Morning Walk | Venus Looking Glass?

I think I'm in the right genus, but haven't keyed it to species yet. Those curved anthers should make it relatively easy to distinguish from its kin. UPDATE: Thanks to Rurality for the dope slap and correct ID: American Bellflower.

I had to shoot with the lens at 200mm because these were blooming up a steep shale bank at the end of the valley. The dynamic range from lightest to darkest was too great for the medium to capture so the highlights are blown; would have been a good time to take RAW and use Photomatix to balance light against shadow. But I was too lazy to think through this.

I love bringing images back and posting them while they are still "warm" from the field, though it's not quite as much fun having to upload blog-size and enlarged versions to Photobucket as it would be if I had a permanent place for them. Maybe this will happen soon. Sigh.

Larger images is here.

Friday Shorts: Almost July

You can see a larger image different view of this shot of a busy barn swallow bringing food to at least two hungry mouths I could see inside. She returned about once a minute with her catch (that sometimes got away before the gaping mouths could take it) so I had several opportunities to catch her on the wing.

* That's My Name Too (three! four!) There is a Goose Creek in South Carolina, and they have a press--which is how it happened to come up in a Google search for the name of my little business, Goose Creek Press. Apparently, more goes on there than in our rural backwater. I give you exhibit A. It involved Rev. Jesse Jackson, who apparently stopped by for a photo-op.

* I'm tinkering with some new sites for the book. If you enter slowroadhome.com or goosecreekpress.com in your web address, you'll go to my newly-redirected site at wetpaint.com. It's very easy to use and change. Stop by, poke around, let me know what you think. I haven't settled yet, and haven't invested anything here but a little time.

* But then yesterday I rediscovered Terapad, where I'd already set up an account back in January and then forgotten about it. It is feature rich, but as far as I can figure out, lacks an easy way to get from the edit page back to the page that's been edited.

* Almost, but not quite. I just couldn't make myself enter the medical quagmire that is health care in America. Yeah, we have insurance. But I will do anything to keep from being jerked around by Southern Health. So I'm looking at something other than straight glucosamine for my crummy wrists and thumbs. Anybody know anything about Osteo-Biflex? It's "special" ingredient is Frankensense. Seems to be something to it as an anti-inflammatory, with a history of use that goes way back.

* Carry me back. The Kingston Trio sings Four Strong Winds. So clean-cut and earnest, the crowd so polite and engaged. Sorry: the good ol' days.

A Field Guide to Light

That title contains some essence of what I'd like any potential photography book to be about. In some cases, the actual subject of a photo would be of most interest. But more often than not, it would be about the magic of a lighting moment--the light itself, the thousand different species of light--that come and go in this single small cleft of landscape and span of sky through four seasons.

This grassy composition lies just beyond the maple tree seen here earlier this week. Both scenes become worthy of the time to capture them photographically because they both benefit from the very same early morning light, shifted so far south along the ridge in the summer months that the sun's rays drop just there, just then.

I could create my own private Stonehengian calendar: a shaft of light at nine o'clock in the morning on the first day of summer will spill through the cleft in the maple trunk and strike the earth exactly here, the pasture grasses from must that angle. I could place a permanent marker on the spot to honor the light, the day, the year, the lifetime it marks.

And so it is for all the light that comes to Goose Creek. It is predictable, and it is so very transient and unique to each given moment and place in time.

To be honest, this shot of the grasses came from this day last June. This year, in the very same spot, the pasture has been cut and is only a foot tall now. But I know what I would have seen on this date in that exact place at 9 am when the sun came over the ridge so predictably. Except this June 28 is cloudy; the sky is flat-gray and somber with a thin fog lying over the stubble of pasture grass--its own kind of special light.

Click for a larger image.

Beauty Upon Beauty: Not

Black Vulture Glamour Shot spotted on the same country road from whence the chickory flower pictures came earlier in the week.

I rounded a bend, and greeting me were three black vultures on three consecutive fence posts. Only one remained by the time I stopped the car in the middle of the untraveled gravel road, pulled the camera from the car seat to my eye, and pressed the shutter.

This one is nicely vignetted by a luxurious growth--of poison ivy.

Turn Your Radio On

If you can take a slice of life from Southwest Virginia by ear. The last three Friday essays at WVTF are by local writers including my friends Colleen Redman and former Floyd Countian, Jim Minick. Each is about three and a half minutes long. Take a listen.

Essay by Fred First - 6.29.07
If you find yourself swatting at annoying insects that abound as you mow the lawn or attempt to enjoy the outdoors this summer, you're certainly not alone. But WVTF essayist Fred First has a different reaction. Fred First is the Floyd County author of "Slow Road Home: A Memoir of Place."

Essay by Jim Minick - 6.22.07
The summer months find many tending gardens. WVTF essayist Jim Minick stays busy protecting his tree farm. Jim Minick teaches English at Radford University

Essay by Colleen Redman - 6.15.07
There aren't as many farmers these days as in the past. But WVTF essayist Colleen Redman has a son whom she calls a farmer of sorts. Colleen Redman of Floyd blogs daily at looseleafnotes.com. Listen."

AC: Made in the Shade

This is the time of year that even in the mountains, the heat enters into the conversation along with the details of the last thunderstorm that hit one neighborhood but didn't shed a drop on the next.

Folks sometimes want to know if we have air conditioning here in the old house.

Heck no. We heat with wood. We cool with it, too.

Five large maples constitute our summer cooling. The largest is the one in the front yard off the porch; it still has the remains of two-by-four steps that once gave somebody's children access to the thick fork of branches that shelter the road.

Two maples are above Goose Creek along the road, blocking our southern windows both from the hottest part of the day and from a full view of the pasture, May til November.

The fourth maple is to our west, between the branch that runs beside the house and the driveway. We'd really suffer the late afternoon sun for a while before it dropped below the high horizon well before the rest of the county experienced the same some hours later.

The fifth maple, to the northwest beside the shed, is the only one we could lose and not be hotter for it.

