Fragments From Floyd

Table With Me

Terry Oglesby of PossumBlog, architect by trade and always one to eschew obfuscation, enjoys new and creative architecture-- even in the so-called language of our day. Read about another noun actionified and coming soon to verbiage near you!

Tick Tockery

Well we may need to move further north to see the aurora (Seth, I think you hold the record for southern observations). But we may need to move above the Artic Circle to get beyond the realm of TICKS! Dang, almost November and this past week has been the worst week for these weensy bloodsuckers we've had all season. There had been dog ticks around every spring and fall; they are slow and relatively large, easy to see, slow to start feeding. They bothered Buster quite a bit, and being black, we couldn't detect them until they were engorged and lumpy. With Tsuga being a yellow lab, we thought it would be easier. But now for some reason, we have "seed ticks" (sp unknown) that are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. And quick to set up housekeeping.

The PreventTic collar (a hefty $17) hopefully will do its work. Matter of fact, Ann and I are thinking about giving each other one of these as stocking stuffers this Christmas. I think a rugged leather tick collar might be sort of macho; a slender pink one for the missus. Whaddaya think?

Poisoned Hemlock

"We walk this land every day; but more often than not, it is in the pauses that I've come to know these hills best. This morning, sitting under the dying eastern hemlocks where the creek gorge narrows, I struggled to accept the passing of these trees, this species, forever. I'm grieved by the sight of the few that remain barely alive, gray and gaunt, with boney arms uplifted frozen in a final unanswered prayer. Tiny bracket fungi have already begun to colonize crevices in the listless bark, a step ahead of death."

This is truly a "tragedy in the making". I've mentioned this forest disaster a few times here in Fragments over the past year. A few of you understand, most folks do not. Could not. If you don't live among them, they are merely anonymous trees. When you see them out your window every day, they are neighbors. Friends. And they are dying in their boots, standing drained of their sap-blood, anemic and losing whatever it is that a plant knows as consciousness. Soon they will have no life left.

A particularly well-told eulogy is told by Elizabeth Hunter in this piece called "Coming Soon to a Hemlock Near You".

Elizabeth will be leading the Nature Writing workshop I am attending next week at the Campbell Folk School. We have exchanged several emails and I feel certain she and I will share some sad conversation about the passing of the hemlocks. But mostly, I look forward to infectious enthusiasms and passions and exuberance among my "classmates" in the beauties and wonders that survive in these magnificent forests we call home. I expect to be among kindred spirits for a whole week, and I can't tell you how affirming it will be to find I'm not alone in my eccentricities! The Folk School week may be the next best thing to having my Fragments Friends come down for a week-end camp out on the creek! Hmmmm. Now there's an idea!

Op-edited: A Cautionary Tale

"You need to start sending more of your writing locally, like to the hometown newspaper, to increase your visibility as a writer, maybe meet some more folks with your writing interests".

This I have been told by more than a few well-wishing, forward thinking friends and coaches. They say these things with my best interest in mind, and I know there is some truth in what they say.

So, after polishing up a piece from a few months back that I thought would have rather wide reader interest, I emailed it to the local press and asked, if there was space, would they please print it. When the weekly paper came in the mail yesterday, I eagerly turned straight to page two to find the editorials.

And there was my essay. Correction. There was two-thirds of my essay. I looked frantically for the next column that would bring my thoughts and words to closure as I had so carefully crafted them. I expleted loudly (hey I don't care if that's not a word. It ought to be.)! Someone had amputated my creation in mid-paragraph. To the resulting stump, a staff writer's shave and a haircut abrupt end had strange and illogical words coming out of my mouth.

Dwarfed and truncated, it would seem that the afflicted writer must have had an acute episode of hemorrhagic aphasia there in mid-sentence. Maybe the piece was found on the unfortunate chap's desk as they wheeled him off to the home. Poor fellow.

And so much for proclaiming my presence as an area writer. I wish I'd used a pseudonym. But then, Fred First couldn't be anybody's real name, could it?

Being There

Chris Corrigan on Bowen Island near Vancouver caught the Northern Lights last night. And so, our son, Nathan, saw them too, maybe from the shoreline of Vancouver near his dorm. That he saw this wonder is the next best thing to my unfulfilled and remote hope that we might see the aurora last night, even this far south, during this solar surge. Nathan has seen the Northern Lights. That he is having good life experience, putting down lasting memories for later years is satisfying and comforting to know, even if he is so far away from home.

This time last week, Nate and Chris actually met for the first time and had a quick cup of coffee and some good words there on Bowen Island, three thousand miles from here.

I've never met Chris, but feel that I know him through his weblog and his close affinity to place, his love of the details in the ordinary around him. He has befriended me, a stranger, by helping to welcome our son to new surroundings, to be a neighbor-- someone with some 'family' connections, an ambassador from Nate's new homeland. Several weeks ago, another blog-reader, Lisa, welcomed our son into her home there in BC-- a friend of a blogger friend extending hospitality to Nate because of the bonds arising from mere words on these pages. In loco parentis.

I'm thankful for this medium that brings me into your study or office or den. It also brings me to a quiet place in the far northwest, sitting under the magnificence of Truth revealed by the magnetic storm we call the Northern Lights that I may never see, but my son has seen them, and he is among friends.

Jots and Tittles

This really seems to work to hide your email address (posted on your webpage, for instance) from spambots. Thanks for the link to Philip Cartland (Flotsam) who has a snazzy new front end to his site. Go see!

Maybe you already know this: In Google, you can type in define: followed by a space, then a word or abbreviation... like DSL, RSS, DVD, etc... and it will give you an instant page of definitions. Quick and simple.

PublicRadioFan.com will give you the offerings of a scad of Public Radio stations for whatever time period you access their site, with click-throughs to their Real Audio, Windows Media or other real-time broadcasts. Pretty snazzy, huh?

