Festival

The 37th National Storytelling Festival has ended. Tents are coming down. Chairs are being stacked. Port-a-potties are heading back to wherever they come from. Restaurants are going over what inventory is left. The golfers at the Ridges have their carts back. ISC is $1 million closer to the $3M goal for the Horizon project. Actually there's a little over $250K to be raised.

And yet stories are still bouncing around the town.

The weekend started with a trip to the airport to pick up Karen Chace, Teresa Clark and Meg Gilman. We dropped Teresa off at Joseph Sobel's and headed to the house for a quick supper, then on to the Library tent for the NSN Storynight. They had a great lineup of Diane Ferlatte, Barbara Freeman, Bobby Norfolk, David Novak, Gayle Ross, Faye Wooden, and Rixon Lane. The pros were good, but I thought Rixon (youth from my native SC) and Faye (local) were the best.

I had traffic duty for four hours on Friday morning, so after getting Karen and Meg downtown, I picked up my ticket at the Christopher Taylor cabin and went to work. That afternoon I wandered from tent to tent. In the evening I heard John McCutcheon, Ben Haggarty, Beth Horner, Antonio Rocha, Kevin Kling, Won-ldy Paye, Erica Lann-Clark, Tim Tingle and Katheryn Windham. IMHO, all but one were good to great. It was my first time hearing Haggarty and he's now a favorite.

We had other guests who arrived Friday afternoon. Faye and her daughter Robbie were first-timer festival attendees. Faye won the tickets Jimmy Neal contributed for the Kiwanis Convention in August. They were great to have with us and enjoyed the festival.

The Midnight Cabaret featured Andy Offutt Irwin whom I love. I got my festival ticket by ushering at Andy's Teller in Residence program in July. I was a little disappointed because he really built up his new material in summer about Aunt Marguerite Van Camp and there wasn't much of it. But I still enjoyed him.

Sat. morning my traffic duty was early (7-11). It was fun, watching folks come in to town, saying good morning to them, answering their questions (where can I get coffee?, where can I park? and where's the College St. tent? in that order.) One guy said it was nice to have a sunflower greeting them and that made my day. Me...a sunflower. How 'bout that!

I grabbed some lunch and then it was on to Onawumi Jean Moss and then Kevin Kling. I was done for after that and headed home.

Sunday morning was the Featured Listeners breakfast. The room was full and the stories abound. David and Jeff (owners of the former Dogwood Lane) and others put on quite a spread. Mike and Susan welcomed us to the Parson's Table.The group lost two members this past year. Emotions were right at the surface. It was good to hear George stories.

The afternoon was more stories. I heard Bil Lepp who told one old and one new story. The old might have been new to the festival. Michael Reno Harrell was next. He's new the the festival crowd, but has been to Jonesborough many times. Tony and I had supper with him and Joan one evening when he was playing Jonesborough Days. His song Southern Accent kept me sane the 15 months we spent in Assachusetts. (My spelling of the state.) After his set, I headed home.

The fun continued that evening at Alta Cucina in Johnson City. It's a tradition to end the weekend at dinner somewhere with any Featured Listeners who are still in town, plus us Jonesborough folks. Meg came along with me. We filled the patio there. Tony and Karen were supposed to go to Joseph's after festival party, but I forgot and took the van. He doesn't have keys for my car. So after we ate, we came home and picked up Karen and went to Joseph's to end the evening with some good music.

Monday morning was a trip back to the airport for Karen and Meg to catch their flight. Then it was home to an empty, very quiet house. How many more days until the festival???

Lots of hats

Last Christmas our Kiwanis Club adopted the Head Start kids in Jonesborough. We had a great time buying gifts and they came to one of our meetings and sang carols to us.

I had knitted a few hats on my loom knitter and included some of them to be distributed. This year, I wanted to make sure I had enough made, so on August 28 I made an appointment in my Outlook that said "Make Hat." I have it recurring every three days until Dec 1. If I follow the schedule I will have 30 hats made.

Unfortunately (fortunately??, I don't know which), the schedule got messed up. Tony ended up in the hospital the day after Labor Day with 2 90+% blockages. He was in for 3 days and I ended up with about 5 nervously made hats. He's doing well now and started cardic rehab today. I'm now the "Food Nazi" watching everything he eats.

