Fragments From Floyd

Yahoo

In the way of a dry run before the semester begins, if you need or want to email me, please use my Yahoo account. That would be fred1st plus the yahoo.com domain. You'll figure it out. I need to accumulate some email addresses there to be able to tinker with the Address Book features toward the end of use with students.

The Radford University email system is painfully slow at times, and not wonderfully reliable. My usual ISP email account is also quirky when accessed via the web. Gmail won't let me set up email lists. So, yahoo, for now.

At The Moment of Truth

There is an ember of hope that avian flu might be stopped soon, while it remains only a spark and not a raging conflagration.

Will the nations with the most to lose economically gamble on the altruistic (read: economic self-preservation) move to put out the small fires in Indonesia, Viet Nam and Thailand by sending their supplies of antivirals and vaccines there to possibly contain the spread? A recent Washington Post article points out that...

"... unless antiviral drugs squelch a pandemic at the outset, their ultimate usefulness will be small. ... In theory, even a modest amount of vaccine might be useful. Fighting disease outbreaks is like fighting fires. You do not have to hose down the whole world to put the fire out, but you do have to hose down the perimeter to keep it from spreading. It might be possible to contain an H5N1 outbreak at its source if the surrounding population were immediately vaccinated.

Would the United States, Europe and Japan be willing to donate their precious vaccine supply to mount this long-shot defense? This is perhaps the biggest unanswered question in pandemic flu planning -- and one likely to be answered only at the moment of truth.

Officially, it is a possibility.

If it was done in consultation with the World Health Organization -- and with other governments that would make contributions, as well -- we would be more likely to consider it," said Gellin at HHS. But observers both in and out of the government said, not for quotation, that they doubt the U.S. government would ever send a significant amount of its vaccine stockpile overseas.

Even if this scenario played out and we gave up our stockpiles to put out small fires overseas, there remains the wildcard of spread over vast distance by bird migration (or infected airline passengers) starting too many small fires to handle; and the barrier of secrecy and disinformation across the vast Chinese borders where a significant brush fire may already be spreading.

We (global mankind, science and public health) have not adequately anticipated and prepared for such a scenario, even though we could have seen it coming for a decade or more. If we could turn back time 15 years and know with certainty the pathogens we would face in the future, would there have been any better cooperation between continents? Would we have wasted so much talent, wealth and technology (ostensibly) to protect our people and way of life from acts of terrorism if we'd accepted that it was emerging infectious disease that posed by far the greater threat to our economy and to our very survival?

It seems we may be very near the moment of truth. Is it too late to turn our swords into vaccines?

5 Yr Plans and other Errant Arrows

This life I'm living wasn't in my five-year plan. Certainly it wasn't in the overall life-goals mission statement I might have naively projected for myself in my twenties or thirties. I left teaching for many reasons, now whaddayaknow: I'm back in the classroom again. I stumbled on writing quite by accident, leading to the blog, the radio bits, the little newspaper column. I never set out to be a writer. At Hindman, I'll be among writers who ended up in that discipline and medium by design.

Or did they? Do any of us aim and hit the targets we think we're aiming for or are we all ad libbing our way from one happenstance to another with as much grace and seeming intention as possible? I think this parable (thanks, Melinama) pretty well describes it:

Once, a man dreamed of being the greatest archer who ever lived. He studied at the military academy in Moscow, learning to plant his feet and square his shoulders, to address the string with three fingers, to suspend his breath at the moment of release.

He became one with the target. Eventually he shot perfect bull's-eyes almost every time. He was traveling home from Moscow when he came upon a riveting sight: an enormous barn and on that barn a hundred targets. Some small, some big, some in the middle of the wall, some low, but in the center of every single target, an archer had shot a perfect bull's-eye.

Our archer marvelled: "I couldn't do that!" He asked a passing village to find the archer who had done it.

The villager came back shortly with a kid. "You did this?" the archer asked. "Uh-huh," replied the girl. "Can you teach me how?" "Uh-huh." And she showed him just how she liked to stand and hold the bow, and just how she pulled the string, and just how she held her breath at the moment of release.

And then she explained... "Just after your arrow hits the barn, take a bucket of paint, and paint a target all around it."

We'll see where this workshop lands on the barn. And afterwards, I'll have some more painting to do.

The Dance

I have been flying over the Planet Earth lately, using my mouse to zoom down into steppes of Siberia; to traverse the highest mountain peaks of the Appalachians; to follow the great rivers to their sources, noting major cities and nameless villages built along them--the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges. I cannot see the people there. I can know something of who they must be by seeing the topography of the land that shapes them. But I could know their heart if I could hear their music, and feel their dance. There is not a civilization yet that has not been moved by music--to sing, to cry, to dance. It is truly mankind's common language.

And so, being a spectator at the Friday Night Jamboree is more than a simple diversion or a voyeuristic peek at the peculiarities of a mountain community. It is more like communion--a sharing of a much larger celebration of life that, even in this sad and distressed world, is happening across the planet under thatched roofs and on sandy riverbanks; in opulent ballrooms and on livingroom rugs. The world sings, the world dances.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Fragments Web Galleries of music and dance: Jamboree; Winefest 1; Winefest 2

Weapons of Minimal Destruction

It's true: they showed up a little early. And it's true the St. Lawrences are not fully enculturated to the Floyd County way of doing things. But when your hostess in rubber boots greets you carrying a gun, well, it can be a bit unsettling, don't you know.

Yes, it is only a .22, but it is the psychological equalizer. Don't leave home without it, is Ann's latest motto. She's hoping the bear sees it and thinks it's a 30 ought six. She's also got this George W swagger thing going. She looks very manacing.

Bad. She's very bad. You see it in her walk. She's out for regime change.

Bear Facts

The title has no connection with my attire when I first spotted the bear recently. So lay off the 'bear in my boxers' jokes, 'kay?

Last night, Jungle Jim (a.k.a. Doug Thompson) brought Tsuga the dog a framed print: "The One That Got Away" to commemorate the pup's close encounter with a bear.

Only difference is, Doug shot his. With his famous 'long glass.' In fact, if you scroll down Doug's archive for the past few weeks, it's rather like a visit to the Wild Kingdom. You got yer deer, yer snakes, yer bobcat, yer coyote. Stay tuned. You just can't tell what you'll see next.

"Alligators photographed breeding in local stream on Sandy Flats. News at 10."

Friday Jots ~ 29 July 05

BLOG IN SPACE ** I've decided what my next step as a writer will be. Earth is too small an audience for my erudite eruptions and mystical meanderings. I will send Fragments into space. Think of it: Tsuga, Space Ambassador to the Stars.

WATER, WATER ** This is surprising and encouraging: an environmental consciousness in China--and a willingness of the government to admit there are any flaws at all in the national fabric. Chief on the list of concerns of Chinese citizens is the availability of clean drinking water. Look for more and more conflict in the future of this crucial limiting factor, especially in the world's growing urban populations (including the US where 85% of people still get their water from public utilities.) Water utilities are increasingly under pressure to resort to privitized management under the ownership of foreign conglomerates. Not good.

