Yesterday I was the guest speaker at a luncheon in Wayneville. This yearly fundraising event put on by the women of Grace Episcopal Church is called "Tablescapes" and it featured some of the best-dressed tables you'll ever see. The one in the picture above was on the theme of my first book Signs in the Blood and it included a blood-red centerpiece, tiny plastic snakes (a nod to the snake-handlers,) earth-colored excelsior as a stand-in for the soil of Full Circle Farm, and a New-Age-ish mobile over the table to evoke the Star Children's cult. And there were packets of herb seeds at each place.
The luncheon was well attended -- almost a hundred women. And among them was one long-lost friend from my high school days in Tampa -- there she is on the right below -- Elizabeth Neely. It's been almost fifty years but I recognized her at once. There were a number of other Florida and Tampa folks there and at times it was like old home week. Waynesville has always been popular with a lot of Tampans.
It's fun talking to a group of women like this -- they were a mixture of native North Carolinians, folks like myself from away who'd been there a long time, and newer residents who "got here as soon as they could," as the saying goes. I love it when I talk about my experiences getting to know my local neighbors and I love it when I look out at the audience and see heads nodding -- because they've had similar experiences.
Afterward, when I was signing books, one lady came up, thanked me for my talk, and said,"I really enjoyed listening to you. I feel like I could ask you over for coffee."
And I love that too.
(Click here for a web album with pictures of more gorgeous tables with their amazing decorations. The quality of my photos is pretty mediocre -- I was zipping around and snapping pictures and talking to people and though I tried to get all the tables, one or two came out way too blurry to keep. But they were all beautiful.)
