Barn Red

This shot of crystal branches against the barn roof might just be my last of the frozen months (he said, with mock confidence.)

The jonquils are poking up through the sodden ground beside the house where the top few inches of solid soil is finally on a slow, prolonged thaw toward spring.

Spicebush is dotted now with barely-swollen buds, visible in the early morning light that spills over the ridge about 8:45 now with the longer days. A month further along, it's wispy, lemon-yellow blossoms will be so abundant along Nameless Creek that it will seem like a golden fog in the coldest part of the valley along the old rock wall.

Skunks are active again--a sure sign of warmer weather ahead. Unfortunately, their early emergence from hibernation is evidenced by those places where they didn't make it across the road to their girlfriend's house.

And where will I migrate now that winter is almost past? What will blossom from the dormancy of short days? What will grow from fallow hours of contemplation, from the season of mindfully tending the wood stove to hold back the cold, once that cast-iron beast is put to rest?

Open Book

Finally, Google Book Search will carry you to a page where parts of Slow Road Home can be viewed.

You can see the front and back cover in color. You can peruse the table of contents.

And you can see parts of many but all of not so many of the 108 vignettes in the book. Why? Because I chose the option to make 20% of the book readable.

But I would have chosen to make more contiguous pieces readable so once a potential book buyer begins reading for the flavor of the book, they could complete the thought to the end of the piece. With the exception of a couple, none of the short passages in the book is longer than two pages, so I'd have been happier to have the limit at two contiguous pages. But Google didn't give me that option.

And I find this read-from-the-book function doesn't work for me using FireFox. I have to switch to MSIE. Will you let me know if your experience is the same? I'm in communication with Google about this, and they were unaware of the problem with FireFox. I need to know if it's just me.

I'm wondering how much I'd give away to make the whole book readable. Would that make it MORE likely for a browser to purchase the book, or LESS, having access to it all via Google Book Search? Your thoughts...

(If this way of seeing excerpts doesn't work for you, I've pulled some together on the book website, here.

Snappy Screen Capture

I haven't added many new Firefox extensions lately. At least, I haven't kept many once I tried them.

But Snapper now lives on my browser window just above the task bar. It shows there up as a little red fish.

When I want to save a piece of a browser screen (for instance, to send tech support an image of a dialog box with an error code) I click the fish (that temporarily opens his mouth to show the program is active), left click and drag around the rectangle of screen I want, and the file, in png format, is sent to storage where ever I have designated the program to store these little pieces of browser screens. Very handy.

But if you use Firefox 2, you'll need to get the modified extension here at this link.

P1nk Fl@yd

I wish my hands hadn't gone numb so quickly Friday night. I'd have loved to hung out on the corner of Locust and Main on the Courthouse lawn and fiddled with the camera under unique lighting conditions.

I'm still far down the learning curve on the Nikon D200, especially for night photograhy, motion photography and am still learning what the vibration reduction will do for the 18-200mm lens.

Even so, I was pleased enough with the way this shot turned out, especially as I only came away with a half dozen before I went stiff with cold.

(I disguised the name of this post a bit so I don't get disappointed music fans coming here down a Google wrong turn. Also, I'd hate Adsense to head off in the direction of advertising grunge music on Fragments from Floyd. Ya know?)

Floyd Friday Nights

Last Friday night was my first time in the "improved" Country Store, and I was pleased.

Much of the character (including the hornets nest hanging from the ceiling) remained. The same folks--the regulars--were there predictably attired and in their usual places with usual partners on the dance floor.

There's just more room now. Better lighting. A significantly revamped sound system. And air conditioning when 200 dancing bodies send the temps soaring. Lots more shelf space, waiting to be filled with local offerings. An active soda fountain. And soon, open beyond Friday nights.

I was pleased during my short stay at the store to be able to congratulate Woody Crenshaw, owner and renovator of the store, a man who must be very gratified to see the task completed.

I'll be pleased to offer Slow Road Home in the book section at the Country Store, and hope a new population of visiting readers will discover it there in the "heart of town" over the coming months.

And I'll be back--for more pictures!

---

Where in the world do your blog vistors come from? And why? How many of them do you know? Does it matter that visits are almost entirely anonymous? These are questions I'm pondering on Nameless Creek this morning.

Dog-gone Critter!

For those who have missed the link over at Nameless Creek, you might enjoy a peek at the Puppy Gallery, too long neglected.

Danged dog. It's gonna be a real irony to have a dog get hit by one of the half-dozen cars that go by here every day. You could hardly find a less traveled county road than ours. And yet this stupid dog at times gets overcome with the need to throw himself in front of certain trucks as they move not slowly down the dirt road.

We try to catch Tsuga in or preferably before the act, but more often, we only catch him at the end of one of his suicide runs. I'm not certain he makes the connection between the obvious disapproval as I drag him back to the house and put him in the pen and what it is he's done that I'm disapproving of.

