Windy Sunday on The Wacissa River

I took a very windy paddle on the Wacissa River this morning. It was just me and the seaweed farmer and my cold weather friends.

Catching up With Veronika Jackson

Nathan and I took a trip up to Macon, Georgia on Friday to see Veronika Jackson perform at the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. Veronika is a blues singer originally from St. Petersburg whom I had first seen and heard at the Florida Folk Festival when I was her MC on the Tower Stage, a few years ago. She is beautiful and mysterious, a soulful child of God and a Black woman through and through! If you get a chance to buy her CD or hear her perform, you will be lucky! Here are a few photos from her gig. I am writing an ethnography about Veronika for my Folklore class: my second course towards yet another degree( which will make four)... education junky that I am!

Nathan enjoyed our trip because he spent two days at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame playing B-ball. We also toured the Harriet Tubman Museum which introduced me to many Georgia artists whom I was unfamiliar with including Thornton Dial, Amalia Amaki, Radcliffe Bailey, Ronald Lockett, and Nellie Mae Rowe.

Kayak Trail at Lake Lafayette

On saturday I also took a short trip into Lake Lafayette from the launch near the railroad tracks at the end of Road To The Lake. I did not do the entire trail since I am unfamiliar with it as yet and I was alone. The water appears to be about three feet in depth and the bottom is very, very silty. I did not see any alligators. There was one other canoe on the trail. This area is a young cypress swamp with flooded fields with fence posts in some areas. It has been dredged and marked and appears to be a pleasant trip. I saw bluebirds, warblers, robins, cardinals, and a great blue heron but did not get any really good bird pictures so I have used the trail pictures only, in hopes of peaking my kayak buddy's interest in doing this trail sometime. ..

As you can see, some yahoo has already shot up the signs with pellet shot...

The Wacissa Crowd

Cold Saturday birds!

Woodpeckers!

These woodpeckers were across the water from the pileateds and I had a time with my head swiveling back and forth like a woodpecker!

Getting Ready for Spring (at the Spring!)

Before dawn this morning, I rolled out of bed and managed to do the dishes, wash up and hit the road for the Wacissa in an hour. I was on the river before eight AM, a record for me on a Saturday. It was cold and overcast until after ten AM, but I found the birds!

This pileated woodpecker was excavating a nesting cavity and he stayed at it for more than a half hour while I snapped dozens of photos! He was near Blue Spring in a place I'll return to in a few weeks to see the nesting.

Didn't I Dance?

Didn't I Dance?

Grandmother heard him -
His song was so sweet.
She danced to the fiddler
On little bare feet.
She was fifteen and fair,
With black braided hair,
And didn't she dance in her day
Over the years I remember she said,
One night as she kissed me and put me to bed,
"When I was a maid, and my song was played,
Oh didn't I dance in my day?"

Didn't I dance, didn't I dance
Didn't I dance in my day.

Mother, she danced
In a long silken gown
Hair done in curls
The belle of the town.
There was many a man
Who asked for her hand
And didn't she dance in her day.
Now when she dances, just once in a while,
She says, "I remember those times and I smile
I think of the night my feet danced so light
Oh, didn't I dance in my day?"
See the young girls
On a soft summer's night
Silhouettes slender
Against the moon's light;
Hair flowing free
Once that was me,
And didn't I dance in my day!
Now that I'm older, there's one thing I know,
I'll go on dancing though the tempo be slow
And I know that some day to my grandchild I'll say
"Oh didn't I dance in my day!"

Copyright Lori Holland BMI 1984