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 told us with childlike brutal honesty "he looks like Christie's grandfather"...a wizened, pruny, simian little man. Nate was a beautiful child in that he had all his fingers and toes, but past that, I was really hoping in those first months that he would grow up to have a mighty good personality, 'cause he was gonna need it.

In twenty four years, he has grown into a fine looking young man and I am proud to stand beside him and call him my son. But more than that, I am thankful for who he is, and is becoming... a young man who makes friends easily and works hard to keep them; a person who is more generous to strangers than common sense would dictate; a person of keen intellect who appreciates this as an unearned gift, and intends to use it for good; a confident world traveler who has found warmth in those both lovely and unlovely around the world; a creative and caring poet whose music and words one day will change the lives of many; and a thinker who struggles honestly with the really hard questions and cares deeply about the answers.

You have come a long way. And miles to go before you sleep. To him to whom much is given, much is expected. Carry God's blessing gracefully and well. Happy Birthday, sonny boy. See you soon.

Love, Mom and Dad

Posted by fred1st at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Oh I can feel it. Disorder rules the morning, thoughts and intentions spreading out from the center, radiating like starbursts bouncing off each other in random patterns, fractals gone berserk. One distraction creates an eddy in brainspace, a vacuum sucking coherence from thought, and purpose wanders off to doodle with a stick in the snow. Focus is futile. Tis the season to be frantic, fra ra ra ra ra. No point in pointing anywhere with your words, miserable writer. You can't get there from here this morning. Ooooh you bad little fingers that you will not listen to the mad scientist back up at headquarters.

Maybe it is because my desk is a mess. An orderly space creates an orderly mind. Ergo... Let's see what we have here.

• One pile of books including two ordered from Amazon as gifts; I am going to try to read them before giving them away. Is that wrong? Should I not do that? I promise not to make marginal notes or fold pages. And then there is the stack of library books checked out for the second time, once again not finished. And a stack of interesting magazines to glean for ideas; and a week old newspaper.
• The bank account from last month that I have not reconciled yet has been mercifully buried so I don't see it glaring at me. Since I am not bringing in any income, I find that I dread and find reasons, excuses let's be honest, to put off fooling with things financial to which I am not contributing. We are maintaining the status quo, but I wish we could be working more to pay off the house. This may change soon, which brings up another desk cluster...
• One folder containing various personal stuff, including the resume I have been working on this week. The old CV is undergoing it's umpteenth facelift and is starting to look like a certain grotesquely modified pop singer we all know. I need to give the thing an update, a nosejob, if you will, so it will look more like the real me. Hmmm. What shall we say about May 2002 to present: Compiled and propagated 463 observations and opinions on topics including arthropods, vegetables and meteorologic conditions. Strengths in magnifying and embellishing the trivial details of daily life from a place nobody ever heard of. Soon I may return to the 'real world' of work; or not. If I have learned nothing else it is to not count one's chickens. Still, a three day a week job may be forthcoming, and my desk will become even more rounded with 'stuff'.
• And lastly: Spread, stacked and sprawling in different strata of the disorderly desktop are CD's in brightly colored cases. Most are blank, some completed but unprocessed, and a few decked out and ready for mailing. The First Goose Creek Christmas CD is finished! And a crude thing it is, too, commensurate with my ineptitude with my sound editing software and haphazard conditions under which it was 'produced'. Contents: just me reading about a dozen "fragments" and singing three songs. Oh yeah, and reading one Maurice Sendak story from my kids childhood. Pretty cheezy, but fun to do. Next year, I'll do better.

Posted by fred1st at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

OOOOH! Here's an idea for a full-length movie: The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. No wait! Somebody already made this film in 2000. Gotta be some desparate B-grade-at-best performers, fur shure. Right? Wrong!

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is an innovative and irreverent live-action/animated comedy adventure based on Jay Ward's classic cartoon, which combines the talents of Robert De Niro as the insidious Fearless Leader, Jason Alexander as the evil Boris Badenov and Rene Russo as the seductress Natasha Fatale. In addition to cameos from such names as Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Carl Reiner and others, the trio are joined by a CGI-created Rocky and Bullwinkle from the wizards of Industrial Light & Magic.

Fred's Review: Roger Rabbit meets Blazing Saddles. There are some neat sight gags and enough puns to keep you on your toes. What would Moose and Squirrel be without PUNS! All in all, I imagine only the flying rodent and the antlered ungulate were proud of this one when it was complete. The other characters who should have known better were hoping they would wake up and this movie would be nothing more than a bad CGI dream. If you were a big R & B fan like I was, this would be worth catching for free by accident like I did. But don't get a babysitter and go to town for this one.

Posted by fred1st at 6:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If anybody has a link to or information on the nittygritty of moving a MT blog from one server to another, I am all ears. Someone did the export from blogger to MT for me, thank her very much, and even that was confusing.

I know I need to download MT and extract it. Then, after I have set up space on the new server, upload it. And after that, import my weblog files from the old to the new server. That's about the extent of what I know, and I'm painting with a very broad brush. The devil's in the details. And I'm not able to find much of the particular do's and don'ts by Googling.

For the time being, I guess the heat is off. Fragments won't be migrated to the mySQL database tomorrow, since I have told my benefactor that I will be moving the weblog. I would sure love to get this done over the weekend, but am waiting on the domain name registration to be finalized.

Meanwhile, we are in the midst of yet another ice storm and were without power for 6 hours today. Expecting 50 mph winds and snow showers tomorrow. And all this BEFORE Christmas! Hey, Winter IS BACK!!!!

Posted by fred1st at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well, I have bitten the proverbial bullet (or was that bullet in Ecclesiastes?). I will soon 'own' fragmentsfromfloyd.com, registered at GoDaddy. When that becomes legal in a few days, I will sign up for the toddler-package of 50MB at FeaturePrice.com.

After that, I will have to figure out how to transfer the domain to the server. And then, how to transfer the weblog to the new server without killing it. Geesh, I dread messing with all those MT folders and junk. I'm considering asking Santa to send one of those pointy-earred gnomes of his to set all this up while I go dream of sugar plums. I been good, Santa! Really. It was on a Thursday, I think.

Maybe, oh maybe, this will be the Promised Land, with no more wandering around in a 40-acre field looking for Fragments final home. And don't change your bookmarks just yet. It may take me a week to figure all this out, and I will give you plenty of advance warning. I want to carry all of you along with me in the move, for moral support; and, I've sort of got used to having you around. Wouldn't want to lose any of you, and see your little picture posted on the back of a carton of milk, now would we?

Meanwhile, if I get booted unceremoniously off my current server over the weekend and feel the urgent need to post, blogger buddy Ron Bailey has graciously set up a space in a metal outbuilding behind his house where I can come post (figuratively speaking, okay? for all you literalists). Find me here, bundled against the cold, if the 'old' Fragments seems empty of new posts over the weekend. Thanks for the temporary digs, RB!

Posted by fred1st at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, I guess you get what you pay for. The server that hosts my free webspace is harking up a hairball. Apparently MT is eating up bandwidth and slowing everybody else down. (Has this been a known problem on anybody else's hosting service?)

My hostess is converting our blogs to mySQL, whatever the heck that is (sounds painful) and asks that we not post until she makes the changes sometime tomorrow. The server admin is threatening to suspend survices. So if I appear to have taken a blogger's holiday, I am banished temporarily to the edge of a black hole somewhere near Betelgeuse.

