Fragments From Floyd

Emergence

I am so off stride these last few days, waking up late after unrestful "sleep" as the nasoraptors prowl the aveolar caves and tracheal trees for prey. They come and they go, but even when they are gone, my mind and my hands are disjunct, cut off from one another, the supply lines severed by troop movements in the night.

The logistics of war make for lousy reading, so I am keeping my muddled thoughts confined to quarters. The poor muse is taking Universal Precautions--gloves, mask, and gown-- and so at the moment it is quite impossible to hear from her anything she might divulge on which to write. I hear only the sound of one lung wheezing, the Zen of the Rhinovirus. This, too, shall pass.

The warm sun yesterday was therapeutic for both of us. We spent a good bit of the day outside getting the wood-storing area ready for a new layer of gravel, there, and along the driveway this week coming up. We pried up the locust runners and small flat cinderblocks from the frozen muck. The stacks close to the house are gone now, used down to the ground. Those blocks and chunks and sticks of firewood blessed us with comfortable radiant heat over a hard winter, and now are reduced to only so much ash to show for all those years of hardwoods standing tall in the forest, and then two years segmented in the rank and file of human necessity.

After we get the gravel in, we'll put the runners back down and start rebuilding the woodpile for next year. Several cords of maple and hickory, oak and poplar are waiting over in the pasture where they have been stored in lengths, teepee-style, for almost a full year already. It will be good and dry come next September. And I have three large trees (two windfall, one power company line clearing victim) down and waiting to be bucked up into stovewood. I'm saving that work for when Ann's sisters come to visit in a couple of weeks. The estrogens will be so high for a while around here that a fella will want a place to go do manly work. Or pretend to.

The dog thought he'd died and gone to heaven with not one but TWO of his humans outside yesterday afternoon for the sole purpose of entertaining him, and of course, also to watch him show off by digging in the soggy sides of the branch like a dervish. Every piece of wood we moved out of the way was something for him to prance around with, taunting us to catch him. The more we organized the more he disorganized--cosmos chasing chaos on the small scale.

We saw our first butterfly flitting around in the low sun, its shadow appearing on the ground where we were working before we traced the angle back to find the frittilary overhead, fresh from a long winter nap under a rock overhang up on the ridgetop, perhaps. We reckoned that during the day we might find our first flower in bloom--a Coltsfoot, transplanted along the driveway where I'd been raking dead leaves away earlier in the day. Just as the sun sank behind the western ridge, I found the naked, leafless yellow bloom along the rock wall where the stones hold heat and speed up the bloom date by at least a week.

This morning, the first bluebird, calling from the highest branch of the maple across the road from the front porch, its chirping whistle unmistakable--a declarative, then an interrogative phrase in a nasal register. Where has this male been since we last heard from his kind in October? Perhaps just down mountain twenty miles from here--in Roanoke or Woolwine--where temps are ten degrees warmer and a few insects emerge on warmer winter days, providing a snack to tide the birds over until later. But even now, what will they eat until the insects get active again? Maybe the bluebird saw our fritillary butterfly yesterday and had him to dinner.

Keep your TheraFlu. Spring in these small doses are a homeopathic dilution of the season ahead, and more than enough tonic to chase away the dregs of a winter cold.

On the Verge

No snow. Not flake one. Trish down in Carolina got all our snow-- 16 inches, she says. And she is welcome to it. Our ground remains ugly-muddy, gloriously free of white, and I have work to do today! I have licked the better armies of the Nasal Hordes, although some hand-to-hand combat still goes on in the Tracheal Zone. There are early reports of insurgence impending in another battle theatre far away. Well, not so far away. She's in the kitchen blowing her nose, actually.

Almost March! Ding Dong the witch is dead! It is time to come out of hibernation. In the dead of winter I forsake all lovers but the keyboard and the book, paying homage hourly to the woodstove for its offering of heat in the months of anemic sun.

I forget the inner warmth that comes from simply standing under a warm sky under small yellow-green leaves and red buds and smelling life begin again. I forget the feel of soft soil under my garden boots and the sound of water flowing free of ice and birds making homes in the alders along the stream.

Who knows what marvels the weeks ahead will reveal once again, for the first time.

Imagery

Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic world of their own. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph. -Robert Heinecken

If, someday, I do this book thing, should I press to have it include images, even if reduced to black and white? It is often the seeing that makes me want to write when I come back indoors. Occasionally the images the camera brings back help me put others in that moment. It seems a shame to leave them out entirely. I'm wondering about converting some to B&W and coverting them to "woodcut" quality to use here and there. At least the place will be in the pages a little. I guess I will need to talk to a photo-editor, should the time come. Meanwhile, I'll look through what I have and see what might help the text of this little tome I imagine.

Fragments Inquirer: The Tabloid

Well I started to title this post "I'm__ Too Sneaky For My Shirt" but was afraid, in light of recent missed hints, clues, cues and pointers, that title might incite a rumor that I've become a nudist. Once again, Mr. Murphy, you are so right (and I used to quote this one to myself daily when teaching for a living): "IF you explain something so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, someone will". I guess I'm just going to have to be more concrete, overt and direct from now on. I don't do subtle very well.

1) I did not write the OGDEN NASH poem about the cold. I only lived the poem. I have the wicker trashcan here by my desk full of spent tissues to prove it. I left a hint at the end to find the author. Had it actually been me, I would have been saying something self-effacing like "Nannynannybooboo, I wrote a POME and it's a winner! Send money!" I've amended that post up front to indicate I take no credit for the poem, only for its inspiration. Posthumously. And is it true that Mr. Nash actually died of a bad cold? NO. I'm kidding again. MUST. STOP. MUST. STOP. MUST...

2) Again, I'm too sneaky, apparently, even though I dated the ARK post the other day as happening in January 2005 and six months later and left the paragraphs at the end indicating, I thought, that the whole thing was created in my weird head after going back and reading the link about the supposed boat on the mountain in my archives. I made the scenario up for the sake of placing a real, verified boat into the modern melieu, wondering what would be made of it by folks on either side of the GOD DIVIDE. The Ark, in particular, might become heavy artillery in the creationist camp where, on the one hand, they poopoo the science that says the earth is very old, but would hold up the science that says "this wood in this boat-like structure is X thousand years old". Or so I thought, among other interesting implications. Hence, the ficticious scenario.

Trish, and perhaps others, took the "Rowers of the Lost Ark" as a bona fide article from some un-named source (there's your first clue). She correctly points to flaws in both this FREDITORIAL and the link referenced and some of the factoids used to create the scenario.

She carries the issue-as-interpreted (assuming the scenario was ostensibly about "real" events) in her LiveJournal to a discussion of a way more weighty and worthwhile thread on the implications of scientific verification (of the Ark or the Shroud or the Holy Grail or any concrete faith-object) vs "belief by faith". Read her post in its entirety. I agree with her concluding statement:

"I submit that if we ask God (and our faith) to pass the test of verifiable, repeatable double-blind scientific method, then we have placed science above God. And, as we know from our Hiroshima experience, dat dog don't hunt."

And that is a whole nuther ball of yarn--one that I have been most interested in as someone with umpteen years of science background and a strong sense of wonder in the world that we can know through our senses and our devices that extend their reach into the physical world. But I am also a Christian who has come back to a renewed faith as an adult (twenty years ago) and can see the Cosmos through both the lens of science and the heart of faith. And yes, they do come from two different kinds of vision. This is a much bigger issue than my early morning news-hack cobbled together the other day. But then, what can you expect. He's paid by the word, you know.

Forget Your Perfect Storm

I have the PERFECT COLD!

Disclaimer: NOT MY POEM! Check "read more" at the end for the author.

Go hang yourself, you old M.D,!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
In not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!

Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.

Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!

... anybody want to guess the author?

-- Ogden Nash

Poem compliments of son Nathan. Thanks, sprout.

Illiterati

"So what you need to do" my writer friends told me" is send some of your stuff to 'literary magazines'. They publish writing because it is good; trade magazines publish only what appeals to their very focused audiences and your writing has to match that style, content, et cetera."

Notwithstanding the daunting fact that "good" is relative term and my hermetic self is in a poor position to judge what is "good enough" for the lit-mags, I have set myself at least to become familiar with them. I now have a long list of selected magazines, print and online, and a list of lists of lit-mags, since they sort of hang out together and post "other resources" on each site, meaning "more publications like us". Once you find one of them, pull the thread and you'll find oodles. It's been sort of interesting, actually. Here's my take on the matter:

Firstly, I think it's safe to say many of you will never have heard of these limited-audience publications. They are not limited by lowest common denominator taste or comprehension when it comes to ascribing names to the magazine as they do not have to catch the eye of the grocery-store-shopping housewife in the checkout aisle in order to sell the rag. So they come with some odd names. Consider, for instance: Mudlark; Painted Bride; DeadMule; Owlfarm; Crazyhorse; Pig Iron Malt.

Lit mags seem to have an uncertain life expectancy. I'd say about thirty percent of the links I explore bring up either the white page of death, or archives of old issues only-- the mag having gone recently extinct; or a brief goodbye, thanking all their former readers for (months--less commonly years) of dedicated readership. Some come out annually. Many are twice yearly. There are quite a few "quarterly reviews" among university supported magazines. Most are low circulation and high price-point for purchase. Seems that many originate from university MFA or Creative Writing departments or are works of love of grads of such. Can't imagine anybody is making lots of money at this. Most offer two free copies of the issue in which a contributor's piece is published. Some actually pay, a little, after waiting up to six or more months to reply to your submission, and then paying only on publication. Not much of a ready or dependable income stream for the proverbial "starving" artist.

My impression is that literary magazines publish just gobs of poetry; and lots of fiction; and some non-fiction. Many are restricted to the first two genre; or poetry only. If they accept "creative non-fiction", their archives show it poorly represented, proportionally.

Some of the top tier lit mags prominently display who their most famous contributors are, and I am scared away immediately. If I see Annie Dillard and Fred Chappell and Ron Rash listed, I know I'm out of my league. Others seem to accept and print stuff that I purely don't get. Some is frankly bizarre -- way too "artsy" I guess for the unsophisticated likes of me. But then, I think it's true that the readership is the "twenty-somethings", in which case I should be approaching THREE TIMES the saavy of the 20-yr-old, given my overwhelming chronological advantage.

I think it makes sense for me to look primarily at regional magazines since my stuff is regionally branded by the language and often times by the subject matter. The Sun, Chattahoochee Review, Mockingbird Journal, storySouth and Rivendell are a few I've either sent stuff too or plan to do so. I told you a few weeks ago I had a piece accepted by the Birmingham Arts Journal; it was very much a southern piece set in Birmingham, actually, so that seemed a good match.

Rivendell operates out of Asheville and they have a theme for their two issues each year. The upcoming issue topic is "Southern Appalachia" and I have something that I think fits very well except that I've already sent it somewhere else. Rivendell will decide in 3 months, the other place in "six or more", although the 'somewhere else' is a more prestigious publication by far, and consequently a longer shot for acceptance, just playing the odds. So there's a little quandry there.

I've sent a piece off this week to storySouth-- an online-only journal. The editor Jason Sanford has a piece called "How to Expose New Writers: Online Versus Print Magazines and I think he makes a good case that online is a viable and growing venu for new writers. And storySouth features a nicely laid-out page for easy online reading. I'd like to see something of mine show up there some day.

Here at ZuZu's Petals is where I started my lit-mag exploration some time back. Here's another alphabetical list. And another rich literary readership site is WebDelSol. Almost all lit quarterlies and reviews have submission guidelines you can cut and paste from their websites. A growing number are allowing (or some requiring) email-only submissions of manuscripts and that sure beats the mailer and SASE and stamps and such. But an electronic rejection can be even less satisfying than a tangible paper generic rejection form letter that comes in the mailbox that you can rip open, wad up and throw dramatically into the trash, a pox on all their houses.

Gee. Amazing how one can ramble on at 3:00 in the morning when he doesn't have anything particular to say, but plenty of time to say it in.

Laugh...

And the World Laughs With You
Whine, and you Whine Alone

Hang with me today. I'm fighting this malevolent infectious bronchitis beastie though the winner is still in question. Lying flat of my back in my personal, downstairs, tissue-strewn bed was not the position of choice for the various fluxes of the early hours, so I've been up, as in vertical, since 3. Now we are preparing to send Ann off yet again to stay at work overnight as this next winter storm approaches. Now they're saying "6-12 inches with locally higher amounts". Maybe she can get home by Saturday. Of this week.

So it's just me and Tsuga and Mr. Kleenex for the next 36 to 72. These weather-related cancellations and separations and privations are growing wearisome, I must say. Alone ill is a bad combo. When one whines, it helps if there is a whinee to hear. I'm afraid it's going to be up to you dear folks. Whaaaaah!

I promise to wash my hands before I type every blog post for the next few days and to run each entry through my anti-virus program before publishing, just because I care about the health and well-being of Fragments readership. Even so, while reading, I'd suggest you sit well back in your chairs, back away from your monitors, just to be on the safe side. But hey. I think the surgical mask there is a bit over the top. Yes I see you. Don't think I don't.

Nice While it Lasted

The sun shone today. I'll try to remember it fondly.

SNOW WILL DEVELOP ACROSS THE AREA THURSDAY AFTERNOON OR EVENING...AND MAY BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES THURSDAY NIGHT. AT THIS TIME...STORM TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS ENDING BY NOON FRIDAY ARE EXPECTED TO RANGE FROM 4 TO 8 INCHES IN THE NORTHWEST PIEDMONT AND FOOTHILLS OF NORTH CAROLINA...FROM 3 TO 6 INCHES ACROSS SOUTHSIDE VIRGINIA AND EASTERN SECTIONS OF THE NEW RIVER VALLEY...EXCEPT 6 TO 10 INCHES IN FLOYD COUNTY

Great Expectorations

They would have me as both room and board, these opportunistic pathogens that have come to pitch camp in my lungs. This is not the three day cold I get about every other year. I've felt worse than this. But I don't think I've ever sounded any worse.

It's terrible. I can't sing. And I realize, now that the well has gone dry (as if my family couldn't have told you this) I tend to sing along with everything. Even instrumentals. Not only can I not hit the right notes, I can't even make notes of a discernable pitch, on the mark or not. A sound oscilloscope recording of my voice in song, to an unsuspecting interpreter, would probably be identified as coming from a harbour seal. How long can the Pips get along without me!

My voice is so off that, when I give the dog one of his usual commands, he turns to look dismissively in my direction, but it's clear I have no authority here and he does not answer to harbour seals.

We're supposed to meet friends in town for dinner and music Friday night. And I will go because without me, how will they maintain the proper seating sequence of "boy-girl boy-girl"? And I've been thinking this through so that the time there won't be a total loss. It can be done--to communicate without a voice. But I need the props, ala Harpo Marx: some big floppy shoes (one stomp for yes, two for no) and a big horn with the rubber bulb--OOgaOOga--to express strong emotions (in combination, of course, with the appropriate facial expressions.

And already I have this sinking feeling that guess-who is going to be the defenseless brunt of all the dinner table jokes Friday night. It that fair, guys? Stomp. Stomp. OOgaOOga (frowning malevolently).

Overcoming Inertia

In a galaxy far, far away, back when I was teaching, on the first day of Biology 101, a pop test. Take out a sheet of paper (can you feel the prickly sensation in your arm pits?) and write the answer to this one question:

WHAT IS LIFE?

