Moonshine in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Hanging out on the campus of Warren Wilson College outside Asheville, NC right now. Just met my friend Kelly for lunch. She works here. It's pretty beautiful. Hippyish school. Controversies on campus include nude hiking and bringing pets to work. Last night after the Orangeburg screening, we went back to Ellen's beautiful home and had marshmallows, hamburgers, salmon and salad and meatballs. It was great. I had a fan, an 11-year-old boy named David who had lots of questions about my film and told me the reason not many questions were asked was because everyone was confused. I met a woman artist who just recently decided to start working part-time to be able to devote more time to her art work. Orangeburg is very pretty. The school seems pretty supportive of the students and profs. Apparently it was a big hub in the civil rights days. The music prof works, who i thought was English, but actually is USAmerican. We had a good political discussion. Argued about one of my favorite argument topics: Hugo Chavez. He says it's like Munich in 33 or 38. I guess the Jews in this case are middle-class Venezuelans. A hyperbolic argument which i counter by saying the dude is not only democratically elected but also won in a referendum and re-elected. Then i went on a mini-tirade about OUR president saying that the kind of damage he's doing is going to reverberate for decades. I called him "that asshole" pretty loudly and then apologized because one of the students had her baby with her. She said no need to apologize for that!

This whole tour has been very inspiring. A way to meet so many great people in the South. Ellen offered me a place to sleep but i thought i'd go to Columbia and stay with my cousin instead. Then, when i was driving there i found out that she had gotten the flu and so i decided just to keep on driving to North Carolina. Screening tonight. Up at 5:15am for a 2.5-hr drive to the airport. Back to sunny Troy, New York.