I am hopelessly behind. I'm just now figuring out what I'll be cooking for Thanksgiving, and already gingerbread-themed, Christmas time events are popping up all over the region. While they're starting on the early side for my taste, they all sound delicious.
Houses in every shape and size, some complete with little streets, and even entire villages are being constructed of gingerbread rectangles and gum drops and candy canes and gallons of warm, dripping icing. Yum.
If you visit any of these palatable properties, be sure to eat lunch first. We don't need anyone dragged out of a fancy resort for gnawing off licorice gutters.
And post your comments/photos here, letting us know what you think.

Gingerbread Village at The Homestead Resort, Hot Spring, Virginia

National Gingerbread House Competition at Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina
On its Website, The Grove Park Inn declares "bring us your tired, your grouchy, your hum, your drum." They'll cheer them all up with edible art pieces submitted from across the country. The contest winners will be on display November 16-January 1, and you can go behind the scenes with a guided tour that provides details about the houses' construction.
Also, be sure to watch Good Morning America on the morning of Friday, December 23. Several of this year's entries will be featured.
Gingerbread Festival at Longwood Park, Salem, Virginia 
I have many happy memories of sitting on a curb in Salem, Virginia with hot chocolate smeared across my upper lip, while I watched high school bands go by along with floats made by realtors, giant walking versions of my favorite cartoon characters, and eventually, after a long, cold wait, Santa Claus himself riding the back of a red firetruck. The legendary Salem Christmas Parade has been a tradition in the Roanoke area for years, and the town has built off of its reputation for holiday fun by adding the Gingerbread Festival. It's an entire day, December 3, of food, music, arts and crafts, all culminating in a gingerbread house competition.

I don't post about books that I've not finished. That's largely because I'd hate to talk up a book only to find that it tanks after the first one hundred pages.
I'm on page seventy-five of Burning Bright, and I can't hold back any longer. I'm about to burst over Ron Rash's collection of North Carolina stories.
The first three of them, the ones that I have read, are set in a dim Appalachia, where light never seems to rise above a twilight glow. In spite of the book's beaming title, Rash establishes this gloomy reality right off. In the book's opening paragraph, a character can see dawn shining from the other side of a ridge, but in his holler it is still dark. We are told a simple saying that was uttered by his father...
This cove's so damn dark a man about has to break light with a crowbar.
It's a crisp expression, isn't it?
It conveys a matter-of-fact violence. Rash writes about this hard blow almost like it's a morning chore, like these people have to repeat it every day of their lives.
Even in a single sentence, you can taste Rash's secret sauce. He delivers words sparingly, but not like he's withholding them from you. He's just patient. It's like he has a bag of bread and you, the reader, are a duck. He feeds you slowly, not to watch you beg but because he's giving you time to digest your first morsel before tossing you a second.
With another writer, you might give up and walk away, but Rash isn't feeding you bland, old white bread. From the beginning, he infuses his stories with flavor, foreboding, a dark allure that moves you from page to page. Take for instance, the opening paragraph from "Dead Confederates:"
I never cared for Wesley Davidson when he was alive and seeing him beside me laid out dead didn't much change that. Knowing a man for years and feeling hardly anything in his passing might make you think poorly of me, but the hard truth is had you known Wesley you'd probably feel the same. You might do what I done--shovel dirt on him with not so much as a mumble of a prayer. Bury him under a tombstone with another man's name on it, another man's birth and dying day chipped in the marble, me and an old man all the living ever to know that was where Wesley Davidson laid in the ground.
You know what's coming next. You're going to find out how this fellow got in this predicament. Rash doesn't try to surprise you. After this gruesome set up, he goes back to begining and lets the events unfold. Again, his writing is simple and clear, but knowing that this story ends with Wesley Davidson buried in another man's grave, how can you not keep reading?
One reader calls Rash's writing "country noir." Many others have compared him to Raymond Carver. (I'm curious who all remembers him.) In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Carver revived interest in short stories by delivering simple, accessible gems. They were dark and clean, well written pieces about working class people. You would not be surprised to find them in Readers Digest or Best American Short Stories.
[caption id="attachment_4553" align="alignleft" width="150"] Ron Rash[/caption]
I suspect that Rash would be honored to appear in either of these publications. In his bio, he seems to be as humble as his writing. He says that his literary career was inspired by a man who could neither read nor write:
It was a warm summer evening and my grandfather, still dressed in his work clothes, was smoking a Camel cigarette as he lingered at the kitchen table after a hard day’s work. When I handed my grandfather the red and blue book (“The Cat and the Hat”) and asked him to read to me, he did not offer any excuse, not even the most obvious one. Instead, he laid the open book on the table before us, peering over my shoulder as he turned the pages with his work-and-nicotine-stained fingers, and I heard the story of a talking cat and his high, blue-striped hat.

