Fragments From Floyd

Today we enjoy the mixed blessing of the January Thaw, a bit early this year. But why not. Every other aspect of the weather has thumbed its nose at the auspix and the prognosticators this year. Even a weatherman's air mass can be surly and mutinous, and likely without warning to aim a high-powered wind at Walmart shoppers in Texas; or in a different mood, that same bubble of air may decide to just sit down over Alabama, tepid and tame, and hold its breath until the Jet Stream tickles its sensitive underbelly.

The Mud Season starts for real sometime in late March, should the seasons relent their rebellious tirades and decide to play by the rules. The January Thaw is a teaser, a complimentary packet of mixed nuts, on the long flight to Spring. After more than a month of deep freeze, the subsoil is hard as iron, down to the frost line. The thaw this week has warmed and softened the top few inches which slip and slide around like choclate pudding on a rock. Pastures and fields are rutted with brown parallel scars from the feeding of livestock; cattle stand around in muddy boots, up to their elbows in pasture gumbo.

In town, the street is outlined in cinders and salt, marking where the gray mounds of snow have finally disappeared down the city drains, heading now for Little River, then north through the New, the Kanawha, Ohio, then south to the Gulf of Mexico. Here it will retire on a beach, with a sweet orange drink in a tall frosted glass with a saffron paper parasol. Meanwhile, a few shortsleeved human types busy themselves in the tiny heart of town, finding excuses to step outdoors onto the solid surfaces of sidewalk into the warm afternoon, to greet a neighbor before the real winter comes.

Cars and trucks along the street are gray-brown, the color of lost dogs. They seem embarassed to be seen looking this way. But what's the point in taking a bath, they ask? In this in-between chapter between pre-winter and real winter, the mud falls on the godly and the ungodly alike, so the Lexus and the farm-use truck next to it don't look all that different, mud being a great equalizer in Nature's homogenizing justice.

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Everything is flowing -- going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks... While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood...in Nature's warm heart. ~

John Muir

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The crescent moon lifts through a veil of thin ground fog racing higher hidden by ridge then up quickly through the sharp branches of bare trees into open sky, brilliance smeared in moist breath of hills. Waiting above in its own halo Venus, chrome-edged against a brittle sky of deep indigo. Two luminaries star-crossed, will meet Morning Star will come to rest in the cusp of a two-horned silver crescent lifting like a goblet to hold starlight.

I hope you saw this, this morning. It was worth a few minutes of cold. Bookmark Sky and Telescope, so you'll know what's happening in a sky near you!

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Well, I sort of came at this story backwards. Had I read it outright before learning of it at Silflay, I might have thought it was one of those 'urban legends' of beefed-up airport security gone overboard, ordinary citizens harrassed (well, not harrassed really...the airport security folks only exposed the man's way-pregnant wife in public view and groped her breasts...nothing really serious... then put the husband in handcuffs when he protested her treatment). You can read all the details.

Leave it to Bigwig of Silflay Hraka to stir up a hornets nest. He got a written reply, and sidekick Kehaar, in his role with a large local newspaper, actually got a phonecall from these Portland Airport 'officials'.

With all this, it doesn't seem that justice has been served by a long shot. Scary. Stay tuned. Wanna bet this is not the last we hear of this tale?

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There are SEVEN new residents on the Fragments blogroll! Can you match the names (last 7 listed, bottom of blogroll ~ right sidebar ~ added chronologically) with these brief clips or descriptions? How many can you guess just from the blog name or URL?

Go here for the words. Stay here, and come back often, for the web tips and tricks. And of course, the gallery.

Ask Dr. Stupid! Or solve the rebus. Written, easily and well, by 34 year old Massachusetts native who is "appallingly left-brained despite love of music, photography and sketching".

Chaz is home between road trips. Waxing eloquent about most anything that comes to mind. How can you go wrong with a Goldfinch for a mascot!?

Go where the weather is warm and there are Cloud Rorschachs, to visit a "A wry writerly blog named in honour of a minor character in a minor Shirley Temple film".

Find here links to stories about waterproof books, chickenpoop-powered vehicles, and medieval toilet systems. And the recipe for riskem.

Talk about a potpourri of this and that. You never know what to expect here. Recent quote: "I took anatomy and biology. I know the stuff of which the human body is made. Yet for all that i am an anomaly. At least twenty-five percent cotton. Honest. When i was 16, i was five foot four. Now that i'm dragging forty, i'm five foot two. If the cancer bug doesn't get me, i figure two more decades of rain showers and baths, i'll have a stature roughly equal to an oompa-loompa". And...she advises, "wherever you go today, be sure to take your clavicle!"

Read about children Freshpants and Petunia, and never hear "Walkin' in Memphis" the same way again after the new lyrics to "Shopping in Target". Visit the realm of a future futurist.

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Journal 28 Dec 2002

Last night my mother called to tell me that my father had died in a nursing home on Christmas day. And all I could say was "that's too bad". I regret that there was not more to say. Surely there must be other words for him, to lay him to rest, again, this final time.

One gets only one biological father per lifetime. He may or may not choose to be a constant and involved agent in the rearing of his progeny. Fewer and fewer fathers these days stay the course, for richer or for poorer, to see their children's children have children. Mine didn't. I am sad to see him go, but it is a remote sadness like the passing of a familiar stranger with whom I share only some insensate genetic common ground. These are thin bonds after thirty years of silence.

In my father's passing there is the remorse of what never was more than what was but now is gone. The active grieving stopped long ago, the separation complete though never hostile since the early days of his slow self-amputation from our family. The last time I remember seeing him perfunctorily along side my mother was at my wedding. I have no recent memories of him beyond those that remain, like his small framed picture, hidden in a bottom drawer of my heart and mind. The smell of clove mints, Old Spice and stale cigarette smoke overlaying an image frozen in time; a picture of a thin, black-haired handsome man I recognise as one who once coached my YMCA basketball team. Also in the hidden places, there are a few jittery moving figures on a beach shown on a rippled sheet on the wall by an ancient projector; and the memory of a memory of a kind voice.

I never knew him. I'm not sure anyone really did. He grew up in a home where there was no love, no approval or acceptance. And so, he was poorly equipped when his turn came to give these things to others. He bore an emotional and social disability that lead him ultimately to make some very hurtful choices for himself and those who attempted to belong to him.

