Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays to All 2020

 Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays to ALL. Whatever you believe or not, here is wishing you the best for 2021.  Prayers for our country, our families, our selves and our world,  for Peace and Good health. Stay Safe, stay alive....old Covid will END.  

Christmas 2020....a balmy 14 degrees here in the Appalachian mountains.

Hillbilly Elegy Movie is out....

 I did a review of what I thought of the book here somewhere. I just had a problem with that book. I know it was J.D. Vance's perspective BUT.....it went mainstream and seemed he blamed the troubles of his life on where he and his family were from.  There are many stories of rags to riches in Appalachia. Dolly Parton comes to mind, we LOVE that story.   Ron Howard did a wonderful job on the movie but it's the story itself that has most of us in a dander. 

Here we go again....Appalachia is now known for poverty and drug abuse, when those two issues are nationwide.  Can't we get a different story out there to go mainstream? 

On another note, Glenn Close did an excellent job...that character reminded me of my own mother right down to the hair and the glasses. Only thing... my mother NEVER wore "jogging" pants and NEVER a T shirt. T shirt were men's clothing and her religious background...you didn't wear men's clothes. It could be a pullover shirt, but they had to be made for women, had to fit and they had to be part of a suit and had to match.... with shoes. 

We will live with Hillbilly Elegy for a LONG time....but I hope Mr. Howard gets to work on another story of Appalachia. One of a different story. As a master film maker that would be an honor.   Here read this:  What is an Appalachian?

What Crazy TIMES WE Are Living, In A Covid-19 Virus World

Lord have mercy. I have not even WANTED to write at all. If anyone would have told me that the United States would be in the shape it's in right now, 3 years ago, I'd of said..."yer lyin me".  Well it's a new world now for awhile.

We will get through it. This Covid-19 virus is a bad one but I don't think it's the one that produces zombies is it? Though some folks out of work may look that way these days. It's the uncertainty, the bills piling up and the wonder what the hell is going to happen next on people faces I see. Kind of a tense fear. Hard not to be fearful but like my mother told me, the blood that runs through you has survived every war, every plague, every calamity on this old earth. The fact we are sitting here today IS the miracle!!  Plagues on this old planet have happened before. They are as old as time.

Everyone knows now about the 1918 Influenza pandemic. But there was also polio epidemic that crippled and killed mostly children. If folks stopped in Wytheville, VA during the quarantine they were not allowed to leave.

There was also typhoid fever came through here in 1896. It's how my great grand daddy Burress and his brothers lost the farm.  His mother, father and 2 kids passed away, leaving 4 brothers under the age of 12 to fend for themselves.  It also is a reminder of what Native Americans went through when Europeans came here with diseases they had NO immunity to and entire villages were wiped out.

One would hope we are wiser now, on how to handle this in the modern day...but the handling of this virus in this country...I think we missed the brain train somewhere and are on the stupid cart. This is NUTS!  It should have never gotten this far. Being on lock down to slow the virus progress seems to have worked. Now they are wanting to open back up and that would not be so bad if there was a real working plan to get testing, materials to prevent the spread and put policies in place so we can at least save a few more lives.

I get so aggravated that folks are calling it the "will of God" and they will trust God not to get it. Well maybe it is, but that doesn't mean we don't try to save our lives and others from getting it!  If you are going to pass illness and disease off as the will of God, and one is so against modern medicine, then most of us would already be dead. If it's God's will you have high blood pressure or diabetes or cancer, then you should  let the "will of God" take over and do away with modern medicine completely, by that idiotic way of thinking. Reminds me of tempting God like our Appalachian snake handlers do. It's a viral deadly disease and we should tackle it for humanity's sake, not to try to prove our faith and do stupid stuff for the sake of money.

But my time is not much different than before. I'm one of those "compromised" people so I'm limited going out anyway.  Have been for about 7 years now. But it's not like my weeks are boring.

Last week, started with my neighbor's bull getting out in my yard, eating all my tulips and spring flowers...sigh...and chasing me into my house. I hate bulls...they are SO unpredictable and this one just didn't like being yelled at or shooed.  Called animal control or as we say, "I lawed em". But before they arrived, my grand daughter and her father came. He helped me chase it away with some firecrackers to get it back to the road and then took his vehicle and herded it back to where it belonged...it butting his car the entire way. I think it was down here again because I had like 3 tulips left and they are now gone with hoof marks in the dirt.  I told animal control I will be calling them next time, but they better hurry, this bull chases me up the ramp to my porch again...the owner will be coming to get their steaks instead of a bull.

I guess I'm going to have to fence my property when I get rich to keep the neighbor's animals out of it. Hate to do that, last survey showed my property line is right in their front yard and they know it is because they were raising cane about it. Gave them permission to mow it. Country living...has it's cons.

