NELSON'S NOTES #47, Saugerties, New York, June 25, 2005

DAZZLING ANIMAL ART

A grizzly comes to life

Father and son beagles beg to be loved

A bison trio is silhouetted against a fiery sunset

For the last 20 years, artist Mary Ellen Connelly has been developing and perfecting her oil painting techniques of animals.

My cousin, Mary Ellen Connelly

Now, you as an art viewer and animal lover can see the beauty she's created in the 30 animal portraits exhibited on her online gallery. Mary Ellen's paintings show her love of the many faces of nature and evoke feelings of power, love and tenderness. Be sure to put this Web address in your list of Favorites; you will want to visit it again and again. Click here

SPEAK UP FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING

On June 9, a House subcommittee voted to cut 100 million dollars from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Fortunately, on June 23 the full house voted to restore the appropriation. Had these cuts passed, they would have represented the most drastic cutback of public broadcasting since Congress created the nonprofit CPB in 1967. The CPB passes federal funds to public broadcasters. These funds are particularly important for small TV and radio stations and account for about 15 percent of the public broadcasting industry's total revenue.

Many people don't realize that local PBS stations have to pay for the programs they run--they are not free. To continue educational, informative and cultural programming that commercial stations can't match and to keep public broadcasting strong so it can withstand possible government cuts in the future, there are things you can do. People who listen and watch their local public TV and radio stations--but who are not members--need to pledge their financial support and volunteer their time now. People who are members need to continue their pledges of support and promote their love of public broadcasting to others. Greater community involvement is vital to the existence of public stations. After all, the community is the public.

THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK

Our country's most visited national park

On June 20, we drove on the park's 11-mile Cades Cove loop and stopped at restored houses, churches and a mill area built in the 1800s. First inhabited by the Cherokees, Cades Cove was later settled by white people from neighboring states, mostly of Scotch-Irish background. Cades Cove was a progressive community that by 1850 had grown to 685 people.

A bear cub, oblivious to a group of visitors, forages near the trail to the Elijah Oliver house in Cades Cove

Interesting facts about life at Cades Cove:

1-Instead of cutting trees to clear land, farmers deadened them by girdling them with an axe. This made the trees lose their leaves and let in more sun to grow corn. Later the dead trees were cut down and burned to add fertility to the soil.

2-European style cantilevered barns were constructed with an overhang to protect livestock during the winter and with a center aisle wide enough to drive in a wagon to unload and load grain.

3-When a person died, the church bell rang and then paused a minute before ringing slowly, one ring for each year of the dead person's life.

4-The first telephone came to Cades Cove in 1901.

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Gravestone at the Methodist cemetery in Cades Cove

Even though Cades Cove was a progressive community, it was still pretty much a frontier. Other gravestones like this one indicate that infant deaths were common and life was hard.

We saw this look-alike of our car three times during our Cades Cove tour, but we never saw the newly-weds. I wonder what the question mark on the side window means?

I think Kentucky's license plate is the prettiest of all .

Photos by Bruce and Marianna Nelson

Text by Marianna Nelson

Check out our home page, On The Road With The Nelsons

Marianna

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