Carver's Photographic Journey

Monday, May 3, 2010

That's My World Tuesday: Sanford, NC Pottery Festival and Melanoma Monday

Bill and I went to Sanford, NC for the pottery festival. It was a little under an hour drive there and I enjoyed the scenery as well as the festival.

I thought the little train station that we passed looking for the festival had a charm of its own. That's the train station in the shot below.

The next couple of shots are of houses we passed while continuing to look for the Sanford Civic Center where the festival took place.

I'm not sure when if ever I've gone to Sanford before. It reminded me of other small towns in North Carolina that I've been to.

Finally we spotted the festival. It was quite large with many different booths inside the civic center and also large outdoor tents with booths and concession stands.

I want to update my post here and explain about the flags below. I knew the black flag was for missing in action servicemen and women. Groups following our involvement in Vietnam started using that flag in their efforts to locate lost loved ones. What I didn't know is the other flag was the first confederate flag and later others I'm more familiar with were used. If I'd known it was a confederate flag I probably wouldn't have used that shot although the rebel flag is the version I particularly dislike since hate groups use it. I am a North Carolina native and love my state but I am not proud of some parts of my state's history. Let's just say I'd never knowingly post a confederate flag unless it was part of a history post. I'm embarrassed that at first when a commenter mentioned what that flag was, I corrected him because I was associating that flag with the NC state flag. Boy did I feel dumb when I looked it up because the NC stage flag has NC on it, duh. I almost removed this photograph but since it is a part of the state history I'll leave it although I kind of wish they hadn't chosen a confederate flag to fly beside the MIA/POW one. I also dislike how hate groups use the confederate flag.

In addition to the North Carolina potters, there were also North Carolina wines and chocolate. We didn't do the wine tasting portion although it looked tempting.

I didn't take hardly any photographs inside because I'm shy about shooting around people. I need to be able to get some distance from them.

It was too dark to shoot inside the large outdoor tents where some of the booths were set up.

After restraining ourselves from the wine tasting, and fudge booths, we even managed to walk on past the funnel cake, hot dog, and barbecue booths.

We ended up picking the stir fry booth for a rather pleasant lunch. There wasn't even a line for that booth.

My main post about Melanoma Monday is on my other blog, Carver's Sight or is that Site. This will be a condensed version. Melanoma is a cancer which most commonly originates in the skin although sometimes originates in other places. Melanoma can attack people from all races and with all skin types. If diagnosed early it has a good prognosis but once it spreads it's very difficult to treat and can be fatal, spreading to anywhere in the body. Try to avoid the sun during the heat of the day, and keep an eye out for skin lesions which change. It's a good idea to get screened for skin cancer. The first Monday in May was designated as Melanoma Monday by the American Academy of Dermatology to promote Melanoma Awareness and sponsors free Skin Cancer screening on this day.

For more participants of That's My World, please visit the home site.