~The following was published in The Floyd Press on December 30, 2010.

We see education as the active preservation and expansion of the heart and soul of our community. Therefore, we strive to create renewing and inspiring educational experiences in an intimate environment that sustains creative culture, community and individual growth.  ~ The Jacksonville Center webpage.

The Jacksonville Center for the Arts is a recognizable name in Southwest Virginia and beyond.  After fifteen years of promoting the arts, offering classes and workshops, and hosting exhibits and events in its renovated dairy barn since 2004, the center is well established as a leader in the rural arts scene.

“We’ve grown up.  We have a seat at the state-wide table,” said Jacksonville Center director John McEnhill. Last January the center was invited to present a workshop on the challenges of a rural arts center at an art conference in Richmond, he added.  “It was the best attended workshop at the conference.”

Although the center’s name has been gaining notoriety, it’s the name it does business under – the Floyd Community Center for the Arts – that more aptly describes the Jacksonville mission.  “We are a community center in a rural county.  Our first allegiance is to our community.  We’ve built-up a solid audience drawn to specific events, and we host a wide range of community events,” said McEnhill, who explained that the Jacksonville Center is the only truly rural art center in the state.

The annual Empty Bowls fundraiser for New River Community Action’s backpack project, held in the center’s Community Room, accommodates 600 or more people. Workshops on tourism and chamber of commerce meetings also take place at the center, as well as twice monthly Old Church Gallery Quilters Guild meetings and weekly yoga classes.  “We have the parking and the space to offer the community,” McEnhill noted.

This year the center introduced the first annual Floyd County Imagination Month, dubbed FloCoiMo as a take-off on NaNoWriMo’s November Novel writing month.  FloCoiMo challenged countians to create art each day of the month.  Spoken word, music, and visual art were shared in a coffee house atmosphere at the month’s conclusion.  A book signing for a local author also took place at the center this year and a memorial celebration for a recently deceased community member who was involved in dramatic arts is currently scheduled.

The center has two art venues. The upstairs Hayloft Gallery is home to about 5 – 6 exhibits and receptions a year.  Downstairs, the Breezeway showcases the works of art organizations, such as the Quilters Guild and Retired Seniors Volunteer Program (RSVP) FineHearts and Floyd Artist Association students.  Classes offered at the center have included everything from painting and printmaking to blacksmithing and bookmaking.  The expanded gift shop features fiber arts, woodworks, jewelry, sculpture, photography, basketry, pottery, cards, mobiles and more made by local artists and artisans.

In the interest of keeping the center accessible to the community, there is no admission charge for gallery showings and events.  The center is inclusive and welcoming to new artists as well as the established. Some new artists have shown their work for the first time at the center.  Established artists appreciate the fine art juried exhibit the center hosts once a year.  Silent auctions and classical music concerts are among the special event fundraisers that community members look forward to.   Winterfest, the Jacksonville Center’s longstanding annual art and craft festival, always draws good attendance.

Adding to the hub of activity on the Jacksonville campus – which includes 7 buildings on 7 acres – are artist studio incubators (150 – 400 square foot spaces), along with resident organizations.  The center provides the rentals at below market rent and tenets share equipment and common space. They also benefit from the center’s marketing guidance, networking partnerships, free wifi, a color copier, and extended available space.    “They don’t have to hire a staff person. We can open and close for them,” McEnhill said.

Jacksonville studio artist and Pickin’ Porch music teacher Scott Perry has extra room for his student’s jam sessions.  Potter Sarah McCarthy uses the center’s pottery kiln.  Some resident artists “graduate,” McEnhill explained, such as George Lipson, who began his “Green Label” organic t-shirt business in a Jacksonville incubator and has since moved to a building on Oxford Street.  Past Jacksonville tenets include Floydfest and the Young Actor’s Co-op (YAC).

When the Tri-area Community Health Clinic needed a temporary home they found it in the Jacksonville’s Residential Craft School dormitory building.  Currently, the New River Community Action Center occupies that space while repairs are being made at their permanent location.  McEnhill said the center stopped using the building as a Craft School dorm in 2007 when the economy began its downward spiral but he anticipates using it as a dorm again when out-of-town class enrollment picks up.

