214 Guest Posting--Teri Merrill

A Trip to Nowhere

A Guest Posting from Teri Merrill

Teri Merrill started out writing professionally in 1982, for a health care magazine in Chicago, IL. She moved with her husband to Washington, DC, and was a staff writer for various healthcare publications, but chose to become a freelance writer when her first child was born. 

Her family moved to Dallas in 1995, where she continued to write for several health care publications and then pivoted to religion and gardening articles for different outlets.

Her family moved again in 2009, to Winchester, VA, and Teri began writing religion, gardening and lifestyle articles for the Winchester Star. More recently, she has written lifestyle articles for Senior Correspondent, a publication for seasoned writers.

I had lunch with a friend recently, and as our conversation wound down, I asked where she and her husband were traveling this summer. She looked at me quizzically and replied: “Nowhere. We love our fur babies and house too much to leave.”

Finally, a fellow traveler who has the same favorite destination as me…nowhere! I’ve been visiting this destination for years and absolutely love it. Some people would call me a homebody, but I object to that description. Instead, I like to think of myself as a “Selective Adventurer.”

For many American vacationers, there seems a hyper, almost frenetic approach to world travel. Friends and acquaintances have either returned from a faraway trip, are planning a trip, or have a bucket list of distant places they want to go.

And when I say go, I mean GO! To Russia for downhill skiing. To visit the Galapagos or the mountains of Peru, any country ending with “stan,” or places that take a full day, or more, to reach.

I’ll admit, I just don’t have this peripatetic need. It’s not that I lack curiosity or don’t think there are hundreds of beautiful places to visit across the globe. It’s just that my corner of the globe is the most interesting and beautiful to me, at least most of the year. 

In the summer, there’s my vegetable garden to oversee and crops to pick and enjoy. In the fall, there are amazing hikes through brilliantly hued forests. In the spring, there are garden chores to undertake and each day brings a new plant or tree to admire as it burst forth in bloom. These may be small wonders of the world, but they are no less astounding to me. 

Does that make me an ugly American? I think not. I’m completely respectful of the people, laws, and language of other countries when I do travel. But I don’t enjoy struggling over menus, or maps, or bus routes, or how to say “Good Morning” to my waiter

Instead, I like to stick closer to home and do physically challenging things, like biking the rolling hills in my beautiful valley. Or along the coast of North Carolina. Or hike or kayak or walk almost anywhere beautiful in the United States. Somehow, these are adventures enough for me. 

My family knows how I feel, and while they are supportive, they don’t always agree. So that means there are times when they GO, and I stay behind with my pups and my garden and my small pleasures. And that’s okay with me. Because there’s nothing worse than feigning interest or excitement on vacation.

So go ahead and tell me about your travels. I mean it when I say I’m happy for you! But I can’t wait to share my stories of my vacation to nowhere!

Teri                 

213 Awesome Photo Archives

Awesome Photo Archives

I have been working for the past few weeks on a presentation that fellow Savvy Broad, Frances Lowe, roped me into. 

The Godfrey Miller Home has been hosting a series of lectures about the 275 years of Winchester history. On Tuesday, July 23 at 7 p.m., with Judy Humbert who is speaking about integration in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be speaking about Winchester benefactors in the early 1900s.

Frances assigned me to speak about John Kerr, Charlie Rouss, and Judge Handley. Much of the information I have to impart is not original research but is rather a recounting of their numerous gifts that resulted in many projects and buildings around Winchester. The real star of the presentation, I think, is the wonderful images from the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives at Handley Library.

Since I have permission from Archives to reproduce the images for my presentation, but not in this blog, you will have to come to the Miller Home see the great photographs or wait until the whole series of lectures is reproduced in Winchester-Frederick-County Historical Society Journal. 

But I do encourage you to visit the library's webpage to view the photographs through software called PastPerfect:
https://www.handleyregional.org/services/departments/archives/photographs

On this page, click on Past Perfect Online Page to get to where you can search for pictures. Actually, your best bet to get started is to go to Archives and have a friendly staff member help you get the hang of it. If you want to download any photos to a memory stick, they will help you do that as well. There is usually a charge to download or to order copies. Why, you wonder, can't I simply copy it online? You can but there is a very big watermark in the middle of the image.

But you can simply enter a keyword and be amazed by the number of photos, with watermarks, that turn up.

I hope to see you on Tuesday!

