Fragments From Floyd

Terrible Peace

It is 6 in the morning and very dark--far enough from sunrise in this shorter day of early fall that the setting moon casts long shafts of blue light toward the car as I pull in to the driveway. Ann has left for work already, making the loneliness complete, but for the dog. His face appears at the window as I walk toward the empty house, and his wagging tail is some consolation. One more send-off; one more goodbye. By now, Nathan's flight should have left from Roanoke, bound for Detroit, the boy for Vancouver sometime tonight--his home for at least two more years. I won't even try to explain how quiet this place is now. Those of you who have kids that have left the nest, and returned, and left again, can hear it.

Life in Frames

The morning after the Milky Moonlight experience, before the hay bales would be taken away leaving a beautiful but empty foreground, there remained that magical quality to the pasture. All summer it grew shaggy and unkempt, full of spiderwebs, vertical in the tall grass, high as my shoulders. Now, clean shaven and formal, it gave the appearance of having been made ready for some grand event. Autumn, perhaps. It begged to have one more picture taken, so we could remember it the way it looked at graduation. Or death. Or setting out for a long trip around the world, back again in late April.

Funny how appropriate the frame seems to me this morning--a metaphor for this different kind of day I spend here since the work carries me away every day. When I'm here, I'm not really, not in the total immersion way I had been most of the past months when being here was the whole story of my life. At the center is the textbook, the lab, the other projects already underway when the teaching role popped up. These are what I dream about, or lie awake pondering--not spider webs or moonlight or any kind of light or color in words or pixels.

Not that I don't notice the little details--the bunching of the blackbirds preparing to carpool south; the spots and smudges on the poplar leaves, dying already, waiting to fall; the way the clouds have begun to tatter and fray in the way they do only in early autumn. I see these things in passing as I'm coming and going to work. I find myself holding up an artist's frame of thumbs and index fingers in opposing "L"s, making a box around beauty, quickly composing a mental picture to indulge in, some other time, saying a brief silent word of appreciation. And then I sit down for the pre-dawn morning hour to generate study notes on the taxonomy of bacteria and a few test questions.

Larger image, without the frame, here in the gallery.

Alleviating the Suffering of Billionaires

Nothing feels better (well, almost nothing) than a long, satisfying rant. Garrison Keillor, who has spoofed the GOP in his "We're all Republicans Now" skit off and on for the past four years, has taken off the gloves and let loose with a Twainian tirade ("We're Not in Lake Wobegon Any More") on the Frankensteinian transmorgrification of Ike's Republicans. How cathartic it must have been to say it out. How viscerally sad it makes me to agree with him.

But if Garrison's screed is too heavy for you on a Sunday and you want to know what part you can play in the coming election, take action! Become a B4B! That's right. See how you can participate in the Million Billionaire March in your area, where the motto is "Leave No Billionaire Behind". You can even make this worthy cause more widely known by sending high-quality audio files "(Billionaire Moments)" to your local radio station for broadcast, so everybody can plan to attend.

Lies, Damn Lies, and...

Statistics. That's what the non-majors can look forward to in next week's labs. Welcome to the buzzing, pulsing, richly beautiful world of biology. But first, let's do the numbers.

So, between now and Thursday (two labs) and Friday (one lab; yes, a lab on Friday afternoon) I need to come up with some data sets and clearly-explained examples of how students can prepare this information from statistical tests they will perform in the proper chart, graph or table. Any ideas, y'all? Seriously, I would be happy for suggestions.

So if I'm more curmudgeonly than usual this coming week, just consider it an outlier--an unstandard deviation from the norm. I'll get my good humor back when we move on to the next lab that studies the reproductive potential of wingstem--actual plants gathered from the real woods.

Think about how stupid the average person is; now realize half of them are dumber than that. -- George Carlin

Milky Moonlight

The first hay cutting, usually in late June, became the only cutting in this wet summer. It happened while we were away in South Dakota. By midweek, the gray-green grass was wind-rowed, and a few drying days later, the serpentine rows of heaped grass were eaten and regurgitated by the baler. An earthy wholesomeness and sense of well-being emanates from those round half-ton biscuits lying for a day or so in haphazard order on our narrow valley floor. Soon they will be gone, stacked like cord wood for the winter in our neighbor's barn.

Meanwhile, the valley, especially early and late, the thirty organic monoliths in our field have become our own Stonehenge. This illusion is particularly striking in the waxing moon this week. You can imagine my excitement to walk out the back door one last time before bed on Thursday night to find the valley flooded with both moonlight and a tattered ground fog, poured like thin milk around the shredded-wheat bales. Blue moonlight reflecting off the rust-red barn roof created a color for which there no name. It was otherworldly still. I ran inside for my camera and tripod. I set up the shot. I pressed the shutter. Nothing happened.

I've learned today what I was going wrong, but not the dozen other things I must understand before I will be able to bring back the image I saw in my mind and in the viewfinder the other night.

This odd impressionist study in agrarian geometry is the best I can show you from last night's small success in night-time photography. I doubt I'll get another shot of Stonehenge before it is carted off on a flatbed trailer. Such is life.

The Way We Were

Ninety pounds of wagging, wiggling canine happiness literally drug me out of bed this morning at 4:30. The Bulova Living Alarm Clock. It was as if he knew that this morning, I had planned to send folks back to look at his baby pictures from this time last year. Tsuga's first day with us was August 17. Now he is 24/7 at the center of the stage around here.

So I wanted to suggest today, as we come toward the end of The Dog's anniversary month, that you go back to the August 03 Archives and scroll through some of the early Alpha Male entries and images.

Oh, and I'm hearing a low-pitched growl from the next room, insisting that I send you to the Pet Gallery for a quick look at thumbnail images of Himself.

Serving Suggestions?

