When I came to the Council my mother-in-law joked that it looked like I had finally found a job giving money away. That’s about the size of it, though I’ve discovered that doing a good job of giving money away is harder than you might think.

It is not that we don’t have people willing to take the cash off our hands and lots of projects competing for our resources. The trick is to pick the very best ones. Fortunately, we have a good program committee whose members, drawn 50/50 from our board and the general public, make grant decisions subject to the full board’s review. Working with these conscientious humanists is one of the pleasures of my job.

Even so, check signing can be downright tedious. Think of it as paying the household bills on a grand scale. It requires sitting down to a stack of paperwork twice a month and doggedly working through payments large and small.

I share the chore with board member Jim Rowley, and that makes it better. Time spent with Dr. Rowley is well spent. He is our president emeritus, and after more than two years I find I still have plenty to learn from one as thoroughly experienced in Council affairs as he.

They included payments to every corner of the Mountain State. A sizable check went to a YWCA summer camp at Cedar Lakes, and another to Huntington Museum. One went to the Randolph County School Board, for a folklife video; we recently showed off a segment of that, a fun program full of draft horses, oxen and mules. Another check went to Mercer County schools, for poetry. A couple went to projects at WVU, at least one to Marshall, one to Shepherdstown and one to Williamson, and another to Steenrod Elementary School in Wheeling for a remarkable foreign language program.

And on and on — I counted history, literature, ethics, education, folklore and poetry among the projects which caught my eye on check day.

Council grants are awarded on a competitive basis, and the more competitive the better. More applications give us more ideas to choose from, which means that the overall humanities program we offer to West Virginians is that much stronger. Ultimately, successful grantsmaking requires more money and more demand for the money. When I speak to groups, I find myself asking people for money — and asking them to ask us.

I’ll leave you with the same message: Do contribute what you can, using the enclosed mailer, and do ask us to fund your best program ideas.

After all, that’s what the money’s for.

Eclectic as always is this group of reading recommendations. Current West Virginia books of interest include the self-published Hippies and Holiness, the third novel by Council member Mack Samples, who discovered a fiction streak after leaving Glenville State College. And watch for Bil Lepp's forthcoming Adventures of the Monster Stick, tall tales from Bil and his late brother Paul. The yarns come mostly from the West Virginia State Liars Contest, which the Lepp boys dominated for years. Ken Sullivan contributed a foreword to this one, published by August House of Little Rock, Arkansas.

Jennifer Soule, WVHC board member and Adult and Senior Services Coordinator for the West Virginia Library Commission, recommends Lamb in Love by Carrie Brown. Kirkus Reviews calls Lamb "a charmingly old-fashioned account of a small town romance." Jennifer simply says it is one of the "sweetest books" she's read in a long time.

Sweet for another reason is Chocolat by Joanne Harris. This is a story of a chocolatier—and perhaps witch—who sets up a chocolate shop in a small French town during Lent. The novel features a fascinating array of characters, and the conflict between the chocolatier and the village priest makes for a real page-turner. Pam LeRose passed this on to Jane Siers, and they both loved it.

Ken Sullivan's current enthusiasm is Jacob's Ladder, Donald McCaig's latest novel. The book, which Ken says is sort of an Appalachian Gone With the Wind minus the melodrama, deals with the dissolution of a Virginia mountain plantation during the Civil War. Jacob's Ladder is set mostly in Virginia, with key scenes at Philippi and elsewhere in West Virginia.

McCaig, of Highland County, Virginia, is a writer, sheep farmer, and occasional commentator on National Public Radio. He is best known for Nop's Trial, about the national sheep dog trial circuit, and the sequel, Nop's Triumph. Another of his novels, The Man Who Made the Devil Glad, is set entirely in West Virginia. He wrote an outstanding nonfiction memoir, An American Homeplace, about his decision to leave a New York ad agency to make a life in the country. McCaig joins Kentuckian Wendell Berry on the Council's wish list of neighboring writers to bring in for lectures.

I would like to thank the West Virginia Humanities Council as well as Dr. Byers, Mr. Tenney, and Mr. Randolph for my copy of In the Mountain State: A West Virginia Folklore and Cultural Studies Curriculum. I can assure you that it is a resource I will use and share a great deal at Green Bank Elementary-Middle School.

