Beauty springs up in the humblest of places, astonishing us and inspiring us to pause and imagine the possibilities.

Inexplicably, this beautiful lilly grows right next to the well casing within the cinder blocks that surround it.

Generally the boys use the cinder blocks as their “wood shop,” tucking away handmade tools and meaningful stones in the nooks and crannies. At this time of year, though, this area simply becomes the place where the lilly grows. We admire it as we pass by every morning and evening on our way to the milking barn. We all gaze at it and remark upon it. It refreshes us as it quietly goes about its flowery business. We don’t know how or why it is there but no matter - every day at this time of year we pause and imagine the possibilities.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

As my husband notes in his video linked below, we have been going through a long period of contraction here on the homestead. There has been lots of selling off and going without and getting by for a while now. There has been lots of, “Where do we go from here?” and “How can we possibly do that?” (which could mean either How do we move forward? or How can we honestly allow ourselves to move backward? depending upon the context).

A small personal story from last week:
Last week, we enjoyed the delights of the Blue Ridge Parkway twice. The first time, we went to our usual spot at Rocky Knob and walked in our usual way on the trail down below along the creek. However events conspired to push us to go beyond our usual ways of exploring down there, luckily, so that we ended up walking much farther along the trail than we ever have before. As a result we discovered an entirely new area with new topography, new atmosphere, new kinds of trees and stone remains of old houses, a new creek so much larger and more babbling than the first and so on. It made such an impression on us - this alluring area full of hints of what seems better to us - that we drove back several days later to explore some more.

Now the second time some of us were a bit resistant to heading back out there because we were exhausted. We wanted to be there but the thought of getting there and back felt overwhelming (and I am not just referring to myself here with the exhaustion, by the way, but also to some of the children). I happened to have checked Best of the Blue Ridge Parkway out of the library, though, so I looked up Rocky Knob to get a more complete picture of the trail there. I discovered that the trailhead was in a different area altogether we have never visited before. We reasoned that the trailhead was probably not as mountainous as the other part of the trail we were on several days ago. It would probably be less tiring while still giving us a taste of that special outdoor atmosphere we were craving so we packed up food and water, tied on boots of various descriptions and headed out.

Oh my, oh my, oh my. This new area was heaven on earth. A big roaring creek. Waterfalls literally every ten yards. Huge boulders covered with moss and lichen. Small sparkling stones of many hues so attractive to young children. Wide, easy to follow trial. Rock foundations of past lives. Locusts and pines in abundance. We even discovered a large area where chives were already up which added just the right spice as we drink water and rested for a bit. It was the kind of place you never want to leave and obviously some people never did leave. Once upon a time, people lived there.

As we walked back to the car hours later, I found my eyes filled with tears. I was exhausted past managing but I couldn’t bear the thought of going back “home” to the usual way. No more stick built, four cornered, uncreative, industrial (even if a 1940 farm house, so called), questionably sited house on a road with suburban type houses on it that demands for itself utilities and cleaning out the gutters. As much as we may be “homesteading”, we are still a darn long way away from natural living. I don’t know for sure what all natural living truly means but I know that it means a lot more than this. I longed to stop and stay where we were and live an utterly stripped down, natural, yogic life with the sound of water ever in my ears and the example of unspoiled nature ever before my eyes to help bring me and my family back, back, back to the Original Design.

Even though I was almost too tired to walk and a natural life like that takes much effort.

The somewhat long ride home provided a transition and I was OK by the time we arrived at our stick built, four cornered, industrially built home. I was grateful to have a warm place to rest actually. It turns out, though, that the final movement of this small symphony wasn’t until the next morning.

The Life of a Prairie Mom is a blog I have been closely reading for a while now. Paula has a very calm way about her. No fireworks. No intellectual feats. No blistering analysis of current trends or groundbreaking ways of gardening. No extraordinary flow of words you can hardly keep up with in the busyness of your own day or noise of your own mind. Rather she quietly spells out certain aspects of her day and instructs along her way of thinking. She is very measured and I have found her writing peaceful and yet inspiring these last months. She writes of things I care very much about like raising and educating children in Him and relating respectfully and fruitfully with her “Beloved” (her husband) and how she organizes her sewing things and cooks real food and minimizes shopping or excess energy use and how determined they are to live off the grid. She has detailed some of the steps that she has been prudently and faithfully taking to prepare them for a new off-the-grid, simpler future and I have identified with all of it.

