Category Archives: Big Stone Gap

Coming Up, Rushing ‘Round, and all things ‘Twixt and ‘Tween

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in which Jack contemplates all that is to be accomplished between now and Thanksgiving…..

It’s that time of year again –  when Wendy and I take a deep breath before diving into the whirl of Fall and early Winter events in and around the bookstore and the country.

Coming up on September 25th and 26th is the 9th annual Big Stone Celtic festival which always means plenty of last minute arranging, checking and panicking. Before that, though, we MC the Sycamore Shoals Celtic festival this weekend over in Elizabethton and that’s much more relaxing and an opportunity to re-connect with old friends. The weekend between, we will be heading to the On the Same Page literary festival in West Jefferson where I will be singing and Wendy is a guest author.

Just a couple of weeks after Big Stone Celtic is Wendy’s yearly medical conference, Head for the Hills at the gorgeous Breaks Park, where I can relax (but Wendy cannot!).

Then we’ll be into the season of bookstore events: a house concert and traditional foods supper with storyteller Lyn Ford Oct. 30; a Nov. 6 eat with the author event featuring Willie Dalton, who wrote Three Witches in a Small Town;  and as-yet-unscheduled house concerts musicians Jamie Laval, Pete Clark and Ron Short.  We usually try to throw in an autumnal murder mystery,but this year we may have to punt.

A gifted storyteller and author, we remember Lyn most fondly from a house party in Ohio, when she ever so diplomatically persuaded another storyteller NOT to give a demonstration of ‘keening’ after we’d all had a few. We forward to a no less entertaining evening this time around as Lyn will have copies of her Afrilachian Folktales book for sale and signing.

Jamie is an old friend from our time on the staff of Swannanoa Gathering Celtic Week. An award winning and very popular exponent of Scottish, Irish and Cape Breton fiddling (not to mention percussive foot tapping!), he will be with us for a full weekend so I can ‘try out’ as one of his guitar accompanists at his house concert.

Pete, from Dunkeld in Scotland, will be touring with accordionist Gregor Lowrie and also staying over a weekend. He is no stranger to Big Stone and will enjoy introducing Gregor to the delights of fishing at Lake Keokee. He has also toured and taught all over the world as the acknowledged expert in the fiddle style of Highland Perthshire.

Ron Short will be joined by Willie Dodson to provide an evening of immersion in the culture and music of this part of Appalachia. Strong connections link the cultures of my homeland of Scotland and this area – stories, songs and fiddle tunes as well as language and attitudes.

Somewhere in between all this we also need to handle the day-to-day requirements of running a retail business, which means relying on friends and neighbors to mind the store – we are eternally grateful to James Ryan, Erin Dalton, and David Hamrick for stepping into the Gap!

The Monday Book: THREE LITTLE WORDS by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

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Ashley-RC-Headshot-1-1A clear, calm, journalistic approach to your own life? Hard to achieve, but Rhodes-Courter did. This memoir is one of those books that isn’t so much about the way it’s written as what it’s written about.

It’s about being a foster child available for adoption (eventually, when somebody noticed and the system got around to it) and winning the adoption lottery, because the parents who adopt you don’t “return” you, even when you put pills in their wine. (Read it; it’s kind of like horror comedy except these were real people coping with the moment.)

The descriptions of how Ashley felt at a young age of course have to come later, so they often have an adult spin put into a child’s word. Which gives it a kind of awkward clarity that’s really helpful if you’re trying to get to the core of the feelings involved. The chronological development of Ashley’s awareness of what kind of rabbit hole she’s fallen down is really described well, because she’s been there done that and chooses straightforward language to depict the twists, turns, and funhouse mirrors.

It is no small thing to turn a maze into a straight line and still let the readers understand what the maze was like. This is that kind of book – no poetics, no histrionics, just the feelings behind the facts. It’s also built on a moment that pretty much sets the tone for the whole book: those three little words are not, in the first instance, “I love you.” Which gives the memoir a lot of its power to help us understand what it means to learn to trust when you’ve seen so little reason for trusting.

An insightful, thought-provoking book, not overly sentimental and not given to voyeurism, is unusual in the growing field of “I was a……” true life books. Good for Ms. Rhodes-Courter. And good for those who want to understand what this strange, broken world of child “protection” looks like these days.