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Summer Festival at Senate's End

    There will be 26 vendors for food, jewelry, crafts, books, and who know what else? Places and Times will be available for purchase and my signature.If you miss this one, there will be a Fall Festival in November. More on that as it happens.

    Anyone who reads this blog is feel to comment or to contact me on Facebook or aturfa@aol/com.
Lately I have had some steady hits from Mauritius, Nepal, and Portugal. I would love to hear from those readers especially!

    Early next week I am going to announce a new blog related to great poems from the POETS Google+ community, where I am an Owner! 

Musgrove Mill Historic Site

   My high school mascot was not an animal, but a Colonial: a Continental soldier in the American Army. There were Revolutionary War campgrounds and skirmishes in our school district, about half-way between Philadelphia and Valley Forge. In US history we heard that at some point the war moved South and that was it.

   But the War was really won in the South. A lot of that happened in South Carolina. Today my wife and I went to Musgrove Mill, partially to see if it was suitable for a parish group to visit. (She determined that it was.) Being in the Upstate, it felt cooler than back home. 

   I will post a few appropriate links and think about a poem. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Musgrove_Mill

http://www.sciway.net/hist/periods/revolwar.html

https://www.amazon.com/Partisans-Redcoats-Southern-Conflict-Revolution/dp/0380806436

    

Belated Happy Birthday to Aldous Huxley

     Born 26 July 1894 in Godalming, UK, Huxley died in Los Angeles on 22 November 1963. That was also the day that CS Lewis passed away; of course their passings were lost in the international coverage of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

     When I was in high school one could actually be assigned to read Brave New World  without parents complaining about their precious children being corrupted. I also read his essay Brave New World Revisited written in 1958 during that senior year when I was allowed to read int he library most of the time for English class.

    On my first trip to Europe I found a West German translation of The Doors of Perception (Die Pforten der Wahrnehmung). The book also gave Jim Morrison the name for his band. I found the book fascinating, but was not about to start using mescaline or anything like that.

    When I returned to the States I read Point Counter Point and was thoroughly taken by it. A few years later in Orange County, California, I met a young woman who had met Huxley a few times. She was a fascinating person who lost her husband to asthma and was raising a young daugt

her while attending graduate school (She was Comparative Literature, I was German but liked her discipline).
It was during that time at University of California-Irvine that I heard Christopher Isherwood, another friend of Huxley's who is best-known for writing the short story on which Caberet was based.

   I will add a link of some of Huxley;s quotes, and also a section of a poem I met about meeting that young woman. Since I want to submit the poem for publication, I cannot post the entire text, but a little bit should be all right. I hate mentioning that I wrote a poem without sharing any of it.

An informal gathering at someone’s house

Nestled on a Los Angeles canyon:

Over her walnut soup, Huxley’s

Razor-sharp Oxonian clarity

Impressed her and her late husband.

A kaleidoscope of images

Surged through my mind

As she talked of Huxley:

Reading the major novels

In high school library,

Finding others at university

Outside of classes and keg parties,

Wandering through Central Europe

With German translation of

The Doors of Perception

And its mescaline-fueled mysticism

At the World’s Biggest Drugstore.

Arthur Turfa ©2014

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/aldous_huxley.html

Senate's End Summer Festival This Sunday!

    What better place to spend triple-digit weather than by the Broad River in Columbia, south Carolina! There will be lots of vendors, good food and music. I will be at the Open Mic at 2 pm. I hope to sell out of Places and Times.

    Jennifer David Gerdes of 302 Artisans has worked hard to draw people to her events. My hope is that this will be the first of many annual festivals!


https://www.facebook.com/302Artisans/photos/gm.276198149415051/1035717173203166/?type=3&theater

Lovely time in Florida

   My wife and I had an enjoyable time in the Tampa area last week. We ate very well, spent some time on the Gulf at Clearwater Beach, visited my cousin and his wife, and visited many nice places. I even finished a poem and thought about some others.
 
  I will post a few pictures here, and provide some music to look at them by. Frederick Delius' family wanted him to go into business, and sent him to northern Florida to manage an orange grove. Instead he listened to American music, including African-American music, and wrote "Florida Suite" after his return to Europe. The work actually premiered in Leipzig, Germany in 1888.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6CrzLXUHx4

Hello! Back from vacation to Tampa/Clearwater, Florida! And I have a fantastic event ahead of me!

https://www.facebook.com/events/256729304695269/