Once More at the Renaissance Festival

The Renaissance Festival is such a great opportunity to gawk and take pictures that I had to go back one more time.  Last weekend was the final weekend of the year, and it started out chilly but warmed up to comfortable very quickly.  I have been trying to capture the people who blow soap bubbles with their hands but it is very hard.  This is as close I've managed to come this year.

There is always at least one baby that catches my fancy.

This little girl was really chowing down on her corn on the cob.  Getting her arm painted must have given her an appetite!

As I was sitting in one of the shows, I noticed a young girl who was very busy drawing.  I got up and moved to where I could see her better.  She was very intent on what she was doing.

Often the visitors to the festival are in costume and are accompanied by a "friend" or two.  This one had a shoulder buddy and a bosom buddy she calls "titmouse".  It doesn't look like the titmice I know, but then I'm a birder, not a festival groupie.

So long to the Renaissance Festival for this year.  See you next year, I hope.

Storytelling in Tennessee

The first weekend in October I spent a wonderful three days in little Jonesborough, Tennessee at the National Storytelling Festival.  Picture three days of listening to some of the best storytellers in the world doing their stories just for you--and hundreds of your closest "friends" packed into a very large tent.  There were five of these tents scattered over a five or six block area.

You needed to get to your venue of choice early.  My strategy was to take water and nibbles, choose the venue where I could be content most of the day, and leave only to go to the bathroom or stretch.  Someone would always mind your seat for you, and you returned the favor for them.  Because you tended to be there early (or ended up standing for the hour's program) you got time to watch the setting up process.  The sound and lighting were excellent, especially considering that often there were 500 people in a tent, sometimes listening with reverence to the grand dame of tellers, Kathryn Wyndam, who is in her 90s and sometimes listening to much more boisterous tellers such as Bill Lepp.  Those sound technicians were awesome.  We were not allowed to photograph the performers, but the crew was fair game.

The only time the sound crew was out of its depth was when the trains came by, and then you just had to wait.  Two of the tents were VERY close to the tracks, and they were NOT quiet.  I didn't have to do more than just turn my little Canon camera in the right direction to get this picture, and some of those trains are LONG!  This one had five engines and seemed to go on forever!

If you got hungry, the local restaurants and scout groups and church groups were all ready and willing to sell you food.  I'm sure some of these groups make good money during this event.  The schools let you park in their lots and on their grounds (for a fee, of course) as do many of the local residents.  If you park at the schools, there is a constant stream of shuttle buses running right into town (five minutes away) and you are poised for a quick exit.  It is cheaper to pay for parking at the school and a couple of bucks each way on the shuttle than to park in town.

When the weather was drippy and chilly, the places selling hot drinks and hot food did a booming business.  When it warmed up, the ice cream shop had a line out the door.  Whatever the weather the Lollipop Shop was always busy.

Jonesborough is a pretty little town, and one of its churches presented a nice view near sunset one day.

This was my second time at Jonesborough, and the storytellers were as great as I remembered them being.  There were so many styles of story from the gentle stories of Kathryn Windham to the outrageous ones by Bill Lepp to the hilarious ones by Don Davis that had me laughing until tears ran down my face.  If you think this is something that would interest you, check out http://www.storytellingcenter.net/festival/  and then reserve your place to stay in the spring.  There isn't much in the way of motel space in town and most of us stayed in places like Johnson City, about 20 minutes away.  If you wait till September, you'll just be plain out of luck.

Searching for Ancestors

My mother's maternal grandparents are buried in West Virginia, and her paternal grandfather is buried in Gordonsville, VA.  I figured I could detour a bit when I headed down to Tennessee for the weekend and see both sites.  I had actually been to both of them years ago when I was about 16 years old, and with the help of www.findagrave.com I had good directions to both grave sites. 

The cemetery in Gordonsville had a contact person, so when I asked her if there were a map available that tells who is buried where, she actually went out to the site to verify where my great-grandfather is buried and sent me a map with the section marked in red and a description of landmarks surrounding it.  That one was a cinch and here is the proof.  This fellow died in 1880 when he was only 32 years old, leaving a wife and five children.  The oldest child, my grandfather, was only 12 at the time, and the youngest, named after his father, died a few months later.  Both father and son died of consumption, as tuberculosis was known then.  Here lies the father, George W. Rhodes.  I wished that I had thought to bring a large sheet of paper and crayons or chalk to make a rubbing of the markings, because I couldn't get older eyes to decipher the saying at the bottom.  Next time, perhaps.

The engraving on this stone is long gone, but the stone is small enough to be a child's, and my assumption is that it is the grave of the little one who died not long after his father.

The following day I moved into West-by-God Virginia.  I had directions to the old Greenbrier Church outside Alderson, and the Perry great-grandparents are buried in the cemetery behind the church.  However...

There are NO pictures of Greenbrier Church or the gravestones. I will make a concerted effort to find and scan in the ones I have from years ago and be done with it. I had reasonable directions, but very UNREASONABLE roads.  Some so-called roads I was on at one point made the Going to the Sun Highway in Montana, which I drove this summer, look tame. Almost one lane wide with a tiny space on the edges in case, God forbid, you met someone on the roads which were series on tight S's, that was white-knuckle driving in the extreme.  Fortunately I only met someone once or twice as I drove. When I got to the church after making several wrong turns because I couldn't believe what they wanted me to drive on was considered a road, there was no place to park and no way for several more miles of that road to even turn around. I finally found a real driveway with a real person coming out, and I asked for directions back to Alderson. She suggested I follow her since she was going there. I thought she knew another way.  She apparently did not, for back we went along the same treacherous wanna-be road I had just come along. At least she was the lead going around the curves this time. I figured if she met anyone they would get her first! In Alderson, which isn't much, I found the road to Pence Springs, which is where my grandfather once had a general store.  There was NOTHING there but a gas station with a bathroom, which by then I was beginning to need.  Thank goodness for small blessings!  Onward. I went through Lowell, site of Grandpa's other store in the area and that was a bust, too. SOOOO! Enough of WV. My original plans had an option of going to the county seat in Union to do some research, but that would have required another of those narrow winding roads.  I know, because one of my wrong turns took me a ways down it!  I headed back along roads that were a bit wider and better paved to civilization for the night, stopping in Wytheville, VA.  I do NOT plan to go back to Greenbrier Church. 

Next stop, Jonesborough, TN for the National Storytelling Festival.  Stay tuned!