2019 Shoals Front Porch Pop-up & Storytelling Festival

Shoals Front Porch Storytelling Festival 2019 

March 5, 2019, 11:30-1PM, 2019  Dolores Hydock Through the Back Door ~ The Music that Bridged the Bayou. Mardi Gras luncheon, Sheffield Public Library, Sheffield, AL

May 6, 2019, 2-3PM, 2019  Dolores Hydock Helen Keller Library 511 N Main St. Tuscumbia, Al 

Literary Treason: the Writings of Bess Streeter Aldrich 

This program looks at the life and work of Bess Streeter Aldridge, a Nebraska Writer of the 1930s who accomplished what a few others did:

While she raised her family as a single mother, she had a successful, self-supporting career as a female writer during the first half of the 20th century.

The program describes her early life and later career success and includes a telling of “Jundo Swans,” Aldrich’s funny, touching short story that’s a reminder that there.

It's no disaster like an elementary school play and no friend as important as your best friend when you’re ten years old.

May 16, 2019, 10-11AM Dishing the dirt Cypress Lake Golf & Tennis Club 1311 E Sixth St. Muscle Shoals, Al Sponsored by Muscle Shoals Public Library Tickets are $5, including a light brunch before the program call 256-386-9212 

Whether you’ve got the greenest thumb since Johnny Appleseed or you managed to kill a rock garden, you’ll enjoy these stories about Mother Nature, Frederic the French Yard-Man, and people who grow philosophy as well as phlox on their little piece of earth. 

May 16, 2019, 4-5PM Pop-UP Concert with Josh Goforth Florence-Lauderdale Public Library

350 N Wood Ave, Florence, AL  

 Storyteller, ballad singer, and multi-instrumentalist Josh Goforth is a native of Madison County in western North Carolina. Situated deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, this area is known for its keeping of unbroken ballad and storytelling traditions brought by early Scots-Irish and English settlers in the mid-17th century. It was also fertile ground for the rise of American string band music played on fiddle, banjo, and guitar. Proud to share his Appalachian heritage with audiences near and far, Josh Goforth draws from each of these wellsprings. Join us for a FREE pop-up concert with Josh at 4 p.m. on Thursday, May 16, to kick off the Shoals Storytelling Festival!  

May 17, 8:45 AM – 5 PM (with lunch break): The Shoals Storytelling Festival featuring Donald Davis, Dolores Hydock, Bil Lepp, and Josh Goforth

8:50-9:00 Welcome

9:00-9:30 Bil Lep

9:30-10:30 Josh Goforth

10:30-10:45 Break

10:45-11:30 Dolores Hydock

11:30-12:00 Donald Davis 

12:00—2:00 Lunch

2:00-2:30 Josh Goforth

2:30-3:30 Bil Lep

3:30-3:50 Break

3:50-5:00 Donald Davis (Went home at 5pm)

5:00-7:00 Dinner 

7-9 PM–Storyteller Showcase with Donald Davis, Dolores Hydock, Bil Lepp, and Josh Goforth

May 18, 9AM – 5:15 PM (with lunch break): The Shoals Storytelling Festival featuring Donald Davis, Dolores Hydock, Bil Lepp, Eric Kirkman, and Josh Goforth

9:00-9:30 Donald Davis 

9:30-10:30 Eric Kirkman

10:30-10:45 Break

10:45-12:00 Dolores Hydock

12:00—2:00 Lunch

2:00-2:30 Bil Lep

2:30-3:00 Josh Goforth

3:00-3:50 Eric Kirkman 

3:50-4:15 Break

4:15-4:45 Dolores Hydock

4:45-5:15 5:00 Donald Davis (Went home at 5pm)

5:15-7:00 Dinner

7-9PM – Performance with Firekid, Dillon Hodges, and Heidi Feek

For the past two days, I have enjoyed spending time with my friends at the Shoals Theater Storytelling Festival.

Friday, we ate lunch at Legends(I think everyone ate lunch there) I enjoyed a plate of fried okra, fried shrimp, and Jack Danial's apples. 