So next morning after this heart touching time spent out in Nature in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I opened her blog to read “Going Off-Grid.” She shares with her readers that they are going off grid as of tomorrow. It is sooner than expected but she is peaceful and faithful about it. She can only post further when and if she gets to a library which would be once a month at most. She will post again when she can. “May the Lord’s blessings be with you.”

It was the timing, I guess. I felt like I had been punched. She and her family were turning and disappearing into a simpler life, just like that, tomorrow. Wow.

With this story I am saying, and through his video my husband is saying, that we long for more. There is more than this. There is deeper to go. We have all along felt pushed to make the changes we have made so far. We have felt no choice but to go through the contractions my husband details in the video which has left us continually wondering about the future. What are we supposed to do next? We are clearly not at a balance point right now but rather at a point of movement.

I guess my question is this: does “contraction” imply muscles coiled and waiting to spring into the next level?

Please enjoy “Update Winter 2009.”

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

Two nights ago it was the coldest here it has been in over 12 years and we were without power for most of it. We were without power from about 1am to 5am. It came back on for a little while and then went out again for some hours yesterday morning.

I found this more unsettling than usual. Part of the reason is probably because I have a disconnect notice from our utility company sitting on my desk which I have no idea how to pay. Some of my unsettled feeling is due to my deepening thinking about man-made systems and the uncertainty of the future we all face.

We Americans believe - no, have a certainty - that the power will always come back on. This certainty doesn’t just out of a feeling of entitlement but is embedded in our view of reality. We have never known anything else. To confront going without, not just out of poverty, but because there simply isn’t any (electricity, gas, food, health care…) rocks our world view in fundamental ways.

But one day, that will all come true. There simply won’t be any. What will we do? How will we respond? At what point will we respond? Tomorrow, first thing? Or the day the power goes off and doesn’t come back on, and not a minute sooner?

I lay awake most of the night thinking about these things, observing the vulnerability, praying for all of those out there on a bitter cold night with no heat.

And, I thought, as close as we are as a family to living off the grid - we are still nearly close enough for my taste. We are vulnerable right now because I don’t know how I am going to pay our bill and avoid having our utilities shut off in a few days. We are vulnerable because I couldn’t get the pancakes I was already in the middle of making when we lost power again to cook properly on our wood burning stove. We are vulnerable because we don’t have immediate community around us with whom to share risks and problem solving.

I am grateful that as hard as we are working on these changes of lifestyle, we still keep getting enough small shocks to keep us highly interested in seeing this homesteading/living a simple life/getting off the grid/spiritually based family life project to its conclusion. Well, “conclusion” is probably a bad word. How could there be conclusions to such things? How about “full expression”? We are receiving enough shocks in terms of worldly bad news and challenging personal experiences to remain highly motivated to see this project through to its fullest expression.

Yes, and we also receive confirmation in many ways for the direction we are taking. A feeling of peace or satisfaction, for instance. Observing the growing competence and fortitude of our children, for another. Or the positive comments of other like-minded individuals and families or this that our spiritual Master noted recently:

Nothing is difficult. You just throw away everything and you will find that you are as happy and comfortable as you were before you got hi-tech. What does it take? Leave your computer at home, disconnect your telephone, disconnect your electricity: you are back in the beginning. It doesn’t take much. What is civilisation? It’s nothing but a few instruments of communication and illumination! What else is civilisation?

You sleep out one night and look at the stars - you are where your original forefathers were. It’s beautiful. And then you begin to wonder why on earth you went where houses are air conditioned 24 hours of the day, where you don’t know from inside whether it’s raining or not. The wind is blowing and you think it’s cool outside and you go and it’s 120 [degrees]! You wonder because it’s all artificial. So to cut off artificial is natural. There is nothing primitive about that. Natural was always natural. Sahaj Sandesh Dec. 29, 2008

Oh, it meant a lot to me to read those words. “Natural was always natural.” And always will be natural, I might add. It is us who are unnatural. We must deconstruct all that we have piled on the natural state to find our way back to a simple way of life that allows us to re-focus on the goal of human life. That is the only option. We can take it willingly and in a timely fashion or unwillingly and with all kinds of suffering and angst but take it we must.

