Oktoberfest in Hickory

Bright hot sunshine, temperature is 64°, "Ommm..." humidity 39%, breeze "Paaah," from the south at 7 mph, "Ommpaah" Sky is a deep Carolina blue. "Ommpaah, Ommpaah!" and the German band is stirring the earth and the crowds. Octoberfest and Heffewiezen beers, locally brewed from the Olde Hickory Taproom are available in plenitude and the smell of bratwurst and sauerkraut travel through the crowd of perhaps 40,000 who have gathered in downtown Hickory today.

Other food is available too. Remarkably good gyros, along with fried chicken, famous Carolina pulled-pork barbecue, curley chips, pizza, locally made ice cream, braised "baby-back" ribs, hamburgers and hot dogs, french fries and even Asian food. And all kinds of goodies to buy for those important people in your life to thrill them on their next birthday or for Christmas.

But the really BIG attraction to this Oktoberfest is the Foothills Oompah Band. How good were these guys? I really don't know because they cast their spell on me from the git-go. Their music just took me away to a world that is happy, joyful, fun and funny too. Thanks guys - you really did it right! Hoi! Hoi! Hoi!

© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Block Party

A fine way to end September. Bring together all the neighborhood families for food and talk. Obviously not all could attend but still enough families turned out this drizzly night to re-establish the neighborhood.

Of course we were all on our best behaviour and about as agreeable as we can possibly be but that’s not too bad either, at least not occasionally. Stories were told, tales were spun and the work-a-day-world was left far behind.

Big events of the evening were real hot dogs, thick hamburgers and a special “signature chili” to put over the whole mess. Lots of chips and crackers, veggie dishes and hummus, and cheeses, and catfish patties. About as good as it can get. Then - there were bottles galore of home-brewed wine. I sampled the elderberry wine, some white grape wine, mango wine and persimmon wine. Better than the hot dogs.

As night fell, a fire began and it attracted a few moths, one bald-faced hornet and a whole host of kids. So the evening slowly drifted away, just like the summer had already done. It had been a good party and this chilly evening wound up on a warm note. It had been a good summer too, and some of us could dream away into the dancing flames already anticipating the autumn and seasons of celebration now arriving in our neighborhood.

© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Bear's Lair Atrium

To Lenoir-Rhyne University this afternoon to watch another in the continuing performances honoring "The Spirit of Black Mountain College".
This performance was titled “Collage in 4 Dimensions”, and it was, as the program indicated, “Inspired by the many scholars and artists who explored the dynamic link between art and education at Black Mountain College”.

It was not an entirely unscripted performance but it was very different from any normal show that you might attend. There were about 21 performances and their titles were inscribed on 21 index cards. The Leader of the group handed me the cards and asked me to shuffle them. I shuffled them three times and handed them back to her and that determined the order of the performance.


Well, to say that it was attributed to Black Mountain College indicates that it would have to be different. That there would be performances honoring Merce Cunningham and John Cage assured that it would - well, at least SEEM to be weird. And it was.

I tried to find meaning but think that was probably just one of my faults. Perhaps it was more a depiction of how life really IS rather than how things SHOULD be. It was sort of a stumble-around thing. But it worked - more or less. In a lot of ways it did resemble life, particularily life on a college campus.


It reminded us of our 16 month old granddaughter - she would have LOVED it. The rest of the audience - most of whom were college students - watched - some with understanding but most with incredulity, amusement and amazement. Their main characteristics seemed to be raised eyebrows and pursed lips.

© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Moses Cone Manor, NC

Moses Cone Manor is on the Blue Ridge Parkway around mile marker 294, on the northern edge of Blowing Rock, NC. The manor is a 20 room house on a 3,500 acre estate. But there is a lot more than just that - see http://www.brptrails.com/brp2940.htm and also http://www.virtualblueridge.com/parkway_tour/parks/293_0/
for more details. The house is modestly beautiful and so is the view from the front porch. It became part of the Park Service in 1949.








Inside are sales of art and crafts from this region. It is a fine place to find a special and different kind of gift for someone important to you





There are some 25 miles of trails including those for hiking, horseback riding and riding horse-drawn carriages. Trails wind across sun-drenched meadows, and through mountain forests. There are lakes on the estate, including Trout Lake and Bass Lake (pictured here). The grave site of Cone, his wife and a sister are in the edge of a great meadow. There are apples galore. Cone planted some 30,000 to 40,000 apple trees, including 75 species.

© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Valdese, NC Hmong Festival

The Hmong (MOWng) people are an ethnic group generally located in southern China. Large concentrations are also found in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. During the American War against Vietnam, some Hmong were recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States to attack North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces in Vietnam and Laos. Many Hmong fighters were teen-agers and preteens. When America was forced to abandon the war, large numbers of Hmong fled into Thailand and other countries. Approximately 275,000 were brought to the United States. A small number now live in Valdese, a town of about 4,500 people twenty miles west of Hickory, North Carolina.

The Valdese Hmong have begun a yearly festival. Their First Annual Festival was held this year on Sept 20, at the Old Rock School in Valdese and featured traditional Hmong costumes, singing, dancing, art and sports events. I wanted to attend because I was somewhat familiar with the Hmong from my experiences in the American war against Vietnam in which I directed hundreds of B-52 bombing missions into many areas containing Hmong people. When their leader, Vang Pao was airlifted out to the United States, the Hmong were left to face the victorious communist forces and many were massacred. Many other Hmong died in the “killing fields” of Pol Pot.

I was interested to see what the passage of a mere thirty years might have done for these people who, after all, trace their continued existence as a separate group for almost 3.000 years? Remember that they not only crossed a great ocean and traveled to the other side of the globe but also traveled from a jungle/agrarian lifestyle to a modern technological environment. What would we find? We enjoyed some of the music (some was weird!) and all of the dancing was enjoyable. It was very interesting to notice the extremely intricate hand movements used the by women dancers and to contrast that with their very simple foot movements. The craftwork was nice and original and the food was simple, inexpensive and delicious.

© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Hickory Art Crawl

Thursday afternoon and night seems a slightly off time for this type of action. Yet it appeared to be pretty well attended.


The lage parking area between the main square and the station was filled with cars, and the downtown was busy with shoppers.




Table 220 was had diners both outside and inside and live music was performed inside the restaurant, and the music could be heard outside nearby. Clearly there was room for a lot more music.











The stores that were participating in the crawl had art work on the sidewalk and more art could be seen right inside the door .

Some of the artists were attending their presentation, graciously answering questions and talking about their work. Lawrence Rice was one of the most prominent with his display of Aviation Art. www.riceart.net.

Snacks were available in several of the venues, along with wine offerings.

Clearly the main action was taking place at Taste Full Beans Coffeeshop where Joe Clayton Young was talking about some of his interesting photos. One of the big questions had to be “How do you get all these people to relax and act so normal when you are making their pictures?” I tried to talk with him but he seemed to spend a good bit of the evening talking with another gentleman who had a camera around his neck.



Island Style was not participating in the crawl but its distinctive art was hard to pass up. and a nearby store showed a preview of coming attractions. Hmmmm. I wonder if they meant Halloween or the election!

© John Womack, 2008. All rights reserved.

Hickory Museum of Art

Remember: Most pictures will enlarge if clicked upon.


Outside the art gallery was a busy place to be. Besides an energetic Blue Grass band in front of the entrance, there were outdoor mobiles, dancers, ice cream and sandwich wraps, and a petting zoo. The zoo featured dog-sized ponies, and slightly smaller goats and lambs plus a leghorn chicken, delighted children, puzzled parents and exhausted volunteers.



Above the petting zoo the eastern wing of the museum towered decorated with advertisements, and looking toward its left you can see the main entrance with the band in front and the refreshments are out of sight farther to the left. According to "AreaGuides.net>Hickory", it is "One of the oldest art museums in North Carolina, the Hickory Museum of Art displays a superb collection of American art, with a featured holding of landscapes from Thomas Cole and other painters of the Hudson River School tradition. Other areas of focus within the museum include pieces of contemporary folk and outsider art from the South, clay works from North Carolinian artists and studio art glass." More information at http://www.hickorymuseumofart.org/home.php



One of the exhibitions on September 13, 2008, Doug Marlette. Doug is best know for his cartoons, but he is also a writer. Very well known to some of us of course, as the cartoonist for the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper before he made it big-time. He is a native North Carolinian, but for some reason he went to Florida State University for his degree. Where he got attracted to kudzu is not known to me although he obviously had been familiar with it all his life.

The main exhibition right now is a commemoration of the amazing Black Mountain College.


What happens when John Dewey's educational philosophy is taken to extreme? Wow! Black Mountain College. Not for everybody, or even most people, and never more than just a blip on the world's education glacier, still it changed the direction of that glacier by infecting the world's leading artists, poets, writers, philosophers, scientists, architects, and a whole lot more with the academic disease called imagination.