Then I got stung by a bee the next day. Came in on my clothes. I took my shoes off at the door and it stung me on the side of my foot right through my sock. I took that sock off and threw it bee and all across the room, knocking the bee off at my feet. I was hopping around, man it hurt!! The bee was still alive and I was trying to find something to stop it from crawling off, while hopping in pain. Some bees die when they sting you once and others can sting multiple times. In my pain, I was just thinking catch it. I had my coffee cup and hopped over the sink poured it out and set it on top of the bee!

 It was a carpenter bee! I didn't think they stung!!! I swat at them all the time when I see them but I learned something new. The females DO sting! Love the internet for looking stuff up. One of the WORST stings I've ever had and it swelled my foot up for about a day.  I've been stung by just about every kind of bee there is in these parts. Mostly wasps. I hate wasps!! And yellow jackets in the ground. Yep Carpenter bees Sting

It started swelling immediately and itching up to my ankle. I treated it with a compress of tobacco and ice. When the swelling didn't go down to my satisfaction I took some Benydryl. By morning it was gone. Now we have to worry about murder bees from Japan?  Saw it on the news and a murder bee is a scary looking BEE!

Oh but wait...there is more!  The next day, Appalachian Power came to change out the meter to a newer meter that will tell them when my power is out and has bells and whistles. I was on the phone when he came and didn't hear him knock. I really need some kind of light or something because I can't hear half the time with this Meneires disease.  I have a land line and a cell phone. I have to keep the land line because most times the cell doesn't work. There are times to use the cell you have to go outside on the hill and play like it's a Lion King and search for a signal. That's living in a "holler".

But this day I was on the phone to my sister and my daughter calls and says, Appco is out here and I have a problem.  Oh Boy, did I have a problem!  The meter base was corroded on one side and arching power.  They would not be able to change the meter and would have to turn my power off until I could get it fixed!!  On a FRIDAY! Talk about panicking. Didn't have much but I had just put two weeks of food in the freezer and NO power, no generator? I was panicking. And NO money either to hire an electrician. AND winter had not let go...we were expecting 3 inches of snow that night.

Calling around and trying to find a meter base was crazy! No one north of us had one! They had been finding bad meter bases all week it seems changing out these meters and everyone was sold out. South of us State Electric had one and they GAVE it to me free of charge when I explained the story! THEN my brother in law is a state licensed electrician and he traveled 50 miles to put it in. When he took the old one off, it literally fell apart and it's a wonder the house hadn't caught fire. So from the time Appco came to change a meter and getting a new base in, was approved in about 6 hours. TALK about blessings THAT day. Appalachian Power I bitch about all the time, (the bills mostly) but let me tell ya, they came through for us and probably saved my house!!! It snowed and I wasn't in the dark for the weekend because of their actions!!

In between all this excitement, I've been making masks for the family. Made some for a local hospital and sent them by a friend over there. But now that everyone should be wearing a mask, been making them for family and friends.  Using scraps from old craft projects.

Ironed and ready to sew.

What was so hard about that is I have inherited and acquired 3 sewing machines over the years. One is a table top 1938 white, one a 1950's Montgomery Ward portable machine and one a 60s Kenmore table top.   When I went to find one to sew on, NONE of them were really in working order. All of them needed cleaning and oiling. I don't think any of them had been used since I've been ill.

Took me 3 days of tinkering to get one cleaned, oiled and the tension correct. Then the other needed a new electric pressure foot, a bobbin tire and some bobbins that actually fit it. About 30 bucks but I got 2 working and will get the timing on the other fixed this week.  THANK you YouTube and the internet and Sewing Parts Online! I got the time, and when I go to feeling bad, I can stop and I do. I'm learning to STOP when my body says STOP.  Everything can be left to be fixed another day.  It's aggravating but better than being down for a week.

Well...that is my update. We are staying safe at home as much as possible, wearing masks, doing all we can to keep us and others safe.  YA'LL stay safe!!!

Old Time Fruitcake Recipes

 I know, I know tons of people don’t like fruitcake. As one friend of mine used to tell me, someone gives her fruitcake she thinks of it as a gift of a door stop for a year until another one shows up.

I think I understand why people malign fruit cakes….because they don’t make fruitcakes like the old timer’s did. The one's my mother would buy were NOT like the original fruitcakes in my family and I've often thought of them as cardboard with fruit.  I have shared how my people were moonshiners and wine makers.  Well the old timer’s in my family made their cakes with alcohol.  And I don’t mean just adding alcohol to the recipe and then letting it bake out, I mean they SOAKED the cakes in alcohol for weeks!