It has some wonderful ideas that we will be using for our 9th annual Appalachian Harvest Festival this October. This is a day-long event focusing on our Appalachian culture and showcasing the talents of artists, musicians, storytellers, cooks, dancers, farmers, historians, Civil War reenacters, senior citizens, etc.

Congratulations on producing a fine resource for teachers.

Alesia Wayne  Green Bank Elementary- Middle School, Librarian, Green Bank Observatory

In the Mountain State is available to teachers free of charge by contacting the Council, (304) 346-8500 or wvhuman@wvhc.com.—ed

Dear Humanities Council,

What an absolutely stimulating experience it was to be in the audience of top notch Shakespearean performances! And that was only part of what I gained from the Updating Shakespeare seminar . . . ideas for staging Shakespearean scenes with my theatre students . . . new perspectives on analysis of a play as a teacher and as a director . . . classroom discussion "tidbits" ranging from details of King Henry VIII's armor to the taste of

mead. Obviously, this seminar trip was a kaleidoscope of experiences I plan to use in my teaching this coming school year.

Julia Lee, Parkersburg South High SchoolMs. Lee was part of a Council-sponsored Summer Teacher Institute that visited Great Britain this summer.—ed

Dear Humanities Council,

Just a note to say my brother Tom and I painted all the white trim back in 1982. It was a great job, and Ms. Hubbard was a wonderful person. I hope the Hubbard House will be as you and the public want it to be. It's a grand place. Thank you.

Just a note to let you know that I really enjoyed the trip we took [this spring]. I felt I got my money's worth, and I would like to be notified of future trips. The talks by all those park rangers were enlightening, and [Ken and Jane's] running commentary made it all light and entertaining. Good job.

Gene Quarrick, Morgantown

The term is often used interchangeably with clogging, but it should not be. Clogging is more structured and has certain universally accepted steps. Cloggers often raise their feet high off the floor, some kicking higher than their heads. They often keep a steady shuffle with one foot, freeing the other foot and leg to do some fancy moving. And clogging is often done in teams. Flatfoot dancers, on the other hand, dance solo and tend to keep both feet close to the floor. The steps are not quite so fancy, and there are no standard steps. Among the old-time flatfoot dancers, the movement was often backwards. Hence, many of them referred to it as "backstep dancing." Two of West Virginia’s better known traditional musicians, Phoebe Parsons and her brother Noah Cottrill, always referred to it as backstepping.

Close observation of a good West Virginia flatfoot dancer will reveal a combination of several different kinds of dancing. There is a little of the Irish stepdance in it, sometimes a little polka shuffle can be observed, and perhaps a step or two has been borrowed from what southern blacks called tap dancing. But the best part of it all is that every flatfoot dancer tends to do it a little differently. It is the expression of how that particular dancer feels about the music that he or she is hearing. Good flatfoot dancers feel the drive of a fiddle deep in their spines. They put their souls on display and proudly demonstrate with the movement of their feet all of the good things about living in West Virginia.

—Mack Samples, West Virginia University Extension Service

Hubbard House Party
What do you call a party that requires more tents,
more chairs, and twice as much food as you
had planned? A success! The historic 1836 Hubbard House hadn't seen so many people under tents since it was the site of a military hospital during the Civil War. Over two hundred historians, preservationists, and other well-wishers gathered on the lawn on June 19 to celebrate the state's birthday and the preservation of this local landmark.

The occasion was the quarterly meeting of the Kanawha Valley Historical and Preservation Society. The purpose was to invite society members and interested citizens to become a part of the Council's effort to restore the historic home and grounds.

After lunch under the gaily striped tents, guests relaxed with cool drinks while Council president Joe Jefferds, executive director Ken Sullivan, and representatives from the architectural firm of Paul Marshall & Associates explained their plans to preserve the home and put it to work as a center for humanities programming. Henry Battle, historical society president, urged his members to support the preservation effort financially since it was their organization that first called attention to the risk of losing the historic MacFarland-Hubbard House to commercial development.

The high point of the program was the presentation of the Civil War cannonball that has passed to each successive owner of the house since it was lobbed through the roof during that conflict. Pat Doumaux, representing the First Presbyterian Church to whom the property was bequeathed by parishioner Elizabeth Hubbard, handed off this piece of history (wrapped up in a Tiffany's box, no less!) to Ken Sullivan to the applause of the crowd.

