Fragments From Floyd

a.k.a. Morgellons Disease. Initially dismissed as nothing but a kind of mental aberration, now with more than 12,000 “registered” sufferers from all 50 states and more than a dozen foreign countries, CDC is on the case. 

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States announced the launch of an investigation on ‘Morgellons Disease’ in January 2008 [1], after receiving thousands of complaints from people with this bewildering condition, which it describes as follows [2]: “Persons who suffer from this unexplained skin condition report a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms including crawling, biting and stinging sensations; granules, threads, fibers, or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin, and/or skin lesions (e.g., rashes or sores). In addition to skin manifestations, some sufferers also report fatigue, mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, and changes in visions.”

Morgellons Disease first became known in 2001, when Mary Leitao created a web site describing the illness in her young son, which she named after a 17th century medical study in France describing similar symptoms [3]. Until then, people with Morgellons Disease have been diagnosed as cases of “delusional parasitosis”, in which the symptoms are deemed entirely imaginary, and lesions allegedly due to self-inflicted wounds.

Some early evidence (with a very small sample size at this point) suggests a bacterial agent associated with Morgellons–all the more significant in that this particular bacterium (Agrobacterium) is everywhere, has the ability to transfer some of its genetic material into organisms other than fellow bacterial types, AND that this organism is an agent in genetically modifying plant crops. (Are you hearing the intro theme to X-files yet?) And some fringe groups (natch) are shouting ET GO HOME!

I’ve followed this for more than six months and it only gets more interesting. If you haven’t heard about this previously unknown and very rare condition, my guess is that like WNS in bats over the past six months, the topic will snowball as CDC either substantiates or refutes the legitimacy of this “new disease”. Wikipedia has a good set of resource links of you’re interested and here’s a link to Google News archives for 2008 on the topic to date.

Frankly, I was not surprised having heard of the human swarm that the Myrtle Beach are has become. Still, seeing it for ourselves about a month ago was a shock. The beauty and serenity of Brookgreen Gardens and the many impressive sculptures (this one so nicely reflecting the lines of the massive arms of the live oak in the background) seem sadly out of place, a small island of natural beauty and peace in a sea of manmade change.

A friend with a foot in both camps (Floyd and the Grand Strand) echoes the concern of many that his coastal home is being loved to death. And he shares this piece from the local paper with an eye as well to what might happen to other lovely places we call home.

It’s easy understanding why people find this area so desirable: a magnificent natural setting that includes wondrous beaches, estuaries, blackwater rivers, wetlands and forests; intimate downtowns, with sidewalks enveloped by moss-draped oak trees; terrific local restaurants and family-owned businesses; a slow pace of life; and friendly people.

Unfortunately, unchecked local growth is threatening all of this. And the problem is widespread: Coastal areas of the United States make up about 17 percent of the country’s land area, but hold about 53 percent of the total population. The Southeast, which in 2003 was the least populated coastal region in the United States, is growing the fastest. At the current growth rate, Horry County’s 250,000 will double to 500,000 by about 2020, and to 1 million by 2032. Given the haphazard way we’ve grown so far, I don’t want to live in the Grand Strand when the permanent population surpasses 1 million people.

This piece was printed in the April 18 edition of the Roanoke Star-Sentinel. 

My wife says you could sit me down anywhere any time with a map of any place in the world and I’ll be happy as a pig in mud. Yep.

Maps suggest human stories against the backdrop of landscapes most of which I’ll never put my feet on but can experience vicariously as a map traveler–with new bearings and sense of proportion, man to map to territory. In their odd place names, features and boundaries, maps suggest the passage of geological and culture time.

Of course, the larger and more detailed the map, the wider and deeper the imagination soars.  And so you can imagine my absolute Walter-Mitty awe when Google Earth arrived on the scene.

As an arm-chair explorer, this free digital globe program is the most wonderful adventure tool to come along in my not-particularly-well traveled life!  I’ve followed the waters of the Nile and the New from their sources to their respective oceans and found the highest peaks of all the great mountain ranges.  I’ve soared over Pakistan, Madagascar, Chile, New Zealand and Afghanistan and about each place learned  facts that would never have become as “realized” from a textbook description or a flat map of these places.

While blemishes like rain forest destruction and Appalachian mountaintop removal are clearly visible from a hundred miles up, there are still remote and beautiful places left on the planet to map-browse—including the mountains and forests of southwest Virginia. Many regions of the world still have sizable if shrinking patches of healthy forest, prairie or jungle wilderness intact.

We’ve learned much in the last fifty years about how Earth’s ecosystems and creatures get along, and at times, we have created ways to conserve and protect them. But our numbers on Earth continue to grow and humanity’s material and energy wants and needs seem inexhaustible, while the little blue ball on my screen and under our feet is finite.

