Fragments From Floyd

Bucolic Backwaters Near Home

A few of the images from my first year of digital photography remain. The rest were trashed when my hard drive went south, in 2001...ironically, while installing a CDRW drive so I could back up my imgages, so I wouldn't lose them.

I'll post a few of them, like this one...during this yukky NeitherNor season we're having this week.

This one is of "the Buffalo"...the most prominent geological feature in Floyd County (on the distant skyline). Our high school sports teams are the Buffalos. I particularly like the image conjured by the girl's basketball team..."The Lady Buffs".

The Buffalo is one unique piece of planet, protected by the Nature Conservancy (I think. I'll have to review the current status) and home to some very distinctive creatures. I've a trip planned for a hike to the top, third week of April, with fellow blogger Doug and another buddy also too old to be doing this sort of thing. You can be sure there will be pictures coming, regardless of which camera I am carrying by then!

Good Company

Hey, now I MUST get the D70. Glenn Reynolds just got one and Fletch told him I was on the verge. And whaddya know... my first InstaLanche! I feel like Cinderella (even though he has transported me to Herndon, Virginia... Fragments from Herndon... I dunno, it lacks something, somehow).

Meanwhile, even the wife is saying "go ahead and get the most camera for the money. And make it last. And, considering our ages, it might not even have to last THAT long!" Wives. Can't live with'em, can't live with'em.

Okay. Pile on and twist my arm just a bit more and I'll not have any choice but to go Nikon one more time!

And BTW, I'm going to be working to get the spiderweb pix ready to go along with some yet-to-be-written text to submit someplace soon for fall publication. And I am getting expert help! Stay tuned.

Photophilia

It will come as no surprise to Fragments readers that I am hopelessly infatuated with light and color, particularly natural light and the colors of nature. I got my first "serious" camera in 1970. That Minolta lasted until 2002 when the strap broke and it fell to the pavement in Boston. By that time, I'd already given in to the temptation of digital photography and have never looked back. My first digital, the Nikon Coolpix, was delivered to Goose Creek on April 20, 2000 and it will soon be four years old. And if I am serious about this love affair with light, it is time to make a commitment to the future with a new camera, and I am getting shaky knees on the way to the altar. Forgive me as I confess my qualms and hopes and uncertainties in this matter over the coming weeks. I've really got to talk this out, you understand.

For the bulk of those thirty years of SLR photography, I was quite used to carrying a daypack full of camera bodies (two) and lenses (three or four) and filters and film and cable release and... but when the digital point-and-shoot came along, I carried only the camera, the size of a couple of candy bars, in my pocket. All the lenses were "built in", although there were many times I'd wished for a very wide angle or more telephoto than the Nikon Coolpix 950 could give me. Now, one issue of course is how much to invest. The other is buying a digital camera body (like the Nikon D70) and then also needing another three lenses (and lens cases) and filters over and above the camera, and another bulky camera bag to carry with me every time I walk out the door.

The bottom line, I suppose, has to do with resolution. At some point, unless a person plans to create a coffee-table book of images (and I might), the megapixel resolution of a camera at, say, 6 megapixels is going to be way in excess of what is needed to produce professional quality images of the size one would expect to see in even the finer magazine. And so the theoretical difference between a 6MP point and shoot and the higher quality of a 6MP SLR's better CCD is probably moot. Or at least this is my thinking at the moment. I'll let my photo-professional buddy Doug straighten me out when I meet with him tomorrow.

Meanwhile, for the one person who is still reading this blahblah entry, here's what I'm looking at today:

Doing my homework, I've read this excellent primer on How Digital Cameras Work. If you're planning on buying your first or fourth digicam, this is a great review of basic technology of non-film photography that may help you make a more informed decision about what to buy, and why.

And currently, the Fuji FinePix S7000 (released July 2003) for $400 (after the current $100 rebate) looks like it would have everything I require. I could be wrong.

The Season of NeitherNor

The grass out the back door piles up in unkempt tangles, dark green, growing explosively from winter's unused reserves; and this morning it is dusted with a skiff of late March snowflakes. The birds--titmice, bluebirds, robins--sing from bare branches, come down to the cold ground wondering why did they arrive south before dinner was served? The only color, save for hidden greens in the pasture under last years grasses of dun and taupe, is the yellow-greens of the tiny flowers of spicebush along the creeks and edge of the field. Everything else this time of year is happening high overhead in the reds of maple and sarvice and poplar buds that you can see when the sun shines brightly. But that is just the matter. Just when all of the rainbow potential of nature is being birthed so fast you could hear it if you truly listened, the season of NeitherNor descends with a vengeance in late March throwing a cold, wet blanket on the party.

It has been three days since we have seen the sun. It will be another week before we see it, and warmer temperatures, again. We will endure another week of tiny fires in the wood stove because it is just cold enough for the house to lose a few degrees too much heat at night for the next day's comfort. Another week of wet mud before the garden can dry enough for tilling. One more week of sepia toned somber days that are more like winter than spring.

Then. The sun will suddenly appear with all its bags as if it has come to stay a spell. NeitherNor will be a memory of a time when we needed a bit more patience than we had for life to return to our lengthening days. And it will be for all the world like a "surprise party" where out pops the world of color again. SURPRISE! And the yellows of bellworts and field cress, the maroons and reds of Trilliums and Fire Pink, and the whites of Bloodroot, Hepatica and Anemone will explode all at once, as if they had been planning this event for months. And then it will be spring.

Jots...

A quick note on bloggers in the news...

A few weeks back, Jim Fletcher of Smoky Mountain Journal was interviewed about his weblog in a Knoxville paper. Unfortunately, they didn't see fit to keep it archived long enough for us to read it.

And Beth of "Switched At Birth" is prominently featured in this Florida Panhandle news story of weblogs and bloggers.

West Coast blogger Anita Rowland was recently interviewed on Puget Sounds KUOW and did a nice job of explaining the medium (move the RealAudio slider to about 26 minutes into the show to catch Anita.)

Any other bloggers-on-blogging in the non-blogging media to report?

Poor Rudolph

Ah. At last. I've manually deleted another seven comment spams (now stands at a total of 208 addresses banned) and sent back a rebuttal to a well-intentioned alarm about the federal bill that will tax my email (which is a hoax, folks). And what I thought I would be talking about now was how pumped I am because we got an income tax refund yesterday, and I am almost convinced that now is the time to replace my four-year-old digicam with its successor. I even went by Ritz Camera to see and especially hold in my hands the Nikon D70. I'm not married to that camera but have been very happy with my Coolpix 950 these last four years. But it is so new, it hasn't reached out little rural outpost yet.