At the end of the program guests flocked to the door of the old house for tours by enthusiastic volunteers and Council members Robin and Jim Snyder and Martha Confer. Those waiting for a tour took a turn around the grounds or enjoyed Ellen's Homemade Ice Cream to the eclectic sounds of a string trio, featuring Alan Freeman playing dulcimer, Jenny Allinder on violin, and Jack Bowman on cello.

The festivities continued throughout the afternoon as community members who had not attended the luncheon dropped by to tour the mansion and enjoy the music and a piece of cake commemorating West Virginia's 136th birthday.

The day marked the official kick-off of the Hubbard House Preservation Campaign, the Humanities Council's drive to raise funds to carry out the preservation work. The campaign, chaired by former Council president Thad Epps, has met with a positive

response from preservation-minded individuals, foundations, and corporations in the Kanawha Valley and around the state.

The single largest gift to date is a grant of $75,000 from the Clay Foundation. Gifts of all sizes brought the campaign to a total of $280,000, or over one-third of its $750,000 goal, by August 1, less than two months after its start.

Naming and memorial opportunities are available to donors to the campaign, and several such gifts have already been received. Four Charleston-area land companies memorialized the foyer and historic staircase—reputed to have come from the Old White resort, precursor to The Greenbrier—in memory of Roxalana Noyes, their shared ancestress and daughter of the original owner of the land on which the Hubbard House is built.

Anyone wishing information on the progress of the preservation or wanting to contribute to the effort may call Jane Siers, director of development, at (304) 346-8500.

As an author, folklorist, filmmaker, and academic administrator, William R. Ferris has compiled a distinguished record of achievement and leadership in the humanities during a career spanning nearly three decades.

Before becoming chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities in November 1997, Dr. Ferris served for eighteen years as founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. Under his leadership, the University of Mississippi developed the most comprehensive southern studies curriculum in the nation, and the center, with an interdisciplinary approach incorporating popular, folk, historical, and literary subjects, attained national recognition as a model for regional studies centers. In 1993 the center was named a nongovernmental organization affiliated with the United Nations.

A professor of anthropology and a prolific author, Dr. Ferris spearheaded the creation of the best-selling Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, published in 1989. Containing entries on every aspect of southern culture and widely recognized as a major reference work linking popular, folk, and academic cultures, the volume was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In Russia, eastern Europe, and Australia it has been used as a tool for understanding cultural and social diversity.

Among the cultural programs Dr. Ferris established at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture are the Oxford Conference for the Book, the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, and conferences on Elvis Presley, civil rights and the law, and civil rights and the media. The center also sponsors seminars for teachers, educational tours of the South, traveling exhibitions, and musical performances.

Dr. Ferris joins the West Virginia Humanities Council for its twenty-fifth anniversary as the McCreight lecturer in the humanities. He will speak on the role of the humanities in preserving our American heritage. The lecture will be held on October 14 at 7:30 p.m. in the theatre of the Cultural Center on the Capitol Complex in Charleston. A reception will follow in the Great Hall. The lecture and reception following are free and open to the public.

A nation's legacy is that part of the past that we choose to preserve for the future. In Charleston, the West Virginia Humanities Council has chosen to preserve the historic Hubbard House. The campaign will save one of the city's few antebellum houses, while providing a working humanities center. Council supporters have contributed significant resources to the project, and their efforts are commendable.

Year in and year out we lose more and more irreplaceable pieces of America's past through neglect or lack of funds. Historic buildings crumble, rare documents and photographs disintegrate, and collections mold. What can be done to stop this tragic loss of American heritage?

NEH is partnering with other federal agencies, in a White House initiative called Save America's Treasures, to identify and stabilize the nation's most important and imperiled cultural resources before they are gone forever. In planning for the celebration of a new millennium, the White House Millennium Council asked twelve federal agencies to submit lists of endangered cultural artifacts and historic sites that are of national significance and in dire need of treatment.

