HWA

Here's what the HWA (Hemlock Wooly Adelgid) is doing to our forest. Have you noticed?

Back to the Future

I woke up in a panic: Oh my gosh, another deadline looming for the newspaper column, and I hadn't a clue what I would write. And so this morning's blogging time on the first "free" morning at home in a week has been given over to obligations. I will eventually post the whole piece here, but for now, just an excerpt from a piece about Ann's recent high school reunion in Mobile:

Friday's Meet and Greet under the vaulted atrium of the hotel lobby was an informal gathering. I consented to go briefly to be introduced to a few of her most cherished friends. It wasn't long before I found myself standing among the Ficus trees along the margins, conspicuously disengaged as gray-haired folk passed by for a quick look at my nametag. Was I was another of their classmates grown unrecognizable over the decades?...

...Soon, I slipped away to our fourth floor room; she didn't even notice. I stood there in the dark quiet and watched the crowd and my wife of thirty-six years, one of the strangers mingling in the lobby below. Hugs, back slaps, handshakes--a hundred ants touching antennae and moving on. We've come so far together to be so far apart for these two days, I thought. But such is the stuff of high school reunions, of separate realities that have made us who we are, for better or for worse.

I read it to Ann a little bit ago with the certainty that she would object; it's rather personal and she is a much more private person than Fred the Blogger. But she is fine with it, and I think this prospect of facing a high school reunion is enough of a shared reality for married folk that it will be of some interest and value for the Floyd Press readers next Thursday.

At any rate, I got that to-do item checked off my list. And now, oh wow, what a beautiful sunrise. I gotta go.

Fruit-Flasher

"It's rumored that in the early '90's, civic authorities ordered the Peachoid water tower repainted so it would look less like a big butt -- reducing rubbernecking fatalities on nearby I-85. It may be safer today, but from the right angle, the one-million gallon watersphere STILL looks like a bright orange butt." link

We knew to expect it this time down I-85 through South Carolina. The first time--twenty years ago, when the kids were young--it came upon us quite unexpected, like spotting the plumber's rump protruding out from under the kitchen sink when you walk into the house with an armful of groceries. It just sort of demands one's attention, and this is even with the purported taming down of its buttness since those days.

If I had time before work this morning, it would be fun to put some low-slung Carhartts about mid-cleavage, playing around in Photoshop. Be my guest, show us your best "just say no" picture.

The other thing I wish I had a picture of from our trip--but never went back with the camera--is the collection of identical signs that appeared about every 20 feet on the wall behind our motel in Mobile. Under a large, standard-yellow smiley face, were these words: YOU ARE BEING VIDEOTAPED AND RECORDED.

What a country.

Old Times There...

...are not forgotten.

Back in Dixieland. It has its charms and its memories. Spanish moss and mistletoe overhead; fireants and armadillo scratchings in the sandy soil; the smell of salt spray and marsh mud in Mobile.

Today we leave from Birmingham where I grew up. This is the first time I've ever stayed in a motel when visiting "home". Mom has some back problems and we didn't want her to worry her with beds to make, wet towels and such, though of course she insisted we could stay in her bedroom since she hasn't been able to sleep in the bed now for a month.

Between baulky wireless connections in the places we've been and Blogger.com eating one long post that I made the mistake of composing directly in the blogger edit window instead of my usual Notetabs text file, it's not been a good few days for any kind of writing, but particularly not for jotting to Fragments. That should change by midweek and the old rhythms return.

Right now, the four-cup coffee brewer smells like it has successfully done its job. We'll fill up our insulated cups from home to the top with hot coffee, swing from I459 to I59, next stop: Waffle House in Gadsden. Home to Floyd in time to pick up Tsuga from puppy camp. To Goose Creek before dark, in time to get the fire going in the woodstove to warm the place up again--a task that will take a day or more after it cooled down for four days without heat.

Ah well. Good to travel, great to travel home. See you on the other side, Y'ALL.

Elder Mobile-ity

Just a quick howjadoo from Mobile. Spanish moss, mistletoe overhead; fireants and armadillo sign underfoot; the smell of salt spray, the faint aroma of papermill and wet marsh mud. Traffic of I-65 just outside our dirty fourth floor window that also has a scenic overlook (and direct acoustic connection) with the busy lobby complete with piped-in bass-enhanced rap music. Makes me miss Musak); a lobby full of so many people my age at this 40th reunion of hers that it is impossible to continue to believe I'm still the kid I feel inside; the feel the morning after a night of motel air; gas pumps that demand you add more to your credit cards or you go someplace else for gas--we went someplace else; the elderly man with a cane spending his disability check for 6 lotto tickets and two cartons of Salem menthols; the unavoidable excess of speed just to keep from being rear-ended at less than 80, the high cost in fuel efficiency from driving so fast that had us stopping every little bit to keep the tank no less than half-empty (an Ann obsession I don't share.)

Sorry, that is the best I can come up with on short notice. I'm about to get out and see what I can find to occupy 10 hours til she comes home from the brunch with the girls, followed by other unspecified conviviality with folks she hasn't seen in almost a half century. There will be stories to hear going home--if she'll tell them. I think I'll go out and make a few of my own. Left alone to shift for myself for dinner last night, I ended up at Hooters. Yeah, really. I needed to be around some young people--the token codger sitting alone nursing his Killians, making social commentary to himself. I'm blogging this, he muttered, but he never did.

Counting My Blessings

November 2001. Our only grandchild, Abby, was less than a year old, barely enough hair to tie a ribbon around , fat-cheeked, speechless. My how she's grown into a bright, stuck-on-go little gal, just like her momma. We see her once or twice a year--and if she doesn't remember us down the road, she'll remember the white house in the woods, splashing in the creek, and she'll remember the dogs, Buster and especially Tsuga, her hug-buddy.

Mike and Holli, SIL and daughter, we thought were living far away then--in North Carolina. Now we wish they were so close, having seen how much country passes under the shadow of the plane between Goose Creek and South Dakota. Both are thriving in their respective therapy professions of PT and OT. I'm afraid we'll never get them back this way, now that Holli has a horse again. That was the only thing we could tempt her with that she didn't have out there. She's never forgotten Beauty, and her clubhouse in the barn loft--the blessings of a country childhood I'm thankful we could give her before wisking both kids to Birmingham so I could climb my professional ladder.