Christmas morning and I am six years old. I watch my father cry as he holds the heavy black telephone receiver to his ear. I come to understand that he is talking to the man who has given me and my brother the wristwatches we have just opened from under the tree. It was only years later that I knew why he was crying: this distant voice on the phone was my father's birth father in California who had left him and his brother and his mother when he was six years old. He could hardly have remembered even the smell of his aftershave or the sound of his voice. And yet he wept bitterly for the loss of him. Then years later, he repeated the very sins of his father. Here the image of an infinite regression of paternal abandonment first occured to me, a disturbing precocious foreboding. When my father drifted farther and farther away in my early teen years, I feared that this legacy would fall to me, hardwired into who I would become in the same way that he and I shared the same name and my signature came to look more and more like his.

To be sure, today in my distant and faint grief for his passing, I know that he taught me by his example some painful negative lessons, and I learned them well. I have my own faults, to be sure, but I am able today to say that I have not followed my father's course, or that of his father before him. The trail of broken lives has ended and we have just celebrated my daughter's twenty ninth and my son's twenty fourth Christmas with us.

Marriage and parenting are the two hardest and the most wonderful things I have ever undertaken in my life. We have loved each other, all of us, through sickness and health, across distance and through time, in spite of our failings and faults. I have seen my children's children happy and loved this Christmas. God has sustained us and held us up. As I think of this, I realize that this light of faith I saw first from my father during those few years when he lived his life for the sake of Someone other than himself and here he pointed the way for me. This is not an inconsequential legacy, and perhaps in God's wisdom my father was used for this very purpose, in spite of what came before and after in his unhappy life.

And so, it is indeed too bad that he has left this world on a Christmas day. I would rather things had been different in my family. Still, one out of two is better than so many children score in parents who last a lifetime. Somewhere in Alabama today, they will lay him to rest, a ceremony I held in my heart many years ago. There are tears today for a character who never existed in my story, tears for the ending now of the last chapter of a happy book that was never written.

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Well, that'll about do it for travels this holiday. We drove down through some nice country between here and far western North Carolina since Thursday morning. It was good to be there (in the home of my daughter's in-laws, who are very easy to be around, Thank Goodness!) and it was good to get home to this cold house tonight and build a cheery fire in the woodstove. I am starting to feel my fingers again already. It seems like weeks since I was able to formulate any kind of topic and sit down and write it out. The holidays are most disruptive of routine, and in that is both a blessing and an aggravation, I suppose.

Having seen our 23 month old granddaughter Abby again for the first time in a few months, I am reminded of the grace by which God gives small children to young parents. I had mercifully forgotten since my own children's babyhood that small human persons are the embodiment of the physics principle of entropy, the personification of the passage from order to disorder, from organization to chaos.

Like the gradient followed inexorably by electron states and heat energy, young Abby can go under her own steam only from the high energy state to the low, from the top of the hill down the steep sidewalk three blocks to the low energy state at the park at the bottom. But not vice versa, requiring an external source of energy to return the body to its original state. Were it not for this External Source, the low energy object would remain in the swing, at the park at the bottom of the hill until well after dark, swinging happily. Fortunately, two External Sources were available for the return to the high energy position for the gradient was of great steepness and the tiny body did gain density and become more liquid to the hold as it moved further away from the desired state (park, swing, outdoors) to the less desired state (home, inside, boring).

Little Abbster, in further demonstration of her entropic abilities, is capable of introducing maximum disorder to a deck of cards or stack of paper napkins, and this can be accomplished in just under 4.3 nanoseconds. However, she is demonstrably not capable of putting order back in, requiring this same external energy source to recreate the original complexity. These constant requirements for energy and order transfusion help explain why her parental units (and especially but only briefly her grandparents) are exhausted at the end of a day of Abby. Parents, and very occasionally grandparents, are the sun to that tiny disorderly world of the child, the source of perpetual energy flux without which all would decay to chaos.

Also observed, in the world of baby physics, is their ability to create action at a distance. Only a few examples will be offered to illustrate this principle as exemplified by the young Abbster. Take a sturdy box (or flimsy) or a steady piece of furniture (or unsteady, it doesn't matter). Watch the small toddler climb expertly to stand up on the said box or coffee table. Now watch as the toddler leans backward, stiff as a board, headed to the floor and every adult in the room launches out of his or her seat to keep said toddler from smacking the floor (most of the time). Such control over adults at a distance is a principle of baby physics that seems most delightful to the toddler, the more so if two of the fast moving adults bump heads in their Stooge-like efforts to save a baby from herself.

Unfortunately, the Backward Fall of Doom may soon lose its effect on adults-at- distance, who after some while seem content to let the well-padded baby bounce off the carpet a few times, and toddler will thus lose interest in the Save the Falling Baby Game. But all is not lost, and there are other methods to achieve said action at a distance. From the gathering at the dinner table on Christmas night, the father of the toddling unit notices that across the room "She's taken off her jeans". No action is taken. Moments later, in a slightly higher pitch, father notes "Now she's taking off her diaper". Still no action, although the threshold of response is lowered and baby has succeeded in capturing the rapt attention of at least one of the assembly. Finally, the father, unable to articulate his urgent concerns beyond a "Oh No! Oh No" frantically leaps over one or more dining room chairs upon noting a dark shadow from the recesses of the diaper on its way to the light colored carpet. Mission accomplished, the wily toddler having demonstrated that small objects can exert great force across a distance.

And now, it is time for bed, whereby grandpa (Dumpa Dumpy) hopes to demonstrate the physical principle stating that an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Good night!

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Pop test. Go here. Take the Color Test.

Be honest. Report your score on your FIRST TRY only in comments.

I had it, then lost it. 50% the first time. Sigh. 100% the second.

UPDATE 12.30.02

Well scores run the range of 0% to 100%. Chris O'Donnell took a smart approach: say aloud the COLOR of the word before making your choice. Try the test again using Chris's method and see how much easier it is!

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Having problems with the dreaded MSIE6/F11 gremlin?

Rumour has it, via Ron Bailey via Stacy Tabb ... that there is a simple 'fix' for MT-ers.

First, copy this line of code: ?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'? (add < and > before and after) Next, paste it in your main template, just above the Doc Type line. That's all.

How hard is that! Even I can do it! Now, what to do about the Netscape display problem a Fragments reader reported today? Anyone? Anyone?

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Over the river and through the woods.

More precisely, out of the Blue Ridge, down Fancy Gap, across the piedmont of NC to Old Fort, up Black Mountain and into the Valley of the French Broad river at Asheville, then down Big Balsam to the gateway to the Smokies. Ganny Annie and Dumpa Dumpy are going to the 'other grandparents' to see our visitors from Wyoming.

Just talk amongst yaselves while I'm gone.

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Readers Digest Version: my redirects have been terminated by others. You can't get here from there, anymore. Or, the longer allegory...

