Christmas at Biltmore

 Every couple of years Trish and I spend a few days at the Biltmore Estate during the Christmas season.

Following the terrible damage suffered from Hurricane Helene on September 27, it was important for us to go this year to help support the tourism industry in Asheville where so much destruction happened.  We were so glad that we made the effort.

We went to wine tasting in the late afternoon and then visited the house just at the edge of sunset.  It was a magical time to be there.

The Palm Court was especially beautiful this year.  There were lots of beautiful plants there.

As always the Grand Dining Room was a centerpiece of wonder.  The triple fireplaces, the table set for 36 guests, the forty foot Christmas tree.  It all goes together to form a wonder of sight, smell, and color.

This year the weather was warm and the doors to the porch was open off he Music Room.  We got to take a walking break on the porch and watch the sun move toward setting toward Mount Pisgah.

Growing up only 27 miles away in Waynesville, I never got to visit the Biltmore Estate.  My mother was just not comfortable even visiting a place so grand.  I came here first on my own in adulthood.  And, I shall come again and again.  I admire this family so much for their preservation and deep commitment to the culture and economy of Western North Carolina.

Chiluly at Biltmore

 The year ends up with four final performances, two in Georgia and two in North Carolina.

Trish and I had a couple of days in between, so, we decided to stop over in Asheville to visit the Chihuly glass exhibit in residence now at the Biltmore Estate.

The photos of Dale Chihuly’s work can only give a hint of the wonder of color and shape that he creates.

At the beginning of the exhibit you see a number of different sets of individual pieces. These are called “soft cylinders” and all I did is want to touch them.  How can someone do this?

Then suddenly we entered the room where the entire ceiling is glass above which the work explodes in color and shape to make us feel like we were under the sea.  We could have spent hours picking out individual shapes in this part of the exhibit.

Next came the chandelier room.  Part of the wonder here is about how the these massive works are assembled once the individual components have been created, and, how did they transport them here from his workshop in Seattle without breaking everything.

When you think you can’t be surprised any more, you turn a corner into the garden room to meet a glass flower garden of spectacular proportion. 

The final room was a sublime display in subdued lighting of glass and wood.  What a calming finish. Pieces like this surround you and produce the only light in the room.

Layer in the day we will visit the Biltmore House itself to finish a splendid pre-Christmas adventure.

San Antonio Riverwalk

 Trish and I had three extra days between jobs in Midland, Texas, and LaGrange, Georgia. So, we decided to linger in San Antonio on our way to enjoy Riverwalk decorated for Christmas.  What a beautiful place at this time of year.

In 1921 a terrible flood did massive damage in downtown San Antonio.  Afterwards an architect named Robert Hugman proposed building a bypass canal to handle massive amounts of water in flood times.  The plan was approved in 1929, but, due to the Depression, it was not built until 1941. 

Mr. Hug a moved his architectural offices to the Riverwalk to prove to people that it was safe to do business and live there.  Today the Riverwalk is the most visited tourist attraction in the state of Texas.

Trish and I walked and walked, ate in Riverwalk restaurants, and took a total of four boat rides to cover different times of the day plus after dark.

River walk is beautiful at all times of the year,  it, as you can see, it is especially stunning throughout the Christmas season.  We had a great and restful time.

Midland, Texas

 It had been my great privilege to have been a featured teller for all thirty-three years of the Midland Storytelling Festival.

Rex Ellis and I were here for that festival and in the years following the featured roster had grown to eight tellers each year.

The Festival starts off with a school day.  Some of the tellers do school visits.  This year Laura Pershin Raynor, Willy Claflin, and I had two large groups of second graders who traveled to Legacy High School auditorium for the performances.

A special feature this year was having Cowboy Poet and Musician Andy Hedges at the Festival. Andy did a special pre-show at the Haley Memorial (cowboy history) Library in addition to the Festival itself.

Before the Saturday evening show, we were treated to Christmas Music by the West Texas Gospel Chorus, an event that gives us a great start for the season. Sue Roseberry, the Festival Director also directs the chorus.

