Fragments From Floyd

In the Green

"You can't become a credible writer without credits. You can't get published unless you're already a writer with credits." It's a well-known conundrum, no more fun to experience the misery with company than without. More than once in the two years in which I've sort of pretended to see myself-- at least one facet of myself-- as a writer, I've said t'heck with the whole lot of literary magazines. From the ones from whom I've not received rejections, I've heard nothing. No acknowledgement of what has become of my little tales after they left here SASE'd six, eight or more months ago. There for a while I eagerly awaited the mailman, expecting to hear something from somebody. Anybody. Even the ones that don't give you the time of day but put your name somewhere on their lonely pages. Lately, I've stopped waiting, and I've stopped caring.

So, when I brought the mail in on Saturday, it was a surprise to see a response of some kind in an envelope whose return address I recognized. But maybe less of a surprise in this instance, because I'd sent one piece last fall to Greenprints and received a nice hand-written critique from the editor. "I like this; nice phrase here; good humor..." But the bottom line: parts were overwritten and the ending was weak. Thanks, but no thanks. This was a rejection not totally discouraging though, all things considered, and I greatly appreciated knowing that my literary child had at least arrived safely at its intended destination.

And so I sent a second piece to GreenPrints a few months later, and again, received a nice hand-written explanation for why it didn't match the magazines' intended focus. "Rewrite it and I'll be glad to take a look at it" said Pat Stone, owner and editor of the the magazine that prints "the best personal garden writing, old and new."

But this rejection was one of those finely-tuned, pithy pieces that I thought I had pared down to the bare bones. And while he didn't ask that I reduce it but change its focus in significant ways, I discounted the idea of taking the time to reinvent it. I noodled with it some, got nowhere, and forgot about it. A few days later, it pops up again. And for reasons I can't explain, within an hour it morphed into a much stronger piece than the original. Lesson learned. I sent it back to Pat about a month ago. And when I opened-- as I supposed-- his latest rejection, a check fluttered out of the envelope! Hot Danged Skippy!

If you check out the magazine, I think you'll agree, Fragments is right at home among stories like this one at GreenPrints. While the money is not enough for that new lens I'm saving for, it's a start. Yes sir, I'm bringing home the bacon now, buckeroos (and buckerettes.) Except that every silver lining has its cloud: I just got a call from Leo, our auto repair man. The replacement truck door is in. The one involved in the incident where the deer standing on the side of 221 said to his companions as he saw my truck approaching:

"Watch this. I saw it on a Road Runner cartoon. I think I can do it." I'd need two GreenPrints checks to break even. Sigh.

Ecotone Biweekly: Imaginary Places

The biweekly topic for the Ecotone this time around (for June 1) is "Imaginary Places". Let me know if you'd like to contribute and are unfamiliar with the Ecotone format (it's a wiki--the only word more dysphonic than the word blog!) and I'll help you set up the link to your tale of imaginary places--whatever from that takes.

Mulling this over last night in half-sleep during the nocturnal electrical storms we seem to be getting each night, I lapsed into the memories of the very mixed emotions I felt on Saturday as we sang along with patriotic music. My son, wife and I listened on the portable crank radio from the front porch while we ate our evening meal. We sat comfortably in the late afternoon looking out on the peaceful pasture's waving grasses shining under fat curdled cumulus clouds rising to the limits of the atmosphere. The audience of Prairie Home Companion sang the Star Spangled Banner and Garrison entoned his unpolished baritone on America the Beautiful. I confess. It got to me. The lump in my throat was not ground meat from the grilled burgers.

This memory came back to me last night in the storm ('the bombs bursting in air' maybe). I remembered that, as a boy, I sang these songs and I pledged allegiance in my cub scout uniform with one hand over my heart and the other holding my blue cap at my side. I remembered this as I lay there watching the lightning flash on my bedroom walls in the wee hours, and I grieved that sadly, I'm not sure that this is the place I honored in those days. In many important ways, America the Beautiful is becoming an imaginary place, morphing beyond recognition from the indivisible republic our forefathers fervently imagined so long ago. So there's an "imaginary place" topic for you. Agree or disagree as you see it. I'm not gonna go there. Of course not.

Being an apolitical feel-good, puppies and pansies place in cyberspace, this is not what the Fragments Ecotone post tomorrow will be about. This noctural lament comes out of a whole 'nother world that I mostly keep in a closed vault. I wonder, come the fall, if I can remain silent. I rather imagine not.

I'd Rather Be Flying

I always demand the window seat when flying (which doesn't happen that often, actually.) When I get where I'm going, I need physical therapy for my neck. In a two hour flight, I've been looking hard left, or hard right, from the time the wheels come up til they go back down again--even if it is only out onto the tops of clouds. The view from 'up there' is mesmerizing--as close as I am likely to come to a God's-eye view of this fantastic world.

If you like views from high places, you'll find hours of spell-binding scenery at AirPhoto. Recommended starting place: Trees and Patterns.

Meanwhile, back on the ground: More webs.

Bobbin' For Rocks

I'll have to say to Buster, the Black Lab's discredit: water, water everywhere and he never got it. Tsuga, on the other hand, gets it. Buster's tongue would be hanging out after a run or a good round of groundhog wrasslin', but he would NOT drink out of the creek--had to have his water out of his blue plastic bowl. And heaven forbid that he would actually go to the creek in the summer for a dip. No thank you sir.

But Tsuga, after getting over his puppy fears of moving water, has opted the Baptist way and accepts total immersion as the full gospel way to heaven. Sprinkling? Pfffft! For sissies! He drinks it, chases glimmers on its surface, digs in it--even bobs for rocks. And not just ANY rocks, mind you. He must keep his eyes open under water because he carefully selects rocks that are on the tan or white end of the spectrum-- "flesh-colored" if you're a yeller lab-- and prances with them in his mouth back to the house.

He has a new, dark green collar as of a few days back. The highly-visible orange one spent so many hours in the water it had faded; and each time it got wet, it left a brilliant pink ring around Tsuga's neck--not a status-building attribute among male country dogs.

I haven't yet seen him chase a crawdad, much less catch one. That should be interesting. I can see that picture now: the dog leaping, frame frozen in mid-air, water-droplets spraying off in all directions, a big brown crab-claw firmly attached to Tsuga's black nose. Click! Got it!

