Fragments From Floyd

When the Cat's Away

I was twenty-something. Probably twenty-even. It was the Scottsboro summer and I remember it well. But I'll not have time for meandering in nostalgia this morning. I have a job to do while Ann is away and not here to deride me: I'm going to shave my beard.

If she were here, I'd come from the task sheepishly, hoping she wouldn't notice the beard was gone. And many times--when I've been brave enough to de-beard--she hasn't noticed right away. But when she does, you should here the hoots.

"Ha ha ha. You look like Frank Burns. Ol' Ferret Face. Go grow a chin, Depitty Fife."

And so I give you exhibit A, indicating that I do indeed (or did indeed at one time) have a chin.

By the time she gets home, I'll probably have seen enough to grow back more salt than pepper and will look like Gabby Hayes again. Heck of a choice: Gabby or Barney. I get no respect around here.

Friday Jots

* The epicondylitis pain still remains (temporarily?) squelched by the one injection a week ago today (Thanks! Joe.) I've not put it to much of a test, what with the rain we've had the past week; and when I do working on cleaning up the walnut, I'll wear the elbow brace. Thanks for your encouragement and concern.

* The Floyd photo-project continues for my young freelancing friend, Jonathan. We spent some time yesterday here at the house looking at his battle plan, plotting places on the county map for possible scenics and then down at my friend Tim's glass studio at the end of the road. Tim knew the name and numbers for several local characters whose arts or personalities made them good potential contacts or subjects.

Turns out there's other work afoot in the county. One guy is here working on a piece on the Floyd music scene for Blue Ridge Country Magazine (someone please kick me for not doing this myself) and another--from Columbia U--is here studying the role that music (at the Country Store?) plays in uniting the disparate groups that have lived here long or come here recently.

* Well, I sent off "Harvest Morning" to the VMI photocontest this morning. It bounced. I retested to be sure I'd pasted in the correct email addy. Bounced again. Hmmm. Will I lose this one as a now-show? I'll try again this afternoon. Deadline is midnight tonight.

UPDATE 9:00 am: Their mailbox was full with overnight entries.(GULP) I got an email with an alternate address and it's gone. Now, wait til April 13 to learn who gets the prize(s).

* I have some exciting possibilities for music to include on the image CD. I'll be telling you more about those very soon, I hope. I was kindly directed by a Fragments reader to Open Source Audio. While I didn't find exactly what I was looking for to meet my current needs, there is much here to explore (and download!) Check it out.

* The Pine Tavern Restaurant, long a bohemian and epicurean landmark in the county, closed quite suddenly and unexpectedly about a year ago, cutting Floyd's restaurant choices in half (at least for Ann and me.) It will be reopening on April 16 with new ownership and a new quisine (about which I can't say more.) But check it out if you're in town. Located about two miles east of town on 221 toward Roanoke.

* The St. Lawrences are back in town, finalizing some of the details of their impending move to Floyd. Don't tell Dave, but I'm buying stock in salt blocks and whatever it is that they feed their deer at their present home upstate. The Floyd market for deer fodder is fixing to spike, good people. Buy shares now!

* I have completed five of the seven parts of the "photomemoir" I presented on March 19. I made the introduction available for download a while back, and a few took a look at it and had good remarks about the software I used and generally about how it performed on your machines, as well as kind words about the content. When I complete the final portions this weekend, I'll probably make the individual parts available for upload and also splice them together into a larger, complete 27-minute program. What might become of "Glimpses from a Blue Ridge Memoir" I do not know. But I was encouraged others would enjoy seeing it so I'm still working to make it available.

* Yes, I know it's not Friday. But it is one of those days I can only focus on JOTS like these because once again, I've waited until the last possible minute to get my act together for class today. I conglubriated too much yesterday afternoon with Tim and Jonathan, and so have to cobble an hour's worth of lecture on the anatomy and physiology of the heart before noon. Doh!

Fragments Gulag

Maybe I'm even busier than I thought I was. It seems someone found a business I'm apparently associated with at a very specific address in Roanoke. I wasn't aware that I was in the Wedding Supplies and Services business. Maybe this is yet another new venture for the coming spring!

Adding to the mystery of my association with this link is the search term that apparently led the Fragments visitor to our quiet valley: SEARCH TERM was BOOT CAMP. True Target, indeed.

Vernal Dreams

Baby steps. Baby steps. Eat the elephant one bite at a time. Take a deep breath and do the first thing.

This is the sense of what looms at the front of my mind this morning as I face an empty page and a full day, week, month and too-full season ahead.

It has started: the spin into what always becomes the most wonderful-frenzied part of my year. The blur of AprilMay is here--a single hurtling period of riotous overproduction, of too much color and the return of fragrance to warm air. The calendar looms with too many things in both the aesthetic and necessary realms that want and warrant my attention.

It will happen all at once and everywhere at once and I will not want to miss a single new appearance as spring returns life to the valley.

I want to be a passive but careful watcher of spring. AprilMay is here. Be patient. Listen and see. Let it unfold. Savor it.

And just then, the days of being here fill suddenly with responsibilities of living here: overhaul the tiller and the mowers; clean up the woodlot of winter's flotsam; order seeds, prepare the garden; finish outdoor projects halted by snows in February. Get busy! Stay busy, or you'll be overwhelmed and never catch up.

I've said yes to extra projects beyond the usual that come this time of year and realize I might have said yes when I should have said no.

An hour ago in my dreams, I was neck-deep in a warm, still pool. I could feel it around me, soft and green. I pushed away from my hold on the shore, my body floating silently, passively toward the dark depths where shafts of golden sunlight pierced the translucent emerald water. My eyes were open; I would not struggle, would not swim. The warm green would hold me up, and I would watch the underworld life below the surface of the tepid pond; only watch.

And I began to sink.

Conjoined. And Purple.

For those of you who are squeamish or faint at heart, a word of warning: the following link contains graphic depictions of surgical procedures, images of internal parts and descriptive and highly complex medical terminology. I am requiring my students to study this daring surgery very carefully, as it brings to their attention many of the processes of biology we have discussed in class.

