Fragments From Floyd

Country Life

I went out to turn the truck around yesterday to drain all the accumulated rain from the bed liner of my poor old rust colored 1996 Dodge Dakota truck. Tsuga went out to help me. As I got out the passenger side, he went over to mark my right front tire and all of a sudden began rubbing his face on the ground, running around like something was after him. That indeed was the case: seems we were gone long enough for yellow jackets to build a nest somewhere under the body of the truck–maybe in the engine compartment. We’ll have to go out with the flashlight of a cool morning with the RAID I suppose.

(Footnote: Tsuga turns FIVE YEARS OLD today. Some of you will remember his early days in our life just after the sad passing of Buster the black lab at only four years old. I’m happy to report that Tsuga’s hind quarters did finally catch up with his beefy upper body.)

Flickr Fumble

I ignore my “messages” in Flickr as they only tell me some stranger has become my latest contact. I really haven’t played the social networking game much, including not on my Flickr pro account. Maybe I should pay more attention. Yesterday I saw a message from February, subject line “Use of images”. It was from the director of a very large state zoo wanting permission to use some of my shots in their publication with photocredits. I wrote him back anyway with apologies. Maybe something will come up in the future, and I’ll be sure and notice new Flickr emails now.

Go Pollinate Something

Do your children (or do you for that matter) know about the birds and bees? How many of you could use the following words accurately and in proper relationship in a short paragraph? Flower, seed, pollen, fruit, vegetable, pollinator. I imagine 99% of folks would stumble at least a couple of times and end up with “and then some other stuff happens” to get through the story. This is an incredibly important part of our planet’s remarkable life that most are ignorant of–to our peril. Go (with your kids–it’s Safe For Work Sex) and re-discover the workings of the birds and bees. Heck, it’s National Pollinator Week and the Pollination Partnership site is one of the best designed and most resource rich sites I’ve ever seen. Check out Selecting Plants for Pollinators for your ecoregion. (And NOTE: in the UK it’s also National Insect Week.)

Roots

Who do you love–family first? Plants, too. Yes, recent evidence suggest that plants can recognize genetic family ties with other potentially competing plants and give its “ken” preferrential treatment. The Guardian article points out that there is a scientific society called Plant Neurobiology whose site uses the terms “plant intelligence” and “plant memory”–with the understanding that this means something different than the same animal qualities. Fascinating.

Avast, Avira, AVG, A Mess

Quick request for advice: Three computers need antivirus: Mac Pro for the weeny bit i use Windows programs; IBM Thinkpad for work and occasional browsing; and Dell desktop upstairs used only for email checking by the wife. What antivirus or Internet security program do I need? Preference is to use the same software on all machines, preference is FREE. So, where do I go?

While the guys were here working on the garden fence, three dogs chased a wounded deer into the creek down below the bluff (just off the front porch) where two days later, the buzzards indicated its fate. You know the drill: grab the rope, a plank, the truck keys and the rubber gloves. Deer: even in death, they are an aggravation–though the dog thinks otherwise. Had a patient tell me about two four-yr-old Huskies that belonged to a friend of his. They died from eating a rotten deer carcass.

America’s Worst Mom? This woman gave her 9 year old a longer leash. Too much rope, perhaps? Free range children? She’s been vilified. But consider the alternatives. Your thots? Mom Skenazy says:

… here’s what I’ve learned from all the folks who don’t want to do that, and send bile-filled notes instead: For some reason we live in a society that sees little difference between letting a child frolic in the front yard and letting a child frolic in front of a firing squad. It’s impossible for people to calculate the difference between real and remote risks.

Better Bottles: Looks like Canada will prohibit bisphenol-A (BPA) from food and drink containers (including baby bottles!). Wonder how you tell if bottles you already have and use contain it? Ann’s solution: replace my hard plastic insulated coffee cups with stainless steel versions of same.

Nobody has to die. One fella is taking a quart of pills every day because he intends to live to witness and be the first one beyond the Singularity when computers will be smarter than humans and human memories and personality can be uploaded into avatars, then into immortal robots. A kook, you think? Hardly: Ray Kurzweil.

