Fragments From Floyd

Alpha Male ~ Pup Abuse

We had an rough-cut neighbor of ours years ago complain about somebody he knew wasn't takin' good care of their cows. Made him mad. Said he ortta by gawd call the SPCA. "The WHAT?" I asked. "The SPCA. Th' Special Police Cattle Association" he explained in utter seriousness.

I'm afraid Tsuga may be making a call soon to the Canine branch of this organization. I've noticed that he's been keeping notes, and I'm afraid it's not looking too good for the defense here.

Just yesterday for example: Our cat, CJ is suffering now through her third dog... breaking him in, so to speak. Or shredding him into ribbon thin wafers, Sylvester-like, would be a better analogy. She's trounced him good, boxed his ears, hissed fearfully... he is still infatuated and watches her admiringly as she walks ever so tauntingly by, in complete control and just daring him to get into her rather wide personal space. She hasn't fully connected claw to ear or tender little black nose yet, but it's coming, and you can bet the SPCA is gonna hear about it.

Puppy's exhibit B: Large appliances used as objects of distress. Let it be known that 1) the litigant did have his long pink tongue slightly singed on the stove door as a cookie tray was being retrieved (it should be known that it was emanating wafts of oatmeal and chocolate and alluring beyond the abilities of a juvenile to resist thus constituting entrapment). And 2) Also, on the same day, the defendant's head did become slightly compressed in the closing door of the refrigerator while he attempted, dutifully and responsibly, to clean off the crusty tops of the Heinz 57 and Ketchup bottles that had been knowingly placed in the lowermost rack of the door, again, the presence of same in this location constitutes a cruel and unusual temptation rendering the litigant, Tsuga of Goose Creek, an innocent party in this obvious infraction.

And, at present unbeknownst to the young pupster, today after a period of exactly two weeks of constant reinforcement that he is in a secure and nurturing environment and that he can be assured of the continuous presence or prompt return of his caregivers, he will be spirited off to what his Uncle Buster called "Puppy Camp" for 36 hours for such trivial reasons as the visitation of a daughter and granddaughter in North Carolina. This is obviously a case of willful and intentional abandonment, and yes he may have the olfactory time of his young life and have his fur rubbed off by the kind attendants, but he is still pressing charges.

The dossier continues to grow, and no doubt more will be said about this deplorable situation at a later date.

Canada and the Criminal Element

In these days of heightened vigilance against those who would do our countries harm, it is understandable and right that those with criminal records of a certain sort be scrutinized carefully at the borders, such as the one that we share with our northern neighbor, Canada. Case in point: my son, traveling in a circuitous route from Goose Creek to Vancouver, BC was sharing the ride with a friend bound to Seattle to relocate there. The friend intended to join Nate in Vancouver for a few days before returning to set up housekeeping in Washington state. But no. The friend (and you could tell this from his apparent mild demeanor and soft voice, his vocation as a chef and his excellent grades back in college where he met my son)-- had a criminal record and was prevented from entering the country. Four and a half years ago he got caught skinny dipping in the college pond. And now is forbidden to cross international borders.

Thank God our son is a law-abiding upstanding young man free of a criminal record. Well. He is a very lucky kid is what he is. We only know the small crimes he's confessed to. But it gives one pause to think that had he been caught for the following escapade, he may have become persona non grata and may not have been accepted to his graduate program in Canada. Here's the tale:

In his senior year, somehow Nate stumbled onto the college mascot outfit-- a huge scottie dog suit with a paper-mache head with little peepholes in the dog's mouth-- in an upstairs storage area of a building on the edge of campus. Come to think of it, he found the dog outfit while he was in that top floor room for the purpose of climing out a high window onto the roof of the building (that looked south toward the Smoky Mountains) to write poetry (that itself was against the law-- being on the roof, not the poetry, which really wasn't as bad as that.) But the crime story doesn't stop there, no indeed. It seems he figured the ScottyDog costume would make a great disguise, and he donned it unbeknownst to anyone else.

He walked around campus doing the stadium antics of the mascot, and students and staff greeted him cheerfully, thinking this was some kind of off-season team spirit activity. His anonymity allowed him to enter the administrative building and literally tweak the noses and otherwise mildly mock those administrators he deemed worthy of some mild unrebuked ridicule. Thinking it was all a skit, the deans and chairpersons tolerated his hijinx, asking each other as he walked around playing the fool at their expense... "Did you know anything about this?" and "Who is in inside the dog?"

The next week, he held the suit for ransom (this was during the off-season and nobody much cared) sending in tips to the college newspaper complete with polariod images of the suit (with him hidden inside) posing in different familiar places on campus and with magazine-cut-out cliched ransom notes. His extortion 'payment' was some silly something I cannot remember...providing ice cream sundaes to all seniors on Sundays or somesuch. He smuggled the dog suit back into its usual place, notified the staff of its return, and that was the end of that.

As parents hearing of this stunt over the phone his senior year (and so close to actually graduating!) we were mortified and mystified but secretly sort of amazed at his daring and creativity. But had he got on the wrong side of the college administration (especially those whose noses were tweaked) he could well have been spending the night on the south side of the border with his friend earlier this week. As parents, you try to hold up the dire consequences of thoughtless carrying-on, and they think you're just being overprotective. Now ya see here sonny boy! The little prank wouldn't have been so funny if you'd been apprehended. (I can see the bust at the crime scene now: "Okay Scotty, put ya front paws on the top o' the car, hind paws wide apart, and don't even think about biting".

Rules is rules. But I am sort of disappointed that a skinnydip or a scottydog theft would keep an otherwise law-abiding person from crossing a national border. On the other hand, should the whole truth be known about any one of us, and if this level of misbehaving qualifies one for the part, I suppose we are all criminals without criminal records, and just darned lucky to stay out of official trouble. And fortunate we can travel to Canada with what seems to be a clean record. If they only knew.