FloydFest on Summer Horizon

The FloydFest May Newsletter is out! You ARE planning to come, Fragments readers. Right? As if the three-day schedule for August 13, 14 and 15 was not already bursting at the seams with things to see, hear and do, the slate of activities now includes a spoken-word gig by the Floyd Writer's Group. We are presently sans-web-presence, but are working on it. Just so you'll know a little bit about us:

The Floyd Writers' Group is a small but active organization of book authors, poets, radio essayists and bloggers who live and write in Floyd County, Virginia. From this small cadre of wordsmiths, two books have been published, several are in mid-process, poems are being generated as the Muse grants her intermittent presence. Also the group has been involved in an increasing number of Spoken Word performances in the Greater Floyd area--soon to include this year's FloydFest where these creative types may also facilitate workshops on poetry, nature and place, TBA.

Members of the Floyd Writer's Circle presently include: Anonymous Elliott; Colleen Redman; Kathleen Ingoldsby; Jayn Avery; Mara Robbins; Rima Forrest Sulzen and Fred First.

The Crooked Road

There is one traffic light in Floyd County. It hangs over the intersection of Route 8 and Hiway 221 in "downtown" Floyd, the county seat. You can see it here just out the window of Farmers Supply. Since the traffic light is pretty much the center of town, I suppose you could say that you are looking here at the very beginning of the Crooked Road--Virginia's Heritage Music Trail. The other end of the roughly 250 crooked-mile cultural tour is at the Ralph Stanley Museum in Clintwood in far western Virginia near the West Virginia border.

The project came to completion last week when our governor and a host of musical and other dignitaries celebrated the passage of the bill that makes the Trail official. Expectations are high for tourist dollars, increased cultural exploration of southwestern Virginia, and the pressures and woes that tend to follow crowds and their money into small, quiet communities. I think it will constitute a healthy form of tourism and be good for our end of the state. This from the Crooked Road "About" page:

In January 2002 an idea germinated to develop a heritage music trail in the Appalachian region of Southwestern Virginia. Since that time a consortium of local governments and private organizations have been at work to realize this concept as an economic development program for an area of the state encompassing eight counties, three cities and nine towns. There are two basic project objectives: within three years from the trail’s inception, the Appalachian region of Southwestern Virginia will be nationally recognized as a major heritage tourism destination; within four years, revenues from tourism in the Appalachian region of Southwestern Virginia will triple. Although the trail is focused on the uniqueness and vitality of this region’s heritage music, it will also include outdoor recreation, museums, crafts, and historic/cultural programs.

Here's the map. Y'all come on down. And now I see that with the late addition of Ferrum's Blue Ridge Institute, perhaps Floyd is no longer considered the eastern beginning of the trail. Don't matter. We still think our traffic light is pretty darned important.

BAMBIvalence

Monday a neighbor, a man I barely know, called on his day off and offered to help me with a farm chore that required the tractor I don't have. "Sure," I said, "if you're willing, now is a great time for me." The little blue Ford 3910 chugged down our gravel road a half hour later. His new very-used Rhino blade looked pitifully unequal to the task of gouging back the silt and rocks. Before last year's floods this was where my crossing over Nameless Creek into the meadow had been. It took two hours to create a new passage for my truck, scores and scores of trips back and forth miring up in the sandy loam, hanging on countless large water-worn rocks while climbing the grade away from the creek. As he pulled the tractor across the creek to start the job on the other side, something flushed from the waist-high bracken ferns. "I think I just jumped a little bobcat" he said, turning off the engine, standing up straddling the seat for a better view. "It might have settled down by that cherry tree". I went to give a look.

There at my feet, possibly not many feet from where it was born the night before, was the smallest newborn deer I've ever seen. It stood trembling, swaying on tall wobbly legs. I bent down for a better look, and off it ran, insomuch as it was able to run, into the high grass toward the creek. This meadow has been a "deer nursery" in years past. Buster, our late black lab, discovered quite a few over there. We mustn't let Tsuga come here, I thought. He's much more aggressive than Buster ever was. I'd hate to see him get a'holt of one of these critters.

Today he did--far down the valley. By the time we reached him, he was circling and nipping, the fawn was exhausted, confused, uncoordinated and defenseless. We pulled the dog all the way home by his collar. It will likely happen again.

The dispassionate, pragmatist Spockian side of my brain says "what better time to thin down the overpopulated herd of white-tailed pasture-rats than now, when a fella could go along with a club and bash'em like Harp seals." Yes, as a species deer have become a problem in Floyd County and the subject of contempt and disdain from gardeners of all stripes. But when you encounter them individually and as naïve, innocent newborns free of malice toward man, his yard or garden plantings or the fenders of his vehicles, it is unconscionable to think of doing anything but defending them against avoidable suffering.

But of course, a year from now, I may slam on the brakes to avoid this very deer who will be determined to throw himself into my truck windshield on a blind curve near the house and send my auto insurance rates up yet one more time.

And then, I'll rehearse again the ethical conundrum of protecting these tiny deer of early summer only to shoot, maim and kill the big ones a year later. Hmmm. There has to be a solution to unwanted births. And this opens up the whole new field of deer birth control. A day-after pill? Male voluntary sterilization? I won't even suggest those a-clinics for fear of agitating the pro-(wild)life crowd. Okay. Now I'm getting silly. I'll abort this foolery with a wise quote:

Thumper: He doesn't walk very good, does he?
Thumper's Mother: Thumper!
Thumper: Yes, mama?
Thumper's Mother: What did your father tell you?
Thumper: [clears throat] If you can't say something nice... don't say nothing at all.

Behind your Lids

I'm sorry. I'm just in this MegaLimbo this morning and this one really gets to my PhotoShoppish funny-bone. Maybe these are the things you see when you press on your eyeballs inbetween blog posts, hum?

Photoshop Chimeras: three beasts in one! Have a favorite among them? How 'bout the zebra monkey hamster? Or the CrocoDog Seal?

Link via Watermark.

Tiny Movies-on-Demand

When you can't decide what to do next: press the heel of your hands into your eyeballs and watch creatures and faces dance across the screen. Blaugustine (May 25) is mesmerized by what she sees. What do you see? (And btw, while at Blaugustine's, scroll down to May 22 where she confesses she is addicted to blogging. Sound like anybody YOU know?)

