Garden Report

Becky at Twisted Fencepost has been giving weekly garden reports. So here's an update, but without photos because Blogger is so slow tonight I'd never get this post written. Actually, I should lay the blame where it belongs and that is with Hughesnet, our satellite Internet provider. It beats dial-up but not by much. So, sans photos, here's what's going on in the gardens:

Tomatoes are ripening, the Early Girls of course being the first on the table. We put them out early so we're seeing early results.

Corn is ready! The Early Sunglow was planted on April 20th I believe, and Larry picked the first ears last night. 4th of July corn has always been an out-of-reach goal, but not this year. We'll have plenty when our company arrives on Friday and Saturday.

Beans, beans and more beans. Larry has sold a couple bushels, we've given away bags and bags, I've put up 22 quarts, and they've just begun. Methinks we planted too many. Most fun are the rattlesnake beans and they are producing heavily. The flat Roma beans are doing well too.

Cabbage is ready; these are the baby cabbages I'm trying this year. Supposedly one head is just enough for a meal. It is always a challenge to eat a normal cabbage when there's only the two of us. The Savoy cabbage is just beginning to head.

Broccoli is coming in too, and I'm happy about that because last year it was a bust. I hope to be able to freeze some this year.

Carrots and potatoes have been ready for a while. Larry planted cucumbers in place of the peas so the cuke vines can climb the pea trellis and we should have late cukes.

Lettuce turned bitter with the heat. The third planting is suffering from the kittens forays into the bed, but the fourth planting is coming on.

Dill is ready to harvest, but the cukes aren't ready yet! Darn, bad timing on my part.

The new herb garden struggles along. The kitten is a problem, and probably being in a new place hasn't helped much but I'm still hopeful. Basil, especially Thai basil, is doing great.

Peppers, sweet potatoes, pumpkins and butternut squash all look good at this point, and the peppers are already setting on so we should be picking some pretty soon.

That's about it. Larry is working hard to keep up with everything and he's done a great job so far. One of the best things about a garden is being able to give stuff away to visitors. We might not have a lot of money, but food? Got that.

Stories at the River's Edge Begins Friday

It's coming! Storytelling all up and down the Ohio River! This is the third year for the storytelling series that my storytelling friend Donna Wilson and I coordinate. Here is the press release for the programs. Check the schedule and come see us when we're near your home.



Stories at the River’s Edge is a series of storytelling programs presented along the Ohio River in community centers, museums, libraries, theatres and parks.

The series brings together professional storytellers from both sides of the river to tell stories of all kinds, from family stories to traditional folktales. The goal of Stories at the Rivers Edge is to provide residents of river communities an opportunity to experience the traditional art of oral storytelling.

In the past, Appalachian people told tales as part of everyday life. From the adventures of Jack to the plaintive mountain ballads, sly tall tales, spooky ghost stories and legends, storytelling was part of the fabric of life. Over time, storytelling died out as television and other popular entertainment took its place.

Today, however, audiences everywhere are discovering the pleasure of a tale well told and the value of using imagination to create images and characters as vivid as those on a screen. Storytelling is entertaining for all ages, backgrounds and interests.

Come join us this summer for a relaxing program in your community.

Program Schedule for Stories at the River’s Edge 2010

July 2: Granny Sue
Ripley Public Library. Ripley, WV 10:00 am
Ravenswood Library, Ravenswood, WV 1:00pm.
Call 304-372-5343 for details

July 7: Suzi Whaples
Syracuse Community Ctr, Syracuse, OH 10 am Mason Municipal Park, Mason WV 2pm
Call 740-992-7830 for more information.

July 7: Keith Maynard
Point Pleasant River Museum Pt. Pleasant, WV 10:30 am
French Art Colony, Gallipolis, OH 2:00pm
Call 740-992-7830 for more information.

July 12: Donna Wilson
Sistersville Library, Sistersville, WV 12:00 noon
Pleasants County Library, St. Mary’s, WV 2:00pm
Call 304-652-6701 for details

July 14: Donna Wilson
Point Pleasant River Museum 10:30 am
Our House Museum, Gallipolis, OH 2pm.
Call 740-992-7830 for information.