 Now the first time I noticed a difference was when I was a kid. My family would get these fruitcakes given to them that we kids were NOT allowed to eat.  We thought the adults were just being stingy and wouldn’t share AT ALL.   But you know how kids are…like sneaking into the liquor cabinet, we’d sneak a piece and let me tell you…that’s when I figured out some fruitcakes are much better than others.

My fruitcake recipes come from family. When I was a budding family historian, they tell you to go around and talk to your family first to start building your family tree. Ask family members if they have any stories they can share or things they can show you. 

I’ve seen old quilts, guns, rolling pins and got an old bread board given to me and even one granny’s pair of eye glasses she wore. Now…I really didn’t want the glasses but you could tell they meant something to the person that gave them to me. They themselves were too tender hearted to part with them or give them to the Lion’s club which is what I did with them. Of course that was after putting them on and seeing how blind great granny was.  

But the one share in those early years was RECIPES. Everyone had a recipe from someone in the family. Seems we Appalachians, our history revolves around food. So I started collecting those along with the family stories of where they came from.

I have two fruitcake recipes from both sides of my family tree. One is from my dad’s people and it’s soaked in bourbon. Well... they were living closer to Tennessee and Kentucky.  Came from my Aunt Flossie and I can remember as a kid her making these cakes. She had a basement and in the basement was a wooden box that always smelled like alcohol. She’d make these cakes, wrap them in cheesecloth soaked in bourbon, wrap them in an oily paper and put them in that box. Every week or so go down and resoak the cheesecloth and re wrap the cakes.

Today I use a spray bottle, I don’t even have to unwrap them from the cheesecloth. First time I made these, I kept them in my fridge, which made it smell like a bar, for weeks! And everything had the taste of bourbon…bourbon scrambled eggs, bourbon lettuce, which my feller didn’t mind but the kids snarled their nose up at. So now I just keep them a cool place like an unheated room, in a box wrapped in plastic wrap and aluminum foil.

The other recipe is from the mountains of North Carolina. Wilkes County to be exact. I’m told because it’s dark, it’s an English brandy fruitcake recipe using sour milk and molasses and I guess the oldest recipe in my box.  When I wrote the recipe down from my Great Aunt Callie, I had put that she said it was her Great Great grandmother Perdue’s recipe.

I didn’t know who that was at the time, but now I know tracking the family history, it was Francis Wooten Perdue, who was born in Wilkes County, NC in 1837 and died in McDowell County WV in 1923.  Her husband was John Wesley Perdue, who served in the Civil War and was at the battle of Gettysburg. After he passed, she was living with one of her sons who worked in the coal mines in McDowell County.   

I’ve was told by someone you should make them up and sell these recipes. Well…there is a mountain tradition in my family that when something is freely shared, and it is not your creation, you don’t make money on it…first of all…. that’s stealing and second of all kind of a karma curse happens when you do that.  I will not break that tradition of what was freely shared to be getting 30 pieces of silver.

And don’t eat these fruitcakes and then drive. Like my daughter said, “How am I going to convince a cop that the alcohol in my bloodstream is from my mother’s fruitcake?”  Hope you enjoy these recipes and here is wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  

You can make these cakes in rings or in loaves. I made loaves because it makes more to share, just watch them in the oven. Loaves don't take as long to bake. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Both of these recipes take a really long time to bake at a lower temperature oven and you use a pan of water in the bottom of the stove so they will not dry out so quickly. Otherwise you get more like a hard brick, instead of a cake. Yep...I did that!

Bourbon Fruitcake

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups raisins

2 cups mixed candied fruit

1/2 cup bourbon

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 1/2 cups butter, softened (3 sticks) BUTTER not margarine ( Margarine makes it just greasy and loses taste) Yep did that too.

1 3/4 cups sugar

6 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

Combine raisins, fruits and bourbon in a bowl and let soak overnight.

Grease and flower a straight tube pan or 3 bread pans.

Sift flour, baking powder and nutmeg together. Set aside.

Beat butter and sugar together in large bowl until smooth.

Beat in eggs until light and fluffy.

Stir in flour mixture alternately with milk, beating until smooth after each addition.

Stir in fruits soaked in bourbon and nuts.

Turn into prepared pan.

Bake in preheated slow oven 300 degrees. Make sure to put a pan of water on lower rack of oven. For tube bake 2 hours and 10 minutes. For loaves about 1 hour and 45 minutes. check with a toothpick if it comes out clean and it springs back when lightly pressed with fingertip it's done. Cool in pan on a rack for 20 minutes. Remove from pan, cool completely.

Wrap cake in bourbon soaked cheesecloth: over wrap in plastic wrap and then in aluminum foil. Store in fridge or cool place. Each week I open them up and with a spray bottle full of Kentucky bourbon (or bourbon of your choice) I lightly spray the cheese cloth and recover. I let mine age 6 to 8 weeks but by the 4th week ...we break into one and it's fine.

