Good Ideas for the New Year

JaJah
Named after Ms Gabor? I dunno. All I know is Jajah is cheap or free and it really works well. I've charged my account with a few bucks to see if my first impression holds up to real-life use. Unlike some other means of online telephone calls, this one uses your regular phone (and I think cell phones can be involved too) with absolutely no loss of quality. Click the number on the webpage or in your address book (that you create) or in the JaJah box on Firefox and your phone rings. You answer, it connects you to your call number. If they have a JaJah account, the call is FREE. If not, it costs 2.5 cents a minute over a vast spread of continents. It's a no-brainer. No codes, no delays, no scratchy reception.

Winter Ergonomics
From our "wish I'd thought of that" category, the WOVEL. Of course, it won't do us much good, lacking both snow and paved driveway or sidewalk. But if you value your back and shoulders, and live in areas where white is still the color of winter, take a look. Working smarter, not harder!

Bonsai Dogs!
Well, maybe this isn't such a great idea. Definitely not. The Japanese are into cute-ifying all sorts of things, including dogs. (At least they don't find them delicious like some other Asian cultures.) But their penchant for novelty has taken some bizarre genetic twists, and the puppy-mills of the Custom Dog Business over there are coming under some well-deserved scrutiny.

New World Order
Seems like a good time to take a look at the somewhat haphazard order of my WinXP Explorer Folders. Having done that, even though I have an external hard drive, it would be nice to have the assurance that, even if the house burned down, my files would be available to restore down the road after the smoke cleared. I've been using MOZY on the laptop since the beginning. Now, I've also downloaded the FREE program (which will hold up to 2GB on the Mozy servers) on the desktop, but find I can't make it fetch a shared folder where I keep the OneNote files I'm using to work on upcoming writing projects. Those, I'll have to hand-transfer from desktop to external drive. Oh well. But check out Mozy. The price is right!

It Was a Very Good Year

When I was fifty eight...

No, I'll stifle my first impulse to write my own verse to this old song. But I have given no small thought and reflection here lately to the events of the past year--remembering mostly while driving, my mind wandering its own roads with hands on autopilot.

I'll spare you the long list of personal victories and defeats of 2006, but say only that thankfully there seem to have been more of the former than the latter. I suppose it is no great surprise that the most tangible goal accomplished, a material embodiment of a resolution kept, is the book. Most everything in it was already written this time last year, but getting it finally done, between covers and delivered is certainly one large milestone on the greater sweep of recent years.

We look back on things accomplished now and realize, had we not done that then (like undertaking the restoration of this old house, for instance, when we were 51) we never would have been able to pull it off today. Portals of possibility open briefly, and we step through them, or hang back, and the die is cast.

What windows to potential change for the better will come along in 2007? And will we be receptive, responsive, and willing to do what it takes to make them realities?

But now the days grow short
I'm in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage wine
from fine old kegs
from the brim to the dregs
And it poured sweet and clear
It was a very good year

Like Momma Like Daughter

Somewhere up in the Very Back Room, in a cardboard box full of faded leatherette albums filled with yellowed acetate sheets of pale Instamatic images from the Pleistocene era of our marriage and family life, is a picture of our eldest--then about a year old--gnawing a turkey bone. She is sitting in a high chair in the midst of our little apartment on Southside, Birmingham (La Clair Vista it was called, and the vista was anything but La Clair in the smoggy days before the Clean Air Act.) All around our young daughter was the chaos of Childcare By Husband, the flotsam of apartment life for which there is no storage, no hiding, no pretending--though, granted, it could have been more organized.

And seeing young Abby attaching the turkey leg on Tuesday brought back those memories, and later ones of her momma's eating habits later in life--the slurping of spaghetti in particular--that became issues of eating etiquette of a similar kind to "don't cram food into your mouth with your fist".

And for this, a twenty-something-year-old Abby will berate me, much as her mother does for the picture that hangs on our wall showing her at three, sitting on the front steps of our Wytheville home in town, her index finger imbedded to the middle knuckle in her left nostril.

But hey--what are daddies (or grand daddies with cameras) for anyway?

The Other Side of Christmas '06

Too fast. They've come and gone, and 95% of the things I thought we'd do and talk about didn't happen. But 5% did, and I'm thankful to have had the time together, gathered as we were from too-far-flung homes. Maybe it's going to be that way for the long haul. Maybe some day they'll live closer. It was a merry Christmas, and I'm just now rounding up my little pile of booty from our Tuesday night unwrapping. Let's see...

IN the way of reading matter, what does this say about moi:

First, sitting on my desk is America (the Book) / Teachers Edition: a Citizens Guide to Democracy Inaction--by Jon Stuart (with foreword by Thomas Jefferson.) Lacking TV, the Daily Show is our source of news via the web, in three minute snippets, usually a week old. I'm sure I'll learn a lot. Ooow! I just discovered it has a centerfold!

And 2) Uncle John's Tremendous Bathroom Reader--the latest in a long line of annual Procelain Library editions from the wife-side kin, and to date, read cover to cover in just about exactly a year--in said library. The first year they gifted me in this way, Ann recoiled as I unwrapped it, shocked that her sister would give a gift of 350 pages of bathroom humor. Which these books are not. But I'm a little concerned if this weighty tome is predictive of my plumbing needs for the year ahead: this volume is 750 pages long! (Eat more prunes.)

And in wearing attire, of course I got my traditional underwear: a pack of wife-beaters. From the wife. And from the daughter, who apparently reads Fragments from time to time, a t-shirt with an inscription she gleaned from the blog. I promise a picture soon with me wearing it, and also holding the wooden placard (along the same subject line) that I will put above my desk.

Deeper into the little stash, another tradition: my bottle of Gentleman Jack (Daniels) that will predictably last me until next Thanksgiving, mostly due to the fact that we can never remember to buy COKE (which I otherwise don't drink) and my failing to develope a taste for Dr. Pepper as a mixer.

Oh, you'll be happy to know (those of you who knew and loved (or loathed) it when I posted a blog post about it the week after Christmas that each segment of the family--including us--received a framed 5 x 7 copy of my photograph of the Peach Butt--a fun family memory. Now what other family can claim to have given images of fruit cleavage for Christmas, huh?

End of a Full Year

Let's see: since late November...