Parts Department

I am a physical therapist. It's my job to understand mechanism of injury. I'm supposed to have a grasp on the biology of ligaments and tendons, muscles, bones and joints, and to apply the appropriate treatment following injury to bring about a return of function and reduction of pain. Unless of course it's my own dysfunction and my own pain--in which case it turned out on Thursday of last week I was totally useless.

Of course when you get to be my age, pain doesn't necessarily have to have a precipitating trauma. The warranty on various parts goes void at odd times and for no apparent reason. One part or another simply hurts. Thursday, while simply walking across a parking lot the parts-failure du jour was my left ankle.

It was mild and barely noticeable at first. I finished my business at the Jacksonville Center and went to visit a friend for lunch. I managed to walk up his front steps, but an hour later could barely make it down them to get in the car. Driving home--and especially operating the clutch with the left foot--was sheer agony. This was the second worst pain I've ever experienced in my life.

I was certain that I had a severe ankle sprain, and telephoned Ann in Floyd to pick up a pair of crutches. I called the clinic to cancel my patients for Friday knowing I wouldn't be able to drive the car or tolerate a full day on my feet.

But I couldn't for the life of me figure out what had caused this degree of pain. I have no pre-existing ankle injuries. There was absolutely no swelling. There was pain with both inversion and eversion of the ankle, where most sprain injuries will produce one or the other but not both. And the pain was getting progressively worse over a period of four hours.

Here's the strange part: the pain suddenly went away.

Next day, I still wasn't confident enough to drive or to risk being on my feet all day. But for the most part, my symptoms disappeared. This couldn't possibly have been a severe ankle sprain but I had thought.

Diagnostic conclusion: gouty arthritis

Or maybe not. We had dinner with a physician friend last night. He has had three episodes of gout himself and seen many patients with it. He says it doesn't just go away abruptly in the way I described. So what was it?

Whatever it was, once was enough. Been there, done that. And I've got a five dollar pair of crutches from Angels in the Attic to prove it. image from treasury.state.tn.us/ --heck: the little guy even has my initials on his shirt! But I have more hair!

Nameless Creek Update

Goose Creek Back When ~ Parts One, Two and Three went up on Nameless Creek, Fred's lonely second blog, this week.

Thanks to all who contributed to my better knowledge of this area's history, place names, personalities and culture. (All images and most text donated by means of emails, scanned newspaper articles or other means--no small effort on the part of the contributors, so thanks again!)

Cruelty Jokes

1) These two lawn chairs beckon you to come sit and relax--in the cold slush.

2) Yesterday's warmth was to make us let our winter-guard down, only to follow up with another winter event overnight. Ann: pack your bags, girl.

Reading, Writing and RNA

Every type of storage media--from stone to paper to magnetic disks--is subject to destruction. From the great fire that destroyed Alexandria's world-class library in 48 B.C. to that unfortunate hard drive crash last week, information has had a habit of suddenly disappearing because the media that contains it succumbs to the forces of nature.

Researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are tapping forces of nature to store information more permanently.

The forces of nature to store information permanently? What ever could this mean?

Well, no less than using bacterial DNA to store text, pictures, music--any form of information in binary code converted to the appropriate sequence of nucleotides. And in multiple billions of copies no less.

Nature has been using this incredibly dense form of communication for millennia.

The ultimate goal of the research "is to use living organisms to store and retrieve significant amounts of data quickly," said Wong. Living organisms, including weeds and cockroaches, that have survived on Earth for hundreds of millions of years are good candidates for protecting critical information for future generations, according to Wong.

If this isn't the stuff of science fiction, then I don't know what is.

Mankind is doomed to oblivion by its own indifference, greed and violence. Future scientists--remnants of humanity millenniums from the Apocalypse or visiting aliens who discover only lowly lifeforms on the third rock from the Sun--reconstruct the former civilization (the entire biosphere genome and every book from every library) from cockroaches collected across the planet. link

Ann's Falls in February

Click image to enlarge

For those of you who have read Slow Road Home, this is Ann's Falls spoken of in the book.

For those of you who haven't read Slow Road Home, what are you waiting for!

SHE drug me up the hillside last week, insisting it would be worth my time. (But then, she'll say anything to entice me out for a walk.) But she was right. I have some other pix of the ropes we've tied between trees on the way up that enable us to get to the falls--a handhold necessary even when there hasn't been a winter storm and long, hard freeze.

It's some rugged terrain, but once we get there, we're always glad we made the effort.

Sadly, the falls are likely to become inaccessible one of these days. Several large (and of course, dead or dying) hemlocks at the rim of the falls will someday rot, and the tops, or the entire tree, will fall across the trail and the little trickle below. Then it will be decades before another photographer can get a clean view and appreciate the scene we were greeted with the other day.

Perhaps it's worthy of note and relevant to this prediction that the sinuous tree trunk lying across the near foreground of this image is that of an American Chestnut, another species that belonged in the southern forest--once--but succumbed to a blight.

Enskyment

To have one's bones picked clean by vultures and live on, with wings.

