Photos of the Week

Lantern Tour On Stage

Saturday’s performance at Rugby's theatre was excellent and very well-attended.  Unfortunately, it is very hard to take photos in the Rebecca Johnson Theatre when the lights are low and camera flashes are not allowed. But here is one of some of the local presenters assembled on stage at the end of the performance. All of the cast and singers were great. And the historic photos display was remarkable.

 Thanks to everyone for all of your hard work.

Road Trash Pickup

Last Tuesday was a pretty day for our litter pickup along lower Horseshoe Bend Road. Here are Benita Howell and George Zepp with a small bit of their collected trash. The four participants filled a small truck bed!

Historic Rugby Board Nominations

The 2012 nomination process for recruiting new board members for the Historic Rugby board has begun. This year three positions need to be filled. Historic Rugby members may submit suggestions for people to fill these positions any time before March 30, 2012. 

Suggestions should be addressed to Historic Rugby Nominating Committee c/o Historic Rugby, 5517 Rugby Hwy., PO Box 8, Rugby, TN., 37733. E-mails should be sent to Rick Murphy at rickmurphy1@aol.com.

New board members begin their first term after the annual membership meeting on June 24, 2012. The first term lasts three years. Board members can serve another three-year term before they must go off the board for at least one year.

Board members must be Historic Rugby members and they are expected to attend a minimum of four Board of Directors' meetings each year.Their duties also include being active on one or more of the standing committees.

This year the Nominating Committee has identified several experience areas of particular need, including marketing/public relations, development/fundraising, and volunteer training and coordination. But more than anything Historic Rugby needs board members who share a love for Rugby and an unwavering determination to shepherd it forward.

Please determine that the person you are suggesting has the desire and time to serve.  Include a brief biographical description and qualifications. The Committee will select the final slate of nominees. This slate, with brief descriptions, will be sent to the HRI membership by May 24 and voted on at the annual membership meeting in June.

BIRTHDAYS

Jan. 31 - Mary Ann Lovett and Jessie Gully

Choir from "Lantern Tour On Stage"

CALENDAR

Rugby is in the Eastern time zone, just barely.
 
Friday, Feb. 3 - Music at the  Harrow Road Café - Butch and Doug. 6:30 - 8:30 Eastern

Saturday, Feb. 4 - Community Potluck at the Friendly House - 7 p.m.

Tuesday, Feb. 7 – Afternoon Tea at Grey Gables - 1 p.m. Eastern, $10 per person, plus tax and gratuity. For Reservations: 423-628-5252

Friday, Feb. 10 - Music at the Café - Dusty Basye playing the Oldies

Saturday, Feb. 11 – Soup Hike – A beautiful hike of about two miles, rated "moderate" with one climb through the woods. Meet at the Harrow Road Café at 10 a.m. Eastern. Soup afterward at the Café. The trail to be hiked begins at the Beacon Hill home of Tom and Benita Howell, leads downhill to White Oak Creek, then over a rise to rejoin the White Oak, past the former "Letner property" (Riverside) and arriving at Rita Myers's gate. From there we follow the White Oak upstream to the Hwy. 52 bridge where cars will be available to shuttle us back to Rugby.

Saturday, Feb.11 – Valentine Dinner at the Harrow Road Café. – Four-course dinner and special gift. Lodging packages available for Historic Newbury House B-and-B and Cottages. Call 888-214-3400 for reservations.

Saturday Feb. 11 – Valentine Dinner at Grey Gables with entertainment. $18.50 per person, plus tax and gratuity. Reservations Required: 423-628-5252

Friday, Feb. 17 - Music at the Harrow Road Café – Our very own Donna Heffner on keyboard playing the oldies

Friday, Feb. 24 - Music at the Harrow Road Café - Victory Bluegrass with Wayne Rogers and Friends

Saturday, Feb. 25 – Book Club at 7 p.m. Eastern/6 Central at the home of Kit and Candy Howes. The book the group will be reading is The Tiger, a true story of vengeance and survival, by John Vaillant
.
Quilters’ Group - Wednesdays and Saturdays, 2–4 p.m. Eastern, at the Friendly House behind Christ Church

Rugby Yoga – Wednesdays, 8:30 a.m. Eastern, at the Friendly House.

Christ Church Episcopal -- Sunday morning services, 11 a.m. Eastern year round; all are welcomed.

Historic Rugby Winter Hours

Harrow Road Café open every day except Wednesdays. Sundays through Thursdays - 8:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. EST. Friday and Saturday hours, including dinner seatings, 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. EST (7:30 to 7:30 Central).

Visitor Centre and Commissary General Store - Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Closed Mondays through Thursdays. Weekday and weekend group tours can be arranged with advance reservation. Post Office in the Commissary is closed until March

Lodging Facilities are available year-round.


NATURE NOTES

A Long Winter's Nap

By Linda Konig

As I intimated in last week's Nature Notes, it's interesting in winter to look beneath the surface, so to speak, to see what's hiding underground or in some other sheltered place, away from the winter's storms. Many of Mother Nature's children are sleeping, perhaps dreaming of spring days to come. One of the more common insects that do this in our area is the Goldenrod Gall Fly (Eurosta solidaginis). Go out to any field that has plenty of dry dead goldenrod stalks, and you'll see that, far from being totally uninteresting, some of the stalks have large marble-sized round swellings  Inside many of these swellings, called ball or apple galls, you will find a Goldenrod Gall Fly larva sleeping through the winter. A judicious cutting into one of these galls will reveal a white larva or, a little later in the season, a pupa. By this late in the winter, however, the gall walls are rock-hard.

Many times, though, there will already be a hole in the gall made by either a Downy Woodpecker or a Carolina Chickadee, and the gall will be empty. Goldenrod Gall Fly larvae are just loaded with calories and one of these birds' favorite winter food items. The Downy Woodpeckers usually attack the gall fly larvae in late October as soon as the larvae have finished making their future spring exit tunnels. The larvae leave just the outside layer of stalk cells at the exit hole. That way the hole is visually hidden from the outside world, but also easy to exit as adults when spring comes.  How do the Downy Woodpeckers know where the hole is?  Good question. Perhaps they can hear them chewing away inside the galls before larvae's frozen sleep sets in? These Woodpeckers make a very neat round hole that is larger than the tiny precise Gall Fly hole. Woodpecker holes are much neater than the Chickadee holes which are larger and hacked open in a messy fashion. 

There are also two other kinds of insects that inhabit goldenrod stems causing different-shaped galls. The Goldenrod Gall Midge creates the bunch (sometimes called flower) galls. These galls are actually very pretty in an arrangement if you separate them from the stems with goldenrod flowers on them and use both in the bouquet. They look like some kind of hybridized green zinnia or mum mixed in with the yellow goldenrods. The Goldenrod Gall Moth creates an elliptical gall. I haven't seen many of the elliptical ones, but we have plenty of the ball galls and bunch galls.  By the way, the presence of any or all of these galls doesn't seem to be a bit harmful to the goldenrods. They go right on their merry way making flowers and spreading cheer along the roadsides. It's fun on a warm fall or winter day to look for these different galls. I usually find some in the grown-up field at the southern edge of the Brewstertown Church of God property if it hasn't been mowed. For glorious photos of these differing galls and flowers, as well as more information, you might check www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek051001.html . The Hilton Pond website is one of my all-time favorites, always well-written and entertaining.

Lantern Tour soldier Steve Logan heads home

This Week’s Editors: Rick Murphy and George Zepp