The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page D1

CYANMAGYELBLK TennesseanBroadsheet Master TennesseanBroadsheet Master 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 5 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 5 TennesseanBroadsheet Master TennesseanBroadsheet Master 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1D THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2004 www.tennessean.com LIVING CONTENTS Dear Abby Crossword Horoscope Entertainment Comics Television Shortcuts Sandy Smith, Assistant Managing Editor Features, 259-8040 Susan T. Leathers, Assistant Features Editor, 726-8964 To List Events: Call 726-8902 Fax: 259-8057 E-mail: RONEN ZILBERMAN CMT Rocco Wachman, left, and Judd Leffew are sure enough cowboys, and they try to teach five urban couples the cowboy way in the CMT reality show Cowboy So, you want to be a cowboy? CMT giving greenhorns a saddle full ofreality By KEN BECK StaffWriter You meet many cowboys named Rocco. But if one of the city slickers learning the lifestyle on reality show Cowboy be smart to listen to what the cowpoke from New York has to say. I do for the TV show is what I do for a says Rocco Wachman, lead instructor for Cowboy Season three kicks off at 8 p.m. Friday on CMT as Wachman and his partner, pro rodeo bull rider Judd Leffew, wrangle with five couples from cities throughout the United States as they try to teach them the cowboy way.

spend 17 days with them. The object is to take them through 12 days of boot camp and prepare them for five days of some form of gathering cattle. They go out to bring in livestock for a rodeo on the last says Wachman, who abandoned his job as a grocer in 1988 and followed his heart West. As a professional cowboy at the Arizona Cowboy College in Knowing what I know now, 11-year- old Jordan Bennett of Franklin probably should have been one of the top winners in my Junior Cheapo contest earlier this fall. Not because she is so cheap on her own, but because she is learning firsthand how to really stretch dollars for people in need.

I mean this girl truly gets it! church, Franklin First United Methodist, earlier this month teamed up with two other churches, Historic Franklin Presbyterian and St. Episcopal, to put on an alternative gift market featuring 20 booths. At the market, people like you and me could contribute to hunger organizations, environmental groups, church mission work and more instead of buying pointless gifts for people who need anything. For example, instead of buying a gift certificate to Wal-Mart for your mother-in-law who has everything, you could write a check for $45 and provide a wheelchair to a disabled person in the Congo. Or instead of forking out $30 for a coffee-table book for old Uncle Clarence, you could support a Ugandan AIDS orphan and caregiver for one month.

A little bit definitely goes a long way, and not all at far-away places. Right here, your $5 contribution could feed a family of four for a week through Feed America First of Middle Tennessee. And $10 makes a huge difference at Campus for Human in the Inn. At market, her booth helped children in Iraq get school supplies. Her 6-year-old brother, Jake, had a booth seeking to raise money for the rain forest in Chile.

The market has raised more than $50,000 in its three- year history. In fact, if interested in this kind of giving, the market still is open in the First United Methodist church office. Listen to pitch: of buying a tangible item for your mom or dad, a shopper can think of something their parents really care about and buy something that helps someone else in their honor. Your parents (or whoever they want to buy for) would then receive a card with an insert explaining about the needy person or group that was helped. of the best things about the market and why it is perfect for jun- ior cheapos is that it takes so little money to truly help these people.

Did you know that for only $2, you can buy a full dose of de-worming medicine for one person in Tanzania that will prevent river blindness? Where else can you change a life for what you would spend on a candy bar and soda and give a gift that someone will remember the rest of their mom, Shannon Bennett, who instigated their market, says the obvious goal is to make money for the various causes. But equally important, she says, is encouraging awareness of our ability to help others. want the children involved so that they see that no matter what you have, you should help those in What a great way to reduce the commercialism of Christmas and ignite the true joy of giving. Thanks Jordan! You deserve a prize. see what I can come up with! Stay cheap! As Christmas draws near, we can look to a child to capture the spirit ofgiving Ms.

Cheap Mary Hance Greatest gifts of all Ready to do some alternative shopping? You have several choices: First United Methodist alternative gift market in the church office, 143 Fifth Ave. S. in Franklin, will continue through November. Information: Call Shannon, 591-5774. Hillsboro Presbyterian market supports causes here and abroad and also sells handicrafts from Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Hours are p.m. Dec. 3, 9 a.m.–3 p.m. Dec. 4 and p.m.