The effectiveness of my grandfather’s performance was verified by my begging him to read “The Cat and the Hat” again the following Sunday. His story was different this time. The cat got into more trouble, and out of it less easily. At every opportunity in the following weeks, I ambushed my grandfather so I might hear what new events might occur in this cat’s ever-changing life. How could I not grow up believing words were magical? How could I not want to be a writer?
That's a hopeful start for a man who'd later build his career around illicit burials and (in the below story) meth addicts, but it worked for Rash. He not only became a writer, but a successful one to boot. His acclaimed 2008 novel "Serena"--described as a gothic tale of greed, corruption, and revenge--was named to the Publishers Weekly “Best Books of the Year” list, and it was rated No. 7 on Amazon’s list of the 100 best books of 2008.
With three collections of poetry, three short story collections, and four novels, there's no doubt about it. Ron Rash has become an Appalachian mainstay. You can see why in "Back of Beyond," a story about an aging pawn shop owner who's trade with meth addicts eventually hits home.
When you finish reading it, post a comment. Tell us what you think of the story and if you agree that Ron Rash is, in fact, burning bright.

*

BACK OF BEYOND
BY RON RASH

CONTINUE READING

I'm not ashamed to admit that I like The Waltons. When I say so, younger friends stare at me blankly. They think I'm talking about the neighbors or some family at church. People over thirty-five respond in one of two ways. Either they invite me to sit on their porch and compare our favorite episodes or they smirk. Now, this is not your regular smirk, but the kind that substitutes for rolling your eyes when rolling your eyes would be too blatantly condescending. It's a smirk that says, "You can take the boy out of the holler, but you can't take the holler out of the boy."
Well, they're right. There's still a lot of the holler in this boy. That's why I like to cook with bacon grease and random pig parts; that's why I like to nap in pine needles; and that's why I like to watch The Waltons. Not only is the show set in a place that is dear to me, it is also first rate storytelling, and it bucked the mold for its day.
The Waltons illustrated a functional, loving family when other shows were exposing all of our real life dysfunctions (think Archie Bunkerand Maude). It faithfully recreated simple, depression era living in the 1970s and early 1980s--a time typified by poly-blend suits and space age television sets (think The Sonny and Cher Show). It wasn't bawdy or daring, but in its own way, it was revolutionary.
It treated country people with respect. These weren't the hillbilly rapists of Deliveranceor the vigilantly bigots of To Kill a Mockingbird. These were good hearted, fair minded people, living in a tight knit community. The show addressed hot button issues like race and gender equality, but it did so in the same way that many real people did at the time, quietly and thoughtfully in the context of their daily lives.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="227"] Boyhood home of Earl Hamner in Nelson County, Virginia[/caption]
As you may know, this gem of Appalachian entertainment started with books. Earl Hamner published Spencer's Mountain in 1961. It was our first glimpse at the family that would later be called the Waltons. In this book and in The Homecoming: A Novel About Spencer's Mountain (1970), the family was called the Spencers, but they were largely identical to the clan we know from television. They even featured a character called Clayboy, who was the bridge between television's John-Boy Walton and the author himself.
Like Clayboy and John-Boy, Hamner was born into a large mountain family. He dreamt of going to college and writing, but nothing seemed less attainable. He wrote this conflict into the plot of The Waltons. In a recent post on his blog, Hamner describes the way the storyline mirrored his real life and how he managed to go to college:
John-Boy’s mother has just discovered a tablet the boy has hidden under his mattress. She demands to know what is in it. He replies:
“You know what’s in this tablet, Mama? All my secret thoughts- how I feel, and what I think about. Things I never told anybody ‘till now. What it’s like late at night to hear a whippoorwill call and its mate call back, the rumble of the midnight train crossen the trestle at Rockfish, watchen water go by in the creek and knowen that some day it’ll reach the ocean and wonderen if I’ll ever see the ocean. Sometimes I hike over to Route 29 and watch the people in their cars and wagons go by and I wonder what their lives are like. Things stay in my mind, Mama. I can’t forget anything. It all gets bottled up and sometimes I feel like a crazy man. Can’t sleep or rest till I rush off up here and write it in that tablet.