This picture (larger image) of a single shaft of light, a tiny packet of solor photons, makes me appreciate how many more of these light-to-heat rays don't reach the house in the summer months, thanks to our solar-powered organic air-conditioning system of maple trees.

They'll have their work cut out for them today. And the floor fans and ceiling fans may see their first action before dark.

Insert Image Here

Barn on Daniels Run -- a Foggy Day in June

I am a man without a country--well, a man without an ftp folder for his photos, anyway. That's just about as sad. But Ellis Island is appearing over the horizon. I'll have my new citizenship papers soon, and you'll see the snapshots. Again.

For now, I'll just send you from this colorless, imageless post to SmugMug for your Blue Ridge view for Tuesday.

As it turns out, I did have my camera in the car with me that day, even though I'd only been going to town for a morning meeting on a drizzly-foggy summer day. Fat chance I'd actually take any pictures, I thought, but it's a cinch I wouldn't come home with any if I left the camera bag at home.

Just as I was ready to take the last turn towards the house, I noticed the fog rising fast over the crest of the hill and headed our way. If I went another couple hundred yards farther up Daniels Run, I might be able to stop and look back and catch just enough fog for a photographic backdrop before it obscured any potential subject I might find.

I ended up with several nice perspectives of this old barn before the fog engulfed it, and was glad I'd given my camera a ride to town and back.

Moral: it's better to pack it and not need it than to need it and not have it. That applies to umbrellas, extra cash--and cameras.

Plastics Are Forever

One word: plastic.

Benjamin Braddock as The Graduate in the 1967 film may not have been at all interested in it.

Meanwhile, America has swooned to the seduction of plastic after finding a generation ago that "cheap oil" could be made into so many versatile, colorful and inexpensive tools, toys and trinkets.

Every year, about 300 billion pounds of plastic are produced around the world. And the best thing about plastic we discovered since the sixties is that it is practically indestructible.

And maybe the worst thing about plastic, Benjamin: it is practically indestructible.

Take plastic shopping bags, for instance. They are so prevalent across the landscape that I propose that they be named the new national flower. Lifted to bloom on tree limbs by the prevailing traffic-winds of speeding eighteen-wheelers, they are the most lofty blossom of humanity's love affair with plastic.

It's hard to believe it has only been some 25 years since we were first faced with that awful but lightly dismissed environmental conundrum: paper or plastic? And overwhelmingly in recent years, the answer has been-you guessed it-plastic. Fully 80 percent of shoppers choose it. I read recently that "somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year".

But wait. Let me set the record straight: that many bags are made and are utilized. But dear hearts, they are NOT consumed. They are NEVER really consumed. They are however, unfortunately, sometimes eaten-but more about that distinction in a minute.

So. Where do all those trillion plastic bags go when they disappear from our lives-the ones that don't end up in the high branches of roadside trees? First, we'll watch a bag settle into Goose Creek right out my window here, blown from the back of someone's passing truck.

From there, it will wash into the South Fork and on downstream, into the main flow of the Roanoke River. It may perhaps in high water become temporarily hung up in the branches of a piedmont streamside alder. But eventually, it will find its way to the ocean. And there it will not be alone.

Let's follow our wayward bag to its not-quite-final end (a Styrofoam coffee cup would follow the same route) all the way into one of six ocean "gyres"-great swirls of listless ocean sometimes called the "horse latitudes" where much of the world's floatable trash ends up in unimaginable abundance. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre between Hawaii and California can swell at times to twice the size of Texas and has come, just within our lifetimes, to contain many times more plastic than that area of ocean contains in living matter (biomass.)

Bad enough that our trash plastic unaltered and whole can strangle an albatross or seal (six-pack holders are notorious for this kind of death) or choke a green sea turtle that fatally mistakes our ocean-drifting plastic bag for a tasty jelly fish.

But perhaps the most ominous thing about the durability of plastic is that it can, over long stretches of time, wear down by sheer mechanical action into smaller and smaller particles without reverting back to its constituent carbons and hydrogens.

Many millions of pounds of these tiny non-digestible particles are destined over decades, centuries perhaps, to float in the ocean currents. In time, tiny bite-sized bits of plastic will be munched but not digested by zooplankton, the bottom tier of the marine food chain. These tiny animals by countless metric tons will be eaten by bigger and bigger fish, on up the food chain and into the grocery stores. And the plastic-and its constituents (a rogue's gallery of dangerous additives) lives on, and on, and on.

Consider this: "Except for the small amount that's been incinerated-and it's a very small amount-every bit of plastic ever made still exists." Each of us tosses about 185 pounds of plastic per year. And you have to wonder: do we need filtered-water bottles that will last for 500 years?

Where does this leave you and me? Perhaps we are on the verge of a slow substitution of non-degradable with break-downable "plastic-like" shopping bags and six-pack holders and drink containers and Barbies and Kens that don't require fossil fuels. As nearby as Virginia Tech, new, less persistent polymers for this purpose are being created using chicken feathers!

So the next time the nice young man at Slaughters presents me with that impossible paper-or-plastic dilemma and I don't know how to answer, I'll be toting a canvas shopping bag (it's a start, and something we can do in the near term) and I'll smile as I imagine a green sea turtle off the coast of Myrtle Beach munching contentedly on a real, digestible, peanut-butter-and-jellyfish.

Recommended:
Polymers are Forever http://urltea.com/ji0
Plastic Ocean http://urltea.com/rcx
Plastic A'int my Bag http://urltea.com/ucj

Keeping It Floyd

Build it, and they will come. And the building is underway.

But what will they bring with them, for good or ill? What will they take away? Will they stay? And will Floyd lose even as it wins?

The town of Floyd (a collective for lots of hardworking and persistent folks) has succeeded in funding a face-lift. Local merchants are taking the opportunity to revitalize and build. Changes are coming. You can read about them in this Roanoke Times | New River Valley Current article about the weekend events.

And how to balance preservation and change was a big part of the conversation on Saturday. Finding the point of "dynamic stability" is the work we face. And people are talking. Most are optimistic the balance can be found. No one is certain.