Both the planet’s immensity and variety and its susceptibility to the uses and misuses of civilization become more real when you see them with your own eyes from above. “Oh, I’ve been there!” I say when I read about the melting glaciers of Nepal or the disappearing Colorado River.

Maps line us up with the world as it is. Google Earth does this especially well for me. In its three-dimensionality and interactivity it makes me a participant in place. The global browser as a mapping tool gives the vicarious vagabond a literal grounding to the environmental and human dramas that unfold in natural terrains around the world. We are affected more than ever by events that happen on the dark side of our daytime world. They are closer to us than we imagine.

Soon, the World Wide Telescope (now in limited beta) will do for space what Google Earth has done for the planet. What power this gives us to know our place in the universe as no other generation has ever been capable of. Can we use these views of our common world and cosmological position in the order of things in such a way that we grow closer to this shrinking planet and each other and work together for the common good?

I encourage you to go see for yourself.

UPDATE: WWT is destined for public release very soon and Google Earth’s latest version lets you see the same landscape as the sun rises and sets–a very impressive and interactive way to experience the planet! Of course there are also improved “street views” in GE, but I’m waiting for “trail views”. Even so, let’s get out in the real world and know it better!

Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. They’re creating FrankenBugs. It’s all about s’curity so it’s gotta be okay, right?

So keep your swatters ready, but realize that the buzzing nuisance you flatten against the window pane may have been sending images and conversations home to the mother ship.

HI-MEMS (Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) insects are packing electronics, built into them from the embryonic stages, turning living creatures into agents of the Watchers–just a slightly new twist on insectoid robots that have been around for a long while, according to this WaPo article in my files from last fall.

In 1974, a group of writers and activists gathered in the circular meeting space at Highlander Center near Knoxville to form what became the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. Founding members of SAWC include Gurney Norman, Peggy Dotson Hall, Jim Webb and Ron Short.

During the 1970s, SAWC sponsored readings and published New Ground, an anthology of contemporary Appalachian literature. In the 1980s, Norman, along with poets George Ella Lyon and Bob Henry Baber facilitated the Appalachian Poetry Project, breathing new life into SAWC as poets and writers from throughout the Appalachian region gathered in their own and one another’s communities, and celebrated together at Highlander Center.

SAWC has met (almost) annually since this time. Through its annual October writers’ gathering, a SAWC Summer gathering at Wiley’s Last Resort on top of Pine Mountain in Whitesburg, KY, local readings and the literary magazine, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, SAWC continues its original mission to foster community among and encourage publication of Appalachia’s writers.

SAWC members from Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia will gather at Radford University the evening of Thursday April 24 at the Flossie Martin Art Gallery, Radford University to celebrate the posthumous publication of All There is To Keep, a book of poetry by the late Rita Riddle of the RU English Department and a long time and much loved SAWC member. Then, while in the area at the invitation of SAWC member Fred First, on Friday April 25, members of SAWC will meet and swap short readings with the Floyd Writers Circle at the Country Store from 3:30 to 5:00.

The time of good words and good fun at the Country Store is free and open to the public, and all are invited to attend and to welcome these writer-guests to Floyd.

The image is from yesterday, a day much less ominous for us than areas north and south that saw strong spring storms. Wish we’d gotten more rain!

That the old has become new–without abandoning the comfortable scale and pace of the old–is a noteworthy–and newsworthy– feature of today’s downtown Floyd. Small is beautiful. Others towns are noticing how this growing phase is shaping up…

To prevent strip malls from moving into suburban areas of town, Floyd officials and property owners are working together to convert old downtown buildings into new commercial and residential space.

The concept, known as “adaptive re-use,” is also being explored in Giles, Pulaski, Wise and Scott counties, according to downtown Floyd property owner Woody Crenshaw, who said he’s been contacted by people in those communities about what steps Floyd has taken to preserve its local character.[NRV Roanoke Times 20 April 08]

In all this make-over, can prosperity happen without becoming the Midas touch? It may be that the street improvements are the easy part. Dealing with success while preserving the foundation it was built on will be the challenge of the future. Other former small towns lay buried somewhere in the sprawl, gobbled up by the smothering suburbs created by loving a place to death.

That there is a risk of this happening in Floyd is certain. But contrary to the county seal, there are many who believe that we do not need not grow in the all-to-common big-box ways of small towns these days to prosper. But finding that balance between what we get and what we give away is necessarily at the center of all the discussions I’ve been involved with.

There is a large measure of caution here, of measuring twice before cutting once. And so far, the balancing act seems to be keeping Floyd on its feet, and only occasionally do you have to sit through more than one light change at the single traffic light in town.

You are, of course, following mankind’s approach ever closer (later this summer–signs and wonders from a former solar system near you!) to the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything? CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is set to rev up (to some very large percentage of the speed of light) and do unspeakable things to perfectly normal, peace loving, matter-making protons. And then what? One non-scientist humorist asks if there are better ways to get answers.

