Fragments From Floyd

A Rare Evening Post!

Thought I'd put some little something up tonight, way contrary to my usual pattern, because I need to leave the house in the morning no later than 7:00. The weather looks great, lighting could be "hazy bright"--those with cameras are hoping for a little ground fog but none on top of Buffalo Mountain. Guess we'll take what cards we're dealt. I'm sure I'll have something in the way of an image up by late afternoon, though I might not post as usual in the morning.

Let me briefly comment on a couple of issues I was whining about yesterday:

I can see the end of the comment spam situation soon. Chris O'donnell says MT version 3 will be public very soon, and it curtails most of the spam. And, I have some help out there (thanks Jeremiah!) with the upgrade without risking making a mess of things--this is the hand-holding I'm afraid I have to have for some of this MT stuff. I hate to beg help, but I'm overwhelmed with the kindness of folks in my blogging world.

I think I have a solution to the display of images larger than what I can put up on the weblog...AND a way to make them available since I do get requests for some of them from time to time. I need to do a bit more homework on this and will let you know early next week. I do appreciate the support and encouragement and helpful tips from so many of you regarding my photographic passions. I hate to use the cliched word, but I must say it is "heartwarming". Thank y'all.

(The wildflower pictured here is Columbine. I hope to get a few more shots to best this one. If/when I do, I'll tell some neat things about this flower--one of my favorites!)

In Reagan's Immortal Words...

"There he goes again".

Time for another Readers Radio Theatre there kiddies. Gather 'round the old Victrola where the golden tubes glow mysteriously behind the diaphanous grillwork. Tune that small, dark brown knob through the squelch of static as the post jerks erratically across the broad expanse of the dial, left to right, back again. Somewhere in there, between Amos and Andy and the Arthur Godfrey Show, hear the syrupy-sonorous voice of your ol' Uncle Fred, telling another of his three-minute radio tales.

Sorry. Got carried away in the wee-tiny drama on the eve of another radio essay coming up. I've overcome my stage fright just enough to tell you how to find it tomorrow.

Also, I will tell you that this radio piece has never before appeared on the pages of Fragments and is part of the future book tentatively titled "Here's Home - Belonging to the Blue Ridge". To see it in print, you'll have to wait til next spring.

You can listen via Real Audio: HERE (Live, real-time only)

Or if you're local: Regional radio broadcast: 89.1 - Roanoke; 89.5 - Lynchburg; 88.5 - Charlottesville 89.3 & 89.7 - Charlottesville, Waynesboro & Staunton; 91.9 - Marion, Wytheville, Galax & Abingdon

Date: Friday April 30, 2004

Time: Immediately after the regular short Civil War series that airs at 6:50 and again at 8:50 a.m., EST... so ~ 6:55 and 8:55-ish

On the Sunny Side

I think it's safe to say that the show of Spring is about over. Even here in our cold little valley--always one of the last to get frost-free days--the poplars are full of miniature leaves and the canopy is closing in on the very private forest experience of summer foliage. Now, we will have months when you can't see into the forest for the trees. Here's what I wrote this time last year:

Spring starts where the weather suits its clothes... in the warm, sunny, sheltered valley floor at the lower elevations. And as the season matures, the bloom-line slowly, day by day, rises up the mountain slopes (sooner and faster on the southern exposure) toward the crest, where for all practical botanical purposes, this week it is still winter--bare and brown and threadbare above a riot of green and chartreuse coming up from below. It is fully mid-spring in Salem at lower elevation. In two weeks, if I go to the Naturalist Rally at Mt. Rogers, it will be perfect early spring at the campgrounds at 4000 feet, spring wildflowers at their peak there that have been gone for weeks here at the house.

I might just tell you that this year--for the first time since 1986-- I am going to the Naturalist Rally next week. You can bet there will be stories and pictures. Stay tuned!

Parasite that Kills Host Kills Self

In nature, parasites that kill their hosts commit suicide. So too, blog comment spammers, given a sufficient burden of "infestation" of their host blogs eventually lead to the blogger closing comments or abandoning the blog altogether. I mention this because I'm a frog hair away from doing one or the other of these parasite-stopping measures. All I do is clean up from the steady stream of blogspam. I've had it!

I know I need to update to the current version of MT. I've read the instructions. It does not compute. Is the upgrade something that, given my ignorance, I could do with a few tips in MT-for-Dummies language? I had thot version 3 of MT would be out by now. Of course, upgrading to that version I'd be limited by the same ignorance and lack of expertise that hampers me at this stage.

The spam has gotten to the point where much of the pleasure of the weblog is gone, and all of the "Oh boy I've got mail" reflex is extinguished when 4 out of every 5 emails is notification of waste matter being dumped on Fragments. What's a dummy to do?

End of an Era

It is like viewing the Grand Canyon through pea-shooter. It is to take a full, rich, detailed outdoor scene and reduce it to a dimension smaller than a postcard. Trying to convey the expanse and detail of a local landscape in a weblog image has always been disappointing. My images run 450 pixels wide at most before I run into formatting problems; now, that dimension is perhaps a fortieth of the full 6 million pixel image the camera brings back from the places I take it. I can't tell you how many landscapes I've previewed in MT and then decided 'why bother'--even before the larger, richer images were possible with the 6MP camera.

Last night I attended the organizational meeting of what may become an active photographer's group in our little rural community. I've not had another photog around since the late 70's, and so was looking forward to sharing and learning from other visually-oriented folk. I've carried a camera since 1970 and thot I'd have a thing or two to contribute. Well, ends up I had the distinct impression I had signed up for Biology 101 and walked my mistake into Advanced Computational Systems Modeling--a graduate course, to be sure. Let's just say of the seven photographers, I was the runt of the litter. And I was the only one who didn't respond with enthusiasm to the plan for the next meeting: everybody bring in a dozen of their framed photos to hang in the gallery for the night and we'll discuss and critique. All my images are digital, none of them printed, most of them so low-res I won't even attempt to print them.

So. If I am going to take the next step up, I need at least two things: 1) a place to show images in larger size than the weblog front page; and 2) a color printer capable of at least 11 x 14" color prints (and then matting, framing etc after that.) And I am too lazy and too broke to do either. So never mind. It's the same old era. Photography has been a private joy for so long. Now at least I can share my little mini-postcards with kind readers from around the world. Now at least I will be able to go and sit at the feet of folks who take the medium seriously and pick up a few crumbs that will make me better at my hobby.

