Fragments From Floyd

Amazing Grace

At midnight the silence beckoned. It told that snow had fallen. I rose to stand listening, hands crossed at a windowsill alter. Creeks flowed hushed and reverent. In a vast forest the size of cities, Ann and I are the only human souls that hour in a sea of unbroken indigo midnight snow. Ours are the only breathings, our dreams alone hover over an immaculate complexion of winter. Be still, and know...

AntiMatters

Yes, I promised I would undo the damage to the pup's public image after the G-force picture I posted yesterday. But I can't do anything straight up. Yes, I inverted the image of the dog here, taking his very first actual SWIM in the creek this week.

Call me quirky. (No, I take that back: if you can't say something nice...) I like trying (and so far, failing) to get my head around the BizarroWorld phenomenon where the image is real and reflects the corporeal body. There has to be a future metaphor lurking at the very least in this inverted reality--the cosmic equivalent of tail wagging the dog. Maybe, after lots more coffee...

When A Good Dog Goes Bad

We figure it was something (dead) he ate. May have been recreational carrion. Who knows. Might have been delayed effects from the squirreloid substance he popped a few days ago. We're hoping it isn't addicting, and that his face doesn't get stuck like that.

Tsuga allowed me to post this image as a warning of what can happen when a dog eats anything that makes a buzzard gag.

I've also had to agree that in the coming week, I will put up TWO pictures that portray the dog in a nobler light.

Let There Be: Color!

Yesterday in the back yard puttering, they stopped me in my tracks: the painfully yellow petals of three coltsfoot flowers against the rock wall. And suddenly, as often happens when a pure, rich color meets the archives of memory, especially on a drab winter day--I was transported: crayola, Lemon Yellow, 1955. It happens often. Colors carry me back to Crayolas: my first connection of names with colors. The richness of the world overwhelmed me quite literally when I first saw the 'big box' of 48 (The grand collection of 64 didn't come along until 1958) and my visual world has never been the same.

And it is a synesthetic experience at that: who can conjure the memory called Crayola without wafts of smell-memory of sweet paraffin like 48 waxed fruits in a green and yellow lift-top box? One whiff and I am eight years old when I learned that, if you sneek to the back of your second-grade class and put a crayola on the large hissing hot-water radiator, they melt into rivers of grape and navy, orange and green; and the smell of color will be overpowering, flooding the memory permanently with the scent of pigment.

It was the color of this image above, taken on the same day as the Blue Door, that has made it one of my favorite pictures. I can't name the colors of the flowers or the lattice-work from the 64-crayon box. Can you help?

(BTW, the color count is now up to 120, and these are not your father's crayolas, with colors like Brink Pink, Denim and Macaroni and Cheese!)

Planet Goes Off Medication

Maybe it's cabin fever; the winter blahs; short-day blues, even as they get noticably longer and the world shows signs of surviving another amazingly mild winter. It just seems to me the whole world has not taken its medication. What the planet needs is a good spanking; a dose of castor oil; an exorcism, perhaps. I should never look at "news" first thing. Never.

An exorcism will be broadcast live this week by Channel 4 for the first time on British television. The programme, titled The Exorcism, will examine what happens inside the human brain when the rite is performed, but has provoked anger from churches and psychic groups at the front line of a taboo still entrenched in the imagery of the horror film, The Exorcist, that shaped public perception of the practice over the past 30 years.

I don't trivialize the power of evil, either in individual lives or our collective world, so this parlor trick doesn't sit well with me. It only makes me glad we threw away the TV almost three years ago--not that we could or would have tuned in Channel 4 from Britain. I couldn't find exactly when this was to be broadcast (but this week sometime, so I'm assuming its over.) Hope you all missed it.

The Where's We Are From

I've had several folks ask if all the responses to the George Ella Lyons poem Where I'm From writing exercise were assembled in one place.

I've inelegantly copied the web addresses of those I am aware of and can find who have responded to WIF. See the list below. Others back in November 2003 sent acknowledgement that they had completed this poem, but either don't have search functions on their weblogs or I'm too lazy to wade in and find their post from 2003. If you're one of these folks (or if your link is broken for some reason in the list below) please send me the permalink to your Where I'm From and I'll add it to the growing and permanent list. If I've left yours off the links below, please send me the link right away!

I'll have a separate page up before long (and permanently on the right sidebar) with a goal of gathering at least 100 links by June 1. Think we can do it? Send the poem template to friends and family. Then, post theirs on your blog if they don't have web publishing access, and kindly send me the link as well.

This could become a meaningful way of people getting in touch with their pasts, their places and their priorities. I think they make wonderful gifts between siblings, betweeen parents and children--framed, maybe, as gifts for special anniversaries, birthdays or marriage. So, click the READ MORE to open the list in its temporary home. Add to it, please, from links to your post of WIF. Thanks, y'all! -- Fred First / Fragments From Floyd

A Girl and Her Life
A Sort of Notebook
A Tech Monk Speaks
A TIme Like This
All Things to All
AnnaMatrix
Airea
Art on a Limb
At The Time
Bayer Family Blog
Boca Della Verita
By The Way
Can You Hear me now
Chaotic Harmony
Coffee Breath
CovOnline (two here!)
divertimenti
Eclectic
Ellemental No permalink, March 01, 2005 post
Elsewhere...Words
EMOB Daily
Fragments From Floyd
Joe Missionary
Garfette's
GollyBlog
Grismeri No Permalinks / March 07, 2005
Happy Husband (Curt has TWELVE stored here!)
Is THere Anything of Interest
Kingfisher Cove
Knitting Cybarian
Lima Bean Queen
LooseLeafNotes
Magnificent Octopus
Mental Dustbunnies
Mere Catholics
Miss O'hara
Mommy Brain
Mr. Max and Boo
Music and Cats
My 2 Second Shelf Life
My Camera Tells me Secrets
Nina Turns 40
Norge Thingy
Obx2mt Link broken
Older and Growing
PaulaLight
Piffle
Popculture Ate My Brain
Pratie Place
Project61
Purple elephant's Corner
Quantum Tea
REd Grand Am
RedondoWriter
Routon HomeSchool
Sals Journey
Sarcasmo's Story
Sarcastic Redhead (from June 17)
Scarlet Cougar
Sea and Sky
Semicolon
SerenityDawn
SharkeyMalarkey
ShoeHound
Sleeping Mommy
The Spurious Plum
Stand Up and Walk
State of Congealment
This Too
True Grit
True Jersey Girl
Texas Trifles
Turning Points
Underground Stream
Verbatim
Wifely Steps
You Gotta Believe

Friday Jots ~ Feb 25 '05

* Well, I think I'm ready to make the judges decision known to the wife: everybody knows WHO Horton is. Thank you kindly for your preponderous weight on my side of this little debate. And I've sent an amendment to the Floyd Press to make sure the piece is changed to indicate it was a CLOVER upon which the tiny universe landed--not a dandelion.

