Monday: Conference Week
Part 1: A Seven Day Series
Its cold here in Asheville on this Monday morning of Arts and Crafts Conference week.
Exactly the way we want it.
As they say in the mountains of Western North Carolina, if you don’t like the weather, just wait twenty minutes – it’ll change.
But weather patterns here in January and February, which I have informally studied for the past 29 years, tend to alternate in weekly cycles. Last week we had some ice and snow, plus bitterly cold (by our standards) temperatures, which, while it wrecked havoc on school schedules, pleased me.
Today the temperature will rise into the thirties and it will rain in the lower elevations and snow in the upper. By Tuesday the moisture will have moved north and on Wednesday it will again be in the forties, with the prediction that Arts and Crafts Weekend will see sunny skies and temperatures in the high fifties – maybe even toying with sixty degrees!
That means we’ll be sitting on the Sunset Terrace, soaking in the sun, surveying the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west, and sipping a favorite drink, just as people have been doing here since July 12, 1913.
Although in 1913 it was “Bring Your Own Bottle,” as Asheville had passed its own prohibition law even before it became an ill-fated 18th amendment to the federal constitution in 1919. But rumor has it that in 1913 a generous tip to one of the hotel bellmen would net you a quart jar of Buncombe County’s finest ‘mountain dew.’
Today and tomorrow are transitions days for Alex and myself, as we begin moving scores of tubs and boxes of catalogs, tote bags, posters, calendars, name badges, silent auction donations, workshop materials, signs, and everything else an event of this size requires. It will total four pickup truck loads, plus Alex’s car to empty our office into two offices at the Grove Park Inn: Alex’s at the Registration Desk in the Sammons Wing, and mine over in the Vanderbilt Wing where nearly 125 exhibitors will be setting up on Thursday.
And today I’ll meet again with the audio-visual crew, making sure all seven of our seminar presentations have been loaded into the computer and checked for any flaws before the speakers all arrive on Thursday for their day of rehearsals in the Heritage Ballroom on Friday.
And if you’re interested, the Grove Park Inn will have some rooms available, and, of course, you can always just come up to the hotel for the three sessions of selling shows, vintage and contemporary: Friday 1:00pm-6:00pm; Saturday Noon-6:00pm; and Sunday 11:00am-4:00pm.
For more information, just go to Arts-CraftsConference.com. And if you are thinking about taking one of our Thursday or Friday hands-on workshops, give us a call here at 828-628-1915.
Until tomorrow morning,
Think Daffodils in Asheville!
Bruce