LAST WEEK'S PERFORMANCES

Well, Kind Hearts, it is over, and I am glad. It is always a nice ego trip to see my plays on the stage, and Elizabeth Westall was wonderful, as always. However, the production of these two plays were accompanied with a considerable amount of frustration. I think that I will retire to the porch now and try to focus on mini-dramas: the redbird wars, my chickens (two hens and two roosters - "segregated," of course), my annual war with the groundhogs who eat my sugar peas. Perhaps it is time to think about tomatoes and a few rows of corn. I would like to have one of those Egyptian "walking onions" this year! I'm hoping to doze off on the deck with a novel in my lap and I want to spend a lot of quality time with Jack, the jack russell and Booger, the quare cat. I'm not going out "there" much, as it has lost much of its charm. Maybe breakfast and brunch with my friends in Sylva, a trip to Asheville with Neal Hutcheson on the 27th and a Nance Dude program at the Haywood County public library on the 30th. That is enough of the world out "there." I don't know how permanent my attitude is .....let's wait and see. In the meantime, I have cancelled my phone service as well as my Verizon link to the internet. Can't pay the bill. I will go to the library each day and check my mail.....and maybe visit my blog.

HOLLER NOTES IS SHUTTING DOWN (TEMPORARILY, I HOPE)

For some reason, I have had only one post on my blog in the last month. Yeah, I know that most people read and do not post, but I feel that the life's blood of any blog is the "comments" where people actually respond to the topics posted. If no one is commenting, that indicates that something is seriously wrong. Either I have lost my readers who talk to me, or my computer problems are worse than I thought. I would prefer that it is my computer which has become ... I guess the word is whimsical. The cursor freezes and it refuses to send email messages (or dispatches twelve copies of the same email). My iMac suddenly shuts itself down, highlights everything on the desktop and refuses all commands. Sometimes, it will function for a few moments if I cut it off and restart it. Whatever the problem. I am in the process of buying another one. I will have to borrow the money and that makes me want to crawl under my bed and bite my leg. Anyway, I am going to hang it up. I will go back to this blog if (1) I get a lot of posts; (2) I get a new computer (which will take a while) or (3) there is an impressive display of disappointment that I'm not running this blog anymore. I'll check by in a week or two to see if anyone has noticed that I am gone.
If I continue to get zero responses, I'm gonna hang it up and spend more time writing.
Losing Holler Notes would be a painful thing for me, but maybe it needs to go away.
Gary Carden

P. S. Please click on the photo of my Nance Dude flyer which i am currently marketing.

NANCE DUDE DVD WITH ELIZABETH WESTALL

Well, Kind Hearts, I finally have "Nance Dude" on DVD. For those of you who do not know, Elizabeth Westall has been doing this dramatic monologue for twelve years, and in view of its continued popularity, I managed to get a filmmakeer to record her last performance at the Performing Arts Center in Highlands, N. C. last June. The DVD can be ordered directly from me and the cost is: $20 plus $3 for postage and handling.
My address is:
Gary Carden
236 Cherry Street
Sylva, N. C. 28779

Nance Dude: a dramatic monologue

Well, Kind Hearts, here, at long last, is a 4.5 minute clip from my play, "Nance Dude."(To enlarge the picture, simply click on the screen icon at the bottom of the screen right under the YouTube logo.) The actress is Elizabeth Westall, who has been performing the role for twelve years. It is, for whatever reason, the most popular work that I have. Since this clip is taken from the middle of the play, a bit of background might be useful. Nance Dude is a "real person" who was charged with the murder of her two-year-old granddaughter back around 1913. She was sentenced to 30 years of hard labor and was released after 15 years. She was 80 years old and came home to find that her own family rejected her. She ended up living in a one-room shack on Conley Creek in Jackson County. She remained a social outcast and was considered a witch by many of her neighbors. Her only companions were a pack of stray dogs that followed her. She supported herself by splitting kindling which she sold to "the Floridy folks." She died alone at the age of 104.

Over the years, people have come to believe that there were "mitigating circumstances" that were never brought to light about the murder. Nance had been forced out of the house where she was living with her daughter and told to "get rid of "Roberta," the two year-old-child ... the reason being that there were too many people living in the house. The old story about Nance says that she walked the roads of Haywood County for three days and was unable to find a home for the child. It was April and cold; the child was sick.

The story has become a legend in my region. Maurice Stanley's book, had a profound effect on this play. However, I grew up hearing the stories and often saw Nance walking along the roads in my region with a load of kindling on her back. (There is much more to Nance's story, including her love for a man named Dude Hannah.)