Fragments From Floyd

Mindless Spawn of Space

In 1953, exactly fifty years ago today, Watson and Crick announced their explantion of How Living Things Work. Wonder where the two brilliant scientists have been since then? A few highlights...

Everybody complains about it, now Dr. Watson (of DNA Double-Helix fame) says we can do something about it. Better living through chemisty!

Watson says that low intelligence is an inherited disorder and that molecular biologists have a duty to devise gene therapies or screening tests to tackle stupidity.

"If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease," says Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York. "The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't. So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent."

Watson, no stranger to controversy, also suggests that genes influencing beauty could also be engineered. "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."

Meanwhile, his sidekick, Dr. Francis Crick, has discovered that there is no meaning to meaning! Elementary, my dear Watson!

At the heart of the Crick-Koch hypothesis is a simple idea with vast implications. It is that consciousness, rather than representing some spiritual or God-given quality, is a biological process like digestion or circulation, generated by the activity of neurons in the brain. As he wrote in his 1994 book, "The Astonishing Hypothesis": "You, your joys and your sorrows--your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

Blind in One, Can't See Out the Other

Watching the War with Both Eyes
Published on Tuesday, February 25, 2003 by the Boston Globe
by James Carroll

BECAUSE THE CIRCLE of chaos was closing in on the realm, the hero went to the troll and, forcibly subduing him, demanded to know the secret of drawing order out of chaos. The troll replied, ''Give me your left eye and I'll tell you.'' Because the hero loved his threatened people so much, he did not hesitate. He gouged out his own left eye and gave it to the troll, who then said, ''The secret of order over chaos is: Watch with both eyes.''

This story, from the late novelist John Gardner, perfectly illustrates the American problem. We are embarking on war with only one eye watching. That eye sees Iraq, Saddam Hussein, the threat of terrorism, a break with ''old Europe,'' the frightening foreground of the post 9/11 world. What we are not seeing is the larger background where far more deadly dangers lurk.

More...

Seeds in Snow

It is the time of year, in some parts of the country, when a body can begin to lose hope. A time when the White Witch of Narnia rules, and it is 'always winter but never Christmas'. A season of gray mud outside and too much knowledge of the same walls you've been looking at inside since early December. Snow is no longer beautiful or exciting, blue skies and the sound of songbirds not even a memory.

I felt foolish, but I put on my rubber boots, stepped over the fence wire that the deer have broken down around the garden, and stood yesterday in the falling sleet in the middle of what once was a living thing, thinking: Let me have things about me that are green. Resurrect in me the knowledge and hope that things will grow in rows and clusters, will flower and fruit in gold and red, will spill yellow pollen into the air and smell like bread baking. Where I stand in frozen mud and slush around my ankles I will feel the warm sun on my neck and hear bees buzzing in the corn tassels above my head. There will be rich, crumbling soil below my feet and in a handful of sweet earth, fragments of the composted remains of last year's harvest, better soil than when we started this little patch. Days are longer now, if not warmer. Gardening season is not a cruel myth. Plan. Anticipate. Plant seeds in your mind. Live again.

Tooth Fairyland

I thought I was miserable, a captive in my own home, submersed in self pity and general whineyness during this unending ice storm until I read about Terry Oglesby over at Possumblog getting his new crown at the dentist today.

I feel better now, by comparison. Thanks, Terry, for sharing . Eh buh fa duh gayss o ga....go you and I. Now. Open wide.... this might hurt a little....

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

We had been in Belfast for a week, visiting our son who, in his continuing quest to find creative ways to add gray hair to parental coifs, had undertaken a six month exchange program in this rather unsettled part of the world. We'd had a wonderful visit, even though I had been intermittently plagued by some leg pain I'd inflicted on myself a couple of weeks before our trip. Being a therapist and knowing the things I had done that I shouldn't have done, I was pretty certain of the mechanism of injury, and had only myself to blame. Here's the deal:

When our neighbors with the backhoe had finished clearing spindly pine trees from the flat five or six acres that is now our pasture, they 'raked it' by pulling a huge pine log across it to level it and smooth it so that we could put in pasture grass seed. When planting time came, the neighbor who came to put out the grass seed suggested the huge pine log would make a good 'bridge' across our little side creek. He pulled it into place with his tractor. Over the next week, I proceeded to take off the round upper surface of this 20 foot log to level it off and make it easy to walk on. What I needed for this task was an old log-working tool called an adze. With this tool, I could have used good body mechanics, chopping straight in front of my body. Instead, I used an axe, and swung forcefully sideways, off and on, for hours. Got the job done, though, and shortly thereafter, we left the country for Ireland. And all was well, more or less until...

In the cab from the hotel to Belfast International, my hip and leg went into severe spasm. By the time we got to the airport, I could not bear to sit but could barely stand, much less carry heavy suitcases. Once in the terminal, I got shocky, managed to limp over toward a wall, and woke up clammy having briefly passed out, now crumpled in a heap on the floor. To make a miserably long story short, I writhed in the worst pain I've ever experienced for almost twenty hours until we got to Floyd and a physician friend gave me an injection that knocked me out. Subsequent X-rays were negative, and my diagnosis for my condition is piriformis muscle inflammation and spasm leading to sciatic nerve damage (a year and a half later, I still have numbness and calf weakness).

I only relate this story for the fact that, this past week as we were able to get out again and survey the effects of the recent flooding, we discovered that our pine-log footbridge had been swept away. You can imagine I saw it as more than merely a log washed downstream. This spring, when it dries out and it's time to lime and fertilize the pasture, I'll ask the neighbor to use his tractor to pull it back in place (this time, on higher ground). He has the right tool for the job, and I think I'll just stand by and supervise.

Fred Rogers: Good Neighbor, Goodbye

Fred Rogers died this morning. He was an ordained Presbyterian minister who got his seminary degree on his lunch hours in the '50s; considered his work in television as 'sacred ground' and saw this work as his ministy and lived out the meaning of 'one little word':

For many years, he and his wife visited one of his favorite seminary professors in a nursing home every Sunday afternoon. They would sing, talk, read scripture, and pray. One Sunday, the Rogers sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," which included these words:

And though this world, with demons filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God has willed
His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim,
We tremble not for him,
His rage we can endure,
For, lo, his doom is sure:
One little word shall fell him.

When they finished the song, Mr. Rogers asked of his old prof, "Dr. Orr, when it says one little word will fell him, what is that word?" Great question. What word has the power to bring down the prince of darkness?

Dr. Orr replied, "Evil simply disintegrates in the presence of forgiveness."

Fred Rogers believed that Christian principles were 'caught, not taught' and he lived out forgiveness, acceptance and the power of God's love in his 47 years of television. I am grateful to him for being a Christian peacemaker who presented the 'good news' in a gentle voice for so long. You have fought the good fight, Mr. Rogers. Rest in peace.

Hi Yo! Silverware!

My idea of removing moisture from the silverware is to take the wire basketful out of the dishwasher and bounce it sharply on the counter a few times before sticking the knives and spoons in the drawer. Why bother wiping water drops off something that is clean and will sit in the dark drawer and dry without consequence before you need forks and spoons again? I'm sorry. The horror of water spots is just an emotional trauma that I can't comprehend. There are some things about which I am obsessive and meticulous, but flatware can be put up slightly damp as far as I'm concerned. Ann disagrees, but has given up trying to 'civilize' me. We were chatting this morning as I put away the mildly damp silverware we have carried with us now through three states and seven homes through 32 years of married life.

"Look at this knife" I said. "I must have used this for a hammer at some point" as I turned it round in my hand to see the slight dent in the handle. "And check out this fork". I handed her a 40-year old fork that must have come from one of our parents' collections. The tines were slightly snaggled, and you could see both a bowing along the long axis and a twisting in the handle as if it had been turned hard while fixed in something solid and unyielding.

"Holli and the ice cream" Ann reminded me. Our daughter was notoriously hard on silverware, especially when she was in a hurry to get at the rock-hard ice cream straight out of the freezer. Holli always operated by the 'bigger-hammer' approach, and that didn't just apply to ice cream. She was equally hard on the plates, as we still notice in the chips and cracks on what few pieces survive from those days.

Ann continued with lore of silverware as I removed cereal bowls from the dishwasher and pretended to wipe them off with a dry towel. She asked me if I remembered fixing a window with a fork. I didn't. "Yeah, we had just moved in to the little house on Greasy Creek. Remember those ratty double-hung windows, the ones we replaced by the second winter there? We were standing in that kitchen putting away dishes. The wind was blowing like crazy, like it always did there in the valley, and the window was rattling so bad we could hardly carry on a conversation. I commenced to harping about how you had to do something to fix these crummy windows so they wouldn't rattle so".

"Without a word, you reached into the silverware drawer, grabbed a fork, and wedged it between the upper and lower sash of the window. It stopped rattling. And six months later, that fork was still there" she gloated. I guess she thought I'd feel somehow apologetic over this. It had quite the opposite effect. Made me proud. Show me a problem, I fix it. Sometimes that takes the form of banging the wet silverware on the counter a time or two. A man does what a man's gotta do.

Let There Be Light

Yet another map in my cartographic longing for perspective on this increasingly well-lit planet that grows darker by the day. The entire Earth at night is visible in this image. Sometime, I want to sit down with my Hammond World Atlas and match the bright strips and spots to unknown cities, coastlines, river valleys and other landforms. Walty Mitty, the world traveler, flies over the planet at night. You come too!

Lies, Damn Lies and CBS

The CBS Rural "Reality" show just won't die.

("The Real Beverly Hillbillies") is insulting and could be potentially harmful to the Appalachian region in terms of our public perception. It could influence decisions by those who may locate a business in the area or invest in the area. U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland Ohio-6th District

Rural Strategies goes on to state...

Rep. Strickland has contacted Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia to see whether he would introduce the resolution in the Senate.

Miller has been an outspoken critic of "The Real Beverly Hillbillies." In January, after CBS put some distance between the network and the proposed series, Miller sent a letter to the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"Seems they are having a hard time finding the family they had in mind: toothless illiterates with hookworms and an old man who has impregnated his barefoot, teenage daughter," Miller wrote.

"My bet is that these hoity-toity media moguls won't give up that easily. They're dying for a new 'Cracker comedy,' and with their noses in the air, they will keep searching. After all, they are certain that Appalachia is even more backward than the rest of the South, and making viewers feel they are superior is certainly as good a ratings grab as a washed-up 'Celebrity Mole' in Hawaii or a fake 'Joe Millionaire' in France."

UPDATE 11 a m Feb 26: More from a Capitol Hillbilly (Zell Miller of GA) who's NOT HAPPY WITH CBS!

North Korea: The Movie

Oh Great. Another Hot-shot Cowboy in High Places (if you count the 4" lifts).

Like Saddam Hussein, Kim is said to be a huge fan of "The Godfather," which explains much about his leadership style. But in other ways too, he seems to be living his life and running his country more along Hollywood plot lines than traditional ways of living and governing.

Take the way Kim set out to build a North Korean film industry. In 1978, rather than sending emissaries to study filmmaking in other countries, he simply arranged for the kidnapping of Choi Eun Hee, his favorite South Korean actress, and her husband, a noted movie director. They were taken to North Korea and held for eight years, ostensibly to teach him how to make movies. When Kim, who is extremely self-conscious about his stature -- he is 5 feet, 3 inches tall and wears 4-inch lifts -- met Choi, he reportedly used a line worthy of a Peter Lorre character: "Well, Madame Choi, what do you think of my physique? Small as a midget's droppings, aren't I?"

That last line begs for a comeback. Anyone?

Tuesday Tidbits To Go

• No, honestly, if I wasn't obliged to go scrape Ann's car at 5:45 every morning, I wouldn't go any farther than the woodrack on the back porch until after sun-up. But I'm often glad, when I come back in and take off all the winter garb, that I was out under the winter sky in the dark. This morning, the coy C-shaped waning moon was beautiful. I've not checked the news yet this morning. No matter what has transpired in the world of men, the heavens point toward that which is beyond our small world and puny senses, past the outermost of the spinning, whirling galaxies, past the edge of change, sitting on the other side of that final curtain beyond which our instruments cannot take us. And that's good news.
• It's come to this. Much of our wood is wet, as I've confessed. But I have a plan: I will bring in selected pieces of wood from the wet part of the dwindling pile... looking especially for cherry, sassafras, and walnut... and put them on some tin foil over the woodstove's cooler top surface, to slow-cook the moisture out of them before they go in the stove. This has the most desirable side-effect of producing a house-full of woodscent potpourri. Serving suggestion: don't try this on your kitchen stove.
• And I have entered the dog house. (Who am I kidding. We always live in the dog house. Right, Buster?) Yesterday I found a small amount of paraffin lamp oil in a bottle in the cellar. I brought it up and put it down on the back porch while I wandered off and split wood or somesuch. The winds came down the valley from the south, blew over our hiking sticks that were leaning against the house, and they knocked over the lamp oil onto the walkway. Our brick pavers are now permanently (?) marked with a Rorschach blot which appears to be a fruitbat that has been run over by a steamroller.
• I have been reading the Floyd County Comprehensive Plan. I intend to blog on this. I just thought you deserved to be warned ahead of time.

