Fragments From Floyd

They say: "The calculation provides evidence that human activities have exceeded the biosphere's capacity since the 1980s.

"This 20% overshoot means that it would require 1.2 Earths, or one Earth for 1.2 years, to regenerate what humanity used in 1999.

"The global average per capita area demand for 1999 adds up to 2.3 global hectares per person.

"This (2.3 hectares) is significantly lower than the area demands in industrialised countries such as the US (9.7), or the UK (5.4) and Germany(4.7)."

The results are debated because there are some fairly arbitrary assumptions being made. But note that, comparing apples to apples, 1961 to 1999, the trend is certainly not toward reducing "our" footprint.

In 1961, the authors say in their "preliminary and exploratory assessment", humans were using 70% of the capacity of the global biosphere. By 1999, that had risen to 120%.

I will ask him later today if I can post another chapter to my auxilliary weblog. Some of you have commented that you have read and enjoyed the first couple of chapters. If interested, I suggest reading about Frank Kingsley , one of my favorites among quite a few distinctively American eccentrics the boy was blessed to meet and know as he followed his naive nose home.

I'll let you know if additional chapters are posted. Anybody that has an uncle in the publishing business, let us know.

"It's very near where you live, in Shawsville" she said. She told me the name of the facility, then a later conversation when I could not find it in the phone book, she gave me the road name. Later, the telephone number and that it was between Hiway 29 and 64.

I kept saying things like "I'm not familiar with that street" and "I am not aware of a hiway 64 in Shawsville". We continued this dance off and on for about three weeks.

She became a bit indignant, assured me that SHE had been to the very facility and it did indeed exists, and did I think she was crazy? I assured her that if she had been there and was sure it was in Shawsville between Salem and Christiansburg, then it must be there and I was the idiot. She was sure of her facts, and maybe I should just call and get directions from someone at the facility.

With a bit more research (like the AREA CODE she gave me that just did not compute), I come to learn that all the stated facts about the facility fit if applied to CHARLOTTESVILLE...three hours away from where I live! Yes both towns have the SH sound up front and 'ville' on the end. But they are not interchangeable, honey.

Heck, the old man might find his way to the mic for a number or two as well. This ought to be fun!

Once again, life proves my most universally-applicable bromide: It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

I dreamed one day that there would be a map software program that allowed the user to virtually fly over anyplace on Earth, at any altitude (even orbital heights), any speed, and with three-dimensional photo-reality options. I could envision flying along Noland Creek in the southern Smokies, cresting the rim of Big Bald on the NC/TN border; venturing out West to places I have never been, but would 'be there' in my map program. At last, on Tuesday, I was to have my dream come true.

Delorme's Topo USA 4.0 is not the program of my dreams. But it IS way cool and the more I use it, the better I like it. The shaded 2D topos are more useful than the 3D, but the latter is a step in the direction of the ultimate zoom-over-the-treetops map program that hopefully will come along before I move on to a more hospitable planet.

I have put pins on the map for many of my old favorite hikes, especially around the Wytheville area: Henley Hollow, Raven Cliffs, Walker Mountain, Grayson Highlands, Burkes Garden. More impressive are the spots near Morganton where we used to live: Grandfather Mt., Linville Gorge, Table Rock, Shortoff. Of course the Smokies near where we lived in Sylva are impressive to look at on the maps, but I never really 'bonded' with any of those remote but beautiful places. Traveling further in time and distance, I have revisted Camp Winnataska, Scarem Bluff, and the Sipsey Wilderness in Alabama where I grew up.

I have a lot of wonderful memories attached to the natural places I have known, visited, inhabited. This software is an aid to memory and a guide to such places I have not yet seen, but can visit now with ease. I can pretend, I can travel hopefully if digitally, but eventually I know I will have to return the tough world of the here and now. Or maybe not...

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won't be a minute." She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back and his heels together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

Nothing new for Nature-boy here, really. You wouldn't believe the 'wild foods' I have inflicted on my poor trusting family. There were the milkweed pods that turned bright green and looked like sea slugs; the elderberry jelly that inadvertently was populated by stink bugs; the tooth-cracking touch-me-not faux hickory nut cookies; and the ramps (wild mountain onions) I brought home at which point my wife said that if THEY were coming IN, then SHE was going OUT!

