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Celebrate!

Here Comes The Veep!
The Faithful Show Up Alive After All -- Hangin' At Home On A Friday Night
Educate or School? -- Grounded by God
-- jh

Here Comes The Veep!

The presentation of Al Gore on Thursday evening, March 26th, had been well-promoted and the response overwhelmed East Tennessee State University's original plan of holding it in the Martha Culp Auditorium. Amidst some confusion, it was moved about a week beforehand to "the minidome" where indoor sports are generally held. The result was a half-packed covered stadium, meaning that all the ticketed seats with any view of the speaker stage and podium were filled. Large and helpful screens to either side of that projecting from the stand allowed all a comfortable view. While waiting in one of the lines to get inside, I talked with Travis, a senior History major originally from Connecticut before his family moved during high school years to Knoxville. In discussing recent political events, he opined that, "We had to have Bush to get Obama," about which he was extremely happy as he works toward earning his bacchalaureate to enter graduate school and then hopefully go on into teaching. A South Korean professor, with a doctorate in performance who is also a studied and storied opera soprano, in ETSU's Music Department sat beside me briefly with vivacious, friendly, bubbly and enthusiastic conversation. The range of her voice is the obverse of her physical personna and just adds to the marvel of hearing and observing it. She also sings professionally outside of the university and will be performing next year with the beloved and renowned Symphony of the Mountains.

Dean Randy Wycoff of ETSU's College of Public Health introduced and thanked quite a few women in the audience, including the wife of the University President and the head of ETSU's Student Health Alliance Association. It was she who introduced and welcomed Al Gore. The recent Nobel Prize winner strode up the stairs and across the stage with a smile and outstretched hand to long and thunderous applause and hurrahs. Strong, funny, relaxed, natural, passionate, intelligent, powerful, intellectual, factual, rousing and inspiring, he then held the audience in thrall for an hour or so. At the beginning he told a few funny stories including the following, minus most particularly some very humorous details which require his hand and head movements and facial expressions. Mr. Gore related that, following the "emotional roller coaster" of the 2000 election and later inauguration, he and his wife Tipper stopped at a Shoney's on their way out of a Nashville home to their "small family farm" about an hour east of there. As they awaited their order, he heard a waitress say to the folks sitting behind them, "Yeah, that's Vice President Gore!" and the male patron comment, "He sure has come down in life, hasn't he?" Gore then related how later he had repeated that story during a presentation in the African nation of Nigeria. On his way back to the states, the commercial plane stopped in the Azores and he got out for "a breath of fresh air." Suddenly, he said he was paged and informed that there was an urgent call from Washington DC for him. Immediately he thought to himself with a laugh and a shrug, "What could possibly be wrong there?" It turned out that all the news wires had picked up the Nigerian story as being that he and Tipper had bought a Shoney's and were going into the restaurant business. Later, the late night talk show hosts had little skits about it including one with him in a chef's hat and Tipper waiting tables. A few days after that, he received a message from President Clinton congratulating him on his new business. Gore concluded with the comment that he and Clinton always liked to celebrate good news together.

A handout given to all in attendance at the entrance doors read: "Former Vice President Al Gore is Chairman of Current TV, an Emmy award-winning, independently owned cable and satellite television nonfiction network for young people based on viewer-created content and citizen journalism. He also serves as chairman of Generation Investment Management, a firm that is focused on a new approach to sustainable investing. Al Gore is a member of the board of directors of Apple, a senior adviser to Google, and a partner with the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He is a Visiting Professor at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, and chairs the Alliance for Climate Protection, a non-profit organization designed to help solve the climate crisis. Al Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980 and 1982 and the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the forty-fifth president of the United States on January 20m, 1993, and served eight years. During the Clinton Administration, Al Gore was a central member of President Bill Clinton's economic team. He served as President of the Senate, a Cabinet member, a member of the National Security Council, and as the leader of a wide range of Administration initiatives. He is the author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance and An Inconvenient Truth and is the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary. Al Gore is co-winner, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the 2007 Novel Peace Prize for 'informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.' He and his wife, Tipper, live in Nashville. They have four children and three grandchildren." The title of Gore's lecture, and also of his newest book to be published, is Health Threats and The Climate Crisis.

