I started this blog in 2006 to share my job hunting journey in my fields of technology and education and to share my amateur photography passion. However since then I've strayed into other topics, including (oddly) Marilyn Monroe; a piece of Americana called the Cafe Rienzi; Belgian draft mules; antiques and furniture refinishing; artists Firma Duchene Philips, Tom Durant, and David Grosblatt; and a television series called PREY. And those are just for starters - so browse and enjoy!
Prairie Light eBook Series
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I have posted frequently on this blog about my great-aunt Firma Duchene Philips, a well-known scenery painter and one of the charter members of the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival. I'd now like to introduce some other memorable folks from my youth - namely Archie and Mary Foxworthy. I spent my teenage years with my grandparents Claude and Helen Alward in Fountain County just outside the town of Wallace, Indiana. Every fall my grandparents would help Archie and Mary ready the produce and products they had raised on their Parke County farm to sell at the Rockville Covered Bridge Festival. My grandparents would tie bunches of bittersweet and help bundle other local fruit and flora such as persimmons and sassafras roots as well as various jams and jellies, I suppose. For many years Archie and Mary ran a produce stand on the corner of highway 234 and US 41, across from a little store called Jipville, where they sold the fruits and vegetables they had raised throughout the growing season. I got to know them there, and at Wolf Creek Community Church, and through Lodge and Eastern Star activities in Wallace. Also Archie had a sugar camp for as long as I can remember - and I have an oil painting of it painted by my Aunt Firma Phillips. The painting has also been around for as long as I can remember. When Parke County started the Maple Syrup Festival which runs from the last weekend of February through the first weekend of March, Archie and Mary became very involved in this event. In fact I'm looking forward to attending this coming weekend and buying some of Foxworthy Farms maple syrup. Now 93 years old, Archie is a musician, a poet, a humorist, and a philosopher. Duane Busick, an Indiana journalist, has produced a wonderful three-part series of videos about Archie entitled "Archie Foxworthy, Parke County Treasure" which can now be viewed on YouTube - and the links follow below. I hope you enjoy meeting Archie and his family as much as I have enjoyed knowing them throughout my life.