SPEAKING OF CHINA ** Maybe you've heard of the 'mysterious illness' now in China. "A pig bacterium" is the official word from the government. "Under control" they reassure. If this is a bacterial disease, it is very odd indeed. Sounds more like a virus. Maybe two viruses that have joined forces.

SEASONAL SEASONINGS ** This piece from Books and Culture discusses the role of the seasons in art and in our psychology of nature and our relationship to it. The author quotes Diane Ackerman:"we’ve worked hard to exile ourselves from nature, yet we end up longing for what we’ve lost: a sense of connectedness."

BOYS TOYS ** Via CoolTools: 1) BugZooka. How could anyone not like a bug-and-spider sucker! 2) SketchUP (rhymes with Ketchup) is beyond most needs for a new toy (at $500) but it sounds really useful for the right needs. And wait! You can download a trial version for free and waste countless hours! and lastly, 3) A fully-functional (backpacking?) origama plate. No, it's a dish. No, it's a bowl. And it's just $6.

MEATING THE NEED ** What to do when chickens, pigs, and cows are no longer safe food sources for a burgeoning world population's protein needs? Prime without the rib. Laboratory-grown tissue-cultured meat! "With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that's better for the environment and human health. In the long term, this is a very feasible idea." I dunno. Vitro-Meat is starting to make tofu sound better.

WHISTLED LANGUAGE ** I'm a whistler. I also play the accordion. So shoot me. Turns out, whistling can be more than a way of making mouth music. It has a wide usage as a language as well, as you can read here, and listen to, here.

FloydFest Radio

Ani Difranco and others share full sample songs (maybe 45 minutes for the whole free taste) on the FloydFest site (doesn't work in Firefox.) Pretty cool.

Go, enjoy. What? No hurricanes this year. But expect the traditional mud after yesterday's rains, and then tonight's. They'll have to get along without us this time 'round. We enjoyed music from the main stage on that same beautiful knob overlooking Rock Castle Gorge just a few weeks ago at the first WineFest there.

Playing now: Asylum Street Spankers. Start at the beginning and pretend you're at FloydFest Number 4!

Bio-Notes 28 July '05

DNA testing of suspect fur may tell once and for all if Sasquatch lives among us.

Leeches are back in business. Pointer to this topic from the July 25 edition of NewYorker (long) article, Bloodsuckers, by John Colapinto.

Why "No Sweat" is not a comforting reassurance. (I'm a non-sweater, so I don't do heat. Not without whining, that is.) We're not home free on the heat and humidity yet. This article has some pointers for staying cool, plus the physiology behind your heat-regulating biology--or lack thereof.

And lastly, a video link I strongly suggest you watch--if for no other reason than the wonderful way complex and inaccessible material can be made entertaining and comprehensible to the lay public. If you watch this little video, you'll likely look back in five years and say "That weblink on Fragments was the first time I heard about RNI-i. Now, it's a household word." PBS Link, thanks to Fragments reader Eric, this fifteen-minute video narrated by Robert Krolwitch, describes what promises to be one of the most important discoveries of our times: the key to locking down undesirable genes associated with major diseases. And as you learn at the end of the film, RNA-i will also allow us to selectively suppress one gene at a time, possibly ultimately in every organism on the planet, to inventory gene function of life on earth. And all this from some very basic science problems related to petunia breeding. This will be a great investment of our time and attention in class next month.

Homework: give the scientific equivalent for 1) the scribes; 2) the castle; 3) the chefs; and 4) the policeman. You will receive a grade on this assignment. And don't tell me the dog ate it.

Damascus Road Experience

Passing through SWVa? There are other small towns farther west you might want to see. Damascus, written up in WaPo this week, was one of the places we considered when looking for a compatible spot to settle in our return to Virginia in the mid-nineties. It is situated IN the mountains, while Floyd is on a plateau with the view of mountains in the distance. Both the Appalachian Trail and the Virginia Creeper Trails pass right through town (as well as other trails described in the article.)

Damascus is about the same distance from I-81 as Floyd is, and it benefits from a similar can't-get-there-from-hereness as Floyd. If anything, from our visits there, it has stronger back-to-earth qualities than Floyd, with more of an emphasis on outdoor activities and nature, less on farming, crafts and music.

The Virginia Creeper rails-to-trails path from Whitetop to Abingdon is a real gem, and a suitable grade for bikers of all ages. There's still plenty of time to plan an outting in (or passing through) Damascus. And there's the Appalachian Trail Days every May--a grand event for through-hikers and passers-by alike.

Damascus is yet another example of the adage that sometime less can mean more.

Teaching Ends Everything

This three-word bumper sticker is something that Lorianne and I concocted in our collective lament over the end of summer. While it's not as dismal and defeatist as it sounds, the phrase reflects the overwhelming pull of a teacher's attention, time and energy away from whatever or whoever they were during the freedom of summer. A return to the classroom--long before the actual first day of class--begins to hijack all that, channels all currents between narrow canyon walls and the flow of life moves relentlessly toward the next lecture, the next lab, the first test, and the long list of names and numbers that will be your responsibility soon for three months or more. And here on Goose Creek, this current away from blogging, photography and daydreaming started several weeks ago. Now we enter the rapids. Class starts in three weeks. I already hear the foaming cataract that is the rapidly approaching end of summer.

Between now and then, the fall garden needs planting and what harvest we have will come in. I'll spend a week at Hindman and come home overwhelmed with seeds of inspiration that are likely to fall on rocky ground during this hectic time. I have a presentation to give at the Floyd Library on the 18th. Our daughter and granddaughter will be with us for a week, and there's not room in a house for a blog if there is also a four year old and a dog. Know what I mean? So, I guess we've entered a new chapter in the lurching tale of this weblog.

Fragments will go on, in fits and starts. But you're likely to see a change in focus from personal perambulations to more biology-relevant and less general-blog-audience-relevant topics. And I have to admit, it has been exciting these past two weeks to re-enter the current events of biology in my daily browse, thinking how I might reach those latent riches of curiosity, excitement and passion that lie dormant in a typically inert and passive eighteen-year-old freshman non-major. It is quite a challenge, even though it seems it would be an easy task:

We live in such wonderful times when our tools can carry us to levels of knowledge we only dreamed about when I was eighteen. We live in such terrible times when our technology and its residual ills can alter entire systems--the weather, the oceans and bacterial resistance. How can a young person not be engaged in a living world where their knowledge or their ignorance of basic biology may tip the balance in the planet's future? Oops. Stepped up onto my soapbox there.

Anyway, teaching will end not everything, but it will alter many. I'll dance to a different drummer for a while. But then, after three and a half years of blogging, I've changed partners often enough to know, the dance will go on. In time, (I don't know if I'll be teaching one semester this year or two) I'll cycle back and find that when the rapids give way to wider, slower currents again, things here will not have changed all that much. And when some things end, that gives other exciting and challenging things an opportunity to begin. And here we go!