* Some of you will remember my lament of some weeks back. I'd foolishly loaned some out-of-print books to a student. They showed up in my school mailbox this week with an apologetic thank-you note. Meanwhile, I think I remember loaning my 3D Home Architect disks to somebody a year or more ago. Now I need the program to design a desk; I'm bartering with the guy who gets the walnut from the tree we dropped by the garden. I don't think it was a blog reader who got the disks but probably a relative. I recall the advise you gave me about the lost books: never loan anything you hope to see again; think of it as a gift and you'll be right more times than not.

* Looking back through the digital photo archives of recent years and the boxes of slides and prints from eras past, I'm thankful for what I've seen. Less easy to bring back to memory are the things I've heard. More than most, I've made a point to take acoustic snapshots during my life of backpacks, canoe floats, field trips. There are memories, too, from hours simply sitting quietly alone in the woods waiting for the wildlife to forget I've intruded in their space and return to their usual voices. Nature sound clips like these bring back some of those wonderful moments of hearing like the prints bring back moments of sight. (Serving suggestion: you might want to think about livening up your workplace this morning. Crank your speakers to full volume, then play this obnoxious whiney call of the narrowmouth toad. It's sure to be a hit!)

* Check Out Wild Thoughts: An Online Journal of Environmental Writing. Dave Bonta has a piece there, and I think Beth of Cassandra Pages has or will. How about you?

* Let me ask you once again for suggestions. I want to write a piece about blogging for the March 17 edition of my column in the local paper. I have no more than 750 words to tell what a blog is, how they are being used, why they represent a valid new medium of self-expression and where the reader can go to sample them. Are there things I simply must not omit in this piece? Are there must-read blog posts or online articles that will help me tell the tale? I'm open for pointers.

* Both as a photographer, as a writer and as an physiology teacher, the phenomenon of vision fascinates me--the more so to read that one artist who has never seen can paint scale, parralax and shadow into his artwork. Perhaps we see with more than just our eyes, or can learn to.

Winning Back the World

I remember that shirt. You can't tell it, but the blue cords I'm wearing are bell-bottoms. My thesis was with my graduate committee. I would end my career as a student in two months, and after that, life would be on hold for me for six more, waiting for Ann to serve out her year of pharmacy internship in Auburn.

The vacuum in my life left when the research was done was filled by a period of voracious reading. The topics suddenly were no longer dictated by a curriculum or syllabus but by choice. The holistic discipline of ecology seemed to point the way back to a healthy planet and I was reading everything I could find that addressed the biological future my unborn children would inherit. Rachel Carson's warnings hung heavy on my shoulders, young idealist that I was. I felt responsible somehow for making the world of my future children a healthier and more just place to live. Those days I'd just begun to acknowledge that America could become a Corporation Nation. Something must be done. Earth was not going to become a company town.

I know exactly what book I hold in my hands in this self-portrait: Overskill by Eugene Schwartz. It warned against placing our confidence in technology to solve the environmental problems of the day (which are the same root issues of our day.) Technology spawns problems, then creates solutions to those problems that require additional technology; in turn, residual problems are created by the first solution, businesses grow to fix them, and so on, ad infinitum. What was required was a change in our value system, not another technological fix. It would happen. The time was ripe for the Greening of America.

I found this slide the day the Kyoto Treaty was ratified while America abstained. That same day, new evidence from ocean temperature histories threw more weight toward a human impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Green house gases: capital's business climate. Thirty years later, there have been pockets of positive change in some measures of the planet's health but the overall report is dismal. What is one person to do? I'll participate with and support the small groups who futilely swim against the current of petro-agrichemical empire builders. I'll live responsibly with the earth and do what I can, locally. But I confess sadly that I have lost the dream I held so strongly that day reading in a slant of afternoon sun; a day when anything was possible.

There will be no greening of America. Not in my lifetime.

Singing on the Same Page?

I need a quick vote here. My wife says no. I say yes. (And no, you will not precipitate divorce, regardless of your answer.)

I say that most (or at least enough) people will recognize Horton (from Horton Hears a Who) so that the comparison I make in the final paragraph of next week's Floyd Press column is appropriate.

She says that, in years of reading Seuss to the kids, she never heard of Horton.

And you, dear Fragments readers, say: Heard of? Not heard of?

Here's the final paragraph from my visit to the Museum of Natural History, with the quote in question:

... And so, I drove home to Floyd that bright February day marveling at the serendipity that had carried me to the treasury of Virginia's tiniest residents. I had the strongest sense that I had just spent three hours with someone very like Seuss's elephant, Horton, who is the only being on Earth aware of the presence of an entire civilization of tiny people living on a single dandelion. It is imperative that we know what Horton can tell us about the living world beyond our short-sighted vision. And Dr. Hoffman's millipedes under our feet have more to do with our long-term well-being than we appreciate.

(The complete story before recent edits is here.)

And Then There Were None

A Canadian couple basked in the warmth of a sandy beach in Thailand. The husband recorded the special day with his camera to show the family back home. In the distance, the sea had lifted into a frothing wave. The next minute, it roared over them and swept them away. Their camera was found just recently in the rubble; the memory card survived.

Lunacy and Light

Gothic: a style emphasizing the grotesque, mysterious and desolate; medieval, not classical; dark and brooding.