Priorities

See. Here's the problem. Instead of doing the thing, I write about doing it. It's as bad as my making lists of my lists rather than getting to the task so I can begin to check off to-do's as done. I am writing about the writing that I ought to be doing if I were not distracted by a thousand other things. The weblog shares the role now of both blessing and curse: I would probably never have developed the discipline of writing daily without the threat and promise that someone would read my words. On the other hand now with the time spent entering my largely trivial and silly daily posts and getting sidetracked in the process on the various branches one ends up in when reading others' blogs... I am not finding the time to work on the little 'book' I envision. It would include both images and various of the 'better' posts from the first year of Fragments. This is still a viable issue, but the summer's events and my own distractability have not done much to move that project forward. I've got to get back in focus.

Task at hand: send required information to at least 3-4 publishers before resorting to self- or web-publication. By October 1: complete the following and submit...

• Include a cover letter that gives a brief description of the project.


• Include an outline of and/or introduction to the project.


• Include at least 30 pages of the text, preferably the first chapter.


• If the project will include illustrations or photographs, please send samples. Do NOT send originals. Clear photocopies are acceptable.


• Supply a market analysis of the book. Unless there is something about the potential market that would not be obvious to the uninitiated, this analysis should concentrate on the titles, publishers, and dates of all similar books, with an explanation of how your book differs from each.


• Send a biography of the author, including publishing credits and credentials in the field. If the project also has an illustrator or photographer, please include that biographical information as well.

To do this, I need to curtail my blogging. I know this. But I am weak. Does anyone know of a 12-step program for bloggers I could join? Or, is there a patch I could wear as I taper down? Does anyone have any good links to a blogger's version of the Serenity Prayer? Nevermind. I'll Google it and be back to you in an hour or so...and if I don't find one, it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to write one.

Wait a minute. I lost my train of thought. What was I talking about?

Blogs in Class

From newly-discovered Syllabus Magazine by way of Stephen Downes Website.

In a very short time, blogging has moved beyond a niche activity for the hyper-extroverted to becoming the backbone of a new Internet communications movement. Although often deeply individualized, Web logging has revitalized the idea of online communities: many blogs have moved from obscurity to having a large and devoted readership—many blogging sites enable people to link their blog to other blog clusters, based on topic and the interests of the authors.

What, then, is the potential for blogs in higher education? ... more

See additional links at the end of the article.

Great Blue Lobelia

While flowers bloom unseen, I am being nibbled to death by mice. This pretty well sums up my self-pitiful mood this morning after a yesterday totally parasitized by you-know-who. The tension between caring for the puppy and caring about so many other things not done because of him is starting to take its toll on my attitude. And so you can read the title here in a booming voice in capital letters followed by an exclamation mark followed by the dog's name and disparaging, whiny comments about my self-sacrifice on his account. My muse has been gnawed away up to her lovely knees and I am taking some deep breathes to help me refocus on things rumoured to be going on outside the kennel. There. I feel better now. Let's see. What goes on out in the larger humanoid world on Goose Creek these days?

We will be talking to a representative of the Virginia Outdoors Federation next week about putting our land in the Conservation Easement program. Actually there are a half dozen contiguous neighbors who are possibly interested, and if this works out, there may be several hundred acres protected from development in perpetuity. The land can still be farmed and logged (on a prescribed schedule) and on our 80 acres we can build one additional dwelling. There could be some significant tax benefits or even some cash conversion advantages to help us pay off this place much sooner as well. We are located in an important watershed area of Floyd County. While almost all of the county drains by way of the Little River into the New River and thus to the Gulf, our area is drained by the Roanoke River (south fork formed by the confluence of Goose Creek and Bottom Creek) and important in water quality for the Roanoke Valley. I feel certain I'll have more to say on this as we talk with the folks next week.

The wildflower in the image is a close relative of the more familiar red Cardinal Flower, which should be but isn't growing in wet areas down here in the valley. I'd love to have some coming up along the branch beside the house just now, in with the orange Jewel Weed, mauve Joe Pye Weed, various yellow and lavender asters and assorted greenery that is changing now into it's muted autumn wardrobe. And the native yellow iris would do well there as well.

Ann is home today, and I think my attitude will be much improved by just one wildflower photo today. If I pull it off, I'll post it later in the afternoon. I hear wifey cooing in calm tones to the pup in the next room; maybe that means he's calmed down from his toothy early morning exuberance and it's safe to go get another cup of coffee without donning the kevlar socks. Wish me luck... here I go!

Prepare the Soil, Good People

Excerpt from a letter by J.R.R. Tolkien to his son Christopher, 10 April 1944:

I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: The millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days - quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil - historically considered. But the historic version is, of course, not the only one. All things and all deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their 'causes' and 'effects'. No man can estimate what is really happening sub specie aeternitatis. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labors with vast power and perpetual success - in vain: preparing always the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.

- from "The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien," edited by Humphrey Carpenter (Houghton Mifflin Co.)
via Sojourners Email Newsletter 082703

House Pet

I am reluctantly posting yet another picture of Mr. Big Stuff. On the one hand, I don't want him to know that people from all over the world have asked for more pictures of him, as it will go to his head. But on the other hand, I am hoping he will be on his good behavior if he knows I am going to be telling the blogosphere about his misadventures, and he may feel some accountability to his public if he gains a good reputation by these occasional snapshots during brief and atypical moments when he is behaving himself.

This image was taken in front of the house, and yes, the place is called HeresHome. Long story there. And you know I'm not much one to tell a story. (?) But I've posterized this picture somewhat, and am planning to use it on some greeting cards I will make for later.

When everybody's doing it...

... it makes me squirm.

Just in casually browsing this morning, I see that AOL, YaHoo and Microsoft all are poised to come out with their own BLOGGING tools/sites/propaganda ploys.

I guess I'll hang tight, an insignificant microbe destined to become even more microbial along the edge of the pond, as this medium sorts itself out and the numbers soar. Soon, we'll be issued a blog address along with our SSN's at birth. Everyone will write, and no one will have time to read. Still, my greatest pleasure, I suppose, is in reading my own words from days past in this little album of mine.

