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| readwithme.wordpress.com |
Hello, all.
Just wanted to let y'all know that I'm taking a brief Internet fast until Tuesday, November 12th. This means that I won't be posting here, at my blog, over on my author Facebook page, from my Twitter account or even checking my email for the next seven days.
If I get a wild hair, I may post my Show & Tell Friday edition at some point, perhaps not even Friday. I've got some good stuff that I'm itching to share. But maybe not. We'll see how it goes. Can you tell I'm incredibly dedicated to this fast?
Why the Internet fast? I've got 20 new fiction pages due for my upcoming residency in my MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Though I'd been on a Leave of Absence this past semester, what with the new baby and all, this winter residency I'll begin my fourth and final semester in the program. I was lucky enough to be placed into a special novel writing workshop during the upcoming residency, and so I need to buckle down.
The teething baby, wily and BUSY 4 year-old, and a bout of family-wide cough-and-colds (the preschool disease) have brought my writing to a grinding halt for the past several months. So now I've got to buckle down. Put the pedal to the metal. Pull myself up by my boot straps. Just get on the bus, Gus.
Catch you on the flip side!
I hope everyone had a fun, safe and festive Halloween last night!
Some good stuff to share to welcome November:
1.) Divided and United: the Songs of the Civil War
On Nov. 5th, ATO records is releasing Divided and United: the Songs of the Civil War, an album of 32 Civil War-era songs (both Confederate and Union) sung by contemporary bluegrass and country artists. I stumbled upon this album over at Garden & Gun magazine. The artists included reads like a list of greats, and up-and-comers: Dolly Parton, Ricky Skaggs, Loretta Lynn, Ralph Stanley, Vince Gill, Steve Earle, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Lee Ann Womack, T Bone Burnett, Taj Mahal, and more.
Hearing these songs, sung by these artists in particular, makes the music seem fresh--and the longing, joy and sorrow, bravado and bravery that moves through each tune is instantly recognizable. Karen Elson and The Secret Sisters, particularly, sing a haunting version of "Dixie" in a way I've never heard before. I plan to purchase the CD, and listen to it while I type away at one of my works-in-progress. (Notice I said "type away." I'm an optimist.)
It doesn't matter if you're a Civil War buff. If you are, you'll adore this album. But if you aren't, there's no way to hear these ballads, sung by these particular people, without being moved. It's a reminder of how close we came to destroying the dreams of our forefathers and foremothers, to ending in a bonfire of tragedy the great "American experiment." After all, the Civil War (or the War Between the States, as it's called where I'm from) was only 153 years ago. And that's nothing in the grand scheme of time.
To listen to Divided and United in its entirety, click here.
2.) The Southerner's Handbook: A Guide to Living the Good Life
I swear, Garden & Gun magazine isn't paying me for the advertising. They're welcome to, though. Curated by the editors of the magazine, the book's a compilation of stories, essays, and instructions on how to get the most out of all aspects of Southern life: sport, drink, food, literature, home and garden, music, art and more. I've not read it, but I've become a fan of G&G despite the fact that from their ad pages I can tell some of their readers exist in a financial stratosphere I'll never see. Mainly, I read it because of the stellar writing, and so I'm adding the book it to my Christmas wish list.
3.) "10 Hilarious Southern Expressions"
This article over at HuffPost Books reveals 10 of the funniest Southern expressions I've ever heard, and growing up in South Carolina and now living in the mountains of North Carolina, I've heard a lot. Most I've actually used. It's a quick, enjoyable read. I dare you-- especially those of you from above the Mason Dixon line, to use one in conversation today. Just for the heck of it. And I want to hear about what happens!
4.) Quotes to welcome November
No, this has nothing to do with the South, but I love me some quotations. And since it's the 1st day of November, for your reading pleasure:
"The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving."
~ H.U. Westermayer
Some hae meat and canna eat, -
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.
~ Robert Burns
"Gratitude is the sign of noble souls." ~ Aesop
“October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces.”
~ J.K. Rowling, from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
“But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods … for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them.”
~ L.M. Montgomery, from Anne of Windy Poplars
Over the river and through the wood
to grandfather's house we go;
the horse knows the way
to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow
~ Lydia Maria Child, Thanksgiving Day, 1845
"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice."