As the nation's leading advocate of lifelong study of America's cultural heritage, NEH proposed a number of preservation projects, twelve of which have been funded. They are—

* The largest collection of Thomas Jefferson's letters and writings outside of the Library of Congress (Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston);

* Jazz legend Louis Armstrong's home (Queens College, N.Y.);

* The original manuscript of "The Star Spangled Banner," original competition drawings for the design of the U.S. Capitol, and early watercolors of the White House's interior (Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore);

* Washburn Mill, birthplace of General Mills, producer of Gold Medal Flour, home of Betty Crocker's kitchen, flour-milling capital of the world from 1880 to 1930 (Minneapolis, Minn.);

* Dutch colonial manuscripts dating to the mid-17th century, the earliest records for what became the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware

and western Connecticut (New York State Archives, Albany);

* Photographs and yearbooks documenting the pioneering work of social reformer Jane Addams from the 1890s to the 1930s (University of Illinois at Chicago);

* Collection of antislavery literature from the libraries of abolitionist leaders (Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.);

* Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald's entire manuscript collection (Princeton University, N.J.);

* The home and studio of Lincoln Memorial sculptor Daniel Chester French (Stockbridge, Mass.);

* Richmond, Va.'s Jackson Ward neighborhood, the center of the city's African American professional and social life at the turn of the 20th century;

* Home of author Edith Wharton (Lenox, Mass.);

* Home of Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school of modern design and one of the most influential architects of the 20th century (Lincoln, Mass.).

These materials and sites are among America's proudest and most distinguished treasures. Saving them will cost $5.25 million, but it is a small price to pay to guarantee our children's and grandchildren's direct access to American history.

To think log construction was a choice made due to lack of skills misses the mark entirely. At Bath and elsewhere, log buildings were often constructed from professionally writtenspecifications that might even include directions regarding the type of notching to use. Log construction persisted for many years in isolated parts of the state, as evidenced in 1872 in McDowell County, when commissioners ordered that a new courthouse be of log construction. Throughout the state, log buildings remain in excellent condition, many covered, as they have been from the beginning, with clapboards.

Sawmills, brickyards, and quarries provided other materials for building. In 1798, a visitor to Wheeling described Moses Shepherd’s new dwelling as "one of the best built and handsomest stone houses . . . on this side of the mountains." With its graceful Georgian proportions and finely crafted details, Monument Place, as it came to be called, would have been at home on either side of the mountains. It stood on the same site where Moses’s father had built a log stockade, Fort Shepherd, a few decades before. Old Stone Church in Lewisburg, another late 18th-century building, tells eloquently of its significance by its very name.

By this time Samuel Washington had already built his own stone mansion, Harewood, in the Eastern Panhandle. In 1794 its beautifully paneled walls witnessed the wedding of Dolly Payne Todd and James Madison. Early in the 19th century, other Washington family members built even larger houses, of brick, near Harewood on tracts that a teen-aged George Washington had originally surveyed for Lord Fairfax. Blakeley and Claymont Court still stand on axis with each other across the meandering Bullskin Run.

Far to the south, mineral springs in Greenbrier and Monroe counties were already attracting visitors in the early 1800s. As at Berkeley Springs, health and pleasure seekers were first housed in log structures. By 1840 the management at Sweet Springs opened a new hostelry so attractive that its design has often been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, even though built after his death. As it turns out, William B. Philips, one of the talented builders at the University of Virginia, designed and built the hotel which still stands. Sweet Springs was soon eclipsed by the phenomenal Grand Central Hotel at nearby White Sulphur.

Just before the Civil War, the state of Virginia began construction of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum at Weston. When the hospital was finally completed some 20 years later, its proponents bragged that it was the world’s largest cut-stone building. No longer used as a hospital, the sprawling building still dominates its environs.

The Weston hospital was designed by R. Snowden Andrews, a Baltimore architect, but other antebellum institutions looked westward for their architects. Cincinnati’s James Keys Wilson provided Alexander Campbell with a Gothic Revival design for Bethany College in Brooke County. Begun in 1858 and completed in 1871, Old Main was a remarkable achievement for its time and place. It remains the centerpiece of one of America’s most idyllic campuses.

The Federal government provided Wheeling with an impressive new Post Office and Custom House just before the Civil War. The stone Renaissance Revival building soon came to play a far more important role than architect Ammi B. Young could have anticipated, when it housed delegates who met in 1861 to create the new state. Now handsomely restored, it is known as West Virginia Independence Hall.

Another architectural testament to the separation of one state from the other lies close by. Cast-iron fronts of the List Building were fabricated in Wheeling, but at different times, since the building was erected in several stages. The base of one pilaster is labeled "Sweeneys & Co. Wheeling, Va." The base of the adjoining pilaster bears the label "Sweeney & Son. Wheeling W.Va."