Fragments Notecards files to printer; Reunion in Mobile; Thanksgiving; Winery book signings x 4 days; Wytheville Rotary; two Floyd Press columns; book cover and interior text revisions complete and sent off; NPR essay recorded; cover and text files to Lightning Source; Dec 17 massive gathering on Goose Creek; book proof for second edition arrives 23 Dec; Christmas Day; POD files approved; eBook briefly considered; kids home with us two days; and the kids just left in two sad waves, and the house is silent, be it ever so jumbled, and I am left to consider a new year just the other side of the weekend.

Somehow, instead of being overwhelmed, I am invigorated.

To have had reinforced time and again these past four weeks how immensely blessed I am in my children, my wife, my home, my county and these times in my life has left me energized. While hate and destruction seem to dominate the larger world, with my health and senses and the few things I know how to do and feel compelled to do, to photograph and to say, I can be a force for good, a channel to the beautiful and meaningful in this tiny corner of the world, a light in a dark place.

We all can--can swim against the current of our times, rise above the swells. Hope floats, I hear. This moment, I feel buoyant. And thankful.

After Christmas Gifting

From our Shameless Commerce Department...

The Fragments Gift Set (one signed copy of Slow Road Home and one set of Fragments Note Cards -- see sidebar--for $25 delivered) is a great way to spend some of that Christmas money you don't know what to do with.

You might even send the book to Aunt (Aint? Aunt?) Jenny, who you forgot in the first wave of gift giving, using one of the cards to explain to her how a meteor fell on your bedroom, utterly destroying your first choice of gift for her. Now, an even BETTER gift: a slice of life from Goose Creek.

She'll be thrilled. And tell her I said hello. (Notecards available separately also.)

Sounding Off

A few weeks back, I downloaded a copy of the beta of an Adobe soundediting software called Soundbooth. It ought to be easy according to the promo material--as easy as it was back in the month after I paid for Cool Edit 2000 before Adobe bought it, called it Audition, and then charged me $120 to upgrade, which at the time was out of my budget.

Cool Edit (which Soundbooth is touted as the successor to) was an intuitive program for a casual sound-tweaker like me. You could cut and copy, slide tracks and fade them separately to overdub one sound (voice, for instance) with another (musical interludes, openings and closings.)

If it works, fix it, Adobe seems to have decided. Every sound editor I've tried (but not bought) since is a hassle. Soundbooth, for now, is no better, and I haven't even seen a price for the finished product, but in line with other Adobe full package softwares, it will be more than I want or need for my purposes to spend. Heck.

All of this, to say I'm hoping to do more audio posting this coming year. It is one of my goals, you might say, and first up, I was going to upload an mp3 file (getting it in that form, also a hassle!) simply called "Resolutions" (about goal setting and success) as my new year's wish for readers (blog and newspaper--where it will appear January 4th). I've uploaded the file--without the musical embellishments I'd intended. (5MB and about 5 minutes)

So let me be, in this way, the first to wish you a happy and "rich" new year. (The piece mentions the book "Think and Grow Rich"; if you're interested in a fairly concise summary of the basic principles in this old but influential book, this is a good source.)

New Years Resolutions: Good Goals to You!

Reciprocal Chicken Soup

Not that I was having a bad day, mind you--anything but--and yet, getting Dana's kind words and book comments in the email just after the Family Turkey Dinner the day after Christmas was a wonderful lift--a little chicken soup for the soul.

Dana Wildsmith, Georgia poet and teacher, on the other hand, was recovering this week from a spell of gray days, and it was good to hear that Slow Road carried her a little ways back towards wholeness and health.

It wasn't until the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative in October that I actually met and got to know Dana, though her face was familiar from a dozen meetings and conferences in the few years since becoming an attendee at Appalachian writing events.

What I discovered at SAWC was that Dana is one of the few poets I consider "accessible". Another is Colleen Redman here in Floyd. Turns out I had two copies of Dana's newest book of poetry, One Good Hand, and gave one of them to Colleen recently. That exchange felt like connecting two live wires, completing a kind of circuit between poets, growing new synapses in the collective mind.

I will tell you something: I sat down a month ago and read Dana's book, front to back, aloud. I got started, and couldn't stop; it just begged to be heard that day here alone. And after that, I had hoped to do something I've never done at the Spoken Word at Cafe del Sol a few weeks back: read another person's work than my own. Didn't make it to that meeting, but I still have and highly value One Good Hand (many of the poems are dog-related, for those of you who have affinities that way.)

I put Dana's kind words up over on the book website, if you'd like to read it.

Oh Bring Us Some Foggy Pudding

At 11:25 last night, the phone rang. It was Ann, half-way home. She had made it part way down George's Run, and had to turn back. It was so foggy she could go no farther without the white lines along the edges of the road to guide her--something that little country road lacks, though it is paved for all its very dark, winding four miles, a short-cut that drops about five minutes from the trip.

And so I put on my bathrobe and fired up the laptop to have something to do to stay awake for the 30 minutes it would take her to get home down Christiansburg Mountain, along Allegheny Spring road--complete, all the way to our country lane with white lines to show the way.

But what would I do if she didn't show up in a reasonable amount of time? And just how long should I wait? She would be out of cell phone reception; nobody else would be on the road that time of night, should she end up in a ditch or wrapped around a tree--or a deer. And would it make sense for BOTH OF US to be pulled off the side of the same road in different places penned down by the fog?

At midnight, I put on my clothes, not really knowing what I intended to do, but preferring to be ready to leave the house, should she call from one of the dark and far-between farm houses along the way.

At ten after 12, reluctantly and not knowing how to proceed, I picked up the phone. When I punched the ON button, the dog bolted up the way he does when he hears a car coming. Maybe it was just the phone noise that startled him. I dialed the "9" of 911, preparing to tell the hiway patrol to be aware of her route and situation.

Then I heard what the dog had heard, then saw the sweep of headlights through the pines, and Ann drove up non-plussed at about 12:15. Merry Christmas, welcome home, and such is life in the boondocks.

Ho Ho Hum

Don't mind me. And of course, I don't have to tell you that, all you bloggers who are NOT reading blogs or writing to yours today, immersed as you are in family events of the holiday. I, however, am alone and entertaining myself--watching the fog roll down off the ridges, occasionally tormenting the dog, snacking on sugary or fat-sat munchies to wile away the hours til the first wave of company rolls in after dark. Ann left for work a bit ago, won't be home til midnight.