Wild Kingdom

It was odd but comforting to have someone but me here during the day. Even odder, Ann was upstairs humming to herself as the much-neglected Singer whirred intermittently as she repaired my favorite jacket for my trip next week.

"Ah! Fred! Look out the front window" she called down from her perch.

Through the knee-high pasture grass, fifteen turkeys (or rather turkey heads) undulated through the field in their odd stop-start head-bobbing fashion. They moved methodically, kicking in the soft soil for the last of the insects not hibernating for winter, fifteen reptilian birds moving east in a cooperative phalanx flushing out a meal. I ran up the steps to get Ann's better view, grabbing my binocs on the way up.

There is nothing about a turkey I haven't seen. I can't say what was so exciting about this sighting. Maybe because it was unexpected and that we had been suddenly privy to the orderliness and intracacy of a nature that goes on without us. There is beauty and blessing in that providence.

While I watched the turkeys disappear into the pines along Nameless Creek, a blur flashed by out of the corner of my eye-- a squirrel leaping through the tall grass. It sure looked like it might be a fox squirrel. I've tried since late August to get a good view of one. Yep. Tail as long as the gray body, russet belly, white blaze on the large head. I watched him until I couldn't hold the binoculars to my eyes any longer.

Life is good.

Oh Please!

Northern Lights. Tonight. Outside. I've never seen the aurora borealis. Could happen tonight. Oh please!

New Ground

Next week I will be at the John. C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. Brasstown gives the lie to those who think that North Carolina ends at Charlotte. Almost in Georgia, almost as close to Tennessee, that region is not totally unfamiliar to me. We lived in Sylva for two years, but even there an hour west of Asheville, we were almost two hours east of Brasstown. You can get there from here, but only if you take the byways not generally taken, and that's okay by me.

Campbell is one of the remaining Appalachian "Settlement Schools" that began forming in the late 1800s' at time when there was widespread poverty there. I've read that, had the Civil War not started when it did, Lincoln had already agreed to a mass relocation program to move 'backwards' folks out of the uncivilized hills and hollers.

The Appalachians had not assimilated America's culture. This was disturbing to the growing number of newly-college-educated ladies of the day. They saw the unmet needs of southern mountain communities and set out to elevate the "needy" by educating them in proper manners, dance and music and language, and by organizing groups to produce traditional products--- especially items useful in everyday self-sufficient daily life: quilts, jugs and crocks, household items carved from wood. The farflung loosely-organized communities needed churches, schools, and health care.

Not everyone took kindly to these "interveners" as they were called, and their wide ranging effect on local community and tradition was not entirely positive. Still, the impact of settlement schools on local economies and communities are still felt even today. Some -- like Hindman in Kentucky and Campbell-- continue as creative centers.

Here's a good overview of the Folk School. I've never been. I only know what I read. I will soon know much, much more. Stay tuned.

Honing In

Thanks to the ever-vigilant aesthetic eye of Numenius out on the Left Coast, my artsy and antsy sides are coming closer and closer together. I think maybe this might be a creative outlet I could cheerfully pursue from the hinterlands here. The dog could certainly help me find my creative agents as hardly a day goes by that he doesn't offer us a source he's found in the nearby woods... an inexhaustible resource of art supplies.

I can see it now: Fred First, Grampa Moses of Maggot Art.

Aesthetic Appetites

"I'll not bother grabbing the camera" I thought as Tsuga the Barricuda tugged at my pantsleg, ready for a romp down the grassy road along the pasture. It was a bit overcast and blustery, after all, and not the best lighting anyway. We would stalk squirrels and pretend-hunt-- maybe scare up that flock of turkeys we flushed yesterday afternoon. I need not be a slave to the camera.

But, as they say__ As Fate Would Have it__ there on the side of the path lay an exquisitely composed image of rain beaded up in perfect crystal symmetry on a fallen Fraser Magnolia leaf. This is one of my favorite leaves of all times under any circumstance or lighting-- its color the richest of deep red-browns, a foot in length with prominent feather-pennate veins off the heavy central petiole. But this one... ah, this one could not have been placed in any better light if it had been brought into a studio. It was the archetype of fall beauty sequined in dewdrops.

The dog noticed my rapt attention to this wonder. He licked off the water and ate the leaf.

Surely there's a life lesson in here somewhere.

Life Beyond the Underpass

I think about it every single day. When I'm in the shower. The fact that standing there under that wonderfully warm water, luxuriating in a moment of hygenic bliss in a heated bathroom with thick towels waiting... I am among the very smallest fraction of mankind who has ever known this kind of indulgence that I take so for granted. Literally billions on earth now will never take a single warm shower.

I think of the fine line that lies between having and not having access to daily bread, showers, clean clothes. We dismiss these things as givens.

Here are some folks that, for one reason or another, live on the streets. But they're taking their lives and dignity back. I will think about them the next time the steam fills the small, clean room and I go ho-hum about my ordinary boring comfortable safe belly-ful day. link via PathToFreedom

Pre-emption

This morning's posts have been delayed by the unfortunate circumstances of getting actual work done. I'll try to never let it happen again.

What most of you don't know is that I have an honorary Doctor of Pharmacy Degree conferred by the good Doctor herself, granted in return for taking a shoebox full of highly technical medical terms, assorted would-be tables, columns and bullets (indicated by countless tab-tab-tabs and space-space characters) and turning the whole mess into a logically laid-out presentation, paper or policy. We're talking hundreds of these over the past half-dozen years. She can earn an advanced professional degree but she can't remember how to center text. I dunno.

This, just to let you know I have this important credential to keep current, and occasionally I am called away from more important blogging matters to revise a policy going before the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee on Vitamin K administration or other trivia. Type, type, type. I try not to think of myself as just another secretary with good legs, more than just another pretty face. I earn my keep around here. And I make a darn fine pot of coffee too.

Crime Scene Insects

Lee Goff is a Forensic Entomologist. His business card reads: "Know maggots, will travel." It depicts a little worm staring through a detective's magnifying glass.