And it may be a non-issue anyway. On the way to town to my little writer's group last night, I was hit by a deer. It came down in a single bound off a five foot bank--a single bound, and hard into the driver's side door. I didn't begin to have time to go for the brake. Last seen it was doing the GyroSpin on the asphalt in the rear-view mirror, very dead.

The door to my truck will open and close, but it looks like somebody took a vacuum to it and sucked out all the air. My $500 will buy not a camera but a replacement door from the junkyard, whatever color they have--certain NOT to be the white with teal stripe of the original.

And thus I will be one step closer to owning the archetypal country truck: I already have the dented fender from an encounter with a guardrail in the ice; I have some places where the paint is chipping off and soon will have the requisite rusty spots; I'll have at least three, possibly four colors of body panels. Now, if I can just find a place to put some unpainted Bondo and a gun rack in the back window...

Anyhow. I got a request to use (and pay for) one of my images last week, which is encouraging. I'm going to be working soon on some ways to do more with the photography. So, I may pursue the camera upgrade in spite of the Close Encounter of the Hooved Kind last night. I'm open to suggestions. I'll need a high-resolution format (D70 is six MegaPixels) and close-up potential. Beyond that, what would you suggest is a "must have" for the kind of images I take?

Clickable Curiosities

He's been at it again--reminiscent of his former Sunday Click-o-Rama. Below, a few neat links from the many at Exclamation Mark.

Mars under water

Diving under Artic Ice (this is way cool--no pun intended!)

My wife believes all cats are defective. These--there's no question. Especially see the jumbo kitties at the bottom of the page. Got any in your house to match these BiggieSized Felines?

First the Chestnuts

Now: Sudden Oak Death in Eastern Forests?

I concluded a recent post about the disappearing trees of the Appalachian Forest with the following imagined narrative:

"...And fifty years from now, neighbors may meet under the walnut by the barn and exchange pleasantries on a warm March day, remembering those who have lived here in the long-ago. There was that fella who wrote all about this place way back. Took pictures. Remember? And isn't it a shame what's happening to the oak trees here 'bouts?"

Yes, it would be unimaginably terrible for disease to ravage our oaks (the dominant forest species pretty much throughout the Eastern Deciduous Forest) the way that the Chestnut Blight took out that species early in the last century.

Well, this might not be so far-fetched a disaster as I would have hoped when I put those words in the mouths of local characters fifty years from now. Sudden Oak Death may already have come east. (Thanks to Jim Fletcher of Smoky Mt Journal for the bad news).

"Cross your fingers — it's not just Pennsylvania. We're hearing reports of other states finding positives as well," said Everett Hansen, a professor of plant pathology at Oregon State University. "A lot of nursery stock moved, and a lot of people are going to be holding their breath until this plays out.

The worst that could happen would be that, over a period of some years, you'd see a loss of susceptible trees from a significant section of the Eastern forest. There's many, many assumptions here, and we just don't know, but there's a lot of people are very, very concerned about what might happen in the East.

Sudden Oak Death, or Phytophthora ramorum, was first detected in North America in 1995, and has since been found in the wild in California and Oregon, and in nurseries in Washington and British Columbia."

"...In the wintertime in the Northeast it's going to be too cold for the Phytophthora, and that may mean that Northeastern forests are protected even if it gets established in other parts of the East. It might be too hot in the Southeastern forests," Everett said. "We just don't have a clear enough understanding of what the temperature and moisture requirements are and how they might play out in the East." from PennLive.com

Basic Biology of Dead Ocean

It's not complicated. We know what causes it.

Nitrogen goes on our fields as fertilizer. Twenty percent is taken up by crops. The rest washes into the creek, the river, the bay, the ocean. Phytoplanton (algae, diatoms, etc) in the upper waters thrive on the excess fertilizer. They live, die, sink to the bottom of the ocean. Bacteria gobble up their remains and use oxygen in huge quantities in the chemistry of decomposition. There isn't enough oxygen left for anything else. Voila. A "Dead Zone" (See satellite Images this link). Oh well. What's a little bit of ocean bottom.

Stay tuned. This is not a good thing. This is another product of human industry that we will avoid facing until it is too late to repair the damage. Brinksmanship and beyond. States along the Rhine have cut nitrogen effluents by 37%. We could do the same. We won't.

Collage

How like memory it became, weaving together the images that made up the collage I gave Ann for her birthday last week.

One image lies large or small, bright or faded, sharply or faintly distinguishable from its neighbors. Some from nearby. Some barely remembered until the features appear.

And the instant these shapes become visible, they move to the background and others come to take their places. And again and again the page of memory is filled with color and form, a dynamic canvas of remembrances.

But I could only give her one, frozen in time. There could be so many. So many.

The Eternal Flame

A few months ago while browsing (the old fashioned kind--in the library) I picked up the free BookPage. I tore out the page that held the account of Susan Shapiro's book called "Five Men Who Broke My Heart". This (married) woman actually interviewed five former boyfriends. Where were they now? Did they still think about her? Were they ever sorry they broke up?

This story struck me, somehow. I suppose we all have unresolved relationships. Questions about ourselves, about the other person, our culpability or vindication, could we replay the old tapes of our on-off love-hate relationships. And replay them we do, bidden or not, in the film noir of memory. If only we could find out what had become of them. And this author not only did x 5, she had the courage (desparation?) to write about the journey into her own past. And it is selling.

My Floyd friend Doug has a poignant story from his archives--a long-ago memory who walked into his studio last week, unannounced, saying "Do you remember?" He did.

We say we'd like to see them. But would we, really? I can think of several old "friends" I'd really love to hear from, to see, but it would scare the fodder out of me to have them show up on my doorstep. Do you have ghosts it would help to revisit? Do you suppose Mrs. Shapiro put demons to rest or stirred them up with her close encounters with her past?

To Lick a Lizard (Stamp)

At last, some stamps for the everyday man-on-the-street herpetologist to love. When the postmaster laid out a half dozen choices of stamps on the counter, I hesitated only about as long as it takes a gray rat snake to flick its forked tongue to decide. "Give me the herptiles!" I said. "The who?" retorted the clerk. "Oh I'm a snake man from way back. Almost had to annul my marriage during its second week because of a snake" I said. I didn't go into my snake tales that I recorded here last year.

Scarlet King Snake: innocuous, but very like the deadly coral snake. Just remember--Red on Black, Friend of Jack. Red on Yeller, kill a feller. And a word of advice: never carry a coral snake in a pillow case with a hole in it. The guy who was carrying it was in the front of the line as we hiked along a sandy trail in the Florida panhandle. Never did know when it came outta that sack. And I was at the end of that line.