Resistance is (NOT) Futile

Four Goals of McDonaldization

• Efficiency -- Rational calculation of best cost effective mode of production. Cheapest per unit price.


• Calculability -- (or quantity rather than quality) Assessment of outcomes based on quantifiable rather than subjective criteria. Therefore, they extol the big Mac rather than the good Mac.


• Predictability -- Organize production process to guarantee uniformity of product and standardized outcomes.


• Control -- Substitution of more predictable non-human labor for human labor.

My kids will tell you, we don't do MakkyDee's since they were little. I have abhored the place since my college days, and finally Dr. Ritzer has come along to flesh out my disdain for and resistance of the culture of the fast food industry, of which McD's is the torch bearer.
Coming...some pros and cons of McDonaldization.

Puppy Pranks

This one is for the kids. I wrote them last week when Buster had a couple of bad days and we were worried about him. This picture is just to show that he has fully recovered to his prior levels of obnoxiousity and is enjoying the snow, even if he is basically an Orlando Retriever (at least that's what he tells us when he stands at the door with his legs crossed, refusing to go as far as the lilacs to pee when it gets below 20 degrees).

In this picture, I had hopped down off the road to take some ice pictures along the creek, and had taken off my gloves to operate the camera. I look up a minute later, my gloves are gone, and I hear this "Yahyahyah" from you-know-who. So kiddos, the ol' boy Buster is back!

While we're in doggy mood, go over to Fool's Blog and see how puppy Harley has grown in just a couple of months. Great slide show. Sit back and enjoy the feline-canine wrestling match!

The More Things Change

There is a new grocery store coming to town, and not everybody is happy about it. There were already two here, Farmers Foods and Slaughters, and it isn't a public demand for fresh lobster that will be bringing in a chain grocery to the edge of town. It's simply a corporate opportunity. The new Food Lion store will be going in a field right across from the library, 100 yards out the front door of this stately old mansion that was featured here a month or so ago.

The issue has somewhat polarized the community, at least as it plays out in the editorial columns of the local paper. The most vocal locals, if I can paint with an overly-broad brush here, want any growth anywhere, any how. Some of the newer residents who come to Floyd with bad urban sprawl experiences and perhaps a longer and larger view of things, are concerned that certain kinds of growth, and aesthetic aspects of it (the signage, obtrusiveness of parking lot lighting, traffic changes) need to be considered before this kind of change in the character of town takes place.

This little controversy has brought into contrast the different voices represented here, and has been especially of interest to me now, as I will be attempting in my class research project to discern the 'collective identity' of Floyd County in some meaningful way. I mention this because the more I read and interview and write about my study topic, the less time I have to roam around with my camera and ruminate about protozoans and pondscum. I am a reluctant sociologist here, but that is the hat I am wearing for a while, til I get this class behind me. Who knows. Maybe I'll even wander upon something of substance to write about. (NAH!) Stay tuned!

Two 20-somethings Ago Today

Chaz Hill over in Dustbury Country used to mow grass to buy vinyl (no, it's not siding, children... it's what we used to call 'records'. They were big and bulky, broke rather easily, came along before Frizbies and didn't work nearly as well, warped in the sunshine, collected dust, and in sufficient quantity... which Chaz has amassed... required bracing up your house's foundation against the weight.)

The erudite Mr. Hill elaborates on my sixties musical ramble in the informative "B" side of Dustbury, in his VENT in which he tells us where the Beatles were, and weren't, in 1963. And now you know the rest of the story.

Is This Okay?

SEOUL, South Korea - Rattling nerves along the border, a North Korean fighter jet violated South Korean airspace over the Yellow Sea on Thursday before turning back as warplanes in the South scrambled. The flight — the first such incursion in 20 years — was the latest in a series of North Korean provocations.

The incursion, which lasted two minutes, came only days after North Korea (news - web sites) threatened to abandon the armistice keeping peace along the border if the United States imposes sanctions on the communist regime.

Sure. This is fine. Knock yerselfs out, North Koreans. But boy, I'm glad they don't have a little missle that will go 10 miles farther than the legal limit. Then they'd be in DEEP DO-DO!

Revive us Again

Excerpt from
Revive Us Again. A Sojourner's Story by Jim Wallace ~ Abingdon Press, 1983

Why does this description of America written in the early 1980's sound so familiar? Just substitute terrorism for communism...

[...]America after World War II offered a dream brighter than ever before. We ruled the world. The economy was booming. Our standard of living became the envy of the rest of the nations. It seemed to many that God had surely blessed us. Our national righteousness was evident in our wartime victory and peacetime prosperity. There was plenty for all who ere upright in character and willing to work hard enough to succeed.

But, like our parallel pursuit of military security, there was never enough. The more we stockpiled possessions and weapons, the more insecure we became. Accumulation and armaments did not bring us security. It was all an illusion.

Had we read the Bible more carefully, we would not have been surprised. Biblically, security is found in the presence of justice and peace. The all-embracing pursuit of material success and comfort distorted our priorities, our faith, our church and family life. We were captivated, seduced and captured by the materialism of post-World War II America.

If the reaction to the Depression was frenzied pursuit of affluence in my parents' generation, the response to the success of World War II was unbridled nationalism. The years of my growing up were the peak of American power into the world. We had our way -- always. We were the strongest, richest, and, we thought, most righteous country in the history of the nations. For all the fear of the Soviets, there was no one in the world who could pose a serious challenge to American dominance.

The anti-communism which followed World War II was pervasive. It became almost a religious cause and served as a convenient cover for American commercial, political, and military adventures all over the world. No matter what our country did, no matter how we intervened in the affairs of other countries, no matter how much suffering our policies brought, the great cause of anti-communism was invoked, and every act of political subversion, economic imperialism, or military aggression became justified and even took on the noble character of a religious crusade.

Time magazine named Wallis one of the "50 Faces for America's Future." His books include The Soul of Politics (1994) and Who Speaks for God? A New Politics of Compassion, Community, and Civility (1996). He continues as Editor-in-Chief for Sojourners: Christians for Justice and Peace.

Things That Go Boing in the Night

"What was that!?" I asked, as I sat bolt-upright in bed, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

"I don't know but it was inside the house. I think" Ann offered groggily. "What do you think it could have been?"

Such is the way of the sleeping brain. It receives what the physiologists call the "raw percept"... the sound waves from... what?... make nerve impulses in the ear that reach the 'hearing' cortex and activate the 'alertness' part of the brain, but that last leg of the journey to full comprehension... the interplay of hearing and meaning... doesn't happen. So there you sit, awake, alarmed, having heard SOMETHING, feeling uncomfortably clueless.

It wasn't cold enough for it to be a pipe bursting (my worst winter-wee-hours fear); it wasn't a tree falling (the weather dudes missed their guess about the 60 mph winds last night, yet forecast for later today). Wasn't the dog, wasn't somebody on the road, not the phone, not the fire alarms. We scanned through the inventory of possibilities and came up with nothing, although we both agreed it was inside the house, and it was a metallic kind of sound, like a spring recoiling or something.

All this was taking place at ten after four this morning. It was about time to get up anyway (yes, even on a Sunday) so I begin the tedious winter process of dressing for the morning. Just then the dark room flooded with light and a split-second later the sharp peal of thunder reverberated down the sodden valley, around us, in us, as much a visceral feeling as a sound. There was no crescendo up to the climax of the storm. Like the mysterious noise that woke us, the peak of the storm came at once, before we could attach meaning to the raw percept of sharp metallic pinging. Hail was hitting the metal roof, bouncing down onto the porch roof, from there to the frozen ground just outside our window in an audible hiss. The roar of the wind and the rushing of the swollen creek screamed like twin banshees in a threatening howl that only added to the adrenalin of being startled awake just a minute before. The lightening flashed, the hail hissed and the creek growled and we pulled back under the covers as if they would protect us from the fury and violence just the other side of our walls.

The storm passed quickly, the power stayed on, and we threw the covers off and headed for the coffee pot. As soon as the light came on in the bedroom, I discovered what had startled us from sleep just as the storm began. The D string on my guitar had broken suddenly in a metallic twang, not ten feet from the bed. I have a guess that the sudden change in pressure from the storm may have triggered it. So, my old guitar had the honor of playing the opening note for The Tempest on Goose Creek in D Major. And on that note, I think I have earned another cup of coffee.

Blogstreet Neighborhoods etc

I suppose some, maybe most bloggers will be aware of Blogstreet. The folks there use some voodoo to create a kind of hierachical ranking of over 85,000 weblogs, determined in some fashion by who links to and is linked by the weblog. I'm not sure what some of this means, especially the "neighborhood". Fragment's Neighborhood shows many well-known weblogs, but I'll be darned if many of them know me. Still, you can go to any of those in the list and see more about their associations.

The BlogBack feature lists other weblogs where Fragments appears on their blogroll. This seems accurate enough.

And there is a new javascript feature (menu: VISUAL) that ostensibly shows in a graphic way various connections between Fragments and other seemingly random chosen weblogs. This is sort of fun to play around with, but I can't say that it tells me anything useful.

Word is that soon, there will be a number of separate 'categories' and ratings will be applied within those categories. Hmmm. Wonder where to file Fragments? Maybe there will be a "Seinfeld" category, that is 'about nothing'. Yeah. That's the ticket.

And while were sort of on the subject of linkages and connections, notice down at the bottom of the right sidebar now... a neat little FREE piece of code from Stephen Downes that tells you who's visiting Fragments (if anyone) and from where. Did I mention it was free?

Too Much Too Fast

This is not a drill. This is the real thing. Water is up over the concrete bridges west of us, threatening to be up over the road, east. We have moved our vehicles up as high as we can and are watching an angry, grinding, soil-choken Goose Creek carve away at the banks and eat out around the trees that have survived along the creek til now. We'll lose some tonight.

Expecting the rains to finally end late today, followed by 60 mph winds tonight and tomorrow. I doubt we will try to get out for church, even if the road itself survives. We could come back to a dozen monster trees down over the road.

I'd be happier to see all this moisture if more of it was getting into the deep ground. As it is, the frost down a few inches deep is making it seems as if all this rain is falling on a vast parking lot over square miles, and the creek is the convenient storm drain. It smells seaweedy, smells of topsoil out there and the creek is terrible, raging, powerful, mindlessly following the only laws it knows. Water and time are the brushes that created this Appalachian canvas through the eons, but it's not a pretty picture as it happens.

Now. Time for an inventory of candles, batteries, drinking water, crank radio, and a book with print large enough to read by the oil lamps tonight. And hey, it might be a good idea to use some our duct tape and make the dog a raincoat.

If a Woodchuck Could Chuck

It's a sad day in Mudville. Mighty Casey has struck out. My perfect record for one-match fires ended this morning because the wood is wet and this has certainly put a damper on my manly self-esteem... the price I pay for being so puffed up, earlier in the winter, at the quantity, quality and sheer aesthetic wonder of my ample and well-thought-out woodpile.

We've had a much colder-than-normal winter. Unlike winters past, this year somebody (me) has been in the house most days during the week, so instead of firing the woodstove at 7:30 to last until 5:30 in the afternoon, it's been fed continuously, 24/7 since late September. Add to that the fact that we've had snow/slush/mud since early December... a time when I would have been laying by next year's wood, or the year after's ... in a typical year. There was a time I would have done it, but this year, the idea of slipping and sliding around while operating a chainsaw has left me, well, cold.

What wood that's piled over here at the house is either wet from where the snow got to it, or it's 'body wood' that will have to be split before it's burned; and the kindling pile is almost gone. Over in the barn, there's still some scraps of old siding and flooring I salvaged from the house reconstruction a couple years ago, but it won't do for more than firestarter kindling. Spring can't come too soon to suit me. Even so, we'll need a bit of heat on into late April-early May, so the woodburning season is far from over.

In the picture you can see how I store my wood, in teepee fashion, over in the pasture. I just cut this little bunch up last week, got one truckload over here between snows, and the remainder is buried once again and frozen to the ground. It's nice to see the green again and remember my love-hate relationship with grass mowing and summer heat. Ann likes to mow. Go figure. You can see a bit of the AT (no, not Appalachian Trail... the Annie Trail) that wifey keeps up, cutting a swath around the perimeter of the pasture and down the old road we follow in our daily walk, so as to keep the dew off, and hopefully, most of the ticks, come summer. And come it will. And I'll be getting in firewood when I should be gardening. Such is life.