As Scarlett O. would say: "I sweah, with God as my witness, I will neveh, eveh"...make seventy copies of a five page document again on that blankety-blank copy machine. It took me at least an hour, and now I have a four-inch stack of papers to lug to class on Friday.

Students should make their own copies of these Powerpoint documents, on their dime and their time. What I need (I think) is space and bandwidth on a server to house these files. The one where I keep Fragments may be adequate, I dunno. If I store it there just as the ppt file, I think a student could open it, go to "handouts" view, and print it --even from the library computers if they don't have Powerpoint on their personal computer. After a few students have printed copies, others could copy their copies. A copy could be filed (maybe?) at the library desk then, so hopefully there wouldn't be seventy downloads of the file.

If anybody has ideas, experience or suggestions, please let me know.

The university way seems unsatisfactory, involving converting Powerpoint through Frontpage to *.mht format, and I think, only opening to the slides view where one page of paper equals only one slide, vs 3 or more in the "handouts" view.

UPDATE: Yahoo Briefcase recommended by Chris O'D sounded like a good idea, but my buddy Bud in the RU library says yahoo access to files from the lib is forbidden. Shucks.

Taskus Interruptus

Yesterday--the first day as a reincarnated professor--went about like I had expected. The ratio of success to frustration was about one to one, with the failures having to do with not knowing where anything was, not knowing who to see for this or that little glitch, and the typical administrative omissions and computer screw-ups that keep one's access codes from working properly the first time around. Or the second.

Finally, the Moment of Reckoning had come and it was time for class. I stopped by the mailroom for the first time (after a couple of wrong turns and trying the wrong keys) to fetch my syllabus copies. Dang! As I was slipping them into my briefcase, I got a nasty paper cut and dripped blood all the way to the closest tissue paper. And it was in this condition, bird finger wrapped in a scarlet kleenex, that I arrived outside my future classroom, by a factor of three, the oldest of the silent figures waiting for the unknown to come.

This time, I was prepared: for the unfamiliarity; for the silence; for the isolation. Nobody knows anybody here. They don't talk to each other. They don't reply to me. They don't know when I'm joking or being sarcastic, not yet. And they don't know how a wrong answer or a "stupid" answer will be taken by me, by their alien peers. The first day of class is a lonely place. For everyone. But it will be less so on Day Two, tomorrow. We will build a relationship of sorts--not a symmetrical one, unfortunately, with seventy students. But none of us will ever have to do Day One again.

And what does the picture from our South Dakota trip have to do with any of this? Hey, for the next couple months, I make no guarantee that picture and text will agree, that stories will have endings, sentences will have periods or even verbs, or that I will even remember to post something once I've composed it. The weblog never had a more apt name: Fragments. We'll just enjoy the ride and ask your indulgence for the inevitable turbulence now and then.

You Will Be Tested

The past two years has allowed me the luxury of being non-organized beyond the structure of my hard drive. Not dis-organized. I just have not had much reason to think eight hours or more into the future to plan for where I'll be doing what and when; not had to go over and over a list of things that, if I don't have them, I'm toast (or at least profoundly embarrassed). This is the beginning of a new order, and it will come out of relative disorder. My casual mornings have ended.

Today, I go to class. Sink or swim, a little more than two hours from now, I put on my chalky professorial hat again, for the first time since 1987. Will it come back to me, the rhythms, the self-possession and purpose, the speaking voice while 50 pairs of eyes track my pacing back and forth behind the desk, 50 pair of ears hear my words, and a few are listening.

The thing I dread the most about my first day on campus and in class is finding a parking place. After that, should be a piece of cake. I'll let you know.

Big Sky

Pampas. Steppes. Veld. Prairie: Grasslands of the world, a unique natural domain, or biome, so different from our moist, green wooded hills in the eastern forests, a jungle by contrast. Now, I've driven through Custer State Park, but I haven't really been there. If we'd had the time to walk a few miles to the top of one of the long, grassy ridges and watch the stars come out, hear the coyotes, settle into its rhythms, I'd feel I had been there. But we were just passing through. Custer, then Rushmore, then rush home.

For a forest-dweller, it was impressive for its spareness and expanse. A single landscape image is sure to do injustice to both land and sky. The picture above is a panorama of three, and does not give the eye the sense of distance that gives the land its character.

By contrast, our little valley shows us only a tiny patch of sky over a green embracing bowl. This hollow shelters us from the rest of the larger, sprawling world and is comforting, once we get over the hundred-mile horizons of South Dakota.

We live in a jungle of leaves where the air is heavy with moisture and flowing water is so common we take it for granted. Its scarcity has determined the biotic fate of the prairielands, given it its character and face.

Room with a View

Detroit to Roanoke, late afternoon, in a prop plane flying maybe 15,000 feet. And I got a window seat this time! Seeing the world from this vantage point is still one of the best educational experiences in my sheltered life. My personal favorite observation yesterday was the odd dimpled pastures that appeared briefly somewhere after we entered the "great valley" landforms. No doubt about it: this was what the geologists call "karst topography" and those dimples were early sinkholes forming over the underlying limestone deposited in the shallow sea that covered the incipient continent in ocean sediment.

It occurred to me what a great field trip a plane ride would be--to bring all sixty-some-odd biology students up on a chartered plane, each with a window seat, and watch the history of Appalachian geology unfold as we flew over all the physiographic provinces, from coastal plane to Allegheny Highlands. We'll wait for this until we've talked about the major biomes, of course, and plate tectonics and mountain building. And certainly, I'll have to give the department a few weeks to get on Orbitz and get a good price on sixty tickets. Yup.