Once upon a time, there was a Strange Farmer who in the spring of the year happened upon a mysterious tool. The marvelous device he called Spot and learned that people all over the world knew of it, and spoke of themselves and their lives using the curious device. Spot allowed the farmer to display his curios and trinkets, memorabilia and scraps and old photographs to those few who wandered down the gravel road along the creek banks into the peaceful valley. This was most important to him, for reasons he could not quite say. Along his road, he laid out insects and turtle, garden vegetables and stories of snakes, pictures of clouds and millipedes and all sorts of odd and quirky bric-a-brac, and hoped that those passing would know his joy and pleasure in these things. Some even signed the chalkboard left by the roadside, leaving a few left short messages of encouragement and understanding. The farmer was so encouraged that there were others in the world, though few in number, who shared his odd way of looking at things. But alas, he was soon frustrated by Spot.

Spot was cantankerous and obstinate, like an old mule. At times it seemed not to remember all the things the farmer had taught it, and it did not heed his commands. Perhaps this is why it was sometimes called by the pejorative term BLOG SPot. And so the day came when he couldn't count on Spot any more to create his wonders to greet his visitors each day. And he set out on a long trip to find the elusive Moveable Type of creature that was said to be reliable, required little care and feeding, and seldom bit or betrayed its master in the way that Spot was known to do.

And lo and behold, a kindly princess named Sheila heard of the farmer's pilgrimage to find the elusive Moveable Beast. She did offer to capture one for the farmer, to house it in her barn, nurture it to full stature and instruct the farmer in the simple ways of its care. Being a princess of large heart, she never asked for any of the farmers livestock or produce in return for this favor, checking in on the farmer pleasantly from time to time to be sure that all was well. And the young Moveable Beast did grow at a modest rate, and sure enough, over time, a few more souls wandered down the crooked road to peek at it, poke it through the bars of its stall to see what it was about, and even spoke to the farmer about the simple things the Beast told them about this place where the farmer lived.

And all was well in the peaceful valley. And yet, the farmer knew that the space that the princess had provided to house the beast would one day be too small for all his pictures and words, and he would once again need to set out on a quest for someone to build him a bigger barn. But that day was far into the future. For now, he would merely enjoy his dreams and visions that he would share with the curious or wandering souls that passed his way.

But alas, storm clouds descended on our quiet little valley and the ways of the farmer were threatened with pillage and plunder. This he learned from Princess Sheila, whose wicked king who owned the castle and all the barns where her Moveable Beasts were housed had become surly and easily provoked, and was casting about dire warnings that all Moveable Beasts would surely be tossed from the castle walls and killed unless they permitted a strange incantation called mySQL to be cast over them before two days passed. This was most upsetting news to the farmer who considered his Beast a sort of child. That it should be summarily threatened with a premature murder was most poorly received, and the farmer did rail at Princess Sheila to intervene. She explained to the farmer that this was happening all over the known world, because Beasts were taking up more than their share of space in the serverbarns, and consuming too much of the limited resources of oat and corn and a strange food called bandwidth. Soon thereafter, the farmer came to understand the nature of the crisis, and knew that it was time for him to find the bigger barn with more fodder for his Beast, and to leave the care and friendship of princess Sheila.

The farmer was nonetheless, distressed, thinking "some of my friends may also have their Beasts put to death, and I should tell them the very words that Princess Sheila has told me, so they will know, before it is too late". And here our story takes a most unpleasant path into the macabre and the grotesque.

It seems that Princess Sheila did go off her medications, those mysterious potions that had once made her appear reasonable and kind. For at one moment, upon reading the farmers exact recitation of her words to him, she did wax wroth and did rail and foment against the poor simple farmer for not moving his Beast to a new barn in a manner that would have only been possible by those who understood the arcane world of Domains and Servers and such. And she did commence to flog the farmer, chiefly because of those words of one of the farmer's visitors about which the simple farmer understood little, having to do with the mySQL incantation which was indeed beyond the farmers ken. Yet his words of reason and explanation to Princess Sheila could not turn away the ire and fury of the transformed and disfigured and fallen princess, who now did seem a banshee intent on the death of the farmer.

And so it happened that, on Christmas Day, the poor farmer learned that indeed, the wicked Sheila, once a wonderful princess, did behead the farmers Beast that still barely held on to life in the server of the wicked king. All traces of the beast were burned in a terrible conflagration under the wizened hands of Sheila, so that those who once came to the farmer's display down the pathway of that earlier Moveable Beast could no longer find it. Anon, they would be compelled to search high and low to find where the farmer now housed his new and better Beast.

But all is not lost. The sorcerer called Dean was told by the farmer's faithful friends of this terrible thing that was to come to pass. He did work his magic, sending up the Beast from the barn of the wicked King with his sparkling wand, transporting it to a safe hidden place, where the Beast was protected from the witch's horrible punishments. The Magician in an act of incredible kindness, carried the farmer's Beast to the barn called CornerHost. There, Prince Michal seems a reasonable man, not prone to fits of rage and fury, and immune to the visitation of the wraith of unreasonable rage that sadly ate away the compassion of the lost soul Sheila. In the end, she did vent her bile and evil sorcery on the farmer; but as he says from his new barn while grooming his gentle Moveable Beast, "she has her reward". THE END

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There is little difference between a summer breath drawn indoors or out. But with the first breathing in of winter air, you know that you have stepped out into a world that is remarkable for those things that are now missing from it. Heat is only one of the absent characters. Winter outdoors is a play on a stage vaguely familiar, from which most of the props have been temporarily removed. Diminished are color, smell, and the sounds and motion of living nature. Even molecules move with lethargy. Come the play of winter, all the best lines have been spoken by autumn; and, except for the wind, there are no words.

Summer is soft, yielding, supple. Winter is hard, unyielding and brittle. You can feel winter through your feet and hear it in your steps. Cold dry air has its own smell, and it almost seems that there is a sound that belongs to cold of winter. The sound of winter is the sound of breathing, ears muffled keeping the beating of your own heart trapped in wool, like an echo in an empty shell. No birds call, insects sleep frozen solid under bark and sod. Winter smells of wool and wrapped pink flesh underneath. From beyond the thick encumbering shroud of winter clothes there is only the near-fragrance of frost. No motes of aroma escape on warm currents from spicebush, sassafras, white pine, from dank soft creek mud or pasture clover. There should be a olfactory adjective, like 'monochrome', to describe the stark lunar aromasphere of winter.

