September 30, 2003
Ancestors: The Grafted Roots
The roots of my family tree run shallow and short. Someone gave me the "First" coat of arms as a gift when we were married; I appreciated the thought but it connected me only to the lineage of a biological stranger and a name not my own. Any meaningful connection with my father's paternal lineage was severed by divorce in the 1930's; my surname by true inheritance should have be Strickland. This is a twig of our small tree I have not been able to trace with the little information that I know. My mother is an only child. I never knew her father who died in a hunting accident when she was very young. Her father's Dillons go back in remote history to Ireland (Henri of Lion migrated to Ireland in the 1100s'-- du Leon becoming O'Doullin, then Dillon over the centuries). Mom's mother's Harrisons disappear in the genealogies earlier than the mid 1850's when my granny's grandparents moved to Mufreesboro, Tennessee.
I can walk the same dark high school hallways and over the summer camp trails that my mother walked; and I can visit neighborhoods where we lived in Birmingham as I was growing up. Beyond that, I cannot stand in hallowed places known to known ancestors. I cannot conceive what it must be like to have relatives spreading across the hollers and back through time for five or more generations as many of my neighbors here in the southern Appalachians do. For me, there will be no retracing ancestral footsteps to the places from which, in some sense, my true roots arise. Nevertheless, with the quick passing of decades, I do feel some need to find roots. If I am to know ancestral places, lacking any of the old-fashioned kind, I will be happy to adopt them: this old house, this patch of land, the Blue Ridge Mountains... and the people who have loved them long before I did. If they will have me, my belonging will be here to these places, these hills, these people.
Since we've been married, eight places have been "home" for us. It was not until a year ago that it dawned on me that, even after both Ann and I had marketable careers that would pretty much let us find work anywhere, we have consistently chosen to find our place in the southern Appalachians. This must be our home, as warm a hearth as we are likely to find in this life. We've adopted its traditional music as our own. The particulars of the language have settled in comfortably along the margins of our speech, modulating the rhythm of our neighborly conversations with snatches of the Elizabethan English that our geographical ancestors brought into these mountains two centuries ago. The gentle grandeur of the Blue Ridge seems to appeal to us as if we had known these broad ridges and gentle valleys in a lifetime long ago. Yes, I've adopted all of this, but there seem to be unknown lines of pull that make the Appalachian hills lay a deeper claim on me.
But what of my children? They suffer the same rootlessness and lack of history I have known; they cannot go back 'home' unless they are content to visit a half dozen houses in which others now live. This patch of earth I look out on, lying peacefully in a natural bowl between two little creeks; an old farmhouse that comes with a history and kindly ghosts of its own going back a hundred and thirty years, full of memories; the rugged hillsides and slender pasture bordered by the old stone wall, and the crude field-rock foundation of a little barn where ash trees are growing from it's center-- all of this recently claimed ancestral ground can become 'the old homeplace' to my children's children. Perhaps here we can lay down a soil in which future roots can grow, where unborn feet can walk and hearts can feel with deep certainty that "those from whom I come walked here, they sat on this old wall, saw these same high ridges swept by west winds that sounded just like this wind today, and I belong here".
My children and theirs may have these buildings and creeks and ridges to hold their history. But having this daily journal as a record of the everyday details of life here on Goose Creek, I'd have to hope that it too can become part of the ancestral roots of those who come after me and from me, though I will never know them. Those dear ones, as they age and wonder about the infinite regression of generations past and future, as I do, will not be ignorant of the peculiar lives of ancestors at the turn of the twenty-first century who adopted a region, then birthed a homeplace in the flesh-- one that will carry on, perhaps, into future generations of Southern Highlanders.
The topic this week at the Ecotone:Writing About Place is "Ancestral Place".
Read the posts, join the discussion.
When A Good Dog Goes Wild
I go away for less than an hour to cut some firewood up the valley. "What could he get into" I say as I think how well Tsuga has learned his way around the house, how responsive he's become to our wishes, how grown up.
Little could I have known that as soon as he heard the truck crossing the creek, he was in the pantry having himself a grand ol' time. And no, he doesn't get in the Milwalkee's Best. He goes straight for the Killians I save for special occasions. Like Wednesdays, for instance. And worst of all, he didn't even bother to chill it and is drinking it right out of the bottle. I thought I'd trained him better than that. What is a father to do?
Bigger, Deeper, Longer Lasting
No, not that. A new search engine. Try it and report back at oh-eight hundred hours for debriefing. No, not that. TurboTen: its test time.
Trees: Walnut ~ The Perfect Wood
I didn't know any better. It was winter and the leaves were off the trees. I could key them to species by the leaves back then, but I was a clueless flatlander when it came to knowing a tree by it's bark. My division chairman at the college said "cut what you want" from the tracts he owned where houses would soon go up. He thought surely I'd leave the cash trees: the walnuts. I burned them in the woodstove that second winter living in Virginia. Felt a little guilty, and a lot warm. I still burn walnut, but I never take it for granted that it is a valuable wood indeed.
Our hilly acres here have all been, at one time or another, in pasture. It's hard to believe, given the fact that on the slopes, you go up five feet for every five you 'walk'. We find remnants of the stacked-rail fences that once served to separate one steep bit of grazing space from another. Down in the valley, along the edges of the bottomland and the road, squirrels use to sit on chestnut rail fences and eat walnuts from up on the hillsides, burying some of them in protected spots near the bottom rail. And now, along these sheltered margins, gnarly walnuts have come up and in turn, served as living fence posts for stringing barbed wire; the chestnuts have finally after decades on the ground succumbed to decay.
The cold valley winters and rocky soil here don't make for tall straight boles free of knots. Our squirrel-planted walnuts unfortunately will not make us or our children rich sold as saw logs. But they make us rich in other ways. I must confess, I do not grieve to find that one has dropped a large, dead branch or succumbed to age and died. The wood is a woodburner's dream. Dense as ash and almost the energy equivalent of oak, it is relatively dry when green, dries fast and burns hot. But, as they say, one should enjoy the journey and not just the destination, and it is in the cutting as much as the burning that I find walnut a winter joy.