Not that I have not been busy this past week--hence, some gaps in the regular posting to Fragments--but those tales have only been the kind of thing to blog on a day when nobody is listening--for my ears only, mostly--like today. And hey, it's my blog, so here's what's happening on Goose Creek.

On Saturday, the proof copy of Slow Road Home was delivered--a day late, not overnight by UPS as promised, but over two nights: "item missed at destination" it said on the tracking page. Somebody in Roanoke was asleep at the wheel. And I must tell you, it was with some dread I upboxed the book and took my first look on Saturday afternoon.

Suffice it to say, at first glance, I was relieved. The only option for the laminate was glossy, not mat like the first edition. I had feared it would look like plastic. In fact the colors and edges are sharper and brighter that the original (in addition to the fact that I upped the saturation a bit before submitting the cover file.) I also eliminated the background color from the spine, and so now the text (title, name and publisher) is simply laid down over the cover image that spills nicely without a break from front to back--much more contiguous a scene than before. Downside: the cover stock is not as heavy, and I think maybe a little less durable to wear than the offset-printed book from Edwards Brothers.

Internally, the Table of Contents I think is a good plus for the second edition. I made some changes there after seeing it for the first time in the Lightning Source copy. The interior black and white image quality was another place I dreaded to see in the revised version, but they actually are little different from the offset half-tone versions, and I'm pleased.

However, the subheadings for each little piece that originally were gray (60% black) just for detail came out looking thin and rasterized, so I converted them to 100% black. I'll have to send in a revised text file now, but that's all ready to go on Tuesday, and the book should be completed and ready to have its presence made known to Amazon, Barnes and Noble and such by the first of the year--which was my target date! (and Google Books? I rankle at having them scan the book and parse it out to customers. To be decided--next week.)

Busy year? You bet. This time last year, I hadn't even started compiling the book from the Fragments posts that formed the basis for the book. I didn't have a clear idea of where I wanted it to go with it, organization-wise, and had no idea how I would create it other than to start out in Word (but ultimately purchased Adobe Creative Suites through my now-expired status as adjunct faculty at Radford U.)

I had little certainty then that I would persevere to complete it and actually ever have it in my hands. This in the end came to reality on April 27 when 24 cartons of 48 books were deposited in our driveway. I did know that, for the first run, I wanted to "do it by hand", which I have done. Every copy sold to date has been signed. Now I'm ready for step two: making the process run itself via digital printing and order fulfillment while I move on to other things (while still doing book events, drop-shipping to individuals, and keeping some degree of direct personal involvement.)

About future endeavors: more to come!

Christmas 2006

I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas.

The first drops fell after I had fetched the kindling from the back porch at 4:30 this morning. It sleeted for a while, sizzling like hot grease as it hit the metal roof of the house, but now has become a stready cold rain before first light; it promises to be a bad day for new roller skates or tricycles on Blue Ridge city sidewalks. But then, I suppose not so many children get that kind of active toy as they did when I was a kid. Rain means nothing when you unwrap your X-box on Christmas morning.

Ann and I will defer our modest gift-exchange until the kids arrive, one set later today from mid-point in their trip from St. Louis, and the other tomorrow afternoon coming up from the in-laws in far western North Carolina. Both, I'm afraid, will drive in the rain. But at least it isn't frozen this year as it was last year this time.

And there will be Abby, almost six, to enjoy the goodies--no X-box included--and the warm puppy. And maybe Wednesday when the rain stops, we'll take a ramble along the creek or that night, find a chance for her (and her grampa) to play with the glow-in-the-dark Frizbee. Oops. I can't say that yet. It's a surprise.

The Party Balloon

The orange balloon pulled at the thin pink ribbon that tethered it to the green mailbox, the party done and nothing to celebrate.

The sun rose, lighting just the tops of tallest trees and I untied the child's toy from its hitch, moved back into the clearing to let it go where it would with space to rise free of the branches of maples and poplars by the house.

There had been the barest whisper of wind on the banks beside the creek at first light and from there, the orange teardrop rose vertically, slipping gracefully through the bare limbs outside the back door, drifting north up behind the little white house on a gentle slant into rising sun--itself an orange ball with a blue planet tethered to it.

Fifty feet above the silver metal of the roof, invisible waves pushed down, tossed and jostled the thin rim of elemental air in the undertoe of the surging wave, lurching, twisting, uncertain which way to go--pulled, tossed, lifted and swirled, the ribbon traced the erratic scribble of an alien hand.

At 100 feet, the golden dot was released, let go from the hold of the chaotic swirl that bedeviled its rise, found hints of the persistent northerlies, still bobbing and lurching a little along what would be its final course southeast.

At 200 feet, the struggle calmed above the level of the upwind ridge, a barrier like a snow fence that drops winds down our valley like drifts, crazy, erratic and weak.

And at 250 feet the tiny speck of gold lifted above the rim of our hollow, into the sun, out of the turbulence, its tail gone stiff behind it, rushing with certainty, driven above the bowl that holds home by the great blow of arctic air pushed heavy down from Canada.

Then on, no wavering, no ripples, no looking back. And at the rim of the distant ridge, it cleared the treetops as I knew it would and disappeared.

Thursday Blurbs

Score One for The Guys!

I achieved the Glowing GasPump Dashboard Icon award recently, traveling on mere vapors while on the remote and gasless Blue Ridge Parkway. I was traveling alone of course, as my copilot begins to panic when the tank falls below 3/4 full. I'm serious.

Pain Vs Pleasure

I suppose after last week's party the new room (the ANNex) does have some usefulness and can provide us with some pleasures. But every morning since then, I'd have much preferred (and this was roundly voted down) for our construction dollars a garage so that I don't have to scrap ice every morning , twice on the days I also leave the valley before first light for work. Grrrr!

Dr. Pain

I am about to celebrate my first anniversary of my return to physical therapy. There have been more good days than bad, more patients I look forward to working with than dread, and enough income to make me feel less guilty about indulging in the much less financially-rewarding enterprise of the book-related events of the past year. I think I am only recently regaining my sense of "best care" and the results of treatment have been more and more rewarding. I doubt I will return to teaching anytime soon, as it takes far too much time for the dollars, and takes too much out of me. My PT license is good for two more years, and we'll re-evaluate at the end of 2008 what happens after that. To some extent, it will depend on how able the hands are to go on in this work. The trend in that regard is somewhat bleak.