But wait! Even walking in this Winter Desert of Things Missing, there, mousy brown against the gray-brown road bank stands the tiny frail inverted candelarbra remains of last year's Pennyroyal. Oh how can I tell you the wonders of it! Years ago, living southern, empty without mountains in my life and surrounded by pastures paved and creeks captive, culverted and broken, I found a pressed vestige of the mountains between the pages of a favorite book long abandoned for journals and textbooks. My dear old friend, Pennyroyal. Pressed in books and even in winter fields, it carries the smell of the southern Appalachians, if you stop and warm it with your hands. I took the fragment from the book, and held it to my face with some hesitation, almost fearfully, crushing it gently in my palm. And, as I knew it would, it brought tears in a way that only those uniquely personal smell-memories can do. Bitter. Sweet. Minty-musty memory of mountains. That is all I know.

Winter Walk Part One

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There has been only one Christmas - the rest are anniversaries. ~W.J. Cameron

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukkah" and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy Hanukkah!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!" ~Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin. ~Jay Leno

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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This little meditation was written last year during the week of Halloween. It was to become part of a small booklet of Christmas reflections by members of the congregation of the Lutheran church we attended then. It seems appropriate to share it now with you.

Luke Chapter One 31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever ; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

Perhaps no passage in all of the Christmas account succeeds better at raising goose flesh on my arms than this passage in Luke. I especially appreciate the King James language in verse 35. The "power of the Highest shall overshadow thee" and "that Holy Thing" born to Mary will be the very Son of God. This language reminds me of nothing so much as the forecast of an alien invasion. In my mind, I envision the advent of The Force, the Holy Ghost, casting a moving shadow over the rocky mountains and valleys of Israel as it comes down below the clouds, approaching its intended rendezvous at a preordained point in time and space, with a certain Mary. She will be benignly and supernaturally impregnated with a Something that even the angel, it seems, could not fully comprehend or conjure more precise terminology for, calling it THAT HOLY THING.

Worlds collide, nature is invaded by SuperNature, and two separate realities become one in this human-alien spirit-into-matter conception. The kingdom of this world...the very real flesh and blood world of observable "history" including real people... David, Jacob, Abraham ...with the coming of this Holy Thing... has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His baby, Christ. Of course, this is what the Father of this world of Otherness has intended to take place, even before His creation of the universe. And precisely at this invasion moment of our story, told in Luke, the PLAN is made fully known. We, in a sense, are the aliens living in His world. He is the One, in the form of a powerless infant, who will enable us to conform to our intended beings in his world. This odd Force that he brings with Him, that IS Him, will enable all the world of humanity to become true citizens of an invisible-but-real world of spirit that will outlast this world of matter.

I am not very excited about the coming of ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties tomorrow night. But I am wonderfully, awe-fully thrilled by the reality of this Christmas Ghost Story, especially knowing that this same spirit, this Thing has inhabited me, it dwells in my family, and in the holy universal church. History is His Story. And of His Kingdom, there shall be no end. Come, Lord Jesus.

Now, that gives me goose bumps.

Prayer: Lord, we marvel at the mysterious way you came to live among us and through us, to become one of us. Give us new eyes to see That Holy Thing upon the Earth this blessed and awesome season of your coming, to experience afresh the holy fear of your Otherness, and the Wonders of your love.

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Here is a wee bit of holiday cheer. Image offered by the folks at Mandarin Design who got it from The Other Side who got it from ... Might as well wish a Merry Christmas to our daugher Holli, seeing all these Holly Wreaths around.

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Having a party has something in common with an iceberg, and also with teaching a class: seven-eights are invisible, under-the-surface preparation. The lecture, or the party is the small, easy part. In this case, the investment was well worth the reward. The gathering last night was really a lot of fun, and I was sorry to see it end. We're already planning a late spring wing-ding.

Some comments and observations from last night...

Standing-room-only capacity of this house/bottom floor/in winter: however many we had in here last night. Had all invited shown up, it would have triggered a lottery mechanism in which three couples would sit in their cars until called for their turn to rotate through (cup of hot cider provided). Summer: increase capacity by 100% or more, with overflow onto the porches and yard.

Host participation: If you are host or hostess, you will not eat nearly as much as the average guest. You will be too busy talking, cleaning up behind folks, replenishing dip and chips, and trying to cross pollinate conversation between strangers. The next day, your wife will say "did you like the macadamia blueberry cheesecake?" and you will not have any idea what she is talking about. And the night of the party, you will go to bed hungry, too exhausted to eat when you finally get the chance.

On How Much is Enough: Ann will always overguess how much beer or wine will be consumed at the party. So, when purchasing, be sure to get something Fred likes, since he will be responsible for disposal of any surplus.

Music: Some if it fair; all of it fun. Two guitars, an autoharp, banjo and fiddle. Lineup as it evolved: Carter Family; Jimmy Rogers; some old shape note gospel; and the ever-popular End of the World song written by Nathan and coreographed, with sound effects, by Fred. Also appearing: the two munchkins ages 6 and 8 who spontaneously favored us with a couple of duets.

Favorite words overheard: "It has been such a pleasure meeting you. Please stop by our house sometime. We'd love to get to know you better". The serrendipitous affinities that spring up between two sets of friends, strangers to each other before and friends to each other after your party is a most gratifying by-product. You never know ahead of time who will click with who; often the bonds that form are quite surprising and the web of association can mature into a network of friends. That would be a nice change.

Kodak Moment: During the peak of the hooting and so-called singing, eight year old Madonna steps stage center and announces "I'm not going to sing this time. I am going to say something, some Bible verses I learned". And after some brief moments of eye-squinting toward the corner of the room where she could see the memorized verses, she commenced, in total self-posession and poise, pausing only occasionally to peek up at the corner for the next verse. The cacophony of party chatter hushed; you could almost see the shaft of light illumine the little angelic messenger. The passage about the shepherds especially animated her expressive tiny voice, with a cresendo at the word "terrified".

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

Wow.

Kodak Comment: During the music, Jean brought out the autoharp and we were fishing around for simple songs to sing, being simple musicians. We got to talking about rounds, and Jean offered that one beautiful but simple round appropriate for this time of year would be Dona Nobis Pacem. Totally serious, low-church Jennie retorts "what kind of a song is Donna No Peach Possum?" I will never be able to hear this melody again without thinking of marsupials.

Posted by fred1st at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I seem to have termites already in my new home. The little beasties have eaten away the TITLE off the top of the page.

If any of you Mt-savvy types can point me to where in what template I must go to fix this, I suppose I will need to make the necessary repairs before they move down the page and begin infesting my daily entries.

Other than that, it looks like (knock on wood) the ordeal of relocation is behind me. Now: where was I. I know I had a couple of longwinded tales running around in my head before all this 'recent unpleasantness' popped up.

Thanks again to all who have stuck around, and/or offered all kinds of heart-warming assistance and encouragement during this transition.