~ Meister Eckhart
In honor of that day of the year when the door between this world and the next creeeaaaks open, I’m sharing a post I wrote on this day way back in 2008. Forgive the references to snow. It used to snow in my mountains. Also, I used the word "freaking." I was in my 20s and didn't have kids.
Happy Hallowe’en and Feile Samhna to you all!
Without further ado, a repost from my past:
Snow in October, Hallowe’en in My Head
On Tuesday morning, it snowed in Brevard. And not just a few, miserly flakes: the stuff came down–so thick it hid the mountains from view, and made my drive to work feel like inching through a blizzard. But, because it is the South and only October, it melted by 9 a.m.
I am a fool for snow. If it had stuck around long enough, I would’ve tromped my students outside to stand in it, and somehow managed to make the weather relate to writing… just so I could get my time in before it melted. I come by this snowmadness honestly: When I was growing up in South Carolina, my parents–especially my Dad–made snow days more magical than Christmas. (And Christmas was pretty freaking magical in my house.)
The year of the Big Snow, something everyone who grew up in the ’80s in Greenville, S.C. still talks about, it snowed well over a foot, and school was out for nearly two weeks. My father took buckets of water and washed down our driveway and road, so it’d be perfectly slick for sledding. He and his friends tied our sleds with old ski ropes to the back of someone’s Waggoneer, and they tugged us around our neighborhood for hours, the moms in the way back with the hatch open, giggling and hanging on. We sledded for hours down the hill near a local Baptist church, a gang of StayPuff marshmellow kids in our snowskiing gear (bibs, jackets, gloves, boots, hats)–which the nearest house with the nearest mom would dump into her dryer, filling us with hot chocolate before sending us out again.
My neighbors, formerly of the coast, pulled out their surfboards and removed the fins, and we surfed down the hill in front of my house. My black lab, Magic, raced circles around the house in a blur of white. Each morning, my sister and I woke up, raced to our parents’ bedroom where they had the radio on by their bed, to wait anxiously to hear whether My 102.5 would announce that school was cancelled again in Greenville County. My God, it was magic.
It doesn’t snow much any more. And even though I’ve moved to the mountains of Western North Carolina, a much higher elevation than my hometown, I’ve only seen a few inches each year–mostly ice–that melts in a day, leaves me sad and a little slushy. I long for those preternatural sunrises, pressing my face to my cold bedroom window and praying that my world would still be white. I miss the igloo my Dad and his friends built us, the real fires in the fireplaces, the way my neighborhood became a festival of friends for two straight weeks, the fun never-ending.
But now, there’s Hallowe’en in my head. Feile Samhna to all! Happiest of All Souls’ Days, All Hallow’s Eves, the night just before Samhain, the night when the door supposedly creaks open between this world and the next, and the spirits roam. No matter what anyone says, or how much we’ve ‘roided Hallowe’en up with commercialism, it is a preternatural night: a night our ancestors (just about all of them, no matter what your DNA looks like) recognized as different. If you stand outside in the chilly dark tonight, away from the squealing kids and orange lights and ringing doorbells, you might feel it brush your face, give you a little shiver. If you do, I say you’re lucky. Hallowe’en has many faces, many traditions, many legends associated with it… and not all are scary.
My husband and I have been debating for a week about what to do with ourselves tonight. Our neighborhood, which is not even a half mile from downtown, will become swamped with trick-or-treating children at about 6 p.m., and will not cease until after 10 p.m. They are mini-vanned in from all corners of the county… and sometimes the street up from us is blocked off by police cars so the kids can wander freely. It’s not anything out of the ordinary for folks in our neighborhood to spend $400 on candy each year.
Suffice to say, we cannot afford this. And so, we flee after a time… and I think that’s what we’ll do tonight. But first, we’ll buy a couple of bags of candy from the dollar store–if they’ve any left–and pass it out to the first little ghouls, the cutest ones of the entire night, and then we’ll walk downtown to eat, maybe to a movie. We’ll leave Scout, our dog, to guard the dark house.
For the Scottish poet Rabbie Burns’s famous poem about Hallowe’en, click here.
For an interesting article on the Celtic origins of Hallwe’en, click here.
Hi, all.