When I come back, I simply MUST not put off registering Fragments with a domain of its own and moving servers ONE MORE TIME! Oh, the horror! Bear with me, friends and neighbors. And keep those card and letters coming in. I am in need of support. After all, I just survived a terrible ordeal in the ice, you know.

Posted by fred1st at 6:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The whole terrible tale..

Not a snow for frolicking, this one. There is a sharp, brittle crust on a half foot of dry powder so that each step is like walking on an endless eggshell. At the last instant before stepping out with the right, the left foot sinks suddenly through the white veneer into an icy pit, and conversely with the other foot, step by ponderous step across the yard and pasture. The road is not much better. Scraped, packed, melted, refrozen and rutted, it threatens harm to auto and foot traveler alike. But this slickeryness is nothing compared to the worst-case ice storm a few years back that almost got me for good. I almost died -- laughing.

It was just me and the cat in those days. Ann stayed in Carolina to finish her degree, and I moved into a small cabin tacked on the side of a dead-end road. Walnut Knob is a peninsula of blue ridge-lets that are surrounded on all sides by steep valley leading off way below into the piedmont. The views and wildlife were spectacular. There were a dozen and a half dwellings on this road; only three were occupied over winter. Mine was one of them. The isolation was made more profound by the week-long fogs that singled out these particular high hills, especially in winter. I would often drive 12 of the 13 miles home in 'good' conditions, only to turn down the knob road on the edge of what my neighbor called 'the droppin'-off place' into an other-worldly microclimate. Sometimes the eerie fog was exciting and mysterious, and I felt comfortably remote and sequestered in it. Other times, it seemed like a curse and a punishment. I remember one storm notable for both ice and fog-- a deadly combination.

Almost dark as I came home from work, I groped along in four-wheel-drive from one fence post to the next-- this being the visible range of my headlights. Stay in the center of the road; don't brake suddenly or change direction any more than necessary. Get as close to the cabin as you can before abandoning ship. This was my mission and I was repeating it out loud to give me courage. The hill and curve beyond Max's house were just ahead. If I could make it up that one rise, maybe I would get the truck and me home in one piece. At least the freezing rain had stopped for now. There was a good inch of ice on the wire of the pasture fence that was my only guide in the frozen fog. It would have been beautiful if the adrenalin had not obliterated every shred of aesthetic care I'd ever had. At that moment, beauty was the farthest thing from my mind.

My body seemed to be consist of no extra parts or forces beyond tension in my shoulders, strain in white-knuckled fists on the wheel, and anxiety. These all melted away like an April snow when at last the truck slipped sideways like a drunken ice skater onto the edge of my driveway. I breathed a prolonged sigh of relief as I sat in place, gathering my wits. Finally, I grabbed up my briefcase and a small bag of groceries and began to think about the big crockpot of vegetable soup that was waiting for me inside the dark, cold little shack. I paused to thank God for the angels in ice crampons that had managed to keep me out of two miles of frozen ditch. But it turned out that I was counting my blessings a bit too soon.

During the drive from Floyd, the doors of the truck had iced shut. I turned sideways in the seat and kicked against the door while awkwardly holding the door handle open with one hand. The door finally crunched and creaked and stiffly opened. Free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last! I could almost smell the salty fragrance of soup simmering in the crockpot; I could feel the relaxing heat radiating from the soapstone woodstove with me curled up, cat in lap, contentedly watching Seinfeld in a mere half hour! I grabbed my things and started to the house, and it was at this point that The Bard's words came to me: "The best laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft agley". I was most certainly ganging agley. And I was going there right quickly and on my ruddy rump in the dark.

The truck sat at the fork of two graveled branches at the top of the driveway; one fork went downhill a hundred feet to the garden, the other was level for fifty feet and ended under the deck at the house. My intention, of course, was to reach the cabin with all haste.

Alas, my feet flew out from under me after perhaps a dozen steps, and thereafter, inertia and freedom from friction quickly deposited myself at the top of the road less traveled, at the top of the path down toward the garden. And here, I might as well have had my skeleton removed, like Gary Larsen's boneless chickens, so futile were my motions to stand as I sprawled there at the top of the driveway. I had fallen with my first step and could not purchase a grip to save my life. What was worse was that, if I started to slide downhill at this point, I would most certainly build speed all the way down the garden road, ending up jolting to a sudden nauseating stop, straddling a tree, thereafter singing soprano in the heavenly choir. Each attempt to come up on my knees just greased the skids. In the end, I relinquished all efforts of control. I figured, like the drunk asleep in the crushed car who escapes injury by virtue of his relaxed condition, I would just go limp and let gravity and fate carry me where they would. A sledding bug on the windshield of life.

My canvas satchel preceded me; I had seen it zip past the fruit trees as I took my first taste of the ice. It wasn't long before I followed the exact same path, thankfully coming to rest without the tree twixt my frozen legs. I had body-surfed to 100 feet below the cabin on the ice. In almost total darkness, the boneless chicken could not find enough traction to do more than founder like a turtle on his back, if you'll pardon my mixed metaphors. Mercifully, I was giddy from fatigue and able to gaze down from up and outside this scene-- the detached and dispassionate watcher. I was able to see the humor in all of this, momentarily. I even laughed out loud in a nonchalant, macho, dismissive kind of way. Maybe the cat heard me; there was no one else for miles to hear me laugh in haughty disregard in the face of peril. Soon, the corporeal Fred regained full possession of his wet and cold, hungry, slightly bruised body that was undeniably and totally out of control. This was really not so very funny after all, he said quietly to himself.

Sprawled spread-eagle on ice in the darkness, all I could accomplish was to make slippery snow-angels on the ice. In time, momentum and my unproductive wallowing carried me even further down slope into what had been pasture. At last, I managed to grab a small ice-coated tree to pull myself unsteadily to my knees. The cabin was 150 feet up hill now; I could barely make out the silhouette of the roof against a gray-pink sullen sky. Pulling myself up the hill, tree to tree, mostly on my knees, was exhausting work. I soon became soaked with sweat, then clammy...small wonder, what with my blood sugar falling for want of food and the hormones of emergency surging against a cooling, slowing metabolism as my core temperature fell. I needed that crockpot in the worst way.

At last, I made it back up through the woods and onto the road; a fresh start. I was not about to step onto the driveway to the house and take a second thrill ride down to the garden. Clutching through the spindly Rhododendrons and Mt. Laurels between the road and the house, I eventually made it to the bottom of the steps. And there I stood, using the verb loosely, within 10 feet of the door. But there was no way I could get to the front door up those 8 small glistening ice-encased steps. So near and yet so far, I was on the verge of simply throwing a fit. I considered shaking my fist angrily at the heavens. Or maybe I would just sit right down at the foot of the steps to discover for myself if it was true that freezing to death was actually not so bad once you became numb all over and your metabolism reached the point where thought and pain were merely faint ghosts of awareness. A brilliant white tunnel of light would point to a place warm and safe, with steaming vegetable soup waiting in a golden bowl.