I have never seen the Blue Spotted Salamander, which apparently lives NORTH of here. But one of my first herpeto-memories is of turning logs in an Alabama swamp looking for marble and spotted salamanders, which are also Plethodontid (lungless) salamanders, and some of the most beautiful creatures I've ever seen. Alas, our amphibians as a whole are not well and the lungless salamanders that depend on healthy forest microhabitat are in peril in many places. My grandchildren may never see what I have seen in branches, bogs and under bark.

As reptiles go, those of us from the deep south are deprived of much exposure to lizards, at least compared to those in more western areas. Skinks, anoles, and fence swifts was about the sum of it where I grew up. Willing to bet none of you have seen this creature. It is a southern lizard without legs that looks like a snake. HINT: It can blink. Snakes can't. To which the average person replies: I'll not be getting close enough to have the darned thing wink at me!"

Frog nostalgia: I am wading in a south Alabama bog, or swimming--depending on the depth of the water and the amount of support from the bottom muck. It is a warm, dark night before a rainstorm. Around me and my buddies are perhaps a thousand frogs of seven species, all shouting out their buzzy, booming, chirping, whirring, croaking advertisements to the females. Every now and then in the cacophony: a release call. A male had mistakenly clasped onto another male. I can smell the wet night, the organic soup of the bog, and the pervasive frogginess. We must have been crazy. But it was a good crazy.

Box turtles. How many have we rescued from one country road or another, especially when the kids were little. Our dog, Zachary, used to think of them as crunchy snacks. There was one on our first farm that had the initials "H C" carved into its shell. "Oh yeah", said the neighbors. That'da been Herbert Catron. He lived in the house you live in back in the sixties. Died in '65". So, that turtle had been around the block a time or two. We found him at least once a year for the six years we lived there. I like to think he is somewhere up on those hillsides still today.

Visual Aid

It is, I suppose, a family tradition--probably genetic, since our kids have it too--to leave just one thing behind anywhere we travel. It can be something small, like a single shoe. Or, it could be something not much bigger but of somewhat more value and importance to the flow of normal life--like a Nikon Coolpix 950. Yep. I did. It's in the mail. So, until it arrives sometime early next week, I'll have to play the vicarious photographer and point you elsewhere.

First, especially for those of you from off-continent, you might enjoy a visual tour of Virginia, or closer to home, of the Roanoke area. These pages are massively full of images and take a bit to load.

And for a visual feast on a sleepy Saturday, what better than a click-fest on the pretty faces of orchids--perhaps the most "intelligent" and certainly most oddly beautiful of all flowering plants. And it is most certainly not just in appearance that orchids are worthy of our awe and admiration. This article from "The Orchid Hunter" is full of amazing facts and features of orchids. Of course, smell is always pretty high on my list:

Some orchids have straight-ahead good looks but have deceptive and seductive odors. There are orchids that smell like rotting meat, which insects happen to like. Another orchid smells like chocolate. Another smells like an angel food cake. Several mimic the scent of other flowers that are more popular with insects than they are. Some release perfume only at night to attract nocturnal moths.

And lastly (at least for this cup of coffee)--if you have any interest in photography, identifying or consuming mushrooms, this seems like a pretty good place to start. Notice the beginners key in the right sidebar. Gotta start somewhere. Especially worthy of note is the page on what is perhaps the safest and most sought-after spring mushroom, coming soon to a meadow near you: The Morel. Start perhaps with a page full of pictures of Morels (some of these are NOT morels and I wonder why they chose to add them here>). Then work back to the main Morel page for tips about identifying them. If you find some, there are recipes and preparation sites all over the net. It is worth the effort, folks, and the time is approaching for them to come out.

WHEN? "When the oak leaves are the size of mouse ears and the blue violets bloom" say the old-timers.

WHERE? Everybody has their theory. Old apple orchards. Burned over areas. Where Mayapples bloom. The biggest one I ever found was growing next to the gutter downspout behind our home back when the kids were small. TIP: when morel hunting, DO NOT allow them to see your collecting receptacle (bag, bucket or basket) as they will instantly become invisible. In my experience, the best morels and the most are found by accident, carried home in a make-shift sling made from the front of one's T-shirt.

Twilight Time

You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!

Carefully, weeks ago, I had chosen speakers for 10, 12, 2 and 4 o'clock from Fridays schedule at the Festival of the Book in Charlottesville. Yet, when I arrived there Thursday night anticipating the next days carefully selected talks, those authors and topics appeared nowhere on the elaborately fleshed out schedule of this year's Festival.

"The speakers you sent us" said my lovely hostess "where all for March 27. That's Saturday."

"Another Senior Moment" I thought at first. But no, I was certain I'd pulled up Friday's schedule.

"Is it possible those were speakers from last year?" Gretchen asked.

And after considerable bewilderment, suspicions that Rod Serling was standing somewhere in the wings in his blue gaberdine suit, and self-loathing for being an idiot, this is what I think explains the fact that today, none of the speakers I went to hear were there today: I know I reached the links to the chosen speakers off the main page-- the one with Garrison Keillor pictured as one of the opening speakers. But the page from which I selected my talks a few weeks back must have been left over, not yet updated from last year. That would explain the fact that the day and the date didn't jibe. Except last year, Friday was the 26th. I'm still just a wee bit bumfuzzled.

Unfortunately, there were not any "must see" speakers on the entire schedule for today. So, "best laid plans" and all that. I did weedle a nice stay in the Ripples Bed and Breakfast out of the trip north and I came home having had much good conversation. Not only that, due to a missed turn, I got to see Business 460 West throughout the fifteen mile length of Lynchburg, Virginia and this was as much fun as a stick in the eye.

Flat Butt Syndrome

Sitting. An hour in car from Goose Creek to The Airport Clarion. .Sitting. Six hours in my meeting--me and two hundred nurses. Sitting. For 2 and half more hours from Roanoke to this undisclosed location somewhere near Charlottesville. I am sat out, buddies, so no post tonight. Fortunately, host David remains brain active after 9:00 and he has posted, so I will direct you to his brief description of our two-blogger evening, plus a picture! There may be more from C'ville, and if not, I'll be back in the saddle on Saturday. Man, it's an hour past my bed time!

If I Only Had a Brain

HeresHome this week is under new (miss)management and this valley here ain't big enough for the three of us. Ann is taking a week off work while her sister from MO is visiting. The Estrogen Warning Level was reached by noon the first day, and I think I'll just find someplace to go.

Not really. Sis-in-law is an easy guest and even wifey is a teddy bear as the work toxins recede and the person down under all that stress and responsibility comes to the surface for a look around. The weather is supposed to be great for the next couple days. But I'm still leaving home.

Today I have to complete my CEU requirements to keep my PT license active. So: an all-day seminar breathing the recylced air of a Roanoke airport hotel conference room learning about "The Aging Brain" where I can feel it coming:

"Let's have a volunteer from the audience, shall we?" says lecturer and author, Dr. Cerebriac, as he looks out over a sea of downcast gazes as conference attendees slump in their naugahyde chairs.

