O chi, chi mi na morbheanna (Oh, roe, soon shall I see them, oh, )

Hi friends. The Blue Ridge Book & Author Book Fest was wonderful. Even though it was their first one, I'd never have known it - I thought they'd been doing this for longer. It was well-attended and well-coordinated. A success, and next year should be even better.

I met Carol from the Writer's Porch and she is something else! I just loved her energy, her laugh, her big ole smile, her peronality. I didn't know where she was, so I just wandered around the bookfest, attended some talks...yes, I had her phone number, but since I'm a phono-phobic kind of person, I didn't want to call - I figured I'd leave it all up to chance *teehee* -that's how I do I suppose. I wanted to see Gary Carden a wonderful gifted storyteller that I adore, and since Carol was seeing him as well, she saw me sitting there with my usual dazed expression of "All these people - I see Live People! auuughhh!" * Carol gave me the biggest dangest bear hug I've not felt the likes of since ....since I don't know when. Her personality is strong and lively and down to earth - you can't meet a better person. I was my usual ...um... dazed and confused and jittery self. I mostly just blinked in the headlights and laughed and mumbled, I think. Haw! Carol took Gary Carden, Vicki Lane, and me out to dinner that night - it was good to sit with a storyteller, a mystery author, and a lover of books and people and life (carol!).

The last speaker Carol and I saw was Jeff Biggers - WOW! I'll tell more about that later. If you look to the right on my sidebar, you'll see a widget thingee for I love the Mountains Mountaintop Removal....please, do check this out. More on that later, as well. But if you peruse those websites, you'll get an idea of what Jeff 's book is about, what mountaintop removal is - imagine that name: Mountaintop Removal...imagine it. Picture it. Think about it. Mountaintop Removal; roll it around on your tongue--how does it taste? Bitter? Nasty? Can you swallow it down easily? Does it lodge in your throat as it does mine? If you've read Tender Graces, you know how Virginia Kate (and I) love sweet sister mountain, the mountains of West Virginia - if you've known me, you know my love of our mountains. Look at the photo above--that is not "the Rocky Mountains" - that is a mountain that at one time had trees and birds and plants and soil and critters - bald, gone - 1000 feet blasted to hell and back - the impact of that photo isn't enough - nuff said (for now).

Happy Mother's Day to all you mom's ou there!