Thursday Thirteen

On Sunday, we took the utility vehicle and drove around the farm. While we were riding, I held up my little Nikon pocket camera and my Canon with the zoom and snapped all kinds of pictures. So I thought I'd share with you photos of the farm as it looked on 11/6/2011.

1. My husband's hunting stand.

2. The power lines that bisect the farm. I am not sure when they went in; probably in the 1940s or 1950s. Mostly they cross fields used for pasture. They attract a lot of lightning in the summer, though.

3. Our house taken from the other side of the farm with the Canon. I have been surprised at how long the color has stayed on the trees this year.

4. The farm in the foreground. My house is hidden in the woods to the right of the house on the left.

5. The farm from the northern side. The buildings are the old chicken coop and barn sheds. My husband's grandfather raised thousands of chickens in the 1950s.

6. One of the barns as seen from the northern field.

7. A view of the Botetourt County Sports Complex from the highest point on the farm. Those are our cows in the foreground. They look like little ants!

8. A shot of some color still on the trees.

9. The pond in the foreground, Tinker Mountain to the left. You remember that book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? Well, this pond is the start of one of the tributaries that marks its headwaters.

10. I love the way the trees look in this picture.

11. This is a sycamore tree.

12. More color.

13. A lonely little pile of firewood.

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 216th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

The Geology of Botetourt County

A very long time ago, I thought about being a geologist. When I was around 10, I collected rocks, mostly quartz, and hoarded them in a little crevice in a rock shelf along the creek of my father's farm. For all I know, they are still there.

That career has gone on by me, but I am still fascinated by rocks. Unfortunately, I do not know all of the geological time periods or the proper language to speak about such things. It has been a long time since I had any kind of Earth Science class.

Botetourt County is surrounded by and includes mountains. I look out my windows every day at Tinker Mountain, North Mountain, Stone Coal Gap, and Caldwell Mountain.

The mountains are rugged and heavily forested. In our area, we have a lot of limestone and something called "karst" topography.

It looks like this:

Karst topography is characterized by sinkholes and caves. The rock is usually limestone. Groundwater carves out the caverns. Water aquifers beneath the rocks often contribute to sinkholes.

The Bucks Stop Here

Saturday was the opening day of black powder season in the world of deer hunting.

My nephew and my husband both took eight-point bucks. Those who are aversive to dead deer photos, please avert your eyes. However, do check out the video below the photo if you want to see the deer on the right as he was when he was alive.

The deer are both in freezers and will be eaten. We don't waste them.

I prefer to shoot deer with my Nikon or the video camera. The deer James shot has been wandering around the farm since August. I have video of the deer in velvet as well as the following video that I shot in October one evening when the buck found its way into the front yard. It's a little long, for which I apologize, but he was fascinating to watch.

Open Studios, Botetourt, Part IV

For my last installment of the Open Studios, Botetourt, series, I present to you Willie Simmons.

Willie is a personal friend and a woodmaker of note. He lives in Fincastle.

The following is a revision of an article I wrote about him that appeared in the October 26, 2011 edition of The Fincastle Herald.

It's almost a lost art, the idea of taking a piece of wood and turning it to create the leg of a stool or an intricate architectural piece. But Botetourt native Willie Simmons has kept this craft alive and in the public eye.



Bottle stoppers made by Willie Simmons

Simmons' wood creations include stools, pepper mills, bottle stoppers, wooden bowls, and Christmas ornaments, to name just a few.The woodworker's pieces are well known to those who follow the arts and crafts shows in the Roanoke valley and beyond. He spends his autumn weekends at these events where he sells the creations he has painstakingly made at his shop.

He has spent 31 years working with wood, and 25 of those as a wood turner. He started out helping his father, Bill Simmons, at the same location when it was Castle Crafts, a furniture and antique repair shop that opened in the mid-1970s. When his father needed a piece of oak turned into a chair rung, for example, he asked his son to make it. And Simmons obliged.



Pepper mills made by Willie Simmons

"I worked for him a while, and then went back to teaching," Simmons, a graduate of Virginia Tech, said. He later returned to open up his own woodworking studio in the same building as his father. For the last 15 years, he has also worked as a county magistrate, having long ago given up the classroom.

While all of Simmons' work is functional, some of it is so beautiful that it might be found on display in someone's home instead of hidden in a cabinet. His bowls in particular convey an elegance of design that draws out the wood grain and conveys a since of the majesty of the native hardwood from which it came.

