November Weekend: Saturday

What a wild weekend.

Outside the Mountainlair at WVU

Friday night we packed the car for storytelling on Saturday--a puppet stories program for WVU Mountaineer Week's Family Fun Day in Morgantown, WV, and ghost stories in the evening. This is the third year in a row I've done the puppet program at this event, and it's always fun.

It was a good day for a road trip too--rainy, temperatures beginning to drop and light snow predicted later in the day. If we'd been home, we'd have been stuck in the house. As it was, we had a blast.

After setting up for my program I had plenty of time to browse the big arts and crafts fair. My favorite jeweler, Robert Riffe, was there. Last year I bought a pair of prenite earrings that were absolutely gorgeous. I lost them at my family reunion and have been sad about it ever since. I made myself feel better yesterday by buying three pairs of Robert's earrings. What can I say? I love his work, and I like knowing that by buying from him I'm supporting a very good artist.

This friendly fellow shared my program space. Do you know who he is?

I also bought a few stained glass ornaments from my friend, stained glass master artist David Hauser. His work is stunning; I can't afford his bigger pieces but the ornaments are whimsical and as perfect as all his work.

Handmade note cards and a little leather pouch for my business cards rounded out my shopping. I go to very few craft shows so I planned to shop at this one.

The storytelling was wonderful. A girl who was in one of the classes I told stories to at Westwood Middle School a few weeks ago was there with her family. She told me several times how that was the best 7th period class ever. I value that praise--it was obvious she meant it. She was one of the kids who helped with the first story and did a great job. The highlight of the storytelling, though, was a young boy who, when I told him his part was over and he could go back to his mother, took off at a tear out into the craft fair! His mother was sitting in the audience, but evidently he thought she was somewhere else. She chased him down and we all got such a laugh out of it.

I don't have any photos to share of the storytelling, unfortunately because I forgot to give Larry the camera. But after the storytelling, he snapped this one of me with the WVU Mascot, the Mountaineer. (Can you tell I was pretty warm after the active storytelling with lots of little ones?)

My friend, blogger Jason Burns was also there to do a presentation on the ghosts of WVU. He had a good crowd; the strangest of his stories was the one about the ghost cow. For real--a ghost cow in one of the WVU buildings.

We left for a little while to have dinner with our youngest son Tommy who lives in Morgantown. Then it was back to the Lair for the evening Tellabration storytelling event with WV Storytelling Guild members. The theme was ghost stories; when we started there were perhaps 20 people in the Hatfield's restaurant where the event was held. But the room quickly filled and we had an excellent turnout for the event.

Tellabration, I should explain, is an international event that celebrates storytelling. Guilds and storytelling groups all over the world host events, usually on Thanksgiving weekend (we had ours earlier because so many tellers were going to be at WVU on Saturday anyway). The event was the brainchild of J.G. Pinkerton, a well-known storyteller from New Hampshire who passed away this month. His wry humor will be missed.

We left Morgantown around 8pm for the drive home. It was a lively trip because storytelling friend Donna Wilson rode with us on this trip; two storytellers in one car means little quiet time!

We got home just before midnight, got the fires going, and sat up talking until 2:00 am. Why? Why not? The next day was Sunday, and we planned to sleep in.

And that was exactly what we did!