And about the milldam: it was a spectacular morning. I made myself leave the house early and go poking around when the light was golden, low in the sky, and the trees still that translucent green I love so much. I discovered several things--a remote picturesque cemetery for one--I had never seen driving past the mill. I learned that one of the old homes nearby is a museum that contains the history of the mill and the community that once existed there and I have a contact person to give me the tour. I hope eventually to generate a magazine article (with photos) from future visits. The milldam image here is too small to do its beauty justice, but to the photographer, there is almost always more to the image than meets the eye.

Do You Have Writer's Brain?

Writing (very entertainingly) in Commentary Magazine, Joseph Epstein begins his article, Writing on the Brain, in the following way:

I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of profitable work. This must be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that one has established one cannot do. To these two must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy—once you have these in place, you are set to go.

And he concludes with these words:

Where do the words come from? The same mysterious place, I suspect, where notes of music go. They precede ideas, and are inseparable from them. For myself, I bow my head, touch wood, and utter a small prayer that the flow of them never cease.

Motivation, meanwhile, is as various as the subjects upon which one feels called upon to write, varying from time to time, subject to subject. I should like Dr. Flaherty to know that my two motives in writing this essay have been, first, to collect a decent fee, and, second, to try to knock down her book as an assemblage of profoundly muddled notions that I, given my calling, find mildly but genuinely offensive.

In between, he weilds three thousand words to do exactly what he set out to do: tear down Alice Flaherty's reductionistic explaining away of the creative process (Midnight Disease) and expose the fallacies of false ascendency of the neurosciences in its (and her) failed endeavor to dissect the writer's brain.

As I read this essay, my limbic system, particularly my amygdaloid nucleus, was pouring serotonin into the pathways to my higher cerebral integrative centers, producing the illusion of enjoyment and comprehension. Mr. Epstein, I think, would prefer me to just say "I enjoyed it". I think other writers will, too.

Writers Read

We had our second "Spoken Word" night on Sunday. I invited Doug Thompson. I thought about asking him if he would bring his camera, but then realized this was as stupid as asking him if he was going to wear pants. Of course he would bring a camera! He's written about the evening, and has a few pictures of the event. Scroll down his page for more images.

This Friday, Doug and another friend and I will climb to the top of Buffalo Mountain. And, well yes, I did think I might carry the new camera, as a matter of fact. Of course, veteran photojournalist, Mr. Thompson, will tote along some outrageously long lens-- maybe a 700mm -- while I crank away with the only lens I have, the "kit" 18 - 80mm, green with focal-length envy. Expect pictures by Saturday on both blogs, I'd imagine.

Wings

Striped Maple leaves emerge, poised like butterflies

It happens too quickly, the surge of bloom and leaf, suddenly--when there are enough degrees, the right amount of water around roots, and the earth tips just so toward the sun again in spring. One day, overnight, rabbit out of a hat, we have forest again. If I were in charge, I'd put the show on freeze-frame, be sure I'd seen it all--buds, buds opening, new leaves, early blossoms, inch-tall fiddleheads--under the open canopy. But I leave the house each morning now, wander down the lane saying "No! I had to sleep! I missed the part where..."

In heaven, maybe I will get to hold the remote control of the seasons.

Rain

The house was empty, my inspiration exhausted, and it was raining. I crawled back into bed like a soldier into a foxhole--a protected place where I could wait until the next assault on the task list. I slipped under cool sheets as the bedroom curtains lifted and fell, as wave upon wave of rain advanced down the valley from the south. I do not know if the place I went was sleep, but it was not wakefulness and it was not dream. It was somewhere in the archives of rains past and it was projected before closed eyes, light flickering faintly on the screen of perception and memory. The sound of rain was the same in every scene, more intense or less, but a constant in a life where not much is.

It is raining and I am pretending to sleep on the metal glider on our screen porch in the first home I remember. I don't think there were gutters because sheets of rain are pouring off the roof, splashing against the foundation of the tiny house. Fat drops blow against the screen, turning to mist, wetting my bare legs where I lay pulled into a ball for warmth. It is summer. The sudden chill is alien and welcome. The air fills with ozone, the smell of old brick, metal screens, Zoysia grass and bus exhaust from 49th street. The sun will come out and steam will rise from the hot sidewalks.

It is raining, has been raining for three days, and the natives are restless. The cabin is festooned with the blue jeans and T-shirts of twenty soggy unhappy campers. The bunks on the west side are damp from blowing mist that sifts through the screens of Navajo hut. Our teen-age leaders have exhausted everything in their bag of diversionary tricks and there are still five days of summer camp to go. We cannot swim or canoe; it is too cold. We cannot ride horses or play softball; it is too muddy. The rain runs down past the flagpole like a river delta. We endure the call of reveille and taps in the cheerless rain. The muddy water enters the muddy creek, red upon red. The roar of Kelly Falls drowns out the verses of Day is Dying in The West at vespers. The woods becomes a rainforest smelling of pine and mildew.

It is raining and I cannot tell where I am exactly. Camping somewhere. We walked in, most likely up or down a mountain with the rain rolling down our useless ponchos, filling our boots. If it ever stops raining, we (whoever it is I am with, I cannot tell) can dry our boots by the campfire. I may be on the Cranberry River in the three-sided shelter as the river rises closer and closer to our somewhat-dry sanctuary. I may be on the top of Walker Mountain where the rain is freezing in the trees and when we wake, it tinkles in the early January breeze like crystal wind chimes. Maybe this is one of a dozen times when a day of rain pulled us into fetal position in our tent, fat drops plopping against the translucent fabric, outlines of rivulets visible as drops run down the thin nylon, blue and cheerful, the only blue we see for days. Or this rain may be from days spent under the beetling sandstone cliffs in the Sipsey, where raindrops big as nickels are hitting the Frazier magnolia leaves like timpanies. Water is pouring over the rim in a dozen places, spontaneous water-falling into the ravine thick with ferns and boulders held by the roots of jungle plants.

Through the open window, above the rush of the creek and the heavy drops on the metal roof and the twitter of wet, happy birds, from my half-sleep I hear the crunch of gravel. She pulls into the driveway, home from town with groceries. And it is still raining.