Photo of "downtown" from Saturday.

Slow Roads Are Hard to Find

It's surprising, even with the miles of back roads and gravel roads and side roads in Floyd County how hard it is to pull over when you spot a photo-worthy composition. There's somebody behind you; it's a quarter mile to a place to pull off, and that is across from somebody's house, but far enough away. But their dogs spot you and set up a fuss. And you move on.

I'm hoping to do a better job this year of documenting the passage of time measured in roadside wildflowers (and the insects that visit them) so finding those marginal places for this purpose is high on my list.

And I did find such a place, not very far from home--a mile or more of gravel road that winds down past a sheltered farm surrounded by rising, rounded pastures. A small sign near the road give the name of the owner and his wife. There's nobody there. Seeing the name, I remembered: I visited this elderly farmer at the suggestion of a local minister. He has stories to tell, the minister told me. He's quite ill, staying at his sons, and would love to talk--especially since his wife died a few months back. I recorded about 15 minutes of our conversation from his bedside, and never did anything more with it. Now I've been reminded, I just might.

This very common roadside "weed" pictured here is chickory, Chichorium intybus. It's a pretty little thing, but not easy to photograph to show it off at its best. Chichory is a relative of endive and radicchio, and I'm surprised I never experimented with its edible parts--with the exception of imbibing it this very moment as an adulterant of the Luisianne coffee in my cup.

Note: this image hosted at Photobucket, as my server priviledges are in limbo as I make the switch soon to Wordpress and a new stall for this pony.

Forficula auricularia

Ah, what's in a name? In this case, more beauty to the ear perhaps than the named is to the eye.

But contrary to a long history of misinformation, the earwig does NOT burrow into the ear of someone asleep and burrow into their brain. Hardly ever. Though I met someone in town yesterday who might have been a victim.

I tend to think of these creatures as "coffeewigs" because that's often where I see them--around the sink, often under the coffee pot on first lifting it for the emergency cup of morning alertness.

Pictured here on the buds of some nearby milkweed, they do no harm. Their "pinchers" or cerci are rather puny, and though theoretically they can defend themselves with them, they aren't much defense against a broom and a dustpan. (They do, however, emit a strong iodine odor if picked up and lifted to the nose.

What! You haven't snorted an earwig? Well you certainly have lived a sheltered life!

Local Color

First, before I forget, there might be just the exactly right person for this responsibility out there in the blogging readership (or among Google vagabonds who vastly outnumber regulars these days):

There is a need for a volunteer to staff the desk at the Rocky Knob visitors center on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Man, what a great, COOL, and beautiful place to spend one's days, chatting with the wide variety of folks who pass along the nation's longest state park.

Find out more about it here.

Hmmm. I must have had a second point in mind. Wonder what it was? Let's see.

I never mentioned that this past Sunday, we visited Haven's Chapel Methodist Church, right up at the intersection of Goose Creek and Daniel's Run. We didn't have time to get to our regular Presby church over in Blacksburg and back before the John McCutcheon Concert in Roanoke later that afernoon. (And seems I never blogged that either! Man, am I slipping!) Haven's Chapel reminded us powerfully of Berea Christian Church, whose cemetery our property on Greasy Creek in Wythe County bordered. On Sunday, we met quite a few of our neighbors and learned some local history of the houses and families along our road.

And thirdly...well, I'm sure something in the realm of "local color" will come along to fill this in. I'm stopping by the Farm Store (never posted any pix from there yet) and to town for some computer geekiness and lunch. So, third time's charm. More, later.

Image, a local Floyd County resident presides from upstairs (over what used to be Momma Lazardo's) as the new facade of the Country Store is completed, and ready for the official grand (re)opening on Saturday! (You may have seen this particular two-dimensional resident propped on stage at the "old" country store.)

Online Angst-o-rama

It seems like entropy passes through in waves. I think "things come in threes" is a version of that observation, because it's hardly ever things coming TOGETHER in threes, one after the other. In the world of mechanics and data, things spontaeously break. It's only in the amazing world of biology that broken things mend. But that's a story for when I'm wearing my PT hat. This morning, I speak specifically of things digital.

First, I discovered early last week that my AdSense ads had disappeared from my sidebar. Then later that day, they reappeared. The next day they were gone again. Blogger Gary Boyd told me he had the same problem, but it was a FireFox problem. Sure enough, they show up on MSIE. And should I worry? Problogger is talking about reports of Adsense pay-per-click freefall. So maybe my little problem makes no difference.

Second, while my switch from PC-Cillin Internet Security to Kaspersky Internet Security went fine on the desktop, it failed to install completely on the laptop. I'll hold my flames pending what now can no longer be a prompt resolution of that problem. But one consequence of the proper installation is that I can't get to Sitemeter (Kaspersky smells a rat.) Again, maybe that isn't such a bad thing, since Sitemeter seems to have sold out to a sitetracking cookie monster (half a dozen, actually; I just followed the directions at this link and removed them and banned the source--specificclick.net--from my browser. You might want to consider doing the same. If anybody thinks this is NOT true, or NOT a problem, I am willing to be disabused of my sadness at the loss of Sitemeter after more than five years of use.

Thirdly, well as I said, Kaspersky. Tech support has responded to two emails, but each time it has taken a full two days (this is the third since the last one and no reply.) So my Friday installion from last week on the laptop still has not been resolved. I'm hoping that once it is, we'll have smooth sailing. I'll most definitely let you know the outcome.

Uptown, Downtown

If you're headed to Floyd this weekend, be prepared to not be the only one.

This may well be the buzziest couple of days all summer long--or at least the first of what promises to be a lot of summer days when cars pile up behind the one traffic light in town.

Ann's scooping ice cream from two til five for the Partnership for Floyd, so I know I'll be wandering around with my camera slung across my neck. Looks like fun.

If you're wondering what's coming up in the weeks ahead in Floyd County and the Greater Floyd area, there's good news: Check out this CALENDAR OF EVENTS which I will certainly put in my sidebar, once the new WordPress blog is ready to go. But here's what appears on the near horizon.