Mt. Rogers Rally: The Naturalist Rally this year (Konnarock, May 9-10) will hear Stephen Hopp as the Friday night speaker. His topic will be on bird songs, particularly on how digital analysis helps us understand more about the role of calls in bird biology. Hopp is the husband of Barbara Kingsolver–who hates it when she hears me say that on Amazon.com, Slow Road Home and Animal, Vegetable and Mineral are bundled together, both in the category Books>Entertainment>Humor>Rural LIfe where hers is #1 and mine is #47. Humor?

The Garden Fortress is looking rather spiffy, I hate to admit, but only because of the horror I had imagined. Pictures tomorrow, I promise.

I’m happy to direct you to Bell Gallery and Garden’s new website. And to the actual location, of course. Great work, Billy and JoAnn, and Doug on the web work.

Nature Find– get out there. Take the kids.   No excuses  Related: Amphibian Facts Hearing spring peepers yet?

Arts Council of the Blue Ridge  See what’s being created, performed and imagined near Floyd

Business of Writing: Algonquin sends a curt “not for us” in the SASE. At least it was quick. Five of five agents who accept email queries yawned.

Soft Worn: Firefox extensions Rapidowrite (insert frequently used text); Reminderfox (alarmed reminders and to-dos) and Tree Style Tabs (vertical sidebar tabs).

My replacement brain-on-Mac: DevonthinkPro and here’s why.

Moving Pictures: World Wide Telescope  and The Waldo Ultimatum

Oooh. And as I type the date in the title block just now, the tattered pink Rolodex of Fragmented Fred Events spins back, far back to this day in the life: 40 years ago today, our first date. We’ve stuck it out. Sticky business, marriage.

* Think you have a fast internet? Japan launched a satellite last week that promises speeds of 1.2 Gb per second. Blazingly fast, you say? One 75 yr old woman in Sweden clocks at 40 GB per second. SuperNet: able to download HDVD movies in just two seconds! Helps to have a son in the business, but what is first possible but uncommon eventually becomes probable and ordinary. Should I live so long and civilization hold together…

* Sixty Minutes had a segment recently on Colony Collapse situation in honeybees. It’s worth watching if you want an overview on the situation from one beekeeper’s perspective–a guy that’s been in the business for years and was the first to say we had a problem. Nothing really new as far as I’ve been able to find: a fungus; a virus high on the list of suspects. But I’m betting neonicitinoid pesticides (banned in France since 1999 because of what they do to bees) may be a common denominator with both CCD and WNS in bats. Stay tuned–should we ever get to the bottom of this.

* Does it matter at all to you that the next president has a clue about the world beyond politics? If so, consider another candidate than John McCain. Let his record speak for itself. From the Sierra Club… Washington, D.C.–In the 2007 National Environmental Scorecard released today by the League of Conservation Voters, John McCain receives a score of ZERO. McCain was the only member of Congress to skip every single crucial environmental vote scored by the organization, posting a score lower than Members of Congress who were out for much of the year due to serious illnesses–and even lower than some who died during the term. By contrast, the average Member of Congress scored a 53 in 2007. McCain posts a lifetime score of only 24

* MaciVersary! Today marks one month of PC to Mac Conversion. Mostly. The Machine goes both ways, Intel Mac. Software in use is 80% MAC, weaning from PC utilities as I can. Still vacillating between notes-organizers, top runners includes Journalr (I was almost ready to commit) and now, MacJournal (included on a list my buddy Jeremiah sent along–I’ll include it in a comment in case others are looking.) Sadly, most of these programs see Safari but are blind to Firefox for clipping and such–a major factor that sends me running back to OneNote.

* A local girl, Adelee Mitchell, made it into one of those talent thingies that I hear are on the television these days. She made it to the top 50 on a show called American Idol. Wanda Combs, editor of the Floyd Press did a good piece about the experience of competing against such huge odds.

* Ah, and as I type this I am listening to Floyd’s own Rob Neukirch on Studio Virginia (WVTF), former owner of Oddfella’s Cantina, who will be playing the lead role in the Mill Mountain performance of “The Foreigner” running through March 16 in Roanoke. I hope we’ll be able to make it down mountain for that!