Take the test. Do not cheat. You have five minutes. Then turn here for the larger image and the wrong answers.

I think it is the approach of gardening season that made me think of this question. And all the invisible life, like I see here-- life that has overwintered in the moisture that clings to tree bark, and in stems of dead grass, and slime of last year's nutrients adhering to a round, cold rock in the creek. It is still bleak mid-winter out my window. But the cycles that we think of as beginning again every spring never cease, even though at times--like this week--it seems I am living on a lifeless planet.

A microscope and some warmed creek samples or bark scrapings might be the best antidote to the winter droops next year. Give me rotifers! Euglena! Vorticella! Movement, the student answered. Life is things that move. I think I can accept that answer. From December until the end of February.

Bookish

Well, let's see. Finally, after a long, house-bound winter there is something to do come end of March. Take a look at the lineup for the Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, March 24-28. They did not consult me when setting up this date range, and I am miffed. Miffed, I tell you.

Sis-in-law #1 arrives from MO on the 23rd. Anns B-day is the 24th. I have an inservice all day in Roanoke on the 25th. Sis-in-law #2 arrives from GA on the 26th for Ann's bday party at the Winery. And sometime during all that, I'll have to slip up to C'ville and spend at least 48 hours rubbing shoulders (well, looking from a distance at the shoulders) of famous authors. Check this out. This is just the non-fiction participants.

Here's one (of many) that caught my eye. Hmmm. That name sounds familiar. Of course! She's had essays on "my" public radio station! And whaddaya know: she's putting together a book from her essays! Say! Why didn't I think of that!

Janis Jaquith is the author of Birdseed Cookies: A Fractured Memoir, a collection of radio commentaries she has broadcast nationally on PRI's "Marketplace" and locally on NPR-station WVTF in Roanoke. She's a columnist for the Daily Progress.

Rowers of the Lost Ark

In January, 2005, using the latest generation spy optics from space and benefitting from unusually clear weather over the Mt. Ararat region of Turkey, the US together with the European Space Agency conducted the most extensive and precise study of the "Ararat Anomaly" to date. Details from that hyperspectral sensors were sufficient to deduce that the object partially buried in the snow, first observed in 1949 at more than fifteen thousand feet on the northwestern side of the mountain, is indeed an object containing material that is neither the igneous rock of the mountain or a form of water ice.

Six months later, an international ground team, with permission by and cooperation from the Republic of Turkey, took advantage of continued "mild" weather conditions in the region. The 10-man team succeeded in reaching the anomaly after three day's climb from their base station and were able to take extensive samples of the massive structure.

A detailed report from the team was not made public at the conclusion of the fact-finding expedition despite widespread interest in the project. However, in the past several weeks--and prior to an official press conference upcoming-- some important details have emerged. The structure is man-made. It consists of a kind of wood formerly present in great abundance in the Middle East. Preliminary analysis of the organic materials indicate that they are not of recent origin.

Even before the official release of all the technical findings, two vocal camps are forming.

Christians, of course, are understandibly in an ecstatic "We told you so" frenzy, especially the small segment of the faith that believe the Earth is young and all geological history can be traced to Noah's flood. Church leaders have cautioned their congregations against drawing theological conclusions beyond being able with added credibility to say that the primary documents of the faith are trustworthy as historical record. Jews and Muslims, to a lesser degree, also voice their excitement at the findings that tie their traditional beliefs to what seems to be validated archeological proof.

Meanwhile, resistance to the apparent confirmation of a most incredible Biblical "myth" is growing around the secular world. The expedition team is being discredited because two of the team are known to be 'biased' by their belief that they would indeed find the remnants of the ancient Ark of the Biblical flood.

Others have used the words "hoax" and "massive conspiracy" to describe this apparent confirmation of a most surprising mystery that has haunted mankind for the ages. "A 600-foot wooden ship stuck in the ice at 15,000 feet on an Asian Mountain is the stuff of fairy tales. There will be alternative explanations for the alleged "anomaly" on Ararat that do not require miraculous floods. In the end, science, and not children's dreams, will prevail" said a spokesman from the American Academy of Science.

---

Thank you, my regular early-morning blog spammers, for carrying me back to a post from last year about the Ararat Anomaly. It got me to wondering how the world would react if, in fact, this "thing" on the mountain in Turkey did indeed turn out to be a boat of Biblical proportions. Those inclined already toward belief would find their faith strengthened perhaps by this rather spectacular archeological find.

Those inclined to doubt would not be convinced no matter how much data supported the "Ark" hypothesis. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this as a possible story line for a fictional account of the Indiana Jones type. First the Arc of the Covenant. Now, the Ark. Granted, the ending of a story about an old boat full of animal poop wouldn't have as dramatic an ending as the Spirit of God consuming the flesh off the Nazi agents in the last scene of "Raiders".

What Would Lilek Do?

You've maintained a weblog for eighteen months and it has become a central part of your communications and your life. You've made friends and established a relationship from those you've met and you have strong sense of community with these far-off visitors. The weblog has been both audience and vehicle in your unexpected life as a new writer in a middle-aged chassis. You've been encouraged to consolidate some of the worthy passages into a book, and finally, you've found an editor who is excited about what you've shown them. This is great news! They agree that the book will appeal to a wide audience based on the response to the weblog.

But there's a cloud behind that silver lining: the publisher has have told you that, if they are to publish your book, you will have to delete your weblog. Totally. For good.

This scenario occurred to me yesterday, reading about a guy who tried to publish his book, couldn't find any takers, so finally put it up on the web for free. Then a publisher wanted the book and they asked him to take it off the web. Not exactly the same story as the let's-suppose situation above. But it gives one something to think about.

Oh Yes, I'm the Great Pretender

This is truly wonderful...a case of mistaken identity where the pseudo "authority" thought "What da heck. I can pull this off". Matthew Richardson, Oxford engineering student, proceeded to devour an economics text book on Global Financial Markets on his flight to China where he would be speaking as an "expert" at a major conference.

He soon exceeded his capacities of bluff (learning only from the podium that he was speaking as an authority to Chinese PhD and MBA students and not high-school students as he had expected). He ducked out during a coffee break on the second day before he was found out, and caught a flight back to Britain.

The article never said if he got his honorarium. The real intended expert by the same name applauded his stand-in. Matthew, you got cajunas, buddy. Ever thought about a career in politics?

Writer's Writ

Well I am at about the midpoint of the Barnes and Noble free class, "Thinking Like Your Editor". It is well suited to someone with a non-fiction book idea (perhaps more so for those that start with a premise or thesis and proceed to answer their questions--about the Kennedy assassination or a how-to book, not so geared toward autobiography, memoir or nature-related topics at least from the interest and experience of the text). It equips the writer to produce the full "proposal package" and find an agent. I'm not ready to go that route yet, so this info is for possible future reference, should I have any drive left after exhausting my short list of publishers who don't require an agent.

Nor have the ones I've looked at wanted a proposal--at least not by that name. They ask for a "cover letter and X pages of your manuscript". In the second go-round, I've expanded both the length (to two full pages....the max) and the scope of readership so that perhaps publisher #2 will see a broader audience and greater earning potential than the first publisher who read Cover Letter #1 could identify.

I know you're not supposed to send manuscripts to "departments" but I cannot find names of editors at the intended publisher, so the cover is to "members of the Editorial Department". Phooey. As I googled for editors' names, I did find Gerard Jones' Everyone Who is Anyone in publishing. What a great resource, and I especially enjoy how he has posted his in-your-face correspondence with agents and editors in with the agent's email addresses. Wish there was some info re the kinds of books these agents represent.

So. Since Fragments readers have inspired the vignettes in the intended "book", I might as well bring you along in the process. For both of you who are interested, I've posted Cover Letter #2 in the "Read More" section. I'm open for editing and suggestions on the letter since I'm probably going to wait for the final word on the Parkway job before I send it off. The letter will give you a better idea of where I think I'm going with this dog-and-pony show.

Update: This is a more recent version than that posted Monday Morning. Current time, 6:00 Monday evening. Thanks for suggestions. Keep'em coming!
Editorial Department
XYZ Books of Erewhon
Erewhon NT, 20000

Dear Editors:

My wife and I march to the sound of a drummer that our boomer, post-child-rearing cohorts cannot hear. Our friends saw in their newly-empty nests the freedom to travel widely and return home to familiar and comfortable suburban neighborhoods. We set our hopes on finding an imagined home place in very rural Virginia where the living wasn’t necessarily easy. We cared less about seeing the world than finding home, finally, in our own forest and fields. And we were willing to make sacrifices to find it.

Our gamble began with good fortune when I found a job as the only physical therapist in the tiny town of Floyd, in Floyd County, Virginia—a county so unhurried that to this day it has but a single traffic light. I pitched camp here alone a year ahead of my wife, living in the clouds in a small cabin off the Blue Ridge Parkway (described in part in “Eagle Wings” in the writing sample). Two years later we found the place we had dreamed of: eighty acres of mountain land and a redeemable century old farmhouse with his-and-hers outhouses. But as some things fell together in our quest for bucolic bliss, others fell apart. I lost my job in physical therapy, and tossed the profession in after it.

Suddenly I was waking up every day to the freedom of empty time here in the wilderness without purpose as my wife left in the dark to win the bread. Writing became a way of making sense of this new geography of rural midlife crisis. And before long, it seemed I was leading field trips again, describing to my web-log readers what day to day life looks and feels like from our quiet creek valley. Our home on Goose Creek is a destination toward which I had been moving for almost thirty years. The book that describes getting here—but especially being here—is called Fragments: Field Notes from an Appalachian Year.

The overall length of the nature-memoir will consist of some fifty-five thousand words. The core of the book (which is completed) contains approximately eighty descriptive and contemplative vignettes (averaging around five hundred words each) that carry the reader through the seasons, starting in summer when my uncertain adventure began. The introduction and threads of narrative between sections will flesh out the larger story to bring the reader along as we move through new terrain during this surprise sabbatical at home in the Blue Ridge.

The book shares some elements with several related works. Comparable seasonally organized natural histories and personal narratives include A Country Year, Sue Hubbell’s seasonal autobiography which gives an account of her solitary life alone among her beehives, exalting everyday wonders and the economies of nature to a place of high praise. Bernd Heinrich spins descriptive vignettes from his Year in the Maine Woods living in harmony with nature when “the subtle matters and the spectacular distracts.” In Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden, Eleanor Perenyi uses garden stories to draw lessons for daily living. Annie Dillard sees the ordinary with new eyes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I count myself fortunate to have seen her “tree with the lights in it” in my own wanderings and regard nature as Dillard does with a mystical reverence and awe. Fragments: Field Notes shares with all these books the invitation for the reader to slow down and comprehend the extraordinary world we can know through all the senses fully engaged.

Ten of my essays have been accepted for broadcast on our local NPR affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia. One of my stories appeared in the national magazine, PetLife, and another is scheduled for inclusion in a future issue of the Birmingham Arts Journal. I am co-founder of the online Ecotone site where “people write about place”. My photojournal weblog, Fragments from Floyd (http://fragmentsfromfloyd.com) is visited each week by a thousand writers and readers who are representative of the potential buyers of the book that I offer. They come from urban places across the US and the world, curious to see what life is like in our Blue Ridge home place.

Fragments: Field Notes is an unpretentious and genuine testament of one man’s wonder of the world, and it is a world that readers already enjoy sharing. The book provides a variegated and pleasantly unpredictable mixture of topics and voices from day to day— from nostalgic narrative to self-mocking wry humor to highly sensory and evocative poetic prose. The scope of the non-fiction writing and the story that it tells will attract readers who enjoy the rich detail of country living/ It will also be of interest to those who are considering the risks and the pleasures of rural retirement in out-of-the-way places, and the southern Appalachians in particular. And it will represent hope to those living in the cities who long some day to break free of hurry and urban stresses that suck the tranquility and beauty from their days.

I am a veteran of twelve years of classroom and field experience as a biologist/naturalist/teacher, then as many years as a caregiver as physical therapist. My breadth of experience infuses the book with unique insights, humor and sensitivity. While I tend the farm and serve as domestic engineer and writer-in-residence, my wife works as a hospital pharmacist in nearby Blacksburg, Virginia. Our two grown children live in South Dakota and British Columbia, having fallen rather far from the tree.

The short writing sample included here captures only a brief glimpse of the book. Also included is a small sample from my collection of digital images depicting details from our little domain that may be used to enhance the visual appeal and authenticity of the book.

I would like XYZ Press to consider publishing this book. Please find a stamped, self-addressed mailer for returning the manuscript to me as well as an envelope for corresponding with me by regular mail. I look forward to hearing your response to the manuscript.

Sincerely,

Frederick B. First, Jr.

Looking Up

It was early January, 1978. The wife was home with a two-week-old child. I told her that I was going to be gone for the night, and she could expect me home the next day about breakfast time. I plannned to be out running around with the boys. But no, it's not what you think. The physics prof and I set up the college scope and waited in the cold for the party to begin. It was very, very cold. We went inside briefly to warm up. He offered me a cup of hot water. No coffee. No tea. Just hot water. But he was Chinese and we often surprised each other with customs seen in semi-private that did not appear in our official roles as faculty.

Finally, the moment arrived, between 1:00 and 1:15. The crescent moon moved closer and closer to occultation of the planet Venus. We caught it with the Nikon telescope-mounted camera just as the brilliant planet began to disappear behind the dark mountains of the moon. We took the film to the darkroom and saw the image for the first time as it appeared out of the wet photopaper. It was worth waiting for, and the Roanoke Times published it the next day.

The reason I bring this up just now is that, starting tomorrow and continuing for a couple of days, the Planet Venus and the moon will come in very close proximity (though not an occultation as the one in '78... more like the one I described as I watched from the front porch last December:

The crescent moon lifted through a veil of ground fog. It rose slowly over the ridge, then lifted quickly through the sharp branches of bare trees into open sky, brilliance smeared by moist breath of winter hills. Waiting above in its own halo, Venus moved chrome-edged against a brittle sky of deep indigo. Two luminaries star-crossed, met. The Morning Star rested in the cusp of a two-horned silver crescent lifting like a goblet to hold starlight.

Do you remember that the Soviets landed several craft on the surface of Venus back in the seventies? I don't know if I knew this. We didn't hear much about the successes of the USSR back then, did we? Here's an interesting page about the exploration of Venus and what it's surface is like (with images from the Soviet lander) with some good "related pages" at the bottom.

Plan "B"

I have somewhat of a phlegmatic state of mind this morning, both figuratively and literally. Of the four vital humors, it's definitely the phlegm that colors my world today. I have a chest cold. I never have colds. Who does a hermit catch cold from, for goodness sake? So, Ann slept upstairs last night because I was and still am "disgusting"--to use her terminology. But I am not complaining. Not so anybody would know, because I have laryngitis: my mouth makes whining motions but from all aural evidence, I am suffering bravely.

I've decided maybe I should have heard from the Fed re the Parkway job by now. So, on to Plan B. Wait a minute. I don't have one of those now. Plan B used to be so easy to find, back in the early days of my physical therapy career. I got tired of hospital work and easily found a private practice job in work injury managment. That one soured, three of the team left at once, and two weeks later, one of those guys and I were starting a couple of new programs in a small community hospital. After five years there, the clinic in Floyd opened. HCA pulled the plug on that one, I did home health for a while (never got paid; Medshares claimed "bankruptcy" as a way of shedding some debt by not paying the little guy -- that would be the likes of me) so I found the work in the retirement community in Blacksburg and when that started to go stale, I took the manager's position with the private practice in Christiansburg. And that's where my string of easy work transitions and my willingness to jump through the corporate and insurance company hoops came to an end.