Whether I am one of a million or one of 100 million weblogs, Fragments will keep its relevance for me as an archive of the day to day changes that happen outside my window and behind my keyboard. It would seem that the 'goods' of blogging is making a big kersplash in the popular pond, but I do get squeamish swimming in anything that is becoming 'kewl'. Know what I mean?

Disappearing Medical Slang

In these litigious times, one must be oh so careful what one says, even if couched in non-offensive code. But even the intent to judge the value, credibility or pulchritude of a customer, patient or client is verboten, and so impoverishes the language of such wonderful acronyms as those below.

CTD - Circling the Drain (A patient expected to die soon)
GPO - Good for Parts Only
TEETH - Tried Everything Else, Try Homeopathy
UBI - Unexplained Beer Injury

And from my own medical past:

TOBAS - Take Out Back And Shoot
OPD - Obnoxious Personality Disorder
GALP - Get A Life Program (suggested for some chronic whiners)

Do you have some you'd like to share from your profession? Send them here for safekeeping before the Humour Police come search your computer!

Alpha Male: Dog Has Worms

We distinctly remember, when we were first considering what kind of dog to get for the kids long years ago that Labradors as a breed were described as "wanting to be involved in all famiy activities." The new pup has not determined quite yet what that entails, but is already after a week beginnning to pick up the rhythms of life here with us. Unfortunately, that includes his biorhythmns syncing with the alarm clock, and so there he stood in the pale blue glow of the night light at the top of the bedroom stairs, ready for a new day, at 3:50 Saturday morning. There was no putting him off, and so we both dutifully got up, this just reinforcing his role as family rooster and official starter-gun for a day on Goose Creek from here on.

There is one job he is already fully involved in, and that is pulling weeds. I've done right much of that lately, because it is one planted-in-place job I can do just out the back door while waiting for the blessed bladder event or just getting Chucky's teeth outside for something un-upholstered to bite on. Tsuga loves to help with the weed-pulling. And an added bonus: he's learned that when he pulls snatches of grass from along the walkway where I'm working, the earthworms come out of the wet grass by the bucket-full.

Oh, I'm awishin' I was fishin'. I could have used these 6" beauties back when I fished for bream at East Lake as a boy, paying for a couple dozen wormlets so thin that when you stuck in the hook, it cut the thin pink line in half. Tsuga's worms would fetch a dime a piece, easy. If I could just train him to have a soft mouth and drop them in a bucket of mulch, I'd be in bidness. And to think that this wee pup already knows how to fiddle for worms. You do know about fiddling worms, don't you? Note that if you're going after maximum worm-fiddling efficiency, you take the chain off a chain saw and ram the bar in the dirt with the engine running to bring the worms up. Somehow, that doesn't seem quite sporting. At least Tsuga's method gives 'em a fighting (or squirming) chance.

While the dog has not fully found his niche in the house and family yet, I must say, he has already elevated our lives here. The toilet paper. The wicker basket of shoes on the bottom shelf in the bathroom. The long bath towels. All this and more... has been elevated since Tsuga came home with us. It looks rather like we're expecting a flood on the bottom floor. I can hardly imagine how it will be when his legs grow long, and he becomes imbued with an even higher power over us, and our well-chewed belongings.

(Lest you feel compelled to offer aversive training suggestions to prevent excessive puppy chewing, I confess I exaggerate the role Tsuga's mouth plays havoc around here. He's getting better every day, has his 'soft mouth' on about 80% of the time, and my forearms are healing nicely.)

Brave Weird World

After we had decided to eliminate what little television we watched from our lives by discontinuing the satellite subscription, I became aware of the book "Amusing Ourselves To Death" by Neil Postman ... another book that, although I have reached his conclusions, I would be interested in knowing more of his reasoning, which seems well-articulated and timely (the book was published in 1986 and things have only slud further, as Yogi would say.) Until I can spend more time pulling my thots together, here are some excerpts (following, from chapter five)....

"There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have changed. Our culture's adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now almost complete; we have so thoroughly accepted its definitions of truth, knowledge and reality that irrelevance seems to us to be filled with import, and incoherence seems eminently sane."

and, from the foreword of Amusing Ourselves to Death...

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right."

There will be a kindly pat on the head to the first one (should there be more than one) to explain to me "centrifugal bumblepuppy". I don't know what it means, but I think there is one eating puppy chow in the next room this very minute, and I will free hereafter to call him by this name whenever I can remember it.

You'll Go Down in His-to-ry

I admire people who set out with a purpose to do a big job and see it through. I cannot for the life of me, however, understand what must have been in the mind of the person who undertook to never rest until every last 'deer crossing sign'-- and there must be a hundred of them across 380 square miles of Floyd County-- had a round, red nose painted on the tip of the jumping deer silhouette. Hey! it may not be your life's work, but to some quirky mind, it was their reason to get up every morning.

Yes, it's odd, but not everybody is like you and me, called to a higher purpose, compelled each day to spill our guts or discribe the most mundane of daily blah to the entire world, publishing this little round red nose on cyberspace. Go figure.

Alpha Male Bonding ~ Day Nine

It is legendary how Labradors love the water. They were bred to swim out into the waves and fetch fishing nets in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic (and were originally called Newfoundland Dogs). They even have webbing between their toes that makes them excellent swimmers, and heavy insulating coats to keep them warm when wet. On Tsuga's second day with us, I couldn't wait to carry him down to the edge of the water knowing what a puppy joy it was going to be for him to discover that he would grow up on a place with two creeks right out his back door. You can imagine my disappointment when he was not only not interested in the water, but seemed to actually be afraid of it... ran away from it, as if it were coming after him. Maybe the fact that there was motion and noise set off his alarms, and it might be that he could not smell any signals-- of either friend of foe-- from this long undulating creature and this may have been unsettling to a pup with such limited exposure to this strange world where all the water he had ever known was mirror-still in a round plastic bowl.

