Renovated Café to Reopen March 26
Most Historic Rugby facilities resumed regular season hours on March 1, although the Cafe, which is undergoing extensive kitchen renovations, is not expected to reopen until March 26.
Rugby Visitor Centre and Theatre hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday; noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, with a Rugby history film and historic building tours available throughout each day beginning at the Visitor Centre.
Jessie Gully shows the Commissary's stone jewelry made by Deer Lodge resident
Sally Huntley. Photo by Rick Murphy
Sally Huntley. Photo by Rick Murphy
Commissary Museum Store hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday; noon to 6 p.m. Sunday.
Other Rugby shops include Spirit of Red Hill Nature Art and Carriage House Art Gallery. 1880 Newbury House B and B and historic Pioneer and Percy cottages are available for private or group lodging, year-round, along with miles of hiking trails including the new Massengale Homeplace Loop in the Rugby State Natural Area.
Saturday, March 26 the Harrow Road Café will reopen. The hours will be 8:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. daily serving breakfast and lunch. Friday and Saturday night dinner hours will also return featuring local bands on many Friday nights.
Special activities throughout the year will include Rugby Quilts Past and Present, April 8 and 9, and the 37th Festival of British and Appalachian Culture, May 14 and 15.
The Rebecca Johnson Theatre and Rugby Visitor Centre features a full-wall mural depicting Rugby’s 1880s heyday, and the award-winning 22-minute Rugby history film, The Power of a Dream. The theatre will host special activities throughout the year.
Contact Historic Rugby at 1-888-214-3400 or email rugbylegacy@highland.net for lodging reservations, events and workshop information, group visits and details about protected building lots are for sale. More information is online at http://www.historicrugby.org/.
Rugby Busy Preparing for Spring
Rugby has been a beehive of activity lately getting things ready for spring’s increased visitation. I am sure I will have omitted something, but here are a few things that have been going on.
Work continues at the Harrow Road Café where an entire new floor has been put down in the kitchen and other areas and new equipment is being installed. Properties staff and volunteers have done a tremendous job with this extensive project.
Jody Hester recruited a large group of volunteers who worked hard at the Community Building all day Saturday, cleaning it from top to bottom. Volunteers will begin painting the walls next Saturday to help get it ready for the quilt exhibit. Everyone says it looks much better already.
Volunteers at work cleaning the Community Building. Top left: Boyd Mitchell cleans lights. Right: Annie Patterson and Jody Hester work on the Rugby display cases. Bottom left: Dorcus McBrayer cleans in the kitchen area. Photos by Steve Logan
Julian Bankston has been working on the interior of Uffington House to help get it ready for use during the quilt exhibit. He has just about completed interior paneling for a room that formerly had a wall of windows.
Jody Hester and George Zepp decorated the downstairs sitting room at Percy Cottage recently. The room, previously used as an office/conference room, is now a comfortable gathering area for the cottage, which now has three bedrooms available. Its new downstairs bathroom is also almost completed.
Work has begun to redecorate the suite at Newbury House. The Hesters have donated a large carpet that will be installed in the main room of the suite and John and Kathy Hicks have adopted the room to arrange for other substantial improvements. Gerald Hanwright has been working on plaster repair and painting in the suite.
Volunteers Needed Saturday
By Jody Hester
Another volunteer opportunity will come this Saturday when a group will get together to paint rooms inside Rugby's Community Building. The effort is designed to get ready for the Quilt Event April 8-9, as well as prepare the building for Spring Festival and other uses in 2011 and beyond. Volunteers should bring paint brushes, rollers, cutting edges and whatever else they normally like to use. Painting begins at 9:30 a.m. Eastern, with free lunch served about noon. Also, thanks to all who helped clean and prep and building this past weekend. We had fun!