Posted by fred1st at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's no place like home! There's no place like home!

Unable to click my own Ruby Slippers, with the help of Mean Dean Peters (the Wizard) of blogs4god, Ron Bailey (the Brave Lion) who hosted me while in exile in the Land of Oz, and Michal Wallace of CornerHost (the kindly farmer who welcomes me home) who arranged my safe haven for ever and ever...I am safely landed at my new home.

Set your bookmarks ONE LAST TIME, patient visitors, to Fragments permanent home....fragmentsfromfloyd.com.

New entries will be added there when the dust settles from the gala party we are having here tonight....expecting more live human bodies in this house in one single night than have cast shadows on our threshold for an entire year. Gee, I hope the floor doesn't cave in again. (just kidding)

Thanks to all who have given encouragement through this harrowing ordeal. Those danged flying monkies almost got me!

THIS IS IT! Fragments Final Home! Set bookmarks! Change BlogRolls! Write the relatives! Change your wills! Fragmentsfromfloyd has landed!

Posted by fred1st at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

As the kids streamed off the stage when the Christmas drama was done, this one small boy stopped in his tracks, as if he had seen a Great Light.

The image brings back to me the memory of the Herdmans, and of that old schoolhouse where two neglected and unwanted children became part of the community of neighbors, and of the Kingdom of God.

"The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars and used the Lord's name in vain. They hit little kids and cussed their teachers and set fire to Fred Shoemaker's old broken down tool house."

These are the opening lines of the play "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever." The year our daughter turned twelve, she was the narrator for the community performance, so the script sticks in memory from her endless recitations. And the next year we moved to the farm, down the hill from the Herdman kids.

Our place in the Virginia countryside bordered the cemetery of a tiny church on the hill behind us. There on a good Sunday, forty souls dotted the sanctuary-all of them from five families that had lived in that farming community and gone to that little brick church for generations. My wife and kids and I were the rare new members. Warmly welcomed, we quickly became comfortable there.

During summer preaching, the open doors of the church let in the cool breezes. They also let in our black dog Zach who often wandered up the hill and found us in our pew. Just behind the pulpit through the open back door you could see cows grazing nearby against the backdrop of Walker Mountain twenty miles away through the blue haze. Our kids were loved by half dozen grammas and they belonged to the entire church. We would discover our youngest sitting with a different family every Sunday.

Across the gravel road from the church the shell of a one room school house dilapidated on the crest of the hill. Socks and overalls hung now from clotheslines strung from its corners. Chickens found shade underneath during the days and spent the nights perched in pine trees growing where the school's playground had last heard the laughter of children long ago. Rusting appliances framing the front door testified to human apathy and neglect.

In the ramshackle school house, a man and woman were living desperate lives, and yet, the County had placed little Mary and Silas there to live with their aunt and uncle. The children were a source of income but mostly, their support money quenched their Uncle Johnny's thirst for liquor. The brother and sister lived an unruly and impoverished life, deprived of more than groceries or new shoes.

It came time for the annual children's Christmas Drama. The nice thing, my wife said, would be to ask Mary and Silas to come and take part. Furtive and distrustful, like wild creatures, everybody knew what they would do. Like the unholy Herdman kids they would come into church and grab fistfuls of cookies and cake. They'd stuff as much as they could get into their mouths and pockets, and then run off. Even though we knew they wouldn't behave and would never participate, it would be the caring thing to ask, especially now when the other children were so excited and full of anticipation.

It seemed a miracle. They came and they joined in. Mary was even chosen to play the starring role. She sat silently beside the manger, holding the Baby Jesus Doll in her arms, lost in her own thoughts. Silas was a rumpled shepherd who appeared in my bathrobe, a towel wrapped around his head and a broomstick for a staff. He marched solemnly up the center aisle toward the manger, his sister and the baby. In his eyes that night for the first time, we saw joy and hope.

On that cold December night, two small outcasts were welcomed in. They played parts in a story far greater than the sad script of their own bleak lives; a story of wonder and expectation and the promise of unconditional love.

Of all the little towns of Bethlehem that I've ever seen, that was the best Christmas Pageant Ever.

Posted by fred1st at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Follow along in the continuing saga as Fragments washes up first to one shore, and then another, clinging to a banana crate, attempting to find a host country to accept it....your poor, your tired, your huddled blogger, yearning to blog free, the fragmented refuse of the teeming shore. Where will he find one who says "send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me"? Tune in again next time for the exciting conclusion!

Well, maybe not next time. But soon.

Thanks to Ron Bailey for putting up with me for a week or two. I owe you BIG.

For now, to find new entries:

Click the old Fragments Address, http://fragments.blogon.com/fragments.

Go directly to http://fragments.blogs4god.com

In a short while, the new address (not currently active) will be fragmentsfromfloyd.com

Sorry, more than you know, for all the confusion.

It has been a dark and stormy night on Goose Creek, although clear with a full moon outside. Tempests have brewed in teapots and the greatness and smallness of humanity have been much in evidence. I prefer to dwell on the greatness and would aspire to not let the other spoil my good holiday cheer or fellow-feeling. More on another day about those who have risen to keep the Good Ship Lollipop afloat.

Posted by fred1st at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Scenario: You know that all your files are going to be deleted from your host server in 72 hours. During that time, you may not be able to set up another host to accept an import of your weblog.

What would you do? I'm only asking because there is a high risk that this may happen to Fragments.

I have 'exported' Fragments to a file, both text and html (since I didn't know for sure which was right). It is stored on my hard drive.

I have access to my MT files via ftp. Should I download anything, like images (luckily only a few), comments, archives, script? If the answer to this is YES, what do I download?

Don't ask. Just gimme some answers. Please. I feel my cold fingers losing grip of the floating flotsam and my lungs are filling with salty seawater. Don't let me down here. Throw the ol' boy a rope.

With a good bit of good fortune, the blog can be moved before Monday. If not, we have a problem, Houston.

Posted by fred1st at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We are expecting a white one. Ann will leave for work in the dark at about the time children begin to tug excitedly at the covers of their parents' bed and go in to find the cookie missing from Santa's plate in the family room. Buster and I will stay home near the fire, going out every once in a while to see if we can find two snowflakes exactly alike.

I once brought a dissecting microscope home from work. I left it in the basement overnight to bring it close to outside temperatures. The next day, in mittened hands, I retrieved a very cold dark-colored jar lid I had put in the freezer. Outside there was a fluffy snow falling in perfect vertical lines. Holding the lid up to the sky, I captured a dozen tiny flakes on the lid, and quickly put this under the two eyepieces of the stereoscope. This is what I saw.