The coyotes complain in the distance as the northwest wind howls over the ridge above the house. And wait--what's that? Footsteps in the meadow; a woman's voice, singing to herself, melancholic, soft, and in a minor key.

Looking Down

Whilst dealing yesterday afternoon with the toxic squirrel, the moon was just rising over our east ridge--several hours after it became visible to those who live on Floyd County's general plateau. By the time I groggily drug out of bed this morning almost an hour later than usual, the moon was just barely visible through the trees on the west ridge. And so another month's full moon passes unrecorded here, but well documented just across the county.

Meanwhile, while Doug and Fletch and others look up, I've been looking down. In the way of a substitute for a moon contribution and to mollify your sensibilities after the previous emetic epistle, here's a shot of the creek during last week's deep freeze. We have more coming tonight. Perhaps, tomorrow: snow scenes.

Disgustibus Disputandum

He came. He saw. He swallowed.

Adding to his life list of necrophagic morsels, as we hurriedly walked him between work and an evening meeting, the dog discovered to his delight and our horror a very large, dead squirrel. And in that way that famished carnivores do, with a few bolting gulps, the cadaverous mass headed for temporary storage where the sun don't shine. Temporary. Even by dog digestive standards--which must be incredibly permissive--we were certain to see this particular rodent again. Where? When? Perhaps on our rug as we returned home several hours later?

And here is where the real crisis began. Me, I am of the let-nature-take-its-course school of thought. While I don't understand or condone the behavior and would never entertain the notion of getting in touch with that animal urge, I know the dog will repeatedly lose and reclaim his mortuary morsel many times over the course of the next hours. Who am I to stand in the way of a time-honored canine ritual? We'll just deal with it when we get home.

She, on the other hand, is of a more executive-managerial and controlling temperament. And so, being the only Indian in our small band, it became my task to follow the dog around in the yard so as to catch him in that brief instant between garbage out and garbage back in, obtain and flush the squirreloid mass, and be off to our meeting. The moment came. In my laissez faire permissiveness, I hesitated and we had our problem all over again. We made Tsuga as comfortable as we could on the concrete floor of his pen and left for our meeting. I had failed my mission and the chief was not happy. I was sharing doghouse space in spirit with you-know-who as we drove off. Been there before.

And all was well--just as I had predicted--until some wee hour this morning. Ah, to wake to the sound of heaving. I stumbled barefoot across the floor with the knowledge that there may be semi-solid land mines invisible in the dark between me, the retching dog, and the door. He almost missed the rug. He was more than willing to lumber out the door and leave the former rodent with us for detox. And upon returning, finally, to bed, my waking hour (or more?) was filled with wonder at the makings of a carnivore. How is it that natural selection has blinked while this was going on? Eat a dead, parasite-infested body; it makes the wolf sick; his body very wisely says REJECT; he eats it again; and so on, ad finitum. I guess there's just no accounting for taste.

Beauty and the Beast

I can't complain. It has been a mild winter. Alas, so far, we've seen less than six inches of snow, and at that I feel both regret and relief. But there are winter mysteries missing when we have these days of not-quite-winterish weather. We experience cold mud, and enjoy none of the sculptures that water performs on frigid days.

Have you ever seen "frost flowers?" You would remember if you had. Or maybe it is like so many things we don't see in our worlds because we never have. Then, once we know such things exist, they are all around us! Frankly, though, these remarkable formations are not common, even in a winter that is ideal for such frozen beauty.

Look at these images. Remarkable, aren't they? There is still enough winter left you might yet see them in a corner of your back yard, now you know they are not tissue paper strewn in the woods!

My thanks for these links to the proprietess of Rurality--from an Alabama blogger who reminds me that the bloom dates back in the Heart of Dixie are about 10 weeks ahead of bloom dates in southwest Virginia. Her site will be a comfortable place for those who find something of interest at Fragments. Go visit.

Oak Under Ice

Our creeks begin in a dozen springs a mile south of our valley. In their past, they have raged back and forth between the ridges, swollen and angry, carving our narrow pasture out of Appalachian stone.

This winter day, the little stream purrs along peacefully enough, cold, clear as liquid glass, on its way down mountains. It carries the smell of snow to a sandy beach on the coast. Tonight our little creek will freeze along the edges. In a month, we will hear a river embryo calling faintly from under ice and we will walk on water.

Last week, I didn't have an image to go with this passage from the "Creeks" segment of the photo-memoir. It was the only blank screen in the finished package. When I set out on my Tsuga-walk that day, I'd not brought my camera with me. We got as far as the creek crossing by the barn and there was my illustration, frozen in time.

Sometimes, photography is like gathering manna. You just walk around putting those vital nutrients in your basket, saying "thank you."

This image and several others are added to the gallery. Go here, click MORE FRAGMENTS.

Counts and Coyotes

Well, Sitemeter is down again today. This seems to be happening more and more frequently of late. Anybody know of another FREE visit counter as good or better than Sitemeter? Hmmm?

Seguing clumsily into a totally unrelated topic: I just stepped out on the porch for firewood and heard an eerie sound over the shussh of the creek and branch: the not too distant chorus of yodeling whimpers on top of the next ridge. Where had I heard that sound before? Then it dawned on me: this was the sound not of dogs but coyotes. Drat!

I have heard that they've moved up this far north in the state, but this is our first remote encounter with them. We'll need to pay extra attention to the cat. At least Tsuga is large enough now he isn't at risk from a single one or two; a pack--well, that's another story. I'll be carrying the .22 on our morning walk here in a minute and Ann will tie the dog leash around her waist. We'll be watching for an ambush behind every curve in the road.

Burning Bush

Winter outdoors is a play on a stage vaguely familiar, from which most of the props have been removed for the off-season. With the first breathing in of winter air, you know that you have stepped out into a world that is remarkable for things missing. Heat is only one of them. Diminished but not entirely absent, too are color, smell, and the sounds and motion of living nature. Even molecules move with lethargy. Come the play of winter, all the best lines have been spoken by autumn; and, except for the wind, there are no words.

No birds call. Insects sleep frozen solid under bark and sod. No aromas lift in the cold turbulence of winter winds from spicebush, sassafras, white pine, from dank soft creek mud or pasture clover. There should be an olfactory adjective, like 'monochrome', to describe the lunar-stark aromasphere of winter.