The Association of Energy Conservation Professionals (AECP), a non-profit energy education and advocacy organization, and the Sustainable Living Education Center (SLEC) are other resident organizations on the Jacksonville Center grounds.  The AECP hosts the annual Green Living Energy Expo at the Civic Center in Roanoke.  Its partner organization SLEC provides interactive demonstrations and exhibits. Onsite SLEC working systems that showcase the importance of sustainable living include solar panels, a wind generator, and a straw bale building.

Another important way the center serves the community is with its engagement with youth through kid-centered activities, student exhibits, the annual Summer Kids Camps, and SOL based in-school art programs in Floyd public schools.   The center recently raised enough funds through a successful Facebook appeal to provide an afterschool achievement and art program for at-risk students in partnership with Floyd Elementary School.  The annual youth exhibit, currently showing in the Hayloft Gallery features the works of area school art students.  “I’m proud of the fact that we showcase students and give them a venue during the holidays so visiting family members can attend,” said McEnhill.

“There is ample evidence that regular exposure to art curriculums helps students do better all around, particularly at the elementary school level and particularly in math, science and history.  They perform better, get better SAT scores, are less likely to do drugs and more likely to graduate with a secondary education degree,” McEnhill stated.

It takes a lot of manpower and dollars to run the Jacksonville Center without the benefit of a large endowment, something that other art organizations often have.  Like other non-profits, as well as many small businesses and families across the nation, the center has been affected by the economic recession.  As class enrollments and sales of higher priced art have decreased, energy costs to keep the center running have continued to increase.

Recent news about the financial struggles of Roanoke’s Taubman Museum has brought more attention to art organizations like the Jacksonville Center.  “They have the same challenges as other art organizations but on a bigger scale.  We’ve already done a lot of what they are doing now. We’ve learned a lot,” said McEnhill, who noticed trends of a slowing economy in 2007 and began making cost-saving cutbacks then.

The Jacksonville Center is supported by 40% earned income and 60% unearned income from grants, donations, and memberships.   Nine part-time employees with a combined payroll of less than $80,000 a year keep the center running smoothly day-to-day.  Staff positions include an education coordinator, marketing coordinator, volunteer coordinator, a business manager, office manager, maintenance worker, front office staff and executive director.  Board members and committees also help guide center operations.

Many of Jacksonville’s committed employees receive stipends and all work off-the-clock hours, McEnhill reported.  Thousands of volunteer hours are put in each year by hundreds of volunteers.  The center also sub-contracts some jobs and utilizes the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEEP), a Department of Labor training program that employs unemployed seniors.

As temporary sources of income ended and the economy stalled, the center responded by adding an “on demand” class schedule and by replacing their paper newsletter with a cost saving e-newsletter.  “We’re looking into getting a property tax waiver from the county. They have granted waivers for non-profits in the past,” McEnhill said.  He reported that rooms at the center are heated as needed.  Closing for winter months is not an option because of the risk of frozen pipes and because art studio incubators function year round.

Ironically, as the economy has sunk, McEnhill has noticed a sharp increase in visitor traffic, “which shows that people don’t stop appreciating art or wanting to participate in activities,” he said, estimating that the center had approximately 15 to 20,000 visitors last year.  “There are times we are busting at the seams and other times are slow and steady,” McEnhill remarked.

The Jacksonville Center doesn’t have an endowment, but it does have a group of ardent supporters, internally referred to at the center as the “Savior Team.”  Savior Team activists make phone calls requesting contributions and have pledged to match an end of year appeal to raise $20,000.  As of late-December the center was only $7,000 away from their goal.  But pledges will be needed for the new year as well to ensure that programs can continue.

McEnhill believes there are signs that the economy is beginning to improve, saying, “We had the best overall Winterfest this year.”  He remains hopeful that by the spring trends will point to continued improvement.

