Great Backyard Bird Count Event

Great Backyard Bird Count Event offers many opportunities in the Great Smoky Mountains. This count is for the birds. Bird lovers everywhere are invited to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) and help create a real-time snapshot of our feathered friends. Participants, from all over the world, are expected to be involved in the 22nd annual four-day event which begins Friday, February 15 and continues through Monday, February 18, 2019. Enthusiasts, which include beginning birdwatchers to experts, can spend as little as 15 minutes (or as long as they wish) during the event and then report their sightings online at birdcount.org.

Each checklist submitted during the event helps indicate how bird populations are changing, and how the latest warm weather patterns have affected bird movements around the country. GBBC allows researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society learn how to protect birds and the environment we all share. Last year’s count included data from more than 160,000 people and produced the largest instantaneous snapshot of global bird population ever recorded.

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Biltmore Estate Vintage Vanderbilt Clothing Expo

Biltmore Estate Vintage Vanderbilt Clothing Expo. Dressing in style at Biltmore Estate February 8 – May 27,  2019 is a Smoky Mountain special event. Reproductions of original Vanderbilt clothing are on display at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, and the public is invited to imagine the glittering parties when the Vanderbilt’s really dressed in style while entertaining in the fabulous home’s elegant rooms.

Oscar winning costumer John Bright and Cosprop, London, guided by Biltmore curators, meticulously recreated the fashions favored and worn by the Vanderbilts and their guests at elegant turn-of-the-century house parties during America’s Gilded Age.

Join in the fun with Biltmore’s new custom exhibition audio-guided tour, created especially for this

exhibit, which combines realistic 360 degree sound techniques featuring stories told from the perspectives of those who lived and worked at this amazing home during the early 1900s. This impressive audio-visual experience brings scenes, previously viewed only in old black and white photos, vividly to life. Consider this your invitation to attend a Vanderbilt House Party!

Biltmore Estate is nestled in Asheville, North Carolina in the foothills of beautiful Pisgah National Forest. Long referred to as, America’s Castle, the sprawling estate includes tours of the mansion and the extensive gardens designed by famed architect Frederick Law Ohmsted.

Valentine’s Cookie Baking Class

Valentine’s Cookie Baking Class at Wildflour Bakehouse in Sevierville, TN. This Smoky Mountain special event will feature separate classes for kids and adults Saturday, February 9, 2019. Wildflour Bakehouse is a staple for good eats in Sevier County serving breakfast and lunch. They are a family run, small batch bakery that creates pastries and breads in house early each morning. Stop in and get your day started right with some of their sweet and savory baked goods.

“IF BAKING IS ANY LABOR AT ALL, IT’S A LABOR OF LOVE. A LOVE THAT GETS PASSED FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION,”

REGINA BRETT.

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Blue Ridge Parkway Winter Closures

Blue Ridge Parkway Winter Closures. The Blue Ridge Parkway is the unofficial sister national park to the Great Smoky Mountains. Beginning in the beautiful Oconaluftee Valley just north of Cherokee, North Carolina and stretching hundreds of miles to Shenandoah National Park this national treasure is a must but always plan ahead when heading to the hills.

Ole Man Winter takes toll on Blue Ridge Parkway. The National Park Service reminds visitors that some areas of the Blue Ridge Parkway remain closed due to winter weather effects and debris along the scenic highway. Many factors impact the Parkway for extended periods during winter weather. Variables include the route’s north facing slopes, tunnels, higher elevations and sight limitations. While some snow and ice are removed, the Parkway’s priorities involving natural resources prohibit the use of ice melting chemicals.

Park Superintendent J.D. Lee thanked committed staff, partners and neighbors that supported the Parkway during the recent lapse in appropriations. He also mentioned several weather events that continue to impact Parkway travel during this frigid season.  “We appreciate the public’s patience and cooperation as we prioritize work to provide access to this special resource,” Lee said.