While this reincarnational idea is more poetic than a statement of my personal future expectations, it is just one among many pondering points in an essay by Radford English prof Rick Van Noy. There were so many out-takes from the piece I am helpless to do justice in summarizing it. Find the essay in the archives of Appalachian Voices here.

For those like me--this includes perhaps a few Fragments readers--who have an inexpressible awe and respect for even the "ugly" parts of the natural world (spiders, snakes, and bare-headed buzzards), I highly recommend this piece. A few small bites from the author about vultures to whet your appetite, so to speak...

Vultures are "Nature's flying janitors".

"Raptors hunt with intent, while vultures, members of the stork family, wait for accidents."

They fly in packs..."nature's version of a street gang."

"Their cousins bring babies, but they are the undertakers."

Van Noy's account of visiting the Radford, Virginia vulture roost with his children is predicated around what he sees as the solemn fact that his town is making great efforts to discourage over a thousand vultures from making their home near town. And it is not for reasons of health or safety that the masses feel such repugnance.

The author gives us a different view of these birds through the eyes and words of others who have watched and wondered about them, including Cormac McCarthy, Robinson Jeffers, and Edward Abbey. And after pondering the world of vultures with Van Noy, perhaps the next time you watch the dark shapes of these "tearers of flesh" you will hold them in higher regard than the squinty-eyed, sinister, sloop-shouldered cartoon caricatures you've harbored in error all these years.

An Uncommon Remembrance

From where I stood to take the picture of the store (posted yesterday) I could have reached behind me and touched this stone and bronze memorial. Placed by Clyne Angle's wife, Myrtle, I wonder each time we pass this marker about the generations that have walked, driven wagons, ridden horses, and navigated Model T's past the store that bears its last owner's name.

I wonder, too, about legacies. The best most of us can hope for is a rank and file slab of granite far from where we spent our days. Here is a tribute in place, marking where the celebrated life was lived.

Click the image to read the inscription. How unpretentious and simple. How heartfelt.

What would your memorial say? And where would it be placed to show the center of your life's work and joy?

Note: Visit Nameless Creek (Fragments Annex) today for the first of several pieces on Roscoe Willis' Store on Goose Creek. This series is possible because of the kind contributions by several readers after yesterday's post on Floyd County history. link

Book-ends

I feel the first stirrings out of hibernation after a long winter of oblivion to writing, speaking, thinking about Slow Road Home or whatever might come next.

I'll have at least two events between now and the middle of April to make me think in concrete terms about the future of my writing and photography--two complementary passions I hope to bring together in new ways in the coming book year.

For both my events (in Wytheville VA and Birmingham AL) I will arrange for a digital projector to run a little pictorial preamble before my discussion about writing, Goose Creek, sense of place, and Slow Road Home.

I think if listeners can gain a visual context for the story, it will mean so much more to them. Do you agree?

And so, even if "whatever comes next" borrows heavily from SRH, it is a second step I think worth taking, plus of course adding some new material as well. Details very much TBA.

But the book year is about to bloom. What it took to make me realize this is the call I got yesterday requesting more books for my best public perveyor to Floyd visitors: Bell's Studio and Garden on Main Street, just down from Oddfellas Cantina.

I am so proud to have my book on their checkout counter. If you come to town, be sure and stop by to see Billy Bell's incredible photographic prints, JoAnne Bell's glass creations, and other pieces representing local craftspeople. Plus, it's just such a nice place to hang out and get a sense of the heart of Floyd.

Here's David St. Lawrence's account of the Bells' fine establishment, written at the time of their opening--coincidentally taking place the same day in April that 1100 copies of Slow Road Home were delivered to Goose Creek! Find store hours and more details on my Nameless Creek site.

Clyne Angle's Store

I feel certain that, while I'm not able to find anything on the web, there is plenty of information about Clyne Angle's Store at the Floyd County Historical Society.

Mrs. Angle still lives in the house across the road, there at the intersection of Shawsville Pike and Daniels Run, and there is a commemorative plaque to Mr. Angle embedded in a stone marker. I don't think I have any photos of it, but wish I did. It's text would shed some light on this image, and on the old Post Office (Floyd County's first, I think I remember) and a building that was active during the Civil War.

You can see the small, green sign in the window that locates the store in the community of SIMPSONS, now not much more than an intersection of two roads. This was once a thriving farming community. A steep mountain path, and later a motor road, was constructed by hand to allow mail delivery and commerce between Simpsons and the similarly active community down the mountain in Goose Creek.

That old road follows along the descending waters of Nameless Creek, and ends up at our barn. We walk it every day--another place in our valley that harbors "good ghosts" as I say.

I'd be interested if there are any readers who have knowledge, stories or recollections of Simpsons or Clyne Angles Store. Please offer comments or emails to share.

Floyd County, VA: Blog Grand Opening!

Please stop by Southern Mountain Melodies, the brand new and still growing website for our friends Mac and Jenny Traynham. These local musicians are familiar faces (and voices) in Floyd, and it's time their music gained a wider listenership.

