The annual Virginia Highlands Festival is here once again from July 25-August 9. The festival began in 1948 and is now one of the top 100 tourist events in North America. The festival offers entertainment, antiques, juried art and photography competition, writers, lecturers, and performing artists. It is in Historic Abingdon, Va. If you would like to know more about the festival you can go to their web site at: www.vahighlandsfestival.org .

My favorite artist will be showing her work there again this year. Artist Jeannie Yates will be there with several of her oil paintings. She recently gave me “Apples on the Wood Pile”, and I am so proud of it. The apples are so realistic, you just want to grab a big bite out of it. Her style is more realism, you don’t have to try and figure out what it is; you know immediately. She does mostly nature scenes, and calming pastoral scenes. She has won for “people’s choice ” award in the past, and her paintings are always favorites. Hope you get there early, before she sells out! Below is Jeannie with her painting, “White Top”.

Can you believe that it has been one year today since I started writing on this web site. How the time does fly! Thanks for all of the kind words of encouragement that I have received. It does mean a lot!!

We had our family reunion this past week-end. It is always great to get together with all of your relatives and catch up on the latest news. Since we are so scattered about, it is usually the only time that some of us see each other.

We laughed and told silly stories and jokes and ate way too much!

I learned something about Rick’s wife Cheria that I didn’t know. She doesn’t like chocolate! Now how can that be? I thought they passed that out with American Citizenship. My mother use to say that she thought that I would eat grasshoppers if she put chocolate on them, when I was growing up. Maybe I wouldn’t go that far……Now I can see someone like Anthony Bourdain on the Travel Channel chomping down on some chocolate grasshoppers in some remote village somewhere; but I think I’ll pass on that one, even though I really do like chocolate.

One of my cousins told a story about how she made these little potpourri bundles and tied them with a ribbon and put in the back of her car.  Her son was driving it and got stopped by the police. He thought that it was marijuana and hauled him into the station. One of the other officers looked at it and said, “You dummy, that is potpourri that she has put in her car to make it smell good.”

We had great fun and I can’t wait until next year!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July.

I almost had another encounter with a deer on Highway 81 near Abingdon, VA. I was coming home from work and a deer jumped out in front of me on the interstate. It was late at night and I was doing the speed limit of 65 miles an hour. Have you ever threw the brakes on and tried to come to a complete stop at that rate of speed? Naturally I started sliding and careening out of control; fortunately for me there was no immediate traffic near enough to me or I would have most certainly not been able to avoid them. I managed to get the car back under control and resume my speed. The frightened deer disappeared and was nowhere in sight. I guess he figured out that crossing the interstate might not be such a good idea at the time. He was close to the exit ramp so maybe he decided to stop at Long John Silver’s instead.

I have had too many run ins with deer and I was very fortunate this time. The last time I encountered a deer, it made contact with my car and caused a lot of damage.

They really can come at you before you know they are there, and I really try to watch out for them, but sometimes they hit you before you can even see them.

Usually you see them on back roads and not very busy roads, but my encounter with a deer on a very busy interstate highway proves that they really are everywhere. Watch out for the deer!!!

Happy Fourth of July to you all. Let us celebrate our great country while we still have the freedom to do so. There are so many alarming things going on in the world today with unemployment and wars and higher prices and things that are just plain UN-American. It seems that our rights are slowly being torn away from us while we go on ignoring it and hoping that it will go away.

But let us remember our freedom and what it has cost our ancestors and those who preceded us; let us hold onto it as long as we can.

My children and grandchildren are going camping this week-end, as I am sure a lot of you are. I will be working this week-end, but I will still celebrate in my own quite way this great country of ours.

Happy Birthday America!!!