I may not know much about the classical pieces that were played, but I know a masterful performance when I hear it. I know a masterful performance when I feel it. Even when I was no longer consciously listening, I could feel her music affecting my body, changing the expression of my face, altering my [...]
My choice for Best in Show, titled and created by Laura Byler for the Make Me Laugh show currently up at The Jacksonville Center for the Arts.
Do you keep it up all year long?” I asked my long time friend Alwyn about her blue planet Earth flag. We were in the garden behind her apartment in a local retirement community, enjoying the wild cats, the flowering phlox and azaleas, and each other’s company. “No, I can’t,” she answered with an impish [...]
There’s still time to see the 7th Annual Youth & Student Art Exhibit at the Jacksonville Center for the Arts. The show, which showcases the talent and creativity of the youth in the Floyd community, is up until January 28. Blue Mountain and Floyd County Schools are well represented. Winter hours at the center are [...]
What can I say? They’re hippie, hick, old-time, hobo troubadour and a little punk all at once. They’ve played their Appalachian fiddle tunes, folk songs and jug band blues at the Grand Ole Opry, on Austin City Limits, Late Night with Conan and Prairie Home Companion. They opened for Dolly Parton, were personally invited by [...]
I’m a big fan of Donna the Buffalo and Jeb’s Puryear’s guitar work. They played at the Dogtown Sun Music Hall Friday and Saturday and we danced our socks off. Watch another clip HERE.
Blue Mountain School student art projects done with art teacher Lora Giessler who has since move to Portland. We miss you Lora!
The Little River in Floyd is poet/artist Jack Callan’s Walden Pond, the place he travels from Norfolk to about six times a year to camp, write poetry and paint. For the past few years Jack, who is a carpenter by trade, had been coming to Floyd’s monthly Spoken Word night to read his poetry whenever [...]
They come to fill buckets and pans, canning jars, freezer bags, pie crusts, and always, the everwaiting tongue. They come to visit and eat, to sate the hungers of loneliness and body. Though we offer only blueberries, they come wanting more. They come from the American Dream—CEOs and wealthy realtors, two kids piling out of [...]
Gibby Waitzkin’s studio filled with the smell of lavender and rose when the homemade paper bookmarks, imbedded with homegrown flowers, came out of the press, sort of like when you pinch an herb to release its scent. She placed the bookmarks between pieces of paper and cardboard for us to take home, saying, “I’d like [...]
Belfast born musician Tom Martin made some new friends in Floyd County, fans who stayed for all three of his Dogtown Roadhouse sets Saturday night and bought a collection of his CD’s to pass around between them. For me, hearing Martin perform was a perfect compliment to hearing Michael Meade, author of Fate and Destiny, [...]
~ The following was published in the November issue of Natural Awakenings of Southwest Virginia magazine For two decades Floyd potter Jayn Avery lived completely off the grid. The country home where she and her partner raised their two daughters was built in 1929 by a local farmer for his bride’s parents. It had no [...]
~The following was originally published in Natural Awakenings of Southwest Virginia In the 10 years that Blue Ridge Tree Climbing instructor Bob Wray has been climbing trees on his 40 acre Blue Ridge Parkway property, he hasn’t run out of new trees to climb or the enthusiasm for teaching others how to do it. “We [...]
“I want to see them at the Grammys next year or at least on the main stage at Floydfest,” I said to my neighbor Bob Grubel about the Flying A’s who were in town from Austin, Texas for some gigs and a house concert. It was an iconic summer evening of food cooked over a [...]
The last time I modeled for The Floyd Figures Art Group I was a single mom raising two boys and did it for the pay. I may have posed nude. This time, nearly 20 years later, I did it because I admire the artists involved and was inspired to sit for them again after seeing [...]
~ The following originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of Natural Awakenings of Southwest Virginia. What happens when two socially conscious people with backgrounds in business meet at a clothing trade show, fall in love, and pool their talents? The answer is Green Label Organic Sustainable Threads, George and Rain Lipson’s family run business [...]
This is the time of year when I have to look both ways before pulling out of my little dirt driveway off the Blue Ridge Parkway. As the fall foliage gets brighter, tourist traffic on the normally quiet Parkway gets busy. I live just a few minutes from the Saddle overlook (where Joe and I [...]
Floyd artist Lora Geissler (pictured above with two of her paintings) asked members of the Floyd Writers Circle to put a poetic voice to her recent body of work. At a Show Opening at the Café del Sol on Sunday, Mara Robbins, Rosemary Wyman and I performed some of the poetry that resulted from her [...]
