Category Archives: Big Stone Gap

Warm Fuzzies

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prayer shawlsWe have a lot of book groups and girlfriend posses through our shop, but on Monday past the women of Hiltons Methodist Church came bearing gifts.

Prayer shawls, and chemo hats and scarves for the community. Made with love and prayers for healing, and yarn in pretty, bright colors.

It was frighteningly easy to get those distributed. Jack and I immediately set aside some for cancer fighters we knew: an elegant executive approaching retirement coping with breast cancer; a buoyant cat rescuer who lets nothing get her down, including chemo; a young mom facing killer lymphoma; one of my most feminine ever friends, a healthy-eating, beautiful, petite woman who has that rare kind of cancer prevalent in men of African descent; and a 12-year-old boy (who got the camouflage lap blanket).

The rest we gave to my friend Leigh Anne – herself fighting cancer, and the director of our local cancer center – to bless those who might have less family and friends around them when they need a warm fuzzy moment.

Of all the things Little Bookstore has done, this might be the nicest: that people bring to our community gifts of love from theirs. When I put out an appeal last summer for postcards, so the Quakers doing prison visits could send them to guys in the federal penitentiary, y’all sent 400 cards, plus the nicest notes, and even sheets of stamps. When my friend and I stared making “spay and neuter afghans” to pay for the cats of Wise County being rendered non-reproductive, people on the West and East coasts and many places in between bought them.

And when I’ve blogged about friends in need–Sue’s bookstore in Wisconsin, the stealing of Elissa’s dog rescue raffle money–responses have been practical, and sweet, and positive. Sure there’s stuff that goes wrong with the world, but while there are women knitting prayer shawls filled with love, how bad can it be?

Stay warm, y’all.

Play it Again, Mike

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heritageJack’s weekly guest blog
For more than fifteen years I was the lead singer and back-up guitarist in a Celtic band called ‘Heritage’. Although we were never more than middle-weights in the traditional music scene, we had a lot of fun traveling Europe’s musical gig trail.
The glory days are over and we’ve gone our separate ways, yet some band members keep in touch. Our piper/whistler/keyboard player Mike Ward, who still lives in Scotland, came for a month’s visit to the bookshop two years ago.
Mike has always had a special affinity for Brittany (in NW France, one of the seven recognized Celtic Nations) so has kept up with friends there since the tour days. He recently sent a news report about the sad fate of Pontivy Castle, one of the places where we had played. A lengthy downpour undermined a section, and it collapsed.
This sad event led to much reminiscing between us about the various times we’d been to Brittany – including playing the biggest Pan-Celtic festival in the world, at Lorien. Ah, the magnificent sound of Bagad Kemper, with its combination of highland bagpipes, bombardes, binious and drums; hurdy-gurdy bands of women in regional costumes; wonderful food and drink; and the warm hospitality of Bretons toward their Celtic cousins.
Of course Mike, who studied for the priesthood, never lets me forget the time I stumbled in my faulty French through requesting that two young women pose for a photograph ‘au naturel’ (in other words, nude). We recalled the late great piper Gordon Duncan sitting backwards astride a motorcycle, playing the pipes like a child of Pan as the bike roared through the Lorien’s main streets. Perhaps our favorite was the gig at the Palais de Congress, where the sound desk smoked and sparked all the way through. (Or maybe that’s just the gig we’re most grateful to have survived–no, that would be the one where we kept throwing our cigarettes behind us as we played on a German naval boat, only to find afterward that munitions were stored in that space.)
As you can tell from these memories, we were never equal to the Beatles, but we had some fine musicians on board and even merited an article in the US folk music magazine ‘Dirty Linen,’ by Steve Winick. It was Steve that I met for the first time in person, at my birthday dinner last week in DC.
Which is really the reason behind this blog. Who knew that a castle in 1980 would lead to two friends connecting in the US in 2014? Yet there sat Steve with his lady Jennifer, chatting away with Wendy and me as though we’d know each other since birth. I love these connections through my music, and that so many of them continue. Like books, music keeps the world at large turning, and my personal circle of connections turning in very happy ways. I am a blessed man.