My daughter's house sits on a small corner lot on a broad (cottonwood) tree-lined street of nice older homes, with sidewalks on both sides and a green median for joggers and pet owners. I never did get used to the fact that when you tossed the cat out the back door at night, it landed in the neighbor's yard. That'd be some heck of a cat-toss where we live.

But there was a time that city living was right for us, or at least convenient, and we were the ones walking the pet on a rope. I had to laugh, comparing our dog's free-roaming wherever-the-urge-strikes habits to the pampered pooches in the median followed by their masters carrying pooper-scoopers and lumpy plastic trash bags.

Daughter says "That's nothing. Get this: Last week we were driving along Boulevard. This man's dog squatted and the guy cut out the middle step, catching the offending substance directly into his plastic bag as it emerged. We had to wonder: if aliens are watching, which one do they think is the dominant species on this planet?"

Well, it's good to be home, but I don't have much wiggle room for blogging. This is the beginning of the new phase that includes teaching responsibilities as well as several other things begging my time and attention between now and Christmas. I can imagine some fall-related pictures posted here soon; and once class starts, I'm sure that will spawn some observations and anecdotes from a whole 'nother place than has been the norm (using the term loosely) here at Fragments. We'll just follow our noses and see what comes to mind in these (perhaps more sporadic) morning rambles.

A Place for EVerything

What day is this? Monday? Is that possible? I haven’t seen or even thought about the calendar for days, haven’t known what time of day it was, really (meaning according to our Virginia eating and sleeping schedules) and most of the time I haven’t known or needed to know where I was in space because our daughter has been doing all the driving. Being oriented to person, place and time is one property of what we call being in our right mind, so I guess not having a firm grasp on two out of three accounts for the out-of-place disorientation I feel this morning after four days in my daughter's very comfortable home twelve hundred miles from Floyd County.

Now, in a few hours, we'll take our first flight of three today. We'll cross two time zones, leaving the arid grasslands and entering familiar green and rolling land once more. We will arrive home tonight. Alerts of impending events will pop up on the computer. We’ll find dates for this week circled on our refrigerator calendar and phone calls will wait to be returned. Oh, yes. There’s the dog and cat again; bills due before the end of the month; obligations; commitments. But there will also be the hundred small pleasures of knowing where and when things are and having them ‘just so’—mundane but routine, predictable and at hand.

I had thought I would have plenty of time to write out the details of our time here in Rapid City. But I’m discovering that so much of the ease of writing for me comes from the place and the feel of it. I’m dependent on my ergonomic keyboard; my adjustable arm rests; my software tools. A creature of habit, I listen for the usual ambient sounds of Goose Creek, and miss the familiar fit of my usual early morning writing hour. I’m cooking in somebody else’s kitchen. But home again, soon enough. See you then.

From the Prairie Hills

Our daughter bought our tickets (for the air miles) and so for the first time ever in a plane, I did NOT get a window seat. The view of the landforms and clouds is the only thing that makes flying worth the price and the hassle.

I think at one point, overhearing my grumblings and complaints to no on in particular, the stewardesses and fellow passengers, especially on the last two legs of our trip from Virginia to South Dakota, had talked of sedating me. And I know the young lady who sat betweeen me and the window seat probably thought I was obsessed with her bustline, because I could take my eyes away from the tiny wedge of window beyond her silhouetted torso that give only fleeting glances at glacial lakes, drumlins, the shore of Lake Michigan--more fresh water than I've ever seen. I was especially antsy on the final leg of the trip as we descended over the alien world of South Dakota. Poor Ann had to listen to me interpret the geological history by the story told below by brief views of dry riverbeds, eroded valleys now filled with dust of millenia, yadayadayada.

So, here we are. I got up early to work on class notes, but instead read from a large Disney book about Princesses and other heroines. Young Abby was up by quarter til 6. And so it goes.

Just a quick howdy to let you know we've settled into Big Sky country. I think tonight we're going to the SD State Fair. That should make for some intesting photo-ops.

And maybe, by sheer random chance, on the way home on Monday, I'll get a window seat. I am prepared to take hostages.

Joe Pye et cetera

Joe Pye, as I remember it, was an Indian medicine man. This plant that bears his name is from a genus with swollen nodes along the stem (where the leaves come out) and looks (to some imaginative minds) like a healing bone. The genus thus carries the common name "bone-set". To me, it's healing effect comes from the fact that when it blooms in August, hot weather is mostly past. It's mauve flowers, remarkably similar to that of our barn roof, was a sight for sore eyes this morning as the sun was first filling the foggy valley with soft light. (Larger image here.)

I have several things I wanted to share with you, and will dump them on you en mass, forgive me, because we are leaving town again today. This time, I'll have ready access to DSL connection and will be checking email from South Dakota. So let me hear from you.

If you are a reader or writer of nature-related topics, this article is a must read. "Sick of Nature" contains the following paragraph: (but start from the beginning)

If nature writing is to prove worthy of a new, more noble name, it must become less genteel and it must expand considerably. It's time to take down the "No Trespassing" signs. Time for a radical cross-pollination of genres. Why not let farce occasionally bully its way into the nature essay? Or tragedy? Or sex? How about more writing that spills and splashes over the seawall between fiction and nonfiction? How about some retrograde essayist who suddenly breaks into verse like the old timers? How about some African-American nature writers? (There are currently more black players in the NHL than in the Nature Writing League.) How about somebody other than Abbey who will admit to having a drink in nature? (As if most of us don't tote booze as well as binoculars into the back-country.) And how about a nature writer who actually seems to have a job?

And if you'd care (and I hope you do) to read a nature writer who has stepped up to the bully pulpit, Rick Bass, writing in Orion, says we must do "Everything it Takes" to take back our country in November. I couldn't agree more.

And lastly, fellow radio essayist, Janice Jacquith, from upstate, has a helpful primer on writing essays (or "commentaries") for the radio. You can read it at Amazon, here. She's certainly done her share in the medium, and turned them into a book. Hmmmm.