“It’s not so much about surviving as it is about taking the challenges as they come and adapting to them so that something positive comes out of it,” McEnhill explained.  “We are a remarkably resilient group,” he added.     ~  Colleen Redman blogs daily at http://looseleafnotes.com 

“I have up and joined the Peace Corps,” begins the latest issue of Floyd County Moonshine.  In his editor’s preface Aaron Moore explains how joining the Peace Corp seemed like a nice thing to do.  He goes on to say, “Today I started quite possibly the first Hacky-sack English Speaking club in China.  In due time I will introduce tie dye t-shirts, biscuits and gravy, and Frisbee golf.”

Aaron may be in China but the Floyd based literary magazine he founded goes on like a long distance romance.   I imagine the Floyd creek and mountain view on the front cover of this issue, and the prose and poetry by new and established, regional and other writers on this side of the world might feel like letters from home to Aaron.

Browsing through the issue on a snowy afternoon with a hotly brewed cup of tea in hand, I wondered how anyone could not be compelled to read Essence of Skunk, Poets Just Want to Be Thirteen-year-old Girls, or For Christmas I’m Buying My Obsessive Compulsive Roommate More Hand Sanitizer by Luke Armstrong.  Armstrong, a contributing editor for the magazine The Expeditioner who currently lives in Guatemala, is featured heavily in the issue.  He has a knack for giving his poems intriguing titles.

I marked this stanza from his If the World Were Within Me I Would Stay Home:   The world is within you, says the Zen master/It is something you create. I do it, but with the ingenuity of/ An artist painting sunsets for paying tourists.

Native Floydian Richard Nester writes in a poem titled Salvage: at the big yard sale / of hope, it is amazing / what people / who have lost everything / will carry off. His poem Buffalo Laughter appeals to my sense of whimsy:  Every year the buffalo get / together like a bunch of old actors / There are only enough of them / left to make a movie.

Nester’s daughter-in-law, Robbi Nester, a writing teacher who lives in California, writes about Floyd’s own Will’s Ridge.  Your grandfather’s a mountain / Though he passed some time ago / his name endures, enshrined / on maps and part of local lore.

I was thoroughly taken by What Noma Meant to Say, a short story by Ronald Lands, a Tennessee doctor and writer who’s been nominated for Pushcart Award.  Set in a nursing home, the story starts:

Noma Gentry leaned on her walker and stared out the picture window overlooking the lawn that circled Shannondale like a moat.  She squinted her eyes, hunched her shoulders, and bent her knees a little, as if she was searching a half century of horizons back to the gray morning when she watched Hiram back the hay wagon into the barn for the last time.”

I read it the day after learning that my mother just had another small stroke.

Noma nodded her head slightly as if a memory of the music was trying to wriggle free from the plaques and tangles that held it submerged. Before her last stroke cauterized the speech area of her brain, she shuffled the halls and sang, “Some glad morning when this life is ov-er, I’ll fly away.” Sometimes, a burly man with a phlegmy cough echoed the bass refrain from down the hall, “in the morning.” After he died, she lowered her voice and sang it herself.

Being a regional publication, I know several of the writers featured, along with the photographers and artist Amity Dewey.   I heard my friend McCabe Coolidge’s voice as if he was reading his story about the death of his friend out loud in my head.

I like to read bios.  My actor/writer friend Rob Neukirch’s bio reads: Rob substitute teaches on a regular basis at Floyd Elementary School where he is best known for taking his thumb off and making coins and other small objects disappear. Rob has a short story in the issue titled In the Latter Stages that begins with the line I lost my parents in the divorce.

It’s also a pleasure to see my own photography and poetry in amongst the 69 pages.  I got a kick out of giving a copy to my son’s girlfriend for Christmas. She’s the elusive woman standing at the edge of the Blue Ridge Parkway escarpment in the photograph on page 16 titled The View.

If it keeps snowing and blowing I just might get through the whole magazine.  Sip by sip, I’m appreciating the local color of local literature.

Post notes:  Floyd County Moonshine can be purchased locally at the Harvest Moon, noteBooks, and The Floyd Country Store and online at their website HERE. Read more about the Moonshine HERE and HERE.

Colleen Redman blogs daily at looseleafnotes.com.