Nate soon lost the beard he had brought home from Belfast a few months before. If I'm keeping my calendars right, at Thanksgiving that year he was finishing his bachelors at Maryville, finally, after first taking a semester off to walk home from Bar Harbor in April through July 2000 on the back roads of 8 states, and then there was the stint at Queens College and after that, busking his way around Europe and a few months on a dairy farm in the Swiss Alps in 2001. His flight was scheduled to bring him home on September 13, 2001. There were some unsettling complications in air travel about that time. We were so thankful to have him home for Thanksgiving. Now he is married almost a year, moving even today somewhere on the road, from Vancouver where he finished a Masters in Theology to a few months in St. Louis. Now only God knows what and where the boy will go from here, and He isn't divulging what comes next just yet.

Ann was working at the pharmacy at the V.A. in Salem then, and didn't know at the time that it wouldn't be a forever job for her. Six months later, her first choice job, not available when we moved here in 1997, opened up. She started it the same week I left mine. And she's still there, more than four years later. She's to credit for the lovely table and meal.

I can't remember how we talked mom into joining us. I'm pretty certain it had to do with the rare conjunction of her son, his children and their child in one place. I don't think she's been back since. We'll get to see her for a short while when we pass through Birmingham soon.

The photographer behind the camera on this day was a fortunate fellow, with a fine family sitting down together to a warm meal in a snug old house far out in the woods. But six months after this picture was taken, he came home from the clinic and told his wife he needed to do something different with his life. He found blogging as a way of speaking out his uncertainties, but also as a way of sharing his blessings--and they were, and are many. And to this day, he finds this picture of the last time the whole family had Thanksgiving dinner in this old house, and it makes him feel mighty satisfied. Yes sir.

Committee-Comatose

This morning's blogging focus has been pre-empted by a brainsucking, late-night committee meeting. The blogger slept in and woke up behinder than usual. With regrets, we inform you that there will be no blog post this morning. Except for...

* Our motel in Mobile has a Business Center! Oh, I read it consists of one computer in a coat closet. No wireless in rooms after all. I expect I'll be drinking lots of coffee at B & N down the road, and maybe blogging from there if I can find something nice to say.

* Upon returning home, I'll need to not collect two hundred dollars and not go to jail. Here's the skinny: the truck, since getting the Subaru in August, has been farm-use only, just to haul firewood. That is, until it began getting balky and would or wouldn't start in unpredictable fashion. I took it in thinking it would be a one-hour fix; it turned out the part took four hours to get. So after a totally wasted day in town, I'm driving home at almost-dark when from behind me comes a blue flashing light. Seems my state inspection sticker expired in September, a fact that, in driving it up the pasture to pick up some oak I had failed to notice. I think this falls under the heading of irony.

* Got 150 sets of 5 notecards ready to pick up the end of next week. Thanks to all who have put their name on the list for one or more packets. I hope they find a little market; I'd like to have a half dozen different sets by this time next year. I'll also be considering bundling Slow Road Home with a set of cards for a special Christmas deal, details to follow after I have the cards in hand, or at least more time to think about the details first of next week. Oh, and I should add (and will probably mention again) that the card images are 4 x 6, edge to edge, and would make a fine framed wall hanging with some simple mat cutouts. Collect them all! For your wall!

* The studded tires go on Ann's Subaru next week. Last year, it was the first week of December that we had that hellacious ice storm of the entire winter. This year, at least I have the Outback. The truck, even with 4WD, wasn't so trustworthy on our road without some weight in the back. And the weight just added momentum when the rear end fishtailed toward the ravine that held the frozen creek, far below the road. Oh dread. Old Man Winter loometh.

* Anybody else having problems with MSIE7? The danged program (which I kept loaded only because the MT edit window didn't like Firefox) insisted it be updated, and ever since, every time I close Control Panel or any other XP Explorer window, up pops MSIE. Makes their browsers usage stats look really good though, to have it automatically launch at random times in the normal use of a computer where Firefox is the default browser. Grummmble...

Mixed Nuts

NOAA Wx Radio's Greatest Hits

We call him Jose because he seems to have a south-of-the-border ESL quality to his robot speech as he reads the weather synopsis, forecast or current readings of conditions around the area. He came out with a good one yesterday. Of course he just reads what the statisticians put before him:

November 19, 2006. Blacksburg Virginia set a record for snowfall amount of TRACE which exceeds the former snowfall record for this date of ZERO recorded in 2002.

Words Fit to Print

Drove to Wytheville yesterday to make final arrangements for the notecards. They are spot-on and will be ready for me to pick up on Friday, December 1. But the best part of the trip was the guided tour of the facility at Wordsprint, owned and operated by Bill Gilmer. We knew Bill when he moved to Wytheville in the mid-eighties, a young man with the purpose to live away from town, and write--short stories. He took in typing by the page because it was something he did well. He now has both floors of the old Leggetts building on main street, twenty employees, and a thriving regional print and mail business. I'm pleased with what he's produced for me, and more than that, with what he has produced for himself and the community by persistence, character and hard work.

Words Fit to Finesse

Two words were added to the Fragmented Fred lexicon at the writers workshop in Tennessee a few weeks back. I'll share: 1) efreet (or afrit) -- an evil spirit, especially in Arab mythology. It came up in a bit of science fiction poetry that was read, and everybody went HUH? and 2) ekphrasis, which poets are more likely to know, perhaps, than other flavors of writers. And I guess it deserves more, because without knowing it, it is this kind of one art leading to or enhanced by another that is inherent in my "images in words and pixels" relationship between photography and the written word. Here's the fuller description of what the word means:

Ecphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one art tries to relate to another art by defining and describing the essence and form of that original art, and in doing so, "speak to you" through its illuminative liveliness. A descriptive work of prose or one of poetry, a film, or even a photograph may thus highlight through its rhetorical vividness what is happening, or what is shown in, say, any of the visual arts, and in doing so, may enhance the original art and so take on a life of its own through its brilliant description. The kinds of art described in this way may include painting, photography, sculpture, architecture, etc.