Crises of Conscience...

...and being accountable.

Kurt Easterwood looks at the two sides of the Janus-faced role of the personal writer, wondering how to find the proper balance between keeping the internal peace of one's life where he or she lives it, and waging peace in the real world of words and weapons. I appreciate him carrying some of my earlier thoughts forward and am happy for the company in this confusing time.

UPDATE/2.23.03 Pascale also asks if it's right that a blogger should be silent if he or she doesn't have all the answers' and note too Sainteros comment to Pascale's post, which reads, in part...

[...] I cannot escape my sense that far from protecting Americans the current administration is actually increasing the danger to Americans, that its unilateralism is seriously destabilizing international relations, that it has squandered the one opportunity we've had in 50 years to unite the world more sympathetically to our values and our character. The current administration failed to anticipate September 11, failed to stop it, and subsequently has failed to capture or render impotent those who did it. Now they are pursuing an enemy that they cannot prove is a direct threat, promoting both the perception and the reality that America wishes to behave as an empire and not a republic. The cost to America is to incur the world's ire.

Lynn Sislo (in her comment) takes issue with the term 'unilateral' since others have 'willingly' sort of kinda joined America in this endeavor. Technically, maybe she's right. However....

Musical Markers: Life Went Thattaway

Somewhere at the crest of a remote and rocky ridge, probably in the Smokies, I sat with a hiking buddy, many, many years ago. We had pitched camp in a three-sided trail shelter, as I recall, and were enjoying the end of an exhausting day on the trail when each step, all day long, was higher than the one before. We had gained maybe two thousand feet of elevation, just to spend the end of the day on a mountain crest where we could see both sunset and sunrise.

This was one of my first two-night backpacking trips and it occurred to me that I was as far away from 'civilization' as I had ever been. We ate a quick supper, and sat back to watch the sun go down beyond the last of a dozen ranges of overlapping southern mountain ridges. The stars were already appearing when, in the last glory of sunlight, I noticed a coppery reflection from something on the granite rock here at the highest point of the mountain. I was surprised and frankly disappointed to find a three-inch metal plate permanently set in the rock.

So. We were not the first people here. So much for that fantasy. Not only had humans been here before, but they made sure that they or anyone else could come back to this exact point on the planet at any time for centuries to come and find this bronze plate. What I had found, I later discovered, was a Geological Survey 'benchmark', placed there long before I was born. A benchmark is a permanently fixed point of reference: "you are precisely here on the map and you can reliably orient your position, find your bearings according to this known point".

The next song on the oldies station begins with the raucous sounds of seagulls. Not only do I instantaneously know what the song is going to be, but as the first words are sung, I nail the key perfectly, cueing in some unknown way from the unmelodic birdcalls. The Tymes are singing "So Much in Love" and so am I, and it is 1963, a fixed point in memory, rooted and grounded by the music of that sophomoric age. This is a metaphorical benchmark, it occurs to me as we stroll by the sea together under stars twinkling high above, and somehow my body pilots the car safely in the present, under overcast skies heavy with snow. The music of that year, not one particular song but taken all together, is embedded in rock with a brass plate, immutable, known, anchoring that time to this and me to that gangly fifteen-year-old who was becoming me.

As anchors go, I think the top 100 of 1963 holds pretty well. Consider the top ten:

Top 100 Hits of 1963
Chart # Song Title Artist
1. I Will Follow Him Little Peggy March
2. Be My Baby The Ronettes
3. He's So Fine The Chiffons
4. Our Day Will Come Ruby and The Romantics
5. Easier Said Than Done The Essex
6. So Much In Love The Tymes
7. My Boyfriend's Back The Angels
8. Hey Paula Paul and Paula
9. Fingertips (Part 2) Little Stevie Wonder
10. Go Away Little Girl Steve Lawrence

Year for silly/novelty songs: Dominique (some singing nuns?); Sukiyaki (about uncooked fish?); Hello Muddah (I was a 'leader' at camp that year); Tie Me Kangaroo Down (another international inroad into American pop).

Group names often take the formulaic "So-and-so (individual) and the such-and-suches (rest of the bunch) as in Martha and the Vandellas'; Ruby and the Romantics; Franki Valli and the Four Seasons; Randy and the Rainbows; or Sunny and the Sunglows. It was the names of people... Peter, Paul and Mary, Lou Christy, Jan and Dean ... that identified the groups. This was before the era of abstracting and obfuscating with names like Leftover Tuna, Toe Jam, Vowel Movement or the Banal Retentives.

And finally, in the Karaoke Machine: Fred sings...
1) Go Away Little Girl in his syrupy impression of Steve Lawrence
2) Blue Velvet or Blue on Blue, in the heart-wrenching wail of Bobby Vinton
3) And, only if alone unless its payback time, the ear-piercing suprafalsetto of Lou Christy in Two Faces Have I... YiiiYiiiYiiiYiiiYiiiYiii.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

So. What are your musical benchmarks? And be honest: you're really quite impressive singing at least one of the top 100 from 'your year'. (And yes, I do realize that most bloggers were not even with us yet in 1963). Put your lips up to the monitor and belt out a stanza or two for us. Don't be shy.

"Greater Israel"

New bin Laden tape purportedly says Bush agenda: the creation of 'Greater Israel'. After Iraq the US will go for Syria, Egypt, Sudan and Iran. Mr. Laden, please sir, you're going to get folks upset! I know you'd hate that, being a messenger of God and all that.

"This attack is part of a new crusade to prepare the region, after dividing it, for the creation of a Greater Israel," excerpts of the recording read. "This means the whole region will be ruled by Jews" bin Laden is quoted as saying.

Yesterday's message said that Mr Bush and Tony Blair were waging a campaign to carve up the Middle East in a similar fashion to the 1916 British-French pact that divided the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

Silence of the Lambs

I've lost my writing rhythm, if not the will as well. Never a king, never aspiring to talk about kings, by proxy, I nonetheless feel the sword of Damocles just grazing my scalp. (You know the story. Damocles, the Greek courtier to Dionysius the Elder who, according to legend, was condemned to sit under a naked sword that was suspended by a hair in order to demonstrate to him that being a king was not the happy state Damocles had said it was). How can I sit here and ignore this mountain of woe while I gush about the joy and wonder or tiny ills in the life on the fringes of the kingdom, content to be in the world, but not of it, but guilty at the same time for seeming indifference? Fran of Northwest Notes understands.

Two If By Sea

Three we know about...

LONDON - U.S. and British intelligence services are tracking three mystery ships suspected of carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the Independent newspaper said on Wednesday.

...A shipping industry source told the paper: "If Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction, then a very large part of its capability could be afloat on the high seas right now.

...The paper, quoting what it called authoritative shipping industry sources, said the giant cargo ships had been sailing around the world for three months while maintaining radio silence in violation of international maritime law.

Quite Contrary

"The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest," Washington wrote in 1796. "The nation, prompted by ill will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy." George Washington

Stars, Invisible by Day

I hoped to my soul that the rare traveler down our road would chose another time to come by. There I was in the middle of a torrent of freezing water, squatting precariously on the rocks, in black rubber boots with a camera, photographing ice, of all things.

I accepted a long time ago that, if you're going to see the most interesting and beautiful things in this natural world, sometimes you have to get down to where they are... even if you have to play the fool on his knees to do it.

In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives a message of beauty, hope, cheer, and courage - so long are you young. When the wires are all down and our heart is covered with the snow of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and only then, are you grown old. ~Douglas MacArthur

Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life. ~Charles Dickens

Age is opportunity no less,
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. ~Madeleine L'Engle

The idea is to die young as late as possible. ~Ashley Montagu

Word of the Day

hubris (noun):

• very great pride and belief in your own importance


• Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance: “There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris” (McGeorge Bundy). ETYMOLOGY: Greek, excessive pride, wanton violence. See ud- in Appendix I.


• the pride associated with arrogance; pride considered as sin


• N. arrogant ambition, ultimately leading to downfall; the revenge of the gods, the ancient Greeks said, when mortals got above themselves.


• insolence, impudence, pride, haughtiness


• a wrong springing from insolence, an injury, affront, insult


• mental injury and wantonness of its infliction being prominent


• injury inflicted by the violence of a tempest

Christmas in February!

Missing since Christmas travels: my little shirt-pocket digital recorder. There is such as thing as "too small" and the tiny Olympus DW-90 was just so easy to lose between couch cushions or to slip out of a pocket. I had lost it somewhere and dang I wish I had at least put my phone number on it in case somebody found it.

Yesterday somebody did. Me. It was stuffed back in the far corner of my underwear drawer, wrapped up in a placemat from the table, along with a small pocketknife, a few .22 shells and two odd socks. Obviously this was a "Oh crap they're walking up the sidewalk!" kind of last minute clean up during the Christmas house guests season. I swear I didn't put it in that drawer. So does Ann. Buster!

For some reason, my mind goes 100 miles an hour when I am driving. I suppose it is somewhat of a sensory deprivation kind of thing as the 'motor mind' is occupied with the mere action-reaction aspects of staying on the road. I dunno. I bought the little recorder back when I was on the road an hour a day, five days a week between here and work in Christiansburg. At the time, I had no outlet for writing, but wanted to, and the snippets that zipped through my mind while driving I somewhere called "ephemeral fragments from Floyd" because they would come, and would as quickly go, until I got my handy-dandy little recorder. Even then, I had snatches of imagery, adjectives, sometimes paragraphs of thought and reflection that were to me worthy of writing about. But the idea of writing without some concept of audience left me cold. Then the concept of the weblog-as-journal came to my attention in March... now almost a year ago... and here we are.

I'm back in the truck again several times a week. I'll be doing some interviews for my class research project soon. Finding the little recorder couldn't have come at a better time. Ho Ho Ho! Merry Christmas!

Fragments, Well Seasoned

Now in my eighth month of journalling here in Fragments, I appreciate the cycles of life that are showing up as time passes and the days' entries grow and fill these pages. From the sum of them come rhythms and patterns not evident or important perhaps to the casual reader of these words. But to the author, the common thread in snippets and fragments is beginning to tell as story missed when a day's thoughts and musings stand alone.

And too, standing back from the present, with the perspective of many months of writing, I realize how much the effort of daily jounalling has been good for me, to give perspective, purpose and meaning in these bits of thought and memory. I need that... to know that the value of the sum is more than one morning's silly ramblings that I so often hesitate to post. Keep it. It will be a drop in a larger pond someday.

I was considering all this as we walked the road this morning, sliding on the icy lane beside the creek that flows well up in its banks. Water hangs in frozen drops from the alders and covers the Broomsedge, so cold and brittle it shatters with the slightest touch. Springs boil up literally from the middle of the road and the world is saturated with a month's worth of water.

Standing in that very place in August, we wondered then if we would ever hear the drip and gurgle and splash of water in our valley again. Those memories from the terrible drought of late summer bring back the feel of dry heat, and hot breezes, and this is not altogether an unwelcome illusion in the middle of February. I'll snip a bit of these summmer memories that make me smile, as I read back through the seasons, bundled in front of the woodstove this morning:

from Every Drought Ends with a Good Rain August 09, 2002
... One has only to dig down a bit over by the barn to know that rounded river rocks by the tens of thousands have been washed down the narrow Rhododendron-shrouded gorge of the nameless creek that flows together with Goose Creek not 100 feet from where I sit. This same creek, tumbling down from its springfed source, has meandered first against the resistant rock of the east ridge of our valley, then the west, then back again, each time widening our little pasture by imperceptible inches in 100 years...such an unthinkably long time to our mortal perspective, a flash of time in a million years of wind and sun, frost and floods.

Floods are cataclysmic, sudden, drastic and evident in their consequences. Drought is chronic, insidious, draining life invisibly, quietly, leaving no record in the sands of geology's time. It is an abundance of water that has carved the hollow of the creekbed and made valley wide, not its absence. It is an abundance of water that has nurtured the broadleaved forest of these mountain hillsides. Drought has not formed this landscape, and it seems reasonable to hope that it will not subdue it now.

We will miss the rains for a few more weeks, for maybe one more season. But we must learn to see the cycles of wet and dry as the land sees it, and be still. If history is any lesson, the water will win the day.[More]

from Showers of Blessing August 15, 2002
... The clouds spoke of rain since mid-morning, but only in a distant whisper, and in jest. Nothing at all appeared on the weather radar that I watch like an ancient shaman watches bird entrails for signs of what might be. Once again, we were taunted with the hope of rain. Oh how those first drops would seem miraculous, the ordinary become extraordinary, sacred and hallowed, if only they would come. Soon.