---

Above, a little snippet from the 25 minute, 80-image photomemoir "All Who Wander" at the upcoming Appalachian Studies Conference at Radford University, March 19. I wish I could fill the auditorium with Fragments readers who have received these 'images in words and pixels' with such kindness and support over the past many months (but attendance is members only.) I'll be looking for ways to convert the spoken text and Powerpoint images and transitions into a distributable form when the presentation is behind me. I'd like it to be more long-lived and better traveled than this one outting. We'll see.

Perspective

When we pull our way step by step up the steep sides of "Heart Attack Hill", I don't usually have my camera along. Being in those high places along the ridge is a lofty experience, but there are no views of the expanse below that the eye can take in unobstructed through the chaos of forest. We don't go up there often--none at all in the summer, with the heat, the ticks and the tangles of blackberry.

But Ann has found a place not far up the hillside where the Hemlocks, as they die, drop a wealth of barkless, dry and brittle lower branches. These make excellent fire-starter; and she is happy to have a purpose only part-way up that lifts her to a lofty view of the world below. I went along yesterday and brought back this perspective of the barn and road--the first from this vantage point in five years of archiving our lives here.

I need to say more some day about the road. I've thought of doing a "study" that would be an illustrated narrative of Goose Creek Run, from end to end--almost four miles between the hard surfaces. It has its beautiful moments; it has its share of decay and decline. This was once a thriving valley with a church, a store and a community. In fact, just to the left of the barn, you can still walk the old roadbed that once carried a rider with saddlebags of mail up the mountainside to the little farming village of Simpsons.

Everywhere You Go, There You Are

My wife says I'm a map-freak. Guilty. I love the unique human genius that converts real space into two-dimensional representation. Getting one's bearings is pretty darned important in this life. Map-making and orienting one's place in space by map-reading are so metaphorically rich. What's not to like?

So, I killed a precious chunk of time last night messing around with Google's beta map program. Right off the bat, it got a familiar road name wrong in our neighborhood. But this is still pretty cool. Type in the name of your city. Click-drag or double click to recenter. I can see this going much further than previous mapping-direction-finding services have gone. It IS Google, after all.

The title to this post, which percolated to the surface as blog post titles do, reminds me of my old backpacking buddy, Bob, who used to say "I feel more like I do right now than I did when I first got here." Which always left me a little, er, disoriented.

So. Where are YOU from?

A few of you have pondered where you're from using the structure, more or less, of the poem we've used for this activity (read several from links in the comments to the earlier post.) A few more have said they'd send links to theirs today or soon. And as usual, when I read them, I see bits of common experience, but I also see phrases I have not a clue as to their meaning or significance for the writer. This ambiguity gives their memories a certain mystery. I want to know more. Explain: there's got to be a story here.

If I were going further with this vehicle of self-exploration and writing, I'd say ", choose one phrase or line from your completed poem and tell us what that is all about and why it is significant to you."

You know, you could tell quite a larger story about most every blank you filled in as part of this exercise. Oven-baked Saran Wrap? What's that all about? (See below.)

In fact, it might be an interesting project to see if you could weave all these related phrases of your history into a thousand-word memoir framed around these passages about yourself that have come together in the Where I'm From poem. Think about it. Write it. Post it.

My version of WIF (along with a short explanation about the Saran Wrap) follows in the READ MORE section that will appear when you click it.

---

I am from the peaceful banks of a creek with no name; from JFG, toast and blackberry jam and home-made granola.

I am from "a house with double porches," a room filled with good ghosts and creek laughter in the mornings before first light.

I am from Liriodendron and Lindera, butterfly bush and mountain boomers

I am from Dillons and Harrisons, Betty Jean and Granny Bea-- frugal and long-lived, stubborn and tender, quick to laugh. Or cry.

I am from a world whose geography my children know better than I, from a quiet valley where I am the proprietor and world authority of its small wonders.

From barn loft secret passwords and children who can fly if they only try.

I am from oven-baked Saran Wrap and colds caught from jackets worn indoors.

I am from pire in the blood Baptists, from the cathedral made without hands, the church in the wildwoods, the covenant of grace.

I'm from the Heart of Dixie, son of Scarlett O'hara. From War Eagle, Wiffle, UAB and PT, from Walnut Knob's blue ridge and the soft shadows of Goose Creek.

From a "fast hideous" dresser and a home body from Woodlawn, from a grandfather I never knew that I can blame for my love of nature and my stubbornness, they tell me.

I am from fragments, the faint smell of wood smoke, and familiar walks among trees I know by name, from HeresHome and good stock. A man can hardly ask to be from more. --Fred First, November 2003

I am from oven-baked Saran Wrap...

When Ann and I were twenty-two and newly married, my grandmother, Bea, often gave us leftovers from meals she had prepared. They would go home with us in a pyrex dish or Corningwear bowl covered with plasticwrap.

Knowing how new-to-the-world we were (but never quite as naive as she must have thought), Bea would always remind Ann as we left to be sure and take the Saran Wrap off the dish before she put in the oven.

Two decades later when we had the last meal Bea prepared for us before rheumatoid arthritis robbed her of her independence, she gave us leftovers to take home. "And remember to take the Saran Wrap off before you cook it" she reminded us. Yes, Bea, we'll always remember.

Browser Wars

We noticed one day last week that the Rhododendrons in a large area of the hillside above Nameless Creek had no leaves up to the level of our shoulders. It was as if something had come along and nipped entire leaves or half of the ones that remained from all the vegetation in that area. Something had.

That same day on NPR, we heard this story of the demise of ginseng from the remote places it used to be common. Studies suspected the lucrative crop was being depleted by overharvesting by collectors; the root brings from $300 to $500 a pound in the East and some mountain folk still supplement their income gathering "sang". No, it isn't the two legged browsers at blame, but deer. And the ginseng is just a sexy symbol among the few plants some have heard of. Many of those only a botanist would know are disappearing along with the Trilliums, Goldenseal and Trout Lilies.

