take me home

welp, i’ve created a monster. a list-making monster, that is. a lot of times, it’s easier to distill everything i’m thinking about into one short, sweet summary. so here goes:

top 10 reasons i can’t wait to get back to wv

1) mcclintic library has the new bill bryson book, at home: a short history of private life--and, unlike in burlington, it’s yet to be checked out. plus, they have a book (the lost continent) that the libraries here don’t have and i haven’t felt like buying. three cheers for being a cheapskate in poco!

2) now that the specter of grad school apps is no longer looming overhead, i can read to my heart’s content! besides the above two selections, i’m hoping to have a jane austen fest and finally get through some history books.

3) same goes with netflix, and basketball…santa brought one monster of a tv for christmas. once cable gets set up, i’m going to be one basketball-happy clam. wahoo for conference play!

(side note: you should be able to choose the cable channels you want and just pay for that. not sure how it would work in actuality, but cable is stupid expensive for a lot of stuff that you don’t actually want/need. frankly, you could give me three espns and i’d be set.)

4) this sweet duck print fabric: dunno what to do with it yet, but something will reveal itself.

5) diy projects: the place could use some sprucing up, and design*sponge has a bevy of ideas. of particular interest: cutlery hooks, and a faux-shell chandelier for my room & hallway. wahoo!

6) duck boots and sweatpants: two items the 2009 iteration of emily would be horrified to wear, much less own. 2010 emily is beyond stoked. sad? more like warm.

7) onion keeper: ok, so this really isn’t that exciting. but it is kind of cute. christmas morning, what was in my stocking but an onion keeper. random?! nope. my momma knows of my red onion obsession. so, while it’s not something i really needed, it’s just another reminder of how awesome my mom is.

8) same goes with the new electric blanket!

9) kegger?! hope so. i managed to get through college as a fairly big drinker who never touched keg beer. it’s about time that changed.

10) snow!!!! anything that makes that miserable cold at least a little more magical. plus, the duck boots are way better than rainboots with three layers of socks.

lew-burg

as it turns out, the city nearest to little marlinton is in a nationwide competition. budget travel is holding an 'america's coolest small towns' contest, and lewisburg is currently in the lead. still, a few more votes couldn't hurt the cause. so, vote here!

if you're not convinced, check these reasons to love lewisburg:

lewisburg's annual chocolate festival: surprisingly bougie logo, and chocolate mousse eating contest? sign me up.

the greenbrier, duh. the bunker tour might be mad expensive, but undoubtedly cool. (for more on the bunker's history, read this.)

wolf creek always has an excellent selection of clothes and such. so does hazel. plus, everything they do is vegan/organic/eco-friendly...and way cute.

stardust cafe--though i've only had their coffee, the atmosphere is amazing--much like arty places in carrboro or larger cities. you'd never guess you were in the middle of rural west virginia!

smooth ambler distillery--betcha didn't know there was such a thing as white whiskey.

one of four carnegie halls...in the world!

all that, with less than 10,000 people. pretty cool, no?

if you couldn't tell

back in wv!

REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD.

in a more realistic vein...

winter 2010 soundtrack

1)   the microphones
2)   beck (sad-ass beck circa sea change is preferable)
3)   johnny cash
4)   gravenhurst (multi-part depression is always better)
5)   the love language
6)   joanna newsom (always and forever!)
7)   the xx
8)   dylan
9)   sigur ros
10) radiohead (duh)


essentially, anything sad and white will do.

on the subject of summer...

summer scenic highway soundtrack (top ten edition)

1)   big star!
2)   the kinks
3)   gram parsons
4)   the beach boys
5)   legends of benin comp (or anything else from analog africa)
6)   patsy cline
7)   wilco (covering gram parsons! perfection.)
8)   television
9)   t. rex
10) bob seger (duh)

wow, that list was really white. let's be real, i'll also be listening to copious amounts of lil wayne, clipse and kanye...espeically if the new album is as great as everyone says (which it just HAS to be, judging by  the outrageousness that is 'monster'). can't wait!



in other news, my best friend's mom donated to the upcoming 2011 summer wardrobe with this sweet crop top vest! she made this in the late 70s/early 80s, shortly after getting married. this blurry picture does it NO justice--especially the scraps of dior fabric, culled from who-knows-where!

though i'm still unconvinced of the merits of crop tops, i'm so excited to add this puppy into rotation...once the mercury hits eighty, at least. and with that, the search for a 2011 festival to attend has begun!