If you want to impress your city friends, learn to recognize walnut. On the stump, the smaller branches, when broken, have a 'chambered pith'... the softer center core is divided into little compartments and very distinctive. The wood, of course, is difficult to confuse with any other. The outer sapwood is very light, while the heart wood... much prized by furniture makers... varies from a deep choclaty brown to a pleasant muted purple-brown aubergine. The grain is clean and straight. The stove lengths free of knots (I hesitate to confess) I often split on down with the hand axe to make wonderful lengths of eggplant-colored kindling. A bonus of so much splitting is the wonderfully odd smell of cut walnut. Smell being a very idiosyncratic and subjective observation at best, I'll tell you that to me, walnut smells astringent and medicinal... blending the faint aroma of iodine, a hint of freshly opened Band-aid with an underlying foundation of varnish. Trust me. Walnut is the smell of cool weather itself.
And here in this first week of cool weather, on this first frosty morning of the season, a few sticks of walnut are sending back the warmth and light of summer through the glass door of the silent, steadfast woodstove. Later today, I'll gather a bucketfull of hull-less nuts from along the road and pretend I wear a squirrel's hat, and plant walnuts along the pasture by the creek. I'd like to think decades from now that my great-grandchildren will inherit both the walnut trees and the inclination to get to know them as I have.
Making It Up As We Go: Language
Conglubrious: adj__ meaning: people getting together talking and having a good time.
Nope. You won't find it in the American Standard Dictionary. Or any other dictionary for that matter. Our son made it up, incorporated it into a high school essay, and almost got away with it. On the final revision, his teacher caught his creative impulse to forge new words. I think she actually marked his grade up for his brazen attempt to smuggle a new word of his own into the language.
Here's a veritable compendium of English words that once were in the King's English (some only for a very brief span) but now are found nowhere else on the internet but here, in the Compendium of Lost Words.
But backing up even farther in our utterances, peruse this brief account of the long evolutionary origins of modern language-- ours and the rest of the worlds'-- and their common ancestry from "Indo-European" roots thousands of years ago. Fascinating. Don't you think?
September 29, 2003
A Veritable Cornucopia of Goodness
Too bad none of it is mine. But hey, I'm only a little jealous, slightly covetous and mildly green with envy. But of course it's only noon, and I have just begun to blogbrowse.
My Hero, Al Franken from WriteOutLoud
MouseDroppings from Field Notes
Sunday in the Cove from Switched at Birth
Dumb Tourist Questions at North Coast Cafe
Just everything at Fishbucket, formerly Semi Compos Mentis. An extravaganza, as always.
Seasonally Affective
If there are manic and depressive seasons, summer is depressive with it's heat and lethargy. Fall is manic. Today with the first cool weather and a little fire perking along in the woodstove, I am falling all over myself with things I want to do, and am holding back a veritable geyser of things to write about... the fall wildflowers, the smell of woodsmoke, more about trees, an overabundance of images ready to post, words about words and language, and musings about where our sciences and technologies are taking us. But more about all that later, after raking leaves, splitting kindling, covering up the tomatoes against tonight's frost, and generally putting the garden to rest.
Oh yeah. And before I go, I must remember to tell you that the biweekly topic for October 1 at the Ecotone will be "Ancestral Place(s)". If you just want to read what others write, stop by the Ecotone Biweekly Topic on Wednesday after posters have had a chance to get their writings up. To offer your own contribution, if you aren't familiar with wiki format, email me and I'll be glad to help you get on board. Should be an interesting group of responses, do drop by.
Trees: Walnut ~ #2
There was a walnut in front of the barn above the creek... good sized but smaller than the huge one beside the barn. It seemed anchored solidly in the rocky soil, had been there through the storms of at least fifty years. But one day three years ago this month, in a late summer thunderstorm, I watched out the window as it came crashing down, roots lifting out of wet ground, falling across both the creek and the road. When the lightning moved on and the rains slowed, I cut and hauled the treetop away from the road. I left the bole of the tree intact, and later in the day, called our friend Lynn, who was always looking for lumber from which she would craft beautiful furniture and cabinets. She had it planked into boards. Today her house has a magnificent walnut desk and massive walnut bookshelves. A friend finished the work she had started on these pieces after she died quite unexpectedly. I'll never know if it was our walnut that went into her last beautiful creations. I'd like to think so.
A Pox on Ye, Blockish Grutnols!
They Don't Make Invective Like They Used'ter. Take your choice: next time your significant other leaves the toilet seat up (or down, depending on the laws in your house)... launch forth with one or preferrably a half-dozen of these utterly damning (if unintelligible) epithets in rapid succession. After all, when's the last time you enjoyed a really invigorating, vitriolic diatribe. Hmmmm? In 1653, buddies, you could let fly the vituperation with reckless abandon.
(from WorldWideWords)
Try these on for size: prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory epithets
September 28, 2003
The Web From Semania
Do you keep hearing about the Semantic Web? Scientific American has a good (not too techy) overview of it's purpose and ultimate composition. I'm not sure I look forward to participating in the "new and improved web" of the future. When it arrives we will have unprecedented power over 'resources' and access to facts and control over objects and ideas; but it will also carry the potential to separate us further from nature and the 'softer' humanizing aspects of our culture.
Consider this quote from a good basic description of the "Semantic Web" by Eric Hanson:
XML can represent real-world objects like used cars, but it can also represent concepts and ideas. Just like the ontology for a used car could unite the used-car selling and buying people of the world, an ontology for an idea could unite the people of the world around a single idea. Using XML to represent the idea that the president should be assassinated could unite would-be assassins in a single online community. XML will unite people with common interests and goals in ways never before possible. Scarry thought huh?Our world is beautiful and complicated and cannot and will not be classified or categorized. By stretching a net of approximate categorization over our earth, a line is drawn between those things that can be classified and those that cannot. Mass produced goods take on all the beauty of a grey lego block. Things that can't be captured in this web, things like art, music, literature, nature, stand out and shine brighter. XML and the Semantic Web will profoundly affect our earth and the way we think of it. It will challenge capitalism as we know it, and unite people around common interests no matter how obscure. How soon it will take off is anybody's guess but it has the potential to revolutionize the world as we know it.
