Athens Alabama Storytelling Festival

All week this week we have been at the 16th Athens Alabama Storytelling Festival.

This festival starts on Tuesday when students from Athens, Limestone County, and other surrounding areas are bussed in for a storytelling field trip.  We have one group for the morning and then a second group after lunch before the school day is over.  By the time the school days are finished we tell to nearly six thousand students.

Bil Leo with 1,500 third graders.

The lineup this year for the student days is: Randy Evensen, Andy Offutt Irwin, Bil Leo and me.  When the weekend festival gets underway on Friday, we are joined by Kevin Kling and Josh Goforth.

Randy Evensen charms the students.

A special feature of this festival is the lineup of student tellers who perform with us on the school days. This year there are eleven student tellers ranging from seven years old to fourteen. The students are wonderful and the audiences love them.

Also, early in the week there is a local teller event from which the featured tellers choose one person  to perform with them on Thursday evening. This year’s Athens teller is Leah Oakley who has also come to our Ocracoke Island workshop weeks for the past several years.  Everyone loved her story of the squirrel in her fireplace.

Rain in Friday and Saturday did not dampen the spirits of this audience.  We have all had a wonderful time.

Recycling Our Trees

We have found such strange things in our yard following Hurricane Dorian.  One of the most interesting was the neck and head of a good sized plastic giraffe.  We could never figure out from where it had come.

The most mysterious, however, was a still-strapped bundle of 10 x 10 treated pilings that looked like they had just come off a building supply truck.  The longest ones were twenty feet long and they were  bundled with an assortment of shorter lengths.  They still had red flags stapled to the end like they were properly marked as an over-length load on the truck.

Assorted pilings still in a bundle.

We checked with all the construction people on the island and with the people who do work like this and no one had lost any pilings or even had any similar to these.  Everyone finally decided that they had washed all the way from the mainland.  Now Jamie and Galen will have some free pilings to use just for getting them out of our yard...no easy task.

Many trees went down during the storm.  We lost five trees in our yard, one of which ended up on the neighbor’s house. As the trees are cut, they are ground into chips as this is the easiest way to dispose of them.

The usable version of a downed tree.

One of our needs is to replenish the ground itself where trenches were washed out in the yard and large amounts of soil were washed away in several places.  We keep saving the tree chippers a lot of work by asking for the chips instead of letting them be hauled away.  We can fill with them and make a new yard surface with them.  Then we will sow them with annual rye grass followed by permanent grass before next summer.  The pine and cedar chips disintegrate quickly and very soon you cannot tell that we did not do the repairs with dirt.  Now our trees are still with us instead of being cut and hauled away.

The cedar chips smell wonderful after the hurricane stink.

Recovery continues!

Back on the Island

We arrived back home Tuesday night and, with the daylight of the following morning, came back in touch with the realities of hurricane recovery.

There is a lot of progress: much of the debris has been picked up though there is a huge amount to go and more is being generated all the time as houses continue to be both stripped out and torn down.  Several groups are continuing to provide meals.  This includes local chefs and restaurants as well as off island food trucks and other groups.  The Mennonite church on the mainland has been faithful and wonderful in this regard.  Most insurance adjustments are completed and people are now in the long wait for actual money.  SBA loans can now be applied for as well.

All that remains of Stella’s house.

On the other side, the mountain of debris at the beach parking lot is growing though multiple loads are hauled away almost every day. There are still dozens of dead cars to be picked up.  Multiple propane tanks (including ours) have been removed.  We hope to have some heat source restored before cold weather comes.  The road to The Hatteras ferry (NC 12) is still not open for building supply trucks to access the island,  most people are in a waiting mode with regards to repair work.

Debris is hauled to the beach access parking lot and then trucked off the island.

We have had many offers from people to come and help but we cannot accept those offers.  There is no place to stay in the island and there is no way to feed numbers of people in addition to essential workers.  The island is closed except to residents, homeowners, and pre-approved construction workers.

Rows of dead cars still waiting to be hauled away.

But...we are home!  We are very fortunate that we have a place to live...the apartment over our garage next door.  We also have our wonderful contractor...the man who built for us to begin with...Woody, and his dear worker, Armando, working on our house.  They encourage us each day by assuring us that it will all come together in the fullness of time.

Last note:  we thought our little red VW had survived the storm.  But, after starting and trying to run, all of the electronics went out and fried all the computer systems.  The brakes are also gone.  It looks fine as it is hauled away to be used for body parts.  So sad!

Bye, bye Bugbaby.

Last Day at the Swag

We started the week here with overcast weather and many rain forecasts.  As the week has progressed the weather has cleared and the temperature has gradually dropped. Leaf color is very slow this year.  Usually mid-October is the peak of color season, but this year there is only the barest beginning of reds and yellows to be seen.

There is more color on the ground than on the trees this year.

Each morning gives us a different view ranging from total overcast to being above the clouds to having totally clear skies.  When I was growing up here I never tired or took for granted the beauty of these mountains.  I was then and now constantly amazed that one place can fill days with such infinite variety and splendid beauty.

First View of the day from the Swag.

Our last day we hiked to Hemphill Bald, a clear mountain top on the Cataloochee Divide Trail where my friends and I spent much time in my youth.  We climbed about six hundred feet in elevation from the Swag to see wonderful views from Cataloochee Ranch to Canton and beyond.

Looking toward Asheville from Hemphill Bald.

In the afternoon I took Trish down the mountain to visit the Davis Chapel Cemetery, where multiple generations of my ancestors are buried.  The result of this visit was a commitment and a plan to do a big project of cleaning gravestones when we return later in the year.  It should have been done years ago.

The Davis neighborhood in the Davis Chapel Cemetery.

Tomorrow we go to Roanoke to see our new grandchild, Beckham!