Dec. 5 at the church, 5820 Hillsboro Road. 665-0148. Christ Church Episcopal second annual market will be 10 a.m.–noon Saturday and 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Sunday at the church, 900 Broadway.

You can support dozens of local and international agencies as well as buy handicrafts from Ecuador and Bolivia. 255-7729. St. Episcopal Church, 4800 Belmont Park Terrace, will have its first alternative market 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Sunday.

It supports nine local and international agencies and will include crafts from Ecuador, Honduras and Mexico. 377-4750. Check www.altgifts.org for more information on the alternative-giving concept. Tuning in Five city-slicker couples compete for the right to be called cowboy Hawaii-style on an exotic and remote Hawaiian island on Cowboy at 8 p.m. Friday on CMT.

BENNETT Nashville artist Bill Myers, a fan of classical music, created this illustration of the true story of vanished lighthouse keepers at the heart of Peter Maxwell The Lighthouse This is the actual Flannan Isles lighthouse off the western Scottish coast. the site of a 104-year- old unsolved mystery that inspired the opera The Lighthouse being performed here this week. By ALAN BOSTICK StaffWriter ather for the story of a phenomenal mystery that remains unsolved to this day and likely forever. a haunted, 104-year-old tale of a lonely lighthouse and the three keepers who vanished without a trace. so haunted and bewitched and inexplicable that it continues to spook those who come closest to it, including Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

The celebrated English-born conductor was so taken with the story of the Flannan Isles lighthouse off the windswept coast of Scotland that, about 25 years ago, he wrote a short opera about it, called The Lighthouse a challenging and rarely heard work that will receive its local premiere here tomorrow in a daring new Nashville Opera production. believe in anything that is Davies said. we explain it now, perhaps we might be able to one day. There are these extraordinary experiences you have which are not explicable. Here, everybody has for Davies, is the rugged Scottish coast, where he has lived, on the remote Orkney Island of Hoy, since the early 1970s.

It was there, during a terrible gale at his cliff-top home, that he recently spoke by phone of the lighthouse story and why he was so drawn to it. But first the story itself an absolutely true story, fully documented. It was the day after Christmas in the year 1900 when the supply ship Hesperus made a routine stop at the isolated Flannan Isles lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides off the western coast of Scotland. The purpose of the visit was to bring provisions to the three keepers James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donald Macarthur who manned the lighthouse, a tiny dot of rock in a wild and relentless northern sea. The light was out, and no one was at the landing ramp to greet the arriving ship.

The crew came ashore and found the lighthouse empty. The door was ajar, and a meal of meat, pickles and potatoes was set out on the kitchen table. A chair was overturned. Only two of the three sets of out- Opera dusts offold Scottish tale ofthe long-lost keepers ofthe light Please see COWBOYS, 2D Please see LIGHTHOUSE, 2D Getting there Nashville Opera presents a double bill of 20th century opera at 8 p.m. tomorrow, 8 p.m.

Saturday and at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Polk Theater, 505 Deaderick St. Tickets are available via Ticketmaster at 255-ARTS (2787) or at www.nashville opera.org. A limited number of pay-what-you-can tickets are available by calling Nashville Opera at 832-5242. Also, tickets, when available, will be sold for $10 each at the TPAC box office 45 minutes before curtain.

DRIVE-THRU REVIEW scores again, by introducing to the South the Western Bacon Cheeseburger been a 20-year cult favorite at sister chain on the West Coast. In Shortcuts, 6D Cult favorite LIVE MUSIC The Americana group Hem, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., mixes pastoral country with orchestration for a so-called countrypolitan sound that has captured a lot of attention. You can catch Hem at 3rd Lindsley tonight. On 3D Brooklyn bridge PETS These days, when you hear people mention greyhounds, probably not talking about buses. More than 165,000 racing greyhounds have been placed in adoptive homes by Greyhound Pets of America and other organizations.

Want to know more? Call the GPA adoption hot line at 1-800366-1472, or visit www.greyhoundpets.org. Fast facts on greyhounds Sea of mystery.