In my back yard, I saw these snowflakes. There too I beheld the Andromeda galaxy. Microscope and telescope reveal beyond the limit of our natural eyes man's proportion and the beauty of the spheres. Both make me humble, and thankful. I will think of this as the world goes white with beauty on Christmas day.

"Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind." Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley

Posted by fred1st at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred.

No cannon. Just bounced email; failed domain registration; a void of no response; promised return calls not returned. Close enough to the mouth of Hell for me. Even my new home at Baileyville here has taken ill and as of late last night, I couldn't delete a duplicate post from yesterday, not getting comments emailed to me, and can't 'rebuild' the site. This entry right here may not make it through enemy lines to the other side; in which case you won't be reading it.

If my messenger gets through the front line this morning, it will tell you that there is an end in sight. After a lot of confusion and technical errors and lapses in various places, it looks like fragmentsfromfloyd.com will soon be sitting on CornerHost, with many thanks to Michal Wallace for his kind support. In a midnight revelation, it occurred to me that paying Ben and Menna Trot $20 to move Fragments would be money well spent and angst avoided, so that is what I am going to do.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to communicate this to Dave Worley who was bending over backwards to host me on his greeblieblog server space. It was not going to be possible to register my new domain there and I really had to have ftp access to files, especially for the way I like to create image-posts. Dave's email and his website have been unreachable for the past 18 hours or so; I fear he has been taken prisoner by the Axis of Weevil. So Dave, I will keep trying to email you about what has transpired since our last successful email. I'm sorry I didn't make it into the Axis of Greeblie. You're still my hero.

Okay. The moment of Truth. It's up and over the top! Press the PUBLISH button! I'll see you on the other side!

"Forward, the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Someone had blunder'd: Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

Posted by fred1st at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Curious Frog has a good summary of the options in the Ground Zero architectural project that will decide by the end of January what goes where the WTC towers stood. He also scooped me on the WinAmp worm story; I'll let him tell ya.

New York Times "Year in Ideas". Wish it came in a bathroom reader edition.

Joanie, daNurseGoddess, is moving here.

And, in case you were planning to visit Floyd for all your Christmas shopping needs, here is a very good collection of 'what's in Floyd' pages.

Posted by fred1st at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The snow from mid-December persists in shadowy places
It came an uncommon showering of tiny snowballs
dense and dry that sifted down
and piled up against the base of rocky bluffs
along the creek forming deep drifts
that will hide in shade til spring

Posted by fred1st at 6:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I appreciated responses on the "Lifestyles" ramble yesterday (still open for more comments btw). I have continued to think about why Ann and I live the way we do, looking at the bigger picture, for a year's-end retrospective, I suppose.

To no small degree, spending for interior environment has been affected by the fact that: we have moved in 1987, 1989, 1991, 1997 and 2000; and have had a child, or two, in college from 1991 to 2002, also including some overseas travel; and we are severely debt-averse and disgustingly pay-as-you-go practical. And oh dear my, in the last three years we have purchased for This Old House all new windows, a foundation, indoor plumbing and wiring, a lovely septic system, 350 sq feet of new construction, landscaping, new paint, and a partridge in a pear tree.

That said, as you suggest, Pascale, we need to 'invest' in a few more objects of beauty and creative joy in our home, having gotten past most of our larger expenditures for kids and house. We have a number of small crafty things from local artists from Floyd and from other former abodes. But now I, even I the tightest of wads, have been saying "now that the kids are grown, let's splurge on some art that we both really love, for our bare walls". So. Let's see: yellow pages....Art Galleries in southwest Virginia...hmmmm.... It might be easier to come up with a glorious insect collection for our walls, like Artichoke Heart (lets see some pictures of THOSE one of these days, AH, eh?)

Another thing I am realizing along these lines is that our 'preference' for city or country living also have been dictated by our place along the age continuum and the roles that this carries with it. It was in fact much easier, if not more congenial, to live in the heart of a small town when our son was in high school. As Cody mentions, there is a charm to proximity to the hum of human activity. It was immensely more convenient to live near things during the youth-activity taxi-service years before the driver's license age. Now, the kids are gone, and our deeper lifestyle needs can be realized: living simply in the country, far from 'things', noise and hurry. For those of you who are energized by city life now in your child-rearing years, you may find your tastes and preferences will change as your parenting circumstances do.

I'm hoping to find a balance between two 'goods': seclusion, peace and proximity to things natural and a simple lifestyle; and community, belonging and involvement and the building of more lasting relationships. Our physical surroundings within and without are compatible with our needs and restrained wants these days. And finally, after almost six years here, there is hope of fleshing out our lives by relationship with others. The lifestyle question just happened to come up in sorting through all that, I can't say exactly why. But isn't that the luxury of blogging? I can leave this entry topic unresolved, with loose ends and no point at all, with no penalty incurred. Except maybe losing readers. Hello? Anyone?

Posted by fred1st at 5:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And you sheltered city folk think that country living is so buccolic and pastoral, standing around listening to the grass grow, chewing your cud and such.

Well, you can see here there are perils at every turn. Those old school buses they park in the back pasture: they're Death Traps! And not a single warning label on them anywhere about putting your head through the broken door, about the terrible risk of entrapment.

Each year hundreds of cows, just like this one, are enticed to take just one peak inside the faded yellow carcasses of county school busses, and then left with terrible physical and psychological scars. Oh, Sally Struthers, where are you when we need you! Save the Cows! Please...do it today (bites quivering lip).

Nah. Put your checkbooks up. This cow, spotted in a pasture near Two Creek Farms (home to a multitude of Tennessee Fainting Goats) survived this ordeal requiring nothing more than a vet to lift the heavy metal door off the beast's neck. Counseling for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has been recommended, but those ruminants are really resistant to revealing their inner selves. Cows are mostly just stomachs inside, anyway, really; nothing actually going on in there, in spite of their outward appearance as cunning and acutely aware sentient higher life forms.

Fainting goats? I guess it's true. Bummer of a genetic legacy. Can you imagine the glee of a wolf spotting a herd of these in the wild!? It would be like sitting down with a fresh Whitman's Sampler....now, let's see: I think I'll have the big fat black one there, just wait a minute til he keels over.

We may just have to wander over to Two Creeks and check this out. Thanks, Dixie, for permission to use the picture. By the way, she found Fragments via the "Floyd County UFO" helicopter story of several weeks ago. She had a close encounter with it, and at least had the advantage of knowing what da heck it was, having read of my ordeal.

Posted by fred1st at 5:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Honey, We Don't need a Lifestyle. So went the words to an early Garrison Keillor song. The singer of the song humorously acknowledges that as a simple Minnesota couple, they don't need to ski the Rockies, or have expensive coffee table books, drink expensive wines or be hip art snobs to be happy. Each other was enough.