And then they came. Three large, fat drops on the pavers outside the porch door. Then nothing, only a high hot wind. I lay down on the walk and watched the clouds form demons and cherubs; but a gray, flat, featureless raincloud would have been the most beautiful cloud of all. So intent on the vision overhead, I had not heard the first hints of rustling down our valley to the south. Wind? Rain? Both?

Sudden, sustained and smelling of dust and ozone, the blessed rains swept in sheets down the valley. It is raining still. This afternoon, we have walked in it, waded in it, rejoiced in it. How frail we are in that the cellular seas within us, plant and animal alike, are filled by rains and rivers that we do not own and cannot invoke by a word or a law. We live on a Water Planet, but it is all too easy to take this miraculous liquid for granted. I hope that I never will again. [More]

Flag and Country

"No, that is the Confederate Naval Jack. It is not the Confederate Battle Flag. Battle flags were square. And this flag was not the National Flag of the Confederate States". A class mate had just soundly corrected our prof who was about to use "THE" (misnamed) Confederate flag as an example of a symbol that 'signified' some very negative things.

"The Naval Jack was flown on ships in port. That's all it was. The Battle Flag that is square shares the central St. Andrews Cross and was the battle flag for the successful Northern Virginia Army, and later the rectangular form came to be associated with the southern states. It was expropriated after the war by groups that went on to become the KKK, and it acquired its racial connations thereafter. Those were not associated initially with this symbol." Katie knows her stuff.

Man, I actually came away from class with something; and after spending a while browsing around the world of flags this afternoon, I stand somewhat informed. Here is a nice display with explanations of the various flags of the Confederacy as they evolved.

The X-shaped St Andrews cross takes its origins from the days of Christ's disciples (according to one story). St. Andrew is the Patron Saint of Scotland and the white cross against a pale blue background is the national flag of that country.

This cross was incorporated with modification as the "Southern Cross" in the Confederate Naval Jack and other similar flags. A very strong contingent of Scots-Irish had migrated to the southern tier of states, shunning their former enemies the English who settled predominately in "NEW ENGLAND", so it is not surprising that they would incorporate this emblem in their flags. (

Another example of how flags evolve from earlier flags: Consider the Union Jack of the "United" Kingdom.Three crosses: the Cross of St. George (England), Cross of St. Andrew (Scotland) and Cross of St. Patrick (Ireland) go together to form the Union Jack. Fascinating! Maybe I need to get out more. Ya think?

But you probably already knew all this. You probably listened in class instead of drawing caricatures of your history teacher, or counting her "ummm"s and "uhhh"s like I was doing. I sorta figured that'd come back to haunt me.

Creatures of the Grid

There are not a few Floyd County residents who live 'off the grid' to one degree or another. They range from our retired Lutheran minister friend who uses a battalion of car batteries to store solar-generated power at his home, to our reclusive neighbor who choses to live off-the-grid in a tiny cottage with nine cats, who bathes in the creek and reads by oil lamps... this eccentricity compounded by the fact that she is from a very moneyed family whose name everyone would recognize.

We moved into our house here in November of 1999... just two months before the dreaded Y2K event. Our move wasn't predicated on survival when society melted down in January 1, 2000; but the thought did enter our minds that we could be relatively 'okay' for a while during a time of disruption, having the abundant wood for heat, gas (or wood) for cooking and hot water. And I was especially pleased with our water situation.

The house had been on spring water for over a century, but the spring head up the road filled in with sediment some decades ago, and I guess the hippies that lived here over the years brought in water from other wells or springs. Not knowing what to expect when we put in the very first deep well on the place, we were delighted to have 12-15 gallons of water at about 140 feet! And the best thing was that, very rare for deep wells in our area, it was artesian, meaning that there was enough pressure on the aquifer to send water up out of the well without pumping. We had enough pressure to use all the water outlets on the main floor, even when the power to the well pump was off during winter storms! Until...

In the spring of our first year here, we started noticing two changes in the water: it smelled funny, like rotten eggs especially in the shower; and, standing water in the back of the toilet was rust colored and slimy. Ann's pharmacy clinic jackets came out of the washing machine a nice reddish off-white. For reasons we didn't understand, we now had both iron and sulphur bacteria in our water. While there were no health concerns about this, for aesthetics and plumbing reasons, we had to have a water treatment system installed, at no small cost and with great dismay over the loss of our wonderful tasting water. Also, with the system in place, we lost the potential to have water in the house when the power is out. There is no way to bypass the sytem and take pressure directly from the well.

Of course, we still could fill buckets from the creek to use to flush toilets. Mostly. Of course the creek dried completely up this past summer. And there were times during the past month when getting through the ice to fill a bucket would have been quite an ordeal. And even then, this is surface water and not drinkable without chemical treatment or lots of boiling. So, project of the moment: find a low-tech way to get drinking water when the power is out. (The gas generator is a last-ditch option, used mostly to keep the freezer from thawing. We have never needed it since most of our power outtages have been in winter, and of short duration, thankfully. We could have put the meat out in the snow, or in coolers on the north side of the house, and it would have lasted fine for several days).

Possible water solution: We still have artesian pressure at the wellhead. My current thinking is that if I can find someone to put a threaded 3/4" hole in the well cap, we should be able to put a short piece of threaded pipe with a shut-off of some kind, probably just a ordinary faucet, on the end and have easily enough pressure to fill water jugs or a bucket directly from the well. I've made some calls and have a well-driller with a 'can-do' approach working with me on this little low-tech approach to water independence. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Yep, that's it. No surprise ending. No moralizing punch line -- just a mundane narrative of a slice of life from where I live, where I have a wee bit of control. And today I plan to stay off the grid... to 'be here now' all day without Google News, CNN or NPR to tell me about things I can't do a dang thing about. Maybe later, some pictures of yesterday's ice storm. Provided we don't lose power...

Cat-atonic

Dave, you should post a warning to cat-lovers. This is pitiful while hilarious.
Pictured, the unkindest cut.

ICE: Figments and Formations

You have heard about rural places where life moves so slowly that the locals sit around and watch the grass grow. I'm here to tell you that I have experienced the winter counterpart of this inactivity, and of that fact I am not ashamed. For the past two months, I have watched the ice grow and morph in the creek, and it has been a most beautiful, amazing and bewildering hobby. I do not understand what I am seeing and lament that I have missed fleeting opportunities to capture more images to remind me of all the wonders I have walked past.

We've had freezing temperatures and snow on the ground since early December, in an atypically cold and wet winter. It is by far the most 'wintery' year we have spent here on the creek. I have never lived year round so near to the presence of water and ice. This is as close to an Arctic expedition as I ever hope to come.

I see the creek now from my window as it flows between the house and the barn. So many times in the past weeks I have stood and marvelled at some sunlit ice formation in one part of the stream or another, in sun or shade, only to come back an hour later with my camera to find it altogether changed. The evolution of ice is unpredictable and ephemeral in the way of sunsets. I watch amazed and dumb and know no more of the ice below than the myriad formations in the clouds over my head.

I have seen crystal stalagtites that look every bit as if they were formed from the roof of a limestone cave. And sharp transparent fluted shards like snowflakes forming a visible fringe along the edge of the creek. I have seen the results of 'mock snow' forming six inches deep right along the water's surface in a zone of supersaturated frozen air. A spongy pad of airy creek ice forms on the shoreline even on mornings when it has not snowed a single flake on land the night before. This 'creek snow' eventually covers the entire creek if it stays this cold for long enough. As it grows, this encasement will bulge and lift several inches above the water's surface, as if the creek below has mysteriously dropped from under it. The snow-ice once formed in this way expands and while anchored at both creek banks, the only way to expand is by lifting up in the center, forming a bulging dome that completely obscures the dark waters of the creek below. The noisy riffles are muffled. The cold water burbles in mysterious internal organs, a perpetual visceral stomach-rumbling kind of sound.

Fluted. Filigreed. Lacey. Cancellous. Clear as crystal glass, green as a glacier. Granular and rough over here at the top of this ledge; and just there in the shadow of a rocky bluff a smooth, flat sheet that refects the pale pastel light of a weak winter sun. Ice buttons and balls decorate the drab grasses at creek's edge with bright colorless ornaments. Air bubbles under glass move rodent-like downstream in a warren of liquid and crystal.

Does Matter Matter?

The more we know, the less we understand. New pictures of the young Universe bring answers. AGE: 13.7 billion years. GROWTH: Indeterminate. Big Bang supported, Oscillating Universe idea, refuted. CONSISTS OF: Well, we don't really know. Mostly, dark matter and dark energy, they call it. How embarassing. Basically, this is science's way of saying 'some other stuff'. Here's the conclusion, in a nutshell:

The data also have enabled scientists to produce the most exact calculation ever of what the cosmos is made of today. It turns out that only 4 percent of the universe is made up of atoms with known forces such as electromagnetism and gravity, the ordinary stuff that makes people, potatoes, porcelain and everything else that humans know. Twenty-three percent of the universe is made from mysterious unseen material dubbed "dark matter" because scientists know so little about it. The remainder -- 73 percent -- is made up of yet another poorly understood force called "dark energy."

The Fragments Dictionary

Terms that have caught my eye this week...

• Forgive me, I forget which blogger described (her?)self as having cabin fever this week, a condition s(he) called shack wacky. Yeah. I'm that.
• I am doing research on cultural tourism for my class I'm taking. Somewhere I found a database listing income produced by various segments of the population of some oriental country. Included was the monetary contribution to the local economy by "sex workers". What a wonderful politically correct euphemism! But, to be fair, I propose that, in the same spirit of softening what could be seen as judgemental epithets, we should commence to calling burglars, extortionists and the like by the term crime workers.
• And finally, again 'somewhere' I read a sarcastic review of our Prezdunt's proposed tax cut that will provide needed financial relief to the rich, that population which was referred to by this author as the uptrodden.

The Tie Dye Decade

The Psychedelic Sixties:
Literary Tradition and Social Change
A Media Exhibit
by Stephen Railton
Balding Hippie & Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Virginia

"There were a lot of ways to get hurt in the sixties, from fire fights in Vietnam to drug overdoses in student apartments. Most of us survived, to face a different kind of sixties risk: nostalgia. Nostalgia is probably as hallucinatory as any drug, and certainly more dangerous to the memory than any LSD induced "flashback." As a means of resisting its effects, let's evoke the skepticism of someone born after 1970, someone who might be more receptively curious about the sixties if there weren't already so many oldies stations on the radio, someone whose voice has no trace of a lump in it when pronouncing the word "Woodstock."

Cosmic Beginnings

Professor Robert Jastrow-Ph.D. (1948), from Columbia University; Chief of the Theoretical Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1958-61) and Founder/Director of NASA 's Goddard Institute; Professor of Geophysics at Columbia University; Professor of Space Studies-Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College. Writings include: Astronomy: Fundamentals And Frontiers (Wiley, 1972); God And The Astronomers (Norton, 1978); The Enchanted Loom (Touchstone, 1983); Has been described by Paddy Chayevsky as "the greatest writer on science alive today."

Realize that Dr. Jastrow is an agnostic, not a believer. His conclusion, from God and the Astronomers, is one of my favorite cosmological images. The final four paragraphs, below:

Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proven that the Universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, what cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into the Universe? Was the Universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre-existing materials? And science cannot answer these questions, because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the Universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination.

Now we would like to pursue that inquiry farther back in time, but the barrier to further progress seems insurmountable. It is not a matter of another year, another decade of work, another measurement, or another theory; at this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences
by US Senator Robert Byrd
Senate Floor Speech - Wednesday, February 12, 2003

To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war.

And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.

Please, if you never read another word on this silly weblog, read the rest of this address. Please.

U. of ??? Engineering Exam

1. Calculate the smallest limb diameter on a
persimmon tree that will support a 10-pound possum.

2. Which of the following cars will rust out the
quickest when placed on blocks in your front yard? 66
Ford Fairlane, 69 Chevrolet Chevelle, 64 Pontiac GTO.

3. If your uncle builds a still that operates at a
capacity of 20 gallons of shine per hour, how many car
radiators are necessary to condense the product?

Please complete all 10 questions for full credit.

4. A woodcutter has a chain saw that operates at 2700
rpm. The density of the pine trees in a plot to be
harvested is 470 per acre. The plot is 2.3 acres in
size. The average tree diameter is 14 inches. How
many Budweisers will it take to cut the trees?

5. If every old refrigerator in the state vented a
charge of R-12 simultaneously, what would be the
decrease in the ozone layer?