I could find work in PT now if I were willing to drive an hour one way and do nursing home Medicare paperwork. But the last job that I resigned in May, 2002 (just as this weblog started) left permament scars. The nerve of passion for that work is irredeemably severed, even though it is the only line of work that would make the long travel worth the effort, financially. And, I can't do the work very well any more, physically--either the copious documentation by hand or transferring, muscle testing, or performing manual therapy on a patient any more. Both my wrists are in sorry shape and need new parts; and hands are a therapists chief asset. It is a very hands-on profession.

So now, when Plan A seems to be going the way of the DoDo Bird, I have a sinking edge-of-the-world feeling again. The wheezing in my chest does nothing positive for my state of mind. Spring is coming, and who knows? There may be things at work even now that will come together in a few weeks, or months, and the "end" of all of this, and the point of this odd life I'm leading will become crystal clear and I will have found my niche. I dunno. That ole bull I used to so readily take by the horns has got me buffaloed (I think I mixed bovine metaphors somewhere in here, yes?). So. Sorry for the mucoid melancholy this morning. No, come to think of it, melancholy comes from black bile (melan- is black, chole- is the prefix for the gall bladder. There's your word trivia for the day) so phlegm and bile are two more mixed metaphors here. And of course, what's a metaphor? It's for growing grass and grazing and having picnics and such.

I think I have a bad case of snot on the brain. I gotta go.

Letting Them Go

We're having the parental difference of opinion that happens when those in your charge stand at the verge of early independence. For so long they have been in your charge alone, young, naive, and incapable of making decisions for themselves. They could not be expected to do the responsible thing, so unexposed as they were to the injuries and evils out there in the larger world waiting to do them harm. And yet, the day comes when you realize that, if they are going to become responsible adults, you have to start giving them freedoms in their adolescent years--including freedom to fail, and freedom to experience pain. It is a difficult thing to let them go. And even harder when the two parents see the world through different lenses. I fall toward the liberal, let-them-go side of the spectrum. Ann is very much the conservative, high-cautious keep-an-eye-on-them type. Maybe we can find a middle ground.

Tsuga certainly hopes so. Even after we open the door for him to go outside and entertain himself, he often looks back at the house, examining the windows to see eyes following him as he moves fifty, then sixty feet from home base. I get a general idea of which way he's heading and go back to my work. Ann frets and worries, and it becomes an urgent and alarming matter when the dog goes finally out of sight behind some trees or over the edge of the yard.

And I think we're both right. There are potential dangers from the road, even though we get fewer than a dozen vehicles a day going by. He still doesn't get the physics principle about two objects not occupying the same space at the same time, and thinks all cars passing want to meet him, up close and personal. We must break him of running to greet each passing truck that goes by. And he does seem easily distracted chasing the juncos that fly a bit farther, and then a bit farther with him right on their heels--er, wings. He could find himself in some unfamiliar place. Or encounter another dog--worse yet, a female in a come-hither way, and be lost in love.

But really. We have all this land that he knows well, and we never walk with him across our borders. Our acres are bordered on all sides by "empty" forest and he'd have to walk a mile or more to bother any other humans who would see his collar and give us a call. He is very fond of eating, and as soon as he gets hungry, he'd be home in a heartbeat. And we did the Pavlov thing early on: when I ring the big bell out back, it means prime treats if he comes right away. And just yesterday, with him at the far end of the valley and barely in sight, lost in the excavation of yet another mole, he made a bee-line for the treat at the sound of the bell.

It's hard to know when to give the kids the keys to the car for the first time. And long after they're grown, you still get a knot in your stomach every time you watch them drive away. It's not a lot different with the family dog. I'm all for letting him get his learner's permit. I'm not sure either one of us will ever be comfortable letting him go out, ever, without a curfew. We're just not that kind of parents.

Here They Rest

Three gravestones sit back above the branch, away from the single-lane dirt road that has barely changed since the days the first settlers followed the headwaters of Goose Creek up the valley through the Rhododendron. We had walked down this road, "our road", many, many times for three years before we noticed the little cemetery behind our nearest neighbors' place. The house belongs in her family and she and her husband come several times a year, when their health will allow, to the house as a get-a-way from city life. They won't be back until Easter and have said we could walk their land any time, though we seldom do. Yesterday, we did.

The stone on the left belongs to A. W. Boone, born 1830, died 1886. His wife --21 years his junior-- is buried next to him; and the third is that of a child aged 2 years. It was A. W. Boone's sons who built the house we live in, not long after their father settled in this valley after the Civil War.

Where I stood to take this picture, Mr. Boone once stood. He might have pointed with the end of a hoe, casually as if he were scribing out the foundation for a new corn crib. "I'd say 'bout right there'd be all right" he might have said, as he envisioned his final resting place. I imagined the particular spot was a place of pleasant memories-- a picnic spot in the warm late morning sun, perhaps or later in the afternoon, a cool and shady place to stretch out in the grass and rest from his work in the narrow pastures along Goose Creek. And right then, his young wife also knew her place next to him behind the house they had built on this rough land. They had carved the clearing out of forest with two mules in the mud, in the snow. And from here they would never leave.

HomePlace

As the little green sign under the hemlock says, "HeresHome". In a sense, the whole story of our lives is about arriving in just this place in all the world. The house is the first home we've lived in since 1987 that we don't plan to leave in a few years. The story in Fragments is about being here. As lives go, ours are not so special, but our stories are one-of-a-kind and we are the only ones who can tell them, just as you own your stories and perhaps share them in your own way. Keeping a weblog certainly makes the sharing easy, doesn't it?

One of the nicest things I've heard in my short life of publicly-accessible weblog writing was the reader-visitor who drove up to the house for the first time and said "It's just like you've described it. I feel as if I'm coming home." It has been gratifying to share the details of our ordinary lives with visitors from all over the world.

This may be the last picture of the snow you'll see for a while. But I can pretty well say for sure in the months ahead you will see more pictures of home-- the creek, the barn, the garden, the pasture, the forest, the ridges, the dog-- because there's more to home than house. But every once in a while, when the lighting is good and it looks especially, well, homey, I'll snap one of the house itself. For our scrapbook.

Ever Wheah I Went...

... I was blog-ging.

Sorry. We watched Forest Gump again this week. I couldn't help draw parallels when Forest left his problems behind and ran across America. And when he got to the big ocean, he jus' turned around and ran back where he started. He ran because he didn't know what else to do. People joined him because they thought there must be a deeper purpose to this man who would abandon all, let his beard grow, and just run. It works pretty well if you substitute blogging for running. I think I have reached the ocean. Okay everybody. Let's turn around and head back.

I'm curious. How many of you sang "Junior Birdman" (and of course you made the official Birdman Goggles, too.) You didn't? Maybe I ran with a different crowd.

Speaking of which... out the blue of the western sky, I got a surprise email a couple of days ago from my college roomie, Mike. Dang, he's got a daughter thirty years old and a grandchild! How'd he get so blamed old! Wait a minute. So do we. So. How do you catch up with someone you haven't seen in at least ten years?

And is it really possible to resist temptation to turn all those college-day escapades into blog posts? It's gotten to where everybody I know makes a point to keep their mouths shut when they're around me, thinking "I heard he even lampooned his own wife on public radio. How safe could I be from being his next target!?" Just kidding. Truth of the matter is, I'll be telling some horror story (about the ice or the dog or the truck, whatever) and while I'm re-enacting it, the other person is saying "Yeah, and I bet the whole time you were wondering if you'd ever get back to the house alive, you were thinking what a great thing that was gonna be to write about". Guilty, as charged. In the words of the immortal bard, "All the world's a blog".

And also in the "different crowd" category, while waiting in the library for the bad news about my truck, I picked up a freebee "BookPage" writing-newspaper and was scanning the new books in non-fiction. Hmmmm. Interesting title, that one. And the author... why, I used to know a Dennis Covington in high school. Couldn't be. Yep, it could. I found his email (out in Texas now) and sent him a "congrats", and have read a good bit about him. His latest book, Redneck Riviera, sounds interesting. You can hear an interview with Dennis about the book on Living on Earth.

Notwithstanding the sore throat that went from zero to sixty after dinner last night and the ensuing night of futility dreams that alternated with ones of swallowing scorpions, I am suffused today with bodaceous positivity after our time in town last night. There are a lot of synergisms happening in town as all the civic organizations are actually communicating with each other to coordinate efforts at grant writing forbeautification, developement of walking, bicycle and horse paths in the city and county, and find ways to identify and protect cultural and historical treasures before "they pave Paradise and put up a parking lot." There are some good writerly things happening, too. Last night, it felt as if we had finally arrived in Floyd.

These Rose Colored Glasses are brought to you by Intellicast, who delivered the message this morning that it is supposed to go up into the SIXTIES today! Get out da Tevas!

Hair Today

It was standing room only yesterday in the Floyd Barber Shop where Ralph presides now and for the last--what--thirty years? Monday in the snow, he made it to work somehow; hung out for a while, shoveled off the sidewalk, and then just went on home. It was a really slow day, nobody much stirring. And a Monday, to boot. Tuesday, the roads to town were clear and a few parking places opened up in the drab snow banks along Main Street. And so cabin-bound old men in overalls drove dirty trucks to town, truck beds filled with a foot of egg whites. For certain, some used the haircut as an excuse to get out of the house for an hour, even though what little they had under their caps could have easily waited another few weeks for a trimming.

Odd, in the snow. So much light reflected off it and up through the front window that it cast moving shadows deep against the farthest wall where old posters announce long-silent blue grass performances. In the odd brightness the place seemed less nostalgic of the forties than usual--almost modern--by Floyd standards. And this is a good thing for those of us gathered there waiting to be shorn. Ralph cuts hair by natural light, mostly. You want to be sure and go mornings of a sunny day for the best cut when the surgical field will be well lit. And go, too, before the conversation gets so interesting that your part on the left gets lost in talk about how nothing is the same as it usta be and who was playing this coming Friday night at the Jamboree. 'course you could part it on the right for a while. Just keep your cap on til next time.

Old men and one little boy, maybe not quite two, having if not the first, one of. He was apprehensive but brave, although you could see him almost panic when Ralph enforced the "all hands under the frock" rule. Escape seemed unlikely if you couldn't even use your hands against your captor. All in all, he showed remarkable courage sitting up on the one-by-twelve pine board over the armrest of the ancient red-leather chair, perched there like reluctant royalty, swathed in a royal blue robe while his platinum curls fell to the worn lineoleum floor that is scuffed through to the concrete underneath. But it was bravery born of distraction.

The elderly gentleman next to me played the clown as Ralph singled him out for Little Boy to focus on. (Who can blame him for wanting to see what it was making those beak-snapping noises just above his right ear. And how could he see if he didn't turn his head?) Voices seemed to be less interesting than visual effects to Little Boy so Clown resorted first to holding up fingers to count--a concept whose time had not quite come to the audience under the shears. Finally, Old Man found the magic: Here's the church. Here's the steeple. Open it up, and here's all the people. Little Boy was mesmerized. And so we saw the people again and again. And you could see little hands moving under the frock, wondering if those people were in his hands, too.

And Ralph said "Why, that's clever. I never saw that before". Law, I thought it was required that all children play that game with the toys we were born with. No, he'd somehow missed that one. And Little Boy slipped down off the bench and onto the chair seat and off it like a sliding board on the leather chair, onto the ornate footplate from whence he stepped into the floor festooned with the curling golden rites of passage.

Chances are, hair growing like it does, Little Boy and I will be there at Ralph's again some sunny morning when the lighting is good, in about a month. And as he wiggles there under the cape and turns to see the whirring shears, I'll say "Hey. L'il Boy. Wanna see my Junior Birdman goggles?"

(You can see a demonstration and make your very own Birdman Goggles by clicking "Read More" just below)

And, of course, the song:

Junior Birdman

Chorus:

Up in the air junior birdman
Up in the air upside down
Up in the air junior birdman
Keep your noses off the ground

When you hear the grand announcement
that your wings are made of tin.
Then you know that Junior Birdman,
has turned his box tops in.*

For it takes: 5 box tops,
4 bottle bottoms,
3 coupons,
2 wrappers,
and one thin dime!

B-i-r-d, B-i-r-d, B-i-r-d-m-a-n
Birdman, Birdman, Birdman
Buzzzzzzzz!

* Alternate Verse
When you hear the doorbell ring (buzz, buzz)
When you see the badge of tin (tin, tin)
Then you know that junior birdman
Has turned his box tops in.

J-U-N I-O-R
Junior Birdmen! WHOOOOOOOOOOO!

Assignment

1. Watch GeorgeB the Movie (an altered state of the union. Heck. It's an altered state. Why not?)

2. If the movie doesn't give you the warm fuzzies, hug a big, pink streptococcus.

3. Feeling artsy? Go GoogleDoodle.

4. And when you are done with these tasks, please view this and follow instructions.

Whatever You Want to Do….

You gotta do something else first.

This is one of Murphy's famous dictums and a handy thing to keep before the mind, mantra-like, any time one is tempted to make plans. And when the something else is a matter out of one's control, the wanna-do's can just take a number and wait.

I'm hoping to hear something this week (as I was lead to expect) about the Parkway Ranger job I applied for. I hope I get it. I hope I don't get it. I guess I'm what you'd call *amphibious about the outcome. Whatever. But it would be nice to know, because if I get the job, the six months between May and the end of October will be the something I gotta do first before such things as sending off the book to another publisher.

Wouldn't do much good to get that miraculous "yes" and then have to say "sorry, I won't be able to do the edits you ask for until Thanksgiving". And too, if I get the job, there won't be much gardening, and next year's firewood is looking for the first time ever as something I might have to buy from somebody else. For everything you get, you give up something. Gee, I'm so *aphorismic this morning.

And, in the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" department: Oh yeah. It's broke.

Driving home one day last week, I was impressed with how the wind was blowing the front end of the truck all over the road. Except the trees were barely moving. Hmmm. The next time in the truck, the wind was blowing even harder--on a calm day--and I began to suspect that anything that can go wrong, had gone wrong. I called Leo the Mechanic for an appointment.

Man, something funky weird was happening in steerage and linkage and it was a white-knuckled drive to the repair shop yesterday, I wanna tell you! But not to worry. Leo can fix it. Probably just a shock or a tie clasp or one of those doflottchies under there. I dropped the truck off, and when I got back from my haircut (not there's another blog post), there was my truck on the lot, ready to go. Not.

"We got serious trouble with your truck, Fred" Leo said, ashen-faced. "It's a wonder the front right wheel didn't fall off on the highway. The frimfrangle is broken all the way through and the dowlrimple has got to be replaced. (I believe it had something actually to do with the strut and the ball joint but not being mechanically fluent, I'd rather make up terms than misrepresent my car guru, Leo). It's not safe to drive". And of course, I had been impressed of the very Truth of this statement getting it there for him to diagnose.

And so, here I sit, confounded between the dreaded writer's block and numerous oncoming trains of thought (as I described a few days ago), an object at rest, tending to stay at rest and generate cliches until motivation returns, I find out about my job, and I get my blessit truck back. I think I shoulda stood in bed.