And a third word often used, never dissected by me until someone did so in church a couple of weeks ago. The word is SARCASM, and I claim it reluctantly as a perverse gift of mine, pulled out when threatened, wounded or frustrated, usually with family. And I should have picked up on the word root long ago; it is well-known in medical terminology (e.g. sarcoplasm). It is in the word sarcophagus. In the word sarcasm, too, sarc- means flesh. When we use sarcasm in our language, it causes the hearer to bite the flesh of their lip in pain, is the original meaning. I'll remember this, next time my words risk wounding another.

Lost in Let's Remember

We're very different, Ann and I, in the source from which we take our bearings. Hers are from the demands and obligations of the moment. Each day is the first day of the rest of her life. Mine come from the stepping stones of what has come before--the places and people we have been in our own rights, and to each other; from the people and influences that have guided or misguided us all along our swerving path together since this picture of innocence was taken in 1970. I revisit my image archives often with this view of the present in mind, and finding this wedding picture this morning set the wheels turning, turning back, turning forward.

Soon, we'll travel far south to her past. I won't share it. She'll become who she was in 1966 and before, seeing old girlfriends, prom dates, teachers, places she's kept locked up in disremembrance all these years until the prospect of this gathering took shape in the spring and carried her back to more hopeful times. Now, for the first instance in our long history, she has become nostalgic. Now, she wants to remember. This full immersion in the places and faces from long ago will be a powerfully exciting and probably powerfully unsettling experience for her, and from far outside the experience, for me.

Funny how, after so many years, you know so much about each other. And so little. In some ways, we are still those two smiling souls living behind today's tougher exteriors, beneath the scars, having survived hopes met or failed, good times, hard times, lots and lots of times. I still see the June bride in her face at unexpected moments. I imagine I'll catch a glimpse of it again when she becomes the girl that lived before the young woman I met by chance or fate in college so long ago.

So, she'll indulge in let's remember. I think I'll just move over to the edge of things and have a cold beverage.

Now I told you my reasons for the whole revival
Now I'm going outside to have an ice cold beer in the shade, oh
I'm going to listen to my 45's, ain't it wonderful to be alive
When the rock 'n' roll plays, yeah
When the memory stays, yeah
I'm keeping the faith, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah -- Billy Joel

To Nap, Perchance to Dream

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, The death of each day's
life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second
course, Chief nourisher in life's feast. -- Shakespeare, Macbeth

"Thomas Edison, Napoleon Bonaparte, Salvador Dali, Winston Churchill, and Presidents Kennedy and Reagan had something in common? In fact, each of them enjoyed a regular nap."

They know my routine, the girls at work. And, as the token male, I get picked on. But I am undeterred: even against the threat that they might yet again startle me from my dozings behind the wheel by rocking my parked car out in front of the clinic at lunchtime, I will nap on!

I've been a faithful napper for as long as I can remember. When I was teaching in my first real job at the community college (was that a real job?) I either walked home for lunch and a 15 minute nap, or closed my office door, made a pillow of my arms, and woke up in time to get the sleep wrinkles out of my forehead before lecture. (Hmmm...those sleep wrinkles don't seem to go away these days. What gives?)

My watch timer is now set for 14 minutes (15 just seemed too indulgent). I eat my sandwich while I do paperwork during my lunch break, so that there will be time to get out to the Subaru and let that seat way back. I have the routine down so pat that the ritual itself leads inexorably within two minutes to the first signs of total relaxation: the jaw drops embarrasingly open. So I put up my sunshade to spare passersby the look at the fillings of an unconscious, drooling man gone limp.

But if you read this article called 5 Reasons to Nap, it explains why this apparent sign of motivational lassitude is really the key to creativity and vigor!

So Rock on, ladies. You can shake my car, but you can't shake my commitment to the Noon Snooze!

Perchance to Dream

I dream of color, of images in words and light together on the page. In Fragments has been realized a hope that goes way back. In an old journal, the only journal I ever kept during the early 70s, I found the other day a note to myself that spoke of the wish to write to an image. Funny. I didn't have very many images then that were very good, and I'd never written outside those private pages about anything. And would not until thirty years later, on the virtual pages of Fragments from Floyd.

So here we are, literally thousands of pictures and hundreds of thousands of words out there now before friends and neighbors, old and new, close and far flung. Perhaps that should be enough. But I can't shake the idea of an in-my-hands book of my words and my color images between full-color covers. And it is doable. And not expensive.

Color printing these days, at least at affordable, profitable prices, is done overseas. I spent some time in Barnes and Noble yesterday, and Korea and China seem to be sources for some nice looking softbound books chiefly of images. Close to home, take for example Blue Ridge Country Impressions, text by Cara Modisett, who I know as Blue Ridge Country Magazine's editor. This book is printed in China, published by FarCountry Press of Helena, Montana. All of these similar books (sigh: look at these!) are about 80 pages at a cost of $9.95. Amazing price, very good quality.

But these are apparently 1) financed by a publisher who agrees to put up the money to get the project going, and who 2) gets the finished book into the larger distribution systems so that 3) an initial order of maybe 5000 has a chance to be put before readers and so that 4) the cost per book is low enough at this volume that some profit is made even at this low price for the book store, the publisher, the printer, and alas, the author. It must be pennies on the book for the latter. The publisher (like FarCountry) also does the considerable detail work of getting files to China and shipment of the finished books back here--no small logistical headache (or expense!)

I have book two in mind. It will contain color images. Actually, it occurs to me that I may have books two and three in mind. Book two might be chiefly images with not much text and doable in the relatively near term while I work on book three that will also have color images as well as black and white and require considerable research to produce perhaps 25 thousand words and maybe two years off.

So what am I doing blogging with all these projects to dig into? Well, the blog is where I think outloud even while I keep up the daily discipline of writing, delve through my image archives and remember forgotten images and impressions, and share the journey with a few friends who come along on this field trip with me each day.

November Woods

I recently read a short "review" of the book (a couple of sentences) that described the book as "breathy, ethereal, out of the body prose". I don't think this was a compliment. But I never expected to please everybody. Just myself, mostly. But even so, I'll resist the temptation for a breathless description of this image from a year ago.