LabPaca: New Home Industry

Duh! Why didn't we think of this before? Here it has been, right under our noses (in our noses, really, and our breakfast cereal and the bottom of our socks)--the basis for an untapped home industry. All we need here is a cooperative association to pool our product in sufficient quantities for garment production. That should be easy through the internet and from among the bloggers I already know who own the primary resource: a yellow lab.

This is the time of year when yellow labs shed hair not in ones or twos but in clots of fur thick as rolled socks. DONT THROW IT AWAY! The soft, tawny fiber can be spun into downy yarn and knit into scrumptious LabPaca garments like these. Supplement your income while you groom! (Or simply wait and collect the large aggregations of shed hair--called Dust Hippos-- from the corners of your rooms in April and May!)

I look forward to accepting your memberships in the Co-op and receiving your first shipment of FABULOUS FIDO FUR bound for your future sweaters, vests and socks!

(not) Wood Anemone

Anemonella thalictroides ~ Rue Anemone or Windflower (Image mislabeled as Wood Anemone--see errata.) The first time I saw this pure white member of the buttercup family growing in perfusion was in the Smokies. The occasion was the annual Wildflower Pilgrimage. Newly married and cheated of a real honeymoon by the first day of my first year of graduate school, Ann and I both went on a Systematic Botany class field trip to Gatlinburg.

I grew up in the pine woods of central Alabama and frankly, I did not pay much attention to plants until my eleventh hour conversion to botany late in my undergrad years. When for the first time I saw the incredible diversity and abundance of flowering plants in the rich coves of the Smoky Mountains, I was hooked on the study of plant life. When I tried to photograph them along the Little Pigeon River with our clunky peel-off Polaroid and the small white Anemone blossoms came back as vague tiny white dots, I was hooked on SLR photography. From my grad student stipend of $200 a month, I paid $200 for my first Minolta and a set of screw-in close-up lenses.

That camera went everywhere with me for thirty years. When I press the shutter on the new digital SLR, part of the joy of that sound and feel is the memory of my old friend, the Minolta--held and worn by the hands of the boy and the man, a window on the world of color and light. There is something special about our first loves, don't you agree?

Errata: Thirty years is a long time. I had written this post thinking the plant pictured was true Wood Anemone, but something didn't seem exactly right in the fog of memory. Newcombe's Field Guide set me straight. I'll forgive myself this near-error: the two plants, Anemone and Rue Anemone, are close enough in appearance (except for the leaves) that even the genus names are almost the same... Anemone and Anemonella.

Bushes

Someone came snooping at Fragments for pictures of our shrubbery--close up and personal. I wouldn't have thought there would be that much interest in this sort of thing, but this Google searcher was even specific as to the gender of our hedge planting. Clipped from Sitemeter:

http://www.google.com/search?h...se+up+picture+of+girls+privets

New Camera: No Regrets

I've had the D70 for less than a week. I've still just barely started up the learning curve for getting the full benefit of what the camera will do. But already I can tell that, because the tool I have now is capable of more, my vision of what is possible is also changing. I'm composing differently because my "eye" can record light differently than it could in the past four years of digital visioning. I love how the camera handles skyline detail and shadows, flashes of light on water and out-of-focus shapes. I had forgotten the gratifying clunk of the mirror flipping up and back in an SLR versus the sad little beep of most digitals. The instantaneous shutter and recycling time is a wonderful improvement over the slow response in the Coolpix ! I like the way the heftier body feels in my hands, but when the heavier camera around my neck bounces off my bony sternum, I wish I had the pectoralis major padding of my weight-lifting thirties and forties.

I miss the LCD viewfinder, swivel body and simplicity of the Coolpix, and am thinking I will always carry it in the camera bag for special times when a smaller final image is okay and the shot can only be captured in those odd configurations that camera is made for. I've come across the most magnificent display of spider webs on a neighbors property; I'll call tonight for permission to go where I've already been--and spend one morning this week down there. With the Coolpix, to get the low-lying webs (after wading the creek up to my knees) I'd hold the camera down at ankle level in a squatting or on-one-knee position and compose with the LCD. With the D70, I'm going to have to be prone on elbows in the very wet grass with my eye and the viewfinder at ankle level. I'll need to take a piece of tarp for a ground cloth for sure.

The expense of lenses is no small consideration. The 18-70mm lens that I purchased in the "kit" with the camera body does pretty well, close up to about 14". But I will some day want a true "macro" for the detail I enjoy in nature's patterns and textures. And I will need something with more telephoto capabilities--at least up to 200mm. But the fact that the camera takes larger images of high resolution lets me grab pieces of the 6MP images and blow them up--the poor man's macro and telephoto--at least for webpage-quality pictures. Of course as the full images become more impressive, the teeny low-res web versions become more disappointing by comparison.

I could go on (as you are perhaps well aware) but for the sake of the non-photo-geeky majority of visitors, I'll just hush. But for certain, the composing of pixels has taken precedent over composing words til the new wears off. I'll need to find a balance between the two with time left over for the garden, the grass mowing and all the other projects that loom pleasantly in coming months. As usual, I'll bring Fragments visitors along for the fun and foolishness!

Essays about Fathers

I had a little advance warning that I had been suggested as a judge and was prepared to say "yes". When I got the call last week, no, I was to be the entire committee. And without a whole lot of premeditation said "yes" to that too. Now I'm wondering exactly how to go with this little project.

The Chamber of Commerce wants to have an essay contest as part of the street festival on June 19--the day before Father's Day. The topic of the essay is "About My Dad" or something along those lines. I need to come up with categories (age groups), word limit, judges and prizes (among a dozen other details) ASAP. Once the basic package is together, I'll need to get a copy of all the details to the newspaper, the schools, the nursing homes so there is at least a month for entrants to respond.

If anybody has experience with a similar event, suggestions of things one must or ought do and things one (that would be me) must avoid would be muchly appreciated.

Nature Quiz

* Grand Prize goes to the first person to correctly identify the tall spikey cone-topped creatures in this photograph from the banks of Goose Creek. Correct answer and the prize winner will be announced on Monday.

(* Prize will be awarded later in the season when the garden produce is coming in. The winner will receive a bushel of fresh vegetables, sent as an email attachment in the new *.sqs compression format called Squash.)