Bloggers Blogging

Fragments friend D writing under the pseudonym Metropolitan has "penned" a nice study (Fountainpens: a Place to Start) of the joys of and varieties of fountain pens over at DIY Planner. I confess to a pen fettish myself, though too cheap to spring for a real ink-powered pen. My favorite (especially for book signing) is a nice Cross Pen given to me by a patient some years ago. And David Sobotta, Roanoke blogger / beach blogger rallies to the defense of blogging and bloggers against the foppish rantings of a "real" journalist who suggests blogs are "written by fools to be read by imbeciles." Hmmm.

Proof in the Pudding

Actually, no pudding. Maybe no proof. But possibly. I got word yesterday (after spending literally ALL day Monday reading the fine print, making the slight but tedious revisions to make the cover comply with a new template, yadayada) that I may have in my hands by tomorrow the complete book (version two, digitally printed) from Lightningsource. Then, I'll have to decide if that is the way I will go for future book printing and distribution. I'm prepared to be somewhat (or significantly) disappointed with the interior graphics, possibly the cover (gloss laminate is the only choice.) I also will need to get my head around how much less per book this option will offer me, while holding the potential for many times the distribution. More on that soon, I'm sure, for the two of you who have been following this little continuing story of the climb up the learning curve of publishing.)

Horse-dreams

She got her horse.


After all these years.

Beauty kept her out of trouble. Beauty, the first horse, also sent her to the ER with a broken arm. But now there's Cassie, and granddaughter Abby will have her own love affair with the sweaty, obstinate, romantic beasts because her momma couldn't live any longer without a horse in her life.

If it will keep her a safe distance from other harms and wastes of time, I'm all for it--especially given the fact that I don't have to call the vet, the ferrier, or the neighbors to see if the horse showed up over at their place after getting out of the pasture. Those duties I happily confer to son-in-law Mike (who is wearing my shirt, I notice here! Some styles never go out of style, eh?)

And So It Goes

"Ann, you should see some of the great suggestions Fragments readers are offering for the lead-in and byline fade-out for the radio essay" I told her yesterday morning.

"Like what?" she wanted to know.

"Well, like Stranger on the Shore. It's such a haunting..."

"No! That comes from my brother's era, not ours. I don't want to be dated any older than I already am!" And so the search took on a new twist, with acceptable tunes only within a narrow window of time (not yet negotiated) though I argued (if she would just read the piece again) that the essay was about "the times" both before and after we graduated from high school, so that the exact year was less important than the emotional weight the music would lend to the piece. Venus. Mars. In separate orbits of course.

But then later in the day, it no longer mattered. An email from the radio station said the piece (which I figured was destined to air sometime in the spring) would be up on Dec 22 (this Friday!) and due to time constraints, they had to select something instrumental and get it uploaded and done.

And so, as you can hear, the piece ends with some music that is pleasant enough, but lends nothing to the memory of the times. I'm sorry about that. But it was fun "producing" this piece with your great suggestions. Heck. I may just have to download the radio file and splice in my own intro--WITH musical bookends: intro maybe the instrumental organ leadin to Whiter Shade of Pale; fade out: last bars of Floyd Cramer's Last Date. Hmmm....

Meanwhile, if you're interested, catch the little reunion tale real-time broadcast on WVTF this Friday morning, or listen to the unreal-time mp3 file here. The Way We Were / An Essay by Fred First

This was fun. Thanks, all.

Aint Ant Aunt

I suppose the most "authentic" and unaltered mountain-talk I've been around since moving north from Alabama was at an impromptu meal at the home of Ray Hicks, storyteller and along with the rest of his very gracious family, keepers of the language of the mountains.

But then, I guess I grew up with a double dose of language-baggage, being both southern and Appalachian. So most of the words and phrases in this article about Appalachian language seem commonplace, or at least familiar.

Makes me remember my AINT Sara who once when I was small offered my brother and I a glass of SWEET MILK. To our disappointment, it turned out to be only not-buttermilk.

Ann and I heard some terms only after moving to southwest Virginia in the mid-seventies, and it took us a while to KETCH on--like the first time some country neighbors asked if "YUNS wanna come ta dinner at AIR house directly?

Lots of older folks still DRAP the first letters of THAT and add an H to it and change words like ruined to RURNT and it all sounds quite normal to our ears now.

For those who don't come from these mountains, if you heard such language from a visitor, would you think them simple and backward? Could you accept them as an intellectual equal? Is there any wonder that those who must make a living in the larger world outside the hills and hollers often abandon the "native tongue" now spoken by fewer and fewer until some day, our children's children will only read about it, and listen to a few old WAV files and laugh.

Musical Bookends Needed!

Okay, Fragmented Few, here's an opportunity to pool your collective nostalgia and set the musical score.

The situation: on Saturday at the Roanoke NPR station, I recorded a shortened version of the Reunion piece posted here a while back. Dutchie at WVTF wants me to suggest an appropriate musical introduction and trailer for the piece. It needs to be instrumental because the spoken intro and byline will have to be done over top of it.

Of course, given the nature of the little essay, it should be an "oldie" from the sixties--a melody, I think, that is more emotionally evocative than rhythmatic; and preferrably one whose title has to do with love lost or found.

I have one such song in mind, but won't bias you by telling yet. I'd be interested in hearing your ideas, you boomers out there. Send those cards and letters in. The winning submission gets a free pack of Fragments Notecards. Drawing ends at midnight, Friday, December 22.

The Ghost of Parties Past

Yes, the Goose Creek Christmas Gathering was going to be a big deal. But how big, and how to deal with the enormity of the event looked very different through eyes from Venus versus those from Mars. If men ruled the world of social events (and they don't) these occasions would be much more come-as-we-are affairs. Preparation would start, oh, a day or two beforehand, not a month. It would be a disaster.

And yet, every year, the disparate approaches to such self-inflicted and pleasant tasks as planning a big gathering at the house brings out those differences between host and hostess. I started thinking about just what those different world views looked like, but didn't make it very far. Even so (to be amended over time and as a basis for negotiating future Grand Gatherings) here's the list so far. Maybe you have a similar dichotomy at your house and have lived through to The Other Side--which, I am both happy and a bit sad to report, is where we are this morning. The morning after.