* yes, I know this is not a word/not the correct word, and I throw these out from time to time just to see how many out there are having a "trish moment". You know who you are.

And Nothing But the Truth

It is the year 2013. What her husband doesn't know is that Wanda has obtained the most recent version of this device, developed in the early '90s in university labs with CIA money. It was used effectively in several critical court cases ten years later as a more reliable measure of TRUTH than the polygraph. Over the intervening decade, the device has become smaller, cheaper, and with very recent improvements can now be operated remotely without the skull electrodes of the original machine or even the ear bud of more recent models.

"So. Where'd ya go last night"? she asks, and the fate of their marriage hangs on John's answer.

The makers of the Veritas 300 anticipate a wide usage for the device, now that the price, size and wireless and covert capabilities have matched the affordability and size and utility comparable to other worn and embedded devices in common usage today. There are plans in coming years to implant dime-sized successors to the V300 under the skin of the user who will get an automatic vibratory signal when the target subject--child, coworker, clerk or confidant--give answers that fail to fall in the normative range of TRUTH.

Visionaries involved with future applications look forward to the day when this device, smaller than a grain of sand, will be as common as today's childhood vaccines, implanted in every child born in America (although it will be restricted globally to American citizens, and possibly to those with certain party allegiances; this remains uncertain at this time). These future-thinkers have established a long-range plan for the dissemination of their appliance, and even found a theme from an outdated and little-used source that will serve as a letterhead for their communications. It reads:

"You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free"

...and in the Darkness, Blog Them

We (that means even the tube-o-phobic wife)... we are watching the second of the LOTR videotapes that wife bought a few months ago. In another couple of weeks in dribs and drabs, we'll come to the end of it. She can't take it in long spurts. The violence and darkness oppresses her, and Gollum really weirds her out. Which made it all the more surprising this morning as she slithered around muttering to herself while getting ready for her journey to Mordor.

She said "I feel like Gollum". I reassured her that she had better hair than Gollum. She was comforted.

And then just this moment, I find out two things: Gollum, apparently, is a human actor. Bless his heart. Wearing that long cloth and everything. The bad teeth. That was one heck of a makeup artist at work there. And I compliment the actor on his marvelous flexibility. Very impressive. But that frog sitting is really hard on your hips, you know.

And second, a blogger-buddy's wife just got her photo snapped at the big LOTR wingding in Hollywood. Hi, Mrs. Kurt. Mr. and Mrs. were the first blogger family I ever met a year ago September when they stopped by Goose Creek for a short visit.

No, wait. There's a third. Mr. Kurt, the blogging partner in the duo, was blogging about blogging just a few days ago. And I'll be darned if he doesn't sound like the bipolar voices of Smeagol and Gollum duking it out. OOoooooh! Weblogs! Weeeee hatezzzz it! Go away! It's our preciousssss, it tizzzz!

Grain by Grain, the Mountains Wear

This month's Ecotone biweekly topic is "Stones and Rocks"

My mother would probably say that the object of my first outdoor curiosity was an insect, but my own first clear memory of backyard wonder was a rock that I held in two pudgy hands, probably at around age two. Milky feldspar, crystalline quartz, and iron pyrites or fools gold were common in the red clay road cuts around my neighborhood. I couldn't name them then, but the glassy, pearly or chalky chunks of matter were like jewels that sprang like magic right out of the ground. I remember digging with a spoon in one designated spot behind the garage. I had heard that if you burrowed your way all the way through the earth, you'd come up in China where they didn't talk like we did (this concerned me some. What would I say to them when I first emerged from my hole?) and decided that digging is what I would do with my life. I figured along the way as I passed the center of the Earth, I'd come across all sorts of interesting rocks.

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama --the Iron City, Pittsburg of the South-- and my first experience of rocks big enough to climb on were the red iron outcroppings along the southern edge of the city; those ridges form the southern terminus of the Appalachian Mountains. The stony spine of those Alabama ridges planted in my dreams the seeds of greater mountains to the north that I would see one day. And once I did see them as a young man, I knew right away that I belonged in the mountains. The massive enormity of them, the permanence and the subterranean reality of rock was a subconscious metaphor for that which one can build a life upon and trust to endure. I would live in the mountains and build my life upon a rock. Here was Permanence. A sure foundation. Some are attracted to the sea to which all matter moves; I wanted to live near the source, the high places, the rocky peaks where clouds roosted and streams began: the mountains. The constant, the immutable mountains.

We moved away from Birmingham after college to live in the Blue Ridge of Virginia. But a grad school friend would soon be leaving for a year in New Zealand. It was possible that he might never come back to the states after he left. So I traveled down to Alabama to take one last hike in the rocky sandstone ravines of what is now the Sipsey Wildnerness. Walking between the rocky walls along Thompson Creek or the Sipsey River was like tracing a great incision etched by flowing waters over time. Standing between canyon walls was like spelunking in roofless caves, sunlit and overgrown, where waterfalls tumble over the rim, humid as a jungle. And it was on that trip that I learned that permanence, even in stone, is a relative term. Even rocks crumble and melt, mountains buckle and break, and our time on earth is measured in grains of sand.

Excerpt From Lessons in Stone, Fragments May 26, 2003:

By the middle of the afternoon, we had discovered one particularly splendid blind-ended canyon typical of the Sipsey area, carved by a small tributary of Thompson Creek. The small side-stream plunged over the rim of the ledge above, splashing into a pool of jagged rocks that were so long in place, they were swathed in thick moss and tall arching ferns. Trees grew atop them, roots wrapping round like tentacles of jellyfish, to find the forest floor. The sound of water echoed and hissed like a seashell held to the ear, reverberating in this conch of stone.

Here we would stay the night. Nestled back under the broad high dome of ancient rock, we spread our gear on a bed of dry leaves that had drifted into the hollow of rock the previous fall. And then, we had the rest of the afternoon to slow down and absorb the wonder of the place, to let it seep into our bones, and let go the hectic rhythms of the city and highway.

We made ourselves comfortable, stretching out to rest under the ledge of rock frozen in place for millenia, like a breaking wave, 40 feet overhead. Our 'roof' extended out beyond us in a towering brow, toward the nameless stream in the V-shaped bottom of the narrow valley. Tall trees, especially Cucumber Magnolias and massive Tulip Poplars, competed with each other to gain the most benefit of sunlight, lifting their topmost branches above the rim of this hidden green, wet, shadow-filled cove. I have seldom felt such serenity as in this timeless place. The massive unmoving stone whispered to us of permanence, changeless stability, security. I put this into words as best I could, sharing them with Steve. Then we were quiet again for perhaps an hour, lost in our own thoughts.

As we lay there on top of our sleeping bags, hands clasped contentedly behind our heads, I felt a small mote of something fall on my face. Soon, Steve did too. Then a few more specks, and we both realized in the same instant what was happening, and together saw the irony of it. These specks of sand had been falling in just this way, relentless over eons, like ticking from a great granular clock of massive sandstone. With each tick, tock, grain and speck, the great rock diminished. On this particular day, two human minds were there to comprehend it.

The very substance of the sanctuary of stone around us that had spoken to us of permanence-- fixed and immutable features on our map-- was speck upon grain, yielding to forces tearing matter apart, marking time, surrendering to the pull of gravity. The very mountain was moving each moment to the sea. Those tiny motes in our eyes would join the fish we had watched earlier in the day, holding their places in the stream. Pebble and sand would then move with inexorable slowness into larger and stronger streams, at last to find rest in the Gulf. This end, too, suggests the false certainty of a final end. Sand specks will become stone, stones compacted will be lifted up into mountains once more, and grains will fall, one by one, and wash away, then live again in mountains.

Day Light

Floyd County sits on an uplifted plateau of land that forms a wedge on the map. We live at the northern point of the triangle. Beyond the southern border, the land falls off down the Blue Ridge Escarpment to the Virginia Piedmont. On the northern side the land falls too, not as precipitously, and Goose Creek carves its way into the Great Valley that includes the Shenandoah to the north, and the New River Valley just west of us. Our land lies about midway between the average elevation of Floyd County at 2700 feet and the Great Valley at 1700.

The Farmer's Almanac says today's sunrise will be 7:08 and sunset at 6:03. The Goose Creek Almanac says that from the middle of our pasture, the first sun will begin to paint color across the highest peaks around 8:15 this morning and reach the pasture and barn by 8:50. This afternoon, the sun will disappear behind the western ridge, from the same pasture vantage point around 4:15 and the west-facing ridges will go to monochrome by 5:15. We'll be bathed in indirect light for almost an hour before our neighbors up top actually see the sun set behind the low mountains twenty miles west.

Our days have their own properties unique to the particulars of our unique location, just as yours do. We are tucked down in a wrinkle of the Ridge and Valley geology that forms this terrain and our daylight doesn't go by the book. But we are also sheltered from the worst of the wind, and when we see forecasts of 45 mile-an-hour winds at night, we don't envy the folks who have built on the ridges to get the nice views of the sun rising and setting. And in summer, especially after the maples leaf out, the house is spared the hot, drying western sun during the long afternoons.

When we moved from our cabin high on the brow of the Blue Ridge to the shaded recesses of Goose Creek, I had expected I would feel claustrophobic and shut in. I still enjoy the expansive views, but all in all, I'm content to wait for the sun to find us in this placid bowl in its own good time. And there are views looking up as wondrous as those looking down from high places.

A Different Perspective

In four years, I don't think I've ever taken pictures of the house from this ridge that strikes up just behind the barn. It is steep and muddy and the briars are pretty bad. It was part of the brutal logging and is still quite a tangle, and not very attractive. But it was good to be there this morning just as the sun was first hitting the ridge behind the house to bring the snow-covered pines into razor sharp contrast with the bluest sky we've seen in weeks.

Goose Creek runs between the trees in the foreground, paralleling the road. My truck sits forelorn like the horse not chosen to leave the stable this morning. I left the pup inside because where I’m standing is one step away from a thirty foot plunge. I couldn't trust him to behave while I was focused on my viewfinder. Plus, I just needed some alone time to get my head on straight.

Silent Night

I scolded myself for not paying more attention to the lighting after I'd taken this one and realized that the yellow porch light was still on. But now that I see it, I think it gives a warmth to the picture that would have been lacking with just the outside floodlights on.

This picture is taken from the back door (on the nearest corner of the house you can see in the upper right banner), looking over the rock wall (made from the rocks that were the original foundation of the house), past the chimney and over the little footbridge across the branch (or crick, or brook....whatever we decided a few weeks ago to call it). The trees left to right are an odd unnamed pine, a spruce and two dying Hemlocks I need to treat this spring for the wooly adelgid that is wiping out the species.

Now the sky is brightening and even a little blue is showing overhead. Every limb is holding snow, but it will change quickly as the sun comes up over the ridge. I have to decide if I need yet one more picture of the house, the barn, the creek in the snow.

But all snows are different, even in their sameness. And it is the serendipity of yellow light and such surprises that add the adventures to photography! So, there will probably be another few snow pix later today!

Four Wheel Driven

It is probably the most snow and the most beautiful snow we've had all year. "Up to two inches" that was expected before morning was on the ground by 4:00 yesterday afternoon, and by 9:00 there was another four or five "unexpected" inches on top of that and still coming down. So. We are in lip-biting mode this morning wondering when/if/how Ann will cover 25 miles between Goose Creek and work.

The Forester will do fine, but Ann's never driven it in deep snow and lacks confidence. My only concern is that the hiway folks will have plowed the first hardtop she comes to. The approach to this intersection will have her coming across a little bridge and up a grade, and the plow will have pushed up a two foot barrier of snow that she'll have to bust through with the car. (I don't know whether to mention this to her ahead of time and send the adrenalin higher than it already is or just let her problem-solve when she gets there).

The cell phones don't work til she gets 7-8 miles from here, but there is a house and someone we know at the hardtop if she had to call me to come with the snow shovel (and risk getting the truck stuck, too.) It is a two mile walk back home. What to do?

UPDATE 7:30... Well there she went. Somebody had been down the road overnight so there were tracks to follow, and this same vehicle probably cut a path through the snowbank at the hardtop... if it had been plowed at all by then. Ann said she'd rather have me at home in case she called instead of sharing the misery stranded with her somewhere along the way.

It may take her an hour and a half to get to work, half that time before she could call and tell me she's doing fine. Or not. Meanwhile, I just remembered a took a couple of pictures last night while it was snowing pretty good. Maybe I'll post one directly... to take my mind off those things that are out of my control.

Eating Nemo

This study (to be published officially later this year) shows that by taking two 1000 mg Cod Liver Oil capsules daily, OA sufferers may be able to obtain good reduction of pain and inflammation and a slowing of the underlying cartilage destruction. The preventative aspects of this old-fashion remedy may have particular importance for younger folk who think they might be prone to later onset of osteoarthritis (and the odds are good you are, so why gamble?). Later, perhaps, someone will look at the combination of Cod Liver Oil and glucosamine (which lays down new cartilage in the joint). I give this nice discovery a big "thumbs up!" No, wait. Can't do that. That hurts. The thumbs are definitely not happy and are hoping soon to be finding Nemo in a gelcap.

And, while rambling in the medical realm...do you know someone with gluten intolerance? They can't eat bread or other things with wheat products (chiefly gluten). Apparently, at least in the UK, 1% of all children tested showed the enzymes for this condition called "Celiac disease". A far smaller percentage of children showed overt symptoms of the condition but could go on to manifest the condition later as adults. There is a simple test for this disorder and dietary changes early may reduce severity of the condition. (Seek medical advice. I am not a doctor. But I do have a "Dr. Science" T-shirt and have a masters degree... IN SCIENCE!)

Wonder what it looks like from Cold Mountain right now? (Well not right 'right now' but after the sun comes up?) Go to the webcam.

And, lastly (you wish...) what do you make of this odd thing on the Martian soil (scroll down to Feb 03 entry on the Mars Blog). I think it's a Martian Snail on it's way for a dip in a nearby subterranean pool. Or a hanky that fell out of someone's pocket. What do you think?

Keystroke

From Fred's Demented Dictionary

KEYSTROKE (noun): cerebro-vascular accident brought on by excessive keyboard operation while engaged in multiple threads of internal and/or external conversation via the typed word. Can occur when the victim becomes trapped between the fixed entity of a writer's block and the locomotives of one or more speeding trains of thought. Variant: one form of keystoke occurs when the victim is riding on multiple trains of thought, and they all pile up at the QWERTY station at the same time.

Old Dogs

New tricks.

November marked our four year anniversary here. I admit, there are still a few places on these acres we've not traversed. But I had a pretty good sense of our boundaries and where the neighbors' places were, all out of sight save the place down the road where someone is home about four months out of the year, off and on. But there is something to know about snow: it covers up some things, but it also makes other features visible that are not apparent until the white gives contrast to the dark trunks of trees and outcrops of rocks.

Last week we were up on the ridge behind the house--the part of the land that was logged, then devastated by two winters of ice storms. Since it faces south, the snow, if not melted to bare ground, is at least slushy and not icy. So we climb that steep trail through the new white pines and reach the top where Ann gathers twigs for kindling. As we stand on that ridge, to our backs are many hundred acres of mature forest that has been 'hunting club' land for ages. The hollow boles of old chestnut still stand lodged in the gnarled oaks. The gray wall of mature trees stand in sharp contrast to our sad, deforested land to the south. Over the top of our house and barn, across our pasture and the twisting ravine that follows Nameless Creek, we see several ridges beyond, hazy against the southern horizon. And this week on the farthest of those ridges, in the snow, for the first time in these four years, we could make out the white rectangle of something man-made. A barn, probably. Funny. I suffered the ambivalence that one might experience finding footprints on the deserted island. One the one hand, it is good to know that you are not alone. But on the other, you are not alone.

