportions, mainly due to increased obesity and sedentary lifestyles.
Data from the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System, which involves collecting information regularly on the V.I. population, indicate that diabetes mellitus is the third leading cause of death among residents in the territory.
Prosterman, a diabetic for the last 34 years, started the local association in 1987. "There were lots of good people with information to share, but the word wasn't getting out enough," he recalls. "People with diabetes didn't seem to know they had a say in their disease, or that life-threatening complications weren't inevitable."
At first, Prosterman focused on children with diabetes. "But then I saw there was a need for everyone," he says. The group met regularly for years, then hit a slump in the mid-1990s and became inactive, except for the summer camp he conducts each year at Lameshur Bay on St. John.
Last year, Kieva Rogers, a senior nursing student at the University of the Virgin Islands, approached Prosterman about resuming the group. "Kieva put a lot of energy into it, and it went over well," he says. "We had seven to eight kids and their parents attending through the winter and spring," he says. "My promise to her was to carry on with the group after she graduated."
The purpose of a support group is to share information, suggestions and practical living tips, Prosterman says. "Everyone comes away with something important they've learned. Maybe it's something basic like how to guestimate accurate portion sizes, or something more technical like the importance of testing blood sugar regularly."
Self-care is the first and fundamental step
Speakers include local physicians, pharmacists and ophthalmologists. But often group members themselves help and guide one another. "Many times people who have diabetes are too passive," Prosterman says. "They think if they just pop a pill, they'll be okay. They have to learn the importance of taking care of themselves. If they learn that, they can prevent complications."
The most important advice Prosterman offers for someone who has diabetes is to "start with the basics. Take your medicine, follow your diet and exercise." He says the people he's known "who have had diabetes for many years and who are active are the ones without complications. It's the ones who aren't active that are losing limbs, having kidney failure and going blind."
Another fundamental point, Prosterman says, is to test blood sugar often. "It can be expensive, but without a record of blood sugar readings it's hard for physicians to know what's going on and to prescribe the best treatment," he says. For those afraid of sticking themselves to get blood for a sugar reading, he offers two tips: "Use a little-used finger like the pinky or ring finger, and stick on the sides of the finger where there are fewer nerve endings rather than the middle fleshy part."
Oneday soon it may become easier for squeamish diabetics to monitor their blood sugar. "There is research into a nasal mist insulin and non-invasive blood sugar testing like with the GlucoWatch(r)," Prosterman explains. The GlucoWatch(r) is a glucose-monitoring device that is worn like a wristwatch. It takes glucose readings via an extremely low-level electric current that pulls glucose through the skin and reports readings on a numerical display screen as often as every 20 minutes and for up to 12 hours at a time.
Further in the future is a cure for diabetes in the form of transplants of insulin-producing beta cells from the pancreas. When he spoke at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation earlier this year, Prosterman met a woman who was cured of diabetes after receiving a transplant of such cells. "The problem is that it takes two to three cadavers to get enough beta cells to transplant," he explains. "This means that demand is high but resources are low. That's why stem cell research is so important."
The stem cell is a type of body cell that has a unique capacity to renew itself and to give rise to specialized cell types that can be directed to perform a variety of vital functions, including producing insulin.
Since symptoms of diabetes — thirst, hunger, the urge to urinate often, cuts and bruises that heal slowly, dry itchy skin, feelings of weakness and numbness in hands and feet — can be easy to ignore, it's possible for someone to have the disease and not know it. In fact, statistics indicate that for every person diagnosed as having the disease, there is another person who is undiagnosed.
"If you're overweight and have a family history of diabetes, it's important to get a thorough check-up," Prosterman says. "People often wait until something extremely serious or life-threatening happens, but the complications from diabetes are fairly easy to control with diet, exercise and medication. People with diabetes need to know they have the power to prevent these problems from happening."
The next meeting of the Diabetes Association of the Virgin Islands support group is scheduled for mid-October. For specific information, contact Prosterman by calling 693-1399 or e-mailing to sproste@uvi.edu.