Cha-chingg! I think I've found my next profession! Whaddaya think?

And where can we go on field trips when I go back to school as a maggot specialist? Why, the Body Farm of course! And how perfect for Halloween! I'm trying to imagine what folks who work here tell people they do for a living.

Sorry. So as to put my little friends, the insects, back in a better light... by all means go see Butterflies as Art. Now seriously: this photographer has created some kind of wonderful niche in the working world, don't you think? To travel around the world to photograph the "M" in a moth wing.

The Agony of Going

TravelerTrish says that with all my dyscombobulation about being gone next week, I may just have About-to-Leave-itis. She is the Frequent Flyer. She should know.

Writing Toward Home

Empty Emails. Or Not?

Okay. What is the deal now. And am I the only one-- getting emails from fictious senders with plausible sounding names who send an email in which there is no content and the subject is a random assortment of 10 or so letters? I've had a dozen in the past two days and this is getting old!

Should we suspect that somebody is testing our email address validity with a spam bomb to come our way at some future date? Postini does not catch these and I don't know how it could.

I right click these messages and shift-delete them. But I still have this uneasy feeling the deleted messages are even now gathering in some dark corner of my hard drive, donning their camoflage and blackening their wicked faces and assembling strange-looking weapons, soon to swim through my *.doc files looking for something to eat.

What are you doing about these mystery emails? Should we do anything other than delete them immediately? Should I alert my nearest T.I.P. snitch?

Ho Ho No!

It's almost November and I have SantaClaustrophobia again. October and December are closing in on me from both sides and it's time to Xmas shop or be damned. And for certain if past years tell the tale, I'll just be damned because -- I don't know about the rest of you guys-- I break out in prickly heat just thinking about wandering around a shopping mall looking for panty hose or potpourri. And I'm not much more at ease with the idea of thumbing through the catalogs from Crap And Barrel, Plow and Horse or Shopper Image. I have this mercifully short Christmas list of names followed by dashes followed by-- empty spaces. I'm not cheap, I'm practical. Frugal Fred. For the life of me I can't force myself to force on any of my would-be giftees a present just for the sake of giving it. And so from now until the week before Giftmas I'll wallow in guilt and dread. At the last possible minute I'll succumb to the Grinchy spirit and become an unhappily Malled American Consumer in the Blessed Season of Spending.

Not to worry. I'll deal with the Extrinsic Gift List closer to the 11th hour. The In-house list is easier to manage. It works like this: Ann makes her own personal list and orders what she wants (to be honest, it's mostly things she absolutely needs.) In September when the UPS man brings her gift, she wraps it up in pretty paper with her name on it (from me or from Santa). On Christmas morning she is "surprised" and exclaims as she upwraps it -- "Look what a thoughtful and perfectly chosen gift you got me this year! I couldn't have gotten anything better if I bought it myself!" and I see my choice for the first time. I am such a wise and caring husband, don't you think? And we never have any returns.

As a gift receiver, I am not much help and cannot tell would-be gifters a single thing I need-- or want, for that matter. Except for this year. There is this one thing I saw just yesterday at a friend's house and I was overtaken by a tsunami of covetousness: Here it is. For those who won't click to see, it's a Wirelss 433MHz In/outdoor Min-max Thermometer with Built-in Atomic Clock Alarm.

No, I'm not kidding.

But then I am a closet meteorologist. "In my next life" as I am fond of saying, "I'm going to be a weatherman." Weather is real, it's relevant and it's darn near everywhere. Given a choice when I'd hold the TV clicker, my kids would groan because I'd go straight to the Weather Channel. It was the only authentic and consequential thing on TV back then, and if this was true ten years ago... A hundred channels and I watch weather. But is it any wonder? Is this so strange? (A rhetorical question so hush.)

Weather is the breath of this remarkable planet, powering and impacting human lives in unfathomable ways. The great mixing machine of weather is part of what makes this Blue Orb livable. That the planet conveniently is also tipped on its axis first pointing one hemisphere toward the sun for six months and then the other means we all take our turn getting a bit too much or a bit too little sun energy to suit our nekkid hides. And the thin skin where weather happens (that we call the atmosphere) cooperates by filtering out the excess of bad rays that would make life unlivable but for the simplest organisms living underground and deep in the lakes and seas. It is a wonder to me how it all works together. The movement and infinite permutations of air masses the size of continents is the best show going. I am suspicious of those who aren't fascinated by weather in the same way that I don't quite trust people who don't like dogs or cats. There's something just a little cockeyed about'em, y'know what I mean?

So. You needn't ask me what I got for Christmas this year because I can already tell you: some nifty new underwear and a ramfrazzle superdooper thermometer that is my desktop connection to the Greatest Show on Earth-- that I wrapped myself.

Caught Me With My Posts Down

Nada. I got nothin. I don't seem to be able to focus on my thoughts and words this morning. Maybe it's daylight savings demise and the fact that the dog is still on the old time--he got us up at quarter til 3, EST... right on time by his clock at the old quarter til 4.

But it's more than that. I'm just distracted by the fact that a week from today I'll need to have an act in gear that is distinctly spinning in neutral at this moment. A week from today, my truck will contain everything I need to write, hike, photograph, play music, stay reasonably clean and clothed, sleep, read and so on and so forth. I'll have more to say about where I'm going and what I'll be doing there-- although honestly I don't really know exactly what I'll be doing there.

Seemed like a good idea to sign up for something like this back in the summer when I was full of enthusiasm after the Highland Conference on Appalachian Writing and Writers. I determined to be involved with another meeting of that inspirational sort again, and found this workshop in November. "Sure, go on, I'll be fine" said Ann.

She didn't care that the woodstove would have to be tended every day before work and she'd be scraping ice off her car in the dark. At that time, we didn't know we would be bringing up a puppy and that the time he would have to spend alone inside in my November absence would push his bladder tolerance to the max. She will have to feed and walk Tsuga a hour before daylight while I am away.

