Fragments From Floyd

Papillonaceous Predator on the Prowl

Butterflies. Tsuga is convinced they are here for his sport and entertainment. And, as you may know, it is their shadows that he is almost always more interested in, since learning that the actual creature does not, after all, taste like butter, as advertised.

But the swallowtails on the coreopsis were just flaunting it yesterday, daring him to try to catch them. He dared. He dove. He missed, but not by much. (See intended victim in evasive maneuver just above the Jaberwock's cruel jaws.)

Misfigures of Speech

I know it is said that your enemies will tell you what your friends won't. And so even though I think of you as my friends, I hope you'll tell me to my face. I so rankle when I hear it in the speech of others, so if I am guilty please, risk injuring my hidebound ego. Rescue me by pointing it out at once. I'll do the same for you. We'll be doing each other a favor, truly.

The offense to which I refer and from which I try to steer clear is ORPs: the use of Obnoxious and Repetitive Phrases in one's day to day speech. This comes to mind because all day long (I hate to admit it) I've been yelling at someone on a teaching DVD as if she could hear my hollering every time (and oh there have been so many times) she says "go ahead and..." as in "go ahead and open a new layer." In twenty minutes of narrative, she'll use it 40 times, and she consistently has done so now across twenty hours of her otherwise pleasant and knowledgeable voice. I keep shouting to her "No, just tell us to OPEN a new layer. It won't make you sound pushy if you do. We won't think you rude or controlling. Just tell us what to do. Not to go ahead and do. That's just saying the same thing twice. Can't you hear yourself!" But she doesn't listen. Or doesn't care, I can't say which.

I suppose some people can just tune out that sort of thing and get to the meat of what the speaker is saying. I cannot. In college (somewhere I still have the notebook) I couldn't attend to the vertebrate zoology professor for all of his "uh's" and "um's". Every one of them was a little road bump that made my mental needle skip, and I ended up off track. I counted the skips with little hash marks--all around the edge of the page, until they spilled into the center where my notes should have been. We're talking duhs by the hundreds! And that was the same prof, who, like my CD maven, didn't want to seem too forceful or cock-sure, so he used the terms "pretty much" and "and that sort of a thing."

Which reminds me: we had a neighbor, a man who perhaps had sworn the secret pledge of Devout Indecisiveness. He ended almost every sentence with "and so on and so forth and what-have-you-there." I kid you not. This was an intelligent man capable of normal human vocabulary! But he was mired in this bog of habit and without help, he could not escape. I imagine he is there to this day, and **stuff and such and whathaveyouthere. (**An occasional variant.)

Some people mush their adjectives into a puree to make them easy to swallow: the woods are not dark, they are KINDA dark. The dog that bit them was KINDA mean. They KINDA make my flesh crawl! Ya know? Or "don't ya know?" Crimminy! Don't ask me if I know, turning declarative into interrogative. You might as well turn down that dark road to uptalk if you're going to Ya Know me over and over again before you make your point. Assuming you don't think that would be too threatening to actually just say it out move on.

Sorry. I got on my high horse there for a minute. Didn't mean to throw stones. I don't doubt that I am blind to my own ORPs that make people cringe. Should you and I meet someday for a nice afternoon of conversation, you may find yourself making mental hashmarks, keeping score of my own obnoxious verbal habits. But 'til then, tell us about ORPers you have known--a neighbor, classmate, family member or coworker. What meaningless space-filling sentence fluff and egregious wishwashies have you been exposed to? Wink Wink. Nudge Nudge. Know what I mean? Eh?

Feathered Foto Failures

Twice yesterday, I suffered the terrible occupational hazard of photographer's/birdwatcher's neck. First it was a pileated woodpecker I stalked until I could see his silhouette against the drizzly sky. His rattatatting set the standing stump of a white pine swaying with each hammer. Shards of old bark and frass fell noisily through the understory. I watched him selectively and deftly pick away the leaves of a Virginia Creeper that were obstructing his work on the old stump. But after standing stark still for ten minutes with my neck flexed as if I were looking at the ceiling overhead, I never got the picture.

Then, just before sunset, as I usually do, I puttered around in the garden. And as they usually do, the cedar waxwings congregated in the old walnut by the barn, using its dying branchtips to launch their frenzied looping forays out for insects, and oft times, I'm convinced, merely to show their siblings a new aerial acrobatic stunt they've mastered. Since they were not more than 20 feet overhead at times as I stood there in the bean rows with my hoe, and since there was nice orangy indirect lighting, I decided I'd see if I could capture a cedar waxwing in motion. I couldn't. And trying to keep the lens centered on these speedy aerialists as they zoom directly overhead is a great way to end up arse-over-teakettle in the creek. So, if I decide I must try this again, I will spread an old sleeping bag under the tree (but out of the birdpoop zone) and see if this supine orientation for birds-in-flight photography is any easier on the bones.

Cola or Juice?

Your hippocampus knows if nine (and possibly soon up to 15) years in the future you will develop Alzheimer's dementia. My first gasp on reading this was to think "how horrible to be able to look ahead and know you would some day forget everything and everyone you ever knew, and yet live."

But maybe this kind of foreknowledge can allow us to better understand the elements in our genetics, diet, environment and lifestyles that effect the onset of this mind-robbing condition. Already there seem to be clues: genetics (in twin studies) plays an important role. At this point, the genes we have are the cards we play. But as is the case in many of diseases for which there is a genetic predisposition, having the genes for a condition does not mean we are doomed to suffer their expression.

Recent research suggests two pertinent alterable factors that all of us can exercise to significantly reduce our risk of dementias (including Alzheimer's are: 1) simply drinking fruit or vegetable juice 3 times a week may make you four times less likely to develop ALZH. And 2) early gum disease and the inflammation it causes (say NO to the cola!) can increase your risk by four. Exercise and moderate alcohol use also figure among the controllable risk factors for dementia (as well as for numerous other lifestyle-related disorders, of course.)

So when you need a mid-morning pick-me-up, chose the juice.

Twixt the Devil and the Deep Blue

First, I get all twitchy with paranoia, imagining Google has managed to hide surveillance bots in my sock drawer. Fie! Fie! Run for your lives.

Then, later on the same morning, I'm lured back into the Googleverse by the free download of Google Earth--the ten-year dream of my internet-using fantacy life: a free world map program that will transport me to every town, neighborhood and backpacking or canoeing location I have ever in this life spent time.

Approach. Avoidance. Seduction and revulsion. What's a paranoid, net-dependent, infojunky mapfreak to do?

Bows and Flows of Angel Hair

Field Note, June 25, 2005: From a walk on a cool morning in June, the sun, finally, tops the ridge. Instantly I can feel its benign warmth on my face. I squint into amber shafts of light moving through the trees high on the mountain. Sunrays move like search lights through the opalescent fog, sinking visibly down into the valley, to find wet magnolia leaves along the path.

