Ocracoke Story Week

 This last week has been a very busy one as it has been the time for Ocracoke Storytelling Week.

In 1998 we started the first Ocracoke Storytelling Weeks and through the following years held 46 weekly workshops until COVID brought them to a halt for 2020.  After that year off, Trish and I were eager to get started back again this year.

Instead of two weeks, we decided that the thing to plan for (there was still COVID uncertainty at our planning time) a single week this year.  We contacted the people who had planned to come the year before and were cancelled and soon filled the week with nineteen participants.

Getting ready for music from Martin, Lou, Marcy and Dallas in Lou and Marcy’s yard.

This year we moved to a new meeting house called Sounds Perfect, a great location with splendid views of the Pamlico Sound.  It was a wonderful week with not only workshop time but occasions for two public performances, one at the Preservation Society Museum and the other at the stage beside Books to be Red.  We had excellent audiences at both.

Sometimes our days seemed centered around food as we ate at at five different restaurants in addition to being catered by Eduardo our opening night and a cookout at our house on our closing night.  Our meal times are actually learning times as we exchange stories nonstop through all our eating.

At the Museum performance.

Next year we plan to return to two weeks and look forward to being back on our normal schedule.

OcraFolk Festival

 For nineteen years the OcraFolk Storytelling and Music Festival was held on the island the first full weekend in June.  Then came COVID.  Last year the festival was cancelled and we had to miss each other for that weekend.  This year the festival came back to life.

The 21st Year was moved from the traditional sites on Howard Street and Schoolhouse Road to the Berkeley Center grounds where crowd size and containment could be planned for and controlled.

Telling on the Barn Stage. 85 degrees and humid!

There were two main performance stages: the Golden Stage and the Barn Stage.  The Barn Stage was set up on the porch of the Berkeley Center barn and chairs filled the lawn in front.  The Golden Stage was under twin tents in the front yard of the Center itself.  The Golden Stage was named in memory of John Golden, both a performer and a stage host at the festival throughout its history and a favorite friend and performer in Ocracoke’s total music world.  We miss John terribly following his death during the past year.

On the Golden Stage.

The original plans, put together when gatherings were much more restricted under COVID regulations got to be relaxed a bit and we were able to both move and associate more freely under recently revised regulations and recommendations.  There was a palpable joy in the air as people got to be together in a setting of music and stories for the first time in the island in two years!

Birthday Trip

 When we left the SWAG, Trish and I drove up to Lake Orion, Michigan.  Lake Orion is the town to which her family moved when her father, Ralph, retired from the Navy in 1966.

The purpose of this trip was not just for a visit home, but, to pick up her mother, Betty, for her first trip to Ocracoke Island.

On Tuesday the car was loaded and we started the two-day drive home.  Tuesday was also my birthday, and, getting to bring Betty home with us I considered to be my first birthday present of the year.

After two days and eight hundred miles in the car, we arrived at the Swan Quarter Ferry.  Except for a short passenger ferry ride to Mackinac Island, this was Betty’s first real ferry ride.  

After three hours on the ferry, we arrived on the island and gave her the full tour of both the island and our little home here.  

The following day was HER birthday. She is now 92 years old. I had arranged for pineapples from Hawaii to arrive in this day, and they did!  Now we are all set for many treats.

She will be with us until July 7 and then will have a visit with Trish’s daughter, Betsie, in Roanoke, Virginia.  After that we will all have many stories for weeks and maybe years to come!