“I do vow,” replied Olivia.
“If things had been different, Mama, I think I could have done somethen with my life. What I would have liked, Mama, was to have tried . . .to be .. a writer!
“If that’s what you want, couldn’t you still try? “ Asked Olivia.
“It wouldn’t be right,” he answered. “Not in these times. It takes a college education to be a writer and even if we had the money it wouldn’t be right to risk it all on me. And anyway I can’t disappoint my daddy. He’s got his heart set on me taking up a trade.”
Olivia replied, “He just want you to know how to make a living.”
“I could sure never do that scribblen things down in a tablet.”
But time would prove me wrong. Through the intervention of Laura Horsley, the wife of our company doctor I received a scholarship to the University of Richmond. But that was only half the battle. The scholarship paid for tuition only. There was still food and board, textbooks to be bought, fees of several kinds. Through the generosity of three of my father’s sisters I was taken into their home in Richmond and given food and lodging. Our local Baptist minister gave me a crash course in Latin, one of the requirements the University needed before I could qualify to accept the scholarship. My father ruefully parted with the white shirt he had planned to be buried in, and my mother spent the money she earned from selling eggs and buttermilk to buy me a suit from Sears and Roebuck. She showed a picture of it to me in the catalogue before it arrived – “the fabric is of green herringbone, with vest to match and an extra pair of trousers.” And it cost nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents. Took every cent of my mother’s buttermilk money!
Lucky for us, Hamner made it through school and became one of the Appalachian region's most successful sons. Honoring the deep impact that he has made on literature, the Library of Virginia will award Hamner with the 2011 Literary Lifetime Achievement Award on October 15.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="270"] Hamner Family Kitchen[/caption]
Now a resident of California, the 88 year old Hamner will return to Virginia to accept the award. The ceremony will be in Richmond, where he will headline a lively conversation on the role of television in American life and culture over the past 60 years. In addition to The Waltons, Hamner created the long-running, night-time soap opera Falcon Crest and wrote for Rod Serling's classic series The Twilight Zone. If you're in the area, it should be a fascinating discussion.
If you're not able to attend, you can read an excellent interview with Hamner in the Library of Virginia's quarterly magazine Broadside. The author discusses the impact of the Blue Ridge Mountains on his work and his latest projects--a children's book about a goose that escapes a death warrant, another children's book about an American boy and an Aboriginal boy raising an orphaned kangaroo, and a "light hearted guide to the golden years", which this prolific writer certainly seems to be taking in stride.
Now, I have to ask, are there any other fans of The Waltons out there?
If so, please oh please post a comment and tell us why the show matters to you. Also, be sure to check out Earl Hamner's April 2010 update on the lives of your favorite cast members. One has recently appeared on Broadway. Another has had a touring cabaret act. A third actually lived in Hamner's home county--Nelson County, Virginia--for many years.
Hamner says that even though they are spread out and living disparate lives, they all stay in touch. Thirty years after the television show stopped running, it sounds like they still function like one big family.

When we visited Asheville a few weeks back, the work of local artists was everywhere--in galleries, in coffee shops, lining downtown sidewalks on tabletops, and even at a tailgate farmer's market out by UNCA.
We picked a few of our favorites. Now you can pick yours. Check out the below works and vote for the one you like best.
 
[polldaddy poll="5261907"]
 
Linwood Wood Carving

Just North of Asheville alongside the French Broad River lies Marshall, North Carolina, home to Blue Hill Farms, which produces great looking course ground grits and these beautiful hand carved spoons.
I was so struck the middle one--the spoon that tappers into an elegant elongated bird's head--I forgot to ask the woodcarver his name. He had a bushy beard and a friendly disposition. He seemed to be a regular at the UNCA tailgate farmer's market. If anyone knows him, by all means, let us know. He deserves so much praise for his beautifully carved utensils.
 