(Or if you really want the full straight scoop on what’s about to happen and why, this LA Times article is about as complete and comprehensible as a non-physics-major can handle or should need. All jocularity aside, this is a Big (Bang) Deal, kiddos–the largest and most expensive Dr. Science Chemistry Set in the history of Life, the Universe, and–well, you know.)

The whole colliding thing just seems like such a violent way of solving universal mysteries. If the proton actually does know some answers, aren’t there better ways to get them to reveal them to us? Such as:

The SuperDistractor: An underground entertainment center designed specifically with the uptight proton in mind. PlayStation, plasma screen, foosball, pool table, trampoline, high speed Internet — when the proton is embroiled in a game of Donkey Kong, it’s bound to blurt out the secret of the universe without even knowing it.

The SuperRelaxer: Like a proton spa — hot tub, sauna, lap pool, hookah. Who’s to say that a couple of protons weren’t just chilling one day and decided, hey, wouldn’t it be kinda cool to get together and form, like, a universe? Groovy. The SuperRelaxer could simulate these circumstances and allow scientists to do whatever it is that scientists do while it happened — take notes and get grants and stuff.

Waterboarding: Maybe a bit of gentle “encouragement” is all that’s needed to get the stubborn, tight-lipped proton to reveal the secret plans of the universe. True, information gathered under such circumstances is not reliable, but it is a bit more humane than colliding.

If you know the answers to any of my questions, please don’t tell me. It’ll ruin the bliss.

The March 2008 issue of National Geographic has been folded back for weeks now to the article on “The Hunt for the God Particle” and I’ve been reading a paragraph or two every little bit as the mornings allow. It may help us answer the ultimate cosmological question in the title of this post.

Fascinating stuff: that soon, either North America’s Fermilab or Europe’s CERN will create colliding particles that could set off either the most profound discoveries of our existence, or the end of it. Depends on who you believe, who you trust. And it doesn’t really matter because we will climb this mountain because–at least for now–it exists. The risks are slim but oh-so-consequential, the potential gains: cosmic.

Not everybody is bullish on crossing this physics threshold that represents a new and unprecedented step in human history and science. What if it turns out we have more courage and curiosity than wisdom or prudence? Here’s the matter at hand from the NY Times:

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue that has bothered scholars and scientists in recent years — namely how to estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets to decide whether or not to go ahead.

“The possibility that a black hole eats up the Earth is too serious a threat to leave it as a matter of argument among crackpots,” said Michelangelo Mangano, a CERN theorist who said he was part of the group. The others prefer to remain anonymous, Mr. Mangano said, for various reasons. Their report was due in January.

Questions about the doomsday scenarios may well come up at CERN on April 6, during a public open house at the LHC. Some researchers have gotten the word to be prepared to talk about microscopic black holes and strangelets if asked. MSNBC

From this massive experiment, profound questions might be answered about why and how the universe was formed and why it continues to exist as we find it billions of years after the origin of time, matter and energy out of nothing–in the beginning.

Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if (however unlikely) we destroyed creation in our quest for the God Particle? What a peculiar animal we are, driven, hungry and confident that in making the right tools, we’ll find the universal equation, pluck the ultimate fruit from the Tree of Life, the Universe and Everything.

Wish I was going to be around to see how this Story of human curiosity and genius turns out. Or then again, maybe not.

Extinguish one candle. Participate in Earth Hour TONIGHT!

On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m., join millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off your lights for Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife Fund.

Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagships–Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco and Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

We invite everyone throughout North America and around the world to turn off the lights for an hour starting at 8 p.m. (your own local time)–whether at home or at work, with friends and family or solo, in a big city or a small town.

What will you do when the lights are off? We have lots of ideas.

Join people all around the world in showing that you care about our planet and want to play a part in helping to fight climate change. Don’t forget to sign up and let us know you want to join Earth Hour.

One hour, America. Earth Hour. Turn out for Earth Hour!

Need something to do in the dark?

It has been years since I visited a home health physical therapy patient in this house I pass on one of my alternate routes into Floyd.

On my first visit, a tiny black woman came to the door, her small dog yipping nervously beside her, jumping against her legs.

“You must be Mabel Lawson” I said, glancing at the chart in my clipboard to confirm the address.

“Harumphhh” she snorted. “Mabel Lawson–I don’t know ’bout that. They took a gall bladder. The took most of a stomach and all them other innards in there. Ain’t much a’ Mabel left. But I guess I’m what’s left of ‘er. ”

She has since passed on and her house abandoned. I wonder what happened to her little dog that came to accept me after half a dozen visits. And now her house suffers decrepitude, taking on the aspect of its former owner.

They ain’t much left uvvit.