So. This week I will be distracted with this glorified camping trip I'll be embarking on. And the following week I'll be blogging intermittently (I hope) from the nearby community college library. It may be a little chaotic around Fragments for a while. I'm feeling both guilty and excited about my trip but more than a little unsettled and scattered in the current moment. Maybe later today the fog will clear. And maybe a nap will help. Already been up three hours and it's not even six o'clock (that's five o'clock dog daylight savings time.)

AMENDMENDED: Okay you knuckleheads! Guess you're letting me know what a poor job I did in my chronlogy of events in the post above. This week I'm just distracted about my trip. NEXT WEEK I'll be actually gone from home. Don't turn off the Fragments Channel quite yet. 'kay? And by all means, you'll hear about it. I'd love to be able to blog from the place, but don't think that's going to work out. Rustic and DSL just don't go together. Unless you live on Goose Creek. :-}

Kill to Live

If I had to, could I kill in order to eat? Should I, again this year, set out with a gun on my shoulder pretending that, if I don't kill, we will not eat? Shall I pretend to find any satisfaction in the taking of the life of a squirrel, for gosh sakes! a glorified tree-climbing rodent that makes more gravy than meat? I dunno. This I pondered as I watched the tiniest of squirrels-- our Mountain Boomers or Red Squirrel-- in the walnut tree by the garden yesterday.

Late in the afternoon, backlit against the low sun, the dazzling outline of an arboreal acrobat ran sprints to the end of every branch holding one last walnut. Too big to carry back the way he had come, a little squirrel paw reached out and lightly tapped the walnut-- three times as large as the creature's head-- sending the blackened lump falling kerplopp! to the gravel road below. There, passing vehicles will cooperate in the gathering of winter's larder by not only dehusking but cracking the kernel as well. Ingenious, I thought, and for this cleverness you shall live. And I took my make-believe gun and walked up the New Road toward the head of the valley.

More squirrels everywhere! Gray squirrels fat and meaty and naive of predatory hunters who view them across their gun sights, there, sitting on a pine stump, turning a nut in their dextrous little paws like corn on the cob, unafraid. And then a fox squirrel-- the largest North American squirrel-- stopped in the grassy road ahead of me lifted himself up on his haunches with that elegant tail curving up his back to the top of his head, mocking me. My crosshairs were only mental, and he knew this. I've always wanted to get close enough to get a really good look at the secretive fox squirrel, but I do not want to hold a dead one in my hands.

Bow season started several weeks ago. Rifle season for deer starts in mid-November, and in our county, it will run for two additional weeks this year, either sex legal all season. Deer, lacking any natural predators, are ruining gardens and orchards and sending auto insurance rates here soaring. And so I will have my hunting seasonal dilemma again this year. There is enough meat on a deer to make a lot of meals of low fat protein. They are a nuisance and their numbers need thinning. And I could sit at my desk and shoot one over by the barn without getting out of my computer chair.

But, I am not a hunter. Not that kind.

Solitary. Solo Tarry

"During the last few weeks I have been thinking lots about the solitary life. Or as I like to call it ‘the solo tarrying life.’ For many people the idea of a solitary life means being alone, bereft in some way or conversely living life on some higher plain as mystic or holy person. Well, neither is what I think of when I consider my solo tarrying life" explains the articulate solo writer at AnimatedStardust.

I struggle also with the blessings and bane of solitude and aloneness.

Here's a full page (enlarge the font for gosh sake!) of "resources and reflections on hermits and solitude" to consider.

Search Inside the Book

"Let's say that you're interested in finding books about "rocket experiments." Just as you do today, type "rocket experiments" into our search box and click the GO! button. You'll get a list of the books that contain that term in the author's name, the book's title, or in the book's text. Books participating in our Search Inside the Book feature with "rocket experiments" in their text will show an excerpt with your search term highlighted. To see all references to "rocket experiments" within a particular book, click the "See more reference to 'rocket experiments' in this book" link. From Amazon, of course.

Ten Mistakes Writers Make

Been there. Made those.

And while we're talking language and its use/misuse, go through the first page of "Tense Present" in this Harpers article. See yourself there? The second page begins a tale of lexicographic intrigue...

"Did you know that probing the seamy underbelly of U.S. lexicography reveals ideological strife and controversy and intrigue and nastiness and fervor on a nearly hanging-chad scale? For instance, did you know that some modern dictionaries are notoriously liberal and others notoriously conservative, and that certain conservative dictionaries were actually conceived and designed as corrective responses to the "corruption" and "permissiveness" of certain liberal dictionaries? That the oligarchic device of having a special "Distinguished Usage Panel ... of outstanding professional speakers and writers" is an attempted compromise between the forces of egalitarianism and traditionalism in English, but that most linguistic liberals dismiss the Usage Panel as mere sham-populism? Did you know that U.S. lexicography even had a seamy underbelly?

Go today and hug a Grammar Nazi ora SNOOT, a Usage Nerd, Syntax Snob, or Language Policeperson out there in your blog readership. If you're not sure how to recognize one, don't know who they are and what they stand for and why, then by all means... read this article!

Flotsam

"Where I’m from we have a reputation for professional hunters and wildlife experts, movie stars and eccentrics, tycoons, empire builders, adventurers, aid workers, researchers, hard working farmers and writers... I am none of these. Even though I write these words, I remind myself that I would be lying to claim myself as a writer until the day my pen makes a living for me."

So writes Phillip Cortland in his "Introduction". Where he is from, however, or coming from, is not an easy thing to say. Kenya. Prague. London. From my brief visits to Flotsam after a friend's referral yesterday, it seems Phillip is from a number of places and writes and will write from more than a single frame of reference... on Alfred Russell Wallace, on the Bounty's crew, on the keeping of servants. And that he will write more in future also seems certain, as he is hoping to shift his focus to words and perhaps turn them into a book some day.