Okay. You're on your own. But I'll be checking up on every one of you, so no squabbling. Don't make me stop this blog and get out and switch the bunch of ya. You know I'll do it.

Liverwort

"Wyrt" is Anglo-Saxon for "plant" so don't look for fleshy gibbosities on St. John's Wort, Spiderwort or Liverwort. And what good is a liverwort, you might ask? (We demand to know why we should care about anything that will not go in our billfolds, or a crockpot.) Well, according to the "Doctrine of Signatures", wyrts were put here with some visible indication of God's intention of how we should use these plants for our health and well-being.

Someone in Europe--probably a monk, priest or minister, since these were the keepers of nature-knowledge in those days--could plainly see that the lobed edges of this ribbon-like plant told us it was good for treating liver ailments. Hence, the common name.

This is probably about the most primitive true plant surviving in modern times. It lacks roots, vascular tissue, flowers or seeds. This one here is perhaps the most common species, Marchantia. You'll find it hidden back in cool, moist shade--like under the bluff I mentioned in yesterday's post, where I found this little colony. You can clearly see the pores that are open to admit the filtered sun. They give it a primitive, reptilian quality--like alligator skin, don't you think? You rarely see the other part of liverwort's life cycle, shaped like a tiny parasol, rising a half inch from the green, pebbled surface. And that's another story I'll spare you.

So now you can put to rest those questions about liverworts that have been burning in your mind since high school biology class. Aren't you glad you stopped by Fragments today! (Rhetorical. No comments needed. Besides, my MT spamguard would filter whatever you write and spank your hand and refuse you.)

Confluence

A little more than a stone's throw away, the rocky shoal where Goose Creek and Nameless Creek meet is a favorite hidden place to pass a pleasant hour. From my desk here, I walk out the front door, down the steps, across the front yard.

I hop over the rock wall between the yellowbells and out onto the gravel road, heading east. Fifty yards on and I cut across the rocky, Yucca-spiked field where we took out the spindly pines four years ago, to the edge where the flood plain pasture sinks down to the level of the creek channel meandering a path into the vari-colored gravel, rounded rock and sandy soil that once was mountain.

My secret spot is full of flicker and dance, flooded with the fluid purpose and predictability of water and gravity. The wet air settles here, unruffled by the wind that lifts the highest poplar leaves barely visible through the wall of summer leafery.

The smells of late summer settle in that calm along the creek, an aromatic steeping of dry Queen Anne's Lace and Yarrow and the dank fragrance of water come from underground only moments before it flows past me in the cool shade.

Riffles form from stones too large for the little streams to carry once a storm surge has passed, and the crystal water splashes there with sound and spray. Thin shafts of light strike through the canopy, dazzling eyes grown used to the crepuscular shadows in mid-day.

To my back, the rock bluff rises. The earliest wanderers in this valley would have seen it above the creek, just so, but that the forest on its crest held towering chestnuts and white pines fit for the mast of ships where now anemic woods of dying Hemlocks stand. The massive wall of stone speaks of permanence, or its illusion, as the water does of transcience and flow.

And here I sit for a quiet hour, between shadow and light, earth and sky, between those things that will last and those that move to the sea on these clear currents of time.

Larger image is in the gallery.

Snakebit

Waldo has become a permanent fixture, regular as clockwork, appearing somewhere draped along the stone foundation of the barn, east side, as the sun rises warm in the mornings. Lately, there is also Waldo Junior, only about 18 inches long compared to a good 26 for W Senior. The larger partner also likes to coil in a tangle of taller grass that grows around a tree stump about six feet from the barn wall. Every day we go for a walk, the dog goes around the western, ground-hog inhabited side of the barn. He's not seemed the least bit interested in the snakes. Until yesterday.

In the warm afternoon sun, Waldo left his grassy cover and was sprawled full length in the short grass between the pasture and barn. And so their meeting was thus inevitable. The snake was just lying in the sun reading a book. He wasn't interested in playing, but Tsuga would have it no other way. When the snake retreated into his hiding place down beside the stump in the tall grass, the dog proceeded to follow him, digging furiously. We gave up trying to pull him off or lure him with treats. He was determined to find Waldo. We left him while we cut grass, worked in the garden and such.

A hour later, while the dog was striking an Orvis pose on his bed in the house, I noticed a red patch in the armpit area of his front leg. Inspection revealed a single puncture wound. I see the two of them finally met.

Waldo is a brown water snake: ill-tempered and capable of a nasty bite, but non-poisonous. Even so, Ann is convinced that the dog is not acting right. I awoke at 2:30 this morning to visions of Florence Nightingale as the silhouette of a kneeling human form administered antibiotic ointment to the dog's leg (which he promptly licked off). And this morning before his breakfast, I've been directed by the local pharmacist to give the dog a dose of Doxacycline, just in case.

The pup does actually seem a little mopey this morning. But I think he's just depressed, getting a painful bite when all he wanted to do with his new friend was play around a little. It will be interesting to see how he reacts the next time he happens upon Waldo and company. Hopefully, this close encounter will make him less eager to play tag with legless playmates. But then again, Tsuga may carry a grudge and want to even the score. There are a few weeks before the cold sends the snakes to winter shelter, so there will very likely be another installment of this story. Stay tuned!

FogFest: Debriefing

All things considered, Hurricane Charley could have dealt southwest Virginia a crueler blow than the gray, blowing mist and thick fog that shrouded the mountaintop at FloydFest yesterday. But the cold, gray cloud that descended on the Blue Ridge made the festival an unfamiliar planet for much of the day.