6. A front porch is constructed of 2x8 pine on
24-inch centers with a fieldrock foundation. The span
is 8 feet and the porch length is 16 feet. The porch
floor is1-inch rough sawn pine. When the porch
collapses, how many hound dogs will be killed?

7. A man owns a Tennessee house and 3.7 acres of land
in a hollow with an average slope of 15%. The man has
5 children. Can each of the children place a mobile
home on the man's land? (This reminded me of Madison County)

8. A 2-ton truck is overloaded and proceeding 900
yards down a steep grade on a secondary road at 45 mph.
The brakes fail. Given the average traffic on secondary
roads, what are the chances that it will strike a
vehicle that has a muffler?

9. A coal mine operates a NFPA Class 1, Division 2
Hazardous Area. The mine employs 120 miners per shift.
A gas warning is issued at the beginning of 3rd shift.
How many cartons of unfiltered Camels will be smoked
during the shift?

10. At a reduction in gene pool variability rate of
7.5% per generation, how long will it take a town
that has been bypassed by the interstate to breed a
country-western singer?

The Sky is Falling: Just Kidding

A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.

Saving the Blog

Techy question for ya.

You want to preserve your weblog and all associated images to a CD so that it can be viewed as if online.

What is the best way to do that?

UPDATE: I think I got the answer. I downloaded a freeware (adware) web "stripper" called, as a matter of fact, WebStripper. I drug the url for Fragments to the WebStripper window, clicked once, and it captured the current page, all archives, and even saved all my comments and opens them in a new window! It missed most of my images, but I have since found an option that says 'fetch images from page' or somesuch, and will retry the process again when I am ready to copy it to CD this weekend! Thanks, all, for your help.

Saying Exactly um like What You Mean

It's a wonder I made it past grade school. I say this because I found a high school notebook the other day and was astounded to recall my doodles, which were of high quality, while the subject notes were obviously penned by an uninspired and distracted teenager. My doodles were way better than my notes, yet I was never tested on them. Pity. Many of these marginal works of penmanship took the form of imitative art. Without looking at the captions I could recognize classmates and teachers by the caricatured features that made them uniquely recognisable as themselves. I couldn't help it. My pen had a life of its own. Even today, I can't sit and listen to anything without a pen and scrap of paper hidden in my palm to receive the spirals, dots, cubes, arrows and the occasional face that give my hands something to do while my mind is wandering all around the speaker's words. I live in constant fear of a pop-test.

The other flavor of high school notebook non-notes were the hash marks. One page contained IIII's and the final hash mark "/" recording in groups of five all the "uh"s for one of Mr. Caudill's history lectures; there were more than 100. Another notebook subject tallied "um"s and "er"s for the chemistry teacher. In other classes I remember not hearing the lecture material for the "sort of"s, or the "you see"s, "and so on and so forth"s. But these aggravating gap-filling speech bullets were as much a part of the memorable characters in my school as the freckles, buck teeth and the Coke-bottle glasses I drew on the faces. I admit, I have a low threshold for hearing these irritating mannerisms that others seem to be able to ignore, and once I have heard them, I find it hard to 'hear past them'.

I remember that I once got nailed by a teacher recording her "um"s. I must have seemed too intent in what I was doing, and she knew I was up to something. She took up my notebook and during class while we were supposed to be reading something in our texts, she thumbed through my notebook, looking at the hash marks and the caricatures. Oh what was in that notebook! I was sweating bullets. But I could see her doing her best to keep from smiling. This was a good sign. I was mildly reprimanded at the end of class, and slyly complimented on my artwork. Thank goodness her picture (that paid special attention to her tiny head) was in another notebook!

Knowing how distracting these null-noises are in the spoken word has made me keenly aware of them as well in my own speech, okay? I kind of make an effort so to speak to you might say avoid these words or gutteral utterance sort-of-things. I just never use these speech lubricants, don't you see. Rather than fill the-um pauses, as it were, between phrases with what you might call a 'spacer', it's better to just take a breath uh and think about your next sentence and stuff and whathaveyouthere. Right? You know what I'm sayin'?

As Good Advice as I've Heard

Dave Barry's advice, during this period of HIGHTENED ALERT:

Everybody needs to be ALERT and HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS. Like, if somebody at the supermarket asks you, "Paper of plastic?", your correct response is: "Who wants to know?"

Night Vision

To tell the truth, I don't always go willingly on the last dog walk of the night. When you're warm and sluggish and already thinking how good that down comforter is going to feel, its awfully hard to get dressed again in your winter survival clothes, to venture out into the cold and dark. We stumble along in the crusty snow to find the dog the appointed roadside tree du noir. But there are some times, many, if I'm honest, that all my grumbling is just bluster, because I have learned that often these late night walks produce memories I would never have had, snug and drowsy in my slippers warm inside.

The moon is just past half full
but the snow that persists in the pasture
and under the dark winter forest
gives off the light of two moons,
white light coming down, blue light
coming up, off of, out of snow,
blue translucent with razor shadows
of the fine extremities of trees.

The valley fills with lunacy and light
As another dark wave surges past, and another
Like an armada of ghost ships propelled by moonbeams.
The world flickers between life and death
Between cloud and shadow and
I am terrified and raptured, a frail vapor
So close to heaven and so bound to this throbbing world.

The Year of Appalachia 2002-2003

"Congress designated The Year of Appalachia as a special 12 month celebration when the people living in the beautiful Appalachian mountain region of the United States are invited to share their unique culture and history with the world. This celebration culminates with the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in Washington DC during the summer of 2003".

Come on. Fess up. How many of you didn't even know it was the Year of Appalachia? Okay, I was the only one. Boy do I feel stupid.

Bomb Somebody? Yes! No! Both are correct.

ANALYSIS: Arguments on war with Iraq
By JOSHUA BUREK, BEN ARNOLDY and JIM BENCIVENGA
Christian Science Monitor

The answer to all these questions is "yes". And "no".

What's the rush? Shouldn't we give inspectors more time?

Doesn't North Korea pose a more immediate threat?

Won't war against Iraq inflame terrorism?

By acting alone, would the US isolate itself in the world?

Carnival is Legal: 21 today!

Carnival of the Vanities is now in its 21st edition over at John Ray's place of blogness. There are 58 flavors to chose from. Vanilla is not one of them.

High Marks

I'd like to pass along to all of you Buster's thank-you's for your Birthday greetings last week. He particularly appreciated all the emails that said 'give the old boy a hug for me'. How he could tell those hugs from the ones he routinely gets I do not know, but he says he could tell the difference. He asks me also to tell you that yes, thanks, he has mostly recovered from the debilitation of November that we continue to think was Rocky Mountain Fever's effects on his joints.

One evidence of his improvement is that he can now, at last, pee like a guy again. When his hips were painful, even though he would give it a noble effort, he couldn't sustain the three-legged stance so that he could heist the aiming leg to do his business in the gender-appropriate manner. This really embarrased him, and he would look around sheepishly while he merely squatted like a girl.

Now that Buster's able to mark turf the 'right way' again, I've been wondering why this particular male dog habit has become hard-wired into the breed, into the entire species as far as I have been able to observe it. Why is it that male dogs lift the leg in such a way?

Of course there is known fact that males in squirting on a fire hyrdrant or a pasture tree are marking their territory, their urine conveying a signature message of their presence and by realm of distribution, the extent of their turf. But why the heisted leg? Seems like a lot of work to just put some dribbles of male aroma around. This tripod stance is especially an acrobatic undertaking on our Floyd County slopes, let me tell ya!

Here's Fred's working theory: the leg heist, in addition to marking maleness in a general way, indicates the SIZE of the pee-er by the height of the scent on the firehyrdrant, saying: I'm here, and I'm THIS TALL... bigger'n you. Top Dog, so to speak. So, no wonder Buster seemed so sullen when he had to squat... sending the message that he was the lowest ranking guy canine on Goose Creek. The higher the mark on the tree, the higher the status. Pee on the ground: a sissy.

There is a human corollary to the theory. It has to do with the kid I knew in second grade, Phillip Jackson, who could whiz all the way over two stalls who gained school-wide fame in so doing. The working hypothesis: there exists a statistical correlation between this ability to leave 'high marks' and the male's territorial status later in life (I'm here and I'm bigger than you). The experiment takes the form of a controlled test requiring 1) large quantities of iced tea; and 2) a sample of forty male subjects across the spectrum of dominance-subordinance... i.e., the Pecking Order. You can pick up the experimental methods here and understand outcome measures, et cetera.

Dr. Jackson, sir, if you're out there somewhere reading this from the posh sunlight-flooded penthouse office of your world headquarters... sir, I'm curious. Can you still do that?

I'm Getting Very Specious, Lucy

'Guernica' Cover-Up Raises Suspicions
By Maggie Farley, Times Staff Writer

UNITED NATIONS -- As Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented evidence to help U.N. ambassadors decide whether or not to go to war against Iraq, there was one important thing they did not see: Pablo Picasso's "Guernica." (More about the painting and it's significance here).

A tapestry version of one of the world's greatest antiwar works that adorns the wall outside the Security Council chamber was covered Wednesday by a blue curtain with U.N. logos. A U.N. commentary on war and peace? ambassadors wondered. Trying to avert a diplomatic incident, the U.N. spokesman explained.

MORE

Bare Bloggers for World Peas

What is the deal? All over the world, what would otherwise pass for normal people are taking their clothes off for peace, for baby seals, on cruise ships and in airplanes, and now for humus and Hostas.

So, going with the flow, this spring we will be offering the Goose Creek "Buff Under the Bluffs Nude Woodchoppers Calender" inspired by the "Altogether for the Garden" calendar from Maine this past Fall in which matrons of the garden expose all, mostly.

Toward this end, so to speak, I'll be recruiting some of you guy-fellow bloggers who will sport only the discretely well placed lawn and garden tools (heck, a packet of flower seeds would be more than enough concealment for the guys here in the cold weather). We'll be Vogueing our unadorned selves in various poses along the creek here, and charge $14.95 (Plus S & H) for the resulting calendar so as to raise some extra cash to supplement Fred's Tractor Shed Fund. Don't wait to claim your month, boys, and of course June through August are gonna go fast!

Hey wait a minute! I don't have a tractor!

And yes, Mom. I'm kidding.

In a Nutshell...

In case you didn't make it to the peace march last month, here are some of the posters and signs you might have seen. (Hey, don't shoot me. I'm just the messenger.)

My personal favorite: Frodo has failed, Bush has the ring.

There are just a few dozen more... sure to raise either chuckles or hackles.

Bush/Cheney: Malice in Blunderland

Who would Jesus bomb?

War begins with 'Dubya'.

Bush is proof that empty warheads can be dangerous.

Let's bomb Texas, they have oil too.

How did our oil get under their sand?

If you can't pronounce it, don't bomb it.

Daddy, can I start the war now?

1000 points of light and one dim bulb.

Sacrifice our SUV's, not our children.

Preemptive impeachment.

Look, I'll pay more for gas!

Draft dodgers shouldn't start wars.

War is sweet to those who haven't tasted it
(Erasmus).

Our grief over 9/11 is not a cry for war.

Different Bush, same shit.

Stop the Bushit.

Just war/just oil.

You don't have to like Bush to love America.

Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld: the asses of evil.

$1 billion a day to kill people -- what a bargain.

Smush Bush.

America, get out of the Bushes.

Pro-lifers: Wake from Bush's propaganda spell --
war kills innocent
children.

Disarm Bush too.

Big brother isn't coming -- he's already here.

Empires fall.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind
(Gandhi).

Mainstream white guys for peace. (held by three
mainstream-looking white
guys)

Hans Blix -- look over here.

Let Exxon send their own troops.

There's a terrorist behind every Bush.

We can't afford to rule the world.

9-11-01: 15 Saudis, 0 Iraqis.

Don't waive your rights while waving your flag.

Drop Bush not bombs.

Bush is to Christianity as Osama is to Islam.

War is not a family value.

(Picture of the peace symbol) Back by popular
demand.

(Picture of Bush with a red-stained upper lip) Got
blood?

Picture of Bush saying "Why should I care what the
American people
think? THEY didn't vote for me.

SUV's: Axles of Evil.

Drunk Frat Boy Drives Country into Ditch.

Violence comes from uncreative thinking.

Axis of Evil: Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Cheney.

Axis of Evil: Militarism, Racism, Commercialism.

Give Impeachment a Chance.

Bush Fails I.ra Q. Test.

Preemptive peace.

No more blood for oil.

We don't want your phony war.

Security through peace.

Drop Sanctions Not Bombs.

This war will make us less safe.

Get the Empty Warheads out of the White House.

War is SO last century.

How many lives per gallon?

Iraq never took away my health care.

Regime change begins at home.