 
Anonymous Mugs
I've got to be better about capturing artists names--missed this one too. Luckily, I did capture a shot of two whimsical mugs in Clingman Cafe, a tasty spot in Asheville's visit-it-while-it's-still-hip River Arts District. I'm not sure who the little lady is teasing, but her devil horn stance is just strange enough to make me dig her.
 
Blue Mountain Bowls
Walking outside the Grove Arcade, I passed table after table of local crafts. Many were lovely, but one struck me as being truly "museum quality". Carl Pittman has carved bowls into remarkable art pieces. Some are fully functional; some are meant to be displayed, maybe behind lucite with lasers protecting them. They're that nice.
The bowl pictured here stands out for me. It is simple and earthy with a prominent grain. The concentric rings are thin and even, almost as if they were painted atop the golden hue of the bowl's base color. Also, I'm a sucker for things that come in threes--the holy trinity, french hens, musketeers-stuff like that.
 
 
 

There are people who know the Blue Ridge Parkway well--avid hikers, commuters who drive their given stretches daily, park rangers--but I doubt any of them hold a candle to Janet Wimmer. This Virginia artist doesn't just admire the parkway. She reproduces it leaf by leaf.
In 2009, Janet decided to paint a new scene from the Blue Ridge Parkway every single day for a year. Pounds of paint and hundreds of canvases later, Janet has produced an amazing body of work and a testament to the most visited national park in the United States.
This weekend, she put down her brush long enough to talk to me about her passion for the parkway.
TR: Janet, I've loved your work since the first time I saw it. It is beautiful, and it shows a perseverance that's kind of mind-blowing. What made you decide to paint one painting of the Blue Ridge Parkway every day for a year?
JW: The biggest problem for most artists is in deciding what to paint. I live just a quarter of a mile from the Parkway in Blue Ridge, Virginia and my goal is to improve as a landscape painter; so this really was a no-brainer. I began to paint my “backyard”.  And after teaching many years and not painting as much as I would have liked, I felt that I needed a goal to get caught up on lost time. I strongly believe in setting goals, stretching myself and going after passions. And if you really want to succeed at something, you have to seriously immerse yourself in it. So I figured that a painting a day (five days a week) for one year would be a good start to my journey.
TR: Now, I know you met this goal last September, but it would be great to hear how that year went. What was your typical day like when you were producing a new painting every day?
JW: I love to paint on location, but I realized, early on in the project, that would not be feasible due to time and weather conditions. So to make the project realistic, I gessoed five canvases each Saturday and took photos of the Parkway on Sunday afternoon. Each week, I would do the underpainting/value study for each of the five paintings by Tuesday night and then finish the paintings by Friday or Saturday morning. These were the paintings I would post the next week while I was working on the paintings for the following week.
TR: Were there days when you got up and thought, "I can't do this today?"
JW: Actually, there was never a day when this became a burden. There were times when I painted more than five a week and I was able to take a day off now and then, and, of course, I took off holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. The project would have been a breeze if I were not also keeping my granddaughter and teaching private lessons. I paint fast and like to keep the impression pure. Sometimes the longer you work on a painting the worse it gets, so pushing myself to paint quickly was actually good.
TR: Do you remember finishing your lasts daily painting? How did it feel?
JW: I do remember finishing my last painting! It felt like I had finished running a marathon! Success brings joy and relief and a deep breath, but you can’t just stop. Even a runner needs to keep running slowly to come down from the high stress level of adrenalin. It really took me several months of slowing down to feel at ease taking a break.
TR: Now the project didn't end there. You've kept painting the parkway, right? Do you have a new goal? How often are you painting now?
JW: My new goal is to keeping painting! I have a backlog of paintings but artists do not paint to sell; they paint because it is a “calling”. I need to paint almost as much as I need to breathe. It is a passion that I repressed for many years thinking about money or lack of it. You just get to a point when materialism gets thrown out the window and you do what you love. My thinking now is to go ahead and finish the whole 469 miles – to paint something from the major overlooks and cover the whole parkway. Instead of backpacking it, I am painting it. I have a deep reverence for beauty that I want to share with others. My hope is that the “poetry” of the parkway will inspire viewers to visit this national treasure, to breathe in the woodland scents, to hear the whippoorwill, to be transported to a little piece of “heaven”, and maybe even to work toward conserving the natural beauty found there.
TR: So you're really painting with a mission. I love that. I also think your paintings would make a great gift for anyone who's a fan of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Are they for sell? Where can folks find them?
JW: I have tried to keep my prices really low so that anyone could buy an original piece of artwork to have in their home. I really want others to be able to have something that brings them peace and joy and remembrances of special times. My blog records this journey from the day I began in September of 2009 to today, and orders can be taken at my website or just by emailing me at janetwimmer at gmail.com. I do local shows; my next will be in Bath County, July 16-24 at Valley Elementary School in Hot Springs, Virginia. My gallery in Roanoke just closed, so I am looking for another gallery, but anyone can keep in touch at my Facebook page.
TR: Thanks, Janet. Best of luck with the gallery search and the upcoming show.
So what do you think about Janet's work? And if you were going to paint the same stretch every day for a year, where would it be?
Join the conversation by posting a comment below.