He Can Have the Berries

There is a sense of feeling violated when you walk up a steep trail on your own land, only to find you are not the first to go up there after the blackberries. Several days ago, we discovered that many of the canes had been pushed down and almost every little nook where there would have been berries had been explored. There was no doubt about it: we were not the first to the wild fruit. We were outraged, and Ann, a little unsettled by the fact we had a trespasser so close to the house.

I joked with Ann that I would put a posted sign up near the top of the trail--so that the next time our intruder came, it would only be after he made the hot, sweaty climb to the very top. Then he would see we were on to his trespass. The sign would read:

THIS LAND IS MY LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND. GO AWAY.-- Woody Guthrie

And yet, the way the vines were beat back made no sense. Also, many of the higher berries--taller than my head, but certainly within reach of the average berry picker--were fat and juicy, unpicked. I wondered aloud if it could have been a bear, this being a small comfort to wifey, who just this week received her order for Counter Assault Bear Spray. This is a mace-like spray, only it is the proportions of a small fire extinguisher; she'll need a backpack to carry it, I told her, dismissing her concerns but yielding to her enhanced feeling of security with it on hand while I'm away. Silly woman, I thought. Now, I think not.

I could see Tsuga rise on alert from his torpor in the hot shade outside the window yesterday. Something had captured his attention, but then, it was probably just a groundhog; maybe a deer; maybe only his over-active canine imagination. He lay back down briefly, but was up again, his nose sniffing in the air, back and forth, picking up traces of something only dog noses can smell. And then suddenly, he barked his alarm bark and disappeared toward the road. I got up from my chair just in time to see him disappear from the side of the house, headed for the pasture.

I ran to the front porch, remembering at that moment that I was clad only in Joe Boxers, as Tsuga reached the road. From the foot bridge I had a clear view of the pasture just as Tsuga dipped into the notch of the creek and rose up the opposite bank, with his aim set far down the valley. He stood hesitantly on the far bank as I scanned the valley for deer. And as I saw what Tsuga had seen, he broke into a full run to intercept a massive, full grown jet-black bear that by then was lumbering in characteristic inchworm fashion, across the pasture, left to right. In the next instant, the dog was in full pursuit as I screamed his name, to absolutely no avail--helpless, shoeless, and in my underwear.

The bear in full sideview made for the shade of the west side of the valley where we take our daily walks, while I watched the dog's south end grow smaller and smaller into the distance, as I hollered another time or two before giving up. I ran inside thinking Oh Crap Oh Crap, jumped into my rubber boots, grabbed the .22 where it sat by the front door (in case of crows or rabbits in the garden). When I reached the road, I was relieved to see that the dog had stopped two thirds of the way down the field, about where I'd last seen the bear disappearing into the shadows.

But Tsuga was still agitated and I didn't know whether my presence would deter him from going after the bear or encourage him. He looked at the woods, he looked at me, back and forth several times, as excited as he was indecisive. What else could I do?--I fired a shot into the creek bank.

Miraculously, this was all it took to make the dog trust his instincts that told him THREAT! GO HOME NOW! The unfamiliar gunshot tipped the scale away from fight and toward flight. And he ran the length of the field, down into the creek, tongue hanging, and up to the back porch, almost as happy to be home as I was to have him here, with no sign he'd tangled with a bear three times his size at least.

We've dismissed Tsuga's sudden spells of spookiness on the trail over the past month, mostly, although that is one reason for Ann's mounting uneasiness that lead to the purchase of the jumbo cannister of bear spray. Turns out, his nose knows. Turns out, I might as well save my witty Woody Guthrie tribute. It may be that black bears will do what black bears most certainly do in the woods. They may leave signs. But they aren't likely to read one.

Detour of Destiny: All Roads Lead to Floyd

No, I take that back. Very, very few roads lead to Floyd. But that's another story. Where was I?

I guess we always wonder: do others see us, see our lives, our worlds, as we see them? And as bloggers, do others who visit our worlds and meet us for the first time in those spheres, urban or rural, find from our writing in our blogs that they've been given the rose-colored version of a monochrome person, personality or place?

Peter and family only saw the heart of town, and only for a short while. But then, that's the neat thing about downtown Floyd: a hundred yard walk in two directions from THE traffic light shows you 75% of everything there is to see in the center of town. But even in this bucollic village on a drowsy Saturday afternoon, Peter and crew saw enough to want someday to come back. There is a certain conviviality of scale in a place so small. And as Peter and I discussed, there is, in all of us, a desire for such (perceived) 'unspoiled places' to exist--for their own sakes, like wilderness areas or tropical islands we will never visit. It's just good to know, somewhere, they exist.

There isn't much here. But then these days, too little is a welcome relief from too much; too slow a balm against frenzy and rush. And I'm glad that Peter got to see that, and even find something in it all to write about. And next time, Peter, try the Ginger Beer.

I have one concern of late, however, what with Lorianne's picture, and Doug's, now Peter's in the past month. I swear, the older I get, the worse grows the fidelity of cameras--strangely enough, only when pointed my direction. And those same lenses used to be so accurate in capturing the youth and vitality in my features that now are somehow lost. What's with the desaturated hair color, the noise in the facial qualities especially around the eyes, and less sharpness overall? Funny how that this delusional (self)imagery works, isn't it?

Funk: Pre-Fall

It is before 5 o'clock on a late July morning. All the windows were open overnight but it is already pasty muggy sticky hot in the house. Situated in this deep valley surrounded by a thousand-acre woods, it rarely is too warm in the early morning, and I am thankful for this. I lack my usual early-rising verve. I just want to sit very still so as to generate as little extra heat as possible. I stare at the empty screen and sit. Sit, and wait for signs of fall.

Today, Accuweather forecasts a high of 99 here. I've never seen temperatures that high since we moved here seven years ago. Record high for this date in Roanoke, always at least five degrees warmer than Goose Creek, was 98 set back in 1987. Today's heat may be a record breaker. And then, those signs of fall will come, when a cold front passes through tomorrow night. Next week, while I am at the mercy of summer in Kentucky, actually promises to be very pleasant by recent standards, cooling into the low fifties at night. The clouds may even show the change, as they do in early August.

And as I steeped and stewed in my dread of the day of heat ahead, I remembered: there are some good things coming in early August: signs of fall. The following (since I lack the energy to write this morning) is a minor rewrite from my first blogging summer in 2002:

---

It is August at last. True, there may not be a great deal of difference in day or night-time temperatures, yet. But here in southwest Virginia, we can typically expect a tantalizing preview of fall during the first half of the month, and there are 'signs of fall' already, if you know what to look for.

Autumn's plants are up, although they're not very conspicuous yet. You won't notice them as you drive along the highway for another three weeks or so. But it is part of the pattern of things that the goldenrod, Queen of the Meadow (Joe Pye Weed) and Ironweed are soon to bloom, adding rich deep yellow, dusky mauve and royal purple to the pallet of color in every meadow and pasture border.