Most of his wood is local. He likes to work in walnut, cherry, oak, and maple. He also works with pine, but has found it to be less durable than hardwoods. "I do use some exotic woods, but it's not as much fun as a native wood," he said.

Handcrafted bowls made by Willie Simmons

He also likes to use old wood and has in the past turned wood from barns or someone's old home place into keepsake ink pens. Those pens tend to be cherished by their owners. One person told him that a Simmons pen was the one pen he would never lend out, Simmons said.

Kurt Hertzog is a wood turner in Henrietta, NY who serves on the Board of Directors for the American Association of Woodturners. That group oversees most of the woodturning organizations in the country, and Simmons is a member.

"He's very skilled," Hertzog said of Simmons. "As a wood turner he excels at peppermills and spindle turning. I have taken classes from Willie, and he's a superb teacher. He shares his skills."

He likened Simmons' work to the ancient arts found in the Foxfire books, which harbor ancestral secrets such as how to weave a chair seat, another skill Simmons has mastered.



Willie Simmons, woodturner extraordinnaire

"I still have the stool I made in his class," Hertzog said. Those footstools are of a kind seldom found commercially, with woven tops and spindle legs.

Simmons is the program director for the Blue Ridge Woodturners, a local wood turning organization. He brings in expert turners for demonstrations. At the end of October, Richard Raffan, whom Simmons called "one of the top five turners in the country," demonstrated for the group. "It's a good coup for me and the club," Simmons said. "He's in demand worldwide."

Simmons also builds furniture on commission, but he is choosy about his work and the assignments he accepts. He will have a few select large pieces for sale during the Open Studios event, including a jelly cupboard and a 30-year-old baker's cabinet, one of his early works. That piece was in his home but he recently built a new house and has decided to let the cabinet go.

His work is never finished, he said. He is always striving for better, a new way to improve a technique, a different and better cut. He works with four or five tools, but his shop is filled with an array of metal and wood, some of it stacked, some not. Clamps, hammers, and chisels line the walls. A big pile of sawdust rests at his feet.

During a recent interview, he looked rested and content even though he had spent the previous three days working at an arts and crafts show at the Roanoke Civic Center. He is honored to know that his work graces the homes of not just his friends, but friends of friends, some of whom live in other countries. His work is in England, Australia, and other nations. "A few times I have gone in and seen something in people's homes and realized I made it," he said, adding that he found it gratifying to know that his work is enjoyed.

Reflecting on his career, Simmons smiled and summed it up this way: "I'm better than those people who are cheaper, and cheaper than those people who are better." His work is always for sale; if you can't make the Open Studios event, stop in when his lights are on, and check him out.

Open Studios, Botetourt, Part III

Dreama Kattenbraker is another Fincastle artist who is a personal friend. She creates what I call "whimsical" art, in that it is not realistic paintings. Her work appeals to the heart and the mind. It makes you think and gives you a different point of view.

She works in mixed media of all kinds. I think her work is very "Alice in Wonderland."

Some of Dreama Kattenbraker's work.

A cabinet and a statue. The cabinet reminds me of Punch & Judy shows.

From left, artist Dreama Kattenbraker, her aunt, and her sister, Donna.

A Dreama Kattenbraker statue.

My favorite Dreama Kattenbraker picture. I have a print of this one.

Open Studios, Botetourt, Part II

You can read about artist Ed Bordett here.

Nancy Dahlstrom is another Fincastle artist.

She is also a professor at Hollins University. I took a couple of art classes from her when I was working on my undergraduate degree.

That's me on the left and Professor Nancy Dahlstrom on the right.

Nancy does printmaking, drawing, and painting. I remember when I was one of her students how kind she was. I cannot draw worth a damn but she was always encouraging. "That's a great line on that leg," she would say. Nevermind that the rest of the piece looked like child's scribbles.

Some of Nancy Dahlstrom's more delicate artwork.

She won the 2011 Perry F. Kendig Award, which is a prestigious honor.

A lovely flower painted by Nancy Dahlstrom.

I overheard Nancy telling another Open Studios visitor that she was having a hard time showing the above painting, because "beauty and loveliness" is not in vogue at the moment. Everybody wants to see darkness and angst, she said. I thought that was pretty sad.

My favorite of Nancy Dahlstrom's artwork at the Open Studios event.

For some reason, the above piece just calls out to me. I think it's a lovely piece of art.

Thursday Thirteen #215

It is the first Thursday in November, and as such I will go back over October and list 13 things I am really grateful for or happy about or just want to remember.