"You there. With the silver excuse for a beard there in the back row. Will you step up to the front of the auditorium please."

The young people sitting around me nudge me awake. I startle, and without thinking, get up and totter off in the direction they are pointing. Somehow, I find myself standing at the microphone, blinking, disoriented and confused in front of one hundred relieved potential guinea pigs.

"Now then. Just briefly, sir: can you tell us what you do".

"I write. About mosses and liverworts and such. To people who aren't there. And I talk to the people who come to read about what I write. They're my friends" I say honestly.

"Just as I thought. This, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of what can happen in the Aging Brain. 'A mind is a terrible thing to lose'... to quote our ex president, Mr. Quayle. "You may go to your seat."

And, after the conference, if I can remember where I parked my car, I will drive up peaceful and uncrowded I-81 north, thence to the Charlottesville area to Chez Ripples to spend the evening and the night with host and hostess David and Mrs. Ripples. The next day, David and I will attend various offerings of the "Festival of the Book."

And the point of all this circumelocution is to say I will miss posting, most likely, until the weekend. So, all you people who aren't there, come back and see me for the debriefing from all my world travels. I anticipate there will be blog material aplenty in the next 48 hours. Should be fun.

Happy Musical NonEvent To You

It was the celebration of sort that we don't celebrate in this household anymore. She doesn't celebrate hers about three weeks before we conveniently forget about mine. Nevertheless, some gifts were given last night on the occasion of the annual nonevent, and one gift from me was the latest offering from our favorite Old Time-Blue Grass band and good friends, the Wolfe Brothers. (Their latest, Old Roads-New Journeys isn't listed at CooperCreek yet.) We put the music on and became lost in the rhythms, the lyrics, and particularly for me, the thread of music history of which this is a living part.

If you have the least interest in the history and culture of the Appalachians, you must appreciate the role that its unique music has played in the making of our character. I don't expect that one in a hundred will actually read it, but this is an excellent synopsis (with sound clips) of how the music of fiddle and "banjar" became associated with the Appalachians over the past two hundred years.

Music is a common ground that ties the southern Appalachians together, and recent efforts assocated with the Blue Ridge Music Trails are making it easier for fans and travelers to sample it in all its variety. This map shows the different sections into which the Music Trail is now divided. Floyd County is in section 6. If you're planning a trip this way, include at least one live music venue. You'll be glad you did.

Little Things

The small rosette of thick leaves belongs to a plant whose common name is "Stonecrop". It grows in the thin, nutrient-poor soil that begins to form on rock surfaces as the pioneer species…lichens and mosses… come in and establish a microhabitat. As the pioneers grow ever so slowly, they begin to trap a little organic matter carried to the rock surface by gravity, wind and rain and a film of "soil" begins to accumulate.

It apparently takes very little soil for stonecrop to put down roots and grow, but other plants always have come along to that inhospitable rock surface to prepare the way. The plant pictured here (the larger is about 3/4 inch across) is growing in luxury, with mosses providing a protective blanket against the drying sun. But stonecrop (genus Sedum) is prepared for the worst: it has a thick cuticle or skin to prevent excess water loss. And if you look at the leaves closely, you can tell that they are thick and fleshy, their cells specialized to store water in case of prolonged drought. Probably, too, their leave surfaces have few "breathing pores" or stomata that further reduces water loss. Such plants are called "succulents" and many desert plants are thus adapted.

A word about the image: the leafty moss gametophytes (the spiky little moss "plants") in the picture were, well, a brilliant moss green in real life. Just tinkering with the image, I grayed down the mosses to make stonecrop stand out a bit. Then I noticed what I had overlooked before: there are traces of other colors in the small fleshy leaves--some yellows and reds--that I missed until I took color away from the background sea of greens. I decided to post the "altered" version of the image to show you, keeping in mind our mosses are not this color, in fact. Photo-trickery, but with a purpose.

Big Bang

Nuclear battle cruiser in danger of exploding

There are few details on this at 6 a.m.

Were my coastal town considered for the possible docking place, I'm sorry, NIMBY.

Zion Church: A Possible Rembrance

Most of 'em walked to church--up and down Goose Creek along the road--it was dusty in summer, covered in ice all winter long, and nothin more'n a muddy path rutted by wagon wheels, springtime and after summer storms. They come down Griffith Creek and north and south along Shawsville Pike. Some hauled up the steep trail through the woods on foot, over Diamond Knob--they followed the switch-backs on down into Goose Creek valley. All of 'em woulda been wearing their Sunday best, and ever last one of'em would look as if they'd plowed five acres by the time they climbed those steps out front of the church and went on in through the little narthex.

That's where they'd hang up their dusty coats and the men'd remove their hats. The women were pleased for the chance to wear their Sunday hats, and these they'd not remove. 'Course, that made it hard for those sittin' behind them to see Brother Lucas in the pulpit. On t'other hand, big hats also made for somethin' good to hide behind and nap. If you watched 'em comin' in of a Sunday morning, you could see the men rush each other for the pew right behind the tallest and widest of those bonnets.

At one point in time, there was a fair piano in the church. Hit was years before anybody came regular who could play it. Mostly they used the shape-note hymnals without any playin'--and what you'd hear would be the womens' voices, clear and strong, and the men less bold and way down deep. The sound pushed out against the rough board walls and through those four little windows, it flowed out along the creek and filled our valley with joyful noise. I can still hear it now.

As soon as services were done, the kids wriggled between the grown-ups' legs and poured out the door. They leapt down the steps in a single bound like so many Spring Peepers and were into the creek with their shoes off and their pants rolled up, turning rocks for crayfish. Somebody'd always go home wet as a mop, usually them that wandered too close to the baptismal pool--that deep place there in the bedrock where the water was high as a cow bell--at least in the wet summers. They'd be maybe a half dozen dunkins during revival in August ever year. Had to be water enough to get'em properly dipped head to toe, so they could rise in newness of life a sputterin' up out of that cold, cold water. In dry years, services were down in what was called the "Green Hole" downstream a quarter mile; except it was so steep to get down in there, one year they had'ta hoist some of the older members back up to the road with ropes when the baptizin' was done.

It's hard to believe now, it's been so long ago that those little ones who played in the creek have had their own young'uns, and them theirs, in turn. The old mill up by Willis' Store couldn't put out what the new gas powered operations up in Simpsons could. We lost a lot of young men from down here in the Great War; then the Depression came and even those what knew how to do with little couldn't make do here, and moved away. Some of the old houses still stand. A few have been brought back to new life in the last little while, and they look so alive, like they use'ta. Most of'em are gone, but you can kinda see where they once were since a boxwood or some yellowbells or row of daffodils still crop up every year under the forest that's come in where there were once yards, meadows and pastures, and people lived their lives.