A couple of weeks ago, a thought boomed into my mind that didn’t seem to come from me. It was, “Nature will support you if you are content to live with what Nature naturally provides.” This keeps ringing through my inner chambers completely unbidden by me. It seems to me to be one of those statements that is deceptively obvious, deceptively simple.

What does Nature willingly provide? What was the Original Contract between Nature and humans (if we can even think of humans as being at all separate from Nature in order to require a contract)? What is the difference between what Nature is created to provide us and what it will yield when forced to by humans? And how long will this yielding hold out? No. No, I want to get back to the Original Contract. I want what is willingly given and not what has perhaps been reluctantly yielded all of this time. I want to live within the Original Contract, the Original Design. I know it will be better, whether I understand it or not or even know how do it right now or not.

This notion of living within the center of what Nature willingly provides is how I understand the famous Matthew 6:25-34:

25″Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life”?

28″And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Notions about Christianity and paganism aside, I take the idea here as being the same as what I am talking about. Live as He would have you live, and the resulting harmony with Nature will provide you with all that you truly need. This is a startling thought when you think about it freshly. Fulfilling our needs comes perhaps not through our great intellect or organizational abilities or sheer (often brutal) efforts. Fulfillment of our needs perhaps comes about most quickly and easily through living in harmony with natural law.

Run as fast as you can to any corner of the universe and the Law will be there waiting for you. Cornbread Nation 3, p. 14, from Marilou Awiakata’s “Compass for Our Journey”

So for a long night and following day I considered these matters even more deeply and more urgently than I usually do. This morning I was grinding some cumin seeds for our Sunday morning breakfast in a coffee grinder when I thought, “I am going to make a list, by crackey!” Yes, I am going to make a list of all the ways we as a family rely upon “the grid” to accomplish our daily life tasks so that I can keep track of the changes and adaptations we still need to make.

I can immediately start my list with:
mortar and pestle.

Quickly I can add:
wood burning cook stove;
alternative lighting;
water storage and (hopefully) a hand water pump for outside.

When I complete our list, I will post it here in the spirit of us all working together. I do enjoy crossing things off of lists. Don’t you? But crossing items off of this list will be a special pleasure and gift, no matter how long it takes. But even more, I look forward intensely to the day that it all just dissolves into a simple life led only in Him.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

At about sunrise on these fall mornings, I am in the kitchen every day making the first of several breakfasts that get served up through the course of the morning around here. Yesterday morning as I was moving about the kitchen, I glanced out our large south-facing window and could just see the blazing pink of a sunrise out of the corner of my eye. I never open up the east facing windows in the dining room this early because the shades and blinds make too much noise and I don’t want to wake anyone. So often this flash of pink out of the corner of my eye is all I see of the sunrise.

As it got just a little bit lighter, I glanced out again and noticed one of our Nigerian Dwarf does standing up on the large compost heap at the back of the pen quietly facing the sunrise. I stopped in my tracks and stood gazing at her. She was suffused with the achingly delicate light of a November sunrise in the mountains. It struck me that she was being nourished by this light, that she was drinking it in.

I realized that one large qualitative difference between her life and mine is that she is out there being nourished by sunrises and sunsets every single day. She doesn’t see glances of them through windows. She doesn’t surmise that a sunrise took place hours after the fact when she is led out to the spring house to be milked. She doesn’t lose consciousness of sunrises for days at a time due to her work schedule. She isn’t taken by surprise by the sudden dark because she missed seeing the sun set on a particular evening. No. She is a recipient of every sunrise and every sunset the earth has to offer throughout her life. She is out in them, under them, with them. She is painted by them, drenched by them, regulated by them, strengthened by them, lightened by them. Our Nigerian doe and the earthly cycles that support her are one, each giving meaning to the other in some subtle way.

While I am frequently consciously grateful for having a house that provides us with shelter and a sense of place, I also sometimes feel caged by the very walls that keep me warm and dry. I long to be physically strong enough and mentally free enough to spend more of my day feeling Nature and less of it thinking about or observing Nature.

I want my whole being to be physically soaked by the achingly delicate light of a November sunrise. I want any consciousness of separation or difference to vanish with the fully experienced sunset. I want to unlock the secrets of natural law and natural rhythms and be strong enough to live them, no matter what they are. Perhaps a daily dose of light-of-sunrise will help me live more naturally. Perhaps a daily dose of withdrawing-of-the-light will soften and strengthen me and help me live more deeply.

