Tennessee Renaissance Festival 2013

Our day at Tenn-Renn

Welcome to Covington Glen!

We made our annual visit to the Tennessee Renaissance Festival on the third Sunday of May this year. Isaac, Rachel, and I arrived at the festival so early that we were able to park in the first row, directly in front of the gates.

Soon after we bought our wristbands, it was time for the faire to begin. To our surprise, the Queen and court assembled for an opening ceremony in front of the gates. They probably do this every morning of the faire, but it was new to us.

Fairies at play

A royal lineup

Talented minstrels

Inside the front gate, the fairies were already busily blowing bubbles. Isaac and Rachel wandered away, and I sat down to wait for Keely and Taurus who were a few minutes behind us. Some of the nobility stood nearby and observed the arrival of the day's guests.

A wizard and family put on
wristbands at the fair entrance.

When Keely called to tell me they had arrived, I went back to the ticket line to meet them and share my spray-on sun block. At the entrance to the festival, workers were checking armbands and looking carefully inside every bag. Many uniformed members of the sheriff's department were present throughout the day, and security seemed to be a little tighter than in the past.

Sunshine and Shadow

At the VA Medical Center in Nashville

I spent a day at the VA Medical Center in Nashville with Dennis, earlier this week. In the late 1960s, he injured his hand while working on a Navy aircraft carrier flight deck. Now the injury is affecting his ability to grip with that hand, so he had a morning appointment related to that. Then he had a 3-hour wait for an unrelated appointment in the afternoon.

While Dennis was at his first appointment, I waited for him in a lobby on the third floor that overlooks a courtyard. The last time I spent time looking through that window, workers were laying the walkway. It was interesting to see the finished project. One thing bothered me, though -- a red piece of garbage on the rocks.

The courtyard, seen through a third floor window

When we went back to the first floor, I walked outside, crunched my way across the rocks, picked up that piece of trash, and put it in a garbage can. It was a jagged piece of red plastic with a few small white words on one side. I decided it was part of a broken sign. Maybe it blew off one of the surrounding rooftops.

In the background, the window where I took the first picture.

Every plant in the courtyard makes a statement. The flower planters had not seen any attention this spring. A scraggly pansy was growing in the corner of one planter. In another, a single tulip was almost ready to bloom. Why not plant ivy in the flower boxes if they aren't going to be kept full of flowers?

Unexpected visual treat

The designer planned for people to experience the courtyard by seeing it from windows, as well as by visiting it. From all levels, the simple structure of the courtyard and the contrasts of light within it are interesting, but soothing.

I didn't spent my entire day analyzing this courtyard, even though it may sound like it. After I got that piece of red plastic trash picked up, I spent the rest of the afternoon in 19th century South Dakota with Norwegian settlers -- Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rölvaag. After we finally got home, I sat down and finished the book.

In Giants in the Earth, there are great dreams, mighty labors, well-earned victories, crippling fears, terrible loneliness, and heartbreaking losses. Several days later, I am still mulling over what I read.

Odds and Ends (2)

More photos from the "To be posted" folder

I can say with certainty that I have not been in Elkton (KY) on a Thursday evening in summer for several years. How can I be so sure? Thursday night is Bike Night in Elkton from May through October. If I had passed through the downtown area of Elkton on Bike Night, I would have noticed the motorcycles.

Elkton's Facebook page reports 265 bikes in town on the evening of July 2, 2010, just two days before I photographed the flag and metal biker art on the corner of the town square. The poster was on display in an Elkton convenience store.

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I saw this business card on the bulletin board at the Pennysaver Market in Fairview (KY). Apparently these guys have a market for the materials they salvage. Large beams, weathered siding, wide-plank flooring, doors, vintage light fixtures, old mantels, etc. from old buildings are sometimes used in new construction to add a rustic look.

I would like to visit a building salvage yard, sometime. On the home-decorating TV shows, the designers visit salvage stores and always find a vintage piece with lots of character. Hailey Salvage & Building Material in Nashville sounds like that sort of salvage store.