Ever changing road conditions and weather problems led the National Park Service to dedicate an online site that monitors openings and closing along the scenic 469-mile route via an interactive road map that allows visitors to zoom in on specific sections of the Parkway and provides a planning tool to ensure enjoyment and safety. To access this map visit Blue Ridge Parkway Closures.

The Tenth Annual Rose Glen Literary Festival

The Tenth Annual Rose Glen Literary Festival presents the “write” stuff scheduled Saturday, February 23, 2019 from 9 am – 4 pm. This Smoky Mountain event is a must for all literature lovers. The Rose Glen Literary Festival, celebrating a decade of the “write” stuff, welcomes back the event’s first keynote speaker Stephen Lyn Bales who will discuss highlights of past festivals. Bale, a contributor to both the Smithsonian Magazine and Tennessee Conservation Magazine, is a regular speaker at Wilderness Wildlife Week in Pigeon Forge. His published works also include Natural Histories and Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941.

This year’s festival lineup features a variety of successful and entertaining writers that includes luncheon keynote speaker Robert Beatty, author of the New York Times best-selling Serafina series, an eerie thriller that features a strange young woman who is a secret resident in the basement of the fabulous Biltmore House. Serafina and the Black Cloak spent more than 60 weeks on the Time’s best seller list and was also the recipient of the 2016 Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize. His second book in the series, which has proved popular with both young readers and adults, Serafina and the Twisted Staff, hit number one on the Times’ best seller list the week of its launch and earned a starred review from Kirkus Reviews.

His latest work, Willa of the Wood, introduces a young girl who possesses magical powers and lives in the forests of the Great Smoky Mountains. Now a full-time writer Beatty, who lives in Asheville, was one of the early pioneers of cloud computing, the founder/CEO of Plex Systems, and co-founder of Beatty Robotics and chairman/CEO of Narrative Magazine.

Terry Roberts’s debut novel, A Short Time to Stay Here, won the Willie Morris Award for Southern fiction, and his second novel, That Bright Land, won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award and the James Till Award for writing about the Appalachian South. Roberts will discuss his latest novel, The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival.

Bill Carey is a columnist for Tennessee Magazine and founder of Tennessee History for Kids, a non-profit organization that assists educators who teach social studies and Tennessee history in improving their core curriculum. Carey’s book, Fortunes, Fiddles and Fried Chicken: A Nashville Business History is ranked among the best Nashville history books of all time. His latest book, Runaways, Coffles and Fancy Girls, a History of Slavery in Tennessee, explores the humanitarian tragedy of slavery. Carey grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, spent five years in the Navy and has resided in Nashville since 1962.

Caitlin Hamilton Summie, a veteran Book publicist and marketing director, will walk writers through the basics of book publicity. A former marketing director of MacMurray & Beck and of Blue Hen Books/Penguin Putnam, Summie, during the course of her career, has help launch numerous authors, and published both short stories and poems. Her short story collection, To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts, earned excellent reviews nationwide and took Silver in the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year.

Marilyn Kallet is the author of 18 books, including The Love That Moves Me and Packing Light: New and Selected Poems. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Tennessee, where she taught for 37 years. Kallet is the Poet Laureate of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Smoky Mountain hikes, mountain lore, disaster and mayhem are on the agenda during the GSMA Panel Discussions emceed by Sam Venable. Venable, a semi-retired humor columnist for the Knoxville News-Sentimental and winner of numerous writing awards, is the author of ten books. His newest collection is Someday I May find Honest Work, a newspaper Humorist’s Life. Venable’s lively commentary will offer entertaining and uncommon perspectives to common experiences. Panelists include Ben Anderson, author of Smokies Chronicle: A Year of Hiking in Smokey Mountains National Park. Anderson, life-long devotee of the Smokies, is a former media relations director at Warren Wilson College and an assistant professor of Mass Communications at Florida Southern College, and has also worked on the staffs of The Asheville Times, the Atlanta Journal and other newspapers. A backcountry volunteer for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for more than 20 years, Anderson currently provides marketing and public relations work for the Grove Arcade Public Market Foundation in Asheville.

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