The physics of a nearby star lifts graceful rising pirouettes of cloud. And the hydrologic cycle, earth's water ballet, begins once more on the banks of Nameless Creek.

Tuesday Flu Focus

1) Trust for America's Health has made available a very complete summary of the nation's (un)preparedness for an avian flu pandemic (state by state: anticipated deaths, courses of Tamiflu, etc.) It also emphasizes what can be done, still, to reduce economic and health impacts from this crisis. I'd suggest this: print out this document and be sure someone in your local health department reads it. Today.

2) FuturePundit's evaluation of the TFAH document. Among his conclusions, the following:

"If a half million or more Americans were at risk from some type of terrorist attack billions of dollars would be thrown at the problem. We should do the same with the avian flu threat. Avian flu is far more likely to kill you in the next 5 years than anything terrorists might accomplish. Our preparations for it should be commensurate with the scale of the threat it poses."

An ounce of prevention...

Worst (Summer) Jobs in History

"The Worst Jobs in History" is the name of a six-part PBS series. It allows the viewer (I am told) to watch the show's host reenact mankinds' most unkind use of human labor, from the Dark Ages to modern times. And there have indeed been some stinkers throughout our species' erratic history. By comparison, my own personal worst jobs are roses. And now as I look back over the most memorable of them, it seems most of my most horrid jobs were of the summer variety.

I was lifeguard and canoe manager at a summer camp. I also helped with the horses. Low point: while rounding up a dozen horses that had freaked and broken through the coral fence in a thunderstorm, my horse leaped over the bottom of a forked fallen tree. He went between the forks. I didn't. Emergency room: sternal contusion.

Summer of my senior year in high school I installed fiberglass installation overhead (my neck starts itching just thinking about it) while standing on a tall scaffold at a new hospital under construction near home. This is Alabama, mind you. It is summer. The windows are locked closed. There is no air conditioning. No lemonade. For a buck 75 an hour.

I spent the summer after my freshman year at Auburn on a barge (about the size of our living room here) on the Tennessee River. On the river (tanning and fishing) by day, housed in the neon-blinking Liberty Motel weeknights. Location: Scottsboro, Alabama. I witnessed a tornado pass over my head through the windows of my red VW beetle. Job description

I had been on the summer job less than a week, pawning myself off as a hopeful engineering student (because that is, after all, what this business was about.) While learning the process of structural material testing (in this case, cured concrete cylinders to find their resistance to compression) my arms are plastered in molten brimstone (literally: carbon and sulfur at several hundred degrees) and I came to work on day three with both arms bandaged to the shoulder. (Same job where by week two, they decided for liability purposes, maybe I'd be safer out of town and off shore.)

First job I had after getting married June 1970 and concurrently beginning graduate school was digging ditches in south 'bama in July. Duration: one day. Heat stroke. Get that degree, boy.

Grad Student: thesis research on radiozinc metabolism requires two hundred toads that we collected on a rainy summer night on the new Auburn bypass. One hundred ninety nine gave their lives to science. One stowed away in my raincoat pocket. Found sometime that fall. A frog mummy. Job description

Grad Student: Same semester as the frog collection: Obtained five foot rat snake for herpetology class points. It escaped in our apartment. New wife jumping up and down on the bed screaming, questions wisdom of recent marriage to biology major. Job Description

Fatherhood looms in the near future. First job after Masters degree (Zoology) and move to Birmingham: I sold fire alarms on commission using the fearmongering script: "Mr and Mrs Jones, (pointing to glossy color 8 x 10 in three ring binder kit) this horrid lump of burned flesh could be your little Sally." Duration: two days, and stop payment on the sales kit. Job description

Pregnant wife, no job, new masters degree, a week after barbequeing poor little Sally: I finally find work at the Univ of Ala Medical Center in dental-nutritional research. Work responsibilities included 1) decapitate 40 day old white mice; 2) bake heads in pressure cooker (autoclave); and 3) pick out their teeth for assay. Probably my most "dark ages" work to date. Job description

I think you get the picture. Now, it's your turn. Bet you've had a stinker or two. Get it off your chest. Come on, tell us about it.

Perils of Poultry Petals

Browsed yesterday in Delmarva's News Leader: The dangers of over-reliance on spellchecker.

"MILLSBORO - U.S. Senator Tom Carper says more research for the poultry industry is needed.

He spoke to WBOC on Saturday from the site of the Delmarva Chicken Festival. He said government funding allows poultry experts to learn more about avian influenza, a deadly bird disease. One infected bird can spread the disease like wildflower to other birds."

The Flu Wiki is Up

Effect Measure announces today the opening of the Flu Wiki self-described as "an experiment in collaborative problem solving in public health."

"The purpose of the Flu Wiki is to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic. This is a task previously ceded to local, state and national governmental public health agencies. Communications technology has now become sufficiently available to allow a new form of collaborative problem solving that harvests the rich fund of knowledge and experience that exists among those connected via the internet, allowing more talent to participate."

Having just opened for business, and, as is the way of the wiki, depending participant additions, there is mostly just a framework yet for what should become a useful central communications hub for Avian Flu news, advice and information. I think we can count on some highly qualified and well-informed contributors here, and they will be free in this forum to speak openly unfiltered by corporate, party or bureaucratic strictures.

I've bookmarked it, because I'm feeling I'll need to come back often this summer.

Parkway Tolkienesque

I'm dabbling in Photoshop. No, I'll be honest: I'm immersed in PS at the moment, because I've sent myself back to school. With abundant thanks to my benefactor, in a kind of barter, J has recently sent me a three DVD set of Photoshop tutorials, and I've almost completed twenty-something hours of the BASIC disk--the first time through. I figure after I've watched and taken notes three times, something useful will stick.

Until then, I'll be making stupid mistakes, like the one above. But hey--sometimes accidents cause novel creations that persist because they show unexpected desirable features.

I had clicked off "constrain proportions" as I worked on getting this Parkway Panorama ready to print and sell (he said hopefully.) And so to my horror, my 180 degree wide expanse of mountains got smooshed up into 30 degrees of view, piling up the little knobs and rises into a scene resembling the Shire. And I sort of like the potential here. I think of this place in Tolkienesque terms at times, and think of myself as a very tall Hobbit. May the hair on my toes never fall out.

Downplay the Uptalk

We see our son not so often these past few years, and each time, after he's lived in yet one more far-off place, he brings home a new way of talking. In college, he lived in Tennessee, so there really wasn't a lot of difference in their southernisms and ours in southwest Virginia. Then during his junior year, after 9 months in Ireland and Europe, the jigs and reels and lilting tones of voice persisted for months after he returned home. With graduation, he moved to Vermont for a year and brought south new words and ways of saying them. Recently, we visited him in Vancouver, BC.

At our first time alone after spending the evening with our son, I asked Ann "Is it my imagination or does the boy end all his sentences with question marks? Have you noticed the rising inflection, and if so, does it bug you the way it bugs me?"

