New events planned for Greening Up the Mountains

By Lisa Majors-Duff

As usual, Sylva's spring festival will kick off with the Catch the Spirit of Appalachia Parade of Many Colors at 10 a.m., with a new theme for this year of "The Many Colors of Music." Among those scheduled to perform during the parade are the Scottish Pipes and Drums and the Smoky Mountain High Jazz Band.

WLOS-TV weatherman and on-air personality Bob Caldwell will serve as the parade grand marshal, said CSA co-founder and parade organizer Doreyl Ammons Cain. Other parade highlights will include bicyclists in both the Ice Cream Community Bike Ride and a penny farthing bicyclist, both sponsored by Motion Makers of Sylva. A penny farthing is an old-fashioned, large-wheeled bicycle popular during the Victorian era.

Also new this year and in recognition of the county's sesquicentennial, members of Nobel Green have announced the donation of a tree to Jackson County Manager Jay Denton during the festival's opening ceremony at about 10:30 a.m.

Noble Green's mission is to help reduce some of the negative effects in the ecosystem caused by the lumber industry, said its founder, Netherlands-native Stan Veraart. Noble Green is based on a simple concept, he said.

"We can't live without nature," said the Western Carolina University student working on his master's degree in project management.

Noble Green is approaching this goal by asking area book stores to propose to their customers that each time they buy a book, they donate 25 cents to replant a tree. City Lights in Sylva was the first to join the effort.

Though the county's sesquicentennial tree will be ceremonially handed over the Denton April 28, Noble Green members will actually plant their first tree this Saturday, April 7, in the Ritz parking lot on Main Street at 1 p.m. to take advantage of the spring planting weather, Veraart said.

Also new this year will be a Clean Air Rally sponsored by the Canary Coalition on the Main Stage at 1 p.m. The objective of the event, according to Director Avram Friedman, is to raise awareness on the clean air issue and to encourage public participation in the campaign for clean air. In addition to an address by Friedman, the rally will feature winners of the Clean Air Poetry Contest reading their submissions.

Ducks on the Tuck, a fund-raiser organized by Jackson County New Century Scholars, will hit the chilly waters of the Tuckaseigee River at approximately 11 a.m. and travel downstream toward the finish line at Western Builders, where a number of lucky - and fast - ducks complete the course ahead of the rest and earn their owners one of more than 30 prizes that have been donated by businesses from the area and beyond.

Available prizes will include passes to Western Carolina University football games; tickets to Atlanta Braves games; a set of automobile tires; free meals at a variety of area restaurants; NASCAR jackets; as well as a number of rafting, golfing and fishing packages. Winners will be announced at 3 p.m. on the Main Stage.

Each duck costs $5. If you would like to adopt one, visit any public elementary or high school in Jackson County. All money raised will benefit the Jackson County New Century Scholars, a program that guarantees a college education to deserving public school students who fulfill program requirements. For more information about the Duck Race or the New Century Scholars program, call Patti Wilson at 293-5667 or DiAnne Crisp at 586-5387.

Drama will also play a part in this year's festival, as three performances are scheduled around the event. Starting Thursday, April 19, and running until the day after the festival, Kudzu Players will present "Greater Tuna" featuring Howard Allman and Tom Dewees in the old Jackson County Courthouse. "Greater Tuna" is the hilarious comedy about Texas' third smallest town, where the Lion's Club is too liberal and Patsy Cline never dies. The eclectic band of citizens that make up this town are portrayed by only two performers, making this satire on life in rural America even more delightful as they depict all of the inhabitants of Tuna - men, women, children and animals. Show times are 7:30 p.m. April 19, 20, 21, 25, 26 and 27; and 3 p.m. April 22 and 29. Tickets are $7 for adults and $5 for seniors and students.

Drama seekers will have a choice of performances the night before the festival, as City Lights will host "Nance Dude," a play by Sylva-native Gary Carden at 7 p.m. The work is based on the life of a Haywood County woman who was convicted of murdering her 2-year-old granddaughter after leaving the child in a cave and covering the entrance with rocks. At age 65 she was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. She died at age 104 after living in Jackson County's Conley Creek community as a social outcast.

Then on the day of the festival, those who missed CSA's "Samantha Bumgarner and the History of Mountain String Music" will have another opportunity, as Cullowhee Valley fourth-graders bring a few of the song and dance scene's to the event's Second Stage area.

As in the past, the fourth annual Greening Up the Mountains festival will include entertainment, craft and food vendors, Carolina Mountain Naturalist Carlton Burke and winners of The Sylva Herald's Appalachian Spring photo contest.

For more information about this year's festival, call SPIR Director Richard McHargue at 586-2611.

Back to Archive: 04/05/01.