The Boy Who Sought the North Wind

Published: Feb. 15, 2011, 11:29 p.m.

This Norwegian Folk Tale is being presented especially for this harsh winter and in preparation for the windy March to come. It involves a motif common to many folktales: a young traveler is taken advantage of by an innkeeper twice, but the third time proves the charm.

We come to you from Chattanooga, TN, having made our way from Charleston, SC., where we saw the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley (the first submarine to sink a ship in battle, which occurred in 1864) and the Charleston Tea Plantation (the only tea plantation in North America).

From there, we went to Atlanta, and saw the former home of Margaret Mitchell, a pioneering female journalist and author of the classic novel "Gone With the Wind". We also toured the Center for Puppetry Arts, which showcases puppets old and new from all over the world, ranging from shadow puppets to puppets constructed from found materials to classics like Punch and Judy to the latest hight-tech animatronic contraptions. Needless to say, there is a great deal of coverage of the extraordinary career of Jim Henson.

Just west of Georgia is the rustic retreat of Historic Banning Mills, which has a fantastic zip-lining course, and we were blissfully walking and zipping along among the clouds (almost) for several hours.

And here in Chattanooga, we've toured two caves (Ruby Falls and Raccoon Mountain) and the famous Rock City, and took a ride up (a mile up) the side of Lookout Mountain on the Chattanooga Incline Railway. And oh yes, how could we pass up the International Towing and Recovery Museum?

Happy Listening!

Dennis (Boy) and Kimberly (Mother, Wind, Innkeeper)