By the way, on Thursday, July 25, 7 p.m., the final presentations in the lecture series will concentrate on the present state and future goals of our community, and they feature Eden Freeman, City Manager, and Kris Tierney, County Administrator.

The presentations on the 1700s and 1800s were excellent, and if you missed them, look for them in a future Winchester-Frederick-County Historical Society Journal. 

Trish Ridgeway       

212 Hot & Grumply

HOT and GRUMPY

I woke up feeling hot and grumpy.

Oh, I wish I could write like Dr. Seuss. It might go something like this:

Hate is a word you should not say 

But I will say it anyway 

I hate summer

I hate heat

I hate sandy, dirty feet

I hate the pool

I hate the beach 

I hate bugs

I hate hugs

It’s too hot

To even speak



I do not want to be so mean

But I hate everything growing green

I do not want to pull a weed

Let it all just go to seed

I hate to have to mow the grass

It is all a pain – I speak with sass

Go away and let me be

I do not even want to chat

I hate to feel so fat

It’s the humidity - the nasty rat

I hate to eat outside

I hate that salad - looks like it died

I hate to grill

I have had my fill!



It’s my plight

It’s my fight

I hate July

I hate August

Leave me alone

We’ll talk in autumn

When the weather is as it ought’m!



With much love and sincere apologies to dearly beloved Dr. Seuss.

And, of course, a “shout out” to my beloved Google! 

Stay COOL, Glenne

211 Literary journal

Literary journey 

When we decided to head to the mountains for our anniversary this year, we really weren’t sure where our travels would take us.

I started researching the area around Asheville, N.C. and found a few stops we would have to make.

The first was the home of Thomas Wolfe, author of “Look Homeward Angel.” 

 The American writer grew up in Asheville where his mother’s boarding house, the Old Kentucky Home, is situated in the downtown area of the hustling, bustling city. It is captured in time with the furnishings intact from when his family resided at the stately residence.

Stepping back many decades, the tour guide presented a well-documented account of Wolfe’s life as well as his family’s. The state of North Carolina owns the property, The Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site, which the family donated, and keeps it preserved in the manner it deserves. High-rise buildings surround it but that doesn’t take away from the feeling visitors get as they follow his life events.

The visitor center which was built in the back yard of his family residence houses an exhibit with his belongings that are not part of the time he lived in the house. Items from his other dwellings are showcased in the exhibit--clothing, books, etc.

One fact that stood out to me was he never learned to type. He wrote out his masterpieces long hand and someone else would type them. This would have been a considerable number of pages to type since most of his books were more than 500. His first novel was about his life in Asheville but he changed the names although many people recognized themselves and were not happy. But Wolfe did come home again even though his novel title was You Can’t Go Home Again as he is buried in Asheville. 

I reluctantly left after soaking up all I could about this famous author. To walk in the rooms he did was beyond belief. 

So moving on to another American author--Carl Sandburg, we stopped at his home in Flat Rock, N.C. which was not far from Asheville. The family purchased this home as a retreat later in life and lived there until he died in 1967. His widow sold the house to the National Park Service including all furnishings. It is part of the National Park Service and is a National Historic Site. 

Items in the house are placed exactly as the family left them including personal items, clothes, dishes, etc. The number of books is overwhelming. Now there are about 12,000 in the house but when the family lived there the number was tens of thousands more.

The tour guide reported that the house had undergone a major renovation several years ago, but all items had been placed back in the house exactly as the family had left them. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet also wrote a six-volume biography of President Abraham Lincoln.

The park is located on 264 acres and offers hikes, farm visits including goats (some descendants of the Sandburg goats), and productions by local artists. Sandburg is not buried in the area but returned to his midwestern roots for his final resting place.

One can’t help but think of his poem “Fog” which starts with

      The fog comes 

      on little cat feet. 

      It sits looking

      over city and harbor

      on silent haunches

      and then moves on. 

Again, it is overwhelming to view and be present in the actual home of an amazing writer.

If that wasn’t enough of a literary thrill, we continued to the Grove Park Inn in Asheville where many famous people stayed, including F. Scott Fitzgerald. A display case explains his tenure at the magnificent stone structure. His wife Zelda had actually stayed at Wolfe’s boarding house before she took up residence in a nearby medical facility. 

He preferred the inn which he frequented on many occasions.

Of course, I purchased books by each author at each site and purchased some online. This became an automatic list for my summer reading and will probably take me into fall. 

If you are ever in the Asheville neighborhood, I highly recommend putting these literary stops on the list.

Frances