In the same vein of discovery from under our own noses, we've just learned of an alternate route to Christiansburg taking a road we've passed every day for all these trips to town. As we are told, not only does it cut five minutes from the 45 minute drive, but it bypasses the long grade of Christiansburg mountain on 460 that becomes such a winter problem when trucks get half-way up and then bog down in snow or ice. But the greatest thing about this is that we will see some different country and expand our maps of where we are, knowing our place all the better.

Star Tech

Looking back over the snippets accumulated this past week (which is what Friday blogging is for, after all) I notice a little cluster that all fall under the heading of Virginia Tech-related. Tech is about 20 miles north of us as the crow flies. Unfortunately, roads aren't crows and it's 45 minutes and 27 miles by car. Anyhow, here are three items of note:

Not that any of you will be able to attend (though we plan to): I want to point out the multimedia extravaganza taking place at Tech starting next week. It's a dance. It's a poem about poets and poetry. It's a musical. Our friend Tom Gardner is the poet-originator of "...ear and I and Silence" (a phrase I think he said came from Emily Dickenson). Tom, being one of very few writers with whom I have occasional contact, gets an earful of my hopes and visions as a writer, and is the only person to have read my entire book manuscript through--twice! Come back to Fragments in two weeks for a review of the play. (You can come back before that if you want to.)

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Poet Nikki Giovanni Goes to the Grammys!

Giovanni, 60, is one of America's most revered and popular poets. She rose to prominence in the 1960s with her socially conscious and politically charged commentaries on the pursuit of civil rights for American blacks. She has been cited as one of the country's most influential poets, and she believes her works and the writings of other black poets in the '60s and '70s informed the stylings of early rap artists.

I met Nikki when I was providing therapy for patients at an assisted living facility of a Blacksburg retirement community. She came every Wednesday to lead a memoir-writing class. I spoke with her about the only writing projects going on in this house at the time-- Nathan's book. Were I to meet her today, I'd have a bit more writing-related things to pick her brain about. And, I have forgiven her for any encouragement she might have given to the rap artists. And Nikki, I'm sorry Al Franken kept you from getting the Big Prize.

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Finally, I have learned that one can take classes in Spacecraft Design at Virginia Tech. Professor Chris Hall who teaches this otherworldly kind of class also has a blog, appropriately called Spacecraft. Chris found Fragments after the last radio essay a few weeks back. He rides with a group of motorcycle riders that come this way from time to time. He has promised to warn me if they decide to come down Goose Creek... and I want to be ready for pictures of a dozen hogs in front of our barn. Chris (as much as it galls me to say this) is now in Hawaii--on business. Yeah, right. Somebody's gotta do it.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

...Gardening season is not a cruel myth.
Plan. Anticipate. Plant seeds in your mind. Live again.

I stood in the cold mud of the garden last February and repeated this mantra, remembering the abundance, the warmth, the first honeybees in years, and shelves full of canning the August before. I also remembered, but didn't write about how a month after this picture was taken, Goose Creek--from which I had pulled water to irrigate the garden to such productivity--went completely dry. And the garden withered, and was brittle and barren before the fall crops could germinate.

The next summer (the one just past) the soil was so wet and cold that nobody around here put very much in their root cellars. What will the coming season bring us?

Summer already swells in miniature in buds of flowers, leaves, branches. Color lurks in dark places, hidden from the weak light and cold winds. There are stirrings in Central America as bright birds grow restless for summer seeds, for larvae tunnelling under bark, for cucumber beetles chartreuse and black, and a thousand nameless arthropods that leap and hop and undulate under the hot remnants of oak leaves.

We are expecting sunshine, calm winds and temperatures in the balmy low 40's here today. And I intend to step through the fence wire in my mud boots and see how my garden grows.

Embarrassment of Riches

I'm more than three weeks past due for a haircut and tempted to just let it ta heck go--and add to Floyd County's high percentage of males with gray pony tails--the Willie Nelson look. But we saw Willie in Salem a while back. He has a thinning, if long, coif these days. On the other hand (or head) I am blessed at this Certain Age to still have my own teeth, and way plenty of hair. As it gets longer it grows more up than out and looks each week more and more like a bad toupee. Or an ill-fitted hair helmet.

This morning in the shower as I wet down and reached for the shampoo, I found only two little foil packets where the shampoo should be. They said "Volumizer". Oh great. Just what I need--more bulk. And so when this chapeau dries, I'll resemble a cross between Jim and TammyFaye. Or Glenn Campbell. It's gonna be a Big Hair, Home Alone kind-of-a day.

By The Time I Get to Dugspur

How good can a day be when it begins in a dark room in an empty bed on a cold morning with snow moving in, and at 4:22 a.m., the dog is barfing in the other room? Well, I'm about to find out how good. Right this moment, I predict that I may sleep through a bit more of it. I dropped Ann off at the hospital (again) late last night so she wouldn't have to face this morning's snowstorm. Maybe she'll treat herself to a hot, autoclaved blanket from the ER to help her sleep another night in a hospital bed on-the-job. I think she'd confess she's married more to her obligations than to me over winter.

So. I didn't get to bed until after 11:00, which is sinfully late for me. My fingers are awake enough, but my eyes feel like they're full of cinders and they're begging for another couple of hours off-duty. What did I dream? Seems I remember that the dog heaving at 4:22 was briefly part of a bad dream before it produced a wet place on the rug just inside the back door. The dream had something to do with a toilet plunger. As consciousness rudely supplanted the dream, the sound of the plunger morphed into the suck-blow sounds of crepuscular dog wretching. If there was a plastic bag in that wet spot, or a rubber band--dogs being dogs--it was sucked back down for another shot at the hydrochloric acid before I could get the lights on.

Maybe I'm more bleary than I thought. I was about to go into my usual introspective riff about the Friday slump, being at a loss for words worth writing, about how February sucks the soul out of me every year. Blah blah blah. I swung over to Outlook to be sure I'd set the alarm for later today for my usual Friday call to mom. I'll be darned. It's Thursday. I'm a day early for my end-of-the-week slump.

And, too, intertwined through the dream with the toilet plunger noises were the songs of Jimmy Webb, the discordant sounds and their meanings somehow meshing as they only can in dreams. I had heard Terry Gross interviewing Webb a few nights ago on the way to town. His "place" songs--Galveston, Wichita Lineman, By the Time I Get to Phoenix--are sequestered in some remote place where memories of youth, ego, a clear voice and fleeting dreams of stage lights are stored. Many of his songs were in my repertoire then, and if Glenn Campbell sang it, so did I. Glenn Campbell, the guy with the big hair. In my dream, I forgot the words. It sure feels like a Friday.

The firewood this morning was crusted with ice. (But then, everything in February is crusted with ice.) The stove has balked at every fumbling, groggy attempt to rekindle it, and after almost an hour it was producing more smoke than heat. Finally, just now, it has begun to crackle and and the wet wood hisses at the flames. Shadows dance in the dark corners away from the light of the monitor. Warmth fills the room like an inverted flood, piling up next to the ceiling first, then slowly descending, relaxing, like a warm bath. The snow just started. I'm going back to bed.

So Why Should I Publish Your Book?

Apparently, there are all varieties of lists of "the (X) most important questions editors want answered in a nonfiction book proposal". Here is one short list from the "text" being used in the Barnes & Noble course. Of course, the author recommends not to do something so blantant as number, then address them.

The answers have to be cleverly embedded in a description of your book that gives away enough of the book to draw the editor in. Sequence is not necessarily important. Some subgenres (like memoir, autobiography) seems to me will have less of a thesis toward which they are heading, although there needs to be a "point" the author can give to explain why he or she is giving this account of an event or a personality. FYI. Here they are. Not earth-shattering. But this is harder than it looks.

1. What is this book about?

2. What is the book's thesis (many in publishing refer to it as the book's argument) and what's new about it?

3. Why are you the one person to write it?

4. Why is now the time to publish this book?

5. Who makes up the core audience for the proposed book and will they find it appealing?

GSW

Emergency Room shorthand for Gun Shot Wound.

The abbreviation also finds usage in physical therapy patient histories, and I have seen a few GSW's over the years. The first was a poor schmuck whose wife threatened to shoot him, apparently, on many occasions. And then, one day, she did the deed. After getting to know the man, I could understand the wife's point of view.

Fortunately, I suppose, she was either a darned poor aim or intended the GSW as wake-up call. She shot the man in the foot. Went clean through. And we were dressing his wounds after soaking the mangled extremity in a sterile whirlpool. The wife brought him to therapy, which I always thought was amusing. I could imagine her saying through clenched teeth:

"I'm gonna fill your sorry a** with daylight with this .38, but then I'll find you the best sterile whirlpool in the county and carry you three times a week for physical therapy for three months, you sorry son-of-a **."

What brings this to mind is Ann's recent interest in getting a pistol to carry with her when she walks the dog. We've seen bear, and there are a few feral dogs around that concern us, her more than me. But what we've decided to do instead is for Ann to carry an industrial strength whistle she got as a stocking stuffer a few Christmases ago. I feel better about this. There are no ER abbreviations for Whistle Wounds.

Meanwhile, the dog seems destined for internal injury. Over the weekend, Tsuga ate the ziploc bag of puppy hotdog behavior-mod treats that fell out of my pocket while clumsily carrying in groceries from the car in the ice. We are waiting to see how (and which end) this comes out. Yesterday he found a heavy duty rubber band in the driveway. With considerable difficulty and persistance, he managed to swallow this, too, as I chased him around in the slush. I had visions of cartoon Xrays showing digested alarm clocks, tin cans, garden tools and such. Hmmm. I've been looking for a missing pair of sunglasses. Ya don't suppose...

Blog Hatchery

It's a blog! No! It's a communications clearinghouse! No! It's a multimedia agency!

Yes! FloydCounty.com is all these things and more. As you'll see, Doug Thompson's modest sidebars lead the visitor into the different domains that Doug and his wife Amy have been developing during their years on the road. Just this past weekend, they've returned to Floyd County to set up their headquarters in the cultural incubator called the Jacksonville Center. While they will take to the road again, Floyd will be the center of their new lifestyle.

I'm looking forward to meeting Doug this week and to welcoming a new blogger to town. Be sure and click all his links and be prepared to be entertained, educated and entranced.

Meanwhile, out smack-dab in the breadbasket of the country (or cheesebasket?) another new blog has recently cracked its way out of its little eggshell and seen the light of day. Here again, only the blog is new. The Midwesterner is the brand-new blog of Tom Montag, whose extensive work as a poet and writer will now serve him well in the creation of his latest project-- the "Vagabond in the Middle". We can peek over Tom's shoulder as he interviews and travels and runs into memorable places and characters from the midwest.

This is very much place-based writing and I think Tom will find a regular audience of eager readers from all regions who are interested in reading about what it is that gives us our connections to community, country and place.

When at First...

It took the publisher less than a month to respond. There in the mailbox yesterday was my manuscript in the folder I had addressed to myself. It contained my proposal and images, and from the short page signed by the company president, this excerpt:

"... Although your proposed book is written in a nice style, our acquisitions felt that potential market for this book was too narrow for us. We did not feel we could sell enough copies to make the project economically feasible for us."

I was not surprised and I was not crushed. I am, however, uncertain where to go from here.

One line of effort would be to change the way the book is presented (proposed) and the Barnes and Noble course offers suggestions for putting together a winning book proposal. This would require starting over with the sales pitch and I knew from the start that my audience, as originally offered in the rejected manuscript, was not made to seem broad enough. How can I, without changing the core of the book, change the proposal to make it saleable to a broader market?

As a kind reader offered yesterday, it is too easy to read the daily blah of someone's life, well written and with images. They are all over the internet, for free, and we call these new "books" weblogs. Why spend good money to buy the book?

And so, if I decide that I want to continue to pitch the book to trade publishers, I need to do more than say "here's an account of my life seen through daily writings". Yawn.

I think I could broaden the appeal by stepping back and putting the daily stories and reflections and ruminations in a larger context of the life and times the book arose out of. Doing so, on reading the new proposal, an editor would see at a glance that a larger audience exists than just people wanting to read a journal between hard covers. While it doesn't lead to a particular conclusion or argument as many nonfiction works do, it does come out of a unique circumstance and answer some "questions" about life purpose that could lead a wider readership to be interested in the book. I need to look more carefully at those reasons that this book, right now, could become "economically feasible" to the next publisher.

Pardon my thinking out loud. Feel free to read over my shoulder while I brainstorm early in the post-rejection phase. I'll let you know what I come up with.

Through a Glass, Darkly

Winter is the season of sensory deprivation, when the cold is so sharp and brittle that even molecules seem to cease their mad motion and temperatures approach as near absolute zero as a human mind can tolerate. In winter, we learn to live with absence: absence of the aromas of steeping teas and potpourris and warming organic cassaroles of humus and mulch from forest and pasture and garden. We acccept that there will only be the large mechanical sounds of wind in trees and water under ice, and a jet above us somewhere in sunshine we haven't seen in weeks. And absence of color so that it becomes the way of the world: black and white and shades of gray, week after enduring week. And mostly, white.

There are three images I carry in my mind because I have seen them this winter. I see patterns that not everyone sees. We don't all notice the same visual patterns any more than we all hear the same melodies or rhythms in music. I've been able, at times, to capture the feeling of a pattern in nature--in creek ice or spider webs or garden insects--that show others how I see the world. And there is something fundamentally edifying in that for me, to be able lead someone to an "AHA!" moment so that they will never be able to see the world in the same way, ever again. These three images of mine are that kind of image. I have seen them. But I don't think I will ever be able to photograph them. And maybe they are that kind of personal vision that--like the old superstitions-- if captured on film, they will die.

I have thought about trying to put these sightings into words, but--as I have done again just now--always decided that this, too, would only diminish their beauty. I cannot do with words what nature does with light, nor can I do with words what a writer-artisan does with them. Yet. Maybe never. I am doomed to the making of flawed maps that in only the most grotesque of ways portray the territory.

But I have seen these things, and feel blessed. And they have put the senses back into the bleak mid-winter. I can at least tell you that much. I'm sorry there is not more.

Genie in the Bottle

If you don't have an opinion on nanotechnology, get one.

What we (the man-on-the-street and the corporate players) decide about how to proceed with this "genie" in the next few years will have profound effects on our children's children and--without hyperbole--on the state of the planet. Be prepared for the coming battle to win "hearts and minds" to accept the coming technological wave without a whimper or reject it out-of-hand as a tool we are not equipped to use until we grow up as a species.

This Washington Post article is good to lay out some of the issues, and I will resist excerpting it, except I really liked the caveat about environmental consequences: "Everybody agrees that if nanotechnology is going to be the next industrial revolution, it would be nice if it were a cleaner revolution than the last one. Nobody wants to read Rachel Carson writ small."

Apparently, one of the stronger voices urging caution with nanoparticles in medicine and the environment is the ETC Group (Erosion, Technology and Concentration) that describes itself as "dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights. To this end, ETC Group supports socially responsible developments in technologies useful to the poor and marginalized and it addresses governance issues affecting the international community. We also monitor the ownership and control of technologies, and the consolidation of corporate power." (I make no claims re this group, but offer it as a foil to the gung-ho Monsantos who champion immediate, widespread exploitation of the technology.)