In a last twilight of consciousness before total indifference consented to defeat, I spotted an old shovel under the steps. I was able to reach it, though by this time I was not very well able to feel it in my frozen fingers. With considerable force, I busted through the ice enough to rough it up and expose a little of the wood underneath to give a wee bit of traction. Each step was one small step for man, one small step for man. I was grateful for each one I conquered, as if it had been an Alpine peak. At the top of the steps, I fumbled in the dark for some time with the key that did not seem to fit in the door lock and it occurred to me in my growing stupor that maybe I was even at the wrong house. The world was under a New Order for the last few hours, possibly under control of the White Witch of Narnia. I wouldn't know for sure until I got inside this door.

The lock turned in slow motion and the cabin door opened. I entered a dark womb of relative warmth, and began to reinhabit my former limbs inch by inch. It seemed vaguely familiar there, and I understood that I should be doing something. I stood just inside the door, dumbfounded by the trauma of the past hour, shaking involuntarily. About that time, the phone rang, although it did not occur to me what that noise signified until the 5th or 6th ring. Oh yeah. That's the phone, and I reached for it in slow motion. It was Ann in Carolina. She asked casually what I was up to.

"Oh, I had a little trouble getting home today" I said groggily. "Tell you what: how 'bout I call you back after I've had me a little soup? It is going to be the best soup a man has ever had." Yep. One giant step for mankind. I kindled the fire in the stove til it cast warm flickering light into the cold shadows. I ate my soup, the best I'd ever had, cupped in my hands around my favorite bowl, not made of gold but just as precious. The last thing I remember is crawling under the covers alone, sliding peacefully into a long dreamless sleep.

Posted by fred1st at 7:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Keenly observed the world is transformed. The landscape is engorged with detail, every movement on it chillingly sharp. The air between people is charged. Days unfold, bathed in their own music. Nights become hallucinatory; dreams, prescient. Gretel Ehrlich ~ Solace of Open Spaces

Posted by fred1st at 7:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A pitiful true story of a man brought to his knees by the icy fingers of the White Witch. In three parts, for those with short attention spans, reading blogs at work.

Not a snow for frolicking, this one. There is a sharp, brittle crust on a half foot of dry powder so that each step is like walking on an endless eggshell. At the last instant before stepping out with the right, the left foot sinks suddenly through the white veneer into an icy pit, and conversely with the other foot, step by ponderous step across the yard and pasture. The road is not much better. Scraped, packed, melted, refrozen and rutted, it threatens harm to auto and foot traveler alike. But this slickeryness is nothing compared to the worst-case ice storm a few years back that almost got me for good. I almost died laughing.

It was just me and the cat in those days. Ann stayed in Carolina to finish her degree, and I moved into a small cabin tacked on the side of a dead-end road. Walnut Knob is a peninsula of blue ridge-lets that are surrounded on all sides by steep valley leading off way below into the piedmont. The views and wildlife were spectacular. There were 17 dwellings on this road; only three were occupied over winter. Mine was one of them. The isolation was made more profound by the week-long fogs that singled out these particular high hills, especially in winter. I would often drive 12 of the 13 miles home in 'good' conditions, only to turn down the knob road on the edge of what my neighbor called 'the droppin'-off place' into an other-worldly microclimate. Sometimes this was exciting and mysterious, making me feel special, honored. Other times, it seemed like a curse and a punishment.

Almost dark, I groped along in four-wheel-drive from one fence post to the next, operating within the visible range of my headlights. Stay in the center of the road; don't brake suddenly or change direction any more than necessary. Get as close to the cabin as you can before abandoning ship. This was my mantra and I was repeating it out loud to give me courage. The hill and curve beyond Max's house were just ahead. If I could make it up that one rise, maybe I would get the truck and me home in one piece. At least the freezing rain had stopped for now. There was a good inch of ice on the wire of the pasture fence that was my only guide in the frozen fog. It would have been beautiful if the adrenalin had not obliterated every shred of aesthetic care I'd ever had. At that moment, beauty was the farthest thing from my mind.

Posted by fred1st at 5:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The crusty snow and ice of a week ago is slushy enough to walk on safely this morning, even with a fresh overnight coating of frozen fog and freezing rain. Branches of Hemlocks along the creek, ravaged by a foreign hoard of indifferent insects, are slowly dying, and hold more frozen jewel drops of ice than green-gray needles: a sad kind of beauty.

The deer have come out of storm seclusion. They lay low when it would do them little good to browse for grasses buried under crusty snow, conserving their layer of fat for more productive foraging. This morning, their pronged prints come right up to the front steps, and show signs of a brief stop to munch the Hostas by the footbridge.

Swollen with snowmelt, the creek runs both under and on top of the thick ice- comforter that mutes amd modulates the more familiar sounds of a summer creek; water has learned a hundred new permutations, variations in the key of winter. Listen. The visceral core of creek runs hidden except in round patches of open water, dark against white. Green waters part around a steadfast rounded rock here and there and the world is full of flow, smooth and quiet as an Artic island.

Snowbirds leap for tiny seeds of broomsedge, their cold feet leaving cuneiform slits and wedges, like crop circles that appear out of nowhere. There is play in their work, tiny swingers of birches. Their antics in a motionless world are reason enough to have hope for spring. Meanwhile, I will love winter.

Posted by fred1st at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Cody Clark is no stranger to the craft of word-smithing. If you like Fragments, take some time to get to know the Overflow here. But come back to Fragments. Promise?

A thoughtful post on "why write" from Curious Frog, a blog whose frog-trainer is a long time journalist and cat-fancier. Does the presence or absence of comments make or break your blogging will-to-write, and if so, why?

A screenplay writer in Australia is resurrecting her writing humours via her recently started blog named after an obscure Shirley Temple character. She writes in the third person about some of the neatest stuff! (And at times I am guilty of the most shameless self-promotion!) Boynton is a labrador puppy owner, hers is approaching a world record for longeivity.

Posted by fred1st at 5:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, how could I let this one from Sunday's Silflay slip past me? Bigwig examines the concept of tipping those who you read and who read your blog regularly, wondering how all of that might work. Susanna, Meryl, Michele, and others mentioned here... would 'pay' for what you do make you feel better or worse about your weblogging? Bigwig writes...

[...]I find that the more I try to quantify which bloggers I ought to be leaving tips for, the more bloggers make the list. Technically, to my way of thinking, I ought to tip not only every blogger that I read regularly, but also every blogger that regularly sends traffic our way. It feels like the neighborly thing to do. It's also impossible, unless I send only pennies. I've joined the nickel exchange in an attempt to do just that, but I haven't seen a lot of their banners on other sites.

Off the top of my head, this is the list of bloggers who I think I ought to be giving money to as well, if I'm going to give money to Andy in the first place.

InstaPundit, Daily Pundit, cut on the bias, Meryl Yourish, File13's Amish Tech Support, Little Green Footballs, A Small Victory, Silent Running, USS Clueless, ColdFury, Spleenville World Domination Headquarters, The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, On the Third Hand, WeckUpToThees!, Fragments from Floyd and Lileks.

Small bills, American, please. Or sourwood honey. And I'll give you back the jar when it's empty, for refills.

Posted by fred1st at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Manager Ann has decided unilaterally that the Army of One will sing a new favorite Christmas song before the assembled congregation at the special Christmas service next Sunday night. Though there was some agitation and near-mutiny among the ranks, er, rank ... in the end, mine is but to do or die.

