FestivALL Fun

FestivALL Charleston, our town’s four-year-old community arts festival, is in full swing. It seems to be growing and evolving every year, and it really is a great time to be in Charleston. There are many performances, quite a few of them free, of music and theater and dance.

This year, the theater offerings include a play that Michael Davis and I wrote! It is one of two winning plays in the Charleston Stage Company’s “Location! Location! Location” ten-minute play competition. The location is the River Queen, the riverboat you see here, which will also be ferrying festival-goers across the river. The play had to be written for performance on the boat, and the first line of dialogue had to be, “This is where it gets deep.”

There will be four performances, all on Saturday, June 26. I’ll not say more than that, except that it’s very silly, and that we are thrilled to be an official part of FestivALL Charleston.

That soaring construction beside the riverboat? The new Schoenbaum Pavilion, a shaded area for performers and audience.

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Lavish Leaf

This almost looks like something scary, but it’s a large leaf with the sun backlighting it. Seems there is no end to the wonderful imagery nature provides. Why on earth do we watch fireworks when there are things like this to look at?

Oddly, this looked like a large, dark green leaf to me when I photographed it, but when I looked at the pictures later, I was surprised to find a whole rainbow of colors. Hmmm…I’m going to have to go back and look at it again!

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Here’s Looking at You!

Actually, I have no idea which end of the caterpillar this is. It may be that he’s wagging his (or is it her?) tail at you. Michael and I saw this marvel crawling along a sidewalk on the campus of Davis & Elkins College this morning, as we were returning from an invigorating walk in the woods at the campus nature center. As amazing as it looks, I’m afraid it’s a gypsy moth caterpillar, which is not such a welcome visitor, and perhaps we should have squashed it instead of merely admiring it. But we just snapped and walked on.

I have spent a lot of time at D&E this week. The nature center is the best place in town for a walk, and the college library is my preferred place to work, check e-mail, or just sit and read. It’s clean and cool, full of wonderful work tables. All this and wireless access, printers, and Xerox copiers that charge only five cents a page. And the librarians are the best!

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