This is not an issue of pure science. The practical, everyday implications of nanoscale technologies make you involved whether you are interested in this topic now or not. The fact that there are literally trillions of dollars in applications concerns me.

There was a motto said to express the full-speed-ahead mentality of the Corps of Engineers back during it's stream channelization years: If it can be done, it should be done.

We are a whole lot better with the cans than the shoulds. The former is science; the latter falls into the soft realm of ethics, values and character. Do we have the character to say NO, to keep the genie in the bottle, even though it could make a lot of people rich? Your children will live to see the answer, and you should be a part of it. Do your homework.

What kind of wine goes with gopher?

As they say, the devil is in the details. Is a red or a white the choice for groundhog?

This erudite question comes from Andrea Harris, formerly a resident of Spleenville but now is driving the backroads of America in a Winnebago she calls "Twisted Spinster". If we are to have serving suggestions for our GroundHog Breedery Products, Andrea points out correctly that this element of style must not be overlooked.

I feel certain there will be great enthusiasm on the part of our two local wineries to work with me to develop some special blends (with labels I intend to design right here on this computer, on site across from the Breedery). In advance of my first meeting with them, I want to have some suggestions to offer, and you are invited to add yours.

In the wee hours of the night, these few have come to mind. Certainly, you can offer others.

Gopher Gewürztraminer
Rodent Reisling
Sauvignon du Squirrel

and finally, Marmot Merlot -- with the problem of deciding on the French or Am'ercan pronunciation: "Mar-mow Mer-low" or "Mar-mot Mer-lot". Whaddaya think?

What's a Carnivore to Do?

The first thing I read today in the morning browse was that chickens in Delaware are being destroyed because of the avian flu, first featured on farms in Asia.

Over coffee, Ann suggested maybe since beef is out, and now chicken is becoming suspect, maybe we needed to consider the "other white meat": Pork.

An hour later, I read this headline: Bird Virus Found in Pig Snouts.

And it became clear to me what we should do: I will develop Floyd County's first and only (until the wisdom of my ground(hog)breaking entrepreneurship spreads) Organic Groundhog Farm. Appalachian subsistance farmers and homesteaders (and penniless local artists--if that's not a redundant term) have long known that Woodchucks/Ground Hogs/Whistle Pigs/Marmots are a form of edible meat. They are really just enormous squirrels. And everybody loves squirrel gravy. And so, this is an idea whose time has come. It'll give a whole new meaning to "ground chuck"!

Since they will be hibernating for another six weeks, I will have time to formulate my business plan, acquire the needed materials to convert the barn to the Goose Creek Marmot Breedery, and scout the valley for burrows. When the sleepy sciurids emerge in mid-March, I'll have set up my snares to obtain breeding stock, will select only the meatiest and most efficient of the lot, and begin soliciting customers from my carniphobic neighbors. Of course, the regional market will develop soon after as the word spreads.

And I wondered what I was going to do with my life. Oh, and there will be the bumper stickers: (open for suggestions from you future consumers...)

EAT MORE MARMOT

HAPPINESS IS A 20-POUND SQUIRREL FOR DINNER

HOW MUCH MEAT COULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK

THE ROAST ON YOUR TABLE THIS MORNING
SLEPT UNDER OUR PASTURE LAST NIGHT

I gotta go.

The Ice Follies

Friday, 06 February 2004. It has rained all night, and today until mid-afternoon. As I look at the Intellicast radar, Floyd County remains in a tiny tear-drop patch of dark pink freezing rain, a cold enclave that stubbornly refuses to warm up ("warm" here being a relative term) like the rest of southwest Virginia has by now. Amazingly, we still have power with all this ice. Icicles hang from every branch and the yellowed grass in the yard looks like a heavily waxed punker's spiky coif. It is possible now to walk in the yard and in places where snow remains to crunch into and get a purchase. But we had an emergency and I needed to get across the road right away--to rescue the plank we use for a bridge--before it washed away in the swelling stream. How hard could that be, I asked.

Very, very hard, it turns out. The road was the proverbial sheet of ice, even while inundated by flood waters rushing down the middle of it. In a stroke of genius, I had grabbed two hiking sticks to use as outriggers on the ice, so surely, with my extra support, I could make it across and save the bridge! I went to plant my ski-poles on the gravel, but they slipped over the surface like a speed skater's blades. I tried a half dozen crossings, all the same. Even where torrents of water now streamed down the rutted gravel road, nothing had melted and clear invisible ice glistened under the rushing rain water. No one could walk across this road, I realized as the waters in the creek rose and splashed against our little footbridge.

Think, brain. Use your professional knowledge of locomotion and physics, knucklehead.

"Aha!" brain said. "Lower your center of gravity and broaden your base of support with the hiking sticks."

And so, I had a plan. In a full squat in the rough snow at the edge of the road, I prepared to reciprocal-duck-walk across the frozen road, using the poles, cross-country fashion as I inched along. That way, if I fell at least I wouldn't fall very far (although I would get very, very wet). But on the other hand, if I fell--which seemed highly possible--I wasn't sure I could get back up out of the freezing rainwater. What would I push against to stand in this world of zero traction? Maybe I should have told Ann I was heading out to cross the treacherous road and save the plank. If I went down, I reckoned I'd have to stay there until she missed me. Surely she'd notice by bedtime.

Now this is the kind of field-decision I'm sure you are familiar with. You've analyzed the situation and taken stock of your resources. You've considered all the alternatives, balanced risks against benefit and created a five-step plan of execution, using the power of your years of analytical experience and problem-solving know-how. Then, setting off to do the deed, at a point generally just over half-way to completion, you utter the all too familiar and desparate words: Oh, *_____! And you realize the truth of one of my favorite pithy personal aphorisms: It is easier to get into something than to get out of it. (*expletive of choice)

And there I was, duck-squat in the middle of the road. I could not go forward nor could I go backward. The slightest movement threatened to send one foot east and the other west, ski poles north and south. And, whilst hunkered there in this most bizarre of postures, it occurred to me that if the mail must go through, the postman would be coming round the bend at any moment. I broke out in a cold--a very cold--sweat.

The mailman didn't come. Hasn't come. Isn't coming. The mail won't go through today, apparently. Some people have enough sense to stay indoors on a day like this; so he didn't drive up to view this spectacle, and I was spared the embarrassment of explaining that no, I was not laying an egg in the middle of the road. Eventually I inched my way across the road in an ungraceful waddle. And, hurrah, I got to the board before it was swept away.

But, for all my risks, the plank was irretrievably locked in ice and I could not budge it, even using my ski poles as a pry bar. There was one brief loss of traction under my boots while leaning and tugging at the board where it seemed that I might find myself bobbing along in the torrent, a bug in the storm drain of life. More cold sweat. I scooted cautiously back up the bank on my cold, wet rear and sighed a steaming-vapor gasp of relief.

Finally, defeated, I quacked my way back across the road--no more gracefully than I had come--mission unaccomplished. When I finally reached the welcome warmth of the dry house, I took off all my dripping wet gear and went upstairs to give Ann a report. Sure enough, she had been sewing and had not missed me. Had I fallen in the road or into the creek, I'd still be out there in the morning.

But the plank, on the other hand, will have surfed south down the raging creek. Hopefully, it will lodge in a tangle of alders along the bank, and we'll go fetch it back home when the weather clears and the road is neither luge or kayak run--sometime in April. Sigh. I don't know which is the worse to suffer: the cabin crazies or the winter things we get into going out where fools fear to tread. Or waddle.

Note: I should remind new readers that my rear end is no stranger to the Ice Follies. This week's adventure was tame by comparison to the one that almost iced me for good. (Thanks for the reminder, Trish.)

Fragments Goes to Fantasy Land

You know you'll old when you remember the Disneyland television program that had its first broadcast not long after the disappearance of the last DoDo Bird. You remember that the Sunday night programs were thematic, each designated to a particular topic. But you're really old when you can't remember what the heck those themes were. I remember Adventure Night; and Fantasy Night. There were a couple of others. I'm blank.

At Fragments, Fridays--for some reason-- have become Introspection Day! So gather 'round, boys and girls, and let's get ready for a day of navel gazing from the Frozen Banks of Goose Creek!

But seriously. I truly would value your opinions and advice. Especially from those several of you who have been visiting Fragments regularly over the past year or more, bless your l'il hearts. Here's the deal: As I work through this B & N online course on "Thinking Like an Editor", I realize how important it is, if hoping to be published by a commercial publisher, that a book be clearly classifiable for marketing, shelving, and other placement reasons. Books that can't be classified--while they may be well written and of interest to some reader-base, are just not very appealing to an editor who has to predict reader appeal and sales.

As you may know, I'm going through the process of submitting a book for publication--to small presses who don't require an agent, first; then ultimately, will likely self-publish, or get a life. Whatever.

Envision the book. It will (tentatively) be called "Fragments: Field Notes from an Appalachian Year". If you've come around regularly, you'll see that the book consists of some eighty selections through the four seasons. These are drawn from the posts that examine the who and the where of living here--entries that attempt to bring the reader into the moment using all the senses; to pick up the small wonders in ordinary things, turn them over in their hands, and pay close attention. Some are self-revelatory tales--about me, the dog, our neighbors, the house and how we arrived here. All have been amplified, massaged, tweaked--from their original form. Sorting back through the archives since June, 2002, there seems to be enough of adequate quality for a small book of about 55 thousand words. Probably without images. Too expensive, but lending itself to a CD version complete with images later.

So. Here's where I'd like opinions. If you were going to Barnes and Noble (or your favorite mom-and-pop corner bookstore) looking for this book, where in the stacks would you head? If asking for the book, where would you say it it would be shelved? If asked about similar books you've read, what books would you name? Is this book narrative non-fiction? Regional/Virginia-Appalachian? Nature? Memoir? None of the above?

In the "read more" below, I've appended the "marketing plan" that was part of my submission package, just so you can see what I said about the book. What else should I say? What should I leave out? And do I really expect readers to spend their time with my publishing problems? Nah. So I'll be pleasantly surprised if someone does. Ya'll have a good weekend!

Marketing and Readership

Comparable seasonally organized natural histories with philosophical overtones include Sand County Almanac, where Leopold instills an abiding "land ethic" in his readers, teaching them to care about the commonplace in its beauty and frailty. Sue Hubbell received excellent endorsements for her 1986 seasonal narrative A Country Year in which she gives an account of her solitary life alone among her beehives, exalting everyday wonders and the economies of nature to a place of high praise. More recently in Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden, Eleanor Perenyi uses plant life to draw lessons for daily living. Annie Dillard sees the ordinary with new eyes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I count myself fortunate to have seen her “tree with the lights in it” in my own wanderings and regard nature as Dillard does with a mystical reverence and awe.

Fragments: Field Notes from an Appalachian Year, by contrast to these other related works, is perhaps more personal than practical, less political than aesthetic, and includes more wide ranging sources of inspiration than gardens or beehives. In it a reader will find a variegated and pleasantly unpredictable mixture of topics and voices— from nostalgic narrative to self-mocking wry humor to highly sensory and evocative poetic prose. Like every new day in the author’s life, each entry in the book brings some new joy or vision.

The genre of creative nonfiction— into which this work falls— is gaining readership. In addition, the southern Appalachians are coming to be recognized as a place worthy of attention for the creative personalities and arts the region engenders as well as for its quiet beauty. Floyd County, Virginia, is bounded on its southern border by the heavily visited Blue Ridge Parkway. The county is increasingly visible regionally by virtue of recent cultural tourism endeavors here and stands to gain additional attention in coming months, bringing the potential of a growing readership eager to discover what life is like in this beautiful out-of-the-way place.

In today’s world, regrettably we are often too busy to notice the small wonders that come and go through the seasons just outside our doors. There is growing interest in the slower and simpler life as our technologies and economies create more unease than efficiency. In rural Floyd County, it is has been possible to find both the slower pace and attention to beauty in the ordinary. This book celebrates these increasingly uncommon riches of the simple life and should find wide interest among those who live in or visit this popular part of the mountain south.

The author is an experienced and comfortable speaker and presenter and looks forward to the personal interactions that will be associated with the promotion of this book. His experience, extensive contacts and community of readers, and his facility with computers and the internet will facilitate the development of markets for the book. The author is committed to full time work in this capacity to assure that this will be a successful publication.

The Winter of our Discontent

It's official. The thrill of winter has passed. Starting the woodstove first thing every morning--and all the preliminaries that go with it--has become mindless drudgery as the woodpile at the edge of the yard shrinks under its tarp, dwindling to nothing like the Wicked Witch of the West. White no longer represents purity and a fresh start. Silk longjohns are claustrophia-inducing and I gag at the thought of one more cup of hot chocolate. This morning, even the dog doesn't want to go outside in the ice after his first harrowing pitstop earlier--I thought I was going to have to belly walk out into the glassy yard with a liferope and have pull me and the dog back to firm footing (and more coffee). More ice is coming. It's raining bullfrogs. Make that polar bears.

We had a brief respite from the bitter cold Wednesday, so I was going to unload the wood I had cut the week before in town while seeing my Friday patient. Maybe it was water in the gas, I dunno. As I was pulling up into the driveway to turn around, the engine stalled and wouldn't restart. And there I sat, dead in the road, but on level if not solid ground and unfortunately on the curve in front of the house. I ran and threw my jacket in the road so the mailman would know to slow way, way down and ran back to push the truck out of the road. Yeah, right. Heavy truck, half ton of firewood, slushy traction underfoot and a deconditioned desk jockey pushing a driverless Dodge Dakota. The resistable force and the unmoveable object. A hernia waiting to happen. I tried the engine again. It was sounding like the battery didn't have enough juice to turn it over. Sigh. What would McGiver do?

So I unloaded the truck right there into the front yard thinking at least that would be a thousand pounds less to push. Stick by ice-covered stick (stick=a length of field cut wood, may be 6" or more in diameter and up to 100# or more) I drug the wood out of the truck bed and piled it between the HeresHome sign and the mailbox. My gloves were soaked, and with the anxiety and hurry, so were my clothes by the time I was done.

When the truck was finally empty--the moment of truth. The truck was a thousand pounds lighter but in the slush, the coefficient of friction under my boots remained near zero, so the truck was a fixture in the middle of the road around a blind bend. It was about time for the mailman. He would either hit the truck, or help me push it out of the way. Or both. In that order. But, just to go through the motions, I would try cranking it one last time. I held the ignition on for much longer than I would have, thinking "what could it hurt". It fired. Of course.

So, after letting the engine run for ten minutes, I reloaded all the wet, icy wood back where it had just come from, pulled down to my reserve woodpile beyond the garden, and unloaded it. Again. Winter deja vue. Wonderful exercise. Bah, humbug.

Its Friday again. My patient called yesterday to cancel because his road was impassable. Harumph. Our road, yesterday a frozen luge run, today becomes the kayak agility course with the flooding plus melting snow. Winter storm warnings AND flash flood warnings today. Something for everyone!

I think I need a vacation. South of here.

One Thing...

...leads to another. Hence the webbiness of the WWW.