halftime

good ol' macbeth, in the midst of his blundering misadventures, says: "i am in blood/stepp'd in so far that, should i wade no more,/returning were as tedious as go o'er." bizarrely enough, i find myself paraphrasing that surprisingly often, mostly when a task seems to become herculean. that's kind of how i considered my time in west virginia prior to moving here--my god, i'll be living there for an entire year. the boredom! the missed social opportunities! the flannel!


but my six month mark has come and gone, and it's flown by. i literally can't believe i'm on the downswing of my VISTA year. granted, these next six months being the coldest of the year, could seem like an eternity--but the people here are so wonderful and lovely that it shouldn't be too bad. (says the girl who's already layering leggings under jeans.)

anyway, point is: time's a funny thing. and a little bit scary. hours of the day seem to drag, yet months can go by in what seems like an instant. my parents always make a fuss about how fast john & i grew up, and it's starting to become apparent why they're always reminiscing.

a second year of VISTA is looking more and more likely (fingers crossed!), and i've determined to make the most of another wv summer--cliche, yeah, but totally necessary. more days at the swimming hole, camping, lazy drives on the scenic highway--all the things i should have been doing this summer instead of going to the gym or making dinner. life's too short to be wasting it on a treadmill, amirite?!

so while winter's sure to offer a plethora of fun activities, this girl can't wait for summer. only 212 days!

come back, summer! and kater clark.

ps. if you're into shakespeare adaptations, this one is great, if only for novelty's sake!

been a while

three months. THREE MONTHS. what in the world have i been doing for three months? well...

i went to pittsburgh!

my board member & i made grape jelly, while listening to russian internet beatles radio. fun!

boy scout beach trip

read october sky and visited coalwood, wv for the october sky festival!

super inspiring, even if the coolest thing about the festival was the burned-out high school.

created records for our collections, and started photographing them. 20-something down, 1400+ to go! 

item 1000: gout rocker.

turned a year older, grew facial hair.

well, that's about the extent of it. entirely one-sided wrestling matches, too much cheap whiskey, and marathon youtube sessions have been excluded for aesthetics' sake. hopefully there'll be more exciting, and regular, posts in the future!

i canned, i saw, i conquered

friends & neighbors, i took a step today from which i will never be able to return. as i write this, i've officially entered the ranks of...marriage material! ok--in truth, there's still a long way to go on the psychological/social front, but if you want to talk domesticity, please believe i've conquered it. why, you might ask? well, at this very moment, bubbling away on my stove, is a CANNER!

yep. tonight i made and canned salsa, in preparation for winter/the lack of mexican food in the near vicinity. sure, there's decent-enough salsa at the grocery store down the street, but where's the fun in that? besides, upon finding out that i had an inkling of a desire to learn how to can, female relatives on both sides of the family deluged me with enough paraphernalia to start a small munitions factory. so, it seemed that if i didn't report back with some sort of positive canning news, a lot of face was going to be lost. thus, i canned!

six hours later, some scalded fingers, and a ruined manicure later, i can definitively say that canning won't be an everyday (or every season, or every year) addition to my kitchen repertoire. it was however, a lot of fun, and really did make me appreciate the amount of work that goes into keeping food by, whether on the commercial or household level.

i started out with a few pounds of cherry tomatoes from the plants that keep cheerfully invading my parents' yard. note to (future) self: make things easier, and don't use cherry tomatoes. they took FOREVER to peel! the larger ones i used were a lot easier.

 jalaps, of course! and TONS of chili powder, garlic, cilantro & lime juice.

 part one, done.

 my grandmother's canning jars! words can't express how happy it made me to use something that used to belong to her.

 jars all ready to be packed!

the whole shebang! minus the most important part, the giant canner that i could probably sleep in if it came down to that.

as of right now, it looks like i've got three, maybe four, jars of salsa to get me through the winter. won't know for sure until tomorrow, but i'll say this: even if it's only 75% successful, that's still a better average than anyone in MLB. so there.

carma, part ii

my car's been in the shop most of this week for some fairly serious (read: pricey) repairs. some thoughts on this:

--why do i always seem to wear white dresses whenever my car needs to go to the shop? the men at the corner station must think i'm the biggest princess.

--on a related note, it's REALLY uncomfortable/difficult trying to keep a white dress clean in a garage. try it sometime.

--the shop's owner is named buck brock--a really great quarterback name! which, i think, is all in the alliteration--colt mccoy, tim tebow, etc. (the notable exception being my perhaps #1 all-time quarterback name, johnny unitas--mostly because he sounds like a superhero.)

--walking is super-inconvenient. i'm all about slowing down and enjoying the moment, but when you get a little too caught up in TCB-ing, as i often do, walking somewhere is insanely patience-trying. it's pretty much impossible to multitask while walking--reading's out, and forget about writing anything. it's even hard to text at full walking speed, unless you want to end up like dexter strickland.