Wheeling could build almost anything, thanks in great measure to its talented cadre of German craftsmen and builders. Known as the Nail City, it also became famous for its pressed, stamped metal ceilings — called, of course, "Wheeling Ceilings." Rows and rows of townhouses still exist in Wheeling, the only city of any real urban character when West Virginia was created.

One of the nation’s most significant and familiar Civil War sites is Harpers Ferry, at the state’s easternmost edge. John Brown’s Fort, built in 1847 as the U.S. Armory’s fire-engine house, has been moved and rebuilt no fewer than four times. High above, St. Peter’s Catholic Church lords it over this picturesque little town on the Potomac as imposingly as any European prototype along the Rhine or Rhone.

Three of the new state’s first priorities were to provide for a state university and a state penitentiary, and to decide where to locate the capital. After alternating between Wheeling and Charleston, the latter city was finally selected as the permanent seat of government, and it soon began to grow accordingly. Charleston’s 1870s Kanawha Presbyterian Church was designed by another Cincinnati architect, M.E. Anderson, and its interior is lit by richly colored stained-glass windows by Tiffany.

West Virginia University, located in Morgantown, has grown over the years to become a fascinating architectural amalgam. One of the earliest architects associated with the University was Elmer Forrest Jacobs, who also embellished Morgantown with some of its finest Victorian-era mansions and commercial structures. Jacobs was the first, and for many years the only, West Virginia member of the American Institute of Architects.

The original architect for the State Penitentiary, a grim foreboding Gothic pile at Moundsville is believed to be Joseph Sinclair Fairfax. At the turn of the 20th century, Wheeling architects Franzheim and Giesey designed a huge addition. Ironically, West Virginia’s state motto appears high above the prison’s battlemented entrance: Montani Semper Liberi — Mountaineers [are] Always Free.

Edward Bates Franzheim, Millard F. Giesey, and their sometime partner Frederic F. Faris, were the state’s leading architectural triumvirate for many years. Though their work centered in the Wheeling area, they designed a courthouse for Mineral County, and did several buildings at the turn of the century in Marion County’s overnight oil boomtown, Mannington.

Parkersburg, a city that had already grown rich on oil, was large enough to have its own architects. Parkersburg’s Juliana and Ann streets contain the state’s most concentrated grouping of Italianate, Second Empire, and Queen Anne mansions, all typical of up-scale Victorian-era design. Many were designed by Richard H. Adair and William Howe Patton. H. Rus Warne, a Parkersburg native, practiced in his home town only briefly before moving to Charleston. He became one of the state’s most important early 20th century architects, and founded a firm that still exists. Among his most interesting and unusual commissions were for the 1907 Jamestown Exposition, held in Norfolk, Virginia. His colonial-revival West Virginia Building remains, but his "Coal Column," an obelisk constructed of coal from nineteen different West Virginia seams, is gone.

With coal came the company town, the most maligned and most misunderstood category of West Virginia architecture. Castigated as monotonous, poorly constructed and horribly located, company towns were, in some instances, all of the above. Others were model towns, providing far better living conditions for miners and their families than they had previously enjoyed. At Gary, in McDowell County, the U.S. Coal and Coke Company maintained an in-house staff of architects and engineers who, among other duties, designed houses, churches, stores, and baseball diamonds. No matter that the drawing of an onion dome for a proposed eastern Orthodox Church appears more like something from Vidalia than from Muscovy, the company tried earnestly to provide its workforce with amenities far beyond basic requirements.

The Depression of the 1930s hit West Virginia hard. Yet in retrospect, some of its most significant and important buildings were products of this pivotal decade. Cass Gilbert’s magnificent State Capitol in Charleston had been started in 1924, but was not completed until 1932. One of America’s finest "temples of democracy," its main wing follows the architectural pattern established by the U.S. Capitol, though its gilded dome rises five feet higher. Next door is the Executive Mansion, designed by Charleston architect Walter F. Martens.