[caption id="attachment_3665" align="alignright" width="180"] My Mother[/caption]
What is it about Appalachian women?
Take my mother for instance. She is 64 as of today (happy birthday, Momma!) and still a tornado of a woman.
Two weeks ago, I listened as she scolded neighborhood hoodlums from her porch in Southeast Roanoke. These were probably shirtless boys, thin to the ribs, running around in baggy jeans, maybe with knives, maybe with guns. Riotous packs carouse her neighborhood day and night. Mother doesn’t mind them until they try cutting through her corner yard.
She stopped me mid-conversation. “Woah’now,” she yelled, “There will be none of that. You get your little asses right back in that street.”
I could practically hear the boys freeze. I imagined them standing perfectly still between her porch and the back fence, their jaws drooped open because no one ever calls them out.
On my end of the line, two hundred miles away, I held my breath and waited to see what this wild woman would do. Thirty-seven years into knowing her, and I still can’t guess.
Only one of the trespassers had the cohunes to talk back. For all his adolescent bravado, he was reduced to a whiny excuse. “Buuuut she was chasin us.”
A lone girl waited for them at the edge of Mother’s yard. An Appalachian woman in training, she had these ruffians on the run. I couldn't tell why, but now the boys were stuck between her and a crazy old lady.
I can speak from experience. Mother has whooped fellers bigger than these, and I don’t mean a polite whack on the behind. She can sling a belt and words all at once, roughing you up on the outside and the inside.
I was starting to worry for these boys. They were in for it.
Then all of sudden, she hollered back, “Well, stupid,” she said with mock indignation, “If a pretty girl is chasin ya, why don’t ya let her catch ya?”
Then she erupted with the hoarse laughter of a former-smoker, and released the boys from her verbal grip. I could hear their footfalls as they rushed back to the pavement.
“Oo’yeah, I got him good,” she said, returning her attention to me, “He’s just a’blushin.”
What could I say?
“Give ‘em Hell, Momma” was the only option. The screen door thumped behind her, and I marveled over my Mother at the other end of the line.
Living with Appalachian women is exhilarating. From minute to minute, you don’t know if you’re going to be whacked upside the head, lovingly picked on, made to massage their feet, or held like you’re the last person on Earth.
Love and fury, it all comes full throttle.
Willie Davis has written a story about women like this. His protagonist, a young man named Jesse, falls in with ladies who are wild and tender in turns. They are not above using a shovel to keep you in line or sewing up your busted head in the open air of a Hazard County porch.
Published by storySouth, “A Family of Women” captures an elusive feminine bluntness that I have long admired.
Do these ladies strike you as familiar too?
If so, tell us all about the Appalachian women that you love and/or fear.