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I was really shocked when I drove down Jeff Adams Road (in Christian County, KY) and saw this heap of broken boards instead of the little frame house that it used to be. Bro In Law Barn Salvaging could have recycled some weathered silvery-gray wood siding from it. Instead, the little house is bulldozed and ready to burn.

This little house was built like a barn with the boards running up and down. It always looked to me like there was nothing between the inside and outside except a single layer of board. People who grew up in houses like this one tell stories about waking up on winter mornings with snow on their quilts.

The little house is gone, but the day-lilies that grew around it are still there, I promise. They filled the yard long ago, and they've spilled out into the road ditches where they grow for a hundred yards in both directions.

One summer, I dug up a few day-lilies from the ditch and brought them home. They have multiplied and they would like to expand out of their allotted area here, too, but the lawn mower keeps them corralled.

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As the shortest day of the year approaches, these forsythia buds remind me that the cold, dark days of winter will soon pass. This photo was taken in early March; it's now late December. In less than three months, the forsythia will be ready to bloom again!

Related:
Odds and Ends (1)

Nashville Flood Video

A natural disaster of epic proportion as photographed by Nashville's citizens

As the video notes, coverage of the Nashville flood on national news has been limited. Bombers, oil spills -- America has a lot going on right now. That doesn't change the fact that Nashville has been left a terrible, terrible mess by the Great Flood of 2010. I can't imagine trying to carry on with life in the midst of all the flood damage.

"We are Nashville" on the Section303 blog

Murfreesboro and Nashville Flood: How You Can Help
Middle Tennessee Red Cross
Salvation Army in Nashville

Flood in Nashville

Photos on Flickr

Local readers who follow Nashville television news have been seeing video of the devastating flood there. For readers outside the Nashville area, here are links to a few of the photographs that have been uploaded to Flickr by Nashville residents:

Nashville Flood, set by Inyo Photo
Other Situation 2010, Nashville Flood
Nashville Flood, set by Jett Loe
Nashville Flood, 2010, set by Richard Call
Nashville May 01, 2010 Flooding, set by avatar28

Many schools in Tennessee are closed tomorrow due to flooding, including Montgomery County (Clarksville), our neighbor just across the state line south of here. School closings are merely a slight inconvenience, compared to the muddy mess that some people are facing in their homes and workplaces.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/avatar28/ / CC BY 2.0

Seen at the VA Medical Center

Quiet spots in a very busy place

Water garden at one of the entrances

Glowing Coke machine

Courtyard renovation

Dennis had two appointments at the VA Medical Center in Nashville today. He saw a physical therapist about his back and also got his eyes tested. I went along to take over the driving after his eyes were dilated.

Dozens (hundreds?) of people were traveling through the ground floor of the Medical Center. Some offices had lines that stretched down the hallways. Our first two waiting rooms were small and crowded. On the 4th floor, the elevators opened to a quiet, spacious waiting area. "I'll stay here," I told Dennis.

I had a stack of magazines in my bag, and I looked through five of them while I was waiting. I tore out the few pages that I wanted to save. Then I passed on the magazines by leaving them with the other reading material on the table. I also left several magazines in the waiting rooms downstairs.

Getting rid of those magazines in a good way and being there to drive my husband home were my two best (and only) accomplishments of this day.

Memorable Visits to the Zoo

Talk to the animals

All visits to the zoo are interesting, but sometimes, something happens that is out of the ordinary, even for the zoo.

When we lived in Berlin, we visited the wonderful Berlin Zoo frequently. One dark winter day, Dennis and I were there with the kids. I had Baby Isaac in a carrier on my chest, and I was wearing a cape that went over both of us.

The wind became very sharp, and I tried to keep my back to it to shelter Isaac. Then sleet came shooting through the air, and the wolves began howling. It was such an eerie sound that I imagine that even the pedestrians outside the zoo shivered and walked a little faster when they heard it. We decided to cut that visit short and go home.

