April 26, Woodsongs Radio Show

Brent, Joaquina, and Brianna took us to Ramsey's in Lexington for a delicious dinner and then to the Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour, also in Lexington. What a fun night we had!  Woodsongs is all about acoustic folk music and once they go HD they will have a larger audience than Austin City Limits.  You can find them on Public TV and subscribe to the free podcast.  They need a lot of money to get the equipment for HD and you can contribute on their web site. http://www.woodsongs.com/

Michael Jonathon is a folk singer and a tree hugger and the man who runs this show, a show put on almost entirely by volunteers.  Even the guest performers are volunteers.

We volunteered too.  We clapped when the applause sign came on and even re-applauded one time when something got messed up and had to be redone.

The show is in a beautiful old theater.  These photos were taken in the lobby after the show and before we laughed ourselves silly telling family stories on the way home.  We stopped at Culvers for ice cream when we returned to Richmond ending a perfect evening.

April 24, Quilt Barns

A woman in Ohio painted a quilt square on her barn in memory of her mother and the that was the beginning of the Quilt Trail that extends into Kentucky. There are three of these barns between Berea and Richmond.

Why are the barns black? Because black paint is cheaper than red.  There are a lot of black fences around too because the black paint is cheaper than white.

There is a book on the Quilt Trail for any quilters who may be interested in more information.

April 21, Shaker critters

The Shakers were pretty self-sufficient so of course had gardens, cows, horses, goats, sheep, and a few kitties around. The little red goat is only three days old.

April 21, Shaker Bath house

The teeny building on the right is the bath house. It isn't very fancy inside. :-)

April 21, Shaker Stairs

Lunch is available in the Village. Good food in a photogenic place.

April 21, Shaker Walls

There are 30 miles of these walls just on the grounds and many more miles in the Harrodsburg area. We thought we'd made a wrong turn and were in Rhode Island when we saw all these wonderful walls.

April 21, Shaker Home

About 100 brothers and sisters lived in the huge Central House - women on the left and men on the right. The building was completed in 1825.

April 21, Shaker Meeting House

We went to Pleasant Hill Shaker Village today and these photos are of the meeting house. Men entered in one door and sat on that side of the building. Women entered and sat on the other side. Services started with nice little songs that progressed into wilder songs, dancing, speaking in tongues, and even rolling on the floor. This elevated level of activity was known as "promiscuous dancing." The center line could be crossed during the dancing, but no touching allowed. Celibacy was the law which explains why the number of Shakers left today can be counted on one hand. Guests were allowed to sit on benches around the edge of the room and watch but could not participate. What did the ministers do? There were two male and two female ministers who lived on the second floor on their own sides of the building, of course. During the service it was their job to watch the guests from the little windows way up in the corner and then swoop down on any guest who appeared interested in becoming a Shaker. Outside of the Sunday service everyone lived by very rigid rules, i.e. - hands had to be folded with the right thumb on top, no hat bands were allowed on men's hats in the summer, etc. There were over 400 of these laws.

April 20, Lovely evening

After an excellent dinner at our friend's house (J makes fabulous coconut cream pie!) J and B continued the dulcimer lesson they started before dinner while B watched, Galen accompanied, and I shot the photo. The dog had the perfect name for this photo - Mozart! Today was our day for musical pets. Galen and I went into a music store earlier in the day and a black cat named Elvis insisted I pick him up and cuddle him.

April 18, Cemetery Gate

I got a kick out of the NO OUTLET sign at the cemetery gate. :-)


The cemetery is said to be haunted by a few soldiers.

April 18, Wallace Gravestone

Engraved at the bottom of the stone: Man nor doctor could not save these two bodies from the grave. Nor can the grave confine them here when Jesus calls them to appear.

April 18, Uncle Tom's Cabin

It is said that Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Tom Kennedy when she was researching her book, UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. I've read a couple of stories about Tom Kennedy. One is that he was so mean to his slaves that lightning strikes his gravestone when it storms and that the stone has had to be patched back together several times. The other legend I read was that the family was warned not to put a marker on his grave, reasons unknown. The warning was ignored and the original headstone was struck by lightning as were two subsequent stones. Kennedy was a Captain in the Revolutionary War and later an owner of 200 slaves.

April 18, Oops

I liked the typo on this one.

April 18, Jinney Adams

Jinney was killed by an Indian Chief named Thunder and was the first person to be buried in Fort Paint Lick. Interesting name, isn't it? The Fort was and and now the village is named for the creek, along whose banks the Indians painted symbols on the rocks and trees in bright colors to indicate the most likely places where animals could be hunted when they came to lick the salt.