We discussed this with him, just wondering if he was aware of it. "It makes you sound indecisive, and wears me out to listen, because it's like you're asking me (or any listener) to approve of every declarative sentence offered as a question. I thought you should know."

He wasn't aware, and agreed it probably makes him sound a lot less sure of himself and his opinions than he in fact is.

Since then, I've learned this isn't just one of my little idiosyncratic language peeves. Uptalk Makes Me Upchuck says one writer; and another speaks of the linguistic affliction of the helium-filled inflection.

So if the speech patterns of someone you love? end with those little upturned apologies?, do them a favor? Make them stop?

Web Upon Web

Okay, Carl. Here's another in the Fragments Goth series. See the ominous larger image--not a double exposure, but also not one that lent itself to very symmetrical composition. Hence, getting rid of some busy detail by losing it to shadow. Webs of mystery, what lurks in the netherworld of spiders?

For the Common Good

The use of eminent domain or "takings" is supposedly only to be used for the greater good. But whose interests are behind the recent takings in Connecticutt last week, supported by our "supreme" court? If this doesn't concern you, you're living under a rock somewhere. And even your rock might someday be bulldozed to make room for town houses or a cronie's corporate office park.

The common good is an expanding concept, and economic development has gradually -- and controversially -- come to be included in that sphere. Thursday's court decision solidifies its constitutionality for eminent-domain purposes, but -- as Justice John Paul Stevens' majority opinion stressed -- states remain free to set tougher standards.

They should do so, without delay. Lax eminent-domain policies favor moneyed interests over average citizens. States must counter this effect with laws that set high standards for "public benefit" and clearly define what that phrase means. Furthermore, if there is voter consensus against takings of non-blighted property, state laws should reflect it.

...It's time for legislatures to straighten out the loose and wobbly language of eminent-domain laws. If politicians resist, voters can do some "just compensation" of their own -- at the ballot box. Link

How does your state define imminent domain? Are there elections coming up in your town, county or state? If so, what do your candidates say about this most timely subject? If we don't define our 'greater good', if we don't take a hand in defining the limits of this powerful law, someone else (a contractor, a corporation, a political party) will make that decision for us. Take an interest. Or be taken.

Country Dog

First, at the edge of the creek you dig a deep hole in the silty sand with your front paws, throwing it so that it covers your underside with a layer of brown. Next, run zigzags through the wet morning pasture so that your coat is caked with a dozen kinds grass seeds and chaff. Then hurry to find your master (somewhere out in the field taking pictures of spider webs) and show him what a finely adorned country dog you've become. If possible, lick his ear while he's down on his knees, then run around in large circles in the tall grass. Next: find a sunny spot and take a nap. Back porches preferred.

(Secretly, Tsuga wishes we had sidewalks.) via

Front Page Floyd

The Crooked Road is bringing Floyd to regional travelers' summer vacations and the front page of the Christian Science Monitor. Thanks for the tip yesterday from Nantoka ; and I see Floyd's music scene has even been noticed on the Left Coast by Fragments friend Rebecca Blood. Say, wouldn't it be fun to have a grand blogger meetup that includes the Floyd Friday Night Jamboree! Floyd's first Blogging Man (and Woman) gathering!

BTW, Doug Thompson has the Friday Night Jamboree documented in a video available for viewing at his site.

Meth Mouth

My dental hygienist had never heard of it. After all, those who use this stuff aren't necessarily the kind that makes their regular six month prophy visits. I saw this first on a NYTimes piece, with a really sad photo (which I snagged, but somehow, it doesn't mesh well with the play of light in dew covered grasses) and the article is now archived. Just as well. Some snippets:

"The drug itself, a synthetic stimulant that can be manufactured just about anywhere, causes dry mouth, Dr. Shaner said, and that in turn allows decay to start, since saliva is unavailable to help control bacteria in the mouth. The drug also tends to leave users thirsty and craving a constant supply of soda pop and other sugary drinks, which spur the decay; Mountain Dew, he said, has become the preferred drink of methamphetamine users. At the same time, the drug's highly addictive nature causes many users simply to stop doing what is needed to take care of themselves, including the brushing of teeth."

"There are also dentists who point to methamphetamine users' tendency to grind and clench their teeth nervously, aggravating the frighteningly twisted and tangled look of meth mouth."

Just say NO. 'Kay? More here.

Friday Jots ~ June 24, 2005

SLANT OF LIGHT ~ Not to tread on the photographic toes of Mr. Fog himself, here's a rare shot from our valley. By the time the sun rises over our ridge, several hundred feet above the valley floor, the morning fog is usually long dissipated by the heat of the day. Compare Doug's slanting rays coming directly at the viewer from a sunset over the actual horizon versus the near-vertical rays of our 9:45 sunrise over the ridge. I had told myself that yesterday was going to be a sticking-with-business day. I'd just walk the dog down the "new road" over by the barn and come back and accomplish something. I ended up wading the length of the pasture (boy did I get soaked!) looking for spider webs, then doodled with images til almost noon. I confess, at this stage in life, I don't tend to defer gratification like I did when there was more time ahead in life for deferral. Sometimes I eat desert first, and the result often comes in the form of these visual slices of life I so enjoy sharing.

TIMBER! ~ Later this morning, Ann and I will be going down the road for the felling of monstrous white pine that grows very near the corner of Polly's barn. Craig, the treeman, asked if I'd come take pictures of the feat-- a very tricky and precise operation where there is some risk of the tree clipping the corner of the barn. But it must come down. Its roots are heaving the foundation, and one larger limb through the roof in a storm would crush the building flat. So, maybe a little photo-documentary later today or tomorrow.

SHEDDING ~ My gosh, when will the dog be done with shedding hair! But then, tis the season, and I've lamented about it every year this time, first with Buster, now with Tsuga, as follows: 1) I lauded my approach to doghair collection: turn on the ceiling fan, wait for the great tumbleweeds of dog hair to be driven up against the side of the couch, and collect them when reaching for your beer. (Ann didn't like my method, but hey, she's from Venus.) 2) Let it fall as it may, sweaters can be made from the stuff! I suggested a home industry: LabPacca garments, originally in Buster Black, now in Tsuga Taupe! and finally, 3) "Coat your dog in DoggiEnamel--the miracle sealer that locks out fleas, ticks and burs and ends shedding forever! (Complete with picture of product.)

SUMMER READING ~ Help me out here. I'm thinking of doing a future piece in the little column at Floyd Press that springs out of the blogger's book meme (or variations of it) that are going around. One question that should have been part of this 'assignment' is "what books did you read as a child that left a lasting impression and why?" If you're willing, send me three book titles from your days as a reader, particularly if you think today's young readers would benefit from adding them to their list of summer reading. The assumption is that some kids still think of summertime as a time to check out books in the Library Club Summer Readers club like some of us older folk once did. Are there summer reading programs where you live?