--then again, there's no real reason to rush anywhere in marlinton, and it was GORGEOUS out today. so really, what's there to complain about?

--when i went to pick my car up, nobody could find my key. it turns out they moved my car, left the key in the ignition, and left the car unlocked.  considered having a freak out for about 1.37 seconds, then realized: IT'S POCAHONTAS COUNTY. nobody's going to steal the car.

--but really, it's pretty incredible. only place i know of where a car should, but won't, get stolen!

i’ll lay it out for you: i like west virginia, don’t get me wrong. this place is crazy in all the right ways. but i don’t plan on living here after my term’s up—i’ve got other things i want to do and other places i want to be. i haven’t even lived here long enough to feel like it’s home (and god knows not long enough for people to NOT consider me an outsider--back-to-the-landers, i feel your pain.) so there’s really no reason for me to feel this way.

but i’ll tell you what: play ‘country roads’ on a sunny day with the windows down, going through the little levels on 219 north, and don’t be surprised if you get a lump in your throat.

char-town

well, let’s get caught up, shall we? the other weekend, my roommate and i decided that enough was enough. after residing in a town of 1,200 for the past two weeks, bank account be damned, we were going to a city!

in west virginia, that city is charleston. sure, you can go to morgantown for wvu sports, beckley to visit tamarack, lewisburg for that gorgeous secondhand bookstore guy, but for a semblance of a city atmosphere, you gotta go to charleston. not that charleston is much of a city. hell, it’s about the same size as my hometown, which isn’t slightly impressive. still, we figured, it’s better than looking at cows all weekend. so, charleston-ho!

coincidentally, we happened to choose the first weekend of festivALL! to visit charleston. it’s pretty much what it sounds like. in any other city, festivALL! would be one weekend slam-jam full of (semi) exciting things to do. in charleston, though, they spread it out over a ten day period—as a result, the excitement is rather limited. luckily, the day’s big event just happened to combine two of my favorite things: puppies and competitive sports!

i guess puppies is the wrong word—dachshunds are NOT puppies just because they’re small! my mistake. at any rate, we were privileged to see this year’s winner, stella, crowned champeen, in what was probably the cutest animal race possible. miles better than a rattlesnake rodeo. also, i saw a uga fan with a bulldog—the inventiveness of georgia alums is simply astounding.

after a finally-decent meal, we headed downtown to catch some wv power baseball! nothing like baseball and a giant beer in the summer. or more accurately, doing the day’s crossword with a giant beer. let’s be honest: i might’ve grown up with baseball, but that doesn’t make it any more exciting. after all, i didn’t break my arm at my brother’s t-ball game by watching in rapt absorption. but, adding beer to even the most mundane activity greatly increases my enthusiasm for said activity, so baseball/crossword it was!

america's real pastime

best part of this game was the appearance of wrestling legend jerry “the king” lawler. no idea who he is? you’re not alone. turns out the dude has a pretty sweet history: getting in kayfabe fights with andy kaufman (it was the 80’s, who didn’t?), performing this instant classic, running for mayor of memphis and getting a not-shabby 11% of votes, using mussorgsky as theme music. generally being an all-around badass. among his exploits this night, the king manhandled a giant anthropomorphic mustard bottle and participated in the ninth inning rave. yes, you read that right—a rave. it doesn’t make any sense, no matter how much you think about it. sadly, despite a valiant (mediocre) effort, the power were bested. so ends day one.

day two: west virginia day! unlike our lovely neighbors to the northwest (wv) and southwest (georgia), north carolina’s celebration of statehood is somewhat…subdued. then again, west virginia’s secession was rather uniquely timed, and i guess that’s as good a reason as any for a day off. and what better way to start such a day than with a biscuit? so, to tudor’s biscuit world we went! for you nc-ers, it’s basically a biscuitville with much less kitschy décor. also, they’re sometimes combined with a place called gino’s pasta and spaghetti. yeah. bottom line: delicious face-sized biscuits. definitely a must-try for all those of you considering a trip to west virginia (which should be everybody!).

after touring the capitol grounds and learning that booker t. washington spent a good deal of his youth in the charleston area (super interesting!), we took a tour of the west virginia state museum. friends, if ever you have the chance to enter this fine establishment, do so. nowhere else will you find preserved (and clothed) circus fleas, jerry west’s lakers jersey, and a rousing marching band version of john denver’s ‘country roads' as exit music!