Our respects and gratitude go out to the daring surgeons who performed this risky intervention to separate five conjoined quintuplets here at Easter. All of them survived, except one who was inadvertently eaten.

Now: to the operating theatre:

Paying the Piper

I realized yesterday that a piece of software I already had would make CD labels, and so have just started exploring the possibilities. Neither the image or the words or layout on this sample are likely to last til the finished product, but it's a start.

I think there is no doubt the images, as they fade in and out, have a much stronger impact with a musical layer in the background. Several of you said how much you liked the music on the sample file posted the other day. The problem is, it's illegal to sell a product with these tunes.

The selection comes from one of two CD's we have by William Coulter. The chances of being able to first negotiate the use of this music AND be able to afford it for this uncertain, small-scale project are slim to none. I hate that. This sound fits so perfectly and is among my favorite music in our small collection.

So I'm not sure how to proceed. Am I stuck with scratchy reproductions of nameless Central American flute performances that have lapsed into public domain? or free-to-use ambient-metal-fusion synthesizer loops? or a soundtrack of me humming the Ken Burns theme from the Civil war series? I looked yesterday for "royalty-free music" and "public domain music" and found the large haystack but wouldn't swear there's a needle in there anywhere.

I could offer a disk with just images, but that prospect sorta takes the wind out of my sails. If any of you have experience, expertise or wildly delusional opinions on this issue, I'd be interested in hearing.

And the Winner Is...

Well, it hasn't won anything. Yet. But it will soon be tossed into the mix with over 100 other images. And you played no small part in helping me decide which image to send--which I will do, later today or first thing tomorrow--provided I come up with the final name for the image.

It was originally titled "* Autumn Morning." Maybe that's as good a title as any. But before I send it along, I've been jotting down alternatives. Any other thoughts? It probably doesn't matter, but for me, the name of something colors my perception of it--gives my eye something to seek out, a place for my mind to settle, guided by the name the painter, sculptor, or author gave to his or her work. So. Add names to the list if you'd care to. I'll be shipping this 4 x 6 image off soon.

* I tweaked the final image some vs the gallery version--increased brightness a nudge on the barn, brightened the nearest haybales and straw on the ground with a bit more color. The original was somewhat too somber-dark, I thought.

Here are alternative names conjured so far. Like any of them better than Autumn Morning? I considered Misty Dawn, but was afraid one of the judges, being from the south and all, might have a daughter by that name.

• Blue Ridge Morning


• Blue Ridge Harvest


• Autumn Dawn


• Autumn Harvest


• Harvest Morning


• Autumn Valley Fog


• Harvest Home


• Harvest Morning


• Virginia Morning


• Peace in the Valley


• Gathering The Harvest


• Morning Has Broken

We've Got Mail

We don't see columns of acrid Mordor-ian smoke rising from the northern skyline above Blacksburg. But there are thriving industries there nevertheless, neat, clean and hidden in the sleek buildings on and around the Virginia Tech campus. One such business is Webmail, about which I would have remained ignorant had I not had a berth at the Roanoke Times Bloggers list just next to the company founder, CEO and blogger.

Small Town, Big Ideas is company founder, Pat Matthews' blog. From there, you'll find links to the corporate page. And since I know some people who are looking to find technology-related work so they can stay in the area, I'll point out the company is hiring. Heck, if they needed a Greeter, I'd give 'em a call myself. My teaching gig runs out at RU in May, and I'll be hitting the streets. Er, the dirt roads.

Here Comes the Sun

Title above is an ultimate assumption and hope, not an observation. I just awoke from a full night of hard rain beating down on a metal roof. We've not seen much sun all month, but not much precip, either. So while the somber drizzle of the past several days has helped neither the water table nor the efforts at spring cleanup so sadly needed in our yard and field, this morning's deluge I can't begrudge. We are a good 30% behind in rainfall for the year. You'd never know it as you drive down our road, rutted and re-rutted by the full springs that send across it the stored water from Charlie, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne of the last hurricane season. This is March Madness of the meteorological kind, and a reminder why I love the month of April so dearly!

I didn't set out to give a weather synopsis--only to post the sheeply picture that I resisted posting yesterday--Easter--when I would have felt compelled to preach, with the appropriate shepherd-lamb-sheep verses. Today, I'll say it makes me look forward to a photo-foray later this week. Ann is going Deeply South to visit friends for five days. T-dog and I will live the slovenly lives of bachelors. I'll be looking around seeing who I can pester for a meal, a beer, a conversation, a hike or drive in the country toting cameras.

Larger Green Pastures image is here.

It's Not About Bunnies

My Gracious GuineaPiglets

I admit right up front I have little in the way of business sense and even less entreprenurial drive. At the same time, maybe I got more than my share of boldness in the self-promotion department. I have this thing I want to say with my life through my stories and images, so there is a certain amount of passion in that--some ego, perhaps; some, just expressive necessity. While deferral of gratification was about all there was in the frenzied child-rearing, income-accumulating years, my wife often reminds me now that, when we buy something that says it offers a 'life-time warranty', that particular widget may not have to last so long after all. Defer? Til when?

And so this long-winded preamble is to say that I'll be looking to make some things available for sale in the next couple of months and promoting them here, in moderation. I am asking for your indulgence, in advance, as our Shameless Commerce Division ramps up.

While the book-writing urges are likely to resurface this summer, the quickest "product" to make available to Blue Ridge Parkway and Floyd tourists would be a slide-show/screen saver CD that would let them share a piece of the Southern Mountain Experience with the folks back home.

There's a lot to consider: how many images to include per CD; how much text to add--maybe a phrase or two from the writing that the image inspired?; how much to charge; where and how to market and distribute; what music to use (public domain or permissions required).

So. I'd appreciate your thots. You can download the five-image-and-music file here (finalists in the photo contest) which will play with a single click on the downloaded exe file. For-sale versions could be both richer and more polished. A looping program of 20 images (at 15 seconds per image?) with some pleasant, authentic Appalachian music (from my friend Mac, perhaps?) might be worth--what?--six bucks? Another possibility is to ultimately have FOUR disks: one for each season. (The set on sale for $22!) The images could be a nice supplement to the eventual book as well. "You've read the book, now see Nameless Creek, the country lane, and Tsuga the butterfly-chasing Dog!"