Counting Crows
More and more crows are flocking to more and more towns and cities, and more and more people don't know who to shoot. This, from an Orion Magazine piece by Peter Sauer...
"No one understands the cause-and-effect relationship, but over the next decade crows began to prefer urban over forest trees for roosting. Ornithologists speculate that lighted city trees may allow the birds to escape from great horned owls. Whatever the reason, by the end of the '80s crows were roosting in small cities from Maine to Ohio, Mississippi to Michigan, and virtually every attempt to drive them away spread them into new neighborhoods and increased their numbers. Though the critical crow-mass varied from city to city, the dilemma it triggered was the same. Humane crow removal programs were expensive and notoriously ineffective while methods that involved killing "innocent" crows were intolerable to many citizens."
Solution: Turn the problem into a grand war with the wildlife! Give everybody guns! Call it a tournament!
[...] The tournament began on the gray, still morning of Saturday, February 1, 2003 -- one month before the anticipated start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Before dawn, the first protesters spread dog and cat food beneath city trees to entice the birds to stay and feed in the city, where discharging firearms is illegal. In the countryside, meanwhile, the hunters set up decoys and crow-calling sound systems around their blinds.
Suffice it to say, they have not found the "final solution" against the crows.
[...] By replacing real crows with abstractions, both sides were diminishing their own humanity. But then, this dispute had come to have little to do with crows. This was February 2003, when the abstractions du jour were collateral damage and shock and awe. The tournament was a ritual for a human society preparing its flocks for war.
Wonder if they ever thought of baking them in a pie?
September 27, 2003
Rainy Weekends No Coincidence?
Workweek Causes Climate Fluctuations
But nah, man's activities haven't a thing to do with climate change outside of cities. Right, George?
Alpha Male ~ Month Three
We call it "porpoising". The grass in the pasture is just a bit higher than Tsuga's back, and when he runs in it, he appears and disappears as he leaps and lunges like a rollicking dolphin. With his mouth gaping, by the time he clears the tall grass (captured here in mid-lunge) there is a good bit of rye grass raked into his open toothy mouth as he plunges and plows his way towards us like a demented herbivorous tiger.
I've tried a couple of times to take 'moving pictures' of the dog (snapshots of him in action) and realize something now. I remember those pictures of the early pre-astronauts training for space, sitting in the big centrifuge, spinning around at several "G"s; and we've all seen the distorted jowls of high-speed runners or jumpers... the unflattering effect that motion has on the plastic tissues of the face. And so it is with dogs. Motion turns Tsuga into his own cartoon character, as you see here. He has allowed me to show this one of him in somewhat unflattering countenance only if I promise to show you some more noble images next week. I have signed papers to this effect.
Today is the pup's three month birthday and this is the week Tsuga began to 'get it'. He has made the connection between scolding or withdrawal of attention with the offending behavior. He understands and shows signs of wanting to comply but is still under considerable control from his inner Wolf. It is as if someone flipped some switches on that were off since we brought him home. And indeed, this is literally true, in a sense. Pups or baby humans aren't capable of certain age-related degrees of coordination, learning or 'thinking' until fields of synapses connect up with other fields in the brain. When that happens, and two and two computes for the first time, voila! A little personality grows by leaps and bounds. Memory and learning happens in pup and it's human as they grow together. And the bonds of companionship begin to take shape, each molding the other to become best friends.
Previous posts about the struggle to be the Alpha Male around here...
September 26, 2003
How Much Information?
Fascinating. We talk about the "overload" of information. This tells where it's growing, who generates it and how it's likely to change in coming years. Explore. For instance, check out the charts for starters.
Say What?
I had slipped into my southern rural persona when talking to someone a bit out of that melieu, and when asked what I would like to do about (the farm, my writing, retirement... don't rightly remember what)... I said "If I had my druthers..." And the person I was talking to acted like I'd slipped into speaking Afghani. I'm sorry, maybe not everyone has druthers. Do you?
I was hunting around, interested in the origins of the term (a contraction of 'would rather') when I came across this potentially useful page that I've bookmarked and filled under "Writing Tools" (when the truth of the matter is, I'll go back and play, killing some time clicking through a lot of the neat word origins and other "facts" compiled over the years at alt.usage.english. (This is more or less their FAQ).
Trees: Walnut #1
I used to think, as I hurried along the county roads of Floyd County to work, that some day, I'd like to start a pictorial study of trees. It would be mostly silhouettes of trees against sky, isolated whenever possible from a lot of background so that form would be primary. I even had a couple of subjects picked out, and toyed with the idea of stopping someday to ask the owner of that old barn on the hill with the ancient apple tree next to it if I could please just come and hang out, watch the light change, pick an hour and a day when conditions said just what I wanted that old apple tree to say. But I was in a hurry, and it was other things more practical than trees that won every time.
And so, maybe this year, this wintertime of bare branches and monochrome, I will start attending the trees again, starting with the walnuts near the house here, realizing how different are the feelings that a stranger feels seeing trees that are merely trees, and what I see, knowing these trees personally. Even that tree in the neighbors pasture, having studied it, learned its particulars, its personality if you will, makes the photograph quite another thing to the photographer. So just indulge me.
September 25, 2003
Got NEDS?
New Economy Depression Syndrome. I don't have it. Much. But it's a wonder that I don't. Let's look at some of my risk factors: socially isolated with few face to face contacts for days; male; spends more than 30 hours on the Internet each week; and I'm a "digital immigrant" ... not native to this landscape, being over the big five-oh having to compete in a novel, technologically demanding world unlike the one that nurtured me. Thats for starters.