What I'll do (completely unrelated to this image) is suggest that, when you've done with using your eyes here, go here and listen to Colleen Redman's WVTF essay (airs today) on--of all things--blogging!

Colleen came reluctantly into this medium. I think it's safe to say she's here to stay. And we're the better for it.

Leonids: Time in the Dark

This is a timely selection from Slow Road Home. Tonight you can begin to look for the Leonids to zip past, a few or many, depending on which experts you listen to. But maybe it is more about just going outdoors. At night. With expectations. Happy hunting!

I left a warm bed, got dressed in every piece of clothing I could lift and carry, and stood outside in the dark for a half-hour this morning. With my neck craned, spinning slowly in circles, I waited in the cold to see the grand show of the Leonid Meteor Shower. My toes are still numb an hour later, and I need to find a good physical therapist to do some mobilization on my stiff sky-watcher's neck. Was it worth it? Yes indeed.

The light of a setting full moon and the wet haze in the predawn air hid the weakest stars. But it was dark enough. In thirty minutes, I saw perhaps 200 meteors. Most were zips at the edge of vision. Some were spectacular, lighting up the valley in less than a blink, like a photographic flash. Others left persistent trails across the sky in the way an artist would lightly dash a perfectly straight line on black canvas with a luminescent pale blue pigment on a fine-tipped brush. One split into two, each fragment sizzling off to die dark death, extinguished in the protective shield of atmosphere.

"Give me a performance!" I demanded for my efforts. Dazzle me with special effects. Entertain me. The predictable shower of stars fell, and on with the show. But before it, and after it, one spectator huddled against the cold of the dark side of the planet and knew moonlight and starlight, creek sounds and the stark silhouette of limbs against the heavens. These features do not come to indoor venues.

Will I make a habit of bundling up each morning to stand silent under a quiet sky where stars keep their places or not? No, I can't promise I will do this. But I have remembered again what night is like, and cold, and things moving out there beyond my vision and understanding. This, and another cup of hot coffee, is easily enough for me.

More about the Leonids this year can be read here.

Watch Ma! No Hands!

I think I'm frustrating myself unnecessarily by thinking that on day two I have to have mastered Dragon Dictation's speech-to-text program. It is something I'll have to do almost exclusively, ultimately, as my wrists cooperate less and less with the thousands of keystrokes associated with writing and editing, sending emails and processing photographs. I don't think it will ever become a tool that I use exclusively as someone who is totally disabled would be required to do but over time I'll need to begin using it more and more frequently to extend the life of my wrists some months or years into the future. There's never a good time to take time away from writing for wrist surgery but with this software, that's at least conceivable without me giving up everything I want to say and show through the weblog and in other ways.

So far the process of trying to think my words rather than type them has been very frustrating. After four years of developing a rhythm and relationship between the brain and the fingers (that's as automatic as the process of reading entire sentences and not single words) the process of having to think through every word that comes next in sequence is very unnatural and awkward. Perhaps over time though this way of thinking about communication will make me a better speaker as well as a better writer. We'll have to see about that.

This program is not working so well so far to enter data directly in the blogger edit window but works very well using what's called a dictation box that is the designated text entry program for this software that seems to respond quickly and accurately even after only one day of training. I can pretty well speak as quickly as I want and the program is able to keep up with me.

This will be especially helpful if I can use it to dictate my evaluations and other paperwork from my physical therapy job. Of course I'll have to train it in all sorts of special terminology but that should only be a matter of time to bring it up to speed.

I don't know that I'll ever be able to use this program to write more creative things. But then I thought the same thing about using the keyboard versus using a yellow legal pad almost 5 years ago when I first began to attempt to say what I felt through my fingertips every morning.

With exception of a few edits, this was all spoken onto the page. Not fancy, not good, but legible and that many fewer keystrokes spent from the limited future reserves of them! Dragon Naturally Stammering may eventually become Naturally Speaking. Right now, it ain't natural at tall!

Light and Dark

Somehow, this yin and yang play of light on shadow seems fitting this morning.

In reading back over SRH for final edits these past weeks toward a second printing, I realize I used some terms or phrases more often than I would have thought. One such phrase when trying to express my feelings from this very time of year is "changing of gears" or something to do with the term "transmission", this in the sense of the altered rhythms so palpable as days shorten past a unknowable magic number of hours into the pace of winter.

For the most part, on most chill mornings as I fire up the woodstove, I think it's a beneficial change in focus that comes along starting about now, a healthy introspection leading slowly in the coldest days to a more accurate accounting of what's been stored up, and of what remains.

Idle Hands: Not!

Yes, I must confess: this was one of those very rare mornings when I was in town, I was at home, and I was even sitting at the computer and did NOT post to FFF.

But lest you think I've lost the will to blog or have otherwise gotten lazy, I direct your attention to the bottom of the right sidebar to the little strip display of the notecards in Set Number One.

I'll be heading over to Wordsprint in my old home town of Wytheville on Monday to make the final touches on this project with the do-able goal of having NOTECARDS available (just barely) for Christmas! The details are very much up in the air.

Hopefully, I'll have a PayPal button available on this website or another for the purpose.

And I feel certain there will be a store or two in Floyd, maybe one or two on the Parkway, and some place in Blacksburg and Roanoke that will stock them. But I have no specifics today.

Check back for updates, and email (see top of right sidebar for addy) to be put on the waiting list for this first (but not last?) set of Fragments From Floyd Notecards. Thanks!

Things Fall Apart

I actually had a little momentum going yesterday morning in that hardest part of a project: the getting started; the getting of the sheer weight of an object at rest moving in any direction at all, breaking the resistance of inertia that keeps a thing where it is and nowhere else. And then my engine stopped ginning. The home network started acting wonky, I couldn't share files, and the laptop browser slugged down to a crawl, and more. Must have been something I broke, I assumed.

But later--much later and many grumblings late into the day (thankfully Ann wasn't here to witness) I found out it was some random change in my firewall. And Trend Microsystems PCCillin Internet Security does not come, apparently, with any way to actually speak to someone about your problem. You get a choice of chocolate, vanilla or strawberry to explain your problem. Not one of those? Too bad. By bedtime, I had fixed it by sheer random luck, no thanks to those to whom I paid my money.