Anyhow, this is a prototype and also lets you see the photocontest images again--a tiny thank you!

Please let me know of any problems you have with download or play. Note that if you move the cursor to the bottom of your screen while the program is playing, some controls pop up.

May I Have the Envelope, Please

Well, it's nearing decision time. I took all your suggested images, put them into a grid, and looked for commonly repeated image names across all the recommendations. Some that you put high on your lists, I had expected to see there; others surprised me. In the end, I'll have to chose just ONE.

A number of you suggested "it needs to say Virginia". I agree. A few found several images "too perfect" and I know what you mean. I just don't know if the judges will share this subjective valuation of "post card" compositions. Maybe that's just what they're looking for. And I think there needs to be some element of humanity or human activity in the image versus nature untainted. And so I suppose at this moment, I'm leaning toward agreeing with the most-often mentioned image from all your suggestions: Autumn Morning is at the top of my list.

It has good composition and fall color and depth. It suggests a story. It contains elements of human enterprise and presence in the barn, the road and the mailbox. And it is archtypical Virginia country. But I'd put TWO WALKERS as a close second. The lighting is striking, it puts people in the commonwealth, and there is some action to it; however, portrait orientation may cause some problems, depending on how the judges will be viewing these images.

Later this morning, I'm going to have five images among the image-finalists available to you for download in a "slide show" format. You can send responses on this final batch of you want, but I can't ask any more of you than you've already given. I do so much appreciate you sharing in this winnowing process.

Southwest Virginia Blogs

So. There are a few more local-regional bloggers than I was aware of. Thanks to the Roanoke Times for giving the hat-tip to us blogger types. This may grow to become a good resource for learning who's saying what from where in southwest Virginia. Maybe we'll eventually have enough bloggers for a Roanoke-based blogfest of some sort. For the most part, people I meet in Floyd are still among the majority of Americans that don't keep or visit weblogs. But that is changing rather rapidly. First Fragments, then BlueRidgeMuse, then Colleen's LooseLeaf. Soon, we'll have Ripples headquartered in Floyd as well when the St. Lawrences move to Floyd County.

We are blog. Resistance is futile.

So Shoot Me

It had gotten to where I dreaded just pulling on my socks in the morning. And shaking hands? The thought brought tears to my eyes. I considered becoming a southpaw at last week's conference just to avoid the wincing. The 'ignore it and it'll EVENTUALLY go away' phase had passed. Tendinitis (of course along with the other Itis brother, Arthur) had come to stay, and me with a yard full of walnut limbs and trunks to get up before the grass shoots up and the garden needs plowing.

And so, last night, after a nice dinner in town with friends, we went to the doctor's office--or rather his living room, and my doctor friend gave me my very first-ever cortisone shot. Right into the bony point of the elbow the needle went, and down to the bone. "Does it hurt?" the wife ask, I assume, fully aware of the answer.

"Yes, dear, but it always hurts. What's another few minutes of pain if this thing works."

And five minutes later, and now, 12 hours later, I have no pain at all! And grass to mow, wood to cut, fence posts to pull, winter waste to rake... and could even shake a few hands. Reach yours into your monitor there and give'er a good squeeze.

Better living through chemistry.

The Review...

...whose name you cannot pronounce.

The new issue of Nantahala Review is (finally) ready for readers. Knowing more about the online literary publication having attended the App Studies session last week, the website truly is an interesting creation coordinated across the distance and winding roads of Appalachia. I announced some while back I would have something in this issue, and have been able to access certain pages for many weeks. Everything is in place now on all pages, so I hope you'll explore.

On the Non-fiction page, you'll find some interesting reading. I highly recommend Liza Fields piece. I've exchanged emails with Liza and know a good bit of her activism in our former home town of Wytheville. She walks the talk and is an excellent writer. My piece here (On Eagle Wings) may fit someday into a book prologue about finding and getting to know our place here on Goose Creek--the place the eagle saw when we were blind to the future and losing hope of finding home.

At last weekend's conference, I was pleased to meet Rob Merritt, editor of Nantahala Review and especially gratified that he chose to come to my presentation. Rob has a piece in this issue that expresses a hopeful and helpful perspective on living with ambivalence in the beauty and decay of coal communities of West Virginia.

Lastly, if you're a Wendell Berry fan, read Jim Minick's interview with Mr. and Mrs. Berry. Jim is a former Floyd resident moved to Wytheville and teaches in the English Department at Radford. I met Jim for the first time after my little program last week. I was most pleased to have him attend. Since, and after seeing the spider web pictures in the program, Jim sent me a spider poem he has written. I'm hoping to find a way for you to read it. And I think I have just the (previously unposted) spider and web image to go with it.

(Larger image of the two trees before the storm is here.)

Buggers

So Tuesday, one of my students made me eat my words. I'd been using JellyBellies in our discussion of the sensation of taste.

"Oh, you need to try the Harry Potter jelly beans." The last lecture before spring break, they told me the disgusting flavors available.

I swaggered. "I'd eat an Earthworm-flavored jelly bean!"

And so guess what: there they were, laid out on the front desk. And the class insisted: eat that one. Can you tell what flavor it is? as they watched my face for signs of impending emesis.

T'wern't so bad, really. I couldn't imagine any repeat customers for this product if EARWAX beans or BUGGERS tasted too very disgusting. I mis-guessed DIRT, GRASS and PAPER. I got VOMIT right. (And I'll confess to you that I washed that one down quickly with a swig of water. It stayed down.)

So I guess now I'm in the club. Right?

Finding Floyd

Young photo-freelancer Jonathan has decided to come to Floyd County to complete a project over the next six weeks. He hopes his visits will result in 15 images to best tell the story of the full and true identity of those who live within the county lines. He found me--how else: via Fragments--and we spent yesterday afternoon making contacts, kicking around ideas, to give him as broad a picture of what needs pictures as I could muster.

