Family Talk

A Trip to Merlefest

Posted on April 30th, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: General Family Talk.

As an “old” guitar picker (old as distinct from “good”) one of my favorite things is to go to Merlefest, Doc Watson’s bluegrass festival held every year in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Here are a few of my favorite photos from this weekend.

Little Pickers: musicians of every age gather around for jam sessions that go on all day and night for three days.

Old Timers:

Doc Watson on stage at the age of 84 years and can still play a million times better than I can.

One of the great things about Merlefest was seeing some of the fantastic young groups who are preserving the best of the old time country and bluegrass music traditions. Her are a couple:

Uncle Earl (yes, four young women!) Excellent CD’s, and the banjo player, Abigail Washburn also has a great CD.

New generation jam session on the Watson stage with some chaotic combination of Uncle Earl, The Duhks, Crooked Still, and The Infamous Stringdusters. It was a great session at 11 in the morning.

Crooked Still

The great old Del McCoury Band performing on the Watson stage with 70 thousand in attendance.

One of the eight stages has continual instruction workshops. Here is Roy Bookbinder, Happy Traum and John Hammond. Roy is no doubt telling one of his stories which comprise about half of his act.

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I’m Three

Posted on April 2nd, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: Gil, Layli & Serena.

Serena had her birthday party last weekend. Here are some photos from the party.

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Evan’s Birthday

Posted on March 25th, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: Natasha, Naysan, Evan & Jalil.

For Evan’s 5th birthday, he had a space party at the Harrisonburg Children’s Museum! Naysan created a solar system in the room from streamers, we played space-themed games, made aliens, had a galaxy treasure hunt (where the kids went to look for different planets) and, of course, the traditional birthday cake & presents.

Here are some pictures of him dressed as an astronaut and enjoying his party with all his pals!

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Funerals Are Not Bad Things…

Posted on February 24th, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: General Family Talk, The Preston-Martin Family.

I confess to not being a funeral goer. Generally, I don’t like them and do my best to find an excuse for not being there. I understand the need to grieve, to share that grief and to bring closure to our relationship with the departed. But….I still avoid them.

I did attend the funderal of my aunt, Jean Preston Martin, not only out of respect, but because I believed it would serve as something of a family reunion, one of the things she liked the most. I appointed myself the official photographer and here I post a few of the photos, hopefully, happy memories, from the funeral. These are “thumbnails” that will go to fullsize when you click on them.

Inside St. Lawrence Basilica in Asheville.

At the gravesite:

Here are Jean’s children Ann, Tom, Lisa and Kathy

Dinner was a good occasion to renew family ties, as Jean would have wanted it.

Here is Lisa with two of her nephews, Jim Dubois and William Compton

I suppose to say “I am looking forward to the next funeral” would probably not be the right thing to say… but,

Larry Miller

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Welcome to Family Talk

Posted on February 22nd, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: General Family Talk, The Preston-Martin Family.

Irene Miller and Jean Preston Martin

Two weeks ago I attended the funeral of Jean Preston Martin, my aunt and my mother’s sister. During the last stage of Jean’s life one of her passions, along with my mother’s, was to bring the extended family together, to share news and create a genuine appreciation of the family history. Jean also initiated a family newsletter, “FamilyTalk”, hence the title of this blog. If you like, you can consider this in her honor.

The purpose of this blog is to serve as a location for sharing family photos, stories, and news of any sort. This blog is intended to replace what was the Miller Family web page. This will be a lot easier to maintain, make additions, comment on, etc.

So, I hope every one will feel free to contribute and comment.

You will notice on the right hand of the page both “Pages” and “Categories”. In case you are not familiar with blogs, the main section is a running chronicle. So the next entry will appear above, in chronological order.  The Pages and Categories are ways of filing postings. I am filing under Pages, an introductory page on each individual family. Under Categories I am indicating when a post is about one particular family. You can, by clicking on a category, find all of the posts that are referenced under this topic. I hope that makes sense.

If you maintain a personal or professional blog and you would like me to add it to the “Blogroll” please let me know and I will do so.

If you go on an interesting vacation, if you have a new member of your family, or if you would like to add a post yourself, please simply send that to me (larry@millerfamily.org) and I will add it.  If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

Larry Miller

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