So by comparison, turning garden weeds into potherbs and salads is not that radical. Actually both of the plants I have in mind are cultivated to some degree in Europe (where both are native, spread as 'exotics' to the 'new country'.)

I'll let you do the homework. Check out both purslane and lambs quarters.

• Purslane: pictures of the plant


• Lambs Quarters (or Goose Foot): pictures of the plant


• Purslane (and Lambs quarters) recipes


• And ESPECIALLY look at the phenomenal food value of Lambs Quarters at this link. Impressive!

And writing about my early morning ennui or depression or whateveritis puts me squarely in the camp of those who parade their every nuance of emotion before the world on their weblogs. I will probably delete this, once it is complete. Caveats: it will never be complete because life will go on and the source of funk will persist no matter when I 'end' this word-emesis this morning; and digitally trashing this will not have nearly the degree of satisfaction I would get from ripping a printed paper page out of the back of a typewriter, wadding the waste and throwing it disgustedly at the corner trash can.

It's the heat. Seasonal Affective Disorder, but around the longest day of the year in late June. Happens every year, and I rather forget about it, until, like today, I awake and there it is, sitting heavily on my shoulders like a sack of sand. The mild depression today is anticipatory, knowing that heat will make me lethargic, lethargy will make me inactive, and inactivity will make me ineffectual and guilty. Fall will come, even hints of Fall in late August, and the sandbags will lift, but today I will feel their dull oppression, I can tell. Another cup of coffee is not going to help.

It's the drought. We are missing the water because the well is dry. Not literally, thank God. But the creek is so low that we cannot hear it's comforting babble at night with the windows open. Fields are brown as old haybales, and the garden barely responds to the hand-watering. Rain will fall in spots today, and if it comes I will lie in it, out on the walkway under the maple and let it infuse hope back into this dry sponge of a person.

It's the job thing. Once again, the call I was promised hasn't happened. I always have a 'Plan B'. I don't even have a 'Plan A' if this one falls through. I dread having to endure the corporate hokey-pokey if I get the job. I will be glad to be back in the saddle again as far as getting to know and care for patients, but don't look forward to breaking another health-care bronco.

It's knowing that today, I have to tell our son that his 'big sister' Lynn died while he was in Vermont last week. He came home last night with such excitement and zeal for his upcoming Americorp position in Burlington. He is so full of life now, and so inexperienced with death, and this is a bitter task that cannot be put off. Lynn was very special to him, and he will have to go through the phases of incomprehension, denial, anger, and grief to reach the zone of numbness where Ann and I reside now, after almost of week of dealing with it.

And as I am wallowing in this whiney-snivvley mire of self-pitiful verb-trash, Buster the dog comes up and rests his chin on my leg, like the hand of an old friend on my shoulder, wordless, comforting, reassuring.

Maybe another cup of coffee might not be such a bad idea, after all.

That was the point of the bit about The Point here yesterday. I want to resist ALL FIVE of these blogging trends. Can there be a purpose, a point other than these caricaturizations suggest? And if there are others seeking the same SIXTH POINT of blogging, where are they?

I see mostly PUNDITS in my wanderings throught the Blogosphere. Now there is a word that has taken on a new life.

PUNDIT: noun
a person who knows a lot about a particular subject, or someone who gives opinions in a way that makes them sound knowledgeable.

Think I will just stick with Fragments.

FRAGMENTS: noun
Parts of a greater whole; remnants of a now-missing and once complete document, tapestry or sculpture.

Hmmm. I am not doing it for the fame and glory. Far as I can tell, I get about 10 unique visitors daily (some are clones of prior visitors) and am 'linked' on, oh, about two other weblogs. There has been an occassional reference to some snippet I have written (I specialize in snippets, which are like haiku, except not as cerebral, without meter, and they don't usually have a point).

I guess if Fragments has a point, it is this:

It has opened my eyes and ears to things that before I would think: that's interesting, I would like to share that with someone, no one is around to listen, forget it. Now, even if no one reads it, these little brain cookies have the potential to reach thousands all around the world. Weblogs are about potential.