This was not a difficult or onerous task; the idea for such a project has already passed my mind more than once. The difference: Jonathan can pay his bills with his photography. His experience and skill, already at his age, is impressive and I look forward to seeing the county through his lens and to reading his narrative in a glossy magazine someday before long. And you'll probably hear more about this as he accumulates his portfolio for the project. But that's all for now.

I'm painfully behind on class notes--for 2:00 today!--because I was having too much fun showing my new photo-friend the tiny town of Floyd. Today will be blogging-lite day. However, I can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the pancreas and thyroid and their associated diseases--like goiter. You think you've seen a goiter before? That's wasn't a goiter: THIS is a goiter. Apologies.

And against that grotesquery is the charm of Buffalo Mountain's silhouette at the end of a day when the weather changed every ten minutes. I waited for a half-hour at the top of a ridge on my drive home from town yesterday, waiting for that one shaft of light that would break through the churning clouds to turn a ho-hum image into a prize winner. And the golden glow disappeared, and the rains came--again--and I came home damp and happy after a very interesting and stimulating day.

The Way They Built the Pyramids

What! No forklift? No backhoe? Just two scrawny guys with a flatbed trailer, a couple of oak planks, some chain, a metal tamp and two peavy sticks? No way you're going to get those 600 pound sections of walnut UP onto that trailer! (Remember when it was cut?)

And yet, they did. As Bill said, "if they could make the Pyramids by hand, well, we can get this walnut outta here just fine."

Soon, Bill will plank this into a solid table, Y-shaped, to include the crotch most people would consider trash. I'm hoping to be there to get the process on film.

Officially: Spring. Unofficially: NeitherNor

Suddenly the grass grows out the back door in piles, in unkempt tangles, dark green, rising explosively from winter's frozen reserves. This morning the tufts of green are dusted with a skiff of late March snowflakes. The birds--titmice, bluebirds, robins--sing from bare branches, and down on the cold ground they wonder why did they arrive south before dinner was served? The only color, save for hidden greens in the pasture under last years dun and taupe, is the yellow-green of the tiny flowers of spicebush along the creeks and edge of the field.

The remainder of life this time of year is happening high overhead in the reds of maple and sarvice and poplar buds that you can see from across the pasture when the sun shines brightly. But that is just the matter: we've lost the sun to NeitherNor. Just when all of the rainbow potential of nature is being birthed so fast you could hear it if you truly listened, the cheerless season descends in late March to cast a cold, wet winter pallor on our hopes of spring.

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

Then. The sun will suddenly arrive--with all its bags--as if it has come to stay. NeitherNor will be a memory of a time when we required more patience than we had until life would come back into the longer, gray days. The sun will come. And the yellows of bellworts and field cress, the maroons and reds of Trilliums and Fire Pink, and the whites of Bloodroot, Hepatica and Anemone will explode all at once, as if they had been planning this suprise party for months. And then it will be spring.

This is a slight reworking from a post from March 2004. I love going back and seeing how the seasons bring so many of the same peaks and troughs, moods and funks, feelings on your skin, and smells. For someone who could never keep a paper journal but started one a dozen times, the fact that this one has gone on daily for three years is remarkable, and of inestimable value in my fifty-sixth year. Indulge me the occasional reminiscence, won't you?

The Real Estate

I almost forgot: I received the message below from a Fragments reader last week while up to my elbows in Powerpoint and such. Can't say anything about the place, but will pass along for those interested: From the email from a recently-former resident of Floyd County with a place for sale:

I own a house and 5 acres on Lick Ridge, the ridge just above you. If you go up Griffith Creek to the end, it dead-ends on Lick Ridge Road, turn right and travel about 3 miles. The house is a timber frame on the right. It is for sale, and I might ad that I would like to sell it ASAP. I am very motivated. Listed for 134,000. Will consider all reasonable offers.

We put a lot of remodeling into the house--kitchen cabinets from cherry cut from the property, spiral stairs, master bedroon with deck overlooking the valley, two good wood stoves...

And once again, that commission check from ReMax would be a nice token, don't you think? And I'm wondering if I shouldn't just go ahead and get my real estate license and blog and work at the same time!

Vancouver in May!

Our two kids live a total of some five thousand miles away from us, both together. I'd always imagined (at least very early in child-rearing) that we'd have a tight little nucleus--living far enough away from our grown children not to be obnoxious but close enough to visit every couple of weeks. Maybe we'd even see the grandkids grow up close by.

But one's in South Dakota, the other, British Columbia. There is some small consolation in the fact that both have chosen places we'd love to visit; and son or daughter can serve as our tour guide on the very infrequent chances we do get to travel to see them. We saw the plains of Dakota last August. This will be our first to Vancouver, and I am really looking forward (if not to getting there) to being there for a few days in mid-May.

Our plans are just taking shape. I know we're planning on at least two days at a retreat on Bowen Island (hello Chris Corrigan!) and maybe we'll sit in on some classes or lectures at our son's school (Regent College) and I'm certain we'll eat food we can't get in Floyd. (Yes, there are a few ethnic groups not represented here.) And I will take copious photographs, many notes of impressions for future blogging and other writing, and enjoy total immersion in being the different someone I will become in a different somewhere--the altered stated of travel. And I'll feel the conflict of loving other places while longing to be home.

You People Are The Best!

Thank you all for your involvement in this little photo contest decision. Your participation makes this way more fun than just guessing what might have a wider appeal than my own taste.

I would still value more opinions, so keep'em coming. A pattern is beginning to appear in what appeals to Fragments readers. You are both reinforcing some of my top picks and giving me a new perspective through other eyes. And since there appears to be no stated theme as such for the contest, I think general eye appeal is as good a criterion as any.

Toward the end of the week, I'll narrow it down to the top three picks, and post all three in a montage. Then, I guess I'll have to do the eenie meenie miny moe thing and chose just one.

And yes, Jim, we really must have a Fragments Pig Roast if our collective decision wins! Ann and I will supply the pasture and sky. Somebody got a pig volunteer?

Help me Win!