*

A FAMILY OF WOMEN
BY WILLIE DAVIS
I didn’t know how, and I didn’t want to know how, but on the first night Hannah Holiday and I spent alone together, she told me how she hit that boy with a shovel, as casually as if she were talking about last night’s dreams. To hear her tell it, the kid had had it coming for a long, long, long time. He was begging for it, practically on his knees praying for a right-thinking adult to pound some sense into him. No one liked that boy. He swore and spat at women, gave the finger to cars, and pushed little kids around, even ones as young as her daughter Abby had been, and she was just barely out of diapers at the time. Clearly, he took after his jailbird father the car thief even more than his half-mad junkie mother. Besides, the boy was so goddamn filthy that anyone could see the lice treating his upper body like a playground, leaping from his curls to his ear to the collar of that brown and yellow striped shirt he wore every single day of his life like he was some ragamuffin Charlie Brown, and she wouldn’t normally let him around her daughter if he was offering candy and flowers, because she didn’t want her to catch Ebola or some such thing. When that boy shoved her daughter down and stood over her laughing, Hannah Holiday simply did what any normal parent would do and went to scare the kid. If she aimed to hurt him, then this world would be one delinquent lighter, she can guarantee you that, because she would have cocked that shovel back and treated that boy’s head like a tee-ball, and you better believe there’d be lot of homeless lice in Hazard, Kentucky. As it was, she barely tapped the boy, but had to take him to the doctor’s on account of his bleeding. She drove him to the hospital herself, because she didn’t want any real harm to come to the boy. And if it’d really been so bad, why didn’t they charge her with anything? You can’t just go smacking kids who don’t deserve it with a shovel and not get charged for it, now can you? That right there shows a lot of what they say about her was garbage.
CONTINUE READING

Have you ever fallen for a dimwit? That is to say, have you ever overlooked social awkwardness, an oversized noggin, a nervous condition, or digestive problems because this person, though full of quirks, is nice to you, nicer than the rest of the world, and that just makes you happy?
My hand is raised high in the air right now. If yours is too, then you might identify with Robert Gipe's very short story "Troubled Colon." It was published in the Fall 2010 issue of Appalachian Heritage.

*

TROUBLED COLON
BY ROBERT GIPE
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="184"] Colon in Felt[/caption]
My boyfriend, Willett, is in the bathroom. He has a troubled colon. I’m in love with a boy with a troubled colon. I say this in my mind to the stringy-headed girl up in the check-cashing booth at the grocery store in Willett’s town in Tennessee. I don’t say it out loud. I say it in my mind. What I say out loud is:
“Can I use this phone?”
And that girl says “yis” through her no se and turns and walks away like she can’t bear to watch me using her phone. But it’s not her phone. It’s the store’s phone. Her phone says “dial 1-800-hateful.”
I call my aunt June and say, “What are you doing?” She says, “nothing,” and I say, “This boy is strange. He talks all the time, and he ate too many hot peppers at the Chinese and he’s been in the bathroom a half hour.” My aunt June says, “Is he okay?” And I say, “I guess,” and I turn around and my boyfriend, Willett, is coming up the dog food aisle with toilet paper stuck on his shoe. I hear that girl in the check-cashing booth snort, and I know I better stay on the phone or I will have to whip her stringy-headed Tennessee ass right in the middle of her snotty Tennessee store.
CONTINUE READING

I remember sitting in my Daddy's johnnyboat as morning fog burnt off Smith Mountain Lake. The plop of fishing lure and landing loons were the only sounds. Trees and rippling water were the only sights. This was twenty years after the lake was made by a hydroelectric dam, and we still found unspoiled spots.
Now you can't spit on the shoreline without hitting a McMansion. They loom over the water. Big and cheap, the houses are spaced too close to retain a rural identity but not close enough to remotely resemble smart growth. They are sprawling lakeside suburbs, and in my opinion, the perfect waste of a special place.
I've only seen two positives come of the growth around Smith Mountain Lake. First, it's been an economic boon for a couple of counties that have never seen such a thing. Second, it seems to have inspired a beautiful short story.
In "The Weight of Water," Michael Chitwood personifies the tension between developers and old timers at James Mountain Lake, a fictitious body of water that bears a striking resemblance to the one outside my hometown. It is man-made, named after a nearby mountain, and experiencing explosive growth.
Chitwood builds his stories around two characters, both symbolic but believable. Maude Thurman, a crotchety loaner, remembers the river and fields that lie under the lake. Walter Lyon, a devout Baptist, bought large tracks of land as the lake was being built; now he builds sub-developments on them. Their conflict over Maude's property reveals something surprising--a depth of faith that you might not expect from either character.
Have you seen somewhere you loved change so much that you hardly recognize it? Are we doing enough to protect precious places? And, what about the other part of this story; how does faith shape our physical world--what we build and what we save?