It seems that "hypergraphia" was the topic on a recent Diane Rehm Show. I didn't find the audio of that show when I was thinking about and posting about that the other day, but I did run across this story (with a picture) about Diane--her childhood traumas, her later successes as a radio interviewer and her speech disorder that struck in 1991. If you've ever heard her, certainly you've wondered as I have "has she had a stroke? What is the deal with her voice?" She looks quite other than her "shaky, rickety, wishy-washy" voice would make you imagine. She suffers from "spasmodic dysphonia" which is treated by occasional shots of botulinum toxin to the muscles of her voice box.

Her childhood was less than wonderful, although early on, a congressman suggested she should become a child actress. Her difficult growing-up reminds me of the accounts of childhood I've read from not a few bloggers. If you hear Diane on your NPR affiliate, this article will give you a new appreciation for the lady. (May require Washington Post login)

An Eye for Winter

Sometimes I think I've seen it all. Then a new snow falls--a tabula rasa--and I learn that something has been inscribed on the clean white slate that I would never have known but for the snow.

Since early December, we've had snow in as many flavors as Bubba Gump's shrimp. I can't name them all. The last one was light and soft but not so dry that the wind would blow it from where it fell, heavy, like sifted sand. Under our feet we could have been walking in a bog of goose feathers as each step made an utterly silent boot-shaped stamp. Our trailings staggered left-right-left up the "New Road" toward the creek gorge under a cold sky, painfully blue. And when we arrived back home a half hour later, I had learned two new things.

As the leaves, flowers and shoots of the coming spring begin to swell in the early stages of pre-bloom, the protective bracts or scales around the bud are cast off and flutter away. The snow in our woods is literally strewn with these little scales now. You could never see this were it not for the perfect white slate on which they fall after a snow like ours last week. I haven't been able to find these little fluer-de-lis shapes (all well under a quarter inch) still in place on the host tree or bush yet so I'm only guessing they are protective bud scales. Later today maybe I can find a sampling of these mystery shapes and get a photograph. I'm sure they've always been there right under my nose during January snows of years past. Somehow, I didn't see them. Now, my mind knows of their existence and I see them everywhere. I'll never be blind to them again.

The steep bank along the New Road shows exposed earth in places, ten or more feet above our heads. Bare earth and rocky ledges constantly cast off small pebbles and clods from the frost-heaved surface. Year-round, they roll down the incline and come to rest in the road. Some of these rocks and chunks of frozen soil are the size of cats, but most are mouse-sized or much smaller. The lesser bits we would never notice, except for the contrasting bright surface of the snow. It takes just exactly the right kind of snow, the right temperature, an adequate gradient of incline and just the right "kernel" to create these odd things we were finding along the road.

I don't know what else to call them than "snow donuts". Each consists of a halo of snow wrapped around a dark, round kernel of dirt or rock. Some had fallen over when they reached the bottom of the hill. They lay on the snow like dark eyes searching the sky. Others rolled like an innertube down the bank and stopped in mid-roll, still sitting up like tiny white wheels with an ochre hubcaps. You could trace their paths as they had tumbled down the bank, growing a rim of white, snowman-fashion, each trail ending in a fairy-donut.

It's silly, perhaps, to find joy in such trivial things. But these little discoveries are just samples of the thousand things I've never seen because I didn't know when or where or how to look. While my world may be small and become even smaller over the coming years, my days will run out long before there is an end to wonder.

Write Brained

I first saw reference to the term "hypergraphia" a few days back over at North Coast Café on a post that started "For Fred" and so I jumped immediately to the not-far-fetched assumption the content was going to go on about those of us who don't know when to stop writing: Hyper (excessive) graphia (writing). Hypergraphia is a complex and interesting matter for those of us who wonder why we write what we write and sense such terrible-wonderful urgency and release in the process. And North Coast Dan has read my musings on the Muse. Writing--too much or too little, creatively or from an uninspired bog--has much to do physiologically with mental health, emotional trauma, and genius and warrants some attention.

The topic has been given new neurobiological illuminations by the release of the book "The Midnight Disease" by Dr. Alice Flaherty, a neurologist who suffered a four-month episode of hypergraphia after the death of still-born twins. She discusses numerous creative masters in several fields of artistry who had both depression or bipolar disorder or epilepsy or even PMS that coincided with their periods of creative feast or famine. Flaherty talks more about creativity in general in this excellent article from the Chronicles of Higher Education.

In one of those odd synchronicities, a few days before I first read about hypergraphia and creativity, I had come across an article about the use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for inducing enhanced mental abilities-- a real "Thinking Cap".

So, creativity (including the ability to express oneself in writing) and the drive to create originates in specific brain regions and is subject to tweaking. But, increased activity in these brainy places is also associated with "mental illness". So is hypergraphia a disease? Might writing in excess and its opposite condition some day have their own disease diagnositic codes? (A writers-blocked journalist could then appeal his lack of productivity under the Americans with Disabilities act!) Would you want to be cured of your writing frenzies or take medication to get you through unproductive times in your writing?

Take Note

That's what I'm doing. Again. I'm wearing the student hat again and I'm taking notes. This morning, I start the five-week online course (free from Barnes and Noble University) called "Thinking Like an Editor: How to Get Published." This is a pretty slick way to sell the "teacher's" book--as highly-recommended but not required reading--but I think I'll learn exactly what the title suggests. I have no idea of how the book business works, and if I'm to have a shot at getting a book into print (other than vanity press), it will help to know what editors are looking for, and in what format--how to jump through the editorial hoops, as it were. And, since I blog my life, you'll read about this class I'm taking--how the dog ate my homework; how I played hookie; you'll read about my mean old teacher with the wart on her nose and the pretty girl who sits next to me in class who called me a geezer.

The class is specifically for folks interested in publishing non-fiction. This seems to be my genre by default (inasmuch as I have one) and I'm balking at this a little. While what I have written that might possess a smidgen of worth has been more of a memoir and classified as slightly-creative non-fiction, I wonder if I could learn to write fiction. Almost everything I've read in the last thirty years has been non-fiction. The real world is so interesting and edifying I haven't really found myself reading for diversion or entertainment in the fiction area. If I am not a fiction reader, could I hope to become a fiction writer?

Do you think a person can learn to write fiction, or is the gift of fiction-writing an innate drive to create characters and places and events that don't exist? Can fiction writing come from learned methods and discipline or does good ficion only come from passion and native ability and the right kind of imagining and language?

Our Daily Bread--New Low Price!

-- excerpts from Sojourners Magazine

"Who provides both power and conscience to Wal-Mart? Shoppers and shareholders, so far, have consented that lower prices and more stores are more important than honorable vendor and employment standards. It is inconceivable that Wal-Mart, king of counting the financial cost, is unaware of the human cost of wage levels and working conditions in its suppliers’ businesses. Wal-Mart’s power comes with responsibility to pay just wages. With hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees below poverty-level income, corporate contributions to community and charity are not enough.

Wal-Mart expects to reap $1 billion in sales of "Christian" merchandise in 2003, only the doorstep of a much larger market. Evidently, Christians are shopping at Wal-Mart. But what are we buying, when a dollar saved in the store is another dollar squeezed from the life of "one of the least of these?"

We chose to not do our shopping at Wal-Mart. It doesn't seem socially responsible to us to contribute to their business practices and impact on small towns and local communities. You may feel otherwise. Thankfully, competitors still exist here and our dollars go to independent groceries, hardware and building supply stores, greenhouses, appliance stores and pharmacies, even if we pay a bit more. As this article points out, "always low prices" is not necessarily the measure of all things. Our local merchants live in our communities and spend their profits from our purchases here where we live...until Wal-Mart puts them out of business. We've seen it happen twice, in two of the communities where we've lived. Wal-Mart--the largest employer in the country (next to the military, I think I read) is antithetical to the type of commerce center I'd like to see happening in coming decades in America.

Our county is the fastest growing county in our region--the New River Valley of southwest Virginia. It is only a matter of time before this becomes a live issue for Floyd County shoppers and voters. Maybe the impending arrival of WalMart is an issue in your community. I post this controversial topic only to encourage you to see the choice of allowing Wal-Mart in as more than the matter of shopping efficiency and thrift.

I "Get" Blogging!

1. It’s almost impossible to explain what a blog is to someone who’s never seen one. That's the mark of a true innovation.

2. I know very few people over fifty, and scarcely any over sixty, who "get" blogging.

(At least I think I get it. Aren't I special in the chronologically gifted set? Got any over-sixty bloggers willing to claim senior points in the blogging world, hmmm?)

Do you agree with these 15 conclusions about blogging? Note that they are from one blog in a list of interesting arts-related blogs. Hmmm.

Going Somewhere

Our one-hour meeting took three. He and I stepped carefully across the icy plank over the frozen creek, trudged up past the barn and down the "new road" in the crusty snow, talking a mile a minute. This man actually was interested in knowing all the details I too-easily spout to all our visitors--interested or not--who are visiting our place for the first time. He was genuinely curious about the "New Road" we were walking on-- the local name given to the old postal road that connects our valley with the once-thriving community of Simpsons two miles away near the headwaters of Nameless Creek.

He stopped often, as I always do on this path, to look around, to take it all in. He saw clearly the wisdom of where the house was sited facing south in 1875 when it was built, intuitively knew to ask where the water mill was found in our valley--because all mountain communities a hundred years ago depended on water power for many kinds of work. And I told him about the three-story millhouse there by the old Roscoe Willis Store that stood until the 1960's, until it fell in from decrepitude and neglect, having survived well into the fossil fuel age.

Randy had come to appraise our property for the conservation easement status we want to obtain so that our eighty acres will not be subdivided into smaller and smaller chunks over the years. His background in city planning and appraising give him the expertise; his interest and knowledge of local history and his obvious care for the land and understanding of the importance of sustainable land-- these give him the heart for such a job. It was a pleasure to spend the morning with him, and I hope we'll do it again some time, unofficially.

What was the most exciting about our conversation was Randy's vision for how the opportunity for community can grow out of land use that involves contiguous property owners who have all put their land under conservation status. Each of us have special places on our land--ponds, creeks, rock outcrops and such. Randy worked in similar settings in Connecticut, helping landowners develop private trail systems or other programs that would connect one farm or forest with another. I would love to have access, on designated neighborhood days, to such a walking tour of our community and be pleased to have our neighbors enjoy our place on a beautiful spring weekend.

He also is very interested in connecting landowners over a wider base so that easement owners from Floyd County can meet those from Montgomery County such as the individuals who have an easement on the land where the historically precious Ingles Ferry and the Mary Draper Ingles cabin are located-- maybe have outings to share that kind of historical resource located on easement properties.

Conservation easement protection has been slow to come to southwest Virginia, but interest is growing rapidly as more people understand the importance of watershed protection, viewspace preservation, forestry management for the long term, and the value of protecting places from becoming nothing more than real estate commodities.

This is one of the "goods" I was talking about the other day, one of the ways I see people coming together in our area, for the common good. More about this in coming days.

Everybody Talks About the Whether

Whether the earth is getting warmer. Whether global warming is affected by human-induced change in the atmosphere's and ocean's heat burden. Whether the earth is about to undergo another ice age as soon as next year. Whah! Ice age?

Folks, we understand about as much about the planet's weather system as blood-letters of the Dark Ages understood about the human brain. Only in the past few decades has the role of the "Great Conveyor Belt" been rudimentarily understood and it plays a huge role in eastern North America's climate, which grabs my attention for purely selfish reasons.

A very good summary of our recent understanding of the world's ocean circulation system and its impact on climate can be found summarized in this AlterNet article, from which the following excerpts were taken:

"Most scientists figured the transition time from icy to warm was gradual, lasting dozens to hundreds of years, and nobody was sure exactly what had caused it. (Variations in solar radiation were suspected, as were volcanic activity, along with early theories about the Great Conveyor Belt, which, until recently, was a poorly understood phenomenon.)

Looking at the ice cores, however, scientists were shocked to discover that the transitions from ice age-like weather to contemporary-type weather usually took only two or three years. Something was flipping the weather of the planet back and forth with a rapidity that was startling."

..."If the Great Conveyor Belt, which includes the Gulf Stream, were to stop flowing today, the result would be sudden and dramatic. Winter would set in for the eastern half of North America and all of Europe and Siberia, and never go away. Within three years, those regions would become uninhabitable and nearly two billion humans would starve, freeze to death, or have to relocate. Civilization as we know it probably couldn't withstand the impact of such a crushing blow."

The article is worth reading in its entirety. If the excerpts sound alarmist, the rest of the piece explains why there is reason for alarm. And here is a great primer on oceans and weather (including the Conveyor Belt, also known technically as "thermohaline circulation").

Kyoto or no Kyoto, the Earth has its own cycles and rhythms we know very little of. But make no mistake. Our activities can sicken those earth-systems, and the illness may be of the acute, sudden-onset variety, easier to prevent or mitigate than "fix" once the cycle has been triggered. Personally, I believe the data indicate that we are in a warming period and it seems reasonable to explain some of these changes as arising from the atmosphere-polluting activities of man. I'd like to see us put the first priority on the long-term health of the planet over and above the profits of American corporations. But honestly, given everything we don't know about how climate works, these are muddy waters indeed.

That's Odd

Oddest Sight: Yesterday, up the valley in the shadows, Nameless creek shows much more ice than Goose Creek that is exposed to at least a little sun. At one of the countless little drops in the creek, a clear, round fifteen-inch dome of ice had formed off the ledge of rock, and water continuously splashed up in a curve inside the bowl. It reminded me of very early memories of old-fashioned gasoline pumps that had a glass bell through which the cider-colored fuel surged, over, and over.

Oddest Smell: The oddest smell was... well, we never did figure out what it was. But it was something burning, plastic-sweet, from somewhere in the kitchen. Maybe. After quickly running upstairs and down to the cellar to rule out burning wires, the smell eventually dissipated. But the alarm made me remember I want to take the extinguisher by the rescue squad and have them check it. As far from everything as we are, a call to 911 is not likely to result in much prevention of property loss, should we actually have a fire here. We'll have to be ready to handle it ourselves.

Oddest Sound: Again, source unknown. Ann and Tsuga were walking up on the very top of the ridge behind the house and heard slow, heavy, regular footsteps not far away. The dog became very wary but followed Ann back to the house. It could have been a bear. Maybe if the ice storm tonight doesn't dump too much sleet et cetera, we can go back up and look for prints.

Prettiest Sight: Look at Marie's sunrise that came before the ice storm Monday night!

Most Hopeful: The buds on some of the trees on the distant ridge (probably maples) are visibly redder than they were a few weeks ago--an early sign that life persists in the gray ravages of winter branches. A few sparrow songs heard this morning (wish I had Pica or Lorianne to tell me which ones!) and several skunks squashed in the road. Sorry 'bout that, Master LePeu, but skunks crossing the road pour amour is another early sign of spring!

Annoyance, Present: Had the DSL modem replaced for the third time this morning. We're still ironing out the bugs in the local DSL and hey: we're 15 miles from the home office. I'm not complaining. We have friends in Blacksburg--a university town-- that still can't get broadband while we have it (mostly) here in the hinterlands.

Annoyance, To come: Up to 3/4 inch of ice expected overnight (and again Th-Fri) and it seems very likely we could be without power. If Fragments comes up missing between now and the first of next week, blame it on the weather.

Most Interesting Conversation: Saturday with the appraiser who came and walked the property with me prior to our conservation easement claim, and: with my writer's group on Sunday afternoon, especially the reading about a burial in one of Floyd's oldest intentional communities. Both of these warrant their own blog entries. If we keep power for the coming couple days. Speaking of which, I think I will make an exception to my usual schedule and post this tonight while we still have power.