And looking back, heck, I hate to admit, she was probably right all along.

Social Planning from Venus:

• Everything is urgent


• Everything that can be done should be done (this one, courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers)


• If 5 is enough, we can't do less than 8 (relative units of effort or substance applicable just about anything imaginable)


• Our purpose is to offer all these people a good time; we, as host and hostess, were not meant to share in it


• Assume responsibility for everything


• Any omissions or shortcomings represent self-esteem demerits; demerits are conferred only by the female members of couples visiting.


• Corollary to above: All other women in attendance have much higher standards than we do, and would be appalled to learn we sometimes live with ladybugs, dog hair, cob webs or dust bunnies.


• Corollary to above: of all husbands, darn the luck, yours is the slobbiest


• Everybody coming to our house will be dangerously malnourished and there probably won't be enough food, no matter how many casseroles, stuffed pizzas or deserts are provided by the hostess

Social Planning from Mars:

• Everything on the to-do list for a time may be important; very little will ever be urgent


• Things omitted will probably only be noticed by us


• Nobody is keeping score


• Things omitted or errors made make the wife no less a good hostess than if every last detail was remembered. And they were probably due to forgetfulness or indifference on the part of the husband, after all.


• Delegate to others; they are happy to help


• We are host and hostess, not staff. These are our friends, not our employers. Enjoy!


• Corollary to the above: the party succeeds to the degree to which we take an opportunity to listen to each of our guests and make them feel welcome, not fill their plates and cups


• I doubt anybody is going to open up the closets in our bedroom. Rearranging one's clothes by color to pass inspection is overkill.
  

The dog is slurping around behind me now, patrolling the carpets for invisble spots of crab dip (that will become visible after the sun comes up.)

We discovered just a few minutes ago that nobody found the cooler with the beer. (Oh well. I'll have to deal with that one one elbow-flexion at a time over the next month. Help me, anyone?)

I'm learning people were here that I never even saw.

Ann is looking for a place to store the new punch bowl she purchased for the occasion; it's big enough for a family of cats. What was she thinking!

Upstairs in the Red Room, the kids last night tied the helium balloons onto the Fisher Price Farm family, and thus tethered, they sway in the dark in the rising heat of the woodstove.

If you take the sum total of good times, new friendships, pleasant conversations and feelings of conviviality on one side of the scales, and the total effort, angst and preparation (and inter-planetary wrangling about the details) on the other, I don't think there's any question which way the balance would tip. Even so, I think maybe, if we do this again next year, she and I might want to do less and mingle more. But then, I'm only an elf.

Buffalo in the Back Yard

Another image picked up on the way home from the winery last weekend--and the first using the combination of (new) tripod, 80-200 telephoto lens (and new tripod mounting collar for same) and the 2x teleconverter.

The silhouetted shape behind the house takes the reposing form of a buffalo, hence its name, Buffalo Mountain.

Were there buffalo in these parts in the days before the western migration of the white man? Does anybody have any info or stories about that? I'd like to know.

Dead as a Duck

Test results are pending to explain this puzzling and disturbing die-off of mallards along a small, remote Idaho creek. Bacterial or fungal agents are said to be suspected, but why only mallards susceptible?

Migratory mallards from Canada and their local cousins staggered and struggled to breathe before collapsing, Parrish said. He said every mallard in a radius of several miles has died--approximately 2,500, up from an earlier estimate of 1,000.

"I've never seen anything like this in 20 years here," he said. "There were dead mallards everywhere--in the water and on the banks. It was odd; they were in a very small area."

The massive outbreak is puzzling scientists because only mallard ducks are dying. Golden eagles, geese, magpies, crows and other birds in the area all remain healthy."

Stay tuned.

Among Friends

Yesterday, I stood at a point about equidistant between our first and second homes--the first, in town on a wide street in what has become a designated "historic district"; and the second, our little farm house just outside town that bordered the cemetery of Berea Church. At noon, I read to the rotary club the tale in the book I called "Like a Dog." The "Euell" of that story (and others in the book) was in the audience, an invited guest, near eighty now.

To have him there, such a good friend, mentor and surrogate parent all those years, and share our lives since Wytheville with him and with other faces from our past was truly wonderful. The college president who hired me in 1974 was there. Wow. And from that meeting, I will now have an opportunity in March to speak at the community college to an audience of townspeople and students. I taught there for 12 years. Now I come back wearing another hat, with another voice, before an altogether different population of "students". Life is good.

And life goes on.

Whatever bug had me yesterday morning relented under the force of adrenalin and responsibility, and other than being a little nauseous and unable to eat the nice lunch buffet at the rotary gathering, I wasn't too ill during the day yesterday---until last night, when the malaise (achy joints, raw skin, too-cold/hot) fell with a vengeance. Ann slept upstairs out of the influence of my toxic cloud.

And I slept like a baby. And at least right this minute at 5 a.m., I feel super! (Way to go, Immune System!) And that is a good thing for many reasons, not the least of which the fact that I will be forced to sit and act attentive all day in Roanoke at the last of my mandatory continuing ed meetings that I need before Dec 31 to keep my PT license. (I couldn't NOT go just because I was deathly ill.)

So maybe I'll be fit enough to feign attention and read the latest Orion magazine I'll hide in my notebook. May even be able to get a seat on the outside where I can plug in the laptop and browse. Or blog?

Order or Chaos?

I was unwell at midnight. I was still awake at 3 with chills. I crimped my 6 foot frame onto the 5 foot loveseat by the woodstove and slept rounded like a comma, til almost 6. And now I don't know if I'm over illness or just ramping up for it. And I need to decide soon: we'll leave the house for Wytheville before noon, and I'll be ON, need to be UP, ready, engaged. I feel none of those things just now, even after two cups of coffee.

I told Ann reluctantly that I was not quite well. Her highest priority is having the strength to get up and do what needs to be done for the gathering here on the weekend, and if means treating my like a leper for the remainder of the week, no doubt she can and will do so.

I've had episodes before where, in the wee hours I was racked by fever and violent chills, only to wake the next morning with no serious repercussions, and go on. So I'm going on this morning, assuming once again that the army of immune cells and the chemical warfare of self-versus-nonself has tipped in my favor.