Wife and I have had occasion to visit in other folks homes recently. And quite frankly, these folks... really most folks we know... don't live like us. They seem to have a discernable Decor. And I'm wondering if maybe we shoulda been Amish. Our decorating motif, or Interiors Lifestyle, if we have one, is Undated American Functionality with a heavy overlay of Simple Indifference. Now it is obvious that others take great thought in furnishing their living spaces and I come back to look at our plain house with the feeling that in our long married life, we somehow missed those lessons dealing with taste... the ones where you learn about coordinated color schemes, the compatibility of shapes and textures in drapery and upholstery, and the latest wisdom regarding wall hangings and display of your collection of Faberge eggs or china thimbles.

I look around me here in this room that Ann calls "The Bridge" after the Star Trek Command Center where JonLuke presides over galaxies far, far away. This is a mild dig at Fred stationed at his computer, of course, but I'm used to it. But this room, I think, is typical of our decorating indifference. Its contents:

One desk, particle board with simulated woodgrain laminate, glued back in place where it was hanging off the edges. Heavy as hank. The drawers stick. Cost: free. Third hand ten years ago from our secretary who got it from her dentist.

One very faded and cat-plucked loveseat that we bought with a cashed-in insurance policy 15 years ago. It sits positioned such that I can flop in it and watch the fire burn through the glass door of the woodstove. Since Ann never sits, it is of no value to her, and I fear that soon it will suffer the same fate as the matching extravagantly full-dimension sofa. It will be GoodWilled out of my life because she has some strongly held ideas of How Things Should Be, at least as regards the grosser aspects of home decor. I confess that I have none, except that I want something sitting there. I do some of my best daydreaming while sitting on that faded jade loveseat watching wood go up in fingers of flame.

One Queen Anne chair that belonged to my grandmother. Reupholstered when our youngest was very young, it is only a shadow of its former self, faded, catclawed, well worn and comfortable as an old shoe. This is my reading chair under the window, next to the woodstove. It is accessorized by an old school desk on which is piled an assortment of 'stuff I am reading' as well as a generous supply of advertisement pages torn out of Readers Digest to use as bookmarks.

The focal point of the room (as it has been in every house we have ever lived in) is the massive oak wardrobe. this is our only piece of 'real' furniture. Whenever we have been house-hunting (which, thank God, we won't have to do again ever) the first thing we would do is measure (by me reaching up overhead as high as possible) to see if the wardrobe would fit. If so, we can consider the house. If not, move on to the next one.

Back when we first moved to Virginia in the mid seventies, we owned no furniture. We found this huge wardrobe in a local glass antique shop; the man was using it as a display case. We went back several times to look at it, but the man wouldn't take our highest offer. After enough visits, he came to like us, young married and penniless types that we were. We finally talked the guy down from a ridiculously expensive $120 to $90, and took it to our first home...the one with the coffin on the roof. We stripped all the old varnish and bees wax off it; it took maybe 150 hours of detailed work with a cue tip and dental tool. Once we got it back to bare wood, we stained it with MinWax Golden Oak and finished it off with several coats of tung oil. It is a pretty piece of well crafted wood. It has been the centerpiece, well, the only piece of furniture of any note in our houses ever since. Everything else we own will someday follow the loveseat to Goodwill. The wardrobe stays in the family. You listening, kids?

We have never felt the need to invest heavily in our interior space. The outdoors has always been where we wanted to be, and in most cases, why we moved to where we moved. I suppose this priority shows in our relative lack of attention to what we have inside. As much as I value color, texture, the play of shadow and light outdoors, we really have very little artwork adorning our walls. It seems silly to pay huge sums for framed art when we can step outside and see the three dimensional real thing, with a frame as big as our field of view, zenith to horizon, and complete with smells, sounds and wind! Or something like that.

So. Inside: practical, yard-sale, worn, plain, comfortable. I don't quite understand why I feel I have to apologize for that. It seems that even in our happy eccentricities, there is still the undercurrent of 'keeping up with the Joneses'. But I can tell you, I wouldn't think of trading my creek for their thick carpets and Broyhill living room suite.

What does your interior design say about your tastes? interests? priorities? budget? Is what you see around you the authentic you? How do you feel when you visit around to others' homes during the holiday, or does this comparison come into consciousness at all? Aren't I full of questions this morning?

Posted by fred1st at 6:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Update: Still waiting for the domain registration to go through.

Wishing and washing re chosing a host but actually talked to a human type person at FuturePrice and will probably belly up for a gig of space for $10/month.

I know this all just extra interesting, especially to those who have not blogged a mile in my shoes. (Oh, that sounds distasteful).

Meanwhile back at the ranch: I have failed in my prime directive for the day: obtaining the Charlie Brown Christmas tree that Ann marked way up on the ridge a few days ago. She marked it by (very loosely) tying a piece of orange surveyors tape to the 'perfect' one. Today the tape was lying in the path, and I chose the one closest at hand. I mean it's not worth agonizing over pitiful vs more pitifuller. So outside the door it sits. This year we have selected a misshapen Virginia Pine, free-range and fresh, and the price was right.

Lucky Ann. She gets to attend the Cursing of the Tree. Happens every year when the Grinch here attempts to pound the bottom of the lopsided tree into the ancient red and green Ring of Exasperation, part of the Tree Stand of Doom that is supposed to keep this bonzai-ed bargain from tipping over into the dining room table. At least this year, we won't be doing the two-trees-wired-together trick that has been employed in past years before moving to the Deformed Tree Farm here.

Today is the first time I ever fetched a Christmas tree alone. And, looks like it will be the first Christmas Day I have ever spent in the pleasure my own company. Ann is working, so that staff with kids at home can stay and enjoy the day. Well. What about THIS kid? Maybe I'll get some really neat underwear and socks to play with to keep me occupied. Or maybe some skates. Oooh. All-terraine skates. Up and down Goose Creek in my new underwear on knobby-wheeled skates!

I want my own blog back. I'm getting distracted over here at the Baileys, so many interesting things to see. Especially the candles. Ooooh! Smell this one!

Posted by fred1st at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are some snippets from my recent snippy response to the threat of being silenced. If you have concerns about this, you might want to communicate with your server to insist on advance warning so you get more than the two days I had. My former hostess replies to my responses....

"this kind of action of suspending MT accounts is unprecedented"

If you look on the MT forums you'll see that it isn't. MT is starting to
gain a reputation as a resource hog. There are plenty of messages on there
from people who have had their accounts suspended/cgi scripts disabled by
their hosts with no warning at all. Our server admin at least warned us
about the problem first.