Today, Tsuga was ready to get his feet wet, on his own terms. He hopped off the end of the bridge across the branch by the house and headed straight to the shallow water very intentionally, as if it was something he finally mustered the courage to do, and must do quickly before his fear could talk him out of it. Jumping into the trickle with all fours, he attacked the muddy bottom and quickly became, for the first time, a mostly black yellow lab. He looked for all the world like a little kid making mudpies and proud that he was really dirty now-- like a working dog. This seemed like it might be a good time to take him to the creek for a bath, but I would let him decide if it was time to face the bigger waters.

He followed me over toward the creek by the barn at the crossing. I sat just at the water's edge while he fumbled around in the high grass. Soon he came cautiously to the land's end, his paws just barely in the current. His ambivalence was comical-- he so wanted to see what it was all about, but had no idea what to expect. But his drive to exlore won out, and all at once he pounced with all four feet through two inches of flowing water for the very first time. He even flopped down with his pink tummy in the stream of cold spring water for in instant. You could see the glee and terror in his eyes! After no more than a few seconds, he tore out of the water past me and was heading for the safety of the house. But stopped in his tracks as if he had realized that he was wet, a bit cooler, but safe. And he came back to lie under my bent knees where I sat... taking refuge, chin down on his paws; then, creeping on his belly, he went back to the edge, then in, then ran around wildly, and back under my legs for protection... over and over again he tested the waters, again and again he returned to sanctuary.

It was the funniest, dearest-doggiest thing I had seen since Buster left us. I laughed til I cried, and this is not a figure of speech. I can't explain it, but the beauty of that moment, the pure goodness of the sunshine, crows and ravens and goldfinches all around on a clear, crisp autumn day; the innocence of a young life in the place of one I still remembered and miss so much; the rightness and goodness of this new bonding with another intelligence and the transcience of all of it... Sometimes there is a poignance in a Kodak moment that is ineffible and overwhelming, and so it is today. Thanks, Little Buddy, I needed that.

Turning Off, Dropping Out

I have just given my permission for them to pull the plug. I can't take it anymore. All I hear in there is crazy talk; rambling, rude, disjointed sounds without purpose; loud, empty noise lacking any real melody or lyric. Killing time in the same room with it seems so foolish, we have so little time. Watching that face for a flicker of skin, a car crash, a laugh at someone's expense... is obscene and petty and I feel controlled. I never trusted that cold flickering eye-- always felt it was sizing me up for the kill-- looking for my vulnerabilities that would seduce me to buy, to believe, to open wide and take it in and swallow what it fed me. For some reason, I kept going back, thinking "this time, there will be something in this interaction I will carry away, I will be truly fed this time... just this one more time."

We're pulling the plug. I've lost any hope of being a better person-- or even an entertained person-- for having a television in my home. Not physically better (except perhaps in my thenar imminences), not intellectually, morally or spiritually. I inquired from my Customer Service Rep if they might let me keep just the History Channel for, oh, a buck a month. They were not amused. That's what I told them was the dollar value I was getting out of my subscription, and please just let's not do this any more.

There will be a bit of monthly savings, even though at about the same time, we will be subscribing to a (slow end of the spectrum of FAST) DSL Internet connection as the tube departs. But it's not the money, or at least not only the money influencing our decision to once again be TV-free (as we were when the kids were growing up). We are stepping back across to the uncrowded end of the cultural divide. Count this as one small vote against the perpetual baptism in aspects of American popular culture that I could hardly care less about, and find increasingly damaging and unhealthy for my soul. I hugely regret the fact that this country so vigorously exports this vacuous commodity around the Coca-colonized world. But I can avoid importing it into my own personal space so obtrusively as the one-eyed brain-sucker can do so effectively and seductively.

We'll put a table cloth over it, set a plant on top of it, and poke a MASH tape in the VCR every once in a while. I'll miss the Gunsmoke reruns, but I'll get over it.

Alpha Male ~ One week Anniversary

Little Tsuga has indeed gone through some amazing transformations in his first week with us, as you see here in this recent image. You'll remember in the last picture, I commented on his proportionally small hind quarters, and those have continued to diminish and have become vestigial and practically invisible in the picture here. At the same time, also following a trend seen early on, his little teeth have become quite prominent. Also there is this odd little gibbosity on his forehead; I am strangely attracted to it somehow, but have not yet examined it fully as yet. But soon, as I am inexplicably fascinated by it.

The thrill of victory: He knows how to avoid the first impulse to pee and is now able to store it up, which will come in handy for later months when he goes out to advertize his boundaries. (This reminds me of a Gary Larsen dog, seen holding up a hose, drinking liberally. The wife dog says: I see you're getting tanked up for a night on the town with the boys!" Tsuga 'saves it' and comes to get us up (several times) to go outside with it, tiring of the same old braided wool rug, and now taking over the much larger back yard for this purpose.

New Favorite Place: He came up missing yesterday. I could not find him in any of this favorite spots to sleep (which he does intermittently during the mid-day especially). I knew he had not yet mastered the door knobs and must be inside somewhere, and I finally found him lying on his back in ecstacy, in the bathroom, in the shower stall. I think he was dreaming he was in a bubblebath with Lassie 'cause he was some kinda blissed.

So far, he has met only one other person besides me and Ann since arriving on Goose Creek. That's about par for the course out here... one 'stranger' per week; often less. The neighbor who cuts our hay came by and Tsuga was all over him wiggling like a nightcrawler on a hot sidewalk. And speaking of earthworms... but that is for another time.

The Moral Sense Test

"Most of our moral intuitions are unconscious, involuntary, and universal, developing in each child despite formal education. When humans, from the hunter-gathers of the Rift Valley to the billionaire dot-com-ers of the Silicon Valley generate moral intuitions they are like reflexes, something that happens to us without our being aware of how or even why. We call this capacity our moral faculty. Our aim is to use data from the MST, as well as other experiments, to explain what it is, how it evolved, and how it develops in our species, creating individuals with moral responsibilities and concerns about human welfare. The Moral Sense Test has been designed for all humans who are curious about that puzzling little word “ought” — about the principles that make one action right and another wrong, and why we feel elated about the former and guilty about the latter."