So, to say I'm out of blogger rhythm, postless--almost.

But I do have needs. (Don't I always!) I got back a pdf proof of a notecard from the printer (yep, back to that little project, now seen as a break-even or losing proposition for the purpose of advertizing) and I will probably order a batch of "Winter" cards (five different scenes, pack of 5 for $10 tentatively). Here's what I need: a supplier for the clear envelopes into which these five 4 x 6 cards go to keep fingerprints off them. Know what I mean? I don't know where to start looking, so I'm open to suggestions.

And I have happy feet. Got the word in the mail yesterday that Slow Road Home has been nominated for the Library of Virginia 10th Annual Literary Awards Celebration, in the non-fiction category. Which by itself is no great accomplishment as someone merely had to submit some forms for this purpose. But it will at least get the book on the Library's website and promotional poster, along with the names of the bigshot writers from the Commonwealth. I'll accept validation by association, even if it is to merely pass through the shadow of the Top Dogs.

And I should tell you, I hunkered down and ordered that cussed lens collar I was whining about last week. So this will be a busy UPS delivery week as I spend down my Goose Creek Press account putting my wee profits back into equipment, software and supplies before the Tax Man comes calling. Break even was my goal, and after deducting for almost 5000 book-related travel miles since May, I should come pretty close.

An Appreciation

If I'm remembering right, I found Tom Montag in a browser search for "sense of place". Early in my wanderings in the summer of 2002, I'd come across that term, new to me then, and the hair on my arms stood up. Yes! There is something in this term that represents where I must dig next to find what is important in my life. And there was Tom's site in the search results, a web page that pointed to his publications and speaking engagements, and detailed his long-term mission to accumulate enough disparate interviews and stories so that one day, he'd hold some sense of the place that is his "middle west".

I emailed him, a stranger, just to tell him of my appreciation for his undertaking, and that I was newly on a similar quest, though less well equipped by background, and with a focus of a much more circumscribed place than his middle-west. I, on the other hand, had something Tom didn't have.

It was called a weblog, and it seemed to me that Tom's work would display nicely in such an easily updated and interactive medium. It wasn't long before he had set up the Middlewesterner. And not long after that that he was one of about two dozen collaborators on the Ecotone site--"where writers write about place."

So Tom followed my pilgrimage, from rise to fall, clarity to confusion, pretty much from the start. At the end of my first year of writing--in the summer of 2003--a dear mentor had planted the seed that there was a book in the daily journaling. Tom concurred. And we began discussing the idea. Tom, no stranger to publishing and presses and such, even offered to help with the printing. We reached the point of exchanging some early manuscripts. And then, in the late summer of 2004, both Tom and I were offered teaching opportunities, and our lives turned in utterly different directions than the one that included my book. Part time teaching is full time work, it turned out.

Now, more than two years later, Slow Road Home sits on Tom's desk. And of all the people who will read the little book, he knows far more of its history than most. And he has ears to hear both the voice and the hope of the book's message. A couple of weeks ago, he wrote of his intention to post an "appreciation" and, at the time, I was not sure how that was different from a review. Given a choice, I'll take an appreciation any day.

If you are a visitor with little background on this site, do read Tom's bigger-picture description that brings Slow Road Home and Fragments from Floyd to the same table. Many thanks, Tom.

Sunday Jots

Thunderstorms in November! We were over at a neighbors for a pot luck gathering. I would have loved to have had a camera when the first lightning flashed, and everybody in the room lifted off the floor simultaneously in surprise. We were among the first to leave, and already the sloping pasture had claimed on car sideways of the hill. Thank goodness for Subaru!

I keep running into bee people. Last night, had a conversation with a fellow that keeps 70 hives not far from here. It might be his hives that house those bees I saw on our corn tassels summer before last, though at the time I imagined them to be from a (rare these days) wild hive. Then I learned from another bee keeper last week that a bee will fly five miles to and from a hive, so in that radius, I'm sure there are kept hives I didn't know about. Anyway, he told about a new hive pest--as if another was needed: the small hive beetle, thank you very much, South Africa.

Having the tools creates the work. Last night (same party) I was glad that yesterday I had ordered a digital recorder (Olympus DS2) to record interviews for an upcoming project. Two unexpected and immediate opportunities fell at my feet, with folks approaching me to tell about their neighbors in late 80s or 90s who had stories too rich to lose. So I'll maybe field test my new tool soon, and close to home, before wandering wider afield.

I also acquiesced to the inevitable yesterday and ordered DragonDictate Naturally Speaking Preferred (a $40 rebate coupon expired after yesterday's date.) Keystrokes saved now by this speech-to-text software may allow these uncooperative finger joints to participate at some level for a few more years. I dread the learning curve.

And finally, here's one I'm hoping to get a beta-invite for: SCRYBE, an online (and offline) PIM that seems a cut above most other calendar - scheduling - reminder programs I've seen so far. Watch the video and see if you think it would be useful for you. I'm always looking for ways to shore up the failing intracranial software (and the hand joints, I suppose, would be hardware.) Gotta roll with da punches, eh?

And Upon This Rock

Here's an image collected on the drive down to Mt. Airy last week.

This is the Bluemont Rock Church, one of several built during the period between the world wars in Floyd and adjacent counties by Bob Childress and his congregations.

You can read a brief account of the Childress history and legacy in the Buffalo Mountain region of Floyd and Carroll Counties. Interesting how this man's reputation and good deeds are not universally agreed upon by all who knew those times and personalities as contrasted to the description of them in "The Man Who Moved A Mountain", the book about Bob Childress' ministry that started here in 1926.

Placing Ourselves

Birmingham: Red Mountain and the Vulcan
Wytheville: Sand Mountain and the towers
Sylva: Plott Balsam Mountain's ice covered summit
Morganton: Table Rock, Grandfather Mountain
Floyd: Buffalo Mountain

Everywhere I've lived (all in or very near the southern Appalachians) there has been some feature of skyline that has oriented me to where I was in the world, some high and prominent rocky fold or spire on the skyline that tells me I am exactly here. High places orient us. Perhaps, too, it is the sense of permanence that we draw from when we "lift up our eyes unto the hills from whence comes our strength" as the Psalmist said.