It would have seemed less alien, perhaps, had I not brought with me the memory of the same event two years ago: thousands frolicked and basked in 80 degree heat, juggling, throwing frisbees, lying about the grassy hilltop on blankets around the stages. Set up along the long, 80 acre corridor of the broad, open ridge, the hundred vendors of esoteric or useful crafts and creations were visible all at once on either side of the open spaces, peopled with dazzling, throbbing tie-dyed and button-down humanity.

Yesterday, every traveler walked in his own universe. Were there thousands on the hilltop, hundreds, or only the one or two we could see in the stifling fog at any instant of time? What Others there were, were vertical, walking without seeing their destination or standing in the mist as if unsure of where they were in space. Colors fade in the blue fog, and yellows and reds appeared only at the last instant when others came into and quickly out of your viewspace.

The audiosphere served to further disorient, each stage the center of a sound-territory with its loudest calls projected into the wet whiteness by the directional speakers. But the territories overlapped excessively, and it was never possible to hear or attend to just one performer at a time, save under the impressive, pick-up-truck-sized speakers at the massive and grand Main Stage. Whatever was happening there permeated all other venues, no matter what, while lesser stages held smaller realms of cacophony.

And in this odd netherworld of cold blowing fog and noise, we read, a leaf in a gale. I had wondered how we would be heard against the competing amplifiers and instruments all around us, and the answer was, barely; but I had expected this. My little reading sample was accompanied by the low-frequency tremelo of didgerdoos and manical goat calls and chantingfrom the main stage, and I think Zydego music closer by, at a decibel level far greater than what was coming out of the little mic and amp we had. By the time Nate read a little later in the day, it was misting enough that by the end of his truncated reading, his pages where hanging limp in his hands, and drops were forming on his hair.

Later in the afternoon, the fog had moved away, but only into the next valley, rising and falling to reveal and then hide the main stage that is perched just on the lip of Rocky Knob above the gorge. Far away, but still not out of the audiosphere of the competition, Dar Williams played on the small, intimate Workshop Porch. With the "cocktail party" selective hearing we all must cultivate, it was possible to hear and enjoy her simple music and complex lyrics under a brightening sky. Colors were coming back by then, and you could sense the wholeness of the event, the energy and wonderful diversity of human form and oddity.

I'm glad we went. I'm glad our Writers Circle had a presence there, getting our words in. Too bad about the fog, for those who didn't get to see the scene in full color. But today will be different. Every one of them is.

All God's Chillen Gotta Style

Can't do much browsing or jabbering this morning. We have to scurry off, umbrellas and rain slickers in hand, to the Hurricane Charlie Celebration of Liquid Sunshine formerly known as FloydFest 2004. Actually (knock on wood) we are at the very edge of Chuck's winds and wet, and may get by with nothing more than a shower or two.

This morning, I've decided on 7 pieces from which I will read 3 or 4 in my 15 minutes at the mic at 11:15. Son Nate has the same amount of minutes at 12:15. We'll carry our reading pages in a gallon ziplock bag, just in case.

Meanwhile, and without the least attempt at a seameless segue--some of you might be interested in this Chronicles discussion of "style" and "voice" that pits the Strunk and White viewpoint against the Natalie Goldberg spin on the words, as seen in the following paragraph:

The Strunk-and-White people privilege readers, viewing them as delicate invalids, likely to scurry off to their bedchambers when faced with any sentence diverging in the slightest from the plain style. (Using another metaphor, White wrote that his old teacher Strunk "felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, a man floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get his man on dry ground, or at least throw him a rope.") At the other extreme, the Goldberg group coddles the writer the way an overindulgent parent would a sensitive child: Are you sure you've shared everything that's on your mind or in your heart?

The author concludes with this description of "style":

It emerges when writers are comfortable and proficient with their tools. Style is expressed unconsciously, but shaped consciously, in revision. It is a whispering, not a shouting voice; whether readers discern it depends on their familiarity with the writer and their own skill as readers. The writer himself or herself is aware of it; identifying, developing, and shaping it is one of the main pleasures of the craft.

E pluribus unum

The even overcast lighting was good when I happened on these grape-sized puffballs, but I sure wished for another set of hands--someone to drop a twig on them so I could stay focused on their little round "mouths" as the spores came belching forth in a dusky cloud.

I tried shaking the small tree above them hoping to bring some water drops down and then quickly get back in place to snap the dust of a hundred thousand spores ejected by the force of that one kersplat of water on these sacks of future fungi.

The giant puffball, the big brother of these little puffers, produces 20 trillion spores. I've seen them almost two feet across, spongy white inside like french bread, but in fact, nothing but spores. If each of these tiny motes of fungal future successfully produced another of the same size, somewhere I read it would be enough to cover the surface of the Earth with giant puffballs; or would equal the volume or weight of the Earth--some such believe-it-or-not factoid.

Point is, this kind of reproductive success never happens. It takes that kind of outrageous over-production just to break even, in somewhat the same way that, for the 20 million sperm that compete for the sole ovum, only the lucky one is chosen to produce the single human that will result. For the rest, they do their part, statistically, with the odds up front stacked against any single spore, or sperm. And because of this sacrifice of the many, the few go on, and also through them, the species.

Just Is

Can you see it--the single, garnet-red flower in the very center of this galaxy of white florets that make up the flat-topped inflorescence of a Queen Anne's Lace from the pasture? And it isn't present on every plant. I had always thought this one dark flower part was curious, and one day, I had a chance to ask an expert why it was there.

Both Ann and I were considering going back to school in the early 80's, and UNC-Chapel Hill had programs for both of us--hers in Pharmacology and mine in Systematic Botany. I arranged a brief meeting with a professor of great stature, one of the authors of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas--a text I had both learned from as a student and taught from as a teacher. He seemed the ultimate source of botanical wisdom.