Go visit. Bookmark. Watch.

Friday Flashback: Hope Has Wings

There are very few things in life that are predictable. And this is why I mark my life by the tiny immutable boxes of the calendar. That there will be other Octobers in my lifetime is likely. That Octobers will go on and on when I am gone is certain. The calendar is a weaver's loom that holds our months and years, but we may never look back at it to see the pattern our lives create. So many busy friends could not tell you what they were doing last October, or five Octobers past.

You will have to indulge me my frequent returns to a history that is written now on a calendar year and also on a writing year. In returning to last year's October, the pattern in the tapestry begins to show, themes and rhythms become audible to my inner listener. The year's outbreathing into winter is not an end but another turn of the cycle going back, going forward in one soul's short sojourn.

I read "Hope Has Wings" to a writer friend a while back, and when I was finished it puzzled me why, of everything I've written during the past year, this and a few about the dog's death were in the third person. "That's curious" I said. "Wonder why I that wrote from that perspective?"

And my friend, a wise man and writer by trade, said "because you needed the distance from your subject. It was too painful to put yourself directly into the writing and the third person gave you some distance from something that was very difficult to write about."

And so this retrospective look at last October 23 and from that vantage point to this month in 1997 is a personal reflection over our calendar of life, saccharine perhaps, not stellar writing but dense with memory for me. And today, when Ann gets home, if my back is up to it, we will walk to the top of the ridge and remember how we got here. It is recorded in last year's Hope Has Wings.

The photography, too, becomes a way of mapping the journey. Two images from the steep hillside behind the house are here: Storm Home and From a High Place.

Fly United

Wide-eyed observation brought Kees Moeliker, of the Rotterdam Nature Museum, the Ig Nobel biology prize. Birds began colliding with the museum's new glass-walled wing as soon as it was built in 1995. But an unusually loud thud one day sent Moeliker dashing to investigate.

He found a dead duck on the ground, and a male mallard standing nearby. He then watched in amazement as the unhurt mallard mounted the dead bird and mated with the corpse for over an hour, stopping only when Moeliker interrupted it. He summed up the incident as "The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard" duck in the journal Deinsea (vol 8, p 243). NewScientist

Technorati Trashed

And now this. Anybody got a fix to prevent porn sites registering links in Technorati? Sheesh!

Come Into My Parlor

I was planning to save this final (?) webby picture until the week before H'ween but think I'll go ahead and pin it up now. I've been using the full size image as a desktop for a week, and it always makes me grin. Three different spiders (only one visible) and three strikingly different webs caught in dramatic lighting: Miracle Number One. But what the photo doesn't show and only the photographer knows is Miracle Number Two: this shot was physically almost impossible to get. Only after I came back to the house and looked at that morning's iamges (that also included the "Emphemera" web posted a few days ago) did I know that I'd captured a useable composition I was happy with.

What could be so hard about taking a picture of a spider web, you ask?

Had you driven down our gravel road at about 9:30 that morning, this is what you would have seen: A man (grizzled and frumpy, about some odd task to be sure, obviously hastily clad in ill-matched slightly-ripped flanel shirt and week-old work chinos, black rubber boots, and camoflage GoreTex cap.) The man was standing in such a way that one booted foot kept slipping back into the creek, the other attempted to hold him midway up the steep bank below the dewy pasture where the sun was just flooding the valley with golden light. The man appeared to have both hands fully occupied with his odd employment: with his left he held a small compact black box unsteadily below his face while with his right hand, he held his cap out at an awkward reach as if to give it to an invisible partner (trying to minimize lens flare, of course) flailing it wildly as he slipped from time to time back into the creek.

I couldn't see through the view finder because of the dazzling sun. I couldn't both hold my cap to block the sun and hold my position on the bank. And with all this, a steady press of the lens was just not possible. I had no idea which, if any, of the webs was in focus or even in the frame! And so, this picture of three webs... like most of my images, has a story behind the composition that burns that moment, that day, that feeling of wet grass and discovery and brilliant threads into memory. And that is why I get such a kick from photography!

See other Spider Web Images from October:

Ephemera; Truth Plain and Simple; and Lost in Space

I Like To Have Written

Here's another wonderful quote from William Zinsser (On Writing Well):

"Learn to enjoy the tidying process. I don't like to write. I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity. I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to strengthen the transition between one sentence and another. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line. With every small refinement I feel that I'm coming nearer to where I would like to arrive, and when I finally get there I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that won the game."

So, dear bloggers: when you issue a post to your weblog, what's the process-- before and after?

Before you post: Do you keep notes on a scrap of paper and amend it often during the day while you mull over just exactly the right points, perfect phrases, and organization to use? Do you sit down the night before and rough it in, preview it just for the aesthetics of the post on the page, research your topic and collect your sources?

And especially, after you have written: Do you read your post to yourself at least twice? Do you read it aloud to yourself or some unfortunate listener-victim? Do you spellcheck (blush)? Do you ever scrap the post entirely because it is not full-grown or seriously disfigured in the gestation process? Do you enjoy having written but dread the rewrites?

These of course are rhetorical questions, as most blog questions are, because we are all so busy thinking about what we will tell our wonderful readers next that we don't have time for silly questions. And of course we are busy with our hours and hours of rewriting. Aren't we? Don't answer that.

A Thousand Uninvited Guests

Got any people you would wish to have a really bad day? Maybe some snooty types in your neighborhood having a dinner party alfresco this weekend? Want to give them a night they'll never forget? Watch this 30-second movie at Insect Journal (no extra software needed) and see if this swirling cloud of insects might be just the ticket! It's probably available via one of the twenty catalogs you got in the mail just yesterday. Order today while supplies last!

Backward, Christian Soldiers

Many are not happy with General William Boykin's recent Christian jihad language. Many of those who are alarmed are Christians like Sojourner's Jim Wallace...