Unless there is a way to bring the deer population back into balance with our forests, these voracious browswers will cause problems by other means than their effects on the front ends of our cars and trucks. They have become somewhat of a plague, and we sorely need a predator back in the foodweb.

Man in the Mirror

These are the very eyes that return my gaze in the mirror this morning, yet the face around those baby blues I sometimes don't quite know. Such an odd symmetry: he looks out at me from this found image from the lower strata of sedimentary memories in a box under boxes in the very back room; and I look back at those eyes, through them, and know what it is like behind them that very day, that
hour, that instant in thought and memory. I know what he hoped for his future and I stand in the full flow of it twenty years later. What can I say to him now?

I could tell him that aging is like sailing. All you will do is stay on the boat, being who you are, doing what seems best to you in the sight of God in the space between the prow and the horizon. The boat is fixed; the sea moves under you in a steady pulse and flow through no effort of yours. Its current moves only one way. You will look back often but quickly lose clarity of the uncertain paths you have chosen or the ones chosen for you. Know that the sea behind you will be marked more by people than by paychecks, pleasures or momentary praise or tiny successes or failures. And it will come and it will go so quickly.

Aging is a verb, like skating, surfing, sailing. It means to stand firm with purpose and good balance while moving forward into new space and time where you have never been. Its passage will pull at our skin, fray your joints, suck at your strength and memory. Yet you will feel a part of it, the great sea of time. There will be a deep knowledge, even far down the path, that the elemental you is eternal-immortal, even as the shell around those eyes will go through its metamorphosis from the muscled vigor of youth to the craggy, wizened decline that will begin far too soon and last far too long to suit you. But even that is part of the story; it has its own purpose and meaning. Sail wisely and keep your eyes open. There is more to see than you have known.

Weaving Gold from Straw

It is a dream--or nightmare--that goes back in human fantasy as long as stories have been told: to transmute matter on a whim, to tap into the alchemy of the creativity of God. What if our dreams were realized? Suddenly, anything our minds could conceive (for good or for ill) we would create, one atom at a time, from raw nature and from living flesh. How would we use this power, this act of creation, this Midas touch?

Ann's Falls

A dry spell. I've not felt the camera's heft or seen through its eye in more than a week. I sit down to write and out come lecture notes, dry as yesterday's toast. I live on the surface while life is lived in some deeper place than the necessity of getting by. I do what I have to do and have forgotten, for now, what I want to see or say. A drought. But not forever. Rains will come.

She didn't name these falls. I did. I'll tell the story soon to others, then to you.

Where Are You From?

This is a repost from November, 2003. I still get visitors or trackbacks from this one. It is a fun exercise in learning about the small things that give us our identities with the place or places we are from.

George Ella Lyons is an Appalachian author and poet with a long list of children's books to her credit. Her poem, Where I'm From, begins in this way: I am from clothespins, from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride. I am from the dirt under the black porch. (Black, glistening it tasted like beets.)

Each of us is from a place that is more than a dot on the map. Every experience that we can recall has left its mark on who we are. Nobody is from Clorox, but can't you smell the laundry room at the poet's house as a little girl?

I'd like to make a suggestion-- not just to the 'writers' who read this, but to everyone. Actually, putting on my teacher hat: this is your assignment --

Read Where I From, all of the poem is here.

Then, write your own version-- where you're from. Here's the format, the remainder of the form is in the "continue reading" section if you want to try this worthwhile exercise. Cut and paste it into a word processor to work on later. (This is a borrowed idea, not mine, but worthwhile, I think, and meant to be passed along.)

You might be surprised what you find as you rummage around in those dusty old trunks--your personality, your family history and traits, and the places you've called home--as you complete the poem with your own memories and facts.

I think it would be a joy to read this personalized poem from a group of bloggers who "sort of" know each other. This could extend the depth of bond between strangers. The same thing applies within a family. Consider you and your spouse each filling in your own blanks, from your own unique perspective. If you don't want to post it or send a link to it to Fragments, maybe this would make a cherished gift to give your children. I'm willing to bet they will learn something about 'where you're from' that they did not know.

I will repost "Where I'm From" (the Fred version) on Friday. Maybe as the week rolls along, you'll post links to your version that you put up on your websites. It will be interesting to see the small, peculiar things we each select to define where we are from.

This may be a silly idea, but that hasn't stopped me before, why raise my standards now!? You can read some of the comments and completed poems from November, 2003, here--to get you started.

For the WHERE I'M FROM Format: Click the READ MORE link below:

I am from _______ (specific ordinary item), from _______ (product name) and _______.

I am from the _______ (home description... adjective, adjective, sensory detail).

I am from the _______ (plant, flower, natural item), the _______ (plant, flower, natural detail)

I am from _______ (family tradition) and _______ (family trait), from _______ (name of family member) and _______ (another family name) and _______ (family name).

I am from the _______ (description of family tendency) and _______ (another one).

From _______ (something you were told as a child) and _______ (another).

I am from (representation of religion, or lack of it). Further description.

I'm from _______ (place of birth and family ancestry), _______ (two food items representing your family).

From the _______ (specific family story about a specific person and detail), the _______ (another detail, and the _______ (another detail about another family member).

I am from _______ (location of family pictures, mementos, archives and several more lines indicating their worth).

Transitions

"Meet me at X town on the Y river. We'll put in on Sunday and what's left of us will take out mid-day Tuesday. Water's perfect, bring your fishing gear. I'll bring the groceries in sixes." --L

It came written on paper. So long ago. He was best man in my wedding. He and I had rafted and canoed and waded so many miles of Alabama warm-water creek and river while students at Auburn; had graduated, got jobs of sorts, moved away. Our outings had been many, spontaneous, irresponsible, in the years the pop-top pulled all the way off.

L. worked off campus at the Tiger, whose distinction was the highest sales of beer per cubic foot of space of any seedy college campus suds-shack in the country. He preferred PBR. He'd take care of five, I'd finish one, save for the warm last ounce. He'd get that, too.