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22 Special Grand Re-Opening Weekend of Concerts
The newly renovated Floyd Country Store will celebrate with a spectacular Friday Night Jamboree with Special Guests Olen Gardner & Friends at 6:30 p.m., Wayne Henderson and Friends at 7:30 p.m. and The Looping Brothers at 8 p.m. It's a night not to miss! The Floyd Country Store is just south of the stoplight on State Road 8 near the crossroads with Route 221.
For more information: www.floydcountrystore.com or

23 Ice Cream Social
Citizens of Floyd are invited to a free Ice Cream Social to Discuss Developments in Downtown Floyd. From 2:00-5:00 PM at the Sun Music Hall Floyd's Town Manager and members of the Partnership for Floyd will be available with information about Community Development seeking input from our Floyd County residents. See our web site for more details http://partnershipforfloyd.blogspot.com/

23 Saturday Night Re-Opening Concert at the Floyd Country Store
The newly renovated Floyd Country Store will celebrate with a Grand Re-Opening Concert featuring Jimmy Costa, Tina Liza Jones and Rounder Recording Artists, King Wilkie. 7:30 p.m. The Floyd Country Store is just south of the stoplight on State Road 8 near the crossroads with Route 221.
For more information: www.floydcountrystore.com or Learn more about the performers at www.dipconcerts.com.

23 A Play Called "Cotton Patch"
The Greatest Story ever Retold is a musical of the Gospel of Matthew and is set in contemporary Georgia. The music and lyrics are the final works of Harry Chapin and the storyline is based on the book by Tom Key and Russ Treyz. Sponsored by Friends of the Oak Grove Pavilion. 7:30 p.m. Rain or shine. Admission is free but a freewill donation is encouraged at intermission. More than $40,000 has been raised for local charities over the years. Oak Grove Pavilion is a gorgeous, covered pavilion in back of Zion Lutheran Church at 635 Needmore Lane NE, Floyd.
For more information: www.floydlutherans.org

This picture of Mac and Jenny Traynham came from Saturday's Oak Grove Pavilion event.

Hmmmm. My Ears Still Ring.

Nope. It don't make me wanna holler hiDeeHo! (Reference to _____ -- you boomers out there?)

I'm talking about two rounds from the .44 magnum short barrel rifle, fired into the bank. I had nothing to shoot at, and didn't want to. But I DID want to distract the dog from tangling with the bear I saw crossing the creek ten minutes after I got home from work. Tsuga had barked twice from the back porch, and was headed fast in pursuit after a lumbering black form headed for the west ridge.

I was, it turned out, barefooted, but adrenalin can do some amazing things to pain. I grabbed the rifle and got as far as the other side of the garden, heard barking beyond the pines, and fired over into the bank. The dog came running, right past me, across the creek, over into the field, and took a...well, you know the saying about having that scared outta ya. Must've happened to him. Whew! Close call, I said to myself about the time the dog bounded back across the plank, back away from the house, back toward the bear. Oh crap!

I ran to the house, BACK across the gravel drive (after noticing thistles growing the yard I would have missed wearing shoes), grabbed some more .44 shells and my boots, and ran faster in this heat than my heart would have preferred, to where I'd last seen the dog. Again, adrenalin is a heady motivator. Another shot into the bank over my whistles and screams, and sure enough, here came Mr., undamaged, tongue hanging, pretty proud of himself.

And I guess I'd never noticed, though neighbors have remarked about it. It just smelled musty--like bear--and knowing that smell, I'll be more tuned in to when one or more is in the valley. The dog could smell THAT from inside the house, no problem.

Persistance

From the pasture, looking back across the ribbon of creek below the road to the house, is an odd monument: steps to nowhere.

Unless I tell it, stories will be made up centuries hence as to what the original purpose of those steps was, way back in those primative times at the turn of the last millenium. The house will be gone; the concrete steps tipping into Goose Creek will persist, though they too will ultimately vanish, grit and grain at a time, eroding their way as all things finally do, to the ocean sediments. Ashes to ashes, concrete to dust.

It's not that much of a tale really, but it is true, a solid fact, so better than the lore that might grow to say that this aggregate of rock and concrete washed downstream in a flood, or perhaps there was a great explosion that hurled the steps from higher up the bank from that flat place where it looks as if there might have, at one time, have been a house. In fact, that seems certain. Someone with a metal detector many, many years ago found an embossed metal placard on that knoll that clearly stated "Here's Home".

Well, there was a time it was not our home. Yet. We had begun to make it so, but eight years ago today, in June of 1999, the work had only just begun. One of the first things that needed doing was to remove the broken-down front porch that was not the original. It had been rather poorly constructed since the house was built, and it covered the entire southern face of the house. The approach to the old porch was this solid mass of concrete, four steps fixed in a form. My suspicion is that this was a federal assistance work, since we had similar replacement steps installed at the first house we owned, and whatever federal agency held part of the mortgage wanted to update their investments with such things as PERMANENT entry steps.

But they had to go. So before I left for work, I was talking with the backhoe boys about what was to be done with the mass of artificial stone. They had brought a jackhammer for the purpose and planned to break up the chunk of rock, and would need to put the rubble somewhere.

"Might go down along the creek below that maple where the stream is cutting into the bank. I want to protect that tree; it's part of our air-conditioning" I told them.

When I returned home that afternoon, I was mortified to find that they had been able to get the whole lump into the bucket of the backhoe, and yup, they put it right where I wanted those busted-up chunks of rock to go. And there they sit to this day.

However, Goose Creek pulls away the ground from under the old steps as the level of the stream bed falls. At first, in their new place overlooking the creek, the surface of the steps was horizontal. I used to sit on them in the shade of the maple and watch the minnows play in the creek below. Now, they're pitched steeply toward the water, gravity being a patient force, pulling every mass inexorably toward the center of the earth.

