A Sacred Feast by Kathryn Eastburn

Author:Kathryn Eastburn [Eastburn, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4962-1138-5
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2018-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

I looked to Jesus and I found

In Him my star, my sun;

And in that light of life I’ll walk,

Till trav’ling days are done.

Nearly five months later, I packed a bag of unseasonable clothing and drove through a blizzard to the Colorado Springs airport to await a flight to Seattle and the fifteenth annual Pacific Northwest Sacred Harp Singing Convention.

The 7 a.m. flight was delayed indefinitely. Snow and ice flew violently sideways, caking over the airport terminal windows. Rather than sit and wait for a flight that might never get off the ground, I gave up my seat and accepted a flight voucher and a free taxi ride to Denver International Airport. What would normally be an hour’s drive took nearly three hours through freezing fog, gusty winds, and swirling blasts of snow on this bitter morning.

A few hours later, my plane glided through a crystalline sky past glittering, snow-capped Mount Rainier. The mountain’s mighty canyons and ridges were parallel to our descending aircraft, thrilling and close enough to raise heart rates.

The efficient public transportation system of the People’s Republic of Seattle carried me past industrial plants, yacht basins, ports, and skyscrapers to Ballard, a northern suburb originally settled by Scandinavian loggers and millers, now shorn of its forest but tidy and well gardened. Annexed to the city in 1907, Ballard is now a local and national historic district. My bed and breakfast, Chez Sharon, the lower level of a private home, looked out on a sleeping patch of perennials, eager to begin their seasonal bloom. Along the streets red, white, and pink crabapple blossoms burst forth, with cherries and plums soon to follow.

In twelve hours, I’d traveled from deep winter to early spring. The next morning I walked past stands of crocus and viola peeking out of deeply mulched flowerbeds, to the Sunset Hill Community Association Clubhouse where Sacred Harp singing would shape the next two days.

A neat, beige two-story clapboard building with brown trim and shutters, tall windows, a high ceiling and a wood floor, the clubhouse might have been a church in an earlier incarnation. If not, it was on this day.

Morning greetings filled the air as a crowd quickly gathered. Petite, dark-haired Katharine Hough, a regular Seattle singer, rushed about asking lingerers to help bring up more chairs from the basement.

“We’ve never had the problem of not enough chairs before!” she exulted.

Her husband, Dave Hough, introduced himself and told me about folk festivals and music fairs of the early 1970s where he’d first heard Sacred Harp singing. He and others became interested and began learning songs from The Sacred Harp. Dave met his wife, Katharine, at a folk singing camp and eventually the couple traveled south to hear the music at the source.

“We brought the enthusiasm back,” he said.

Seattle is gifted with a number of veteran singers who have traveled to southern singings over the years. Most notable is Karen Willard, co-chair of the convention, a woman in a large-brimmed hat who swept around the room directing

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.