WALDO LIVES! ~ "Fred, come quick!" Ann gasped as she pulled the dog up the driveway by his collar. "There's a snake over behind the barn, and the dog is VERY interested. It's huge and I want you to tell me it's not poisonous. "It's just Waldo" I said with confidence. And sure enough, he's a little bigger and badder than last year, all curled up inside the center of a cinderblock. I goosed him with my hiking stick, and of course he hissed and struck at it before slithering off under the barn. Soon, on sunny mornings, he'll be cryptically draped along the stone foundation of the barn again, and we'll play "where's Waldo."

Morning Mist

The Primordial Ooze of the Blogosphere

In July, 2003, I was secretly delighted to find out my weblog had even made the "ratings" at all. This, even back in the early days when there were, if I'm remembering correctly, only about 50K blogs listed in the Truth Laid Bear Blogging ecosystem. Somewhere near the very end, I qualified (by whatever arcane formulae are used to calculate this, and three years later, I'm still clueless) as an Insignificant Microbe. I pretended to take offense:

I feel compelled to voice my resentment at the reference by innuendo on behalf of my kindred corpuscles that our weblogs are 'mere microbes' at the bottom of the food chain. That this blogger and associated blogs are AT THE BOTTOM, there can be no debate. But microbes! Please!

Call it hubris, but I consider myself higher than the microbe level, much higher....more on the order of a rotifer, tardigrade, or gastrotrich....perhaps not sentient in the InstaPundit way, but multicellular, by gosh....way beyond the level of staphylococcus.

And I think I speak for other hierarchy-impaired bloggers who hope one day, after regurgitating the crumbs that trickle down from the Top Feeders above, to one day grow into truly macroscopic creatures....flatworm, flukes, leeches!

Yes, we are small and insignificant, and the higher feeders swallow hundreds of us with their corn flakes every morning, but we ARE NOT MICROBES, and its time we took a stand:

We are M.A.D! Multicellular And Defiant! MADBLOGGERS! All for one and all about nothing in particular!!

There, I feel better. Think I'll go take a bath in a drop of pond water.

After three years of early morning writing in indifference to the drifting of continents, impact of meteors or rise of the terrible lizards, Fragments lives into the present era. Survival of the fittest? I think not. I attribute the evolutionary staying power of this blog far more to chance than to design, to blissful ignorance rather than to intelligence. I now have a backbone and walk upright, a TLB Large Mammal. Why is it that I feel at times more like an insignificant microbe than ever, one among the millions of blogs whose numbers grow by 30,000 a day? Why blog against nature red in tooth and claw?

I think the motivation to write and read blogs comes from the knowledge that each of those 30K new blogs are not as alike as peas in a pod or staphylococcus in a petrie dish. Each is as unique as the DNA of its author, a phenotypic expression of personality, experience and purpose. But subject to the selection pressures of real life, 999 out of 1000 of these newly evolving blogs will be born to die, to go extinct in two months, lacking the fitness--whatever odd ingredient that is, after all--to thrive, grow, compete. But some will live, propagate ideas and grow synaptic networks with like minds in a living net of words.

Meanwhile, some of us old-timers persist, in spite of the odds and without a clue where this adventure in emerging diversity will carry us. But it feels more and more as if the future is not merely a matter of my individual survival as a blogger. It feels as if there are forces at work, beyond our private purposes or personalities, that are shaping blogs-as-organism. Perhaps we are on our way in some strange lineage toward becoming a collective multinucleate creature possessing powers and properties for change we could not imagine as mere microbes. Could it be that the Grand Scheme calls for something like this potentially-cooperative syncytium of voices to draw us back from the brink of the abyss? Will blogs united become a force of natural selection in human history?

Who can say. I only know the this medium has been a force for good in my life, and trust in some small way it has brought at least some pleasant images into the thought-world of others. And if we each act locally for good, in the end, our impact can be global. Staphylococci of the world UNITE! We have more at stake than our egos or blog rankings!

Kodachrome Days

As photographic composition goes, I can't get too excited about this image. But as catalyst to memory from the middle of a snowy January day, this will carry me back to the colors, textures and smells of June pasture after a cold front has passed through. Clearness, coolness and color--a snapshot of the times of our lives.

I've been back over in the dew again morning already, even though it's barely light. A dense fog has settled into the valley. And again, there is no focal point than the valley itself, landscape for its own sake. But I'll return one more time later, as the sun rises. I can't watch it happen from the windows. Hopefully, the fog will not burn off completely before the light becomes a reason of its own to be there in the wet grass of June. Life on the planet is good, if we keep our vision sufficiently circumscribed.

This Means War

Yummy Peanut Butter! Delicious! Come! Eat! Enjoy!

The tops are eaten out of most of the green pepper plants. The sunflowers are eaten to the ground. One deer, according to the tracks, stepped between the strands of electric wire and helped himself to the product of hours of work (read: bending, kneeling, swatting gnats, sweating, miles of walking, carrying water, repairing worthless fence...you get the idea.)

What we need is a little operant conditioning. So I'm hoping the yummy lure (not well shown in the little picture here) will bring about a strong and lasting negative reinforcement for any deer who thinks I am in the business of growing deer salad.

Our neighbors we visited Monday evening have built crude 10 foot fences around their well-established garden plots. We can't do that. A 12 foot locust pole would have to be sunk 2 feet in the ground. Our garden, from necessity being the only flat sunny place that isn't a pure layer of river jack, is partly over the septic field. Tilling depth is fine. Deeper, we're messing with corrugated pipe. What are we going to do?

I can't tell you the sickening sense of being violated when you see those deep cloven prints across your deep-dug beds. (Oh my back!) "Ah, the tomatoes are looking good. Lettuce needs thinning already. Hmm. Better transplant the chard. AAAKKKKKKKK! My peppers!" If we had neighbors, they would have shared my moment of angst.

"Animal caught in a trap" they would have thought, looking up from their morning paper.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

Yesterday in the morning coffee browsing session, I ran across this wonderful Charles Atlas era Stong Man Stunts post via Metafilter. (Do take a look at some of these, but don't try them without adult supervision!)

And while reading about bending steel rods and tearing telephone books in half with your bare hands, I remembered a month or so back, Ann had tossed some long-lost snapshots on my desk (since then, buried under bills and CD cases) and asked sarcastically "ya got any idea who THIS is?" Yesterday I dug down to the lower strata and retrieved one of those pictures.

Duh. Sure I know who it is. It's Charlie Brown in his "I'm gonna whip Lucy's ___ period" in June, summer of 1985. Rumor has it that twenty years later, those six pack abs look more like a pony keg. That's what I hear.

Summer Solstice: The Gathering

We've lived here now going into our seventh year (can it be?) and have known that, just up over that ridge on the east side of our valley, we have neighbors. But they, having lived on their land in Floyd for almost thirty years know the trails well, and will occasionally walk the mile and a half, through the woods, down to the old road along Nameless Creek and end up on Goose Creek Road by our barn.

