DIRTY HOES
When Susie and I drove up the Blue Ridge Parkway on Thursday our destination was Burnsville, which we eventually got to after stopping at the Penland School of Craft. We were on our way to see a art exhibit of an old friend, Donna Price. Donna grew up in Hickory and was on one of my long ago Warren Wilson College student trips to India. Donna has become very cosmopolitan since then, living with her partner, Heidi Zednik for the last ten years in Gmunden, Austria, a beautiful little village on a deep narrow lake with the Alps all around. Both Donna and Heidi are artists.
But before going to Austria both Donna and Heidi were owners of the Dirty Hoes, a landscaping company in Asheville. Our visit to Donna’s exhibit in the back room of a new bookstore just off the central square in Burnsville, a vacation town turned out to be a reunion of the Dirty Hoes when Kathryn Skelley-Watts and Cheryl Geiger showed up along with Mark Williams along with Dana Nagle and Aimee Fabre who were also members of the Dirty Hoes. Kathryn and Cheryl had also gone to India with me on another trip which Susie helped lead, so it was an India reunion combined with a Dirty Hoes reunion and a Warren Wilson reunion. We all bought something from Donna, ate some refreshments and had fun talking. Then Susie and I drove home.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 