I tried the door to the church. It was locked. I'd really liked to've opened it up and gone inside to see it all again. But then on the other hand, maybe I wouldn't 've.

Church in the Wildwoods

Zion Church. Its name is all I know about it. I do know that beside it is an ancient trail that I had not noticed til recently, even though we drive past it every time we go out the Allegheny Springs way from here. And since discovering that trail, I've grown more interested in the small, empty, abandoned church and the community that once enlivened this valley. Now, fewer than a dozen houses represent families and homes but they do not reflect the thriving rural neighborhood that once existed here.

If you follow that trail--which I intend to do in the next few weeks--if my reckoning is right, it would have carried the foot-traveler up the side of the creek valley and over the other side of the ridge, down to Diamond Knob road where the old maps still show a "mission". Was this a "mission school" started early last century? Then, the Appalachians were "white unto harvest" and the "Interveners" from up East came in to Virginia and Kentucky and other parts of the unwashed southern highlands, starting settlement schools, missions and later, local crafts economies.

There is so much I don't know about our neighborhood. Some few of the old ones are still alive-- those who lived their lives here and would know about Zion Church, the mission, the old Willis store and the mill there where Griffith Creek meets Goose Creek. I need to connect while there is still time.

Church in the Wildwood / LYRICS BY PITTS

There's a church in the valley by the wildwood,
No lovelier spot in the dale;
No place is so dear to my childhood,
As the little brown church in the vale.

Oh, come to the church in the vale,
To the trees where the wild flowers bloom;
Where the parting hymn will be chanted,
We will weep by the side of the tomb.

How sweet on a clear Sabbath morning,
To list to the clear ringing bell;
Its tones so sweetly are calling,
Oh come to the church in the vale.

From the church in the valley by the wildwood,
When day fades away into night,
I would fain from this spot of my childhood
Wing my way to the mansions of light.

Chorus:

Oh, come, come, come...
Come to the church by the wildwood,
Oh, come to the church in the dale;
No spot is so dear to my childhood,
As the little brown church in the vale.

Picture Deleted

I feel better now that I have gotten this double-barreled rant off my chest. Picture intended here will follow shortly.

This picture of the little country church will have to be worth the thousand words I won't write this morning because I've been manually deleting the current flood of comment spam. This has got to be nothing more than a hobby for these people. I'd like to offer an alternative profession for these nice folks. I have in mind an outlet for their talents, a field for which Comment Spammer seem to be pre-adapted. It's a great fit, really.

I wonder if they've considered becoming Professional Litterers.

It's rude. It's obnoxious. It disturbs other people. It serves no social or cultural purpose. And it makes the world an uglier place...just like comment spam... all while saving the electricity, server space and hosting charges of the hard work of being a desk-bound Comment Spammer. Plus, the daily routine of the Professional Litterer would allow these fine people to get out more, get some upper extremity exercise... hurling, flinging, tossing... that sort of thing. And while in their cars on our back roads leaving their spam-equivalent they are at increased risk of serious bodily harm. What's not to like?

Gathering No Moss

Disappointing. The full-sized image of these little creatures that I'm using for my desktop fills my 19" monitor and is larger than life. There, these moss sporophytes look like alien life forms, or at least more like something seen while snorkeling than common plants growing on a very ordinary rock outcrop up our valley.

To get the image (which stood out from other patches in the area because of the glancing light that left foreground and background in deep, dark shadow) I had to climb up the bank about six feet, then stand precariously against an outcrop of brittle rock while holding the camera ASAP (as steady as possible) for the composition I wanted. For something so trivial, the amount of physical and mental focus was intense and no distraction was strong enough to pull me out of the moment. Except that the dog had somehow clammered up the almost-vertical rock bluff while I was thus focused on getting the image and he was, I realized at the very instant of this photograph, standing some six feet above me on crumbling rock that threatened to break off and come tumbling down on my head.

Later, while standing in the creek, hunkered down to get an image of some thallose liverworts, suddenly a large dog paw appeared, filling the frame and squashing the poor liverwort to livermush. How I wish my immediate reaction had been to press the shutter rather than yell at my assistant. Woulda been a prize-winner for sure. Dog-assisted photography brings a kind of urgency and confrontation with mortality and challenges to bland, pedantic composition that dogless photographers could not understand.

Pronounce: Chrysogonum virginianum

Fine Gardening's Guide to Pronouncing Botanical Latin may be just the thing you need to avoid those embarassing mumbles at the greenhouse this spring. Be bold. Act like you always knew the emPHAsis was on the anti-penultimate sylLABle when speaking latin binomials.

ACCENT
You place the accents on Latin words following these simple rules:
1. The accent is never on the last (ultimate) syllable.
2. In a word of two syllables, the accent always falls on the first syllable: ser´vus, mi´hi, oc´to.
3. In a word of three or more syllables
a. the accent falls on the next to last (penultimate) syllable, if that syllable is heavy:
pu-el´la, sal-ve´te, ta-bli´num, vi-gin´ti
b. otherwise the accent falls on the syllable before that (the antepenultimate syllable):
gra´ti-as, quat´tu-or, un´de-cim, tri-cli´ni-um

This is one I hear mispronounced a lot: Clematis. How do you say it?

In the mood to learn some useful latin roots so you'll demystify those high-falluting fancy plant names? Check out Roots of Botanical Names.

Note here that each issue of Fine Gardening Magazine has an 800 word essay on its last page, called appropriately, the Last Word. Hmmmmm. Do I know anybody who writes earthy-touchy-feely and might have something to submit? Hmmmm.

Houses on Wheels

Are Trailer Homes only for the "Newly wed or nearly dead"?

It is interesting that several readers have risen to the defense of "mobile homes" after I put the Trash Gollums living in one earlier this week. Had I cast the characters living elsewhere, would there have been the same rush to defend if I'd said they lived in "brick ranchers" or "timber frame" or "earth-sheltered homes"? Not likely. But, by whatever name you call them... trailer homes, mobile homes, manufactured housing... they have gotten their deserved, and undeserved share of prejudice and abuse. Those who have lived in them, too, have mixed feelings about the economics, aesthetics and long-term role they play in communities where the are "parked" (90% never to be moved once in place).

Here is a study (pdf), done, coincidentally, at Virginia Tech near here, that looks at a lot of perceptions, misconceptions and problems to address in the "manufactured home" relationship with cities, counties, and communities.

Any personal experiences, good or bad, living in or near one or often many of these homes?

Things Fall Apart

Don't ya just hate it when... the following is that kind of post. Forgive me.

All of a sudden, I have an "F" drive partitioned on my computer, with nothing in it but the DELL directory. I didn't partition a new drive. How could this have happened?