The starlings will begin to grow restless, bunch up, then break apart into little groups again, like they cannot quite get comfortable with each other in a crowd. The instinct to migrate must be a powerful itch. It won't be long before an occasional Monarch butterfly shows up, passing by in loops and glides. Winged wisps of will, they lift on the rising heat, at first in no particular direction and free of hurry; then, later, and unfailingly westward, they move purposefully toward winter roosts in central Mexico, in such numbers that they break branches out of trees.

Wooly worms will show up here in the next week or two. Again, not in large numbers, discovered here and there under a piece of firewood or scattered slab of barn board. Later, they cross the roads of Floyd County in large numbers in their brown and black three piece suits, seeking shelter for the coming winter.

In August, the locusts and walnuts, last to get their spring leaves, are first to shed them. Harbingers of fall, the feather-pinnate leaves of Sumac will be among the first to redden along the wooded roadsides, followed soon by Virginia Creeper, both well ahead of the color change that will come later in poplars, hickories and maples.

Some of the 'fallness' that I know I will feel this week, or next, has nothing to do with changes in the visible sense. It will be a sensation that come from of the imperceptible loss of time as the days shorten minutes each day-a resetting of our internal clocks that wake us up at certain points in the season, just as our inner alarms awaken us promptly every morning. I am confident that if you blindfolded me, and spun me around ten times, and placed me anywhere on the calendar, I could tell you "this is early August", by the feel of it alone.

On such a day as this in early autumn, I will breathe in the new smells that August alone can give-the scent of old hay, of corn stalks going but not quite gone by-a potpourri of plant matter in profusion, baked dry and fragrant by the July sun: monarda and pennyroyal, spicebush and sassafras. These aromas were present but not appreciated in late July. Today I will be looking for them. I'll celebrate their presence, and stop more frequently for deep drafts of it during the day.

This week, or the next, I will exclaim "that is a Fall sky!" The round piled and billowed clouds of summer for a day or two will give way to clouds streaked and smeared, thin, high and attenuated with the ends turned up, against a turquoise sky.

Fall will make a few short sorties in August, then retreat, and return again to stay longer each visit. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. It is time for fall, even though the season has not yet quite arrived.

Regulars

Perhaps one of the things that makes the Friday Night Jamboree such a central event in the life of Floyd County is its predictability. Always three dollars at the door, when you finally decide to come in off the street. Always sultry as a tropical island inside with two hundred hot bodies radiant with the buzz of blue grass and twenty of them clogging on the wooden floor in front of the stage. And every week, while new faces from out of town and even out of country are always there, I've never once been to the jamboree I didn't see a half dozen of the same faces. For the Friday Night Regulars, if you don't see them in their usual seats on Friday night, you know something is bad wrong and the Hospitality Committee at the church is taking them covered baskets of homemade bread and chicken soup.

Slim here, as I call him, is one of the regulars. The Man in Black. There seems to be less and less of him every time I go, and it's true for all of the permanent fixtures on Friday night: this world is not their home, they're just a passin' through. But til then, Friday night is the peak of the week, a time to grab your old battered instrument for some street music, stash three bills in your pocket, an extra one for a cool drink, and join the Friday Night family in town. They'll be expecting you.

Getting There

It has begun. Two stackable bins wait empty on the made beds upstairs. Over the next week, they will fill, one book, one pair of shorts, one coffee cup at a time. And next Sunday, I'll chose a route to Hindman, Kentucky. All are equally indirect. You can barely get there from here, or from anywhere else. But you can get there, to the forks of Troublesome Creek.

The workshop in Kentucky will be the closest I've ever come to accepting a blind date for a week. I've been amazed with how little information has come of the details of getting there, being there or writing there. Come to think of it, I've not even received the bill for the week's room and board and the workshops. Hindman, especially compared to the carefully structured program at the J C Campbell Folk Center, seems shockingly unstructured. This isn't altogether a bad thing, but it does leave a featureless expanse on my calendar. All I know is I will be in a very remote place, and by some accounts, it is a very beautiful place. And it is inhabited by the ghosts of some of the best and most beloved of the Appalachian literary giants--Jim Wayne Miller, James Still and others. These patrons of Appalachian rootedness and language still brood over a gathering family of writers who come each year, each spinning writer's thoughts--at meals, on front porches, in classrooms, on solitary walks--in the same way that I will be in such a place, among such hills and history, ghosts and spirits.

For many of my unmet companions and future friends there, the week at Hindman will be an annual pilgrimage. I have the sense that the place serves as a spiritual retreat center for a few of Kentucky's and the southern Appalachian's prominent writers and poets--a place to which they return to tap into the energy of group mind--there, apart from obligations, away from cell phones, and out of the presence of the sorts of folk who don't understand the writing temperament. Upon entering the settlement school boundaries, they are on familiar terrain, linked to known faces and shared histories--a kind of family reunion, bound not by blood but by the bonds of place.

For me, both a novice camper and a novice writer, I will be a lost and reticent outsider for an hour, or a day. And by the time I've made connections to the place, the pace and the people, and know who I am away from my desk at home, it will be Friday afternoon, and time to follow the breadcrumbs back toward Goose Creek.

So much will happen between the time I first step out of my car onto an unknown landscape and get back in it, filled to the bursting point with faces, memories, voices and inspiration. I have no doubt that, in ways I cannot yet anticipate, the week will seem like both a day and a month. I will thereafter never be quite the same, and in this there is a kind of wonderful dread to the prospect of going and to coming home.

While there hasn't been much in the way of official communication about the program or the school, I could have done more to educate myself about both. Had I been aware of it, I would have ordered and read Crossing Troublesome--a commemorative of Hindman's 100 year anniversary and an anthology of work arising from the authors and events from the first 25 years of the Writers Workshop there. It will be wonderful to have the opportunity to be a part of such a rich tradition, and who knows: maybe I'll become one of those folk who goes back time and again to this unknown place I can now only imagine.

What On Earth?

I'm having this little brain spasm in which I am imagining giving my biology students a Google Earth scavenger hunt. Details, TBA. But one of the places we may hunt for, or I may direct them (when I find out for sure my hunch is correct regarding the nature of this point here. (Click on it if you have Google Earth installed and it will let you see exactly what I'm seeing.)

Looking at the gazeteer for Minnesota, this landform is in Koochiching County in the last tier of counties this side of Canada. Given this area was the site of heavy glaciation and glacial lakes abound, I'm wondering if these odd smears of flowing land (which in total are dominant over several hundred square miles both in Mn and southern Canada) are bogs--partially-filled-in glacially-scoured depressions dominated by sphagnum moss. These areas are often farmed for such things as sugar beets and cranberries. I wonder: what accounts for the blue and other non-green colors in this odd land?

Does anybody have any experience from northern Minnesota to shed some light on this earthly mystery?

Sacred Cow

On the way home last night from visit and dinner with Peter and family, I took the slow road. I was hoping for some backlit shots of Queen Anne's Lace but the sun was too piercing as it settled toward the horizon, rather than the muted red ball I was hoping for.