It depends on how you hold your eyes when you look at it: diseased or eased ? chaotic or cosmicly ordered? creek ice or a place where stars are born? I chose to hold up the latter in all these dichotomies; we'll see if things look different by the end of the day.

Creek Under Ice

Nameless Creek comes from darkness underground, beginning in a dozen springs a mile south. In its past, it has raged back and forth between the ridges, swollen and angry, carving our narrow valley from Appalachian stone. Today the little stream purrs along peacefully enough, cold, clear as liquid glass, on its way down mountains. It carries the smell of snow to a sandy beach on the sea. Tonight our little creek will freeze along the edges. In a month, we will hear a river embryo calling faintly from under ice and we will walk on water. (from Slow Road Home)

I'd carried my pocket recorder with me yesterday when I stood admiring the late-morning light on the creek. I would take a sound sample of the babble of the creek under ice, patch that as a fade-in and fade-out either side of a reading of the paragraph above, combined with the image. I really thought I would do it. I have the pieces. But I never quite made it to complete the task, and now I'm off to work again, tomorrow the rotary presentation in Wytheville, Thursday all day at a CE meeting in Roanoke, then the vortex of the weekend gathering to prepare for. And from now til Monday, I'll kick myself for not getting to done on this. Heck.

But a bit of good news: The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation's Virtual Bookstore now stocks and sells Slow Road Home! Here is the press release just posted to their site yesterday. Many thanks to Joe and others who helped make this happen, and I hope the book warrants the virtual shelf space and doesn't collect virtual dust. So okay now readers, it's up to you. (And by the way, if you wanted to order more than one copy and pay by credit card, THIS would be the way, as my PayPal button on the book website is set up only for a single purchase.)

Seasonal Chores: the Musical Score

Do this:

Go to Pandora.com

Create a new station and type in The First Noel.

Enjoy.

Winter at Mabry Mill

"Did you come east on the Parkway to get here?" asked a booktable visitor yesterday at the winery. "There's ice on Mabry Mill pond" she said, herself a photographer, and, seeing my photo-notecards, she knew I'd want to know such a thing.

So, as smile-weary as I was after four long hours of the last of four such days, when four o'clock came, I cleared the table of my dog-and-pony-show paraphenalia in two trips out to the car, and headed west toward Meadows of Dan and Mabry Mill, a few parkway miles away.

The beauty of a visit to Maybury Mill in December is that there's nobody there but me. And a few ducks. If you click on the image above it will take you to a larger image on Flickr; this is actually a (poorly done) merging of three different images: a normal exposure, 2 1/2 stops underexposed, and one that is 2 1/2 stops over exposed. This is a rudimentary first attempt at what is called HDR photography. High Dynamic Range is a technique available to digital photographers to take advantage of the computer's ability to create an image where both the highlights and shadows are optimally exposed. The three images were slightly out of register, even though I used a tripod, so this image is a little blurry, and the difference between the shadows and highlights was probably not significant enough on this image to do justice to the technique. More not-quite examples sure to come on FFF in coming months!

Winery Weekend

I think I heard somewhere that the winery building at Chateau Morrisette was the largest timberframe structure east of the Mississippi. I do know the timbers were dredged from the bottom of Puget Sound after being submerged in cold waters for a hundred years--massively large and long. It would take more camera than I went with or own to do it justice. The upstairs room where the winetastings take place for this year's Wine Club Open House was still rough when I first saw it back in the summer.

I had stopped by in June with low expectations that the gift shop folk would consent to putting Slow Road Home on their limited shelving for books. They consented and bought 12. Emboldened, I told the store manager I'd be happy to do a reading and signing, should they ever have an event where such was suitable. She brightened at the idea, envisioning this double weekend of crowds upstairs, and took me up to show it to me. Impressive, I thought, and tried to imagine my little book table in such a grand castle of a building. Today will be my fourth and final day, and it has been most interesting and rewarding, and I am most appreciative of the opportunity!

I spoke with so many interesting people. The situation is somewhat like blogging: nobody forces a visitor to stop by the table, examine the book, and know from what they see that we might have something to say to each other. There either is or there is not a connection between the book browser and author. For those who stopped to chat, there were interesting stories.

One poor gal choked up after reading the back cover. "I loved it here. My husband made me leave. I've never quit hurting or missing the mountains. They are a part of me, and I see that same connection from what little I've seen of your book."

Another book-buyer said he was convinced that the mountains (of Patrick County along the parkway) was where they belonged. His wife was not convinced. He hollered at me from the cash-register line: "Fred, does your wife like living here?" I told me that, if anything, she was more attached to this place than I was. And he called his wife over to hear our testimonial of how well this lifestyle fits our needs and preferences. "But it's not for everybody" I told her. You'll know it if it fits you.


Others stopped to say hello, book readers already, or blog visitors, or appreciative of the radio pieces or newspaper column--people I would never have had opportunity to meet. One lady said "I loved your book, but there was one part, after I read the first paragraph, I couldn't go any farther. I was already crying." And of course it was the sad account of putting Buster down.

Another book reader, of all the little mundane details, delighted in the tale of walking with a "spider stick" down our loop through the woods. "We do that too! It was so powerfully connecting with the little rituals of our daily lives in the mountains to find common ground with you on Goose Creek. And when we're away (so many have weekend places here) we enjoy picking up Slow Road to remind us of how the season is changing back up here in the mountains."

There were people from Giles County, Pulaski County, Patrick County, and over in the Roanoke area who felt the same connection to place that Ann and I do here in Floyd. Yes, there are unique qualities here, but it is the larger connection and attachment to the southern mountains that we all love and seem to need. One fella, in conversation of "where are you from" told me about a T-shirt he'd seen in another nearby county. I'll just adapt it to here. It said...

No, I'm not a native of Floyd County, but I got here fast as I could!

It has been gratifying to find out that others have the same sense as we do, that we have arrived at a place we've been moving toward all our lives.

Sand in the Gears

Technology. Bah! Humbug. It's down a few notches on my list of the Wonders of our Age. Sometimes I wonder how things would be without so much of it intruding into our dreams and waking hours. But then, I've just been dealing too much lately with computer keyboards and not enough with family and friends. Maybe that is about to come to an end. I'll be with folks for the bulk of today, much of tomorrow, and away from blogger issues, upgrade decisions and the fine print of digital paperwork. I bet I'll wake up in a more technophilic state of mind tomorrow.