I have rounded up some verses to add to the ones Doc Watson sings on the Sugar Plums (Sugarhill) album on which we first heard this 'Christmas Lullaby'. The lyrics (about 12 verses) to what was called originally "Cradle Hymn" were written by Isaac Watts (who also wrote Joy to the World) in the early 1700's. He also wrote a tune, but not the haunting minor-major version that Doc sings.

I have recorded and uploaded a snippet of the song to send along with the lyrics to a buddy of mine in Boone, NC. He sings out and about with some other folks, and they all happen also to go to the same Presbyterian church where they lead music worship. I like the words and the simple melody. I think he will like it, and you may also. I think it is especially meaningful when you contemplate the lyrics in light of your own small child or grandchild this holy season.

So, since I have uploaded it for him, I would offer the opportunity for you to listen to the mp3 file waiting here. I have included the obedient soldier Fred, mercifully, singing only the last verse, file is about 495K.

HUSH! my dear, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed! Heavenly blessings without number Gently falling on thy head.

How much better thou'rt attended
Than the Son of God could be,
When from heaven He descended
And became a child like thee!

Was there nothing but a manger
Cursèd sinners could afford
To receive the heavenly stranger?
Did they thus affront their Lord?

See the kinder shepherds round Him,
Telling wonders from the sky!
Where they sought Him, there they found Him,
With His Virgin mother by.

See the lovely babe a-dressing;
Lovely infant, how He smiled!
When He wept, the mother's blessing
Soothed and hush'd the holy child.

May'st thou live to know and fear Him,
Trust and love Him all thy days; 50
Then go dwell for ever near Him,
See His face, and sing His praise!

Posted by fred1st at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Winter is the season when thermoregulation becomes a really high priority in these parts, and particularly in this house. The Queen must be have comfort in her castle! Of course, staying within a comfort range, temperature-wise, is a consideration in the summer too. More so in Dixie-land were was I was bornin'. In summer, you can only take off so much. If you're still sweating, tuff. On any given day in winter, you can pretty well add or subtract layers of cloth or increase or decrease your exertion level and find the Goldilocks Happy Medium that is 'just right'.

When it comes to what is 'just right' in bedclothes for winter, she says tomAto and I say she's way wrong about that. I expect in January the same kind of cotton sheets that have been on the bed since summer. This constancy serves as a common denominator of comparison between the seasons. Yes, they're cold, at first, but you know that warmth is coming. Sleeping under cotton sheets in winter is to resist cowtowing to the instant gratification crowd who prefer other fussy fabrics at night. Sissies.

"Oooh! Can you imagine how good these freezing sheets would have felt back in August!" I ask rhetorically, while Ann is convulsing with cold over on the southern half of the bed, her Skinniness unable to voice a retort through chattering blue lips.

Somewhere along our hundred years of marriage, we were given a set of flannel sheets. For Herself, it was love at first touch. Queen TomAto slipped between those powder blues one winter night decades back, making embarassingly sensual sounds of snuggliness. She has been unwilling to give them up since. Sleeping on and under flannel at night feels to me like being stuffed naked into an electric wool sock. On this issue, we simply do not agree, never will forever amen.

Marriages have ended with controversies less trivial than this. What were we going to do? How could we resolve this either-or conundrum? Make it both-and! That's right. Divide the baby!

Tonight, we will replace my cotton with His 'n Hers custom marriage-maintenance sheets: my half cotton, her half electric wool sock. Many years ago, we simply took one cotton and one flannel, cut them down the middle, and stitched them back together again. Voila! Now we both sleep where the covers suit our temperaments.

The stitch down the middle also provides a convenient marker so that there is no debate about whether she has crossed the middle line with knees or elbows (which somehow grow in both size and sharpness during the night). But that is another issue before the arbitration committee.

Now: if we could just find some way to divide the kitchen into two separate but equal halves...hmmmmm.

Posted by fred1st at 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I have a friend who is doing a blog-related research project at Virginia Tech.

Does anyone know of an actual community (town, city, county) that is using a blog for community-networking purposes or for any other use on the level of the neighborhood or municipality?

Please leave me a comment with suggestions. Thanks!

Posted by fred1st at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A big THANK YOU to Michele over at A Small Victory for posting Fragments as her Site of the Day and had a few kind words to say, to boot!

Please, new visitors, make yourself at home. Leave your boots on the back porch if you don't mind, before you come in. If I'm not here, there's coffee in the pot. The dog may bark, but he definitely won't bite. Throw another stick or two in the stove if its chilly. I won't be gone long. Hang around. Take a look at the pictures from the last couple of days during the snow. Got one you can carry home with you, if you're a mind to.

Posted by fred1st at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The unnamed creek comes from darkness underground beginning in a dozen springs a mile south In its past, it has raged back and forth Between the ridges, swollen and angry Carving our narrow valley from Appalachian stone. Today the little stream purrs along peacefully enough, Cold, clear as liquid glass, on its way down mountains. It carries the smell of snow to a sandy beach on the sea. Tonight the creek will freeze along the edges. In a month, we will hear a river embryo calling faintly From under ice and we will walk on water.

Dear Fragments Readers old and new...

Since you are busy and cannot come to visit us this holiday season, I want to come as close as I can to sending a bit of Goose Creek to you. If you'd like, you can download a full-sized image of the one above. It might make a nice screensaver or desktop. If you put your ear up close to your monitor, you can hear the creek and smell the snow! Consider this your "First" Christmas present from the Firsts to each of you. (File is 570K. Right Click the downloaded image and "save picture as" to some comfortable place on your hard drive. The file will be available only for about a week.)

Posted by fred1st at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

To walk the same steps through four seasons; to see the same steadfast ridges like the loops and curls of fingerprints that seemingly never change, unique to these hills alone; to see that life goes on in ordained ways about and within me. This is a thing I own. This is wealth. I do not own the air that fuels these transient living cells that carry me up and over and down this mountain. Neither do I own the trees that reclaim this tattered hillside, or this ancient valley land under them.

This body that labors more each season to come here itself is leased, a borrowed book written in erasable ink. This I understand. Getting to the top of the ridge in summer and in winter is a form of praise of that which endures beyond the life of a man, a dog, a white pine or a slowly eroding valley. It is a prayer.

Posted by fred1st at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ~John Ruskin~

Posted by fred1st at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Journal: Friday 06 December 02
Brrr! This snow is unusual in being so early and so cold! First thing after putting on every piece of clothing that still allows for crude movement, I must go straight out into the very cold very dark, bring in kindling, and do all the winter voodoo that gets to be a comfortable routine. In the summer, I miss it, but not entirely in a bad way. Makes me remember a post about "things I like about summer". I went back and read it, and chuckled, here from the opening scenes of the world in white.

Today was a long day, in a good way. It was a gift, a thing not expected. Ann was able to safely travel home over seriously bad roads in the trusty Suburu after 36 hours at work. She had a hospital room to herself and slept no more poorly than she does at home. With all this overtime, she earned Friday off, the first day of a long weekend. That alone is rare, and will be enough time for her to at least partially clear the work toxins. She likes her work, but the life-and-death decisions she makes every day take their toll. Hopefully, the decisions for the next three days will consist of such as 'raisins or dates' in the cookies?