I found the usual livestock on this picturesque brow of pasture set against the Buffalo in the far background. And while all the sheep scampered away from the fence as I approached it, this one lone white cow stood her ground, a radiant sentinel on guard against intrusion by the Pasture Papparazi who might come between a ruminant and the chewing of her cud.

Blogger Pilgrimage to Floyd

Even though it was late in the day and they'd already spent hours on the road, his wife and kids were willing to let Peter of Slow Reads venture off the interstate and travel 25 miles down the road and decades back in time to visit downtown Floyd--a place that seems at times to be the Lake Wobegon of southwest Virginia. After hours on a Saturday, it seemed more like a diorama of a little town (that time forgot, which the decades could not improve) with most of the props stored back stage somewhere. Even so, it was a good visit that included sandwiches (and lots of peach soda!) at Momma Lazardos and as much conversation as you can shoehorn into an hour.

And there was a kind of blogging symmetry to Peter's visit. He'd just come from meeting his first blogger in the flesh: Kurt of A Happening, who, as it turns out, was the first blogger I ever met, almost three years ago now.

Maybe they'll come back some day and stay longer. I think that the hand-painted clothes in the windows of Winter Sun and the promise of sartorial abundance in Schoolhouse Fabrics might just lure the missus back to Floyd at some point in the future. That'd be good. Our non-blogging wives could shop. Peter and I could dig a little deeper in to areas of common interest that you just can't get around to in a first howjadoo, passing through.

Six O'clock News: Henny Penny Reporting

Which of the three thimbles hides the pea? Are any of these internet stories true, partially true or wholecloth fabrications? Sometimes, it is impossible to tell. But all would fall into the 'if true, then significant' category. Since I've been following the topic of the first one, I give it a higher chance of being based on fact. The second is easy enough to check out to see if it is, indeed, as quoted in the actual print edition. And the third is in all likelihood at least partly true, but how will we know until it's too late. Caveat emptor.

1) Avian Flu is already a raging pandemic in China. From Recombinomics, a reliable source to date. I made this prediction a month ago to my wife. I'd just as soon lose this bet. Interesting: forum exchange in very broken English. Is this a news leak from behind the Bamboo Curtain?

2) The Bush Plan for retaliation after the next 9-11 type of attack on American soil is to nuke Iran. Justin Logan excerpting from the American Conservative. Hard copy examination yet to be carried out to verify an authentic quote.

3) Nuclear satchel bombs have already been smuggled across the Mexican border and are stored in or near American cities (source WorldNetDaily is some distance from the center (leaning right, mostly) but some of their scoops have turned out to beat the mainstream media to stories that eventually make the nightly news on CNN.)

How does one process so much information? Are we capable of dealing intelligently with so much potentially bad news without becoming inert to pending disaster warnings? Too much information too soon leads to panic and burnout. Too little too late results in unacceptable consequences of inaction and unpreparedness.

Bloggers, myself among them, would do well to study how those in the field of 'risk communication' approach crises (with regard to the link here, the crisis being communicated is avian flu) to get the word out, create a receptivity of concern, but not incite panic or a sense of lost control. This is a long article from the Pan American Health Organization, but worth the read. Perhaps your public health leaders would appreciate some guidance in this very awkward matter of risk communication. Another article in a similar vein is here.

Is the sky falling? Is the wolf really eating the sheep this time, or should we even listen to the warnings any more? Tune in at 11 for all the latest, with your intrepid news reporter, Turkey Lurkey.

Grazing in the Grass

Serving Suggestion: Prior to reading the paragraphs below, click here and open in a new window or tab. Turn up your sound.

While the grasses themselves had lost much of their orderly beauty and subtle color before the pasture was cut a few days ago, the insect inhabitants had begun to appear there in myriad abundance as the long warm days incubated eggs into larva, and pupae into adults. Earlier in the week, I steered the truck along the edge of the pasture to beat down a walking path through the high grass--as high as the top of my windshield. I navigated by the sky, not able to see the ground in front of me. When I got back to the barn, the hood of the truck was an entomological treasure trove--leafhoppers, spittlebugs, cinch bugs and grasshoppers--hundreds of grasshoppers like the one you see here.

A week before, I had watched and photographed this very type of small green grasshopper on a tall stem of grass. It moved methodically along the flower spike using its long antennae (several times the length of the body) to flick the pollen-heavy anthers. The male grass's sex organs hung dangling like tiny salt shakers, waiting for a gentle breeze to carry sperm (inside the ornately-sculpted pollen grain) to a female flower yards or miles away.

You can see some pollen grains floating away in this small image, as well as some of it on the grasshopper's antennae. And what I wish I'd taken the time to discover was whether these grasshoppers use their antennae intentionally to gather pollen. Some insects can pull their antennae through their mouths to clean them of mites and such. Could it be that in these very common pasture-dwelling grasshoppers, the antennae are used to collect pollen and then bring it to their mouths? This would explain the ridiculously long appendages, wouldn't it? And this relationship, then, would be a 'mutualism', helping both the insect (providing food) and the grass (pollen dispersal, costing only a few grains in payment to the insect for the service.)

But I'll not find the answer to this mystery this year. The grasses--along, most certainly, with a hundred thousand entombed long-eared grasshoppers--are now wrapped in tight round bales, stored under a barn roof up on Griffith Creek. I'll just have to wait until next July to confirm my antennae-as-feeding-hands hypothesis.

All the Buzz

For the better part of a week while we had house guests, I blogged away the early mornings when I should have been out tending the garden. So much changes out there when the weather is warm. Or maybe, it is simply that, in our gardens, we move slowly, often squat on our haunches or kneel close to the earth, and pay very close attention to the lives of growing things. We note every nuance of swelling bud, elongating stem, and the difference in color of swollen plant ovaries that will become our food--in a way we seldom do outside our garden fences.

Yesterday, when I took the GeorgiaOkeefish image of a squash flower, I didn't know about squash bees. I learned that in my little research session that is my daily education in the ways of the world. So today, armed with ew imformation, I went back purposefully to note the difference between this bee and the sadly uncommon honey bee, and to distinguish male from female squash bee by appearance, behaviour and location.

You could clearly see the females, most often on the male flowers, gathering protein-rich pollen for their brood. Time after time, the quick-flying males would dart in for a quicky. The female, with her receptive parts uppermost, would kick up her back legs with each attempted mating, signifying in bee language "I've got a sick headache." As soon as one male would leave by the front door, another would sneak in the back. It is quite the redlight district there in the golden interior of a squash he-flower.

This morning, I noticed how many squash blossoms are already past their prime. Most have dropped their fused corona of petals and are going or gone to fruit. Since yesterday, the curved pollen-bearing anthers have muted from dark yellow to a bright ocre, possibly signifying to the bees "Last call. Bar and dating service closes in fifteen minutes." I doubt there will be any flowers at all by tomorrow.

Writer Comes (back) to Floyd

Congratulations to Jim Minick, former Floyd County resident, for bringing his book, Finding a Clear Path, to press. Last night marked his first book signing, with copies just arrived at the last minute yesterday afternoon. The book is pending release via Amazon.com, expected within a couple of weeks. Other local speaking engagements are scheduled.