As Featured Tellers, I was joined this year by Charlotte Blake-Alston, Willy Claflin, Barbara McBride-Smith, Antonio Rocha, Laura Pershin Raynor, Bil Lepp, and Andy Hedges.

The 2025 Festival will be held in Midland at the Bush Convention Center the first weekend of December. Join us then.

Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest

 Around and following the first decades of the 20th century, the logging industry acquired timber rights and almost totally clear cut the mountains of Western North Carolina. Even the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (1934) was an attempt to restore land that had been virtually destroyed by lumbering.

In 1936 a 3,800 acre virgin forest located in Graham County, North Carolina, was set aside as public land and named in memory of Joyce Kilmer, the poet whose work includes the poem, “Trees.” Kilmer was killed in action in 1918 in WW I.

To visit this forest is to see what all of our mountains would have been like had the forest industry not wreaked havoc and to hope for a return of such beauty in future generations.

On our way back from Alabama, Trish and I stopped in Andrews, North Carolina, where I did an evening of storytelling in the church that I served fifty years ago as a young pastor.  The next day, we spent much of the day hiking in the Joyce Kilmer Forest.

The Forest is located a few miles outside of Robbinsville, North Carolina, and is a worthy goal of any trip in that area.

We have never seen trees this size outside of sequoias and some redwoods.  There were all kinds of hardwoods, the biggest seemed to be mostly tulip poplars and gray birches.

It was hard to imaging what our forests might look like had so many thousands of acres not been cut.  It is gratifying to imagine our descendants visiting the Smokies in another two hundred years and seeing those forests once again filled with these giants.

 

Athens, Alabama

 Trish and I have just come from a wonderful week as I told for the eighteenth year at the Athens, Alabama, Storytelling Festival.

The lineup of tellers this year was spectacular. I was joined by Carol Cain in the school days and by Josh Goforth, Michael Reno Harrell, Tim Lowry, and Rev. Robert Jones for the full festival.

On Monday I had a dinner with area teachers followed by a workshop with them. 

Tuesday through Thursday we told to more than 5,000 students from grades three through high school. They were a marvelous audience! When they come every year, they grow in an amazing way!

The full festival followed all day Friday and Saturday.

This festival has a strong student component. On Tuesday evening we had fourteen student tellers for an evening for everyone. Then, throughout the week, there were students who told mixed with the featured tellers. The student audiences loved hearing from their peers and were wonderfully supportive of them.

An extra plus was having Michael Reno Harrell and Josh Goforth here at the same time. In addition to their individual sets, on occasion they combined their time and performed together. This was a special treat that the audience loved.

This is a lovely festival in Athens, Alabama. You should plan to come sometime on the fourth weekend of October each year on the campus of Athens State.

Storytellers Giving Back

 On Saturday evening a group of us gathered for the first event held in the newly restored Jackson Theatre in Jonesborough, Tennessee.  The purpose of our gathering was to hold a Hurricane relief benefit on what would have been the Saturday evening of the storm cancelled National Storytelling Festival.

The show was preceded by music by the Jonesborough Novelty Band.  When we arrived for our sound check at 5:30, there was already a very long line waiting for the 7:00 pm show.  When the doors opened later, we had a totally full house.

Barbara McBride-Smith, who now lives in Jonesborough, was our emcee.  She did a wonderful job throughout the evening, beginning with presenting Bil Lepp as our opening storyteller.

All of the stories were both entertaining and poignant, focusing on the reason we were there. Hurricane Helene wrought disaster a week earlier and we were determined to make a difference.

After telling separately, Andy Offutt Erwin and Paul Strickland played together.

Sheila Arnold and I finished off the telling.

To close the evening, all the tellers came on state and joined Ed Stivender in his classic storytelling hymn, “Yankee Come Home.”

When the offering buckets were call counted up, we brought in $12,021 on sight and $14,020 came in on line during the show for a total of  $26,041 for direct hurricane relief.

Thanks goes to all of you who supported this event.  It was an honor to work with these fine people in this effort!