*

The Weight of Water
by Michael Chitwood
Maude Thurman had never prayed in her life and she wasn’t about to start. Walter Lyon could chat with the clouds all he wanted, like a God would care if Walter built another subdivision or not. In fact, if Maude would consider praying for anything it would be that a hole would open up under this lake and it would drain like a bath tub when the stopper is pulled.
That was a good thought. Fish flopping in the mud. All those houses and barns the water had covered up rising again into the air. The old landscape returning and the river flowing again under the cliffs across the way.
She would miss her visitor. Actually she didn’t know if the visitor was singular or plural. It was usually dark so she couldn’t see “him” or “them.” The sound of the water being moved could be a “the m.” But he was part of the lake and she’d let him go if she could be shed of the weight of all that water.
But the lake wasn’t going anywhere. One of the things that Maude did best was face facts and that was a fact—the lake was here to stay. Too many people like Walter had way too much invested to let anything happen to the lake.
For a moment she remembered the tug of the river when she and Tanner waded there in the late afternoon. A river is a living thing, she thought. It has moods and changes its look. It can be angry. It can dwindle and seem lovelorn, wistful. They killed her river, drowned it, to make this lake.
CONTINUE READING

My last minute gifts are sugar cookies. Yesterday, I baked two hundred of these golden little treats. Today, I am icing them and packing them in cellophane bags. They're as inexpensive as can be, but they take some time. With Christmas less than a week away, there's not much of that left.
Before you fire up the oven, you might want to check out these great, last minute gift ideas. They're all from or about the Appalachian South. Buying them is much faster than baking, and you can get them all quickly enough to have them under the tree on Christmas Eve.
Summer Peaks Series from Emerson Creek Pottery
Summer seems like a long ago memory, but Emerson Creek brings it all back. Its Summer Peaks series pays homage to the pottery's notable neighbor--The Peaks of Otter. This popular Virginia hiking spot is depicted as soft blue ridges surrounded by irises and offset with a field of green.
Emerson Creek Pottery has been making signature pieces like this since 1977 utilizing a unique technique. They apply natural pigments to an absorbent glaze with a Japanese Sumi-e brush. Their Website explains that the "the spontaneity of the brush stroke, combined with the accuracy of design" is key to the pottery's distinctive look.
If you order online, Emerson Creek Pottery can usually ship your order the following day. This week, it's probably wise to select Priority Mail for a two to three day delivery time.
no prescription furosemide get="_blank">The Homecoming from you can i buy clomid online r local bookseller or Amazon
Have I ever mentioned that Elizabeth Walton was my brother's imaginary friend?
She was blamed for every mishape that Michael ever caused. A broken glass-Elizabeth did it. A missing toy-Elizabeth took it. A half empty pack of cookies-Elizabeth ate them.
This fictional family played an intimate role in my childhood, and they actually did so under two names. One was the Waltons, a name created for television. The other was the Spencers, the name used in Earl Hamner's semi-autobiographical novels that inspired the hit show.
Of Hamner's warm, carefully crafted books, my favorite is the The Homecoming. Set in the 1930s, it is about the Christmas that Clay Spencer could not be found. Forced by the Depression to work forty miles from home with no car, he took a bus back to his family on the weekends. On Christmas Eve, Clay did not arrive as scheduled, so his eldest son, Clayboy, searched for him. In the process the teen found an angry deer, a fearsome county sheriff and bootlegging old ladies. In short, he found adventure.
This heartwarming, beautifully written book has held my attention for the twenty years since I first read it. It is sure to please all of the bookworms on your list. It can still be ordered from Amazon and arrive in time for Christmas or, even better, ask your local bookseller if they can get you a copy in time.
JetBoil from Blue Ridge Mountain Sports
I own one of these. In fact, I used it to make coffee on last summer's camping misadventure. When you're ready for a warm cup of joe or you need to boil water for one of those instant, camping foodpacks, it can't be beat.
It's light and compact, packing down to the size of a water bottle. With a built-in coffee press and optional attachments for a fry pan and pots, it is basically a little stove to-go.
With Blue Ridge Mountain Sports, based just outside of Charlottesville, you can order as late as December 22 and still receive your package before December 25. Click around when you get to the site; this locally grown outfitters has everything from winter gloves to kayaks.
Preserves and Fruit Butters from West Virginia Fruit and Berry
Aren't edible gifts wonderful?
I especially like those with a decent shelf life. Long after the fudge, cookies, and peanut butter candy is gone, I will sometimes find a jar of apple butter given by a friend. It's like Christmas is revived when I spread a heaping spoonful across piping hot toast and bite into it. Yum.
The folks at West Virginia Fruit and Berry have mastered the craft of canned treats. They make every kind of imaginable preserve--plum to blueberry--along with all natural butters made from apples, pumpkin, cherries, or peaches.  All of their products are free of additives, preservatives, and corn syrup.
If you're near Bridgeport, West Virginia, you can pick them up at the company's store, The Berry Patch. They are also available at gift shops throughout West Virginia and at Kroger grocery stores in Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia.