I'd suggest that, whatever their conclusions from the results of the Moral Sense Test, they will be based on the presupposition that morality is a derivative property of Nature. C. S. Lewis sees "Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe", where Natural Law is conferred on Mankind, not emergent from the genes only.

What's the "so what?" Failing to find any common currency, to discover any common human moral roots from within or without, we seem likely to continue the rapid slide down the slippery slope of moral relativism we've been travelling with increasing speed for the past half-century. How 'ought' we to live in this world?... a question worth asking, and not a new one. Some of the older answers are well worth revisiting. And I would mark the issue as 'urgent'.

Kibbles and Bits

Bugs Me: A Republic of Insects Ever read anything by Henri Fabre? And I thought I thought too highly of insects! Some other thots on our eight-legged contemporaries on the planet:

" I always felt that insects are the general rule, and everything else is a special case." Paul Bystrak

"To a rough approximation and setting aside vertebrate chauvinism, it can be said that essentially all organisms are insects." R.M. May

"Bugs are not going to inherit the earth. They own it now. So we might as well make peace with the landlord." T. Eisner

Look. Don't touch. Then burn. (May cause blindness).Hogweed from Hell, another imported pest that can 'survive for 10 years after pulling it out of the ground'. Neat image here. No, this is not a Photoshop retouch. They really are that big!

Everythang a Big Bad Wolf Could Want. The Hood, going back... way back. See the version your momma read to you at bedtime? via exclamationmark

Walmart to depend on Net for electronic purchase orders. Oh joy. And as the W-World goes, so goes commerce in America, then the larger world. And great will be the fall thereof in the next blackout, and the next, and...

How likely is that? "Neville Ebin died in Bermuda when a taxi knocked him off his moped. A year later his brother was killed on the same moped in the same street by the same taxi driven by the same man and carrying the same passenger. And, best of all, in Massachusetts in 1965 Roger Lausier, aged four, was saved from drowning by a woman called Alice Blaise. Nine years later Roger saw a man drowning on the same beach, dived in and saved him. He was Alice Blaise's husband." More likely than you think.

Doc Rocs!

Stop over at WritingOutLoud and give DocRoc a welcome to the Left Coast contingent of bloggers. I think I can safely say, there will be good words from this page. Already we have a pithy letter to the "PowerPoint is Evil" author quoted in a Fragments post the other day, and DocRoc's elaboration on the concerns of technology using people... an especially pernicious bondage when our children are the victims.

Not of This World

True Fact: Lewis Carroll had our new family member Tsuga in mind when he wrote this otherworldly poem years ago. It was the uffish thought I observed in the 'dog' yesterday that made me see the truth of it. He whiffles, he burbles and he bites. He is, in fact, a Jabberwock.

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

And I am gyring and gimbling and rathing outgrabe. I am also looking for the Band-Aids.

Outlook Expression

Free and it works. If you have been exasperated by Outlook Express's poor handling of quotes in your replies, OE-QuoteFix works painlessly to improve what MS should have fixed to start with (sound familiar?). Link via Lockergnome via RSS by way of AmphetaDesk.

Infantile Amnesia

[...] Some people can recall a few memories formed when they were as young as 2 or 3 years of age, but most of us can recall much more from when we were 5 or 6 years old. Studies suggest that we're not simply forgetting what happened during our earliest years; far fewer autobiographical memories exist from early childhood than simple forgetting predicts. So the fate of early memories remains puzzling; solving the mystery of infantile amnesia may go a long way towards a more general theory about how we remember and why we forget.

more...(from brainconnection)

Everything's Got to Have a (Power)Point

Whadda I know? I was miffed when my recent factory-installed copy of MS Office did not include Powerpoint. (Didn't it use to? I know I never ordered it separately and used in for years, off and on, from my Dell-loaded software.) Mind you, not that I anticipate needing to put together more talks on the physiology of chronic pain (the last big one I did about three years ago) or need it for another class like the one I took at Va Tech this Winter (where the grand finale was a PowerPoint extravaganza on Tourism, Culture and Identity in Floyd County).

But I understand why this man thinks little of the cognitive style of Powerpoint, and if I were a parent, I would resist the bulletizing of my child's expressive abilities. Good article (from Wired).

Clean and Jerk

Sorta broad in the shoulder, narrow in the hips, and everybody knew ya didn't give no lip to Big Tsuaga.

If you cover up everything in this image but Tsuga's back quarters, you'd think you were looking at a tiny dog with very big feet. This perspective makes him look like Mr. Upper Body with a Russian weight-lifter's gut: I give you Tsuga Wudjabuzoff!

He's gonna get me one day for showing these baby pictures. I gotta go. Time for the 3:00 feeding frenzy.

Like a Rainbow

Swing over to visit Ian at his new site on TypePad: Panchromatica. He's just settling in, and has things look rather pert, don't you think?

Poem for Rana

"Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them
too early in your life.

You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime,
and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end,
you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines.
For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions
(one has emotions early enough)
- they are experiences.

For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people
and things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly,
and know the gesture which small flowers make
when they open in the morning...

More... (from WhiskeyRiver)

Love and Lacerations

Teeth. There are no teeth in Tsuga. And thus his name, while commemorating our vanishing Hemlocks, leaves out the essence of who this young dog is. He means no harm with his mouthing, chewing and nipping, but can cause it just the same. His brain homunculus (see human version) is without a doubt 95% tongue-lips-jaws, the rest paws.

And so, as I have learned quick reflexes to pull away or offer a chewable substitute to digits, I have wondered about alternate names for da pup: Crocodile Dundee. Great White. And-- since we so often say it -- the name Harm: "let's put (this or that, or both this and that) up out of harm's way.

About this time in Buster's young life, we were considering adding the name Dammit to his official pedigree, since it was so often a part of the epithet when invoking his name. "Dammit Buster of Walnut Knob" I wanted to call him officially. Ann poopoo-ed it. And speaking of poopoo... but that's another story.