One day, maybe in our lifetimes, after a summer hurricane, the whole five ton lump of rock will tumble upside-down into the creek. The smart thing then would be to have the same guys come with the same jack hammer and bust up the intact mass and push the pieces back into the creek bank. But you know, I'd almost be tempted to leave the thing intact. Think of the creative stories it would inspire!

Devil's Horse

I wish internet research wasn't so much fun. I have work to do.

Wait a minute: I AM working--on a piece for the Floyd Press column for July 5--about my favorite insects of summer. One happens to be the "dragonfly" and I'm surprised I hadn't wondered about this before:

Where did the name ‘dragonfly’ originate?

Answer: We have not been able to find a definitive answer to this question. One interesting theory about its origin, however, can be found in a book written by Eden Emanuel Sarot in 1958 entitled Folklore of the Dragonfly: A Linguistic Approach.

He theorized that the name dragonfly actually came about because of an ancient Romanian Folktale. In the folktale, the Devil turned a beautiful horse ridden by St. George (of St. George and the dragon fame) into a giant, flying insect.

The Romanian names the people supposedly referred to this giant insect (when translated into English) mean ‘St. George’s Horse’ or, more commonly, ‘Devil’s Horse.’ According to Sarot, the peasantry of that time actually viewed the Devil’s Horse as a giant fly and that they may have started referring to it as the ‘Devil’s Fly’ (instead of Devil’s Horse).

He stated that the Romanian word for Devil was "drac," but that drac was also the Romanian word for dragon. He thought that eventually the Romanian name for the Devil’s Fly was erroneously translated to the English Dragon Fly and this eventually evolved into the "dragonfly!" from dragonflies.org

Dark Beauty

Out the kitchen window one dark, drizzly and overcast day, the hillside behind the house was glowing with white against the dark forest. I went out between showers to explore, finding this odd natural composition that juxtaposed light and color against the dark, soft leaves of a mullein plant gone by.

Wild Life

IN addition to the other aspects of the deer population that we enjoy (weaponry onslaught in the fall with the resulting risk of outdoor excursions and rotting carcases left in the woods; and the season of the deer garden tour, ours is on the list) there is the fawning season. We must be in the very midst of it at the moment. And now, it is not the hunters to be wary of, but the deer themselves.

Twice this past week, does have protected their fawns from predators. Our predator: Tsuga, the wonder dog. I don't think he'd actually hurt a new-born deer, but their mothers don't know that. And I'm not entirely sure myself.

In the second episode of dog-fawn encounter, the mother deer threatened not only the dog, but Ann, who was walking on the back of the land with the pup. When the dog chased the fawn up the side of the hill and wouldn't come back, Ann feared for the dog's safety and rushed back to the house to fetch me (and the rifle) to help. The mother deer stalked her all the way back to the house, snorting, charging, retreating, potentially dangerous.

In the end, the dog reappeared unharmed, and without any visible evidence he'd done the fawn any damage.

But how many more new-borns are out there? And just how dangerous is the wildlife we've come to know and to trust? I have to tell you, my heart went out to the momma deer who was simply following her instincts to protect her young. Whatever fear we felt must have been magnified many times for her. But I had the gun off safety as she paralleled our walk back up the valley, just up the hillside in the shadows.

But then, there are recent instances like this where creatures go psycho: squirrel goes on rampage.

Many thanks to my friend Dennis Ross for allowing me to use the shot he took off his deck this week of a doe with triplets. Oh great. More of the little darlings. (The chard should be ready in about a week.)

A Poem for Father's Day

So here we are, the parental empty-nesters, sandwiched once more on the late spring calendar between Special Days for mothers and fathers. Our adult offspring (the term we substitute in recent years for the word "children" when describing our small but matured brood) live far away and it's easy to misplace even the memory of the satisfaction and anguish of having actively, presently, physically been someone's parent so long ago and far away.

Now I will readily confess that I have a curmudgeonly and cynical opinion of these parental "holidays" as being manufactured for the bottom line of the likes of Hallmark Cards and Russell Stover Candies.
But I will also admit that at times, to be remembered in the small way of a special phone call, a hand-written letter or a cross-country trip on these designated days of appreciation are, well, genuinely appreciated.

Saved, Remembered, Found: a father's day poem-a toast (and cleverly veiled roast) for Father's Day 2004, received from our son, Nathan, then a single scholar just moved to British Columbia, and today married and moving into their first owned home in Columbia, Missouri-still far too far away.

I thought I would share Nate's poem with you this Father's Day in the hopes that it might help you to recall: that seeming crisis in your relationship with your dad that looking back was so silly you can laugh about it now; the way you respected him but never got around to telling him because at the time, he rightfully thwarted your idiot dreams; the lessons he taught you by example, good and bad; and the pride you know he has when he hears from you, a grown or growing young man or woman who occasionally takes the time to say "thanks, dad."

Do consider using the short phrases of this "poem" as a model, and give a single page a single hour of your time, a gift to give your dad this year, while there's time. Chances are, he'll never forget it.

---

A Father's Day Poem For Dad, 2004

For all the times you made me hold that damned ladder;

For all the times you said, "if you throw that tennis racquet again, we're going home," and I threw the tennis racquet again, and we went home;

For that time you wanted to go hiking in the Smokies, and I wanted to go to Amy Harris's pool party, and I pitched such a fit halfway to the Smokies that you turned the car around and drove us home at breakneck speeds, only to give in half an hour later after I pitched another fit, and we went to the Smokies, and had a nice time;

For beating me every time at every sport and every game, many years after I was sure I was better than you;

For the thirty-seven times you told me the name of the same green-metallic beetle, while each time I was thinking about some girl or some song I'd like to write, or some song I'd like to write about some girl, only half an hour later to see a green metallic beetle, and wonder what kind it was;

For the times you crushed between your fingers something sweet-smelling, or sharp-smelling, or minty-smelling, or putrid, and shoved it toward my nose, saying, "Nature snort;"

For all the arguments we've had about religion, and all the agreements we've had about politics;

For all the times we've called each other "smart-ass," audibly or otherwise;

For every time you should've made fun of me for the way I split wood, and the vast majority of times that you did;

For all those really stupid ideas I've had, which you vehemently opposed, until you knew I'd go through with them anyway, at which point you supported me;

For all those trips I've taken, and you've secretly worried about, even while you tried to project all your concerns for me onto "my mother;"

For teaching me to light the water heater-and to rake with full, efficient strokes, and curse at the weed-whacker, and spread the peanut-butter clean out to the crust;

For all the creative ways you punished me, with just enough consequence to sting, and just enough humor to tell stories about later;

For finding your craft, your voice, and a fulfilling sense of place--for living my aspiration and giving me a sense of belonging, even as odd as I feel to live vicariously through my father;

For all those times, all those lessons, all your friendship and love, this father's day I bought you an ice-cold bottle of beer,

Which I'm drinking now as I write you this poem,

All the while thinking, man, he would've enjoyed this.