Wifey was home to share the nail biting as I listened to my adenoidal voice in the radio essay this morning. It survived the flash-editing better than I had expected, and I was okay with how it turned out. I was crushed that, even though it was the last thing I said before I left the studio on Tuesday: be sure and add the same bio as last time (where they mentioned Fragments from Floyd)...it was not included. Consequently I got none of the Virginia visits that came from the first piece I read back in late October. Sigh. Once again, Fred, remember you're doing this silliness for its own sake. You alone are the benefactor and the recipient of any worth in the words you produce. An army of one.

WARNING: DO NOT OPERATE MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT WHILE SMELLING THIS FRUITCAKE!
The making of America's most hated holiday confection began a few days ago by the soaking of all that sticky-sweet clarified fruitoid substance in Virginia Gentleman. This morning, we had the traditional pre-baking snort of the stuff. I know that most people prefer to use gifts of Christmas fruitcakes as doorstops and such. I suggest that the potency of this one might render it efficacious for snake bite. Good stuff! We sampled it after it came out of the oven. Most is now wrapped in bourbon-soaked gaily-colored cloth in preparation for shipping to friends and family in need of doorstops. It is rumoured that there is only one fruitcake in the whole US, and it is passed from one ungrateful recipient to the next. I can vouch for the fact that there are at least three... less two small slivers.

While Ann mixed and snorted the fruitcake, I worked a bit with a song from the Sugar Hill album "Sugar Plums". Ann especially likes Doc Watson singing "Christmas Lullaby". The cords are easy, and it is a haunting tune, probably an old traditional Irish ballad. I couldn't quite make out one line of the lyrics. By way of the amazing resource of the internet, I found the words. And not just the three short verses Doc sings, but the whole original hymn written more than three hundred years ago by Isaac Watts. I think I may post the lyrics later; I don't think Mr. Watts would care. She wants me to sing it at the church Christmas service where they are soliciting anyone who wants to read, sing, et cetera. I think we'll keep this a chorus of one, for home consumption only, thank you.

We may not get another major snow (our 8" here is a big one by recent standards). So, I wanted to get a few more pictures of the house from the steep hillside behind the house. The snow was still very crusty, and the dog had to stay behind because, between his joints still a bit painful from the recent illness and the abrading of the ice on his paw pads, this particular walk would do him more harm than good. It was tough going for us humans too, but we made the loop, and I came back with some marginal images. Saw signs of what may have been a coyote tracking a small deer. The visible presence of wildlife by their tracks is one of the best things about snow!

How life never ceases to surprise me. I got a call today related to my former profession, making me an offer I can refuse. However, I will play this fish and see if I can recreate the position they are offering and end up with both of us happy with what is being sold by me and purchased by them. Nah. Probably not. But opportunity has come knocking, and I am peeping through the door-port looking at these unknown ones through the fish-eye lens. Hey, here's a Gary Larsen cartoon: First frame shows man peeking out his door peephole, seeing a frumpy man in a hat and his little wife in a polkadot dress, with the pointy glasses, string of pearls, clutching a handbag. They appear distored through the peephole, with big heads tapering down to little tiny feet. "We're your new neighbors, the Hendersons". The guy opens the door to meet the people. There they are: great big heads, little tiny feet... just the way they looked through the fish-eye. Gee. I hope these PT people are at least normal.

The town of Floyd was having its "Dickens of a Night" thing last night. All the merchants are open, have hot cider, freebies, music. People wander around the streets (one intersection where THE traffic light is) visiting the stores and generally mingling and Dickensonian characters in period dress are caroling and generally merry-making. We made the decision that it would not be safe to travel there because of the back roads. A logical decision. Ann, in typical fashion, got caught squarely between damned if we do and damned if we don't, and pouted for a while because we didn't go. She is her own worst enemy sometimes, I swear.

I agreed to keep the TV off (even though there was a James Bond movie I would have allowed myself to beam into) and no blogging. Missing out on the socializing in town, Ann wanted to 'do those things we talk about but never do'. That could take in a lot of territory for sure. We decided that I would read her something from 'my world' of late that meant something to me. So, we pulled up in front of the woodstove, and I read excerpts from a powerfully-written essay by David James Duncan in Orion Magazine called "Improvisations in the Key of Cosmology". This was especially meaningful to me, resurrecting my thinking from long ago, struggling with the knowledge of Science versus the knowledge of the spirit. Duncan does an excellent job of explaining why it is essential for the science of today to incorporate the language of the spirit, of poetry, and of wonder. The world is becoming a stranger, more beautiful place than we had imagined, and those who understand the ineffible nature of nature, prophets and sages in ages past, may know more about ultimate reality than we have given credit for.

Other than the mailman, not a car came down our road all day. It was as if there was a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door to our private resort, a day just for us. Just before bedtime, we put on layer after layer of winter skin one last time and walked down the road under the Pleaides. The dog went with us. We walked in starlight alone in a world made new and full of wonder by this strange white blanket of crystal down. It silently wraps our valley in a peace that passes understanding.

Posted by fred1st at 7:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The magic of all-wheel-drive and a few frostbitten angels have conspired to bring wifey safely home yesterday afternoon after being snowed in at work for 36 hours. We are enjoying a full pot of 'special' coffee (which we save for such occasions) and looking forward to a long weekend snowed in on Goose Creek.

There is nothing quite so relaxing and reassuring as sitting on the loveseat with a warm, full mug in hand, watching a new-kindled fire leap behind the glass door of the woodstove. We look forward to a day in which nothing is planned and there is nowhere we need to be but here.

Posted by fred1st at 6:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The summer after we moved to Virginia, my mother Betty Jean and grandmother Bea made the long drive up from Alabama to see us in our new home. We were living in our rambling, drafty old house on a tree-lined street in what seemed like a very small town after moving from Birmingham. I had told my family of the kindness of our neighbors, Euell and his wife, in sharing with us the produce from their garden, honey from Euell's hives, and even giving us firewood in the early months when we were so cold and so helpless in our adopted rural lifestyle.

When he found out mom and Bea were coming, Euell asked if I thought they might like to take a drive out to the cove where he managed several hundred acres of magnificent valley pasture and rolling woodlands. We would take his big truck up into the logging roads where Euell and I often cut firewood together. I thought they would enjoy that, so a day or two after they arrived, we made plans to take this afternoon excursion. My grandmother declined but insisted that mom, Ann and I go on ahead. Bea stood in the shade of our large curved front porch and watched us drive away, Euell and Jill, his black spaniel dog, in his flatbed truck, with the rest of us in my car.

We returned a few hours later after spending a very nice afternoon riding around crammed into the cabin of a rough one-ton truck. My grandmother, of course, wanted to know all about it right away. Mom was still gushing with adjectives to describe how majestic the mountains were, praising the clouds and the wildflowers, everything we had seen. She was gratified and relieved to have learned so many good things about the area where her son and his little family were now living. This was the world we had left home for; now she had seen it, and it was good. She began to describe our afternoon adventure to Bea.

"When we got out to the farm, Freddie and Ann and I got in the truck with Euell and drove way back in the woods. It was just wonderful!" she exclaimed.

"Well" Bea asked "what did Jill do?"

"Oh, there wasn't room in the cab for all of us, so Euell made her get out and run along behind the truck".

Bea appeared horrified at this, but being the genteel southern lady she was, she couched her disapproval in the mildest of negatives. "Well, I don't think that was a very nice thing to do" she scolded.