My Radford office-mate put me onto an annual photo contest sponsored by Environment Virginia 2005 (contest rules are here.) First prize is $400; that would go a long way toward getting that macro lens I've hoped for. But I need your help.

I've waited until near the March 31 deadline so I could get a feel for the competition (take a look.) Frankly, at present, while there are lots of nice images, only a few are exceptional. If you have time over the next few days, please oh please browse my image galleries. Not all my favorite images are there, but many are. Maybe a prize winner is amongst them. Maybe.

Give me some gut reactions. If there are one or two that just call out "Pick Me!", please let me know by the name of the image, and perhaps why you think those pictures might be winners facing the competition you see on the contest gallery page.

I'll hope to decide by Saturday and send in my one image and wait for the judging in mid-April. Man, I can just see the late Spring wildflowers through that 105mm Macro lens!

A Place Called Home

National Geographic's feature--just posted today--is Discover Appalachia: Visit a National Treasure. It includes an interactive map. The fold-out paper version is more to my taste; we were offered a free copy of it by the Appalachian Studies Association at the conference this weekend.

Floyd County has three interactive icons, including the Jacksonville Center (my image above), the Floyd Jamboree and Country Store, and the Crooked Road Music Trail--oh yeah, and Mabry Mill, too.

Long the source of pity, suspicion and ridicule, the Appalachian region (parts of 13 states) and its mountains have become a resource both for travel destinations but also increasingly for cultural experience that is rich and genuine. Click around on the NG map; plan a visit. If you live in the eastern US, you couldn't be too far away.

And The Fat Lady Sang

So it's over--the thing so far off it could be easily dismissed in October; the event close enough that the thought of it could cause prickly heat in December; the impending moment of truth like the Gary Larson cartoon with the gigantic peering eye in the rear view mirror: "events on your calendar are closer than they may appear"... on Friday when I found out there were problems with the sound files I'd worked spent so much time on. Then Saturday came, and it went, and there is now a huge mess of neglected projects on my desk and a great hole in the days ahead that Powerpoint used to occupy. And so it goes.

It went well enough. The images, while they lost some clarity reflected from the 10 foot screen, held up fairly well and, while there seemed to be consensus that the text fit the images well, I think it was the images that created the strongest impression from the work. All seemed to agree that the program warranted a life beyond that one showing, and I'll be searching out what comes next, as I've mentioned here before.

There were some familiar faces in the little audience (the room was filled so there was no echo)--a friend from church, a fellow blogger, and my wife; a former mentor and grand figure from the App Studies world who promised he would come and showed up late; a former classmate from the Highlands Writers workshop of two summers ago; a Radford English Department faculty member I'd exchanged emails with but never met; the editor of Nantahala Review who wants to have lunch in Floyd some day; and many others with whom I shook hands afterwards but did not know nor can I recall them now.

And, as so often happens when one encounters the world of greater minds and wider experience than one's own, I'm overwhelmed at once by what I could do and by what I cannot. I can't re-enter the academic womb to emerge for a life different than the one that lead me into science rather than art; I can't be born into a large family from a part of the southern mountains where stories grow like April trilliums or have a mind that favors fancy over fact. I want to say another thing than I have said. I'd like to do it well: poetry, historical fiction, nature narrative and essay. I've dabbled and tinkered with language and ideas and become stuck at thoughts and themes that end after eight hundred words. Can I cross that horizon, and is this how I should spend what days I have left? I have much to think about.

The Dilirium of (Pre)Spring Fever

I see the images from central Alabama showing things in full bloom. I speak with someone from Vancouver the other day; she looks out on a 'snow' of white blossoms in the trees around the park while I watch the frozen kind falling in round muffins on the rock wall in front of our house on a frigid day in March.

And so in this protracted late winter, I am beginning to hallucinate; to see things as they might be; to imagine other worlds free of mud and cold, full of light and color. Bear with me. It may get worse before it gets better.

These are only the first symptoms of the full-blown condition to come. In another month, we'll suffer the rapture of those first weeks of the green tease--and bloodroot flowers covered in snow; then the riotous weeks of full bloom will pass far too quickly; and finally, we'll watch the month of transition from early spring of blossoms to middle spring of tall dark green grass and the chartreuse glow of sun through thin new poplar leaves.

Do not adjust your monitors. Fragments is not broken--only showing the effects of solar changes taking far too long. Our technicians are working on the problem.

An Infinite Variety of White

I need to be getting my conference head on. And my dress shoes. But I just had to see yesterday's snow one more time. Take a look at the large image of the woods on a snowy afternoon; it may load slow for some, but is worth the wait. Dang. It's got me missing winter already, here on the cusp of spring.

I'll be off here shortly and don't know what I'll have time to tell between now and Sunday morning. I'm really up and have a sense of expectation about my first Appalachian Studies Association conference. It hasn't been all that long I've known how deep my roots run to meet the core of mountains. There will be others I'll meet today who have known it far longer.

Traveling Hopefully

*IMAGES* With yesterday's snow, I set a new record for images in one day, and I can't say that any of them lived up to the being, there. It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive, I suppose. But I'll delete most of them, play with a few others, off and on, and maybe come back and visit and tweak when it's too green and too sultry and pictures of white will help me chill in the midst of a July heat wave.

*PAST* Last night, we attended the series at the library that spotlights local residents who have a story to tell. Our friend Jeanne spoke of her father, Max, who was a well-known teacher in the community and a former neighbor of ours (and patient of mine.) He lived on Walnut Knob--an out-of-the-way part of the county (and actually partly in Franklin County) where we lived when we first moved back to Virginia in 1997. While the town of Floyd had electricity by the 1920's, the Knob didn't get it until the late 40's and most of Jean's life was little different from a child growing up a hundred years earlier. Her dad still spoke with not a few Elizbethan remnants in his speech; a conversation with Max was a history lesson, not by what he said, but from being in the same room with him. He was one of the few wise people I've ever met.

*PRESENT* While it will mean he can't come home this summer, perhaps, we're happy to learn our scholar-son has been offered a teaching assistantship with a mentor for whom he has considerable respect. We haven't a clue where his education will carry Nate when he leaves Vancouver; but we're hoping it will be another part of the world we can visit and have a knowledgeable tour-guide child to show us around. News of future travels for the parents--soon to come.

