Saturday in Calvert

Main Street

Calvert, Texas

photo by Cecelia

Be sure to watch "Texas Country Reporter" on tv this weekend. I watched at 6:30 this morning on KCEN out of Temple, Texas.

You will get to see artist Virginia Vaughan do some plein aire painting, winding up her "Last Year on the Farm" series. If you like farming, the country, or have some roots on a farm, yourself, or if you just enjoy watching artists work, you are going to love this part of the program! I was so excited to see it, and am looking forward to seeing it again when I am more awake! I think it comes on at 5:30 in the afternoon on a different station, here. And will also be on tomorrow, but I haven't found the times or station, yet.

Virginia's "Last Year on the Farm" paintings have become a book, and the exhibition of the entire collection is being shown around the country. From Nebraska, it will be shown in Rockport, Texas next. She tried to do a painting a day, to document the last year on her family's farm. Austin was encroaching and the land will be developed, eventually.

I have a link to her blog and website in my sidebar under Artists and Authors. It was nice to put a voice and a face to the e-mails and things I have been reading.

Virginia is also a teacher, and conducts workshops around the country. She is quite inspirational.

Speaking of workshops, Myrna Wacknov is giving one in the area of DFW/Arlington. I'm not familiar with the place that she will be. She is also a very creative lady and I'm sure that her workshops are really something. Nancy Standlee has more about it on her blog today. She will be one of the participants. Myrna does some amazing work, and so does Nancy.

The photo above is of downtown Calvert last Saturday. This is from the spot beside the Masonic Lodge where my sister and I sat. We were trying to get out of the wind. Despite the sun, a fresh cold front kept things pretty breezy and cool all day. She did some plein aire painting of a street scene in oil, while I took some photos and did some sketches.

We were in town for the annual spring pilgrimage and homes tour. We thought that would be a good time to do some art work outside, in our old hometown.

I think that I did as much visiting as I did drawing! But it was nice to talk to new business owners and see the restoration work that is taking place on many of the old buildings.

I had trouble posting, every time I had time to work on my blog, so more pictures will follow, now that this seems to be working again.

The next events seem to be the Texas Scottish Festival in Arlington, the 19th World Wide Sketch Crawl, and the Texas Reds Festival in Bryan, all in June.

Congratulations to the bride and groom, president George W. and Laura Bush's daughter and her new husband. From Temple tv last night, it looked like they got a big fireworks show from Mother Nature last night. Lots of lightning, hail, rain, possible tornado hooks on radar, just in time for the pre wedding festivities. Temple tv preempted their programs to show live camera shots and radar as the storm passed over Gatesville and headed toward the ranch at Crawford, most of the evening.

When the new bride reaches my age, she is probably going to wish that she had had a White House wedding. I guess she has had so much privilege in her life, though, that things that most people think of as special, don't even impress her.

Oh well. When I first got married, I wanted a Beatnik wedding, with bongo drums and a slinky black wedding dress. That would have been different, fun, and something to shock the more conservative people in town. I didn't get it, of course. Now I think I should have opted for a normal church wedding. Instead, we had it in my great-aunt's home, which was nice. But I was so embarrassed and shy through the whole thing. Knowing what I know now, I should have just called it all off before it ever got serious!

From the pictures I've seen of that ranch, I'm pretty sure that is the area where I went to Camp Fire Girls Camp when I was a little girl. I remember swimming in that river and the waterfall. And it was near Crawford. I think it might have been Camp Tonkawa. Camp Val Verde came later, in a different location. That might have been closer to McGregor.