We are drawn to that which we can see from anywhere while the stories of our lives unfold, as if those high places look down on our petty problems, seeing them in the perspective of the ages, putting our month of despair or sorrow into the context of their million years of uplift and erosion.

We gravitate towards skylines with character. In this part of the world, we feel the gravity of mountains, and if we don't live on them, we want to look at them. But there can be places where so many want to see one of these beautiful mountain landscapes or high prominences that over time, the decks and picture windows and vaulted glass walls of one new home look out on the decks and glass walls of the next and the next. And in the end, the charm and character of the landscape is lost. Precious places can become prostituted to profit, turned into a mere selling point, and priced out of the experience of those whose lives have been told in the shadow of these special places for generations.

You yourself can buy a piece of Floyd's unique skyline and own the Buffalo lifestyle. It's simple. Sign here. Scroll down to chose your view.

Beautiful green ridge top parcel with grandiose four-season view of Buffalo Mountain. Strong western mountain views with neighboring orchard and nature conserve canopy. Views to the east include nearby mountain range. Quiet cul de sac with level building envelope offers exceptional plan diversity. Community panorama and four-board fencing complement the Buffalo lifestyle. 2.55+ acres. $615,210.

The pull is strong. And expensive. And in not many more generations, the view--of the Norhteast coast, the Rockies, the Pacific Crest, the Grandfather Mountains of the east--may be owned only by those few able to pay for it.

How do we decide as communities what is precious, even in what we see from our back roads and living room windows, and then, how do we protect those high places so our children's children don't look out on roof tops and swimming pools, strip malls and cell towers? How do we keep these grand hills from becoming grandiose, protect our special places from becoming more than mere commodity, and nurture them as a source of solace and strength long into the future?

IWanna

Please allow me to whine. I am had by the tender parts, and the camera accessory folks are squeezing for all they're worth. Which is a lot. To use my telephoto lens with my tripod, I need a mounting bracket. It must be made of a semi-precious metal at $150 for this 6 ounce piece of hardware. I'm wondering if by some vanishingly small chance anybody has one of these sitting idle in old Uncle Mort's chest up in the attic, rest his poor departed soul. If he doesn't need it anymore, can we work out a deal?

And while whining, another sad story. Ann left out of here this morning stressed for an important continuing ed meeting with which she had become involved in planning. Her neck was in a bind as she hurried down the front steps in the first light. Ten minutes later, I heard a short horn-honk and went to the front porch.

A large tree had fallen down across the road, requiring Ann (who is reverse-impaired under the best of circumstances) to back down the mountain about a half mile. Actually, from a therapy point of view, this might have been just the end-of-range active motion she needed to help with her neck pain. And hey: it just might mean a couple of week's worth of stove wood. I asked the VDOT guys to go gently and leave what they could for those what might come along and fetch it home to the woodstacks.

Sigh. White oak. A half-cord or more of it. And all either too steep on the high side or tumbling almost vertical down the creek side. I horsed a few pieces into the back of the truck, including one that was too big for me. I horsed it anyway, and it may come back to haunt my back tomorrow. What price, firewood.

You and the Bird

Please note (and do go by to visit) the Carnival of Birds (I and the Bird #36) has posted just today over at Words and Pictures.

You'll be glad you stopped by. Betcha.

Doing The Hard Thing

I told you a few weeks ago that we knew what must be done. It has taken this long to steel myself to do it.

CJ the Cat (from CJ Harris Hospital where I worked) showed up as a very small lost kitten at the Emergency Room door in January, 1990. I put her in a box and carried her home to our daughter, who excitedly said that CJ (a.k.a Calvin, both perhaps from our Presbyterian connections but more probably from our son's hero, who also had a cat sidekick) would go with her to college the next year. Daughter went, cat never did.

CJ was an indoor cat once upon a time, but her shreading effect on the furniture sent her permanently alfresco--except for when she and I lived on Walnut Knob that first year in Floyd County without the SheBoss, during which time cat went anywhere inside or out that her highness desired. She's never been an especially affectionate cat, but we bonded that year of living with only each other's company most of the time. We came to an understanding.

Since moving to Goose Creek, she's been a porch cat, and until recently, managing quite well for herself. Until she started going blind a few months back, a process completed several weeks ago. It's a terrible thing to watch a cat fall off the edge of the porch or walk into her water bowl. Winter is soon upon us, and already CJ howled in the wee hours, unable to find her box in the cold.

As of a half hour ago, she now is in her final rest, up beside Nameless Creek, under a headstone formed by one of the big rocks plowed out of the pasture ground a century ago. She felt no pain. I, on the other hand, will need some time to recover from the sting of sending her out of this world after almost 17 good years. There were just barely enough Powermilk Biscuits to get up and do what needed to be done.

Barn Redux

Thanks, Andy, for providing a caption for this image. All I expected was to put up the picture, but was pleased to find your perceptive words in a Flickr comment for this one this morning.

Some photos have a "being there" quality about them; maybe its something familiar about the scene which stikes a chord, maybe its to do with the clarity of the shot. Whatever it is, this is one of those. Obviously I've never been to Goose Creek (although I've heard a bit about it!) yet I can feel myself there, feel the chill in my fingers and cold air in my lungs, the stillness of the morning. Scenes and times like these I've known and loved. Maybe its because the scene has an air of suspended animation; soon the stillness will transition gently into the day's activity - I almost expect to see Tsuga come nosing round the corner of the barn in a moment...

Oh, and from a purely photographic point of view, that reflection in the creek is magical.

Swing over and take a look at Andy's photos of his travels in and about the peaks and glades of Western Europe and the UK.

A Mountaintop Experience

I can't even imagine, but we should all try to, and sometimes I do.

I am standing on the front porch in the early morning with my coffee. The sun is just painting enough light behind the ridgetops to make rise and fall of their silhouette into the rim of this chalice-valley that holds our lives.

With a sudden, sickening slap against my feet in the near-light, the yard, the house, the entire watershed of Goose Creek shocks as smoke and dust rise from what had been forest along the skyline. And when the cloud of pulverized earth settles, the trees are gone. The familiar contours like the lines of loved one's face, have disappeared forever.

