Country Music Awards, Nov. 1, 2012 - Nashville, TN

I've been lucky enough to be able to attend some pretty awesome events.

Oftentimes, events are all about the hype, but I'm a sucker for them anyway.  Love 'em!!!

To experience The Indy 500 a couple times is something I'll never forget. 

The Masters in Augusta left me breathless.  One year we attended the Pro-Am played the day before the tournament and that was cool beyond measure - especially when Arnie Palmer drove right up in his little golf car next to me and my friend Becky for a little chat.  Cool?  Cool!

I was sitting in the Atlanta Stadium when Hank Aaron his Number 755.  Very cool!

I've been to Aspen and kicked out of my ski class for not taking it seriously enough (with friend Becky yet again).  Probably for the best - I don't know the first thing about skiing.  Après-ski was really more my style while we were there.

I've attended a lot of concerts and have loved every one of them - The Willie Nelson 4th of July Picnic in Hampton, GA in 1983 was, without a doubt, one of the more memorable  . . . .

I ADORE Willie Nelson, and have seen him a whole lot of times.  Hoping to see him a whole lot more.


Our latest event was attending the CMAs in Nashville and it was divine!  The cherry on top was a tribute to Willie Nelson.  Cool?  oh, yes.

I had never been to Nashville so being invited by my buddy Maryglenn to not only come see Nashville, but come and go to the CMAs left me speechless - and Donald too.  He was every bit as excited about it as I was.  The trip lived up to our expectations and quite possibly even exceeded them.

The day before the awards show, we spent most of the day on Broadway downtown.  Nashville is a wonderful mix of old and new.  We loved it.

We shopped and acted silly - taking pictures, of course, all along the way.

 

 

Okay - time to get ready for the Big Event - Yayayayayayay!



Harley Approves!!! (and me too!)

Still acting silly right into the elevator -

Meeting up with friends - - -

and seeing the show -

 

Brad Paisley

Kelly Clarkson and Vince Gill
 

Blake Shelton

Vince Gill, Blake Shelton, Keith Urban

Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, Eric Church
 

Kenny Chesney




 

Carrie Underwood


 

Faith Hill and Tim McGraw

Kix Brooks

Willie Nelson Tribute

 

Events.  They may be all about the hype - but, oh wow, to experience all the energy surrounding certain events warrants the hype - every single bit of it. 

Here's to Nashville!  We had a great time and we'll be back.

November Photo A Day Challenge - Day 3

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Me  -  Age 20 - 50"

 

 

 

 

November Photo A Day Challenge - Day 2

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Me - Age 5 - 20"

 

November Photo A Day Challenge - Day 1

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Me - Under Age 5"

 

 

 

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 31

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Halloween"

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 30

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Costume"

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 29

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Moon"

Photo by Don Barley

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 28

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Looking Back"

 

A Road Trip for Readers by Neil Plakcy

Neil Plakcy’s golden retriever mysteries were inspired by his own golden, Samwise, who was just as sweet as Rochester, though not quite as smart. And fortunately he didn’t have Rochester’s talent for finding dead bodies. Now that Sam has gone on to his big, comfy bed in heaven, his place by Neil’s side has been taken by Brody, a cream-colored golden puppy with a penchant for mischief.

 

A native of Bucks County, PA, where IN DOG WE TRUST, THE KINGDOM OF DOG and DOG HELPS THOSE are set, Neil is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and Florida International University, where he received his MFA in creative writing. He has written and edited many other books; details can be found at his website, http://www.mahubooks.com.

 

Neil, his partner, and Brody live in South Florida, where Neil is working on a fourth mystery, and Brody is busily chewing something.

 

 

 

 

 

A Road Trip for Readers

by Neil Plakcy

 

 

Let me take you on a little trip, to the river towns of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I grew up in Yardley, right smack dab in the middle of this string of charming towns. I write about a place much like it in my golden retriever mysteries.

Bucks County snuggles against the curves of the Delaware River, forming the boundary between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Within easy commuting distance of New York and Philadelphia, it’s home to a growing and increasingly transient population. As its farmlands gradually give way to suburban developments, some of those old connections are lost. I try to recreate a bit of that lost world in my books—my hero runs into classmates at the local coffee shop, and helps his childhood piano teacher out of a jam.