While we were making small-talk in our meeting before he farmed me off to tour the department with some servile graduate students, I thought "Now's my chance to ask him about that little dark floret on Queen Anne's Lace." And I did. And much to my surprise, his answer was "Hell if I know."

And so now, I can tell this little story and project this flower image in class as an example of the fact that 1) not every visible trait has adaptive significance and 2) not even the experts have all the answers.

Yep, this impending role as teacher makes me look at our Goose Creek ordinary through new eyes. How could I use this or that image that is not particularly stunning on its own as an example to illustrate a point? And so, in the way of a warning, I'd imagine Fragments may show a bit of a pedagogical twist in the coming months, since from the beginning, the blog reflects "real life" here.

Hopefully, from time to time between now and end of semester in December, there will be some nice shots that will find their way to the galleries; and every so often a brief visit by the muse (now wearing pith helmet and snake boots) so that I might be briefly in touch with that source from which impassioned writing comes. Or not. Day at a time, we'll see.

The One That Got Away

We've had some cloudy days lately, and this has been very disappointing for Tsuga, who, when the sun shines, is much more curious about butterfly shadows than the uninspiring creatures that create them. Yesterday, I noticed for the first time, he was paying close attention to the insect itself--especially those that congregate on the road or bare patches of ground to lap up the salts.

If I had had my camera, and if it had been set for rapid shooting of three frames per second, I would have a prize-winning sequence of shots for you this morning.

Tsuga persisted until he caught a large spicebush swallowtail. The way he was holding his mouth, it was obvious he was "hiding" something as he walked around proudly but with some guilt, like he does when he finds a bread-bag twist-tie or dryer-paper inside the house.

"Drop it!" I scolded. He did. And out of his mouth flaps the butterfly. Reflexively, he leapt to catch it again.

"Drop it!" and there was yet another opportunity to capture the butterfly flapping to freedom from this large dog's wet mouth.

However, I am sad to report that, after the second release and recapture, third time was not charm, but rather death by dog spit.

Poor Man's Chicken

Ann gets the finder's fee for this one. She spotted it high on the side of the gravel path that is our "high road" out of the valley here. What she didn't provide is a skyhook for getting the picture. This brilliant orange mushroom colony is more than two feet across, growing from a fallen ash tree, just at the lip of a twenty foot drop-off (which I darn near did getting the picture).

The common name for this "polypore" (it has pores and not gills underneath) is "Chicken of the Woods". When young and tender (as this one was) it is supposed to have a "lemony chicken" flavor and is classified as "edible", with the caveat that it causes GI upset in about half who eat it. I was tempted. Ann, on the other hand, said she'd "stick with wings and thighs of the real thing at 30 cents a pound, thank you very much." Chicken.

Larger image is here.

Every Day is Different

There was less fog this morning than yesterday. The sun rose through just enough cloud to diffuse the stark light that makes for the best web pictures. And too, it looks as if nobody rebuilt fresh webs last night, and the remnants of two-day-old webs hang like tattered ropes of ghost ships here and there among the waves of pasture grass. I'd hoped for a repeat of yesterday, but there are rarely two days alike, all the more reason to make spiderweb pictures while the sun shines (just right.)

Four new web images are loaded on the gallery, if you're in a spidery state of mind.

Why Write?

I ask myself this question every morning. And nobody knows why Writing Spiders put their characteristic zigzag message in their webs. Today, is if by spontaneous generation, they are everywhere in the pasture, their two-foot tall snares punctuated by the yellow and black zebra-complected orb-weavers that are, like their webs, still covered with last night's due.

The morning took me by surprise. I was twenty minutes late for the best of the light. I'll do better tomorrow. The time to catch the most striking contrast of web against its background is when the sun rising over the eastern ridge and touches the web at a tangent. Then, the silver threads are set off against the dark shadows not yet flooded with sunlight. As the morning wears on and the sun rises, the shadow creeps closer and closer to the foot of the ridge; the light comes down and not across the vertical webs, and the magic is lost for another day. (More web pictures later today.)

The Foreign Language of Biology

I hope I am through the worst of it. These students I will meet in a few weeks will be picking up the text at Chapter 13 that describes what we know and think we know about the diversity of life on Earth. They didn't get the part that discussed basic biological prinicples like cell division, and yet the chapters they will first encounter are peppered with the terms meiosis, diploid, gametes, homozygous, and phenotype.

I could hardly make myself hammer through another definition and explanation. If it's dry for me, it will be barren and tedious at best for them. These are not the kinds of biological entities where it's easy to come up with a simple visual or compelling example. And yet, without speaking the language at some basic level, these young people will remain in a foreign country for the rest of their lives. What is the least, best vocabulary for these people so they will become aware and impassioned citizens of the natural world?

This morning, I've moved into Chapter 14 in my note-taking and slide-making. Finally, no more definitions. Or at least we'll be talking about non-biochemical and macroscopic things like species, habitats, hybrids and punctuated equilibrium.

I feel for them. Many don't have that great a command of english, and now they will need to learn another language altogether. How much is enough? At what point do the details and jargon stifle all the life and wonder out of biology?

How To...

Some good thoughts on creativity, each of 13 points expanded with an essay and a cartoon by the business-card blogger-artist. A few excerpts:

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, "I'd like my crayons back, please."

9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don't make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

The pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it's going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it's worth it. Even if you don't end up pulling it off, you'll learn many incredible, magical, valuable things. It's NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the opportunity- that hurts FAR more than any failure.

from: Gapingvoid

Flowers Bloom Unseen

All work and no play. I have no idea what this picture has to do with the price of tea in China, but I'm burning out on the textbook-Powerpoint grind and needed some diversion, momentarily.

