Something Besides Tennessee Please!

Now ya'll know I love Tennessee, and my husband and I have thought many a time about packing up and moving to the mountains there.

I also happen to have many a reader and contributor that live in Tennessee. I love it! I love the pictures and the articles they send in.

BUT..............

I need articles and pictures from other parts of the South!

Elsewise I'm going to have to rename this Dew in the Tennessee!

:)

help.....

Editor Photo

Reader Photo of the Week

Photo courtesy of Angela Clark

The picture came from an area in Middle, TN called Bransford. It's just a small community right down the road from me.... in Westmoreland, TN.

the mountain top

Dr. King is surely blowing out the candles on his heavenly birthday cake today while millions of Americans enjoy a day of rest in his honor. Somehow I think he would like that idea. After all, it was about the concept of equality back in his days in Memphis. The black sanitation workers were being paid a lot less than their redneck white counterparts for doing the same job. The Commercial Appeal in Memphis is a wealth of history concerning the legacy of Martin Luther King. There's a museum over there at the Lorraine Motel where he got shot on the balcony just for standing up to say amen.

Reader Photos of the Week

For the new year, the Dew is starting a new section - Reader Photos. I noticed that a lot of news and magazine sites are now asking readers for their personal photos of certain events and happenings in the area, and I'm always one to jump on an interesting bandwagon.

So once a week I will take a reader's submitted photos and share them with the world. All I ask is that they are photos from the South.

This week's photos are courtesy of Ms. Janie Stafford from Dyersburg, TN.

Thank you Janie - they are great!

Kudzu Kabin Desgns

Kudzu Kabin Designs, in Walhalla, South Carolina is the home, studio and store of Nancy Basket. Beautiful cards and baskets made from Kudzu. She also has recipes that range from Kudzu Quiche to paper made from Kudzu leaves.

Really a fascinating site and I definitely plan on stopping by her studio if I'm in the area!

THE ARTIST NANCY BASKET, in 1989, began experimenting with the "notorious" kudzu vine after moving to the Carolinas to be close to the Cherokee Reservation. Nancy shares her Native American heritage, by re-telling ancient legends orally and through her art. She says of her work," I feel the old ones guiding my fingers and I am proud to be making something beautiful." A contemporary basket maker and fiber artist, Nancy takes her name from the work she does, and from her Cherokee grandmother, long ago Margaret Basket. She is an artist-in-education in basketry, papermaking and storytelling in the Carolinas.

Visit Nancy at her home and choose from her 150 different 5" x 7" kudzu art cards. Each card has it's own native story on the back. Find a frame on the wall to fit and you have a unique gift for all occasions guaranteed never to grow again! Purchase a larger wall piece for your home, commission a special canvas, covered in kudzu with your colors in mind.


Come see Nancy's 100-year old barn where bales of kudzu are both the walls and insulation. This is the only kudzu bales building in the world. Take a class, or see kudzu paper being made.

1105 East Main Street
Walhalla, SC 29691
864-718-8864

Hours: Mon-Sat: 10 to 4
Sunday and after hours by appointment only

Attn: All Writers Without Publishing Houses

I have a lot of aspiring authors who send me material and I'm always looking for ways to give back to them.

I have come across this event and I believe it will be of strong interest to some.

Please let me know if you go and have success!



Shoo-In Self-Publishing Fair

Dog Heaven

By Cappy Hall Rearick

Our sweet Tallulah suffers from congestive heart failure, which is progressing cough by cough more rapidly than we want it to. Each morning we wake up hoping that Tallulah will be as lucky while at the same time, fearful that she has hacked her last while we were sleeping.

For years, I have made fun of this sweet animal by writing about her silly antics in my columns. We named her Tallulah BLANKhead for obvious reasons, given the fact that she occupied the Alpha pecking order tail-end position, and it appeared to us to be permanent.

There is another four-legged female living rent-free in our house. Sophie Sorrowful, the aloof feline rescued from the clutches of the grim reaper, allows Babe and me to give her affection only when she is bored out of her mind. Miz Sophie, who has never set one of her delicate paws outside of our house, is mindful that Tallulah, Babe and I are her entire world. When Tallulah's time on this earthly dog run has run its course, Sophie Sorrowful will undoubtedly earn the entitlement to her given name, if not her birthright. In any case, it ain't gonna be pretty.

For fourteen years, Tallulah has been our pet, child, companion, playmate, comforter, burglar alarm and four-legged food disposal. The day she finally ascends to that all-you-can-eat canine banquet in the sky, bless her heart, she will leave behind a large, empty dog bowl and an even bigger emptiness in our lives.

Tallulah may be half-blind and probably totally deaf, but there's nothing wrong with her smeller. All I need do is walk through the kitchen, whether at mealtime or in the middle of the night, and she is always there for me to trip over. Tallulah is the only dog in town with a documented eating disorder. She can sniff out a box of dog biscuits, triple layered in heavy-duty foil and secured with duct tape.

On Christmas morning, 2007, I found all my carefully wrapped gift packages ripped open and scattered throughout the house. In the middle of the den, an overweight Cockapoo lay flat on her back, legs flopping over like wilted celery stalks, while she snored and farted in consecutive order.

Propped upright beside her was an empty container of Milk Bones. Unlike the rest of the mess, that box was in perfect condition as though Tallulah had taken out the treats one by one before popping them into her mouth. Yeah, like THAT could happen.

My brother and I grew up with dogs. There was Penny, and then another one whose name I can't remember, probably Nickel. After that, there was Susie Q who fell up the stairs and died while my brother was in the service. He was really attached to that dog, so Mama and I felt obligated to mourn and carry on something awful in his stead.

Daddy hired some workers to dig a hole in the back yard so he could lay the little dog to rest. When the hole with Susie Q, wrapped in her raggedy old blanket, was once again filled back up with dirt, Daddy stood looking down at the gravesite while Mama and I watched from a window inside the house. I'd like to think he was saying a few kind words about our deceased canine sibling.

As any pet lover can attest, our animals often become extended family members, substituting as children to some of us. People who have never experienced the joy an animal brings to a household have missed much. Those who can only see dog hair and fur balls, instead of unconditional love and devotion, must be lacking an important gene. The way I look at it, we are given the privilege of co-existing with our pets for a few precious years, almost as if we're being served a tiny bite of heaven.

Everybody knows that all dogs go to heaven. I suspect when Tallulah finally makes it to the Pearly Gates, she will be wagging her stubby tail, smiling in that lopsided way of hers, and blissfully chowing down on an eternity of T-Bone steaks, medium rare. Our sweet, goofy Tallulah Blankhead deserves no less than that.
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http://www.simplysoutherncappy.com

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested." —Francis Bacon

Packsaddle Worm - Updated

I generally troll thru the searches that are bringing people to the Dew, as I want to make sure that I supply the information people are looking for. Now I have no idea why, but each week there is always one or two searches for the Packsaddle Worm. I only have one tiny reference to it in the middle of a story somewhere, so I decided to actually look this word up and see what it was. Apparently it lives in the Appalachians.

Below is a definition of it pulled from "Do you Speak American" - a PBS page I believe.

I hope this helps. All I can say is "a stinging worm - ewww".

Photo Courtesy of Rebecca Holder of Southern Skies Design
Picture located at: Gardenweb.com Forums
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packsaddle worm n Also packsaddle(r) [See quot c1960] esp sAppalachians See Map =saddleback caterpillar.1884 Smith Bill Arp ' s Scrap Book 72 GA, I wonder if Harris ever saw a pack saddle. Well, its as putty as a rainbow, just like most all of the devil ' s contrivances, and when you crowd one of em on a fodderblade you ' d think that forty yaller jackets had stung you all in a bunch. 1925 Dargan Highland Annals 208 cwNC, You said I must git another big mess ' fore the frost struck ' em heavy, an ' that field was plum full o ' pack-saddlers. One stung me ever ' time I laid my hand on a roas ' in ' year. Hit hurts worse ' n a hornet fer a minute, an ' it ' s harder on a body ' s temper than a hornet is. 1953 PADS 19.12 sAppalachians, Pack saddler. . . A beautiful green worm with markings like a saddle on its back. The worm stings. It is found on fodder. c1960 Wilson Coll. csKY, Pack-saddle worm—The larva of an insect often found on corn blades with a very violent sting; the worm itself is quite pretty, actually suggesting the form of an old-fashioned pack-saddle. 1965- 70 DARE (Qu. R21, . . Other kinds of stinging insects) Inf NC35, Packsaddle—fuzzy, looks like woolly worm with horns; NC54, Packsaddle—looks like a saddle and stays on corn; light green; TN22, Packsaddle—lives on corn; (Qu. R27, . . Kinds of caterpillars or similar worms) Infs AL32, KY28, Packsaddle—stinging worm; GA77, Packsaddle—brown, short, has black square on back; KY40, Packsaddle—found on corn blades, has poisonous spines [FW: Inf used in conv]; TN6, Packsaddle—has a stinger; VA2, Packsaddle; VA7, Packsaddle—long, green, with stingers in their backs, corn pests; (Qu. R30) Inf VA3, Packsaddle—wormlike; fuzzy, stings, eats corn [FW: It stings if you brush against its spines when picking corn.] 1982 Slone How We Talked 44 eKY (as of c1950), " Pack saddler " —a worm that was found on the blades of corn. We were always afraid of them when we were pulling the fodder. It stung by projecting spines from its back. It had a ring of these hair-like spines along its back that resembled a saddle.
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I received a note from Leslie in North Carolina who shared a Packsaddle encounter with me. I thought I'd pass it along to the readers.


I just read your info regarding the Packsaddle worm and want to let you know that this painful, painful critter is not just in the Appalachian Mountains. I grew up about 30 miles east of Raleigh NC (in the Piedmont but close to the coastal plains). One day, a childhood friend and I were walking through a corn field. As Jeffrey brushed through the stalks, he suddenly exclaimed, "Ow!". As the stalk he had just brushed past swing back and brushed against my leg, I also yelled out because simply put, my leg was on fire!!!! We took a moment to examine the corn stalk and found a green worm with a distinct dark spot in the middle and 2 spiny extensions on each end. It was certainly interesting to look out but we weren't in a forgiving enough frame of mind to think anything but "Gross" and "Scary". We hobbled back to the house and tried unsuccessfully to find this unfriendly fellow in the encyclopedia. We had both grown up with 2 acre "gardens" and had NEVER seen any creature like this before. Since the fire on our legs only seemed to be getting worse, we ended up calling the agriculture extension office to find out what had stung so badly. Of course we were relieved to be told that we weren't in danger of eminent death and after a couple of hours, the stinging did abate. Whew! That has been over 35 years ago and I remember this painful encounter like it was yesterday.

Leslie