Another Swag Day

A lot of people hear me tell stories about when my brother, Joe, and I were growing up.  There are often questions like: do you really have a brother Joe? Where is your brother, Joe, now? Yes, I have a real brother Joe, and he and his wife, Nancy, came up to join us for dinner at the Swag last night.

They live outside Waynesville where we grew up.  He is retired from Evergreen Paper, formerly Champion Paper and Fiber, in Canton after thirty eight years working in the wood yard there.  Nancy is retired from teaching and from her pet resort, Creature Comforts, though she still does dog show judging and raises Shelties.  They have one daughter named Cara and she and her husband have three boys, two of whom are twins.

My Brother, Joe, and his wife, Nancy up for dinner with us.

Today was a beautiful day and Trish and I led a hike from the Swag down to Purchase Knob and the National Park Science Education Center.  Weather has cleared and the scenery was spectacular as the clouds gave the mountains and sky wonderful color and texture.

A Beautiful Day at the Swag Country Inn.

On the way we saw plenty of wild turkeys. They seem to be everywhere now.

Turkeys Everywhere!

After our visit to the Science Education Center we hiked down to the historic Ferguson log cabin and had our picnic lunch on the porch there.  This tiny one room cabin was home to the John Ferguson family and their three children.  It is very difficult to imagine how a family of five lived there and raised all their food to boot.

Picnic at the John Ferguson Cabin.

Tonight is cookout night and we look forward to a wonderful eating time before I tell our evening story for all the guests of the Inn.

At The Swag.

The Swag is a beautiful country inn located at five thousand feet just outside my home town of Waynesville, North Carolina.  The property backs up against the boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the whole surrounding area was my childhood and teenage hiking and camping world.

Standing under a Cherokee Trail Marker Tree.

The Swag was just selected by Conde Naste as the summer one resort in all of the southeast and as number nine nationally.  It has fourteen rooms and beautiful surroundings with magnificent views that change every day.

Each year for the past fourteen years they have brought me here as part of their Event Leader program.  Each day I lead a hike into the park exploring different directions on trails I have known since I was a child.  Each evening I tell stories following dinner at the Swag House.

Hiking at The Swag.

Last week was a busy week.  When I added it all up, between being Teller in Residence at the International Storytelling Center, a Featured Teller at the National Festival, playing with the Jonesborough Novelty Band, and preaching at the Methodist Church, the total came up to twenty-four events.  After that, coming to The Swag is a rest and renewal time for me and for Trish.

Yesterday was her birthday and it was our good fortune to be here!  We led a morning hike, had a wonderful dinner, and then I told birthday stories to all the guests as we were not the only ones celebrating birthdays.

If you need to celebrate a special event or just need to get away from it all for a rest, check out The Swag!

Teller in Residence

Each week from the end of April to the end of October the International Storytelling Center (ISC) hosts a different storyteller in a special program entitled the Teller in Residence program (TIR).

During each of these weeks, the Teller in Residence presents a storytelling performance in the ISC Theatre Tuesday through Saturday afternoons at 2:00 pm.  In addition there may be school groups, senior groups or other special events using the weekly teller’s talents. After that there is time for the TIR to work on new material or just get some rest from a busy schedule.

Performing in the ISC Theatre.

When this program first started many years ago, there was some discussion about not having a Teller in Residence during the week of the Festival because so much was going on and the staff was already overloaded.  I thought this was not a good idea since so many people come early for the festival and they are eager for storytelling.  I volunteered to be the TIR for the festival week with a promise that I would not take up any staff time and would take care of myself.  I am so glad I started doing this as it has grown through the years and I would not miss it for anything.

I arrive the Sunday evening before the Festival week and start out with a Monday performance.  On Tuesday the schedule adds an eleven am performance to the day.  On Wednesday we continue with these two performances and add a 7:30 pm evening event in the Library Tent.  More and more people seem to arrive by Wednesday and we have a comfortably full tent by that evening.

On Thursday there are three performances in the ISC Theatre at eleven, two, and four. Then from four to five I get to play my bass with the Jonesborough Novelty Band as the Festival Beer Garden opens for the weekend.

With the Novelty Band.

I love being the TIR for this week!  It gives me a chance to get all moved in before the Festival begins.  It gives me a chance to try out new material before springing it on the entire Festival audience.  And it gives me a chance, with the Wednesday evening time, to help ISC make a little more money to offset the expenses of the whole Festival event.  (I don’t have a lot of money to donate to the Storytelling Center,  but I can certainly donate a week of time and try to make the best of it.)

If you are coming to the Festival next year and happen to arrive early, maybe I will see you at a TIR event.

In Jonesborough!

After the completion of the Cave Run Festival. We drove down to Jonesborough, Tennessee, for the week of the National Storytelling Festival.

The Town of Jonesborough is all clean and decorated for the Festival.

During the week before the Festival, it is my job to be the Teller in Residence at the International Storytelling Center.  This means that I present storytelling performances each day in the Center Theatre for local residents, Jonesborough visitors, and a growing number of people each day who are arriving early for the Festival this weekend.

It also means that Trish and I get to watch the tents go up, the chairs go in, the stages erected, and the sound systems installed.  I love to do this and to walk around in the tents and on the stages as they come to life.  It is very helpful when the Festival begins to have become comfortable with all the performance spaces before actually telling stories there.  I can go back into the audience area, sit in the seats of listeners, and see what the stage looks like to them when I am later up there. I think this helps me relate to the people and the space better throughout the Festival.

The Library Tent...chairs but no stage yet.

This evening I will move from the Theatre to the Library Tent for a full evening of storytelling.  It is amazing that a full tent of people will have already arrived two days ahead of time.  This weekend is truly a homecoming event for tellers and listeners now in its forty-seventh year.