I look forward to reading my copy, and will reread the half dozen pieces that Jim read last night at the Floyd Library, hearing his voice in the written words--all the better. Perhaps before summer ends, I'll have a brief personal reflection when I've finished the book. But I can tell you now, I'm certain that Jim's clear path already has my footprints on it. There is a comfortable stride in his travels, and many of the landmarks along that path--geographic and symbolic--are familiar to those whose visions of and insights into the natural and manmade world come most clearly while walking expectantly. Read it. You'll see what I mean.

Meanwhile, I'll take the lazy way and clip an endorsement from the back cover that says it well:

"Another shining writer has emerged from the Southern landscape. Here, Jim Minick has written an exquisitely beautiful book about his Appalachian farm and his engagement in a life that makes sense. In impressive vignettes, Minick sketches his life and his desire to know the depths of it. 'I need to name what I love,' he writes. With merry deftness, he tells of counting osprey, growing beans, and finding box turtles, but beyond the immediate, his subjects outline a formula for a good life; community, rootedness, history, family, and the beauty of nature. The Virginia mountains are lucky to have Minick as a new voice. Would that every place find such a singer of praises." -- Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Pinbook

Timmy is Home

I'm afraid I have good news for Timmy-watchers out there. Timmy is no longer a lost boy. I know few details. His family wasn't from around here. They didn't know Floyd had an animal shelter, so it took them until Wednesday to find their lost pet, who had been there waiting for them since Saturday.

Meanwhile, Doug Thompson's wife, Amy, had gone to the shelter up on Storker's Knob to see the little pup pictured here last weekend. She immediately fell in love, and was told "it's yours on Friday if he's not claimed." Monday afternoon, I got a call from a familiar voice telling me--in more colorful words--that my soul was doomed to perdition for putting his wife onto yet another mouth to feed. It sounded like the voice of god. I was afraid. I was very afraid. Not.

And so, what really was the best thing for this animal that obviously for a year or more had been the object of a family's attention and effection. But it was a sad disappointment at the House of Thompson, where the cats, at least in this one campaign, were united in feline solidarity. No dogs, no matter how cute!

Living the Lyrics

It is a family recipe, once created by an unknown matriarch and thereafter, a legacy of memory passed from daughter to grandchild. And of course, with such a history, it has become a birthday tradition: a chocolate layer cake with marshmallowy pale green mint icing.

And in that peaceful far corner of our land where the steep hills come together like praying hands, we celebrated the family patriarch's 91st birthday with just such a cake again during his visit this week. There, we re-enacted his 89th in that hidden hollow in the woods. During the first celebration, a sudden afternoon thunderstorm had interrupted the festivities. I hurriedly covered the cake under its Tupperware dome and ran down the lane to store it safely in the cab of the truck that had brought our folding chairs along for the event.

Several steps before reaching the truck, the bottom of the cake caddy separated from the top. The cake fell scattered across the trail as summer lightning sent me scurrying quickly for cover. After the storm, we went back to clean up the mess.

And it was here in this moment that we experienced the epiphany of discovery. Here at this instant, we discovered the meaning of a song whose lyrics had puzzled us for decades. What could it possibly have been pointing to but this very event? We all burst into song (much to the consternation of my 11 year old nephew)-- a sacrament to the unknown, now revealed in our time.

All the sweet green icing flowing down? Never find that recipe again? Melting in the rain? This was the historical event anticipated by Jimmy Webb when he wrote McArthur Park back in the psychedelic sixties. We were living the lyrics. Life is amazing, isn't it?

But it remains to be revealed if we'll ever come to understand 'love's hot fevered iron like a striped pair of pants.' But maybe we have seen enough of this one. But even so, given this blessed revelation, I cannot help but hope that someday--maybe on grandpa's 95th--we'll be granted a similar visitation leading to an understanding of other late sixties mysteries.

"I am the Walrus", maybe. Crabalocker fishwife? Sitting on a cornflake? It's only a matter of time until we know.

Sustainable Communities

Appalachian Sustainable Development is on a short list as possible recipient of a million-dollar non-profit innovation award. I confess, I had never heard of this organization that presides over a ten-county area to our west. But I like what I see on their website, and wonder if their work and structure could be duplicated in the New River Valley area where we live.

Here's a thumbnail view from their ABOUT page:

Mission Statement

We come together as citizens living in and near the watersheds of the Clinch and Powell Rivers to affirm the need for development that is sustainable and beneficial for nature and people, for culture and community. Thus we pledge ourselves to work for this sustainable development:

• By promoting the values underlying a respect for people, nature, community and culture;
• By enabling local communities to meet their own needs;
• By establishing ecologically sensitive businesses;
• By creating services enhancing human potential; and
• By utilizing strategies building upon regional strengths

Our Vision

We envision a future in which the natural quality and great diversity of our forests, land and waterways are protected through an economic life greatly diversified and locally controlled. We envision an economic life that respects the connectedness of the human and natural communities and a system in which economic decision-making is more inclusive, democratic and effective. We envision more meaningful work opportunities created through a fuller, sustainable use of our productive resources. And, we envision a renewed commitment to act responsibly towards people, community, cultures and the earth.

Cutting Our Losses

Okay. I guess now we know the answer.

Ann and I talk about how, if we had to, we could make-do here in times of reduced income, long periods of flooding or snow, or in the event of a national emergency like avian flu quarantine. We have firewood for heat (provided we can get gas for the chain saw.) We can get water from the well faucet, even if the power is out. But how much of our own food could we provide from the garden, if we had to depend on it as a source of food to get us through the winter? This year, I set out with a renewed determination to make the garden a top priority--a Victory Garden--to give us a better idea of what kind of food reserves we could produce and store without depending on the larger economy.

As far as canning vegetables that last from one the end of one gardening season to the beginning of the next, we've had the best luck with green beans. So this year, I devoted almost a third of the garden to Kentucky Wonder--a variety that has been productive in the five gardening years we've lived here. Well, you've heard my whining about how slow they've been to set fruit, and about the terrible problem with Japanese beetles that never before have plagued our garden veggies, and especially not this early in the season.

The corn failed after three plantings. Somebody suggested it might be seedcorn maggots that eat the seed before it germinates. I'm not the only one having problems with corn this year. Small comfort. The deer ate the tops out of most of the green peppers and the Early Girl tomatoes. There are still no flowers at all on the vining (and I think mislabled) beans. Today, I admit defeat. I'll pull up 250 foot-row of whatever those beetle-infested legumes are, and haul them to the edge of the pasture for the beetles and the deer--our winter source of protein that wasn't, fodder for the wildlife.

There is still time to replant. I don't relish it in this heat. And I'll have to escalate in the war against the insects. Several people have mentioned NEEM products and I'll check that out. Seems there is also a spray that is a clay-based product that is effective on Japanese beetles. Now we're in the rush to beat the first frost.

I also bought turnip, mustard, spinach and kale seed yesterday, and we can hope for a good fall garden. But you can only eat so many greens. They cook down so much we'd never be able to grow enough to can, I don't think.

