Happening now (more or less everywhere)

 Creek bank restoration and road repair on Grindstaff Road.

Burn! (carefully)

We got to watch part of a prescribed burn up on Murphy Branch Road yesterday. It was pretty interesting. Here's a good explanation of why someone might want to set fire--carefully, under controlled conditions--to their own property. 

 

Awww...

Jada took this picture of me at the food co-op sometime this summer because she thought it was funny that I was using an Ingles bag at TTT. 

I am posting it now, not because of the goofball with the rice cakes and the boonie hat, but because look at what a sweet little place it was. Everything was so homey and tidy and tucked in. 

Look at all this great stuff! Kombu! Nori! Soba noodles! Fish sauce! Coconut milk! Gretchen's hot sauce! Jam! Sardines! Kippers!! 

And that's just a fraction of what was there.

An Excellent Crew

Jesse has been organizing river cleanup crews on Sundays. She put out a call for a big group to start removing debris from the Weibe family's farm near Toe River Campground, and more than fifty people showed up at the old co-op site and carpooled over to the farm. 

It probably didn't hurt that Thrive Appalachia announced that they would be arriving with tacos and tres leches cake. 

 

 

The job involved a lot of this

 

and a lot of this.

The overall situation is certainly daunting. But it was a beautiful afternoon, it was great to be outside with a big group of neighbors, and the stuff we picked up needed to be picked up. We do what we can.

Also tacos. 

 

Drinking Helene

Last week, Tal, Jessica, and I made it to the Clingman's Peak rainwater collection site for the first time since the storm. As we expected, there was a full bucket of Helene water waiting for us. 

Normally we go to some trouble to not touch the water so we won't contaminate it, but this water had been sitting for way too long to be a usable sample, so we decided to sample it ourselves. Despite all the trouble this storm caused, the water was delicious.

FEMA-ween

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unlike some folks, Eben's family has not had a good experience dealing with FEMA, so for Halloween, he decided to scare people with red tape.
 

South Toe Precinct

Hey, South Toe Precinct voters. You all got cards a couple of months ago letting you know that our polling place is being moved from South Toe Elementary to Browns Creek Baptist Church.

This is to let you know that we were supposed to be using the basement of the church, but it was damaged in the flood, so we will be voting in a large tent that’s sitting at the edge of the parking lot. It has power, a floor, heat and there are port-a-johns and handwashing stations outside.

A number of people have asked me why the polling place was moved. The answer is simple. Holding elections in schools is a conflict with the school schedule and activities. For general elections all the county schools are closed so that a few of them can be used as polling places. During primaries, the schools stay open, but the parts that are used for the election can’t be used for school that day, and it means a lot of people and vehicles are coming in and out of the parking lot and the building while school is not in session.

Both the Board of Education and the Board of Elections have been working for years to move the polling places out of the schools. South Toe was one of only two that were still using a school for the elections. My assumption is that for the 2026 election we will be using the church basement, but this year we will be in this tent provided by the State Board of Elections.

It's still amazing here

 

Just sayin'.

Shown for Scale

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's impossible to convey the actual scale of the destruction that resulted from tropical storm Helene, but Alma was kind enough to help me show the scale of some of the debris that was on the bridge down by the Celo Inn. This was all cleared a couple of days later by a guy with a track hoe, which turns out to be an incredibly useful tool in this situation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's Tammy giving some perspective to how high the water got. She standing next to a low-lying spot on Hannah Branch Road. You can barely see the river water through the brush, but where she is standing is 7 or 8 feet above the normal level of the river. You can see about how high the flood got by the sticks and mud caught in the tree. 

Tal Galton and some kids did careful observations and measurements on a tree that's close to the gauging station that measures the river level. That station quit working at 12-1/2 feet (it was underwater after that). They concluded that the level during this flood was 26.25 feet, +/- a few inches, which is nearly 9’ higher than 1977, the previously highest recorded flood on this river. 

 

It's also hard to convey the scale and generosity of the response to this disaster. The rain stopped around 11:00 AM on Friday, September 27. I took this picture at around 3:00 that same afternoon. This is the assistant chief of the volunteer fire department and a local machine operator with a track hoe beginning to clear our road. 

 

And this is supply distribution at South Toe Elementary, less than a week later.

Remembering Gil

Many thanks to Joyce Johnson and her family for the wonderful memorial for Gil Johnson last month. 

Husband, father, glass artist, dancer, teacher, wrestling coach, teller of tales, keeper of stuff, spinner of ideas, all-around great person. We are proud to have known him.

This is Joyce and Gil in 1973.

 

Linda, Kurt, and Tommy in 1973.

 

Special thanks to Jeff Goodman who, over the last few years, collected video of Gil telling stories and made that part of the memorial event.
 

Impact Driver Deployment

 

Bruce diagonally working on some deck renovation. Those sweet knee patches were deployed by Nancy R.

Mammatus

 

Katie sent this picture of mammatus clouds taken from her porch a couple of weeks ago.

We're Dancing Now

 

Festatoa!

Not actually Wes Anderson

 

This is not a still from the next Wes Anderson movie. Olivia sent it from camp.

Hawk!

 

Miika says she didn't actually see the hawk when she was taking this picture. 

She got it, though.

Festatoa Clock

 

Kathryn House traces Katie Bernstein's T-shirt design onto luan as the crew prepares a central prop for the Festatoa puppet show.  

Mike mourns Dr. Ruth's passing with a trip down memory lane

 

Enormous and Illuminated

 

Kathryn got a picture of this enormous, sun-backed cloud from Sarah and Kevin's driveway while they were waiting for the Patience Park fireworks.

Big and White

 

Peggy sent this picture of the big white bird folks have been seeing near Hannah Branch Road lately. It's some kind of heron or egret, but it's hard to tell (see Sibley Guide on identifying white herons).

Bamboo Transport

 

Because sometimes you need some tall bamboo with leaves on it.

Found Art

 

Nice Spoon, Paul

 

Paul's spoon is on Upper White Oak, just off 80. The base is the rest of the log it was carved from.

Storytime with Natasha and Friends

 

Because who wouldn't want to have storytime with our old/new neighbor Natasha and her friends?

Crow Bags

The community garden folks use a lot of sand bags to hold down row cover and ground cloth. Anna Early sent this black-and-white picture noting that the bags kinda look like a flock of crows.

A Dance for Dotty

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Lundquist, with a little help, gave us a beautiful event remembering Dotty Morgan. 

 

Here's Paul talking about the love of his life. 

 

Dotty and Paul loved to dance--especially together. So after lots of people gave rememberances of this sweet, kind woman, dance caller Claire Takemori led the whole group in a simple dance that finished with Claire leading a long chain of dancers around and around, in and out, starting and ending in a large circle with many configurations in between. It was perfect. 

Flower child

This is what happened when Bob McGahey borrowed Bob Johnson's car.  

Wind Damage

Two brollys down.

Lenticular Invasion

 

Sylvia Archer reported an invasion of lenticular clouds last week. 

Scavengers

 

Ten highly festooned teams turned out for the fourth running of the Celo Not-For-Kids Scavenger Hunt. Kudos to organizers Gretchen Ferrell and Meghan Lundy-Jones.

For a closer look, click on this picture to see it bigger, and here are some details below. 

Special props to Crafty Carly who outfitted her team with shelf mushrooms (Cinnabar Red Polypore? unclumped Chicken of the Woods??) made from paper plates.