Perdue Family Fruit Cake 

Ingredients

1 pound of butter

1 pound of light brown sugar, sifted after it's weighed

10 small eggs, separated

1/2 cup molasses

4 1/2 cups flour (all purpose)

1 tsp. baking soda

3 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. ground cloves

2 tsp. cinnamon

2 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg

1/2 cup sour milk

4 cups of raisins

2 cups of currants

1 cup chopped citron

1 cup candied pineapple

1 1/2 cup candied cherries

1/2 cup candied orange peel (recipe for this in on this blog)

1/2 cup candied lemon peel

2 cups dates

1 cup chopped pecans

1/2 cup almonds

1/3 cup brandy for soaking fruit, 

1/2 cup brandy for batter

Combine all the fruit with 1/3 cup brandy, over night. Leave currants, raisins whole the rest are chopped.  Next day flour the fruit, sprinkle about a 1/4 cup flour on them and mix in.

Cream butter by itself until it is soft, then add sugar and cream again. Add egg yolks and beat all together for 5 minutes. 

Sift flour, soda, baking powder, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg together 3 times and add alternately  with sour milk, molasses, and brandy.  Beat by hand then add floured fruit. Add pecans chopped but almonds whole.

Last fold in well beaten egg whites.

Bake in loaf pans (I fill them about half way up) or in 2 large tube pans. Grease and flour dust pans. 

Bake in slow oven 250 degrees for 2 1/2 hours with pan of water underneath on lower rack. Done when springs back when lightly touched.

Let cool in pan a bit and then turn out and cool completely. Wrap in cheesecloth soaked in brandy. Store in a cool place wrapped in waxed paper. (that was the aunt's wooden box in the basement) Resoak the cheesecloth once a week for 6 to 8 weeks. (I don't unwrap them today, I use a spray bottle) Garnish with half pieces of candied cherries and green citron. I used V and J brandy. Also apricot brandy, but it's really sweet when you use apricot. 

Now I freely share this recipe with you and if you try to make money on it, because neither you nor I created it....there is kind of a karma that goes with that. Don't ask me why but the one's I give away turn out perfectly. It's meant to be shared freely.  So be mindful of that. A bar owner would ask me to sell him several and they turned out TERRIBLE. So I traded with him. He bought all the ingredients for all my cakes and in turn got 3 cakes from me and that worked. 

I bought my fruit and nuts from Nuts.com this year. They are really good fresh products and made an excellent cake. 

Appalachian Requiem - Don't Get Excited - A Veteran's Story

I've had this article in draft since MAY! The month my Dad died. Since Veteran's Day is coming up...guess it would be a good time to finish it.

In life there are always days you have that you remember.  Long after the event has happened, every year that goes by you still have a memory that associates with a date on a calendar.  It's not like the days you celebrate every year such as a holiday, a birthday or an official anniversary of a wedding...no these are more nefarious dates....such as May 6th...the day my Dad died.

Every year when the date comes around, something seems off kilter. I don't really remember his death until I question, what's off, why does this time of year seem weird? I mean the mountains are coming to life, "greening up", the drab gray of winter going away.  Everything comes alive and it is beautiful, why is something is off? Then thinking about it, memories break through and then I remember the days many years ago when Dad moved on from this life.

The entire week dad actually died was a strange week. Dad had been dying for a couple of years. Colon cancer. He was tough even in his illness. Even with colon cancer, up to two weeks before he died, he was chopping wood. My Dad was a soldier most of his life. He was one of the bravest men I ever knew.

His growth and bravery I believe, started by leaving the farm. He worked on a farm with his grandfather, Lindsay Stevenson, in Tazewell County before joining the Army in 1939. He was in the 50th Division of Patton's 5th Army in Europe during WWII. He said he took a pay cut in 1939, to go into the Army. He marched all over Europe with Patton for the entire war.

After the war, he joined the Navy and served during Korea and Vietnam. When you asked him why he got out of the Army to go into the Navy, he would say, "I wanted to ride in the rear with the beer for awhile." His Army days were full of marching, fox holes, bullets, mortar shells and tanks. His war stories and nightmares were his own.

My mother insisted on sleeping on the right side of any bed with him. He would have this recurring nightmare where if she slept on the left side, she'd get thrown out of the bed out of the way of a tank in his dream. After landing in the floor a couple of times, in the middle of the night, she finally figured how to deal with that one.

Because of my dad's service to the military, the one very stark thing I noticed about my father is he didn't get rattled when things went wrong like most people.  He had the demeanor of a soldier and all those who serve, such as firefighters, EMS and police.  The kind of presence that was reassuring even in the worst events, even though inside they were probably just as scared as anyone. They have a job to do and that overrules any fear.