Here's another trick to "see" what can't be seen--your own blood vessels that worm their way across your very retinas:

Take a small penlight (the little colored ones you carry on your keychain will do--but it must be very small and not so awfully bright). Press the light gently toward the outside of your closed eyelid. Move the light in a moderately slow small circle against the eyelid. You should see the shadows of your retinal vessels as the light moves around and around. If you stop, the retinal cells fatigue and the image disappears.

And you wondered what you were going to do for entertainment this weekend!

Muddle

My desk is a mess, a metaphor for life. Not a dangerous mess. Even a mess containing some element of logic in its entropic piles and stacks--chaos arranged in horizontal and vertical planned disorder. But I look at the genuine simulated woodgrain surface of this particle-board desk and realize: not much of its surface is visible. Not much of my creativity is visible under the stack of small engines that need fixin' or cussin'; under the gutters that mock me with the every thrice-daily gully-washer knowing that I can't reach some of them to clean them out--they drool and spit and spatter the new mulch onto the side of the white house as they overflow, full to the top with maple whirlygigs. Clutter comes, too, from the things I've said YES to--not begrudgingly, but now better understanding that for everything you do, there will be things you don't do, given this awful limitation of mortality we wear over out bones. Only one thing at one time. What a pity.

Here lie three books opened and clipped to certain pages-- that talks about Photoshop sharpening; Bald Eagles come Back from the Brink; an Orion article open under the others now for two weeks, subtitled: Can a sense of place help the peace-making process? Interlaced are financial statements enumerating our net worthlessness; bank accounts reconciled or not; two clipboards, both down to the last of their college-ruled yellow pages fully scrawled with a few notes and many doodles of the tao and infinity symbols and a place where I recorded a speaker's score for uh's, um's and er's. Ninety three, all totaled, in a 45 minute presentation. Not a record, but honorable, er, mention.

The stratification on Old Olduvai, my sad desk, mounts up as high as the monitor that sprouts little sticky notes, some tiny pastel ticklers waving from the edge of the screen, and many phosphor-boxes that pop up just in time to the sound of an alarm call (currently a wav file "Bridge to Captain Kirk! that calls me from the Holodeck). There are to-do lists in three places in the imaginary dimensions of Computer-land, each list a different manifestation of the misassumption that if I could only get organized by way of the perfectly-bulleted list, I would thus gain control over this universal tendency for things and events to fall apart.

I think maybe I need an administrative assistant, some large plastic trash bags, and a few more hours hanging out with Charles Darwin on the Beagle. Man, that Holodeck is a great excuse to avoid reconciling the bank account!

Puddle Jumper

We are in the zone here with regular-as-clockwork afternoon (and frequently, overnight) thunderstorms. I can't quite manage to follow the common knowledge that with my APS surge protector, I "ought to" be okay, and I shut the system down when thunder and lightning occur with uncomfortable closeness or the windows rattle. I had a computer fry once (modem, video card, some other inner-jeejaws) and sure would hate to see smoke coming out of my nice skinny monitor.

So, we are having a lull between storms and the computer is back up, the sun is shining--temporarily--and steam rising from the barn roof. Won't be long before the next wave of storms, so here is another image from down by the mailbox--the walnuts across the road in the pasture, reflected in a picturesque Goose Creek dirt-road pothole. (Larger version on the gallery, here.)

The Ordinary

I can't remember much about it, except that some fellow, a photographer--was ill or disabled in some way--confined to his fourth-floor apartment. Mercifully, he lived in a corner space and had large windows on two sides, overlooking a park or a busy street--I don't recall exactly. One would have thought his photographic life had come to an end with his lack of mobility. But no. He continued to take thousands of photographs of the busy street, the park, the coming and going of pigeons, people, the seasons, the eternal shift of light from hour to hour.

Though I've forgotten the details, I have held on to the significance of this little tale from real life. How blessed I am, I thought two years ago this month after posting my very first images, literally to the world via the weblog. I may not go far from home, but I can carry my camera any place that I can walk--up and down our valley, along the creeks, climbing and following the ridges looking down on the house and barn. I can bring back ordinary views from this small place, details of days, fragments of my time in this sheltering valley. That should be enough to sink my teeth into, I thought. And I was right.

Not everyone who saw the disabled photographer's pictures took from them the poignancy and meaning that the photographer always did. He was there when the shutter snapped, remembers all the senses his film could not capture--the distant sounds of children playing; the smell of bread baking in the next building; pigeons cooing contendly from the window ledges; the curtains moving gently in the morning breeze. Maybe he was familiar with some of the subjects he froze in time with his camera and they were not merely shapes and textures and colors to him. And so what appears ordinary is indeed extraordinary to him, and even to some who have come to see his images.

The picture of the pasture and barn here is what I see from our mailbox, facing south down the valley. The larger image is here, and the very next image (click NEXT to the upper right of this gallery picture) is called Pasture Walk and is a view north, back toward the house and the maple trees that frame ValleySouth. So there's your nickel tour from outside our doors. Nothing fancy. Green grass, lots of trees, blue sky and white clouds. More than enough.

Footnote: Be sure and stop by Hoarded Ordinaries where Lorianne picks up this theme and gives it the benefit of her perspective and clear language:

"The ordinary is all we have: it is, after all, the very stuff of our days. It is by watching the daily passage of common lovelies that we train our eye to catch the spectacularly uncommon; through the door of the ordinary, the extraordinary creeps. Are you watching? Will you recognize it when it arrives hidden and silent, cloaked in green?"

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Summer of 2002: Spring brings almost enough moisture so that a garden hose connected to a small pump connected to a lawn-and-garden battery can irrigate the furrows where I've planted the corn, beans, chard. This is true until the middle of the summer when the rains stop altogether. The pool where the dog now goes to do his "swirlies" got lower, and lower; and by the first of August, Goose Creek went dry. For the first time in living memory of the old-timers in the area--going back 90 years--all the fish died, the sandy bottom withered to dust. And there was no source left for half-mature corn or the fall crops after the garden soil turned to dry power down as far as I could dig with the shovel.

Summer of 2003: Floods. Bad floods during the late winter, into what should have been spring but was more late winter. Temperatures lagged behind normal, rainfall was almost double the usual for this time of year. Hay rotted in the field, uncut. Seeds-- beans, corn, squash--did the same thing in the damp, cold soil of the garden. Corn, well over my head in 2002, failed to reach my knees in '03. Nothing for the canner this year, very little for the table. I didn't even bother closing the fence to keep the critters out. There was nothing in there for them to steal.