There is a village in Texas missing an idiot.

Bombs shouldn't be smarter than politicians.

Wendell Berry Essay Published

Wendell Barry's essay, A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, was published yesterday as a full page ad in the New York Times. It is available (abridged) on the ORION webpage at the link provided. I have only just now printed it to read. I'd be interested in your comments, and will share mine as well.

Where I Live

I have been snowbound, at home. It is a wonderful bondage and I know more about ice and snow, not in a generic way, but as it exists only here, so close and silent that it has become a part of me. There are birds that overwinter with us in this valley, nuthatches and juncos, and having lived with them in this pleasant hibernation, thrown into common hardship, I have had time to consider their ways and have found their nests. And I am bound to this place.

[...] For people still dependent on the soil for their sustenance, or for people whose memories tie them to those places, it betrays a numbing casualness, a utilitarian, expedient, and commercial frame of mind. It heralds a society in which it is no longer necessary for human beings to know where they live, except as those places are described and fixed by numbers. The truly difficult and lifelong task of discovering where one lives is finally disdained.

[...] If I were now to visit another country, I would ask my local companion, before I saw any museum or library, any factory or fabled town, to walk me in the country of his or her youth, to tell me the names of things and how, traditionally, they have been fitted together in a community. I would ask for the stories, the voice of memory over the land. I would ask about the history of storms there, the age of the trees, the winter color of the hills. Only then would I ask to see the museum. I would want first the sense of a real place, to know that I was not inhabiting an idea. I would want to know the lay of the land first, the real geography, and take some measure of the love of it in my companion before I stood before the painting or read works of scholarship. I would want to have something real and remembered against which I might hope to measure their truth.

From Losing Our Sense of Place
Barry Lopez February 1990

Do You Believe in Rock and Roll?

Can music save your mortal soul?

This morning, my first impulse upon sitting down with coffee and a freshly booted computer was to go see what was happening in the news. I couldn't do it. I think today I'll let the grotesque World Music play its sad melodies, without me for a while. But some lyrics do come to mind.

But February made me shiver With every paper I'd deliver Bad news on the doorstep I couldn't take one more step

Oh, and there we were all in one place
A generation Lost in Space
With no time left to start again
So come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
'Cause fire is the Devil's only friend
Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in hell
Could break that Satan's spell
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrifical rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died

And by the way, it may just be my imagination, but it seems to me that the American Pie recipe has changed recently. Can you tell? Too much self-risin' flour in the crust, perhaps. I still think it is a most wonderful dish, but you know what happens when you take a good recipe that works for generations and start substituting ingredients. Now I don't expect its ever gonna please everybody, no matter how its made. But I do think we can insist that, since it's a family recipe, all the cousins and aunts and uncles should have more of a say before we ask the neighbors to eat it. Or else.

Crash Test Doggies

Reader Jim points out the dangers of Buster riding shotgun in the truck. He's right, and I am fully aware of the risk of dogs riding unrestrained (or outside of crates like this one that saved blogger Dave Trowbridge's dog Oka in a recent crash.

But ya see, the only place Buster goes is from the house to the dumpsters at the end of our one-lane gravel road. Putting him in a crate for that would be sorta like putting on your seatbelt and a helmet to back out of the driveway.

And to be honest, I don't often ask Buster to go on the trash run much anymore since he's gotten so determined that once he gets in the truck, he's NOT coming out! It's amazing how heavy he can make himself, once he gets settled in. I think it's some kind of enhanced gravity thing that only dogs and small children in swings know how to do. But that's just a theory.

Dog Years

You turn 28 today. At least in dog years. We heard about you when you were still tussling with nine other brothers and sisters, tearing up poopy newspaper that lined your first home. You were known as "the stoutest one of the bunch", and we said "We want THAT BIG ONE!" A week later, I was ready to take you back and try out one of your smaller, smarter siblings instead. You were so timid and dumb then. You acted as if you had been abducted to another star and didn't know how to do even the simplest things on your new planet. I thought maybe you were autistic. Frankly, I held little hope that you would ever, someday, have a personality of any kind. Yes, I admit I was wrong about that.

I've never been around a dog quite as much as I've been around you what with our odd lifestyle since you joined us. Do you remember, you even went with me in the truck on home-health visits, back when we lived on Walnut Knob and you were so small you couldn't begin to see anything from the truck but sky out the windows? Now you perch there beside me, tall and strong, your head almost touching the top of the cab in the truck. You look so regal and intelligent, and I'm proud to have you as a co-pilot, buddy. But do you think you could keep your wet nose off the windshield? Just a suggestion.

There were the gangly teenage years when you and I went to school. Well, yes, I was a little disappointed that we only went to six 'obedience sessions' and made just average grades. But you learned everything you needed to know. You learned to SIT and to STAY. And you learned that I, Ann and I, have the final word and are the leaders of your tiny devoted pack. And you learned that in our insistence of obedience, we would only disapprove and scold, we would not harm you. You showed us that it was our approval that mattered more than anything else in your world, and to have that, you could learn far more than we ever imagined.

You have never chewed up a single thing in our home or 'had a puppy accident' except for that one time when something must have scared the, er, puppy chow out of you while we were away. Our friends comment on what a non-aggressive pup you are, belying your massive size and obvious strength. Many times you don't even bark when strangers pull up in the driveway. You know, we've talked about it: you do have sort of a sheltered, home-schooled naivete about you and frankly, I wish you were a bit more like your predecessor, Zachary, who put the fear of God into insurance salesmen, and more than one Jehovah's witness who made the mistake of driving into our yard back long ago. On the other hand, it scares you to death when anything the least bit novel appears; like the time you freaked because I left the hatch up on the Suburu and you were ready to wrestle it to the ground and subdue it. Now that must have been embarrasing for you. I know it was for me.

It was wonderful to see you running full out in the snow yesterday, to see your agility and strength, and especially your innocent joy. Somehow you seem to understand that you own this wonderful place, and these times, with us, and it is a blessing beyond what we deserve. You know this piece of land and sky well, and your racing around the pasture throwing up a cloud of powery snow was like a victory lap in celebration of your fourth year on this planet. And that is what all my crazy yahoos were about yesterday there up the valley. It was your fourth birthday party and I was the noise-maker!

We've been through some tough times in the human world together recently. And there will be more of them. Just wanted you to know that, when those times come, there is nothing more comforting to me than your big 'ol head nudging its way under my hand, with no motive or intention other than to be close, to be truly each other, and to say "let's grow old together".

Happy Birthday, Puppy Pal.

Winter Time. Summer Time

Me and Buster tried, but... trip aborted. Too danged cold this morning to go down the road and recapture all those great shots of the creek and the snow that my CD-RW drive ate yesterday (thanks, commenters, I now know WHY). So. We have the cabin fever crazies, dear hearts. Stuck in time.

And time is something I have been thinking about lately. Time past, time to come and the growing disproportion therein for this one blogger's lifetime. Time wasted and enjoyed, often being the very same chunk of the stuff. Time left and what energies and efforst, ennui and inertia will fill it, squander it, invest it. And somehow found myself staring out the window at the blinding white morning light on snow, wandering back to the summer out this very same window on the magic carpet of memory. I am lying on warm stones looking out into space, enveloped by a different kind of time. It has been called "ceremonial time" and too few people understand it. I did, for a few brief moments in the sun, in July, in a galaxy far, far away. I'll have more to say about time, stress, and 'right living' in days to come.

This weird introspective ramble from the summer of '02 is one of my favorites, uniquely meaningful perhaps to only me, but that's okay. I suppose it is ultimately for selfish Fred-centered reasons that I write. You'll notice this entry harks back to the good ol'/terribly frustrating ol' days when Fragments lived on blogspot. I miss the colored table cells against the dark background. While you're there, should you be so inclined, pull down the page for some memorable summer pictures of the garden, stories of spiders and snakes and such. And lots of totally unselfconscious grandpa tales. It cheered me up thumbing back through these thoughts and images... like sitting down with a musty old picture album celebrating old friends and good times.

This weblog wears a lot of hats.

Just Read it...

I deplore struggling with the grievous politics of the post 9-11 world, mostly alone at home with only the dog as a foil to my thinking. What we believe about what is right and good will soon be tested in the sending of our sons into harms way; many of them will not come home.

I don't agree with some of the value judgments here that place, I think, too gilded a surface on American cultural exports. But all in all, there are some very worthwhile thoughts expressed by Bill at EjectEject...AND also by his commenters to this rather long and well-reasoned piece that seeks to answer the charges against America as an IMPERIALISTIC, HEGEMONISTIC nation.

I'd suggest you go there. Read. Reflect. Pray for wisdom. And humility.

God Speed, l'il Suburu

When satellites from space look down at the lights of civilization across eastern America, there are few dark patches, even within the realm of the Southern Appalachians. Our place here in southwest Virginia, however, is one of those dark patches. And it is into that darkness that Ann has just driven, tires eerily muffled by two more unexpected inches of downy snow overnight, snow on snow. It is 5:30 on a Saturday morning and her tracks will be the first, so there is only the precipice of the narrow roadside to guide her.

I'm doing some reading and writing offline, in case she calls, which is unlikely; and practically impossible for the worst part of her travel to work. Cell phones are worthless until you are about 5 miles from here, until you get out of the deep canyons and reach the broad open valley. Between here and there, fewer than a dozen widely spaced farmhouses could give her emergency shelter, and at this hour, they offer no light or motion or solace. It will take her up to an hour and a half to drive the 26 miles to the hospital. She will be late when she gets there and a score of 'urgent' problems will confront her before she has her coat off, and she will forget to call and tell me she is okay.

It's going to be another long, slow mid-winter morning.

UPDATE 6:45 a.m. MommaBear just called from work. Once again, she crossed that magic line where the White Witch ended her work, that quarter mile of road where snow abruptly disappears and the roads act like nothing ever happened. It's almost always the same stretch of road, our meteorological lesson that reveals the workings of our unique microclimate in this piece of the world. Soon we will see it in the presence or absence, abruptly, of certain mountain wildflowers that don't venture down into the valley... too warm for them there, but only by perhaps fractions of a degree... the same nuance of temperature that now makes morning snows melt as if by magic.

No Business like Snow Business

I had a wonderful hour walk along the creek this morning after six inches of new snow fell last night. Buster and I and the camera spent some peaceful time in the white world and came back with about two dozen images.

I have been meaning for some months to preserve shrinking hard drive space by saving future digital images to my TDK CD-RW drive. Today I finally decided I would do it. And I created the directory on the RW drive, saved images there, and worked especially with four or five of them (some wonderful B & W's of the creek and snow) off and on for about two hours.

One of my graphics software programs froze the system and I had to do a reboot. When the computer booted back up, the directory on the CD-RW disk and all my saved files were gone. Do you know that sinking feeling one gets when something like this happens? Thankfully, I only lost a couple hours work, and I did enjoy the process.

But I think this is the last straw, having had poor experience in the past with flaky CDRW disks (Verbatim) or the drive, or both. My 13Gb hard drive is down to less than three gig. Suggestions, anyone? Similar CDRW experiences?

Inbetween

We are living inbetween. The first hints of spring are already showing up, provided you are willing to accept the faintest tease ... like the increase this week (evidenced, unfortunately, by flattened fauna) in the number of skunks crossing the roads, looking, and probably smelling, for love. There is the tiniest trace of color in the maple buds on top of the hill against the setting sun. And if you look closely, and I encourage those of you weary of winter to do so, you can see appearing in the tips of the outermost branches of small trees and shrubs the beginnings of phototaxic growth toward the light. Look carefully. As you drive along a roadway with your vision striking a glancing angle to the roadside woody plants in the direction of the sun low on the horizon (as in a morning commute), see if you cannot see a graceful but subtle upturning in the ends of supple living limblets that are waking out of a deep winter torpor.

The persistent beech leaves we saw on our walk yesterday remind me of a time several months ago when I envisioned just this time of year, and looked past midwinter to the first blooms of spring. Here is an excerpt from September's entry "A Time to Fall" that includes a larger image as well.

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

Just Like Momma

Our granddaughter just turned two. Her mother, Holli, lamented recently that, especially with the little one starting to talk and imitate everything she hears, momma is going to have to be very careful what she says.

Here are Holli and her momma having some girl time on the pier at Ann's folks' place in Biloxi. Holli is four or five years old at the time. How unnatural it comes to her, how much effort it takes to cross her short little legs just like the big girls do.

I'm sure a hurricane swept that pier away long ago. The place belongs to someone else now, and it doesn't seem likely that these two fishergirls will sit together again, fishing on a pier. But Holli and her little one just might. And little Abby will want to be just like momma.

