West Virginia State Folk Festival in Glenville

I'm home for a few minutes--I headed out to the Folk Festival this morning, listened at the Oral Traditions tent to Kirk Judd and Suzi Whaples, had lunch with Fred Powers and got a quick chat in with Rich Knoblich before it was time for my afternoon session in the tent with Sherrell Wigal. It was very much fun; for the first time, I think, I mixed storytelling with reading a few of my poems. It feels very good to get my poetry off the page and onto the stage. Unfortunately, I have no photos from the tent but I do have a few from around the festival. The real action, I'm told, starts this evening with the big old-time music concert.

Here's a view looking down the main street of Glenville. Still fairly quiet but the crowd is picking up. This little town was flooded just weeks ago, but the downtown area was spared.
In West Virginia, each county home extension club ( called CEOs nowadays) elects a lady to be the county's Belle. The belles are invited to many fairs and festivals and given the royal treatment. Here a few belles run for the bus.

I loved the contrast here. The times they are a-changin' as regards women's fashions!

A hammered dulcimer group hammers out a tune. You have to hear hammered dulcimers to understand how beautiful the music is--like angel music, I think.

A fiddler accompanies the dulcimer players.

I'm off again on the hour-and-a-half drive back to Glenville. Had tom come home to pick up Larry, so I had time to post a bit about the festival. more tomorrow, I hope. If you're not far away, do drive over to Glenville. You'll miss a very good time if you don't!