Yesterday I planted a hundred feet of beans, a patch of Swiss Chard, two hills of Hubbard squash and a row of Yellow Straightneck squash. Put in a block of Silver Queen--always a gamble that the corn will make, and if it does, that it will survive blow-down in a July hailstorm. The uncertainty makes it all the sweeter between your teeth, with butter and pepper, sitting on the front porch for dinner, in full view of this garden of possibilities. A dozen tomato plants and as many bell pepper plants put in the ground a week ago have so far survived the first onslaught of flea beetles without the farmer having to resort to biowarfare. The vegetable patch will be a pitiful looking mudflat this morning after last night's thunderstorms. Pink corn will float in tiny lakes; I'll have go dibble it back in place after the sun sops up some of the excess. Sunflowers need to go in today; I'll let them soften in a wet paper towel next trip into the kitchen for coffee.

Would the garden be the mystery and wonder that it is if we were guaranteed the outcome in the struggle against the wind, too much or too little rain, and flea beetles? The thrill of victory; the agony of defeat. Canning jars filled with greens and golds; or the bean plants covered with tiny little swords, blown down in a sudden gale and corn kernels floating to the surface for the crows. The garden as a metaphor for life. We have to plant and hope, one more year, even though as I pull the soft earth over tiny seeds, I see that poor soul on skis come crashing off the jump, careening, arms and legs flailing, empty and discouraged, knowing he will try again.

Sardonic

Thus was my post on the hemlocks last Friday described by Tom Montag. Not a word I use every day. Meaning what? "Of or resembling small fish tightly packed in brine in a flat can" I wondered, intrigued and full of etymological curiousity? The word was familiar and I would have probably gotten it right on a multiple choice list of possible defintions, but I wasn't 100% sure. Now sarcastic I most definitely understand. And 'grinning like a dog'-- well, I see this every day around here. Here's what the wordsmiths say about it:

\Sar*don"ic\, a. [F. sardonique, L. sardonius, Gr. ?, ?, perhaps fr. ? to grin like a dog, or from a certain plant of Sardinia, Gr. ?, which was said to screw up the face of the eater.]

Usage: Where strained, sardonic smiles are glozing still, And grief is forced to laugh against her will. --Sir H. Wotton.

Similar Adj. 1. wry - humorously sarcastic or mocking; "dry humor"; "an ironic remark often conveys an intended meaning obliquely"; "an ironic novel"; "an ironical smile"; "with a wry Scottish wit"

Etymology: French sardonique, from Greek sardonios: disdainfully or skeptically humorous : derisively mocking synonym see SARCASTIC

Rainy Day Road

Bethlehem Church Road is a silver ribbon on green fields. The country lane mirrrors the dull sky on a rainy spring day. A larger view of this scene found here.

Not Suitable for Framing

First of all, let me say that Nate and I thoroughly enjoyed the Great High Mountain Tour--consisting of most or all of the musicians whose music has been featured in Oh Brother Where Art Thou and Cold Mountain. The mix-and-match way the various folks sang and played in different combinations made it more like having twenty groups performing than the official seven or eight. The fact that it was more roots-based traditional music was very much to my taste. We had great seats, and getting in and out of the coliseum parking was a relative snap. However, I did not come home with experience using my D70 in low-light situations. You see, my camera was illegal.

We got our tickets ready at Gate Two, flashing them to the lady gatekeeper. "May I see your camera" she commanded rather than questioned. "I have to check it" she said, holding something up against it. Some kind of weapons detection I wondered, confused by its apparent simplicity. Looked like nothing more than a laminated card. One of those new security-tech marvels, I supposed.

"Does this lens extend?" she asked. "Yes, a little" I said, cranking the 18 to 70 mm lens out to its weak telephoto limits. She held the card up against the lens, because as I learned later, it was merely a crude way to measure focal length. Lens longer than the card: illegal. "You can't take this camera inside".

"You're kidding" I said, although it was plain from the lady's expression she was not. I still thought maybe they were afraid it had a gun or explosives hidden inside.

"Promoter's rule. Lenses longer than this (she pointed to her card) can't go in."

Let's just say she could tell I was not a happy camper. What a stupid rule. I acted out just a little. But what I didn't do was unleash my scathing sarcasm on the poor woman.

"Yes mam, I'll take my camera back to the car. And when I come back, if you'd like me to, I'll help you remove all the people in the rows two ahead of me and all the way to the stage."

She would be bewildered and I would explain: "My lens is barely telephoto, length notwithstanding. I'm on row 13. The people with cameras and standard lenses in rows 10 and lower will be able to take the same pictures you don't want me to take with my wimpy telephote. So of course, we'll have to get them out of there or confiscate all their cameras. Promoters rules and such, you know."

But I didn't say what I thought of saying. Even though my reasoning and logic were impeccable. Even though I wanted to rail against the machine. Even though I hate losing when my opponent is some assinine bureaucracy. And so it goes. I'd rather photograph weeds than celebrities anyway.

Doggy in the Window

The Fragments Dog and Pony show has gone on the road. Well, forget the pony. This one's all about the dog. Tsuga has his own photo gallery now. He told me to tell you that, for a few bucks extra, he'll autograph. And each picture comes with a free lock of his hair, collected off of Fred's favorite navy sweatshirt.

Epitaph

Look closely. What do you think of hemlock's spare, no-nonsense theme for the future? By the end of the decade, this is the only style you'll see in what remains standing of this species. And by the end of the decade after that, the design will be even sleeker--trunk only, at least parts of some, will still stand. But without any of the messy needle-leaves.

This new model hemlock is not like its cluttered, dark green predecessor. The old design had boughs bending to touch the ground below, shading the mountain streams where they grew. The new model lets lots of natural light through to the forest floor. And this edition of Tsuga canadensis will not litter the ground with those pesky little baby hemlocks growing in the sheltering boughs of the parent tree.

As you can see here already, greener, leafier species--like this poison ivy--will be quick to take advantage of the new sunlight, growing up into barkless hemlock trellises that are becoming abundant throughout the eastern US.

Chestnuts, of course, were a problem after their model phase-out eighty years ago. They resisted rot and their trunks and limbs persist in our woods even today. Hemlocks, in their new incarnation of the new century will rot quickly, leaving only the memory of tall, black-green trees interspersed among the white pines. Then that generation of human forest visitors who still remember will die out, and Canada hemlock will not even persist in memory of the eastern woods that once were.

