Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 14, 1993 TAG: 9312140106
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Kathleen Wilson
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On Saturday - thanks to the citizens of Buchanan - I found it in the back of a pickup truck.
As warm and special as the town's community parade, party and pageant were, the true spirit of Christmas glowed in a pickup truck filled with bales of hay and some 20 adults and children who huddled together under plaid wool blankets.
For those who can't come to the community party, the community brings the party right to their front doors.
That despite the fact that the clock outside of the Bank of Buchanan on Main Street was flashing that it was just 20 degrees outside.
When we'd arrive at a home, someone would jump out of the truck and knock on the door. Then the amateur choir in the truck would launch into "Silent Night," "We Three Kings," or any of about a dozen other songs printed on a sheet we all held in our frozen hands.
We'd end by singing `We wish you a Merry Christmas." Dylan Johnson, 6, would spontaneously burst out "Happy New Year!" when we'd quit singing.
Although the circuit seemed random, it was, in fact, deliberately planned.
As we rode through the streets in a swirl of snow flurries under a blanket of stars, someone would suggest we stop here or there to sing for the residents of an adult home for the mentally ill.
Or for a woman who was spending her first Christmas without her husband. We even stopped to sing to Mr. Williams, described to me as the man who sweeps the post office.
Buchanan reminded me some of Bedford Falls from "It's a Wonderful Life." It's a small town where everyone knows everyone else.
It's a town where everyone cares about everyone else.
For the past two years, the town's churches have banded together to throw a community Christmas party.
Now they all gather at the Buchanan Volunteer Fire Department, where the entire crowd heads after the annual parade.
It's not a fancy get-together. It's the kind of gathering you'd have at home with your own family, with hot apple cider and warm peanut butter cookies.
After that, the crowd roams next door to the Episcopal Church for the annual Christmas pageant, where 25 children create a live Nativity scene.
"Don't forget we also had a goat, two sheep and a pregnant goat," added Kathy Creech, who's married to Stephen, the minister of Buchanan's United Methodist Church.
Their son, Timothy - whose just a few months shy of being 2 years old - was the pageant's littlest angel.
\ Reporters are supposed to 'fess up if for some reason they might have some sort of bias about a particular subject.
So I'm 'fessing up. Calin Valsan, a Fulbright scholar and Ph.D candidate at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business, is someone I am enormously fond of.
Then why is it that when he lived some 5,000 miles away in Romania we communicated more by mail than we do now that he's just up the road in Blacksburg?
I caught up with Calin at Blacksburg's XYZ Gallery, where he was showing a collection of his oil paintings.
Calin is one of those rare people whose right brain creativity is in absolute balance with his left brain brilliance.
I was around when we were all teaching him about American slang.
"You mean back when I was clueless," he said with a smile.
I asked him if he'd ever been told he's a Renaissance man.
Or more importantly, if he even knew what the term "Renaissance man" meant.
"Yes," he said slowly. "It means I've been dead for 600 years."
Members of the university's faculty and administration turned out to celebrate Calin's artistic achievement. He also has a strong following of friends he's made through the university's Cranwell Center.
His work has been shown at galleries in New York's Soho district and in Washington, D.C.
Locally, it's another matter.
Galleries in the Roanoke Valley have politely turned his works down.
Maybe, I suggested, it's because many local galleries are trying not to use the works of local artists.
"But . . . I'm not local," Calin said, in his thick Eastern European accent.
"I'm from Romania!"
by CNB