So, we will enter the winter of 2006 as obligate recipients of someone else's efforts against the odds to grow, cultivate, pick, store and ship vegetables to us from California, Mexico and Brazil. But next year, I'll know some things NOT to do, some things NOT to plant, and maybe have some new weapons against them what eats what we would eat. Well have another chance to prove that we can feed ourselves. Or the deer and bugs.

And there you have it: if it were necessary to feed ourselves by the work of our own hands this year from the bit of earth and sunlight we are blessed with, we would starve. It's kinda sobering.

ADDENDUM 10 a.m.: Reprieve Granted! Bean blossoms detected, beetles get one more taste of Rotenone spray (fingers crossed) and we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I'll plant the new seeds I got at Ingram's Store yesterday, just as Bean Insurance.

Weeds: Edible Pests

This piece is from Floyd Press / The Road Less Traveled, July 7, 2005

And just for the record, even Ann likes the Purslane. Here are some links to recipes.

Click "Read More" for the story...

---

Garden Pests: Some Parts Might Be Edible!

In early June, open patches of carefully raked garden soil frame a gardener's vegetable sets and sprouted seeds against the dark earth. But a few weeks ago in our garden, those open patches between the intentional plantings became freckled with little dots of green--thousands of them, as if by some kind of evil magic--tiny zombie plants, spreading, multiplying, growing taller as I watch.

Resistance is futile. They are disgustingly hearty, these colonizers of bare soil. When they show up in our gardens by the thousands, we have a name for such an aggressive and discouragingly efficient species: we gardeners call it a weed-and that's a four-letter word. But one gardener's weed might become another's dinner. Let's look at a few examples.

Lamb's Quarters can grow taller than a man's head and take over a barn lot or neglected garden in days. It was introduced to America from Europe, where for centuries it was much sought after as a potherb. And no wonder: it contains almost twice as much calcium as milk; more Vitamin A than carrots; and more vitamin C than orange juice. A single average-sized plant will produce over 72 thousand seeds! And so it is both nutritious and prolific and grows without any care whatsoever: that sounds like the ideal jujitsu vegetable crop to me: you let the momentum of your opponent work to your advantage.

Long ago, I inflicted this pragmatic logic on my family in the form of a steaming pot of Lamb's Quarters greens I had pulled from the garden rows. But this 'wild foods' dish met with poor reception just a week after I had offered my wife and small children a plate of boiled milkweed pods that had cooked into an eerie, bright green-like spiny day-glow sea slugs! The kids have been leery of my cooking ever since.

Another self-seeded volunteer in our garden is Purslane. Low growing, with a thick red-tinged stem and leaves, it is classified as a succulent (meaning fleshy or juicy) and resembles a small jade plant. Like most weeds, it grows fast and uses water efficiently and will survive in too much or too little rain in all kinds of soil. Yikes! How's a gardener to stay ahead of such survival qualities as that? The answer: don't be a weed whacker. Be a weed eater!

And why shouldn't you? Purslane contains large amounts of Vitamins A, C and E, and five or more times the Omega-3 fatty acids in spinach. Fresh Purslane has a crisp texture (but is somewhat mucilaginous) and a slight pickle taste. It can be used fresh in salads instead of or in addition to lettuce, and you can find pictures and recipes for it on the 'net. Wait 'til mid-summer. There will more than enough to make a meal.

Growing just outside the garden fence is yet another wildly successful weedy plant that thankfully stays out of the garden and offsets its aggressive growth with both beauty and function. Jewelweed plants (a species of the genus Impatiens) have already hatched their little kidney-shaped leaves on watery transparent stems in moist places at the edge of our yard. Juice from the crushed stem is great for quelling itches and stings. And did you know you can eat the seeds that explode from the yellow or orange "touch me not" flowers in the fall? But here's a cautionary tale:

In the early eighties, we learned from Euell Gibbons that when it comes to native plants and invaders, 'many parts are edible.' "The tiny seeds from Touch-me-nots taste a lot like hickory nuts!" he encouraged us. So, in an effort to both educate our children and keep the two of them safely occupied for an hour or more, we assigned them the job of collecting enough touch-me-nuts to substitute for pecans in a batch of cookies. And a while later, right out of the oven, the seeds were nutlike and delicious. That afternoon, we walked the whole batch of them up to our elderly neighbors.

The next day in church, we asked them if they'd enjoyed the cookies.

"Well, yes" they said somewhat hesitantly. "But what were those little rocks you put in 'em?"

We hadn't known that our nut replacements would quickly lose their moisture and turn hard as pebbles as they cooled. It's a wonder somebody didn't break a tooth! Our kids will never let us forget that little experiment gone wrong. And score one more swing-and-a-miss in my efforts at family wild foods horizon-broadening.

But be encouraged, stalkers of the wild asparagus. There are some 50,000 edible plant species in the world, and I'm betting you eat no more than maybe 30 of them. So, if you add three kinds of "weeds" to your short list, you'll have increased your food choices by 10%. And without even leaving your own back yard! -- Fred First (c) 2005

Pollination Biology

Once upon a time, it would have been honey bees doing much of the work in our garden, spreading plant sperm to plant egg--the essential process of pollination. Now, other bees, wasps and beetles have supplanted honey bees, whose hives in nature have been largely wiped out by varroa mites, displaced by Africanized bees, and decimated by pesticides. link

The bee pictured here on our summer yellow crookneck blossom is probably a Squash Bee, looking for a mate (if male) or a meal of pollen for its young (if female.)

And yet, pollination remains an essential 'service' if we are to have fruits and vegetables for food. The insect pollinators are perhaps the weakest link in the food chain, on which we place more and more pressure as population increases and there are ever more hungry mouths to feed. Here'a a good article that explains the essential role of pollinators, and some of the threats they (and therefore, we) face.

Consider: every third bite of food you eat, a bee or other insect probably made it possible. It is as much the labor of the pollinator as the farmer that feeds us.

Out Standing in My Field

Well, running, actually.

On the very day I post about him neglecting to cut the pasture this year, our neighbor showed up unexpectedly this afternoon, and in an hour, the grasses of last week's photos were laid low. We have our level plain, our distant views, our agri-cultural tabula rasa once more!

As the sun sank and shadows sprawled across the pasture, Ann and I took a celebratory walk to the end of the valley, walking along the fine lines of grasses laid down in parallels by the noisy mower. It was too hot for boots, so I chose to walk in my Tevas (against Ann's instructions--but then, I regularly live my day to day life contrary to the admonishions of the Queen of Dire Consequences.)

How expansive the view, looking back at the house from the end of the pasture. How open the sky seemed now that the floor of the valley was once again a tidy horizontal. How fast I ran when the yellow jackets discovered my bare ankles, and how unpleasant the memory of the six nests we exterminated from that end of the valley last year!

No, she never said "I told you so."