Building the Perfect Dog

What's a photographer to do? After being the owner-companion and image-maker for two black labrador retrievers, I was well aware of the photographic impossibilities of getting a proper exposure in a scene containing green leaves, blue sky, gray-brown tree trunks AND a pitch-black dog. Most of my pictures of Zachary, our first black buddy, or Buster--our pal who died not quite a year ago--show a dense blue-black dog-shadow devoid of details or color, save the brown eyes, white teeth and pink tongue. I reached the conclusion that it just was not possible to get an acceptable photograph of our dogs except perhaps on very overcast days when the exposure latitude between the darkest object (always the dog) and brightest object were somewhat less severe.

When Buster died, we couldn't bear another black lab. There were too many memories, we'd call the new one either Zach or Buster, no matter what we named him. So we decided on a "yellow" lab--which truly is a misnomer. Tsuga is somewhat tawny, barley-colored in tail and feet, but for the most part, he is a white dog. And here we go again. How does the photographer avoid producing a dog-shaped white blob with features only, perhaps, in the darker aspects of the face and paws?

This seems like a pretty black and white problem, but one I am now prepared to address for future generations of pet-owner photographers. I have the solution. You can thank me later. Or, send money.

This challenge, then, lies before our clever canine breeders: The quest, of course, is to find a new coat-color gene and breed it into the race. The final product: Joining the ranks of the yellow, the choclate and the black: The Neutral-Gray Lab! At 18% reflectivity, the dog could be both a guage of mid-range reflectance and an ideal subject for pet photography. Future generations of image-making dog-owners will create a demand for this new breed, and labradors around the world will finally have their kind look good in pictures. My brilliance sometimes, itself, is dazzling, don't you agree? I'll accept credit where credit is due. Again, I'd prefer small bills.

But wait. Maybe I'm just trying to invent the perfect dog. John Katz is not encouraging:

"The Perfect Dog is an enticing fantasy pooch. It's the dog that instantly learns to pee outdoors, never menaces or frightens children, plays gently with other dogs, won't jump on the UPS guy, never rolls in gross things, eats only the appropriate food at the right time, and never chews anything not meant for him. This dog does not exist.

...The peddling of Perfect Dogs amounts to a multibillion dollar business in the United States. You'll never see images of ugly dogs vomiting in the living room or terrorizing the letter carrier on dog food commercials. Those dogs—the ones we want—are always adorable. Their happy owners are not holding pooper scoopers.

Windfall: High Times

One of spouse's co-workers has been gloating gleefully for months about her 10th-row tickets to the Great High Mountain Tour at the Salem Civic Center on May 21. A family crisis came along, and the tickets needed a new home. Nate and I will be going. This looks good.

Allison Kraus (and of course, Dan Timinsky, Ron Block and still traveling with Jerry Douglas); Ralph Stanley; the Cox Family; Norman and Nancy Blake; Nashville Bluegrass Band; and more.

Yep, I'm taking the camera. Poppa paparazzi. I have no pride.

Missed OrbPortunity

Kewl. A shopping trip to town with wifey I was actually enthused about! I was "on assignment". Sort of.

A few months back (September, actually) I met through the weblog a writer who wears several hats. His purpose at the time he passed through town was two-fold: write a piece for the Washington Post about the music in Floyd and in Hiltons, home of the Carter Fold; and, update information for the second printing of his guidebook on Virginia. Anywho...

Got an email from him last week saying he needs pix from Floyd for the guidebook revision--small, high-contrast black and whites. I get my name in the credits. Gotta start somewhere.

We were in the hardware store (Farmers Supply) picking up a replacement mailbox. The one we have, somebody shot a hole in last year. (Yes, we figured out 'who done it'.) So while we were there, I snapped a dozen pictures, including the one you see here--this one, just for fun, not for the book. When I got home and started messing with this orb image (taken from one of those weird "gazing balls" that some people put in their yard to ward off vampires and wooly mammoths) it occurred to me what I should have done.

Wouldn't it have been cool to ask the nice folks if I could take one of these glass balls on its stand outside to the corner near THE traffic light. Half of the town of Floyd is within a hundred yards of the traffic light. The extreme fisheye of the gazing ball would have pulled it all in, making a striking view of town--a real attention-grabber. Dang. Sent the pix in last night. But I may have to go back and do this just for fun. I'll let you know if I pull it off.

Meanwhile, I think I'll set up a gallery for "Floyd etc". I'll put a few of yesterday's there and add to it over the summer. Also some new images in the "Fragments Gallery", if you haven't been by there lately.

Update: Floyd Etc. Gallery is begun, Friday 21 May.

A Thousand Points of Light

You'll not notice the change, but I certainly do. Fragments is (at least largely) protected from uncontrollable spam now by Jay Allen's Blacklist. This is possible because a kind soul offered to upgrade my MT version and install the blacklist scripts. Why? Because, while we have never and likely will never meet face to face, we have gotten to know and care about each other by way of our weblogs. I truly wish I had been keeping a list over the past twenty four months of the kind words, the encouragement, the swift kick when and where needed, and the actual, tangible acts of friendship that have come this way from my dear, largely faceless, reader-friends.

I marvel at how things have turned out--and are still turning--since May of 2002. What seemed at the time like an ending and a featureless void for a future has morphed wonderfully into so many opportunities for exploration and creation and discovery. I could never have imagined. Two years ago I began to see myself not so much by what I do for a living as where it is that I do my living. I began to chronicle the extraordinary things in an ordinary life, frankly, because I did not know what else to do.

Now, I can't conceive of not having this journal and my reader-friends, some whom I have never heard from but know you are there visiting Goose Creek from time to time. And the best part--and the intended end of all this, insomuch as there were intentions--through the blog (and the radio essays that never would have happened if Fragments had not come along to evoke them) I am meeting people locally and getting involved in what I used to call "real" community. Now, I don't make such a hard-edged distinction, because what happens via the weblog is also real and is real community.

I am so very appreciative of the help over the past days to get past the comment spam. I owe you. I owe so many of you. I don't know what the next two years will bring. I do know I hope you'll stick around and keep me company. Who knows? Maybe we'll sit on the front porch here with a glass of lemonade and listen to wood thrush as the sun goes down. Or the screech owls. Anything but whippoorwills.