NEDS seems to be a dis-ease of our times of "inforuption". I understand it, but thank God, I don't carry a pager, don't have 250 corporate emails a day, don't tote a cell phone, and live in a "love" environment that Yahoo Senior Executive Tim Sanders says is the "killer App" against NEDS. It sounds fuzzy but the man has a well-articulated point and the statistics to back up his arguments. Here's how NEDS is described; see if you see yourself here:
NEDS is a self-reinforcing depression brought on by information overload and frequent interruption leading to an erosion of close personal relationships. Symptoms of NEDS include anxiety, exhaustion, burn-out, difficulty making decisions, irritability, sadness, and sleep disturbances. Tim believed underlying many of these symptoms is information overload. For example information workers scan hundreds of pages of information daily while enduring a constant flow of interruptions from cell phones, blackberries, instant messaging and pagers. At the same time, many people lack quality interaction in relationships. Some of us even email the person in the cubicle next to us instead of walking five feet to ask a question. There are also countless others whose primary communications and contact occurs in cyberspace. This combination of information overload, constant interruption and social isolation can be emotionally and physically devastating.Nevertheless, as an indication that I need to get out more, I'll confess that I heard this interview with Mr. Sanders on Windows Media Player (WebTalkGuys) while multitasking in the middle of a gorgeous autumn afternoon. I rest my case.
Grabbing my Fancy
Start a shoe tree in your neighborhood. (Ours would be sadly bare... too few feet in these here parts. And it would be full of old boots). Thanks for da linkBoynton. Enjoy your spring!
Make Green Goo (wish we had kids as an excuse to concoct this wonderful blob on a rainy saturday!)
I can't stop coming up with captions for this picture. I'll spare you. Make your own. Send them as comments. It just begs for comments, y'all. Keep it clean. This weblog is rated G for grampa (or was it Grumpy?)
One of my favorite pictures of our Head of State. And a well-written article on Bush's Religion by Jim Wallis... a man I've watched walk the talk for twenty years.
My favoritest radio station, WNCW in Spindale, NC... what a great eclectic mix of music. Not kidding. Dar Williams on now... the Babysitter's Here. Great.
Eye Candy for storm watchers like moi. Thanks, Mark.
Stop it! I mean NOW! Stand back from that keyboard. You'll be glad you did. Your wrists will hug you for it.
It's not too late for you to drive away in a 1989 Volvo 740 Turbo Sedan that still has some remnants of leather interior and also a steering wheel. Looks like I'll be driving it for a while til the doc can figure out why my Dakota Truck has coughed up a lung (well, a radiator) for the second time in eight months. The Volvo actually has ample headroom and I actually can sit up straight--if I open the sunroof.
Well that's all til I get some coffee in me and rub me some considerable puppy belly to ease the separation anxieties of a certain mongrel thankfully contained on the other side of the barricade that makes this my room and that one, his. Last night we had the horrible thought, as Tsuga with great difficulty alligator crawled under our bed at lights-out. What if he is growing so fast that in the morning, we'll have to call the Jaws of Life at 911 to get him out! And while on the subject of Hisself, when Ann asked for a daily review of his behavior when she got home from work yesterday, I actually found myself using the words "Tsuga" and "sweet" in the same sentence. Eureka!
I can't promise you I won't add to this list during the day. I have that lean and hungry look and can't be trusted. But you know that.
September 24, 2003
Spaces Between Words
Or, the sound of one lip talking. (link via BoingBoing)...
Hear the "language-free political debate" from California that deletes the meaningless campaign words from the podium and leaves the, er, ums, uhs, uh, and such.
Hey man, I'm loving this DSL. I listened to the wise wordlessness of every one of the candidates there in a mere fraction of the 30 minutes it would have taken on dial-up!
Anybody Lose a Shoe?
There's a lot happening over at the newly spiffed up Proboscis site, and most of this activity involves those squinty eyed bugs called curculionids... Weevils to most of you... and this informative blog originates, if I'm not way wrong here, from the very campus of Weevil State University. Get on over to Proboscis and sign up for a few hours of credit. Possum-related curricula are still open for enrollment.
Carnival a Three Ring Circus
This week's Carnival of the Vanities is up again, and the Fat Lady with the moustache and the Dancing Elephants are in fine form over at Pathetic Earthlings. Get in on the act. But watch your step. The elephants got into the prunes again.
Cidermaking Musicmakers
I don't think the boys would object to me spreading the good word about some good music. I must say it went down especially well with good friends, cold cider and Killian's Red on a crisp September day. The fellas in the picture represent the core of the New Roanoke Jug Band, and brought along the traditional musical jug, several washboards and a kazoo. They'll be playing at Oddfellows in Floyd on October 25 and we'll be going if you want to join us there. Bet ya can't sit still. Below, from Bluegrass Now:
"For some raw, unadulterated old-time music, the New Roanoke Jug Band's "Play It For A Long Time" is the album for you. Inspired by the Roanoke Jug Band's music of the late-1920s, native Virginians Jay Griffin (fiddle, washboard), Scott Baldwin (guitar, banjo, jug, slide guitar), and Andrew Thomas (bass) offer a number of blues, rags, and songs that evoke nostalgic images from the front porches of rural America. With over 78 minutes of music (24 tracks), this album is jam-packed with uncluttered, energetic picking and singing.
