A Peter, Paul, and Mary Weekend

It started out to be a Friday night outdoor concert at lovely Chastain Amphitheater in Atlanta, where Peter, Paul, and Mary were scheduled to present another of their wonderful concerts.

I first heard PP&M person in Cincinatti about 1966 0r 67. We had nosebleed seats, but what a concert. Nobody does it better. And when they assigned parts to sections of the audience and led us in "Rock My Soul" that huge theater rocked! I suppose the statute of limitations is in effect so I'll admit that I snuck a very poor quality recording on my little portable reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Now they are back together. We have seen them several times at Chastain during the last few years. What a treat. So when we heard they were coming back this year, we called up our friends, Richard and Teresa. Richard, a renowned botanist in Georgia was planning to present, the day after the concert, a slideshow on the flora of the Floyd County prairies (another link) and Berry College flatwoods to the Georgia Botanical Society. Sounded like a hoot to me, so Sheila and I decided to just stay over in the big city for the slideshow. We reserved rooms for ourselves and for Richard and Teresa for Friday night.

Then we got the word, Mary's back surgery is not healing as fast as she had hoped and the concert was cancelled. The hotel reservations cound not be. So...

Friday night we took the leisurely route to the Big City stopping along the way to feast on good barbecue. We gathered in our hotel room and Richard accompanied us on the guitar as we sang PP&M songs for an hour and a half. Our rendition of "If I Had My Way" had to be toned down a bit, so the other guests wouldn't complain.



Next morning up and out to a Mickey D's for Egg McMuffins then on to the Dunwoody library to set up for the slide show. And what a show. Richard flipped through slides of gorgeous wildflowers for about 90 minutes as the group of 25 botanical enthusiasts chimed in with questions about the unique environment of the strange remnant prairies of western Floyd County Georgia and their bounty of plants found nowhere else in Georgia.

Meanwhile we bought a beautiful new book of Favorite Wildflower Walks of Georgia from Hugh and Carol Nourse, the authors, who were in attendance and graciously inscribed our copy. If you enjoy wildflowers, and especially if you ever venture to Georgia, you ought to check out this book. I have previously written about two of the walks (one, two) from here on the Limb.

Afterwards about half of the group accompanied us to a Mexican restaurant for more botanical talk over salsa and chips and quesadillas and such.

Our weekend was not over yet. The four of us drove on to the IMAX theater at the huge Mall of Georgia to see the new Harry Potter movie with the climatic scenes in 3D.

So, Mary, I hope you recover soon and return south with the boys. We'd love to have you right here in Rome, Georgia -- I'll bet we could fill up the Forum. It would have been awful hot (over 100ºF that day!) listening to you at Chastain Friday night. It was cool in the hotel room, and despite the unfortunate fact that at 60 I have lost a step or so off the top of my range, we had a hoot singing your songs!