Another day at the Berlin zoo, it rained right after we arrived. I had packed some sandwiches, so we went to the monkey house and had lunch on the bench in front of the orangutan's cage. We spent most of an hour there, watching and being watched by an amazingly human-like creature. To this day, I have an affection for orangutans.

At the Berlin Zoo, the tigers had a big outdoor enclosure that was connected to their inside cage. When we visited the tiger house one day, they were outside. We were walking down a long hallway, talking about other things, when a tiger's huge head suddenly appeared in a porthole right beside little Keely. We saw his long, yellow fangs. Even though he was behind glass, his sudden appearance gave us a fright that we won't ever forget. When we looked at him again outside, we saw that the porthole was on the back wall of his pen.

I had another memorable experience yesterday at the Nashville Zoo. When we visited the giraffes, two were standing at the back of their little pasture, but one male was taking a close look at the people. I spoke to him, and he stretched his neck out and looked right at me. I talked to him for several minutes and took some pictures of him.

Keely and Taurus had moved to the other side of the little building, so Isaac and I walked over there. We were telling them how the giraffe had given us his attention, when the giraffe saw us, left the other people, and rejoined us. So we talked to him a little while longer. It was an interesting experience. It's pleasant to imagine that he knew we liked him.

It was Keely's idea to go to the zoo yesterday. She will remember this trip as the time that a dragonfly sat on her hand. Isaac will remember that the little donkey thought his hand tasted like salt. I think Taurus will remember the reptile house. It was a nice day.

A few more photos:
Alligators
Carousel
Crane
Elephants
Fish
Gibbon
Iguanas
Jungle gym
Leopard
Leopard 2
Lizard
Meerkats
Meerkats 2
Pathway
Zebras

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum at Nashville, TN

Life in The Upper South...

Dennis had an appointment yesterday at the VA Hospital in Nashville. When we finally finished there, we decided to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. (It's true -- in 16 years of living 90 minutes from Nashville, we had never visited the Country Music Hall of Fame!)

The front of the building sweeps to a high peak on one end. I couldn't get it all in my camera from any position I tried. I think a wide-angle lens might have helped. However, here is the museum from the side, with a huge banner advertising the Ray Charles exhibit that is currently featured.



Here are some photos from the museum. (Most are less than 150k in size.) It was very dark in there, but these images were captured without flash, as the museum requests.

A very young Johnny Cash
Detail of Gene Autry's guitar
Old show bills from Hatch Show Print
Old sheet music
Tex Ritter's saddle
Wurlitzer jukebox
Minnie Pearl's dress
Costume-maker, Nudie, honored
Jim Reeves "Touch of Velvet"
Flatt & Scruggs guitar and banjo
Detail of Merle Travis's guitar
Bill Monroe's Gibson Mandolin
Patsy Cline's blue dress
Chet Atkins's D'Angelico Excel
Faron Young's guitar and a costume
Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys
Hank Snow costumes
Early photo of Ray Charles
Roy Rogers, "Bells of San Angelo"

Johnny Cash's battered and scratched Martin guitar

In the photo above, the reflection in the glass is a wall of platinum and gold record albums. They are displayed in the order that they occurred. Some of them open out, and you can listen to selections from that album.

In fact (brace yourself for the shock!), there are many places in the museum where you can listen to music, watch videos of performances, listen to interviews with stars, etc. Much of the museum's ongoing preservation and research is centered on its immense archive of country music recordings.

The Country Music Hall of Fame is housed in the rotunda, a large, light room. It would be possible to browse for quite a while there. Every inductee has a bronze plaque mounted on the wall, with an image of his or her face and some biographical information.

It was late in the afternoon when we left the Country Music Hall of Fame, but we still had a few minutes to walk a block down to Broadway, Nashville's famous honky-tonk street. The Ryman Auditorium, historic home of the Grand Old Opry, is right behind Tootsie's, the purple building in the photo below.

Tootsie's and other honky-tonks and tourist traps on Broadway

On Broadway, we visited the Ernest Tubb Record Shop where Isaac bought a CD of Johnny Cash hits. (He's always been a closet Johnny Cash fan.)