Got another puppy picture coming. Stay tuned.

Baby's Breath

If I said that something smelled like a new puppy, would you know what I mean? For me, it's one of those olfactory memories from early childhood-- like the smell of zoysia grass cut with a push-mower (I hear the whirr of the curved blades too, now that I think about it); the smell of bread baking (not in our house, but downtown, near the Merita Bakery) or the smell of summer rain on hot Alabama sidewalks.

Puppies smell the way they always have since they were first invented. How do you describe a smell but in terms of other smells? What combination makes "essence of puppy"?

Your turn.

The Angry Red Planet

Don't Forget Mars

On August 27, 2003, Mars will the closest to Earth it has been in 59,619 years. On the evening of August 26th and into the early-morning hours of August 27th, Mars will appear brighter than Jupiter!

The best place for you to be to take a look at Mars is one with a good view to the south and one that is away from city lights. To find the red planet, look in the southeast sky after sunset. Weather conditions will determine how impressive Mars looks, so please check out the projected sky conditions on AccuWeather.com. What makes this event significant is that Mars will not be this close to Earth again until the year 2287, so if you have not observed Mars recently, or ever, now is the time! (from AccuWeather).

Angry Red Planet. A really, really bad movie from my childhood, it featured "Dr. Iris Ryan - Nicknamed "Irish," she is here to scream at all the scary monsters. Her entire face unhinges. I swear the woman is part snake."

Bush Wages War

from Common Dreams...

Homeland security? T.A. Barron suggests that "our wilderness and public lands must be at the core of what we seek to defend."

"Not for President Bush and his team, however. Fueled by zealous anti-environmentalism and corporate special interests, they have launched what amounts to a sustained and systematic attack on America's public lands. Instead of honoring the public trust that requires protecting these national assets for our children and grandchildren, they have aggressively pushed exploitation by the mining, timber, oil and gas, and snowmobile industries. Well aware of the public outcry that such radical policy changes would provoke, they have pursued this war with stealth and deception."

Whah? Stealth and deception from these stalwarts of virtue?

"Recently Interior Secretary Gale Norton summarily removed any portion of 262 million acres from possible wilderness protection, thereby paving the way -- literally -- for extractive industries. By renouncing all federal authority to study or protect wilderness values in these lands, this action removed even the possibility that future generations might ever choose to conserve them."

"Behind the scenes, Bush and company have forced sweeping changes in public lands management policies, abandoning decades-old bipartisan approaches in favor of immediate exploitation. [...] Aware of the radical extent of these changes, the Bush team has worked hard to hide them from public view. Norton's action affecting 262 million acres, for example, came after no public hearings, open debate, or congressional oversight. It was not even announced on the Interior Department's web site. It was simply revealed in a legal settlement with Utah and released on a Friday night, after reporters' 5 o'clock deadlines, just after Congress had left for spring recess."

This is just sleazy and this is NOT okay. Twenty-five years later, and I still feel the need to read Monkey Wrench Gang one more time.

Let us Spray

I had an hour layover at the Charlotte Airport last week in my trip to B'ham. One of the first stops many travelers make after getting off the plane is to run by the plumbing facilities. And so, as I walk down the concourse looking for the familiar doorways, there, between MEN and WOMEN is FAMILY. A Family restroom? I did a double-take. Now I have heard that 'families that pray together, stay together'. I had to wonder: what happens to families that, well... I'm confused. That's all.

SARS Copycat?

SARS-type virus causes Canada scare. A milder form of the disease, to be sure; but originating in China, and now, possibly, a variant appearing on the other side of the world... in Vancouver, BC? Be sure this will get heavy attention. Sure caught mine, as our son Nathan arrives in Vancouver to begin coursework in a week. More here.

Homebodies

From the looks of Fragments recently, you might think I didn't have any family members with fewer than four dewclaws. While I won't have the chance to wax loquacious (or even talk very much) about my recent visit 'home' to Birmingham, let me take this quick respite from tummy-rubbing (the dog's of course) to celebrate some other family members. Moe here is an adopted family member who was introduced last weekend in my brother's church as my 'father', and I'd gladly accept that association any time. He and mom have been best friends for 18 years now. Moe just turned 80, and even though they were contemporaries in grade school, somehow mom is only 45. She claims that recently her children have grown older than she is. Hi mom. Thanks for a great homecoming.

Talk About Yer Fragments

Briefly, in snatches, between episodes of ominous sounds from the next room (which sometimes can be that of absolute suspicious silence) I have snuck into the Command Post here-- while Tsuga roots around among his toys-- to post a few random bits. Let's see now...

Oh to find the ULTIMATE idea organizer! Could this be it? Considering the source, probably not. But OneNote seems to be making some steps in the right direction. I really must find a replacement soon, as my PIM once known as the Higher Learning Centers of frontal and parietal lobes are making some ominous static-y noises from time to time, and frequent rebooting is necessary (I prefer to call them 'powernaps').

It's a floor wax! NO! It's a desert topping! Google is now a calculator.

Yippee! The word "new" has been used in association with Fragments, and by association, moi! At 4:00 when you-know-who woke me up and was oh-so-briefly entertained by a rawhide chew, I was able to check email and visits, and behold!.. Fragments was Number One in theTechnorati Top 50 NEWcomers. I'm new! Does this mean I get a new warrantee on parts? (Here's how the Technorati Illuminati describe the purpose of this new Newcomers page).

The three dusty, parched and wounded cowboys are wounded, running out of ammunition, losing hope of ever seeing another day, when-- what's that in the distance?-- they hear the bugle-call of the Cavalry approaching to run off the Warlike Indigenous Persons who have been tormenting them for days. Our cowboys will live after all! I understand how they must have felt. Although she is sleeping 'late' (heck, almost 5:30 now) Ann will be home today to rescue me from this wild In'jun of a dog and I can do, oh let's see... five days worth of outside stuff...finally. I think I hear the bugle calling now! Yes, I see the pastel colors flying and the dust of her bedroom slippers appears beyond the mesa just over the horizon. She's up! I'm saved! The END.