Notes from the Pup Resort

Laughing Dog: The new camera has a fast shutter and focus, and so I've entered a new era of puppy picture-taking. Now, even if he is wiggling, cavorting, running or jumping after butterflies, I can bring in acceptable pictures of Tsuga the Barricuda.

Here's one of the first. I was down on one knee calling the dog, who would not come on command. Suddenly he turned and raced toward me. A split second after this image was snapped, I was cleaning dog spit off my UV Haze filter. (Warning: Objects in the viewfinder are closer than they may appear.)

Think We'll Keep Him: There have been times--many times--that I just was not sure if we had not made a mistake, picking "Number 3" from the litter of seven males. Maybe "Number 5" would have been more what we were expecting after all. We considered taking him back in the cover of darkness to leave him on the doorstep of the house where he was born. This is not what we had expected of our third labrador retriever, even if Tsuga was our first of the yellow variety. How different could they be, one pure-bred from another? We assumed our new dog would be a blend of our former pups, Buster and Zachary. Wasn't this, after all, the point? Wasn't this the reason why a person would pay good money for a mutt otherwise obtainable for free from the pound? The predictable good nature and tractability of the pure breed was what we were paying for when we bought another lab.

T-dog turns ten months this week. Somewhere along about month six--after he lost all his shark-sharp baby teeth--he got nice. Well, nicer. And noticeably more aware of things in general and of our pleasure and displeasure with his behaviors in particular. While he still misbehaves when the rare visitors come--out of unbridled glee and exuberance, not meanness or aggression--he has mellowed considerably. He's is learning right from wrong, and more wants to please than to follow his own instincts and agenda. Except when it comes to turkey poop. But we won't go there. He's accepted that I am the Alpha Male and the other one is the Food Lady and his walking buddy, and we are both part of his tiny pack. I think he knows how good he has it here and has decided to stay.

Inner Light

Blessed are the Peacemakers

Below, an excerpt from an address given by Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, at the Gregorian University, March 25, 2004 (via SojoMail). This long piece does a good job of holding up the Christian-Muslim conflict to the light of the good in both faiths, while acknowledging failures and ignorance on both sides. This man has extensive experience with Muslims and Islamic heads of state, and so has a credible position from which to compare the tenets of his faith to the minority segment of Islam that seems determined to exteminate all competing ideologies.

I encourage you to take the time over the weekend to read all of it. -- FF

"Compassion and understanding are the only tools to handle hatred and violence. It will do us little good if the West simply believes the answer is to put an end to Osama bin Laden. Rather we must put an end to conditions, distortions and misinformation that create Osama bin Laden and his many emulators. It is the battle of ideas we must win, not to show the many bruised and aggrieved Muslims that we are stronger and more powerful than they are.

In this task Christian theologians, teachers, priests, pastors and people have a significant role to play. Christianity has much in common with Islam and working from common moral demands, our joint commitment to family life and religious values, our agreement concerning the importance of worshipping God and teaching all people to build their lives on eternal and abiding values should give us confidence to create relationships between us that endure. If we do not, the future will remain hazardous and threatening."

Favorite Things

"It is the translucency of spring that I look forward to from the middle of winter. It is this, more than the season's growth or warmth or change in the view that I anticipate. In mid-April, sunlight will travel 93 million miles to our woods, finding a million tiny see-through leaves. Packets and waves of light pierce cuticle, mesophyll, and parenchyma--the entire world that lies within the diaphanous thickness of an emerging leaf.

Spring leaves take in sun but don't hold it. Like a ghost through a wall, spring sun shines into and through. So an April leaf projects a chartreuse glow on the world that you will not see when leaves have grown to their full size and thickness in summer.

Keep your whiskers on kittens. A new leaf in spring is one of my favorite things."

Fragments ~ April 25, 2003

You Can't Be Serious

This is a story Doug Thompson told me the first time we met for lunch. It seemed like fiction but he swore it was true. Oooh, how I wanted to rush right home and blog it. But that wouldn't be good manners to steal the material from a person I'd just met. (Of course, I could steal his yarns now that we've known each other for four months, and he mine. All's fair in love, war and blogging.) Doug's weblog is going strong, and he's finally telling this interesting and curious tale of Floyd's mysterious role in the MAD strategic past.

“Land reclamation for Minuteman complex, Floyd County, Virginia.”

Build It and They Will Come

On a foggy April morning, the new camera gets its first look at a spider web. Would you care to wager it will not be the last?

"I've been asked more than once what we plan to do with 'all this land'. Knowing the answer expected of the owner of these five fallow acres along a creek I tell them someday we will fence it off to pasture a few head of cattle; or we might plant Christmas trees like so many other landowners in the county who can't make their land pay for itself by farming. The truth of the matter is something I believe I will from hereon confess: I plan to use this bottomland for taking spiderweb pictures.

That should make for some raised eyebrows, don't you think?" --Fragments, October 11, 2003

Beauties of Spring

Spring Beauties (Claytonia) carpet the shady streambanks of Goose Creek. Also called Fairy Spuds because of the sweet, potato-like tuber at its base.

Goose Creek Rambler

Four years ago yesterday, I went digital. The Nikon Coolpix arrived on April 20, 2000. I'll never forget how excited and how utterly clumsy I was with the new camera. Yesterday, April 20, 2004, the Nikon D70 arrived. Excited. Utterly clumsy. At not-quite-the-bottom of the learning curve. I'll have some first impressions for both of you camera buffs out there, soon.

Yesterday, got word that, for pretty certain, I'll have a little sidebar and several photographs in (I think) the July-August issue of Blue Ridge Country Magazine. With a little help from my friends. Doug loaned me the camera (close! I coulda done the job with my own, just a few days later). My friend, Elizabeth Hunter, offered me the chance to help her with a few pictures that were a lot closer to me than to her; and the sidebar to her long article on the Mabrys came from what I learned from my new acquaintance, Mr. Harris in Meadows of Dan. The people are the best part of it. Thanks, all.

Brrr! Well, it worked. I went around after Ann was in bed and pulled down some windows from the top. It's 65 degrees inside now--a little cool without the fire in the stove. But it will feel good later today, when it is too warm outside in the sun, to step into the coolness purchased with only the energy it took to think ahead. This little ritual of thermoregulation is especially important from the first near-hot days like these until late May when the five maples have put on leaves. The house faces south, which is good. But without the shade, our hottest days of the season seem to be in mid-May before we are sheltered from the full glare of the sun.