*FUTURE* I still have half a semester of teaching yet; in early May, the year of predictability will be over. And what comes next I cannot say--another contract to teach? some new unimagined thing that will spring up out of this weekend's conference? While this personal quest for growth and experience as a writer and photographer has gone further than I might have imagined when it began almost three years ago, it hasn't paid many bills. (As I am aware having just dropped off this record with the tax accountant.) But while it would be welcomed to offset expenses of my hobbies, that's never been the end point. To be honest, I'm still muddling to find it. It seems certain it is mostly about the process--the people I meet, the conversations and community that spring up every day, and the small successes that come when words or images reach a fellow traveler. But what comes next?

And I always imagined, when I was young, that people my age saw their future with such clarity.

Six Inches of No Accumulation

The Wx boys missed this one. Snowed all night and stuck to every twig. Spectacular and far more beautiful than the single eye of the camera can take in. But I had to try.

I didn't have time to spend an hour and over 100 shots on the memory card to process this morning. But I did. It is perhaps the most beautiful snow of the season, all the more so because Ann didn't have to leave for work as snow fell in the dark (although neither snow nor sleet nor gloom of night could turn her from her appointed hairdo; she called to say she arrived safely).

The larger version of his one I can splice into my final Powerpoint to good effect, since I have a comparable shot of where Goose Creek and Nameless Creek flow together from the fall season. Larger image is here.

What you don't know is 1) I took almost a full 540MB card of images; and 2) I erased the whole bunch of 'em accidentally. And there was great weeping and gnashing of teeth--until I realized I'd only erased them by mistake from the download folder--not from my memory card. Even so, I downloaded a freeware unerase program for when this sickening feeling is for real. You'd be wise to have such software on hand too. It's only a matter of time.

Blowing in the Wind

* Julie, at Seeds and Sprouts, voices her preference for just the very "gray goo" mixed bag blog like Fragments, and...well, she has a nice list of fellow bloggers who are also hard to categorize. The Tutti Fruiti blogs? The A la carte blogs? What shall we call ourselves, hmmmm?

* I am pleased to tell you Floyd County has had yet another prominent writer to appear on the pages of her new blog, Loose Leaf Notes. Please bookmark the page, and when she gets (or rather her Kenny Rogers lookalike host gets) her comments up and running, stop by and congratulate her. This was a major plunge technologically for Colleen, although she's been blogging for fifteen years (I forget exactly how many) as editor of Floyd's Museletter and published poet and author (as you can read about on her former and concurrent web page.) You'll find her a very Fragments-compatible writer and personality, and she will gain a wide readership quickly! Welcome on board, gal!

* A Fragments reader and her family are hoping to come down soon to look at the farm for sale a mile down the road. They've spoken to the local realtor (connection made in the original post) and seen pictures of the place (including some I sent yesterday.) I'll not say who it is, but from what I can tell, they seem well suited to Floyd and had indeed been looking in the area already. But I dunno: is Floyd County ready for TWO BLOGGERS on the same road? I think definitely so!

* And speaking of real estate: This is about the fourth linkage I've made between land-lookers and realtors. Sales have resulted. While I am loathe to be a promoter of massive relocation to Floyd, that impulse already exists out there in urban-weary folks like us. If through the easily-found Floyd-linked blog here, I draw inquiries from those people and connect them successfully with the listed realtor, I'm wondering if this could be marketed as paid service to area realtors: If my contact with hopeful relocators results in a contact with the realtor, that will be X dollars; if it results in a purchase, X+ (a very tiny percent of the sales price.) Just thinking out loud. I need to convert time into hobby money. The lucrative teaching paycheck will be drying up in a couple of months.

The Trees in Purkinje's Forest

--from a cropped image of ridgeline woods and a superimposed shape of the most complex neurons in the cerebellum of the brain, called Purkinje cells. They are impressive for their extensive "dendrites"--a term that calls out to be envisioned in a foggy view of intertwined branches.

This May Be The One

Thanks to all who have offered suggestions and encouragement about the PowerPoint to the Next Thing transition for my App Studies talk on Saturday and the slide show/screen saver/vegetable slicer that may come afteward. I have downloaded and purchased a program that goes a long way toward doing what I'd like to do to make Fragments images (and written/narrated text) available on the web, and by CD or DVD.

The program is called Personal Edition Plus-- a version of Still Motion Creator from ImageMatics. It doesn't have a timeline, so making tweaks to individual slides gets tedious as you have to preview the entire series to see changes. What it does well is create slide show and screen saver packages easily exported to exe files, flash or html.

I've created a self-executible exe file from my introduction. You should be able to download and open it from this link if you're interested. (Size 3.6 MB) Let me know if you have problems with it; that will help me know how to best design this as it grows.

Another program I wish I had heard of before I decided on ImageMatics is Adobe Premiere Elements, which is primarily a video editor, but can make inhanced stills into a narrated slide show. But I'll get my money's worth out of my new software. Let me know if this first effort was a success.

The Season of Trash

It's just as well I was distracted with other things Monday when I returned home from a trip to the post office and back. I had those pictures of the little red-bricked barn to focus on--a creative outlet for my angst, a channel for my anger and perhaps an antidote to ugliness--the unnecessary ugliness that intruded in my thoughts and rubbed itself in my face time after time in that short drive. And by the time I got home, I was prepared to rant. I still am.

First, it was the rape of the land along Shawsville Pike that started my grousing outloud. Some of the steepest land in the county (at least 100 acres, maybe more I'm guessing) was savaged, trashing five "worthless" trees for every keeper they drug back up the 45 degree grade. I know there are restrictions for how close a logger can come to a stream. These obviously didn't give a rat's acetabulum about rules. And the worse thing is, this had to be sanctioned by the local forester. This is "standard forestry practices" at work. I am disturbed, outraged and disappointed.

