Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Beltane

Laurel and Michelle
My family and I made the three hour jaunt over to Texarkana this past weekend to partake in the Beltane festivities being held at Wright-Patman Lake.  As you can see from the picture of Laurel and me, the hosts chose a beautiful spot for the weekend-long event.  Spring was flaunting her most vibrant shades of green. 

The Druids opened the festival Friday evening at sundown by lighting the sacred fire, which was to be tended and kept burning throughout the Beltane celebration.  The weekend was marked with several ritual events.  One of the highlights was the May Pole celebration.  My young cousins both enjoyed participating:

May Pole participation
Of course, you can't visit a town that sits halfway in Texas and halfway in Arkansas and not visit the tourist spot showing the actual dividing line:

My young cousins

Eric and Laurel

Interesting factoid about Texarkana:  The Texas side of the town resides in a dry county; the Arkansas side does not.  After spending the last eight years in Nevada, the whole concept of a "dry county" was very odd to me.  You can imagine my dismay when we went to buy some wine on the Texas side where we were staying, and found that we could not.  Fortunately, Miller County, Arkansas did not hold to that archaic idea, and my consternation was short-lived.

6 comments:

  1. Looks like a fun day! Funny that Eric is wearing a blue/red shirt to match the sign. Did he plan that? The picture of the kids is really cute.

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  2. No...say it isnt so ? Someowhere on earth you cant buy alcohol? Seriously? Im never going there.

    Sounds like you enjoyed the weekend. You do such interesting things. I need to get a life and emulate you a bit more!

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  3. Interestingly enough, P, we talked about how Eric's shirt matched the sign. But no, it wasn't planned. We had no idea what the sign was going to look like before we got there.

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  4. it is kind of weird but a lot of the counties in the southern states are dry - I'm not sure how many in Arkansas there are but we live in one of them - we drive about 25 miles to get to the next county over that is wet - but you know you do get used to it and actually we cut way back on any drinking that we did after awhile when we moved here and truthfully we rarely miss not having much booze in the house - when we do stock up it is more wine than anything else. Most likely healthier for us in the long run :)
    Karen
    http://karensquilting.com/blog/

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  5. In Texas you can have wet and dry cities within a county. When I moved into our fair city it allowed hard liquor sales as well as beer and wine. One time, the Mormon's tried to have it repealed, and a large battle ensued, leaving us the victors. Later, Texas passed a law repealing the right to force a vote every six months once a new law has been put into effect by extending the period to vote again on it to three years.

    In our small town of 10,000 people, we have five liquor stores - the only ones in the entire county.

    God Bless Texas!

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  6. Wow! The scenery was really beautiful and I loved learning a little bit of history about that area. Thanks for sharing :).

    xo -El

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Your comments brighten my day. :-)