Activities This Week
Friday Night - History Meeting 7:30 p.m. at Friendly House. Linda Konig will speak about Samuel Jacob (usually called S.J.) Norris. Mr. Norris and John Gilliat's grandfather had a store in Rugby at one time which later moved to Elgin. Mr. Norris' house still stands on Hwy. 27, and he has descendants in the area. Among them is Judy Newport, who plans to bring photos. 
Saturday Night – Travel Photos from Cambodia and Vietnam. Several folks have said that they would like to see photos from our recent trip to Southeast Asia. So if you are looking for something to do Saturday night, come to the Visitor Centre at 7:30 p.m. This will be real low key. Feel free to bring a glass of something.
Two HRI Lots Sold
Two lots that Historic Rugby had for sale recently have now been sold to Harry and Jody Hester. One was the six-plus-acre tract on the east side of town known as the Reisher/Dakeyne property. The other is the two-plus-acre property just to the west of the garden for Uffington House. Congratulations to the new owners.
Public Hearing for Gov. Bredesen's Lands Unsuitable for Mining Petition
Barbara Stagg asked that we include information about a public meeting which is scheduled for March 10. She says there is also a meeting in Huntsville on March 8, but that folks are encouraged to attend the one in LaFollette as it is expected to generate more publicity. “There will be much more press attention there, with an anti-mountaintop removal/high ridge mining rally starting at 5:30 before OSM starts its meeting at 6:30. The lands endangered for high ridge/mountaintop removal mining include parts of the public lands in Scott, Morgan and Campbell County.”
Tennessee has the unique opportunity to save over 65,000 acres of ridgelines from mountaintop removal and your help is needed!
The Office of Surface Mining (OSM) is holding a series of public scoping meeting for the Lands Unsuitable for Mining Petition submitted by the State of Tennessee last year. The petition would prohibit surface mining for 600 feet on either side of mountaintops covering large tracts of our state's public lands. Please help us ask the federal government (OSM) to protect public land for hiking, hunting, wildlife viewing, fishing, and to preserve our cultural, recreational and scientific resources for future generation.
Time - Thursday, March 10 • 5:30pm - 8:30pm
Location - LaFollette Middle School, 1309 E. Central Ave., LaFollette TN (Go through main business district on Hwy. 63, school is on left as you leave the downtown area going toward Harrogate/Cumberland Gap.)
Learn more about the Protecting the Cumberlands Lands Unsuitable for Mining Petition here http://tn.gov/environment/lumpetition.shtml
Stagg Attends Tremont Workshop
By Barbara Stagg
I got to spend a little time with Mary Dresser (a former Historic Rugby interpreter) recently when I took a 3-day workshop on Conducting Meaningful Interpretation at Tremont Institute in the Smokies. It's part of a number of required courses to gain Southern Appalachian Naturalist Certification, which could be useful here in the Rugby/Cumberland Plateau area for future program activity. The workshop focused on both environmental and history interpretation and was great.
Tremont is a wonderful facility and Mary seems to be a great fit there. Check out their many interesting workshops and programs at: http://www.gsmit.org/calendar.htm. Someday -- maybe a North Cumberland Plateau Outdoor Education Center?
Mary is at left in the picture above; on the right are Tremont teacher-naturalist Mary Silver and her state parks naturalist father Marty Silver, who conducted much of the interpretation workshop.
Mary says hello to everyone.
Who Ran Into Kingstone Lisle’s Fence?
Someone ran their vehicle off Highway 52 between the Café and Kingstone Lisle Saturday night or early Sunday. The incident sheered off one of the two poles holding the TDOT “Road Work 1 Mile” sign and ran into a dogwood tree at the corner of the fence at Kingstone Lisle. The corner of the fence was only slightly damaged but the tree suffered a pretty good scrape. It appears a wrecker retrieved the vehicle, but we have no details on the accident investigation, if any.