We didn't see what was so disturbing about this, but tried to assure her it was nothing out of the ordinary. "Oh, its okay. Euell always makes her get out and run when they go out there" I explained. "She needs the exercise".

You could see the indignation rising visibly in Bea's demeanor. "Now Betty, it's just not right that you should come up here a visitor and cause a man to make his wife get out and run along behind the truck!"

In a simultaneous flash of realization, we understood the misperception that was making for such wonderful family humour at Bea's expense. While we laughed hysterically, my perplexed grandmother just grew more and more confused. When we could finally speak between breathless peals of laughter, we told her that Jill was the dog! "Oh, she said. "I thought that was his wife. When you drove off today, wasn't she sitting in the truck next to Euell?"

This remained a family joke for years. Looking into the cab of the truck from behind, sure enought, Jill did look for all the world like a straight-haired brunette sitting there on the truck seat snuggled up extra-close to our good friend and benefactor. Even years later, we'd see Euell and Jill heading off to the cove to tend the cattle sitting side by side in the truck and say, "Well, there goes Euell and his wife. I wonder if he's gonna let her get out and chase the deer around today".

Posted by fred1st at 5:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I wrote the other day of the bizarre forty-foot 10 buzzsaw tree-whacker being spirited here and there by helicopter over our area the other day (UFO in Floyd County). Apparently, I left out of the blog version a paragraph something like the following:

Hey, can you imagine Arnold S. or Bruce Willis getting hold of one of these babies, laying waste to the 'evil ones' du jour in the final act! I included the paragraph in a version that was printed in the local newspaper today. Astute Floyd Press reader "Biased Observer" responds...

You're too late. This machine has already been in James Bond THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. He's riding in a car that gets attacked by a pipeline helicopter carrying one.

Posted by fred1st at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay you scripty types. Help a fella out here. This is an easy one.

What script to I need to insert to put an image against the left margin and place text to its right, then wrapping full column under the image? How much 'buffer' should I leave to make the image nicely set off from the text?

I may start placing smaller images than the 500 x 350 pix I typically post. I'd like the above placement and don't want to make it happen by total ignorant chance if somebody has the answer. And I'm sure you do.

Call BR 549 or comment/email me today! And, if you submit your answer before midnight tonight, you get a the MOTH-MASHER plus a full-length 8-track of Box Car Willie's Greatest Hits. Don't delay. Help Fred today!

Posted by fred1st at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Thursday morning, December 5, 4:35 a.m.
There was a flat glassy surface, cobalt blue reflecting ...what?... maybe the sky or the underside of a frozen lake and I could hear what sounded like bacon sizzling, popping, spattering. The sound might have been coming from this broad glistening frying pan surface before me but every time I tried to look at it, my vision carried past it or through it. Gradually I realized that I was waking from a dream, or dreaming because I was awaking in the dark to the peppering of several flavors of ice falling from three thousand feet toward final impact drop by grain on our standing seam metal porch roof. Sleet, freezing rain, little balls of snow... I can't say what it was that I was hearing exactly, crackling on the skillet lake of ice in my dreams. I am no Eskimo and I don't have a hundred words for snow. Language fails me when it comes to winter. I grew up southern.

Birmingham, Alabama, in my youth was not a place to experience winter. When it happened, only two or three times in my childhood, snow was as magical as any fairy tale I had ever heard or imagined. The first snow I remember, I awoke to find the walls of my bedroom radiating a strange pink glow that startled but didn't quite frighten me. I listened for clues and could hear nothing; more nothing than I usually heard in suburban neighborhood. No street noises, no distant city noises... a silence that I always remember when I hear Silent Night. All is bright.

I recall some of the things I had expected about snow were a disappointment. Not all snow compacted into compact and coherent balls. I might as well have tried to press a cup of dry flour between my mittened hands; I settled for throwing up handsful of the powdery confectioners snow to watch it sparkle in the brittle dry January air. When finally the quality of this stuff changed to allow it to become sticky, I could hardly wait to build a snowman.

I had no idea how to start. With a few hints I learned how to start with a nucleus of snow and roll it so it would gather more and more snowman skin. Roll it until it becomes so massive and lumpy you and the next door neighbor kids can't roll it another time. This will be the base. Roll another one until it gets so big that if it were any bigger, the gang couldn't pick it up for the belly part of the abdominal snowman.

But something was wrong as my first Frosty took shape. As the big lumpy snowman parts rolled over and over and began to gain the proper mass, the snow also picked up grass, leaves and twigs, even acorns. I was appalled. I had never seen such skin flaws in any of the pictures of a snowman. Find me one, anywhere in a book, on TV, that was covered in yard parts! My creation was not going to be the archetypical image I had always envisioned as I imagined my first real snow. There was a valuable lesson here, I can acknowledge, that, even childhood fantasies, when finally birthed into the real world may be less than expected, afflicted to one degree or another with warts and a rash. You just build your snowman and hope for the best. The creative impulse can overlook a lot of blemishes in the final product.

Oh joy! I had no idea there was such a thing! Snow cream! If store-bought ice cream is good, how much better it must be to make it from ice straight from heaven! Now I'm sure that gathering a gallon of fresh clean snow is a snap in more northern places; but when you only have 3" of ingredients on the ground, you can expect your snow cream to contain some of the same kibbles and bits that infected the pocked hide of your snowman. Even so, it was a 'free' treat I could make myself, sort of. We came in with our big bowl of snow and grass, hands numb inside wet gloves without any sensation whatever; mouth red and frozen and so stiff that talking was more like Neanderthal grunts. And what do we do? We eat ice. The absurdity was not lost to me, even then. There are times when, if it can be done, it should be done. Damn the logic. Everybody get a spoon!

Posted by fred1st at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Hey! You there. I see you timidly standing just outside the fence, waiting to see if there is going to be any excitement around the old homeplace today.

It's about time that you come up here out from behind the boxwood hedge there and let me take a look at you. I'm getting all these nice new visitors on the heels of last week's mention on Weblog Central at MSNBC, and not a one of you has come up to ring my doorbell. I don't care if you hang out in the yard, even peak in the windows here at Fragments. That's what it's here for (if it has any purpose at all for being here). But you know, you should knock on the door and introduce yourself, don't you think, just a quick howdjadoo and be on your way?

I would love to hear from you by email or comments, especially if you have not only come once by a Google accident or random click, but have come back intentionally, maybe even bookmarked Fragments and have been coming for months. You know who you are. Come up here in the light and let me get a good look at ya. Hmmm... say, you look as though you might be a rather bright lad or lass. Let me hear you say a few words....

I would love to hear from you. Especially today. I will be home alone for at least two days, a storm orphan whose wife left for work this morning with the winter storm suitcase. Oh please let the power stay on! I'd hate to have to start the generator just to blog. But I'd do it. And you know it.

Posted by fred1st at 7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

This week Michele Catalano of A Small Victory is hosting Carnival of the Vanities #11. She has no doubt lost some sleep in setting up this nicely presented dish of a few dozen 'bests' from this past week. And hey, there's my friend Fran of Northwest Note's entry at the top of the list. Cream always rises...

And OOHH! Go here! Mike Finley's essay on disappointment (Anton's Syndrome) leads into all sorts of interesting directions about his thinking, his work and aspirations as a poet-writer, and about his deeper self. Highly recommended!