Second, it is just plain the season for litter. Roadside trash seems to be most apparent when the wet snows have matted down what standing dead grasses that for a while hid some of man's careless effluvia from view. And on top of the ubiquitous mud of March, it gets to me this time of year, as I see in a post from last March about the Trash Gollums. (I was not kind.)

I think what upsets me so, other than the visual insult, is the fact that it was my neighbors that tossed their Happy Meal out the window, and this act shouts how very different we are after all. I cannot get inside the thinking of a trash tosser to understand why, and we will always be separate in this way. They will continue to toss it, we will continue to pick it up.

Lastly, I was back on Goose Creek where there is at present a bit of logging done well, and some small amount of trash under control by those of us who always carry an empty plastic bag for this purpose, going and coming. And there's the old white porcelain appliance dumped down the hillside above the deep green swimming hole. I've gotten over my outrage at that. It's been there since way before we moved here. But not 100 yards further along toward home was a NEW cheap electric stove tossed down the ravine toward the creek, in a half-dozen sheet metal pieces strewn among the mossy boulders. I'm afraid I'll have no peace unless have to go winch it out of there; otherwise, every time I drive out that way, I'll be afflicted by the tragedy of the commons.

Soon, the grasses will grow tall, the shrubs and understory trees will leaf out. The season of trash will have gone behind the veil of green. The scarred hillside will look a bit less forlorn and damaged. Vegetation covereth a multitude of sins.

Community

It was once the hub of the community here along Goose Creek--the old Roscoe Willis Store. Roscoe was gone from the valley by the time we moved here, but his legend lives in the memories of those who stopped to hear his stories and drink a cold Coca Cola from a thick green-glass bottle (with the city of origin on the bottom--you always checked before popping the top on the side of the ice-filled red lift-top chest.) Roscoe lived across the road, and stayed home unless he had customers. They wouldn't bother knocking on his front door unless they intended to spend a while drinking their pop because Roscoe's yarns were easy to start and hard to stop.

One project for the summer that I've considered would be to find those still living who could tell me about Roscoe, maybe remember some of his tales. He was certainly a central character in the almost-lost history of this little valley. Perhaps his story and those that would come from those who tell about Roscoe could be woven into a creative nonfiction piece to incorporate the history of the next abandoned part of the community just around the bend-- the old Zion church. (See here and here.)

And by the way, this building is part of the little farm for sale I told you about. I don't know how I would feel to see this place "renovated": painted, with new windows and doors, skylights in the roof, paved parking-- a craftsman's workshop, perhaps. The old outbuilding would get a second life; but it would lose the sad charm of a gracefully aging landmark.

UPDATE: Thanks to an interested Fragments reader for finding a picture of Roscoe Willis standing in front of the store. That old gas pump disappeared shortly after we moved here in 1999.

Aging Gracefully

Old barns and outbuildings seem less sad as they weather, wear and give in to the inevitable decay of time. The human lives they sheltered were only in passing--while putting up hay, feeding the chickens, shoeing the horse. But nearby farmhouses in decline collapse on the very ghosts of entire families and generations. Homeplaces abandoned shift on their foundations as their beams grow brittle and frail; they gray under faded whitewash; windows break when the bones crumble. Water finds its way into the upstairs bedroom where the roof has pulled away from the chimney of stacked rock. Soon only this will remain towering for a while over the jumble of human stories buried beneath rotting oak and poplar that was cut from the surrounding hills.

This odd little barn has always caught my eye because of the care someone took long ago to cover its exterior with faux brick shingles. Most of them by now are blown into the next valley south, and the ones that remain seem somehow like a gay mask pulled away from a sad old face. The fog yesterday gave the right mood for such a shot. You can see the entire structure in a larger format here.

Glimpses

From the introduction to "Glimpses from a Blue Ridge Memoir." The opening slide is a silhouettte of a city-scape (Boston from our hotel room back in November.) It bears this muted text: All who wander are not lost. --JRR Tolkein.

It has always been easier to tell people where I live or have lived than to tell them were I am from. Unlike this generation's grand parents who likely died in the same county where they were born, I have followed careers wherever they might carry me, far from where I was born; and "home" has pretty much been synonymous with our current mailing address. There has never been a family homeplace for me to go back to. How would I ever know when and where to settle down, to make roots for my children's children, to bond with a particular place for good?

It's odd how and when they happen--those flashes of insight when the heavens open and light floods into our own personal darkness. When I had my revelation of belonging, it was though the words of Sharyn McCrumb, speaking at the Presbyterian Church in the tiny community of Floyd. I wondered if others felt the tremors I felt that night.

McCrumb described the serpentine rock under the Appalachian chain, the core that binds the great backbone together. I perked up my ears: It begins just south of my home town in Alabama, she told us. From there, it stretches north underneath Floyd and all the way to Ireland. The image of this long unbroken line of history and stone conjured in my mind a map, and on it, I could see them in a perfect line: all of the towns I had chosen for homes in our wanderings.

I guess it had just never occurred to me before that moment: In all of my seeming rootlessness, I have never lived far from the southern mountains. In my epiphany that night, I saw that I never could. The mountains held a gravity I could not escape; I had always been an Appalachian. The Appalachians were my core, and I was a native son. And I saw, too, that I would be more akin to those who claim this calling than to those who by chance alone were born where I was born.

But what kind of allegiance does a native son owe to ridges and valleys? How much of who I am is because of where I've been called to live? Would I have become the same person had I been born on Midwestern prairie or Arctic tundra? How am I --how are we-- shaped by the geometry and pulsing life and the history of these hills and this forest?

It became clear to me that building an intimate relationship with place would require a daily immersion in the particulars of wind and snow, of sunlight and storm. It would come out of the moods and faces of ridge and creek and meadow through every season. And it would take time.

But just then, I had time. I had resigned my job in health care one day-- almost three years ago now-- not knowing what would come next, only certain that digging deeper in that same hole would find me no treasure. It was time to dig in a new place.

In the beginning I was at a loss to know how to spend empty time at home alone. I was plagued by two mountainous questions of identity: Where was I, exactly, at fifty-three, and unemployed? AND who was I now that I couldn't say what it was that I did for a living? I needed a new destination, and to get there, I would need a map to put firm ground under my feet for the uncharted months ahead.