Yeah, I'll Whup Ya

The first one in mid-spring is a joy. Far off, in the distance, over the burble of the creek and shush of the wind across the ridge--a haunting, plaintiff yet ebullient voice cries "Whippoorwill! Whippoorwill!" The first of us to hear it calls the other to the front porch. Listen. How wonderful, we say. Now I am thinking shotgun.

"What a stupid, boring and obnoxious bird with no welcome near human bedrooms" I think in my half-sleep, not ready to get up in the crepuscular gloom but long since rattled awake by this bird's tintinnabulation of the bells bells bells bells bells bells!!! Liquid ditty my Aunt Fanny! He's right outside our window now, drawing closer and closer these last two hours of breathless, redundant, monotonous bleating. Bird-song, indeed.

Why oh why has this feathered wraith not long since gone extinct, I have to wonder, gloating at the thought in the hour before coffee. A bird that is a weak flyer, with a pitiful excuse for a bill, short ineffective legs--and to make sure that natural selection wipes the species off the map after the first mating pair appear on the planet--they nest on the ground. "Come eat me! Come eat me!" they cry ceaselessly through the night, and yet, nothing does. All I can figure is that it is their horrid nagging pean repulses even housecats, who, after all, can tolerate just so much noisy intrusion into their very private worlds. Mice are much quieter. If these birds merely said "peep" or "chirp", they'd have been extirpated from phylogeny before that twig could branch into the goatsucker line--which was a bad idea from the git-go.

Oh. I'm sorry about this. I've had my coffee now. The W's have moved on up the valley now and can almost be ignored. I was just having a curmudgeonly moment. I'd be sorry to see these birds disappear from our valley, but I wouldn't be sorry if they were more fearful of human activity and habitation and kept their distance--a hundred feet or more would be nice. And as far as their "song" goes, I do sometimes wish they took requests.

(With apologies to Mr. Poe)

Not By the Hair of My Chinny Chin Chin

You remember that story, don't you?

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Everything seems to be AOK.

World Wide Webs

They're at it again, the spiders of summer, and living in high cotton. Well, high pasture. It won't be long before the field gets its first cutting of the season. When the earth is trim and green and the new growth starts back, that's when some of the best web pictures will entice me across the creek into the wet orchard grass. Foggy mornings are perfect--just after the sun peeks over the ridge. By the end of the fall, I hope to have a Web Gallery with enough variety to weave into a spider photo-article to shop around to magazines. Maybe. The beginnings of a Gossamer Gallery are here.

Two Years Ago Today

I'm a sucker for anniversaries. Not the wedding kind. Those I routinely miss; ask my daughter. And more about that in a few weeks. I remember anniversaries of events I wish I didn't remember a year, or ten years later as much as I recall the good ones. It just seems like one should acknowledge the passing in some metered way, 365 days and a complete earth-sun cycle as good as any marker of time. Something can usually be gleaned from the comparison, then versus now; some take-home lesson gained by remembering one's life-events measured along a succession of calendars. Somebody said God created time so that everything didn't happen all at once. Man invented calendars and anniversaries for the same reason.

Journal, May 17, 2002: In the odd way things work out, both Ann and I are home from work now for two weeks--she, between jobs--again. She'll be moving on, hopefully, from a fair job to a good one. And me: for the first time in my working life, I am two weeks into an uncertain period of unplanned unemployment after being harrassed into resignation. I've left an employer. I may have left a profession. I haven't a vision for what comes next. Two weeks at home now is about as much idleness as I have known since I had six weeks off in summers when I used to teach at the community college. I'm ready to sink my teeth into the next project and there is nothing looming on the horizon. Nothing.

I've started a web log (or blog) and a couple of times I have written out my frustrations and licked my wounds there, but then deleted all of it, the writing having been catharsis enough. I don't want to whine about my plight, but I do feel so cut off from humanity without the daily contacts at work. I am the tree falling in the forest. Can anybody hear me falling? Anyone?

I've just learned that I can put pictures on my blog, and so I will finally be able to do something I've always felt drawn to do: write to an image. Bring in a picture off the digital camera, paste it on an empty page, and let it draw out the story it tells. I've wanted to write, especially since helping Nathan with his book. Maybe this weblog can become an expressive outlet for the photography and the new territory of the written word.

Maybe it can also become a way of making contact with a crowd other than the usual Instant Messaging/IRC/bulletin board crowd. Maybe while I am ex-communicated from the realm of work, I can communicate and find community via the web...first those who live far away, then over time, actually grow relationships here where we live. We'll see.

Shadow Boxer (er, Labrador)

This dog. A perpetual source of aggravation. And amusement. He is such a "toddler" in many ways, here in his first summer of exploration. For the first time, he runs through the pasture with grass up over his head, a vast green maze. The scent of groundhog and rabbit and mole permeates the warm air, and he walks with his head up, nose twitching. He's never had so many birds around; maybe it's because I pay them attention that he too is a bird-watcher. He'll watch buzzards circle for a half hour, perfectly enthralled.

But his favorite summer sport so far is the Butterfly Chase.

Well, it's not so much the actual butterflies he wants to catch as their shadows. Darn things. Just when he's zigged just at the last instant to catch it for sure this time, the darn thing disappears. He'll even dig briefly where the flittering shadow last appeared, not bothering to look a foot over his head for the actual creature.

(You can see the wedge-shaped shadow-victim in the lower right corner. )

Doh!

Do I gotta big KICK ME sign on my back? I'm minding my own business, surfing the web to find out if what I heard this morning was a Blackburnian Warbler. Aha! Here's a site that has the .wav file. But no. I have been infected with TROJAN DROPPER and Norton Antivirus is unable to repair it.

Disable SYSTEM RESTORE. Shut down system. Reboot in SAFE MODE. Run a Norton scan on the entire system. Thirty minutes later: two infected files. Cannot repair. Quarantined (whatever-da-heck that means).

DELETE was greyed out. Does anybody know if I'm still infected with the files "quarantined". Sheesh. I'm gonna go back to bed and start this day/week over again. Later.