The Referral System (by Stephen Downes) has been improved lately, and now operates in invisible mode. Where did it go? Will it come back some day?

Site Meter just revamped their server and lost four days visit records for this week, so my stats for the week, month and year are meaningless.

I'm getting returned mail telling me I sent some university an email infected by the W32/Bagle.n@MM virus. Norton is up to date and finds nothing. What gives?

My DVD drive whirrs loudly when I try to play a CD. Still under warranty but I guess I'll have to duct-tape the cordless phone onto my cap for the 45 minute hold. Dude, I'm going ta Dell again.

In the next few weeks, I will be moving Fragments (all 135MB of it) from my present too-expensive server to (an unknown location to be arranged). I dread it. Got to be done.

I am using MS OneNote for organizing the various pieces of the imaginary book project. Love the software, in theory. As a version one, it has bugs. I keep sending screen shots of bizarre behavior. They keep saying "well, we never saw anything like this before", meaning... they think I photoshopped the screenshot as a form of attention-seeking behavior?

My ISP has issued a software app that they say makes dialup as fast as DSL. Same speed, half the cost. You can't know how that warms my heart. Now that we've upped for DSL at twice the price. Arrrgh!

kay sara sara (That's French, of course). I gotta go.

Fruit of the Anheiser Bush

At last the snow has melted from the margins of our road. And its absence for the first time in three months makes me realize: snow covers a multitude of sins. And one heck of a lot of litter.

Maybe it is this 'all of a sudden' aspect that makes it seem that we have more trash (mostly beer cans) then we did two years ago. I think we have the same (very low) amount of traffic--possibly a dozen vehicles a day, weekdays; more on Saturday, fewer on Sunday. So some one or two individuals have increased their weekly quotas of tossed trash to account for more litter, same traffic. And I tried to imagine what it must be like in the homes of individuals who habitually, thoughtlessly cast off unwanted things the instant their usefulness has passed.

I think it's reasonable to assume these specimens belong to the sub-sub-bargainbasement species of humankind known as homo rubrocervicas. Or Slobbovians as I prefer to call them. In light of their position at the shallow end of the gene pool, it is safe to imagine them of the most primative, microcephalic types, and as a visual model for these roving herds of trash-spreaders, I can conjure no better model than Gollum.

They sit around their trailer home in loin clothes. There is no furniture in the room where the Slobbovians large and small sit on their haunches, their green skin bathed in flickering blue light of the Home Shopping Network alternating with the Country Music Channel. The floor is thickly littered with partially gnawed chicken bones, baby diapers (used), empty Marlboro and Skoal wrappers, and, of course, the ubiquitous empty beer can. When the room becomes too full of this effluvium for efficient travel from the TV room to the beer compartment on the fridge (the knee is a convenient guage), the Slobbovians kick the carnage out into the yard. When it reaches middle of the Camaro hubcap level in the yard, they call Scooter to come with the backhoe and push enough of it down into the creek so they can get to the car and go to FoodLion and get more beer and cigarettes and chicken legs.

I was a little more diplomatic when this topic first came up some time back. After I spend the better part of tomorrow filling trash bags with the Gollum's crap, I may have yet more to say about this deplorable failure of human enculturation. Stay tuned.

Vignette: Hands

I was out of sorts the moment I walked in the door. Nice old building on what is left of Main Street in the little burg. Comfortable sofa. Pitiful reading material, all the more pitiful after I found myself sitting there at 9:20 for my 9:00 appointment with the CPA to talk taxes. I almost got up and left in protest. I could hear his voice rise and fall, pontificating in muted and wordless tones, but the tones spoke volumes. The client, a female, responded weakly and not often.

I had been sitting there alone over a half-hour, watching fubsy secretaries come and go, waiting--it was, after all, the waiting room-- and my eyes wandered the spare decor for something to hold my gaze. Between the waiting room and the CPA's office where he sat talking at extended length with his client, behold, a door--the modern kind of door with the lovered miniblinds built into the full-length glass. The blinds were almost but not quite closed. As the morning wore on and ponderously on, the sun rose higher and I could make out moving shapes backlit by the windows beyond the desk across which accountant and supplicant were conversing.

Only hands were visible through the narrow glass of the door. Only tones without words were audible. It was a movie-scene vignette.

He orated and speechified, admonished, lectured and mentored. The two hands on his side of the conversation pointed threateningly at the listener like imitation six-shooters, bang bang bang; they made wide palm-down motions indicating the wholeness of the mess she was in; fingerstips met, hands together held like Damocles' sword as they passed judgement. Big hands. Powerful hands.

She remonstrated, excused, parried, resigned. The hands on her side were palms up, exposing the soft underbelly of vulnerability and surrender. The tiny tips of her arms barely rose from the table, then slumped as if paralyzed. Small white hands, powerless, they rose meekly in mock-defense only to drop like tiny birds found in the hunter's sights, lifeless to rise no more.

Be Fruitful, and Multiply

They are begging to be transplanted: wineberry canes "volunteer" all along the road and under the powerline--no man's land. State right-of-way and AEP easement. The species has spread across the country since first imported from Japan in 1890, quite by virtue of its own genius. Ann and I--dressed in our grubbiest work clothes and winter garb-- would be "stealing" these feral specimens to transplant to the house. We felt like plant smugglers out on a caper under the cover of a drizzly afternoon--Bonnie and Clod.

Wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius) is a favorite of birds. They spread the seeds of the sweet ruby-red fruits in their long-distance travels. Once a single plant germinates, its arching canes--up to nine feet long-- can root at their tips, and that cane may do likewise. We will be bringing this wonderfully fruitful but potentially invasive plant onto our place intentionally. In fact, we have done so.

Yesterday a passing cold front left behind a heavy ground fog that was the larger image of our breath in the cold. In the damp and still of the deserted road, we dug up a half dozen of the plants and brought them home in a bucket in the back of the truck. We've talked about doing this in years past, but have put off the chore until it was too late in the season. While it felt like winter yesterday, the calendar says this was a good time to get this job done, and my honey-do list today includes fetching a bucket of water from the creek to put on the transplanted roots of our new, and hopefully well-behaved wineberry plants. They will spread along the edge of the path on the south-facing slope behind the house, next to the blueberries.

Taxes, and 11 Forms of Lightning

Hie thyself to the tax man and empty pockets, beggar.

A day I dread. I carry it all in a folder, paper-clipped, labeled--ncome, interest income, deductible taxes, professional expenses, charitable deductions--and dump it on the expensive mahogany desk of the man with the gold tooth and the diamond stick pen in his starched lapel. I'll pay the exorbitant price he demands for divining with approximate exactitude this year's verdict, read'em and weep. What else is a mere mortal to do?