Snow in the mountain,
golden leaves on the trees.

1. We had snow on October 28. This was not the first time I've seen snow in October; I remember one year on October 10 we had a crack of thunder and snow began to fall. Thundersnow, they called it. But I don't remember it snowing just to snow.

2. I read (or listened to) these books: Promise Me, by Richard Paul Evans, A is for Alibi, by Sue Grafton, One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich, and a lot of detective short stories for my class.

3. The leaves on the trees turned and created a wonderful patchwork quilt of beauty for all to enjoy and clasp close their hearts.

Moo!

4. We purchased another herd of cows to add to our existing herd. Almost all of them had babies by their side.





Li'l Miss Deer comes to visit often.

5. The turkeys and deer have been plentiful around the house, and I have enjoyed watching them. The turkeys strut and bob and the deer look in the windows.

6. I went to Fincastle to watch my nephew run in the Bank of Fincastle 10K. Go nephew!

7. My thesis finally took on a voice and I moved it forward a little bit. I only need about, um, 50 more pages and I can graduate with that masters degree.

8. My pounds lost numbers continued to climb and I have now lost over 20 pounds. I lost about 7 pounds in October alone. I'm going to have to clean out my closet again!

9. I did not get sicker and finally toward the end of the month I began feeling better. I've had a terrible infection but I think I am over it now (fingers crossed). I also found out on Halloween that I have a stress fracture in my foot. But hey, it could have been worse!

10. My oral project for my Detectives in Fiction class went well. I talked about the TV show Hunter which was on in the 1980s.

11. I went to the Roanoke Arts & Crafts show at the Roanoke Civic Center and had a nice time walking around and getting out of the house.

12. My aunt came down for a visit. She lives in Salem, which is not so far away, but still a long drive.

13. I went to a meeting of the Roanoke Branch of the National League of American Pen Women, where I am the secretary, and had a good time.





Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 215th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Open Studios: Botetourt, Part I

Botetourt County held its first "Open Studios" event over the Halloween weekend. Sixteen artists opened up their studios and homes to the public so that art lovers could get a glimpse of their workspace and purchase their wares.

My husband and I were able to take in a few of the artists' studios on Sunday. I feel sure if you're interested in the artwork, these artists would love to sell you something.

Ed Bordett is a Fincastle artist. The following information is an updated revision of an article I wrote about him for The Fincastle Herald in 2005.

Ed Bordett, a folksy Fincastle town councilman, has his studio in the back of his own gallery, Art Images.

Ed Bordett's artwork.

His shop on Main Street was the town’s first art gallery, if you don’t count woodworking shops and other non-painting creative endeavors scattered about the area. He took over an old garage about ten years ago, giving him lots of space in which to paint and collect antiques and curiosities, which he is fond of doing.

Bordett’s been a member of the Fincastle community for about 25 years. He paints scenes from the locality and from his native New York.

Fincastle sculpturer Joyce Hilliou says Fincastle is lucky to have artists of Bordett’s caliber in the area. “Ed’s work is great,” she says. “I think Ed is indisputably a master of serigraph paintings.”
Serigraph paintings are original works of art that are similar yet unique. They are created with a silk-screen process that separates colors and transfers them onto a screen. When the screen contacts paper, the color is forced through a stencil. The process is repeated up to 40 times for color.

That’s just one of the things Bordett does. He also creates oil paintings, etchings, monotypes, and some commercial artwork. He has won many awards and honors for his work and businesses commission paintings from him.

My husband really liked Ed Bordett's version of a cow.

He has always been an artist. Bordett attended the National Academy of Fine Arts in New York City and graduated from the Ringling School of Art. He’s been in the area since 1975; he moved to Fincastle in the mid-1980s. He’s been on town council since 1997. He’s chaired the Fincastle Festival’s art show, served on the board of Alleghany Highlands Art Center, has been a member of the grant review board for the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and co-president of Market Gallery & Studios cooperative in Roanoke.

He takes his artwork on the road 12-15 times a year, showing at juried shows on the east coast. He’s also husband to wife Becky and father of two.

His artwork focuses on color and light, what he calls a visual mix of the activity around him. He attempts to convey his emotions and feelings toward his subject when he paints.

Ed Bordett's image of Fincastle at Christmas.

Fincastle, he says, doesn’t have the same high energy as New York, but he sees a lot of similar geometric shapes and patterns. This comes through in his use of light across the surface of his art.

