A Week of Good Company

We have been blessed this week with visitors. Is there anything as nice as having people come to stay for a day or two or three? Earlier this week, our friends Lorna Czarnota and Thomas came to stay a few days. They are from Buffalo, NY and I was delighted to repay their hospitality when I stayed with them last March on the way to presenting at the Sharing the Fire Storytelling Conference in Albany, NY.

We showed Lorna and Thomas a bit of our life here--we visited my antique mall booths, traveled by ferry to Blennerhassett Island to take in a part of the early history of the US.

That evening we had dinner and a lovely evening by the firepit with our friends from Charleston, Jeff Seager (my sometime music partner when I'm storytelling) and Mary Ellen, his partner. We enjoyed a huge country breakfast (one of my specialties!) one morning and lingered over coffee on the porch. On their last night here Lorna took her fiddle on top of the ridge, and we sat in the dark listening to the notes drift up to the bright stars above. We picked out Cassiopeia, Andromeda, the Big Dipper and other constellations and watched a glowing orange-red moon rise over the horizon. I was sorry to see these good friends leave but they had more journey ahead of them and needed to be on their way.

The afternoon after Lorna and Thomas left, our friend, retired coal miner Fred Powers came to Ripley to do his storytelling presentation at the middle school and at the library. I went in to see him at the school and brought him home for dinner with Larry and me. Then we all went back to town for Fred's evening performance at the library. He did an excellent job of portraying the miner's life, the dangers of the job and shared a lot of mining history with the small but interested group.

The next morning our oldest son and his children arrived to spend a long weekend with us. We've been having so much fun doing simple things--Grace and I baked cookies while George and Derek golfed and Clayton helped Larry put up rafters on the new log room. We all went to the community center on Joe's Run for a baked steak dinner and visited with many neighbors and friends--some of them had not seen George for years so it was really a reunion. We left the dinner to go to Derek's to watch the WVU football game. They were playing in Texas and it was a very good, tight game. I'm not a football fan but I do get into it when I watch!

This morning we put together another big breakfast; Derek and granddaughter Haley joined us. Now the guys are golfing, Larry and Clayton are back at work on the room and Grace and I will be going out to pick some crabapples to pickle (really more liked candied crabapples). By tomorrow afternoon the house will be quiet again, and I will be preparing for a busy schedule of storytelling for the coming week. But this has been a delightful week of catching up, seeing friends and family, and savoring these early Fall days.



Copyright 2012 Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.