Mil-Tree’s “Live from Joshua Tree” raises $9000 for local veteran outreach

Last Saturday’s annual Live from Joshua Tree spoken word event performed to a sold-out crowd of nearly 300 attendees the Joshua Tree Retreat Center, with all proceeds benefiting local veteran outreach non-profit Mil-Tree.

Now in its 17^th year, Mil-Tree’s Live from Joshua Tree displayed some of the Morongo Basin’s best talent and notorious personalities through desert stories and song, providing a current “who’s who” of the community in both its performers and attendees; all to help quell veteran isolation and to build bridges between veterans, active-duty military, and civilians. Founder and host Cheryl Montelle reported Saturday’s sold-out event raised approximately $9000 for the organization.

While many of these desert stories often default to a civilian’s journey from city life to the offbeat calm of desert living, the most hard-hitting stories of last Saturday came from veterans who have turned to writing to process their past’s violent duty. Nadia Clark, a veteran who began her public service as an Oakland police officer, told her story “Home,” through a near-death experience that recently brought her back to Twentynine Palms.

Omar Columbus, a 12-year veteran turned poet, offered his epic verse “White Marker,” an 11-minute confession and condemnation of America’s deceptive ruse of recent wars; its title referring to the soldier’s ritual of writing messages on the bombs they drop.

Other highlights included Snake Jagger’s fascinating Palm Springs childhood growing up with Frank Sinatra and the dynamic prose and song hybrid of Joshua Tree native Nigel Roman, who disarmed us with occasional comedy in his existentialist pondering.

The efforts of Mil-Tree’s community building through the event was best summed up by Rainbow Stew owner Valerie Eagle Heart Meyer who quoted Italian author Luciano De Crescenzo: “We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing each other.”