This is what I decided: to put features on my map, I would search for them near home, in the things I'd overlooked when home was only a place to spend the nights between workdays. Through the lenses of my camera, and with an open and expectant heart, I would archive the days and seasons. And every day I would write-without hope and without despair--to keep a log of the journey. These words and images will show you some of the landmarks from my travels close to home.

I'm happy to be able to to take you where I've walked these past months. Let me show you the place I am learning to live. This will only be a sampler. We'll make a few fleeting stops on this field trip to a very small part of the Appalachians; but it is the part that I know the best, and it is where I belong: a remote creek valley not far from here as the crow flies.

Contrary to what I was told, our local paper says the Appalachian Studies Association conference at Radford University this weekend is open to the public. I wish I could do two runs of my little piece (10:15 Room C143 Peters Hall): once to the handful of strangers who might wander in; a second time for friends and Fragments faithful. I'll find a way to get it to disk or the web by early summer if anyone is interested. I'll be open to ideas of HOW best to do this.

The Gospel According to America

From Books & Culture

Excerpts from the book by David Dark, John Knox Press, February 2005.

"In an age when many churchgoing Americans appear to view the purposes of the coming kingdom of God and the perceived self-interests of the United States as indistinguishable, what does faithful witness look like?"

Whenever the Jewish Christian tradition begins to take root in any meaningful way, interpenetrating the imagination of a people who often speak their country's name as if they were praying to it, the psychological power of patriotism is lessened or at least checked by an ancient wisdom reminding us that a nation might gain a strong economy, everyday low prices, and all the homeland security in the world and still forfeit its soul.

...In this sense, the better part of American valor might be a prudential, well-learned skepticism concerning our well-laid plans. American ambition is at its best when it goes to the trouble of daring to doubt itself. We have to be at least occasionally receptive to the notion that we ourselves might sometimes be the prospering wicked of whom the Hebrew prophets speak. If we're not, we only appropriate biblical phrases (usually taken out of context) to somehow christen our already made-up minds and surround ourselves (and our listeners) with a biblical-sounding aura.

...and no consigning of religion to the private sphere protects a citizenry from the mad euphoria that demands a religious allegiance to the proclaimed interests of the state. But a culture that allows itself to be demystified by the prophetic witness of the Jewish Christian tradition will learn to doubt its own euphoria; be haunted by the Old Testament imagery of arrogant, oppressive nations at whom the Lord in heaven laughs; and note that humans whipped into a frenzy of what they take to be righteous indignation (whether by waves of nationalism, party politics, or talk radio) often have an unfortunate habit of crucifying people.

The Softest Snow

As we were shuffling around pouring our morning coffee yesterday around 5:00, the snow began. By 9:00, we had four inches of the driest, powdery-est snow I've ever seen. It came from only a tenth of an inch of moisture and by noon, it had vanished under a weak sun. The day before, we saw "flakes" fully two inches across falling so heavy we could barely see the barn; and in the afternoon, something between sleet and hail; then sunshine; then several more flavors of snow. March is a month of meteorological madness--such mood swings and petulance that masks the rise of sap, the mitotic surge in buds of leaf and shot and blossom. (Larger image here.)

Just Listed: Goose Creek Farm 4 Sale

Well, it seems our neighbors have decided to go back to his homeplace in NC. They'd been talking about it, but as much work as they've put into the place, we thought they might stay longer. The listing is not even in this week's Floyd Press, and I can guarantee it wouldn't have been spotted by many folks driving past...because not many people drive past. There is the renovated farm house, new heat pump, new other stuff, lots of work on the grounds. The house sits on thirty (four?) acres with a nice creek running through the property. Got yer DSL hookup possibilities out there, bloggers. Asking price: $196K. Call 540-789-7626 (Hylton Realty) NOW before this one's gone. We'd love to have another blogger on our road. Whatcha say? (Be sure and tell Darlene Fred sent ya...maybe she'll give me a cut of the commission and I can get my macro lens!)

Like Kind: Blog Navel Gazing

I've often envied those people who, from their early years, knew where they were headed in life. They wanted to be marine biologists; or sports writers; or beat poets. But they knew. And when they got there, they often dug the same hole deep enough to find their treasure.

I have never had the patience/character/desire to dig anywhere long enough to become a specialist. My jack-of-(a few)-trades superficiality has followed me into my weblog-writing life, it seems, while there are distinctive, topical blogs everywhere. Hardly any shade of any sport, hobby, fettish or discipline is without its specialty blogs devoted to the minutiae of crochet thread, cricket wickets or crayolas. Poker blogs. Baseball blogs. Dog blogs. (Hey, we're sort of close to the margins of this latter group, at least.) Meanwhile, there are some of us who blog in such fuzzy, generic habitat that we are taxonomically invisible.

It's a floor wax. No, it's a dessert topping. I realized long ago that Fragments was destined to be a gray goo sort of blog. Why should a blog be anything but a reflection of its owner? Mine doesn't know what it wants to do when it grows up. Just like me! And here, almost at its third anniversary. Tsk tsk. We got to find this boy a niche. Or do we?

I suppose Fragments is a photoweblog that journals personal, natural and local detail through the lens of a curious biology watcher with a keyboard. Category: Eclectic Ruminations? Rural Meanderings? Dirt-road Navel Gazing?

Does your blog fall cleanly within a topical descriptor? Fill in the blank: My blog is a "________ blog." I bet not a few of you Fragments reader/bloggers find your own sites equally difficult to label. As the blogosphere becomes more clearly organized and defined, is it important to fit in somewhere?

Tips Time

Ooops. I'm about to run out of my 250 free (VistaPrint) business cards. I'll need more to pass out next week at the Appalachian Studies conference. Now let's see: how was it that I did that a few years back when I made my own? Couldn't be that hard (he said.) And I stumbled around in both MS Publisher and Word (2003) help files on a wild goose chase for instructions. Eventually, I found the clear directions here. And now, I have a little stack of 50 new cards, complete with tiny color picture. Kewl.

And while we're sharing how-tos, I also ran across a