..."General, your theology bears no resemblance to biblical teaching. You utterly confuse the body of Christ with the American nation. The kingdom of God doesn't endorse the principalities and powers of nation-states, armies, and the ideologies of empire; but rather calls them all into question. You even miss the third verse of "Onward Christian Soldiers," which reminds us, "Crowns and thrones may perish, Kingdoms rise and wane, But the Church of Jesus, constant will remain." And let's not misinterpret the famous first verse, "Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before." The cross, General, not the Special Forces. ... "more

Word of Gratitude

Just a quick Thank You note to Fragments readers, commenters, lurkers and friends (you may belong in more than one of these categories simultaneously!)

Back in July, Bigwig at Silflay Hraka-- one of the heavier hitters in the blogworld by all measures-- did me the mixed blessing of including Fragments in his analysis of blog readership. In that little study he multiplied number of visitors by the average visit length to get "reader-time-per-day". Fragments, a very small fry to even be included in this unofficial study, showed a paltry 1.5 hours compared to 526 hours a day for Instapundit, 79 for Amish Tech Support. Tra la.

Against those readerships, my current six hours of reader-time a day seems pretty weeny. But I would rather hang around a smallish group of folks as nice as you than have a thousand anonymous clickity-clicks. I'm honored that you come around at all and you're not taken for granted. I look forward to meeting more of you, online and in person, as more people open up their thoughts and creativity and dreams to new friends from across the world. And good night, Mrs. Calabash, where ever you are.

Please BookMark

Not just a link. Too much stuff here to just click through. This site is more a portal than a weblog and will lead to great destinations for those of us who are simple-minded. Not stoopid. Simplicity minded.

The Path to Freedom is an off-the-grid organic permaculture DIY resource base you'll want to bookmark like I have. Maintained by 'urban homesteaders', these are the folks that are walking the walk that so many of us just talk about.

You DO know how to bookmark, don't you?

Until I Met a Man That Had No Feet

Stephen Hawking lectures at Cal Tech from an email published at BoingBoing

...One of the most brilliant minds alive on the planet today, he is cruelly trapped within a useless body, which slumps like an understuffed and oversized rag doll in his large and gadget-filled wheelchair.

In a smart grey suit and white shirt with fine blue stripes unbuttoned at the collar, he was smartly dressed, with a mop top-type short haircut that made him look like an escapee from Quadraphenia.

Yet his movement is minimal. He blinks his eyes, his right knee vibrates up and down with an involuntary tremor, and only the slow rise and fall of his stomach indicates that he is still alive.

[...]Once, early on in the lecture, his head slumped forward like a broken doll, and an aide had to walk on stage to readjust his body: an undignified moment as Hawking's head was manhandled and repositioned, and then his whole body picked up and put down, as if the aide was plumping up a particularly large and unwieldy pillow.

It was simultaneously eerie and inspiring: to know that within this frail, almost lifeless carcass, there hummed the thrilling genius of the mind that produced A Short History of Time, and The Universe in a Nutshell, and some of the most seminal work on black holes.

(... and I'm whining because of a little back pain. What are you whining about today?)

Fragments Senior Moment

I built up the suspense as we approached the Puppy Reunion on October 11, expecting a whiz-bang post with pictures of Tsuga and his siblings in all sorts of antics. Didn't happen, exactly. I wrote the story, but then forgot to post it. And so, here is the old news, and those interested can read on...

How the brothers and sisters had turned out in their various homes, and the differences in size and color and temperament; tales of horror and humor from the first six weeks of puppyhood; helpful hints about how to prevent digging, nipping, and general disobedience in young yellow lab puppies... these were some of the things I looked forward to learning from those who would bring Tsuga's littermates back to the Puppy Reunion yesterday. And of course, the pictures would be wonderful... little boy and girl doggies frolicking together fighting over a tennis ball; one puppy up to his knees in the cooler of water the dogs were supposed to drink out of; pups and owners lined up in blurred haphazard order with one pup halfway out of the picture as the shutter snapped. I could imagine it all and hardly wait to post pictures today!

'Tis better to travel hopefully than to arrive, it is said, and such was the case at the puppy reunion. Only one came. There were lots of neighbors and church and work friends of the hosts where the yellow lab litter was born on June 26, and what I guess I had misunderstood was that the party was for them, and the puppy owners were also invited to come. I had thought it was for the purpose of bringing the pups back, and some neighbors were also invited. Ah well. The barbeque was very good, but I would not have spent two hours in the car with a barbarically yowping dog if I'd known Tsuga was going to be an only child.

I'll have to say, the pupster behaved rather admirably. He was so overwhelmed by all the strange smells and other adult dogs. This included meeting his mother who paid him scant attention and his 'aunt' who is now in a family way and scared him considerably when she snarled at him when he showed a bit too much enthusiasm at their first encounter. We put him on the leash and choke chain to contain him rather than letting him run under people's feet and steal their fried chicken and jump gleefully on tiny terrified children. The few times we've tried the leash around home it has been very much like marlin fishing, with Tsuga thrashing, lunging and leaping against the line, and me, the old man and the sea, trying to stay in the boat. But yesterday the little guy was so intimidated by the unfamiliar that he tended to ignore the leash and even heeled for the most part when we attempted to walk around. Good boy, Tsuga! You might grow up to be the pick of the litter after all, and it's just a shame your siblings didn't get a chance to marvel at your mature behavior and sturdy features. Maybe next time.

Changing of the Guard

Crepuscular: at twilight. Adjective describing animals who become active at this time of day.

Just when we humans are starting to wind down, go inside for the night, thinking about how good it's going to feel on these cooler nights to pull the covers up to our chins, there are other creatures who make good use of the nocturnal side of the human day-- lives lived while we dream.