Besides tunes from their namesake, the band draws material from such sources as the Carolina Tar Heels, Andrew and Jim Baxter, Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, Hobart Smith, Jimmie Strothers, Frank Stokes, and Clarence Ashley. This album also contains four bonus tracks, recorded by the original Roanoke Jug Band in 1929. For a hot time in the old town tonight, this album will get you singing, toe-tapping, hooting and hollering right along. On "Play It For A Long Time," Baldwin, Griffin and Thomas are ably assisted by six friends (Jim Barnhill, Russ Harbaugh, Kinney Rorrer, Kirk and Lisa Sutphin, and Mac Traynham) on some of the CD's tracks." (review by Joe Ross, staff writer, Bluegrass Now)
Walnut: Nut of the Gods ~ Part One
Somebody once said that the best kind of wood to cut for your wood stove was whatever you've got. We've got tulip poplar; and we've got walnut. We've got lots of walnut, and this year, they're bearing a bumper crop of nuts. Yesterday I watched a little red squirrel hoist one up the maple off the front porch, its silhouette at first puzzling, looking like a hydrocephalic rat on a limb... the nut was three times the size of the head, which I couldn't see for the round, green nut. I understand that the oaks haven't done much in the way of acorns this year, so walnuts will have to take over for our squirrels. We might include some walnut in our diet again this year, too, for that matter.
The nuts, husks and all, fall from three trees that arch over the road down by the barn. The couple of vehicles that come down the road each day run over the nuts that have fallen on the gravel road the night before and dehusk and even break a few of them. And so at first light, I'll stand at the window with a cup of coffee and watch the crows, clever fellows, picking the meats out of shells way harder than they could crack, even with their impressive black bills. The nuts are falling in the yard by the road, too, and every year when I think of fall, it's associated at least once when I almost fall because my foot's come down on a perfectly round hidden walnut underfoot on the slope where I'm mowing the grass under one of the trees. One or more of these trees probably should come out; they're shading the garden, and although the closest is maybe 25 feet or more away, the roots and leaves of walnuts produce juglone that is toxic to many plants and stunts or prevents their growth. The stuff is so toxic that crushed walnut shells were used (among other plants, including our very abundant Poke Sallat) to stun fish.
Walnut is a close relative of butternut and pecan, and all of these nut trees can be useful for dyes used in coloring yarn and also in basket-making to create a brown or gray color. Walnuts will color the hands of a picker as well. Once we lived near some "less fortunate" folk who supplemented their welfare check by collecting, shelling, and selling walnuts. One of the little gals knocked on our door. She'd called first, said she was bringing us something. A while later, there was a knock on the door. I was stunned: the child's arms were a sickly gray-black, fingertips to elbows. This was the first time I'd seen just what a powerful stain comes out of those husks. So, we'll be wearing rubber gloves during the harvest this year.
Juglans nigra or Juglans regia is the scientific name in the US and Europe, respectively. Regia, of course, denotes royalty, and the genus, Juglans, is a contraction of Jovis glans, meaning regal nut of Jupiter. It was believed that only the gods ate walnuts, while us common sorts ate chestnuts and acorns. Interesting to note in the following a possible connection between nuts and manhood:
Walnuts were thrown to Roman wedding guests by the groom to bring good health, to ward off disease and increase fertility. Young boys eagerly scrambled for the tossed walnuts, as the groom's gesture indicated his passage into manhood. In Rome, the walnut was thought to enhance fertility, yet in Romania, a bride would place one roasted walnut in her bodice for every year she wished to remain childless. During the Middle Ages, Europeans believed walnuts would ward off fevers, witchcraft, epileptic fits, the evil eye, and even lightning. The Chinese believe crickets to be a creature of good omen, and would often carry musically-trained crickets in walnut shells covered with intricately-carved patterns.
Well, I've way passed the average blogger attention span with this little woodsy tale, but only half finished, so you'll just have to hold your horses, folks, to see how this Uncle Remus story comes out. Meanwhile, I got to get me one of those cricket thingies. Wonder if I could train the little critter to sing "When You Wish Upon a Star"?
September 23, 2003
I Brake for Toads
The rolling turmoil of green hills has nestled under a soft comforter of down, lying out for miles into the distance, just below the broad gray blanket of cloud. I have seen it many times like this-- the highest point in my trip down Stonewall toward the hiway. It always gives us something. Sometimes we can look out over the little cleft of pastured valley beyond the standing worn-empty farmhouses and see all the way to the Buffalo. At times like tonight though, the view is pressed down to this thin bright sliver between the comforter above and the skin of autumn aging below. Tonight, it was raining. And there was an odd smell coming in my open window. Even though I'd be late for my meeting, I'd better get out and check this out, wetness be damned.
I am a product of cities, an obligate parasite on those who care to ratchet and calibrate and rimfrazzle the dingalongs of car engines. Consequently, I feel a certain unaccustomed manliness on the few occasions I actually pull the latch and lift the hood of my truck. Not that there was anyone close by to be impressed by my handiness, as I stood there gawking into a dirty hood, umbrella in hand (the best mechanics always keep one handy, I'm sure). Ah, I said to nobody, there's the source of my mystery smell: a rather elaborate mouse nest of kleenex and shreds of a rug I didn't recognize (not my vehicles upholstery this time) sitting on the hot engine block. If there was a mouse in there, he was now poached properly for disposal into the bed of the truck along with the other tied plastic bags I didn't take time to toss at the green boxes. Gotta hurry along to my meeting.
It rained so hard we could barely carry on the discussion, and I wondered more with each tireless speaker if I could get home across the low-water bridge with this much rain. It blew across the road in sheets. White-knuckled, I was happy for each mile toward home, especially those without the headlights of folks working just as hard to stay on the road as our headlights blinded each other for that tense close encounter between the white lines edging submerged pavement. The lightning was spectacular, but made me remember I had not shut of the computer before I left. I dreaded the "I told you so" from a certain wife if I lost any portion of my system from this oversight.
There was that smell again, and it couldn't be mouse this time. Whhooomph! came a muffled noise from under the hood, and the temp gauge swung immediately over to HOT just as I should have turned back down the deserted darkness of Stonewall headed home. It was a half mile to the Southern States. Nobody there, but some lights overhead, some shelter from the rain; maybe a phone, maybe some water to fill the radiator? No phone, no water, no signs of life. Think brain think. What would McGiver do here stranded in the middle of our own private hurricane? Ah! A resource: the trash in the back of the truck. Found: a milk carton. Fill it with water running off the roof of the Feed n' Seed. And so after ten minutes of chasing the wind-whipped torrent of roof water, I had a pint... enough to pour into my radiator and hear it spatter immediately onto the blacktop. Okay, McGiver, I'm SOL. Help me here. What would you do?