We listened to it on the way home. It was fun hearing Isaac's reactions to some old songs he hadn't heard before, such as "One Piece at a Time," the song about a car built from many years of parts stolen from the automobile factory.

More images:
Many images of the Country Music Hall of Fame on Flickr
Another image search for Country Music Hall of Fame on Flickr

Technorati tags: Country Music Hall of Fame, country music, Nashville, museum, Nashville Tennessee, Nashville TN,

Seen in Nashville

Life in The Upper South...

Here are some random images from recent visits to the Nashville Airport and to Nashville's Opry Mills Mall which is located alongside our easiest route to the airport.



This large flag is suspended over a ticket counter and check-in area in the airport. Call me corny if you want, but I think the U.S. flag is beautiful.




These fabric artworks were created by Diane Getty. A sampler of six such pieces featuring Tennessee's wildflowers is currently on display at the airport. The piecing and quilting on these are just incredible. According to the info posted with the exhibit, Diane Getty is a native of Maine who studied fine arts at the University of New Mexico and later at the East Tennessee University. Her comment:

"I am inspired by the beauty, patterns and colors of my home in the Cumberland Plateau and I work to interpret what I see. I experiment with painting on fabric and incorporating collage and stitching into my piece. These methods help me articulate and interpret the layered intricacies of the landscape and its flora. Every piece challenges and delights me as I am constantly learning about my subject matter and my creative resources. It's the best of both worlds - the landscape and the process of creation sustain me."

On our other trip to the airport last week, the featured artist in this hallway gallery was Mary Spelling, a Tennessee painter. In the info about her, it said that she is interested in portraying relationships. I didn't take any photos of her art -- sorry.

Since it's Music City, the airport has a small stage near the concourse entrance where musicians provide several shows each day. James Allen Batson, a dapper looking gentleman perhaps in his 50's in age, was performing during our first visit, and he was really very good. I admire someone who can get up in the morning and cheerfully sing and play at 9 a.m. to a distracted audience in a busy public area. It takes an entertainer to graciously accept the situation and perform for those who are listening at the moment. In a way, it's a ministry as well as a job.



Opry Mills has a Bass Pro Shop, and much of the decor in it is rustic. Or at least it's meant to simulate rustic, though it might actually be made of plastic. This big fireplace in the lobby isn't plastic, though. The ironwork on the doors is nicely done.

In a shop doorway at Opry Mills. The reflection on a fold gives a strong hint that these guys are really just ... flat.



This carousel is located in the center of the Opry Mills food mall. The theme of the dining room is "a picnic in the park". The structural pillars are adapted to look like stylized tree trunks and dozens of banners imprinted with leaves are suspended high overhead to provide the foliage. The design is witty, there's natural light, and somehow, there's a pleasant golden glow to the entire area. It's nice public architecture.

As I sat on a bench waiting for my group to come out of a shop in the mall, I jotted down these descriptions of interesting people who passed by:

• Woman pinching her cheeks - why?
• Handsome, healthy blue collar couple with beautiful little boy.
• Chubby teenage boy in saggy pants with preppy friends.
• Ladies teetering in heels.
• 50-year-old Thalidomide victim.
• Goth girl in black lace petticoat, black flip-flops, black skull purse.
• Dad babysitting toddler in stroller, too much tickling.
• Plump matron in splashy floral pantsuit, tennis shoes.
  
• Hispanic cowboy with girl in tight orange stretch clothes.
• 10-year-old boy with red-white-blue arm cast.
• Unhealthy banker in bermudas with spindly arms/legs, spindly wife.
• 14-yr-old boy, black clothes, sideways cap.

When Isaac saw that I was actually making these notes, he said, "You're sick, Mom. Really sick." I suppose he's right. I'm good at entertaining myself, though.

Technorati tags:

Opry Mills Mall - Nashville Airport - Mary Spelling - Diane Getty - James Allen Batson - Nashville