Thanks, Dad. Love you. I'll spot you that beer sometime. -- Nate

Valley View

There's a mall in Roanoke by that name: Valley View. And sure enough, you can turn 'round in the parking lot and in every direction find higher ground, the irregular ridges that rim the Roanoke Valley. Though it has grown busy and cluttered with "development", the Roanoke Valley still seems a sheltering kind of place whose ring of mountains connects even the shopper or traveler with the landscape.

A flatter cityscape would remain more generic, less placed, devoid of the personality and landmarks that let a Roanoker orient by the distinctive skyline: Tinker mountain to the north, Poor Mountain west, the ridges the Parkway follows south, and Catawba Mountain north. It is a valley large enough to feel both spacious and sheltering.

I forget sometimes, almost eight years now living down along Goose Creek, how much I enjoy the expanse of sky, of cloudscapes, of distant vistas enjoyed from places higher and more open than the confines of our narrow cleft of valley. I would have wanted to see more of this thunderhead that boiled over Franklin County yesterday afternoon.

From our deck of the cabin on Walnut Knob where we lived before we moved to this spot in '99, we would have had the wide-screen OmniMax view, 180 degrees of piedmont from box seats a thousand feet above the plain, and a sky full of roiling wet-pink cumulus, performing for free.

But we have to take the peeks at that larger world from the oval of clearing above our pasture. And most times, it is quite enough.

Click the image above for more details of the clouds.

John McCutcheon in Concert

Sunday, June 17 at 3:00 pm

Whitman Auditorium | Virginia Western Community College
Colonial Avenue | Roanoke Virginia
General Admission | $20 | Directions

This event is sponsored by the Social Justice Committee of Roanoke Friends (Quaker) Meeting and is a benefit whose proceeds will provide humanitarian aid to the people of Cuba.

If you don't know John McCutcheon, be prepared to be thoroughly entertained, and expect to carry home at least a couple of his CDs, if he has them available.

I first heard him play (his hammered dulcimer, I think) in the cafeteria at the community college where I had just started teaching at 26. He was playing music with some of my students (who have gone on themselves to be recognized local and regional musicians.) Our kids grew up to McCutcheon's music.

Perhaps his most moving piece for which he wrote both music and lyrics is "Christmas in the Trenches", a wonderful story in a song. Please read the words, and understand, at this benefit many years later, John is acting on his longstanding commitment to peaceful coexistence across borders. Do come on down if you can.

Of Remotely Possible Interest

For any of you thinking of getting a book published, or know someone who is, consider this: Success can be failure. Let me explain.

I sat in the audience of a panel discussion in Galax on Saturday. Editors from JF Blair, McFarland, and Norton and one highly-successful NYC agent (a Galax native!) discussed the world of publishing. I took the opportunity to ask a question, whose answer I anticipated would hold interest for other authors in the room.

"Given a self-published book that has met with modest success (1100 sold its first year) what would you recommend to move such a book up into wider distribution? Would it be thinkable that a publisher (like Blair) would accept submission of such a book, the self-published copy being the "manuscript", and work to distribute it to a wider market?"

The answer: NO

They all said "be happy for your successes to date. If we'd picked it up, that's about what we would have projected for sales."

And of course, the publisher would have taken no small percentage of the costs over printing. Keeping full control has allowed me to keep more of the returns. And going with a "real publisher", for all the angst and delay that would have required, might not have gained me that much after all.

So if you're thinking of going the way of traditional publishing, shop your manuscript early, before it becomes a trial-balloon short run book. If it succeeds in this latter form, it may fail to get past the front desk with the editor. They want the same low-hanging fruit you want, and if you pick it first, they won't give you a look. Now I know.

Wake-up Call

If Thoreau is right, then Ann and I sorta slept through yesterday. We both almost missed our anniversary. Again.

She called at noon yesterday, 37 years later, having just remembered why June 11 should mean something to us. She said she'd bring pizza (when was the last time we had pizza since the kids left home?) and I should put the bottle of champagne somebody left here two or three New Year's Eves ago in the fridge.

Home from work, she lofted the flat pizza box high overhead as she walked up the gravel drive with the dog dancing circles around her on his hind legs.

We put two slices each in a tupperware container, grabbed two glasses (made by Colleen's son, our favorites) and the chilled bottle of bubbly and walked down the "New Road" to the two white-webbed chairs you saw from a winter picture during an ice storm. They've been waiting for us.

We pulled the chairs into the clearing. We watched the sun go down, listened to the night noises, shook our heads how long, how very long it's been. And started number 38.

Used Cameras and Lenses: Where to Go?

Okay, this is just to see if there's anybody out there paying attention.

Got a new blog reader / future blogger / future SWVA resident /hopeful digi-photographer who may want a used Nikon D70.

What do you recommend as the best place for her to start looking to find a reliable vendor of used Nikon digitals?

She may also want a zoom, and while Nikon's 18-200VR is great (can't wait til mine comes back from repair) she may want to consider a less expensive starter lens from Tamron, Sigma etc.

If you have experience / advice, give me a holler. I'll pass it along.