The college was only in existence for a short 24 years and fewer than 1,200 students ever attended it and only 60 total ever graduated and the college closed forever 51 years ago. But the names of its students and teachers read like a list of the leaders of mankind's intellectual explorers. http://www.bmcproject.org/ The walls of the museum are now filled with photographs and paintings of those who attended or taught at Black Mountain College such as Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef and Anni Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Cy Twombly, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Arthur Penn, Buckminster Fuller, along with many other BMC students and teachers.



The Hickory Museum of Art has done a very good job of presenting the Spirit of Black Mountain College in this exhibition.

Hickory Riverfront Festival

Sixth annual gathering at the river by the citizens of Hickory. We humans were not alone either. There were owls and hawks and snakes and specialists who knew what was going on around the local area.

There were presentations on birding practices and hiking trails and greenways, although the mythical Hickory Greenway still has not been found. Even the people at this presentation weren't sure, although they informed me that it was nearby - in fact some 3/10 of a mile of the Greenway is right here at the park. Where the rest of it is - well, we still don't know. Nobody was sure although we saw three signs while driving home that read "Greenway" with an arrow pointing. But we've been there in the past and there is no greenway there.


Another bluegrass band was playing here too. "Bluegrass" is heard everywhere around here but they don't play "bluegrass" music for some reason - they play a form of calm, slightly upscale country music. Probably that's because they really only know Country Music, but that has degenerated so badly over the past 30 years that nobody really wants to hear it anymore. So they play something and call it "Bluegrass".


All in all, it was a nice day. Weather was warm but with a bright blue sky and a cooling breeze. Some canoeing and fishing brought us all back to the river, and made for a pleasant visit.

Hickory Community Theatre

The moon rises over Hickory as the community theatre prepares to present its rendition of "The Producers". The story is well known so the enjoyment of the presentation is the local flair, the local actors who play the part of great fictional beings.


It was very well done. Exciting, fast, always flowing just a step or two ahead of the audience, most of whom were busy savoring the part just finished - then suddenly aware that another great moment is already under way.


And the main thing we took home with us from the presentation was the sense of fun. It was fun to see and obviously it was fun for the actors to show it to us. And there is also the realization that this theatre is one of the four groups presenting plays in Hickory. In fact, tonight the Green Room Community Theatre is also presenting "Oklahoma" at the Civic and Performance Place.

Poetry Reading

Tonight at the Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory, NC. The main readers were Helen Losse, editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and John Amen.

There were about 30 people attending in a late arriving crowd. Losse was OK, good and enjoyable, but her presentation was quiet and it was hard to tell when she had finished reading a poem. In fact applause was sporadic and faltering because we wern't sure if we should applaud yet. After Losse read there was an intermission.

I almost left at that point because I felt like I had intruded into a closed group. No one had welcomed me or even talked with me except for one person whom I later found was not even a member himself. The regular attendees seemed to be ignoring me, or any newcomers including the guy running the meeting. No one even spoke to me or responded to my own comments. Talk about a closed clique! Very unimpressive and sub-marginal. Then the one person who did talk with me turned out to be the second reader of the evening, John Amen.



Amen was good - even spectacular. Talk about knowing how to present poetry - here was a master at work. He used body postures, facial expressions and accent changes. He also had a guitar and proved that he knows how to use it well. His presentation left me wondering what kind of a life he has lead and how he would learn so damn much about life. But then, that's where the good poets fly - way out yonder - not so much living, really as it is in sensing, feeling, using intuition, and just plain awareness. The art of poetry is the art of describing what eyes can't really see and hearing what ears always fail to notice - the art of feeling beyond what is presented to you. We all understand it when we encounter it from a master, and we always walk through a slightly different world for the next several days. That is why we need to encounter really good poets like John Amen on a constant basis.

Farmers' Market

Bustling, busy, bargains everywhere and all kinds of glorious goodies. One thing you can ALWAYS count on at the farmers' markets all over everywhere is to expect surprises. You are always surprised at what they don't have - just sold out of - and then there are the other surprises that you really weren't looking for. Some of which you will buy - if you are even a little bit like me. The markets are usually hot and sweaty and they bring together city slickers and country folks and they both put on a little show for each other as they buy and sell the glorious goodies.



The market in Hickory, NC, is right downtown, in the main city square, backed up by the Armory and the railroad tracks, and it opens to the heart of the city.