Basswood Leaf and Insect Incubators

This morning, I manually deleted 147 comment spams. Before I'd had my coffee. Before I'd given any thought to what I might post this morning. And before I finished, I was angry. I have just a certain number of keystrokes left in these joints and this is not how I chose to spend them. For a moment there, I had decided to just leave the page with all it's comment-pollution as is for a week or two, good riddance, they can have it, I will find my expressive outlet somewhere else. Here I am at my two-year blogaversary. Maybe that's enough, I muttered. I'm starting to repeat myself repeating myself, so what th' heck. As I've said before, as blogs succumb to this crap, so goes the slugs' livelihood--a poetic sort of justice, maybe.

But no. I've resisted being overwhelmed by the ugly and disreputable things in the larger world outside our tiny realm, mostly, for two years. I've chosen not to rail (often) here against the evils (another good word gone to service of the current regime) in the world of politics and society or give up when there seemed very little point in offering the mundane in the face of overwhelming sadness in the world. And I won't give up now. I'll just recover from the comment-spam bottom feeders and do my best to keep focused on the fragments worthy of sharing.

Old Chinese proverb say: hungry man does not throw away the fish because of the bones.

Invaders. Aliens. In Your Back Yard.

Last week at the Mt. Rogers Naturalist Rally, I chose the "Invasive Plants" field trip. I'm interested in what has been or can be done to prevent such things as Kudzu and Multiflora Rose from taking over the world. Making a long story short (which is just the opposite from the usual around here) it was an informative morning. I was particularly impressed with our leader, Andy Brown of Equinox Environmental, his business in the Asheville, NC area. More than his technical knowledge and experience, which was considerable, I appreciated his patience with a bunch of old duffers who had never used GPS devices before. We walked for a few miles along the Virginia Highlands Horse Trail near Mt. Rogers and marked locations for plants, particularly Multiflora Rose, that are on the list of invasives receiving close scrutiny (and eventual removal) by several funded agencies.

My take-home lesson from this trip is that I could do more to slow the progress of several of these highly aggressive non-native plants along our road and on our property. They say confession is good for the soul, so:

We transplanted Coltsfoot from the bank across the road to the one behind the woodpile to stabilize the soil; guess we should have tried to extirpate it from the places it was already growing when we moved here rather than give it yet another comfortable place to grow.

A certain person transplanted wineberry bushes to a spot behind our house. I have to say I warned certain people that this would spread and become a nuisance plant. But sometimes you just can't tell certain people a thing. Time will come I'll get to say "I told you so!"

We planted privet as a hedge along the road (again, not MY idea.) I didn't realize Chinese and European privet were on the hit list for some reason, although I've never noticed it spreading all that aggressively.

We inherited Garlic Mustard around the house when we moved here--not nearly so much as we have now growing along the branch, out front of the house along the road--another highly invasive plant. It's easy to pull up, but you need to catch it before it drops seeds!

There are 15 species on the watch list. Some are in bold above. The others include: Japanese Knotweed, Stilt Grass and Honeysuckle; Chinese Yam; Oriental Bittersweet; Mimosa; Princess Tree; Tree of Heaven; Canada Thistle; and Crown Vetch.

Of course, these are just a tiny fraction of the imported plants that have reached our woodlands, parks, and backyards in the Southeast. Full list is here. There will be a test. You were warned.

Toxic Dump Revisited

Yesterday afternoon as the sun was going down behind the western rim of our valley, we walked up the road a half mile to the place where the recent chemical insult took place. Ann and Nate walked ahead while I hung back looking for pictures. Neither of them knew exactly where the drum-full of oil and sludge had been rolled down the ravine into the creek. By the time I reached the point, they were standing exactly at the place: all the vegetation on the bank was dead and a heavy petrochemical stench still filled the air, now two weeks later. With the plants gone we could see where the plastic drum had hit a tree and broken open before rolling to rest in the water.

These ragworts were the only things in bloom near that spot, and not terribly photogenic. But somehow, bringing back some small bit of natural order and beauty seemed to serve as a partial antidote against the disgust of that act of human indifference and depravity.

More about the plant and a larger image, here.

Morning Glory

Plants Can Be Parasites

Rather than post a weeny little picture of and odd but not terribly photogenic native plant, I've uploaded it to the Ferns and Flowers Gallery here. Note also on these "illustration images" I usually will add some explanatory text below the image that you may miss if you don't go down under the picture on your monitor. Wouldn't that be a shame!

There were some temporary problems with the Gallery server but those seem to be clearing up. Please let me know if you have any problems viewing the pictures there. Thanks! -- FF

Putting on the Dog...

Or, My Dog Has Fleece: And I thought I was kidding about making garments from our abundant natural resource, dog hair.

It's been done. A book has been written. There's even an NPR audio program with Barbara Bogaev that describes the long history of (Pyrenees) dog-hair garments and dicusses the fine nuances of difference between the breeds and which make good gloves, or a vest, or a beret (from a poodle, of course).

I particularly like the subtitle of the book: Better A Sweater From A Dog You Know and Love Than From A Sheep You'll Never Meet.

Time and Place

That's the Ecotone Biweekly for May 15. Time and place. This topic asks the essayist to finely focus their writing to describe sometime that has taken place since the Big Bang and to locate the subject of their piece at one or more points in the physical universe. Gee, I dunno. That's pretty restrictive.

Along those rather broad lines of thought: a short while back I pointed readers to Ronni Bennett's As Time Goes By, with particular focus on her ten-image Time Travel Montage. I challenged others to follow Ronni's visual lead. You can see a poet's version of her montage at Watermark. Nicely done! And hopefully others (including me) will go and do likewise.

If you'd like to contribute something to this Ecotone biweekly and aren't familiar with the format (called a wiki), give me a holler and I can help. There should be as many vantage points on this topic as there are contributors!

Fathers Day: In Words

Our Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring a Father's Day essay as part of our street celebration on June 19th--the day before Father's Day. If you think this might be something that would work in your community, there's still more than a month to pull it together. I'll tell you what I've come up with for our event so you'll not have to invent the wheel like I've been doing for the past couple of weeks.

We are asking for essays from three age groups: elementary and junior high; high school and college up through age 21; and ages 22 to 122.

We will award a first and second prize in each category with prizes donated generously by local merchants. Prize winners will read their essays the day of the festival and first place winning essays will be printed in the local paper the next week.

The writing theme that is the focus of the essay is this: Tell something about yourself that you want your father or father figure to know—a way that he might have influenced your behavior, character or life—without realizing it.

There will be three judges for each age group--a total of nine.

Judging will be based on: focus on topic; use of examples and supporting information; use of language and vocabulary; staying within guidelines of the essay; and effectiveness in use of author tone and voice.

