Some years ago, Ralph Stanley made a fascinating comment on the life on a prominent touring musician. He told me that he was usually able to book Saturday performances close enough to get home in time to worship in his own church on Sunday mornings. And he had only missed two meetings since he was elected to the school board. But, he added, he hadn’t spent Thanksgiving at home in a quarter of a century! It was, in fact, on a Thanksgiving night that he told me this, at the South Carolina Bluegrass Festival, in which he has starred  annually since its beginning twenty-five years earlier. 

This past Thanksgiving, he told me he was no longer on the school board. Just when I told him how much I thought we NEED him on the school board,  my son Wesley snapped this picture.

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Charles Joyner is Burroughs Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University, past president of the Southern Historical Association, and the author of the new 25th anniversary edition of Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community.