Yesterday I said yes. I'll be begging help from any out there with experience in putting together essay contests. Begging. You were warned.

Once again, we have aliens landing on Goose Creek tonight. Good and welcomed aliens, to be sure. But you know the routine. And the Troop is grumbling just a wee bit because the new camera battery wasn't charged and ready to operate until after 5:00 yesterday, so play with it was limited. I anticipate at least once, making a break for open country, AWOL with 512MB of film!

The Jax

It officially opened last September. Already, much of the happenings in Floyd County have shifted to the Jacksonville Center--the "cultural incubator" where classes, workshops, art shows and other community events take place, in addition to the offices, shops and studios it houses. The old dairy barn is settling nicely into its second life. (Web page developed by Doug Thompson, whose photography studio is located on the ground floor.)

Thinking Like Spring

It will take some getting used to, sleeping again with the windows open from the top at night. Sounds from outside fly in through the screens and bounce around the heart pine walls. The creek throws its voice, a liquid ventriloquist. All night the unfamiliar susurration speaks in dreams of thrashing machines, conveyors, stadiums full of voices and waterfalls.

I live in a house divided. Now with the days heating up, the mornings are both the best time to read-write-think and the only reasonable time to work in the garden and yard. I've just had a planning meeting with my staff to allocate resources and personnel (which would be me--the Army of One) and it is agreed (though no papers were signed) that writing and related activities end at dawn. Then tilling, planting, weeding, watering and other such things go on until the sun rises over the eastern ridge and grows unfriendly warm by about 9:30.

This was a bad winter for getting wood, snow and ice from early December til late March. This year I don't have all of next year's and most of the one after that already laid by like I usually do at the coming of warm weather. Now its past season. Cutting wood for heat while sweating severs the nerve of enthusiasm for the task somehow.

Staying one step ahead, or hopefully no more than one step behind, the grass and weeds are homeowner's tasks that I disdain. Fortunately, I married well: Ann likes to cut grass. And, this being the first mowing season for the dog, we've discovered Tsuga likes to eat those soggy clumps that the mower coughs up when we cut the yard damp. Puppy salad, I suppose. Maybe we could train him to do the close trimming around the walkway, and cut down on his daily dogchow. I'd say I have it pretty good, a man with wife and dog who love yard maintenance.

I put the screens up yesterday. I cut the grass yesterday. I wore shorts to town last night, and Tevas. I think I'm ready to concede that spring is here. Finally. Well, now I know. It is 6:24 and pert near light enough to shift those duty-gears I was talking about. Time for one more half cup of coffee out on the porch to make the transition.

MultiMedia Day

In the interest of full-spectrum shameless public display of the tiniest shreds of the mundane from our ordinary lives, Fragments is pleased to make available for a short time only audio files of not one but THREE! nursury rhymes sung recently by little Easter Abby for her grampa, Dumpa Dumpy.

When she gets just a little older, we're taking our show on the road. Move over, Charlotte Church!

The Eensy-weensy Spider
The Turtle Song
Baa Baa Black Sheep

(These are Windows Media (WMA) files. Double click the link and I bet you have an audio player on your computer that will play it. If not, give me a call and I'll sing them for you.)

A Day in the Meadows

"You must be Ben" I said, as he made his way with some difficulty through the front doors of the New Holland dealership in "downtown" Meadows of Dan--an unincorporated community literally a stone's throw from the Blue Ridge Parkway.

"Well I guess I'm a has-Ben" he said with a good-natured laugh, breathing hard from the exertion. We quickly found rest in the chairs next to the Coke machine. And there he and I sat for the next two hours while Ben Harris regaled me with stories that were right on target as well as many that wandered far afield of my questions about Ed and Lizzie Mabry--the original owners and operators of the famous Mabry Mill.

"It was along 1932 before there was any school buses in Meadows of Dan. Somebody got a Ford chassis and put some planks up on the back of it, made a kind of a flatbed truck. And that 'uz how the kids got to school in those days. No siderails or nothing, them kids back there in the cold."

I had stopped at the tractor dealership because their back lot afforded a different angle of view of the Concord Primitive Baptist Church--one of my photographic objectives for the day. On an early Saturday morning, the doors of the business were open but they weren't busy yet inside, so I went in to ask permission to shoot pictures from their property. While I was there, I thought why not ask to see if there was maybe somebody around that could clear up some questions I had, having just come from the Caney-Richardson Cemetery where Ed and Lizzie Mabry are buried.

The young man out front directed me and my question to Carol in the business office. In the middle of her busy morning, she stopped and made a dozen calls.

"Now where would Ben be. Let's see. It's almost ten o'clock. He'd have left the restaurant by now, probably headed over to that house that's burning. Or he might be out to a yard sale by now. Let me see if I can find him". No body home at the first place. "Let's see. Who'd know where Ben might be now? Roger'd know."

She called to the up-front man. "Go look and see if the white truck or the black truck is in front of Roger's house." The man stepped through the doors into the front lot, shaded his eyes against the morning sun, and reported back to Carol.

"Okay, he's already gone. I'd say maybe just check back with me from time to time and we'll see if we can turn him up" she advised.

After a half hour of loitering awkwardly in and out front of the showroom, Carol's phone rang. "Yes, he's still here. Thanks, that will be great." She came out to tell me "Ben is on his way here. He'll be here in about ten minutes."

After a few minutes of our howdja-do's, Ben hoisted himself up from the naugahyde chair. "Wait here just a minute, I'll be right back." This trip to his car and back was no small investment considering his bad knees and breathing troubles. In a few minutes, he came hobbling back carrying a large, black three-ring binder with the pages spilling out of it in a trail behind him. Ben had come prepared, but reserved the "good stuff" until he found out I was worthy.

Old bills of sale from the 1830s and 40s; old newspaper clippings: "Winter Storm paralyzes Mountain Town" from the 1960's. "And here's something come in the mail a while back". He handed me an envelope with the address "Ben Harris, Mayor of Meadows of Dan". It was honorary, of course. And there actually is no town there--only an unofficial community that looks a little like a town with several tourist-related business end to end. But Ben couldn't have been prouder to be honorary governor of the state. Or, to use one of his phrases, "I wouldn'ta traded it for a farm in Georgia."