Once I was driving his car and a tie rod end broke going around the corner. The entire front wheel folded up under the car, while I was driving.  I was totally freaked out and he's sitting next to me so calm saying, "Don't get excited. The car is going to stop".  Any and every family calamity, everyone knows that refrain at any catastrophe from Dad..."Don't get excited" was his pat answer.

Once we were driving "Up Home" on his vacation on a long stretch of highway and this wheel passed us on the passenger side. Dad realized it was our rear wheel off of the car. He said, "Look at that! It's our wheel." The car was riding on 3 wheels and instead of stopping my dad hit the gas and followed the tire. We went to screaming and he's telling us, "Now, don't get excited, sit down and well land it near the tire." He waited for the tire to stop rolling and then pulled the car in right behind where it landed about 10 feet away. The car went down with a thunk. He just jacked it up, cleaned off the brake and put the tire back on with some spare lug nuts he kept and down the road we went again.

All of us in the family knew, anything that happened, when Dad said, "Don't get excited", it meant, "hush".....now let's ride this out, look at the damage, figure this out and get to work fixing whatever was wrong.  If you survived and were alive and were not physically hurt, that was most of the battle to him.  The rest of it was nothing as long as you survived whatever happened. If you wrecked the car and came in with nothing but the steering wheel, it was going to be OK, as long as you survived it. If you lost a job, or divorced or had anything adverse happen.. "Don't get excited" People don't think when they are upset and make things worse.

This came from YEARS of dealing in the military with events, that would freak most of us out.  I was a young girl when I became aware of how BRAVE my dad was. Just before he retired from the Navy, he was a flight mechanic. Since he had been working on military planes for SO Long...he was in demand for a special job. His job was to fly around the world with a flight crew, flying elderly planes that needed to be put in the graveyard in Arizona.  It was easier to fly them on their last run than haul them over ground.

These planes were at the end of their useful career. It was dad's job to get them ready for their final flights. He would tell us stories of alarms going off while they were in the air and if they couldn't figure out what was wrong they would put a tape over the warning lights or disconnect the alarm and keep flying.  He was one of the first flight crews to try out foam on a runway, because a plane's landing gear wouldn't work.

My mother would get these phone calls from the base that would upset her to NO end. They'd call her and say, "he's coming in with only one engine working or with a torn wing or no landing gear." About  2 times a month. She'd hit her knees and start praying.  Then after it was over, they never called her to tell her whether the flight crew made it and he was OK. She would try to call the base and they wouldn't give out that information.

My Dad had no idea they had called her and the first place the flight crew went after surviving these ordeals, was to a bar to get a DRINK. He wouldn't call home. Back then Dad called on a certain day, at a certain time because long distance was expensive. We would get post cards all the time. She finally just told them, "Don't call me!" "Just don't call me, unless he's hurt and needs me. I send him out with a prayer and if God sees fit, he will come back to us alive."

I can remember the worst fight I ever witnessed my parents have. They had gone to the base for a unit picnic when one of Dad's pilots he worked with told on him. He was shaking his hand and telling others, "This is the craziest S.O.B. I've ever met!" Then proceeded to tell a recent story on my Dad. The plane they went to pick up was at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  It was a radar plane, or a "stoof with a roof" as Dad called it. Just as it was getting ready to take off and gaining speed, half the landing gear collapsed.  The plane spun around all over the runway, landed cockeyed and caught on fire. Everyone got out including my father......but Dad...went back in a burning plane and saved the Cuban cigars and Rum!

My mother on hearing that story, lost it!!! They came in arguing that evening. I remember Mom telling Dad, "I know what you do is dangerous, but dammit Donald, you don't have to make it more dangerous on purpose!" "You are going to leave me with 5 kids to raise alone, for Cuban cigars and rum?" My mother had a temper. I remember him telling her, "Aw, Lean, (he never called her Lena, but Lean) it wasn't all that!" She was mad about that one for a long TIME.

For a man that had survived WWII, and served in the Navy doing what he did...NOPE....nothing really rattled him much. One of his greatest lessons I think he taught me was, it didn't matter how bad things got, as long as you survived with your life, you have a chance to continue to live and hope for a future. "Things" don't matter, but being alive does, because it's life that is precious.

He told a story of being in a town in Germany, and when they first saw it, it was beautiful. After the allies bombed it, there was nothing left. As they were marching into the town, he said, they saw a man and his family at the end of a street. They had come out of a half blown away house. Before they could reach them, the man shot his wife, an elderly woman and his two children before turning the gun on his self.  Dad didn't understand this...at all...because they had survived. He always said, the greatest thing regardless of what happens is to survive.

So in celebration of the week this wonderful man passed, and in lieu of Veteran's Day, I guess it does feel a little off, so I can reflect and remember and I do.