Floyd Virginia : Musical Horizon

There's been some discussion of late over at Blue Ridge Muse in which a false distinction has been made between the washed and the unwashed of Floyd County. Who goes in which camp can be biased by a prejudice against "outsiders" who weren't born here.

If you'll come to the Oak Grove Pavilion performances this summer, any perceived barriers between these two populations of Floyd County residents will crumble. The long-time locals and the recently-arrived locals sit side by side, enjoying each other's company, the music, and the summer darkness under giant oaks, punctuated by the amber flash of fireflies.

This week, our buddies, Mac and Jenny Traynham, perform. They're sure to do quite a few cuts from the newly-released CD compilation of some of their way-back tunes, gospel and otherwise, that have become favorites of ours.

There's plenty of seating under the pavilion, more out under the stars. Bring a folding chair and a picnic dinner if you want, and get to know your neighbors--in tie-dye or bibbed overalls, good folk. See you there.

Click here for directions to Oak Grove Pavilion behind Zion Lutheran Church.

What Matters to You Most as a Blogger?

I'll follow Darren Rowse's lead over at Pro-blogger, and start with a couple of his "most importants" that I share.

USEFUL CONTENT: The exchange of useful tools, websites and of specific technical help was crucial in 2002 when I started out and needed so much hand-holding. I've tried, in turn, to pass along some methods, ideas and software discoveries to my readers. But the crowd has changed, and the techy stuff seems to not get much response. So my USEFUL POSTS of late has turned more to the "check this out" variety, and more often than not, the topic has to do with air, soil, water, and health in general, planetary more than personal maybe. In coming months when setting up collateral pages is easier, I may set aside a page devoted to southern Appalachian natural history and environmental awareness. That seems to be where my heart is these days. And I consider my photography "useful content" from an aesthetic and educational perspective; but I could be wrong.

STIMULATION / CONVERSATION: This was probably both my end and my means early on: to stimulate my own thoughts by writing them out, and to cause my readers to turn their heads and look at the familiar in a different way. Looking back at my archives from the first two or three years, there was lively dialogue and interaction between commenters at Fragments. Friends met there and there for a while, it was truly the front porch conversation I had intended it to be. But over the past year or so, I feel the blog has become more of a one-way platform in which I expose my strong feelings about one topic or another, and that that intensity of passion almost guarantees it will be avoided for comments. So I do less of this, or at least post them less often, even after having written them. I still find the blog a wonderful repository for ideas I come back to, pick up again and follow a little farther. These from time to time become newspaper columns or maybe radio essays. So blogging stimulates my mind, whether it tweaks somebody else's buttons or not; and that's reason enough to keep it up.

SUSTAINABLE MODEL: I have to confess that I haven't given much (probably not nearly enough) thought to the "model" for Fragments from Floyd. It has been hacked, restarted, moved and morphed so many times that I have never sustained any momentum in one direction for very long. I truly hope that becomes a thing of the past. And in the future, while I don't intend to write to the audience, if I can keep my "brand" a bit more focused, spend more time getting to know today's bloggers, and work with a little more zeal and passion in the good parts of life on Goose Creek, I think readership will grow beyond where it has been stuck for more than a year. Yes, I'd like to do better at "sustainable" in terms of the blog paying its way. A stable platform in WordPress, as I learn the ins and outs, should let me branch out into other kinds of monetizing. AdSense is paying the DSL, but there are so many other options to explore, given a blog that works consistently over the long haul, and grows.

AUTHENTICITY: I set out to be as close to 100% fully Fred in FFF as was possible. That has meant venting, whining and an occasional mild rant. It has gotten me in trouble with my wife who would NEVER tell publicly the tedious or embarrassing foibles of our domestic life. I've also brought to the center of the blog whatever was in the center of my life at the time, and unfortunately for those who see it as crass commercialism, the writing, then marketing of the book and notecards has cropped up here rather often--because it crops up in my daily routine rather often. I've assumed, perhaps wrongly, that those who have come to know me are interested in following along in this uncertain entrepreneurial journey conducted from a very back road from a county with 15,000 people. Genuine, personal, mundane daily rambles will continue to be the source for most of what goes to the keyboard here.

How 'bout you? Where's your blog-center? Has it changed over time?

Well, that about does it for me, and crimminy, those paragraphs are way past the average bloggers dwell time | attention span. Soon, I'll be able to let you click a "read more" link to open the whole thing, then hide it again, like in the old Moveable Type days.

Terms of Un-deerment

Since we don't have a "control" garden without CD's strung from the fence, I can't say if the attempt to thwart the deer by displaying these spinning, iridescent "EYES" is working or not.

It certainly isn't an absolute deterrent: twice, we've found deer tracks (one deer each time) and all the sunflowers are gone, and two of the tomato plants.

I'm heading out now for the morning damage report. The electric charger is not working, but we have our technicians working on it. (And yes, this is false color, but it makes the CD look more like a forbidding bloodshot eye, and I hope this is the way the rats-on-stilts (a.k.a deer) see it!

Several of the CD's there were once on the fence have come down. The fishing line I used to tie them up must be 30 years old (on a reel that's been over in the barn since 1999) and turns out, it doesn't stand up to all the sun and wind.

BTW, the item on the tomato stake to the right of the spinning CD is a fence post pounder--a steel tube with a slug of steel in the base, with two handles. You put it over the T-post (or wooden stake) and lift and let fall. Beats heck out of lifting a sledge hammer above shoulder height--a high-risk for smashed fingers plus shoulder tendinitis!

The Answer is Blowing in the Wind

It was exactly the kind of morning I dread: no traction, no resolution in sight, damned if I do or if I don't. The issue, to upgrade my internet security / antivirus software (PC-Cillin 2007) before the deadline a week off--to suffer the ills I know, or change to something else entirely. The pros just about exactly equaled the cons, and I could not for the life of me decide.

But in the end, given the bad consumer reviews of my current program, I decided for a change despite the negatives--like the fact that I have to buy separate licenses for laptop and desktop. But wait: there's a competitive upgrade, $25 off. All I do is send in my original install disk of PC-Cillin 2005. Hmmm. Now where have I seen that lately?

But it wasn't in any of the obvious places, and yet I had a clear image of it in my mind. Where the heck could I put my hands on it, now that I had committed to Kaspersky Internet Security 6?

Aha! I remembered: it's tied out on the garden fence, one of a dozen sparkling, twirling CDs blowing in the morning breeze, software defense turned gardening offense.

I think they'll take it for the rebate, even though it has a little hole drilled in it for the fishing line. Ya think?

Image: Sensitive Fern, Onoclea sensibilis, so named for its susceptibility to the first frost of fall, and somewhat unusual in that its pinnae are lobed lightly but not dissected like the more lacy ferns. I think the term is "once-pinnately divided".fff

Grayson County Bound

Galax Leaf and String Festival

I'll be heading over for an author's breakfast (8-10 a.m. and open to the public) on Saturday morning at The Galax Smokehouse Restaurant, Grayson and Main Street, to begin a full day of events at the combined Book Fair and Street Festival in downtown Galax, Virginia. Sorry, no schedule of author events available that I can find online. I'll do my little book reading and ramble at 12:30.

Stop at the Author's Tent in front of Chapters Book Store for more information. And by all means, catch the Wolfe Brothers, our old buddies from Grayson County, who will be performing. I suggest you give them a listen. We love this album, Old Virginia Hills.

DiMorphism

Alternate title: Fly United

Notice how very different these lovely paramours are as they face to opposite poles in this most intimate of moments.

He, the smaller, has much the bigger eyes proprotionally. His visual world through green eyes, then, is likely far different from hers through blue. Things invisible to her he sees with greatest clarity--a matter of survival, or aesthetics perhaps.

She had sent me off on an urgent errand: retrieve the dog who was running off down the road. I shrugged on my boots in grumbling obedience, and tromped down the front steps, leash in hand.

But wait! Check out these ziggy flies! I called back, running inside for my camera.

He's running down the road, you idiot!

Yeah, but look carefully how different these beauties are. It's called dimorphism, I explained to her. She harrumphed in disgust.

I rest my case.

Everything is Coming Up Roses. Mostly.

Yes, I'm aware these are not roses, from another plant family entirely--the Asteraceae, in fact--and our pasture and forest margins are full of them. These white Chrysanthemums are mostly concealed in dense buds yet, but any day now, they will burst out like floral popcorn, white dotting the swaying grasses.

What a bucolic and romantic backdrop. You can almost see two figures, a man and woman, young, in fin-de-siecle dress, bounding in slow motion towards each other through the field of daisies. And at last they meet in the middle, and I wake up, and its just two pre-elderly types in rubber boots wearily walking the dog after a day of work.

They're not roses, but my blogging life has taken a turn for the better--with my decision to not dig the blogger hole any deeper; and with the kind collaboration of my present friend and server host and my future (and also past) friend and server host. I'm a fortunate man to be in such good hands.

They cannot, however, push me up the Wordpress learning curve. I'll have to do that on my own over the next couple of months. So, once the move is made (in the next week or so) there will still be occasional (or frequent) rearrangements, outages and the like. But that's okay. I'm hoping this reorganization will correct some of the weird things that have prevented FFF from being accessible, findable, visible, and rss readable for far too long.

So any WordPressorians out there willing to lend a hand, I'll be calling on you!

Father's Day One More Time Around

I sent off four books today, three of them to fathers for Fathers Day, June 17. That's a good feeling, because last year, books found good homes for this special day for dads. From a couple of those father-readers I heard how meaningful, comforting or encouraging they found the book. And of course, that scored points for the book-buying son or daughter!

Now's the time. Send your order for Slow Road Home by email, pay by check or paypal. I'll put the book in the mail upon receipt of either. Need more than one copy sent to two or more recipients (your dad and your husband's)? Just let me know by the email address in the sidebar here or on the book website.

If you're a Floyd Press reader, you'll have to wait. Here's a link to the shorter version of this Thursday's column: a Father's Day Toast / Roast of this blogger by his son, Nathan. And with his permission, I should add. Click this link to read, and it's okay to go there just to look at the picture (from 25 years ago!)

Nameless Creek: And Yet It Flows

It's not the bridge over trouble waters I look for when I can't find my way to the other side of problems. I put on my rubber boots and walk right up the middle of them--like I did in Nameless Creek this morning.

A whip-poor-will flushed from the gravel of the road as I approached well before six o'clock. I must have almost stepped on him before he broke, shadow against shadow, for a place higher on the ridge to resume his monotonous sales pitch.

The moon (alas, I can't even say which side of full we're on) was framed between the branches of the walnut just east of the house. I thought briefly about running back for my camera. But no. This walk was to simplify my thoughts, not add another layer of purpose and intention to them.

The short of my conundrums du jour, as far as transient blog browsers who might flit here briefly, is that for the time being, I'll be doing some degree of blogging (what that means, to be determined after another few pre-dawn creek walks) over at the mostly-neglected "other" blog, Nameless Creek, where at least I can add and subtract from the page without fear of birthing grotesque monstrosities in the page script.

Having completely started over again with the new template here last week, already I've run into the same problem of not being able to make minor changes without causing damage to the rest of the page. I'm losing patience. Very little is working seamlessly, and the technology is taking precedence over the poor, beleaguered morning Muse.

Blogrolling doesn't work. Google analytics shows NO visitors to the page, even though SiteMeter shows 160+. And while once these visits were once predominately intentional stops from other blogger-regulars, today they are mostly image-seeking search engine vagabonds. There's not much community in that.

It's time for a change. Changes, maybe. I'm just not certain where the currents are carrying me.

But then, I look back over the past half-dozen years and see that the month of June has marked the end of one seasonal and personal pulse and the beginning of another clearly different direction of flow. More often than not, the changes were both necessary and beneficial. Sometimes it was push, sometimes it was pull; approach, avoidance, you search for the middle course between them. In the end, movement in any direction is better than stagnant waters, don't you agree?

Quiet Places of the Heart