Missionary Musician

I recently finished reading an autobiography by Dr. Kenneth M. Scott, M.D. Around the World in Eighty Years tells the story of this amazing doctor/musician. Dr. Scott is affiliated with the Black Mountain Presbyterian Church, where his son, Ken Jr. sings in the choir and daughter Betsy (with her family) attends. Dr. Scott Sr. is an organist in addition to being an MD. He played organ to help pay his way through school, en route to being a medical missionary in Korea and India, before settling in Swannanoa, NC. Dr. Scott gave Libby and me this book as a welcoming gift. What a delight it is. It is in the missionary genre, telling stories of work in the mission field as an encouragement to other missionaries and all Christians. Being a travel buff as I am I was enchanted with the stories of people and places around the world. The added connection with Dr. Scott being an organist was a happy bonus; there are couple of tales that are universally familiar to organists and pianists on the run! Dr. Scott worked during the incredibly exciting era of Christian expansion in the early to mid 20th century. Call it Christian imperialism if you must, but Dr. Scott reveals a mindset that is humble, devoutly earnest and brave. Published by Providence House (ISBN 157736077X) the book will be hard to find on the shelf at your usual bookstore. Best to order through a Christian bookseller. Dr. Scott recently wrote a new tune for the text "Take my life and let is be" by Frances Havergal. The choir at church was pleased to sing the first stanza recently at worship; we hope to teach the tune to the congregation in the coming weeks.

New Music

I do a bit of composing on the side. Nothing comes easy, and it's a long time between projects. But every now and then the effort pays off. I am having a set of Christmas carol arrangements for flute and organ published by MorningStar Music. I had the proofs in January, and just got my complimentary copies last week. The book is available now, and will be promoted heavily late this summer for the 2007 Advent-Christmas season. I wrote these three pieces to be part of a concert at Crestwood Church a few years ago. After the season, I did some serious editing and sent them off. I didn't hear anything for a long time. Then I had a letter last fall asking if they were still available, i.e. not yet published by another firm. I hope there are plenty of church musicians who will find these useful. I had fun writing them, and our performance (Libby did the flute for the premier) was well received. Visiting the link you can see images of several pages from the score, and hear clips from two of the three arrangements. Tell your friends!

State Road 10

Leave it to Libby to actually dig up some information about NC Highway 10. And you might know, there are geeks out there interested in the history of roads and highways! (That's one (organ) geek, talking about others, so it's okay.) We found some sites that talk about the history of NC Highway 10. There's this one, and here, and this one. And if that's not enough, there's always Wikipedia. Pretty interesting stuff, if you're into that sort of thing. I went to the funeral of a friend's dad in February over in Catawba, NC. On the way in I had noticed some signs for NC 10. On the way home I decided to follow route 10 part of the way just to say I did. So I was actually on route 10 between Catawba and Newton, NC. Our little bit of NC 10 is only two blocks long. It starts at Padgettown Road, intersects Kerlee Heights Road, and then dead ends just a bit short of McCoy Cove Road, all in the east end of Black Mountain. On the back side of our house is Highway 70, which is also known as State Street. It's the main drag in Black Mountain, and runs over to Ridgecrest.

Where we were

When we moved to Black Mountain, we didn't go directly into our home at State Road. We rented a home in Christmount for six weeks or so, while Kent did the renovation work. I realized we had never really talked about that, let alone shown any pictures. Here is the place and a link to more photos. We remember fondly John Lamotte bringing by brownies before we even had the truck unloaded, and Mary Alice Murphy offering a hand truck to help with moving our clothes into the rental. Dot Borden and her family own the home. We've never met them, only spoken by phone. Charlotte Sprawls was instrumental in getting us hooked up. It was very nice to have a nice, tidy place to roost while State Road underwent the renovation work.

Wierd Weather

Libby insists that I post these things! It was a noteworthy series of weather events, to be sure.

Libby here: Mike finally got up out of the chair and let me get to the computer. He already commented on the snow and cold on Easter weekend, and last weekend brought more of the same. On Sunday, the day started off fairly warm and humid, with temps in the 60s (which we enjoyed in thorough heathen fashion [it was a vacation day from church] by eating breakfast at Denny's and going food shopping). By late afternoon, though, snow started blowing down from the Craggies; here's a shot of clouds of snow wafting across the interstate from Sunset Mountain. By midday Monday, the clouds had cleared out of the valley but were hanging tough on the high peaks. This view is from Old Lakey Gap Road looking north toward the Parkway and Mt. Mitchell. Oh, and we had 2 days of 60 mph winds to boot. Toward the end of the week, matters had moderated. Thunderstorms were forcast for Thursday evening, but nothing too extreme. Ha! We got nearly an inch of pea-sized hail in about 5 minutes, nearly covering up the flip-flops Eli left out on the glider. (Click on the images to see them larger, and really get the details in each.)

Clingman's Dome (at last)

It was a gorgeous day today. The youth handbell ensemble, which normally rehearses on Sunday afternoons rang this morning (wonderfully!), so I gave them the afternoon off. That left us footloose and fancy-free for the afternoon. We decided to try Clingman's Dome again, on the NC-TN border. Here is a panorama video from the lookout tower at the summit. The crowd in the tower just didn't understand the need for silence and respect as I shot the video. The view starts towards the NW, with Mt. Mitchell barely visible at 73 miles distance. The view taking off parallel to the ramp follows the NC-TN border. (Briggs got to see some tennis today!) Here is an excursion below the walk-up ramp to find a hidden surprise amongst the vegetation below. It was 70 degrees in Black Mountain when we left, and a good 15 degrees cooler at 6643' at the summit; still, we didn't expect to find this! The tower doesn't really lean like you see it in the photo! We had a great time!

Soccer-man Briggs

Those of you who know Briggs, know that exactly two things occupy his waking moments: fire trucks (and other emergency equipment) and balls. Any kind of balls. So when we learned that Black Mountain Recreation and Parks offered a soccer program for kids as young as three, it was a no-brainer for us to sign Briggs up. In the end he responded only so-so to the whole thing. If it were just a matter of running around kicking and throwing the ball, that would be fine. But three really is too young to try to do anything more than that. And for the older kids, the program needed them to do more. Briggs spent a lot of time on his own knocking the ball around. We had the last session today. Briggs was excited to get a medal (that flashes no less), but we think he was kind of relieved that the program was done.