Posted by fred1st at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I could be wrong about this being a wimpy snowstorm; we might actually get a royal shellacking (>6") out of this one today and tomorrow. Some places are getting up to an inch of ICE as well. I don't care. I'm sitting here surrounded by 8 loaves of bread, and there is nothing more comforting in a storm than bread....unless it's numerous gallons of milk. But that is beside the point.

I must get the word out now. The point is, the power might be out tomorrow, rendering me computerless and without a purpose in life other than to feed the woodstove and keep the steps swept of snow. The point is, for all you teeming hoard (nothing personal) of Fragments visitors...

Be sure and set your Mickey Mouse Wristwatch on Friday, December 06, for either 6:50 or 8:50 a.m. EST. Both, if you have self-abusive tendencies. Following the usual five minute Civil War story at those times, I will be reading the remains of an essay on WVTF in Roanoke (Real Audio link is here).

The version as read will be what was left after deleting the second and third paragraph in the studio yesterday, field-amputation like, because the piece was 'too long after all', she said. Down and dirty editing on the fly. Ouch! Instead of merely throwing out the paragraphs, had I been quick on my feet, I would have offered to add in their place the transitional solution so often helpful in historical works:

"And then, some other stuff happened".

Posted by fred1st at 5:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If this winter is like the past three since we moved here to Goose Creek, there is no need either to dread or to anticipate eagerly the coming of the first predicted snow storm of the season tomorrow night and Thursday. The huge mass of blue that is creeping east on the radar screen, moving ever closer to our part of southwest Virginia, will at the last hour divide north and south of us... blowing up into the southern tier of West Virginia counties, and down below us following the Blue Ridge counties of Patrick and Franklin. Or, it will come as predicted and change to freezing rain on top of maybe an inch of snow and sleet. That's been the pattern now for years.

I was in the town library today and ran across an old Floyd County history; it showed pictures of school buses buried to their tops in the snows of the 1960's. Even when we lived farther west in the state back in the 70's, we had some doozies. We don't have much in the way of winter any more, and consequently, some of our songbirds no longer migrate, and tick populations wiggle merrily through even the coldest months to drop down our collars on warm days in December, February.

Notwithstanding the unreliable record of the weatherpersons, the Floyd townsfolk were in a veritable lather today about the impending storm. Most were talking about how they simply must get to Farmer's Grocery and get extra milk and bread. It is widely known that the human metabolism requires additional rations of just these two staples during snow storms. This certainly cannot be based on any real necessity to hoard, as our-inch-of-sleet hardly keeps even the little old ladies homebound for more than a half a loaf of bread and a quart of milk.

Time to take stock, for real, of our winter-readiness. Blankets, candy bars, change of clothes, flashlight, scrapers, and de-icer for the cars. Oh, yes, and the emergency pee bottle for Fred's truck. My old buddy Dennis used to stock his winter travel kit with a wide-mouth Snapple bottle for this purpose. (I chided him that this was nothing more than a form of bragging, and told him I could bring him an empty bottle of Texas Pete from home as it would probably do him just fine.) Better throw some firewood in the back of the truck tomorrow for ballast to hold the tires down into the snow, should the weather guys actually slip up and get this one right.

We bought a generator just before Y2K as we were moving in: us out here at the edge of civilization moving in just at the end of the world as we knew it! As it turns out, we have been without power only part of one day in three years. I have tried to keep the thing cranked every once in a while, but have never put it through a dry run of a real energy emergency. We have 300 gallons of LP to power the kitchen stove and two built-in gas lights on the walls and a couple of cords of firewood under cover just outside the back door. Two crank radios will keep us connected to the 'real world'. All this plus a wall full of books and a big warm dog.

I guess we have just about everything we need to stay warm and contented during our typical winter storm. Even so, on the way home today, I stopped by Farmer's and fought the crowd to pick up a couple gallons of milk and some dinner rolls. You know, you can't have too much milk and bread around when the weatherman is calling for snow.

Posted by fred1st at 6:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Monday morning began bright and brisk, with a low silver sun, calm, peaceful as ever. Sitting at the computer waiting for the muse to visit and move my fingers on the keys, I became aware that I was hearing sounds unnatural out my window. I got up from my chair and stood at the open front door in my robe and slippers. Whatever it was, it was circling back and forth between our valley and the neighbors. We see small planes and the occasional ultralight making lazy circles over our valley in the summer when the thermals give extra lift, but it would be odd to have these flying things around this time of the year. Something was not exactly right in my memory of sound to place this roar in any known group of aerial creature I had known.

The roar increased and decreased in pitch and intensity as if this machine was making circles, moving alternately closer, then farther from my listening post in the shelter of the porch. I tried to make sense of it, looking for the simplest explanation in the good scientist way. I could be wrong, but there seemed to be a bunch of engines all screaming at once, then falling off, then beginning the next verse, over and over again. I watched in the apparent direction of the mysterious noise as it persisted off and on all Monday morning and never saw anything at all above the tree lined ridges, even though the pitch of the sound told me I should. Finally, Tuesday afternoon, while across in the woods gathering some oak firewood I had split and stacked there last winter, I realized that once again, these reverberating hollows had deceived my ears. The clefts and folds of these ravines make locating the source of the infrequent noises we hear... a deer hunter's gunshot, distant hammering, mysterious flying machines... a ventriloquial impossibility.

What had seemed to be coming from the south while I stood on the porch on Monday turned out to be sound bouncing back at me from a source to the north instead. Aha! Finally, there it was: just a helicopter! But what on earth was it doing, hanging out in one place for so long? No, not one place. It seemed to be hovering over several different places back up on Lick Ridge... zipping between two places maybe a half mile or more apart, back and forth like a bumblebee between sunflowers. Then, later that day, another piece of the puzzle fell in place.

The helicopter was carrying something underneath. From the distance, it appeared long and straight; it could have been a log, I supposed. It seemed reasonable to conclude that somebody is logging by helicopter! It can be done, but it is very expensive. I was impressed that someone would spend that kind of money, when the local tendency for loggers is to doze their way into the woods in military fashion, rape and pillage, and leave with their cash. Helicopters don't come cheaply, and this seemed an unlikely explanation, but it was all I had to work with at the moment.

Ann saw the helicopter and its odd load later Tuesday afternoon. She said it looked to her more like a metal beam than a log. Hmmmm. Maybe some moneyed person is building a remote steel-girded cantilevered mountain hunting cabin up behind us. But this theory didn't explain why the 'thing' hanging from the helicopter was being moved back and forth between three or more different places.

Wednesday while up on the ridge behind the house looking for this year's Charlie Brown Christmas tree, another sighting. This time we were much closer and got a better view of the helicopter and it's odd burden. The 'thing' being carried was segmented in some way; I could discern a dozen or so rings or lumps on the maybe 30 foot object. Working theory: a long rod with large electrical insulators, such as would be part of the tall electrical tower structures that carry major power lines. The flaw in that explanation was that there aren't any of those within 10 miles of here. I was running out of theories and thinking it was about time to take this bull by the horns, whatever that might entail.

There were no helicopters for Turkey Day. Would they come back the day after, or would this mystery end without a solution? I didn't have to wait long for the answer. Matter of fact, I had sat down to write the preliminaries to this little mystery on Friday morning, when I heard a familiar sound outside, but this time it was way closer than what I had heard earlier in the week. This story, it seems, was going to have an ending after all! Just maybe, our UFO was an Unidentified Forestry Object!

