Good Press

In our school distr ict in West Virginia, public school students have no classes the en tire week of Thanksgiving. This is because the first day of rifle deer hu nting season is Monday of that week . This is a rural area. When I was child, we got Monday off, were supposed to go to school Tuesday and Wednesday, and got Th anksgiving Day and Black Frid ay off. Well, hu nters gonna hunt. So the distr ict allowed hunting students to take "education al leave", guarantee ing th em ex cused ab se nces for Tuesday and Wednesday. I don't know why or when the county s tarted giving students the whole week off. If you're looking for something your children can do while they're off from school before Thanksgiving, have them make place cards for the dinner table. I found this idea on line a few years ago -- probably from Family F un ma gazine. All you need is some white cardstock (colored would wo rk too), tempera or other washable p aint in a variety of colors and their ...

Lest you think I ignored or neglected a big part of my heritage, here is my post about the 67th Annual Preston County Buckwheat Festival wrapping up in Kingwood. We almost didn't go this year -- things have been kind of up in the air since my mom's surgery. So we didn't enter any food or arts and crafts exhibits. We didn't see a parade. We didn't walk through the livestock exhibits. We didn't have family and friends over for our traditional buckwheat-cakes-and-sausage feed on the Sunday before the festival. My husband said he felt like it was too early this year but it always starts the last Thursday in September. Here, in photos, are the highlights of our festival traditions and some of the new things we did this year. May we be better prepared for next year's festival. We watched a lumberjack contest ... ... let Bella ride the carousel (for which we paid $3 -- yow) ... ... bought a chance on a handmade muzzleloader from a craftsman I wrote about, got some ...