Our particular accountant follows the Eutruscan School of Accounting, an ancient form of augery relying particularly on the direction from which birds call (using the art of "*ostentaria" as opposed to a related competitor school of tax preparation that depends on the arrangement of bird entrails to divine WhatYouOwe.) I fear it does not augur well for us this year. (*information gleaned from ostentaria--which may be relegated to an accounting office assistant-- give rules for interpreting signs and portents and lay down the propitiatory and expiatory acts needed to obviate disaster and to placate the gods.)

I'm reviewing the information our Ostentatious Accountant gave me last year when I questioned by what mysterious means he had arrived at the exact figure he placed before us in the Final Solemn Ceremony of Obligation. Here is a small excerpt from the Tax Code he provided that may help you better understand your tax man and his strange ways this year:

The magistrate taking the auspices is referred to as an auspex, distinct from the augurs who interpret the signs (Cicero: On Divination 1.48; On the Nature of the Gods II.3; On the Laws II.13). The auspex sits out in front of the tabernaculum, usually near the edge of a hilltop, while his assistants and the tibicines and tibicinae will stand within. The purpose of the tabernaculum was to avoid the auspex from being distracted by auspicia oblativa, or naturally occurring omens, and that he might concentrate on the auspicia imperitiva being sought in the sky.

Throughout the ceremony the tibicines and tibicinae are to play their flutes. Mention is made in the ancient texts that this was done to prevent the magistrate from being interrupted by the sounds of any ill omens. However there may have been more to this and the flute players might have also been present to draw birds to the templum.

Loquacious Lexigraphic Lubrication

Turns out, writing has its occupational risks.

F. Scott Fitzgerald called it “the writer’s vice,” and Hemingway, more memorably, described it as “idea-changing liquid alchemy.” According to Donald Goodwin, former chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Kansas Medical Center and author of Alcohol and the Writer, 71 percent of writers drink to excess—a rate higher than any other profession surveyed.

And herein lies the short-circuit in my makeup as a would-be writer: A glass of wine, and I sit down to the keyboard and within a few minutes, I'm typing like my wife.

Unplugged

The older I get, the less I take my senses for granted. The more they gradually decline, the sweeter they become, the more I want to indulge them in the minutiae of the close-at-hand. To hold on to what hearing I haven't already lost, I wear earplugs every time I use the chain saw. They block the worst of the engine noise, but even with them in place, it isn't nothing that I hear.

The two-cycle sputter is muted but it vibrates like sound through my hands, my bones; the throb of my own pulse feeds back into my skull, and the sound of breathing echoes as if in a small, closed room; the wind whistles across the plastic line that keeps the two earplugs together making wonderful exaggerated studio-wind sound effects.

I've used this same pair of earplugs for so long the airplane orange is now a faded pink. I yank them out as soon I shut off the saw. The audiosphere explodes out of the muffled silence.

Today from overhead, when I become unplugged: the mewling caw of two crows flying counterclockwise swooping circles along the unhurried path of a magnificent redtail hawk. If this raucous remonstration made them feel better, it obviously had no appreciable deterrent effect on the hawk who barely changed the camber of his wings to accommodate their clumsy attack.

Closer, just at the top of my cap, the season's first swarm of midges hummed while they wove their loopy spiral dance over some imaginary point not far from my right ear.

And the water. I don't even hear it, even without the plastic cones crammed in my ears like bungs in a barrel. I take watersounds for granted a lot of the time, and it doesn't register as anything to bother being aware of--like the feel of the shirt on my back--it's just there. When the plugs come out, against the soft shushing of my breathing and pulse, the rambunctious rush of the creek seems larger than life--crisp, close, and coming from all around me. I can hear part of its rippling babel richocheting off the house; can distinguish the trickle of the branch from the roar of Goose Creek from the wind in the bare branches.

I hate having those pink plugs in my ears. But it's almost worth it, just to be able to take them out and hear again. And listen.

Inside Looking Out

Back, briefly, to prepositions and titles and cover letters and such, then no more on this for some good little while, most likely. Your input is much appreciated and among other things, has served to show that the author will do one thing that he thinks best about naming the book and describing it to agents, publishers and the like; the agents, publishers and the like will not like it that way; and the reading public will love and hate whatever choices are made in about equal proportion. And so it goes.

Re the name, if the title remains in the end more or less as proposed ("Here's Home: Belonging ___ The Blue Ridge") I would chose "IN" instead of "TO" and my reasons are the same as those of you who expressed this preference; and they are different. And "Here's Home" may be too mushy. Some of you liked it. Some of you gagged. I've done both myself. But not to worry. I have miles to go before I sleep. Or name the book. Or send it off any of the various wheres that loom as options down the road. No hurry. I can't even say yet what the book is about.

It might be easier if the would-be book were about a "how to"-- a technology involving objective objects, process, details. Or if it were about a particular historical event with chronologies, personalities, facts; or defended a certain thesis with arguments pro and con; or were about characters I created and wove into a fictional reality. But it's not. It is a book (or could possibly someday be a book) of vignettes of being here through ordinary days. A Seinfeld book. A book bout nothing. Or so it seems, looking from the inside, out.

I write every day from within a reflective orb. It is the very local here and the now. Each of us has a different one. I look out to the edges of mine, experience it and write briefly about it each day. I know it well in these months of total immersion and am thankful for it. But I cannot step outside it and look back into it and say what's inside. It's too close; I wear it, breathe it like air that has no substance, is necessary but feels like nothing to me. I do know that the book is not about me. And yet it can't be told without me. And I have to somehow come to see it from the point of view of the detached other if I am to tell the next person who asks me "What is your book about?" I don't know yet. I haven't been able yet to climb through that orb to the outside of it to look in.

I had to confess to Trish that I have not once read through the whole thing, start to finish. This is part of my difficulty getting a "gestalt", a holistic outside view of the whole subjective enterprise that has filled the last almost two years of life reflected in what I've said about it. And so, I have a lot of work to do before I get back to you with final things like names for a book I don't yet know myself.

As I was sitting here in this navel-gazing state, I got an email from Trish asking permission to post her spin on our conversations on this deep wading. She voices her thoughts in a "cover letter" as someone who has been both inside of and watching all along from outside of my little bubble. Do go over there and read it if you're at all interested in the meta-story of Fragments. (Trish's LiveJournal, March 15 entry).

The earth moves a little under my feet when others obviously know more about me than I can see about myself. But that is what friends are for, and blog readers, and they can be one and the same people. I do appreciate all of you who help me understand the where and who and why. If this book thing ever really happens, it will have a hundred authors, if one writer.

Tragedy of the Commons

I'm sorry. I must violate my usual committment to politics-free blogging on these pages. But there is another election coming up in a few months and we all need to do some serious thinking about the long-term consequences of our choices.