July 16: Suzi Whaples
Ripley Public Library 10:00 am
Ravenswood Public Library 1:00pm.
Call 304-372-5343 for details

July 19: Granny Sue
Sistersville Library 12:00 noon
Pleasants County Library 2:00pm
Call 304-652-6701 for details

July 21: Keith Maynard
Syracuse Community Center, 10am
Mason Municipal Park 2:00 pm
Call 740-992-7830 for information.

October 2: Granny Sue
Ghosts ‘n’ Me: Halloween Tales for Children
Ravenswood Library 7:00pm
Call 304-273-5343 for details

October 23: Haunting in the Hills: Ghost Stories
Alpine Theatre, Ripley, WV 7:00pm.
Storytellers: Granny Sue, Suzi Whaples, and
Keith Maynard
Call 304-372-5861 for details.

October 28: Donna Wilson: Ghost Stories
Mason City Park, 7:00pm
Call 740-992-7830 for more information.

October 28: Granny Sue: Ghost Stories
Ripley library, 7pm
Call 304-273-5343 for details

December 4: Donna Wilson
Our House Museum, Gallipolis, Holiday stories. Time TBA
Call 740-992-7830 for more information.

December 11: Granny Sue
Ripley Library, Holiday stories. Time TBA.
Call 304-372-5343 for details


The Storytellers:


Susanna “Granny Sue” Holstein is from Jackson County, WV. Her repertoire includes Appalachian and world folktales, stories with puppets, character education programs and creative writing workshops. She is a featured teller at the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival in Pittsburgh this year and has been featured at many festivals and events over the past 15 years. She is a frequent presenter for schools, libraries and civic groups.







Donna Wilson hails from Meigs County, OH. She is a teller of tales tall and tales true, and performs frequently for senior citizens as well as young audiences. Donna is active in the Ohio storytelling community and is a coordinator for the Stories at the Rivers Edge series and for the Ohio OOPS Storytelling Conference. She is an active member of the WV Storytelling guild, OOPS and the Storytellers of Central Ohio.








Suzi Whaples resides in Kanawha County and has performed all along the East coast and points west as a member of the storytelling team “Mountain Women.” She will be a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN this October.

Keith Maynard is a resident of Mason County, WV. A railroad engineer, Keith weaves his work into his storytelling with fascinating tales of life on the rails. He has performed at the Vandalia Festival and at the B&O Railroad Museum in Grafton, WV as well as other venues.

This project is supported in part by the Ohio River Border Initiative, a joint project of the Ohio Arts Council and the WV Commission on the Arts, and by Jackson and Pleasants County libraries, Sistersville Library, Farmers Bank and Savings Company, Gallia County Convention and Visitors Bureau, Town of Mason, Point Pleasant River Museum, Arts at the Alpine and the West Virginia Storytelling Guild.

For more information contact:

Susanna Holstein, 304-372-5861
susannaholstein@yahoo.com

Donna Wilson, 740-992-7830
storycottage@hotmail.com

The Missing Generation?

A friend pointed out recently that there is a generation missing at folk festivals and old-time music festivals. It's the 30 and 40-year-olds, he noted that are just not there. Oh, there is a smattering of them in the crowds but the majority of attendees are those over 50 and surprisingly the teens and 20's groups.

Why the hole in the age groups? Is it that the middle generation is not interested in the cultural history of West Virginia? Does the music, traditional dancing and food not appeal to them? Or is it something beyond their control?

Buddy Griffin and Mack Samples, 2009

These questions have been on my mind ever since my friend's comment, and I think I might have hit on a possible answer. I think that what happened was timing. Thirty and forty years ago, West Virginians were leaving the state to seek work elsewhere because the economy here was in poor condition with the loss of many underground mining jobs and the gradual shift of other industry to the sunbelt regions in the south. Interstate highways had passed the state by because of the complexity and expense of building roads through rugged terrain. Those who remained either had good jobs as teachers, doctors, postal workers and in the remaining plants, or they were struggling to get by on incomes below the poverty level.

The families with good jobs also had access to television and saw what the rest of the world was doing. Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet and other shows extolled the suburban way of life and that might have had an impact on people who were smarting from the negative media publicity the state had received in the early 60's. They might have aspired to join mainstream America, with the brick rancher, two cars and food from the grocery store. They might have wanted to listen to the popular music of the day, eat at drive-in restaurants and buy clothes and furniture at department stores.