"You need to walk up and see us" they tell us, but we never have. Last night, we did. Well, we didn't walk it, but we spent a few hours at their place at their big annual Summer Solstice gathering. We saw the headwaters of Nameless Creek. We got a different feel for our place in the larger scheme of things, being up on the ridge that we usually see on our pasture horizon. We put our little creek drainage into a larger perspective, got our bearings you might say. People become "real" neighbors after you visit them in their homes, share a meal. And last night we shared a potluck meal with maybe sixty of our more colorful Floyd County alter-native neighbors. It was indeed a cultural event. A multicultural event, actually.

We found a place to carry our paper plates full of organic vegetarian salads and such, and as we were sitting there, we became aware of a rhythmic commotion around the corner of the two-story farmhouse. I thought at first it was a boom box and the music was pure, raw percussion. It grew louder; more parts came in: cowbells, clanging pipes, sounds I could not name, several drum tones in vastly complex syncopated beats. And it was getting closer. And in a few minutes, from under the shade of a giant maple comes the procession of the Kasun Ensemble, by then in full tempo--and smiling ear to ear. We were obliged to set our paper plates down (marauding pups notwithstanding) because it is futile to resist moving to the beat of Ga.

Kasun (who live in Floyd) "is now considered one of Ghana's most innovative and powerful music and dance ensembles. By blending the authentic sounds of traditional instruments with the exuberance of hilife music and the complexity of African jazz, they are developing a unique Ga sound and bringing the tropical passion of West African music and dance to the world stage."

How cool is that: a mile from home as the crow flies, and in a different world entirely. And never more at home. There's no place like it.

MegaMoon

Be sure and see the "lowest hanging full moon in 18 years" during the next three nights. It will appear huge, and this NASA article tells you why.

Spring into Slumber

The third annual Spring into Summer street festival tried to make up in enthusiasm what it lacked in attendance. Somebody forgot to tell the public we were celebrating Fathers Day, the coming of summer and our downtown merchants. Even so, in the coolness and drizzle, it had its moments.

I posted one puny picture to the galleries. Doug Thompson got a nice little video with very good sound quality, I might add, Mr. T.

H5N1: This is a Test

For the three of you who are following the bird flu developments, Effect Measure is the weblog by "senior public health scientists and practitioners." You might find information here that hasn't been sterilized and diluted for the masses. You've read my concerns on this subject going back to last fall. One of my chief issues is the economic and societal impact, WHEN (a word rapidly replacing the IF of six months ago) a pandemic reaches the US. From a recent post...

"A pandemic of influenza could result in 350 million deaths globally/"said Michael Osterholm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, "and would cripple the global economy with the suspension of international trade." [Dr. Michael] Osterholm, associate director for the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, [said] at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting June 16.

...Osterholm characterized a pandemic influenza as "the perfect storm" for the global economy because of its potential effect on countries that depend on overnight international trade for critical services.

"Collateral damage from the pandemic would also be significant because a suspension in trade would mean that countries will not have access to imported products used for manufacturing, life-saving medications and other consumer items," Osterholm said.

I have some very personal ruminations on this below. I share them with ambivalence. One the one hand I want to be honest and forthright, having done a good bit of reading on this for more than six months, seeing a looming matter of immense importance. On the other hand, I know that no one knows with certainty how this thing will turn out. So I'm sharing with you my concerns, open to the possibility that a lot of chickens will die, a few people will get sick, and H5N1 will mutate into an insipid bit of RNA that made the news for a few short months in 2005. So, with that caveat, read on if you want.

Note: Further reading in the blogs at FuturePundit and later this week, a collaborative wiki that looks like an idea whose time has come. I'll post when it's up and running.

How does one walk the fine line between prudence and panic? How can individuals be proactive to prepare for a time when we might become isolated into neighborhoods or communities that are compelled to be self-sufficient for a month? For six months? duing a period of restrictions in the movement of people and goods? I don't think this is alarmist delusion, but to bring it up is to suggest there's an elephant in the room we'd rather pretend isn't there. We've had no "duck and cover" drills for this one, and it seems we ought to have a proactive plan in place at all levels of society. Great, if we never need to use it. A real source of panic if we need it, and there is nothing but disinformation until the edge of the precipice.

Ann and I haven't really internalized this very real potential future yet by doing anything tangible in response. But this week, we'll be bringing home enough canning jars for the garden produce (if the deer leave us any); we'll do what we do when a winter storm is expected, only thinking it might last a month or two instead of three of four days. We'll be talking with neighbors who will be butchering a beef in the fall, and barter for the small amount of meat we're thinking about canning. I'll be wondering how our local community of neighbors and the larger one of FLoyd County would best form barter and sharing networks to use our experience and skills. And I'll ask about what, if anything, is in place for our local health department's role in this potential problem.

Possible fiction: Despite all measures at local containment, our area could become rapidly involved. The Roanoke and New River Valley lie along a main east-west corridor of exmigration from large eastern seaboard urban centers where the flu would likely be seen first in large numbers. Imagine that the hospital in Blacksburg where Ann works would soon have a dozen cases. She works there in the pharmacy. Will she be allowed to come home, risking the spread of the virus to Floyd County and Goose Creek? How will essential services go on while severe restrictions on travel are maintained? Will people comply?

I hesitate to voice these questions because they are still about events that have not happened. At this point, a bird flu pandemic remains a hypothetical problem, but the hypothesis may be verging on becoming a fact supported by grim numbers. How should one face such a possibility? Denial doesn't seem like a good alternative, nor does indifference. This is a historically-unique spot we're in, friends. There is the possibility of cataclysmic changes in the way we live our day-to-day lives. But maybe the exercise of thinking how we can work more closely together will have good consequences, even if (as we all pray) this pathogen fizzles off into the annals of diseases that never were.

Golden Grasses

I think we're drawing to a close in the pasture grasses series. I have just a few more images to post. I'm hoping, first, that the field will be mowed very soon and second, that the orb weavers will have a chance to spin their magic in the tall grass before it is cut.

We're approaching the time of year when it pays a spider to lay out its silver snares. The shafts of sun in the late afternoon are dizzy with the blur of midges, gnats, beetles, and newly-hatched mayflies--a bounty of spider food.

As the sun sinks below the western ridge, a squadron of cedar waxwings perch in the bare branches of an old walnut by the barn. They take turns launching out to snare a meal, do a few acrobatics, and quickly return to the perch so the next young of the year can show off her recently-learned hover, dive or loop above our garden. What insects the birds force down into the lower realms, the spiders eye hungrily. And they simply sit. And wait. The liklihood of having guests for dinner goes up with every degree of summer heat.

Eye to Eye

I haven't given up on the grasses, and still think there are images out there waiting to be discovered. But the tall stems are going from green to taupe and the weight of the ripening seed bends the tall stems in random angles now. There won't be many more chances to take these photographic field notes of how our pasture grows.

I started out with my camera yesterday morning, and made it as far as the bottom of the steps when this web flashed in and out of vision. Just the slightest angle away from the view above and the silver web disappeared. If I bent my knees to get a lower angle, the light shifted in wedge-shaped sectors around the web, absorbing and transmitting the light as if I were looking at the grooves on an old vinyl LP record.