seriously though, this museum, which opened last year, is fantastic. it starts way back in dinosaur times with the formation of coal, and continues up to the present day with vignette-esque scenes of west virginia’s past. so cool! among the things i learned: george washington owned a ton of land in west virginia (yeah, yeah, i know—west virginia was part of virginia once, but it’s still pretty cool); fiestaware, possibly one of my favorite consumer goods, was created in newell, west virginia; and the coal wars were just another reason being a miner is kinda hazardous to your health (for more on how mining is awful, watch harlan county, usa, or read this book).

this is an ungodly long ramble, but the take-home message is this: charleston was fun, educational, and quirkily great. so visit already!

carma

has it been a month already? sorry, y’all. it’s not really that there’s nothing interesting going on in wv, it’s just that i’m too lazy to actually write about it. maybe this will fix that.

my job is about 10 miles/20 minutes (gotta love those mountain miles) down the road from where i live, so naturally, one of the first observations i made about wv involved on-road encounters. i have a 1996 mazda 626—pretty small, as far as cars go (this picture, while not exactly helpful in showing dimensions, is what it looks like). at 14, the car doesn’t have a lot of pickup left, so while i can/do drive fast, it takes awhile to get to cruising speed. add to it the fact that, upon arrival, i wasn’t used to mountain roads, and i think you’ll see where i’m going.

point is, wv drivers HATED me. not only was i going ungodly slow, brakes squealing the whole way, but i have an nc license plate and a carolina sticker. just like all the north carolinians who yell, “come ON, south carolina!” whenever we come across one of our fair neighbors, west virginians don’t take too kindly to strangers poking along their country roads. for the first week, it was completely stressful—any time i got on the road, there was always some huge truck (ALWAYS with a wvu tag on the front), riding me. and often, passing me in some death-defying situation—it seemed usually to occur while going uphill, around a blind curve, and in a no-pass zone. no lie.

luckily, going the speed limit isn’t an issue anymore! i’ve gotten used to the curves here, and well, it’s way more fun than driving back home, even if the max speed is 60.

the great equalizer? tractors, logging trucks, semis, dump trucks—all similarly cringe-inducing. when you’re used to hitting the buckeye bend at 30 mph (google maps that for kicks), going about 7 mph feels like torture. some drivers are nice and pull their slow vehicles off where they can, others aren’t. either way, it’s just a fact of life that sooner or later you’re going to hit a tractor jam.

not sure what i’m really getting at here—i guess that for someone not used to driving one-lane/rural roads, it’s been an interesting introduction. also, a reminder: be nice to your fellow drivers! they’re probably as ticked off as you that someone’s riding a horse down the road.

photers: marlinton & environs

two posts in one day. miracle!

our new pup, vista! super cute, but she doesn't really slow down for pictures.

the drive to lewisburg, though perpetually nauseating, is also quite gorgeous.

lewisburg is the nearest large city, about an hour away. by large, i mean 10,000 people and a walmart. they have a pretty sweet downtown, though--it's really pretty and reminds me a bit of chapel hill.

i went to a reenactment of the battle of lewisburg the other week. interesting, uncomfortable, and really loud: that sums it up nicely.

this is the zaniness of west virginia in a nutshell: dude on the left brought a kitten to a battle reenactment.

A KITTEN. 

this doesn't even begin to cover what it's like here: the scenery is gorgeous and the people are insanely nice--but there's always things going on that give you pause. like the dog collar pro wrestling match in town this weekend. or when the grocery store ran out of tomatoes on memorial day. or the fact that when you order a baked potato at the greenbrier, you get two, covered in nacho cheese. or when i heard a dude blasting some of will smith's greatest hits while cruising through downtown. like i said, it's a nice place...but kind of strange.

photers: pearl buck

it's evident by now that i'm not good at this blogging thing--finally getting around to uploading photos, which should give a teeny look at what goes on at the pearl s. buck birthplace.

pearl s. buck's front yard!

my little corner of the house.

our collections records. no lie.

a time capsule. supposed to be buried in 1992, pretty sure it never saw the first speck of dirt.

we could really use uv filters on our windows.

win some, lose some

let's put it this way: we have an ungodly amount of books that look the same and haven't been accounted for in at least 10 years. on the bright side, it looks like we'll be having a japanese puppet show in october!

j.o.b.

seeing as this blog is 3 months old already, and i’ve been in west virginia for a couple of weeks now, it’s about time to tell you about my job—which is why i’m here in the first place. after all, why else would a body move to pocahontas county, population 9,000?