So today (9.22) I should have 9 completed hats. Instead, I finished number 14 yesterday and started #15. I figure I'll have about 40 done by 12.1.

I'm going to make an appeal on FreeCycle to take anyone's little bits and pieces of Homespun yarn. I like taking the different colors and making a hat with them. And hopefully we'll have a little cold weather and some kids will have warm ears. Either way, I'm having fun.

Here's what I have done so far.

All of them.

Close-up 1

Close-up 2

Close-up 3

Close-up 4

It's been a while...

since my last post. So what has happened? The Appalachian Fair came and went and our Kiwanis booth did real well. We sold hotdogs, hamburgers, funnel cakes, fries, and nachos and cheese. The booth was jumping every night. Here's some pictures.

We also had race guests. The two Bristol race weekends are a boon for hotels, B&Bs and private homes. We rented our guest room to a lovely young couple from NJ. He's a race fan. She just came to the US about a year ago from Bejing. It was her first race weekend and she seemed to like it. They might be regulars for the March and August races.

It's been so dry here that the leaves are turning early and falling. There are a lot of trees here and I think I'll be raking until December. LOL

We have the month of September coming up, bur I'm thinking about October already. I have a love/hate relationship with the month. I love that the National Storytelling Festival will be here before you know it. With it comes lots of my storytelling friends. We have three staying with us along with a mom and daughter who won the ISC gift basket, including festival tickets at our KY/TN Kiwanis convention earlier this month.

That's all why I love the month. I hate the month because all the wonderful fall colors will be overshadowed in the stores by the color pink. Now don't get me wrong. As a breast cancer survivor, I support Komen and ACS in the fight. But I have a very hard time with pink M&M's, pink KitchenAid Mixers, pink boxing gloves, SpongeBob SquarePants wearing Pink Pants and more. Each year more and more companies are jumping on the BC bandwagon and getting rich with no accountability.

I especially have a hard time with Pinkwashers. They support the fight against cancer and they get rich making products that are linked to the very disease.

Ok, I'll get off my soapbox...for now. I think I have a lot more to say on this subject and will be posting again before the pinking of Fall begins.

So what are you looking forward to this fall?

Our new home

I promised some pictures and here they are....







More to come

I'm still here

The move almost did me in, but we are settled and loving the new place. There's so much light! Having lived in a cave for about ten years (not really, but log houses have some light problems), I can't get used to not having to turn on every lamp we have in order to see.

I'll post pictures later, but just want to let anyone who reads this (is there anyone??) know I'm still here.

What I've been doing

The pictures tell the story...


We can barely walk through the living room to the kitchen.

Getting to the laundry room is a little better.

Luckily we don't sleep upstairs anymore.



Because this is the bed in the bottom right.



Nothing much left to read



Sissy has been supervising my work.

We are both ready for this move to be over.

How did I miss the whole month of April?

Wow, I knew it had been a while since I blogged, but over a whole month?? Where did April go? Well, most of it was taken up with a sinus infection. Mainly, April was spent coughing and sneezing. Then there was the week in Knoxville and a trip to Atlanta. Oh and there was many happy dances done by me and a lot of others over a move of the NSN BOD. Finally, they woke up.

Also, some of the month was taken up with packing. We're moving a whole seven tenths of a mile away. So the smell of cardboard is in the air. The new place is on the other side of the 4 lane so I'm getting as bike. The walk to town will be easy. There's more yard to mow so we bought a riding mower. I've used it twice on this place and can barely getting it going on the flat areas before I have to turn, But it's fast!

We already are filled up for the storytelling festival in October. Two of my most fav teller friends are staying with us along with another teller that I don't know that well. I know what I'm like with Karen or Meg alone. Put all three of us together and add another Karen (who writes great blogs) and hopefully the house will still be standing and Tony won't have run screaming into the night. I already have the meals planned and am counting the days.

There's been one moving disaster already. Last Friday Sissy Ann insisted on checking out an open box. Most of our boxes are book size so when she jumps in, she will check it out and jump back out. Not this one.



Before I could put the camera done she had found her way out of it, but it did take a while. She's shied away from that box ever since.