BIRTHDAYS
March 11 - Michael Buck
March13 - Hannah Alley, Zach Alley and Darwin Bertram
CALENDAR
Rugby is in the Eastern Time zone
Friday, March 11 - 7:30 p.m. — History Meeting at the Friendly House. Linda Konig will speak about Samuel Jacob (usually called S.J.) Norris. Mr. Norris and John Gilliat's grandfather had a store in Rugby at one time which later moved to Elgin. Mr. Norris' house still stands on Hwy. 27, and he has descendants in the area, among them Judy Newport, who plans to bring photos.
Saturday March 12 – Travel Show 7:30 p.m. at the Visitor Centre – George and Rick will share photos from Cambodia and Vietnam
Saturday March 19 - English Country Dancing 7 p.m.
Friday, April 1 - English Country Dancing 7 p.m.
Fri. and Sat., April 8 and 9 – Rugby Quilts Exhibition, "Rugby Quilts: Past and Present." Displays of old and new quilts, quilt appraisals and bed turnings are all on the program. There's even a film: "How to Make an American Quilt." Reservation information at http://www.historicrugby.org/
Friday, April 15 – History Night Annual Dinner at Grey Gables. 7 p.m. Willie Beaty from Jamestown will be the guest speaker. His topic will be Buck's Mill, the closest grist mill to Rugby in the 1880's. Mr. Beaty is the author of a book about the grist mills of Fentress County. The dinner is $11, plus tax and gratuity. Please let Linda Jones know the number in your party by Wednesday, April 13, if at all possible, especially if you have special dietary needs.
Saturday, April 16 - English Country Dancing 7 p.m.
Saturday, April 16 - Rugby Book Group – 7 p.m. at Judy Newport’s house. The book is Jonathan Franzen’s best selling novel “Freedom.” For more information or directions, Judy can be reached at 931-704-7946
Quilters Group - Wed. and Sat. 2–4 p.m. at the Friendly House
NATURE NOTES
By Linda Konig
I know I promised to continue writing about the Barred Owls this week, but I can't resist writing today about the Spring Peepers instead. I just have to write about these singers of spring, especially since they've now reached almost-deafening proportions. I'm well blessed with their song at my house because Jodye Weiler's front pond has so many, and I have a recurring pond in the front yard.
This wet-weather pond is probably the reason I had some cute little visitors Saturday night. About 10 p.m. I noticed what I first thought were four smallish tan moths pasted onto the front storm door. Looking closer, I saw they were Peepers! To see them better, I went out the carport door and around to the front porch. There were three more Peepers on the picture window and two on the concrete floor of the front porch! This is the first I knew they could be attracted to lights! The only lights I had had on were two lamps in the living room.
None of “my” Peepers were peeping, so I figured they were all females. Yes, when I looked them up, I read that the females are lighter in color and don't have the dark coloring on their throats that the males have. Another reason I thought they might be females is that the two largest ones had swollen bellies that I thought might be full of eggs. My Peepers were different sizes, from less than an inch to about an inch-and-a-half, and that puzzled me a bit. The smaller ones couldn't be this year's crop of frogs already, but they weren't adult-sized yet. So I figured they must live two years or more as adults. Sure enough, when I did a little research, I found that the average life of a Peeper in the wild is about three years.
Here's what I think was happening in my front yard last night. The males were assembled around the edges of the ponds and began peeping and trilling to attract females. Their calls can be heard for about a mile. The females started to come out of the woods, making their way to the ponds, but a few were distracted by my lights and made their way to the house. Of course, this light worship was keeping the fertile females from mating, so I tried a little experiment. I turned off one of the lamps, and, sure enough, in a very few minutes, the numbers of females on my porch began to diminish. About 11 o'clock, I turned off all the lights to go to bed, but I waited about 10 to 15 minutes and re-checked my front porch. All the Peepers were gone. If you aren't lucky enough to have Peepers coming to your front porch, you can see some fantastic close-ups of a Spring Peeper at www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeeko41108.html . You can also read about what Spring Peepers are up to in fall. This Hilton Pond site has become one of my favorites.
This Week’s Editors: Rick Murphy and George Zepp