* Lastly….good grief I’m wound up, eh…I learned Thursday in my Earth Day committee meeting (April 19–where water will be the central topic) that there is video online of kayakers on Bottom Creek–some pretty impressive whitewater, and of significance to me because Bottom Creek merges with our Goose Creek downstream a few miles just at the Montgomery County line together to form the South Fork of the Roanoke River.

Rebate Schmebate: Oooh! $180 in rebates from MacMall so that Parallels and the Epson 3-in-one printer are FREE! Free my Aint Fanny. Took me all morning reading the fine print, hefting the big boxes around in the storage room to get a digital image of the bar code and such. But the worst part was I let iPhoto capture from the camera and then couldn’t find the images in the folder structure. You NOOB! Once found, I wasn’t able to “place” them in the new and unfamiliar InDesign to print three on the same page. I still don’t know if I’ve jumped through all the hoops to get my rebates ‘long about July. Grrrrr.

Feeling Lucky?: The cost we incur re global warming are 1) to do something when nothing was needed, or 2) to nothing when something should have been done. Watch this 10 minute YOuTube explanation that says it the way I’ve been envisioning the choices we have. Please take the time; it may help you frame the arguments pro and con in the way that makes the most sense to you. And if enough of us see the risk of doing nothing as too great, well then, maybe we can do enough soon enough to make a difference.

Can You Say Conspiracy: That’s the buzz in some circles–the US is responsible for the FOUR transoceanic cables that carry phone and internet communications to and from the Middle East? Ya Think? Some do.

Safe Harbor: For now, to get some actual work done, I’ve resorted to my old standby programs under Parallels running Windows XP. Full screen view gives me plenty of real estate. Speed is slower than the OSX environment, but acceptable. However, what I can’t live with and haven’t been able to fix–if it is fixable–is the lousy font display. I’ve used MSIE to enable Cleartype, which seems to work for that browser that I won’t be using. But on my other apps, the font is thin and pixelated. Ideas?

Better Living Through Chemistry: Sometimes it pays to whine. “Let’s put some cortisone in there and see what happens” said my doctor friend during the Superbowl at his house. And so he did, and my right thumb (the experimental side; left thumb also arthritic is the control) seems considerably better. Good to know. Watch me button my shirt like a normal person!

More NoteCards: I appreciate the recent orders for photographic note cards from the Blue Ridge, happy folks somehow find them via Fragments or at the book-and-cards website. I’m toying with the idea of doing a fourth set. If there are any of you who have seen images you thought would make a good, representative image that speaks of life in the southern mountains, let me know and I’ll consider putting them in the next set. You can see a few hundred images on my Flickr gallery.

A UFO the “size of a Walmart” was seen yesterday by more than 40 folks, including the sherrif and an airline pilot, over Stephenville, a small Texas farming community south of Dallas.

The thing hovered silently several hundred feet above the ground for several minutes, then moved away at great speed. Observers say two fighter jets attempted to pursue, but could not come close to the thing’s speed. The Government denies any knowledge of the event.

Personally, I think they were looking for Crawford. They’re taking him home.

But you can listen for yourself on NPR (3 minute audio) or visit this site for a half dozen video reports.

Magnetic Field Can Reduce Swelling: I’ve confessed to using them, I’ve imagined they helped, and I never thought it was just placebo. Recent research substantiates the possible efficacy of magnets in pain management.

Entomological Eye Candy: Glamorous Insects. Prepare to be dazzled. Could you take a rolled up newspaper to any of these strikingly beautiful “bugs”?

Speaking of Which: A full length movie about the disappearing bees, a six minute excerpt is here.

Mom’s Obesity at Conception May Set Stage for Offspring’s Obesity Risk. Note: that’s  before you’d know you were preggers.

The mythical midrange Mac minitower: this makes the sound “Mmmmmmmm!” I’d like one. Not likely in my lifetime, so MacPro (ouch!) if the book and notecards booste The Fund sufficiently.

We All Live Downstream. Youth Writing Competition: Topic: Mountaintop Coal Removal. Click for details.

Fire in the Hole: deep-earth coal fires smoulder all over the world. Can they be extinguished?

DIY Toxin-Free Cleaning Guide  Especially a good idea if you or your kids are asthma-or-allergy-prone.