Life changed. Our daughter was born, maybe six weeks old when L's hopeful itinerary came in the mail. For my reply, I took this picture and sent it to him with a note:

"Sorry buddy. Give me a raincheck. Life has changed. Speaking of change, I'm on diaper duty. Don't forget me." -- F

Rejoice, Dear Hearts

This very hour I have reached a goal--a self-imposed deadline I set for this day back in October that has now been reached--not ahead of time, but on schedule. And I can breathe easier. On Thursday, I'll move one more step along the calendar of tasks for this presentation coming up on March 19: I'll rehearse the full 25 minutes, 85 images and 4000 words in the room on the Radford campus where I will give the live version a month later. I just felt I needed to share this good news with somebody.

And man, where did I dig for the title to this post? I know where. I just don't know why a brain holds on the lines from a southern comedian from so long ago. But rejoice anyway.

Economic Botany

If I could go back again and be a young father with a camera, I'd take more pictures of the kids doing unremarkable things on ordinary days. Back then, snapshots were only for birthdays, holidays, family visits, new pets. I was a miser when it came to spending film and processing expenses on ho-hum pictures. Now, I'd be happy with a trunk full of poorly composed, dimly lit moments on film. I look back at the photographs not suitable for framing and see their stories and I wish I had more.

Nathan here must have been four or five. One day with great enthusiasm, he announced his plan to sell dried plants on the side of the road. We saw this story brewing, so this time I followed along with the Minolta.

He collected them himself: broom sedge and other standing pasture grasses; honeysuckle and various spiky and leafless things from along the gravel farm-to-market road. It was late fall and everything once growing was by then quite forlorn; but this was when the spirit moved our young businessman to set up his roadside stand. We penciled the words he told us onto a piece of plywood. We gave him the paintbrush and some leftover latex paint and put him far out in the yard where spilled white paint would do no harm.

I helped him put the sign on a stake and drove it into the ground through the dead grass at the edge of the yard, just where he told me. He opened for business and waited. We watched from the window as a customer actually stopped--someone on their way to the cemetery at the church just up the hill. They gave him the quarter his sign asked for and carried away their bunch of random dried weeds. Nathan beamed and we were pleased that his great expectations had been rewarded in a token sort of way. But I guess I never quite understood what had motivated this flurry of very serious entrepreneurial effort in a five-year-old. Nate is 26 now. I'll have to ask him what he remembers about the story behind all this, though I imagine he'd have to resort to creative imagination just as I do.

It did occur to me that perhaps plants--any and all and year round--had value and worth to Nathan because he saw me--the young field botany teacher--get excited about finding, scratching-and-sniffing, pressing and photographing plants. He even saw me leading groups of students around to learn about and study plants. Plants must be worthy of admiration so that, even in their desiccated state, people would pay to possess them, just to have plants near them.

While I am not convinced that this explanation of Nate's motives is true, it is just one of the possible stories that comes from this little cluster of unremarkable prints from a box buried deep in the Very Back Room.

And Let It Be a Sign Unto You

From the bleak midwinter, I needed a dose of hope, hence the picture of color, of expectation, and of green and growing things. This was our view from the deck in the little cabin on Walnut Knob. You can see the fenced garden where I ended up on my slippery slope from the ice storm story some weeks back. And it occurs to me, this image was taken from the very spot where the eagle appeared, as described in my piece in the (soon to appear?) new 3.01 edition of the Nantahala Review.

Today, the February sky is blue. But I'm about ready for green.

Friday Jots

* The chapter for 100 Bloggers is coming together and should be ready to send off by the first of next week. It has been an editorial exercise unlike any I've been involved with. As Beth asks, "how did people do collaborative stuff like this before email?" And of course, they did it, but the ease and speed of this effort between more than 100 far-flung authors has been remarkable, and part of the story the book will tell.

Jon Strande, book project coordinator, is preparing to write the opening chapter of explanation for what the book is about. He recently asked for responses to these two questions:

• What does 100 bloggers mean to you?


• How are you explaining it to others?

There are 34 responses as of this morning and I think they give some idea of what the hopes for the book are.

* In the never-ending attempt to keep keystroke trauma to a minimum (the warranty is expired on the wrists) I've been looking for a way to customize Word's right-click menu in lists, tables and text. Here's how.

* I've put on my physical therapist hat a bit this week, advising a back-suffering blogger buddy from a distance. In the process, I ran across one of the best-illustrated programs of low back exercises I've seen. And I should hasten to say: they work to PREVENT back injury as well. (Check with your doctor or PT if you have pre-existing back problems before starting such a program.)

* Some recent quotes regarding Michael Crichton's State of Fear (or State of Fiction) from NRDC:

"The best peer-reviewed science since Jurassic Park!" --William Schlesinger, Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University

"Filled with laugh-out-loud errors." --Michael Oppenheimer, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs, Princeton University

"The car chases drew me in, but the misleading graphs were the real fun." --Dan Lashof, Science Director, Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council

* And now for the really big news: It is a thousand paces from our back door, around our "yard" following the edge of the pasture and back to the house along the New Road. Don't ask me. Ann told me the other day one of her co-workers is counting steps as part of her weight loss program. I got curious.

* Let's see. Need to save room to post an image later this morning. Okay. Final bullet: I'll be heading to Roanoke later this morning for another of those blog-connected opportunities to meet people and do things and put the fragments before a wider audience. You can be sure there will be a blog post from this visit down mountain. And now, I'm getting nervous. The essay will be on the air in fifteen minutes. I get more antsy waiting to listen to it than to record it. Gee, I hope I don't screw up. What if I sound like a hick? Maybe I shouldn't have recorded that one after all. Is it too late to call the whole thing off! See ya later.

Little Did I Know, Someday...

Friends we knew at Auburn moved to Blacksburg so that he could begin a PhD program in aquatic ecology. It wasn't long before we followed them north, settling about an hour away from Ed and Jackie in Wytheville. We'd often meet them someplace in between for a hike. This picture of one such outting from almost 30 years ago, I remember well. (Check out the bellbottoms. And the 30 inch waist! Jeepers!)

Steep mountains bounded this long valley on both sides. A creek meandered through the bottomland, once the home to a community, but this house and barn were the only structures represented by more than ruins. The owners lived out of state. We were only stopping for a break; it had begun to rain. The time would have been early May. I know because that is when the Virginia Bluebells bloom and it was to photograph them that I drove more than an hour to get there.