"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" said Alice (or was it the Hatter, or...) Writing in a permanent, accessible and widely available form gives me a motive to write, and accountability to others, strangers, family, gifted writers. I confess to a long-latent urge to write, more than that, to have a purpose and an object of my writing. I can't say that I have found that yet. But this weblog is a first step out of the boat onto the glassy sea of faith. If it makes me a better writer, even if it is only for my own satisfaction, then I am willing to get water up my nose a few times.

We are geographically and socially isolated here on Goose Creek. That has got to change. We must find community, connectedness and a place to serve. Granted, electronic relationships are a poor substitute for the protoplasmic sort. But the sense of being 'in the current' of the social phenomenon of weblogging honestly gives me a small taste of doing something communal. Who knows how the web of connections via Fragments might open up opportunities to meet people in my county, region, state? Again, potential.

Lastly, (and the congregation breathes a sigh of relief), this online diary thing can be a legacy of who I was, what I thought, where I lived, what my world was like...for my children's children' children. I know precious little of those who begat me. I never cared to look until recently, and now, most are gone along with their memories. Trite perhaps, but I long for roots. Maybe fifty years from now, my great-great granddaugher will dig a CD out of a dusty trunk, copy it onto a microdot, and play it on her wristphone, and learn more about our times and one link in her chain of ancestry. I will have given her roots.

"About" will reside under the header text and above the first entry, so you can come back time after time, and in three short weeks, you too can become a GooseCreek expert! That's right! And if you order by midnight tonight, you also get Boxcar Willie's greatest hits!

This is Abby's mother, at about 16 months. She will probably seek to have my parental license revoked for posting this one. I carried it to her wedding reception, she was horrified to find it on the table with all the girlfriend and high school pictures.

Nobody could call the Barter Clinic a typical doctor's office. Nor could anybody call Dr. Susan Osborne, D.O., a typical doctor. A member of Floyd County High School's class of '79, she returned home a few years ago to open a clinic with a different attitude toward health care.

"We take chickens," Dr. Osborne says with a smile. That's her shorthand answer for why she calls her practice the Barter Clinic. The long answer: while she certainly accepts the more conventional methods of payment, her patients have the option of trading goods or services for their medical care. People have traded garden vegetables, cleaning help, plumbing skills, child care, and more. She will even accept a patient's work on a community service project, supervised by herself or a member of her staff, as payment. Sometimes it's something as simple as helping do chores for another patient who is elderly, or volunteering time at a free clinic. "Those sorts of things can often help in healing," Dr. Osborne says, "and they certainly aid in community building,"

Or, if your chickens flew the coop, pay with the "money" that is printed in Floyd, by Floydians, to stay in Floyd County. The blue bills are called Floyd Hours.

Hours are real money, backed not by the federal government but by dozens of Floyd folks who have agreed to take them as payment for math tutoring, piano lessons, gardening, bonsai trees, driveway repair, custom belt buckles, pizza, hammocks, marriage counseling and almost anything else that can be done, raised, made, sung or played in Floyd County.

The notes are decorated by local artists and bear phrases such as "economic kinship with our land" and "exchange your services & goods locally." Each bears a dot that at first appears to be a spaghetti sauce stain, but is in fact a special temperature-sensitive ink used to deter counterfeiters. Touch it for several seconds and it changes color just a little.

Little Miss Abby had refused the chicken prepared her for supper. But when the visiting stray cat was offered the same meal, it started looking a whole lot better. And why not cut out the middleman...eat without hands, right out of the dish!

~^~ Ever heard of digital gardening? Yep. Invented it myself. Really zaps those bean beetles, totally non-polluting and actually, low tech. Method: use terminal digits of thumb and index finger. Digitally compress insect. Wipe fingers on jeans.

~^~ For all those to whom we bragged about how many blackberries and black raspberries we were going to have this summer: Sorry. Temps in the low 20s 5 nights in a row in Mid-May pretty well wiped them out, especially the raspberries. If we had invited you out to pick, we'll put you on the list for next year.

~^~ We are in the midst of a drought (who isn't?) and really need rain. Hay made about 60% of normal (drought plus the freeze) and the fields are brown as August. I rigged a watering system for the garden using a small pump (from Northern Supply) and a lawn-and-garden battery. We can get water from the creek...but only as long as the creek flows. So far, fine, but please Lord, send rain this week!