"One person making a few posts a day is hardly going to bring the server
down, is it?"

No it isn't - the problems are arising because there often several people
using MT at the same time. It's not just about posting, when anyone
comments on a blog it rebuilds the individual archive page. A comment being
posted uses up almost as much resource as an entry being posted.

It's easy to blame the "server trolls" but to be fair to them they are doing
their job properly and highlighting a problem that is affecting ALL the
users on the server. [...]

Posted by fred1st at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few weeks ago I was the target of the attention of Manager Mom, as we used to call her when other Indians were around here. Now, with just one Indian, the chief is Manager Wife. She undertakes various projects in which I 'volunteer' after being shoulded on and subjected to guilt grenades. This particular project that I SHOULD do was to sing a certain new favorite lullaby in church on SUnday, the 15th. I went so far as to get the lyrics and learn the few chords on the guitar, but then She ended up having to work the weekend of the service. She felt that she would be too tired to go on the Sunday night sevice after working all day, and so that, I thought, got me off the hook. WHEW! Close call! Wrong.

Thursday, I got a call from the minister. "Fred, I understand that you might be wanting to participate in the Sunday night service, have a song you want to sing".

"Uhoh. I guess Ann got to you" I accused.

"Well, no, my wife told me about it", he said.

Well, that was puzzling. I suppose Ann told Mrs. Minister about it when we saw them the other night. Oh dread. I guess I should agree to do it, since it is important to Ann. Hmmm. I thought she wasn't planning to go to the service anyway.

So, when Ann got home from work that evening, I told her the minister had called and I had agreed to sing. She was stunned. "How did he find out you were thinking about singing" she asked. Yeah Right. Of course I jeered at her for playing innocent. But she denied saying anything about it to anybody, honest!

And so it came to pass that I did yodel my way through the little song last night in front of a live audience. Afterward, the minister sought to clear my wife of any complicity in the crime. And it turns out, I have seen the enemy, and it is ME.

"Oh, Fred, I found out how my wife learned you might be willing to sing tonight. She read it on your weblog".

Moral: be sure your words will find you out.

Posted by fred1st at 5:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Please go HERE for the temporary headquarters of Fragments from Floyd.

It takes a lot to get me piffed but I am there. The server that houses Fragments, quite apart from any action on the part of my generous former benefactress who has helped me set up and maintain Fragments since September, is playing the Big Hairy Troll and threatening to pull the plug on my weblog if I continue to post here. One MT blog is going to bring the house down? Then I sure as heck don't want to be a part of that particular enterprise. I am working frantically to get moved elsewhere.

Consequently, even though I will not be able to make the graceful transition that I had hoped for, I will only make one final post here, after this one, to tell you that the new place is up and ready for visits. Please keep checking back.

Meanwhile, I will be over at my emergency housing hosted by Ron Bailey at http://www.ronbailey.net/fragments/. There isn't currently any way to receive comments from there, so email me at fred1st@swva.net, please.

See you on the other side.

Posted by fred1st at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Maneuvers beyond our perimeter are planned today for 1300 hours. The troops (The General and one raw recruit) will be making a foray to our objective du jour: the commercial district of Floyd, proper. Under the recent severe winter conditions, and lacking the HumVee that would make these precautions unnecessary, it was expedient that the platoon survey road conditions to the west prior to the ETD. Alternate routes may have to be considered, with a concommitant loss of time.

The Upper Pass, commonly called the 'high road to town' appears on our digital reconnaisance maps as two sets of 12 to 15 closely-spaced parallel contour lines that curve outward from central open spaces representing the ridges to the north and south. In the center between these two sets of lines packed smack-dab on top of each other (indicating a very steep pitch) is a thin blue line representing the headwaters of Goose Creek.

In 1.7 miles between Headquarters here and the hardtop up above, the creek falls almost 300 feet, winding its way back and forth as it careens toward our encampment. The narrow road follows both the pitch and the sudden angles of the creek. There are few houses along this section of road, none at all for the first mile... not because it is not beautiful and quiet there, but because only a home on three-story stilts could be adapted to the steep, rocky terraine. The cleft of the "V" along the creek up this way gets just a short burst of sun at midday. Consequently, the snow from last week is hanging tight, even after three passes by the big orange DOT truck blade. Hence, our reconnoitre.

Our chief concern: the Terrible IceDome of Death. Here, a year-round trickle of a spring oozes water from the high side of the road. This trickle fills a basin about the volume of a baseball cap, then it meanders through the gravel, crossing the road and seeping another 30 feet down into the creek. In early winter, a inch-thick crust of ice gradually forms. This later accretes into a 20 foot 12" thick pseudopodium of opalescent blue terror. More than one hapless traveler taking our road as a shortcut has ended up with at least one set of wheels hanging in space over the creek. The Dome is a formidable adversary. In my dreams last winter, it slithered down from the ridge like a boreal jellyfish, and covered our barn. I really hope that in today's recon, we will discover that it has not yet attained its winter proportions, and can go the short way to town, via the Upper Pass.

Uh-oh. Hold on. The General has commanded that the field troop call the DOT and have them bring their big orange trucks and attack the oozing creature with flamethrowers and earth-moving equipment before it can grow to its full dimensions expected by early January.

"A simple culvert under the road might be more practical", the troop offered meekly.

"Insubordination!" cried the General. Drop and give me forty pushups; and then get the dishes out of the dishwasher, soldier!"

I have to hurry with the KP. The foray to town begins in about an hour now. If we survive the operation and return unscathed, maybe I will have a picture for you at 20:00 hours. If the weblog is never updated beyond this point, you will know that I went down fighting, a valiant Army of One.

Posted by fred1st at 5:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Twenty four years ago today, Ann was baking cookies. That was one of the very few things she could pysically do, since also 'in the oven' was our second child, expecting to draw his first breath at any time. I was napping on the couch in the warmth of the baking and filled with the pleasant doughy smells that were coming from the next room.

I partially awoke to hear Ann say "The water broke".

"Drat! I should have put more insulation on those pipes" I muttered, 'water breaking' only signifying in my stupor that I was about to put on my coveralls and climb back into the crawlspace again. After five years in the old house on Withers Road, I thought I had everything properly winter-proofed.

"No, dummy. This water" and she indicated the linoleum under her feet. We packed up the hospital bag that had been waiting for a week, and spent the next 12 hours in various stages of labor, waiting to meet our son for the first time.

Our daughter, born five years earlier, had been beautiful and photogenic from her first hospital nursery pictures. Nathan also had some pictures made. What can I say? One of my daughter's friends saw him for the first time and to