Perhaps Nature is already providing exactly what we need, in the doses and timings that we need, to become what we are meant to be. Perhaps all we need to do is step outside at the right times in order to go within and go within at the right times in order to be able to truly step outside.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

It is a gloriously beautiful day today. 70 degrees, breezy and not a cloud in the sky. Pretty amazing for November 1 and pretty amazing weather in which to hand wash the laundry outside. Every single extra time I get to wash the laundry outside at this point feels like a “win” to me. So I washed away. My husband helped which takes considerable strain off of my joints.

In the middle of washing, we had to take our oldest off to a choral audition so Paul decided to load up the back of the pick-up with hay and take the children on a hay ride after dropping off Carolyn. Lucy, our border collie, and Ramone, are human loving Nigerian Dwarf buck, came with us. Everyone had so much fun. I sat in the back on the hay with the children on the way home and just loved it. I could see the rolling hills and the distant Blue Ridge Mountains so much better than from inside the truck. I was awash in gratitude all over again for at last being in Floyd country.

When we got back, I resumed my outdoor laundering. I save socks for last because I have to scrub each one on the washboard and that takes considerable time and effort. Today as I carefully washed and scrubbed each sock, I enjoyed thinking of each person to whom that particular sock belonged. Washing clothes by hand, I realized, is like the slow cooking of food. The length of time and degree of consciousness required provide an extended time to pray through and over what you are doing. I truly believe this makes food more nutritious and it certainly gives hand laundering deeper meaning.

As Lalaji said in the movie we have about him, “It is not possible for time to be wasted if it is spent thinking of God.” (rough paraphrase)

As I washed the socks of my hardworking, visionary husband and my lovely aspiring opera singer and toucher of hearts through song, I thought of a Navajo prayer song I have loved for many years. It was just the thing to muse over and sort of sing quietly to myself as I washed the socks in which they walk. I found I automatically changed the words as I could remember them to “he” or “she” rather than “I”:

Today I will walk out, today everything evil will leave me,
I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.
I will have a light body, I will be happy forever,
nothing will hinder me.
I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.
I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.

In beauty all day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons, may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With dew about my feet, may I walk.

With beauty before me may I walk.
With beauty behind me may I walk.
With beauty below me may I walk.
With beauty above me may I walk.
With beauty all around me may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty,
lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty,
living again, may I walk.
My words will be beautiful.

(There seem to be a number of versions of this beautiful prayer/song. I found this one here.)

May my beloved family walk in beauty in socks washed in beauty, hanging in beauty under a beautiful sky.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

Last Saturday night, Carolyn made her debut into Floyd County society with her performance at the Jacksonville Center for the Arts benefit “Music for an Autumn Evening.” It was a splendid evening for everyone due, in part, to the wonderful organizational work of Linda Fallon and the many others associated with The Jacksonville Center for the Arts and, in part, due to the wonderful musicianship of the three performers.

Judy Bevans (harpsichord) and Linda Plaut (violin) are musicians of stature and great experience. They started the evening off with Sonata for Harpsichord and Violin in G Major by Mozart to a packed room. I couldn’t believe I was listening to music of such quality in a small rural county in the mountains. That is definitely the best of all worlds as far as I am concerned! They played a number of other pieces together including many English country dance tunes which were just plain fun to listen to.

Then came Carolyn. Sweet, young Carolyn with the big voice, dressed so perfectly in a simple Edwardian kind of outfit with her waist length ringlets hanging down her back. She literally made the audience laugh and made them cry. She left me astonished. Now I listen to her sing every day and night and I go to all her performances so I know Carolyn and her voice (don’t you always think you know your child?). As we drove to the performance in our old 1986 Ford pick-up (which I thought was hilarious), I mentioned to Carolyn that I thought this would be a wonderful venue for her. An audience big enough to create energy but small enough to be intimate. Ha - little did I know!

Carolyn was so natural, so lovely, so effective, so charming that I and all the audience were truly delighted. When she closed the program singing English folk songs arranged by the one and only Cecil Sharp and accompanied by both the harpsichord and violin, her sweet maidenly character shone through and gave a certain lilt to her performance. No typical, worldly, cynical young person could have pulled those songs off in the way that she did. Her unspoiled nature together with the nuances and hints in the words of these folk songs made the audience laugh. Carolyn was bewildered by their laughter, I found out afterward, until I haltingly tried to explain it to her. It is always interesting to watch the effect of simplicity in today’s world. I wish that it would always provoke delighted laughter and a certain hope for the future like it did that night.