He paints from photos and sketches, depending on the subject and the way the subject matter caught his fancy. He sometimes creates small studies of a subject before moving onto a larger painting.

He works among a jumble of antiques, with the cracks in the walls of the old building as a backdrop and a partially-played chess game near an old sofa. The room is littered with easels, large and small, and half-finished canvases. He doesn’t keep regular hours, though that could change if the town begins to have a cultural climate change that indicates an interest in local arts.

"Buying isn’t the only thing,” he says of the arts and their work. He wants folks to look, too, and contemplate the artist’s vision.

That vision has sustained him well for a very long time, and he has no plans to give it up.

“I’ve just always been lucky enough to pursue what I want to do,” Bordett says as he cradles an ancient yet beautifully painted box he picked up at auction. “I’m extremely fortunate.”

Another Ed Bordett view of Fincastle at Christmas.

New Footwear

My foot had been bothering me for quite some time, and yesterday I went to the podiatrist about it.

She gave me new footwear for my right foot:

Ain't it lovely?

Definitely the next thing in designer wear.

The verdict was that an arthritic big toe forced my second toe to move into major support mode. This resulted in a tiny little stress fracture and something called metatarsalgia.

I'll be in the funny little shoe for a few weeks.

If I'm out and you see me in sneakers and not this thing, don't be surprised. I am not too keen on wearing it outside of the house. I guess it will depend on how much walking I have to do wherever I am going.

Booo!

Saturday Light

The snow began to fall late yesterday. An early snow, for our area. The flakes were big, fat, and wet, falling quickly but melting right away.

I cannot recall a snow before Halloween.

The morning dawned wet and gray. Fog hid the Blue Ridge Mountains from view.

This little one turned up in the front yard and decided to stay awhile. I went out on the front porch and stood not 20 feet away. We had a long conversation, Miss Deer and I.

The moment I had been waiting for arrived, and the sun shone brilliantly off the yellow leaves.

The fog remained and I still could not see the mountains.

Is there anything better than sunshine slipping through the clouds on a brisk October morning?

Li'l Miss Deer hung around a good while as I stood and snapped pictures.

Finally the fog lifted. Snow on the mountain two days before Halloween!

Is there any better sign that we are part of this world than our ability to see it? All we need do is open our eyes and look around.

I find great solace in this picture. For me it is a blend of man and nature, and an example that if we try we can make it all work together.

I hope you find your light on this intriguing day.

Books: Promise Me

Promise Me
By Richard Paul Evans
Copyright 2010
Audiobook

This is the weirdest Richard Paul Evans book I have read, and I have read at least five, maybe six, of his books. It is safe to say that I like the writer.

In Promise Me, Beth is the mother of Charlotte, a six-year old who is not feeling well. Her husband has an affair and then dies from pancreatic cancer. A man comes into her life, helps her out, and turns out to be someone completely unexpected.

If this book had been sent to a publisher by a first-time author, I feel sure it would have been rejected hands down. Fortunately for Evans, he's a best-selling author and probably at that point in his career where a boo-boo every now and then isn't going to wreck his life.

The book is told in a diary format, which Evans uses to better effect in The Walk. The Walk is the first of a trilogy, and I have read both parts, with the second being Miles to Go. I confess after reading Promise Me, I have some concerns about how The Walk trilogy ends. I will try not to be too upset if aliens suddenly beam up the protagonist when that third book comes out.

Anyway, the diary format works well, and our heroine, Beth, is a strong character with a good voice. However, the book goes all fantasy/sci-fi on the reader. This would be fine if you knew it was a fantasy or sci-fi book when you pick it up, but your first real hint of this is more than halfway through the book. The only inkling that there might be a curve ball comes early, but it's such a small hint that any reader who misses it can be forgiven for dismissing it.

Evans does very well with these tear-jerking books that bring up issues like infidelity, death of a loved one, illness, moving on with life, etc., etc., but I don't think bringing in a time traveler is really the way to indicate resolution. As it is, this book has nearly incestuous undertones and I can see why some people call it creepy on the Amazon reviews.

The story is science fiction masquerading as mainstream fiction, and it doesn't do either very well. It is understandable that readers would be upset with this book.

To be fair I can see that he has been heading in this direction. Some of his works have a supernatural or super-spiritual quality to them but they were never completely unbelievable. People have strange things happen all the time and he never slipped beyond the boundaries of disbelief - until this book. Though I confess The Gift, which was published in 2007, was a little far out there. It still didn't push the limits like Promise Me.

His editor really should have made him rewrite the thing from the middle to the end.