The old ways might have been disdained. Who wanted to eat beans and cornbread if they could eat at McDonald's like the rest of the world? Why make quilts when you could buy lovely bedspreads with matching shams and curtains? Why can and preserve when there were grocery stores filled with canned and frozen food? Why even grow a garden? Television people didn't have gardens and cellars filled with canned food. They had modern kitchens and cabinets stocked from the store. Andy and Aunt Bea, of course, continued to portray the old way of life with folksy humor, and the shows, though popular, seemed to be a charming reminder of how things were, rather than how things are.

The children growing up in this environment of keeping-up-with-America were only exposed to West Virginia's traditional life when they visited their grandparents or family homeplaces or perhaps the occasional canner of beans was prepared at home. Gardens were relegated to out-of-the-way places if there was a garden at all, and were primarily for eating fresh. Music came from the pop or country radio stations instead of from family members playing their instruments on the porch. Folk festivals sprang up, and as a historian once told me, whenever they start having a festival for something, it's a lost art. So craft fairs celebrating the old mountain crafts, old-time music festivals and others sprang up. For some, these events were not a celebration of a past way of life, but of the way they were still living. The generation born in the 1950's and before continued to garden, farm, can and play music, but as years passed their numbers grew smaller and many gave up the old ways to join the traffic jam to new culture.

So most of the 1960's and 70's children grew up in a different way of life. Their parents were eagerly embracing new conveniences and saw no reason to teach their children about the old, even possibly embarrassing way their parents had lived. They wanted new, streamlined, modern, and automatic, not old, traditional, and manual. These children grew up with televisions, microwaves, and air conditioning. Few taught their children to play the fiddle or banjo, or to can green beans, plant by the signs, or any of the many self-sufficient skills taken for granted by past generations. Who needed those skills when a machine or a store could provide the same result with less labor?

Now there seems to be a new interest in traditional life by the new generations, those born in the late 80's and the 90's. Music festival abound in young people with fiddles on their backs and banjos in their hands, giving the old music a new twist and a new life. There are communes in cities where young people grow urban gardens and try to live off the grid. Some who can afford to are moving out, buying land and rediscovering the joy of providing for themselves. Those who are held in towns and suburbs are growing gardens and trying to live as "green" as possible with an environmental awareness that seems foreign to their elders but in place with the traditional ways of living.

Glenville folk festival, 2009

I think perhaps technology, the thing that pulled people away from the old ways, may be partly responsible for bringing the younger generations back as they discover old-time musicians on YouTube, or stumble on blogs that detail how to raise goats and chickens and make jam. the Internet with its far-reaching powers now provides instant access to people who can share their expertise in the most forgotten of arts and who will even chat or talk on forums. There are photos and videos and all sorts of tools instantly available. When I was learning to do things on our land, I relied on books and the neighbors. Now there is a world neighborhood available online.

I may be way off track in these ruminations, but right or wrong, it makes me happy to see the young fiddle players and homesteaders rediscovering the value of what was taken for granted for so many years.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this. Anyone care to chime in?

(An interesting observation: the spellchecker doesn't recognize "canner" or "homeplace." Hmmm.)

Two Firsts

Saturday the West Virginia Writers held a performance of their work at the Clay Center's Walker Theatre in Charleston. We had a great time, and a highlight of the afternoon was that we were joined by actor David Selby of Dark Shadows and Falcon Crest fame.

A writer himself with several published volumes of work, and a novel due out this Fall, Mr. Selby was in town to present a one-act play he'd written. I didn't realize that he is actually a native of our state, hailing from Morgantown.

And first tomatoes this year! Delicious with breakfast yesterday.

A good and busy weekend all around.

Beans, Beans, Beans

Right now we're covered up in beans. Purple beans, flat Roma beans, rattlesnake beans and half runners are all in full swing. Of course this happens during one of the busiest weeks of my summer. This past weekend was a mad whirl of beans and travel, work and beans. I'll write about the other things that happened this weekend in another post; right now here's a look at some of the bean madness.

These are rattlesnake beans. You might be able to see the faint purple mottling on the beans in this photo. The beans are very long, some almost a foot, and have an excellent flavor. They do have strings though, like half-runners. This variety is a southern heirloom that can withstand hig temperatures and will keep producing if it gets enough water. Right now we've got the hig temps for sure, but it hasn't rained for a while so I'm not sure how my beans will manage in these conditions.