Also during the Depression years, a number of state parks were developed, with design assistance from the National Park Service and building assistance from the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Log cabins, concession stands, picnic pavilions, stables, and other structures reflected the intentionally rustic flavor then deemed appropriate for park design. Pioneers of the olden days, who had taken such care to hew logs to a square, then join them with closely spaced half- or full-dovetail notches, would have deplored the round logs, heavy chinking, and chopped-off ends of CCC work. Now, after more than a half century, these "Lincoln Log" buildings in parks such as Babcock in Fayette County, Watoga in Pocahontas, and Lost River in Hardy, seem just right for their woodsy settings. Hawks Nest, in Fayette County, has several Depression-era buildings along with a 1960s lodge designed by the well-known Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm TAC: The Architects Collaborative. The lodge, an angular composition of poured-in-place concrete and brick, represents a later phase of park architecture, one that has yet to appear as comfortable in its spectacular natural setting as its 1930s companions.

Architecture is alive and well in West Virginia. The framers of the State Seal would be happy to know that many of the old log cabins peculiar to the region still stand, now alongside a myriad of buildings representing every conceivable type and style, and built of materials they could not have imagined. If what went before is any indication, West Virginia can look forward to what comes next.
S. Allen Chambers is the author of Buildings of West Virginia, to be published in 2000.

Chambers is probably best known in Virginia circles for his book Lynchburg: An Architectural History, which a Richmond reviewer once said "tells you more about Lynchburg than anyone could ever possibly want to know!" He is a co-author of What Style is It?, a guide to American architecture published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and is the author of Poplar Forest and Thomas Jefferson. His book Buildings of West Virginia, part of the series Buildings of the United States, will be available in 2000.

Earlier this year Chambers presented an engaging and enlightening talk on West Virginia architecture in Charleston at the annual meeting of Phi Beta Kappa. The program was jointly sponsored with the West Virginia Humanities Council. Plans are underway at the Council to feature him in a lecture series on the same topic in cities around the state.

In addition to architectural history, Chambers is very involved in historic preservation. The Council hopes to host him for a book signing when the Hubbard House is restored and opened to the public in the near future. Watch P&M for developments!

On that frosty October morning, my brother and I were on top of the hill before daybreak. With a good seat above the hickory trees and guns loaded, we waited very quietly for the squirrels to start their early morning nut gathering and POW!!!! By ten o'clock the wind had picked up, so we came off the hill to brag to the family about our catch. We skinned the squirrels by cutting the hide around the middle of the body and up and down the underside and pulled the hide off, just like removing a set of clothes, well, maybe a little more complicated. We put the cleaned squirrels in a pan of salt water letting them soak for a few hours to draw out the wild taste.

Later in the day, Momma would rinse and cut up the "squakks" and put them in a pot of water, boiling until they were tender. The pieces were drained, coated with flour, salt and pepper to taste and fried in an iron skillet. A small amount of water was put in a roaster along with the fried squirrels and put in the oven for one and one-half hours. Gravy was made from the leavings in the skillet. Served up with mashed potatoes and green beans—what a feast!

Momma says she can remember the day when "squirrel meat kinda filled the bill for meat in the fall before butchering time."

• Plant cabbage seeds while the sign is in the head.

• Plant late cucumbers when the sign is in the twins.

• What grows above the ground should be planted in the new of the moon; below, in the old of the moon.

• Plant corn when the sign is in the scale, and the ears will be heavy.

• Fruit is never killed by frost in the light of the moon.

• Turkeys dance before a rain.

• Sweating rocks are a sign of rain.

• When the pitcher of water sweats excessively, it is going to rain.

• When the salt melts, it will rain soon.

• If the wool "snurls" up when you spin, it is a sign of rain.

• When the insects fly low over the water, it is a sign of rain.

• A rain crow (dove) calling is a sign of coming rain.

• A ring around the moon with no stars inside the ring, means rain; the numbers of stars equal the number of days until rain.

• When flies bite you, it will rain soon.

• When the smoke from the chimney rises straight in the air, the weather will be fair; when it spreads out over the roof, the weather will be foul.

• When cobwebs can be seen on the ground in the morning, it will be a fine day.

• Lightning in the north is a sign of dry weather.

• February2—Groundhog's Day—If the groundhog sees his shadow on this day, there will be six more weeks of bad weather; if he doesn't see his shadow, then winter will be broken.

• If March comes in like a lamb, it will go out like a lion; if it comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb.

• If there is thunder in February, there will be snow in May.

• If there is rain on Whitsunday, there will be rain for seven Sundays.