Writing about Bucks County has reminded me that my high school typing teacher, Mrs. Scammell, still lived at Scammell’s Corner, where generations of her family had farmed. The names of my classmates’ parents were on everything from garbage trucks to antique stores. Today, they have been replaced by chain stores and restaurants, but these the towns along the Delaware’s banks still retain their charm.

Yardley is a small town of Victorian gingerbread and native brown stone. There is only one traffic light in town, at the corner of Main and Afton. To the east is the Delaware River, and the ruins of the bridge to New Jersey that was destroyed in 1960 by Hurricane Donna. To the west is the old mill pond, now Lake Afton, where swans paddle beside the Victorian library, built by local residents in 1878. The mystery section was located beside one of those high, gothic-arched windows, and I used to look out at the water between browsing for the classic mystery authors  who cultivated my taste for crime fiction-- Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie.

Today the library has moved to a modern facility in the country, but children and adults still use its steps to change into their skates for a quick turn on the ice in the winter, creating a tableau straight out of Norman Rockwell.

 Though the Hyatt Pharmacy at the corner is now a Starbucks, Yardley retains a small-town charm. I’ve even converted the Continental Tavern, which has been serving thirsty travelers at this intersection since 1863, into my own bar, called the Drunken Hessian. This is, after all, the stretch of river where Washington crossed the Delaware en route to his attack on the Hessian outpost at Trenton.

My fictional Stewart’s Crossing is just north of Yardley, on a stretch of beautiful riverfront that in real life contains only farmland. River Road, which my hero, paroled computer hacker Steve Levitan, travels a lot, is overhung with oaks, maples and elms and is lined with purple and white phlox on long stems and the tiny pansies called Johnny jump-ups.

As the rest of the river towns do, Stewart’s Crossing straddles the Delaware Canal, and I’ve used the canal and its towpath in my books, starting with In Dog We Trust. Steve walks his inherited golden retriever, Rochester, there. Despite the town nearby, the towpath is wild and quiet, lined with wild apple blossoms in the spring, climbing vines and yellow daisies and buttercups. Rochester loves to chase the mallards, Canada geese, other small birds, and maybe a rabbit or two.

Before railroads, canals played an important role in American commerce and transportation. They carried anthracite coal from the mines of Lehigh County to New York City and Philadelphia. Two hundred years later, the only traffic on the Delaware Canal comes from mule-drawn sightseeing barges run from New Hope, where an artists’ colony grew in the early twentieth century. When I was a teenager in the 1970s, New Hope was filled with hippies, head shops and antique stores, and it still retains a unique character today.

The land is low along the river and the verge is very narrow in many places from Yardley north to New Hope. I placed a car accident there in In Dog We Trust, though I’d probably never walk my own dog there, as the river is so close you can almost reach out and touch it.

In The Kingdom of Dog, Steve takes Rochester up to Bowman's Hill Tower, just inland from the river. It was built of local stone in 1930 and now stands over a nice park with barbecues and picnic pavilions named for Revolutionary War heroes. The picnic grounds are green and rolling, and the slope is just right for little kids to roll down. We often went there for school picnics in the spring. The tower is open from April to November, and is the centerpiece of a 100-acre wildflower preserve.

I’ve driven up the curving road many times, as well as hiking the trail up to the tower through woods that seem untouched since Washington's day. Once you've reached the summit, take the elevator up inside the tower and climb the last 21 steps, through a narrow, curving passageway more reminiscent of medieval Europe than depression-era Pennsylvania, to the observation platform, 110 feet up.

On a clear day, you can see 60 miles in any direction, and you'll understand why Washington sent his scouts to the top of this hill to watch for redcoats. The vista is of farms and fields, but increasingly you'll see renovated half-million-dollar farmhouses and fake-colonial suburbs. Look closely and you’ll see the area where I placed Steve’s alma mater, Eastern College.

I created the small college town of Leighville somewhere outside Upper Black Eddy, just a bit farther up the river from New Hope. Eastern dominates the hill overlooking the river, and provides another environment where Steve and Rochester can sniff out criminal intent. The third book in the series, Dog Helps Those, combines a college mystery with a murder in the world of dog agility training, and gave me a chance to return to the farmlands outside town where my parents used to take me to pick apples and strawberries, and to choose our Halloween pumpkins.

I try to incorporate the landscape of this area where I grew up, as well as years of loving dogs, in creating the world where my characters live. I may not live in Pennsylvania any more, but I love revisiting these river towns in my imagination, even though dastardly deeds occur there!