Nah gunna duut

I know there are many out there who think George W hung the stars and moon. I'm not one of those who give him quite that stellar a rating. In all honesty, I wish he were more like his daddy. But only in the manner of wishing I would hear him say, in daddy's flat, SNL-parodied Texas drawl, complete with wooden hand gestures...

The question is "Mr. President, are we prepared to risk changing forever the relationship America has with the rest of the increasingly smaller and interdependent world, throwing our economy into an unrecoverable tailspin and destablizing the globe militarily at this time?"

And DUBYA, in his best George Sr. Dana Carvey imitation says....

Please Bate Your Breath at the Door

"I'll wait with baited breath" I said aloud, sarcastically, to some politician making promises on the car radio yesterday. (He was sorely wounded by my biting retort). But then, as frequently happens when I am alone in the truck driving along on auto-pilot, my mind drifted and I wondered what the heck does this idiom mean! I guess I had always assumed it had something to do with smelly breath, what with bait typically being some kind of dead animal parts.

I wondered if it would have been appropriate to accuse the dog of baited breath when he licked me in the face that morning after sneakily eating the cat food (Tuna Delight). And when my friend sat his apple down accidentally on the squid that we were deep-sea fishing with, and then later, bit into it (the apple), that could be appropriately called baited breath in the most literal sense I could come up with. Past that, I didn't have a clue why I had used the phrase, and was almost certain that my personally concocted illustration of fish breath couldn't be right.

Oops. It turns out that it is Bated. Not baited. But wait. Maybe I was closer to right than I had thought! Let's follow the word trail...

BATE: (verb) To lessen by retrenching, deducting, or reducing; to
abate; to beat down; to lower.

But wait! I think I can wrest this one so as to retain my own peculiar interpretation of the word. We needs explore a wee bit further....

BATE: (verb) To steep in bate, as hides, in the manufacture of leather.

BATE: (noun) An alkaline solution consisting of the dung of certain animals

AND LATER we learn that this "bate" solution is "An infusion of pigeon's dung used by tanners to neutralize the effects of lime and give flexibility to skins.

I rest my case. I can be right after all. If your breath smells like pigeon poop, you, my kind sir, have bated breath. That's is my story, and I'm sticking to it. But then, that depends on what your definition of IS is.

Don't Write like My Brother...

Thanks to Pascale for her editorial efforts on my behalf, catching at least a few of the recent goofs here; and apologies to those who have read my word transpositions and other misstatements of late and only winced and had pity on me. Never one to over-edit, my proofing of late has sunk to new lows.

We have been plagued with power outtages at the most unexpected times, in clear calm weather, as well as on blustery days like yesterday when the power was out until late last night. No entry to Carnival of the Vanities this week and a lesson to not put off til Tuesday night what could have been done on Monday morning.

And darn it, this class I'm taking is really starting to distract me away from blogging more and more. Which will probably mean fewer and shorter posts (I hear applause!) and more grammerikl errurs getting past the editorial staff here at Fragments. So, borrowing from the immortal words of Click and Clack, I will expect to hear you saying 'don't write like my brother'. And I understand if at some time in the coming weeks, you feel it appropriate to send me a gentle DOPE SLAP. I'm sure I'll deserve it.

Walter Mitty Goes to School

Our intrepid hero prepares for his trip to Blacksburg like staging for the assault on Normandy Beach, checking over all his gear, prepared for both the driving rains and the later snow expected that day. And off he goes to class, taking the daring upper pass, traversing Don't Look Down road. With a white-knuckled grip, he sits tensely at the helm of his little truck, coaxing it up the narrow, muddy road toward civilization. The back end of the truck fishtailed dangerously near the precipice over the creek, even in four-wheel drive. He was driving on pudding. "Traction, my aunt Hattie" he fumed, grumbling that the next time he bought 'all-terrain' tires, he would insist that they state explicitly that they were good on mud and snow, but also on Vaseline... which is what the two inches of thawed sludge on frozen ground felt like. Reaching the hard top seemed like enough of a conquest and he was tempted to turn around and go back home and recovery from this battle, won; but our inscrutible hero trudged on.

Controls were set to auto-pilot. Nothing along this long stretch of high country road needed his attention; only the hands, an army of two, were necessary to make regular long swings of the wheel to navigate the muddy truck along the predictable and familiar curves. They hands deftly steered the assault vehicle out of the Blue Ridge into the open expanse of the Great Valley. He would need to take back control soon. But not now.

From the higher ridges along the road he watched the southern edge of the storm front overtake him in his journey north. Like mile-long loaves of dough, the rounded folds of cloud piled up layer upon thick layer in dark shades of somber gray and cold cobalt and gun-metal blue. Here and there a brilliant cleft appeared in accidental gaps between loaves. The air mass was advancing over the top of him in a blitzkrieg, it's objective somewhere to the south. He had the oppressive feeling that it was also settling down lower and lower, soon to sit upon the very mountains and fill the valleys ... smothering all who scurried there, tiny under the massive airmass, shrouding them in darkness and wind and the sounds of a winter not ready to consent defeat. But he pushed on, closer and closer to his objective: the University Parking Lot of Doom.

Into the Great Valley now, no longer protected by the hills, the winds buffeted the pitiful little assault vehicle pushing it left, right; hitting it head-on, holding it back like a bully with his stiff arm against the forehead of a helpless weakling. Walter took over control; his adrenalin surged as the storm front seemed to present overwhelming force. He wondered what he might use for a white flag, should it become necessary and he turned the radio to the 'oldies' as a balm, to steady his nerves for the final miles toward campus.

TELSTAR by the Ventures, 1962, and Walter is in the eighth grade. There are lights flashing and spinning all around him and for a minute he cannot tell where he is. A sign flashes in the corner of his vision: ALL SKATE it says, and he is in the midst of a swirling mass of children twirling like leaves in a gale, round and round as the other-worldly music echoes off the walls of the rink. Walter turns to skate backwards, preening and strutting for someone out there, one of those newly recognized species of those days, called girls. He swished and veered and the mirrored ball spun round and lights careened around him, through him.

Lost in the dazzling, swirling, circling cacophony of space music, young Walter discovered he was now standing on the back steps of his suburban home, in the dark, holding up a giant pair of heavy black binoculars to the sky, trembling. He knew that it was not silent, this ominous moving point overhead. Beep. Beep. Beep. It repeated as it coursed around the planet, the first artificial star in the cosmos, a menacing bright speck showing only a greater magnitude of brilliance without detail through the lenses. Sputnik. It would have made the hair on his arms stand up, if he'd had any yet. And then somehow this single speck became a cluster of specks falling, people falling from space. And the music stopped.

He looked up when the vision faded, thanking the hands for their superb job of navigation while he was otherwise occupied. The 100-acre parking lot before him was bathed in pink-amber light in the morning darkness, darkness as if the world had been overwhelmed in heavy and oppressive defeat by an invading enemy. But it was only a storm. And this dark storm would pass. Spring would come, and Walter would pilot his dirigible high over green hills and look down from a distance, in calm skies, and see that it was good. It was all good.

"N. Korea is Not a Crisis"

...and God didn't make little green apples.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF writing in a NYTimes Op/Ed piece projects a potential calendar of events in North Korea, concluding as follows:

Aug. 16: Intelligence intercepts suggest that North Korea will respond to even a minimal U.S. military strike by launching conventional missiles at Japan, and to a broader strike by turning Seoul into "a sea of fire." The C.I.A. warns that if the North finds itself losing a conventional war, it will use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons against Japan and U.S. forces in South Korea. All sides brace for a new Korean war, which the C.I.A. estimates could kill one million people.

Aug. 17: Colin Powell is told by President Bush: "If only we'd listened to you two years ago about the need to engage North Korea! Even this February, if only we had started negotiations. I'm sorry, Colin, we blew it." Then Mr. Powell wakes up and realizes he was dreaming.

Fred's Angst Monitor: IRAQ: 3 NORTH KOREA: 8

School Report

I'll be fetching my bookbag soon, preparing to do battle with the vehicular hoardes that converge on the Virginia Tech campus. Three weeks into my one class, I still can't say Yea Or Nay about it. I've missed the last two Thursdays because of horrible snowy weather and have never quite gained my momentum as a student. There's no snow this morning, but it does look like I will get the chance instead to walk 3/4 mile in a driving rain to class today, just so I don't get too cocky. In my winter walks across campus I have tried to imagine sitting on a bench under the Golden Chain Tree that will bloom there beside McBryde Hall in April. I'll pretend I am young, reading a novel in the sun's warmth, before class. Time will come. But not soon. This morning's sidelong swathes of rain will turn to snow showers after noon, and I'll build a fire and watch it turn winter again.

Woodheat Nuts and Bolts

Ta da! PART SEVEN! The last installment! If for some bizarre reason you are interested in reading all segments of this novella (a reader recently expressed amazement that I could say this many words about creosote. Pullleeeze. Remember who you're talking to!)... for now, just type in ETERNAL in the search box to the right to find the previous SIX parts. But don't think you are, as they say, outta the woods. More woodlore coming soon...

I'll spare you for now and put off til later describing my aesthetic sense, philosphy or environmental ethic that makes me burn wood instead of some 'easier, cleaner' heat source. And I won't tell here about the tricks I've learned that have made woodgathering easy enough to do, even if some of your joints don't work so well anymore, like mine. We'll have a while between the end of winter and the beginning of the gardening year to get into all that.

Here I just want describe the 'state of the union' in our current wood-heating arrangement. There may be parts of these details that will be helpful to you if you are considering wood heat. Particularly, the links contain everything you need to know to 'do it right'. If you are considering wood heat, by all means, take advantage of this information. Such was not readily available 25 years ago when we were in the creosote-making business.

These are the elements that make for the safest, most efficient wood burning we have had in our long history with woodstoves:

An efficient, low emission woodstove, the Quadrafire 3100 by Aladdin Stoveworks. It's glass doors stay clean and let us enjoy the aesthetics of a fireplace without the smoke and sparks. It burns so efficiently that after the first 10 minutes of starting the fire, nothing but heatwaves come out the top of the chimney; all the smoke is burned in the stove, which also increases the energy yield of the stove. Due to the way this stove is made, very little heat is given off from below or behind the stove and it does not produce the too-hot searing heat you may experienced with other stoves.

A 'zero-clearance' thimble, and triple wall smoke pipe from stove to thimble as well as inside the chimney. In addition, there is poured insulation (of a vermiculite quality) inside the chimney surrounding the triple wall stainless steel pipe. This combination assures that the stove gasses remain hot... well above creosote-distillation temperatures... until they leave the chimney.

Dry firewood. I so far have managed to stay a year or more ahead, not to mention the fact that I cut down or dead wood almost exclusively. I pretty much already have next years firewood over in the pasture. Later today, I will be working on cutting the following year's wood. Hint: when you look at the cut ends of stove-length wood, if you see cracks radiating like spokes of a wheel, the wood is dry enough to burn.

There is no reason for you to be afraid of wood heat. There is plenty of help out there to teach you how to do it right. Here is one of the best all-round guides I have found. However...

Don't go into heating with wood as a cheap alternative to gas or electrical heat. At least not initially. Depending on what you pay for firewood (hopefully you can get it for the price of the sweat and blisters), an efficient stove and proper setup may take a few years til payback. Don't be cheap with any element of chimney construction or stove setup (follow all codes and recommendations re clearance, etc). Trust me. The dollars buy a lot of peace of mind and the joy and satisfaction you will experience in the woodburning lifestyle... money can't buy.

Soon to come: An illustrated Guide to the Ergonomic Woodpile

In Defense of February

Guest Blogger at Fragments!

The following Winter observation was aired on our local NPR radio station last week. This nice essay was composed by our friend Jenny Chapman, a writer and artist, who lives not far from us here. You might consider her article praising February as 'point-counterpoint' to my decrying the woes of January just a few weeks ago... also read as an on-air essay. Do offer comments if you feel the urge, and Jenny will read them here at Fragments. Maybe with a little encouragement, we could talk her into becoming a blogger, eh?

January is drawing to a close, so that can only mean one thing: the annual round of February bashing is about to begin. Poor February. Typically, the only positive thing said about it is that it’s mercifully short. People groan about bleakness, cabin fever and the flu. February, it seems, takes the brunt of everyone’s winter temper. I’m not sure when all this ill will toward February began, but I think it’s gone far enough.

I like February. While it’s true I tend to champion the underdog, I believe there are many things about this brief winter month that deserve kinder consideration.

First off, there’s Groundhog Day. What other month can lay claim to a holiday set aside specifically for the recognition of an animal? Sure, we call Thanksgiving turkey day, but the turkey dies - and then we eat it! Easter would still be observed even without that egg-laying bunny. Groundhog Day, on the other hand, is solely designated to celebrate the important role of marmots in our lives. Arguably, this role of the marmot is not a scientifically relevant one, but it’s still a bit of fun after all, even if those guys with the top hats in Punxatawney do get carried away with it.