He would impose on the kindness of strangers. He would stand outside the lighted window, outside the fence, bewaring of the certain large dog that would come out the door after some indeterminate period of arm waving and whistling. Sure enough, after some soggy period of time (by now wet to my skivvies and looking like flotsam from Mr. Crusoe's beach) a young lady came to the door and invited me in to use the phone. Ann was home from her own meeting, having battled the squalls north as I battled them west. After what seemed like hours sitting in my exsanguinated truck fogging up the windows, she arrived. I was so frazzled, in very uncharacteristic fashion, I didn't even insist that I drive. Being a passenger in the car with my wife of thirty-something years is not a familiar experience, and it has lead to a recognition of more major differences between my dearest and me. She does not brake for toads.
September 22, 2003
Come Fly With Me
Time for said rostral portions to come up off the grindstone for a few minutes to play. I'd bookmarked Terrafly weeks ago, for later, 'when I get DSL' because it was painfully slow with dialup. Now it--well-- FLYS! You can move more or less continuously over any given terrain at various degrees of magnification, or altitude, as it were.
I've already learned some things about a couple of places around here, as in one thing in relationship to another, the fact that there are a couple of ponds not far from here that I didn't know about... but then if you know me, it's like Ann says: set me down with a map of Tinbuktu and I'm happy as a pig in mud. (Note: the link will open a 'control' subwindow and a "FlyFrame windows" where the actual images will appear.. may take a few seconds). Fly careful, now, ya hear?
Faster
We just had DSL service connected (not a very fast one, mind you, but f a s t e r than before.) Curiously, I find I feel that I have to type faster, read faster and compose faster. Oh my gah, I hope my fingers were ready for this latest technology. Mayhaps I should get them some little running shoes.
P.S. Please read this quickly and report back to me at once if you see any improvements so I can feel like I'm getting my moneysworth. Hurry!
The Cider Makin'
And the Muse said: Don't make me come down there!
Guess I'd better be shakin' it here, boss. See ya later.
September 21, 2003
Gee Whiz
About 20 miles as the dodo bird flies, due north of Goose Creek, lies this massive Terascale Cluster at Virginia Tech. Think of the recipes you could store on this puppy; and Mindsweeper? It'll blow your hat in the creek.
Food for Thought
I'm still happy with the beta of FeedDemon as a News Aggregator, and find that yes, I do use it every day and moreso as I find RSS feeds that interest me (as opposed to some of the preloaded geeky places the software offers from the git-go... but there are also many sources I've kept from their initial offerings). The field is certainly growing, and there are almost too many aggregators to chose from. I'll see what happens when my free beta expires. The suggested $29 charge will force me to look around some more. But so far, I like what I see.
And oh, for both of you who use them, your News Reader can bring a fresh copy of Fragments right to your door each morning. Fragments RSS Feed here.
The Sound of One Hand Typing
I had the opportunity a few weeks back to read something to a small group of writers that I planned later in the week to read to a larger group of listeners at the little Floyd Writer's Group's first "Spoken Word" night at a local eatery. New to the group, they are still trying to get to know who I am, and what and how I write. Having read the practice piece, one of the group commented that the words had such a nice rhythm in spoken form, did I write the piece to be read?
"Effective writing has the illusion of speech without its bad habits" .I don't know that I've ever written something with reading it aloud as the end purpose. But I can say that if I am really concerned about the feel of the sounds the words make, their order in making my point or desired sensory effect or just plain making sense, I print the piece and read it aloud... mostly last year to Buster; lately to myself as Tsuga has not developed the critic's ear just yet (only the critics's teeth). Chip Scanlon makes just this point in a quote from Don Murray: that it is "the ear, not the eye, that is the final editor". Elsewhere I've seen it suggested that a further refinement in this process is to ask someone else to read it back to you because you will hear things in it... flaws of logic, timing, word combinations... that you will miss if you are both reader and author.
I guess this article grabbed me because I so agree with this relationship between the written and the spoken word. I'll have an opportunity to convert page lines to air waves again this week, recording another little essay for the radio. It may be weeks before it airs. I'll let ya know.
September 20, 2003
Alpha Male ~ Ownership
Today, September 19, 2003, at 1:30 p.m. EDT... at the age of 11 weeks and after five weeks of careful consideration and thorough background checks, Tsuga (Chewga, Shoega, Barricuda, and other aliases apply) has decided to keep the place. We officially signed our property over to him because he gave us no other options. Why 1:30 on this particular day, I do not know... only that at that point, like somebody flipped an internal switch, he was no longer content to just hang out on or near the back porch. It was as if he realized "I belong here; and here; and over there" and his perimeter of confidence expanded across Goose Creek like a supernova. He claimed the branch beside the house, running back and forth in the silty bottom snatching jewelweeds out of the ground, dragging them along behind him like streamers, in a most celebratory fashion. He climbed high on the hill behind the house-- farther than he has ever gone before, even with one of us. And as you see here, Tsuga has lost his suspicions about the moving water, and made sure there was a clause in the agreement giving him water rights.
And, adding no small portion of additional status to a pup already too big for his britches, today Tsuga became a hunter: he stole an already-dead soggy female goldfinch from the cat; and alas, he discovered a Darwinian reject from a litter of chipmunks over on the New Road that had just enough life in it to claim it as a "kill". Actually, he has already discovered the Carcass Redemption Program with which Buster was so familiar. "I give you this very dead groundhog carcass I've been carrying around since catching him over behind the barn, you give me a puppy cookie in exchange". It is a form of canine barter we had best just get used to again.