This is an image I found from a trip to Floyd a few weeks back. When we moved here in 1997, there was a large, unhealthy tree (Norway Spruce?) in front of this brick home some 100 yards south of the traffic light in "downtown" Floyd. Rather than cutting it to the ground, the owners had one of the local chainsaw artists come in and fashion an eight-foot-tall likeness of a family matriarch, who now presides over the old homeplace. If you look carefully, you can see she carries a flower basket where living flowers bloom all summer long.

Okay. Back to figuring out how to explain Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium to students who don't know their homozygotes from their nanny goats. Poor kids. The show must go on.

Jazzed

I can't believe it is only 8:00! I've been multitasking since 4:30, and all of a sudden, the sun is up and the thermometer is creeping clearly into the mid-forties. Brrr! I can handle August because it gives us these teases of autumn--a great motivator to crank up the chain saw and get that firewood stacking up again. The day is an absolute gem. What am I doing inside!

I'm full into the swing of this class prep, clicking my notes into PowerPoint--some thirty screens-worth yesterday. I feel so much better now, have a week or more worth of classes prepared. I should have maybe three weeks ready by the time classes start. I can do this. And it can be, probably will be (mostly) fun! I've already also learned there might be some opportunities to meet some "nature writing" folks on campus, as well, and a possible chance to speak on whatever it is that I have been doing with this weblog, place-based writing, and nature photography, too!

And, while I'm in my jazzed-to-be-alive mood: also, a couple of my photos will be displayed at the Land Trust booth at the big street festival in Blacksburg today. The same will be used in promotional literature for their "One Per Cent" program; and the barn picture will be framed (in barn board, naturally) and raffled to those who contribute donations to the Land Trust this year. I'll be putting together a slide show of my stuff for the Board of Directors meeting in September. This could be a great way to let it be known I'd like to do more with landscape and nature photography...as in making a wee bit of income in order to afford my hobby!

I will be going down mountain to record another radio essay next week, to be broadcast late September or early October. And a week from today, will be reading (what?) at FloydFest at 11:15. Friend TravelerTrish will come in with hubby on Friday night. I'm trying to talk Nate into reading some of his stuff in one of the "open mic" slots. Should be interesting.

The image, BTW, is Passion Flower from our Missouri trip. It presents a unique twist in the ways nature uses petals and such. I fully intended to go back and do it justice photographically when it wasn't so hot. But it was always so hot. And I am a sissy when it comes to heat.

This Is Not a Bill

"Just do it. We pay insurance every month and never use it; that's why it's there. Just get what you need" Ann chided, in response to my regular whining about how sorry the off-the-shelf drugstore braces and splints were. They were doing nothing to stabilize my thumbs at the wrist, and I really needed a simple custom long opponens splint for both hands, at least to sleep in.

So. A few weeks back, I met with the head of the hand surgery department at University of VA Medical school. He agreed the splints were a no-brainer. The OT made them in five minutes, using heat-molded plastic and some velcro straps--all together, maybe $10 worth of material and 20 minutes of time.

Yesterday, we got the not-a-bill:

Provider charges: $243 ____ Network savings: $0.75 ____ You May Owe: $242.25

And so today, I am reassured, knowing that our proactive investment in healthcare will be there when we need it, a safety net of financial protection to buffer against the outrageous inflation of healthcare charges. Yessir, I can feel those three quarters jingling in my pocket already.

Red and Green

This colorful shed door (full image here) is the only non-family picture out of the 150 from Missouri last week, and has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this post. But hey, it's Friday, and I always lower my standards to the sub-basement and anything goes. (By the way, the name of state is pronounced "Missourah", just so you don't embarrass yourself with the terminal "ee" that labels you as an outsider.)

I got the word yesterday that the graduate class off campus will go "no matter what", so that takes away the nagging uncertainty about how I will invest my time and energy for the next four months. The class starts in less than three weeks, and I'll have to be up to speed, sink or swim.

And, re the PowerPoint I needed: I called the university bookstore. Yes, PP is part of Office Pro 2003 Win32. Cost to faculty and students: $11.99. With a few phone calls and some prompt action by the folks on campus, the software was waiting for me yesterday at noon, no hassle. And they will reimburse me for the expense! However...

I have an installation question for you. I want to keep Publisher from my current Office installment of Office 2002, but want to upgrade other programs to the 2003 version from the new disks I got yesterday. Should I uninstall all of 2002; install 2003; then install only Publisher 2002 back to a separate directory? I'd like the cleanest installation I can get, so if any of you have opinions (got a bellybutton?)... I'm eager to hear them. I'll need to be using PowerPoint by the weekend, if possible.

And by the way, students, if you look carefully, you'll notice that the green color in this old shed is not paint but algae, living in the moisture-soaked wood, playing its role as a "pioneer" organism. Already, some lichens have moved in on the lower right. And yes, you can expect a pop test.

UPDATE 10:00 am: Never mind. Contrary to info I had found, Office 2003 includes Publisher. All is installed and living happily on the hard drive. Now, there are new-version learning curves to deal with-- a GOOD problem, I guess.

Hands-on Learning

There is a bromide for good writing: "Don't tell me. Show me." It works for good teaching, too, if it can be done with a large class of indifferent students. A handful of sleeping spiders might do the trick, going around the room, hand to hand. Everybody gets their turn.

Feel them in your palm, soft, drowsy, some stretching as if they were taking a nap. But no. They have been sedated and are waiting for dinner, and dinner is them. Even some of the guys flush with the unnatural fear of spiders, trapped in a macho dilemma, while the girls have no such compunctions. Some shiver and comply; others refuse. That has to be okay. I wouldn't want to exacerbate a life-long phobia; but that will be their loss. The others who held a handful of spiders will never forget it. And the teacher will be labelled as a certified nut-case. Years later, they will thank him.