April 18, Berea Methodist Church

This area is predominantly Baptist, but there is a small but quite active Methodist Church and they made us feel very welcome this morning.

April 15, Chapels

This circular staircase is even more impressive in real life.

Students made the chairs in Danforth Chapel and signed their names on the underside of the chairs.

Danforth Chapel.

This is the inside of the Phelps Stokes Chapel. The outside is pictured in my April 15, Berea College entry. When the original chapel burned down in 1902 a New York woman named Olivia Phelps Stokes offered to pay for a new one with two conditions: It was to be built by students and no one was to know where the money came from until after she died. Students made the bricks, they hewed the stones from a place 12 miles away, they felled the trees for the floors, and did all the woodworking for the paneling and ceiling. The building was just called the Chapel until after Olivia died. The students, not used to erecting buildings, must have done okay because the Phelps Stokes Chapel turned 100 in 2006.

April 15, Berea College

We took a fascinating free tour of Berea College today. Founded in 1855 by abolitionist John G. Fee, Berea College was the first interracial and coeducational school in the South. The Christian school provides a private, tuition-free, liberal arts education to about 1,500 students each year, most of whom come from Kentucky and the Appalachian region. In lieu of tuition, Berea has a work program that requires its students to work in on-campus jobs for at least 10 hours each week in their choice of some 130 different departments. Berea offers about 30 majors leading to Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees, and each student is required to attend seven convocations (guest lectures, concerts, or other cultural events) each term. Galen and I attended one these convocations today. We heard Silas House, a Kentucky writer, speak. Others who have given convocations: Robert Frost, Margaret Mead, Maya Angelou, and Alex Haley. George Winston will give one next month.

April 12, Pickin' on the Porch

Pickin' on the Porch is a weekly event in Old Town Berea. This is the first outdoor jam this season and Galen was there to sing "Prison Dance." I was in the audience gabbing with Joaquina and her family. Joaquina lives in Richmond, 15 minutes from Berea, and is one of Jen's high school classmates.

April 12, Hands

These hands are all around town. These two, four if you count Galen's, are in front of the visitor center in Old Town.

April 10, Aullwood Garden

Mike and Denise took us to the serene and beautiful Aullwood Garden.

April 11, Small World

We didn't have a sewer at our site and hadn't seen a dump station so pulled into an empty site to empty the tanks before we headed back to Kentucky. See the RV in the background? The owners of that RV are the owners of the KOA we have stayed at twice in Nova Scotia! We hadn't heard from them in over a year and had no idea they were in the area. If they hadn't decided to go for a walk just after we pulled in, we would never have known they were there.

April 8, Church

We saw this not long after we crossed the state line into Ohio and I grabbed a quick shot as we drove by. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but this statue is kind of scary looking to me.

April 9, Mike and Denise

We went to Dayton, Ohio to visit our dear friends Mike and Denise. As usual, they were wonderful tour guides and they kept us well fed, too. We think Mike needs to start a chalupa cafe in England one day. And Denise's asparagus quiche was pretty darn good, too! This photo was taken in the wonderful little town of Yellow Springs, Ohio. It is an artsy kind of place where even the telephone poles are decorated. Mike and Denise hoped to live here and it would have been a perfect place for them except for the hideous cost of housing.

April 6, Visitor Center

This handsome building that houses the Visitor Center sits in the center of a two-lane roundabout. There is a geocache near the door - one of two we found today.

April 6, Soda Fountain

Here is another photo of Galen bellied up to a bar but this bar is an old fashioned soda fountain bar in the historic Hurst Drugstore in downtown Bardstown.

April 6, Abby

The Trappist Monks who live here, mostly in silence, make and sell cheese, fruitcakes, and fudge with bourbon and without. There is also a great selection of books in their new gift shop.

April 6, Trains

We went to the Kentucky Railway Museum in New Haven, KY, about 15 miles from Bardstown. They have some interesting railway trivia in the museum, quite a few model trains in a second building, and a few real trains out on the tracks.

April 5, Bardstown Library

We added Kentucky to our map today. This is the first addition in a long time.

Galen is not sitting in a church - he's in the very nice Bardstown Library. Bardstown has been named as a great place to live by a number of publications. We've been impressed with what we've seen so far.

April 3, Grand Old Opry

A shuttle picked up Galen and about half a dozen others at the RV park and took them to the Grand Old Opry. I stayed home since I'm not a big country music fan. Galen saw Vince Gill and Son's of the Pioneers among others and enjoyed the evening.