The first picking of rattlesnake beans. I canned seven quarts but we had the wrong gasket for the canner and it gae me fits. So I froze the rest of them, an additional 10 quarts. We gave away a couple bags from this basket; it was heaped and overflowing after Larry finished picking. These are a pole bean, first time we've really had any luck with them.

Next up: the purple beans. If I can get the canner gasket I need, then these will go in the canner tomorrow night. If not, they're freezer-bound too. This is about a half-bushel, and more to pick tomorrow, Larry says.

He'll also be picking half runners to sell tomorrow, so he'll be a busy man.

We got our first ripe tomatoes this weekend and had one for breakfast. Ah, the pure pleasure of a tomato from the garden! Pics tomorrow, I hope.

Pictures of Pitchers: The Inadvertent Collector

As I was putting away dishes the other day, I realized that I have a LOT of little pitchers (and I don't mean the "little pitchers have big ears" kind!). I have big ones too but for some reason I seem to have collected a lot of the small, creamer-sized jugs. Here's a look at them, an a vintage table cloth I found at a yard sale last summer:

The "red" collection, although there's amber here too, another favorite color of glass. The one in front left we use regularly, the dark red with a clear handle was a gift from my sister Julie, and the two amber pitchers were my mother's.

Some are handmade pottery, some are restaurantware, one is cut glass and one is silver, some are old and some are fairly new and I just like their shapes, which is as good a reason as any to have them!

A recent Goodwill find. I liked the colors on this, especially the lavender on the inside of the pitcher. This isn't my usual style, but something about it really appeals to me, and I think it is probably from the 30's or 40's:

My mother gave me this red cranberry glass pitcher and its matching sugar bowl some years ago--I'd always admired it as a child. She said it is very old blown glass and I believe that because it's pretty delicate.

This was another recent find at Goodwill, a handmade pottery pitcher for 50 cents:

Here's a closer look at the pottery/china pitchers:

I liked the handle on the pitcher on the left and the lovely dragon on the one on the right. It has a matching sugar bowl that I use every day to make my morning tea. I bought the wee little restaurant creamer for Larry because he likes the old restaurantware--and so do I, actually. The thick coffee cups really keep your coffee hot.

After the "group" photos, I found more pitchers around the house. This was tucked away in a corner of the kitchen shelves...

This one was hiding in the log room...

There were a few others that I didn't photograph in various other places in the house. I might not call myself a collector, but it seems I've ended up with quite a collection.

The winner!

And the winner is.....

Country Whispers! Jessica, send me your address via email and your wand will be in the mail.
My email is susannaholstein@yahoo.com

Thanks to everyone who participated. I might be doing another giveaway soon, so stay tuned.

In Beautiful Pocahontas County

These are photos taken yesterday and early this morning in Pocahontas county. I was there to be the Creative Writing Master for the Allegheny Echoes workshops. I didn't take many photos this trip. Sometimes I just want to live in the moment and not outside of it as a camera often requires the photographer to be.

Mouth a-runnin' as I tell some kind of tale high up on the mountain.


The heat was intense and unusual for this area of West Virginia where many people have no air conditioning because typically it doesn't get much over 80 degrees. Yesterday was 92, but the heat left with the sun and a bright, almost-full moon lit the evening wild meat cookout. Bear, elk stroganoff, deep-fried turkey, clams and clam chowder, venison chili and probably other meats were cooked by the men who supplied it. The bear was particularly interesting--it was slow-roasted in a pit in the earth, covered in red-hot coals. The final result was tender and as tasty as roast beef. We provided new potatoes and green beans from our garden, and Kirk Judd did the honors and cooked those up.

The evening's music was all flavors and levels of expertise. Master musicians such as Jimmy Costa, Tim Bing, Robin Kessinger, Jake Krack, Mike Bing, members of the Black Mountain Bluegrass Band, and many others were outside playing in jams on porches and the parking lot of the Marlinton Motor Inn, where Echoes is held each year. Beginners and intermediate players found others to play with them, or watched intently on the edges of jams, occasionally playing along when they could keep up. No one is left out who wants to play. The old-time music echoed from the hills until well after midnight. We reluctantly headed to bed at 1:30 am, knowing we had to be up early for the drive to Charleston to take me to an appointment and then to work.