The Continuing Story: Timmy, Lost Dog

You'll remember last episode, Timmy's life had taken yet another twist since he took to the road, searching for America. First, he finds the Tall Man who speaks softly and knows just where to scratch through Timmy's thick fur. The Lost Boy had found a friend at last. The Man fed Timmy, took him for a ride up the road in the truck, and protected him from the demented young monster-dog (the one he called Sugar in some foreign language) who, perhaps himself had once been a runaway dog just like Timmy. Who could say?

But alas, as good things so often do, the man betrayed young Timmy. Suddenly, before he understood the treachery at hand, Timmy found himself locked behind bars in some strange kind of canine gulag. There were others there that had been similarly exhiled from their Tall Men and Gentle Women. But why? What was to become of him? Would he ever find a place again where he belonged?

Stay tuned for Part Three in this saga. It WILL have a happy ending, you need not worry for our furry friend. But I can't tell you the end of the story until Friday.

Join us again for the next installment of Timmy's Tale, to be continued (quite likely) on another blog near you.

Airspace

It is, by all measures, the full-blown middle of the summer: hot, hazy and humid. Too hazy for vistas or landscapes. Too humid to enjoy being over in the field or meadow after the first hint of brightening sky; and so hot that even the greens are going to brown.

To my disappointment, our pasture did not get cut for hay in early summer as it should have been. Our neighbor has tended this field for hay since long before we moved here. Since we culled away the leggy phalanx of pines from the pasture our first year year, R. has fertilized, limed and planted seed. It was at its very best, finally, this year, and sadly, it has gone to waste. It's not like R. to neglect to come by apologetically explaining why he's going to be a week late getting the first cutting. We heard nothing at all, and now our field looks like the matted and burred coat of a lost long-haired dog. The tall grasses, gray and taupe, are lodged over, this way and that, as the winds happen to hit the wet-heavy stems.

What we do have in abundance now are dragonflies--darting cruciform cursors of summer meadows, biplanic insects that flit and light, hover and spin. And they are welcome here to all they can eat. We watch them patrol near-space in the evenings. Above them, in near-space of that column of air 80 acres round that reaches the edge of the atmosphere, chimney sweeps swoop and twitter in twos and threes, in a terrible hurry; and soon, in the uppermost visible sphere of airspace over Goose Creek, the night hawks will come mysteriously, silently rowing in powerful strokes near the vanishing point.

The Mind's Eye

Looking through the saved links in my 'pending posts' drawer, these three below all seem to have something to say about the power of what we see to change the way we see things in ourselves and the world. Sometimes that change is a good thing; we desire to change in that way and we keep coming back again and again to look at a work of art, a beautiful architecture, a tranquil landscape. And other things our eyes fall on make us simultaneously want to look away, and look again.

Given my vantage point rather far up the slope of the rock of ages, the images at Age Maps have a similar if not identical visual impact as Ronni Bennett's sequence of her face through her ages of time, past to present. Both of these presentations capture the truth that eludes young people, and from which they actively flee: we all grow, we all grow old, we never change at our core. Fixed in our central selves, time passes through us, changing some things, leaving others as they have been since we first became selves. And so these images, to me, are both disturbing and comforting. What kinds of feelings do you have at Age Maps?

A little powder, a little paint--makes a lady what she ain't. So says a cross stitch that has hung in my mom's bathroom for decades. That same paint can do some serious and disturbing things to children painted to enhance their adult features, their sexuality--with eye liner, styled hair, pierced ears and such. I guess this was some bizarre kind of 'beauty contest.' And well, now I go to fetch the link, I see that "Angels with Attitude" has been disassembled. It was just too creepy and probably way too attractive to the wrong kind of people who love children.

Finally, a gallery that is part photographic and partly "a kind of contamination among the arts dissolving the boundaries which distinguish them". There is a 14th century Boschian quality to the artist's work--a surreality that is both repulsive, and attractive. Do you find you want to see more, or hurry off to the Dilbert page instead?

Not a Sparrow Falls

Western shore birds in the US are dying. (Global warming?) Eastern shore birds in the US are dying, and so are geese in Brunwick, Georgia. Cause UNK. Quail in Thailand are dying. I'm afraid we know why.

Funny. Upstairs in the Very Back Room last week, I found a cross-stitch Ann did for me while we were still at Auburn and I was the budding young ecologist. On the faded cloth were colorful images of a giraffe, a dog, a wildflower, several birds. The words came from Ecclesiastes:

For that which befalleth the sons of man befalleth the beast. As the one dies, so dies the other.

End of an Era

The numbers, black on white, whirred past, a sign of the times. I leaned against the side of the truck and watched the Saturday morning crowd swarm into the Express Mart for sausage biscuits and coffee. I hadn't imagined it would be so busy on a weekend morning as the sun was coming up. The coolness was a welcome relief from the heat we would have again later in the day. I breathed deeply. My mind wandered.

The dial blurred--$10, $15, $20. But thirty dollars of gas these days hardly allows a fella enough time for a good daydream, I thought to myself. The fumes from the pumping gas--an insult in the clean air of early morning--made me wince and turn away. And yet, it was pleasant in a way, a smell so familiar. The sharp-edged oily memory of gasoline threads across my entire lifetime; a single whiff transports me back to Sunday afternoon car rides in a shiny black Buick. There in the cool shade I remembered the first time I filled the family car on a solo drive, spending my own money--the ultimate rite of passage. The gallons went quickly then, the dollars slowly, at 20 cents a gallon. Three dollars filled the tank of the VW beetle, and I got a free carwash with a fill-up. The smell of gas on my hands was the scent of manhood, independence, and personal empowerment.

A nostalgic sigh drew in another whiff of the volatile blood of the dinosaurs, the ancient perfume that has enchanted civilization for what will turn out to have been such a short blur of time on the larger scale of human history. It is the heady smell of mankind's rise to power, the eau de victory over distance--the power of horses harnessed to change raw chaos into the order of man-made things. Gasoline has allowed us to gain dominion over geography, to transform matter and to wield dominion over our fellow species on the planet, and to foul our nest. Of all the smells of our day, the vapors of octane is the patron-saint aroma of our times--ubiquitous, omnipresent, and finite.

And it dawned on me, an epiphany as a large man pushed his way out of the Express Mart with two heavy sacks of greasy egg and cheese biscuits: One day, someone will use the last drop of oil. It is a hard thing to get one's head around. That this is unavoidably true is as certain and as incomprehensible to most of us as the fact that our own heart beat will one day, one instant in time, cease. This will happen. The use of fossil fuels for world commerce will have ended years before. Then on a Tuesday at 3:12 in the afternoon, Walter M. Smith's high-efficiency gas-hydrogen antique minicar will come to a stop on Maple Street in Wilmington, Delaware, and he will abandon it there. The era of Fossil Fuels will have ended forever.

Efforts will be made in those times to preserve some remnant samples of octane, propane, kerosene, paraffin--perhaps even exhaust fumes. They will house them in museums--the hands-on kind--where you can briefly sniff samples of what was once the elixir of an age. Some of the very oldest visitors will barely remember the last time their grandparents filled up the family car while they stood by the pump, watching the numbers spin, smelling the perfume of a former time.