Miscellaneous

~^~ I have been thinking about my flight home on Tuesday, how the flight out of O'hare made me remember all the many tricky take-offs and landings I have made from there and from Urbana-Champaigne in a Cessna. I actually crashed into the main hanger at Urbana once. Now its been about 5 years since I piloted an aircraft. Yep... 'cause I never upgraded to the Windows version of Flight Simulator.

I'll shut up. Just needed to vent. It's been a tough couple of days.

Joe and Lynn have been our only true friends here since the very beginning. Joe was the physician in whose clinic the Floyd PT clinic was begun. I met him on my second or third visit before taking the job, by which time we had decided that we would indeed move to Floyd. Learning that, Joe suggested he knew someone who could help us find a place to live. And he called his wife, Lynn. Lynn, at the time, was a real estate agent in her own business, and I have never been befriended so fast and so genuinely by anyone in my life. We finally found a place that was suitable, and were invited to Lynn and Joe's house for a meal of home-made vegetable soup, and to sign the papers. That was our first of very many meals together, and drinks, and music, laughter and deep discussions.

Lynn died in her sleep last night. She was forty-five. How is it possible that she, the youngest of our foursome, should be the first to leave; and without any warning? What does one do in a shattering situation like this? All I can think to do is to write. And the words won't come.

Lynn, you wore purple while you were young. You gave way more than you got. You sucked the marrow out of life and excelled from a caring heart at all you did in this life: as a woodworking student at Berea; as a nurse in Laurel Fork; as a Park Ranger on the Blue Ridge Parkway; (it never seemed appropriate to call you an 'agent', you were so much more:) as a real estate care-giver; as an investment care-giver. And your greatest role was certainly as devoted wife to our dear friend Dr. Joe.

It will be held on the rim of the Blue Ridge, just off the Parkway, near Chatteau Morrisette Winery. The biggest concern for many is road congestion and the lack of lodging and eating accommodations in the county. Hmmm...bet we could rent rooms at a sweet price for a couple of nights.

This event will put Floyd on the map. It is already a bit of a mecca for both the new-agey artsy-fartsy types, and the older retirement types for which Ann and I are understudies. Land prices are going up considerably, and pressure will likely build to provide all the 'necessities and comforts' of city life for many who might move here. At present, we have a single traffic light, no Walmart, and a distinctly progressive-rural population that seems to co-exist in relative harmony.

I would hate to see this area become another Blowing Rock (NC) where tacky cheaply-built chalets face each other from opposing peaks, only the rich can play, and you can't get there from here for the traffic of summer home Flor-idiots (sand gypsies). It would be okay with selfish me if Floyd County remained a well-kept secret.

The full size and quality images are nice! I attempted to upload several of them, but they run more than 600K and it is just not feasible to upload or for viewers to load into a browser. So...

The first (or only) full moon in June is called the Honey Moon. Tradition holds that this is the best time to harvest honey from the hives.

This time of year, between the planting and harvesting of the crops, was the traditional month for weddings. This is because many ancient peoples believed that the "grand [sexual] union" of the Goddess and God occurred in early May at Beltaine. Since it was unlucky to compete with the deities, many couples delayed their weddings until June. June remains a favorite month for marriage today. In some traditions, "newly wed couples were fed dishes and beverages that featured honey for the first month of their married life to encourage love and fertility. The surviving vestige of this tradition lives on in the name given to the holiday immediately after the ceremony: The Honeymoon."

This cheezy picture of Tree-Hugger Fred is from Tensleep Canyon, probably my favorite place on the BigHorns car tour with my daughter last week. It was a bit of a tease, as we were just starting to get into some really dynamite country, and wildflowers and wildlife were everywhere, when we had to turn and go home! I'll probably link to some more, larger-sized images from the trip, as the small pictures don't do justice to the enormity of the landscape.

This sounds like a problem for...

It was the FIRST national monument in the national system. Over 5000 people climb this sucker every year, and there were a couple of gals about half way up the south face when we were there. Made me dizzy to watch'em.

I had assumed the Tower was a volcanic dike. Apparently however, it is an igneous intrusion into surrounding sedimentary rock, which has been eroded only in the past million years by the Belle Fourche River that meanders through this area of red rock canyons.