I even remember the drive over. Particularly, I remember leaving the interstate, heading south on Route 8 into territory I had never passed through before. I chuckled as I pulled up to the light in a tiny, one-horse town. What a sleepy backwater of a place, although it did hold an odd rustic charm. There sure wouldn't be much to bring a person this way. Whatever must it be like to live on such a small, slow scale, I wondered.

Now I know. The traffic light was in "downtown" Floyd.

Peddling Those Powdermilk Biscuits

Rest your blog-bleary eyes and let your ears do the work. Listen on Friday to your daily (or weekly or monthly) dose of Fragments.

We start into our second dozen broadcasts with this mildly amusing family story I recorded at our local NPR station in Roanoke two months ago. That's how long the backlog of essayists has become now. Folks from Carolina and from the Virginia coast who can't even hear their own essays live on the radio are sending them in to our local NPR station in multiples. Getting a slot in the schedule requires much more patience than it did two years ago when I first ventured into this realm of media. I was a real regular that first year, with a piece about every six weeks. I would record on Tuesday and it would go to air that same Friday.

I got in the habit of letting folks know in advance of these little three-minute samples of my Alabama twinges wrapped around an Appalachian core of language. That drawl may come out more in this little story since it is about my Alamaba family's first visit to Virginia in the mid-seventies. Readers often find it revealing to actually put a voice to the words they read. I know I can't read anything Garrison Keillor writes without being glad I can hear his breathy midwestern pattern and pace. It brings more of his personality into the text than the words alone. So...

The details, for those what want 'em:

You can listen via Real Audio: HERE (Live, real-time only) Or if you're local: WVTF Regional radio broadcast: 89.1 - Roanoke; 89.5 - Lynchburg; 88.5 - Charlottesville 89.3 & 89.7 - Charlottesville, Waynesboro & Staunton; 91.9 - Marion, Wytheville, Galax & Abingdon

Date: Friday February 11, 2005

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

...or buy them, ready-made in the brown bag with the dark stains that indicate freshness. Goodness, they're tasty. And expeditious.

There Are Places I Remember

An old hiking buddy Dave sent me some snapshots from a recent overnight excursion to a place full of memories. For me, most of them come from the view along its crest--from the rocky summit of Table Rock, Hawksbill or Shortoff Mountain--whose bare shoulders stand high above Linville Gorge in the North Carolina Blue Ridge. This is some of the roughest terrain I've ever backpacked in. It’s a place like a love affair: easier to fall into it than to get out of it. I was down in, just a couple of times, when we lived in Morganton. I remember a spring hike. I stood midway in a crossing of the cold Linville river, looking up far above to the rim of mountain all around. It felt prehistoric, as if I had been swallowed up by the earth. I have been farther from civilization but never felt apartness quite like I experienced in Linville Gorge.

For a while, the pictures my friend sent put me in a blue reverie for things lost. My backpack is in a landfill somewhere after a quarter century of fitting so well against my shoulders. Trail music--that rhythmic torque of the metal frame, the creak and strain of leather straps and the mantra of Vibram against the path, mile after mile--I will hear no more. I miss the banter and jibes of my buddies, the old duffers whose snores and visceral noises punctuated nearly-sleepless nights on the ground. I remember the first-light camaraderie of arthritic whining until somebody got up and built the fire; then the smell of pine, coffee, wood smoke and yesterday's wet wool.

We say goodbye to some things and hello to what comes next. I stand on the porch in the darkness this morning, blue-black save one lone star low on the south horizon above the pasture. The air is so clean and sweet. The music of the creeks is scored fortissimo across a page of stillness and utter calm. We are alone in this place so far from city lights but not lonely. We are camping on the bank of a rocky creek not unlike those over the years where I have pitched my tent and propped my old pack against an ancient hemlock. The sound and smell and feel of the air is the very same as I have known so many times before in so many remote and inaccessible places after struggling cross-country and fording cold rivers only to lie down in those landscapes under the stars at night and wake to them in first light.

Gone Where the Weather Suits My Clothes

They say that clothes make the man. I do hope that this is not so. I think my family would tell you I've never been a slave to fashion. Like Gilda Radner, most of my fashion sense has been based on what doesn't itch.

But in the approach-avoidance waltz through my various careers, I've chosen my path with wardrobe very much in mind. I've tended to travel only where the work has matched my very generic, very comfortable preference in apparel. If I have to dress fancy, I move on. Why should the cover be any better than the book inside? I follow Mr. Thoreau's thinking that one should be suspicious of any event or setting that might require one to buy new clothes.

Even the fact that my first profession was in biology had much to do with the relaxed-fit dress of my professors. They worked in comfortably worn khakis and flannel shirts. They wore heavy boots to class. They could appear behind the podium in the same clothes that they would wear to collect mudpuppies in a swamp. My stodgy economics professors, or history-well, that was another sartorial reality altogether. So, in my first job as a young biology teacher at the community college in Wytheville, I was able to wear the field-ready wardrobe of my mentors; and for me, as Goldilocks said, that was just right.

Years later as I was preparing for my second career-in physical therapy-I realized to my horror that there could be work settings (hospitals, mostly) where a therapist would be required to wear a starched, suffocating, long white clinic jacket. No thanks, I said: I don't do costumes. I will dress for function, or for comfort and modesty, but not for mock- authority or pretense. So I avoided hospitals and gravitated to home health and to outpatient clinics where clothes-sports shoes and loose-fitting shirt and slacks-were practical and matched the very physical work.

But every week there has always been the recurring dilemma of what must one wear to church: the only place I felt any pressure to conform, to don the expected "uniform." Even those few years when we attended a "high" church on the fancier side of a North Carolina town, I held the line. If my clothes were clean, I reasoned, they were probably good enough for God. To the horror of the deacon in charge of pomp and ceremony, I was the only elder greeting new members in (clean) khakis and a sport shirt. At first. Soon others became corrupted with the deadly sin of casualness.

