STEPHEN SILHA (aka Bubbling Banana/BB Ha!), born on this date, is a journalist, filmmaker, facilitator, community organizer.
Born in Minnesota to newspaper executive Otto and healer Helen Silha, Stephen stayed active in journalism, co-founding a “think-and-do tank” on its future, Journalism That Matters, and working with child journalists at Children’s Express.
He reported for The Minneapolis Star and The Christian Science Monitor, and directed communication for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation before moving to Vashon Island, WA in 1979.
In 2019, he co-curated an exhibit at the Vashon Heritage Museum called IN AND OUT: Being LGBTQ on Vashon Island. Currently, he still runs the Big Joy Project, a multimedia exploration of James Broughton’s work, and is active with VillageCo, a nonprofit fostering community connections, and justice system reform with his godson Joshua Puckett, who was in Michigan prisons for nearly 30 years.
In 1989, he met poet/filmmaker James Broughton at a Radical Faerie Gathering at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon; they became friends and mentors, and in 2013 the documentary BIG JOY: The Adventures of James Broughton premiered at South by Southwest, and traveled to over 50 film festivals. It was co-directed by Eric Slade, who also made Hope Along the Wind, the biopic about Harry Hay.