It turns out I made the very best contact for my purposes that morning. Ben's family--especially his uncle Newton Hylton--was active in the life of this Patrick County community during the days of the Mabrys and the early mill. Out of his bulging folder he handed me a glossy 8 x 10 of Newt, and recollected all his cherished memories of this favorite from a seeming dozen uncles he told me about. More to come, perhaps, on Uncle Newt.

And so, it was quite a pleasant and successful day, this due to the kindness of strangers and friends. Many thanks to the nice folks at the tractor dealership, and to Ben for helping me with the story I was after. I had help, too, with the images I needed in large file format, thanks to the incredible generosity by Doug Thompson who loaned me his Nikon D100 (in the lamentable absence of my D70 still on a slow boat from Bangkok.) Stories and pictures are in the mail. Now we will wait and see.

Meadows

Concord Primitive Baptist Church, Meadows of Dan, Virginia. Stories to come.

A Disappointing Outbreak of Civility

The recent fracas on the mountain twixt the Hatfields and McGoobers, unfortunately for you Real Estate Reality-show fans, has ended with soft words and restitution. Goober, it turns out, is a reasonable and amiable, if worldly-unwise sort of a fellow who came up to the crime scene yesterday and promised to restore the new road to its more or less original state--less all the trees, of course. It is not the end of the story for our hapless flatlander, however.

Undaunted by the lay of the vertical land he owns and the laws of physics, he intends to build is driveway straight up across the contours to the top. At this point, it is incumbent on a rational neighbor to remind him of Floyd County winters, the summer gully washer that will take his driveway out with one hand tied behind its back, and the limiting factor of the least capable delivery truck that will leave his new refrigerator sitting on the side of the road at the bottom of the hill.

Some people only learn the tuff lessons in the School of Hard Knox. Such is our friend, Goober. Who, upon actually looking at the details of the survey of his and adjoining lands yesterday (apparently for the first time) realized that the folks next to him had started their driveway (also almost vertical) on HIS LAND! There is, after all, a sort of symmetry to the story after all.

This Land is Your Land. This Land is My Land

A Tale of Horror from the Boonies

For a year now, Linda and Bob have looked forward to coming up over Easter to spend some time on their blackberry hill. Over the past few years, they have purchased first one lot, then three, then all but one adjoining lots on the hilltop where they will someday build a retirement home. Owning all that, they were protected against someone building so close as to spoil their views or the wonderful privacy of their mountaintop retreat.

And so finally, last week, they made the long drive up from New Orleans, down the county roads of Floyd and at last they turned into the gravel lane to their place. They rounded the bend in anticipation. Ah, the peaceful countryside! And YIKES! Someone had built a road across not one but two of their lots--onto the one unpurchased piece that was so steep no one in their right mind would ever build on it. And building he was. The foundation of this guy's future house was being backhoed and jackhammered even as Linda and Bob pulled up to the top of their once-quiet hill. Imagine the sinking feeling realizing their future home and bozo's would be separated by maybe two hundred feet on their "protected" twenty acres.

It seems our hapless wannabe country-dweller could not be bothered with details. One corner property line is pretty much like the next so, let's start the road...um, HERE looks good. And slanting up across not one but two lots that he does not own he begins to chainsaw trees to mark the gentle grade of his driveway. The poor excavators--neighbors of mine--put the road where he marked it, assuming someone would know with great precision what belonged to them versus what belonged to others not there to defend their property. At least that's the way we what lives here do things. The hard-working fellas were mortified when Bob confronted them yesterday and told them what had happened. They promptly stopped work (having already dug quite a pit into granite bedrock for the future basement) and called Clueless Owner to tell what had happened. Sometime last night, Rightful Owners and Trespasser had one interesting conversation that I imagine I will hear about later today.

Here's the crunch: Goober's one narrow lot has a small bit of road frontage. But it is so steep between the road and the top of the hill where he is building, there is not way to get there--unless you angle the road across two pieces of property you don't own. It is worthless for building if all you own is that one lot, and Goober should have figured that out before he envisioned his dream home there and spent $10K. My guess is, after paying to restore the road and paying damages (consider all the trees he cut down!) he'd do well to give the property to my friends for what ever out of the goodness of their hearts they might pay him (and NOT MUCH I'd say would be fair). And they will already have a nice, deep duck pond where the dingbat's basement is cut into solid rock. They could raise trout!

There will be more to this terrible tale, I feel sure. And in the end, things will work out, scars will heal, and we'll all laugh about it in ten years or so (but not tonight over dinner in town). Meanwhile, Bozo the Bulldozer is going to be having a very, very bad day and may end up institutionalized in the Home for the Criminally Stupid.

Gorge of Nameless Creek

I am certain the first year we lived here and walked up beyond the boundaries of our property and yet claimed it as 'our' valley--up where it narrows to a canyon--there were Dutchmen's Breeches in abundance. They grew on the moss-covered boulders that tumbled down from the cliff face--the remnant core of an ancient mountain that is now a rounded ridge with one very steep rocky face. Several days ago when Ann and I walked the old road above the creek there and the dog scrambled up into the soft, green talus, I thought: I'll probably break a leg, but in the next few days, I'm going to leave the dog at home and claw my way up those rocks and see what it looks like from up there. Maybe I'll find my flowers.

Yesterday, that is what I did. And it is a wonder I didn't break something, for true.

I had hoped for a spectacular panoramas of the creek and gorge from that inaccessible place, and I found them there. I sat in the late morning sun on a tumbled fragment as big as a bus, leaned back against the embroidered mosses and rockcap ferns. There was beauty all around. To find it, my eyes disregarded the fallen trees and chaotic tangles of branches and the general disorder of this natural place. Vision, insight, emotion and all the other senses made an experience beyond seeing.

But the camera sees it all--clutter and jumble, disorder and irregularity, too little and too much light. Its single eye only registers a certain kind of energy and faithfully reproduces it. Just the facts from the visible spectrum. And so we come back home and cannot wait to see what we have captured, and are often disappointed with our pictures.

And so it was in the gorge of Nameless Creek yesterday.

There were a thousand memorable images, a few pictures and no Dutchmen's Breeches.