Colleen Redman, the writer, author and poet I mentioned in earlier posts who came to interview Carolyn for The Floyd Press also attended “Music for an Autumn Evening.” Her review or description of her response to the evening is here at While Visions of Sugar Plums Dance in My Head. Please do go see it because in addition to her wonderful use of words, she also had the wits to take pictures!

I want to take a moment here to say that the audience was incredible. The warmth of response to all of the performances surprised me and the overflow of support and well wishes so many expressed to Carolyn after the performance was heartwarming for both Carolyn and me. Standing at Carolyn’s side, I met so many Floyd County residents and, boy, what an interesting bunch of people. We were there for hours afterwards meeting people, hearing stories, getting ideas and mostly just receiving warmth and welcome. It was amazing and it only deepened my conviction about living here in this very special county. My heartfelt thanks goes to everyone. May we meet well again and again.

I want to especially thank Judy Bevans and Linda Plaut for their warm support and professional encouragement to such a young singer as Carolyn and all thanks go to Linda Fallon, Carolyn’s elegant, community organizing, organizationally talented patroness.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

I mentioned a few days ago that Colleen Redman visited us here at the farm in order to interview Carolyn for an article for The Floyd Press in anticipation of Carolyn’s benefit performance at The Jacksonville Center for the Arts.

Imagine my surprise when Carolyn handed me a copy of the paper last Thursday and I saw a photo of Carolyn, one of our goats and me on the front page! While I didn’t expect that at all, it does capture one of the interesting things about Carolyn and about the possibilities inherent in living a natural life. You never know what can happen or what will arise out of the “naturalness.” That Carolyn milks cows and sings Mozart is one of the interesting things about her and it brings a certain balance and depth to her character, I think. Farm raised children are just different and they always have been, yes?

Anyway, Colleen did such a wonderful job writing the article that Carolyn received many warm comments and support because of it. Please go read it here at Young Soprano Reaches Others with Song and see photos and find the link, once again, to the video short of Carolyn singing a bit out by the breezy trees and grassy goats.

Thank you, Colleen, for taking such a poetic and personal interest in Carolyn.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

Yesterday morning I looked up from helping a young one with math at the table and noticed this moment in the kitchen:

A hard working father,
An eager young lady.

All things coming together to support us in our quest.

Neat, eh? A lot of amazing things had to happen for this kitchen scene to even be possible. I wonder what the kitchen will look like next year at this time and what new things we might be doing in it.

Always an adventure…

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

A few weeks ago, Will came to me in the morning and told me about a dream he had in which he was pounding metal out into different shapes. That sounded sort of like blacksmithing to me so the next time we went to the library, I got him every book on blacksmithing they had. They actually had one juvenile book and a couple of adult books. I checked out all of them and he started reading them avidly. I read one of them too so that I would know some of what he was suddenly talking about non-stop.

Shortly thereafter, we stopped in at Mabry Mill on our late way back from seeing about some Great Pyrenees puppies. We didn’t know if any of the crafts people would be there demonstrating that day or not or if they were but had already closed up for the day. As we all walked up the path towards the cabins, however, I heard the ringing ‘ping,’ ‘ping,’ ‘ping’ of a hammer striking an anvil. I turned to Will and said, “RUN!” He ran. We ran after him. We poured into the blacksmith shop and immediately took up all available spectator positions in order to watch every move the smithy made. The smithy was working on fireplace tools that afternoon. He explained things to us as he worked and Will was beside himself with excitement. I indicated to this gentleman smithy that Will was intensely interested in this skill and (I had hoped for this but didn’t know if it would happen for a boy as young as Will) he invited Will into the work area with him. He set Will to some tasks, quietly explained things to him, showed him some tools and then gave him an iron hook as a parting gift. Oh, and this gentleman smithy was also named Will. How about that!

I talked with “Will the Blacksmith” about where one might learn blacksmithing skills and he gave me some ideas. The next morning, I brought young Will to the computer and opened a Blacksmithing bookmark folder for him. Starting with the suggestions we had been given, we discovered many wonderful sites and schools across the country. It was exhilerating for Will to look through all of these resources. It was fun for me too because a lot of the blacksmithing work going on these days is extraordinarily artistic and beautiful.