Mr. Gore continued on to say at ETSU that we are "on the edge" as leading scientists worldwide have been warning us for 20 years of a looming and potential irreversibly disastrous crisis, that carbon dioxide composes 70% or so of the pollutants in our thinly protected atmosphere, that most global natural disasters may be traced at least in part now to global warming which is very real and easily measurable as it has been by many scientists over decades, and that we have the technologies and programs to work effectively toward fixing it all but we need to do it NOW. There is a worldwide summit, he informed his audience, in December which may solidify that direction and the United States must lead it, must be in the forefront of nations demanding global caution, restraint and reorder of attitudes and programs toward ecological health and sustenance. Other countries, Gore explained, all look to us for that guidance and tend to think, "if the United States doesn't do it, why should we? We're the poor little guys. Maybe it isn't really all that important anyway if they don't do anything about it either." Mr. Gore warned that federal representatives will be very pushed and prodded by lobbyists for corporations and commercial organizations. They will feel, he cautioned, that it is a very difficult decision for them to go the way of survivable intelligence, science, and popular will, so all concerned will need to contact them strongly and frequently in favor of environmental balance and sanity for both the planet and its still multiply varied species, some of which in many phyla are nearly extinct and may be the source of vitally efficacious medicines, as they have been found to be in the past. Others are necessary for a healthy balance of predator and prey in keeping both under control naturally.

Our former Vice President encouraged all present to fight entrenched special interests, lobbyists and the powerful influence of their perquisites and financial contributions, with active participation including voicing opinions and preferences volubly by community association, dissemination of pertinent information and by telephone, letter and on-line. Along with background information on climate change and control, he noted that the education and empowerment of women has been found to be the major factor in limiting population growth which has increased fourfold in his lifetime and impacts adversely on environment and healthful resources available with more individuals reliant on a dwindling pool. His statement near closing that "Democracy is a renewable resource!" brought loud cheers and clapping. Gore noted finally that in his faith, along with the Koran and other scriptures, the saying is, "You may have life or death," and he exhorted all, "Choose life!" to thunderous agreement from the assembled crowd. Following his summation there was a very long-lasting standing ovation with yeahs and hurrahs as our former Presidential candidate, and winner of the year 2000 popular vote nationally, walked off-stage and back to sit with other invited dignitaries. On heading outdoors and back toward my car, I overheard one professor call to another, "What a night!" And it was. A night, and message to remember.

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The Faithful Show Up Alive After All

The Washington County TN Annual Democratic Party meeting was held this year at Jonesborough Middle School on Highway 11E. Preceded by a showing of four party stalwarts for its 2008 organizational get-together, the year 2009 began more propitiously with perhaps fifty or so attendees standing and reciting the pledge of allegiance to a flag flying outside of the building. Jim Austin, previous owner/operator/writer/salesperson of Jonesborough's The (New) Emancipator freely-distributed commercial newspaper, served as outgoing Treasurer. His wife Betsy has since taken over managing his computer design business and volunteered as a board member of the Johnson City Arts Council while he accepted other professional employment and they both care for their young and growing children. Marion Light -- longtime friend of Carolyn Moore, ACR's previous Contributing Editor, writer and now Vice President -- also attended as Chairman of The Northeast Tennessee Democratic Party, comprised of 12 Districts, and supervised the later and smaller group meeting that represented Jonesborough environs. When it was conveyed to those assembled that Carolyn has been very ill, the local Chairman and her friend, Adam Dixon, shared a brief biography of Carolyn's background politically and personally with a prayer for her health. Earlier, he had also offered a beautifully-phrased and soulful extemporaneous request of God for blessing on our present and future endeavors.

During much of the general meeting, I conversed off and off most particularly with Daniel Wooten, a warm, cordial, soft-and-slow spoken older Navy vet who still works and has never before been actively involved in politics other than regular voting. He and a few others referred to some prior directions nationally as "evil" and expressed astonishment at the "viciousness" and "bitterness" Republicans showed. To a burst of laughter, one noted that "to get ahead in America lately, you had to 'kiss the pig.'" In urging support for an upcoming occasion, Dixon announced that one speaker for the Democrat's Memorial Day event at the plaque commemorative garden of Jonesborough Visitor's Center will be a Navy pilot shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War. Participants then separated into eight groups with different schoolrooms each and based on voting precincts to elect a captain, chairwoman and chairman for each before reconvening for a final get-together in the school cafeteria. Dixon then noted that representation will be reordered statewide in the next few years and that a local website will be on-line very shortly. New officers were nominated and accepted by acclamation and all were encouraged to work actively as volunteers before leaving for our cars around noon.

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Hangin' At Home On A Friday Night

At East Tennessee State University's Slocumb Gallery of its Art Department, there's a BFA reception/exhibit held early in the evening which offers the usual buffet of good food, art and punch for a mostly young crowd intermingled with professors, family, friends and interested passersby. A somewhat later Johnson City Arts Council similar event downtown serves, unusually, hot dogs and chili, accompanied by wine and deliciously attractive punch in hand-fired cups made by the potter and painter on display. In most of those latter works he uses latex house paints to create abstract and formalized designs on large wooden backings in unusual shapes, which are then glazed. There's a young band -- woman singer and men on drums, bass and guitar -- playing in the large and long hallway of that building with its framed and hanging prints of the old downtown and its inhabitants in their stylish-at-the-time dress. Outdoors on Main Street east an older woman has a large table laid with handmade garden tiles, knitted cloth rugs and other housewares. Katya is a Russian emigre, in this country since 1991 and Johnson City for the past eight years, with a wonderful accent and friendly personality. Asked if she was doing okay and liked this country, she said she loved it, that it's "a country of ideas not ethnicity." Katya is affiliated with Holy Resurrection Antiochian Orthodox Church according to her card which she proferred as we smiled and shook hands before parting -- me into the Nelson Gallery next door.

That framing and galleria shop had home-cooked gourmet foods, punch and wine, as usual, and exhibits old and new. Artist Val Lyle, a cousin of retired Art professor and ACR contributor/supporter John Lyle, whose heritage area family was recently honored with the ceremonial naming of an ETSU building, talked with a woman friend as I came into the large exhibit and work area where she was rearranging her display. Shortly thereafter in desultory conversation, Val agreed that past inter/national directions seemed to be heading toward a complete annihilation of culture and civilization. She called it "The Dark Ages," and I called it "The Dark Rages," but we agreed on the consequences to individuals and spaces. Val's success in the art world, both stylistically and in recognition, has developed successfully over the years with media and experience expansion. She is the featured artist for the upcoming and popular Abingdon Virginia Highland's Festival this year and her work, including a round table discussion, was recently featured with that of some other Appalachian women at the William King Regional Arts Center. Also a professor and tutor, Val offered that her favorite quote from ACR now is, "The price of success is to be bored by people that used to snub you," which we've both found to be true and somewhat funny off and on.

Outside again on the street from the Nelson's unusual, blow-away metal jewelry and small sculptures on feature display, along with their usual professional photographs, ceramics, unique large furniture, paintings and sculptures, I heard music drifting uphill from the blocked-off crossroads of Main and Roan Streets and walked down to watch and hear the Gary Harris Band. It's a blending, cohesion and conversation musically between six young men playing innovative rock -- two excellently accomplished lead guitarists who switch off to rhythm, keyboard, bass, bongos and regular drums, and mariachas. Their music was so involving it took me back in time to San Francisco's Fillmore West; the audience could really get into it and tell that they were totally into and enjoying it too, which is an absolute joy and blessing. As they were playing, a young juggler with his nose painted bright red and wearing loose, bagging pants with suspenders nodded to all and then "set up" mid-street for awhile. There were little children cruising and flying around on heavy plastic tricycles with small wide back wheels and a very large front one. One very little boy was be-bopping with the music as he walked toward his Daddy while mother sat on a raised cement bed of flowers and one tree to watch on laughing and a tiny girl cat-walked by, leaning over to show the tops of her diapers as she rounded the corner of the sidewalk. As the band played on in front of the Beadworks store that's been open for only about a year, I decided to wander in and check out their wares. The young woman proprietor greeted me warmly as I riffled through open bins of variously colored and shaped offerings and invited me to eat from a buffet set up in the back of the shop -- more home-made goodies, including a cheesy dip for pieces of pita bread and fresh bottled water. It was a little chillier when I stepped outside the door and noticed that band members were all wearing wool parkas and sweatshirts, but one middle-aged woman walked by on the opposite sidewalk beside her casually dressed escort wearing only a short, flouncy and sleeveless black dress and very high heels. Couture never bows to temperature. And neither do good times.

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Educate or School?

The Mountain Empire offers many free lectures and discussions on a wide variety of topics from latest book releases to environmental issues and much in between. As just one recent example on a cool early spring evening, Dr. Graham Leonard, an area native originally, walked toward the podium in ETSU's Culp Center Auditorium and, after a warm welcome and crowd applause, gave us all a fascinating presentation, complete with anecdotes and followed by substantial Q&A from the audience, based on his six decades of experience working, living and studying Arab lands, peoples, languages and cultures. His handout summarizes main points delivered eloquently and importantly to our structures of learning as follows:

"The verbs 'westernize' and 'modernize' are often used interchangeably or overlap in English. We contrat them here to emphasize significant educational differences. Westernizing schooling memorizes mainly the facts and learns the skills already known -- leaving students intellectually powerless. Modernizing education teaches the use of those thinking processes that develop the intellectual power and creativity that discovered those facts -- empowering students.

The intellectual power and creativity in Islam began even before they institutionalized education. Those began as the unintended by-products of their passionate work of canonizing the Shari'ah. Arabs justifiably speak proudly of their Abbasid Golden Age (8th to 14th centuries) which excelled all cultures' science creativity prior to modern times.... Traditionally, Arab writers credit the knowledge gained from the translations into Arabic of the great books of the then-known world with their flowering of intellectual power and creativity.... Translation did play a key role, not so much from the knowledge gleaned but from the very rigorous processes of translating serious concepts from other languages and cultures into the Arabic language and cultures. Disciplining poetic-ambiguous Arabic into the rigorous language needed to codify law stimulated mind. Defining the grammar of the syntax of Arabic greatly stimulated minds also, as did searching the origins (philology, etymology) of Arabic words and their exact meanings (lexicography) [creating] 'omni-savants.'... In the early centuries, Arabs developed rigorous methods of problem-solving in mathematics and did hands-on science. In the first two Hijra centuries -- prior to paper -- Arabs honored scholars, debaters, writers and thinkers so that the best minds of the world came together and exchanged ideas in the courts of Caliphs and all gatherings. Passionate and endless discussions, using the rigors of Euclid, the deductive logic of Plato and Aristotle's empirical observation and INductive reasoning were the culminating and most significant fomenters of intellectual power and creativity of the first two Hijra centuries of Islam!... The experiences of educators since the times of Plato/Aristotle indicate that 'concerned serious discussion of non-trivial topics, in small groups, over a period of time' empowers the ability and confidence of participants in their critical judgment, decision-making and in their creativity.... One way to accomplish the modernization of Arabic youths without westernizing them is to revive the research and discussion methods of Adab (Humanities) learning used by the Abbasids and Ummayads during the Arabs' Golden Ages and to do so in and through the Arabic language."

One of the presenter's official biographies reads: "Graham Leonard (PhD in Education, Harvard) has had a close relationship with the Middle East for nearly 60 years, as a student, teacher, advisor, and consultant. Dr. Leonard has worked with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in the West Bank as an advisor on teacher education for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). He has served in Jerusalem as management officer of the Program for Assistance to the Palestinian People through the United Nations Development Program. He has taught at a variety of institutions in the U.S., England, China and the Middle East; and has acted as a consultant on education, the Middle East. Most recently, Dr. Leonard has been engaged in designing an Arabic Touchstones curricula, (MaHakaat), a discussion based program to revive Abbasid-Umayyad learning methods for students in the Arab world to engage with the classical Arabic literature while empowering (modernizing) thinking for 21st century globalization. MaHakaat is currently being implemented in Jordan—6th through 10th grades. This program is designed to overcome student language passivity, promote cognitive skills and improve critical thinking that will spread to the rest of the students' educational experience. Touchstones in Arabic (MaHakaat) will enable students better to problem-solve, to collaborate with others, and ultimately to teach themselves—through Arabic language and within an Arabic cultural context."

We all felt very blessed, enlightened and well-directed by factual history and ideas arrayed as Dr. Leonard wound down with responses to the last few queries and retired from the stage.

As a later example of how important good education -- particularly perhaps in spelling, dictionary use, and the importance of research methodologies -- can be (and this is a true and documented story), a commercial retail garden nursery recently posted a large outdoor sign which read: "Fresh-cut Penis $7.99." A thoughful observer commented politely to friends: "But do they bloom? I wonder if they come in different colors? I wonder about the fragrance? I wonder if it would help to put those preservative packets in the water? I wonder whether they would look better on the kitchen table or in the entry? I wonder if they're cheaper by the dozen? I wonder if they come in long-stemmed?" Another considered telephoning the shop: "Hello? I'd like to have some fresh-cut penis delivered, preferably the long-stemmed variety if you carry those. It sounds like a real bargain. But is there a delivery charge? Does an assortment of colors cost more?" After a few hours, an inquiring passerby discerned that store personnel meant the English word for the flowering bush "peony," and the lettering was altered into a more likely, but less esoteric, sales product. The significance of proper schooling never ends.

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Grounded by God

Finally getting my car to the neighborhood service station for a standard oil change, I learn that it's in need of an expensive repair and am left to entertainments, visits, and necessities within walking distance of home. Since Jonesborough is frequently cited as one of America's model small towns, this "punishment" bends toward healthy pleasure and delight, including exercise amidst the gloriously flowering and green growing season of late spring here. Weeping willows, Tennessee Tulip poplar trees, verdant grasses and slender streams full from recent rains await and ACR contributor and Board Member Caroline Ross (karol cooper) has sent a jaunty wide-brimmed, feathered and bowed fedora so I am suitable attired for festivity in participation and audience.

Friday evening is the now regionally-famous MOTS (Music on the Square) -- mostly soft rock from the 60s including a rollicking version of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" by white-haired Glenn Spayth with Kids Our Age -- and Main Street shopping for bargain treasures at Gracious Designs and the Museum Warehouse (Hands Around The World) where owner Janet Browning, artist and wife of long-time town manager Bob, and I exchange pleasantries and information. As always, I stop by the relocated and much larger The Cranberry Thistle for coffee and conversation also with its convivial owners and helping personnel and pass by my still-vacant and under-renovation former apartment with its photocopied Obama/Biden victory photo and signed message from Joe to "Ms. Moore," expressing thanks and warm regards for her "remarkable commitment to our Party" pasted in the window of the front door. The audience strolls, claps, laughs and some dance, including a man perhaps in his early 70s wearing pleated gray slacks, a long-sleeved light yellow shirt and tie, who's very popular as a partner as he dips and grinds with arm rolls in the air to his evident pleasure as well as that of the appreciative crowd, in a cleared street area before the Courthouse and band. Friendly founder and organizer Steve Cook has the previous week reiterated during the band break his descriptive recommendation of ACR's Appalachia-positive content, to which he has contributed background information and photography, and internet location to those in attendance, for which I've expressed surprised gratitude. Passing three boys, one of whom follows me talking for a little ways, maybe four to six years of age and playing together on an astonishing assortment of colorful two-wheelers, my disabled neighbor in her well-equipped wheelchair walking pet wire-haired terrior Gypsy suggests going with me next time and I agree that would be excellent fun also.

Saturday is Jonesborough's Garden Tour ("Through the Garden Gate," Jonesborough's 13th Annual Garden Gala") with "the intrepid volunteer" 80-something Doris Dean -- retired from ETSU, founder of Friends of the Jonesborough-Washington County Museum fundraising and service organization, and widow of a former Reece Museum director (now Theresa Burchett-Anderson) -- at the ticket ($12/per) collection table and we catch up on a few town details also. Another friend, brought up also as a Christian Scientist by sometimes South American missionary parents and a retired bi-lingual teacher, Lindy from college-time days, shows up waving with two friends at her side, one a Unicoi County transplant from Alaska. After some conversation we disperse and regroup for the Victorian tea, complete with a young woman classical violinist in the gazebo, at the top of the East town rise, supplied with tasty and tasteful assortments of homemade small pastries and punch and served by sponsors/organizers the Tuesday Garden and Schubert Clubs, the latter including Marilyn Buchanan, retired professor and Chair of the Friends of the Library also, and Dr. Roberta Herrin, Chair of ETSU/CASS, who sits with us briefly to discuss the occasion and a few other events. Dr. Bill Kennedy -- retired surgeon, current medical legalist, and founder of the Historic Jonesborough Foundation amongst other similar pursuits -- hands out detailed maps which include all the Latin flora names for the gardens he and his wife have designed and maintained on their one-block plot with its 19th century historic structure. One of four photocopied informations entitled "Miscellaneous Things" includes the following: ... What is the white stuff on the apple trees? It is a newer product, SURROUND, a clay suspension in water, that forms a physical barrier to insects and diseases. Advantages: totally organic and non-toxic.... What is the droopy-looking shrub with the wilted-looking leaves? It is Harry Lauder's Walking Stick, named for a famous British hiker. Actually, it is a contorted filbert. And, well, that's how the leaves look. But beauty is more than leaf deep. Peek beneath the leaves and see the wonderful curly branches, which are the reason people grow this small shrub -- it's glorious in the winter without leaves. The branches are used for line material for flower arranging.... What are are those amazing basket plants hanging on the sweet gum tree? These Stag Horn Ferns, Platycerium, are a tropical species that grow upon tree trunks or branches. They are not parasites, however, just residents. There are 2 kinds of fronds or leaves. The basal fronds are round and enclose the roots and clasp the support it grows on; many layers build up and store water like a sponge. The long branching fronds look like stag horns. On the underside at the ends are large brown patches where the spores are produced. (New small plants are called pups.) These ferms live in the greenhouse in the winter. Their favorite food is banana peels.... We have a new outbuilding, a formal little 19th century necessary [out]house we rescued and restored. It will have new life as storage for dried flowers. Another handout contains annotated listings of their favored mail-order and ground gardening resources including Gardens of the Blue Ridge, Inc. and Thyme After Thyme, Inc. As ever, we discuss current events and local happenings with some surprise, interest and humor. A one-block plot with fantasy manse and landscaping, complete with ornate pool and varied heritage gardens, behind my home is owned by Dr. and Mrs. Thatcher. In one corner of their fairy garden, a sign reads: "Quiet please! Fairy dance lessons in progress." Beside that is a large fairy statue surrounded by quite a few smaller ones in various ballet poses. Although there are 13 gardens on the walking tour, I only have time and energy to explore six, including those of the Blair-Moore House, described in an earlier ACR and New Emancipator article, the Eureka Hotel, and the Buchanan's, where husband Curtis is displaying also his famous Windsor chairmaking skills. He has also been a driving force behind the town's now-popular Saturday Farmer's Market in the Library's parking lot. A second-year addition to the Garden Tour has been working graphic artists displaying their skills also so I am fortunate to greet and converse with social activist and ACR contributor and friend Margaret Gregg, now living in Abingdon VA. Members of the two fostering town Clubs collected over $2000 each in proceeds which are donated to local non-profits like the Jonesborough Library, Second Harvest Food Bank, Jonesborough Repertory Theatre, Jonesborough Heritage Club, and the Senior Center.

Sunday morning is for the Presbytery where Marilyn, her choir-singing daughter Summer, and the new Town Mayor attend, along with a few other friendly acquaintances off and on including Steve and LaDonna Bacon of Black Hawk Realty which has been devoting itself to "Green" design and architecture in which they are both now certified. I review the list of members and friends that have served in the military accompanying the church program and speak with an acquaintance sitting behind me until the service begins. As ever there's a children's service where youngsters gather before the pulpit to sit on the floor as does the Youth Pastor, a Peruvian native, and listen to her brief Bible-based homily, this one on the importance of humility. Preceding the main sermon we are treated to a transcendant rendition of "On My Cross" by the choir, led by a strongly emotive baritone before all the voices come in supportingly in harmonizing behind him. Guest pastor Patricia Willard, an area native and graduate of Columbia Seminary, has retired from her ministry in Washington DC, now leads a Women's Bible Study in her Johnson City home, and has chosen John 17:6-19 as her text, to which she adds an anecdote about the musical "Fiddler On The Roof" and its reference by a theatre critic after its opening as charmingly quaint since the main character speaks regularly with God throughout the drama. Afterwards there's a buffet fundraiser lunch, "the amazing potato bar," by and for the Youth programs where I sit and converse with a retired teacher from Mars, Pennsylvania who has also spent a few years in Boston where her husband and daughter both earned advanced degrees from Harvard and is a participant in the Tuesday Garden Club, which is where I met her originally.

In the afternoon a regional sampling of Rolling Thunder, veteran bikers and their families, roar in as they always do, serious and awesome in black vests covered with many colorful pins, for area events particularly relevant to them. I was fortunate to stand next and speak briefly with a Junior Member, suitably attired and perhaps five years of age, and his father who served in our nation's Air Force, as did my thence-disabled and now-deceased father during World War II. Taps was played from the audience by a perfect local trumpeter, a large bouquet ceremonially laid, and veterans of our different branches of service applauded when they raised their hands as Army, Marine, Navy, Air Force, Merchant Marine and Coast Guard were called. Retired Navy Commander Kenny Wayne Fields, shot down over Laos and retrieved after 189 (no, that isn't a misprint) Air Force sorties, is the main speaker and is followed shortly, after the Mayor, by our Federal Representative Phil Roe -- a retired physician, also a veteran, and an enthusiastic and determined member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. He tells us that he's learned on a recent visit to Afghanistan that our soldiers are properly enabled with life-saving equipment and that the country's residents are the poorest he's ever met. They live on less than one dollar a day and his Starbucks coffee-to-go on return would have fed one for three-and-a-half days. Along with others after the presentations, I introduce myself to him and his wife and we converse briefly. He comments that he wishes more of his constituents would write to him about their concerns, opinions and viewspoints and I suggest that with our newly responsive government and President perhaps they will as that encouragement to participate seeps outward into the atmosphere and our environment. Marion Light, regional chair of the Democratic Party, is humorously toasted by our Republican Mayor and read a decree declaring the day Marion Light Day in honor of his lead and stewardship in refurbishing the Veteran's Memorial and Park with its numerous fund-raising and commemorative bricks. Those list residents who've served our nation in the military, including one for my Goddaughter's now-deceased father, Joe Grindstaff, another college-era friend and Army medic in Vietnam who died several years ago, having been for decades the town's most memorable, honored and cherished, if quirky, historic craftsman, along with carefully guided helpers, in restoring structures with integrity through well-researched and practiced original methods of design and construction. On a more somber note the long-time practicing and warm resident MSW who told and comforted me and others in learning of that sudden demise has contracted a rare, freak, invasive bacteria for which he's been hospitalized several weeks that has destroyed most of his brain, leaving him comotose but with a living will to assure that he won't be kept "alive" artificially.

Perhaps that's an appropriate ending note for a day that remembers and celebrates those who've given their lives in sacrifice to our country and the freedoms for which we fight and sometimes are harmed and/or die. And that have allowed me and others to stroll the byways and paths of "The Lost State of Franklin" this memorable weekend in relative peace and some prosperity through the grace of democracy and God.

"Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic." -- General John A. Logan, first commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, 1868 grave decoration order

"Not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions, but there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men." -- Pericles, 493-429 b.c.