Alpha Male ~ Day Five

It could be a mistake, but last night -- night number four-- was by far our most peaceful since pup came home with us five days ago. The crate had confined him through the long night beside the bed for the first three nights, but we endured an agonizingly long period of raucous resistance and plaintiff wails that break a mother's heart. Ann was tied in knots by the time the cage-rattling and moaning finally ended, exhausted by the time to get up early the next day for work.

Last night, Tsuga went to sleep curled up on his soft monkeytoy in his new favorite spot in front of the wood stove -- in a very Orvis-like pose-- and we left him there and slipped quietly off to bed. He was still asleep, and with no wet places on the floor, when Ann got up to plug in the coffee at 3:50 this morning. He has made himself some cozy little nests of security and quiet, and is able to tolerate separation better every day. We're still trying to find our comfort level, balancing the pup's safety and feeling of belonging with our need to preserve our sanity and our furniture and get a good night's sleep. Tsuga wanders into his crate with his favorite toys for short periods, and generally seems a lot more 'at home' here and with us already.

Nature doesn't equip a seven-week-old puppy with much in the way of speed, strength, or smarts, but what they are equipped with is sharp puppy teeth. When they are with their litter mates, their mouths help them establish a pack ranking and identity. It will take some time for him to find other ways to relate and find his place in the local heirarchy (with the two others in his suddenly-smaller pack) other than by using his needle-sharp incisors. Meanwhile, I am thinking maybe I'll see if I can find one of those kevlar suits or shark-proof cages.

He is learning to keep a 'soft mouth' and when possible, I'm sublimating his need to mouth and bite to acceptable substitutes for fingers and toes. I can see him catching himself at times when I know he wants to lunge at my hand hanging over the edge of the couch, and he lunges and licks instead (mostly). He is showing some submissive postures now, will turn over and let me rub his tummy (none of his litter mates did this and it is taking some time to lie back and enjoy it, which he does with a silly grin on his wrinkled little face).

Tsuga has the advantage (and therefore so do we) of a very supportive, relaxed early puppyhood. His breeders are nice, caring people and gave the little ones a lot of early attention. I'm not sure Buster had the same beginnings, living his first weeks in a paper-strewn room in a trailer of a man recently divorced. This may account for Buster's almost autistic early weeks with us versus Tsuga's shot-out-of-a-cannon self confidence. Tsuga's breeders are having a puppy reunion in October, and as many of the eleven litter mates as will come are invited. Their owners, too. We'll be going for sure.

Boy Named Sue

The Gender Genie -- four times out of four, from writing samples -- sez I am female. Too many personal pronouns. A male, I guess, merely grunts and points. How do you fare?
link via Dustbury

More Baby Pix

Well it has helped to set the shutter speed to 1/125th so the BlurMeister at least has sharpish edges. I'm afraid we aren't yet going to places that make for nice backgrounds, so there will be way too much yard grass surrounding Mr. Tsuga for a while. It would be easier I think to lasso a fish than to get him to stay still long enough for a decent composition, but already it is apparent that yellow labs are immensely easier to expose than BLACK, which have been almost impossible to balance against their backgrounds. Thanks for puppy behavior modification tips, keep'em coming, this one is going to be a handful! Don't let his 'innocent' puppy eyes fool you!

Fate or Destiny?

Chris O'Donnell celebrates his 12th Anni today with a story about his serendipitous close encounter with his future wife 4 1/2 years before they finally walked the aisle. Go read his story, and wish him a happy.

Chris's description of dating espionage brings on a tale involving the Fredster here getting caught in a three way trap when I kept building bridges d'amour and failing to burn the several earlier ones still under construction. Be sure your sins will find you out. I'll have to see if the pup will give me enough slack before jerking my chain again so I can weave this little yarn.

The Dark Side

We still don't know the truth about the blackout. Claims are being made. If not this time, then the next, it may indeed be an intentional act of sabatoge. According to WorldNetDaily...

Al-Qaida has claimed responsibility for the worst blackout in U.S. history which affected 50 million residents across the Northeast and Midwest as well as parts of southern Canada, according to the Arab newspaper Al-Hayat.

[...] The director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare said al-Qaida has been advertising for a long time that a catastrophic attack on the U.S. power-supply infrastructure was something it wanted to do. He added that the current theories being floated by industry officials that three transmission lines in Ohio apparently started a chain reaction that caused the widespread outage "don't hold water."

And here, once again, it seems the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing as the spinmeisters control what these days passes for "TRUTH" in the news.

Jewels, Revisited

We have written recently about 'weblogs as place' at the Ecotone. Several of those who contributed this time, myself included, feel that our weblogs serve in a quasi-physical way to ground us, giving our inner-writer a rootedness and connection to both self and the places that fill our vision and thoughts and memories. And there is more than that for me in this electronic journal. I am discovering the weblog is becoming a way of calling back calendar pages from a year and more, when I first began to talk to myself about the weather, my own moods, and the not-so-small wonders that I discovered here as I became immersed in my own fields, garden, ridgetops and creeks.

It feels like Autumn today. And after my first year of keeping a weblog journal, I find that when I see or smell or hear some thing in the changing season that would have sent me back in distant memory to Autumns past, now too I remember back into the less distant archives to what it was I felt and said about that very same catalyst just a year ago in the weblog. Writing has given me a way of collecting days in the way my camera captures and holds light. I wonder what I would read about if I had been blogging twenty years ago when I was so inconsistently and illegibly journaling in short dabs -- when the kids were small and so many wonderful people and beautiful places and the great ideas of great men passed through my plesantly busy days.

Last Fall, in the midst of a prolonged drought, only a few of these "Jewels of August" came up along the branch that is burbling out the window this early morning, out of our abundance in contrast to last year's lack, flowing down from deep waterfilled rock that lies under the steep hills up back of the house. In writing about it last year, I described at some length the natural history of this flower that adorns the edges of our yard by the thousands this week. And too I wrote of more distant memories of our children gleefully afraid to make the seedpods of the "touch-me-nots" 'explode', and of baking the seeds into cookies. Looking back, I see there have been very few new pictures or rambling, whimsical nature-notes this cool, soggy summer of failed gardens and lost companions.