Christmas 2017, Dollhouses, Appalachian Heartwood Blog Update

Those that follow this blog KNOW I don't blog often. Too sick to keep up with so much. So I prioritize the old life. Blog posts are not priority but I try. So much to update on. Finally figured out how to get my anti virus to not interfere with my blog.  It was a new development that took a couple of weeks to figure out.

First, dealing with Meniere's disease on top of CFS. Going deaf basically. It's OK...I'm learning important sign language to teach my family when I go deaf...like sign for, "Do you want some wine?"

Here's the way I look at all this illness. I was of the generation that didn't believe we were going to live past 30.  Believe me, I tried not to. I worked hard and played hard. It's amazing I've made it through so many crazy things in my life through the years anyway. So now, that I am the age I am...HEY, every day is another gift regardless of what is wrong with the old body.  Just sometimes the juggling of symptoms gets in the way of all I want to do before I do check out of this old world.

Regardless of what is going on in this old world, and it's pretty messed up at the moment, every day you open your eyes is a day to get it right. What is past is gone. What we write and do on this day is up to us to do the best we can. If we do our best, that's all that can be expected. Things we can't change, just change the way we think about them to deal with them better. Keep on going. I woke up today....best gift ever!

So what have I been doing with my time? Well my last post, I sent pictures of grand dad to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum. Now that I'm back on the blog and figured out what was interfering with it, I need to review my pictures here and add they are now their property but I have permission to use digital copies of them. I still heat with wood, an environment not good for pictures and I had this fear they could be lost forever if I didn't find a safe place for them.

My daughter took me to an opening of their movie they are trying to promote the birth of country music. I rely on my family a LOT.
I went to meet a couple of cousins on my father's side. I'm going to be working on the Stevenson's of Tazewell County this winter. Got a copy of my GREAT GREAT grandmother's Bible to share. Whoo HOO! That's a separate post for sure.

Then since May, I've been working on a project for my G baby. A dollhouse. My daughter had one when she was young that we lost possession of through the years. She always wanted her daughters to experience that. Now there is only one daughter left in the house and I got a burr up my butt to make sure she has that experience. So I worked with my grand daughter on this house, all summer. Tried to get it finished for her birthday in October....that didn't happen. As a matter of fact, we just finished it last week.  It's a dollhouse kit and a kit for furniture, but I added a lot of personal touches. The door knobs are from an old broken carnival glass necklace that once belonged to Aunt Florence. Same Aunt that when a missionary proclaimed, "We are coming to save the Appalachian, people!" and she asked, "From what?"

Lace from her Great Aunt's lace materials that we made her wedding dress from are embossing the bed. Just all kinds of things like that. Grand daughter picked the colors and wall paper, etc.  I'm not rich, so we made a lot of things like the newel posts out of stuff I had laying around here. The ceiling lights are out of old wooden beads and the bottoms of a Gatorade, vegetable oil bottles and an old chain necklace.  Living in the land of Lilliput. Grateful for a grand daughter with lots of energy and nimble hands!

I'm pleased with how it turned out. Sent it home with g baby with a bottle of glue to fix what breaks and to finish up adding what she wants to it. I really like this craft. When I'm sick, it's small and I can fiddle with things sitting up in bed with a tray on my lap. Got another kit for my birthday but this time it will take even longer...unless I can con my G baby to help with that one too. 

So that's my update. Hopefully winter will allow me to have more downtime that I can spend on the blog.  Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas or whatever you choose to celebrate. I don't get hung up on what folks say around this time of year! WHO CARES! As long as we are being wished well!! 

I have to relate this story. I was going through the checkout line at the store the other day. When the cashier gave me my change, I said, "I hope you have a great holiday." The lady in line next to me, said "It's have a Merry Christmas!"  And the cashier agreed said, "That's right!"  I asked them both, "What if I'm Jewish, like Jesus?" The look of shock and then shame was apparent. I said, "Wishing one well, should not be based on if you are a Christian or not," and I walked off.  I thought we were over this issue the last couple of years. Obviously, not everyone got the memo.  NOTE: If you are walking around with a chip on your shoulder on how people wish us well at this holiday season, you are not very Christian, AT ALL!  You are creating the war on Christmas. Be grateful and LET IT GO!! God's got this.  Blessings, Peace and LOVE this holiday season. 

I'm An Appalachian with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

I put 3 of these up today on You tube. I will be able to go back and forth on this. I'm working on a blog about Thanksgiving. I hope to get that up next week.

Low Tech Person In A High Tech World!!!

I'm pushing myself too, TOO much. And I know it. Trying to learn all this technology is making my BRAIN hurt and my body ache. I'm taking an online social media marketing class that has been helpful but truthfully? I don't want to spend hours on social media marketing. Some of their methods can't see the trees for the forest.  Some of it I find useful, most I find a pain in the butt. If someone wants to do this marketing as a full time job, that's great. I don't...just pick up a few tricks and tools here and there to use and let this grow organically.  If I'd just post more and share those posts in links here and there, just what I've been doing, I think I'd accomplish the same thing. Alas I never post regularly and I forget to share what I do post!!  My bad.