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Activate!

go to
mountain empire happenings/events -- regional on-going and upcoming events/happenings
appalachian art and healing resources -- freely distributed magazines and newspapers
appalachian visitors centers -- inter/national cultural events/happenings


mountain empire happenings/events
links to regional sites listing on-going and upcoming events/happenings
some strongly suggest advance tickets and reservations

  • Arts Alliance Mountain Empire, organization covering and listing regional events monthly
  • The Crooked Road, heritage music trail in SW VA
  • The Loafer, Tri-Cities bi-weekly coverage of arts and other activities
  • Mountain Homes Southern Style, quarterly coverage of events and developments
  • Music On The Square, Jonesborough TN's popular warm weather weekly outdoor performances by outstanding regional musicians and artists in other media
  • My Asheville, published by the Citizen Times
  • The Orange Peel, Asheville NC, one of the five best music venues nationally according to Rolling Stone magazine

  • WETS, NPR affiliate broadcasting inter/national and regional news, opinion, interviews, events, excellent live and taped music of all genre, and commentary
  • WNCW, another NPR affiliate with outstanding live and recorded music, commentary, news and regional happenings
  • WPVM, community-based internet and radio presence
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freely distributed, mostly monthly, magazines and newspapers
distributed through art and visitors centers, restaurants and shops
appalachian art and healing resources
some representative sources of alternative therapies Go to Activate! -- Go to top
appalachian visitors centers
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The Power of Positive Thinking

  • there's a new field called Positive Psychology and the new ETSU department chair is a graduate of that;
  • we live in an "instant gratification" society -- based upon external, rather than internal healing -- of discontent and unhappiness, with a market created for selling solutions and encouraging the identification of more and more physical and psychological problems and an enveloping, pervasive message of fear, guilt, violence, threats to our health in every way brought to us particularly through media -- radio and television, newspapers especially.
  • maybe it's time for humans to follow the great teachers of the ages -- Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Ghandi, King -- or for the demise of humanity
  • Oprah has a new Web seminar based upon A New Earth
  • we spend a lifetime "trying to get it right"
  • there is a magnetic energy, which can and has been measured, attached to thoughts, which become a field and can even go through steel walls. We all vibrate, like tuning forks. Turning one on will turn on all the others at the same frequency because the same wavelengths attract each other
  • a total identification with the material is defined as evil
  • forgiveness means "it doesn't matter"
  • in response to stress, we can turn on anabolic endorphins or adrenalins
  • malice makes us literally sick; laughter and joy heal
  • we should react to each other as spiritual beings, not physical bodies
  • we have eternal souls in temporary expressions of flesh, an inner voice, and a stream of consciousness which are not the same as the self
  • there is a universal mind of pure energy which creates us
  • some good books are Power Versus Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior; The Eye of the I, and I: Reality and Subjectivity; Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao, by Wayne Dyer (2007); The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (2006); Feelings Buried Alive Never Die.... by Karol K. Truman (1991); The Power of Intention, by Wayne Dyer; Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth, by T. Harv Eker (2005)
  • Grabhorn has a four-step process for channeling positive energies: identify what you don't want; identify what you do want; get into the feeling place of what you want; expect, listen, and allow it to happen Dr. Herrin also distributed a chart of the energy released by different emotions/levels, etc. Those at the top around 1,000, like Ghandi, release enough to affect 10 million people. That's the course of [God-View] Self, [Life-View] Is, [Level] Enlightenment, [Log #] 700-1,000, [Emotion] Ineffable, and [Process] Pure Consciousness. The next lower course is All-Being/Perfect/Peace/600/Bliss/Illumination which affects 1 million people. The lowest level is Despising/Miserable/Shame/20/Humiliation/Elimination and the next up above that is Vindictive/Evil/Guilt/30/Blame/Destruction. I brought up the holocaust and she said that some of the survivors felt a release in having lost their personal possessions, but nothing about the physical and psychological harm to people personally and in their seeing, in some cases, relatives and friends harmed and/or killed. About being a victim of crime, she said the stress at the time must be off the scales but it's what you do about it afterwards that counts and heals. After her presentation, a sampling of members from ETSU/CASS's Bluegrass Ensemble played for half an hour to an enthusiastic and grateful group of around 40 mostly retired or semi-retired participants.

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