Neatest thing we saw, other than the tower, was the very active prairie dog town just inside the park boundaries. They are smaller than I had imagined, ranging from 1 to 3 pounds, and are shaped like fat bellied earless squirrels, without the tail. At one time, one prairie dog 'town' covered 25,000 square miles with an estimated 400 million residents! These were exterminated by poisoning in the 1800s, and the only remaining towns now are in protected areas.

Additional recommendation: Never hug at tumbleweed. You see these rounded tufts of dry plantstuff rolling across the prairie on all the old westerns. They look soft like vegetable dustbunnies. They're not. The plant that forms them is very spiny and tough when it dies and breaks off at the roots. They tend to aggregate as their spines entangle and they do tend to pile up along the fences.

~*~ First time to see at least two dozen unidentified mountain wildflowers. My internet queries before the trip had prepared me for a sparse flora, but that is the fault of poor internet resources for Wyoming, not an impoverished flora! I could have spent all day in a two-acre glade identifying and photographing. Known plants: lupine, larkspur, shooting star, Sierra stonecrop, phlox sp., Wyoming paintbrush, lots of others identified roughly to family.

~*~ First experience of being quite comfortable when the temp is >80 degrees. The wonderful deciduous forests back home sure pump a lot of plant breath into the air (hence the blueness of the Blue Ridge, the smokiness of the Smokies) and contribute to the oppressive feeling of heat plus humidity (in the 60% range in VA and 25% ballpark here in WY). No water, no green. That is the price we pay for trees.

~*~ First time to see mule deer, antelope, pronghorns, and a moose in the wild!

~*~ First time to spend 5 hours in the car with my daughter driving, or to travel at 80 miles an hour with her at the wheel and without severe white-knuckles.

Because I am away from home, I am wondering just what it means to feel 'at home'. I deeply love the southern Appalachians where I live, but feel certain I could love other places as well, had the Great Gumball Machine yielded ME in another instance of place and time.

I sometimes wonder, if I had grown up in some flat and featureless place (Kansas, maybe), would I have ever developed a 'sense of place', a feeling of belonging to a place that, upon leaving, all I would think of is how much I looked forward to returning, of standing in my own fields again?

I'm talking about a relationship with the land, WHERE you live, not the people, not the city, not the community. What makes one either bond to the physical features of where they live, or not? Is it simply a matter of loving the one you're with, geographically speaking? Growing where you're planted? I don't think so; at least not for me.

I grew up in central Alabama. To my mother's great disappointment, the land could not hold me. As soon as we could, we moved to Wythe County, Virginia, and it felt like moving home. Twenty years later, Floyd County feels even more like home, and I doubt we will ever move again.

But the roots of my belonging may go deeper. Traveling through the foothills of the Bighorns this week, I felt potentially 'at home' in the Buffalo, Wyoming area. I had the strong sense that I could live there and find a truer ME perhaps than in the gentle green, wet mountains back home.

Even stronger, almost eerie, was the profound certainty that I 'belonged' in the Highlands of Scotland on our visit there last year. It was as if I remembered having lived there. My very favorite place around home is Grayson Highlands State Park near Mt. Rogers in Virginia: a five thousand acre fragment of high elevation fog-enshrouded, wind-swept rock and low heather-like growth and 50 mile vistas...very similar, on a tiny scale, to both the Scottish highlands and the western mountains I have visited this week. Is there a message for me here? Were the seeds of rootedness in mountains born in me?

What I found were six perfectly black frames...stunning and highly detailed renderings of the back of my lens cap. Humbling.

Roanoke to Chicago to Denver to Rapid City.

Waiting in airports. In all airports, each individual, rarely more than two or three souls together, become enveloped in a bubble-of-solitude protective shield. Look carefully, out of the corner of your eye. It is round, vaguely opalescent, brittle, preventing close seating or conversation. It may persist in the plane or it may disappear when necessity seats one bubble in the domain of another. (Insert here the tale of the two complete strangers in front of me whose bubbles instantly merged and remained so, becoming turgid with unbroken soul-bearing, from Roanoke to O'hare).