Finding Fragments

Two years ago, in an idle moment, I installed Blogger, thinking "Yeah. Just what the world needs. A few more words, another wannabe writer and sagacious wit with a platform". I was pretty certain this was due for an uninstall after a few weeks of tepid participation.

Now it is almost two years and I'd guess close to a half a million words later. In Forest Gump fashion, ah jus stahted writ-ting. Turns out, from time to time I want to see what I said about something way back, like rummaging through a junk drawer for just the right pen or the freshest used battery or a scribbled phone number.

Of course, MT has a "search" box that works slowly but gets the job done. But it won't do phrase finding or other boolean searches. It won't find specific words within comments or find me all the comments by a certain person. Why has it taken me so long to realize there is an easy and very fast way to do this!?

Google site search does it. If I want to find all the references to morels (a timely subject since the past weeks rains and the warm weather in the next few days are just the combo for these tasty 'shrooms)... in the Google search box I would enter morels site:http://fragmentsfromfloyd.com and in less than a second, I have a list of all the posts and comments with this word in them.

If there are too many hits (say I search on Tsuga or Goose Creek) then I can go to the bottom of the results window in Google and click on "search within results" to narrow my focus.

I'm sure I am telling you something you already know. It just takes so little to amaze a country boy.

Stars!

I can't remember the last time I saw stars from my pillow. I woke at 4:30 as I always do when my sleeping brain somehow registered that Ann had turned off the shower. That is my signal to get up and start the fire, boot the computer and begin a new day. Something caught my eye and I turned toward the window. In the wedge of sky over the front porch roof, there were stars twinkling in the early morning for the first time in many weeks! Just before dark yesterday, it was sleeting sideways, full-impact winter. Today and the next few may be the first of true sustained springtime with temps climbing into the low 70's by Sunday.

I love and dread what is ahead. After the relative dormancy of winter, when spring chores come, it's zero to warp speed, then full throttle until the first of June.

Finish cutting and stacking the wood for next year; get the two mowers, tiller and string trimmer filled with gas and running again and cut the few places where the grass is already rangy; clean up the yard of dog-toys (chunks of wood, slabs of bark, fence-post-sized sticks); spray the foundation for carpenter ants; clean the shed and barn; repair garden fence; buy all the seeds for summer and fall gardens and plant frost tolerant things by early May. Till when the soil dries from the recent 2" of rain; put in a few more privets and a couple of pear trees; clean windows and replace screens. For starters.

Winter leaves me alone with my thoughts. Spring invades like kudzu and won't take no for an answer. I'd best get busy.

Photo Second-Guessing

Still no word on when there will be any word from Nikon on when they will ship more D70s to Photocraft, or how many, or where I stand in the queue. Could it be well into the summer before it comes to Goose Creek? I continue to read about the camera and get all goosebumpy. Only the costs of additional lenses gives me pause. The Nikkor AF-S lenses often cost more than the camera body itself! Yikes!

Anywho, there is still time to change my mind about the CF memory I have ordered (Lexar 40x 512MB CF) and I found Rongalbraith.com has recently compared digital camera memory performance here for a variety of digicams. See if yours is in the list if you are thinking about getting more memory. I think I am, but I forgot.

Also, you might enjoy reading at this same site about the digital firepower of the photographers at Sports Illustrated--what and how many cameras and lenses they carry, how many memory cards and the number of photos that must be evaluated for each magazine--especially after a 'big event' like the SuperBowl. Sounds like the upcoming Olympics will really be burning some serious gigabytage.

In all this, I'm thinking about how I will use the new camera. I've concluded I'm more excited about improved performance (instant-on, much improved flash vs Coolpix, SLR ease of manual decision-making, quick shutter response time) than I am the potential size of prints it will make. Yes, I will occasionally take action shots and need 3 frames per second. Hopefully, I'll figure out RAW vs NEF and PicturePerfect vs NikonCapture and be able to produce hi-res images when needed. But I'm guessing 95% of my photography will be "for the fun of it", and more fun with excellent tools.

Got a call last night re the start-up of a photographer's group in Floyd. I think this is great! In discussing the finer points of pixels, their eyes won't cross like yours are doing right now, should you be among the one in a hundred still reading this photo-geekly post. Sorry. All in the name of letting my fingers do the talking while my brain warms up on the first cup of coffee. Well, it may take two this morning.

And oh, BTW... here is the nursery where my new camera will be born. I think I see it, middle row, third from the top. KoocheeKoocheeKoo....

Patina

We now have a perfectly-clean, shiny Presto stainless steel coffee pot again. As of yesterday, it is just like new. The housekeeping ladies at work told Ann that if you put dishwasher detergent in the pot instead of coffee, it would clean out the old, dark stains that have been accumulating there over the couple of years we've used it.

Did the stains effect the taste or sanitation of the coffee in a negative way? I doubt it. Did I mind that the pot showed its age in a patina of use and service? Nope. I would just as soon that well enough be left alone.

My old work jacket I've worn for twenty years is skuffed and frayed. I wouldn't want it suddenly to be made "like new". I've worked hard in that jacket, and it shows. I like it that way.

Women are from Venus, where every thing is pristine, polished and perfectly organized. Men are from Mars, where everything is worn, pleasantly dysfunctional and personalized with a patina of sweat, grease and coffee stains.

Hanging On

...An oak leaf will refuse to let go until December, clacking and waggling brown and brittle in the cold breezes. The serrated leaves of a smooth-boled American Beech turn almost white and become so thin and light--hanging like feathers--that they seem to move on their own on a still January day. This year's beech leaf may persist on the twig until next spring's new baby leaf evicts it, finally, pushing it out and away, off into space, down to the black soil among the first of the spring mustards and violets.

from Fragments "A Time to Fall", September 2002

The Spring that Couldn't Quite

It is almost the middle of April. Theoretically, we've had almost a full month of springtime. But this morning there is a fire ticking in the wood stove. Our heavy winter jackets hang behind it, drying from the cold soaking they took on our afternoon rain-or-shine sanity walk around the middle loop yesterday. It seems all too familiar. Last year, spring was so wet and cold that our bean seeds rotted in the cold ground and we couldn't replant until late June--late enough for the bean beetles to peak just when the crop was setting fruit. Tomato plants sat inert as plastic mock-ups and the corn-- as high as an elephant's eye the summer before-- wasn't as high as mine before we turned it under, earless in August.

