a.d. elliott - Take the Back Roads

 Dear Henry, This weekend Fish and I managed to find ourselves in Ferrum, Virginia, and we found one of the funnest little museums. Let me tell you all about it. Ferrum Virginia is a little village of about 2,000 people, about 40 miles twisty mountainous miles south of Roanoke. It was founded in 1889 and was mainly established to support the Norfolk and Western Railroad (although there were a few farms in the area before the railroad came through). The people in the area were primarily coal miners (for the railroad) and lumber. The site also had a thriving moonshining economy, particularly after Prohibition in 1920 (hard alcohol sales remained illegal in Virginia until 1968). Surprisingly, though, Ferrum avoided the educational lag most commonly associated with the hill towns of the Appalachian and Blue Ridge Mountains. In 1914, with the support of the United Methodist Church, the Ferrum Training School was built on an 80-acre portion of George Goode's farm.  The school offere...

  Dear Henry, Book Nine, Sophocles's Antigone, of the Bucket List Book Adventure ( read about that here ), is done! Let me tell you all about it. Sophocles wrote Antigone around 441 BC and performed at the Festival of Dionysus that same year. It is the second oldest (Ajax is the oldest) of Sophocles's surviving plays. It was written 35 years before Oedipus at Colonus, which covers the events immediately preceding the ones in Antigone. The play begins in the women's quarters at the castle at Thebes. Antigone and Ismene could not prevent the civil war, and their brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, are dead. Their uncle, Creon, is now the king of Thebes.  Also in the women's quarters is the nurse and Creon's wife, Eurydice. After sending the nurse out, Antigone and Ismene talk about the deaths of the brothers and how Eteocles was buried in state by their uncle Creon but their other brother Polynices was left unburied for the animals and has issued a death sentence to an...

 Dear Henry, Roanoke, Virginia, has one of the prettiest Roman Catholic churches I've ever seen, and soon, it looks to become a minor basilica and a place of pilgrimage. Let me tell you all about it. The story of St. Andrew's begins before Roanoke City was Roanoke . The original village of Big Lick had only one Catholic. It wasn't until the building of the Shenandoah Railroad's construction in 1881 and the influx of Irish Catholic rail workers that there were enough Catholics for a parish. So, in 1882, Father John W. Lynch was assigned by the Bishop of Richmond, John J Keane, to the parish of St Patrick's in Lexington, Virginia, and the pastoral care of all the Catholics in the counties of Rockbridge, Alleghany, Bath, Botetourt, Craig, and Roanoke. The first mass in Roanoke occurred on November 19, 1882, in the railroad's passenger car number 6. The small parish was able to find better accommodations soon. They met at Rorer Hall on 3rd and Campbell until the loc...

  Dear Henry, Book Eight, Sophocles's Oedipus at Colonus, of the Bucket List Book Adventure ( read about that here ), is done! Let me tell you all about it. The book Oedipus at Colonus was written around 406 BC, shortly before Sophocles's death. But, unfortunately, he never saw it performed. Instead, the play wasn't presented until 401 BC at the Festival of Dionysus and was presented by his grandson, who was also named Sophocles.   The play starts many years after Oedipus the King , and Oedipus is old, blind, and in exile from Thebes and being cared for by his daughter Antigone. The scene opens with the pair in a grove outside of Athens. Oedipus and Antigone are resting at the grove when a stranger approaches and berates them for being there because the grove is sacred and dedicated to the Eumenides, or Furies ( read about them in Aeschylus's play "The Eumenides ) When Oedipus hears where he is, he is excited and tells the stranger he is destined to be here. Then O...