As I look at the larger image (click the one above), and especially if I let my focus wander just a bit, it seems remarkably like an eye staring back at me out of a black pupil with the reflection of a spider in the center.

From the spider encounter, I went down another thirty feet to the road and surveyed the possibilities of more pasture grass pictures. It didn't take long to decide it had been too breezy overnight, so there was not much dew (that gives these lacy grasses their crystalline glow;) and it was still breezy, which would cause problems especially with closer shots. About that time, out of the shoulder high grass at the far edge of the pasture bounds this deer--a doe, I'm guessing (a good five feet off the ground here) and possibly with a fawn lying in cover somewhere in the sea of green, going to brown, nodding and swaying in the morning breeze.

Between Covers: The Book Meme

Well, this runs about six times the length of my usual longest posts. I'll hide most of it in the "read more" panel. It was kinda fun, but it is a project easier done for one who hasn't lived through as many book/reading personaes as I have.

Books I own? You're kidding!

This is a question whose answer is not terribly meaningful, do you think? Owned, as in, ever? Hardback, paperback, academic and desk copies and manuals? I doubt you're going to find anybody who bothers to respond to this exercise who will say "in my lifetime, I've owned six books. No, seven." Most are going to say like me, hundreds, thousands maybe. Perhaps the more relevant question would be 'how many and which kinds of books have you kept to the present and why? Or perhaps, what kind of books have you tended to buy, to read, to give away or to keep? So there: I've skillfully laid out a number of sidestepping alternatives and now I have to decide if I want to answer any of them like a compliant book meme mousketeer.

For some years now, I have not read very often for amusement or to fill time. Back when I did, science fiction was front and center for a while. And Tom Clancyesque adventures. But the pattern in my book-buying over the years has more focused on "tell me how this works" or "help me think about _______" than it has "show me a good story" or "take my mind off the real world." I've largely been drawn to non-fiction because I think the world out there is vastly interesting and rich and time is short. Why not be entertained and absorbed in something that will bring loose ends together? Someday I might have to know about ________ when the kids ask, when it comes up in cocktail party conversation or when my philosophical maps have gaps that could be bridged by that particular piece of understanding. I have to confess, I'd be hard pressed to tell you many of these distant-past purchases from recall, but I sure recognize them when I see their names. In the past couple of years, my ratio of buying books to actually starting them to actually finishing them is something on the order of 5 to 2 to 1, respectively. I'm fixed for a whole slew of rainy days.

Okay, now that you've got the floodgates lowered with this memory-prod, it just occurred to me that one day recently I discovered a list I'd written of books read during, oh, probably 1973 to 77--from the year before we moved to Virginia to the year before our son was born. I'll append that to the end of this thing, for my retrieval and recall more than to shed light on any of these particular questions about my reading habits or focus.

First, I would have to say that my book buying and reading life has experienced ebbs and flows and the wind blows in different directions in different periods of my life. Has it not been like this for you? Some generalizations will have to do, because I'm lazy.

Let's see: sticking with the broad brushes… Over the years the epochs of book reading and buying have reflected the eras in an evolving body, mind and spirit. Early Virginia as young homesteaders saw "back to the land" to "how to"; from there to "all about biology, nature, and natural history. Soon, photography and the philosophy and history of science were hot. There was the Ram Dass/Carlos Castaneda/Taoist period. And when our son was born, in a midlife 'opportunity', the classics of Christian belief: Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Merton, CS Lewis, Francis Schaeffer. Somewhere in here, cosmology and astronomy combined with late nights in the back yard with the binoculars, and the library expanded accordingly. I often read authors with whom I knew I would strongly disagree (the behavioral and biological determinists, for instance, like Richard Dawkins, BF Skinner, etc.) and I'd read a while and rant a while. I never much wrote down anything in response though. I wish I had on paper some of my more eloquent tirades against the intellectual superstars of the times. Or maybe it's best I don't, come to think of it.

We still have quite a few books. Many of them are still boxed in the Very Back Room. It is ostensibly at least partly for the books that some of us think a new room addition to the house is necessary.

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The Last Book I Bought/Read:

What Are Old People For? By William Thomas, MD

Excerpts on Ronni Bennett's blog made me think this youngish man had some good insights on the role that our elders should play in American society. I worked for years with the elderly as a physical therapist and was inspired by the wisdom and vitality I saw in people who had found themselves anew in their 70s and 80s. Now, I look into the not-too-distant future at how I must adapt to the changes of those ages of life, and I'd like to be more of a spokesman for my age cohort.

I will tell you too the books that are waiting in line on a nearby shelf after the one mentioned above:

God's Politics -- Jim Wallis
The Writing Life -- Annie Dillard
Pattern of a Man and Other Stories -- James Still
Crossing Open Ground -- Barry Lopez
The Dollmaker -- Hariette Arnow
Gap Creek -- Robert Morgan
A Dab of Dickens & a Touch of Twain -- Elliot Engel
Long Life -- Mary Oliver
The Blue Valleys -- Robert Morgan
One Foot in Eden -- Ron Rash
And if I want to be conversant with Silas House who will be on staff at Hindman, I should read maybe his first book, A Parchment of Leaves.

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Five books that meant a lot to me -

Somewhat in order, all of them ancient, the five that pop out just now, given what I had for breakfast this morning and the vagaries of whimsy, plus just a pinch of deep thought:

1) Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill I read this through a couple of times, late high school, early college. Hills summary from the lives of many prominent, powerful and successful men of the early 20th century (Ford, Edison and others) provided examples of how people rise above the mediocre masses, and why. There were patterns to success. I was a bit turned off by the idea of using people and influence and ambition to 'get rich', but I think some lasting principles came from this book that have carried me to more than a few victories against the odds. It reinforced the importance of self-belief with humility, of an understanding of the role of persistence in the face of failure, and showed the power in knowing how to find the answers and overcoming obstacles to reach deeply held goals. I first considered having a personal 'missions statement' and holding that before my eyes of hope each day. I became convinced, and remain so today, that if a person in a free society wants something bad enough for long enough and is willing to do whatever it takes to make that dream a reality, there are few forces that can stand against them.

2) Entropy -- Jeremy Rifkin I cannot rehearse all the reasons this book was significant for me at the time (early 80s?) There is always an alchemy between the ideas in any one book one is reading and others recently or concurrently being read; with conversations had over a pitcher of beer, from dreams and delusion, with an occasional 'original thought' tossed in. This book opened up for exploration many large issues of the past and future. How did we come to think of the world and have the relationship with it that we do as western scientific mankind? And what does the future hold if we continue to treat matter and energy as if they were in practical terms, without limit? Rifkin's analysis and solutions weren't all correct. He went on to pen other books and find detractors the likes of Stephen Gould and others. But he thought large and saw solutions more from changes in human attitudes to nature and each other than in the creation of another new machine that would save us from ourselves.