Too often, February is maligned as a bleak, gray month of boundless monotony. While it’s true that autumn's bright leaves are memories and the hot colors of summer are all but forgotten, the color of late winter is subtle and luminous. February paints with watercolors. There are shades of deep indigo in the juniper berries, alizarin crimson on the wild rose hips and yellow ochre in the willow branches. I’m partial to wild raspberry canes. Their waxy texture invites the hand to wipe away their powdery lavender coating to reveal the smooth, rich purple cane below.

The skies aren’t always gray and stormy this month. The crisp deep blue of a cloudless February sky rivals even those of October. Soon these skies will be busy with the first returning migrants. Grackles, pine warblers and red-winged blackbirds will arrive with the first break in the weather to stake out their territories again.

It’s obvious now that the daylight is growing. The late afternoon sun suffuses everything with a thin, gold light that grows measurably richer daily. There’s excitement in that realization. It means that spring is not so far away now. It will happen. With February’s advent, winter begins to fade and loosen its hold on us. Sure. It will be cold for awhile yet, but now we have hope. Hope for the sun returning, hope for warmer days and easier times. In February, we’re standing on a cusp, turning our backs to winter and moving forward to spring. This month so easily dismissed as devoid of grace reveals a kinder self, not brutal but benign.

So then, here’s to February, the shortest month! To the lengthening days, the waning of winter and hopes renewed. To all of this and groundhogs, too!

Wendell Berry on War

Orion Magazine will be publishing what may be "the most important essay ever written" by Wendell Berry in its March/April edition. Orion will make it available for viewing and download on its website at that time. In addition, in February, Orion will be publishing the essay as a full-page weekday advertisement in the New York Times.

The title of the essay will be "A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America".

I consider Mr. Berry to be a wise and prudent man. I will read his thoughts with interest. When the essay becomes available, you will hear about it here at Fragments. Perhaps Mr. Berry's concerns will serve as a basis for some helpful reflection and discussion about where our country is headed, if indeed it is not already up to its ammunition belt in the quadmire of its 'just war du jour' by then.

And Sometimes I Wonder About Thee...

I like to think of myself as a rational and logical kind of person whose behavior when viewed by another would seem reasonable and appropriate. I see myself as immune to those quirks, eccentricities and weird mannerisms so obvious in everyone else. I am suffering this delusion in ignorant bliss until, this morning, I catch myself in the middle of a little quirky bit of odd activity and wonder "what subconscious Pavlovian conditioning, silly superstition or cerebral synaptic chemical spill did that come from!?"

I would be comforted in this confession to know that I am not alone in this admission of bizarre but harmless oddity. Come on. Offer just one little foible or 'weird' habit from your personal closet that will give us all solidarity in our unique strangeness. I'll go first.

Breakfast cereal(s) in the bowl this morning: Bran Flakes. Harvest Moon granola. Golden Grahams. We never, ever eat just one kind of cereal, seldom less than three, mixed together. House rule. Overnight guests find this very remarkable, which is odd, since it is merely 'normal'. I think this peculiarity started when the kids were small. Yes, we condescended, they could have a little bit of Lucky Stars, Trix or Syrup Coated Sugar Bombs (varieties they called BAD-FOR-ME cereals... don't know where they got that value-laden name) but only as a "sprinkle" on top of a 'good' cereal. This unusual childhood prohibition had such a ** deep psychological impact on them that even now, as a form of retribution for the privations of their youth, they still expect in their Christmas stocking a 10-pack of the small box set of BAD-FOR-ME as a special treat. So, multiple cereals (with or without the Sugar Bombs) is hard and fast rule in our house, a strange habit pattern, perhaps, but with some logical basis.

Some cereal-behaviors are not as logical. I found myself grumbling this morning, as I frequently do, that somebody folded over the top of the cereal bag backwards in the box. Can you believe that! Every reasonable person knows that the inside wrapper should be folded AWAY from the front-panel tab on the boxtop. Let's just pay a little more attention to critical detail here, people, and our lives will have one less artifact of unpredictability, a smattering more of control. Okay. Maybe this one is a bit more of a personal idiosyncrasy without a great deal of practical relevance, a fixed behavior with no known 'survival value'. I'll grant that. But when it comes to cereal boxes, I'll do it MY way and remain perplexed as to why my way is not a universal norm. It is so obviously the right way to do things!

Meanwhile, ignoring the plank in my own eye... examine this factoid: In our house, it is deemed "disgusting" that a certain husband should stir his coffee and then (look away, squeamish ones) put his spoon down on the very counter top! (The unthinkable horror! Doesn't this image just give you the dry heaves?) Can't I see that this crass negligence puts a deposit of coffee on the counter top, creating more work for the oppressed working housewife! You cad! You thoughtless oaf! And she quickly grabs a clean dish from the cabinet to slip under the horrid spoon before it touches down on the Formica.

Here it would be very unwise of the perpetrator, given the deep-seated hyper-rational nature of this bit of feminine logic to point out that 1) small spots of coffee come also from the pot itself. Why is this not also disgusting? and 2) dealing with an additional dish to clean for this odd purpose ... isn't that adding way more 'work' than wiping a tiny spot of the counter top with a dish rag?) When in Rome.

So. Anything similar going on at your house? Start by telling tales on 'the other guy'. They're always way kookier than we are. Right? Once you get started, you'll see how easy it is. Of course, you may end up with your plate in the yard tonight. If so, just don't think about putting your dirty fork down in the grass. Carry along a clean saucer for that, you weird, inconsiderate Neanderthal!

Tiles Coming Off Over CALIFORNIA?

If this is true, there were problems with the tiles before the shuttle reached Texas. I wouldn't be surprised if this observation of tiles falling off the Columbia over California are not confirmed.

As sad as it is to lose seven very dedicated human beings, it seems necessary for me to put this in perspective in my own grieving. Man is unusual among the rest of living creatures that have ever existed on this oddly habitable planet in that he is able to modify his environment beyond the pelt he is born in. He even seeks out parts of the planet where he is ill equipped to go, cannot go without dire peril to his life, and goes there, is drawn there by some imperative to explore.

Think of the lives lost on mountain summits, the depths of oceans, in experimental vehicles of all kinds, over the past 100 years. Thousands of lives have been lost in these endeavors to boldly go... In the space program, by far the most complex and challenging of all environments to test, explore and seek to conquor, we have lost only 18 directly in accidents related to space flight in the Apollo, Challenger and Columbia accidents. This is truly amazing. But none the less tragic when it happens.

Still, its important to keep this tragedy in context as bigger events unfold. What is lost is more than these lives. It is another huge blow to our self-esteem and a black eye during a time when the world is hoping to see something good come out of our country, looking for anything positive as an antidote to words and behaviors seen by many as contrary to what America has been all about now for 200 years.

It would have been a good to welcome heros home. The world could have used a small warm fuzzy moment. And yet it is entirely likely that, in a few months, we will be called upon to mourn the deaths of many thousand times the seven lost this weekend. I wish I did not see this space tragedy as a small, spectacular preamble to death on a grander scale. Save some tears. They may be needed elsewhere and soon.

Southern Comfort

Excerpt from Wayfarer:
A Voice from the Southern Mountains
James Dickey and William Bake

You never did tell me what brings you up this way. People come for different reasons, you know. Had one fellow didn't do nothin' but walk around pickin' up rocks. He told me some things about these-here mountains that anybody ought to know. Because of the feel, you ought to know. What I mean is that these mountains are old, I mean real old. You won't find any real steep places in 'em, except just a few, nothin' like they got out yonder in the ROcky Mountains, that they climb up with ropes and all. It ain't like that around here. It used to be, I been told, that these-here mountains mighta been higher than the Rocky Mountains, or maybe any other mountains in the world, but since they're so old, they done been wore down; kind of; all the edges done come off'em. That's what makes 'em a place you can live in, more like a home place. You won't never find, in no other mountians, all the things that grows around here. I don't know but a few of 'em myself, and I've lived here all my life. You can strike in anywhere, and things're good. We've got poplar trees that's ten feet through. We've got every kind of flower you would ever want, and some you can't see nowhere else. I like all that. I can't think about livin' in no other way, or in no other place. You just get out and move around amongst it all, and you know it's right; everything you see is right.

Shrubbery Joke

Apologies to Dustin Godsey who submitted a slightly different version of this little story in the Reader's Digest "Best Medicine" Dec. 2002...

(Actually I think the second weevil ended up living in an orange grove.)

Animal Planet: Mug Shots

Take a look at these 25 representatives of the major animal groups (phyla). Do it for no other reason than that the image gallery is stunning. But there is also a lot of good zoological information here, which warms my BoZo heart (I have been so called because my gate swings both ways... toward both BOtany and ZOology).

How many of these odd-looking creatures could you name by common name? How many, if any, can you name by their scientific phylum name (like Molluska for snails, clams, etc)? Can you find the (presumed) nearest relative of our group, the "Vertebrates", including Homo Sapiens? Hint: this critter doen't look like a monkey's uncle.)

Put your cursor on the image and the phylum name pops up. Some of them also are clickable and will carry you to extensive information about the group. There you will learn such things as the fact that now there is no such thing as the CLASS INSECTA. The Arthropod group has been reclassified since I learned the shifting facts of biology (to better reflect the current thinking on ancient ancestry of the group). I didn't know this. Shows you how long I have been away from the field.

Hope Runs Eternal ~ Part Six

or, Uncle Fred's Recipe for Creosote

1) Start with wood that has a lot of moisture.

Fresh green wood has up to 90% moisture, depending on tree species. Air dried wood that has seasoned for a year has about only 20 percent moisture and will not be a good source of creosote. Green wood not only contains lots of water but it will make your fire slow to reach ignition temperatures and will cool down the temperature in the firebox nicely for our purposes. Green pine is absolutely the best, especially if you follow direction #2.

2) To make the best creosote, starve the fire for air.

Woodstoves are excellent in this regard. Fireplaces draw vast volumes of air from the room, making them as worthless at producing creosote as they are at efficiently warming the air inside the house. Woodstoves, on the other hand, reduce O2 intake to only the total cross section of the draft openings... maybe 4-5 sq inches tops. Combine with this the tendency for stove operators to want to 'save' their load of wood overnight by shutting the draft way, way down. Green wood and restricted oxygen: now you're on your way to producing amazing volumes of gummy distilled wood liquor called creosote.

3) The final condition that must prevail if we are to produce the sought-after end product of combustion is cool stack temperatures.

Given that you have met conditions 1) and 2), you have only to cool the rising smoke and it's heavy load of contained moisture and unburned organics sufficiently while it remains in the chimney flue. This is easily accomplished when you slow cook your wet wood in a woodstove in an unimproved chimney designed for fireplace use! Warning: Do not add a ceramic liner to improve the draft; and whatever you do, don't use insulated double or triple wall pipe. This will keep flue gasses hotter than the distillation temperature and you will produce a disappointing amount of creosote. Let's review:

Congratulations! With these three basic principles under your belt, or rather, inside your heating system, you and your family are well on your way to having that certain air about you that says "We heat with wood, but mostly, we distill creosote!"

I apologize for that little tongue-in-cheek reverse lesson. Let me briefly recap the practical implications of my having learned these basic principles in the hardest of schools...

We moved from the house with the hot-fudge fireplace after six years in the house. (Yes, we did manage to clean the oily, smelly creosote off the hearth and mantle, and we redeemed the ESPERANZA so that hope ran again in our lives, but not with that awful black bile we had lived with there for an awful while.) We moved to a smaller house out in the country. The Fisher Stove went with us and lived happily there, fed by wood I cut off our twenty acres, but burned only after those couple of cords sat stacked and drying for a full year. I found a draft cap replacement that had a bimetallic coil that would open up the stove if it cooled off too much. A stove themometer on the smoke pipe helped me keep the stack temp over 250 degrees. The chimney was not great and we still had some creosote that had the good manners to stay inside the chimney. I climbed on the roof five or six times every season with a 4' length of heavy chain on a piece of rope; I jangled this all around to break off the dry flaky creosote, and then cleaned ashes from the cleanout in the basement. And we never had a flue fire.

After that, we have enjoyed (to various degrees...ask me if you have specific questions) Vermont Castings, Jotul, and Hearthstone woodstoves prior to our current stove. By far, I am happiest with our present stove and woodstove setup (which I will tell you about in some detail) and offer the final installment as an summary of 'what I have learned about wood heat'. I know I've already lost you city types, so Country Mice, stay with me just one more posting.