This is a specially important time for them to become more publically accessible in as much as they will soon have two new CD's available. You'll learn about that on their blog.

And please turn up your speakers! There are THREE audio files (two excerpts and one full song) to sample their sound--traditional mountain, gospel and blue grass duets, solos and instrumentals you'll enjoy.

Leave a comment, add them to your blogroll, and when the time comes, get yourself some CDs--and a couple for your friends! Watch their schedule for performances in and around Floyd!

Let There Be Light

You can't know (well, some of you certainly can) how good it was to get the power back Friday night.

Sitting down the next morning with a cup of hot coffee to the bright, responsive monitor, keyboard, desk lamp; the whirr of the computer, the tick of the wood stove. Ah, life was good.

And to sweeten the return to the normalcy we've grown so dependent on, on our Saturday morning of restored power, a fleeting pink-orange sunrise.

So even though it was 10 degrees and I was only in robe and slippers, I rushed out with the tripod, fumbled with frozen fingers to set the mirror-lockup, exposure and focus, and clicked a few reminders of the times.

There's the stuff from the freezer in an ice chest on the back porch where it stayed frozen solid, no problems there. And the blue kerosene container. But the most meaningful feature of the photo to me is the tiny glow of the computer monitor you can see through the window.

Warm Home in a Cold World

My mother rubs my face in snows when I lament our winter woes.

"You should never have left Alabama" she scolds me, never having quite gotten over the fact that we were meant to live among mountains and not in the deep, sultry south.

But there was never any doubt about it. My first hint of my calling was at a wildflower event in the Great Smoky Mountains back in grad school at Auburn. There was something in the air--a pheromone of ancient granite, perhaps--that pulled us north.

And it is the Blue Ridge Mountains more than the Ridge and Valley (the setting of nearby Wytheville where we spent 12 years) that seems offer the strongest pull to home.

In winter, the weather is both hostile and beautiful. And we feel very much at home surrounded by it all.

(Do click on the image above for a larger look. Landscapes like this lose so much in a teeny view.)

Puppy Paranoia

The dog bounced up and down at the back door as if he wanted to jump through the window glass, absolutely frantic to get outside.

Well, if he'd heard another dog, then we certainly didn't want to let him out. We tried to distract him with a chunk of banana in his Kong, but he would not be consoled or diverted. Agitated and full of dread, he cowered around the edges of the room looking over his shoulder at an unseen menace, following Ann into the laundry room. Pressed into the angle between the washing machine and dryer, he hid his head in her robe.

"What in the world has gotten into the dog?" we both wondered out loud.

"Maybe he's sick and needs to do something outside we wouldn't be happy for him to do inside" I suggested, but we hoped he wouldn't bolt off down the road when we opened the back door for him, after another dog. Or a bear.

But no, it was more a matter of him avoiding inside than being attracted to something outside. He trod straight to the far side of the drive, up by the bank, and just sat there looking back toward the house, trembling.

After five minutes or so, he hadn't budged. So. It wasn't to puke or poop he wanted out so badly. I called him in. He refused. I threatened. He refused. How very odd. I gave up and left him peering fretfully at the back door as I closed it to get back to whatever it was I was doing at the computer.

An icon had apparently been flashing on the toolbar while we were in conversation in the kitchen and the dog in the front room in his usual position between the computer and wood stove. Instant message--not something that happens often around here. It was only about a week ago a GoogleTalk chat invitation came in, and the little BaBink! notification sound went off, and the dog...

So THAT'S it! There is something about that sound that makes him crazy. Now that I think about it, he acted nuts like this then, and I figured out it was the GoogleTalk sound. Doesn't seem very high pitched to me, and it certainly doesn't imitate another creature's growl or bark. But whatever it is, the dog loathes it, and when offered a chance to come back inside yesterday, he made a bee line for the pen, and put himself in Puppy Jail rather than come in.

Hmmmm. We tend to reward the good rather than punish the bad behavior, but heck, the avoidance of hearing a Ba-Bink! recording would be a powerful inticement to one certain dog I know to comply with commands. But nah. What will happen is that I'll keep my speakers turned off from now on lest we have a dog that needs psychological counceling twice a week.

I actually am thinking about "rewarding" him for tolerating such sounds, Pavlovian-style. I'll keep some kibble at the desk, just in case. Might work. I'll let you know.

Anybody else have a "dog sounds" story similar to this? Tell me Tsuga is not alone in his weirdness.

Better Days for the Blue Ridge

* I started to call this little cluster of paragraphs SUNDAY SHORTS but the very idea made me go looking for my long-johns.

* I see Yak-Tracks ("Walk, Jog or Run on ice") showing up over in the ads strip in the side bar (the recent posts referening to frozen water has drawn a disproportionate number of ad-links to that topic). These shoe and boot friction grippers are highly recommended. We discovered them after the Ice Storm of 2006, and both have a pair and won't leave home without them! Take a look.