So Will went back to reading his blacksmithing books and we made plans to head back to Mabry Mill for another tutorial. We arrived at the end of last week. The Will’s reacquainted themselves with each other and got right down to work. Stupidly, stupidly, I forgot the camera. Young Will had goggles and leather gloves on and he looked mighty fine and productive in the smithy making an eye hook. His brother and sisters were squirming with delight watching him work in there so everyone had fun.

We received the sorry news that the season closes at the end of October so Will only has two more chances to go work there. We are scheduling all of that now. Meanwhile Will the Blacksmith mailed great blacksmithing information to young Will which made our son inordinately happy. A large envelope arrived addressed thusly:

When Will read the words “Resident Blacksmith,” the expression of quiet happiness and manly pride that crossed his face was dear indeed. Inside was a letter from Will the Blacksmith in which he expresses admiration for young Will’s interest in blacksmithing and a willingness to work with him before the season ends. He extended his hand in friendship which, to me, is the finest thing the older generation can do for the younger generation. Everyone benefits when elders guide and young ones listen.

Also included in the packet were web site addresses and catalogs. I will include those addresses here for any readers who may also be interested in the very important and historic skill of blacksmithing.

Suppliers:
Ozark School of Blacksmithing Tools Store
Kayne and Son

Blacksmith Workshops
John C. Campbell Folk School

Organizations
ABANA - Artist Blacksmith’s Association of North America

Books
A Blacksmith’s Craft: The Legacy of Francis Whitaker available from Kayne and Son

I will also add here that our local Jacksonville Center for the Arts offers blacksmithing classes. They are over for this year but we will see if there is a way to get Will into one next year. Also young Will’s current favorite book on blacksmithing is the original edition of Charles McRaven’s The Blacksmith’s Craft: A Primer of Tools and Methods. (See link at bottom of post.) Will narrates to me daily from this book. We also discovered during our internet travels that Mr. McRaven lives and works not too far away from here and teaches workshops. Look at his interesting web site here.

Well, that is it for now. We will post more photos and videos as Will’s passion for blacksmithing develops.

Isn’t it interesting how a real passion for something brings resources to your door? As applied to education, children can naturally mold their individual education to their own needs, skills and potential if their passion is allowed expression. We parents/teachers need only cooperate and be giving and excited! That invariably turns into a “win” for everybody.

Thank you, Mr. Will Foster, gentleman blacksmith.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

Carolyn was invited by a local luminary to sing for a benefit being held on October 25th for The Jacksonville Center for the Arts. Here is a description of the event and of the highly accomplished musicians with whom she is singing.

A couple of afternoons ago, Colleen Redman and her husband Joe paid us a visit. Colleen is a local writer, poet and journalist. (Her literary web site is here.) She came to interview Carolyn for The Floyd Press. We talked briefly on the phone the night before to make arrangements. I hung up the phone and said, “This is a meeting that was destined to happen. I can’t wait!” And, indeed, we all had a really nice time together. Paul and Joe walked all over our homestead and discussed many interesting and useful things. Colleen and Carolyn and I also discussed something interesting which was Carolyn and the path that has led her to this point in her life and her singing.

As the afternoon shadows drew longer, it seemed like a good idea for Carolyn to sing a little so that Colleen could get a feel for what her singing is like. Carolyn sang several pieces accapella right out there next to the cow pasture under the spreading chestnut tree. Colleen’s nifty little camera also takes video and she captured this brief bit of the end of Carolyn singing O cessate di piargami by A. Scarlatti.

The words (as translated from the Italian by me, mind you) are:

Either leave off tormenting me
or leave me to die.

Eyes, ungrateful, pitiless.
You, more like ice or marble

So cold and deaf to my torture.

Somehow seeing Carolyn sing in this setting with her simple intimate gesture at the end of the video touches my heart every time I watch it. I thank Colleen for capturing this moment and thank Carolyn for being such a noble daughter blessed with deep feeling and a rich, rich voice.

Colleen’s article will appear in The Floyd Press next week. I really look forward to reading it and will provide a link to it once Colleen puts it up on her blog. Again, the link to the video Colleen took of Carolyn singing is here.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie