NEWSLETTER

AUGUST, 2005

Since the temperatures have been hot and steamy most of the summer, you might consider taking in the cool summer jazz program each Wednesday before it ends this month. Plus all of the other fantastic performers we have for you:

AUGUST 3 – JAZZ – MARC YAXLEY TRIO.

AUGUST 4 – BRUCE PIEPHOFF. Singer/songwriter/poet from Greensboro, NC returns. www.brucepiephoff.com.

AUGUST 6 – JAY & MANDY. Singer/songwriters from Asheville, NC return.

AUGUST 10 – JAZZ – MARC YAXLEY TRIO.

AUGUST 11 – JESS PILLMORE & RON MORRIS. From the West Coast, this duo is making its debut at the café. .

AUGUST 13 – MENAGE. This terrific trio of talented females from Asheville return after a great performance earlier this year.

AUGUST 17 – JAZZ – MARC YAXLEY TRIO.

AUGUST 18 – SCOTT ALLEN & FRIENDS. Our very own Saluda singer/songwriter returns after too long an absence.

AUGUST 20 – JACK WILLIAMS. One of my personal favorite singer/songwriters. He can do it all. Don’t miss him.

AUGUST 24 – JAZZ – MARC YAXLEY TRIO.

AUGUST 25 – TOM FISCH. Singer/songwriter from nearby Flat Rock, NC returns.

AUGUST 27 – TATER. We are happy to have the full band from Shelby, NC with us.

AUGUST 31 – JAZZ – MARC YAXLEY TRIO. This will be the final performance in our summer jazz series.

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The summer jazz series has been an experiment on our part. If you would like to hear more jazz during the year as part of our regular music offerings, please let us know.

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Rufus Morgan was an Episcopal priest who served many small churches in western North Carolina in the 1900s. He loved the mountains in all of their magnificence and grandeur and was an avid hiker who spent a lot of his time walking the trails in the Great Smoky Mountains and Pisgah National Forest. Some of his favorite hikes were on any of the five trails that lead to Mt. LeConte. There is a lodge at its peak that was established in the 1920s as part of a campaign to get the area named a national park which, of course, became what we now call the Great Smoky Mountains.

We recently had all of our family (except for two grandchildren) here to celebrate that great Saluda event, Coon Dog Day. Being together like that reminded me of Rev. Morgan, Mt. LeConte and the magical time we had with them some thirty years ago. Our family and my wife’s sister’s family hiked some eight miles up the Boulevard Trail to the lodge at the top of Mt. LeConte on that day. We had six children with us with the youngest being 5 years old. (While we all made it to the top, we have this wonderful picture of the two youngest children squatting by the side of the trail, both sucking their thumbs while they rested.)

Rev. Morgan, who was quite old at the time, had preceded us up the mountain with a team from National Geographic magazine who were going to do an article on the area. After a hearty meal at the lodge, everyone went up to Cliff Tops where we could watch the sun go down over Clingman’s Dome. It was astonishingly clear that night as we sat quietly listening to Rev. Morgan talk about his love of the mountains, the grace he had received from being in God’s creation and how God speaks to us through nature if we will only pay attention. In a relatively frail voice, he recited the 121st Psalm from memory which begins:

“I lift up my eyes to the hills;
From where is my help to come?
My help comes from the Lord,
The maker of heaven and earth . . .”

You could have heard a pin drop as the sun dipped behind the mountains. Even the children were mesmerized. It was as if we had been stunned by our being in this place where God also seemed so present. There was not a sound other than Rev. Morgan’s quiet and serene voice even though there were some forty or so of us experiencing this magical moment. The evening ended with the group singing “Amazing Grace” and lingering in silence to further absorb the beauty of the dying day before we retired to our cabins for the night.

“For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Wendell Berry

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Kate is three and loves to eat. I mean anything. As she was wolfed down her dinner with the family, her grandmother told her to “save some room for dessert”. The next thing we saw was Kate carefully rearranging with her fingers the food remaining on her plate to make a space for her dessert.

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Anna is eight, pretty computer savvy and lives in a city where internet users have access to DSL and other fast-connecting possibilities when using the internet. When we told her, that we lived in the country and could only get on the web through the dial-up method, her response was that “even sounded slow”.

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Some puns for your summer pleasure:
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
A successful diet is the triumph of mind over platter.
When two egoists meet, it’s an I for an I.
Propaganda: A gentlemanly goose.
Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?

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We hope that everyone is having a great summer. We know that ours is improved when we see you at the café enjoying yourself. Come see us.

Robert Seiler
Purple Onion Café
www.purpleonionsaluda.com