BlahBlahBlogger
Blogger is unreliable. Several times in the past two weeks, it won't let me post (like yesterday for instance.) Then after I give up and am away, mysteriously, it posts. Something about an sFTP socket error.

Failing Memory
I probably should upgrade and add another gig of RAM to bring my 3.5 year old desktop up to 2 GB. On such an old machine, does that make sense? And with four 256Mb chips in the four slots, I'd have to replace them all with 512MB chips to get to two gig--more than $200 upgrade. I've lived this long with barely enough memory to run Photoshop, Word, Excel and InDesign at the same time--sluggishly. Maybe I should just make do.

Did I say that?
The speech-to-text software (Naturally Speaking) is a mixed blessing. I can't use it in the mornings when I do a good bit of my writing because Ann is either here talking or here asleep. It has done some strange things on my desktop--like hanging the system during use, deleting entire email messages suddenly, as if I said "the dog ate my lunch" which means "delete this document immediately!" On the laptop, it is helping with the physical therapy paperwork, now that I've finally trained it to recognize that I'm saying PARASPINALS and not PAIR OF SPINE EELS. And so on.

BookNotes
Thanks to Fragments friend, reader-editor Bob, for helping me find my way forward into what happens next with the life of Slow Road Home. I'm dipping into the last of the offset-printed books (about 160 left from the first shipment of 1145) and need to move on. Here's what I've decided to do, with advice of those who have a better idea of how these things work than I do: Have the book digitally printed. Call it a second edition rather than merely a revision (it has a full TOC and I made maybe 100 small changes and a dozen corrections). Give it a new ISBN number (I purchased a bundle of 10 and only used the one for SRH 1st ed so far). Get a Library of Congress catalog number for the book (a PCN that is the self--published book version of the LCC#). This process will pass the book back through Books in Print and help it "start over" with the potential of distribution through Ingrams to those places that wouldn't bother ordering it from my back room here on Goose Creek. So all that is in place, just awaiting a few final details.

Christmas Giftpack from Goose Creek
Thanks to all who have availed themselves of the one-book plus notecard set offer for $25. I packed one up last night, and stopped for a minute to really appreciate how amazing that really was. Last year this month, I told people (and myself) I was finally going to complete the book. I honestly didn't know if I would or could do it. Then it was done. Then hundreds of them came up our drive on a truck. Then I wondered if I'd still have 900 in the Annex come Christmas. The notecards came only a week ago--at Ann's insistence, and now I've done another thing I said I was going to do "some day" but never really believed myself. And what a wonderful role you readers, friends, editors, writers, bloggers and general characters, online and local, have played in all of this. And that is the most wonderful part--to be able to share these times from this place with you, in words and pixels.

And coming full circle, it certainly wouldn't have happened this way without the marvelous technologies that we rely on. When they work, they are the most amazing tools. Now, let's see if the software will hark up a hairball when I try to post this at 6:45 on Saturday morning...

The Front

Tattered clouds scattered east across what had an hour before been a cloudless cold-blue sky. The first arctic air mass of the season was on its way, predicted to arrive by late afternoon. Already the air had taken on a solemn and heavy feel. There was no cheer in the wind.

We are woefully behind on dry firewood for the coming winter. The woodsman has taken more to the pen than the chain saw of late, and words won't keep him warm in February. So across the county I headed for some easy wood on a friend's place, after stopping for a while in town for coffee with Dennis.

The old Dakota truck, abandoned since the new (used) Subaru replaced in August, lurched sideways on its shocks when a gust of wind tried to push it into the oncoming lane of traffic. But there was no traffic. Stonewall road was empty and quiet but for one man in one old truck, and someone's kite in the near distance, tumbling, falling, rising; for an instant it righted itself--stabilized briefly as if it regained a tail of torn fabric that gave it enough drag to balance left, right, front and back, and soar. Then it pitched and crumpled, barely airborne, moving my way. A great blue heron battered by the polar gale wished he had gone south after all, to visit relatives on the Gulf Coast.

After a short round of discussion at the local cafe, I wanted to show my friend a special place. It was the land that had been the love of another friend who never knew this weblog. She died about the time it was born. But that gal loved those woods. She'd be heartsick to see it has been logged--in a kind way, compared to most--but happy, I think, to know that I could still feel her presence there. And more than the firewood I wanted to show Dennis a special plant in this special place: pennyroyal in winter.

I can't find on the web any suitable pictures of it in winter. It is decidedly not much to look at. But I think next time I run across it, I'll hope to have my camera, so I can show you first, how to find it. Then, encourage you to smell it. More about that later.

By the time I turned and headed for home, the front loomed like an arching flint-gray wave overhead. The temperature had fallen ten degrees since the heron struggled to find refuge from the storm. The first flakes blew sideways, first a few, then a white blur, then patches of clear sky and nothing. Turning off 221 into the countryside was like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia. Here, flakes at first blew like smoke, undulated like a dry-ice-vapor across the road. A mile further down into the hills, it began to stick on the northy patches that never see the sun. I put the truck into 4WD as I turned down into Goose Creek, descending into winter. I carried an armload of wood in with me for the stove.

Let the game begin. Another winter has officially arrived.

A Separate Reality: High School Reunions

It was too long a trip from Floyd to Mobile to be comfortable with her going alone, though for me, everyone there would be a stranger. Maybe I shouldn't go at all. It was her home town where we were headed for Thanksgiving weekend, her friends gathered there, their memories to be celebrated. I was just along to see that she got back safely to a time and place beyond the realm of our long relationship. And home again.

I knew it would not rest easy with me to stand outside the windows of her life, looking in on an era I did not share with her, a time when she was becoming who she would be when we met at Auburn our sophomore year and fell into something like love at twenty.

She spoke fondly and often over this past summer and fall of people who had been her friends, found all across the country, now friends again, brought together by email and conference calls. Their histories had become forever intertwined by the accidental thread of shared classrooms and stadium bleachers so long ago, and she would soon see them again after all these years.

It meant nothing to me except that it meant so much to her, and I would go and support her as best I could. Besides, I had to admit--I was curious to see what it would be like to be with a hundred or more people who were my age, who had lived through my times. There would at least be that sixties connection between us, and maybe something from that to say to them.