3) Guide to the Perplexed - EF Schumacher Sent to me by an influential friend with whom I had many deep discussions of our doubts, Schumacher's opening page describes his experience as a young man, standing on a corner in Leningrad. He could plainly see a large church opposite him, and yet it was not indicated on the map he held in front of him. He stopped a policemen to ask for help. "In Russia, we do not put churches on our maps." And this precipitated a flash of realization that, in years of education in the worlds' finest universities, the things most important to mankind for the preceding millenia had been left off of Schumacher's maps of understanding about the world. He proceeds to put the spiritual dimension back into the framework of reality. While I did not go with him along the path he chose for this important renaissance, his story nevertheless catalyzed the same kind of crisis in my own thinking as he had experienced, and I began at that moment to doubt my own doubt.

4) Miracles -- CS Lewis Again, so much of what scratches us depends on where we itch. I tried re-reading this book again a few years after its first large impact it had on first reading and it did not speak with the same clear voice. But first time through, that alchemy of which I spoke brought a number of ingredients to bear. Lewis, of course, was at his peak in wartime England in the early 40s. His language is dated, but his analogies and metaphors are timeless and his love of language apparent. He was a Christian apologist I occasionally did not understand or disagreed with, but I respected his carefully worded pictures that described the world he came to know after he was delivered "kicking and fighting" from his agnostic background into the Presence of the being he described in the character of Aslan, the Lion, in the Chronicles of Narnia.

5) Psychocybernetics -- Maxwell Maltz Funny. Amazon.com says "people who bought this book also bought: and one it lists is Think and Grow Rich. I honestly don't remember a great deal about this book other than 1) the author is a plastic surgeon who drew some conclusions about self-image and self-expectations by seeing how his patients dealt with new faces. 2) He spoke of the processes involved in accepting change and offered good advice there; and 3) it dealt with creative imagination, relaxation and visualization. It was a realistically pragmatic book with sound advice, and I've incorporated some of the influences of that book into my own life for good.

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Who's Next?

I really balk at laying the heavy hand on five more bloggers. This gets to feel coercive and forced at this point. I tell you what: I'll mention some folks, and if they happen to wander this way and see their names, and want to participate, we'd love to see what they would tell us. But that's about as assertive toward these busy people as I'm comfortable being.

Colleen, of LooseLeafNotes, has already been memed severely of late. Does she need one more?

Tom Montag, the Middlewesterner, is busy gathering material to write yet another book. And he's touring the midwest to do it. Just what he needs: another "assignment."

I'd like to know far more about where Trey of Only Connect is in his thinking, and how through his reading, he got there.

And Dave Bonta, of Via Negativa, I'm thinking, would have a hard time narrowing down his favorite five. And his reading tastes I'm guessing are about as eclectic as one can possibly get. I'd love to spend a day in his library!

And finally, TravelerTrish has just done a complete remake of her books, so should have a good idea at least of where to go to look for those books she might want to spotlight, were she to undertake this completely discretionary little writing exercise.

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Appendix

Partial list from my journal, dates uncertain, '73 to 76', mostly.

Sidhartha, Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund - Hermann Hesse
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek -- Annie Dillard
Selfish Gene -- Richard Dawkins
Only Dance there is -- Ram Dass
Lives of the Cell; Medusa and the Snail -- Lewis Thomas
Appalachians -- Maurice Brooks
God and the Astronomers -- Jastrow
Six Great Ideas -- Mortimer Adler
On Human Nature -- EO Wilson
Seven Tomorrows
Psychocybernetics
I'm OK, You're Okay
Entropy; Algeny; Who Should Play God -- Jeremy Rifkin
Evidence that Demands a Verdict -- McDowell
Sometimes a Great Notion -- Ken kesey
Eden Express - Mark Vonnegut
Overskill -- Schultz
Mind in the Waters
Since Silent Spring
The Complete Walker - Colin Fletcher
Little Big Man
Backyard Livestock; Small Grain Raising; Seed Starters Handbook
Human Aggression
The Naked Ape - Desmond Morris
Escape from Freedom --Erich Fromm
Shadow of Man -- Jane Goodall
Stalking the Wild Asparagus --Euell Gibbons
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Atlas Shrugged -- Rand
Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle --Garrett Hardin
Territorial Imperative -- Ardrey
Act of Creation, Janus, Ghost in the Machine - A Koestler
Physical Control of the Mind -- Delegado
States of Consciousness-- Charles Tart
Tropic of Capricorn -- Henry Miller
Relaxation Response --Herbert Benson
Towards a Psychology of Being -- Maslow
Meaning of Happiness -- Alan Watts
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance --Persig
Tales of Power (and others) -- Casteneda
Mere Christianity, Miracles, Space Triology, Problem of Pain- CSLewis
Newthink --Denovo
Guide to the Perplexed -- EF Schumacher
Philosophy of Religion -- David Elton Trueblood
The Self And its Brain -- Eccles and Popper
A sense of the Future -- Bronowski
The Firmament of Time -- Loren Eisley

Friday Jots - June 17, 2005

Animals at Play Marmaduke? Tigger? Batman? Mr. Fantastic? Gumby? Porky Pig? ScoobyDoo? Nope. First guess was "right" .... Hobbes of Calvin And Hobbes. I swear, there's a picture of that goofy tiger in exactly Tsuga's twisted play posture, but in three C&H books from the kids' books upstairs, I couldn't find it. I think what brings Hobbes to mind is his boneless trunk that arced in every conceivable direction and his totally self-possessed but unselfconscious attitude in his bearing. Somehow, Tsuga, especially in this play sequence with the plastic bucket, just makes me think of Hobbes. Thanks for playing!

I've Got Email Good advice from the Peanut Gallery re G-mail. Caveats considered, I think I'll use it for student communication and possibly reference Gmail to my ISP mail account as backup, filtered into a folder. Yes, I suppose my email content will be scanned for commercial purposes. Isn't our Guvment doing the same thing for dangerous words? I'd rather have an advertizement than the thought police, and there's no way to be invisible to the latter.

Assignment: Finished I carried my big, black three-ring binder of scored reading comprehension essays back to the Department of Academic Research (or somesuch) at Radford yesterday (and picked up my check for this little project.) When somehow, through the chatter, the department secretary learned I was (am) a physical therapist, we got into a long discussion about fibromyalgia. It was odd to hear myself giving all those facts and recommendations as if I were a clinician again. Maybe it's like riding a bicycle. But I don't see myself doing PT in any regular or sustained way again, for a number of reasons. There were parts of health care I liked, and miss. Mostly, it's the feeling that you've been able to take a little bit of pain from the world.