Then, a massive machine rises above the ragged horizon. It pushes what is left of our mountaintop through what is left of our forest in to what used to be Nameless Creek, into my Fortress of Solitude where the three poplars converge, where I wanted my ashes placed; where our sitting bench has been, next to the little island covered in asters where the white waters will be no more. This image of an early morning spider web was taken at just this place of my nightmare.

A bad dream. Mountaintop Removal is a bad dream that is a new reality every day for someone, for some family, for some community somewhere in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee or Virginia. And unless we force ourselves to look at it in all its ugliness, unless we come to see our own complicity by our very silence and by our consumption without regard for the costs, there will be no end to it.

Some of you who are from or have a heart for the southern Appalachian mountains are surely aware of the costs of "cheap coal". Most of you who read this here are genuinely uninformed, and there's a reason for that. Until recently, the people most affected have not had sufficient voice to lift this issue above and against the powerful forces that want it invisible in the national media; that want vast stretches of remote, sparcely-settled, pristine watershed, forested plant and animal habitat and the physical context of mountain people's lives to be seen as nothing but "overburden". There has been an political policy of silence at the highest levels.

This must stop. We must be a part of the end of mountaintop removal for coal extraction.

Please take a few minutes and watch this short video from ilovemountains.com that just begins to tell the story. Do you love mountains? Then take 8 minutes to learn what's at stake.

From Downtown Mayberry RFD

Yesterday, I took a pleasant solo drive from Goose Creek over to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Now that the leaf-peepers have no leaves to peep, I had the long, high road to myself for 35 miles, all the way to Fancy Gap. And for the first time in thirty years, I wound down the mountain the old way--on Route 52--to the bottom of the Appalachian Escarpment, to the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the piedmont of North Carolina. My destination: Mt. Airy, a town that reared and now prospers on Andy Griffith. It's almost too much as you walk along Main Street. Opie this, Aunt Bee that, and of course, Floyd's Barber Shop. Small wonder the whistled theme music wasn't piped out onto the streets at every corner. But altogether, a nice unwalmarted downtown still flourishes.

Promptly at noon, Traveler Trish arrived at the Snappy Lunch--a local diner of some reputation, but as small as Aunt Bee's kitchen and we'd have to wait for one of the three booths. So we ended up down the street instead at the Blue Plate Diner (if I'm remembering right) and they were very accommodating. Later, we walked the sidewalks through the older homes near town and chatted, catching up on a year's worth of accumulated water under our bridges. She's been around the world. I've been around Goose Creek.

But we'll do that again, Mt. Airy being about half way between us. Trish was one of the first to find Fragments, sense a resonance of fellow-feeling with a would-be writer and offer to get together to chat about writing, about goal setting, discipline and about getting your book's essence down onto the back of a business card--one of the hardest assignments I've ever been given!

A writer by background and temperament, Trish left that behind to form and promote WorldsTouch, and just returned from many months putting feet on her intentions to make some small, remote corner of the world a better place. And she's not done yet, only home to save up enough to go back to India, Nepal, who knows where she'll travel and do this good work next.

It was a great pleasure to hand her a book across the table in the diner in Mt. Airy yesterday. I never would have imagined four years ago when we met that we'd have to be careful not to get frenchfries grease on the cover of my book in the middle of Mayberry.

Pictured: The distinctive silhouette of Pilot Mountain (aka Mt. Pilot--the bigger town not far from Mayberry) as seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway.

And let me add: Slow Road Home is now available at PAGES BOOKSTORE on Main Street in downtown Mt. Airy. Now there's both a destination AND a purpose for a Saturday afternoon drive. You're welcome.

Yet Another Barn Picture

I look at the exotic images from far away places taken on great adventures by photographers who post their works now so easily on the web for all to see. There are breathtaking panoramas in mind-numbingly beautiful light; local people in bright dress engaged in unguessable celebration or worship; and amazing animals in lush rainforest or stark desert places I cannot imagine.

Then I look at my monthly photo-archives of very ordinary local insects, pasture flowers, fall leaves, and always: the barn. It is certainly the most photographed structure in all of Floyd County, and almost all of those images are mine. But that's okay, and by intention.

Almost five years ago I heard the story of a New York City photographer who became disabled to the extent that he was not able to leave his room. His room, fortunately, was on the fourth floor of an apartment building that bordered Central Park. But his passion for capturing the everyday scenes of his life didn't end. He continued his career for several years, growing where he was planted, taking thousands of images from his window--of people passing by on the sidewalks below, of snowfalls on treetops in the park, of light reflected from the windows of the building across the way, even of pigeons on his windowsill. That story of immersion in the close-at-hand resonated with me that winter.

And six months later an empty page of time opened in my life when I left my profession not knowing what would come next; and I remembered this story. Even if I don't leave the house every day and see no other people but the mailman on his rounds, I told myself, there is a world of color and form here in this valley--easily enough to keep my camera and eye, mind and heart filled with good images to contemplate and to share.

And prominent among those images, the barn. It is an illusory symbol of permanence here. The house is much changed since we first saw it in 1999, with a new front porch, new windows, foundation, a paint job, and now the Annex. The house has been "improved" and it shows to anyone who knew the house in its earlier incarnation.

But the barn would have looked just the way it does now at the time my grandmother was born. And this old structure hewn from logs cut on these hillsides puts the human lives lived here into the beauty of the natural landscape in a way that I find comforting, and visually satisfying--to draw the eye to its unnatural straight lines in contrast to the pleasant curve and chaos of nature.

This Time Last Year

"I can't remember what I was doing this time last week, let alone this time last year" Ann often confesses when I slip into one of my time-traveling reveries. The past is the foundation for today, and every day is the anniversary of another brick and mortar time worth building into the present. The weblog certainly helps in this time travel, but all you have to do is pay attention to your senses to reconnect with last year this time, or the year before, or three decades ago.

Last November 05 shares with today the very same seasonal smell of wood smoke and dry leaves. It bears the identical feel of the cool air on my neck in this morning-drafty old house, the same insect noises or bird calls just out the door--or silence but for the creek's babble on this frosty morning. The stage is the same, the players, props and plots have, of course, changed, as life goes on.