If you voted for him last time, don't do it again out of habit. Vote for George W. Bush with the full understanding of the impact that his administration has had and for another four years and decades thereafter will have on the air we breathe, the water we drink, the biology of human lives and ecosystems that lie way more at the core of our collective "health" than can be measured by corporate profits, the sad GNP and balance of trade. It seems to me that the hungry fox is guarding the henhouse. Some of those hens are your children and mine.

I challenge you to invest some thought in this aspect of the Republican platform: Read all of the lengthy and thorough article, Crimes Against Nature, by Robert Kennedy, Jr. (who works on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council) describing not just the Bush environmental ambitions but those going back to the early seventies-- including the Sagebrush Rebellion, "Wise Use", the Heritage Foundation and the "Contract with America". Then vote your conscience.

Crimes Against Nature
The Bush Environmental Record

Lowlife: The Movies

Okay. I admit it. I got pulled in to watching scummy movies for a whole hour yesterday. Dozens of them. Not a one was longer than just a few seconds, just long enough to tittilate, to make me want to see more, ending just when the action got interesting. All the actors admittedly played bit parts and were the lowest kind of characters. Some, sessile wards of the state, were obviously unwilling to move an micron to feed themselves, waiting around as if food was just somehow going to float by and they would pull it out of the air. Vagrants. Others marauded freely about without limit, shameless predators looking for those smaller and less powerful to suck in. Disturbing. And to think this is happening within a five minute walk of your house.

Warning: some scenes depict contractile vacuoles and pseudopodia and are not suitable for children.

Sentence. Fragments.

My fourth grade teacher, Miss Long, left indelible marks, for good and for ill, on my habits of reading, writing, and thinking. I was not the only one singled out for classroom humiliation. But it is my experience that is etched forever in the infamy of memory. I stood at the chalk board with no place to hide and did math problems in the exact rectitude of rows and columns she commanded as she called out each new problem like announcing guilty verdicts in a bank robbery trial; I wrote in yellow chalk the definitions to my weekly vocabulary list while others looked on as I drew tiny circles instead of words in front of my chest, stalling for time, hoping beyond hope Teacher would never make me stand back and show my classmates I hadn't the foggiest idea what "foliage" meant; and she made us diagram sentences.

I still sometimes, while having a conversation with some familiar someone, begin to see our discussion projected on the screen of my fourth grade memory, and as we are talking, I imagine our words falling in three-dimensional space along a framework that is so characteristic one person to the next that these discussion diagrams are as unique as fingerprints. Conversation-prints, I guess they are. Time is plotted along the horizontal axis. Lulls in conversation appear as gaps in the diagram, left to right. The vertical axis represents the dichotomous twigging branches where one topic leads to another, or several more, or the dead end where he and I or she and I could or would follow that branch no further. Their voice is in blue lines, mine in red.

For reasons I do not understand, I have often attracted male friends who draw short blue lines punctuated by long horizontal empty spaces. Meanwhile, my red lines branch off first here, then there, trying desperately to get the twigs of the tree of conversation up in the air, out of the muck, up growing somewhere into the light, only to be truncated by lack of interest or indifference or boredom. I just don't find many people who can hold up their end of the conversation in satisfying, dynamic, unexpectedly mutating, expansive ways. Such is not the case when talking to TravelerTrish.

I am certain, Miss Long, that no matter how long I stand at the board, I will not be able to retrace the eight hours of conversation with Trish from her short visit this weekend. I do know that I can see no gaps in the horizontal dimension of time. Blue or red or blue AND red lines always emerged easily when threatened by a lull. Topic-nodes arose by spontaneous generation, morphed, diverged and then somehow came back like a snake grasping its tail in its mouth, circular briefly, before launching out some other surprising but somehow related direction, branching again. And again.

Good visit. Good talk. Mostly about writing. And a hundred other things. And a modern-art conversation-print that could never in a hundred years be diagrammed. The best kind.

Small Press, Large Presence

Did you know that March is National Small Press Month?

Here's what the The Small Press Center and Publishers Marketing Association say, in part, about Small Presses and Small Press Month: (emphasis mine)

"Independent publishers are making a huge impact, and Small Press Month actively promotes all of their work. With an estimated 70,000 independent publishers in this country, they are the real pulse of publishing."

"These publishers, and the million plus titles they produce, form the core of the industry. Independent publishers are publishing unknown authors, enhancing the careers of established writers, constantly taking risks, exploring innovative ideas and, through their diverse titles, reaching new audiences. Individual expression is the driving force behind these publishers. The Rest of Us 2003, a study conducted by Publishers Marketing Association, substantiated that the small presses are a vital, growing part of the book publishing industry. The 70,000 publishers in this group accounted for nearly 30 billion dollars in book sales."

And from the Small Press.org pages, here's a couple of great resources (at least for UW's --unknown writers-- like me)... 1) Ten Basic Steps to Finding a Publisher; and a 2) Small Press publisher directory.

And, along these lines... by all means, read an excerpt from Tom Montag's small-press-published Curlew:Home that appears on the Prairie Home Companion "Stories from Home" page. (Tom, of course, is the proprietor of The Midwesterner, only the latest of his writing outlets). And I see from the sidebar at "Stories from Home", even Appalachian homes are included. Nice poem called Appalachian Breeze.

Squirrel Soup Kitchen

We had a bounty of walnuts from the trees along the edge of the road and pasture this year--more than I've ever seen. I couldn't stand to see them go to waste, so I gathered, dehusked, cracked and picked the meats out of one five gallon bucket of kernels. Then I had another five gallon bucket of dehusked nuts in the shed to work on over the Fall and Winter.

A few weeks ago when the weather was (temporarily) warm and relatively pleasant, I went to gather a coffee can of kernels to crack for some cinnamon bread Ann was going to make. The bucket was empty. I stormed inside laying blame on WifeyDear for emptying the bucket to use to gather twigs or somesuch, which she indignantly denied. Yeah, right. I guess five gallons of walnuts just disappeared by magic.

Yesterday as I was reorganizing the wood stacked next to the shed behind the house, I solved the mystery. Somehow, even though the cat sleeps in the shed, something--probably a little red squirrel--had carried my hard-won walnuts one by one to the shelter of the woodpile under the eaves of the shed, and eaten four cleanly chiseled holes in each nut, leaving just the empty hard-as-iron shells in a tidy and not so tiny heap for me to discover. Of course, there were fallen walnuts all over the pasture still, and he could have lived quite well over winter off of these with a little effort. But why bother? This lucky squirrel probably thought he'd won the lottery: fifteen pounds of husked, clean walnut kernels all together in one easy location, and conveniently stored under a roof and out of the wind and rain, no less! Life is good!

It's