Haven’t written in a couple of days as the pace of our stay in Palmyra quickened in the run-up to our final presentation there last night.

The show went well. We had a good large crowd, largely thanks to the excellent organizing and promotion of Bonnie Hays, our host at Historic Palmyra.

Everybody was singing, and was singing well – a pretty incredible feat considering that only one audience member was an experienced shape note singer. Many of the rest had come to the singing schools.

I held two singing schools and each attracted a whole bunch of people (26 at the first workshop!). A few shape note singers who couldn’t make it to the final presentation came to the singing schools and helped the participants get a foothold. Many of the singing school attendees also came to a practice session held an hour before the presentation. All of this added up to an enthusiastic crowd with enough singing instruction to pull off a substantial and varied list of songs we sang during the show.

The video presentation went well but I’ll leave it to Carrie to go into more detail.

Between the video and singing presentations we had a mini reception, thanks again to Historic Palmyra. Bonnie had gotten us a cake depicting the Erie Canal, complete with grass, canal boats, and the text “Subliminal History of New York State: Palmyra.” We’re still carrying around leftovers!

Anyhow, today we said our goodbyes and headed to Lockport. On our way (well, actually, out of our way) we stopped in Geneva to pick up a passage, then drove down Seneca Lake a little ways to visit Four Chimney’s winery, then headed back up past Canandaigua to visit Peter Jemison at Ganondagon. We had an interesting conversation with Peter about the history of Native Americans in what is now New York State and then walked up the trail at nearby Fort Hill to read markers telling the story of how the French burned a fort full of stockpiled corn there in the midst of a campaign to wipe out the Seneca in 1687.

Tomorrow we begin the Lockport leg of our tour with a singing school in Buffalo at Rustbelt Books (202 Allen St., 2-5 PM).

We arrived in town to find our pictures on the front page of the Lockport Union Sun & Journal. Hopefully pics of the article and from our stay in Palmyra will be coming along soon, but not tonight!

–Jesse