* Speaking of ads sidebar, I'm hoping to reach the $100 mark soon--maybe today!--and so many thanks for your interest, not always because these commercial pointers are as context-relevant as I might have hoped. The relationship between clicked links and income-per-click is bewildering (everywhere for me from two cents to almost two dollar a click) but this article--Making Sense of Contextual Advertizing-- helps me understand a little better.

* I've recently discovered a FireFox extension that will serve me well--maybe it will help you as well if you want a streamlined way to upload images to your gallery. It's called FotoFox and it will help me get much more value out of my SmugMug account. This morning's picture, you might notice, is uploaded there.

* If you've never used a WIKI or had any idea that you needed to, give pbwiki a look. I'm using this very easily edited webpage utility for the book's website. Recently, the free basic service has gained a WYSIWYG interface that makes the process very easy. You may be one of the ten folks to whom I shamelessly sent a pbwiki solicitation as a way to double my image storage space there. Apologies, but if you can't abuse friends, who CAN you abuse?

* Good news -- bad news. Slow Road Home's Amazon.com page has the good news regarding the book: "Only 2 left in stock--order soon (more on the way)." Yes, some books are selling via direct order, but not many yet--a total of nine, last time I checked. I'm disappointed that the book's only had one review at Amazon after being on the site for more than six weeks now. I'm expecting book-related events to increase soon. There is a review of the book to "hit the streets" soon (circulation 75,000) and I hope that piques renewed interest. More about that soon.

* Do stop over at Nameless Creek if you haven't already. I'll be pondering how to use that "overflow" blog in the coming weeks, and open to your suggestions. Read the sad news from this week: The Day the Music Died.

Out of the Cold

Well, not quite. Ann left to spend yet another night at the workplace so she'd be sure and be able to open up the pharmacy at 6:00 this morning. We've had just enough accumulating snow showers and strong winds to make driving--especially in the dark--something to be avoided.

But this week's weather promises the possibilities of a return, perhaps briefly, to some low 50's temps, which will fell positively balmy.

And how happy I am that I took the time to stop for these frozen creek pictures, because the warm rain before the last ice storm sent muddy water onto the white surface of the creek, and its transient beauty was lost. Once again, as if I needed it, I'm reminded of how fleeting each moment's light truly is. Note to self: be inclined to stop and smell the roses--or capture the moment to digital film; and indelible memory.

Study in Winter #2

My fingers are cold. The house cooled off quite a bit yesterday with neither of us here, and when I got home just before dark, the house was sullen and empty looking and somehow I knew we didn't have power back.

I quickly refilled the Aladdin lamp, built a fire in the wood stove, and promptly picked up the phone to call AEP and get the latest dismal projection. And just then there was a whirring noise behind me. I had to stop and think what I was hearing--the sound I've cast a pox on so many times in our otherwise quiet home--the refrigerator motor running again!

This great reawakening was short-lived, however, though I did my part by not rushing in and turning everything ON. But lots of folks must have. Power came. And it went. But several cycles later, about 7:00, it came on for good.

But there is such a thing as too much light. Dimness covers a multitude of sins: the mess the house has become in the absence of vacuum cleaner, adequate light, and with attention turned to more immediate survival matters is now all too apparent, even two hours before first light.

So when Ann (who got home from work at 1:00) wakes up, I can tell you that vacuum we missed so much will be in MY hands for a good bit of the later morning hours. I feel some serious honey-do catching up coming my way. But at least we can do it with POWER!

And, although I grumbled about a possible AEP conspiracy and general ineptitude in our little sufferings, my hat's off to those men who worked in icy, bitter, windy cold to restore power to "5000 households" in Floyd County alone. We appreciate your sacrifice and efforts on our behalf!

Down But Not Out

We're still without power, last I heard, and every time we call AEP they seem to put off the "final customers return to service" estimate by another 12 hours.

I had a patient cancellation at work just now so thought I'd let you know we're okay--just sort of out of our rhythms and tired of eating soup.

The freezer leaked water (condensation) across the kitchen hardwood floor, I discoverd in my sock feet in the dark-cold this morning at 5 a.m. The milk we left outside on the porch was frozen solid. The keronsene lamp went dry about 30 minutes before there was enough light to see without it. Peanut butter was the best I could do for lunch. Man, is this about to make you weep or what!

I left for work in time to get a shower here before my first patient. And until this blessed no-show, there's been a steady stream of clients since 8:00.

Oh how I hope to drive up and see a light on inside at Goose Creek. If not, I'll certainly finish my book, eat my soup, and go to bed early, hoping for better fortune tomorrow--heck, maybe even blogging from home!

Not A Happy Camper

It came as no surprise, really, and at first we felt charmed: an ice storm that knocks out power just as we were going to bed anyway. At 9:30 Tuesday night, we thought maybe our fairytale luck would hold out and the power come back on just before time to get up on Wednesday. Well, fairy tales don't all come true. We're still without electricity, and told it might be midnight Friday (or later) that we'll be able to get back to normal. For reasons we haven't been told, 13000 residents of a couple of counties lost power at the same time, though the various neighborhoods are getting it restored in dribs and drabs, and looks like we'll be among the last.