More information on my golden retriever mysteries, as well as my other mystery and romance novels and stories, can be found at my website, http://www.mahubooks.com.

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 27

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Vehicular"

I've always been a "vehicular" kinda gal.

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 26

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Stone"

Photo by Don Barley

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 25

Topic of the Day

 

is

"People"

My high school class has a reunion every five years (and sometimes in between).  We always get together at Dan and Ginger's and so far, apparently, have not worn out our welcome yet. 

 

Lordy, but I do love these people.

More here - http://www.meanderingsandmuses.com/2011/06/cambridge-high-school-class-of-66-45th.html

 



Are You a Closet Southern Belle? by Duffy Brown

Duffy Brown loves anything with a mystery. While others girls dreamed of dating Brad Pitt, Duffy longed to take Sherlock Holmes to the prom. She has two cats, Spooky and Dr. Watson, and conjures up who-done-it stories of her very own for Berkley Prime Crime. Iced Chiffon, out October, 2012, is the first in the Consignment Shop Mystery series. Duffy writes romance as Dianne Castell and is a USA Today bestselling author.

 

 

 

 

 

Why, hi there!

 

One of the reasons I wrote Iced Chiffon was that I wanted to set a book in the South, the real South as it really is. It has a flavor all its own from the way folks talk...How’s your mamma and daddy?...to the food, anything that has a stick of butter and cup of cream has got to be delicious...to life moving a bit slower, a smidge more meaningful! 

 

So my question today is... Are you a closet Southern Belle? Now you ask, Okay what the dickens makes a Southern Belle? Well, I just happen to have a little list...

 

* Do you never wear white after Labor Day or before Easter

 

* Do you own a strand of real pearls and wear them with pride

 

* Always drink sweet tea and love it when they have it on the menu

 

* A part of you truly believes in damn Yankees

 

* Civil War? What Civil War? Now that unfortunate Northern Occupation...that you know about

 

* Have Lee as part of your name or your children’s

 

* Fav movies are GWTW and Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes, Something to Talk About

 

* Actually read GWTW and reread parts from time to time. Wish you had the name Scarlett

 

* Have a tiara hidden in your panty drawer and know how to twirl a baton

 

* Have an umbrella that looks a bit like a parasol

 

* Make sure your children know manners and use them

 

* Love Red-eye gravy, grits, country ham and make your own biscuits

 

* Know that prime real estate is The Mall, The Country Club and The Beauty Salon

 

* Buy more then one can of hair spray at a time

 

* Have actually said Y’all come back, Bless your heart, Drop by when you can, How’s your mamma?

 

* Love white gloves and wear hats

 

* Have a subscription of Southern Living or rippeda recipe from that magazine at the doctor’s office

 

* Have a pineapple decoration somewhere in your House

 

* Think the scent of magnolia is heaven on earth

 

And what about the food? Do you own a Paula Deen Cookbook? Catch her on TV whenever you can? I know how to make cream gravy from scratch and would rather poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick than put cool whip on my pecan pie! Is there anything better than Southern cooking? Well maybe Italian but that’s another blog.

 

So, how do you measure up? Is a part of you a Southern Belle? Do you know someone who is? I really tried to keep these characteristics in mind when writing my Consignment Shop mystery series. A gal in NY City is way different than a gal in Savannah and I sure wanted it to feel that way.

 

I am definitely a closet Southern Belle! I do make fried chicken and bathtub gravy. That’s what my kids call my cream gravy because they could eat a bathtub full of it. I do make my own pies, have white gloves, crab at my kids if they don’t mind their manners, buy extra-hold hair spray, subscribe to Southern Living, have a fancy umbrella that I’ve been known to twirl from time to time and I do know how to twirl a baton for real. I even took lessons and still have the baton!

 

On the Southern Belle scale I’m about a 7. Well, maybe an 8. What about you? What is your Southern Belle Score? Are you a closet Southern Belle like me who sometime feels as if they got born on the wrong side of the Ohio River? Or are you a Yankee through and through and proud of it?

 

I’ll give away three Iced Chiffon totes and a signed copy of Iced Chiffon from the replies.

 

Ya’ll have a good day now, ya’ hear.

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 24

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Weather"

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 23

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Broken"

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 22

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"In Your Town"

 

October Photo A Day Challenge - Day 21

Topic of the Day

 

is

 

"Calm"