I promised Tony that I would have the Kiwanis KY/TN District 7 website up before the spring meeting that was on Sat. I managed to get it done a few days ahead of time. Now I need to finish the Jonesborough club's site.

More to come and hopefully, it won't be a month away.

May Pops

I've googled May Pops and was happy to see the first listing was from a good southern school - Auburn.

May-pop, Passion-Flower (Passiflora incarnata)Passion-flower
has long attracted the attention of amateurs and botanists alike. This hardy
perennial vine comes from a family of mainly tropical plants. Its genus,
Passiflora, is the only genus of its family in the United States. Two species
occur in our state, incarnata and lutea. Lutea is the yellow passion-flower only
rarely seen. Incarnata is the purple one, common and beautiful.
Passiflora
incarnata (usually called May-pop) has a blossom with five sepals and five
petals. It has a crown or corona of white or lavender fringe banded with purple.
In the center of the blossom is a column of united stamens enclosing a pistil
with three heads (stigmas). This beautiful complex blossom is exquisite in
detail.
This plant is a vine ten feet to twenty feet long, with alternate
leaves. The leaves are from two and one-half to six inches long and wide. Each
leaf is palmately three-lobed with finely serrated edges. At the base of each
blade are two small bumps (nectar-bearing glands).
The flower buds come in
the axils of the leaves, as do long tendrils which the vine uses for climbing
over whatever is near it. The fruit is an edible leathery berry (the may-pop).
It is the size and shape of a hen egg; green at first and turning yellowish as
it ripens. When stomped, it makes a loud pop. It blooms from late May
through October.
It is called Passion-flower because the early explorers
thought there was some resemblance in the structure of the blossom to the
implements of the crucifixion.

They grew wild in our backyard until my parents planted a huge garden. I loved playing with them. Maybe May Pops was my first real introduction to storytelling. There were various tales about the flowers. We used to tell one about a lady with a hat carrying two loaves of bread. You could pluck parts of the flowers and make the lady. Then there was the fruit. What a great sound it make when popped.

I got my May Pop plant last week and today planted it. I can't wait to see those flowers. There still seems something wrong about paying good money for something that grew wild. But, it will be worth it. If you want yours go to Gurneys. They are only $7.95.

March Madness

No, this isn't about basketball.

And for any non-storytelling and NSN readers, I apologize ahead of time for the rant.

But hey, this is MY blog, I can rant if I want.

Today, my former employer the National Storytelling Network, lost an excellent Board member. Finally, there had been someone on the board who not only knew about fundraising, but had indeed been successful at raising those funds. David Joe Miller would have done great things for the organization. Sadly, he has resigned.


Let me add them up:
I resigned
Holly resigned
Jason resigned
Laura resigned
Eric resigned

That's the staff members since July 2007 who have left.

Then there were the three board members and now DJM.

I don't know the reasons for three of the four BOD members. But I do know that when all this turmoil can be traced back to one source, there is a MAJOR problem.

This madness has to end!

Way to go, Rishi

My friend Rishi defended her thesis last week. She is one more step closer to her Masters degree in the storytelling program at ETSU.She writes about the day on her blog.

I met Rishi in Feb. 2004 when I interviewed at NSN. She told me about the program and how she hoped to finish by Dec. 2004. Now three plus years later, you might say that Rishi is a procrastinator. I don't.

The whole time Rishi and I were together at NSN, she worked on her story and her thesis.

She had just married in 2003.

In 2004, there were the newlywed adjustments, buying a house, moving, plus work, flying to Bellingham for the conference, being a friend, etc.

The next year, she worked on her story and thesis, was a wife, was pregnant, was a mother, worked at NSN, was a friend, etc.

Then in 2006, she worked on her story and thesis, worked at NSN, was a wife, mother, friend, etc. Oh, yeah, pregnant and mother again.

She left NSN in Dec. 2006, which was a great loss. She had been the corporate memory as well as a wonderful face of NSN. Now I was the corporate memory (almost 3 years) LOL

Since then she has moved to NC then to WV. And last week she made another step forward to that Masters degree.

Procrastinator? No way. Persistent, preserver, prevailer, pursuer.

That's Rishi.

Way to go!

And yes, I took the picture from your blog.

What did you do all week?