Luckily, the town of Floyd has power, so I'm at the library checking email, picking up some milk, and just generally getting out of the house as a hedge against a raging cabin fever. Ann has been home too, til this morning, and made it safely to work. We got on each other's nerves at first, but settled into the new and slower rhythm, and had a nice evening by candle light.

Our road is still really very bad, but the hardtop roads are passable. And we're okay with wood for heat, gas for cooking and water from the well-head (we have artesian pressure and put a faucet directly on the well casing.) I have an unread Orion, National Geographic, Christian Century and Blue Ridge Country Magazine. We have a couple of gallons of kerosene and a new wick in the Aladdin lamp. And plenty of dog food for you know who.

But even though I tried the old fashioned way of writing, my pen just didn't want to put anything down on a legal pad, balking at the absence of cut and paste, copy and move, and quick access to the net for word-check and little bits of research. How spoiled I am.

Meanwhile, our neighbor down the road didn't notice any change in her lifestlye. She lives alone in a house about the size of our front room without electricity or running water. Her choice. And times like this, I wish I was a little more resilient to doing without.

Chances are good I won't be able to post again tomorrow. And dang, I've gotten some keeper pix from the ice storm I'm eager to show you, not to mention the two more creek ice shots in the series I started on Tuesday. So don't give up on me, and thanks to those who emailed to inquire about our health and safety. We're off the grid temporarily, but hanging in there. Hope you are too!

Fragments Births Second Blog!

Overflow, I guess you could call it.

Turns out, there's more junk than will fit in the closet of Fragments from Floyd.

Actually, had I not needed to experiment with "new blogger" to help a friend set up his blog over the past couple of weeks, I doubt I ever would have felt the need for an "alter-blog".

But that's what I've got, and it's called Nameless Creek.

I confess, I like the ease of modifying the template without hacking code, though you can still get to the html of the template if you're a mind to.

Please stop by.

And notice--in a bit of a divergence from FFF--there are three AUDIO files within the first half dozen posts. So click away, and turn up your speakers.

And don't fail to note there are sponsored links over at Nameless Creek--an annex to the meager income that results from same on FFF. We appreciate your patronage, and check back here from time to time (I'm likely to point you in this direction) and see what shape it takes over the coming months.

Study in Winter #1

The way ice grows in Goose Creek fascinates me, and I'm sorry I haven't chronicled the process over the past month. Still, where we live gets too much southern exposure. It isn't nearly as good an ice garden as down the road a mile or so where the perpetual shade of the hills spawns crop after crop of ice every night.

And I'd have missed the opportunity to show you three shots from yesterday if I hadn't agreed to carry one of Ann's care packages to the kids over to the Check post office. I waited until there was at least a little light striking the valley flanks before leaving, and on the way home, risked limb and equipment and slid my boots down into the creek bed and onto the ice for views east and west along Goose Creek in its winter garb.

You can just see the road in the distance.

Meanwhile, today, an ice storm looms west just off the radar, just far enough away that I'm not going to know what to do about trying to get to the clinic this morning. Getting there, I can do. Getting home as conditions worsen over the day, not so sure. Gonna be one of those days.

Winter Lights

My hope was to get to the back of the valley (the "Nameless Creek Gorge" I call it) before the sun disappeared behind the steep west ridge. I didn't make it in time.

By the time I reached my destination at 3:00, the lighting along the creek was already flat shadow. But walking back home--sad to have waited too long to get the shot I had in mind--I turned around and saw this dazzling last light behind me, a single shaft reaching the valley floor just seconds before the sun dropped away from our holler for another day.

This is another example of light looking for a subject to draw the eye. For me, the sparkle of the pines and the way the light of the snow draws the eye into the mysterious darkness is enough. The image embodies the feel of the moment, and such pictures are more for the photographer than for his audience.

How Cold Was It?

You know it's cold when the rhododendron leaves go tubular.

As one of the few broadleaved plants still in leaf over winter, extra precautions are needed.

On the plus side, this evergreen mountain shrub can remain metabolically active all winter long. But that involves water needs (from frozen ground) and water production in photosynthesis (with the risk of cells burst by freezing.)

So rolling the leaves reduces surface area, creating a higher humidity field around the leaf's lower surface; the top surface is lacquered in a kind of waterproof coating, the cuticle. The substances in rhododendron's sap (the equivalent of resin in conifers) acts as a kind of antifreeze.

And the tight rolls offer little for snow to settle on, though we have ample evidence in our woods that wet snows have been heavy winter burdens on the gnarled and spindly shoulders of our mountain heaths, creating low tangles that have long been called "laurel hells". Just try to get through one, especially with a backpack on!

NOTE: Today will be the warmest day in weeks, only to be followed by an ice storm coming our way tomorrow. Doh!

Every Home's a Stage

Another Saturday in Floyd County, another house concert. Last week, music of the mountains, sitting in folding chairs, in jeans. This week, classical music of the ages, seated in an elegant living room, in a coat and tie.