Before the evening festivities, I conducted my workshop at a camp on the Greenbrier River. The views from this camp are breathtaking:

Shade gives way to field:

A bear scratched the trunk of this apple tree last winter. Look closely to see the scratch marks on the trunk in the middle of the photo.

The lovely Greenbrier River, where our sons competed in the Great Greenbrier River Race in April:

The one-lane bridge crossing the river looks right at home in its setting.

A barn with three lightning rods on Droop Mountain, between the camp and the motel:

And early this morning, The View from Little Laurel overlook on the Scenic highway (Route 150) :

A wildflower I am not familiar with. Can anyone identify this for me?

Mist was rising and flowing around us when I took this photo:

More wildflowers. I am not sure what the yellow ones are, but the red bergamot was lovely with the yellow flowerheads, white elderberry blossoms, and purple-pink crown vetch.

Then we had to quit fooling around and make some time getting back to our home territory. It is always difficult to leave Pocahontas county, and even more difficult to leave when so many good friends and great music are still there. Next year, I hope I can once again attend the whole week of workshops. There is nothing quite like a week in the mountains with musicians and artists, natural scenery all around, and long summer nights of music and laughter.

If you ever wanted to learn to play or write or sing, check into Allegheny Echoes. I can guarantee you will go home with the knowledge and creative energy you need to be successful. Not to mention a lot of new friends and memories that will bring you back like a homecoming to the Pocahontas county mountains.

Folk Festival: Dulcimer Maker Bob Worth

Dulcimer maker Bob Worth of Beckley, WV played music and displayed his handcrafted instruments in the Holt House during the WV State Folk Festival at Glenville last weekend. Bob demonstrated how to play on this beautiful dulcimer:


Some of Bob's dulcimers:


The dulcimer on the left includes some pine from the two-lane covered bridge at Philippi, West Virginia. The bridge was badly damaged about 10 years ago when an RV caught fire as it was crossing the bridge. Bob worked with the restoration team and salvaged a piece for this dulcimer. He has other instruments that also contain pieces of wood from historic places.

Bob's dulcimers are all priced at $250 and the quality of work and the sound of them is excellent.
I paid $200 for mine from another maker in 2000, so the price is certainly reasonable.

You can contact Bob at:

Bob Worth
312 Maxwell Hill Road
Beckley, WV 25801
304-228-0620

The song Bob played for us was Kilkelly, a beautiful and sad Irish ballad based on letters written home by immigrants to the United States. You can hear a version of the song here. It's being performed by Robbie O'Connell, the man who will be teaching the Irish Vocals class at Augusta Heritage Workshops at the end of July. And guess who will be there? Me!

The lyrics can be found here. Based on a true story, which makes it even sadder.

On the Road: Marlinton

We're off again, this time to Marlinton, West Virginia where I'll be the creative writing master, teaching a class for the Allegheny Echoes Workshops.

I am looking forward to this: my plan is to center the discussion around food and the role it plays in our Appalachian culture, not just at mealtimes but in all aspects of our life.

I am thinking about kitchens, cellars, smokehouses and Mom and Pop restaurants.
About canning and drying and pickling and freezing.
About hunting and fishing and foraging.
About beans and new potatoes.
About favorite, passed-down recipes and legendary family cooks.
About funerals and weddings and reunions.
About picnic tables, kitchen tables, and porches.
About manners, folklore, and cures.
About farmers markets and roadside stands.
About chickens, pigs and milk cows.
About bulimia, anorexia and the obesity epidemic.
About woodstoves, Hoosier cabinets and microwaves.
And so many other things in our lives that begin with our need for nourishment, for both body and soul.

We'll string a few beans at first while we talk, then put them on to cook with new potatoes while we explore, discuss and write. I have stacks of poems to share, and these will be the jumping off place for us to write.

I think this is going to be interesting. While I'm gone, here's one for you to ponder:

Cider Apples

When God had made the oak trees,

And the beeches and the pines,

And the flowers and the grasses,

And the tendrils of the vines;

He saw that there was wanting

A something in His plan,

And He made the little apples,

The little cider apples,

The sharp, sour cider apples,

To prove his love for man.