It snowed in Jonesborough this week. I was hoping to have lots of pictures to post. But it was not to be. All around us got lots of snow. We hardly got any.

So I thought about cooking something and showing the end result. Well, I made a nice pot roast yesterday or should I say, the crock pot made it. And I made chili. But everyone has seen pot roast and chili.

Finally, I thought about showing off the new shower curtain. It took me over a week to find the right material. But the material is still material, not a shower curtain.

So there's the knitting. OK, fine I didn't knit either. What exactly did I do all week? Heck if I know.

It's Friday, so I'm not going to worry about it. Have a good weekend.

Happy Birthday, Zel

My friend Zel (in red) celebrated her 70th birthday this evening with 20 plus friends. I was privileged to one of the invited guests.

Zel’s story is her own. I cannot tell it. But it’s enough for me to say that I stand in awe of someone who has lived the life she has and has maintained a love of her fellow man and knows with absolute certainty that she is a child of a loving God.

She did not want a big deal to be made over her birthday. She was slightly embarrassed at the attention we gave her tonight. (Not to mention that calling down for noise that the waitress gave all of us.) She says she has reached the point in her life that she doesn’t want things. Things to dust and things to care for and things to worry about are not what she is about. So we showered her with gift certificates and donations to causes she believes in and gives her heart to. She gives tirelessly to the Compassionate Friends organization. Having lost two sons, she walks the walk.

What a strange week it has been.

This week I lost a friend to the beast.

This week I honored and remembered what would have been my daddy’s 96th (Feb 21,1912) birthday. (Yes, Cheryl, I can do math.)

And I was privileged to celebrated my friend’s 70th birthday.

Life, death, precious memories, friends, having my daddy’s ears. What an extraordinary adventure life is.

My friend CY

My friend CY

Cheryl Thomason

We came to know each other through a breast cancer survivor board. The picture was taken last August. Some of the members of the group got together in upstate NY for what was called Pinkstock 07. From all reports they had a rocking good time. The little NY town might be back to normal by now.

Cy was diagnosed April 24, 2007. She died Tuesday night.

This blog isn't read by many. (I check the stats.) But to those who read it, get your mammogram or get your lady to get hers.

Do it for that lady in the twirling pink dress whose smile lit up the NY countryside. Do it for CY.

Can I interest you?

Tony went to a Key Club district meeting today. They say he's the first Lt. Gov. to come to Key Club events. They think it's great of him, but he just views it as his duty to the kids.

That left me at home this afternoon. Here's what I did.

Then I waited

Finally...

Care to join me? Mmmmm!!!

Fast Company did it again.

They made me think.

I received my March copy today. I always flip entirely through any magaizine I get, then sit down and read it when I have time. I guess I should change the "always" in the sentence above. I also received Sports Illustrated today and it's NOT the issue I look foward to every year. Swinsuits...hahaha.

Anyway, I never finished flipping through FC when I came upon the one page article titled Another Inconvenient Truth. The gist of the article was the overwhelming knee jeck reaction of companies to hop on the green bandwagon is largely bogus.

I'll admit I like my creature comforts, but I do care about mother Earth. I don't want to contribute to her demise. And I want to believe that corporate America cares, also. Yeah, yeah, what planet do I live on.

Read the article. But I just checked. They haven't uploaded March yet.

Oh, to go...

My friend David Joe is trying to make me crazy. He mentioned the Philly Auto show in his blog. I responded that he needed to be planning a trip to the Philly Flower Show. So what does he do? Sends me 2 full pages from the Inquirer (a real newspaper) about what to expect when you go.

Big sigh.

During the six years we lived in SE PA, we were able to go to the show once. That was enough to hook me. I'm not much of a gardener. I like to play in dirt and am usually astonded when something actually grows. But I can appreciate those who do it right.

I'm the one who's mother took back the snake plant she gave me for my college dorm room. Rescued it would be more like it. Seems even indestructible Sansevieria species (snake plants) don't like to be feed "whatever" liquid (use your imagination) is in the cup.

But I digress...the flower show. Let's see, it's 548 miles door to door. If I leave at 7 am I can be there by 3:30 pm. Only 18 more days.

