"Summertime"! Who in this country can say that word, or sing it, without thinking of the 1930s musical hit, "Porgy and Bess," by George and Ira Gershwin and Dubose Heyward? The rains have stopped flooding and our dreams are high. It is a time to be thankful for our freedoms and our traditions. It is time to share what we know about the past with students and visitors and newcomers to our region. It is a time to sit under the canopy of an ancient magnolia tree and take in the pleasures of a summer evening in the Blue Ridge region: the smell of food cooking on a charcoal grill, lightening bugs sparkling in the shadows, family reunions, the scent of lemon verbena, mint, and basil rising from the raised herb beds that rim our little patio. The smokehouse sits in a tangle of English Ivy that cradles our Celtic Cross, a reminder of our shared Scottish and Irish roots. Smoke swirls over the terne (combo of copper and tin) roof of the plantation kitchen beside us. In summer, time stands still.

I plunk a whole stem of mint into everyone's big glass of sweet tea. Two summers ago, as we sat out here, we were unexpectedly assaulted by thousands of starlings massing in the oaks and beeches above us, swooping in vast flocks across the evening sky. Last year hundreds of birds attacked the nandina bushes in my butterfly garden as I called everyone for dinner outside. We have almost forgotten that we share our yard with other creatures at all times of day and night. My decorative "garden room" is their dinner. I garden for pleasure, but in thick gloves given me by my son after a particularly difficult recovery from being pricked by a rose thorn, which necessitated that I get a tetanus shot. I wrote in a poem once that "We garden to keep wilderness at bay." And so did the pioneers and the people portrayed in our 1938 mural, which is the subject of an article I wrote for this issue of BRT.

I have spent months studying the 1930s workers so beautifully portrayed here on the BRT cover, from the Post Office mural of 1938. The images have much to tell us about American history. 1938 was the year my mid-western parents married and honeymooned in Havana, Cuba. In 1938 my husband was a junior at Andrew Lewis High School in Salem. And it was the year that Hitler took Austria. The 1930s, the era of "Gone With the Wind," Shirley Temple, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, the "Wizard of Oz," John Dillinger, Al Capone, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Hindenburg zeppelin, Bonnie and Clyde, the Depression, the Dust Bowl, Dick Tracy, our own moonshine conspiracy trial of 1935, and so very many other people and events, was a definitive time for our region. I can't seem to get away from the 1930s!

I ask my writers to bring history alive. For those of you who like a treasure hunt, or might like to encourage a young reader to become more interested in culture by asking them to help you with one, here is a list of things to look for: a collie, a loom, a sunbonnet, a black factory worker, a barn with a Gambrel roof, a Lynchburg garden, a black poet, two teenage moonshining boys, a ghost of a girl, a coal train, a steel works factory, an Esso sign, an artist who partially lost his sight, the names Ashe, Hilton, Moran, the word "skeleton," blackberries in a ring, New Jersey, chickens, and at least six paintings.

A reader of BRT pauses on each page, gets carried back to other times, reflects about traditions. That's what BRT is all about, culture and traditions. Every issue should leave you with questions about the history and culture around us, should make you reflect on all that has passed. We try to balance stories, history, and our advertisements, so the end result is pleasing to the eye. It costs more to produce BRT with this philosophy, and we encourage new subscribers, new advertisers. Give someone BRT! Now available, as well, at Visitors' Centers, shops, libraries, eateries, and at our advertisers in all the surrounding communities as far north as Lexington and as far south as Martinsville, and everywhere in between. "...Fish are jumpin' and the mountains are high...summertime..." 

 - Ibby Greer

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