Tonight I'm frustrated, I can't get their program to work...plus every time I learn a program, they change it!!! So I will do what I'm good at and that's put a blog update on here. People who are suppose to find me will. Still have to get this blog changed over to a website. Already have the name purchased. That will be another week in the future. These days it is just too much going on to shake a stick at. Friday night sat about 6 hours at the ER with my son. He's having vision and pain problems. ER's on Friday nights are really INTERESTING places. Bless those people manning those ER's. I'd of pulled my hair out I had to work that every weekend!!! Not sure what is going on with my son, he has a referral to an eye specialist. Blessings and prayers would be appreciated.

Wolf Creek Indian Village and Museum is having their 20th Anniversary celebration, Saturday September 17th and I've been trying to help on the history timeline and identifying pictures. Blasts from the past and realizing so much history because of this one little site.  Yep I've already caused an uproar with my Jenny Wiley posts. BUT dag gone it.... so many of the history books are WRONG and of all the stories that need to be told, the history of the early Europeans and Native Americans need MUCH more scrutiny in Appalachia than what has been written and taken as fact.  Especially when in fact, a lot of what has been passed as history of our area is absolute BS. WCIV is a place for those conversations and beginnings. So life goes on.

Next....When Appalachian Service Project crews were here, repairing my home, I felt so grateful, I made some corn husks dolls and such as gifts. They were not great and accomplished in a hurry and I used every dyed corn husk I had.  I had to get some more and dye them quickly!! I promised to try to demonstrate at the Mercer County Heritage Festival coming up here in a couple of weeks.  Here is one of the little ladies I made for a member of one of the crews.

This one went to a Pittsburgh Steeler's fan who saw what shucks were dyed in my box, wanted black and gold.  Did it, though the flash on the camera makes it look much lighter. Need to work on my photography too. 

So last week, I began the process of dying corn husks to replenish the supply. I'm trying to write a how to book on how I do this, and give directions on how to make all kinds of corn husk crafts. It's in progress!! Thus why I was interested in Social media marketing. I'm just not interested in going that in depth to spend days on it to do what I could figure out with a Google search! But it did get me to work on my twitter account, open a bitly account, get on Linked in and Klout and Hootsuite and explain the concepts which is a good background to know. I just don't like using the programs they want us to use. Big Data is a bit intrusive and scary...I just want to sell a corn husk craft book later! I'm one of those people that believe things will come to you when you want or need them. Don't need to push it, so much as let it be found. 

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Anyway, I use all kinds of things to dye shucks: Kool-aid, food coloring, cold water dyes, rit dye, natural dyes. The brownish black above was accomplished using black walnut husks.  What ever I have on hand. It's been so damp and humid, I was having a time after they were dyed, getting them to dry for storage on the dining room table.  Outside we kept having the "monsoons" every day so the ground was damp and the wind would pick up and then die down. Laying them out on the ground on black plastic usually works on a hot day....IF the wind is not blowing. I finally resorted and used the old pickup truck bed as a drying rack. THAT worked beautifully.  Hillbilly ingenuity.

I always use salt as a mordant. Think of dying Easter eggs, it is the same concept. So here are some pictures of that process and a flyer for the Mercer County Heritage festival. I'm going and will be demonstrating as long as I can hold out. I start getting veritgoey or washed out I will have to quit...but I think I'm in better shape this year than last. Last year I was VERY sick and I hope I hold up much better this year. 

BUT, I NEVER KNOW! Like I've said before, I can tell myself, "I'm going to do such and such today!" And my body replies, "HA! YOU WISH!"  Such is the life of chronic illness.  But it's always a good day.....I WOKE UP!!! Just have to roll with it. 

Took 3 days to dry these on the table.

Purple UNSWEETENED Kool-aid with salt as a mordant

Taking over the sink for a couple of days!

I use mason jars filled with water for weights.

Setting overnight.

BEST IDEA all year. Black Truck bed liner with sides, didn't blow away and dried in one afternoon.

End of POST. Blessing all and back to this CRAZY class. I'm so far behind.

Summer 2016 Update Last of the Appalachians?

Much going on at the old homestead. People have come to volunteer their time through a wonderful organization called the Appalachian Service Project and friends who have donated extra materials to help repair my house. It's been badly neglected and would be falling down if something isn't done. So far what has been done is amazing!!! Groups from all over the U.S. have helped.

If you want to support a group truly helping Appalachian people here is a link to their website.Appalachian Service Project. Now with the WV floods, more help will be needed than ever. While we are trying to figure out what to do to increase our economic development, it helps us to maintain homes we have.

I've been about useless in this endeavor. First, I screwed my foot up tripping into the hearth. This new development of Meniere's Disease, I keep forgetting I can't move or turn too fast. I have to let my ears catch up with my head or I stagger.

I keep telling people, those wild times I had in my twenties and thirties actually was a training ground for this.  I could walk straight, drunk, though if I moved too fast, or bent over, I fell then too.

Myself and bestie Sherri. I asked for a million dollars
She asked to, "get out of trouble". I think she made a drive through out of a restaurant.

Well it's that way now but constantly and none of the fun of drinking. What is up with that?  If I actually get drunk will it make it better? Too chicken to try it and with everything else going on...I do good to move. Woke up with the vertigo yesterday. THAT I HATE! I know how to treat it, so it's not as scary but another day lost on BS illnesses. Sigh...work with what ya got! It's a good day....I WOKE UP.

Enough of the illnesses I can't do a thing about but learn to live with them. There is this wonderful facebook page you should check out called the Appalachian Project, or TAP. A few days ago Shane one of the admin's posted this:

The Last of the Appalachians?

"We have discussed at length on TAP the fact that many traditional Appalachian practices have waned and some have almost completely disappeared. From canning our own food to observing certain deeply held superstitions and everything in between, a lot of our cultural traditions are clearly beginning to be lost on new generations. I have observed it in my own children who have little to no interest in learning the beliefs and skills of our forefathers.

My personal belief is that the world at large is becoming more homogenous in large part due the widespread use of the Internet. Information is literally at your fingertips and exchanges with folks from different areas of the country and world are quite common. My son has made friendships with people from Peru, New Zealand and the UK. They routinely discuss the geopolitical impact of Brexit and the upcoming US presidential election on world events. The closest I would have come to a similar experience would have been to put a message in a bottle, throw it in the Clinch River and hope it floated all the way to Ecuador.

I see all these rapid changes and then think how different my childhood was from my parents and how much their childhoods were different from their parents, and so on. Very few people truly want to be drastically different than their peers so some of this "Appalachian assimilation" is inevitable as people see how the mainstream of society live.

My question is what can, or even should, be done to preserve our culture? Change isn't necessarily a bad thing but I personally don't relish the thought of becoming the new Mohicans. - Shane

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments."

This is something I have pondered forever. We have changed. Just in our speech that has changed so much. I was demonstrating at an event once and I do what we call as "cross switching". When I'm with other Appalachians I revert back to our dialect in a BIG way. The way we speak among ourselves is much different many times than when we are in public. Especially if we are in any professional capacity. SAD but if you don't, people treat you like you are ignorant.

Last year a the Mercer County Heritage Festival demonstrating corn husk crafts,
I will be there again this year, hopefully. Lord be willin and the creeks don't rise,

When I'm in public I speak not so much with a twang or the sing song of our language. Many say they can't understand what I'm saying if I speak with the dialect. Feller came up and watched for a time heard me speak and made the comment, "So by your speech, you are not really an Appalachian? Did you learn all this from the Fox Fire books?"  He got a mouthful of Appalachian then. I told him, "How'd ye like to go snipe huntin' and I lose yer ass in these mountains?" Got my red up then. He ambled on to insult someone else.

I didn't learn my skills from the Fox Fire books. The Fox Fire books were one of the first to write down some about our culture, our skills and became popular. Here is what I posted in response to Shane and the Appalachian Project post:

"I'm sharing this one on my page Shane and with your permission on my blog too. As someone who is descended from a LONG line of Appalachians and still living here I question this all the time. I worked in the tourism industry and helped people with their genealogical research in Appalachia for 25 years. I demonstrate and STILL demonstrate some of the old skills.

I get pissed off when people put down the Fox Fire books. I didn't learn my skills in the Fox Fire books, I was taught like the kids that wrote it down....BUT IT'S written DOWN and preserved that way. I know people who are not from here that know more of our culture and skills than our own people do today. That's the sad part!!! Getting the younger generation proud of who they are, where they come from and interested in learning these things, that is the challenge.

In my county there was a high school history teacher, John Dodson, who 20 years ago, developed a program that the high school students went out and interviewed family members. Kind of like the Fox Fire tradition but with a twist. They put it all online and maintain the database, even today. It's called the Bland County History Archives. Wonderful project because they learn computer skills while preserving history and culture at the same time. Here is a link to their project. Bland County History Archives

The reason I started my blog was to share some of the little knowledge I still know before I'm gone. It is said, it takes a thousand voices to tell a single story. Appalachians should be sharing and writing down their own history. Appalachia is always changing but I think it is the sharing of our culture and our history that will keep it alive."

I'd love to hear your comments too.