Boarding the toy jet out of Roanoke, we stood on the plank outside the cockpit waiting to board. Bad omen: I got a really good view of the pilot. Balding, frumpy, and lumpish, he was created by Gary Larsen and I know his name was Bob.

There was a slight delay from Chicago to Denver: some minor mechanical problems with the aircraft. Finally, the steward announced "We will be underway now. We expect no immediate problems with the aircraft". You could feel sort of a group-squirm as we all questioned the significance of the word IMMEDIATE.

Last leg in a crop duster. A service of Dairy-Air, the Cow's Rump of Airlines. Provided were leather helmet, scarf and goggles. My window seat view just opposite the propeller was a lesson in time, rocks and water. The latter: former. Obviously used to be a lot more water out here to cause eroded canyons that have since filled almost to the rim with dust. Dust is the color of everything north of Denver. Why would we want to go the moon when we have this piece of geography RIGHT HERE? More water to the north, and even the rare color GREEN as we entered South Dakota; cows, even.

It is another planet out here. Sky from horizon to the other horizon and 150 miles between. Thought: I want to hear Wyoming thunder. I have this observation-supported theory that thunder in the Appalachians has a unique timbre, rhythm and resonance created by the baffled mountains, gently dissected valleys, and muted nap of deciduous forest. I expect thunder here to be flat, quick and without the familiar roll and echo of Goose Creek thunder.

Our last full day there, we hopped a local bus on a cool and misty day, and traveled the backroads to Ballycastle, far north on the Northern Ireland coast. We had no tour guide, no particular objective in mind, just to see at least one fragment of non-touristy Ireland.

When I ponder on the image above, I can recall the smell of the salt spray and seaweed, feel the biting seawinds, hear the seagulls, and remember how good it felt to be 'lost but found' in a strange land with my son, my wife, and my mother.

~~Fragment~~Thanks to Susanna Cornett for the FRIED CORN RECIPE. Our Silver Queen is only about mid-shin high (and another batch is ankle high) so it will be a while before we can try this dish. Susanna does indicate that it would be helpful to remove the worms from the ears prior to preparation.

~~Fragment~~I (alas) may have to shed my pink taffeta house dress and crystal slippers and become a skullery maid, er physical therapist, once again. A position has been approved, and an application came off the net and went completed into the mail today. I may have some room to negotiate for less than full time, and in our struggle for life-pace-control, this is my first option. We need TIME in our spaces more than we need to save more and more for the Flaccid Arms Rest Home retirement program.

I have been (slightly) encouraged to continue in the care and feeding of this weblog since installing GeoCounter on May 28. Not getting a huge number of hits, but enough to reinforce my aimless verbosity for a bit longer. Got YACCS commenting too, not long ago, and all was well with Fragments.

Now, GeoCounter server is gone for the past three days and like so many 'freebies' it may never come back up for a final gulp of air before sinking under the weight of server-overload. So, I hunted around this morning for a replacement and seemed to be okay with CQ Counter. They emailed me the script, smooth sailing. NOT.

For weeks on end it happened. It's 2:34 a.m. Ann elbows me out of a very superficial grogginess: Fred, do you hear that? Do I hear it! Well BLEEP yes I've heard it for the last 2 hours! Whaddaya want me to do about it!

Here's the scene: You must remember the Looney Tunes character, Speedy Gonzales here(more about him later, and I apologize for the obnoxious animated rodent, but don't you just want to SLAM it off your screen? See...it evokes just the right mood). Our mice were not 'wee timerous beasties' I tell you. What we had was a track team of Speedys *ARRIBA! ARRIBA! running wind-sprints in the spaces between joists, in the dark spaces between our ceiling and the upstairs wooden floors. From the sound of it, they (and there had to be a whole team of them) were wearing their dirt-spikes and were approximately the build of a small groundhog.

Having placed exactly THREE open D-con bait trays in the room above us, plus a mousetrap, with no noticable effect on the four-mouse midnight relays, my only recourse was loud cursing (which made me feel better but our rodent-athletes could not hear above their ARRIBAS) and an occasional pounding on the ceiling with a shoe while standing on the bed in the dark (and this terrified the wife way more than the mouses).

