Loose Leaf Notes

Thanks to our tea party hostess Katherine and happy birthday to Jayn!

Watch a video of the Back Porch Cloggers performing at Floyd’s Harvest Festival and County Fair HERE. Another of Bernie Coveney and Chris Luster entertaining fair attendees is HERE.  Some of the above photos were published in this week’s local paper. That’s my friend Builder Bob in the blue ribbon photo.

Fire Dancers from the Rhythm Fire Dance Company opened the show for 7 Walkers Thursday night below Dogtown’s Sun Hall in the Warren Lineberry Park.  Led by teacher and Rhythm Fire Dance Company founder/director Ilima Ursomarso, the belly dancers, performed with fire cups, fire fans and fire sticks. Ilima danced with a fire hoop.   […]

I practically had a conversation with Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann. I mean I was that close and he smiled.  And I never stopped smiling.  Or dancing. In the spirit of Jerry Garcia and the rest of the “7 Walkers looking down from heaven” (taken from one of their new song’s lyrics), the band 7 […]

They come to fill buckets and pans, canning jars, freezer bags, pie crusts, and always, the everwaiting tongue. They come to visit and eat, to sate the hungers of loneliness and body. Though we offer only blueberries, they come wanting more. They come from the American Dream—CEOs and wealthy realtors, two kids piling out of […]

At William Walter’s performance at the Sun Music Hall Friday night, I learned about live looping and discovered I was able to dance pretty freely with one arm in a sling.  Recovering from a fracture in my forearm, I wore the sling because the place was crowded and I didn’t want my arm to get […]

Four years ago I was one of a small group of local writers from The Floyd Writers Circle who helped design and decorate a writers suite at the Hotel Floyd, our downtown green lodging with locally themed rooms that showcase Floyd’s art and literature, handmade furniture, music and mountain culture. An antique wooden desk with […]

Kari Kovick and a chorus of children sing her adapted version of Pete Seeger’s This Land is Your Land for Floyd at the town’s 4th of July Celebration on Saturday.

AKA: Mikephin Day It was an old school gathering of family and friends of the Zephyr community where Dolphin grew up. There were bagpipes playing (by Mike’s dad), people wearing fake mustaches, fresh halibut on the fire-pit, and smoked salmon from Alaska where Mike and Dolphin met and now live. Dolphin’s father Bob sang an […]

Sometimes I follow Kari Kovick around.  I’m a fan of her work teaching music to young children and as a member of the band Windfall.  I’ve documented her children’s music programs for the local paper in the past and written about Windfall for the Floyd Compass (a one time visitor’s guide).  Recently, I spent some […]

The National Music Festival’s family concert at the Presbyterian Church of Floyd (just one of dozens of concerts in the two week event) was geared towards children.  It not only appealed to the child and the early childhood educator in me (my primary job before I had my own kids), but I learned a lot […]

It took attending classical music solo performances like the one above at The Floyd Country Store to force me to figure out how to mute my camera beep.  Check out THIS double bass performance and a lively conducting style of the NMF Symphonic Wind Ensemble HERE.  More coverage and photos coming in The Floyd Press […]