I’m truly excited to share this interview with me over at Appalachianhistory.net, a fantastic web site for all you history and mountain-lovers. I’d not known about the site until I received an interview request from one of its contributers, and I immediately popped on over to check it out.
Three hours later, I was hooked. The site says that it’s filled with “stories, quotes and anecdotes from Appalachia, with an emphasis on the Depression era.” This is absolutely true, but there’s so much more to see there. It’s a fabulous resource for anyone researching the Appalachian region–and the stories (which include some of the coolest old photographs) that I’ve read there make my writer’s brain twitch … I can see all sorts of characters emerging from real life.
I hope you’ll check out the interview. It was conducted over several weeks via email, as Joshua Salmans, the interviewer, is living in Brazil with his wife. He asked some evocative questions, about Keowee Valley colonial South Carolina, gender roles in the Revolutionary-era, sexuality in fiction, the Cherokee, my personal background, and more. I had a great time answering them!
I still look like I did last week. But I’m powering through.
Some good stuff to share on this cold October weekend:
1.) Halloweenfest & Osktoberfest in Transylvania County
I live in Transylvania County, North Carolina, and if you haven’t guessed from the name, we are serious about Halloween. This Saturday (Oct. 26th) is the annual Halloween festival. Downtown will be blocked off for food and craft vendors, stages filled with live, local music; there’ll be the annual Pumpkin Roll down the hill from the Courthouse, a hay ride, costume parade and more. After hours Oskar Blues Brewery will kick off Osktoberfest with food, music, and good beer. There truly is something for the whole family here!
The festival will also feature Mountain Mash, an old-time bluegrass competition, to be held at various times during the day.
For more info about Osktoberfest, and all the beers and bands, click here.
2.) Stingy Jack’s Pumpkin Patch
My family and I have been trying to get out to this quirky little blast of a Halloween event for
a couple of years now. We plan to make it happen before Halloween! Located on a farm in Pisgah Forest, NC, Stingy Jack’s only opens on the weekends and in the evenings, and has a pumpkin carving contest, a spooky trail, enchanted hayride, and something called Stingy’s Ultimate Pumpkin Chunker, which is sure to appeal to the kids and the dads in the crowd, especially.
3.) Quotes on my bulletin board
Yes, this is random, and has nothing to do with Fall festivities. Humor me.
This is my bulletin board. It hangs on the wall to the left of my neat-as-a-pin writing desk. Why are you laughing? It’s not my story board–that’s different, and contains all kinds of notes on scrap paper, photographs, and anything inspiring me or having to do with my work-in-progress. The bulletin board holds my calendar, photos, the little reminder cards from the doctor’s office, etc. It also has stuck to it whatever quotes are speaking to me, my life, and my current (often crazy) state of mind.
Here are a few that I’ve lately found to be relevant. Basically, they shout to me from the bulletin board.
“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose, and then give your whole heart and soul to it.”
~ attributed to the Buddha
“Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”
~ Confucius
“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.”
~ John Le Carre
Happy Hump Day, everyone!
It finally feels like Fall here in Western North Carolina. We woke up to 38 degrees this morning, which isn’t so unusual at all this time of year in the mountains, but hadn’t happened yet. If you’re planning to travel to see the leaves, especially on the Blue Ridge Parkway, this is definitely the time to do it.
Last week I posted about getting ready to head to the Cataloochee Valley of North Carolina to see the elk. Well, we went, we saw, and we had an incredible time. There were six of us: two of my best friends, one with her 2 year-old son, and me and my girls (ages 4 years-old and 5 1/2 months). We met in Waynesville, NC, which is about midway between all our towns and the Cataloochee Valley, regrouped, and caravanned into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We’d waited for two weeks for the government to reopen so we could go, so we were psyched to be there among the gold, red, and orange trees, the other visitors, and of course the elk.
Driving through the Valley this time of year is a little like driving through a less-crowded
version of Yellowstone.
People stop their cars, hop out to take pictures, and get much closer to the wildlife than they should. This year there were signs near the road warning cars to stay out of the fields. You’d be surprised–or maybe you wouldn’t–at what some folks will do around wildlife.