Last resort, I gotta get some sleep: One morning last week, after another track meet upstairs, I resolved to end this man-against-nature stand-off. If they live in the space under the floor, well, that's where ya gotta fight'em. So, with a 1" woodbit, I sunk a hole in the old plank flooring, poured in a couple of ounces of delicious green D-Con, and pulled the rug over the hole (I'll patch it with a 1" dowel one of these days). That oughta do it, I gloated.

And sure enough, that night...no sprints, relays or broadjumps! Ah, victory. Sleep all night! NOT. The next night, and the next, Speedy and Crew were back again. OH, PLEASE get hungry, eat hardy and DIE! Think brain, think brain, think! I stumbled up the steps with the little radio I keep at my computer desk, put it on its side on the floor about the mouse-stadium, and tuned in to the only channel we get: Smooth Jazz. All night long. And....No mouses ever again. Nighty-night!

I always sort of thought enough Smooth Jazz could be lethal if taken internally.

* Full text of mouse-sounds overhead: "Arriba, arriba, arriba, andale, andale, ole, ole, ole, andale! – Hello, pussycats, you looking for a nice fat mouse for deenner?"

So, withp l e n t y of time on my hands (and idle hands are the devil's workshop, ya know) I resorted to invention. I grabbed my cap off the rack, ferreted the Duct Tape out of the drawer, and taped the phone to my cap. Voila! Hands free for 21 more games of Mindsweeper while I waited. Another victory for problem-solving Physical Therapy Man! (To be fair, I acknowledge that this would probably be coded more appropriately under Occupational Therapy. Apologies to my daughter.)

In fact, the most startling figure in the report has nothing to do with snowfall or sea level. Instead, it's the official government prediction that U.S. production of greenhouse gases will rise 43 percent by 2020. We'll pour half again as much carbon dioxide into the planet's atmosphere 18 years from now - that's our promise.

It's as if a drunk had finally hit bottom, announced to friends and family that he accepted the fact that he was an alcoholic and that it was destroying his life - and then said that his plan was to drink three bottles a night from now on instead of two, and see if maybe he could find an artificial kidney.

~~Fragment~~Sounds I hate: 1) the sound of 37 miniature ponies with tap shoes = my hard drive defragging, and defragging, and... 2) gnats, Kamakaze gnats who give their lives to attack my auditory canal, nostrils and conjunctiva. Can't some of them hummm a different KEY! I'm going mad, I tell you! and 3) the 412th refrain of musak, holding for Olympus technical support, call number 6...that endless loop of 8 bars of lounge lizard documentary music.

~~Fragment~~I hate people who make lists of things they hate. They sound like Andy Rooney. And don't ya just hate Andy Rooney?

The Osbournes, America's new first family, are planning a big push at the Licensing Show in Gotham, Tuesday through June 13, betting their wacky MTV rocker reality will play well on sleepwear, dartboards, backpacks and a voice-activated plush bear that yells "I'm the f---ing prince of darkness!"

Many of the toys talk ("Shut the f--- up and go to bed" and "I'm not cleaning up the dogs---, I'm a f---ing rock star!"); others are edited for a general audience. Lola the dog just wrapped up a photo shoot for a new calendar. Other merchandise includes action figures, socks and key chains.

Maybe parts are worth a visit, though. Especially you might like some of the images. If you do, and let me know by way of the comments (either weblog comments, or page comments in the WebPipe), and I will put some more here from time to time.

Click on this link to go to a quickly-constructed SidePipe (webpage tour kind of thing, with comments) and see what you think.

1) You have always hated clowns in general. Period. You are not alone, visit the ihateclowns forum.

2) You hate Ronald McDonald in particular. It could be argued he is the caloric counterpart, in purpose and health outcome, to Joe Camel (who had his humps cut off a while back). Is Ronald next?

3) You dislike McDonalds Corporation of the Cosmos as Ronald's parent company for any one of a large number of reasons...take your pick: The ISSUES are too numerous to detail, but take a look at this extensive site of greivances against our orange haired fiend's family.. You'll get the idea.

Read about his boyhood dream of flying high on clusterballoons, with some really interesting photos.

I have seen these 3" fellas before in both our creeks, knew that the males were rather gawdy during their breeding time in early summer. I couldn't get enough detail, though, to identify them...a long shot even with one in my hand, not having much in the way of ichthyological taxonomy in my background.