The dog we brought home five weeks ago could easily walk under the belly of the long-legged dog that stands peeking over the barricade at me in the other room right now. It's rather frightening, really. It brings to mind the childhood images I have of Baby Huey, the gargantuan diapered dimwitted duck. And there are other memories of things getting too big too fast. When I was small, I often heard my mother refer to fast-growing things as "growing like Topsy"; I haven't the foggiest notion the source of this little phrase... perhaps someone can enlighten me, since we will be needing a variety of descriptors to account for Mr. Mushroom here. In our family, we experienced a small boy, our son Nathan, who as all children do, suddenly enlarged like Alice eating the Bigger Pill. Someone commented on how he had grown, to which Nate replied "Yeth! I went out in da garn and growed!" He had heard us so often talk about things growing in the garden, he just assumed that his having been out there amongst the tomotoes and squash and tall corn accounted for his sudden spurt in height. In which case, I'd better turn on electric fence and keep Baby Tsuga out of the garn at all costs!
Previous posts about the struggle to be the Alpha Male around here...
Prickly Tease(L)
Wish I'd snapped this one. Teasel is an old friend, and I remember the first time we met.
Long centuries ago my systematic botany class from Auburn took a field trip to North Georgia to see things you can't see in southern Alabama during a hot summer semester (as everything bakes to clinkers by mid-June, you see). In each car, there was one driver and 3 to 5 botanical rubber-neckers stalking for new specimens to add to our required class collections.
Whoosh! "What was that!?" one of us cried as a tall unknown zoomed past. Screech! Driver slammed on the breaks, and a volunteer (that would be me) jumped out and ran back a few hundred yards along the Georgia secondary highway to fetch the plant for keying. Grabbing it to make a quick getaway, I immediately appreciated the uncuddly nature of the plant. It is covered with short, stout clear spines (as is apparent in this photograph). I let go, quickly. It bites.
I've hoped since early July to get a picture of the teasel patch growing across from the Pilot Post Office; I've seen it every time I've hurried past going somewhere I should have been 15 minutes ago. It is not terribly picturesque and good photographs not easily obtained, requiring just the right lighting to do it justice. I never got the image, so am thankful for this one at North Coast Cafe. I did not know, however, that the little rain-filled basins at the axils of its leaves harbor microcreatures. Some day, when I get the two toys I still really, really need (a microscope and a telescope), I'll go see who lives commensally with my old friend Teasel. Rotifers? Protozoa, certainly. Maybe, oh maybe... Water bears?
September 19, 2003
Harvest Time
... and Buster is not here to help us dig potatoes.
So many things about ol' Buster we took for granted. How he anticipated our plans, cooperated with our tasks without complaint, enjoyed whatever the job of the day happened to be, as long as he was part of it and especially if it involved him getting to ride in the truck... even if it was just to the end of the valley. Tsuga, some day, when he outgrows his baby teeth and baby self-absorption, will be a joy to be around, feel like he belongs, happily be a member of our little family. But Buster was one of a kind, kind and sensitive to a fault. I don't think Tsuga will ever be guilty of being too gentle, more like Tina Turner... he likes to do everything... nice... and rough.
Goulash and Galoshes
By Fridays, my biorhythms are cycled around to the lowish point, and it shows up in the blog. I look at my little notebook of things I could say and it looks like the picked-over carcass of last week's water buffalo. I ought to be content just to keep my mouth shut on Fridays and say nothing at all. But no.
Of course, we survived the night without incident. We had way worse storms this past spring than what Isabel brought us, at least this far west, while a dozen or so people are dead, east, because of the hurricane. I took the dog out at 4:00 when his alarm went off (coincidentally with our electric alarm). I stepped out into humid, warm darkness full of the vapors of African rains spun over and over near the edge of the atmosphere and finally dropped on Goose Creek. There was just enough light that I could the house is basted in wet maple leaves like yellow sequins on a fall dress, our leaves blown in place overnight by alien winds coming from all directions, swirling cyclonic torrents of air. We got a few inches of rain but the creek's roar is tame enough this morning. I can't see how high it is yet, but I'm certain I'll be able to get over it later today in the truck to start working on some of the summer's deadfall. Lord knows I didn't need Isabel to make any more work for me, firewood-wise. Leave it on the stump 'til we need it, please mam.
We had expected this weekend to entertain my good friend Dennis, and his wife and "their" six year old (it's a his and hers family, blended as they say). But sparing me the details, he called yesterday to say only that they just couldn't make it. I could hear the exhaustion in his voice, and I understand. Lives are just so busy and full of obligation and responsibility that by the time it comes to booking your discretionary time, all you can do with it is try to recover before the next wave surges in. Well. Better to travel hopefully, as I say. I had looked forward to some 'face time' with a true friend, in those years we worked together, that knows where I've been, who could come here and see where I am and offer perspective on this so-called life as we know it. And it's just one more sign that old friendships get harder and harder to maintain -- not that more evidence was needed. This friendship, too, is being diluted as the years apart make the waters between us deeper, wider, isolating us from those shared times that get harder and harder to recall. I had thought the weblog would be a way of keeping my life a bit more accessible to old friends like him-- he in particular had requested once that if I ever wrote anything else like (whatever it was I'd written), be sure and tell him. I've written every day for the past 15 months now. I've told him (and others) several times about Fragments, and he's not once visited. I'm disappointed, but my expectations of folks these days are set low enough that I'm hardly surprised.
Last biweekly topic at the Ecotone was "islands and place". I didn't participate because I thought I didn't know anything about islands. But I guess I could have. Sometimes this place seems like a remote and lonely island. Especially on a wet gray morning after a hurricane.
Too Whupped to read?
Then listen! All about bedbugs (coming soon to a interstate motel near you!) and an interview with Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger and called the "the Anne Frank of this war."
September 18, 2003
It's Raining, It's Pouring...
