To Hawaii!

 After the Pike Piddlers Festival, Trish and I drove over to Atlanta where we spent the night and then flew directly to Honolulu on Monday.  What an easy way to get here!

Yesterday all day was spent at the Polynesian Cultural Center on the Northeast side of the island across the mountain from Honolulu.

The Polynesian Culture Center is next door to and operated in conjunction with Brigham Young University Hawaii.  The Center opens at 12:30 each day so that students who work here can go to their classes in the morning and then work for the afternoon to support themselves as students.  It is a wonderful and beautiful place.

There are six villages here each one patterned on a different island in South Pacific Polynesia.  Students from these islands work in the villages presenting programs, foods, and art work native to their homes.  The natural environment is stunning and the interpretations are friendly and educational.

Here  we saw a traditional Tahitian wedding engagement and ceremony.  The costuming is fabulous and the actors are happily skilled.

We finished the  afternoon with a gigantic luau centered around roast pigs.  Then the evening concluded with a show including everything from hula to fire batons, as well as the story that they all combined to portray.

If you visit the island of Oahu, the Polynesian Culture Center is an excellent way to spend a day.  We chose the Ambassador Package which gave us our own personal guide for the day.  This was really worth while as he enabled us to do and see twice as much as we could have managed on our own.

Pike Piddlers Continued

 Following the Friday evening dinner theatre, the Pike Piddlers Festival moves on Saturday to the Troy University campus in Troy, Alabama.

There we tell in a very nice auditorium.  There are three sets on Saturday covering the morning, the afternoon, and the evening.  Each of these sessions is preceded by thirty minutes of music from various local groups.

Each of us tells stories in each session.  People can come for the day and they never have to make a move or a choice to listen to everything.

We were a bit worried this year as strong thunderstorms were predicted for Saturday.  Maybe some people were discouraged, but for those who braved the weather, we had a wonderful time.

Dolores, on stage, shows how we each told in front of the projected festival flyer.  There was no forgetting who was there.

This is one of those smaller festival that is so much fun since we all get to listen to each other and work together.  You should try it!

Pike Piddlers Festival

 Each year for the past sixteen years I have performed at the Pike Piddlers Storytelling Festival on the last weekend in January.

This fine festival begins in a unique way with a dinner theatre event in Friday evening.  The Pike Piddlers Dinner Theatre is held in the little town of Brundidge, Alabama, which is in eponymous Pike County.  This year I was privileged to sell stories with Dolores Hydock, Michael Reno Harrell, and Rev. Robert Jones. 

The Pike Piddlers Theatre is in a building that formerly housed the Brundidge City Offices, including the jail.  The interior of the building was destroyed in a fire some twenty years ago and, instead of tearing the brick walls down, it was converted into this wonderful sawdust floored theatre fully decorated with walls covered with primitive Alabama art.

Local musicians play during dinner time and then it is time for storytelling.  Rev. Robert here takes the stage on his first visit to this festival.

One of the amusing and fascinating things about this recycled building is that the restrooms are built into the former jail cells in the back of the theatre.  You have to go to jail to relieve yourself.  You can see that no one could escape if locked up in one of these only two cells!

This really is a lovely little Festival.  Trish and I will be back next year!

Our “New” Jeep!

 The first vehicle that I ever drove was an early 50’s Jeep CJ 3.  The Jeep belonged to my best friend, David Morgan’s great uncle, Mr. Homer West, whom everyone called  “Old Slick.”

Old Slick owned all of Big Stomp Mountain above WAYNESVILLE and he had an old log fox hunting cabin high up on the mountain.  Starting when we were in the seventh grade Old Slick let us go camping at the cabin AND…he let us (we were all of thirteen years old) drive his Jeep so we didn’t have to walk and carry all our gear up the mountain. We did that from age thirteen all through our college years.

The Jeep was green and just about like the one in this picture.

(I have a new book coming out March 1 entitled “How They Linger.”  It contains, with sixteen other stories, the whole story of Old Slick and camping on the mountain.)

Since then I always wanted an old Jeep like that.  

Living on Ocracoke it is possible, with a four-wheel permit, to drive on most of the beach and several other off-road routes.  After looking round, we were able to locate a wonderfully restored 1965 CJ 5 Jeep in Ohio.  We bought the Jeep and Trish’s son, Greg, hauled it down to the island for us.

First thing we did was get the permit and then take it out to the beach for a winter ride,  it was a good day and Trish spotted several perfect Scotch Bonnet shells and a starfish for us to collect.

Now it is safely installed in the garage, but, when summer comes the top will come off and we will be able to take you for a ride!

The Yard in Winter

 At the beginning of this week we had our big freeze of the year.  This often happens only once each winter, but, when it does, we feel it.

The banana trees are now instantly dead as are the impatiens, the geraniums, and all the other blooming things we had been enjoying in this extended season.

So, now it is time to clean out all the flower beds and start new ones for the coming spring.  

The first little noses of 200 daffodil bulbs are starting to poke out of the big bed on the left.  The other beds have been getting compost worked into them for the plants that will come along later.

In the garage garden room there are already plants coming up getting ready for those spaces.

Our safe time for setting out things here comes around  the first week of March.  By then we should have several hundred plants ready to go.  Doing this helps us get through the winter!

Happy New Year!

 It is 2024 and the sun is still rising over Ocracoke Island!  

As we look around our little home on the Island, we are thinking about all the things that make our world beautiful in the midst of hardships.

We still have lots of flowers blooming even at this time of year.

At the same time, we are now in the process of starting seeds for the coming springtime.  It is a total cycle to be starting new plants while our old plants have now yet given up…just like humans! 

The pansies are nestled among the bearded irises and the irises will gradually replace the pansies as weather warms up.  Every thing around us in nature duplicates some dimension of our own progressing lives.  

Come to see us in the summer and see what our world looks like by then.