Bloodroot and Hepatica are up, here and there, but their petals stay clutched tightly against the cold wind. Trillium leaves poke up along the edge of the creek, no taller from one day to the next. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't change their minds and begin pulling back under the leaf litter where it is less harsh and gray than above ground--up where wet people walk their walks.

And actually, I hope it stays drizzly and overcast today. I am holding two mental images from yesterday's walkin the mist that I want to capture with the camera, and those pictures will die if the sun shines. They are the kind of snapshots the brain is better at than the camera--beautiful in their subtlety of lighting and color, but chaotic in composition. The life goes out of the image when a tiny detail is extracted from the larger context, and the visual is too little of the experience of being there with all the senses.

Crystal water drops hanging in the mist from tiny lemon-yellow tufts of spicebush flowers. The translucent ghostliness of last year's birch leaves that hang on until the new leaves push them away later in this so-called spring. I'll try to bring them down off the ridge for you to see, but I make no promises. Sometimes, you just have to be there.

We need the rains we're having this week, and if the weatherpersons are right, we will see sun and upper sixties by the weekend. Warm weather will come, but it may go again. It is taking its own sweet time deciding. Meanwhile, we'll just be happy we still have a little dry firewood left and plenty of hot chocolate and a warm puppy beside us while we browse the seed catalogs, travelling hopefully towards summer.

I've Got Sunshine On a Cloudy Day

...with My Girls. Talkin' 'bout My Girls. Wife. Dau. And G-dau. I'm happily outnumbered.

As You Were

Thanks, all, for the supportive comments on the heels of the Parkway abrupt dead-end. But this isn't an end at all and now the calendar has opened up for me to get up and do what needs to be done. Honestly, if I had gotten the job, it would have represented a six-month detour for a lot of things I want and need to do. Finish the book. Put in a good garden. Pick lots of berries for jam! Learn the new camera (TBA, still don't have a shipping date). And...

We have a Spoken Word Night coming up on Sunday, April 25 at a local restaurant that will be opening especially for the Writer's Group and Friends. We'll be doing something as well at the upcoming FloydFest in August. And tomorrow I go to a Chamber of Commerce meeting to find out about an essay contest for which I've been suggested as the MC. We'd planned to go to Missouri in July for Ann's dad's 90th birthday and to SD to see that family contingent maybe in early September. Couldn't have done either trip if I was Smokey Bear.

I have two projects for the new camera. One involves working to get the best possible digital images of some of the very beautiful land and structures now under conservation easement (like ours is) with the Virginia Outdoor Federation and the New River Valley Land Trust (these same images suitable also for prints to sell to the owners and for making a calendar to sell for the organizations--thus a way to pay for Fred's expensive hobby). This could be really fun! So the snooty old Park Service can keep their GS7.

Besides. I would never wear a white clinic jacket as a therapist, even upon threat of bodily harm. Why do I think I'd be any more cooperative and wear a Ranger Rick uniform? Humanity isn't uniform and I shan't wear one. Yeah, loose canon, Dave. I guess you're right.

Small Particles, Big Questions

"The nascent nanotechnology industry collectively cringed last week after a study showed that fish exposed to nanoparticles suffered brain damage. Critics say the much-hyped multibillion-dollar nano industry has a dark side few want to talk about" as reported in this Wired.com news report.

This on the heels of other studies showing lung and brain damage from inhaled buckyballs (nanostructures made of carbon).

Can we expect unbiased judgements and wisdom in the rate and direction of nanotech when there is so high a dollar expectation and investments in it from those transnationals mentioned here earlier today? The topic may hold no interest for you now. It will. Better informed while the the genie is still more or less in the bottle.

Here's the ParkwayPoop

Yes, I was curious. So I called the Dept. of the Inferior Office re the Parkway job rejection that said I failed to meet minimum requirements for the position.

My Masters in Vertebrate Zoology did not qualify. "I see you have a BS in biology" said the nice lady. "If you had an advanced degree in biology that would have qualified".

"Mam, vertebrate zoology is an advanced biology degree with an area of emphasis very much in line with the kind of knowledge required by the Park Ranger position for which I applied" I told her in my most controlled and relaxed voice possible. "And I would think that, if someone had looked at my Knowledge, Skills and Assessment forms I provided, they would find my teaching experience in field biology to be a very good fit with this job as well."

"Oh, teaching is not a qualifying experience".

And the primary focus of the job is communicating with the public with the objective of educating them re the natural resources of the parkway. And teaching experience is not a part of the requirement?

I think they made the right decision. I would have been nothing but trouble as part of a gumment bureacracy.

I Pledge Allegiance...

... to the United Stores of Walmart--

Who owns the world's capital? Sorry, Mom & Pop. See the Concentration in Corporate Power for 2003. Very revealing of the growing trend toward all sorts of WallyWorld monopolies that in the end are all about profit. Nothing wrong with profit, but in the post-Christian era, there are no rules accept make the shareholders fat and happy any way you can. Here are the major groups and how the pie is divided. See the article for a breakdown of which transnationals (companies with revenues bigger than countries) belong in each group.

• PHARMA: The top 10 companies control an estimated 53% market share of the world's leading 118 drug firms.
• BIOTECH & GENOMICS: The top 10 firms account for 54% of the biotech sectors' $42,000 million ($42 billion) revenues. (All currency in US$ dollars.)
• ANIMAL PHARMA: The top 10 companies control 62% of the $13,400 million world market.
• SEEDS: The top 10 companies control one-third of the $23,300 million commercial seed market.
• PESTICIDES: The top 10 firms control 80% of the $27,800 million global pesticide market.
• FOOD RETAIL: The top 10 control 57% of the total sales of the world's leading 30 food retailers.
• FOOD & BEVERAGE PROCESSING: The top 10 companies account for 37% of the revenues earned by the world's top 100 food and beverage companies; the top 20 account for 53% of the top 100's total.
• NANOTECH: Public & private sector investment in nanotechnology is an estimated $5,000-$6,000 million per annum.

Blessed are the Children

Easter is not about eggs. But they do make a nice, colorful symbolic icon of rebirth and discovery to share with family--especially the little ones.

Ann put some pieces of candy in a half-dozen plastic eggs, and a dollar bill in two or three more. Abby pulled them out from the stuffable bunny backpack and squealed with glee when a gummy b