The setting: The Inn at Hope Springs Farm, almost to the Carroll County line, on 221 the other side of Willis.

We met the owners, Candace and William, a couple of years back through a friend who was filling their extensive needs for custom draperies, upholstery and such. Last night, the music also was from local talent--Mike Mitchell playing the masters on violin, with accompaniment on the grand piano.

Walking in last night, we realized this was a different crowd. We recognized only the host and hostess, and our veterinarian. But from the remaining strangers, we met quite a few new couples. Some were guests at the Inn from Richmond or Greensboro. Others, like Sandra and Ken, had local ties--and connections to the Inn owners by their common interest in alpacas. Here's their alpaca website.

And so there was some conversation that followed from my question: "So you think I could actually turn a profit on our six acres of level land with these animals?" Boy, did I ask the right question to the right folks. The tax benefits are significant. There's even an Alpaca 101 page that seems likely to answer all our questions. Yours, too.

So we have had two Saturday house events in a row, and sampled the diversity of music and culture that is available in this wide place in the road. No, you won't find a civic center in town. No movie theaters or streets lined with ethnic restaurants. But there's plenty to do. It's just that we enjoy much of our entertainment where we live: at home. And invite the neighbors.

A New Perspective

I don't have many photos of this place where Goose Creek and Nameless Creek come together. And yet, this is one of my favorite places on our land, visually, even though it is very near the road. (You can just see the barn roof near the upper edge of the scene. I'm literally hanging from a tree trunk to get this picture from the top of a rock bluff. You see what risks I take for you, blog readers!)

But more than what meets the eye, the whole notion of convergence, of flowing together to make a larger stream--of water, of experience or of thought--is somehow central to this process of becoming and belonging.

Convergence, a coming together. The making of wholes from fragments. There is something in this.

Smell Check

A recent anecdote from a teacher makes me wish I'd kept a list of student (and later, patient) malaprops from my careers in classroom and clinic...

I asked my students to write several letters, and one was to a business that made a product they really enjoyed. Here is a letter I read this evening:

Dear Ralph Lauren,

I am writing to you to talk about one of your products, which is colon. My dad bought me your colon which is called Romance.

I love your colon. It smells good and the fragrance lasts a long time. It also has a little box that I can put the bottle in. I never go anywhere without it. Keep up the good work.

Sincerely,

AB Student

Traces in the Snow

After it first falls, thick and smooth, deep enough to cover gravel and ground and all traces of autumn, I go out hesitantly into the new snow and leave the first blemishes in the unbroken white. In the beginning, there are just the boot tracks to the woodpile and the signs of the dog's quick trips out and back. For a time during the storm, these trampings will fill with the sediments of the next wave of snow, leaving smooth undulations in the surface. But life goes on, and one can do only so much admiring from the windows. By yesterday, there were tracks--our own and others--that showed what a busy place our seemingly-deserted valley really is in winter.

Over there is where the dog and I went down to wade across the creek, to rummage through the barn for the snow shovel that we needed for the first time this season. And there, past the garden, I'd remembered too late to retrieve my maul, and you can see where I rooted around with the toe of my boot to find it buried under six inches of snow next to a rounded mound of split cherry I could smell even through the snow. And those human tracks going back into the valley are not mine; they belong to the friend who called this morning and asked if he could hunt our land. He left a while ago, carrying out only his deer rifle.

Turkey tracks loop back and forth in the pasture between Nameless Creek and the opposite ridge along the old pasture road. Grasses that stick up from the snow have been nipped along the turkey trots. Here and there, the snow has been scratched away and the frozen earth bothered by prehistoric scaled feet, grubbing up a meal. At times their three-toed tracks suddenly disappear half way up the steep bank, and I know they took wing, ponderously, and only because the bank was too slick with snow for their heavy bodies to climb. Maybe they were startled to flight as the dog and I took our first walk along the creek this morning. They will roost in the tall pines up top of the ridge and be back making more tracks down here tomorrow.

Deer tracks are everywhere in the morning, each hoof mark a sharp pair of converging crescents the shape of praying hands; they are creatures of the night. In the daytime, against the snow, their gray-brown disguise is laughable. Only when they run up the hill away from us does the white flag of their tail match their winter hiding place. It is in the snow during hunting season that they are most vulnerable. And about that, I have mixed feelings.
Excerpt from "Traces" in Fred's book, Slow Road Home

But Not of Stillness

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

from: The Rock by T. S. Eliot (1934)

Nature Imitates Art

I rushed frantically to reach the high clearing for a shot of the late afternoon light through a blue fog that lift out of the valley. That, I thought, was my reason to be there.

With great purpose and focus, I rushed from my car at a favorite Parkway overlook, and while stumbling through the windswept forest with tripod and camera bag headed toward the open pasture views of a fog-pale distant landscape, I was struck by the beauty of the autumn woods that I was hurrying through.

But it struck me: if it was the magic of light I was after, why, here it was, just at my feet.

