Oak Ridge Today

Children’s Museum Gala will be virtual

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Sam Venable

Appalachian tales and mountain music will be presented at the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge 19th annual Gala on Friday, December 4.

It will be the museum’s first virtual gala, and it will celebrate East Tennessee’s great mountain heritage with the theme “MoonShine on the Mountain,” a press release said. It will also feature Children’s Museum STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) mixed in with the entertainment.

Sam Venable, humor columnist for the Knoxville News Sentinel, will bring his storytelling magic to the Museum, presenting Southern Appalachian Tales for the Gala audience, the press release said. Author of 14 books, Venable writes on outdoor and humor themes.

In recent years, Venable’s popularity has grown as a comedic entertainer, the press release said. His topics include how to speak “hillbillyese” and coping with the nutty life in which we live. He has teamed up with entertainers Bill Landry, a TV personality; Elizabeth Rose, singer and storyteller; and Jim Claborn, hillbilly funnyman, on the “Talk is Cheap” comedy tour at venues throughout the region.

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Learn about this summer’s total solar eclipse at ORICL

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Chip Bailey, seen here on the banjo, taught an ORICL course earlier this year on Celtic music in Ireland and Scotland and will teach a course this summer on Celtic music in eastern Canada. He is a teaching artist with the Tennessee Arts Commission. (Submitted photo)

Chip Bailey, seen here on the banjo, taught an ORICL course earlier this year on Celtic music in Ireland and Scotland and will teach a course this summer on Celtic music in eastern Canada. He is a teaching artist with the Tennessee Arts Commission. (Submitted photo)

Would you like to know more about the August 21 total solar eclipse, investing to make your retirement secure, famous Tennessee ladies, Emily Dickinson’s nimble mind, and the inventions of Knoxville’s Weston Fulton (“Edison of the South”)?

Do you have a hankering for learning about and hearing more Celtic music, as discussed and played by Chip Bailey, a teaching artist with the Tennessee Arts Commission?

Want to learn how to travel the world the easy way, write a memoir, crochet creatively, and do visual journaling? How to identify summer birds and butterflies on the Melton Lake Greenway, prepare and cook three Asian dishes, do cryptal varietal crossword puzzles, upgrade a computer, and determine when to replace your PC?

Read Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” out loud with others? Hear about successful and healthy aging, calories and metabolism and “blue zones,” where people live the longest?

These are among the courses offered during the summer 2017 term of the Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning, starting June 5 and ending August 4. [Read more…]