I wonder: will I still be journaling in a weblog-- or whatever this medium evolves into-- twenty years from now? Will reading about today bring smiles? Tears? Will I remember these days then, or only think that I do, confusing my words this morning for memories of an old man? This I cannot know. But in twenty years, I know there will still be "jewels" growing in profusion along "our" little branch. And from our porches, someone else will likely be watching the hummingbirds' blurred buzzings between tentacled, hanging orange flowers that look as though they might have risen up from a coral reef underground.

Alpha Male ~ Day 3

When the world offers you lemons, make lemonade. When it offers you a puppy, wrap some words around it and call it kennel journalism. Since I will not be able to gather too many thoughts on any other topic for a while, I will be keeping Pup Chronicles (Alpha Male) to remember Tsuga's first month (and maybe beyond) accompanied from time to time with pictures to see how he has grown. This is for us, but you can share if ya wanna.

6:00 a.m. Tsuga slept from 8:30 til 4:00 without a peep (after the 10 minute sea-lion imitations on first entering the dreaded crate). Even so, he got up too early. Finally after Ann left this morning at 5:45, he went to sleep on my lap. This is the first time he has calmed down enough to sit close and not be gnawing fingers or belt or watchband. I slipped him off into the crate, and he settled down without protest, nestled next to one of my old unwashed tee shirts, hidden by the towel that blocked his view of stuff going on in the house. I left the radio on NPR as company, and actually had about 30 minutes to have a life apart from the new conscript.

7:30 That little respite is over now; and after wandering around in the yard eating the Corepsis, clumps of mower grass and a few earthworms, we're back inside again. He is so sleepy, and I'm sure he hasn't been getting up at 5:00 a. m. when he was with his liter mates. The second attempt to put the groggy little guy in the crate was not successful, and he's making a racket Ann would never have tolerated. Unfortunately, the computer is in the part of the house with carpet where we want Tsuga to stay out of. So, if puppy is awake, I will not be computing. And so it goes. I am reading what I can find on "separation anxiety", because just today, he throws a fit when I leave his sight even briefly. He is so exhausted. When I come in the room he runs up and lies down between my feet before I can sit down; but he will not rest in the crate. I don't know what we're going to do tomorrow when I have to be away for 2-3 hours.

9:00 Finally, he's konked out and I've been able to get into the front room for a few minutes. I have been saying that I need to do more reading. Well, I think the opportunity has presented itself. I can read outside or in the room with the hardwood floors while he snoops and sniffs and attacks things. Computing (including some way-overdue writing/editing) will just have to take a back seat. Note: I can tell that his face has darkened since we brought him home. And his back legs are stronger, less prone to scissor. He is remembering that when I hold up two fingers, that means STOP, and a light tap on the snout with the fingers when he bites too hard or pulls at my shirt sleeves or chews on the braided rug seems an effective reminder. Re the house training: failing grades so far.

RE: Chewing... yes, we are aware of the great KONG. But are some folks carrying this bit too far? Take for example, AUNT JEANNIE'S ARCHEOLOGY KONG (for advanced dogs) LAYER ONE (deepest): roasted, unsalted cashews · freeze dried liver bits LAYER TWO: dog kibble, cookies or liver biscotti · Cheerios · sugar-free, salt-free peanut butter · dried banana chips, apples and apricots LAYER THREE: carrot sticks · turkey or leftover ravioli or tortellini · Kong Toy (the larger the better!) Pack as tightly as possible. The last item inserted should be an apricot or piece of ravioli, presenting a smooth "finish" under the main opening. LIGHT VERSION: substitute crumbled rice cakes for cashews, Caesar croutons for freeze-dried liver, fat free cream cheese for peanut butter.

How did you meet your wife/husband?

The subject has come up in a couple other blogs and emails, so I thot I'd offer my short story. Any volunteers out there to add you own? Send us links in comments.

The year was 1968. My room mate Mike had met this gal Judy and been out with her once. Once was enough for Judy to know that if there was a next time, she needed reinforcements, as Mike didn't waste much time on the getting-acquainted part of a relationship. Mike is coaxing her for the second date on the phone, and Judy at the hall phone in the dorm sends out a distress call: "Anybody willing to back me up with the guy I met, his room mate is available?" Ann just happened to be standing near by, and bored, and there ya go. The rest is history.

A Day in the Life...

... of a dog. How fast they change. In the one full day we've known Tsuga, there are definite changes in his coordination, awareness, acceptance and courage.

Yesterday when we brought him home he could not get up the 8" riser onto the back porch. Today (Sunday) he can get up readily (if not consistently or gracefully). Getting off the porch yesterday was a slightly controlled fall-- today became a joyous leap into mid-air like a hunting retriever plunging off a pier to fetch a brace of downed ducks. He has a ways to go on sticking the landing, however. He was so funny yesterday watching him try to negotiate the sloping yard; he had not been outside very much at the breeder's house (ever tried watching 11 puppies at once!?) and even at that, had been out on level ground. He had no proprioceptive experience adjusting his stance and gait to a slope where two legs were lower than the others, and he fell all over himself in every conceivable direction. He couldn't walk five feet without falling. Today, you could tell he accommodated the slope much better, and purposefully body surfed down the hill rather than falling all the way down it. Yesterday on day one, all his first ventures expanding his experience of the yard were tentative, leaning, creeping forward cautiously; today, he charged to the edges of his 'known' universe here, but got a little less brave at the frontier. Every day he'll learn more about his body and his new 'pack' and his territory. I'm glad we got a puppy just to watch this happen.

You know, having a puppy around is not altogether unlike having a baby on board. We take turns eating/showering/sleeping so one of us can be in charge of the 'baby'. We tiptoe around when he sleeps so as to have just a few precious personal moments before all of a sudden he's awake and ready to play. We maintain a constant vigilance