Belonging and Identity

After our nest emptied, we moved to Floyd county-- prematurely, perhaps. Many, for good reason, wait until retirement years to withdraw so far from the currents of a busy life. After two years in a little cabin on the Blue Ridge Parkway, we moved within the county to Goose Creek--an out of the way place in a county that has a single traffic light--and became even more isolated. Not that this is not the place of our dreams in many ways, but its remoteness does in fact segregate us geographically and psychologically from the larger world, and even from the small world of our county seat in the town of Floyd.

Everything has not gone exactly according to our ten-year plan conceived in 1997 when we were preparing to leave North Carolina to return to Virginia for good. I took the job that year managing the clinic in the heart of Floyd. One of the highest priorities on our list of things we wanted in our next--and hopefully final--move was to live and work in the same place and to become part of a community; to work with the same people that we would run into in the grocery store and at church and town meetings. After years of cocooned isolation in city lives too busy for many friends or neighborhood interactions, we were ready for involvement in the local culture. Floyd looked like the place where that could happen.

For a year and a half I was the PT Manager in the clinic just across from the Country Store in downtown Floyd. Former patients would stop in and visit on their weekly trips to town. I knew the names of most of the town merchants. A trip to the library was always good for a half-dozen impromptu meetings with familiar faces. Then, Massive HealthCare Inc. closed the clinic in February of 1999--it was the only job in my field in the tiny town.

After that, Ann and I became employment nomads, living in a place you can't get to from anywhere, working up to an hour away with people we never saw except on our jobs. And in May 2002, I relinquished even those contacts from my day. Then the lights of community really went out. But I have the sense that they are blinking back on and this is good, and well timed. Not that the "year unplugged" has been bad by any means.

I have gained a strong sense of belonging here--in this house, in this valley, in this body during my pleasant seclusion. What is lacking is identity--a feeling for where we fit into the larger scheme of human comings and goings--among people who are like us in some ways, different in others. It is hard to know self fully in the absence of seeing one's reflection off one's neighbors, learning in those encounters how to grow and how to teach.

Writing in Fragments and corresponding with reader-friends in the past year has been a rewarding new experience. The interactions with readers have been the nearest thing to community I've known during these cloistered months. But now my center of contact with people outside the cyber-world seems to be shifting back again to our county and the town of Floyd. Maybe we will yet find our place in the community of alter-natives, farmers and merchants that live around us.

Many of these folk have made the same choice as we have to live a bit out of the way, off the grid--and not just the electrical one. They have found interesting ways to create, to make an income and provide some of their own needs while living far from the shopping malls. The interconnectedness and cooperation between all the diverse segments of Floyd's population is growing, and there are good things ahead!

L'il Help Here, Y'all?

I confess I'm reverse-impaired. I don't backup like I ought to. In the past, I've been content to copy My Documents and a few assorted other files from Explorer first to floppies, then CD's and now I have the potential to copy up to 4.7 Gigabytes to a DVD-ROM disk. But most backup programs don't allow this as a destination.

I have vowed to do better and need a program (free is the best price option) that will 1) make it easy to do incremental backups of only files changed since the last backup; 2) compress the files in a simple format like *.zip; and 3) store the backup such that it can be accessed and read without doing a full restore from the backup files; and allow DVD disk as a destination.

If anybody knows of such a beast, I'm sure in the market. After being stealthily invaded by MyDoom this week (quickly removed sucessfully) and now this Explorer hole, I'm getting just a leetle bit speecious about the safety and well-being of my data.

Do you know where your little files and folders are tonight, hmmm?

The Trail: Angels, Demons and the Cafe Beuf

Did you ever get sick of the sound of your own voice? Blahblahblahblah Fragments blahblahblah Tsuga... So, I'm gonna let our son, Nathan, tell you a tale that involves Food and Place, the February 01 topic at Ecotone.

As we join the story, Nate is several weeks south of Bar Harbour, making southern progress in his Quixotic Qwest to find America on the back roads between Maine and Goose Creek. He has picked up the Appalachian Trail (at my insistence) through the NY-NJ portion, to keep him away from the congestion. But of course, he has to jerk us around just a little (us, being the parental "units"). So. Here is a segment snatched from his (unpublished) book that I thought of when the topic turned to Food and Place. Hope you enjoy.

At one point, butt considerably frozen, I crossed a road with signs for a payphone nearby, and used the phone to courtesy-call the Units, who hadn’t heard from me in three or four days. Dad picked up and we said our hellos, and then I realized how busy the road must’ve sounded over the phone. I had to yell when eighteen wheelers splash-roared by.

“Been a change of plans, Dad.” I paused to let a pair of muffler-impaired low-riders drag by. “I met this guy, Marty, who knows the streets of New York like the back of his hand, and he told me about a route I could take through the city that was relatively safe, so I got off the trail a couple of days ago. I guess I’m officially in the Bronx now, but it’s hard to tell. It’s not really that busy anymore…”

“Mmmm,” came in from my receiver.

“I’m fine, Dad. And I think this is basically even legal. I mean, there’ve been a couple of signs that said ‘no pedestrians,’ but I’ve seen a coupla others out here, too, and cops have just flown right by us. We’re small potatoes, Dad. Don’t worry. They don’t have time to mess with somebody just for walking on a busy road in NYC…”

“Not happy.” I heard him say, and then repeat, and then repeat. I knew I’d better give up the gig before he really started worrying.

“Just kidding, Pop. I’m thirty miles from New Jersey. Still on the trail. Everything’s wondaful. Jus’ wan’ to say hi.”

After getting called, rightfully, a jerk, and laughing at my good friend and father, I told him I’d call again in a few days and hung up the phone. I was still freezing, especially after not walking for a few minutes, but now I barreled on with a smile. Dads are good for some things.

That night I made it to the shelter to find an old section-hiker already there who introduced himself as “Pops.” Pops quickly addressed what was on both of our minds. “You ready to freeze your ass off tonight?” Pops had yet to officially surrender to the moisture. He had been conquered but he continued to fight.

Pops had been in his sleeping bag since five o clock, stuffed inside it with some of his wet and clammy gear. He was trying to dry his clothes out with his own body heat so that by morning they would be fine again for the trail. I admired his bravery. He was already shaking and it was hardly even twilight.

My own clothes I hung up in the shelter. Some were dripping and all were in some way trading moisture with the wet night air. With our hanging clothes and gear combined, our shelter soon looked like a slummy yardsale aftermath. We used every hook possible and when there weren’t any we invented some.

Out of everything in my possession, my one remaining dry article was my ugliest pair of algodon underwear. Finding them gave me hope, and they suddenly served as the symbol for my will to fight and live. That lone pair of dry, atrocious boxers was to me like the olive branch carried back by Noah’s post-flood Dove. Inspired by the boxers and Pops’ perseverance I, although conquered, would also continue to struggle on. I repacked these boxers in a ziploc bag, sucked out the air and zipped it tight. I rolled the bag, rubber-banded the bag, placed the bag in another bag, repeated the process, and then put this plastic-and-algodon trophy into my final grocery bag and tied it off in double knots.

Hope! I had hope: Whatever happened throughout the night, however frozen my butt actually became, I would put on dry underwear at sunrise. If I ever awoke, I knew I would surely awake in a dry-girthed sort of paradise.

In the meantime Pops and I both cooked long noodley meals over small stoves, debating even over how much water to add. The more heated water, the more free warmth to drink in with the noodles. But, alas, the more we drank the more often we’d have to creep out of whatever paltry warmth we’d mustered, only to brave the elements in returning some of ours to the soil.

“I don’t know about you but I’m peeing right off the deck,” Pops said.

“I’m tempted to just stay in my bag,” I admitted. “Can you imagine how nice that first warm minute would be?” We laughed – the kind of laughing where our bodies automatically did the shaking and all we had to do was add voice to our breath. We laughed at how absurdly reduced to the elements we’d become, and this when it really, comparatively speaking, was not that unspeakably cold!

“If it just wasn’t so dagblamed wet!” Pops shiverlaughed, shaking. We both agreed that snow would’ve been much better than this relentless rain. Snow could perch rather politely on your shoulder and you’d never even notice it was there. Snow could convince you that it wasn’t really made from water at all. The same amount of rain would hit your shoulder like a cold raw egg and then rip through your clothes in a baneful search for your underwear. It would find its way to soak you, freeze you, kill you if it could.

Night had come in and we hoped for snow. We braced for the long haul. I boiled a pot of water and poured it back into my Nalgene, wrapped it in a shirt and huddled around it in my thin little bivy, sometimes putting it down with my frozen feet for a while. Sometimes we tried to talk ourselves and each other into distraction. Other times one of us would say goodnight and plunge in, hoping that we were fully ready for sleep and the morning would come quickly. In the morning, once we could get moving again, we’d be fine.

Never much beyond the lip of sleep, a crashing down the trail startled us from our own chattering little worlds. Flashlights flung out across wet trees along the ridge.

“Who in the hell could that be?” said Pops in disbelief. “What time is it, anyway?”

I looked at my watch. “Eight thirty.” Pops let out a cross between a whimper and a moan. “I’ve been in this shelter since noon today. Been in my sleeping bag since five…” He mumbled off. “…damn thought it was at least one o clock.” We whistled to the oncoming hikers to let them know they’d found the place. They whooped back. One was singing.

“Sweet mother of Mary,” Pops quietly growled.

Rich and Ed unpacked their things and the four of us got acquainted. They were middle-aged boy-scout troop leaders who went to the same church in a nearby town. They hadn’t expected to find anybody else in the shelter on a night like this.

“Too early in the year for thru-hikers to be this far north” Rich said, “and nobody in their right minds would come out in weather like this just for the weekend.”

“Hmm.” Pops said.

Rich and Ed laughed. Rich, by far the larger of the two, was quickly becoming the spokesman. “Well, we’re boy-scout leaders. We enjoy this sort of thing.”

Never in a million years. Never in a million years would I have guessed what happened next.
Ed lugged a ten-pound propane grill from his pack and began to set up its stand in the midst of a light drizzle.

“Itellya, Ed, I am starving.” Rich looked at the two of us. “What about you boys? Up for a coupla ribeyes?”

Trail Magic: trayl-ma-jik. n. A common term used by hikers of the Appalachian Trail to signify a moment of sheer, overwhelming fortune at the time of greatest need.

Shoot now and ask questions later. Real, plump, juicy man-sized fresh-grilled ribeye steaks. Sautéed mushrooms and onions. Mountains of scalloped potatoes in a homemade cheesy white sauce. Suddenly, somehow, two wet bedraggled rats, one minute shivering alone in the wilderness and trying against all odds to sleep their way into oblivion, are the next minute served steaming ribeye steaks on paper plates by singing strangers under light of a lantern in a New Jersey wood. “You’re good men,” Pops said with his mouth full. “Yep. Good. You’re good, good, good men. Wow. You’re—you believe this?” Pops looked up at me and laughed with his mouth full, and laughed and laughed and laughed.

While we all ate, Rich and Ed explained that they’d been planning on coming out with two more campers. The two in their troop who had earned the most patches were going to get to come on this trip as a reward. Then, at the last minute, neither of the boys wanted to go. “They don’t make scouts like they used to,” Rich said. “Tell’em they’ll be hiking six miles in the dark, cold, and rain and they all of a sudden get a chip on their shoulder.” He speared a potato sliver from his plate and held it up like a trophy. “More for us, right? You eat all you want, boys. We don’t want to carry this out in the morning.”

So now, along with my algodon underwear, I had secure and warm in my belly one and a half ribeye steaks, sautéed mushrooms and onions, and various hills of scalloped potatoes in a delectable cheesy white sauce and pepper. Hope.

Regardless, Pops and I still “froze our asses off.” The scout leaders pulled on their long underwear tops and bottoms; good thick dry socks; warm hats; and climbed into their nice thick cozy warm dry delicious sleeping bags while Pops and I curled in or little wet balls and looked on. Pops had on long underwear but it was wet, a thirty-degree sleeping bag but it wasn’t enough. The temperature was down in the thirties now, and I couldn’t convince Pops to take the clammy things out of his bag. The thought of putting on frosty-wet clothes in the morning was enough to keep him with them all night.

Moron that I was, I had already mailed home all of my winter clothes. By then my long underwear, my hat, my wool sweater and my gloves were all snuggled, soft, quiet, and dry in a box in Virginia. Every article of clothing I now had – other than my algodon underwear – was wet. My fleece liner was small, damp, and thin. Even cooking another water bottle was not enough to put any life back into my deadnumbed frozen feet. I reminded myself that my shaking was a good sign – it meant that I was still in only the early stages of hypothermia. I drifted off.

I have never – never in my life – heard anything like the snoring that came from our old friend Rich. And may I never again. Ed snored too, but I have several times heard something like the snoring that came from Ed. Ed’s snoring was just irritating. Rich’s snoring was something paramount. Something that everyone should experience once.

Pops and I, both too cold to sleep, experienced that foghorn wail for seven good hours with seldom a break. Comrades are made quickly in the trenches, and Pops and I were fast becoming friends that needed little speech between us. We pounded the walls, coughed, shouted, laughed hysterically, nudged, poked, kicked and cursed our way through the snoring of the evening. I know it is not his fault. I know that sleep apnea is a horrible condition that cannot easily be helped and should not cast unfavorable light on the snorer. But, still, even with the steaks in our bellies and the knowledge that he was a friend, if we had not kept our sense of humor that night we may very well have killed our good pal Rich.

Pops got up while the sky was still dark gray. He looked and sounded out of sorts. “I’m hiking to the closest road and then hitching a ride to my car. I’ve had enough of this.” He rolled up his ground pad and strapped it sloppily to his pack. He didn’t even bother to put his trash-bag raincover over his pack. “Good luck to ya. See you around.” He looked up at the spattering trees, cursed, and made his way down to the trial.

I listened to him crash away and then tended to myself. I wasn’t looking too good either. Everything about me—my mood, my body, my thoughts, my breathing—was a clammy and deadbody blue. My shaking didn’t seem like such a good sign anymore. I needed heat. I grabbed for my waterbottle and found it in a thin pool around my head. I remembered, now, that I had left it open and Rich had bumped it over. My bivy was waterproof, thank goodness, so I wasn’t any wetter for the wear. But now I’d have to go out to the creek.
I crawled out of the sack and into the drizzle in nothing but my boots and clammy underwear. “God,” I thought, half a prayer and half an expletive. It was the first time I really started fearing for myself. I was shaking so violently that I could only see around me in flashes, like looking at an amateur collection of flip-book pictures.

By the time I had cooked a hot water bottle the boy scouts were up and rummaging around. “Well. You’re up bright and early.” Rich said.

“Yeah.” I was wrapped around the bottle in the tightest ball I could make. “Pops got the jump on me. He left fifteen twenty minutes ago.”

“Too bad,” Ed spoke up. “He’ll miss breakfast.”

Hot damn skippy. Breakfast was more steak and potatoes. The three of us ate our fill and there was still more left over for the boys to take home. If it weren’t for the heat I got from those two meals – the carbos and energy churning in my gut – I don’t know how I would’ve made it through the night. I thanked them, and ate, and thanked them, and thanked them. I extended—and still extend—Pops’s eloquent speech: Rich and Ed, wherever you are, “you’re good men. You’re good, good men.”