[caption id="attachment_2200" align="alignleft" width="327"] Mountain Calm by Scott Hotaling, 2008 Finalist, BRP Vistas, Courtesy ASU Outdoor Program[/caption]
Listen up, shutterbugs. The 8th Annual Appalachian Mountain Photography Competition is on. It's for professional and amateurs alike. With $4,000 in cash and prizes, there's plenty of reason to get out that old rangefinder and show your stuff.
Whether your favorite shot is a a white water kayaker going under or a single flower standing tall, the competition has a category to fit.
In addition to mainstays like "Adventure" and "Flora and Fauna," this year boasts a special grouping called The Parkway Tree Project. It "seeks to bring greater public awareness to the rich natural resources of the region and to document significant trees that contribute to the character, environment, and/or aesthetic of the Blue Ridge Parkway." Seems like a fitting tribute during The Parkway's 75th year.
Whether you submit or not, take a look at these winners from prior years. I'm partial to the first one--the tree bailer photo; it's got a little grit, a little haze, and I've always wanted to operate one of those.
Have a favorite?
If so, post a comment. Let us know!
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Watch the trailer for Mutzmag: An Appalachian Folktale and let me know if we made the same mistake. I clicked play and thought, "It's a family film, set deep in the Appalachians, and it faithfully recreates mountain life around the 1920s or 30s? Oh, it's kind of like The Waltons."
I always liked The Waltons. The stories were solid and hopeful; the sets and costumes were true to their time and place; and the characters were believable archetypes from our region--the hardworking father, the crotchety granny, mischievous but goodhearted children. Each week, their drama revealed something pure about country life and optimistic about humankind.
With John Boy in mind, I leaned back, propped my laptop on my belly, and began to watch the full version of Mutzmag. The film opens with stark poverty. An ill woman is tending her garden, which is not filled with bounty but instead just a few square feet of cabbage. She is next to her room-sized shack. Inside, the walls are decorated with newsprint and her daughters sit amongst their few belongings.
From the window, the youngest--Mutzmag--sees her mother collapse. The scene cuts to the shack's single bed, where the mother says, "I hurt so bad. Lorda'mercy girls, I believe I'm a dying." And that she does. The girls burry her between her two dead husbands up the hill.
"This is off to a grim start," I thought as winter sets in and the three girls begin to starve. They head out, on foot, to find a better life. At nightfall, they knock on the door of a cabin to ask for food and lodging. I've read ""Hansel and Gretel." I knew that this would go badly, but I couldn't have imagined how badly.
I won't spoil it for you, but let's just say that the director, Tom Davenport, dances on the line between family fare and a true horror flick. Think of all the dreadful things that could happen with a witch and giant in the woods. A movie from Pixar or Disney might allude to them, but they let your imagination fill the gaps, right?
Not Davenport. Cannibalism, squirrel carcasses, and a grisly scene with a dog in a tote and a very big stick--they're on the screen, and it's scary. I cringed. My belly churned. I even closed my eyes once, thinking "Lord, if Elizabeth Walton saw this, she'd wet herself."
That's probably true. Mutzmag isn't right for the little ones, but if you have kids over age twelve, this is your chance to give them a good scare and maybe promote some family bonding. After this spine chiller, you won't be calling out "goodnight" from the next room like one famous mountain family. Your whole brood will be huddled right there in bed beside you.
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