Re this last bit: any ideas on how to numerically score within those criteria? All I can think of is something like 4 points for outstanding; 3 for good; 2 for fair; and 1 or 0 for Pitiful. And how to break a multi-essay tie? I'm open for suggestions from the Peanut Gallery.

Mrs. Sisyphus Hard At Work

Actually, this is the *AT trail maintenance crew on the job, keeping the path through the pasture under control. The entire AT loop is probably 3/4 mile long and 2 to 4 mower-widths wide.

Inset: A in action. *AT = the Annie Trail

Calendar Note

Reminder: Mark calendar for next year, last week in April, for Parkway drive: early bloom of "honeysuckle" Rhododendrons, first emergence of cinnamon and like ferns, and last of spring wildflowers. By the second week in May, the spring blooms are about gone.

Pictured here is "Flame Azalea"--a Rhododendron. I was almost too late to get a picture and didn't have many intact blossoms to chose from. Next year, I'll not let it get by me.

You can see a larger picture here, in a little subgallery I started for "ferns, flowers and such". It is a repository for some pretty pix, but also more of the "teaching" variety image--a natural history scrapbook over time.

You Ain't Never Caught a Rabbit...

...until yesterday. And you ain't no friend of mine. Yes, Tsuga is a killer now. The rabbits we can spare. Either he gets them or I plink them with the .22 from inside the garden after the tender veggies begin to grow in a few weeks. The aggravation of rabbit-eating is the fact that what goes down (hair, bone, viscera) won't stay down and what to do with said carnivore, housing-wise, until the hairball problem is resolved. What one doesn't want to do is leave pup inside the house while and then drive off merrily to the Parkway to take pictures. That was my plan yesterday; I was just about to leave the house when I discovered the masticated south end of a north-bound bunny hanging from the proud pup's jaws. Trip cancelled, rescheduled for this morning.

This will be his first summer of life, really. He was too small to explore his place here his first summer. In August, at seven weeks when we brought him home, he couldn't even get down off the one porch step by himself, so his excursions into the world were pretty limited. He is so naive of what's out there, and also very curious--a combination destined for some painful lessons. I think it was a wood roach that he was intently focused on in this picture--in that vertical both-eyes-on-the-target pose you lab owners are familiar with. The other day it was a large wolf spider (quite capable of a powerful bite) that he would pick up in his mouth carefully, prance around a bit, drop it, watch it crawl, and repeat until his soggy playmate suffered death-by-dogspit and stopped crawling and Tsuga lost interest.

We have a summer full of stings and bites ahead of us, I'm afraid, in the great classroom of the outdoors. Yellow Jackets, paper wasps, bumble-bees, hornets--will one sting in the mouth be enough? And, although there are not many of them, he'll have to learn about snakes. We've only seen one copperhead in five years--our only poisonous snake sighting. But earlier this week, wading in our rubber boots across the creek by the barn, we saw but Tsuga didn't see the fattest banded water snake we've come across here. They are non-poisonous but ill-tempered, and a well-placed fang on the tender parts of the nose would be a powerful lesson. Better here than with the poisonous kind, I suppose.

Foundations

The first time we saw this old house here on Goose Creek it looked as if it would soon be overtaken by forest, would become a home to growing things, melting into the hillside where it sits. Trees emerged from the foundation; poplar and maple sprouts bristled from an ancient brick walkway barely visible in the moss and mud, the white poplar of its outer walls weathered the color of the dirt road below it. Birds nested on the lintels and black snakes and bats formed a closed ecosystem in the attic.

Five years ago this month, we began to "reclaim" this house from a fate that comes naturally when man-made order is left to the slow but certain forces of nature. Where there was random growth and decay, we engineered structure, design and utility. At great expense of human effort we imposed our will on the workings of the natural way of things, moving against the universal flow toward chaos: a coat of paint; a new foundation; new windows; a fire-safe chimney to keep the inside dry and warm; a water-tight metal roof. And we invited the snakes over to the barn.

From the end of the pasture--the flat floodplain of the creek where five years ago there was a rangy crowded phalanx of pine trees--we stand and look back at this house now in its early summer vestures, dappled in the cool shade of the five maple trees planted so long ago for this very purpose. The grass is green and mowed; the forsythias and bleeding heart have come and gone, Hostas border the new walkway. In the open windows the curtains gently sway. With the changes we've made, the house is tight and dry now, a solid, permanent and vital part of this landscape. It is built--rebuilt--to last. But we know that it will not.

Some day--it may be a hundred years, but some day--this artificial habitation, this solid, comfortable and familiar home place will have weathered its last winter with warm caretakers inside. No smoke will rise from the chimney in December. The yard that takes so much care will not get it, will grow wild, neglected and unkempt. The paint will crack and peel. Poplar and maple seeds that fall in abundance around the house will sprout closer and closer to it's dull sides, will rise and branch and block the drying sun. Their roots eventually will breach the foundation wall and water will find its way to the oak timbers cut from this land and first set in place in the 1870's. The studs and joists will become a slow meal for the ubiquitous organisms that simplify and recycle this edible shelter that once was our home, then the home of others we cannot guess, then their childrens' home.

Meanwhile, in that far-off time, the wind will blow down this narrow valley stirring the tops of the poplars just as it is doing out my window now. The same wildflowers I've watched bloom and fruit over my few years here will grow under forest that ages in the way undisturbed forest will do. In that day when only ruble and twining vines remain where the house once stood, someone will stand on the this little knoll where our front porch used to be and look out across the bottomland. By then, the pasture may have reverted back to forest. The forest will have long since healed from the savage logging of the 90's. The two creeks--Goose Creek and the one I have often written of as Nameless Creek--may have cut new channels with the floods of years, but will still meet each other in this quiet valley as they have for a thousand years.

Through the conservation easement process, we have taken steps to protect this small part of God's green earth so that nature can do what it does so well without the help of man's industries or ambitions. This old house will inevitably go through the processes of change incumbent on manmade things (and other homes may come along here to replace it). Meanwhile, this natural preserve on which the present house stands will see the cycles of growth and repair, diversity and succession that is the way of things in this living world. This house we've renovated is a legacy perhaps for decades to come. This valley watershed sheltered from excessive development--for others to enjoy as we have--is a bequest to the future for generations.

A larger version of the image above is available here.