It didn't make matters any easier that Ann was one a few who had initiated, organized and would be in charge of events over Friday and Saturday. For months, she had referred to the desktop computer's email as her email and I was banished to the laptop in the next room. For months, I went to sleep at the usual time while she stayed up clicking the keys furiously, helping coordinate the music that the DJ would play, the name badges with pictures, the tour of the high school on Saturday afternoon.

For six months before the reunion, her present was immersed in the past, submerged in tiny black and white yearbook images of hairstyles from the a lost time, symbols that spoke through rose-colored memory of simpler, more hopeful, mostly-happy days of youth growing up in the Deep South.

Friday's Meet and Greet under the vaulted atrium of the hotel lobby was an informal gathering. I consented to go down 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. I swirled the ice in my cup, conspicuously disengaged as gray-haired folk passed by for a quick look at my nametag. Was I another of their classmates grown unrecognizable over the decades?

Cameras flashed. Hands were shaken and held. Hugs lingered, but the crowd milled about as if they had all just woken from a long, long sleep, only to find themselves surrounded by half-familiar faces.

When we've known someone for decades, somehow we never let go seeing them the way they were back then. And for her eyes, this crowd of late fifty-somethings were still the people of their pictures in the yearbook. Their high school faces and youthful, pre-adult personalities were that night who they had been to her then.

But I could not see through to the young people at their core. For me the encounter was unsetting--to be standing in the midst of so many iterations of just how old my body really is, even while the boy in me lived on, looking out through my eyes at these old strangers.

Soon, I slipped away to our room upstairs; 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 a hundred strangers mingling in the lobby four floors below. Hugs, back slaps, handshakes-like so many 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.

And through all this, we've gone back in our conversations to the pre-history of our relationship, and have had our own private reunion over Thanksgiving. We've found a common ground of understanding. In spite of the fact that we lived separate stories the first two decades of our lives and yes, that has made us see the world forever through different eyes, she and I can keep growing together, keep falling into something like love until we get it right.

We've hung wall paper together and we are still married. Now, we've survived her high school reunion. I think maybe we're going to make it, after all.

Who Will Watch The Home Place

I used this image on our Christmas Gathering invitations this year (and last, and the one before that, I think) because first of all, it is a winter scene. But then in any season, it speaks to me of refuge, of serenity, of the blessed silence and solitude of our homeplace we enjoy sharing with friends this time of year.

I pulled the image up on the screen yesterday morning and looked at it for a long while, a December meditation. Just then, from the kitchen radio, the words from Who Will Watch the Homeplace seemed aimed for the gut, and hit their mark.

Now I wander around touching each blessed thing
The chimney the tables the trees
And my memories swirl 'round me like birds on the wing
When I leave here oh who will I be

Who will watch the home place
Who will tend my hearts dear space
Who will fill my empty place
When I am gone from here

Abscission Layer

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. from "A Time to Fall" in Slow Road Home.

And now, I've discovered there's a word for this phenomenon: marcescence. Oooh, I like the sound of it. Here's what it means, and here's how it describes the reason for what I observed and about which I waxed prosaic:

Marcescence is the retention of dead plant organs that normally are shed. It is most obvious in deciduous trees that retain leaves through the winter. Several trees normally have marcescent leaves such as oak (Quercus), beech (Fagus) and hornbeam (Carpinus). Marcescent leaves of pin oak (Quercus palustris) complete development of their abscission layer in the spring. The base of the petiole remains alive over the winter.

Retention of dead parts normally shed. I think there are some human behavior-relational metaphors hidden in this word, and I may just hold on (heh heh) to marcescence and pull it out when the time has come. Could come in handy, describing for instance, the baggage we carry with us from youth to adulthood, that hang brown and brittle well into the next year, and the next, and ...

Fragments Gift Pack

Thanks to kind reader Missy for jogging my "remembery" (as the one of our kids used to say) that I had mentioned offering a Christmas Package Deal from Goose Creek Press. And I'm prepared to do just that. So listen and listen tight, pilgrim. (Who used to say that? Hmmm?)

Usual arrangement: book $16, notecards pack of five $10 and shipping $3.

For you, a special deal (but no Ginsu knives, no matter when you order)...

One copy of Slow Road Home (first edition signed by author and inscribed upon request) plus one pack of Fragments notecards (more or less as seen in the sidebar of the blog) for only $25 delivered. What a great gift idea!

Sorry, not available by PayPal, only by check per instructions here. (Note one image in packet is different from original five images seen in sidebar.)

Wined and Dined

Saturday and Sunday past I spent four hours each day manning a mostly-invisible table that did not provide food or drink for a population of folk who surged into the winery reception room when the doors officially opened at noon armed for both and nothing else. Armed: verb intended--they didn't have a free hand to carry a book if they'd wanted to. Even so, some books sold, several good contacts made who invited me to speak to their women's/rotary/book club in Stuart/Danville/Raleigh et cetera. And I learned a thing or two between day one and day two about the dynamics of working with this particular setting and crowd; each of these various events I've been involved with since the book came along are classrooms, and I pick up pointers that I hope make me more effective in getting the word across effectively.

Saturday mistakes: no name tag. Table information too detailed and busy. Table display did not immediately link me to Floyd County. Vendor sat or stood directly behind table, intimidating some would-be customers. Nothing offered to draw people to the table, even though hundreds streamed past in line for the white wine table.

Sunday corrections: Name tag. Oh, you're Fred First! Simplified table display, simply the poster with book title, County of origin and "memoir of place" with my picture and name. I stood back-left of the table or fully away from it, and only approached if someone picked up the book, a sample note card or a bookmark. "So are you a reader? or "Did you find one you like?" if they picked up a card. AND, due to a little problem with the packaging of the first set of 150 packs of note cards, I ended up with some free copies, so (aha moment!) I offered a free sample with envelope--a winning idea! Four times more people stopped than Saturday, and I was engaged in conversation for most of the four hours.

The cards were appreciated. Several folks asked if they were paintings or photos (which I took as a compliment.) Others asked if there were any snow pictures; or dogs; or nature close-ups. So of course, that makes me think of future projects. A couple of realtors and also some B&B folks were interested in bulk orders to use in correspondence with clients to the area. Great idea, I thought!

I go back again this coming weekend, and the old dog has learned a few tricks.

The note cards, by the way, are nicely repacked and ready for shipping. See sidebar info. Order today!