Command Central Did I tell you I'm getting a new desk? Not that it hasn't been just peachy all these years sitting behind my $10 yard sale, laminate-covered (taped in places) particle board desk. Yep, we bartered half the cost of the desk for the walnuts we cut. In addition to the desk, there will be a sidepiece for the computer, printer and scanner (same height-width as the desk, so extra surface area to spread my JUNK); and on the left side, another little piece on casters for CD caddies, office supplies and such. Construction (from white oak) starts next week. Completion expected in about two months! This will be one of two pieces of furniture we own that won't go to the dumpsters when we're gone.

Bits and Pieces Old News: There was a tsunami warning for the Pacific Northwest this week. Bizarre creatures: ever see one of these? Neat Gizmo: Plugs into your car's cigarette lighter (why do they still call it that when really for most, it serves so many better purposes?) Expert on Avian Flu says "We're Screwed." Bermuda Triangle solved: the bacteria did it. And I'm still trying to understand why, after 35 years, she doesn't get my jokes.

MEME Warning! Later this morning, I'll post my "Book Meme". It's long and boring, but readers (if any), the scars will heal. Then, over the weekend, I'll work on the "five things I miss about childhood" thing. Mercifully, it will be brief. With all these words, I wanted to post another grass picture today (I have maybe three waiting, and might get another couple this morning. Good suggesting, Andy, re a photoessay on grasses. I'm thinking of contacting somebody in the agronomy department at Tech to help me identify the grasses in my pictures.) Coming next week: some pictures of plain, ordinary life on Goose Creek--the garden, the barn construction (that's another story), some other not-terribly-photogenic but perhaps interesting slices of life from home. And at this juncture, I'll head back to the coffee pot, from thence to the front porch followed by an amble along the creek, a visit to the garden (where not a single corn plant has survived the mystery predator) and back to the computer to see if anybody is up yet. TGIF, y'all.

The Herding Instinct

Not once but twice this week, the dog (perhaps) has been negatively reinforced in his impulse to chase cars that come down our road. There aren't many of them. Most are going slow. But MO is on their side. It would be a terrible irony to live on a one-lane gravel road with a half dozen cars a day and have your dog injured by one of them.

First, there was the car this week--going very slowly--that he actually ran into, hitting it not too hard from the side, overshooting his mark. It didn't seem to hurt him, but it definitely got his attention.

Then yesterday, what I hope was a lasting fright: There are a couple of loggers who come by almost every day. One of them has a massively large bloodhound that rides sometimes in the cab (his head barely fits) and sometimes in the bed of the truck. Well, T-dog went tearing down as the truck came past. He was just even with the truck bed when the HOUND stuck his large floppy-eared head over the side at an unsuspecting Tsuga and quite certainly scared the begeebers out of him. Our much smaller pup tucked tail and ran back up to the safety of the back porch.

Maybe he'll think twice about the next passing vehicle, wondering if it is going to "spank" him or have GIANT BEAST that will snap him up in its terrible jaws. Maybe, in time, he'll learn life is easier (and he spends less time in Puppy Jail) if he just watches and waves.

Pasture Study III

I'll have at least one more in this series of pasture shots (for tomorrow)--which I was tempted to call "Love the One You're With" as grasses dominate our viewspace. As I look out the window at 7:45, the light is slanting over the ridge, a glancing brilliance that leaves the barn in shadow yet. Looks to have been a dewy evening, very much cooler than it has been, and the grasses will be wet and glowing when the sun strikes them; we could have a very nice rising steam as well. So, one more cup of coffee and be off. I'll come back soaked to the skin, but I'll go back at least this one more time to see what I can bring back from a stone's throw from my desk. Life, at this moment, is good.

I like the simplicity of this shot. It is almost too spare. But the form of grasses often has a calligraphic quality, like fine strokes of a light ink against dark paper.

Drawing From Real Life

Quickly. Your first response. What comics character does this bring to mind?

Maybe it's just me. I do pay attention to body mechanics and posture more than the average person, after a good while as a physical therapist. Tsuga here, in his plastic bucket exuberance, has his pelvic girdle planted while his upper torso is strongly sidebent to the right (almost 90 degrees) and also rotated right (maybe 20 degrees.) (Don't try this at home!)

Upon first seeing this photograph last week, I realized, without having ever done the same intuitive analysis of cartoons (I'm not that obsessive) that there is one comic character that often shows just this same jump-twist-wiggle, making me think the artist is a very good observer of large vertebrates at play.

I'll be amazed if ANYBODY gets this one. Come on. Amaze me.

Tag: I'm It

Not once, but twice, and even though I've avoided making eye contact with any bloggers or looking at all like I was interested, I've been tagged to participate in this book meme that seems to be circulating through the b'sphere of late.

One tappist was Andy at Older and Growing who doesn't do memes, as I don't, but did, as I will. He recently has been experimenting with what we agreed were "Doug Thomposian sky effects" with his images.

The other was the Ode-hunter pair (ODE is entomological slang for Odonates, or dragonflies) over at Urban Dragon Hunters, from whence, flitting odonately as one does, I hopped over to a site hosted by "two Brooklynized Tennessee Hillbillies" to read about a wonderful new kind of iPod that comes with an optional firewire port. (More invertebrate humor here, folks, and of course, just up my alley. I recently learned that in parts of England, these creatures we call pillbugs are called "Chunky Pigs."

So, I be the tappee. And maybe on Slow Friday, I'll post my yawner of a response to the book meme, where mostly I'll have to talk about what I hope to read, once read, or would read if 1) I could stay awake reading in bed; or 2) could read more than a paragraph in the past three years without jumping up because it made me think of something I just MUST write about!

Then, although there's nobody holding a gun to my head, it seems to be the expected last step of this little exercise, I have to tap five more bloggers to have their turn at the book meme. Of course, it would make my life a whole lot simpler if you'd just step up to the plate and let me know you'd LIKE to do this. Don't make me get pushy...I'll wait to hear.

Unpetaled Flowers: Grasses in Summer

It is the Season of Grasses. We are surrounded by a sea of tall grass and in it, we wade chest deep across the pasture. And as it lengthens, matures, and flowers; as blades and stems give rise to the glumes, paleas and lemmas that make up their unpetaled flowers, the grasses become collectively a lovely creature. Their dissected tops and fine wirey branchings seem especially well fashioned to catch and hold an overnight dew. When the sun rises over the eastern ridge, they glisten white with diffracted light and share the look of frost and snow that water gives their dried remnants in other seasons.

It is not likely you'll find coffee table books of grasses, since they lack the color and form of their petaled, insect-pollinated competitors. It is true: individually, they are not much to look at. And taken together, their lanky growth, mixed always with an assortment of rangy forbs, does not make for a tight image with a clear message. And yet, to remember a summer like this, I want to look back and recall the little artificial prairie we look out on every morning. I'll make a few more attempts to capture some essense of this vast assemblage of plants (the botanical family Poaceae, from which all our grains come) that shows them off in their summer dress.

The image above illustrates one of the hardest matters in this attempt at portraiture of pasture grasses: they stand out best when backlit against the dark hillside the very moment that the sun strikes the valley floor. This means shooting straight into the intense lig