First come the birds that feed overhead only as shadows lengthen late in the day: chimney swifts and nighthawks sweep the air with wide open mouths, scooping up invisible insects that rise like a cloud in the late-day thermals. Later will come the mammals that exploit the same in-flight feeding niche-- the bats -- that we see mostly as shadows against the sky, black against deep indigo, irratically finding beetles and midges and moths by sonar. And last night, just before we reached the barn coming home from our walk at quarter til dark, a screech owl trilled from the edge of the woods, invisible. Deer snorted and huffed indignantly as if to tell us we were infringing on their shifts, go indoors, and give them their due share of solitude and sky.

With the shorter days, the nights are beginning to chill and there will soon be no insects at dusk, and those that feed on them will move on to find other work to the south. The deer will hide from hunters back in the steepest woods; and the owls will own the crepuscular day until spring comes.

Little Things

• Cracked walnuts in a coffee can sat there next to my breakfast fixin's this morning as the Bran Flakes and granola filled the bowl. What th' heck, I thought, and picked a tablespoonful of nutmeats free from their rocky craniums. I don't think walnuts have ever tasted better, and I'm wondering why I've lived this long without trying fresh walnuts on my cereal before now.
• Odd to hear the heavy, solid-seeming winter winds blow across the bare branches and through the remnant few brittle leaves here in late October-- and stand blown about by hot air in shirt sleeves. It sounds like winter, feels like August. Confusing. And arrrgggh! the grass is growing again.
• Tsuga has developed a limp this morning. While, in a young healthy dog, it is probably not anything more than a stone bruise on his toe pads, an innocuous limp is the way Buster's demise started, and the scars from that have not yet healed. Come on, boy, let's not go there.
• I got a package of videos wrapped in a paper grocery bag in typical mom fashion. She sent me eight VCR tapes of...well, I'm hoping NOT the home shopping network... taking pity on my pitiful whining about our cancelling the DISH last month. Heck, come January, I might be looking for costume jewelry or the latest Foreman Grill. I'll watch two hours of test pattern in mid-winter.
• Thankful I am for new visitors sent our way by the out-of-pocket Rebecca Blood. I don't know what she's up to with this week away, but happy she tuned her guests towards Fragments (and Panchromatica, a Fragments-friendly blogger; and to Mark Woods in Canada...) and a couple of new places to visit as well!
• I've managed to booger up my back (once again) while splitting wood yesterday; and so am moving around this morning like I was in a body cast. Physician, heal thyself. Tsuga says I'm especially boring today. Dang that wood. They can put a man on the moon but they can't invent firewood that will pop apart in sections like one of those Christmas Orange Chocolate balls with a sharp tap against the kitchen counter?

Changing Horses

Thanks all for suggestions about the "flowchart" kind of software I asked about yesterday. Among the options were several useful programs, some familiar, some not. What has totally distracted me from those links for my son's needs is this situation of my own: I am disappointed with Microsoft Word that I purchased in my recent computer upgrade and would love to find something better for the long haul as a reliable writing and graphics-capable tool. Commenter Tony suggested Open Office that has a Draw component for my son's project; I'm considering it as a MS Office replacement. (I think this package has some Sun Microsystems history? Right, David, Gretchen?)

I'm not excited about being at the bottom of the learning curve. Learning a new office-type package seems like it would be second only to learning a new operating system! If anybody has experience, horror stories, glowing praise or other input on Open Office components, pullleeeze let me know about them before I spin my wheels in the sand on this one. Making the switch even more tempting: Open Office is FREE!

Some knowledgeable people seem to like it. I'd love to know what you think.

Life is a Miracle

I did not fully own the parochial and insular "faith" in Science that formed the central dogma of my grad school years, and so the smugness of reductionists like E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins always gnawed at me. I was not wise enough to explain fully to myself or colleagues why I could not just pledge allegiance to the creed that promised us some day that Science would explain All. I still wrestle with the seeming strife between my faith and the "knowns" of science but am not willing to capitulate, not ready, apparently for Wilson's "Consilience" any more than Wendell Berry:

"Science cannot replace art or religion," he writes, "for the same reason that you cannot loosen a nut with a saw or cut a board in two with a wrench." Against science's "false specification and pretentious exactitude," Berry notes quietly that the more he observes his own little corner of the planet, a small Kentucky farm, the less patient he is with reductionist, materialist explanations of the way things work--for here, and everywhere, "life ... is unique, given to the world minute by minute, only once, never to be repeated." (Amazon.com)

Mr. Berry expresses his concerns over the terms of this discussion in a long essay called "Life is a Miracle". A Counterpoint Press review has this to say:

In his best-seller Consilience, E.O. Wilson presented a blueprint for the reconciliation of science with religion and the arts. In a carefully measured response, Wendell Berry demonstrates that Wilson's reconciliation is nothing more than the subjugation of religion and art by science, which alone, according to Wilson, would set the boundaries of discourse among the three disciplines. Berry argues that religion and art are not subject to the reductionist and materialistic assumptions of modern science, and cannot be contained within its boundaries or explained by its explanations. He says the aims of science have become hard to distinguish from those of industry and commerce, and he advocates a new Emancipation Proclamation to free life itself from enslavement by the corporations and their scientific underlings. The aim, according to Berry, is not consilience among the disciplines, but rather conversation. He concludes his argument by suggesting a number of changes in thought which would enable such a conversation to take place.

I'll be ordering a used copy of "Miracle" today and very much look forward to the conversation started by Mr. Berry's carefully considered point of view.

Alpha Male ~ Early Adolescence

Here you have it: the "before" at seven weeks old and Tsuga's first day at home with us. And "after"-- which is by no means the ultimate after but only a very intermediate one-- at almost four months of life -- and about half of that here with us. The changes have been evident daily, sometimes between morning and night of the same day. He's growing like Kudzu. The younger pup could stand between the legs of the elder and he's lost those round infant features that make puppies and other babies so lovable.