I stopped and spent a precious few minutes there before rushing to the last of the light at the clearing. And in the end, it was these shots of windblown ferns in their last grand display of fall that pleased me most from that afternoon excursion.

Here again at the end of their season of life as at their beginnings, these hayscented ferns have taken on a pleasing translucence. Tattered by the wind, cinnamon and pale green against the dark shadows of gnarled, windpruned treetrunks, there was a kind of magic in the light.

And once home, yes, I've added to the fantasy story-book magic by applying my brushes--Photoshop--because this reminds me of the art in the nature we would otherwise rush past. This is the way I remember the moment; this is what I want others to feel when they share it with me.

But the true art comes, as it has for centuries, from those who use real pens, pencils and brushes and palettes to create solely by their imaginations those "effects" I can only bring about by clicking the right buttons. Those artists saw the same magic, and made it real by the power of their eye, heart and hand.

So I consider it the sincerest form of flattery that I imitate artists, as artists draw their vision from landscapes that wait for us to notice.

China Hot Dish

"Skating has been banned on the melting ice of Beijing lakes, trees are blossoming early and people are shedding their heavy clothes as China experiences its warmest winter on record. Magnolias are blooming in Beijing as if it were April." seedmagazine

Yep. It's global warming, say Chinese officials. Officials who are as proud of their cognitive dissonance as Americans in the same role, knowing that...

"China is one of the world's biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, which is released into the atmosphere through the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

About 70 percent of China's energy comes from burning coal, and there are plans to dramatically increase production as the energy demands of the nation's fast-modernising population of 1.3 billion people continue to soar."

Get ready for this little factoid:

China built 117 government-approved coal-fired power plants in 2005--a rate of roughly one every three days, according to official figures.

They blame existing conditions on the developed world. True enough. But to knowingly invest so heavily in more of the same gives some indication of how well the global community is going to cooperate on this most serious environmental issue of our times. In the end, a solution will come, and the atmosphere will return to pre-industrial levels.

Our species might not be here in significant numbers to see it.

Straight Path to the Crooked Road

This spring (oh I like the warm sound of that word!) promises to be a great season for touring the "Crooked Road"--southwest Virginia's Music Trail that passes through Floyd.

Other stops along the way include Galax and Stanley country, the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, the Blue Ridge Music Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Galax, the Carter Family Fold in Hiltons, the Country Cabin in Norton and the Blue Ridge Institute at Ferrum College. You can see and read a bit about them all on the clickable map.

According to Ralph Barrier writing in the Roanoke Times...

"The idea came at a time when old-time roots music was undergoing a huge popularity surge thanks to the success of the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" movie soundtrack. The album featured updated versions of Depression-era songs and sold more than six million copies and dominated the 2002 Grammy Awards. Southwest Virginia's stake in the CD's success came through the inclusion of Stanley and bluegrass star Dan Tyminski, formerly of Ferrum. The time was right to capitalize on the newfound popularity of old-time music."

Cultural tourism is a growing phenomenon as traveling families want to learn more about their own heritage and roots, and that comes from the getting there as much as it is the destination.

"Southwest Virginia has the greatest tradition of old-time string music than anywhere else in the world,"said Roddy Moore, the Blue Ridge Institute's executive director. "The eight spots are just the high points. The Crooked Road is really what's in between. I would take the sidetrips off the road and see the landscape and meet the people."

If you're new to traditional Appalachian music, consider a trip down the Crooked Road as the Baptist introduction: total immersion, head to toe, in "that good ol' way". It's been ringing in these hills for generations, and the invitation is out for others to listen in.

Under the Hood

Okay, I'm gonna have to get my hands dirty. I'd generally resist pulling up the hood nand getting grease under my fingernails tweaking the blog machinery, but sometime you got to do what you got to do.

Need help here, buddies. It has been weeks since I noticed that my blogger window was way larger than my 19 inch monitor could accommodate. My screen resolution is set at 1200 X 1000, and I still have a horizontal scrollbar that will show me another 400 pixels off to the right.

This probably is part of the problem with the newly discovered situation: MSIE in some versions and on some monitors drops the sidebar all the way to the bottom of the front page of the blog. This is especially aggravating as I'm trying to understand how to best use Adsense in the sidebar. No wonder I haven't gotten many visits to those ads in several days! They're way down at the bottom of the main column!

(BTW: andThe sidebar looks fine on my monitor using Explorer 7, but other readers using earlier versions I assume, seem to be having problems.)

If anybody out there using blogger.com can offer me some advice on how to modify my template or to change an offending post to make both Firefox 2 and all versions of MSIE behave, that would be greatly appreciated and make me sleep a whole lot better this snowy night.

Our operators are standing by, waiting for your call. THANX!

UPDATE 7 FEB: Fixed! Thanks Sean Pecor, for finding the missing div tag some doofus (named Fred) snipped and didn't put back. Wonder, how such a small snippet can wreak such large damage. Tsk tsk.

Wounded Wood

Back when we first moved to Goose Creek, I was chatting excitedly with a woodworking frien