Last year when the leaves smelled and crunched underfoot just so and on a day after the moon rose over the east ridge in the very same notch where it did last night, I was hanging out with Jonathan. A talented freelance photographer, this kind and intelligent young man had contacted me in the spring (via a google search on Floyd) about a photo project he wanted to do in the county and pitch to a major magazine. I learned a lot from him, including how many tools of the trade it takes to be prepared for every photo-opportunity.

The day this photo was taken, he was here at the house when the lighting on the barn drew his eye and camera's lens, as it had mine so many times before. He pulled out not only his 7 foot tripod from the back of his van, but also an aluminum stepladder to take advantage of the higher perspective that gave a composition not obtainable any other way. (Note: the metal ash bucket is not one of Jonathan's tools.)

I coveted his study Domke camera bag. I've had mine almost a year now. He said I should be using a polarizing filter more; now, I do. And he had this really fine pistol-grip camera head for a tripod that would position with the legs straddled out almost their full length for a very wide base of support--a capability that was useful when he and I were trying to get sunset images from the top of Buffalo Mountain in a 35 mph wind that would have blown over a lesser support. Mine won't extend to 7 feet, but I have the camera head now and a great Manfrotto tripod that's certainly good enough for an amateur. I've had it more than a week and haven't had a chance to use it yet.

Maybe I'll test it out today. The sky promises to pink up a bit here just before dawn; frost is heavy on the barn roof I can see just now. Might be I'll come inside when I'm done, have another cup of coffee, and bring to light an image--yet another image of the barn and pasture--that I'll look back on fondly on November 05, 2007. And the years and anniversaries just keep coming.

Update: Sunrise image captured! Will post tomorrow, right here--a new-site FFF exclusive!

One Less Squirrel

A gray fox squirrel, a pretty thing seen so close, bore the same markings as the common gray squirrel but with a whiter vent and half again as large. This one sported the characteristic tail longer than the body, it's unmoving spiny shaft conspicuous, wet now with saliva. The pasture grass had concealed the animal as it harvested walnuts from the tree just up the bank from the creek. But the same grass made it hard to see an approaching predator, and then once pursued, impossible to run at full speed to safety.

I don't think Tsuga set out to kill, only to play. But he plays rough with creatures in fur, though he's not once growled or snapped at us. I've never seen him happier than with his new playmate hanging out both sides of his grinning mouth. Yes, I think dogs do smile. I wish I'd taken his picture with his tropy.

Ann asked me while the dog was distracted across the creek to please go pick up the carcass and dispose of it. I carried the customary grocery bag prepared to evert it over the warm, wet remains, still to my fingers alive-seeming through the thin plastic. There was nothing for the bag but the gray tip of a tail.

Bug Zapping Right and Left

Okay, I’m trying to blog outside the box. Or actually inside the box of Blogjet as opposed to freeform in NoteTab Pro’s html editing mode that I’ve been using now for four years plus.

First, let me say how great it is to feel like blogging is a two-way enterprise once again. And then to thank you folks for hanging with me through so many twists and turns to get here, a place I trust will be FFF’s home for some time to come.

From What Sean P tells me, Blog Jet should give me more flexibility with images than I’ve had before (as it takes over some of the formating and sizing operations of posting images) and I hope will become my new normal SOP for getting blogs up every day. However, I’ve grown used to NoteTabPro as an archive of all my past posts and not sure how I feel about giving that up. I have been able to search the NTP file much faster than searching the blog via its search function. There will be trade-offs, for sure.

So, we’re working out the kinks. Got to get up the bloglist and other sidebar items, and don’t think Blog Jet helps with sidebars. Could be wrong. I want better links to image galleries, and better, more thought-out image galleries in the future. I want to do more podcasting—if not the full audiobook thing—and post those links in a permanent part of the sidebar.

I want my little images back up in the banner, and to rotate them weekly or at least monthly. (I'd also like to get the colors I chose for links and such to actually appear when I save my template changes. So far, not working. Trust me: I didn't chose purple text, I just can't get rid of it. Bleccch!)

I want to do more writing, though in truth, I will probably do LESS blogging in coming months if my next project gains momentum as I hope it will. But then, you’ll be hearing more about that as soon as I get my head around it.

Well, TGIF. It’s Miller Time. And btw, you should be able to comment now without signing up for a blogger account. We're squashing bugs every step of the way (no offense to my arthropod friends intended in this figure of speech, understand) and getting back into the blog-groove. Yes!

Fall Leaf Fall

It fascinates me that a leaf knows when its time has come to fall. Perhaps some combination of day length and temperature gives the signal. But maybe it’s just the good taste to abort, an inner sensitivity to the needs of the whole that gives its parent tree a chance to hibernate with its blood gone underground for the winter, safe from freezing. Whatever the signal for the moment of leaf launch, I’m glad they don’t all get the same idea on the same day.

First, the walnut and basswood and spicebush leaves fly in the first winds of tropical storms or sudden thunderstorms in late summer. The poplars and hickories, cherries and sumacs have the good manners to wait a while, until after a leaf has had the proper opportunity to strut its chameleon color changes during October before finally falling, drab and shriveled, in a north wind on a bleak November day.

An oak leaf will refuse to let go until December, clacking and waggling brown and brittle in the cold breeze. The serrated leaves of a smooth-boled American Beech turn almost white and become so thin and light they hang like feathers and seem to move on their own, even on a still January day. This year’s beech leaf may stay on the twig until next spring’s tiny new leaf evicts it, finally, pushing it out and away, off into space, down to the black soil among the first of the spring mustards and violets.

Leaves enter my fantasies this time of year. I have wondered about them, individually, and as a race. If all of the leaves from the countless trees on our acres here fell and did not decompose by the following spring; if this happened year after year, how many years would it take to choke off all growth along the forest floor? Should our woods remain alive after even one year of such a calamity, which is doubtful, how many years of leaf-fall would it take to completely fill the bowl of our valley to the rim?

If all these same leaves from our small valley could by some fairy-industry be stitched together, edge to edge, would it make one huge leaf, big enough to dress all of the New River Valley or Virginia?

And if a curious person was to lie on his back in these woods for a day, could he learn to tell all the leaves to species merely by the pattern of their falling from the tree when the air is still? My hypothesis is yes, and I gladly volunteer to undertake the research.