We've entered that in-between stage where not everything he does is cute, much of it is mere attention-seeking with the additional weight and strength of a dog half his ultimate size and (oh I hope) only a tenth of his final intelligence. His personality (dog-ality?) is beginning to appear now that he is gaining confidence in himself, trust in his caregivers and familiarity with his new domain. And we can't help but compare him to Buster, our second black Labrador who left us in July at only four and a half years.

We used to say, because of his open acceptance of strangers, naivete and innocence to the larger world, and limited social exposure, that Buster was our 'home schooled' dog. Well, Tsuga seems to have been born with more of a James Dean 'reform schooled' attitude -- not mean, just a bit self-important and mildly rebellious. Buster was a big-framed dog with a massive chest and head, but he always had a chihuahua self image and he did not tolerate change. We first realized this when, at Tsuga's present age, Buster went bonkers the morning he first saw the "for sale" sign we had put in the yard the night before. Tsuga is a smallish dog yet (maybe 40# at 15 weeks) but imagines himself to be worthy of the Serengeti and a pride of lionesses. He is very much in touch with his Inner Wolf. If we pretend to be sneaking up on him, rather than slink back to the porch like Buster would, Tsuga goes into full stalk-and-attack mode. But when the attack comes, at the last moment before we would become the limp gazelle pulled up onto a low limb against the sunset, he pulls back and does the lick-and-wiggle display of appeasement. But I think in Tsuga we will have the dirt road watchdog we never had with mild-mannered Buster, and that is a good thing. Tsuga is much more like Zachary, our first lab.

So. He's passed through his cute stage and the thrice-weekly pictures have stopped-- I'm sure you've noticed. Who wants to look at a gangly teenager? Oh, we're trying the "Click and Treat" method of training, just started yesterday, actually. Now all my pockets have a half dozen crumbly kibble in them, just ready for Tsuga to accidentally do something right and get a reward. Funny. The kibble supply doesn't seem to be going down very fast. But the pup is becoming a member of the family and our daily routine once again has a warm tawny pup in the empty place that big black Buster left. I am confident (well, hopeful) that Tsuga will grow into those big paws. His boldness and confidence will become wonderful assets someday, and if we play our cards right, he'll allow us to continue living with him here in this glorified crate called home.

Flowchart-Timeline-StoryBoard

Technical support: HELP! Can you believe I'm still helping my kids with homework! Son has a project in which he needs to create a timeline-flowchart depiction of a story with characters through time; the finished product will cover a single page of 17" x 11". He asks what software to use for this.

I dunno. MS WORD (PC) with DRAWING toolbar might do the trick. Does anyone know of another commonly available software program or "FREEWARE" downloadable that might be just the ticket for this project?

Thanks...

Stumped on Goose Creek

Time Pressured, Anyone?

TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY (Friday, October 24th) is a nationwide initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? Are you, or your friends or relatives, working more now but enjoying it less? Does your family's schedule feel like a road race? If so, you're not alone. Millions of Americans are overworked, over-scheduled and just plain stressed out.

IT STARTS AT WORK.

• We're putting in longer hours on the job now than we did in the 1950s, despite promises of a coming age of leisure before the year 2000.


• In fact, we're working more than medieval peasants did, and more than the citizens of any other industrial country.


• Mandatory overtime is at near record levels, in spite of a recession.


• On average, we work nearly nine full weeks (350 hours) LONGER per year than our peers in Western Europe do.


• Working Americans average a little over two weeks of vacation per year, while Europeans average five to six weeks.

But really: this is a serious, coordinated attempt to call attention to lives out of control, blogger-friends. And we know how to fix the problem. If you want some reminders why this is necessary for your health, listen to Dr. Cecile Andrews talk you through the Circle of Simplicity. I'm listening. Share this with someone you know who needs to slow down, while there's still time to simply live.

Detrititus

Earth as Art From a Distance...(my favorite).

Sound as Healer New Agey, but something to it.

David's new blog! Ripples

DocRoc's coming up for air: Educational Angst

The new blogs of Seth, CopCar, LinB, Trish: TBA. We're waiting...

And I'm sorry: What's the deal with Gazing Balls?

A HorseFly on the Rump...

...of copy editors. That's me. Just enough typos on Fragments to keep'em unbalanced, mildly agitated, not quite able to personally jump in there and apply the red pen to my dropped leters and trasnpositions. Yesterday I got another of my not-infrequent kindly pointers to a typo I might have caught eventually, transcribed early this morning on my way out the door. I should do better. I repent, mostly. I understand how hard it is to see deficiencies and negligence and want to correct them. You see, I used to be the "Posture Policeman."

"My gosh, look at that guy's thoracic kyphosis" I would say to myself of a complete stranger just met. "Bet it started out as a lazy adaptive posture, maybe slumped sitting in an office chair. Now he probably couldn't straighten up his upper back if his life depended on it."

"And the secretary over there. Looks to be about 5'10" tall, grew like a weed when all the boys her age were a six inches shorter. She did everything she could to stand 'short'-- head and shoulders below the rest-- and that slouch of teen-age years never left. Some day her neck and shoulders are not going to thank her!"

The latest posture statement that seems to go with the baggie pants that say yes to crack is the chicken-necked "forward head" posture I have seen in the last couple years in early teenage skater-dudes. I've tried to tell them as patients (and more than that, their parents who should already have told them this) that they can pay now or pay later; and paying now with attention to their horrible but correctible skeletal engineering we call posture will save them a world of literal hurt in thirty years when them chickens will certainly come home to roost.

Back knee. Anterior pelvic tilt. Protracted shoulders.

Sentence fragments. Mismatched verb tenses. Even words that aren't in the dictionary (just to get'em riled up good).

Our professions lower our thresholds for noticing the kinds of nuance that 'outsiders' are blind to... to their peril, be they owners of skeletons aligned (or not) against gravity for the long haul, or would-be writers who are lazy about punctuation and spelling.

Be sure that sooner or later, somebody is going to grab you by the collar and set you straight, bucko. And that means, you, Fred.