Down in the valley at the house, we hear the angry winds rasping away at the trees on the crests, but unless they are from the south, which is uncommon, there are few unimpeded winds along our little stretch of Goose Creek. It's been raining since 1:00 and the ground is fully saturated by now, I reckon, so what we get between now and daylight will pond up and find its way to the creeks. Ann doesn't have to go in til after noon tomorrow, so we at least won't have to face this mess in the dark in the morning, provided the house weathers the storm without problems, and we trust this will be the case.
Ann and Tsuga just came in looking like drownded rats. The rain freaks the dog... he can't figure out who's flinging the water in his face and he gets mad and growls, then gets the run-around-crazies because it feels so good to him to be wet and cool. Silly mutt. Uhoh... lights are flicking, I'd better get this little update outta here. Hope to be around in the morning.
Nighty night. And don't let the bedbugs bite. Hey. That's a post for tomorrow.
The Big Blow
Time to clean the junk out of the back of the truck so I can haul home a truckbed full of milk and bread. Storm's coming, and everybody knows that human metabolism requires extra allotments of these vital nutrients before a storm (but mysteriously, not during or after). Actually, I mentioned this at the Express Mart last night (while buying these particular items) and the girl at the register says, nah, it's cigarettes and beer that are the hot items. S'anyway, we're fixed for the necessities as Isabel now seems to be veering more east of here, bringing us 45 mph gusts according to the latest guess. But there are still some things that need tending, soon as it gets light.
Got to pull the boards that we've laid down across the creek... our makeshift bridge. Since we almost always wear our 'barn boots' on our pasture walks, the boards are more for getting the mower over the ankle-deep water. By this time tomorrow, the creek could be waist deep... or higher, and the not-inexpensive treated lumber washed downstream, hung up in the middle branches of an alder along Goose Creek.
It's been chilly enough lately that, after this storm passes, we are probably going to need to start our first little fire in the woodstove. For this, the purist needs the perfect twigs. We are a wee bit snobbish about our twigs, especially Ann, who only choses the top grade. Twigging has been a great family hobby for years. And now Tsuga will be oh so much help in this, later this morning, before the rains come in.
Better go over and secure the big barn doors so they don't blow open; put extra ballast on the tarps covering my firewood; pull the truck and Nate's old Volvo up into the drive, just in case the water comes up higher than we've seen it in four years. The lifers from the valley tell of some serious high water down here from hurricanes in past years before we moved here. I've looked at the topo, wondering what path we might take to the road up top of the ridge behind us, should the valley see a hundred-year flood and we have to hike our way out of here.
Now about this old Volvo: could I interest anybody in a 1989 740 Turbo sedan with 165K miles? The car dealerships just laugh at me. I could put a fer sale sign on it out by the garden, and in a month, eight people would see it. Asking $2000 or best offer. Hey, it's Nate's college tuition sitting out there. Maybe I should park it in the creek tonight and hope it gets washed away... worth more dead than alive?
Stay tuned. I'll update this hippy-dippy weather report as the day goes on, as long as we have power. Meanwhile, here's what the radar looks like... we are a stone's throw from the Nexrad tower just up the hill.. the FCX on the map.
This is Your Web
I was telling somebody about this the other day. First saw these aberrant spidery webs illustrated twenty years ago, and they have now resurfaced via a link at Exclamation Mark.
I just have to wonder if I couldn't spin beautiful coherent sentences if it weren't for caffeine, beer and cashews. Sigh.
Cemetery
We lived with a cemetery for a neighbor. It stood on the hill above our first country house. From the gentle crest I once judged you could see three hundred square miles of Virginia valley farmland and the little town five miles east. It was the only cemetery where I knew some of the names on the shiny granite tombstones... the family names were those of our neighbors whose families had lived in this part of the county for more than a century, and here they left their dead. Some of the stones bore the names of people we knew from the little country church-- alive, having outlived a spouse, their name already engraved on the matching headstone, the date left eerily blank.
Cemeteries are places we avoid, but should seek out. We flee from signs of our mortality. We should grapple with them instead, not morbidly, but as a means of reorienting the maps by which we live so that the steps we take in life are guided by the shadow of death. I will fear no evil.
I shouldn't be writing briefly on this matter. There is so much to say, especially in autumn, a season of endings, of turning in, when there is so much dying just outside my door and life goes underground til resurrection begins in January and becomes apparent again in April flowers. But I wanted to share with you a visual cemetery I find remarkably poignant and beautiful.
Don't walk here today if you don't have time to view it contemplatively. Click on each of the tiny crosses and see each season in turn. Be sure you have sound turned on from the very first frame. Regardless of your understanding of death and eternity, you cannot fail but be touched by the photographer's selection of images, his marvelous use of just enough interactive effects, and the wonderful painting of light taken from the beautiful world of the cemetery. Pass it on.
September 17, 2003
Go North, Young Man
Pay a visit to relative blog newcomer North Coast Cafe. Seems a nice place to hang out, with a pleasant ambience and a readerly feel to the site. Don't make the mistake I did and assume it comes from the North of the West Coast. Nah. As in Great Lakes coastal. You can read there of another lost pet, a pointless calamity, poor kitty.
Carnival's First Birthday Edition
And many more.... Go over to BigWig's warren and thank him for conjuring up the first Carnival of the Vanities a year ago, still going stronger than ever. Catch the anniversary edition up today!
Don't Try This at Home
Freshman's nuclear fusion reactor has USU physics faculty in awe.
Okay. I'm emboldened to invent the first WayBack Machine in my barn. Think I'll go back to the Eisenhower years. See you then.
Alpha Male ~ A Hole Month (sic)
An Uneasy Peace: "I dare you to step over that line, said Calvin the cat."
All puppy all the time. Not the blog, mercifully. Just everything else around here, now that we are 'celebrating' our one month anniversary since bringing home Tsuga the Barracuda. He's been with us (24/7) long enough that on first seeing each other in the morning or on the rare occasions I leave (the kennel where we live) and return, there is the joy of hello, follow