Cough. Including us. We unfurled our picnic blankets in the middle of a meadow where a turn of the century (the 20th century) church sat, pulled out our PBJs, yogurts, Goldfish and hot chocolate (can you tell we were with kids?), and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. My 4 year-old and my friend’s 2 year-old ran around squealing like little happy banshees. (Yes, I know banshees are NOT happy. But that’s what they sounded like.)
During all this, my friends and I–all of whom have been outdoor educators and worked in the field–kept wondering aloud if it was really smart to picnic in the middle of the meadow during rutting season. But then we shrugged, since we’d done it before. About that time an enormous young male elk wandered across the creek from another meadow near by and walked right past our blankets. We gathered the kiddos close and stayed still. A park ranger with a big ol’ stun gun slung over his shoulder wandered our way and chatted with us while we watched it walk by.
Yep, we were THOSE people. We felt like idiots. But boy was it fun to see the elk up close!
The ranger told us that though the elk are doing fairly well, they’ve had a few die lately due to various causes, including being hit by a car, caught and tangled in underbrush, and shot by idiots. I mean people. One man apparently drove into the Cataloochee Valley, walked right up and shot one of the elk.
Eventually, of course, there’s hope that the elk will do so well that there’ll be a hunting season for them, especially since their ancient natural predators–mainly wolves and panthers–no longer roam the Southern Appalachians. But that’s a long time coming.
At the end of the evening, when the sun had set below the ridges and the clouded sky grew dark, we loaded up our cars and headed out of the Valley. One friend (sans kids) decided to camp. The other and I had to get our children home to bed. It was a 10-mile drive down a pitch dirt road to reach highway again. We all agreed we’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Hi, all.
Apologies, but I've got to postpone my usual Show & Tell Friday until next week. I am an exceptionally busy and important woman.
KIDDING. I'm postponing because I look like this:
Yep, that's me at my desk moments ago. What you can't hear in the background are the soothing tones of a teething baby trying to go down for her nap.
I love my baby. Both my babies! I love it when they're like this:
Aren't they sweet? I'd set Willa (the baby) on our bed while I threw on regular clothes to take Wylie (my 4 year-old) to preschool. Sometimes I go in partial pajamas. Not that day, boy howdy! I was wearing jeans!
I love motherhood. It's been the most transporting, the most spiritual, the toughest, the hardest, the most incandescent experience of my life. I think, when you're a parent, the act of parenting--and the weighty, unimaginable love of your kids--takes your ego and drop-kicks it. Have you ever watched Australian football? Well, it's nuts. Awesomely nuts. Those guys can take the football and drop-kick it from, I swear, anywhere on the dang field, and it sails through the uprights. And then they try to murder each other.
This, my friends, is what has happened to my ego. And that's a good thing. If you don't get the schnike kicked out of you by your babies, if your ego is unaffected, you're not really parenting.
That's my take. Hey, remember the first photo, above? That's what I look like today.
Some days I look like this, though:
Ha ha! I had showered! And Willa's exceptionally interested in her knee.
But, seriously, most days I look like I do today:
Moving on.
* * *
ELK TAILGATING IN THE CATALOOCHEE VALLEY!
This afternoon I'm packing up the aforementioned babies and heading North (Northwest?) to the Cataloochee Valley. We're going to go elk tailgating. That's right, you didn't read it wrong. Elk used to roam these here parts up until the turn of the 19th century, but in 2001 they were reintroduced to a gorgeous part of Western North Carolina called the Cataloochee Valley, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The Fall, and mainly October, is the best time to view the elk because it's time for the rut. This is mating season, y'all. And you're likely to hear the male elk "bugling" to warn away other males. It's AWESOME.
For a 2011 article in the Macon County News about the elk reintroduction, click here.
A few years ago, when my oldest daughter, Wylie, was a 1 year-old, we went elk tailgating for the first time with one of my best friends. We packed a picnic, some blankets, a thermos of hot chocolate and bundled up because it was darn cold. Wylie was in heaven, and so was I. I can't wait to take her back today, and I feel so thankful that these elk and this incredible place are there for her to see.
No kidding, it's worth the drive to be a part of this place. It will feel and look like a National Geographic Moment. You will think you've stepped back in time 200+ years. The scene will sink into your soul. But more than that, it'll feel right.
Because it is.