Unknown (from the website Food Reference).

How to Make a Lavender Wand and Win One Too

I’ve wanted to learn how to make lavender wands ever since I first knew what they were. I looked at instructions but I’m a tactile learner—I have to see it done and do it myself to really get it sometimes.

So when I saw in the Folk Festival newspaper that there would be classes on making wands, I made sure to find out about it. Wouldn’t you know, it was my friend Melissa Dennison who was teaching the craft! Melissa had a booth in the crafts show and was selling her soaps, herbs and lavender wands. In no time at all she put me to work and I had a finished wand in about 15 minutes.

Today I am off work because it’s my birthday (isn’t that cool, we get our birthday off!). I had to go in for a couple hours this morning to start my guys on a project, but I was home by 10am. The lavender beckoned; it is at the perfect stage for making wands right now and I figured I’d give myself the gift of a few minutes to try wand-making on my own.

It was just as easy as Melissa had promised. Here’s how I did it. Remember, this is my first attempt so you might want to look at the instructions here and here for directions from other sites.

Step one: Cut your lavender with stems as long as possible. You want to use fresh lavender for this craft because it will lose pliability and flower buds if it’s too dry. I have the old standard lavender and it grows some really long stems, which are perfect for this purpose.

Step 2: gather your supplies. You need lavender, rubber bands, scissors and ribbon. That’s it.

Step 3: Put together a bundle of about 15 stems. I’ve seen all kinds of recommendations as to the right amount; I used 15 and it worked pretty well. Even up the flower heads; it doesn’t matter if the stem ends are uneven because you’ll be cutting them off at the end of the project.

Step 4: put a rubber band tightly around the bundle of lavender just below the flower heads.

Step 5: Cut a long piece of ribbon—at least 3 or 4 feet long. You can use thin or thick ribbon, it doesn’t matter. I found that the ribbon that was very narrow was harder to work with, but maybe that’s just me. It takes more thin ribbon too, because there's more weaving to do.

Step 6: Tie the ribbon around the stems, over top of the rubber band. Wrap it several times around the rubber band to cover it.

Step 7: bend the stems over the rubber band so that the flower heads are under the stems. Make sure you space the bent stems evenly around the bundle of flowers in the center. This makes a “cage” with the flowers inside, if that makes sense.

Step 8: using 3-4 stems held together in a bunch, begin basket-weaving the ribbon in and out. You will want to make sure you have an uneven number of bunches so that the weaving comes out right.

Step 9: continue to weave ,pulling the ribbon tight as you go, until the flower heads are completely enclosed by the woven stems.

Step 10: Pull the ribbon tight and secure with a slipknot. Tie a hanging loop in the end of the ribbon.

Step 11: Cut the stems off evenly.

Step 12: Enjoy your wand!

I made three today: the first took 20 minutes, the second 10 and the third, the one with the thin red ribbon took about 20 minutes because there was a lot more weaving involved. I included one made by Melissa as an idea of a variation on the wand--this one looks like a little basket filled with lavender buds.

Melissa did say something about the need to tighten the ribbon after a few days, as the wands will dry and the ribbon will become loose. I haven’t done this part yet, just passing on the information.

Now, since it’s my birthday, I will send one of my wands to a lucky someone as a thank-you gift for being a reader. All you need to do is be a follower of my blog and leave a comment here within the next three days. Good luck!

Glenville Folk Festival, Part 2

This year the folk festival tried something new in the schedule: ghost stories! Now you know that's right up my alley. The problem was that the ghost stories program was scheduled at the same time as the evening concert, and there were people in the concert I really, really wanted to hear--like Phyllis Marks, one of the few old-time ballad-singers left on our state. I had to make a choice, and this time the storytelling won out.

When we arrived, Dr. David Corcoran, publisher of the Glenville Democrat newspaper, was telling his version of the Greenbrier Ghost story, one of my favorites and the most famous of West Virginia ghost tales. Dr. Corcoran told about a couple of experiences his family had in a house they owned in Greenbrier county, then opened the floor to the people in attendance.