The mud daubers are back again this year, late, but making up for it by adding extra tubes to their organ-pipe nursuries on the side of the shed. The frantic buzzing of the female resonates against the pine boards, ventriloquial, hard to find. She vibrates her body by contractions in her wings, this process liquifying the mud she will use to cap off one cell of her growing, tubular nursery.

Contents of one chamber: one anesthetized spider (usually a female, since male spiders are smaller and less meaty) and one wasp egg. In a few weeks, there will be a hole over each chamber as the eggs pupate and eventually the winged adult emerges. Some of those new daubers will overwinter here. This time next year, they will be buzzing excitedly around the shed , coursing over the tall grass for spiders--aqua, orange and yellow.

Three. Weeks. Tick. Tock

Three weeks from today, I will have just returned from a family visit to South Dakota. And if enrollment off-campus draws the usual instructor to teach out of town, on the 25th, I'll be heading off to teach my first class, with more than 40 left to go. I had a chance to at least read over the first chapters in the text while I was in Missouri, but now I need to start putting legs on this thing. One thing I'll need and don't have is PowerPoint, and I'd like not to increase my expenses in this little job more than I have to. So, let's go the FREE route.

I'm hoping that, once I get up over the learning curve, IMPRESS-- the presentation program that is part of free OpenOffice--will do the trick. (I installed just this program via custom install from the full 60MB download.) It allows the user to "save as" a PowerPoint format. Can anyone vouch for the reliable opening and operation of these files on the standard digital projector? This will be the first time I will use presentation software in a classroom. I've used it for a few workshops before. But back when I was teaching, chalk had just been invented.

And IMAGEAFTER will come in handy: searchable free downloadable full-res digital images. This should be a good source for images to go into the presentation slides for all sorts of ecology/environment topics. The site is growing, too, so there are new images available every day.

I'm hoping soon to confirm I'm not doing all this preparation for nothing. It's sorta fun organizing ideas and thinking out the flow of things. But I sure could be doing other things--like cutting firewood--before the snows return in November. Ah well. Guess I better get out and carpe the diem.

Dog Days

I have been given responsibility without control--a great way, I recall from my year as a psych major, to create stress and related visceral disorders like stomach ulcers in laboratory monkeys. Well call me Cheetah and throw me a peanut.

I just trashed a long screed, sparing you the gory details, you're very welcome. It seemed a small way of defending myself among friends during a time when I must refrain from doing so directly to the offending party. This task, I defer to those in higher positions. I have reached my tolerance limits. My jaw muscles are clenching. Tension. Let. It. Go. Life's short. Find the good, the noble, the beautiful. Be still.

And so I traveled back in time to last August when we had met Tsuga as a very wee pup and knew we would be bringing him home in a few weeks; and to the August before that, when the garden was green and lush and Buster was in his prime. I was thinking about something I posted about the "Dog Days" of August two years ago. An excerpt:

I went out on the back porch yesterday morning and noticed the white metal chairs were missing. I found them later in the day, over behind the barn, postioned facing the southern sky, down the valley, placed just so for a great view of the Dog Star and its August companions.

My son and his visiting friend had been out in those chairs the night before, under God's heaven, in conversation til the wee hours... not inside, watching a video, playing computer games, or off in a bar somewhere.

Finding those chairs over in the pasture was to me a hopeful sign that maybe our children are unusual, in good ways that matter, because they grew up in the country and because our entertainment has come from the things we were able to find in our back yards and pastures, and the sky above them, right where we live.

So, I am out of sorts this morning. The journal helps give me perspective, brings me back to the larger picture. This little tempest is trivial in the bigger scheme of things. Life goes on. Tomatos grow in the garden. Tsuga is a year old. The son is home with us again. We have a perfectly good, unused summer day before us. And there is coffee left in the pot.

Thanks. I'm glad we had this little talk.

Back in the Saddle

A hundred emails. Forty pounds of catalogs and five of bills. Weeds to the top of the garden fence. My own pillow and bed, coffee spoon and cereal bowl and ergonomic office chair that fits me perfectly. One-percent milk (SKIM: YUK!) and a shower with both heat AND pressure at the same time!

There is no sight any prettier than silver moonlight streaming across the barn roof, slanting across the valley, shadows dark as caves; nothing more pleasant to the ear than the welcoming flutter and trickle of Goose Creek in the hour before dawn of our first day home. The only thing missing is a dog, still at Puppy Camp. We will fetch him home as soon as they open this morning. So how's everybody been?

It was a good trip after an inauspicious beginning. Turns out Ann's drivers license is a year and a half out of date. Would've been nice for them to notice that when she used that very license six months ago to register our new Subaru. But no, we learn of this oversight when the nice lady at Roanoke Delta check-in says, I'm sorry, you can't get on the plane without current identification. We convinced her that Ann was neither middle-eastern nor highly explosive (with some caveats, but we won't go there) and she was allowed to go with her legal, law-abiding, unsuspicious traveling companions--provided she submit to the full-body tooth-fillings and DNA testing at each of the five terminals we encountered going and coming back.

So, after our lost luggage (a family tradition) arrived in MO some 10 hours after we did, we had a very nice visit, most notable the fact that Ann and I spent four days together with son, daughter and granddaughter.

And oh yes, the writerly wheels were turning. Along with the 155 pictures I took as 'official' 90th birthday event photographer, I have my verbal vignettes and family caricatures, the local color, the Kodak moments of dialogue between our kids, their kids, the outlandish almost-relatives who swarmed the hilltop this past weekend.

But then, you wouldn't care to see family pix, nor would they be happy to be seen; and I can't enjoy fleshing out my little snippets of notes in any detail, as much as I am tempted to do so. So, I'll let my son, Nate, fill you in on some of the TINY details. Stay tuned.