my official title is “americorps VISTA volunteer,” working at the “pearl s. buck birthplace,” which is a mouthful. a fancy way of saying “i’m getting paid a little to do a lot, and all in the middle of nowhere.” hope that doesn’t sound too complain-y, but let’s just call a spade a spade, shall we?

in the same vein, the pearl s. buck birthplace doesn’t exactly have a monopoly on her legacy. the fact of the matter is, pearl buck barely lived in this house at all. her parents, as many people know, were missionaries in china for near about 40 years. after several of their children died young, they returned home on furlough--whereupon pearl s. herself was born in her mother’s childhood home in hillsboro, west virginia (which is the aforenamed “birthplace,” of course—also known as ‘the stulting house,’ after her mother’s family). they returned to chinkiang (zhenjiang if you’re, you know, actually chinese) with the infant, returning only twice in the next twenty years. as a result, pearl buck probably only spent one year total in the house—not a lot of time.

however, the pearl s. buck birthplace isn’t completely without provenance—pearl buck wrote a book entitled My Mother’s House, essentially declaring her love for the hillsboro area and the stulting home—during the course of which, she says:

I hope it will live a new life, not for myself or for my family but for people. I would like it to belong to everyone who cares to go there. From that house there has come so much life that it ought never to die or fall into ruin. For my ancestors it provided shelter and home in a new land, a house where they lived their new lives with traditional dignity and ancient faith in the fine things of life, in beauty of art and music, in the value of education, in the necessity of integrity and goodness. For my mother it provided a home, living forever in her thought and memory, though she made dwelling places in a far country. For me it was a living heart in the country I knew was my own but which was strange to me until I returned to the house where I was born. For me that house was a gateway to America. May it live again, my mother's house, and may it prove for others, too, a gateway to new thoughts and dreams and ways of life! (p. 30-31)

boom. there you have it: the good people of pocahontas county took her at her word, the women’s clubs helped raise money to buy the ol’ homestead, and it became a house museum. since then, the organization’s gone through some twists and turns, and came out a little worse for wear. which is where i (along with the other VISTA volunteers we’ve had) come in. the museum board has a (very, very long and detailed) list of goals, which i’m supposed to help them accomplish. i have my own set of goals, and hopefully between the two, some kind of magic will happen.

so there you have it! a sufficiently vague description of my job duties. it’ll get clearer in the very near future, promise.

chair

this has absolutely nothing to do with west virginia--except for the fact that i'll be riding up the mountain with a very special chair in my possession. for the past few months, i've been reupholstering a chair...and it's about 95% finished! as soon as it's done (and it can't be finished TOO soon!), i'll have a lovely purple chair in which to sit in my brand new house!

this chair, as evidenced by these photos, had great lines but was in awful shape--completely watersoaked & mildewed. basically, something i wouldn't go near, much less sit on. (my dad, in all seriousness, gave me at least 10 lectures on how i needed to wash my hands after stripping the chair--which were COMPLETELY unneccesary. i'm a clean freak.)

innards.

bare bones.

my favorite part: tufting! i'd never gotten to try it before, but it was super easy and ended up looking really great. naturally, i neglected to take pictures of the results--but once i finish it all, you'll be able to see the finished product.

beads to hold the knots in...never realized how hard it is to take pictures one-handed with an slr! too heavy for those weak wrists.

by now, i've finished everything but the cushion--which is taking far too long! it's surprising how hard it's been, given the experience i have with sewing things. but i expect to be done in the next few days...after that, i hope not to see carpet tacks and batting for a very long time!

update: it's DONE! found a few pictures i forgot along the way.

house: found!

this spring has gone by really quickly; now there's less than a month left until i move to west virginia. i was getting pretty worried about where i'll be living, but today i got the good news--some of the other VISTAs and i got a house in marlinton!

another welcome surprise: it's actually really big, as well as adorable! i had been going into this blind, so i wasn't expecting much. but just check this beauty out!

on the inside, the pictures i've seen remind me of the house i grew up in--creaky-looking floors, a sloping roof, irregularly-sized windows, and tiny, nook-like bathrooms. oh, and a giant porch!

porch parties, anyone?

upstairs bedroom

the view from the dining room window

the location is really great--the house is in the largest town in pocahontas county (with a staggering population of 1,200). my job is in hillsboro, at the southern end of the county, but it's only about 15 minutes away. and snowshoe mountain is about 30 minutes away. so, while i might not have all the things i'm used to in north carolina, at least now i know that my house is great!

of course, i would feel awful if i kept this beautiful house all to myself...so for those of you who get the urge to come to lovely west virginia, please feel free to impose on me!

off for a celebratory house-having shopping trip! for some reason, i'm most excited about buying hand soap & cleaning products. strange...