By the time I got down off the porch steps and into the yard, the helicopter and it's strange Sword of Damocles was hovering directly over the house maybe 300 feet up. I thought for an instant it was about to drop the Rod of Death straight down on the house! It was moving very slowly west, and descending fast over the wooded ridge. The 'thing' I could now see clearly. It consisted of a series of circles end to end, like pizza pans welded together in a line. At the top was a black box about the size of a small sports car. The helicopter descended slowly, just up the road. It carefully lowered its stinger down below the treeline near the powerline that follows a narrow right-of-way up the ridge next to us. I assumed it was going to drop this thing and go back to the mother ship for more. Before I could throw on my overalls and run back outside, the craft and it's bizarre appendage had lifted and was gone.

Now, I'm not one to freak out over unexplained phenomenon, but I could not be content to just shrug this one off and get on with my doin's around here. So, I called the Floyd County Sheriff's office; you know, the neighborhood-watch community service type call. Reporting a prowler, with an odd twist.

"Yes, this is Fred First and I live down below the old Terry's Fork Grocery and I'm wondering if you know anything about helicopters being used by aliens to hide large, powerful metal mind-controlling devices in the remote wooded sections of northeastern Floyd county".

No, I didn't say exactly that. But what I did say didn't sound not much less weird as I was explaining to tell the poor dispatcher what was taking place here in my backyard. Fortunately, this being a small pond, she had seen the helicopter plus its stinger this morning from Route 8 (a good 5 miles west) and had found out what was going on. Oh good! I wasn't alone to fight off this invasion!

There was a good reason that I could not describe or explain the hangy-down thing, as my mind had not conceived that there was such a thing as this. They could have dang warned us ahead of time! That woulda saved a lot of angst amongst us wayback sheltered folk. The story has it that our electrical utility, American Electric Power, is doing powerline clearing through the steep, inaccessible parts of the county here that really cannot be reached on foot, definitely not by service truck. They have contracted with a company out of NC for a service that uses a very odd but effective tool... the 'thing' suspended from the helicopter.

And here is an explanation for the 'stinger': it is a hanging series of two-foot circular saw blades; the black box on top is apparently the engine that powers them. The whole contraption is lowered along the powerline and moved through the limbs that encroach along the right-of-way. There are at least 10 individual saws, all working at once making a terrible racket, in addition to the roar of the helicopter. No wonder it sounded like we were being invaded by a squadron of Tie Fighters! And in this maze of intersecting valleys, they were coming at us from all sides at once.

I thought there for a minute I was gonna hafta call Mulder and Scully in on this one. And I'm still not 100% convinced that there might not be a Roswell thing going on here. Weather balloon. Yeah, right.

Update: Here is a picture of and more details about the giant helicopter tree-whacker. Man. Can you imagine a movie where, in the final scene, Bruce Willis or Arnold Sreap vengeance on the 'evil ones' du jour using one of these suckers!

Posted by fred1st at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

• Things that roll, bounce, or make noise.
• Things thrown: darts, hoops, rings, balls of all kinds.
• Educational 'toys' that I actually wanted: Chemistry set, microscope, telescope, binoculars.
• Guns: rubber band guns, spud guns (anybody know what I'm talking about here?). I remember one particular shooting game where a pistol shot steel balls at moving ducks within a closed plastic arcade and recycled the ammo, over and over again. I still recall getting a blister on my trigger finger before Christmas day was over.
• Things ridden or rolling: sleds, skates, bikes, wagons, go-carts.
• Drawing/painting things, requested but usually ignored, lacking the basic talent for such. Etch-a-sketch (Check out these incredible drawings! And we thought blogging was an incredible time-sink! Click on the Andy Griffith Etch-a-sketch for detail.)
• Things despised: clothes, especially pajamas and underwear; books, but less so as I got older, particularly adventure like Swiss Family Robinson. Cash money was acceptable, increasingly as I got older.

I can't help but contrast those toys from my childhood to the things kids are apparently demanding this Christmas. Baby-boomer grandparents I suppose were the intended target of advertisements shown over and over through countless commercials during the recent holiday James Bond Marathon (where I confess I was suckered in for a few...one with Sean Connery, one with Roger Moore, and one staring some Lazenby character I positively don't remember).

Oooh. I feel a rant coming on...

And so what will little Bobby and little Becky find under their tree this year, if gramma and grampa got the not-so-subliminal message? The little kiddies will unwrap everything imaginable to feed their Playstation, X-box, and Nintendo.... the latest state-of-the-art software packages on CD that are loosely called "Games". TiddleeWinks these are not. Action heros my Aunt Gussie! Find within all manner of flamethrower-wielding omnipotent robot-warriors, evil grotesque rampaging cyborgs, sinister nimble-nubile superhuman heroines and ultra-fast crashing cars, boats, tanks, spaceships or skate boards. Each features evisceration, immolation, decapitation and more of your favorite graphics!

The real world is such a wonderful, desparate place. If they are to contribute to understanding and caring for this world they are inheriting, our children must be directed by parents, teachers and the media toward ways of playing that use their energies, imaginations and actions towards discovery of amazing, real places in ponds, in woods and in communities on this planet. Isn't our solar system and galaxy awesome enough to entertain from the darkness of a backyard telescope trained on the rings of Saturn? I'm all for fantasy and adventure, but I just have to say BAH HUMBUG to parental complicity in allowing 'toys'in their homes that contribute to children becoming yet more sedentary and plump, more passive but even less easily entertained, and increasingly less involved in the flesh-and-blood chaotic world outside their walls and themselves.

Well-developed thumbs and quick eye-hand coordination will be a scant comfort as today's children face the considerable challenges in their adult world to come. Send them outside with a ball and a hula-hoop this Christmas. We'll all be the better for it.

Posted by fred1st at 4:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. ~e.e. cummings

The sun will be up soon, and we will be heading off for our morning walk, here the week after Thanksgiving. We are now one season removed from summer and our lives have taken on a different character, a seriousness not familiar in June.

A June morning walk is a casual and spontaneous saunter in no particular hurry to go or to come back. We follow our usual loop down the pasture road, jumping across the stones to cross the creek in the Rhododendrons. There is no urgency or hurry as we amble home north along the logging road, using our hiking sticks to keep our footing in the wet grass, stopping now and then to marvel at a new arrival in the calendar of budding and blooming wildflowers. The still bright air is heavy with the familiar smells of warm earth, fields and woods, and a hundred birds sing about themselves from high in tulip poplars sprouting tiny leaves. At the end of our walk, the path leads downhill toward the meadow, and crosses the creek once more to the house.

When winter comes, our morning walks do not end. But they are no longer a come-as-you-are tiptoe through the woods. Winter walks are a deep-sea dive into cold and dark, in a submersible of wool and down. Peeking out from under visors and toboggans like diving helmets, we trudge heavily against the stern and biting currents of polar air flowing like waves over us. Without our encumbering spacesuits our frail pink flesh would turn blue and brittle as December leaves, and our expedition would never be heard from again. It takes determination, planning and a certain degree of masochistic joy in suffering, or at least a willing deprivation of comfort, to take a winter walk.

Posted by fred1st at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)