** Climate Concessions Bad for US Business, so from the Bali Conference… “The U.N. climate chief warned Thursday that a deadlock between the United States and the European Union over emissions cuts threatened to derail talks aimed at launching negotiations for a new global warming pact. Washington has refused to accept language in a draft document suggesting that industrialized nations consider cutting emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020 during upcoming negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.” For shame.

** Word of the day is ululate: to wail in self-pity; howl with sorrow; to utter or emit a long, mournful, plaintive sound. This is one of those words (Latin origin) that is imitative–the word in some way reproduces the sound of the sound named. There was a gal at a recent performance here in Floyd who made this weird yodeling sound with her tongue as a kind of applause or appreciation while listening to some stage musicians. It sounded like this word. So when I came across ululate in a National Geographic last week, having never read it before, I recognized it by the sound of the word.

** Mapophilia: Check out The Weather Channel / Radar Map / Weather layers / Clouds and Radar / Motion. This interactive utility uses Live Maps with transparent weather overlay. It is clickable down to street level and moveable across the country with left-click-drag.

** Here Comes Another Bubble: (YouTube) With apologies to Billy Joel, this is pretty funny–unless you’re holding a lot of tech stocks. UPDATE: sorry, this video has disappeared from the web. Strange–it was such a riot it reportedly had Robert Scoble spewing Diet Coke out his nose. AH well.

** Twinkle twinkle not-so-little star: A diamond bigger than Earth

** No More Sense: Adsense, that is. Or Amazon for that matter. There for a while, the ads were bringing in enough to pay my DSL expenses and then some. And then they weren’t. So at least for now, enjoy an ads-free (also revenue free) blogspace at Fragments. And frankly, I feel better (if a wee bit poorer) not being a part of the omnipresent marketing machinery that commodifies visitors into click-donors.

** If this picture or this one doesn’t make you smile, you’re probably dead.

Maybe I’ve quit my day job. I had five patients scheduled today, and four of them cancelled. A full day of work ahead of me, and I’m home by 10 a.m. Is it my breath? My bedside manner? And these were patients I hadn’t even met before!

My second life as a physical therapist may be giving way to a third life as a–I dunno what–maybe a greeter at–no, I can’t even say it. Maybe a WINGJUMPER! Yeah, that’s the ticket!

…and one suitable for JOTS…

NEW STUDIO: Take a look at Doug Thompson’s new digs in the Floyd Village Green. And stop by–maybe when you come for Winterfest (Jacksonville Center this weekend) or at Dickens of a Night–Floyd’s Downtown Christmas Celebration. That’s next Friday night, December 7, when you can visit THREE bloggers and get signed copies of their books in one convenient location: David St. Lawrence, Colleen Redman and Fred First, plus Lee Chichester and Patty Woodruff. The place: Notebooks, across from the Country Store.

NEW NEWSPRINT: I’m doing a little column twice a month now for a new Roanoke newspaper, the Star-Sentinel. The first edition went out the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. You can download the entire first edition in pdf, and while you’re there, consider signing up for a year subscription!

NEW SOFTWARE: Grab a free copy of SnagIt 7.25–a screen capture software on steroids. It has some very powerful and useful editing and capture options that make it a good choice, even if you had to pay! Also, be aware of Buzzword (a slick flash-based word processor soon to be acquired by Adobe). And consider iwantsandy: a stupid name but a pretty smart email-based way to get reminders, store info, and plan your week. And if you use Firefox, Autocomplete Manager is a must-have. I use it many times every day to find webpages I want to get back to.

NEW TOYS: I got a phone call last week from a Graphic Design group that had found a couple of my images on Flickr. They want to use them in the design of 9000 Christmas cards sent from some big law firm somewhere. I get paid (and they put my contact info in them!) Hmmm. What Windows program can I replace with MAC for that amount?

NEW FOODS: I was delighted to find a nice piece in Orion on the humble “ground nut”–a native edible long forgotten. This was especially relevant for me as I realized just last summer that the cursed twining vine taking over our creek banks is indeed Apios americana, the ground nut, or Indian potato. Ann pondered just the other day: what WOULD we eat if commerce broke down and the deer ate our garden (again) that year? Here’s part of the answer. This little tuber is abundant, and the price is right.