One man told stories about ghosts in Weston, West Virginia and the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, another told a story about a girl in white who appeared in a house they lived in. I decided to offer two stories: one is a supposedly true story told to Larry by his grandmother about a boarding house in Olcott, WV where Larry grew up. The owner was reportedly locked in the attic by her son and left to starve to death, and until the place burned down people could hear her walking about in the attic, or opening and shutting cupboard doors in the kitchen, apparently looking for food. I also told Tailypo, an old mountain "jump tale", or story that makes the audience "jump" from a scare at the end. I was surprised that no one in the audience had heard it before since it's a fairly well-known and often-told story.

At the end of the storytelling, a drawing was held for a woodcut of a story in a book by Dr. Ruth Ann Musick called "The Telltale Lilac Bush." Everyone present was invited to put their name in the hat. And guess what? I won! How amazing is that! The picture is of a headless peddler who was murdered and whose head was seen burning near a whirlpool in the river (see page 93, of you want to read the story). Even stranger than the fact that I won is that I have told this story in the past. The woodcut will travel with me whenever I tell ghost stories now. And of course I'll have to tell the story about the peddler, too.

Here is a picture of the plaque and of the festival newspaper that includes an article by me on the importance of storytelling in today's culture:

The back of the plaque tells who made it, when and where he got his inspiration. True folk art, this.

And here's a close-up of the front of the plaque.

I love it! I've already volunteered to help with next year's ghost stories and I hope I'm taken up on the offer. We didn't get to go to the cemetery, but those who did were treated to more tales, especially the local legend of Sis Lynn who is buried, I hear, in that cemetery. There are so many reported sightings and incidents about Sis Lynn that it would be hard to label them all as coincidence. I definitely want to go to the cemetery myself and see her grave.

Glenville Folk Festival, Part 1

Here's my first post with photos about the West Virginia folk Festival in Glenville, WV this weekend. I'll have at least one or two more posts to follow.

The festival sponsors many events, all free to the public. Saturday was a full day, with the parade, the Oral Traditions tent, a spelling bee, shape note singing, and an evening concert on my to-do list. Larry's list included a session with a History Alive presenter who represented Mad Anne Bailey, and time listening to musicians in the singing tent. It was a hot, hot day, so I was glad to find activities we could do that were in air-conditioned buildings!

Our favorite place to eat in Glenville is the Common Place Restaurant. Yesterday I noticed this clock on the restaurant wall: "Booger Hole, Where Time Stands Still." That had to be a picture! As I snapped it, the restaurant's owner told me that his wife grew up in Booger Hole and knew many ghost stories from the area. I hope to return and interview her soon, because I know the area, in Clay County, is rife with stories. You can read my review of a book about the area and its history here.

Jim and Judy Meads are part of the Festival's organizing team, and work with me to organize the Oral Traditions tent. They are fast becoming good friends, and Jim is a fellow blogger--you can link to his blog from my sidebar or click here.

The Belles represent their home counties at the Festival. This year a session for Belle Storytelling was added and several participated. Here the Mason County Belle tells a story about her years as a military wife in Alaska, where she lived for 35 years. These ladies had good stories to tell. I hope this becomes a regular feature of the festival.

The spelling bee drew an almost full-capacity crowd, many to watch and about 20 to participate. I tried! I was fourth from the last one standing, I think, and went down on vinaigrette--I reversed the "ai." Daggone it. I knew better than that. But it was okay since I wanted to attend the shape note singing class anyway and it was almost time for that. I listened to a little of the class and got completely confused, so I left and I went to listen to Janet do her reading.

I invited Janet Smart to be part of our Oral Traditions tent this year. Janet is a new author from my county who writes middle-grade fiction and picture books. One of her books is currently under contract. Janet followed me to blogging and then to Two Lane Livin' and writes a column for children. In this photo, Janet is reading from her picture book "Miss Maizey" while two girls portray the scarecrows in the story. It was fun to watch a story I've helped to edit come to life. It's why a writing group is so important to a writer's career--we help each other to grow.

A little actor shows her stuff, while in the background is one of the many jam sessions that were scattered all over town.

Later in the evening we attended the evening concert that featured some of the finest old-time musicians in the region, and wandered for hours among the many jam sessions which featured some of the same musicians who had been on stage as well as many other fine, fine fiddlers, banjo pickers, guitarists, hammered dulcimer players, mandolin and bass players.