But don't we dress up when we go downtown, you might ask? And if you ask, you have obviously never been to our county seat. In the town of Floyd, you'll see farmers in Carhartts and mud-spattered boots. There will be the alter-natives dressed in all manner of colorful ethnic-wear, assorted hats and beanies and tie-dye. And of course, you'll see a few lawyers and bankers in suits. (Oddfellas window art pretty well sums up this range of attire you can expect to see on a visit to town.) My wife and I fall comfortably somewhere in the middle of this eclectic mix of wardrobe. We just wear to town whatever feels right to us at the moment. If we've come straight from playing outdoors with the dog, from a long afternoon in the garden or a morning in the woodlot, not a soul will think the less of us for our come-as-you-are disregard for style.

And so in Floyd County, I have arrived in wardrobe nirvana. To work, to town or to church, I wear the very same shirt, pants, and hiking boots. As my friend Doug Thompson says, "In Floyd, dressing up means tucking in your shirt tail." This matter, I think, is merely a symptom of the general tolerance for self-expression and freedom from pretense we have found in the quiet, rural realm of Floyd. And I feel certain that Gilda would be proud of our fashion sense.

This piece appeared in the Floyd Press, February 03, 2005 in the biweekly column, The Road Less Traveled.

Vernal EquiNuts

I stepped out on the porch yesterday morning and was overcome by a sense of impending spring. Titmice, nuthatches, woodpeckers, chickadees, and white throated sparrows all called from or clambered in the bare branches of the maple at the edge of the driveway. Some equation has changed such that the grand reversal of winter has begun. We won't see many visible signs of it for another six weeks, but it goes on, nevertheless.

The signs of spring were once much more tangible. Every March, my friend Ed and I would take a weekend trip somewhere, backpack in a few miles, set up camp and have our Rights-of-Spring Vernal Equinox ceremony (which we made up as we went along.) Sometimes we took our cameras.

I cannot name this creature, yet unknown to science. However, I do know that he still has (and wears) the blue Eddie Bauer 'backpackers sweater' pictured here that he got at the Wetumpka (AL) factory outlet down products sale for $23 in 1974. Beyond that, there have been no recent sightings and it is feared that, while not yet quite extinct, the species is restricted to one small valley in northeastern Floyd County. Which is probably a good thing.

Fixing Things: Planetary Health

The quote below is from an early morning email, author anonymous, since I won't be able to get approval to post this before I have to leave for school. It comes on the same morning when there is mail about future plans for Ecotone where any number of writers responded to a writing prompt with our very unique perspectives on the subject of the day.

I will be thinking about a response to my emailer's question today as I am able. I'll try to write a response tomorrow, maybe just as a comment to this post. I'd be interested in hearing how YOU would make the world a healthier place--going back, or going ahead. Think about it, at least. Write a few words just to get the juices flowing.

Hello fred,

Say you were given the power to fix or right all the eco-wrongs, rebalance the equation between man and earth, Grand Viser of Gaia for a day, which would you choose?

1. To turn back the clock to a less technically sophisticated, less populous time in history when vast sections of the world were untouched, if so which time span?

2. Leap forward into a future where technology resolves ecology issues and produces the needs of mankind without natural resources.

Each has it's appeal, doesn't it? No trick or agenda here, just wondering.

I am not sure I would leap forward, I'm reading John Julius Norwich's final volume of his trilogy of Byzantine history and I might choose the Florentine Renaissance or early Byzantium. Or Mars.

The Aging Peanuts in the Gallery

Say, kids: What time is it?

If you know the answer, welcome to the back nine. I guess my earliest TV memories were of the puffy pioneer, the leather-spangled Buffalo Bob Smith and his articulated friend, Howdy, (who, I appreciated, made it cool back then to have freckles (until Alfred E. Newman sported them on the cover of MAD Magazine. Then it wasn't so cool.)

I had a cousin that looked like Dilly Dally. And I remember, just when I was figuring out what made a dog a dog and getting straight the differences between frogs and turtles--along came the odd creature called FlubADub; I decided the world was a weirder place than I even imagined at age five. I was a little frightened of him. It.

Say. Did you ever notice how much Howdy and Alfred E resemble each other? And wait! What's this?

Howdy morphs to AE Newman, and the "What me worry" character into a head of state!

Well, Kowa-bonga, boys and girls. I gotta get back to work.

Virginia's Biological Bank

Life has always been full of odd twists and surprises, of course; but since the advent of email, Google and anyone's easily-found presence on the internet, the chemistry of serendipity has taken a quantum leap. A road less traveled, indeed. It seems like someone unexpected travels down this way about every week lately. Just after Christmas, I got an email that began with these words:

"By way of your green snake discovery, passed on to me through a regular bucket-brigade of communicants, I stumbled into your series of essays, sermons, and homilies illuminated with stunning color landscapes and leafscapes."

The writer went on to say that my name, unusual as it is, sounded too familiar for he and I not to have crossed paths some time in the past, though he couldn't quite place when or where. Perhaps it was at Radford where he was on the biology faculty for almost thirty years. The writer went on to tell me a bit about himself and invited me, if I ever had a day free, to come down to Martinsville and he would show me "Virginia's best kept secret." He signed his name: Richard Hoffman, Curator, Recent Invertebrates, Virginia Museum of Natural History.

Oh yes, I remembered Dr. Hoffman. If there were trading cards for the world's experts in invertebrate taxonomy, his would bring a high dollar indeed. He is too humble a man to tell you (even if you ask, as I did) the number of species of spider, millipede or other tiny creature he has discovered or that have been named after him. He is among a small and vanishing number of true naturalists, and coming from where I've been, that makes him a sort of hero. And so there was never any doubt I would take him up on his offer to visit. I saw my chance on February 4 on the heels of a winter storm.

Apart from a quick lunch at the local diner where the regulars get to keep their personal coffee cups in the cupboard, we spent our time together downstairs below the public floor of the museum. Here is where the larger work is done--preparing the specimens for display; cataloging the various collections that have been donated, scavenged or accumulated over the years, now stacked to the ceiling in every conceivable corner and hallway. For Richard Hoffman, this is where invertebrate samples from pitfall and funnel traps and sweep nets from all over the state are studied to find out just exactly what kinds of life constitute the biota of Virginia.

As