Shower curtains, hats, scarves and buttons

This is the week to replace the shrunken shower curtain. But it's much more. By this time next week, I hope to have a new shower curtain, waste basket cover, toilet seat cover, valance AND a shower curtain. I found the pattern on Sat. and now need to get the material. Then my sewing machine will be working overtime.

I already replaced my shrunken hat with a new, washable one, along with a scarf. I don't like scarves that are long. It's just too much material around my neck. I'll knit the right size for others, but I make mine short. And to make sure it stays in place, I added a button.

The button on it and the hat are special. I went through all my buttons. My buttons stash consists of all the ones I've collected as well as all my mother's. Those two were definitely in her stash. I don't have a clue about age. I did find a few upholstered ones that I reconized as coming from the green sofa that I somersaulted off at 18 months. Broke my collarbone with that stunt.

The scarf and hat are really red with some multi-colored specks. I don't have a clue why they look TN Vol orange in the pictures. I've been knitting like crazy. If anyone needs a hat or scarf, just let me know. If you'r a Small Stuff reader, they would be free except for the two skeins of yarn. And I buy Lion Brand Homespun for 4 bucks a skein.

A real net surfing find

Net surfing can lead to some very interesting sites. I got an email this morning from Overstock.com proporting a great weekend sale. So I clicked on it , checked out some things and then saw this link on the left side.

Caskets

Ok, I'll bite.

Sure enough. You can buy a casket on Overstock.com.

They have 12 styles to choose from and prices ranging from$1499.99 to $2499.99.

I checked out the Solid Cherry Wood for $2499.99. Heck, why not go for the best. Now this is really a good deal. Their price is 50% off the regular price. I couldn't find a review for this item though, so I passed. I like to know what other people think about their purchases. You know...was it pretty, how much upkeep does it take, is it sized right, was it all they said it was?

I checked again. Nope there was no review. I guess I'll pass on that one. Let's see. Here's one with a review. Yeah that was what I wanted to know.

Now there are some things buyers need to know when buying these items on Overstock.com.

The main thing is to plan ahead:

They ship within 2 business days. So have that credit card ready.

Also, if you live in Idaho or Utah, you'll need to ship it to a friend in another state. They don't deliver to you guys.
And make sure that you don't need it delivered on a Sunday. They don't do that either.

According to the site there is a "sellout risk" so make sure you get your order in soon.
Now the good news...They have a "No Payments for 6 Months" options.

Oh, and I checked. They don't sell burial plots. For that you need to go to eBay.

As the song from Jay and the Americans goes..Only in America

.

Click to Give

There are ceertain sites I go to daily. I even have them bookmarked in a folder called Daily.

I have three newspaper sites
1. Johnson City (TN) Press
2. Greenville (SC) News
3. Anderson (SC) IndependentMail

I have one knitting site I visit: Ravelry

Now you might think I have alot of blog sites because I read a lot of blogs daily. But I use Bloglines to tell me when my favorite blogs have been updated. And that site is one of my home page tabs.

There is one other daily site.

Did you know that within a matter of seconds (about15) you can:

• Give 1.1 cups of food to the hurgry
• Help give free mammograms
• Help a child in need get healthcare
• Help a child in need attain literacy
• Help to protect 11.4 square feet of rainforest.
• Give the value of .6 bowls of food to rescued animals.

The site is Greater Good. com

Is it for real? Well, I cannot find anything that says it isn't. You know the internet. If there's something bogus out there usually someone will blow the whistle. The site proclaims that:

Each person's daily click on the Click To Give™ sites displays sponsor
advertising. One hundred percent (100%) of sponsor advertising is paid as a
royalty to charity through the non-profit, tax-exempt GreaterGood.org.

There are also opportunities to support the sponsors. I've looked at some of the stores and there's some neat stuff offered. They also accept monatery donations.

I look at it this way: if it is for real then it's about 15 seconds of my life to help those 6 causes listed above. If it's a scam, then all I lost was 15 seconds. And as long as I'm not eating something fattening in those 15 seconds as opposed to clinking the sites, then I haven't lost anything.

Anyone else out there a Click To Give™ er?

PS
Why do I read the newspapers? I check the obituaries. I am my mother's daugher. She used to bring the paper in, open it on the kitchen table, turn to the back of the first section and read the obituaries. I have become the electronic equivalent of my mother. Sigh!!