Saturday, my friend and I shared a bowl of white cheese dip and chicken and steak feta for lunch. We topped it off with a cup of their complimentary ice cream.

On Friday and Saturday, we enjoyed listening to the following entertainers
Josh Goforth, Bill Lepp, Donald Davis, Dolores Hydock, and Dr. Eric Kirkman.
Josh Goforth is a multi-talented storyteller who uses a variety of stringed instruments for his ballads and stories.
His stories included friends and relatives, many about his tobacco chewing, never taking the shortcut to hard work grand-paw.
Bill Lepp's, believe it or not, Paul Bunyon tall tales!
Donald Davis's school days growing up and his jokester father.
Dolores's stories included a white cat (Huck), a black cat, a speckled cat, and a one-eyed cat and the lessons she learned from them.
Audry Williams her side of the story of fame.
Dr. Eric Kirkman sings and uses musical instruments to tell the African American influence on American music.

Thursday Pop-up Shows 

Cypress Lake Golf & Tennis Club Dolores Hydock told stories about Dishing the Dirt from the Garden, and we were served ham, sausage biscuits, fruit, pastries, muffins, orange juice, coffee, and water. There were door prizes.

Florence Library Josh Goforth played the guitar, a banjo, and fiddle sang ballads, & told stories about life in Madison Couty, North Carolina.

The storytelling festival has come to a bittersweet end, and cannot wait until next year.

1992 ~ Ethel The Gourmets Pantery Pardise Art

This piece of art is a representational visual form (the cat in the pantry is the theme) to depict the appearance of things.

The everyday things that the artist uses are sort of abstracted: 

Spiced Mice, Flabby Tabby Diet Mix, Puffed Mice, Birds Nest, Uncle Toms Instant Mice, Etc. 

In contrast, to a baker’s pantry. 

You have to be a cat lover and pretend to be a cat. 

He uses items in a distorted way to emphasize or reveal certain qualities or content, a cat's imagination, a cat's paradise.

The artist uses his white to create a delightful and hilarious image of Puss’s paradise.

Why I like this piece of art is the uses of warm colors (red, orange) to make Ethel, the cat appears to expand and advance. 

The overlapping is used to emphasize the cunning cat, Ethel.

There are geometric shapes throughout the picture, squares, rectangles, circles, and other shapes. 

The middle shelve is the center balance and using the primary color yellow and the geometric shapes on the shelves as dividers give asymmetrical balance.

This modern piece of art is a priceless piece of art, especially for cat lovers.

Ethel the Cat by Charles Wysocki
Great piece of art!

Cat Books:

 Corporate Cats, Bye, Bye Birdie Pie, Out of the backyard into the pit, Preparing the Canary, etc.

Foods:

Sour Puss Pickles, Pussy Willow Catprika, Old Tom Crows Feet, Friday Cats, Monarch poultry seasoning, Spray Poupon, Fabby Tabby Diet Mix, Tweeties, French's Song Restorer, Admiral Bird Smoked Herring, Bird's Nest Jelly Beans, Etc

The after poem of “The Cremation of Sam McGee” (by Robert Service)

I looked inside but what did I see,

 The life before of Sam McGee

Looking at me was the face of a smiling Cheshire cat,

That danced among the flames of life.

His volcanic body was flowing free like a river,

The hands that once controlled the wheels of life were no more,

His arms appeared as wings of angles and

His feet were floating along a path of no return.

Then I saw this radiant golden gate open and Sam McGee stepped inside.

A band of angels gathered around and said to Sam McGee you are heaven-bound.

Sam McGee said to me, I release you of your promise.

But could it be that Sam McGee was dancing in my head?

I let out a growl as the anger inside me rose.

I paced the floor like a caged leopard.

My head was pounding with every beat of my heart.

Inside my head I said, Sam McGee are you dead?

I know I made a promise to not leave you in the cold.

As the flames grew, higher and higher,

And Sam McGee slowly faded out of sight, 

I then knew Sam McGee had taken flight.

After Poem by S T