“Fashions for Evergreens,” is a fundraiser for the United Way, held at the historic Hotel Roanoke. Twenty-six Christmas trees decorated by local groups and businesses are festively displayed throughout the hotel.  ~ Colleen Redman blogs daily at looseleafnotes.com. 

Hello readers, it has been quite awhile. Recent years have proven the duress that blogs can face, whether or not their authors intend it, and my postings are no exception. Yet, this author will continue trying to endure.

Anyone visiting the Pembroke and Pearisburg areas since the fall of 2010 may have noticed that the New River Grill has moved from route 100 in Pearisburg to route 460 in Pembroke. Newcomers will be quite surprised at the welcoming vibe of the cafe, and the county residents have already spoken via the amount of vehicles parked in front of the restaurant on a given day … or especially a weekend. THIS place is here to stay.

The menu is comprised of an array of fine appetizers, salads and sandwiches, as well as house-made burgers and dinner entrees including steak and seafood. And for anyone wondering, YES the ABC license has been acquired — so, patrons may enjoy a microbrew or a glass of wine with their meal. THIS may be a first for Pembroke in a long time.

And this writer must state, the food is actually quite good. If you’re in the area, do stop by whether you want a light lunch of a nice dinner without a heavy price tag. It would make a fine top-off to a hike up to the Cascades and back.

Finally, dog car was mentioned … that is a the nickname given to a vehicle that drives through downtown Pembroke regularly, at least once a day. The compact car features a pair of dogs with their heads extending from either opposing windows or the same window, barking as the vehicle progresses down the street. As the cold weather has set in, dog car has been less of a fixture than it was this past spring, summer and fall … and it can only be hoped that such a great anamoly will return with the warmer weather.

Best,

John Hildreth

John lives in Giles County, teaches at Radford University, and plays in the contra dance band Dot Dot Dash.

~ The following was published (with a different selection of photos) in The Floyd Press on December 16, 2010.

In spite of the wintry weather and Emerson Perry’s sore throat, last Saturday’s performances of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer played to packed crowds.

Perry played the part of Tom Sawyer in the Young Actors Co-op (YAC) production of the classic Mark Twain story about childhood adventure and following one’s conscience.  The two act play, set on the banks of the Mississippi River in the summer of 1852, began with a splash, as a river scene created by a large, spread-out parachute was carried across the Sun Music Hall stage and into the audience.

Structured around a narrative delivered by Twain himself (played by Bethlehem Cherrix) and songs sung at scene changes by Kyla Robbins, the production had all the drama one would expect from live theater, including a murder, a funeral, mischief making, school house flirting, a flashing echo chamber dream sequence, a couple of gravediggers, and a courtroom surprise.

Period costumes and dialects added to the entertainment.  The sets were inventive and the action moved right along.   Under the direction of YAC founder Rose McCutchan, this community theater troupe of seasoned young actors and newcomers was well deserving of the rousing applause they received for their performance of Twain’s timeless story.   ~ Colleen Redman

Note:  Search “YAC Tom Sawyer” on YouTube for video clips of the performance. Visit YAC on Facebook or at myspace.com/floydyac for more information on the Young Actors Co-op.

~ Colleen Redman blogs daily at looseleafnotes.com.

~ The following was published in The Floyd Press newspaper on December 9, 2010.

On December 4^th from 2 – 4 p.m. Sam and Dolly Moore hosted the 4^th annual Friends of the Library Holiday Tea fundraiser at their home “Glenanna,” which is listed on both the State and National register of Historic Places.

Friends of the Library president Kit Haggard reported that the tea fundraiser was a sell-out event, although some ticket holders stayed home because of the snowy weather.   Haggard is pictured to the right of home owner Dolly Moore.

A new publication, titled Tea with Friends, was debuted at the holiday fundraiser.    The cookbook was a project of several Friends of the Library members.  It includes “tried and true” recipes that members have made and served at fundraising teas, Haggard said.  The book also includes information on traditions of afternoon teas, as well as the courses that are served at them.    Copies of the book, which features a cover by local artist Gretchen St. Lawrence, are available at the Jessie Peterman Library, where orders for the $20 print-on-demand publication can be made.  ~Colleen Redman blogs daily at looseleafnote.com.